The Dark Side:
I have recently moved to Spain. In order to buy anything official like insurance, a flat, a car or a bank account – you have to pay for your bank accounts here – the foreign resident needs what is known as a NIE (a “foreigner’s identification number”). A month ago my wife and I made our first attempt to obtain one. Getting up early, we drove the forty-five minutes to the nearest NIE office in Marbella and arrived at 8.45, fifteen minutes before the office opened. When I asked the policeman who was guarding the queue of supplicants about the procedure, he told me we had arrived too late, that we should have acquired a ticket before 8.30, and that to be sure of a ticket it was advisable to arrive no later than 6.30. Needless to say, none of this was on the relevant website, which merely told the reader the opening hours and the forms he needed to fill out.
Today we tried again, this time in Málaga. We rose at 6.45 and arrived at the office at 7.30. The queue was short, and the duty policeman told us to wait until 9, when the office opened, before asking any questions. We stood with the others, outside, buffeted by a cold wind. By the gate was a poster, advising all those waiting that they needed photocopies of every page of their passports. Even the empty pages. This is apparently a new policy, as it does not yet appear on any of the relevant websites. Perhaps it is a job creation strategy, although even in as dire a recession as Spain finds itself in I find it hard to imagine how desperate you would have to be to apply for a position as a reader of empty passport pages. The Venezuelan behind us in the queue had not seen this poster by the time we started chatting to him at 8.45 – panicked that he would lose his place in the line, thereby condemning himself to returning another day (and taking another morning off work in a job market where employers call all the shots), he sprinted off to find the photocopy shop that I had located when the queue was in its infancy, and arrived back just in time to avoid ejection.
Gradually the queue filled up with North and West Africans, South Americans and a few Eastern Europeans. At around nine the doors opened, and those of us at the front were promoted to a wooden bench in the office yard. Half an hour later we were inside. There was one official dealing with the entire queue of around a hundred applicants – his colleagues were apparently all still at breakfast (my Venezuelan friend told me that the last time he had done this, five years ago, anyone not inside the building by twelve had had no chance of being seen that day: the office closed at two sharp and those still outside at midday were told to leave).
Of the half dozen people in front of us in the line, three – an African and two Moroccan women – left the office shaking their heads in despair; they had presumably not seen the new poster or had filled in the wrong forms or the right forms wrongly. At 10.15 we saw an official. We stood in front of his desk like errant schoolchildren summoned before the headmaster – there were no chairs. He did not look up as I handed over my documents. ‘Wrong office,’ he grunted (fortunately I understand Spanish). ‘Huh?’ ‘If it’s your first time, it’s another office.’ Still he did not look up. It wasn’t my first time – I had lived in Spain in the early nineties – but I doubted this would make any difference so instead asked him where the correct office was. ‘Ask the security guard.’ ‘Can’t you tell me yourself?’ ‘No, ask the security guard.’ It was as if he was being docked part of his salary every time he uttered a word. The ritual humiliation of any immigrant seeking assistance or even just politeness seemed to be an intrinsic part of his job.
The security guard was no better. ‘I don’t know what you want,’ he said. ‘Fill out this form and bring it back.’ ‘I can tell you what I want,’ I replied: ‘A foreigner’s identification number.’ ‘Are you both from the European Union?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Go to the police station then.’ ‘Is it too late to do it today?’ ‘No idea. Ask at the police station.’ We trudged off, shaking our heads, three hours of life wasted.
The Bright Side:
At the police station we were greeted with a smile by the guard on the door. He showed us to the room we needed, and a friendly woman there processed our application within twenty minutes of our arrival. We received the numbers we sought there and then.
We had evidently gone to the wrong place initially. This was dumb, but none of this was made clear on any website. The experience, however, gave us a glimpse of what non-EU citizens must go through to renew their permits to stay in Europe (one dreads to think what first-timers have to endure). Although there is no explanation for the rudeness, our Venezuelan friend suggested that the slowness of the process is probably deliberate. ‘If they did their job efficiently,’ he said before we left him to battle with the hostile official, ‘there would be too many people getting through.’
March 22, 2011 at 2:05 pm | More on Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia | Comments Off
The convulsions in North Africa have in the past three weeks found an echo south of the Sahara.
The death in custody of a student in Burkina Faso has sparked a series of student protests against the brutality of Blaise Compaoré’s regime. At first these protests were limited to Koudougou, where the student died. Koudougou is traditionally a hotbed of Burkinabe agitation, and the government assumed it could confine the protest within the city boundaries by closing schools and clamping down on demonstrators.
But by extending school closures to the whole country, the government seems to have fanned the flames. The protests have spread to at least seven other cities, with police stations burned down, prisoners freed from jails and in one city the headquarters of the ruling party set on fire. The students, moreover, have been joined by hawkers and ordinary citizens.
