Niger(ia)

I thought this was an interesting news snippet. Oddly enough, it seems that despite the coup Niger might be moving towards more stable footing than Nigeria--where Goodluck Jonathan will face significant obstacles in bringing stability following Yar'Adua's illness/disappearance to Saudi Arabia and the subsequent constitutional crisis. In contrast, "crowds of demonstrators in [Niger's capital, Niamey,] and elsewhere greeted Niger's new military rulers with outpourings of support in the streets," according to the NY Times.

Tear down that firewall

I strongly agree with Secretary of State Clinton’s decision to make unrestricted Internet access a key component of US foreign policy. It is a critical tool for encouraging democracy abroad, and sure works a lot better than neoconservative state building or sending troops abroad.

Today, 30% of the global population live in countries that censor the Internet (WSJ). Considering that a huge chunk of that 30% is China, that’s not that huge a number. The possibilities that Internet freedom holds for the other 70% of the world are tremendous. Here are two of the most exciting examples.

Moldova & Iran

Following the announcement by Moldova’s communist party of electoral victory, young Moldovans organized via the Internet and took to the streets. In the 48 hours after the communist party’s declaration, “#pman”, became one of the most popular Twitter hashtags worldwide. “pman” stands for “Piata Marii Adunari Nationale", which is the name of the largest square in Chisinau, Moldova's capital, and the rallying grounds for protests. ForeignPolicy.com blogger, Evgeny Morozov, termed the Moldovan protests the Twitter Revolution.

In addition to using Twitter to organize protests, Facebook and YouTube (which I waste too much of my workday on) also were used to organize dissent. Videos and photos were uploaded on YouTube and Facebook respectively, and blogs had up-to-the-minute posts, allowing young Moldovians abroad to stay informed.

I think this is absolutely incredible. These tools can help expose government corruption and rally against it. They open up closed societies. And the Moldova example is even more fascinating when you consider that it’s a tiny, underdeveloped former-Soviet backwater. If these social tools can be used so powerfully in Moldova, the opportunities in other less-developed nations are equally strong—not to mention the possibilities for political activism in wealthier and more educated societies.

A similar phenomenon happened in Iran last summer as well. After Ahmadinejad by most accounts stole the election, Moussavi and his “green” supporters rallied via Twitter. Some of their tweets were even in English to make it easier for non-Iranians to follow their protest movement. What’s more, a YouTube video of a young woman bleeding to death after being shot at a rally, spread throughout Iran and the world, galvanizing pro-democratic rallying.

The State Department has taken notice of these two protests. They’ve organized trips to meet with foreign leaders to discuss how technology can be used help to rebuild in Iraq and fight drug violence in Mexico. I have no clue how the Internet could facilitate this, but I don’t doubt that it can. The Iranian and Moldovan examples are from the past year alone! As technology becomes more sophisticated in accommodating social communication, the possibilities for organizing and voicing dissent against repressive rule will grow.

That’s my euporhic rant on the Internet as salve; however, two stories from today have tempered idealism, making me realize that as pro-democracy Internet-activism grows and becomes more sophisticated, so will state repression.

China & Iran

Today marks the 31^st anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, and fearing that the Twitter revolts of the summer will flare up again, the government has suspended Gmail indefinitely. The New York Times writes that unlike past holidays where the opposition movement was firmly in the spotlight, the anniversary today “belonged to the leadership and its security forces.” Cracking down on the Internet freedom has certainly helped them to achieve this.

In the Xinjiang province this summer, the Chinese government took even more extreme measures that the Iranian government. In the separatist province, the government shut off nearly all Internet access following protesting and rioting by Muslim Uighurs. Since then, the government has only allowed a trickle of Internet access into Xinjiang. Yesterday, Xinjiang residents could access 3 websites. Today, that number has blossomed to 30 government-run sites.

These two examples temper my optimism. Even with Google’s “Don’t be Evil” motto, and Twitter’s explicit aid in Iran, governments are still able to silence Internet dissent. Just as books can be burned, firewalls can be erected and cell-phone signals blocked. The Internet has the ability to educate, liberate, and organize people—and thus promote democratization—but it’s not immune to propaganda or, more likely, censorship.

Possible turmoil?

I've been watching highlights of all the Africa Cup matches--if the games were on television, I'd be trying to watch them in full--and it's been surprisingly very exciting to follow. While Africa may be lacking in infrastructure and good governance, the continent certainly is not lacking in quality soccer. I'm no expert, but the quality of play seems to be very high. I would not be surprised if an African team like Cote d'Ivoire or Cameroon pulled off some upsets in the World Cup this summer.

This Monday, Angola will face off against Algeria while Malawi will take on Mali. The host nation, Angola, is currently at the top of its group with a slight edge over Algeria and Malawi. However, with two group games left, any two teams could move on. Angola has the best chance to advance, but there are no guarantees.

What I find most interesting/startling about Monday's matches is that if Angola finishes second in the group, then they will have to travel to Cabinda for the quarterfinals. Cabinda was the sight of the Togo tragedy which opened the tournament. If Angola travels to Cabinda, it could put a lot of pressure on an already tense situation; Cabinda's instability could brim over into another flare of violence. After all, the target of the FLEC rebels were the Angolan security forces escorting them--not the Togolese team itself. At the very least, if Angola's team travels to Cabinda, the government could begin their (inevitable) harsh security crackdowns on the Cabindan populace. In all likelihood, Angola playing in Cabinda will be a non-story. Angola purposefully scheduled games in Cabinda to show the stability of the separatist province and Luanda's control over it.

Nonetheless, Angola playing in Cabinda would highlight the tensions that Angolan officials would much prefer to keep hidden and dormant. As Angolan defender Rui Marques told al-Jazeera correspondent, Paul Rhys, "We would like to stay here because we feel used to it. But there's no problem. If we have to move town I'm sure the people there will support us. We'd like to be first in the group though." I imagine Angola's government feels the same.

____________________________________________________________________

Some other notes, these matches don't seem particularly well-attended. For the second game of the tournament, Malawi versus World-Cup bound Algeria, there were only 1,000 people in attendance. When you look at the highlights of the game, the stadium looks even more deserted than an MLS game. Why is this? Expensive ticket prices? I doubt its due to lack of interest. Based on info from ESPN, Angola's two matches have had an average of approximately 47,000 people in attendance; all other matches have had an average of just under 12,0000 fans.

