As we go to press with the first issueof 2007, we are overwhelmed with sadness and shock at the situation in Africa, particularly Somalia and Sudan, in the Horn and Zimbabwe, in southern Africa. Over the years we have tried to accurately record these debates and have had, on occasion, dreadful rows within these pages. In the two polemical articles by Abdi Samatar (Somalia) and John Young (Sudan) that follow, we are asking you to enter into a dialogue with us, and them, and the wider community of our readers. But also do refer to the ‘more nuanced’ articles both authors have contributed to ROAPE over the years (see www.ROAPE.org for the full author listing). The third article, Lawrence on Collier, was the reason this issue was slightly delayed – we felt it was urgent to debate the issues that he also raises – that of the language of intervention: ‘freedom and stability’.
The pressure to disentangle fact from fiction requires an increasing amount of fact checking – not just for ROAPE as publishers – but for all of us who are concerned that the word ‘embedded’ might not just apply to journalists in Iraq but increasingly to a number of wellplaced academics and NGOs working in Africa and the ‘blowback’ out of USinspired disinformation campaigns.
As various social forums around the globe gather momentum, the one coming up in Ecuador discusses the role of US military bases as they encircle the globe. This ‘no US bases’ movement is not just calling for an end to the powerful corporate military presence but is highlighting how these very same entities re-invent the parameters of language, for instance, when is a base not a base? when it's a ‘training facility’ like the first US Bureau of Homeland Security office in Gaborone, now re-named the ‘International Law Enforcement Academy’. As this movement and others have rightly pointed out:
the US is creating this [military] build-up under the guise of counter-terrorism. The reality is they're protecting the oil resources from the encroachment of other nations that are also interested in oil, such as China. But a naked oil-security strategy is too cynical, even for politicians and generals to defend overtly. Hence, the public relations face put on the GWOT's [‘global war on terrorism’] dispatchof Marines and Special Forces to train and advise local armies to police these vast ‘ungoverned spaces’ is rationalised by the claim that terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda are threatening American strategic interests …
(Maya Rockeymooreof TransAfrica Forum in Lubeck, Watts & Lipschutz, IPR, 2007).
… all four military services are involved in the ‘new scramble for Africa’ with EUCOM taking responsibility for North, West and Central Africa. To bolster intelligence on Africa, EUCOM has created an Africa Clearing House on security information, supported by a Pentagon think-tank, the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, housed at the National Defense University. Finally, General Jones has recommended that EUCOM ‘change its name to EURAFRICOM, or that the Pentagon establish a separate command for Africa, AFRICOM.’ Indeed, according to reports … the Pentagon is preparing to create a separate African Command to take over from EUCOM, the Central Command (CENTCOM) and the Pacific Command.
Unlike EUCOM, CENTCOM managed to set up a forward operating base in East Africa. Its Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa is based at Camp Lemonier, built on a former French Foreign Legion base in Djibouti … [where] it will soon be expanded from ‘88 acres to nearly 500’ so that it can house at least 1,800 personnel, rotating in and out from all four services and the CIA. The US Navy is also becoming a semi-permanent fixture in the Gulf of Guinea, represented by EUCOM's Sixth Fleet. General Jones has stated that he expects EUCOM's navies to spend about half of their time off the coast of West Africa and, to sustain this effort, he has requested Congressional funding for the Gulf of Guinea Guard, a ten-year initiative to train navies, implement a maritime radar system, the Automated Identification System and securitize oil supplies in the Gulf
(IPR, Lubeck, Watts & Lipschutz, 2007).
In 2003 President Bush stressed that during the next ten years the ‘US would reduce its troop strength … by 60,000 to 70,000’ (Ibid.) but this applies to troops, not the increasing number of unaccountable, unregulated, private military companies. ‘The US is one of the only countries … that refuses to recognise the jurisdiction of the inter-American Court of Human Rights, the International War Crimes Tribunal and it has failed to ratify the International Agreement on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; it has also failed to ratify the conventions on War Crimes and Lesser Crimes Against Humanity, the Convention on Trade and Prostitution, the Convention of Rights for Migrant Workers and their Families’ (Fowler, Radio for Peace International, 2003).
As our Latin American colleagues pointed out at the social forum in Ecuador, the appointment of Elliot Abrams as US national security adviser for global democracy and strategy (and key person on Israel) leaves little doubt as to the aggressiveness of military rather than diplomatic efforts, especially in Sudan where Robert Seiple, formerly of World Vision and former envoy to Sudan, is also urging military intervention – in a country with the second largest oil reserves in Africa.
Further Reading: see, in previous issues of ROAPE: Sandra Barnes (2005), Jeremy Keenan (2004, 2004, 2005, 2006), Daniel Volman (2003, 2005), Daniel Volman & Michael Klare (2006) and Sue Willett (1995, 1998, 2005); International Policy Report, ‘Convergent Interests: US Energy Security & the “Securing” of Nigerian Democracy’ by Paul M. Lubeck, Michael J. Watts & Ronnie Lipschutz, February 2007, Center for International Policy.
The first person who can correctly guess the author of the following paragraph can choose between a subscription to ROAPE or a copy of the ROAPE Reader, The Politics of Transition in Africa by Giles Mohan and Tunde Zack-Williams (send to Jan Burgess, editor@123456roape.org).
Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended … War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasuries are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them …
Ethiopian Invasionof Somalia, US Warlordism & AU Shame
Abdi Ismail Samatar
The United States sponsored Security Council resolution, 1725,1 to lift UN arms sanctions on Somalia and allow the military forces of the Intergovernmental Agency on Development (IGAD) member states to intervene in that country, ratified on 6 December 2006, became a prelude to Ethiopian invasion of Somalia.
America's pretext for pushing this resolution through the Security Council was that the ‘internationally legitimate’ government of Somalia needed international military support since it was in danger of being overtaken by radical Muslims. The Islamic leaders, supported by the population, who drove out the warlords and restored peace to the capital and surrounding areas, were branded as friends of terrorists, or terrorists. Much like earlier US claims about ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq, US accusations that Muslim leaders in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, have links with terrorists seems imagined as no evidence has been produced thus far to substantiate the assertion. It seems that the United States has confounded the possible presence in Somalia of three individuals accused of terror with the Islamic movement. The US and its Ethiopian proxy's rhetoric of ‘saving Somalia from terror’ was a new clarion call since neither of these governments came to the rescue of the Somali people when the warlords imposed a decade-long rein of terror on the population. Instead, they tap-danced with warlords and continue to do so. Within two weeks after the resolution was passed, the Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, whose forces already occupied much of the regions of Bay and Bakool, pre-empted the intent of the resolution by invading Somalia with an estimated force of, according to ICG (International Crisis Group, 2007), between 8 and 12,000 well-equipped troops.2 The African Union shamefully supported the Ethiopian invasion only to recant it later. Meanwhile, the US and its allies blocked two attempts at the UN Security Council that called for immediate Ethiopian withdrawal. A day later, the African Union, the Arab League, and IGAD also demanded prompt Ethiopia withdrawal from Somalia which Ethiopia ignored.
This essay narrates the pathway to the creation of the Transitional National Government (TFG), the Ethiopian role in its establishment, US-supported warlords, the rise of the Islamic Courts and the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. It also assesses the implications of the Ethiopian illegal occupation for the futureof Somalia.