Compaoré, as is his wont, has responded forcefully. When early concessions did not work – the Koudougou chief of police and regional governor were fired to placate the students – his security forces opened fire on protesters, killing four so far, with one policeman lynched in return. A peaceful march is planned for today in Ouagadougou, the capital, with student unions demanding the removal from office of the minister of security as a condition for halting the demonstrations.
There are many similarities between Burkina Faso and her Middle Eastern counterparts. Compaoré, like Mubarak, Ben-Ali, and his close friend Gaddafi, runs a dictatorial government that brooks no dissent (Western governments count Burkina as a democracy because it holds occasional rigged elections, but few in the country share that view). There are hordes of underemployed young men whom the population explosion has deprived of a livelihood (and if war breaks out in the Ivory Coast their numbers will be swollen by many of the three million Burkinabes currently living there). Food price rises are exacerbating hunger and poverty (the main cities were rocked by food riots in 2008). And the older generation has sequestered the nation’s resources, creating great resentment among the youth.
So far, the protests have focused on police brutality rather than on the repressive government as a whole (in a similar way to Saudi Arabia’s day of rage yesterday and the early rallies in Tunisia and Egypt), but they may become more wide-ranging. Compaoré assuaged the 2008 food riots by subsidising staple foods, but his latest concessions have not been so effective. It would be a stretch to predict that the discontent will harden into a revolutionary movement, but it is not impossible, and given the underlying conditions in the country (and indeed in West Africa as a whole), Compaoré might have to get used to a rougher ride.
March 11, 2011 at 12:18 pm | More on Africa, Conflict and security | Comments Off
I have never visited the Ivory Coast and do not feel well qualified, therefore, to comment on the situation developing there. But as an observer from afar of the post-election crisis which has seen the country move to the brink of either civil war or invasion by troops from other West African countries, I cannot help wondering whether the country would be better off if it allowed Laurent Gbagbo, the man who lost the election and who is clinging on grimly to the presidency, to remain in power.
Gbagbo’s strategy from an early stage, no doubt drawing on lessons learned from Kenya and Zimbabwe in recent years, seems to have been to angle for a power-sharing agreement with the election winner, Alassane Ouattara. Early on in the crisis, he predicted that there would not be a war over the succession, and asked his opponent to ‘sit down and talk.’ Ouattara rejected the invitation, buoyed by the impressive array of international leaders who have queued up to call for the president to step down. The Ivory Coast’s West African neighbours, the United Nations, America, France and Britain have been united in condemning Gbagbo and in threatening to use force to evict him.
This show of strength, however, particularly when combined with the threat that the International Criminal Court might be waiting for Gbagbo if he resigns (as alluded to by Chris Blattman in an interesting discussion on his blog), has forced the incumbent into a corner. He may now feel he has little choice but to dig in. Losing power in West Africa means you and the many people who rely on you for jobs, money and influence instantly lose everything. But the threat of violence or arrest adds a new dimension; now, you and those close to you not only lose money and status, but potentially your freedom or your life too. I remember a friend in Sierra Leone last year telling me that the reason so few of his continent’s leaders exit power peacefully is because ‘in Africa, they come after you.’ The insistence by the West, West Africa and Ouattara himself that the democratic process be respected could result in many thousands of Ivorian deaths. The alternative is unsatisfactory and unpalatable, but wouldn’t a power-sharing deal, followed by renewed efforts to strengthen political and civil society institutions so that such chaos doesn’t happen again, be preferable to carnage?
January 2, 2011 at 4:01 pm | More on Africa, Conflict and security | 2 Comments
Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan has hit upon an innovative idea for tackling illiteracy in Africa: publish a book of Facebook chats. His Facebook chats. With the thousands of people who read and comment on his surprisingly frequent Facebook updates (recent posts tell us what a great job he is doing on attracting foreign investment, reopening textile mills, strengthening the aviation sector, containing the crisis in the Ivory Coast (one of his less robust claims), easing tensions in the North (another premature boast) and, perhaps his most astonishing feat if it’s true, eradicating fuel scarcity).
Such a book, Mr Jonathan believes, will ‘revive a reading culture in Nigeria.’ With over a quarter of adult Nigerians unable to read and write, and with the country’s education system recently described by the IMF as ‘dysfunctional,’ efforts to promote literacy are sorely needed. Many of the president’s Facebook friends are in raptures over this visionary move (you will no doubt find some of their comments in the book). ‘Thank you sir for this new development may God bless you and multiply you wisdom to lead 9ger,’ wrote one. ‘Reading maketh a man,’ mused another. ‘In reviving the reading culture, you will make a nation. Keep it up my President.’ Another fan, seemingly oblivious to the misdeeds of Mr Jonathan’s predecessors, wrote, ‘My President this is a wonderful innovation cos without it it means our leaders are going extinct.’