The Africa Cup: Cause for Optimism, Cause for Despair

Last Friday, FLEC rebels opened fire on the bus of the Togolese national soccer team which had been travelling from their training facilities in the DRC to Cabinda for the start of the African Nations Cup. Three were killed in the ambush, and 8 were injured. And this weekend, the Togolese team flew home, to mourn their dead and await improved security.

The event is terribly sad. Angola's hosting of the Cup was meant to showcase Africa's fastest growing economy, a debut after decades of civil war. Instead it had showcased the steep domestic problems that Angola faces.

In September, I wrote a post on Cabinda. The odd geography of the Puerto Rico sized province, and its contested history interested me. Cabinda formed in the later 19th century, as three independent African kingdoms (sandwiched between Belgian, French and Portugues colonial ventures) fearing King Leopold's cruel rule, asked to be a protectorate of Portugal. Tied as a Portuguese colony to the rest of Angola, Cabinda nonetheless considered itself independent and culturally distinct from the rest of Angola. Yet immediately following the nation's independence in 1975, MLPA troops occupied Cabinda. Since then the separatist conflict has persisted. What's more the discovery of oil off the shores of Cabinda has only heightened the stakes and the fierceness of the fighting. Some might say, offshore oil is the conflict, although FLEC rebels claim that their fight is for cultural and political freedom rather than exorbitant resource wealth. Nonetheless, its necessary to acknowledge that, today, 71% of Angola's oil revenue comes from Cabinda. And as John Ghazvinian, author of Untapped, writes, while the conflict between UNITA and MLPA may have ended, there has been little resolution to the Cabinda conflict.

I revisited Ghazvinian's book, and found this quote which seems relevant:

The only people given a voice throughout Angola's history have been those with guns. Perhaps nowhere is this tortured legacy more visible than in Cabinda, where the only political discourse available to young activists is one of hatred and violence.

Crackdowns on Cabinda rebels have been harsh. In 2004, "Human Rights Watch issued a briefing paper that included reports of gang rapes, torture, and sexual humiliation carried out by the Angolan Armed Forces" (Ghazvinian, 160).

While seemingly unrelated, what I take from the tragedy at the Africa Cup, is the extreme difficulty for oil-rich nations to positively harness their resource wealth. Although Angola experienced insane growth rates (its GDP grew by nearly 20% in 2008!), a number of substantial obstacles have arisen. The cost of living in Luanda has skyrocketed to Central Park South-levels; the national government is heavily centralized and does not disclose the amount of oil money it is awash with; and, as sadly shown last week, a separatist movement that is perhaps fueled by harsh crackdowns still simmers bringing the nation's stability into question.

This is not say that Angola is doomed; quite the contrary, many African nations envy the potential Angola has. At times, it seems fitting to compare it to rapidly-growing, lusophone Brazil; in optimistic moments, BRIC seems a more likely future than MEND. But the difficulty of oil persists.

I don't want to call it a curse, but oil (combined with Angola's history which offers conflict rather than multiparty politics or democracy as a model) presents substantial political and economic challenges. And while the Africa Cup does certainly highlight the incredibly exciting potential of one of Africa's pivotal nations, it also highlights the substantial and frustratingly sad obstacles that a bright future must overcome.

Book Review: The Good Soldiers, David Finkel

The Good Soldiers by David Finkel

The crack of thunder woke me early this morning. The lighting was so close that I saw its flash through my closed eyelids. It woke me up, and I felt just like how an animal feels during a thunderstorm; I was scared. My heart was racing, my breath was short and quick.

I took some deep breaths and I was able to fall back asleep. When I woke up later that morning, I was thinking about The Good Soldiers. I thought that the way I felt, waking up to thunder, might be how those soldiers feel leaving their compounds (their FOB—forward operating base). Of course, I know that my waking-up-to-bad-weather fright paled in comparison to their stays in Fedaliyah, Iraq. Nonetheless, I felt that I had gotten a taste of the ubiquitous fear and anxiety that invades their subconscious during and after their service. A life of IEDs, EFPs, mortars, and street patrols through dicey neighborhoods where American troops are not looked on favorably.

And, as Finkel captures, one of the things that makes service during the surge so scary is that it’s all chance; your fate is out of your hands. Every time, a soldier hops in a Humvee (just to travel from one point to the next—not necessarily to go on an aggressive mission after insurgents) they are relinquishing control of their life and their limbs. They are at the mercy of the road and the EFPs that may or may not be buried underneath it. These cheap, gruesome weapons account for most of the deaths in Iraq. Detonated by a frustratingly-invisible enemy, they blow through the bottom of Humvees and spray shrapnel throughout its interior.

The Good Soldiers, however, is about more than just the paranoia and fear of serving in Iraq during the surge. As its title suggests, it’s about the soldiers, young and middle-aged (but mostly way young--my age). Their lives and their brotherhood during service. It just so happens that serving in Iraq during the surge is a pretty damn scary, so much of Finkel’s writing captures this fear and frustrating helplessness.

Finkel captures their fear and frustration with poignancy. He writes with an astounding intimacy. There are a couple of quotes I’ve written down below that I feel capture this sad proximity to the soldiers; he articulates their struggles astoundingly well, capturing their complex war-stretched emotions with an intimacy and a truthfulness as though he is one of them. It’s pretty astounding.

And as his writing is soaked with a powerful closeness, it is also structured in a clever and striking way. The first few pages of the book, are enough to serve as an example: this was before, the soldiers hadn’t yet, he would say it…"Except now, on April 6, 2007, at 1:00 a.m., as someone banged on his door, waking him up, he said something different. ‘What the fuck’ he said, opening his eyes."

The comparison to The Things They Carried is apt (although FSG’s is the author of this flattering comparison). Finkel writes with the same intensity as O’Brien, and it loyally captures (at least I think), with a difficult intimacy and cleverness, these good soldiers lives.