The Road to Invasion
The UN Security Council Resolution which authorised the deployment of a peacekeeping force, ‘[e]ndorses the specification in the IGAD Deployment Plan that those States that border Somalia would not deploy troops to Somalia,’3 deliberately failed to acknowledge that Ethiopia already ha thousands of troops in Somalia in breach of an earlier UN resolution. The Council's stand on this matter, in the context of long standing enmity between Somalia and Ethiopia (which fought two wars in the last forty years) and Meles Zenawi's declaration of war on Somalia virtually prepared the way for further Ethiopian aggression. The Security Council's willful avoidance to recognise Ethiopian troops deep in Somali territory, its refusal to demand that the regime in Addis Ababa immediately evacuate its forces out of Somalia, and the resolution's unbalanced criticism of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) made a mockery of justice and fair play. The Muslim leaders in the Somali capital warned the UN that the passage of the US-sponsored resolution will mean a declaration of war on their country given that the edict will formally legitimate the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. These developments at the UN and the ‘terrorist’ rhetoric in Washington completed America's demonisation of the Islamic Courts, while ignoring warlord terror in Somalia, and primed the world for the eventual Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. The question is, what compelled the US Government to become partisan in regional and local conflicts and endorse the agenda of the Ethiopian regime that continues to use brutal violence against its own population; and what might this strategy mean for Somalia and America's long term interest in the region? To answer these questions requires an understanding of recent events in the region.
Somalia has been stateless for nearly two decades resulting in unimaginable suffering for the population. Living conditions in the country were so abominable in the early 1990s that President Bush Sr. was moved to deploy US troops to rescue hundreds of thousands of Somalis from starvation. ‘Operation Restore Hope’ saved tens of thousands of lives but was undermined by a vague mandate, poor advice, criminal warlords, and a new US president (Clinton) who did not have the nerve to take on the latter. The warlords murdered 18 American soldiers and desecrated their bodies in the streetsof Mogadishu in 1993 (‘Black Hawk Down’). When the troops withdrew, the warlords triumphed and the people lost. Since 1995, Ethiopia has been illegally funneling weapons to the warlords turning Somalia into the worst humanitarian condition in the world, what some call a ‘failed state’. Meanwhile, a dozen peace conferences were organised for Somalia but none led to the formation of a national government until 1999 when a conference, sponsored by the Republicof Djibouti, assisted Somali civil society groups to reach a compromise and form a Transitional National Government (TNG). The accord was made possible because the warlords were not allowed to dominate the gathering. The Somali government formed in Djibouti was broadly supported by the population. However, the TNG failed to deliver the peace and the services the population yearned for as its leaders were incompetent and driven by avarice while Ethiopia and its warlord allies also did everything to subvert it. Ethiopian effectiveness ultimately forced the TNG to accept a proposal which called for an IGAD-sponsored peace conference. Kenya and Ethiopia which were the chief managers of the conference allied themselves with the warlords. The convention ultimately produced, in 2004, a new warlord-dominated government beholden to Ethiopia. Ethiopia's dominance was so complete that it was able to help appoint the president and nominate the Somali Prime Minister.4
Somalia's new warlord government refused to relocate to the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and languished in Nairobi until it was forced to resettle in the small Somali town of Jowhar, 90 km. northof Mogadishu. Some warlord members of the government and nearly half of the MPs including the speaker of parliament moved to the capital and insisted the government shift its operations to Mogadishu. While this stalemate continued, the warlords who controlled Jowhar severely limited the authority of the government by refusing to let it bring its sectarian militia to the town. This complicated roadblock was removed when the speaker and the president finally reached a deal in Yemen which led to the relocation of Government to Baidoa. In the meantime, the US government's CIA clandestinely5 hired Mogadishu's notorious warlords to hunt down what it considered radical Muslim clerics who it claimed were sheltering terrorists. These hired guns began a violent campaign which virtually put every religious person at risk of being captured and handed over to the Americans or killed. As the CIA/warlord-instigated violence increased, many of the religious men who managed local Islamic Courts began to organise in order to defend themselves. The public which suffered under the terror of warlords for over a decade joined the campaign and defeated the warlords. Mogadishu was finally at peace and in the hands of one leadership and the port and airport both reopened, after a decade in which warlords held them closed, for national and international traffic. Citizens celebrated their newly-found freedom and started enjoying complete freedom of movement and unprecedented physical and material security.
The religious leaders who were united into the Union of Islamic Courts (UICs) announced its willingness to work with the warlord government in spite of its unsavoury character and invited it to relocate to the capital. Further, the UICs declared its readiness to cooperate with the international community. Despite attempts by the UICs to reach out in good faith, the TFG leaders, taking their cues from Ethiopia, accused it of being Islamic terrorists. The US Government panicked and followed suit. Continued attempts by the Courts to reach out to the US were ignored or dismissed and the American government which had contempt for the warlord government began to speak about it as the internationally ‘legitimate’ government of Somalia. Influenced by what former Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, Herman Cohen, called false Ethiopian intelligence, the US endorsed an Ethiopian initiated proposal to lift the UN arms sanctions on Somalia and allow a military force from IGAD countries, excluding the so-called frontline states of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti, to be deployed to insure stability and advance the peace. This is the origin of the UN Security Council Resolution which was adopted on 6 December 2006.
America opportunistically switched its political stance and recognised the TFG not because the latter achieved anything worthy of respect for its people, but owing to the fact that the US government's regional proxy convinced American policy makers. Former US Ambassador to the UN, Bolton, noted that supporting the TFG is the only option open to advance reconciliation and secure the peace. Unfortunately, the Ambassador and his superiors intentionally ignored the fact that this warlord regime is deeply corrupt and sectarian (and has members who took part in the killing of US troops in Mogadishu) and lacks integrity to be able to lead the Somali people toward a sustainable peace. Further, the transitional Somali charter, which the Ambassador endorsed, is so divisive that it can not provide a sound basis for establishing an inclusive and accountable system of government. All of sudden America became ‘seriously’ interested in saving the ‘internationally legitimate’ government, never mind that this government has no legitimacy from its own people. America's most recent support for the Ethiopian invasion and the TFG demonstrates beyond any doubt that the socalled war on terror is anti-civic and anti Islamic in substance. The US brazen arrogance and ideological blinkers has once more lead to unnecessary war, the invasion of a Muslim country, and the imposition of yet another dictatorship on a third world society.
The Invasion of Somalia
Three factors precipitated the war. First and foremost, false Ethiopian intelligence to the US reified the latter's exaggerated suspicion of all Islamic movement, particularly in the context in which the US has already accused Islamic leaders in the Somali Capital of harbouring three individuals. Consequently, America's predisposition meant that Ethiopia was granted the green light to invade Somalia. US Government's claim that three individuals suspected of taking part in the bombing of American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salam in the late 1990s were hiding in Mogadishu protected by the Islamic Courts made it an easy sell in the West. The Courts contested that they had no knowledge of the aforementioned individuals and invited the US to send investigators to examine the areas the Courts control. This offer was rejected and subsequently the American government began to mirror the language of the Ethiopian regime that UICs is a terrorist front.
Second, the Ethiopian regime's commitment to support its client, the TFG, entailed initially deploying over 10,000 of its troops in and around Baidoa in violation of the UN Security Council Arms Sanctions on Somalia. The confluence of American and Ethiopian interests was articulated in the diplomatic language of ‘protecting the internationally legitimate government of Somalia.’ This joint Ethiopian and American project was codified by the Security Council's adoption of an US-sponsored resolution to allow IGAD countries to send peacekeeping force to stabilise Somalia completely ignoring that peace had been restored in the most troublesome regions of the country by the Islamic Courts. The UICs interpreted the passage of the resolution as a declaration of war and an endorsement of the Ethiopian occupation. Finally, the Islamic Courts made strategic blunders by failing to organise the population and establish working administrations for the areas of the country they controlled. Further, and more damagingly, it was not able to create a chain of command within the Ccourts and consequently lacked a policy structure within which all members operated. This meant that different actors, principally on the military front, made decisions unilaterally without clearing it with the leadership. In particular, tactless statements were made, such as jihad against Ethiopia for invading Somalia, providing canon fodder for the Ethiopian propaganda machine and other Western groups who distorted the substance of the declarations. Moreover, the military wing of the UICs took irresponsible actions that compromised the integrity of the Courts and which undermined the collective project. The haughtiness of these military elements was in part due to overconfidence generated by their quick success against the warlords, considerable public support for the UICs that came with the peace, and their articulation of nationalist ideas. In addition, they were plainly ignorant about the magnitude of the peril which the Somali cause faced. Thus, the chaotic internal organisation of the UICs led from one major bungle to another forcing it into a strategically unnecessary confrontation with the Ethiopian forces buttressing the TFG. Ultimately, this gave the Ethiopian regime and its allies the pretext they had hoped.
