Cold War Redux...?

This Sunday marks the fourth anniversary of the September 11^th attacks against the United States. As we can clearly see now—and as we suspected at the time—September 11, 2001 represented one of those monumental moments of change in history where strategies and even ideals shift for the foreseeable future.

Almost exactly ten years before September 11, 2001 the Soviet Union collapsed, representing the official end of the Cold War and another monumental moment of change in history which brought about massive shifts in policy.

I bring up both 9/11 and the Cold War not simply because they represent two of these rare watershed moments in recent history but to highlight both of their effects on Africa. The Cold War was notoriously bad for the African continent. Both superpowers and their allies pillaged the African continent trying to stop the spread of each other’s ideology. Usually the superpowers ended up supporting ruthless dictators who ostensibly supported the proper cause even if they did little to support their own people.

One of the more egregious examples of this was the United State’s decades of support for Mabuto Sese Seko of Zaire. While the dictator funneled aid money directly into his Swiss bank accounts he allowed his citizens to live in squalor, offering no support whatsoever. The west had clearly chosen to stay the course against an ideology (in this case Communism and its spread) no matter what the cost to the locals. The Soviet Union, not to be outdone by its rival, was equally (or more) guilty with its Cold War actions in Africa.

How does this relate to the post 9/11 world? The West African nation of Mauritania is an example of how. In early August Mauritania’s president Maaouiya Ould Taya was unseeded in a military coup (which hardly received any coverage in the US media by the way). Taya had been a largely unpopular ruler for more than two decades and more recently—in the post-9/11 world—had decided to gain favor with the United States by cracking down on forms of militant Islamism which further eroded his support in Mauritania which is overwhelmingly Muslim.

It seemed only a matter of time before the repressive, unpopular regime would meet a fate similar to so many other repressive, unpopular regimes in Africa: the coup d’etat. The military officers who have taken over the government of Mauritania have freed jailed Islamists and seem much more amenable toward the popular Muslim sentiment. The United States was initially alarmed by the coup but has since cooled its fears as the new leadership has shown to be more benign than first thought.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with a government cracking down on militant and dangerous forms of Islam, as Taya’s government was doing, and for western governments to support the fight against radical Islam. It seems, however, that Taya, like Mabuto before him, was simply giving the west what it wanted in order to retain his grasp on power no matter what the cost was to the citizens of Mauritania. 

Should we believe that President Taya, who cared so little about his people for so long, suddenly developed an intense interest in fighting militant Islam out of nowhere? It simply isn’t rational. It seems likely that he launched this new found crusade against Muslim extremism because he saw it as an opportunity to gain the attention of, and favors from, the United States and other powerful western nations. And, of course, Taya’s fervor against radical Islam was very likely encouraged (or “suggested”) by the United States as well.

The bottom line is the fact that, like the Cold War, the new global war on terrorism is a blanket ideological struggle with one goal: to rid the world of terrorism, with a particular emphasis on radical Islamists. It has and will continue to reach far and wide in the Middle East, in Asia, and in Africa and elsewhere and western governments will stop at nothing to continue to advance this policy.

Africa, with its cadre of inept and unscrupulous rulers, seems particularly vulnerable to leaders making unusual shifts in policy to gain the attention and support of the world’s most powerful nations. Will the global war on terror create more murderous regimes in Africa like Mabuto’s Zaire during the Cold War? Will the United States and other western nations look the other way while brutal dictators terrorize their populations simply because they support the war against terror and radical Islamic thought?

I guess only time will tell but sadly we might just be headed in that direction.

So, what must be done?

Of the people who care about these things, and admittedly there aren’t enough of them, one of the great debates relating to Africa’s current difficulties involves the question of who’s at fault. Is it the great powers of the west who used so many African nations—either during colonialism or during the Cold War—and then proceeded to neglect them once they were finished? Or is it Africa’s seemly vast quantity of inept leaders who, one after another, continue to rape and pillage their own homelands? Perhaps it goes back even further to the pillage of centuries of slave trading on the continent, or maybe it’s the curse of geography, the harsh climates and drought.

It’s not an easy question to answer and, frankly, most people trying to be the least bit objective and honest will concede that the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle—a combination of the above mentioned issues along with many other issues.

I don’t doubt that answering the question of why Africa suffers far more than most of the rest of the world today is important but, in many ways, it’s simply academic. The fact of the matter is that Africa does suffer more than any other place on earth today and—as far as I’m concerned—the troubles of Africa represent the greatest tragedy of our generation: a whole continent dying right before our eyes.

I don’t know that much, but I am smart enough to understand that this little website isn’t going to solve the problems of Africa. That isn’t why I started it. Its basic goal is to raise whatever little attention in can raise about Africa. Concerning one’s self with the issue of who’s at fault for Africa’s situation today is as stupid as thinking that this website will solve all of those issues. Maybe it was the slave trade, maybe it was the big bad colonial governments of the past, or the even bigger and badder superpowers of the Cold War era or the rich countries of the last twenty years who haven’t cared enough. Who knows and, frankly, who cares?

A lot of people who care about this sort of stuff spend a lot of time pointing fingers at people and passing out blame. Just look at the coverage of the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. The lefty web news site Salon.com ran this opinion piece about how the Bush administration cut funding for flood control in New Orleans (read it here). Fair enough, I’m not going to defend President Bush or the deplorable way that the federal, state, and local governments have mishandled the situation on the Gulf Coast. But the fact that while people are literally dying in the streets of New Orleans the good folks at Salon can’t wait to point fingers at President Bush seems really silly. It’s 100% appropriate to criticize the government’s response to this catastrophe with questions like “why has it taken the National Guard four or five days to arrive?” and “why won’t anyone help us?” it seems down right stupid to say—while people are still dying—that Bush cut funding for flood control in New Orleans two years ago. Perhaps that’s a good question to ask once people have stopped dying in New Orleans and elsewhere on the Gulf Coast. Perhaps it would be even more useful to look at other potential danger zones and try to head them off at the pass.