This book was especially powerful for me because it’s the first book on war where my peers are the ones fighting. 19, 20, 21, 22 year olds just like me. Books and films about Vietnam or World War II seem so far removed from my life. I’m able to understand the morals and feel the emotions of these soldiers—Charlie Sheen in Platoon, Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket—but they still end up feeling a bit distant—removed form my life. But as I read about the good soldiers, and the difficult passages of young men like me dying in gruesome ways (19-year olds burning alive in cars, their bodies full of shrapnel) it felt more realistic, more disturbingly tangible and powerful.

My one caveat about the book would be that it’s told almost purely from the soldier’s perspective. As a result, there are a lot of generalizations, and the macro-level details of the conflict aren’t captured. Finkel makes it clear that his intention is to capture the soldiers perspectives—which is different from what think tank scholars and talking heads focus on. Nonetheless, there’s little info on Muqtada al-Sadr or the Jaish al-Mahdi. Nor is there any information on West Baghdad, al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the Sons of Iraq. So if you’re looking to understand who the they are that Finkel refers to, or what motivates insurgent attacks (or most interestingly, why the Muqtada’s cease-fire declaration resonates) then this book won’t be of much help. But Finkel’s goal is to capture the lives of these young, good soldiers, and this he does with a remarkable poise and weight that their service deserves.

Small rocky islands with disproportionate foreign policy impacts

I just got back from a vacation in Argentina/Uruguay. On the flight down to Buenos Aires, my dad, brother and I started talking about the Falklands War. This war lasted for two and a half months in 1982, and began when junta-led Argentina invaded the British-held Falkland Islands. The war was more of a sign of Argentine instability than anything else. Argentina was experiencing a deep economic crisis, and the military dictators leading the country were facing growing resistance to their rule. So the idea to grasp a few rocky islands off their coast was an attempt to distract the Argentine people from their faltering rule and, instead, inspire patriotism and national unity. Needless to say, it didn't end well for Argentina. More than 600 Argentine soldiers died, and the military junta was completely discredited, leading to transition to democratic rule.

What struck me about this brief conflict, was that as my Dad says, "it was over a bunch of rocky, miserable islands where only a handful of sheep herders kick around." And yet, it was mentioned in nearly every IR class I took in college (it's generally used as an example of domestic politics spurring intrastate war), and the conflict had large national affects on the two states that briefly fought over these islands.

In Buenos Aires, I was shocked by the number of Malvinas War (Spanish for Falklands) signs and monuments I saw. The two photos above were taken at B.A.'s Plaza del Mayo where veterans of the Malvinas protested for greater government compensation. In Britain, the Falklands War gave Thatcher a significant popularity boost at home. Patriotism abound, her approval rating nearly doubled (source via wikipedia) following Britain's victory. Some argue that Britain's victory propelled Thatcher and the Conservative Party to victory in the 1983 election.

So, I got thinking, what are some other tiny islands that have had a disproportionate affect on foreign policy?

And so, here are some other small islands whose mention is most often coupled/followed with the logical question, "where the hell is that?"

Palau

The South Pacific islands of Palau made international news when they agreed to take 17 Uighurs from Guantanamo Bay. The US pledged to give the nation of 258 tiny islands, $200 million in long term aid. More importantly for the US, these tiny tropical islands helped the US take its first step toward closing Guantanamo Bay. Although Barack Obama's had to revise this promise, Palau--an exotic dot on the map--was able to help the US take its first, strange strange step towards filling its promise and restoring its values. And I still have to look it up on Wikipedia because I can never remember its name.

Nauru

You think Palau's small? Ha! Nauru is half its size. What it lacks in size, it makes up for ininteresting history. During the 1960s and 1970s it boasted the highest per capita income of any sovereign state (wikipedia) as a result of its phosphate reserves (note: the island is a big phosphate rock). With its phosphate reserves having been spent for years, it recently received some much needed money and made international news when it became the 4th nation in the world to recognize Abkhazia's sovereignty from Georgia. This small island--approximately 1/3 the size of Manhattan--followed Palau's lead in taking a decisive stand on a sensitive international issue. In the larger scope of things, Nauru's recognition of Abkhazia's existence is meaningless. But, at the very least, it briefly drew attention back to the still-delicate Russia-Georgia conflict and the larger issues that surround it. Then again, maybe Nauru really was impressed by Abkhazia's awesome size: it's 20 times bigger than Nauru.

(to be continued / updated)

Cape Verde = "African Success Story"

Sao Tome and Principe = uninhabited island until the Portuguese...future in oil? (Ghazvinian)

South Pacific in WW2

Carribean in age of exploration--a battleground for colonial supremacy

Copehenhagen Cynicism

The Copenhagen climate talks, like Health Care reform, seem so detailed and nuanced that a casual reading still leaves a lot unclear. In other words, my head spins a bit when I think too much about it.

This is what I understand; There are two big obstacles: compensation and enforcement. First, enforcement. Developing nations (both poor African/Asian nations and growing behomeths, like China and India) want compensation from developed nations. Many of these nations will feel the adverse affects of climate change much more than Western nations. For instance, Bangladesh and the Netherlands are both low-lying nations, nearly below sea-level. But those smart, well-to-do Dutchmen and Dutchwomen have state-of-the-art dykes which will help them cope with rising ocean levels, while Bangladeshis do not. Similarly many African nations will be hit hard by the dry rivers and more frequent droughts that climate change will cause, while Westerners will just have to pay a few cents more on food products at the supermarket. Famine is thankfully not an issue here.

Additionally, developing nations don't want to hinder their growth by agreeing to emissions caps. Which makes sense; the US and Europe were allowed to industrialize and grow to the economic powerhouses they are today (all the while massively polluting the world) without any stringent emissions caps, so why should developing nations have to? And the responsibility of poor, developing nations is to improve the quality of life of their citizens--to give them jobs and cars--not to shackle themselves to any agreements that Western nations never had while they were industrializing. So developed nations should compensate the developing world, it's just a question of how and how much.

Secondly, enforcement is an issue. The only thing tougher than agreeing to emissions caps is actually living up to them. The US or China can boast they'll cut carbon emissions by X%, but there's currently no way to see that they meet their goals. And even if they don't meet their goals, there's not a whole lot the rest of the world can do. The rest of the world can yell at them a bunch and tax their products, but that's not that scary.