The lightly armed militias of the Courts were no match for the massive and heavily mechanised Ethiopian forces at the start of the war, and supported by US and British intelligence, mercenaries, and resources. Within a week of the formal start of the hostilities Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia was almost complete, and the Courts lost all the territories they had controlled and their leadership fled Mogadishu. Somalia's capital fell to the Ethiopian forces and the country came under full Ethiopian occupation.
Now that the Islamic Courts are no more, it is important to reflect on the significance of Ethiopian invasion of Somalia and the support of key Western states for the occupation. First and foremost, America's superciliousness towards the Islamic Courts is based on analogy rather than analysis. Some US officials have often said that the Talibans of Afghanistan, just like the Islamic Courts, also restored peace to the country only to turn it to a terrorist haven.
The implication is that, given America's pre-emptive military strategy, the restoration of peace to Mogadishu and surrounding regions was considered a Trojan horse for anti-American Islam that must not be allowed to sail. This preemptive approach might be appropriate in situations of genuine danger, but Somalia did not pose such a menace to real American interests. The Courts were willing to work with the international community wrote several letters to the UN and US Government with a promise to cooperate. Further, they invited the US Government and the UN to come and investigate the claim that three individuals accused of being responsible for bombing American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were hiding in Mogadishu and sheltered by the Courts. Even if the Courts were not telling the truth about the three terrorists, the US administration and the UN should have called their bluff and accepted the offer to investigate. It is possible this would have spared Somalia an Ethiopian invasion as well as the imposition of a warlord government. Instead of wanting to work with the Courts to insure that real terrorists (against Somalis and other populations) do not find a foothold in the region, the US government has empowered America's regional proxy to have a free hand in Somalia with a promise of material and military support.6 This was another American plunder in which a precious chance was lost to work with the most civic Somali force that was able to accomplish what the international community has been unable to do for 16 years: defeat warlord terrorists and restore peace to Mogadishu. Further, the material resources that will be spent on financing the AU force could have been used to help the country's reconstruction, particularly generating productive employment for the young men who have been the foot soldiers of the warlords and sectarian militias.
A second matter of significant note is the return of the warlords. As the Ethiopian troops advanced toward Mogadishu, they were accompanied by warlord terrorists who were defeated by the Courts – the former allowed them to re-occupy their previous fiefdoms. It seems that the invading power, which had a long tradition of creating parallel structures among its subjugated groups, seems to be using the same formula in Somalia. This old colonial strategy of using locals against one another by having people who are just outside the favoured circle always looking in and who can be brought to the centre if the administering clients do not behave in line with prescribed orders from the dominant class. These warlords will not have the power they wielded earlier but they will be kept in reserve for use if and when that is deemed necessary by the invading force The leadership of the transitional government and Western actors who have supported the Ethiopian invasion have yet to make any statement regarding this matter. Such silence of the so-called international community on the return of the warlord is testimonial to the absurd nature of the anti-terror war as well the democratic pretensions they peddle.
Third, American support for the Ethiopian invasion confirms the view of many Somalis and others in the region (Muslims and non-Muslims) that US foreign policy is driven by arrogance and disregard for the interests and wellbeing of poor people. It demonstrates that the US Government which was least interested in supporting the civic camp during the Kenya-based Somali negotiations, 2003–04, and which actively supported the warlords in its aftermath, will never allow local people to solve their problems in ways that diverge from the imperial American view. Therefore, US policies in the region and this invasion will prolong the agony of the Somali people having derailed their wish for freedom and national autonomy, and without warlord terrorists or tyrants who are clients of other states. Recent statements from the US Government indicating that various Somali factions should go back to the negotiating table and work out their differences peacefully is not only ironic and indeed condescending.7 Given that martial Law has been declared by the TFG one wonders how the US Assistant Secretary, Jendayi Frazer, thinks peaceful reconciliation will take place. In addition, the introduction of martial law enforced by Ethiopian troops, as the TFG does not have its own forces, frontally destroyed whatever little grain of truth America's utterings might have had. This reveals that American authorities do not care about the fate of the Somali people and has been willfully dishonest since they can not explain how their proposition of non-violent reconciliation could be possible given that Washington's ally has invaded the country in support of one faction and that others have been destroyed or intimidated and threatened. The subtext of this statement is that Somalis must now accept Ethiopian domination.
Fourth, the AU's claim that the American Resolution at the Security Council was an African project smacked of old imperial bosses letting their boys do the dirty work. What made it worse is how African ambassadors and their governments at the UN Security Council did not comprehend the nature of the Somali issues/problems nor cared to realise the implication of the votes for the Somali people and continent at large. Moreover, the AU endorsement of the Ethiopian invasion and then retracting its announcement two days later underscores the incompetence and disgrace of the international organisation.
Finally, neither the TFG nor its Ethiopian master is trusted by the Somali public. The TFG denied that Ethiopian troops have invaded Somalia even long after the Ethiopian government admitted having its troops in Somalia. Such false denials of known facts have undermined whatever credibility the TFG had. Further, the Ethiopian government initially justified its invasion of Somali territory in order to defend the Somali government from the Islamic militias. Then, both the US and Ethiopia talked about the presenceof 2,000 Eritrean troops in Somalia yet no evidence has been produced to sustain this claim. Subsequently, the first pretext was dropped and a new alibi invented: the UICs and its terrorist allies were a menace to Ethiopia that required preemptive action against Somalia and hence the offensive which started the week before Christmas. It is critical to remember that Somalia has had no army to be a credible danger to its neighbour for over 17 years. Now that the UICs is gone what other rationalisation might be dredged up to justify continued Ethiopian occupation of the country? Although the Ethiopian Prime Minister stated that he intends to withdraw his forces from Somalia soon, however, the Presidentof TFG statement in Addis Ababa declaring that Ethiopian forces will remain in Somalia to train his troops contradicts the PM's account and is similar to previous misinformation provided by the two sides.
Somalia & the Road Ahead
What might the future hold now that Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia has dismantled the formal elements of the Islamic Courts? First, experience in Ethiopia under the hegemony of the Tigray People's Liberation Front since 1991 is pregnant with many lessons that can shed light on what can be anticipated in Somalia. Among the most important of these lessons is the way in which the occupying force establishes a charade democratic structure, handpicks local leaders, and holds them accountable to itself rather than the population. This has been the regime's political practice in Ethiopia8 since it came to power, and the Tigray government has dealt with Somali warlords and regional leaders in the same fashion. Given this record, there is every reason to expect that the Tigray project in Somalia will sail along a similar course. Exactly what might be the contours of this course? Second, the transitional Somali Prime Minister, who was originally promoted into this position by the Ethiopian government, declared a day after he landed in Mogadishu onboard an Ethiopia military helicopter, that Ethiopian forces can stay in Somalia for as long as they want and the transitional president virtually reiterated the same stance.9 A prolonged Ethiopian military presence will turn Somalia into an Ethiopian Bantustan ruled from Addis Ababa via a supplicant Somali authority in Mogadishu. The TFG will have limited autonomy from Addis Ababa on major national issues (even if Ethiopian forces are formally withdrawn) and therefore will not be able to earn respect and loyalty from the majority of the population. Warlords which have been brought back to town by the Ethiopian army will have no autonomy and might disappear when their use to the occupying force is no longer needed.