Others’ praise is double-edged:
‘My love for your drive is so overwhelming that I want to look around you and make sure nobody pulls you down. Let me start by saying that your wife should join you in this reading so she wont pull you down with some of her english blunders.’
‘This is very inspiring your excellency!perharps, dis will reduce the number of illetrate undergraduates that being turned out from some of our universities & encourage those who are willing, to really study well.’
Some are less appreciative of the president’s generosity. It seems unlikely that the following observations, for example, will feature in the book:
‘While the tree has serious problems at the roots (corruption, inadequate power, bad roads, etc), our dear President is decorating the leaves.’
‘This is like putting the cart before the horse. Lecturers in the East have been on strike for months and your administration has been incompetent in finding a resolution to this problem’
‘reading is not our problem we lack motivators and good role model in Nigerian leadership’
‘Mr. President, if you really love education, prove it by intervening in the on-going strike in the south east by ASUU so that students can return to school’
Others draw attention to the practical difficulties of the book idea, some of which would no doubt surprise the fuel-optimist Mr Jonathan:
‘This is good…em em ..but we still need the LIGHT you promised to enable us read the books.’
‘Books we shall read by candle light.’
‘our reading culture impaired by poor electricity supply!Do your know that where i live opposite Ondo state Radio CORPORATION at Akure there is no supply electricity since three weeks ago.’
The president plans to launch his book at a series of ‘meet the public’ events. One or two of these have already taken place, but as with the book itself the response has been mixed. One attendee was ‘really confused if it was a book reading initiative or a musical concert.’ She asked Mr Jonathan to tell organisers of future meetings to ‘play down on the entertainment and lay emphasis on book reading and discussion.’ Another woman had trouble reaching a meeting:
‘Mr President, I must tell u dis, I faced hell yesterdy due to the road blockade precedind ur movt. Although I was at d event n it was a great one but u eventually made me, one of ur friends to suffer by trekking. Things cannot continue lik dis.’
Nigerians are famously resourceful, however, and the woman overcame all the obstacles to see the great man. The final word, though, must go to one of her enterprising peers, who took advantage of his president’s Facebook page to plug a tome of his own:
‘wit due respect sir,i have a book dat i wil like u to lunch before d election date.my numb is 0802514XXXX veri inportant book’
December 31, 2010 at 10:01 am | More on Africa, Economics and development | 1 Comment
As the IMF agrees to grant Guinea-Bissau $700 million of debt relief, the European Union, the country’s main donor, threatens to withhold $150 million of aid.
Guinea-Bissau’s leaders will at least be pleased it’s not the other way round.
December 20, 2010 at 4:49 pm | More on Africa, Economics and development | Comments Off
If you had ever planned an aerial invasion of Spain, last Friday would have been a good day to do it. For on that day, unannounced, Spain’s air traffic controllers decided to go on strike. At 5pm, all three hundred of those on duty called in sick. Five hundred flights were grounded; the skies remained empty for hours. Nobody in the government, the air force or the media had any prior warning. Nor did any of the 600,000 passengers who had to spend the bank holiday weekend (the most important in the Spanish calendar) sleeping on crowded airport floors with no food, no prospects of flight, and no information.
Spain’s air traffic controllers are among the least productive in Europe. The hourly cost of employing them is higher than in any other European country, and their annual salary, for which they work 32 hours per week, is €200,000. The wildcat strike was called because that salary has come down in the past year, bringing it closer to, but still higher than the European average, and because a new law prevents them from counting as working time all the many sick days they take (each controller averaged more than a day per month last summer).
Spain, as you may have noticed, is in the throes of a terrible recession (20% unemployment, frequent talk of IMF bailouts, no real sign of any let-up). Tourism is one of its biggest industries. The strike is likely to cost an economy already on its knees 400 million euros in lost revenue. And for a few hours on Friday until the army stepped in, the country’s skies were unpoliced.
The air traffic controllers nevertheless decided that this was an opportune time to take action. This now looks like a catastrophic miscalculation. Those who are struggling to feed their families are not delighted by the idea that a group earning in one year what the average Spaniard earns in ten think they are entitled to a pay increase. That that increase would come out of public funds (the industry is state-owned) when the country may be on the verge of bankruptcy does not add to the strikers’ popularity.
