Until now many efforts towards peace in troubled parts of Saharan Africa have focused on fomenting coexistence betweenf Islam and competing religions. What the Sudanese referendum says is that coexistence of Muslim and non-Muslim ideologies won’t work.
When the election in The Sudan ends this weekend and shortly thereafter South Sudan declares itself sovereign, Muslims will be in power the north and non-Muslims in the south. But that’s not the end of it.
I expect a migration is going to begin in both directions between the two entities not so dissimilar to what happened in the Hindi/Muslim breakup of India and Pakistan (later, Bangladesh) after World War II. In fact the Sudanese migration began when it became apparent that the process was going to end in partition. More than 50,000 immigrants already turned up in the south in just the last few months.
This migration won’t be as large as the one following India and Pakistan’s partition, because there aren’t as many people to begin with. But it will be substantial enough to notice. And it will further polarize the individual societies at each end.
In America we often read about the religious competition as between Islam and Christianity, but that’s not the case. The perception comes mostly from the large presence of Christian missionaries and aid societies in The South, but the fact is that the majority of The South is not Christian, despite a half century of Christian proselyting.
Neither do I think it fair to call it “animist” as is often read as much as “Christian”. In fact, the two are often combined. I don’t think it fair-minded to say “animist” because that label carries a ton of derogatory inferences from the colonial era.
The fact is that most southern Sudanese are not religious in any regards by modern standards. They revere their family ancestry and create religious ideologies often unique to very small geopolitical areas.
Christianity is probably the largest single recognized religion in the south, but it is far from being a dominant ideology among the majority of southern Sudanese.
What it is truest to say is that the majority of southern Sudanese characterize themselves as anti-Muslim. And this characterization of oneself as anti-something, rather than something-something, is telling.
It is the basis for the conflict not only in The Sudan, but in Chad, Mali, Spanish Sahara and to a lesser extent elsewhere throughout the Saharan belt of the continent.
Religious ideology always tries to dominate government, even at home in America. Less modern societies are less capable of keeping this motivation at bay in part because emerging societies need forms of government that will be readily and quickly accepted by their people.
Muslim ideology with its male-dominated, polygamous hierarchy fits perfectly into many more traditional African societies. This week a Nairobi newspaper published a feature article on how the well-known and very traditional Maasai tribe was accepting Islam in surprising numbers.
The current president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, is a deft survivor of a number of court schemes and military coups, and his current long reign can be linked directly to his decision to make Islam’s Sharia law the law of Sudan in 1983. There’s no question in my mind that this is what has kept him in power since.
And quite unlike a legalistic foundation — even one as entrenched as I feel the U.S. constitution is — the opportunities for amending law in Muslim formulated societies are infinitely less. Some may argue impossible.
This draws a line in the sand, (and in the case of the Sudan, that line goes right through the oil fields). Muslim above the line. Non-Muslim below the line.
There is a huge problem in dividing up the world by religious ideology. It tends to divide not only ideas and faith, but wealth and health. But as with India and Pakistan, the motivation to minimize conflict was a vital one that has been served more or less well, even while they haven’t exactly become bosom buddies.
So if this experiment with The Sudan is successful, which I think it will be “more or less”, then a new formula may emerge for reducing Africa’s troubled conflicts.
Violence is largely an “American” thing. Not African, not Chinese, although some of the worst violence in mankind’s history has occurred there. But organic violence, violence allowed free reign to grow, is distinctly American.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and others murdered in Tucson is why I say this.
If you’re reading this instead of the billions of other blogs about Giffords, it’s because you know my life has been spent in Africa. And when it hasn’t been in Africa, I spend a lot of time talking to other people who aren’t African about how Africa isn’t really as violent, isn’t as murderous, isn’t as corrupt as … well, America.
And here’s why.
First, let’s start with just the ultimate violence: killing. In my lifetime, Americans have been involved (either as the killers or the killed) in killings in the world more than any other nationality.
Add up the Rwanda genocide, the slaughters in the Congo, the political killings throughout China and North Korea, the secret killings in Argentina and Chile, the Balkan slaughters, and the ongoing and endless civil wars in the Horn of Africa.
It still doesn’t equal the involved killings in all the American wars of my lifetime. Likely it doesn’t even add up to the involved killings of the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
In the generation before me, this supreme total wasn’t America’s. It was Europe’s, with the holocaust and the Balkan genocides such as Armenia. (A close second was the prolonged killings of the Stalin regime.)
Not Africa. Not then, not now.
Violence as a true act of self-defense is a bitter morality. But during my lifetime violence in self-defense (WWII) has morphed into violence as preemption.
I don’t think that Giffords’ accused murderer was a sane activist. But he was influenced by the hate and vile (vitriol, as the Puma County Sheriff explains) of the Right.
Fact: Sarah Palin removed her website of “targeted” Congressional seats, where crosshairs were used to designate the Congressional districts the tea party should beat, within hours of the Giffords’ shootings.
Sarah Palin knew it was inflammatory. Removal so quickly was an admission it was wrong to begin with.
A number of other sites came down quickly from the Right as well.
Likely there will always be violence. Poorly brought up, abused, neglected children often turn violent. Abused, neglected, tortured and impoverished adults often turn violent. I believe society should try to rectify all this, but even without doing so, in the past these unhinged people did not direct their violence against Government.
So often it was against women, wives and daughters.
So often it was against other ethnic races, immigrants, other religions, people who aren’t like you. Sometimes it was against animals, or glass because it makes such a clatter shattering. Sometimes it was random.
But in my generation, in America, it’s turned from all of those to… Government.
That’s new. We have never had as many Timothy McVeigh or Jared Lee Loughner wannabees as before. There were some. Nearly one out of every four American presidents has been assassinated. But nowhere near as many Oklahoma Public Buildings, or Maryland State Buildings, or airplanes, or churches… or public officials “targeted in crosshairs” as today.
A junior Congressmen from Idaho didn’t have a body guard when I was child. It didn’t take me two hours to check-in at O’Hare. I wasn’t allowed to bring an unconcealed gun into the Davenport city council meeting, or into my Econ 101 lecture at the University of Iowa as a part of my “right to self-defense.”