So, I'm pretty pessimistic about any major agreements happening in Copenhagen. As Bruce Bueno de Mesquita writes, it's extremely difficult for 170+ disparate nations to agree to anything--even if the health of our planet is at stake. Either the problem will have to become drastically bigger--to the point where we're standing on the cliff's edge--or clean energy will have to become cheaper and more accessible. In other words, the costs of change will have to go down or the felt impact--the fire's breath on our necks--will have to become impossible to ignore. I'm all for multilateralism, but sadly I think that chaos or luxury are the most likely ways to jolt disparate interests into alignment.

What's going on...

Last Thursday night, Dadis Camara, military leader and de facto ruler of Guinea was ambushed and shot in an assassination attempt.

Although junta leaders have stressed that Camara's injuries are not serious, he was flown to Morocco. As junta officials have released more information about the assassination attempt, the situation seems increasingly precarious. Camara is apparently recovering from a gunshot wound to the head, which knocked a splinter of bone into his brain. Sounds serious. I haven't heard of too many non-serious gunshot-wounds-to-the-head-with-bone-splinters-in-the-brain injuries, but then again I haven't heard of any such injury. Junta officials say Camara is stable and that he is recovering well. But who really knows. I guess it's not much of a surprise that the military would try to downplay this assassination attempt and occlude details. Releasing more information might destablize an already extremely unstable situation. Guinea's junta leaders have, however, arrested a man suspected in the attempted assasination.

What's more, on Friday BBC's Africa Today podcast said that the top 3 CNDD officials (the National Council for Democracy and Development, the junta which Camara heads) were out of the country. In the last few days, however, General Sekouba Konate, Camara's second-in-command, has apparently returned from Lebanon where he was last week.

I don't fully grasp the details of this. From just a superficial reading of the events I can conclude the obvious: there is a serious crisis at hand. The Camara junta may be losing control, and a serious fight (between factions of the military?) for rule of the nation may be under way. But that's just a guess. What is more certain, however, is that the prospects of this upcoming January's presidential elections took a serious blow. Camara's post-coup vow (from last December) to "return to the barracks" after these elections now seems unlikely. Camara (or his assassin-successors) will now view elections as to risky to their tenuous hold on seized power.

The Hostage Industry

Odd way to describe it, but New America Foundation fellow, Nicholas Schmindle's article on global kidnapping-and-ransom was an enjoyable read. Kidnapping-and-ransom, known in the biz as K&R, is one of the few industries booming in the tough economic times. While the price of oil may fluctuate, rich oil men seem to be reliably valuable commodities that bring plump returns. As a result, K&R insurance plans have become more ubiquitous for foreign companies operating in less stable nations, and K&R insurance premiums continue to rise. Strange.

Schmindle really captures how much of a business K&R. Here are some quotes that I liked:

If there’s any consolation to being abducted in Nigeria, it’s that kidnappers there seldom get violent. It’s purely business. “Someone’s going to pay them something; that they know,” Mark Courtney, a South African kidnapping-and-ransom consultant, recently told me. K.& R. consultants almost never get on the phone and haggle with kidnappers. Their expertise is devising the “target settlement figure,” taking into account numerous factors. Is the victim carrying anything that identifies him as working for a specific company? Are the kidnappers experienced? What was the amount of the previous ransoms paid in that city or state? “You go by what you know to be the going rate in that particular region,” Chase, of AKE, said.

The kidnapping-and-ransom-insurance industry thrives in a morally ambiguous space. But what is the alternative? “Fire insurance has been known to stimulate arson, and life-insurance policies have led to quite a few homicides, too,”

Three years ago, De Don graduated from college with a degree in political science. He considered “The Prince” his favorite book. While at school, he joined a campus gang known as the Greenlanders. When he couldn’t find work after graduation, he tapped into the Greenlanders’ alumni network and asked for help. Soon he was living in the creeks with fellow Greenlanders, part of a kidnapping syndicate.

AIDS and troop buildups (Depressing things)

SA's Youth Communist League issues a statement calling Mbeki accountable for SA's AIDS "debacle". Verashni Pillay offers a smart response on why stating the obvious isn't helpful.

As much as I grapple with the decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, I find my feelings on the decision unresolved. Were I president (and, in this case, put in the same unenviable situation as Obama), I believe I would have made a similar decision. There are just so many unknowns and sending a short-term surge of troops seems like the easiest and safest option (amongst a list of extremely tough and dangerous options).

But I'm still unresolved. (Like I was last year around this time).

There's no question that if the US pulled out, the short-term risks would be greater: Karzai's government would likely fall to Taliban forces and al-Qaeda would likely have a sanctuary (although it's perhaps possible that moderate strands of the Taliban would come to power and would be fed up with the Western intervention that al-Qaeda brings). What's more nuclear-armed Pakistan's security might be put in real danger, which is most terrifying.

But perhaps this short short term (18 month) action provokes greater long term problems. This article certainly provoked these thoughts for me.

Perhaps life in war time makes us myopic. Perhaps the troop build up is counter-productive and causes more resentment against the US. Perhaps we are putting a band-aid on a wound; committing the US to chase al-Qaeda to any weak/failed state it hides in while hurting our economy, our soldiers, our long-term national defense, and our moral bearing.

While I agree with Obama's tough decision, I hope that he isn't loosing sight of his long-term US foreign policy goals: not committing too many troops to one part of the world (it's dangerous in case of other attacks) and not relying too much on hard power over soft power. I don't doubt though that he's considered my above anxieties and many more.

Africa to (Latin) America

Today, NPR had an interesting segment on the increasing number of Africans immigrating to Latin America--specifically to Brazil and Argentina. This is a phenomenon I had no idea about. I'm so used to hearing about immigration in the US context--a divisive and polarizing issue--so it's surprising and disorienting to think that immigrants would emigrate to countries other than the US and Europe. But it makes sense. Lusane and Mundra say that many African immigrants are drawn to Latin America by economic factors--seeking better jobs. Considering Brazil's economy grew by nearly 6% in 2008 this makes sense. They also mention Argentina and Brazil's relatively lax immigration laws and the fact that a large portion of Brazil's population is of African descent as further incentives for African immigrants.