Fortunately, this tale of myopic greed has a happy ending. On Friday night the government declared a “state of alarm.” This placed air traffic controllers under temporary military supervision, effectively making them military personnel. If they do not perform their duties, therefore, they will be subject to the same penalties a soldier would face for disobedience. This can mean up to six years in prison. Within hours of the announcement of the state of alarm, the strike was over, as the spooked wildcats scurried back to their watchtowers. Disciplinary proceedings against them have already been opened, and the government seems determined to follow through with its threat. Hundreds of pampered air traffic controllers now face unemployment at best, imprisonment at worst. For the industry as a whole, privatisation beckons. The Spaniards I have spoken to, meanwhile, are pleased to see the spoilt brats getting their comeuppance. Many are no doubt wondering if the state of alarm can be extended to bankers.
December 7, 2010 at 9:19 am | More on Europe and Central Asia, Off topic | Comments Off
Last month, not long after the release by the terror group Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb of two Spanish hostages it had held in captivity for nine months, came the news that Acció Solidaria, the NGO that employs those hostages, plans to send another aid convoy to the same region in “homage” to the freed men.
It will be sending this convoy in the knowledge that there is a serious risk of a second kidnapping. The French, British and American governments all strongly advise their citizens against travel through Mauritania, northern Mali and northern Niger, and the number of kidnappings of Westerners in this region has risen sharply in the past two years (five French citizens working in Niger, snatched two weeks ago, were the latest victims). Even the governments of the West African nations concerned have acknowledged the danger, and they are busy promoting other parts of their countries as safe havens for tourists.
Acció Solidaria knows that, although it calls itself a non-governmental organisation, if a second kidnapping takes place it will be able to count on the Spanish government to bail it out. That government gave seven million Euros to AQIM and its intermediaries to secure the release of those freed in August. In recent years, AQIM has also reportedly received large ransom payments from the Canadian, Italian, German, Swiss and French governments. As a further part of the Spanish deal, moreover, an AQIM militant was released from prison in Mauritania.
The leaders of AQIM are growing rich. The funds acquired will enable them to buy faster jeeps, more weapons and men, and the latest in GPS and communications technology. But kidnapping is unlikely to remain their sole raison d’être; the pressures on them are such that hostage-taking can only be a means, not an end. Even if AQIM’s leaders wanted to just take the money and spend it on a life of luxury, the patrimonial nature of relationships in West Africa would make this impossible. Those who have wealth here cannot enjoy it alone; just as they have been helped by others on their way up, so must they now repay that assistance and dispense largesse to their growing band of dependents. If they refuse, they will be ostracised. Their families and communities will cast them out. As word gets around that they have come into money, the number of supplicants will swell; they will have no choice but to continue to accumulate, to amass and dole out ever more wealth and ever more power.
The recent escalation of kidnappings may be a response to the growing pressures faced by AQIM’s leaders, or it may simply reflect their increased capacity for action. Kidnappings, however, are a finite resource; Western tourists are avoiding the region (attendances at Mali’s Festival du Dessert are down 70%), aid workers are being evacuated by the week, and foreign businesses have stepped up security. When the well runs dry, AQIM will have to find other means of keeping its supporters happy. It will be able to accrue some income from the trans-Saharan drug trade (one of the group’s two main leaders is known as Mr Marlboro because of his involvement in tobacco contraband), but a more worrying prospect is that it uses its ransom booty to gun for real power. Already the group has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly bombings of official buildings in Algeria, and in the last couple of months it has carried out attacks on barracks in Mauritania and Mali. If its links with the central Asian branch of Al Qaeda grow stronger (Osama bin Laden’s deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri has publicly welcomed AQIM’s emergence), a jihad to bring down insufficiently fanatical governments across West Africa cannot be ruled out. Given the weakness and poverty of many of those governments, the danger that such a jihad might succeed is real.
So should European governments continue to fund AQIM’s activities? If Acció Solidaria suffers another kidnapping, should Spain cough up another large ransom? And what of tourists who brave the region despite the warnings of their foreign ministries – whose responsibility are they if they are captured? These are difficult questions, but for Africa’s governments the answer is clear. It is Africans, not Europeans, who will suffer most if AQIM grows in strength and if convicted terrorists continue to be released, so in July 2009 the African Union passed a resolution condemning ransom payments and asking the international community ‘to criminalize the payment of ransoms to terrorist groups.’
October 11, 2010 at 10:48 am | More on Africa, Conflict and security | Comments Off
Back in March of this year, I spent a couple of weeks in the far north of Burkina Faso. I slept under the stars on the edge of the Sahara, was offered a live goat at Dori’s spectacular weekly livestock market, and discussed the upcoming hunger season with nomadic Fulani herders. I also spent money (although not on the goat) and contributed a little to the local economy.