Sarah Palin isn’t the cause. She’s just another symptom. She transferred her violence from herself to the public at large. Society couldn’t make her happy. So better than beating a grandchild, she beats Government. There’s a certain bitter-sweet logic to this. And by the very nature of her public scope, she transfers this violence to millions.
We can’t live without Government. We can’t live without Big Government. And we can’t live without Big Government doing a lot more than just “defense.”
Government is Society, Community, the Group of Us. By our neglect of Society, Community, the Group of Us, we have become our own targets. We have become socially suicidal. Americans have put themselves in the Crosshairs.
East Africa is booming, so many of the stories of 2010 were terrifically good news. But there were the tragedies as well like the Kampala bombings. Below I try to put the year in perspective with my top ten stories for East Africa for 2010.
1. Populace democracy grows.
2. Terrorism grows, as does the battle against it.
3. Huge stop in the mercenary purchases of Coltan.
4. Momentum for peace in the runup to establishing a new South Sudan.
5. Tourism clashes with development, especially with the proposed Serengeti Highway.
6. New discoveries of fossil fuels produces new wealth and a new relationship with China.
7. Gay Rights grow public but loses ground.
8. Rhino poaching becomes corporate.
9. Hot air ballooning’s safety newly questioned in game parks.
10. Newest early man discoveries reconfirm sub-Saharan Africa as the birthplace of man.
#1: POPULACE DEMOCRACY GROWS
Theoretically, all the East African countries have operated as “democracies” except for the torrential years of Idi Amin in Uganda. But the quality of this democracy was never very good.
Tanzania was a one-party state for its first 20 years, and that same party continues to rule although more democratically today. Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi experienced one dictator after another, even while democratic elections at regional levels challenged the executive.
But the end of the Cold War destroyed the alliances these developing countries had with super powers. Purse strings were cut, and political cow-towing ended. All of them moved towards a truly more democratic culture.
And in 2010 huge leaps were made in all the countries towards more truly representative government. The most important example by far was the overwhelming passing of the new constitution in Kenya in a national referendum where more than 75% of registered voters participated.
And like the U.S. election which followed shortly thereafter, and like support for national health care in the U.S. and so many other issues (like no tax cuts for the rich), Kenyan politicians dragged their feet right up to the critical moment. They tried and tried, and ultimately failed, to dissuade Kenyans from their fundamental desire to eliminate tribalism in government and more fairly distribute the huge wealth being newly created.
I see this as People vs. Politicians, and in this wonderful case, the People won!
And there was some progress as well in Tanzania’s December election, with the opposition growing and its influence today moving that country towards a more democratic constitution.
(It was not so good in Rwanda or Uganda, where stiff-arm techniques and government manipulation of the electoral process undermined any attempt at real democracy.) But the huge leap forward in Kenya, and the little hop in Tanzania, made this the absolute top story of the year.
#2: TERRORISM GROWS
Four smaller bombings in Nairobi’s central business district over the year were eclipsed by two horrible simultaneous bombings in Kampala bars on July 11 while patrons were watching the world cup. Police display an unexploded suicide vest.
Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda in Somali, claimed responsibility. And throughout the year Shabaab grew increasingly visible along the Kenyan border as its power in Somali increased.
I’ve written for a long time about how the west has had its collective head in the sand as regards terrorism and Al-Qaeda in particular. Long ago I pointed out that the locus of Al-Qaeda terrorism had moved to the horn from Afghanistan, and this year proved it in spades.
The country with the most to lose and most to gain in this war on terror is Kenya, because of its long shared border with Somalia. And the year also marked a striking increase in the Kenyan government’s war on terror, and with considerable success.
With much more deftness and delicacy than us Kenya has stepped up the battle against Al-Shabaab while pursuing policies aimed at pacifying any overt threats to its security, by such brilliant moves as allowing Omar Bashir into the country and not arresting him (on an international U.N. warrant). As I said in a blog, Kenya Gets It, and the story is therefore a hopeful one.
The Dodd-Frank Act is our victory!The Congo Wars continue but are abating, and in large part because of a little known provision in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act which now makes it almost impossible for major corporations in the U.S. to buy the precious metal Coltan on the black market.
A black market which has funded perhaps Africa’s most horrible war for more than a generation. Hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – have been killed and raped, and more than 20,000 children conscripted into brutal wars, funded by purchases of Coltan and other precious metals by Intel, Sony and Apple.
It certainly wasn’t just this little legislative move. The U.N. peace-keeping force, fabulous diplomatic initiatives by Uganda and a real diplomatic vigilance by the U.S. all were instrumental. But the year ended with the least violence in the region in more than two decades.
#4: SOUTH SUDAN
I may be jumping the gun on this one, because the referendum to create a new country, the South Sudan, is not scheduled to occur before next month. But the runup to the referendum, including the registration process, while labored looks like it’s working.
Allied loosely with the Congo Wars, the civil war between the North and South Sudan had gone on for generations until a brokered peace deal five years ago included the ultimate end to the story: succession of the South into a new country.
The concept is rife with problems, most notably that the division line straddles important oil-producing areas. But in spite of all of this, and many other ups and downs along the way, it looks to me like there will be a South Sudan, and soon. And this year’s new U.N. presence in Juba, donor-construction of roads and airports, all points to the main global players in the controversy also thinking the same.
The creation of a new state out of a near failed one is not the be-all or end-all of the many problems of this massive and powerfully oil-rich area. But it is a giant leap forward.
#5: THE SERENGETI HIGHWAY & TOURISM
Last night NBC news aired a segment on the Serengeti Highway controversy, elevating an East African story into American prime time. Good.
But like so many reports of this controversy, the simplification ran amok. NBC’s reporter Engels claimed the motivation for the road was to facilitate rare earth metals like Coltan (see above) getting into Chinese hands more quickly.
While there may be something to this, it’s definitely not the main reason, which is much more general and harder therefore to fight. As I’ve often written, the highway as planned will be a real boon to the Maasai currently living to the east of the Serengeti, as much if not more than to the Chinese.
And as far as I know, Maasai don’t use Coltan.
Roads bring commerce and may be the single quickest way to develop a region. This region is sorely in need of development and recent Tanzania politics has aligned to the need for this regional development.
The highway is just one of many such issues which came to the fore throughout 2010 in Kenya and Tanzania. Concern that the west is just interested in East Africa as a vacation destination with no regards for the struggle for development, has governed quite a few local elections this year.