Third, the occupying force will establish a security force that is controlled by Ethiopia and its handpicked Somali allies.10 This force will be the principle instrument of governing the country and it will be used against any Somali individual or political and social groups that might have a different political agenda than Ethiopia and its clients. The politics of intimidation, fear, and violence has become the norm. A mark of what is to come is the harassment of religious people and the killing and mass imprisonment of Oromo refugees in southern Somalia who are considered as supporters of the Oromo Liberation Front by the regime in Addis Ababa, and the abduction of Somali business people from the homes by Ethiopian troops in the dead of night.
Fourth, the presence of Ethiopian forces has reinforced the authoritarian and venal behavior of the TFG leadership. For example, the President and Prime Minister continued to act as if they were the country's sole institutions by naming governors and heads of police without any process. Most recently, the declaration of Martial law on 13 January 2007 signaled that the march of the dictatorship is on. Such behaviours will likely lead to TFG attempting to extend its life beyond the remaining two years of its five year term. If the international community and an organised Somali civic movement bring adequate pressure to bear on the TGF and their Ethiopian backer, the former will most likely set up a structure that nominally resembles a standard national election commission which will guarantee them victory (see the Ethiopian model).
Fifth, foreign consultants who have been appointed by the TFG (using EU money) and who are at work in Nairobi will produce a draft constitution which will institutionalise clanistic politics that will undermine whatever little civic potential the TFG had. Such a political and constitutional strategy will attempt to turn Somalis into social, cultural, and political strangers by reifying the very problems (i.e. politicised genealogy) that destroyed Somalia in the first place. Further, this strategy will turn public authority into a sectarian and instrumentalist operation and, consequently, government departments will become clan ghettos rather than national operations that serve all citizens equally. A most damaging recent example is the president appointing a relative of his to the governorship of Kismayo, the most southern city in the country and one that is contested by various genealogical groups. This action reconfirmed what the president articulated (captured in videotape) when he was the warlord of the northeast by claiming that Kismayo belongs to his genealogical group. Another clear foreboding of what is to come is the way in which the Prime Minister has behaved since he returned to Mogadishu. He has anchored himself among a clique of hangers-on, encircled by relatives, guarded by Ethiopian soldiers, and has failed to seriously engage a broad spectrum of Somalis in the capital let alone those beyond Mogadishu. This order will create conditions that are fertile for deep corruption which in turn will corrode national cohesion.
Sixth, the executive leadership of the TFG lacks serious vision that can jumpstart reconciliation among Somalis. They have missed the opportunity to halt the hostilities once the Ethiopian army defeated the Courts in Mogadishu and much of the southern region of the country. In particular, they could have demanded that the Ethiopian army stop pursuing last military vestiges of the Courts in the southern most areas of the country and offer to solve the mater peacefully. Such an approach could have been a public relations coup for the TFG and would have signaled to the population that they may not be as obedient to the Ethiopian overlords as originally thought. The TFG's inability to see beyond its political subservience to Ethiopia indicates that the chances for peace through genuine reconciliation look grim.
Seventh, continued leadership of the two principals of the TFG depends on Ethiopian support and the balkanization of the body politic. In addition, factionalism within the TFG driven by opportunism and Ethiopian manipulations will continue to bedevil its operations. The two leaders’ unflinching belief in clanist politics will entail enshrining genealogical divisions in every facet of public affairs.11 The combination of these forces will continue to be a source of political instability and bad governance.
The aforementioned possibilities are not preordained but are contingent on the duration of the Ethiopian occupation, the mood of the population and the strength of their resistance to the invasion, and whether the AU force is deployed without delay. Since the leaders of the TFG have already declared that the Ethiopian force can stay indefinitely, the only way things will change is if either pressure from the population is sustained or an African Union force, with carefully crafted mandate, hits the ground within the next few weeks. So far there has been limited organised opposition to the invasion although a significant proportion of the population is very angry, particularly in Mogadishu. Mogadishu is now a divided city as a segment of the population support the TFG and their Ethiopian allies while a large number are vehemently opposed to the new order.12 It is apparent that the latter group is not organised and that will impede their effect on the struggle.
The most important challenge to the occupation could come from the possible deployment of UN mandated African Union force. The only two IGAD countries likely to contribute to such a force are Uganda, which has a small contingent in Baidoa, and Sudan. It has been reported that Nigeria and South Africa have offered their troops to be part of the AU force, but this has yet to be confirmed. Uganda which is most eager to lead the charge is more aligned with the America agenda and Ethiopia, and seems to be an ardent supporter of the TFG while the other three are not beholden to anyone. If an African Union force that is politically neutral is not deployed soon the Ethiopian military will speedily create a Somali force loyal to the TFG leaders and not to the country, and which will make the UN-sponsored African Union force redundant. Thus, the timing, speed, and the quality of the deployed African Union force is of the essence. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that such operation will occur in a timely fashion given that those who pushed through the Security Council Resolution, the American government in particular, are not in a hurry to do so anymore.13
Last, since an African force will not be on the ground soon, a way must be found to reduce the oppressive effects of the invasion in the short run. A possible instrument for such a programme could be to station internationally sanctioned human and civil rights monitors in Mogadishu and major population areas and for the international community to demand that Ethiopian troops leave all these centres. These monitors will regularly report to the UN and the international press on the activities of the occupying force and their allies that infringe on human rights and that impede the population's right to self-organise politically in order to actively partake in the affairs of their country.
Whatever the immediate outcome of the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia and the installation of the TFG in Mogadishu might be, it is clear that politics in Somalia will not be the same again. The probable impacts of the invasion were noted earlier, but this essay has not indicated what legacy, if any, the Courts left behind during their limited tenure in power. Among other things, the Courts will be remembered for the strategic lapses they made. Those mistakes exacerbated the crisis because they were unapprised about the dangers Somalia faced from the region and beyond, and failed to heed the advice of Somalis and non-Somalis who sought to help them safely navigate through the international system in order to serve the wellbeing of the Somali people. Despite these blunders, they made five critical contributions to Somali history which could have enduring effects. First, they demonstrated that civic life can be rejuvenated using foundational Islamic principles of justice and inclusive community. Second, the efforts of the Courts confirmed that the clanist political project deployed by sectarian entrepreneurs and its damaging social and political effects need not be considered as second nature to Somalis, and that an Islamic/civic alternative is possible. Third, the reign of the Courts proved that an inclusive political project can attract a large following of citizens and this confirmed the redundancy of the need to bring in an expensive or a hostile external force to restore peace and disarm the population. Fourth, the Courts' autonomy from Ethiopia and other states inspired the Somali people and signaled that Somali sovereignty and independent spirit may be deeply rusted but far from comatose and what is lacking to reenergise it are leaders with integrity. Fifth, the Court's immediate engagement with desperately needed public services such as refuse removal from the city, the rehabilitation and accountable management of the port and airport, return of looted properties to their rightful owners, and the public's approval of these deeds indicate the population's wish for a responsible government.14
Finally, American policy and the Ethiopian regime who vilify Muslim movements in the region that are not subordinated to their dictates15 are celebrating the defeat of the Union of Islamic Courts, but their victory may be momentary. Unlike the short-lived tenure of the Courts, one thing is certain: that Islam-inspired political movements will boomerang and shall become the central force in Somali politics for a long time to come. Given the recent history of the relationship between nationalist and Islamic movements, it will be ironic that Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia and America's support for it has inadvertently enhanced the appeal of Islam as the major political force in the country in the near future!