Immigration and the movement of people in the world really interests me. The idea of Somalis refugees dhow-boating to Dubai or educated Congolese seeking jobs in Brazil are fascinating vectors I've never thought about.

Pirate Oasis and Mswati III

Interesting article on Baraawe, Somalia: Pirate Oasis.

Just watched, Without the King, about the Africa's last monarch, King Mswati III of Swaziland. I was excited for the subject matter, but the movie itself was nothing special. Highlighted and repeated same points for an hour and a half. King Mswati has an exorbitant amount of wealth in a nation that has the highest AIDS prevalence rate in the world and where the majority of people live in extreme poverty. Film contrasted this poverty with Mswati's fleet of luxury cars, and the high AIDS rate with Mswati's 13 wives (poor tone to set when your AIDS prevention policy is abstinence). Sad stuff.

News links

Here are some links from yesterday. At least one construction project is behind schedule in South Africa's plans for the World Cup next summer. An air-tram taking visitors from the airport to the city/stadium/hotels will be not be finished until (at least) 2 weeks after the World Cup's start. With so many other construction projects rushing to get done, having one not finish on time isn't a huge deal. It's a bit disappointing because I want to hear that everything is on schedule, and will run like a dream. But that's unrealistic. I hope, however, that this is not indicative of other projects; one setback shouldn't accrete into many. The ANC briefly considered paying their contractors to rush the air-tram construction so it would be done in time, but in the end the price tag for doing this was too high. Understandable. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if this gets pushed back further--seems like contractors always later than they predict in construction.

Big news in Zimbabwe: Tsvangirai ends his government boycott. Derek Catsam is right on the mark arguing that maintaining the status quo benefits Mugabe. There is now a new deadline on the agreeing and implementing some of the details of the GNU (government of national unity). Mugabe wants Tsvangirai to act as the PR person to aid-donors in the west. And Tsvangirai wants formative change in the government structure so that he is a legitimate partner.

I'm working on a post with some quick thoughts on China's role in Africa (in light of China's summit with African leaders this week).

Cope-ing with bad news

As part of an effort to keep up with current affairs in Sub-Saharan Africa, I'm trying to read an article or two in the Jo'burg-based Mail & Guardian every day. I know this gives a somewhat narrow look at African current affairs since it focuses mostly on South African domestic issues. But, M&G follows the Zimbabwean crisis very well, and continental affairs quite well too. Plus I like reading the comments that South African readers posts, and there ain't many other English-text newspapers in Africa.

The big news in SA right now is the resignation of Allan Boesak from the Congress of the People party. Cope emerged with a big bang last fall when ANC dissidents formed it. I for one thought this was the inevitable finally happening: the emergence of a strong and competitive opposition party to the ANC. (I thought that at the very least Cope would supplant the DA as the main opposition party.)

Boy was I wrong. And with Boesak's resignation, Cope's really does seem like an empty party--both in its dwindling membership and ambiguous ideology. It seems that their strength was just a mirage built on the wishful thinking of those craving a multi-party democracy. Infighting and opportunism have further weakened their weak political core.

I'm interested in whether this means yet another opposition party will emerge before the 2013 elections? Or will this act as an example, tempering the possible departure of disgruntled ANC members?

And if a different opposition party emerges, will they share Cope's moderately-conservative right-of-ANC ideology? Or will they be an independent SACP-Cosatu party that many have predicted emerging for years?

1 in 5

M & G has a pretty interesting article on 'the billionth African' to be born sometime this year (or maybe he/she has already been born). I guess this might seem like a daunting number--having economic and infrastructure growth match this population growth is a huge challenge. But I think it's something exciting. One in five people in the world will be African. With such enormous populations, the continent's potential for investment and overall importance in the World will be tough to ignore.

Population statistics like this get me excited because they suggest a fundamental change in the world's workings. As China's population falls by 2050, and India's population growth slows to a trickle, the African continent will likely be booming.

Links for Lack of Longer Thoughts

World Cup 2010 hosts, South Africa, fired their head football coach, Joel Santana this past Monday. This is big news for the Bafana. I'd think South Africans are more worried about their head coaching situation then on anything else (crime, capacity, etc) regarding the upcoming World Cup. Mail & Guardian predicts that the Bafana will replace one Brazilian head coach with another.

Robert Mugabe held a cabinet meeting this morning despite Tsvangirai's absence. Tsvangirai had boycotted the meeting because of frustration that major details of the power-sharing agreement had been unmet. Specifically, Mugabe's arrest and pending prosecution of MDC member, Roy Bennett, whom Tsvangirai nominated for the post of Deputy Minister of Agriculture have exacerbated tensions. In short, Mugabe continues to balk at actually implementing a unity government. His initial concessions to graciously share power in an election he fraudulently won seem to have been a way to buy time and international aid as he co-opts his rivals--much like he once did with Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU party.

This is just the start of a growing habit of linking and reading more news topics on the African continent...

Nobel Peace Prize Alternatives

In reading the announcement this morning that Barack Obama had been given the Nobel Prize for Peace, I (like many others) thought: Afghanistan.

Since receiving McChrystal's recommendation for more troops, Obama has been grappling with what to do in Afghanistan. He's had a couple weeks already, and will likely need a couple more. It's not an easy decision. And the timing of the Peace Prize announcement seems especially awkward considered the monumental decision to be made.

That said, I think there are many other more deserving (and less awkward) to give the award to. I'm no expert on the competitive field of Peace Prize candidates, but I would have given the award to....

Morgan Tsvangirai- formed a unity government with Mugabe--after an election was blatantly stolen from him. Was nearly beaten to death by Mugabe's police a few years ago. If that's not living by a turn-the-other-cheek, Peace-loving worldview, I don't know what is. He avoided falling in to the common pitfall of civl-war African states. What's more he's travelled around the world rallying for aid money, and he's liberalized Zimbabwe's dismal economy. In short, if I were a Zimbabwean, he'd be the only thing to make optimistic about my cholera filled, inflation scarred nation. And I know personal tragedy shouldn't factor in, but his wife died this past year. This guy's had a rough year of it. Plus giving him the award would bring some much needed attention to Zimbabwe and his coalition government at a time when Mugabe is showing he will never live up to the power sharing agreement.