The whole concept of tourism may be changing as the debate progresses. I believe very deeply that the Serengeti highway as proposed would hinder rather than help development. But as I’ve pointed out, alternatives are in the works.
And the real story of which the highway story is only a part, is how dramatically different East Africans have begun to view tourists in 2010.
#6: NEW RESOURCE DISCOVERIES ALTER GEOPOLITICS
For years I and other African experts have referred to East Africa as “resource-poor.” Kenya, in particular, had nothing but potash. Boy, did that change this year!
Although only one proven reserve has been announced in Kenya, several have begun production in Uganda and we know many more are to come.
China has announced plans for a pipeline and oil port in northern Kenya at a cost of nearly $16 billion dollars, that’s more than twice the entire annual budget for the Kenya government! Deep earth techniques have matured, and China knows how to use them.
More gold has been found in Tanzania, new coal deposits in Uganda, more precious metals in Rwanda… East Africa is turning into the world’s rare earth commodities market.
A lot of these new discoveries are a result of technology improving: going deeper into the earth. But 2010 freed East Africa from the shackle of being “resource-poor” and that’s a very big deal.
#7: GAY RIGHTS ON THE HOOK
African societies have never embraced gay rights but as they rapidly develop, until now there was none of the gay bashing of the sort the rightest backlash produces in the U.S. U.S. Righties manipulating East Africa.
That changed this year, and in large part because of the meddling of U.S. rightest groups.
In what appears to now have been a concerted many year effort, support from U.S. righties is leading to a vote in Uganda’s parliament that would make homosexuality a capital offense, and would jail for long terms those who failed to out known gays.
This extreme is not African, it is American. Mostly an insidious attempt by those unable to evince such insanity in their own society to go to some more manipulative place. The story isn’t over as the vote has yet to occur, but it emerged and reached a crescendo this year.
#8: RHINO POACHING EXPLODES
Poaching is a constant problem in wildlife reserves worldwide and Africa in particular. Rhino are particularly vulnerable, and efforts to ensure safe, wild habitats have been decades in the making. Dagger from rhino horn.
This year, they seemed to come apart. It’s not clear if the economic downturn has something to do with this, but the poaching seems to have morphed this year from individual crimes to corporate business plans.
This leap in criminal sophistication must be explained by wealth opportunities that haven’t existed previously. And whether that was the depressing of financial goals caused by the economic downturn, increased wealth in the Horn of Africa where so much of the rhino horn is destined, or reduced law enforcement, we don’t yet know. But 2010 was the sad year that this poaching exploded.
#9: IS HOT AIR BALLOONING SAFE?
Hot air ballooning in Africa’s two great wildernesses of the Maasai Mara (Kenya) and the Serengeti (Tanzania) has been a staple of exciting options to visiting tourists for nearly 30 years. That might be changing. Is it Safe?
A terrible accident in the Serengeti in early October that killed two passengers and injured others opened a hornet’s nest of new questions.
After working on this story for some time I’ve personally concluded 2010 was the year I learned I should not step into a hot air balloon in East Africa, at least for the time being!
#10: EARLY MAN WONDERS
There were not quite as many spectacular discoveries or announcements about early man this year as in years previously, but one really did stand out as outstanding and you might wonder what it has to do with East Africa! Representation by Tomislan Maricic.
DNA testing of Neanderthal proved that early man from Africa didn’t wipe them out after all, but absorbed them into the ever-evolving homin species.
And that absorption, and not massacre, happened outside Africa to be sure. But it finally helps smooth out the story that began in Africa: It’s likely that Neanderthal were earlier migrants from Africa, and absorption was therefore easier, physiologically and biologically.
It’s a wonderful story, and fresh and exciting, unlike the only other major African early man announcement about Ardi which was really a much older story, anyway.
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HAPPY NEW YEAR to all my loyal readers, with a giant thank you from me for your attention but especially your wonderful comments throughout the year. See you next year!
Americans are just as tribal as Africans. This week’s elections prove it. But while Americans may curse and protest, our visceral feelings don’t manifest into actual bloodshed. That’s the difference with much of Africa.
A good friend and 25-year old Africaphile who recently completed a stint with the Peace Corps in Guinea where ethnic violence is now erupting sent me the dispatch below. His heartfelt concerns built by nearly two years of working in an isolated village, learning the language and customs and making friends, now seem swept away by his inability to explain what’s happening, now.
Conor’s angst if anger is the same that drives ethnic violence. Those of us who have “fallen in love” (Conor’s words) with distant places and peoples come remarkably close to adopting aspects of that foreign society that attract us. We touch the same sphere of that complex culture as those who were born into it.
But we’re on the outside. We can sit on the sphere and enjoy something, then remove ourselves perhaps when something turns ugly. We both might feel the same thing. It’s just that we aren’t contained within the sphere like they are. We can release our grip and float away.
Conor puts it this way (excerpted from below): I do not understand the fear of isolation in the same way, the fear or being shut out of the network that I owe my history and existence to. Therefore I do not understand the surge of belonging that electrifies every contact with those on the outside of the fence.
From my distant perspective, it’s the same awful panic that drives the old Delaware widow to elect someone who wants to privatize social security. Or the right-thinking Libertarian who stamps his foot on the head of someone who disagrees with him. These are puerile, unintellectual feelings. They lead to my loving Norwegian Methodist aunt hating her Jewish landlords.
Conor writes (excerpted from below): I thought I understood ethnic identity….I thought I understood what the potential for violence smelled like, what it looked like in schools, and what it felt like when you walked through the market or hitch hiked a motorcycle ride to the next town…..
I obviously do not.
The main difference between Conor Godfrey and his Guinean friends is that he isn’t Guinean. He is not forced into the ultimate defense: attack the other, go on the offense.
Click here for a YouTube video of the current violence, then read the rest of Connor’s dispatch:
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Every day hundreds if not thousands of Fulani flee their homes in upper-Guinea for the safety of Fouta Jallon, the heartland of the Fulani people. They are both victims and victimizers of the neighboring Mandingo with whom they had lived peacefully for some time.
Guinea’s electoral crisis has resulted in a standoff between two remaining candidates representing these two largest ethnic groups in Guinea. Ethnic fault lines, previously well concealed beneath a web of inter-marriage, common faith, and necessary interaction, have reemerged into yawning chasms across which none save the artist or truly pious dare cross.