Abdi Samatar , University of Minnesota; e-mail: samat001.umn.edu
Sudan: Not More Diplomacy But Popular National Struggles
John Young
Foreign diplomats have given Sudan the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 9 January 2005 (CPA), an agreement that is not comprehensive, sanctions majority power to an Islamist minority government in Khartoum, divides and weakens the opposition, and is currently in a state of crisis. The diplomats then went on to try their hand in Darfur, giving the country another agreement – the Darfur Peace Agreement of 5 May 2006 (DPA) – that is claimed to be comprehensive but is nothing of the sort, again strengthens and legitimises the regime in Khartoum, weakens the opposition, and was in a state of collapse within days of it being signed. Following the script laid down by the CPA, Eritrean diplomats oversaw a peace agreement between the government and the Eastern Front (the Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement of 14 October 2006) that suffers the same flaws. Against this record of failure can anyone have faith in the foreign diplomats? The only hope for a peaceful, democratic, just and united Sudan lies in the popular struggles of the Sudanese and to make clear to the diplomats and their allies that the best contribution they can make to Sudan is to pack their bags and leave.
CPA: The Road to Disaster
On the eve of the Navaisha peace process that produced the CPA, the National Congress Party (NCP) government faced a major insurgency in southern Sudan, a minor insurgency in the east, revolts in Abyei, Nuba Mountains, and South Blue Nile, the opposition of the Umma and Democratic Unionist Parties which collectively won 75% of the vote in the last fair election of 1986, and growing chaos in Darfur that foretold that area's subsequent revolt. Knowing that it probably faced imminent defeat, the NCP sought to divide the opposition through the establishment of a series of peace processes. And in these efforts it has had the consistent support of the international community. The starting point was the south where the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) began a peace process in the early 1990s, but which was taken over by the US and Britain. The American and British diplomats endorsed the argument of the NCP that Sudan was afflicted by a north-south conflict and that it was too complicated to bring other disaffected groups into the process. As a result, they supported the NCP in its desire to keep the northern opposition led by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) out of the process and ensure that the ruling party confronted a weaker opposition than it otherwise would.
This was not the only problem of the CPA: first, against enormous evidence of war spreading throughout the country, it was based on the assumption that the only significant conflict in Sudan was that between the north and south; second, by taking the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) out of the armed struggle and crucially out of the NDA, it signalled the demise of that organisation; third, by giving the NCP 52% of the power in the national government it ensured that any subsequent peace agreements could not alter its dominance in Khartoum and monopoly position over the security forces; fourth, by this inequitable division of power it encouraged other revolts in the country by groups fearful that their communities would be left out of the peace process, and last, the agreement ensured that subsequent peace processes could only address local issues since the NCP alone was acknowledged as the legitimate authority to represent national interests. There was also one other crucial flaw in the agreement that the Western diplomats did not consider, namely that the NCP had no intention of abiding by the CPA, and in particular its provision for a referendum on selfdetermination that would not only bring about the separation of the south, but equally importantly, would take all of the oil revenues out of the hands of the ruling party. As a result, there has been a consistent pattern of NCP cheating on the CPA from its inception.
Of course, rhetoric aside, the US and Britain could not be expected to lead a peace process that seriously undermined a regime in Khartoum with which they were working very closely in the socalled ‘war on terror’. Indeed, the Americans were so appreciative of Sudanese efforts that they brought Major-General Salah Gosh, head of the National Security Agency and a major figure in the abuse of human rights in the country, to Washington to thank him personally. Later when his background became better known he was refused admittance to the US for medical treatment, but the British stepped in and allowed him to go to London. Cooperation between the intelligence services of the three countries, however, has continued unabated.
DPA: Deepening the Tragedy
While discontent in Darfur can be dated from at least the 1984 famine, the emergence of an effective armed opposition in 2003 was precipitated by the Naivasha peace process which made clear that power was being carved up at the expense of the rest of the country. Not able to contain the rebels the NCP enlisted the support of the Arab jingaweed and that produced a humanitarian crisis that again brought the diplomats into the fray. And significantly their engagement followed the same pattern as that in the south. In the south the US and Britain favoured IGAD as a regional organisation to lead the peace process, but when it could not produce the kind of process desired they took over. In the case of Darfur, the peace process was initially led by the African Union, but again American and British diplomats took over. The starting point of peace negotiations in Darfur was to ensure that the CPA was not challenged, and crucially that meant protecting the existing division of power between the NCP and SPLM/A. It also meant that the Darfurian rebels could only negotiate regional issues. Just as was the case with the SPLM/A in the south, Western diplomats aided and abetted the policy of the NCP to divide the opposition, ensured that Sudan's conflicts were defined in regional terms and that the ruling party alone could represent the national interest, and that its majority position and dominance of the state would not be challenged. With enormous pressure from Western diplomats and complimentary bribes from the NCP (but providing for no real change in the balance of power in Khartoum), the Mini Minawi faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) was induced to sign the DPA.
But the ink was barely dry on the peace agreement before many of Mini's commanders deserted to the opposition, fighting increased, and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur intensified. And as was the case in the south, the NCP has shown little interest in abiding by the agreement, and in particular its provision to disarm the janjaweed. Despite the virtual collapse of the agreement and growing evidence that most of the Darfurians in the IDP camps are strongly opposed to the agreement, Western diplomats have followed the NCP in arguing that there cannot be another agreement, that only marginal changes to the existing agreement can be considered, and together they have directed their energies to bring the other Darfurian rebel groups into the peace process.
Eastern Sudan: the Pattern Continues
While the NCP and the ruling Popular Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) of Eritrea agreed on keeping diplomats from the US, Britain, IGAD, the AU, and the UN, out of the eastern peace process, the final peace agreement follows the script laid down by the CPA. Indeed, having gained the strong endorsement of the ‘international community’ (which largely means the US, Britain, and to a lesser extent, the EU), for a division of power that was highly favourable to the NCP in the CPA, and having those provisions further endorsed in the DPA, the ruling party could not be expected to enter any peace process that would challenge that division. And although strong critics of the CPA, the Eritreans appreciated that they could only be accepted as peace-makers by the NCP if they did not challenge the provisions of the CPA. But Asmara was also accepted as a mediator by Khartoum because it controlled the Eastern Front and it was understood that no agreement could be reached without Eritrean endorsement. The peace agreement in the east gives the Eastern Front a handful of parliamentary seats in an ineffectual national assembly, 35% representation in the national army in the east, and marginal representation in the eastern states, thus ensuring NCP unchallenged dominance of the national government, local assemblies, and the security services. The core of the agreement, however, is ‘jobs for the boys’, that is, the provision of patronage positions, both now and under the auspices of a US$600 million development fund that is to be established. The SPLM/A and the international community have heralded the agreement as a great advance in the peace process. The Eritreans are not so naïve; for them the peace agreement was a means to win international endorsement of a regime that is increasingly being seen as a pariah, position themselves to lead the much more important next round in the Darfur peace process, and lastly, end encirclement by the Sana'a Pact countries of Yemen, Ethiopia, and Sudan, and begin to encircle Ethiopia.
The Way Forward
Not only have the diplomats produced a failed peace process in Dafur, a southern peace process in crisis, and a third in the east which does not begin to address the problems of marginalisation for which easterners went to war, but their efforts are likely to lead to more wars and ultimately to the dismemberment of the country. The most fundamental mistake of the diplomats was to believe that Sudan's conflicts were of a regional character instead of being a product of a failed state. As a result, the resolutionof Sudan's problems did not lie in the country's many peripheries, but in the centre. The diplomats then set about establishing peace processes in the south, west, and east. And even if these conflicts could be resolved on a sustainable basis (and they cannot) they would only encourage further revolts elsewhere in the country by groups fearful of losing out in the internationally sanctioned division of power. Moreover, with the NCP holding a bare majority (52%) in Khartoum, to give up anything would be to effectively commit suicide and have some of its leading figures dragged before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. As a result, with the signing of the CPA there is no room for any group from the periphery to negotiate a position of any significance in the national government. Diplomacy has thus come to a dead end. Further efforts by the international diplomats will only have the effect of encouraging war and spreading the humanitarian crises.