The same holds true for Africa. Plenty of well-meaning do-gooders who actually care about Africa love to point fingers at colonial governments of a century ago, or at Cold War America circa 1960 or other such things but I will say right here—as interesting as those things might be—they don’t matter one single bit today.

The tragedy in Africa is an emergency and, while we do have to get to the root of the problems, it does us no good to point figures at the ghosts of generations ago. If many of Africa’s leaders are corrupt today because they’ve learned from their former colonial masters how to be that way, so be it. It’s sad, it’s unfortunate but it doesn’t help us stop the current corrupt leaders from continuing to be corrupt—and that’s something that must be done as soon as possible.

To me the reaction to the genocide in Rwanda is a perfect example of a mentality that does Africa no good today. When 800,000 African people were being murdered in a genocide there eleven years ago very few people knew or cared at all about what was going on. Only years later, after being shamefully forced to face the consequences of doing nothing, did most people shed tears and ask ’why?’ pointing fingers at the United Nations, the United States, France, and others. Politicians have talked about never letting it happen again (even while they let it happen again in Sudan). Books, documentaries, and movies all get released and fingers continue to get pointed in different directions.

The genocide in Rwanda was awful, and the world’s response was shameful but the reality today is that Africa is in the clutches of nearly continental wide poverty, disease, inept leadership, starvation, and a general lack of hope that is leading it on a direct course to something many times worse than a genocide. It’s happening right now, right under our noses and something must be done to change Africa’s course soon. No discussion of the past will truly provide us with the solutions for today—and this is coming from somebody with a great respect for history.

So what must be done?

This is the question at the very heart of African Update.  I hope to make it the focal point of what we do here.

Anarchy!

Watching the horrible devastation that hurricane Katrina has caused along the Gulf Coast and seeing the terrible struggles and desperation of the unfortunate people trapped in that region has been nothing short of heartbreaking. Much has been made about the lawlessness that’s occurring—most of it born purely out of survival—in the region right now and it has had me thinking about what it would be like it there were no authority and no government at all in the United States…simply a Darwinian system of survival of the fittest. Frankly, in light of the struggles going on right now in New Orleans and other Gulf Coast areas, it’s a pretty scary proposition.

There are a lot of people in the US who talk about wanting to have “less government” but that’s a relative term. How much less government is the right amount?

All of this brings to mind one of the most tragic stories in all of recent African history (and that’s saying a lot!)…Somalia.

The country of Somalia has had no government at all since the early 1990s. That’s right, no government for the better part of fifteen years. The United States got involved in the beginning, back in the early 1990s with Operation Restore Hope, but then in October 1993 eighteen US Marines were killed (Black Hawk Down) and the US quickly pulled out its military and turned the operation over to the United Nations which, after suffering many casualties, pulled out two years later.

Since that time—and before that time really—Somalia has been “ruled” by warlords who control various regions, extracting “taxes” in exchange for protection and not much else. Yet the lack of security in Somalia is perhaps its biggest problem and this in turn has led to scores of other problems. Nobody can go to school so the illiteracy rate is an astounding 81%, the highest in the world. One-quarter of all children die before the age of five. The largest contributors to the economy, by far, are those Somalis who have left the country and send money back home. The only thing that does work in Somalia are the phones and internet (who knew?)

To be fair Somalia does currently have a government. It was formed by an election that took place in Kenya last year and, until very recently, housed itself in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. It was too unsafe for the government to take its post within the borders of the very country it was elected to govern. Currently the Somali government’s influence doesn’t extend much beyond its headquarters in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, but at least now it governs from inside its own borders. Imagine it being so unsafe in the United States that the Bush administration was forced to govern from Bermuda?

A United Nations human rights expert recently visited Somalia and declared that it was rampant with human rights violations thanks to the continuing security problem, open borders, and an open coastline—all of which have helped lead to a growth in human trafficking (a twenty-first century euphemism for “slavery”)

Somalia has about 8.5 million citizens and remarkably most of them have found ways to deal with this unimaginable chaos. I can’t even begin to fathom how but slowly, without much help (the UN human rights expert scolded the global community saying that “the world is not paying enough attention to Somalia”), Somalis are rebuilding on the disintegrated ruins of their nation.

Maybe twenty years from now we’ll be calling Somalia the jewel of East Africa. It certainly can’t get any worse than it has been and given the resilience that the people of Somalia have shown over the years I’d say the odds are good that things are looking up.

"A dark day for democracy..."

This week Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe won additional powers under the country’s constitution thanks to a vote in parliament by freshly “elected” MP’s from Mugabe’s ruling party ZANU-PF. Under his new constitutional powers, which he’ll sign into law right away, Mugabe and his thugs will be allowed to seize passports from the ruling party’s political opponents and continue to seize farmland for redistribution—despite the fact that the redistribution of farmland has led to a massive drop in agricultural production and the once fertile country has been forced to accept emergency food aid in order to feed all of its people.

Leaders from Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), called the day of the vote a “sad day for democracy” in their country—while the leaders of ZANU-PF called it the "end of colonialism."

Robert Mugabe has been in power in Zimbabwe for twenty-five years. When he took the helm of the newly democratic country in 1980 optimism was high. Now, the country has triple-digit inflation and 70% (that right…70%!!!) unemployment.

It’s all going to come to a head soon…right?

More about Zim soon…