I left Guinea a year ago last week. As soon as my plane landed in the U.S. I began to mock the so-called experts who, I felt, read from outdated West African script as they warned of impending implosion in Guinea.
Did they know Modi M’Biliri Barry, my host father? Had they met Ousmane Diallo, my polyglot Peace Corps trainer who never had a bad word for anyone , or the Nene (mother) in Fataco that sold cassava dipped in hot pepper at recess in the courtyard, or seen Fulani and Mandingo students share benches in school, or chase the same girls on the beach in Conakry?
Because if they had—they would not, could not, suggest that Guinea shared anything more than a border with countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone, whose blood soaked late 90s have come to define ethnic barbarism.
How many people like me have fallen in love with diverse, integrated peoples in far away corners of the world, only to look back with horror as dormant identities in those same friends surge from obscurity, thousands of times more potent than peace time associations?
After a U.S. friend with his Kenyan wife visited Rwanda’s genocide museum in 2006, they both expressed to me wonder at the intensity of feeling that could drive human beings to leave all empathy behind. But as violence then gripped Kenya a few months later that same woman’s facebook page was inciting violence in her home country from an ocean away, urging people to round up Luo and “do away with them.”
The educated Guinean ex-pats I now speak with in The States rarely seem any better. The same family that opened up their homes to their diverse neighbors last year is now a dues paying member of the their group’s most intolerant fringe, cum sudden majority, willing to believe all manner of nonsense about certain members of their community.
The exceptions are beautiful. Grand Imams in most major Guinean cities have issued stern and touching warnings against reprisals and generally appealed for peace and reason. Some of the most prominent musicians from all over West Africa recently got together to put this song together; it asks, in stirring and beautiful verse, and in all the right languages, for peace and unity in Guinea.
I also know that individual Guineans, of all groups, in Labe and in Kankan, in New York, Paris and Montreal, and all over West Africa, are praying for Peace….but my impression is that they are the exceptions that prove the rule.
The collective unconscious I belong to does not go nearly as deep, nor nearly as far back as the Mandingo or Fulani communities, but it should go deep enough to remember European’s genocide inducing arrival to the new world, or our subsequent enslavement of millions of souls, or the other countless atrocities that have been perpetrated in the name of constructed identities by people of every race, creed, and color…..yet I don’t.
I am watching, from afar, the subversion and transformation of Guinean society as if this has never happened elsewhere, somehow unfazed by the stunning regularity with which this process unfolds across time and geography.
Two newly discovered life forms: it's all a matter of perspective!Leucitic hippos, pinpoint frogs and the 18th species of elephant shrew crowd the stage as scientists celebrate the UN’s Year of Biodiversity in Nairobi this week and next.
As for any meeting, you’ve got to have that charismatic headliner, and this time it’s the still unnamed new species of elephant shrew found (right on queue) only last month in far northeastern Kenya.
There are about 7,000 new species discovered every year, although only 100 of those are vertebrates, and for sure, you can’t headline a conference with a grease eating microbe. Actually to be fair, most of the thousands are nicely sized plants, and most of the 100 vertebrates found are fish.
But Kenya’s new little discovery in the Boni-Dodori forest couldn’t have come at a better time, just as the conference began and just as governments and NGOs are reducing their funds for biodiversity research.
All elephant shrews are endemic to Africa, and the other 17 known to science are directly linked to elephants through DNA analysis, going way way back to before the woolly mammoth. In fact, the shrew is a much better remnant of the elephant’s common ancestor with it, than the elephant. Gigantism is an evolutionary trend that effects nearly all new species.
The shrew’s taxonomy is likely closer to the first known mammals about 240 million years ago than it is to the elephant we see today!
And that extraordinary span in time can give us a glimpse into evolutionary dynamics that, who knows, might give us a baseline to analyze the life we might find on distant Gliese 581g!
The shrew’s discovery is also important because it lives in a forest zone that is being rapidly reduced by development, and an area currently in war. The forest is on the border with Somalia.
It’s a weak argument to Kenyan military commanders that they ought to abandon fighting Al-Shabaab in order to save an elephant shrew. But it isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds. Your doubtless reaction is to smile at presumed sarcasm. But ultimately, isn’t that what we’re fighting for on all sides? A better life?
And the more we know about “life” the better we can manage our portion of it.
Here are some of the most recent new nonplant, nonfish newly living creatures found on our wondrous planet that will be discussed at the conference.
Smallest Frog in the World
Discovered August 25, 2010 in a pitcher plant in Borneo.
Shown in top picture above.
Guns from the UK, Guns from America, and bodies from Africa.Tuesday Congress gave President Obama additional emergency funding for the war in Afghanistan. But the real new news is that America and Britain are beginning a new war in Somalia.
This was a week where terror succeeded. It began with the Al-Shabaab (Al-Qaeda) bombings in Kampala, which like 9/11 are intended to provoke. Terrorists know they are militarily inferior, but if they can provoke the militarily superior to come to them, they can win.
Nine-Eleven did just that. It provoked the U.S. in a multi-trillion dollar response that hasn’t ended yet, and judging from Obama’s increasingly hawkish ways, won’t end at all soon.
The powers of the world just don’t get it: no matter how powerful you may be, you can’t beat the joker on his own turf.
By diverting resources away from eliminating poverty, or malaria, or child soldiers… despicable culture centers like fiendish jihadism flourish. These weirdos survive on misery. But we can’t try to end poverty, or malaria or child soldiers… because the resources that would be used are being used instead to buy guns.
So the bad guys at whom the guns are pointed and who want the poor to stay poor so that they can be elevated as the poor’s protectors, win.
It’s weirdly impractical, but if we’d just schedule regular drops of thousands of dollar bills over Helmand Province or Basra, rather than delivering guns to shoot one another, there’d be no terrorism left. And it’d probably cost a lot less.
And this enigmatic neurotic dynamic of World Powers has infected every single American administration, Republican or Democrat, since my birth.
And what I worry about, now, is Africa.
Africa has been mostly immune from this aberration of modernism, because only lately has its resources become so important. Yes Zambia had copper, and yes, South Africa had diamonds and gold, and yes Nigeria has oil, but not enough, or too deep, or too cheap, or too hard to get at.