Today I could do none of these things. The whole northern half of this beautiful, welcoming country has been declared off limits by the British, American and French governments. Last month, the US evacuated dozens of its citizens from north-western Burkina. Last week, France withdrew twenty-five students from the city of Fada N’Gourma, near the Niger border, and sent them back to Europe. Across that border, in southern Niger, NGO workers helping to deal with that country’s hunger crisis (a crisis which my Fulani interlocutors had foreseen) have been recalled to the capital, Niamey, for unspecified ‘reasons of security.’
Were I to go back to northern Burkina and fall sick or have a traffic accident (statistically by far the greatest dangers to my person), my insurance would not cover the costs of recovery. Were I to be kidnapped by elements linked to Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), which the European governments see as the greatest threat to my safety, nobody would pay my ransom and, like the tragic Briton Edwin Dyer last year, I might well be murdered.
My first reaction to this expansion of the already large map of forbidden West African territories was one of anger. So far, two of the dozens captured by Al Qaeda have died. Edwin Dyer was executed because his government refuses to negotiate with terrorists, and earlier this month the 78-year-old French humanitarian worker Michel Germaneau, whose own government normally has no such qualms, either met the same fate or died of natural causes (it is not yet clear). When I compare this figure to the annual number of deaths in car crashes on the M25, on which the Foreign Office is happy for me to drive, or stabbings in London, which I can freely visit, it seems a disproportionate response to tell all foreign visitors that they must avoid northern Burkina and most of Niger, thereby impeding the famine relief effort, hobbling the fledgling tourist industry, and deterring any foreigner thinking of doing business there.
But on reflection, I wondered whether I would be brave enough to revisit the region myself (as I plan to do next year). In March I did not feel in any danger, but if the intelligence the Europeans and Americans claim to have received is correct and AQIM is actively hunting for foreigners to kidnap, would it not be foolhardy to ignore the warnings? In my two weeks, after all, I did not see a single other white face: it would not have been difficult for a desperate local wanting to earn a fast buck to find me and sell me on to the extremists. Perhaps I was lucky not to be snatched myself, although it did not feel that way and no local people seemed concerned that there was any threat.
Michel Germaneau’s fate was probably sealed when the French military botched an attempt to rescue him. He was being held in Mali, and the night-time raid succeeded in killing six or seven terrorists, but not in finding the hostage. AQIM claims that it subsequently executed him in retaliation, although experienced observers of the group believe he may already have been dead, and that the Algerian government, which some allege to be a supporter of AQIM, joined in the raid knowing that it was too late to rescue its target.
The killing of the six terrorists may not be without consequences. There appear to be two main AQIM factions. One, run by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, has never killed any of its captives, and may be driven more by pecuniary than religious considerations. This faction is currently holding two Spanish aid workers, Roque Pascual and Albert Vialata, who were kidnapped in Mauritania last November (their kidnapper, who sold them on to Belmokhtar, has just been sentenced to twelve years in a Malian prison). The other faction, led by the Algerian Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, killed Dyer and was holding Germaneau at the time of his death. It is thought to be the more fanatical of the two groups, and the six dead terrorists were Abou Zeid’s men. The latter is reported to be furious at the raid, and is trying to pressure Belmokhtar into executing his two captives. So far, Belmokhtar, who is haggling for a big ransom, has refused, but the Spanish government has stepped up its negotiations for their release, and it denied rumours yesterday that the two men had been freed.
This intensification of AQIM activity, and the response by Western governments in evacuating personnel from the region, is likely to jeopardise the Islamists’ activities in the short-term. There are very few Westerners in the region already, particularly outside the main cities, and there may soon be nobody left to kidnap. What they will do then is anybody’s guess. They could extend their hunting grounds south into Nigeria, joining up with like-minded groups there, or northwards into Morocco (perhaps with Algerian backing). Or, lacking funds and widespread support, they could fade away as suddenly as they have emerged.
Whatever happens in the future, AQIM’s effect today on those dying of hunger in Niger or trying to scrape a living from tourists in northern and eastern Burkina Faso is clear. In other parts of the world, Al Qaeda has an explicit strategy of wreaking economic havoc. In this desert region of West Africa, however, whose economies are already destitute, the terrorists’ actions are exacerbating the misery of the poorest people on earth. I wonder what their God thinks of that.
Update: The two Spanish hostages are now confirmed freed. The kidnappers wanted a $5m ransom. It is not yet clear whether that was paid, although given the increased threat in the wake of the botched French raid, it seems likely that it was.
Update II: Spain paid 7.6 million euros for the release of the hostages, according to today’s Sur newspaper. Some of it went to intermediaries from Mali, Mauritania and, mysteriously, Burkina Faso, the rest went to AQIM. That should keep them in business for a while.