There are countless other figures who I'm sure are much deserving, but I'd go with Tsvangirai.

Aligning goals and capabilities

I'm generally not much of a Frank Rich fan, but his article as well as recent quotes from Obama and Gates have me tacking back a bit on my post from the Friday before last.

According to a Defense Department official, Gates is unsure of McChrystal's suggestion to send additional troops to Afghanistan. This official reasoned, "Even 40,000 more troops don't give you enough boots on the ground to protect the Afghans if the north and west continue to deteriorate." Although the WSJ article that ran this story said that Gates remains equally skeptical about Biden's suggested course of action, it seems to suggest that he is weighing and exploring middle options--alternatives to drastic troop reduction or sending additional troops.

Similarly, Obama seems to be similarly exploring middle options. According to White House officials, he wants to "dispense with the straw man argument that this is about either doubling down or leaving Afghanistan" (NY Times).

So I think my initial agreement with Brooks may have been a bit hasty. I think middle options are absolutely necessary to explore--especially when the two extreme options seems so guarantee such uncertain and pessimistic results. I think the important thing is to ratchet down expectations to a level suitable to the prescribed course of action. Rumsfield tried to do nation-building on the cheap; as long as the US realistically ratchets down its goals and expectations the US can avoid making the same reckless mistake twice. The key is aligning goals and capabilities. In other words, if the expectations for "half measures" are realistic, I see no reason why they won't work. They're not destined to fail in and of themselves; they're just destined to fail when the simplified, polar goals of "failure" and "success" are the only options thought possible.

Is Coetzee's "Disgrace" racist?

...or is the ANC too sensitive?

I saw the movie last week with my mom. I've always enjoyed Coetzee, and as skeptical as I was before seeing it, the movie did justice to the book. The final scene was different, which bothered me a bit. It ends not with David Lurie sitting on his plastic chair plucking his banjo, composing his opera, but instead with him having tea with his daughter. A reconciliation, a recognition that change and compromise is necessary. Perhaps it's the same idea, but the message resonates more in the book's final scene rather than the movie's.

I read Disgrace for an African Lit course I took at the University of Cape Town. While I thought the book was powerful, what really made it resonate was when I heard about the ANC's reactions to the book. They congratulated Coetzee in 2003 upon winning the Nobel Prize; however, shortly afterwards, they tacked backwards, clumsily calling the book racist.

And I agree with this view. Disgrace is a racist book. But that doesn't mean it's not brilliant, nor doesn't mean that it's not important and enlightening. It's productively racist--as idiotic as that phrase may sound. It's a book that powerfully captures Afrikaaner angst and frustration, while at the same time it shows the remnants of a racist Apartheid power structure that still hurts South African blacks and coloureds (captured by Lurie's lustful gall).

It lays bare post-Apartheid society; it brings the feel-good unity that Mandela's presidency ushered in, crashing back to earth. Crime and acrimony remain. And the characters struggle to deal with this reality.

But these characters are nearly all white. Nadine Gordimer captures this well, point out that, "[in Disgrace,] there is not one black person who is a real human being" (NY Times, 12/16/07). Petrus is a malevolent character driven by entrepreneurial greed. He protects his rapist brother-in-law, and exploits the defenseless Lucy. The white angst towards this character is tangible. Petrus is powerful. He protects his own without any moral qualms, and he underhandedly gobbles up white-owned land. He seems to taunt Lurie, by simply stating a banal fact of contemporary South Africa: "Everything dangerous today." And the only other black characters Coetzee introduces are rapists.

But while Disgrace recreates racist stereotypes--black men raping white women--it is not that simple a book. It's goes well beyond these stereotypes. For me, this point resonated when Lucy talks about her rape. In response to David's frustration and vengeful grief, she points the finger back at him, saying, "Maybe hating a woman or a man can make sex

more exciting. It must be a bit like killing …you’re a man … you should know."

Although Disgrace recreates racist stereotypes, I believe it's mistake to dismiss it as racist. I believe the ANC shows its thin skin by failing to recognize the depth of this book.

Nonetheless, I can understand their frustration. If I were a black South African, I don't think I'd feel much affinity towards this book. Disgrace seems to speak to and for Whites alone. It captures white fear and frustration, and it captures the difficulty and the pain of dealing with a new social order--one that seems to victimize progressive Whites more than racist old Afrikaaners.

A Travel Guide to The Paradox of Plenty

Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil by John Ghazvinian
John Ghazvinian’s Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil is about the resource curse in Africa. Although Ghazvinian ends on a somewhat optimistic note, his thesis can be distilled to the following: the resource curse exists in Africa. It has already shown its damage in Nigeria, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, and (to a lesser extent) Angola, and the future does not bode well for emerging Afro-petrostates.

Ghazvinian is a journalist, but he does a solid job explaining of the resource curse and describing the political history of the nations he visits. At times though, his writing seemed too journalistic—snarky and informal.

His writing is a travel book of land I want to visit, and a history of states I crave to learn more about. What’s more, it is a contemporary affairs piece dealing with issues (Equatorial Guinea’s history, deep water drilling, etc.) I have found nowhere else.

Summary
Ghazvinian spends the bulk of the book in the four African nations that are already established oil-states: Nigeria, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, and Angola.

All of these states have had similar post-oil-discovery histories (except perhaps Angola—which I believe does not deserve to be lumped into this group): ubiquitous corruption, government instability, insurrection in oil rich provinces, and—of course—stagnant or declining economies.

Nigeria, the grandfather of the oil states, has the most notorious oil history of the four. Nigeria is the leading oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, yet its oil reserves have brought mostly corruption and instability rather than economic development. Its oil-producing regions are seemingly in a state of perpetual violence. Successive military regimes (which finally ended in the late 1990s) squashed any nationalist, human rights, or environmental movements that emerged. And after the fall of this repressive regime, stability and development have remained fleeting goals.