But gold is five times the value it was ten years ago. Oil extraction technology is way superior to what it was before, and the thirst for oil especially from China and the U.S. is unbelievable. Copper is an old element. But Coltan is desperately needed by every cell phone and it’s in The Congo and Rwanda.
So enter Africa into the Modern Age: Prepare for battle.
So America called on the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to beef up its troops last week to fight Al-Shabaab in Somali. The OAU asked America for guns. We’re giving them big time.
Yesterday, Kenya’s security chief, George Saitoti, asked its mother colonizer Britain for “support” in fighting al-Shabaab.
Britain’s new conservative Minister of African Affairs, Henry Bellingham, said he was “delighted” to help.
“Al-Shabaab is a threat to all other countries including the UK (United Kingdom)”, Bellingham said, raising his China teacup to new heights.
Since I was born in 1948 just after World War II, the U.S. has spent more money on wars than any other single service for me or my fellow citizens, if you dare call “war” a service.
Korea, Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Granada, Panama, Nicaragua, the Balkans, Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan and that doesn’t count the “Cold War” expense of nuclear armaments or troops and bases in Europe.
The Dodd-Frank Act is our victory!Guess what? We won an important battle: The Wall Street reform act signed by President Obama this week regulates U.S. corporations using Coltan from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)!
There I discussed several of the great horrors of Africa : war, corruption, child soldiers and resource theft. All embodied in one main mineral, Coltan, used by electronic companies and principally to power PlayStation3.
The largest source of Coltan in the world is in the DRC, a lawless, governmentless jungle controlled by warlords who are becoming billionaires by selling Coltan to companies like Sony and Intel.
In a little noticed provision of The Dodd-Frank Act, the commission which must now be created for consumer protection is charged with drawing up rules that will prevent any U.S. corporation from buying any minerals from the DRC unless it can specifically prove that its payments are not being used for …
… war, corruption, child soldiers and resource theft.
Which… is impossible. Every dime paid for minerals that come out of the DRC goes to warlords.
We won. An important, obscure battle that few people noticed but which has such an incredible impact on Africans, particularly children, has finally been won by the power of U.S. capitalist law.
The law regulates “specific minerals obtained from sources in the Democratic Republic of Congo and bordering countries, which include “columbite-tantalite (coltan), cassiterite, gold, wolfamite, or their derivatives” and certain other minerals.”
These are the “conflict minerals” of which Coltan is the leader.
And with the “force of law” we suddenly have all these marvelous U.S. corporations acting as if they never wanted to buy Coltan in the first place:
In June when passage looked likely sneaky guru Steve Jobs announced Apple would never buy Coltan from DRC warlords. (He didn’t say they never had and there is every indication they have.)
Yesterday, Michael J. Holston, executive vice president and general counsel for Hewlett-Packard, said, “We believe this provision will help … reduce the purchase and use of conflict minerals known to fund the ongoing armed conflict in the .. (DRC), and thus help reduce some of the factors that have contributed to the civil war there.”
Right, Michael. HP has intentionally avoided vetting its microprocessor suppliers before now.
So don’t let all this gibberish take away YOUR victory. It was individuals like you, who contacted your Congressmen, organized by a huge coalition of proactive African organizations worldwide. It was a peoples’ battle that overcame the World Transformer Corporation.
We won. And there’s even more. After the U.S., it’s U.K. corporations that are the biggest offenders in the area. Boosted by the new U.S. law, a powerful world advocacy group, Global Witness, announced it would now sue the new Conservative Government to follow the U.S. law!
Now all we have to do is monitor the victory. The commission has 270 days to promulgate the law. And after that, only a U.S. Presidential degree that the conflict in the Congo is over will terminate the law.
Visions of a President Bush insisting there is no climate change or threats of off-shore drilling sets the stage, now, for the new battlefield. But the big engagement is over. We won!
America in Africa...or...China in Africa?The U.S. is finally realizing that Somali is the center of the world’s “War on Terror.” And so now we’re all ready to do exactly the wrong thing. Again.
I’ve written often — and spoken in public — about the growing power that Al-Shabaab has in Somalia. Al-Shabaab is Al-Qaeda in The Horn. Western preoccupation with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq has allowed them to spread and regroup into the Horn of Africa.
Al-Shabaab has been fighting along Kenya’s long northeastern border with Somalia for more than three years. Much of this has been hit-and-run, kidnapping and petty theft of food and military equipment, but more and more the gun battles with Kenyans begin to assume real engagement.
Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for Sunday’s bombings in Kampala. That seemed to do the trick: The U.S. has finally noticed.
First we heard from General William Ward who heads the U.S. Africa Command, that the U.S. would increase its military support to the TFG in Somalia. (Transitional Federal Government).
Then, a much more elaborate policy was detailed by the U.S.’ main diplomat in the region, Johnnie Carson.
I don’t like what I’m hearing.
What I’m hearing is that the U.S. is going to step up its military aid while lecturing a weak and futile puppet Somali government that it “should do more” for its people.
Here are my excerpts from Carson’s interview with All Africa published, today:
“I think [military assistance] is the correct policy… We have provided [Uganda & Burundi soldiers in Somalia] with military equipment… We have supported the training of TFG forces…We have supported specialized training in dealing with improvised explosive devices and training for the protection of ports and airports… There is no question that the TFG has to do more than it’s done in the past….
“We have not done enough on Somalia, which, for far too long, has been the subject of benign neglect by the United States…Given the magnitude of the problems …now is the time for the international community to recognize that this problem will only get worse for all of us if we do not come together to find a solution.”
Military assistance is NOT the correct policy. Providing military equipment and training to Ugandan soldiers who are famous for raping and pillaging in The Congo is NOT the correct policy. The TFG is an useless entity. We should NOT support the TFG.
I like Johnnie Carson, and I more or less like the Obama administration’s overall foreign policy, but they seem stuck in American imperialism. It’s just so dastardly how good guys get corrupted by power. I wonder if we elected Mahatma Ghandi U.S. President if he would then start new wars that we’d lose.
My lifetime has been characterized by failed U.S. wars and failed U.S. policies that I see as contributing to if not outright causing world terrorism.