Moreover, each peace agreement intensifies the state crisis and brings the dismemberment of the country a step closer. The international community may not want to see Sudan disintegrate, but by only endorsing regional based peace processes, discouraging the development of a united opposition, not permitting dissidents in the peripheries to address national concerns during negotiations, and accepting that a regime that came to power through a coup should alone speak on behalf of the nation, they are bringing about the destruction of the country.
For Sudanese of all political persuasions concerned about the welfare of their country, the way forward is clear if not easily achieved: end international engagement in the country, take back the country, and send the diplomats packing. For those in the international community who genuinely want to show solidarity with the struggling peopleof Sudan, the lessons are the same. Their diplomats have misunderstood Sudan, placed their national security interests before concerns for the Sudanese people and as a result have heightened the humanitarian crisis, intensified the conflicts, and brought the disintegration of the country a large step closer. The well known southern politician, Bona Malwal, once said in utter frustration that the only hope for Sudan would be if all the country's politicians were placed on a boat that was taken out to the middle of the Red Sea and sunk. (He graciously volunteered to be a passenger.) I would suggest an additional boat to be sunk: one carrying all the international diplomats. The only hope for a peaceful, just, democratic, and united Sudan lies with the struggles of the Sudanese people. That prospect may seem far off, but it offers more hope and is more realistic than the misplaced efforts of the international diplomats and their never-ending failed peace processes.
John Young , e-mail: johnr_young@123456hotmail.com
Collier on War & Peace in Africa: Statistics in Command
Peter Lawrence
The UK Royal Economic Society supports an annual public lecture which in 2006 was given by Professor Paul Collier, the first and current director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies, formerly director of research under chief economist Joe Stiglitz at the World Bank, and senior adviser to the Blair Commission on Africa. Collier is now an authoritative voice on African economic development and has written a popular book due out this year on what can be done about ‘failing poor countries’ (Collier, 2007). This contribution to the debate first gives an account of the lecture and then raises some critical questions about Collier's methodology and conclusions.
The Lecture
The subject of the lecture was ‘War and Peace in Africa’ and it was given in three locations in the UK, including Sheffield.1 The lecture was very well received by a large audience. Collier presented his research in an unusually accessible style for an economist, and there was much in the lecture that reflected changes in the way mainstream economists treat development issues. However, there was also much that reflected what is wrong with mainstream development economics.
In the lecture Collier reported on work, using statistical methods, that he and others had done, which tried to discover why Africa had had so much civil war (see Collier & Hoeffler (2004), for the analysis informing his lecture and earlier published results). He presented the economist's approach as ‘statistical’ and the method as one of looking for global patterns in the relationships between civil war and possible determining variables, and then discovering whether Africa was different. Knowledge of African differences would then inform policy. To do this Collier's team looked at ‘everything we could find'. They collected data over a 40 year period since 1965 for as many countries as it was available on all the usual economic variables, such as GDP per capita and export composition and volume, but also on the political, social and geographical variables such as colonial origin, ethnic and religious composition, political system, and geographical and topological characteristics. They divided the 40 years into five year periods and then tried to predict the next five-year period on the basis of what they found in the previous period.
The key question was whether Africa was different. For the typical non-African country the risk of civil war was estimated at 4%. For areas of Africa which had the population of a typical non-African country the risk of civil war turned out to be 34%. The next question to ask was what determined this higher risk for Africa. The first was slower economic growth: 0.1% income growth over the period. This slow growth was largely the result of failing to diversify exports. The second ‘cause’ was civil war itself. Having a civil war meant that there was a 40% chance of a further civil war. However, controlling for these factors still leaves Africa with a higher risk. The statistical analysis showed that this was because of size. The typical African country is too small and cannot take advantage of economies of scale, especially in security. Africa simply has too many countries.
So if slow economic growth – indeed stagnation – was a cause of civil war, what explains the stagnation and therefore the ‘accelerating divergence’ at 5% a year between Africa and other developing countries? At this point Collier tells us what readers of this article must have been thinking up to now – that we cannot talk about an undifferentiated Africa. So what is the differentiation? For Collier, this is a matter of four differentiating geographical characteristics: whether countries are landlocked, coastal, resource rich or resource poor. Africa is different in that many of the 50 countries are landlocked. However, if countries are rich in resources and landlocked, they are rich enough to get the exportable resources out. So effectively these two categories become one. The other categories then comprise two types of resource poor countries: landlocked or coastal.
These three categories constitute roughly one third each of Africa. By comparison, among the non-African developing countries, the landlocked and resource poor countries constitute 1% of that group. What Collier argues is that in the rest of the world, resource poor and landlocked areas simply do not become countries. In Africa the problem for landlocked countries is that they are dependent on coastal countries which have no incentive to improve transport links. This is reflected in the low rates of spill-over, that is, the growth induced in neighbouring countries by growth in one country without the neighbouring countries having done anything. In Africa growth of 1% in a one country results in growth of 0.2% in the adjoining country(ies). In the rest of the developing world this rate is 0.7%. Collier's conclusion is that it is no good starting with policies for resource poorlandlocked countries – which then leaves us with the other two types.
First, the resource rich countries have enjoyed rapidly rising export prices over the last 4 or so years while US and Chinese companies have increased prospecting activity for natural resources. However, further econometric analysis suggests that these countries suffer from a ‘resource curse’. In the short run a commodity boom results in higher growth, but in the long run growth rates fall. These countries' income will be 10% up by 2010, but 25% down by 2020. The standard explanations for this outcome have been first, ‘Dutch disease’, which in effect prices exports out of markets because of the highly valued exchange rate resulting from a commodity boom, and secondly, commodity price volatility. Collier finds that the first argument is not borne out by the evidence and that the second is part of the explanation but less than half of it. What really explains the projected poor performance is governance. Once again, Collier and his team look for a dataset on governance and find that it is not democracy in general that determines the quality of governance, but the kind of democracy which incorporates checks and balances. In other words it is ‘mature’ democracies that count and not the instant democracies, of which as Collier pointedly noted, Iraq is the latest! In Africa, only Botswana fits the bill. Here, checks and balances prevent the misuse of resource wealth and encourage economic policies that carefully control the impact of windfall gains through primary commodity price booms so that they do not lead to uncontrolled public expenditure and inflation.
Then we have the coastal-resource scarce countries which globally are growing faster than other economies, except in Africa. Collier argues that the reason resource-scarce Asian coastal countries grew was because they found market niches for low-wage labour-intensive goods and services and then benefited from economies of agglomeration in manufacturing. Africa, with the exception of Mauritius, ‘missed the boat’ in the 1980s. What is now needed is a large wage gap between Africa and Asia such as existed between Asia and the developed world in the 1980s. But what African countries really need is to be bigger and have better security. Here Collier adds to the argument about size and security by claiming that there are economies of scale in knowledge – for example, some African countries are too small to have daily papers, which means the dissemination of knowledge and the discussion of policies is limited. Overall, Collier argues that Asia reformed faster than Africa from the 1970s onwards, both having been equally poor on policies and governance.
For Collier, it is the small size of African countries coupled with their ‘ethno-linguistic diversity’ as one major reason for these differences with Asia. He states that there are 2000 different ethno-linguistic groups in Africa. Given that most African countries have poor governance in terms of checks and balances, then the question arises, given the success of nondemocratic countries such as China, whether Africa would be better off with dictatorship. Collier responds that in ethnically diverse countries, dictatorship is worse. The simple economic reason for this is that dictators’ power depends on their own ethnic group and that in more ethnically diverse societies where a dictator's ethnic group is in a relatively small minority the incentive is to loot the other ethnic groups and redistribute to their own group On the other hand, in societies with less ethnic diversity, the dictator has less incentive to do this because as part of the dominant ethnic group there is less to be looted from the rest and so there is not much to be gained in looting the minority.