August 23, 2010 at 1:00 pm | More on Africa, Conflict and security | 1 Comment
Eastern Turkey is currently plagued by a simmering war between the Kurdish separatist PKK and the Turkish army. Hardly a day passes without some battle or other resulting in two or three, or sometimes ten or twelve deaths.
But villagers in the eastern village of Habsunnes have more important things to worry about. This weekend they have marked the anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death by sacrificing three sheep and two goats and holding a mass prayer session to ask that the King of Pop’s soul may rest in peace. The thousand or so congregants wore T-shirts emblazoned with his image and then watched a film celebrating his life.
This year’s crop of sheep have got off lightly. When Barack Obama became US president, forty of their brethren were sacrificed. Posters of the great man were plastered around the village. ‘We are doing this to maintain the dialogue between nations,’ said one idealistic villager. Ataturk, used to having his own image displayed in every living room and on every street corner, must be spinning in his grave.
July 4, 2010 at 11:11 am | More on Middle East and North Africa, Off topic | 2 Comments
In the recent conflicts in Darfur, Uganda, Congo, and Bosnia, rape has been used systematically as a tool of war. The horrors perpetrated on civilian women and girls have been a key part of fighting forces’ strategy, a deliberate method for advancing the war effort.
Different theories have been put forward for the surge in such violence in the past few decades. Amnesty attributes it variously to ethnic cleansing (by raping a woman you infect her ethnicity with your group’s seed), the desire to sow terror in the enemy’s community, and the need to stop culture and values, of which women are often seen as the guardians, being passed down to the next generation. Others highlight the need for armies to humiliate their opponents (both the raped women and their husbands and sons) by emphasising their inability to protect themselves.
Sierra Leone’s 1990s civil war saw some of the worst atrocities against women of any war in history. Boys raped their mothers and sisters, pregnant women had their stomachs cut open, poles were shoved up vaginas. Gang rape became a sport. Yet here, ethnic considerations played little part, and in what turned into a Hobbesian frenzy of all against all there was no clear enemy to humiliate. Terrorising the civilian population and showcasing their power were no doubt important motivations for the rapists, but it seems there were other factors at work too.
I wonder whether a lethal cocktail of population pressure, poverty and pride was not a more important driver of the carnage. The population explosion forced young men off the land and into the cities to find work. Most ended up unemployed and dirt poor. They were therefore unable to afford the products of modernity – cars, houses, mobile phones, smart clothes – that the young women of the country, clinging to dreams of Westernisation, increasingly demanded. Spurned, the destitute young men could not find wives or start families. In Freetown earlier this year, one young Muslim hawker told me, ‘unless you have a car and a house, people don’t think you’re serious.’ Further along the West African coast in Senegal, a hotel boy complained that he could not find a wife because he was too poor. These days, he said, a girl’s highest priority is money: ‘I can’t afford a car or a house so women aren’t interested in me.’
Rebel fighters in Sierra Leone’s civil war singled out their elders for some of the most horrific violence. The latter, seeing that their sons and nephews could not fulfil the roles expected of them, had looked down on the younger generation. When war broke out, they paid a heavy price for this lack of respect. Could it be that the treatment of women was also linked to respect, a crazed act of vengeance by the proud, frustrated young men they had scorned? The traditional explanations for armies’ use of rape in war put most of the blame on instructions from the top, but perhaps in some cases the pressure comes from the bottom, from the fatefully wounded pride of the soldiers themselves.
June 28, 2010 at 10:08 pm | More on Africa, Conflict and security | Comments Off
It’s not often the evil Daily Mail makes it onto Global Dashboard’s high-minded pages, but this story about an anti-rape female condom that is being distributed in South Africa is worth a read.
A young female scientist invented the device, which clamps itself painfully around a penetrating penis and can only be removed by a doctor, in response to South Africa’s stratospheric rape rates. She was inspired by a rape victim, who told her that while she was being attacked she wished she had teeth ‘down there.’ Even if not many women actually wear the thing, its inventor hopes, it will at least act as a deterrent to would-be rapists.
June 22, 2010 at 11:36 am | More on Africa | 2 Comments
In a talk I gave at Demos early last year, I wondered whether Islamic extremists in different parts of West Africa, who had hitherto acted in isolation, might one day join up to become a cohesive pan-regional force.
Now it seems that Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, whose activities have centered on Mauritania, Algeria and Mali, is making efforts to link up with Nigeria’s Boko Haram movement, now imaginatively renamed the Taliban, to create a broad-based West African terror group.
AFP reports that AQIM’s leader has told his Nigerian brothers that, “We are ready to train your sons on how to handle weapons, and will give them all the help they need – men, weapons, ammunition and equipment – to enable them to defend our people and push back the Crusaders.” So far, negotiations remain at a fledgling stage, but the intent is there and, given the region’s notoriously porous borders, so too are the means.