Bruton’s formula is not new. Learned men have been espousing active, nonmilitary engagement in troubled parts of the world for decades as the ONLY solution to the world’s instabilities. We just don’t seem to get it.
Military action by a foreign power cannot eradicate a local guerrilla force. Period.
Military support of puppet regimes put in power by outside foreign powers is a black hole. Period.
Puppet regimes don’t last. Period.
And the most salient point is that the cost of military action is dozens if not hundreds of times greater than nonmilitary assistance.
In today’s Africa China’s got it right and America’s got it wrong. China is spending billions on roads, resource development and city planning. The U.S. is, too, but many more billions on military.
China’s spending on African military? 0. Zip. Not a penny.
I don’t mean to frame this as a contest between China and America, I mean to point out that China’s got policy orientation right and is contributing to African development. And that America’s obsession with military will destroy African development.
We must end our roles as policeman, schoolmarm, parent and pastor for the rest of the world. We can perform a role as a benefactor, but no longer as a soldier.
After the kiss, she throws a grenade to the bridesmaids.A large midweek wedding celebration dominated the eastern Congo town of Goma, this week, for the first time in decades. Is the war over, or just getting ready to start, again?
We’ll have to go to our PlayStation3 to find out.
I have a mixture of distant nostalgia and abject fear when I remember my own adventures in Goma. Before Mobutu was gone the Congo (then Zaire) was a secretive and scary place, but once inside the forests were filled with beauty and magic. And that was the problem, you had to be a wizard to get out.
But the end of Mobutu – as horrible as he was – heralded an unprecedented era of barbarism. Mineral-rich Kivu province, the eastern slice of the Congo that lies astride Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, became a lawless bastion of mercenaries and thugs.
Supported by the west’s desperate need for such absolutely essential things as weapons of mass destruction, Kivu went on the auction block, and the bidders were Sony, Intel, the U.S. Defense Department and a bevy of other moral-less capitalists. They all need Coltan.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, 80% of the world’s Coltan reserves are in Kivu.
Coltan is a wizard’s brew. When refined it becomes tantalum, and shortly thereafter it becomes camera lenses, cell phones, detailed instruments for surgical implants, wires and filaments in light bulbs that last 100 times longer than tungsten and its alloys are used for jet engines, missiles and all sorts of secret, wizardry things.
I find it so heartening that PlayStation3 now uses more Coltan than the Defense Department.
According to the monitoring group, Towards Freedom, there are 1300 people that die every day in Kivu from bullets or perverse rape. The massacre is a part of the Coltan War. Whoever controls Coltan gets very, very rich.
Those who mine Coltan are abused, mostly children. Those who finally collect for the sales of Coltan often shun dollars for weapon – did you hear that? “Shun Dollars”? What do they want instead?
Guns.
It’s so remarkably convenient. The most sophisticated guns use Coltan. Is this what they call sustainable development?
Eleven years ago the world got antsy with this unusual war for PlayStations, and the UN Security Council sent in 20,000 troops to Kivu to regulate the slaughter and rape. Forget about child labor in the mines, that was beyond their mission.
It has worked a little bit. Enough that there are now weddings in Goma. Enough that the very distant President of the Congo, Joseph Kabila, has asked the UN soldiers to leave. Kabila rules from Kinshasa, more than a thousand miles away over impenetrable jungles and in a world as distant from Kivu as .. Well, as from Leaf Valley, Agar or the other supposedly mythical republics of the PlayStation worlds.
If they go, the modicum of stability in Goma will, well I think the term used in the “Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Package” for PlayStation is , evaporize.
No pension and biodegradable.An important electricity line has just been laid in western Mozambique, crucial to the development of Mozambique’s big new Limpopo National Park.
Thanks to. Rats.
Yes that’s right. Installation had been stalled because of the huge numbers of land mines that remained in the area from the civil war. Land mines are a problem throughout much of troubled Africa, but nowhere as severely as in Mozambique.
An area of about 5000 sq. meters (100m x 50m, roughly the size of three American football fields placed end to end), was known to be full of mines, and there was no other way for the huge electricity grid to go.
The mines were known to be there, because of the skeletal remains found by the pylon diggers in the rectangular area they were to enter. The bones were from years of innocent people irregularly traveling through the remote area.
A pack of rats was let loose, identified the 32 mines in the area which were then dismantled, and the lights are on!
The giant African pouched rat is the work horse. It’s the genius work of a Belgium aid group, Apopo, with the cooperation of several organizations in Tanzania, including the army and Morogoro university where the rats undergo training.
The rat has an especially keen sense of smell. Like white rats, it’s affectionate and not aggressive, more like a bunny than vermin. Apparently it’s also quite intelligent, responding to Pavlovian training as if it were a dog. And, of course, it digs nicely.
What I find especially interesting about Apopo is that its founder and original collaborators were all engineers, those guys who look at a problem through its pieces. Traditional detection mechanisms went for the metal that the exploding powder turned into deadly shrapnel. But land mines are mostly composed of very aromatic powders (gun powder), and it was onto this principal ingredient that the geeks turned their attention.
Rats are cheap, friendly, responsive and biodegradable. AND when they step on a mine, it doesn’t go off!
Now consider this. The chief engineer, Bart Weetjens, is a practicing Zen Buddhist Monk in Belgium. It would take someone as out-of-the-box as this to create this genius scheme.
And guess what. Mines is just the first. The rats have just been trained to detect tuberculosis! Yes, and they will do so with greater success than the difficult X-Rays and chemical tests otherwise used.
Less than 24 hours after the UN Security Council approved continued funding of the Somali peace-keeping force, that force may have been routed from the capital by al-Qaeda.
After a night of intense fighting in Mogadishu, the blogosphere is replete with claims that al-Shabaab (al-Qaeda in Somalia) is near to taking over. Reuters was unable to make contact with any of the UN Peace Keepers.
“This fighting was the worst in months,” Mogadishu resident Ahmed Hashi told Reuters.
The world’s recent attention on Yemen as a cauldron for al-Qaeda growth came way too late. And now it seems not even the UN realizes how serious the situation in Somalia is.
This incessant game of catch-up, of pushing the “War Against Terror” from one country to another and always too late, now threatens the legacy of stability the west helped to create in East Africa.