The next part of Collier's story is a justification for the ‘big’ state. His argument is that African countries need a ‘big’ state because, especially in resource rich countries there are large revenues to administer, so that even though they may exhibit societal diversity, they cannot, like the USA for example, have a ‘small’ state. The trick is to make the ‘big state’ work democratically.
Collier concludes that Africa has three major problems: the high risk of civil war and high level of insecurity; the failure of coastal resource scarce countries to globalise; and the lack of strong checks and balances in resource rich states. He proposes three solutions: peacekeeping, trade policy reform and improvements in governance. First, he argues for peacekeeping forces on the ground to prevent repetition of civil war and promote investor security. This is necessary to generate long term economic growth which then reduces and ultimately solves the problem of high insecurity. Civil war destroys economies, there is a high risk of its repetition, and there is a disincentive to invest in anything except natural resource extraction. Post-conflict peacekeeping is often fragile and in order to strengthen the likelihood of a permanent peace, peacekeeping troops are needed on the ground. Collier produces another dataset of 66 post-conflict countries and finds that the more peacekeepers there are the lower the risk of further conflict. He is scathing about the idea that holding elections after conflict institutes democracy and prevents further conflict. Analysis of the data shows that the risk of renewal of conflict goes down before elections are held but increases after the elections. The reason is that before the elections, the incentive for all parties to participate keeps the peace. Once the election is held, the risks of conflict increase. This is because the winners of the election consider they have legitimately gained the power to do whatever they want, while the losers claim the elections were a fraud and contest the winners by going back to armed rebellion.
Thus it is peacekeeping which reduces the risk of conflict, not elections followed by the withdrawal of peacekeepers, as happened in the DRC. Collier argues that the French provision of security guarantees to Francophone African countries reduced the incidence of civil war by two-thirds. As a consequence of the Rwanda conflict, France withdrew its peacekeepers and war broke out in Cote d'Ivoire. Collier argues that because of the failed US peacekeeping intervention in Somalia, the ‘international community’ began to believe that intervention is not an option. Collier regards this view as ‘dangerously wrong’ and one that prevented intervention in Rwanda. However, the non-interventionist view has been strengthened by the experience in Iraq. But Collier cites the UK's intervention in Sierra Leone as one that worked and of which the UK can be ‘proud’.
Collier's second solution relates to the issue of the resource poor coastal countries having failed to take advantage of the opportunities of globalisation in the way that the Asian resource poor coastal countries did – what he calls the ‘missed the boat problem’. Collier's solution to this problem lies in changing trade policy in order that African countries can diversify out of primary commodities. He contrasts this aim with that of the socalled ‘fair trade’ policies which perpetuate these countries as primary producers. What is needed are policies which temporarily protect Africa from Asia in developed country markets. He argues that such policies are currently being carried out by developed countries but very badly. He takes the example of the US Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which he says is flawed, because the protection it gives is for only one year at a time – not a long enough time horizon for foreign investors to feel secure. The EU has a policy called ‘Everything but Arms’, but this is also useless because it prioritises poorer countries instead of the richer African countries that are more likely to break into world markets first. Mauritius is an example of a country that broke into world markets in the 1980s thanks to the protectionist Multi-fibre Arrangement (MFA) which is now being phased out.
Finally, there is the issue of governance in resource rich countries. Collier argues that there are struggles going on within African societies to effect a system of checks and balances. There are ‘brave people’ fighting for these and they need to be fully supported by the developed countries. He is scathing about the ability of former African dictators to hide their ill-gotten gains in secret bank accounts. Ending the kind of banking secrecy for which Switzerland is renowned would be one way to deter corrupt African politicians. Collier cites the case of the late General Abachaof Nigeria who had around $4 billion in Swiss bank accounts and the Swiss government had to be shamed into ending the banking secrecy that had protected him. What is required to act effectively against corruption is to have a set of standards and codes which can be monitored. He points to the existence of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative as providing just such a set of standards which could be used by African governments.
Collier ended his lecture by arguing that the solutions he is proposing will help to make aid more effective. The Gleneagles agreement to double aid and scrap debt was a populist move to make politicians look good but will not work as a strategy for development. He argues that unless the public are better informed about what is required, namely the solutions he is proposing, the politics of these kinds of summit meetings will be gesture politics and have no effect on Africa. What needs to be done is to inform the public in such a way that pressure is put on the next summit of the G8 in Germany in 2007 to agree to the policies Collier is proposing. His new book (Collier, 2007)2 will be out on sale before the G8 summit so that people can be informed and politicians decisions at that summit judged against the agenda he proposes.
Critical Comments
Collier has been working on Africa for the last 30 years. He first came to notice after the publication of a study on Tanzania's ujamaa villages (Collier et al. 1986) in which the authors argued that intra-ujamaa village income differences were greater than inter-village differences. These conclusions were based on analysis of a large dataset resulting from a survey of villages across the country but were not surprising. There was already a body of empirical work which pointed to pre-ujamaa rural class differentiation which was perpetuated in the power relationships and the continuing economic power of rich farmers through their superior possession of agricultural means of production other than land. What Collier and his collaborators did was to ignore this body of serious research in favour of ‘rigorous’ statistical methods. Such methods are now well developed and allow for the possibility of finding factors, or variables, which determine particular outcomes while controlling for everything else that might affect those outcomes. Collier's latest work is another version of the same methodology with which he began his research in Africa. It is also in the tradition of much World Bank research since the early 1990s. Thus what might appear to be the breathtaking arrogance of one man who has the three solutions to Africa's problems and a book to promote them, is largely a representation of a new Washington consensus to which Collier and his colleagues have contributed. The application of neo-classical economics to questions that were formerly considered to be in the political domain is a relatively new development. What Collier calls ‘economics’ in the context of analysing the causes of war and peace in Africa is part economics, but more, part statistics and part political science of the US quantitative kind. It is deserving of a serious critique, not only on its own terms but also from a radical perspective. For Collier, economic analysis is about being ‘rigorous’.3 Rigour is exemplified by mathematical method and statistical analytical techniques, the latter analysing data and finding patterns which lead to conclusions about causes which have some probabilistic value attached to them. Assumptions about behaviour, the socalled ‘priors’ or hypotheses are largely based on rational choice theory. So, for example, the reasons that young men join rebel groups is because the opportunity cost of doing so is very low or possibly zero. That is to say that because of poverty, the potential rebel fighter has little to lose by joining an armed group and risking death. As Cramer (2003) points out, this discounts the possibility that people go to war for political reasons of belief in leaders of rebellions, or belief in an ideology that supports rebellions. These ‘variables’ of course cannot be quantified. Cramer offers a much more detailed critique than is possible here of this question and some of the other questions that follow.
Once only quantitative analyses are regarded as the only rigorous way to analyse problems and find solutions, then issues arise as to the quality of the data. Data quality in Africa is known to be relatively poor. This is especially so when it comes to making judgements about governance, corruption and inequality, let alone output and growth. However, the ‘poor data’ argument should not be pushed too far. It is remarkable how many times using this ‘poor’ data gives results that make some sense. This may be because while not giving us perfect measures, the data is sufficiently consistent over time to give indicators of change, or sufficiently consistent across countries to give us decent comparative indicators. However, using these datasets to present confident, if not definitive, views about what causes Africa's insecurity problems, and therefore what solves them, leaves out whole areas of analysis which need to be included to build a complete picture.