June 22, 2010 at 9:11 am | More on Africa, Conflict and security | Comments Off
Having refused to testify against Charles Taylor, the thuggish former Liberian president currently being tried at the Hague for war crimes, it now seems likely that the supermodel Naomi Campbell will be subpoenaed instead.
The story goes that after a dinner party hosted by Nelson Mandela at his home in South Africa, Ms Campbell was visited in her hotel room in the middle of the night by envoys sent by Taylor, who presented her with an enormous uncut diamond. Campbell allegedly told Mia Farrow about the gift the following morning, but has since denied receiving it to anyone who asks.
Some might think this romantic, but the diamond, if it existed, was a blood diamond from Sierra Leone, Liberia’s nextdoor neighbour, and was paid for with the weapons and soldiers deployed in that country’s vicious civil war.
This, of course, could stain Campbell’s impeccable reputation. She has said she does not want to testify because ‘Taylor has done some terrible things,’ (er, I think that’s why they want you to testify dear) and because she is ‘concerned for her safety.’
By 1997, Sierra Leone’s war was already several years old and approaching its most apocalyptic stage. Already, thousands had been killed or had hands, lips, legs or noses cut off by men and boys funded and supplied with weapons and drugs by Taylor, who needed Sierra Leone’s diamonds for his own insurgency in Liberia (which itself caused a quarter of a million deaths). So Taylor had already ‘done some terrible things’ by the time he allegedly gave Campbell the diamond. Perhaps Campbell hadn’t researched his past (she is a busy woman), but what is Mandela’s excuse for inviting him to dinner?
Apparently, Campbell promised Farrow she would give the diamond to Nelson Mandela’s Children’s Fund, but the Fund denies having ever received it. This could get interesting.
May 24, 2010 at 12:01 pm | More on Africa, Conflict and security | Comments Off
A couple of weeks ago in the small, poor Sahelian town of Dori in northern Burkina Faso, we were sitting at a roadside stall having a breakfast of coffee and dry bread. As we sat with our backs to the road, a group of five young boys, aged no more than twelve, hovered behind us like seagulls waiting for scraps. From time to time one would move closer, as if making to pounce on a morsel of bread, before retreating again when we looked round. They stood there for twenty minutes. After we got up and left, one of them ran to the table and downed the dregs of Ebru’s coffee.
These are the talibe children of West Africa. They are ubiquitous. In the towns of Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal, posses of these young boys – uniformly skinny, dirty and covered in dust – have been constant companions on our trip. They roam the streets in packs, carrying empty, lidless tomato tins or little plastic buckets, and approach everyone they see for money or food. You never get used to the sight of them.
The boys’ story is grim. Many have been sent from their villages at the age of five or six by destitute parents to live with marabouts, Muslim “holy men” who promise to feed and shelter them and teach them about the Koran. ‘Their parents are too poor to look after them,’ says Karim, a Dori yoghurt seller, ‘and they are uneducated, so they believe the marabouts when they tell them they will house and clothe their kids.’ A few of these marabouts are genuine, and the children combine work in the fields with Arabic and Koranic education. But most are charlatans. ‘They go to the market, buy a cap and a gown and a Koran and say they are Koranic masters,’ Karim, a devout Muslim explains, ‘but it’s pure child exploitation.’
The children are sent out into the streets every morning. They are expected to earn 150 or 250 CFA francs per day (about 20-35p, or 50 cents) from begging. A former talibe child from Niger tells me that if they do not hit their target, the marabout beats or tortures them. Many therefore take to stealing if they haven’t begged enough near the end of the day.
Few receive any form of education, because their masters want them on the streets. Some of these Fagins have twenty or thirty boys. Twenty children can mean 5000 CFA (£8/$12) per day, huge money in these parts, so they do not waste time with teaching.
At night, the children sleep together on crowded floors in marabouts’ homes. Few get enough rest – we often see boys sleeping in the dust under trees in the afternoons. Those who surrounded us at the breakfast table were seriously underfed. In Ouagadougou a few days later, another feral-looking child asked us for money. When we refused, he began staring feverishly at Ebru’s bag and then made to snatch it – I pushed him away, and felt his ribs like a radiator through his T-shirt.
Karim is pessimistic about the children’s future. ‘They get used to this life of begging and stealing, so when they eventually grow up and escape they can only slip into a life of delincuency.’ The boys would make easy prey for extremists and warlords. The Burkina Faso government does occasional round-ups and places them in workshops so they can learn a trade, but this risks encouraging more parents to abandon their sons to the marabouts. Karim believes it is a ‘river that can’t be damned.’ Universal free education with meals seems the most promising solution, but Burkina’s performance in this area is abysmal – fewer than half of rural children are enrolled in school.