One of the big cruxes of Nigeria’s instability is the issue of resource control. The many ethnic groups of Nigeria’s oil producing Niger Delta demand greater resource control. After all, it is their communities whose livelihoods have been most disrupted by drilling. They’ve suffered the brunt of oil spills and exploitative contracts; and perhaps worst of all they’ve seen incredible wealth pumped out of their soil and far from their pockets. They feel entitled to some of this wealth and they are frustrated that oil has destabilized, rather than enriched them. And in turn, they’ve become obsessed with “getting a piece of the pie” even if it’s to the detriment of their own community and environment. In Niger Delta communities, the position of traditional chief has often become a battleground between self-interested individuals. And some of the most frustrated have resorted to destroying pipelines to collect the rewards given for oil spills. The government and profiting oil companies have not built the infrastructure that these struggling communities need and demand, and this further radicalizes and corrupts all involved.

And parallel to the oil and natural gas extraction done by multinational oil companies, highly organized, illicit oil and natural gas cartels have emerged. “Illegal bunkering”—the stealing of crude oil by sawing and drilling into existing pipelines—has become an enormous operation run by well-connected elites with some shadowy government links. And even more absolutely insane is the practice of “local bunkering”—stealing natural gas by drilling holes in underwater gas pipelines. This, in contrast to “illegal bunkering,” is sort of the everyman’s corruption. It is smaller in scale, with higher risk and lower reward. The process itself is so incredible, I have to quote it:

Enterprising youth had discovered the Shell gas pipeline going through Oluasiri, laid deep at the bottom of the riverbed. They had hired teams of divers to drill holes at three different points along the gas pipeline and attach hoses to the boreholes. Where the hoses came up to the surface, valves had been attached to control the flow of gas coming from the pipeline. The product that comes out of those valves is a volatile substance that is not quite crude oil and not quite kerosene (which is what crude turns into when the gas has been distilled out of it), but something in between that still has a lot of gas in it. The bunkerers let it sit for two or three days until it turns into kerosene, which is then sold to villagers for use as a cooking fuel. This bootleg kerosene is not as pure as what is sold legally, and when people put it in their stoves, it can explode and kill them. But it costs a fraction of what it otherwise would, and provides a handsome income for the unemployed youths of the area. (Pp. 48-49)

So in sum, a nation with great resource wealth is likely to be as poor (if not poorer)—and far more unstable—than most other sub-Saharan African nations. This is the paradox of plenty, and Ghazvinian has this story on repeat throughout much of the rest of the book. He alters it to each local context put his analysis and conclusions remain the same.

The Resource Curse
Before continuing on to summarize some of the other nations along Ghazvinian’s Paradox-of-Plenty tour, I want to concisely explain why the resource curse is a curse. After all, it’s a pretty counter-intuitive; having resource wealth should be an engine for growth. Describing the resource curse seems like a rich kid lamenting a free car. But it ain’t. Here goes.

In developing countries (with small economies and weak governments), having an abundance of one commodity (copper, lithium, diamonds, and yes, oil) is a political and economic curse. It is economically ruinous because it engenders “Dutch Disease” whereby all efforts to diversify oil wealth and build other sectors of the economy hit almost insurmountable impediments. Pumping oil out of the ground, pumps large amounts of foreign currency in to the nation. A seemingly good thing. This infusion of foreign currency, however, strengthens the local currency. This may seem like a good thing, but a stronger currency makes it difficult to develop other sectors of the economy.

With a stronger currency, it becomes more expensive to grow crops or produce manufactured goods. Everything that goes into an economic sector costs more. Labor and all the parts that enable a plant to grow or a machine part to be built cost more. All of a sudden a poor developing nation cannot produce its crops and its goods as cheaply, and thus are unable to export their products and further grow. As Naim writes, it’s not that these leaders fail to recognize that its necessary to diversity their economies, it’s that “the exchange rate stunts” other sectors of the economy. Additionally, oil and other extractive industries create few jobs, and their roller-coaster prices make macro-economic planning difficult.

And the curse is political ruinous because it breeds corruption. It turns the nation into a rentier state whereby the government becomes a source of wealth—a gold mine that is to be raided—rather than an engine for growth. Constituents are taxed less, which essentially makes them care less about government corruption, and an unending tap of wealth allows governments to buy off or repress dissidence. According to Naim, oil rich nations spend between 2 and 10 times more on their military than non-oil producing nations. Thus oil militarizes the state and spread a culture of conflict.

The most frustrating part of the resource curse is that it only damns developing nations. “Countries that have institutional strength need not worry” (Naim). Thus, nations like the US and Norway can use their resource wealth to enhance their economic growth. Yet, nations without institutional strength—a diverse economy and a political organization that can ensure that oil does not go into the coffers of a few politicians—languish under the curse. Again this is the most frustrating part. The general consensus is that developing nations need strong institutions in order to fend off the curse, and yet the curse ensures that it will be very difficult to develop strong institutions.

(Note: Foreign Policy’s Editor Moises Naim does a good job of succinctly summarizing the curse.)

Summary Part II
Although the overall story remains pretty much the same for each of the nations that Ghazvinian travels to, I still found the content of the book interesting. It’s chalked full of historical facts and journalistic descriptions that give depth and uniqueness to the seemingly repetitive subject matter (poverty → oil → greed & violence → greater poverty).

Ghazvinian’s travels in each further support his argument that oil has been a curse. Visiting Gabon, he describes Libreville (its capital) as a city of extreme wealth with majestic government buildings—akin to the “French Riviera” (98). And in contrast to the exorbitant governmental wealth, he offers perhaps the best example of the “Dutch Disease” I’ve read; banana-rich Gabon has its ripened fruit fall off trees and rot uneaten. Despite the abundance of uncultivated bananas, an undeveloped agricultural sector means that Gabon is reliant on Cameroon for bananas and must import most of its food—a sad reality for a fertile nation. He describes Omar Bongo and the mismanagement and wastefulness that went on under his rule; the 400-mile Trans-Gabonais railway that cost far too much to build and the title for highest per capita champagne consumption that Gabon captured in 1984. Most interestingly, he asks the question, what will happen to Afro petrostates when the oil runs out, as Gabon’s oil output has been steadily declining since 1997.