The principal omission is history. Much of the discussion about civil wars fails to take account of historical specificity. For example, civil wars in Angola and Mozambique in the 1970s and 1980s were the consequence of the rivalry between the USA, and its South African proxy, and the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent, its Cuban proxy. It is also, to say the least, a misrepresentation of recent African history to equate one-party states with dictatorships. One-party states varied in their levels of democracy and extent of civil society. It is also misleading to paint a picture of persistent low growth rates. These rates were relatively high in the 1960s and early 1970s and most African economies were severely affected by the oil price hikes in 1973 and 1979 and the droughts in the first half of the '70s turning food-self-sufficiency into food imports. This was a periodof African industrialisation based on import substitution, which could well, with improvements in economic management, have led to African countries being able to take advantage of export markets. However, by the early 1980s, much possible industrial rehabilitation had stalled on the back of World Bank opposition to import substitution industrialisation (ISI), and instead promotion of primary commodities and ‘getting prices right’. The fact that resource rich African governments have misallocated and/or misappropriated the windfall gains of primary commodity price booms, and then suffered from slumps in prices, has led to the belief that diversification out of primary commodities is the appropriate strategy for Africa. Of course it always was, which is why countries pursued import substitution. That they did this badly in contrast to East Asia, whose ability to engage successfully with world markets was a consequence of a successful prior ISI, does not mean the strategy was wrong then, but equally it means that an export-oriented strategy on the back of a failed ISI is not likely to be successful now. Yet that is the strategy Collier presents. Therefore he regards ‘fair trade’ as irrelevant because Africa should reduce its dependence on primary commodities. The problem with this approach is that primary commodities remain African countries' main export earners. Without these earnings stabilising, or better increasing in the short run, these countries cannot accumulate resources for diversification. Where Collier is right is that diversification out of primary commodities is necessary. But he fails to point out that African countries were forced to pursue a policy based on primary commodity exports as a consequence of World Bank conditionalities. These conditionalities are not of course included in the list of explanatory variables. Finally here, Collier claims that Africa missed the boat in the 1980s and ceded global markets to Asia. Only Mauritius (often quoted, but hardly a typical African country, if an African country at all), caught the boat. However, it was not simply the wage differences that attracted investment to Asia – it was their relatively well educated populations and skilled labour, evident in the data from the early 1960s, that did this.
Much of the discussion about ethnolinguistic diversity fails to take into account history and context. For example, how do we balance Tanzania's ethnic and first language diversity with its Swahili lingua franca to produce a measure of its ethno-linguistic diversity? Does the distribution of ethnic groups matter? Are the identified ethnic groups in these indices reflective of how people identify their loyalties? How much of the social-anthropological literature has been scanned to inform an ethno-linguistic index? Is enough of the history of ethnic identities incorporated into the analysis? And while ethnicity appears everywhere, class appears nowhere. There is no analysis of the particular forms of capitalism that have developed in Africa and the class formations they have produced and how ethnicity and class interact. Yet it is precisely the question of why we find these differences in the socalled ‘explanatory variables’ that needs itself to be explained.
The geographical representation of Africa embodied in Collier's analysis is also open to critique. It is not clear that small countries necessarily lose out because of their size. It really depends where they are and what they do. Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Singapore are examples of countries where small populations do not mean they cannot develop. It is also not clear that landlocked countries need to suffer any more from the poor transport facilities of their coastal neighbours. For example, high value agricultural commodities produced as a result of diversification out of traditional primary agricultural commodities, are air-freighted, rather than shipped by rail or road and boat. It is also not clear why a coastal country would necessarily cut its transport links to neighbouring countries because that would prevent them selling to these countries. The question that Collier does not address is that if such transport policies are persisting, then that has to mean that trade policies are not liberalised between these countries. This begs the question of why this is the case if these policies are supposed to make gains for both sides. The finding that there could be substantial spill-over effects if trade liberalisation went hand-in-hand with developed country support for the richer African countries neglects the substantial historical evidence that poles of growth did not spill over into neighbouring countries or even the poorer areas of the same countries. Investment has to take place in the poorer countries at the same time otherwise they will not benefit from spillover. Without specific country studies involving some historical detail, we are a little short on understanding the relationships as they actually exist.
Then there are some methodological problems associated with the rigorous econometric techniques that Collier and his collaborators adopt. An important one concerns the issue of endogeneity. If we are explaining the propensity to civil war by ethnic diversity, maybe we can also explain the levels of ethnic diversity by the propensity for civil war. It is not implausible to theorise that civil wars cement diversity through promoting ethnic identity and thus generating more civil wars. This raises a more general point. What Collier tells us at the beginning of the lecture is that he and his team collected every piece of data they could find and then without any priors set up an econometric model. What economists do, as opposed to what Collier says he did, is to have an economic model of behaviour, which is then operationalised with appropriate data, based on expectations of what the relationships are, having derived them from the model. What we get instead is a statistical exercise, whose results are then justified by an expost explanation. That is a purely statistical, not economic exercise. As Cramer points out, this method has resulted in finding inequality being good for peace and bad for peace in two different versions of the model. This suggests that not having a prior worked out model might lead to some spurious results, not least because, as Cramer again notes, inequality captured by the Gini coefficient does not tell the whole story about types of inequality and their different effects. Collier is to be taken seriously. He and his colleagues at the CSAE deal with serious issues in a detailed and rigorous way. Their econometric work uses the latest techniques available and does come up with patterns which have serious policy implications. There are aspects of their analysis, on aid, on peacekeeping, on democracy and elections, which support conclusions arrived at by very different routes by critical, radical or marxist analyses. However, at the root of their work is the belief that the rich economies of the world can develop Africa. Globalisation can work for Africa if developed countries spread effective democratic institutions and use their economic leverage to force governance upon an unwilling set of politicians such that they realise that they can maximise their utilities by not being corrupt. This democratisation has to be accompanied by trade policies that are liberal, though with elements of protectionism in the short run. Countries that have had civil wars need to be policed by the international community until such time as their system of governance has the appropriate checks and balances which guarantee peace and their economy is sufficiently successful to increase the opportunity cost to the individual thinking of starting or joining a rebellion, although sufficiently attractive by ensuring its wages are so much lower than Asia's that they attract investment. Some may see Collier's proposals as less a new start for Africa at the G8 in Germany and more a new justification for an old imperialism.
Peter Lawrence , e-mail: p.r.lawrence@123456econ.keele.ac.uk.
Conference
Leeds University Centre for African Studies and Review of African Political Economy
The State, Mining & Development in Africa
13–14 September 2007
This conference brings together pressure groups and academics to explore three key themes: what lessons have been learnt from the resource curse days of the 70s, 80s and 90s; what opportunities for resource led growth have emerged in the 21st century; and what resistance exists within the continent to the continued politics of dispossession and primitive accumulation that has characterised much resource extraction? The focus of the meeting will be analysis of case studies from Ghana, Sudan, Zambia and South Africa. This will not exclude other country cases or comparative contributions.
More detailed issues relate to what opportunities exist for the State in Africa to benefit from the promotion of mining and resource led development? Has Africa's incorporation into the world economy created conditions within which African states can benefit or not from increased interest by MNCs in the continents resources? To what extent are local dominant classes and political elites in Africa continuing to benefit from resource led growth while labouring classes of peasants and workers remain or become poorer from state involvement with mining companies? What resistance has there been in Africa to the new rush for the continent's resources? Here focus can lie with organised labour, trade unions and political parties and it can also lie with the need to explore micro, village and household consequences for communities that border, for example, open cast mining. To what extent is small-scale or artisanal mining a competitor with large-scale national or international mining operations? Analysis here may focus too on the role of women-headed households. This remains a still underresearched yet increasingly evident phenomenon, especially where mining is a dominant feature of employment as men migrate to work and women remain in rural areas sustaining their families and communities.
Details from: Saeed Talajooy: african-studies@123456leeds.ac.uk