The UN force had been trying to protect the pitifully weak “interim Somali government” which has not even controlled the entire capital city for the last year.
Al-Shabaab on the other hand has slowly established control over a huge portion of the country. In October these mostly foreign fighters took control of large towns near the Kenyan border.
Only the pirate-held area near Kismayu seems out of al-Shabaab’s grasp.
And where are all these weapons coming from? We’re not talking about machetes. There are tanks and missile launchers.
The fighting today reminds me of the 1980s Cold War days when America-backed Somali fought Russia- backed Ethiopia in the useless Ogaden desert that separates the two countries. Thousands of tanks. Thousands and thousands of mortars. Even jet fighters. For a completely useless piece of land.
That legacy left want and destruction then chaos, and at the time most of us didn’t even know that battles which rivaled those of WWII were going on the Horn.
We left want and destruction all over the Horn, proxy battles for the parlor room politics back in Washington and Moscow. The McCarthy hearings were shameful, the Vietnam War apocalyptic to world peace, but the number of Ethiopians and Somalis who were killed in the 1980s fighting for Communism vs. Capitalism and since killed as a result far out numbers the 58,196 names on Washington’s Vietnam Wall.
That was a generation ago. The children born then, now the fighters of al-Shabaab, now know no other life.
The massive U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq to oust Al-Qaeda from the area is like a failed deer culling operation in the Skokie lagoon. It’s just pushing the vermin elsewhere.
And that “elsewhere” is the Horn of Africa, mostly Somalia, but recent events including the attempted Northwest Airlines bombing two days ago, suggest Yemen may be growing unstable enough for Al-Qaeda infiltration, too.
Yemen is a terribly misunderstood society. After the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in 2000 and the numerous publicized connections between terrorists and radical imams in Yemen, it’s been wrongly presumed that the country is an universal den of iniquity.
Nothing can be further from the truth. Last month’s military raid which included fighter bombers on a presumed Al-Qaeda outpost in the Yemeni wilderness was at the least a joint effort between the Yemen government and the U.S. Many think it was completely a CIA operation, given wide support by the Yemenis.
What Yemen is can best be summarized by the fact that even during the Cold War, a Marxist (if Maoist) revolutionary government in the south befriended and worked with a highly capitalistic and western-oriented government in the north, until the two were unified in 1990.
Since then, what the U.S. has proudly termed “fair elections” have democratically created a somewhat autocratic politic that overseas some of the Mideast’s most celebrated intellectuals, religious fanatics calling for each other’s extermination, and a society that is trying desperately to remain open.
And that’s the problem. If you think the U.S. is polarized between Republicans and Democrats, you can’t imagine the polarization among educated, activist Yemenis.
So far, more or less, so good. Somehow this ancient and educated society has managed to hold its remarkably disparate pieces together. And it’s more important than ever that the developed world – particularly the U.S. – find quick and effective ways to support democratic Yemeni society.
Because now, for the first time in maybe … 2000 years, Yemeni society may be fraying at the seams.
It began with the country’s open policy towards refugees. The Yemeni government claims there are currently 95,480 refugees cared for by a mixture of Yemeni and U.N. support. Human Rights Watch and others, however, claim it is closer to 150,000.
According to the latest UNHCR estimates, 74,000 refugees fled to Yemen from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia just this year. That’s a 50% increase over 2008.
Reflecting its hugely varied cultures and politics, Yemen has the most welcoming policy to refugees of virtually any country in Africa or the Mideast.
Strategically positioned reception centers on the coast take in the boat refugees that survive the treacherous Red Sea crossing. In addition to providing temporary shelter and assistance, Yemeni authorities counsel refugees on how to obtain U.N. refugee status, provide job placements within the Yemeni society, run job searches throughout the Mideast for more qualified persons and even provide some job training.
But the remarkably humanitarian policy is coming under increasing strain just by the numbers now fleeing the Horn of Africa.
I reported last month how the Al-Qaeda Somali offshoot, Al-Shabaab, had consolidated its grip on most of southern Somalia. In response, ten days ago Ethiopian troops began reentering Somalia and engaging Al-Shabaab.
Hundreds of Ethiopian troops were photographed Saturday at the Kalaber intersection about 10 miles north of Beledweyne town in central Somalia, an area previously claimed by Al-Shabaab. This is a strategic point that some believe could define a demarcation of Somalia into two countries: the more developed north with Mogadishu as its capital, and the less developed pirate-infested south with Kismayu as its capital.
And last week Kenya sealed its nearly 1000-mile border with Somalia. The Kenyans are even refusing entry to wounded refugees.
The Minister for Internal Security and Provincial Administration, Prof. George Saitoti, claimed the move was necessary to keep terrorists disguised as refugees from entering Kenya, and to restrict Kenyan Somalis from joining the conflict.
“The government takes seriously threats by one of the fundamentalist factions … that some Kenyans of Somali origin were being recruited to prop up the fledgling Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu and we will go out to ensure that partisans of the two factions fighting for control of the chaotic country do not cross the border disguised as refugees,” the Minister said at a press conference in Mombasa last week.
What is happening is that western Somalia is becoming more appealing to global terrorists than the increasingly stressful environment of Afghanistan. Like deer culling in America, though, we’re ridding certain suburban gardens only to have huge infestations pushed to less policed areas.
And Kenya and Ethiopia combined have not a fraction of the power of Pakistan to contain the spread of terrorism, despite their current valiant efforts. And Yemen is the intellectual bleeding heart liberal that increasingly can’t hold its own society, together. What a perfect safe haven the Horn is becoming for Al-Qaeda!
Military success in Afghanistan is pointless. Listen to the Horn of Alarm.
Up to a third of East Africa’s tourism work force is now out of a job. Until now, it didn’t take guns to send them packing.
A number of high-end, professional robberies have been reported at camps in East Africa over the last month. As in downturns in the past, many disgruntled workers turn on their former employers in a number of ways. The most common one is to become the thief that knows where the clients’ valuables are stored.
As in the past, we’re all more vigilant in instructing clients how to act if there is a hold-up. And we’re more careful where we stay. And usually, nothing happens. Thefts tend to occur in areas with less police protection, like private reserves, and on lonely roads we have to avoid.
And until Tuesday the current trend wasn’t violent, but Tuesday Tanzanian police confronted five robbers fleeing the prestigious Grumeti Reserve and shot them to death.