He also travels to the Brazzaville, which from his description sounds like a ghost town, in a nation where oil is inescapable. 90 to 95 percent of the nation’s export revenue comes from oil, and fighting to control this source of wealth and power has contributed to civil wars that spanned the 1990s and early 2000s. What’s more, in the Republic of Congo he describes a defeated civil society—a church-led dissident movement that has met strong repression.

In contrast, his travels in Angola seem like an anomaly—an outlier to the group of states that seem irreparably damaged by the resource curse. I was amazed to read about Lusaka and its astounding growth as a result of oil: the ritzy glass hotel and office towers going up over night, and the “overpriced and overbooked” (129) flights from JFK, Houston, and London to the booming city.

Angola is one of the few nations in sub-Saharan Africa that has never been reliant on foreign aid, and over the past decade the lusophone nation has had up astounding economic growth. In 2006, Angola’s GDP grew nearly 20%, and in 2008, Angola had the fourth highest growth rate in the world (CIA World Factbook). The only states that enjoyed greater growth were Qatar, Bhutan, and Macau, which have a combined population that is less than one-seventh of Angola’s.

This is not to say that there is not substantial poverty and social problems in Angola. Ghazvinian describes the decades long war between the MLPA and UNITA, which was both a civil war between Angolans and a proxy war between East and West, Marxism and Capitalism. He also describes, with patience, the debates about governmental and corporate transparency in Angola; where the international community continues to pressure major oil companies (or the Angolan government) to disclose how much money is coming out of the oil, and where this money is going. These are significant obstacles that Angola must over come, and in her recent visit Hillary Clinton voiced some of the contemporary political problems that Angola faces. Yet in his descriptions of Angola, the resource curse seems like much less of a curse. The boom is still so great and optimism continues to swell.

As with much of Africa’s oil, Angola’s oil has come from the waters off its shores (129). I was amazed to read about the so-called “Deep Water Revolution” Ghazvinian describes; where in the past couple decades, oil companies have begun exploring and extracting more and more from the deep depths of the ocean. Oil companies are now capable of drilling at depths of 7 and 8,000 feet, and as deepwater drilling technology develops, depths of over 10,000 feet will become possible. That’s 2 miles! What’s more there’s a ton of oil at these depths. Ghazvinian quotes two renowned oil consultants that predict that deepwater reservoirs contain more than twice the amount of oil already discovered on earth (85). That’s astounding, and although Africa may not hold a monopoly of these reservoirs, the continent sure holds a lot of them. As the continents were forming, and South America separated from Africa, a great deal of sediment and fossils fell off the African coast and into the Gulf of Guinea. That is one reason why today, the Gulf of Guinea holds substantial oil reserves.

I find it incredible that a nation can gain extraordinary wealth from a resource that most people in the host nation will never even see. A government can commission a large oil company to drill for oil 100-miles from its coast, and then ship it to another nation to be refined—thus never having to touch the land of the host nation. I also find it bizarre that a nation can own parcels of ocean—especially deep sea areas far from the coast. (Perhaps this is why the ocean between Nigeria and Sao Tome and Principe had to be negotiated before deep water drilling began.) I mean who feels a closeness or an affinity to a piece of ocean that you can’t even see from the coast? I’ve never stood on the beach of Robert Moses State Park, gazing longingly out to sea, thinking, “That’s America, that’s our land.” So I’m amazed that something so distant from a people can set them on a completely different macroeconomic course. It’s like hitting the lottery…a cursed lottery.


Wrapping all this up: Further Thoughts
Untapped is meant to serve as a warning and a lamentation for new oil states in Africa. Ghazvinian writes:

Nigeria, Angola, Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville, along with, to a lesser extent, Cameroon, make up an old boys’ club of African oil exporters…[Beginning in the early 1990s] Four African countries—Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Sao Tome and Principe, and Mauritania—have joined (or are about to join) the ranks of the world’s oil-producing nations, and several more—including Mozambique, Madagascar, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia—seem likely to follow. Another dozen appear more doubtful, but their leaders are crossing their fingers (166).

But is there anything that these nations can do to avert the curse? Or at least to mitigate the political and economic regression it causes?

Promoting transparency, strong economic planning (to overcome “Dutch Disease), and building institutional strength can help.

Equatorial Guinea—a truly unique African nation—makes the reader skeptical. The nation was formed when the Portuguese gave the Spanish a small tract of land on the West African coast, and a small island in the Gulf of Guinea. As the only former Spanish colony in Africa, this nation has perhaps the most bizarre and depressing history of any of the new oil states. Its wealth has been squandered. It has one of the most restrictive police states, yet has resort-like compounds for oil company employees. And most strangely of all, the existing government almost feel at the hands of a group of mercenaries hired by shady international businessmen. The warped political events of the past two decades, do not offer much hope to overcoming the resource curse.

Additionally depressing is the fact that Jeffrey Sachs and the World Bank have tried their hand at defeating the resource curse.

In Chad, the World Bank essentially set the nation’s economic policy, forcing the government to put substantial amounts of its profits in foreign banks and requiring all spending to be approved by civil society organizations. This failed (largely because the plan was never fully implemented). And in Sao Tome, the government brought in Jeffrey Sachs and his team of graduate students to help them write Sao Tome’s “Oil Revenue Management Law” (241). Time will tell how this transparency-promoting legislation fares.

It’s depressing that Western experts and institutions have struggled to help oil-rich nations to solve the resource curse. But what’s even more depressing is that national governments have become exasperated to the point that they’ve turned to distant outsiders like American professors and their grad students.

Yet, I don’t think the resource curse is as damning as Ghazvinian’s doomsday tour makes it out to be. I disagree with his fatalistic conclusion upon leaving Gabon: “Stories about Gabon in the international press are virtually nonexistent and, sadly, in a continent of plagues and famines, wars and genocides, this splendid anonymity, this tacit acknowledgement that nothing much ever happens here, is probably as close as Africa gets to a real success story” (116-7).

I don’t know if developing nations that lack the political and economic strength to handle a mass infusion of oil wealth can overcome the resource curse. But I don’t think the future of Africa does not have to be defined by the resource curse.

Nonetheless, Untapped serves as an important and relevant warning for African nations.