April 13, 2010 at 8:00 pm | More on Africa, Economics and development | Comments Off
Back in January, I posted the text below (I subsequently took it down for re-posting at a later date because of a bizarre and unnerving incident that happened to me in Dakar):
“The airstrip on the island of Bubaque in Guinea-Bissau’s Bijagos archipelago is, appropriately, a white line cut out of the bush, a narrow sandy strip hemmed in on both sides by thick forest. Only small planes can land there, but small planes can carry large quantities of cocaine.
The Guinean government claims that the drug trade through the islands (which South American dealers have adopted as a transit point on the way to the lucrative European market) has abated in recent months. The country’s leaders are reluctant to forfeit European Union aid, so they are keen to show that they are fighting this new scourge.
I spent ten days on Bubaque over the Christmas period and heard a dozen or so planes in the night. More may have arrived while I was asleep. Given that the airstrip sees no commercial traffic, with the islands’ few visitors and provisions being shipped in on pirogues and the weekly ferry from Bissau, the obvious conclusion to draw is that the planes were from Latin America.
Nor are there signs in the capital, Bissau, of any let-up. The city is in the midst of a minor building boom, as smart new villas spring up, with gardens, fences and security guards – all funded, according to locals, by drug money.
But even if it does show resolve, the government’s capacity is limited. Only around twenty of the eighty Bijagos islands are inhabited, so they are extremely difficult to police (more so when your navy has no ships and your air force no planes). And the resourceful South Americans are putting in contingency plans to pre-empt EU and government pressure. Two of them, I was told, recently scoped out a hitherto unused island, posing as tourists and asking villagers if there was an airstrip (there isn’t) or a forest clearing (there is) where they can land small jets or helicopters. But even landing areas are not essential – the traffickers can also drop the drugs into the sea for collection.
In the islands, few are willing to discuss the drug trade – many believe Colombian or Venezuelan drug lords killed their president, Nino Vieira, last year after he failed to pay them for a consignment of cocaine, so they are understandably fearful. But the return to the country of Admiral Bubo has put the cat among the pigeons and sent tremors through the highest levels of government.
Before he fled into exile after a failed attempt to topple Vieira, Admiral Bubo was head of the Guinean navy. This position gave him privileged access to the narco-traffickers, who use boats as well as planes to transport cocaine across the Atlantic. Admiral Bubo therefore knows many things, which is why the government was so keen for the UN to hand him over, which it agreed to do last week. He knows the extent of Nino’s involvement in the trade (some believe the president carried cocaine to Europe himself, taking advantage of his immunity from customs searches). He knows who killed Nino, and whether senior members of the new government are involved in drug trafficking.
But Bubo is playing a dangerous game. Guinea-Bissau has no prisons, so he will either be freed or “disappeared”. It is almost certain that he profited from the drug boom himself, so if the government doesn’t protect him he will be at the mercy of rival navy or army factions and of the Latin Americans. How Bubo is dealt with will be a test case of the government’s seriousness in combating the trade.”
Last Thursday, the Admiral Bubo story took a new twist. Bubo was taken into the protection of a group of soldiers headed by a General Antonio Indjai, who at the same time arrested the Prime Minister, Carlos Gomes, and forty army officers including the army chief, who had opposed Bubo’s release. As Indjai took control of the armed forces, Bubo announced that Gomes is “a criminal who must be judged.”
When news of the PM’s arrest broke, hundreds of Guineans took to the streets to demand his release. The plotters relented, placing him under house arrest instead.
Admiral Bubo, as I suggested in January, was likely to have been implicated in the cocaine trade. Vincent Foucher, a researcher with the Bordeaux-based Centre d’etudes d’Afrique Noire, claimed in this weekend’s Libération newspaper that Carlos Gomes had been trying to sideline General Indjai because of the latter’s involvement in drug trafficking. The alliance between the admiral and the general is not surprising, therefore.
But what of the Prime Minister himself? Vincent Fourcher believes he is taking a strong hand against the narco-traffickers. Bubo, who knows exactly who is involved, argues the opposite. While in Guinea-Bissau myself in December and January, I heard many conflicting opinions over whether or not Gomes was abetting the traffickers – some even believe he had Nino Vieira killed in the turf war for control of the trade.
Whatever the truth, it seems that battle lines are being drawn, with Bubo and Indjai on one side, Gomes on the other. Where the country’s president, Malam Bacai Sanha, stands is not yet clear, and nor, perhaps most crucially for the future of Guinea-Bissau, is the allegiance of the Latin American drug cartels…
April 3, 2010 at 7:13 pm | More on Africa, Conflict and security | 4 Comments
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