Africa
Writing recently in the Washington Post, UN drug official Antonio Maria Costas warned of another threat to African stability: a growing cocaine trade targeting Europe via West Africa.
The region is particularly vulnerable due to several factors:
- It is poor and without resources: no radar to spot smugglers’ planes, no navies to chase their boats, etc.
- Poverty and corruption means that it is easy to compromise the area’s governments.
- “Unemployed and desperate youths are vulnerable to being recruited as foot soldiers for criminal groups,” Costa writes.
Already tattered by years of warfare, West Africa is perhaps more likely than any other region to see the emergence of full narcostates, in which the state is totally compromised by drug cartels.
As Future Atlas noted more than a year ago, Jacob Zuma presents challenges to the future of South Africa.
Accused of corruption and even rape in the past, he is now closer to power, having been elected head of the African National Congress (ANC), the only party currently able to win national elections.
New corruption charges may derail his rise; if convicted he would be ineligible to run for president of the country in 2009.
Zuma’s situation might produce at least two effects:
- If he is blocked, his followers could be tempted to amend or bend the rules, endangering the primacy of law.
- South African academic Sheila Meintjes told the VOA that the Zuma affair could presage a split within the ANC, between the business-middle class wing on one hand, and the more radical working class elements on the other. This would be a positive development, as it might break the single-party hold on elections.
Foreign Policy magazine and the Center for American Progress polled 108 foreign affairs experts across the political spectrum about terrorism and related issues.
Asked what country is likely to be the next al Qaeda stronghold, the experts said:
- Pakistan — 35%
- Iraq — 22%
- Somalia — 11%
- Sudan — 8%
- Afghanistan — 7%
The experts also put Pakistan at the head of the list most likely to transfer nuclear technology to terrorists by 2012:
- Pakistan — 74%
- North Korea — 42%
- Russia — 38%
- Iran — 31%
- United States — 5%
The experts were divided about how to change US policy toward Pakistan: about a third favored sanctions against the country, and a similar number advocated increasing US aid.
Pakistan likely tops both lists both because of ideological forces at work within the country, and because it is regularly cited as one of the states most likely to fall apart.
Foreign Policy offers the odds on six new states achieving independence:
1. Kosovo
Odds — “strong”: driven by US and EU support, it has a good shot at full independence from Serbia
2. South Sudan
Odds — “not great”: a 2011 “referendum will probably happen; and it will probably come out in favor of independence; and Khartoum will almost certainly find a way around the results.”
3. Somaliland
Odds — “very good”: effectively independent from Somalia since 1991, it already has its own government, army, and currency; international organizations will attend to the disastrous state of the rest of Somalia first, however
4. Iraqi Kurdistan
Odds — “fair”: Turkey’s strong opposition may be overruled by facts on the ground if Iraq disintegrates
5. Palestine
Odds — “good”: “details” in the way of a two-state solution will eventually overcome the objections of “the extreme radical wings” on both sides
6. Taiwan
Odds — “poor”: China is getting stronger and stronger, and Taiwan “will accept autonomous status” under China
Weak governance and warfare in Africa chronically threaten the continent’s wildlife.
The Washington Post today notes a particularly dire case, the loss of mountain gorillas in barely-governed Congo. More than half of the world’s 700 remaining mountain gorillas are in Congo’s Virunga National Park.
Gorillas in Uganda are doing somewhat better, but their population is still low.
In a Post article on whether Ugandan cultist warlord Joseph Kony should be brought before an international court, John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group warns of potential danger to East and Central Africa:
Prendergast said he feared Kony could still cause instability in as many as three African countries — Sudan, Uganda and Congo. “We have a very significant investment in south Sudan, both diplomatically and in terms of assistance, that is at grave risk.”
Such are the depths of corruption and power-abuse in Africa that a Sudanese mobile phone billionaire is offering an annual $5 million prize to a freely elected leader who governs well and hands over power to an elected successor.
He is thus offering positive reinforcement to oversight and other tools.
Skeptics might wonder if $5 million is enough when you can run off with hundreds of millions if you run a successful kleptocracy.
And, writes a commentator in the NYT, Africa needs more — “It needs a permanent source of political pressure from citizens and business groups — not just general disgust, but advocacy for specific reforms.”
The International Crisis Group (ICG) issued a warning on Somalia today. It begins:
The draft resolution the U.S. intends to present to the UN Security Council on 29 November could trigger all-out war in Somalia and destabilise the entire Horn of Africa region by escalating the proxy conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea to dangerous new levels.
The resolution would authorize regional intervention on the side of the weak Transitional Federal Government (TFG), to protect it against Somali Islamic forces.
The ICG warns that outright foreign intervention on behalf of the TFG
would likely fracture the parliament beyond repair and reinforce the impression that the TFG is simply a proxy for Ethiopia. The loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the Somali public would be irreversible.
Ethiopian and other states are hostile to the Islamic forces in Somalia because “of its irredentist views, and support for international terrorist elements and cross-border Ethiopian rebel groups.”
US backing for this course of action, and prior support for Somali warlords who opposed the Islamists, also hint that the United States is in danger of repeating a dire mistake of the Cold War.
In places such as Vietnam and Central America, the US tended to misunderstand the relationship of local events to the main contest of the Cold War, and take action without regard for the real strategic stakes or the moral consequences.
Action to oppose the Islamists in Somalia might be warranted by American interests and morally preferable to the alternatives, but it might also be a sign of a kneejerk anti-Islamicism.
A recent LAT article illustrates two interwoven trends:
- China is expanding its presence in diverse ways in Africa and the rest of the Third World.
- This new presence and the power behind it are generating backlash.
In this instance, Zambian workers are feeling abused by Chinese mine owners.
The Chinese model will encounter this kind of difficulty abroad: the lack of human rights and worker rights that makes some aspects of development easier at home will create resentment when implemented elsewhere, further limiting China’s soft power.
Recent events suggest that South Africa faces the same danger of destructive leadership that has been the bane of so many other African states.
This danger is personified in the form of Jacob Zuma, who has been accused of serious corruption and of raping the HIV-positive daughter of a friend. (He said that he had taken care of the risk of AIDS: he took a shower afterwards.)
He is nonetheless considered one of the leading contenders to become the head of the ANC party and thus the next president.
If this occurs, South Africa will be at heightened risk of taking Zimbabwe’s path, and self-destructing due to the choices of its leaders, at great cost to South Africans and to Africa.