The media has been all over with praise for the Tanzanian cops, but frankly, I think this is bad. There’s no need to make a war against redundant workers.
According to two sources, Agence France Press and Wolfgang Thome, a reporter based in Uganda, staff at the upmarket Grumeti Reserves tipped off area police that five laid off workers were planning an inside job. Presumably it was the inside that ratted on the outside.
Police and other security operatives laid a trap for the robbers. When the robbers arrived, they were killed in a gun battle started by the police.
I’m not suggesting that our empathy for redundant workers should transform into letting them off the hook. But my experience with these guys is that they’re hungry, educated and have little interest in doing anything but stealing wallets. The Tanzanian response might just have been a bit over the top.
Note: The next day, Grumeti Reserves announced it was seeking a new head of its Tanzanian operations.
Kenyan police say fighting in Somalia has turned the Kenyan border post at Mandera into a ghost town.Fighting on the Kenyan border with Somalia does not mean Kenya’s stability is further threatened, but it does mean we better start paying more attention to Somalia.
The bold bombing in what had been a stable part of Mogadishu, today, and which killed several government ministers as well as a dozen graduating university students and several journalists, finally catapulted the Somali conflict into the world media, again. According to Google this morning, there were nearly 500 major media stories about the blast, second on the day only to news about Afghanistan.
This major escalation of the terribly complex and horribly bloody Somali conflict comes less than a week after a major battle between two Somali factions temporarily spilled over the Kenyan border at Mandera. This was the second such incident in a month. In October, fierce battles spilled over the border town of Dhobley, about one hundred miles south of Mandera.
Kenyan Internal Security permanent secretary, Francis Kimemia, confirmed Tuesday that Al-Shabaab rebels had captured the border towns opposite Mandera during a weekend of fierce fighting with the rival clan, Hizbul. Kimemia was then quick to say the conflict had been contained in Somalia.
Kenya has many troops and police in this near desert area in its far northeast where Kenya borders Ethiopia and Somalia. Many UK and U.S. soldiers have been seen here, and some openly in the large Kenyan island city of Lamu from which they stage operations.
The U.S. as well as many experts consider Al-Shabaab to be Al-Qaeda, and it is widely known that despite the U.S. support for the internationally created Somali government in Mogadishu, that the U.S. also supports Hizbul, which is trying to overthrow that central government.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
But while Al-Shabaab may be responsible for today’s suicide bombing in Mogadishu, the real battle between Al-Shabaab and Hizbul is for the important southern part of the country which borders Kenya, mainly to control the well developed Somali port of Kismayu. This is the center of Somali piracy, the single largest contributor to this tattered country’s GDP and could easily rival Mogadishu in many respects.
Abdullahi Jamaa of Nairobi’s Daily Nation wrote yesterday, “Somali gunmen often prowl along the borderline and their presence is testimony to the fragile security in much of Kenya’s lengthy border [with Somalia]. Over the years, the worsening situation of Somalia has rendered the security of Mandera all but non-existent. Residents live in fear.”
But most Kenyan officials are not worried that actual fighting will spill over from Somalia, and I agree, at least for the foreseeable future. Rather, there are two other immediate problems.
The first are refugees. The Dhobley battle in October sent as many as 2,000 Somalis fleeing into Kenya. Last weekend’s battle in Mandera sent very few, and that is likely because Al-Shabaab has now consolidated its victory over Hizbul for the whole length of the Kenyan border. But caring even for as few as 2,000 refugees is a great drain on Kenyan resources.
The second problem which Kenyan government officials consider even more daunting is the huge inflow of Somali piracy money into the Kenyan black market.
Internal Security Minister Professor George Saitoti says instability in Somalia had led to colossal sums of (pirate) money coming into Kenya illegally.
“And of course when they come here, it may appear initially that it is good for the economy but sooner or later that kind of money ends up distorting the monetary system and the economy as a whole,” the Minister said at a forum recently attended by U.S. Ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger.
* * *
I believe that Kenya is too stable to be a goal for Al-Qaeda the way Afghanistan and Somalia definitely are. Kenya is too developed, too modern, too secular. I remember all too well the embassy bombing in August, 1998. The first thing we noticed only hours after the bombing was how the city’s residents had set fire to the city’s main mosque.
In the ten years since then, Kenya’s development and integration into the western world has sped up exponentially. Despite the terrible election violence of December, 2007, the country is currently peaceful and in the context of a world recession, actually prosperous.
But what is happening to Somalia is extremely dangerous, and being aside Kenya it gives us an unique and hopefully more urgent perspective.
If we are successful in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if the Pakistanis are at all successful stabilizing their own country, where will Al-Qaeda go?
The African country that most emulates the west is South Africa. See Baby walk. See Baby run. See Baby kill.
South Africa has long been an arms warehouse, and many believe it already possesses nuclear weapons technology. Its guerilla attack rifle, the NTW-20 is probably one of the most sought after insurgent weapons in the world.
Now with South Africa’s growing transparency, dark closets are being opened.
It seems the country is selling weapons to Syria, Burma, Libya, Venezuela and North Korea.
Trying to electrify the dark closet, Democratic Alliance MP David Maynier asked the country’s National Assembly, Wednesday, to debate the issue, and directly confronted the country’s Minister of Justice to reply to allegations that the “Axis of Evil” countries were being supplied with weapons. He pointed out that in some cases, this would be in violation of UN sanctions.
The South African government refused.
It’s a very touchy issue locally. Maynier is the Shadow Alliance’s Minister of Defense, a former South African “navy seal” who commanded submarines in the Angolan war. He’s no angel.
But he knows what he’s talking about. Supporters of the South African government will contend he’s just playing politics, and that were he in power, the government would likely be selling to the devil.
Either way, it’s unfortunate that the African countries we most praise and which seem to be doing best in that economically black continent are doing so at least in part by spreading death and destruction.
Until now many efforts towards peace in troubled parts of Saharan Africa have focused on fomenting coexistence betweenf Islam and competing religions. What the Sudanese referendum says is that coexistence of Muslim and non-Muslim ideologies won’t work.
Less than 24 hours after the UN Security Council approved continued funding of the Somali peace-keeping force, that force may have been routed from the capital by al-Qaeda.
