Africa
Yemen has now joined the list of prominent theaters in the battle against Islamist extremism. This is no surprise to anyone who had noted its place in governance rankings.
Where next? Here’s the basic list: the 20 least-stable countries in the world, with those in play in that battle in red, and others with large Muslim populations in green.
It’s not that simple, of course, as receptivity to extremism varies widely, and recruitment can go on anywhere, as the apparent Nigerian underwear bomber illustrates, again. But this is a starter list of places that might matter in terms of instability, and where global Islamic groups might look to build safe havens.
Other than Bangladesh, they are all in Africa. Some, such as Sudan and Kenya, could serve to expand existing zones of instability. Others could provide new foci: Nigeria forms the border between West and Central Africa, and has about 60 million Muslims. Recent polling data suggests that about 26 million of these are potentially sympathetic to extremist causes.
The WaPo reported today on a trend that could have impacts from African stability to the global food supply: companies and governments from developing nations are leasing or buying large swaths of agricultural land, especially in Africa, but also in Southeast Asia and Latin America.
The WaPo article focuses on Ethiopia, which uses only about a quarter of its arable land despite facing chronic food shortages. Indian investment there has already reached $2.5 billion, and Saudi Arabian and Chinese firms are moving in as well, with active encouragement from the Ethiopian government.
This could have positive effects:
- This kind of project could increase global farmland and the global food supply.
- This could bring new flows of investment to poor nations, and improve their infrastructures.
- Access to inexpensive food might rise in the land-leasing countries.
- People could gain access to paid work, and learn modern farming skills.
However, the potential downsides seem serious:
- Land may be diverted from local food production to exports, increasing hunger.
- Poor locals might be deprived of land and water so that governments or elites can profit from it.
- This could extend the “resource curse” to agriculture, as it could enable elites to make money from farmland while largely excluding their own countrymen from the benefits. The WaPo article notes an Ethiopian river that is now to be used for irrigation, with locals banned from watering their cows in it.
- With many of the companies coming from India, Saudi Arabia, and China, the potential for serious ill-treatment of workers, and even human rights abuses, is vast. Indian and Chinese companies often treat their own workers abysmally, and Saudis sometimes revert to near-enslavement of foreigners, so the fate of African workers could be grim — especially if their own governments fail to protect them, which is likely in many poorly governed countries.
- The land leases run for as long as 99 years; exactly what this means, and how far the rights of the leasing country extend, could bring diplomatic clashes.
- The sum of the problems above points suggests that this trend could drive instability in some land-leasing countries.
(Image courtesy mrflip, Flickr)
Jon Norris at Foreign Policy points out that Sudan is scheduled to self-destruct — probably — in two years.
In 2011, the African south of the country is supposed to vote on separation from the more Arab and Muslim north. “Almost every observer has concluded that if this referendum happens, the South will vote overwhelmingly for independence, sundering in half the largest country in Africa,” Norris writes.
The split could be bloody. Norris notes reports that the Sudanese government is likely arming proxy forces, including the Christian cultist Lord’s Resistance Army, possibly with the goal of halting the referendum or seizing territory from the southern regions.
And, suggests Norris, events in Darfur would suggest to Sudan that the consequences of misbehavior in the south are likely to be low.
(Image copyright FutureAtlas.com — usable with attribution and link)
In last week’s Newsweek, Andrew Bast argued that outsiders might be well-served by standing aside as the Islamist Al-Shabab group attempts to seize control of more of the country.
Bast writes that:
- “The Islamist group is far from monolithic, and could well splinter without a foreign enemy to rally against.” Foreign military intervention provides that rallying point.
- “Many of Somalia’s factions—like the Abgal businessmen who run Mogadishu’s port—are well armed and unlikely to be steamrolled by religious fanatics.”
- “Should they somehow manage to actually seize power, Al-Shabab would then face the immense challenge of governing,” as Somalis would likely resist fundamentalist rule.
(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
The Washington Post reports another ominous factor for the stability of Nigeria.
David Hecht writes that Nigeria “cannot feed its 140 million people, and relatively minor reductions in rainfall could set off a regional food catastrophe, experts say.” Increased rainfall variability — which is a likely outcome of climate change — could cause this.
“The reality is that if the rains are bad throughout the region or the price of inputs became unaffordable, there could be massive food shortages, and neither the government nor any other institution stands ready to help,” a Nigerian agricultural official told Hecht.
Thirty-eight percent of young Nigerian children already suffer from malnutrition, and 65% of the population is food-insecure.
Nigerian instability would be disastrous for Africa, potentially dragging down much of West and Central Africa with it. Hecht writes of the direct effect of Nigerian food shortages driving food beyond affordability in poorer neighboring countries, but instability could add massive refugee flows, economic disruption, and spillover violence.
On the positive side, Nigeria could feed itself: the article notes that more than half of the country’s arable land is not being used, and only 7% of the land that could be used for irrigated farming is under the plow. If this were changed, Nigeria could be self-sufficient in both rice and wheat.
(Image copyright FutureAtlas.com — usable with attribution and link)
Amnesty International reports that 1,000 women accused of being witches have been rounded up by Gambian security forces, who were accompanied by Guinean witch doctors.
The reason? “The witch-doctors were invited to The Gambia early in the year, soon after the death of President Jammeh’s aunt. The President reportedly believes that witchcraft was used in her death,” Amnesty reports.
This exemplifies dyschronicity — that two places may be greatly out of sync in time — as the developed world last engaged in mass witch persecutions centuries ago.
It also reveals, again, how flimsy governance in Africa is: many countries lack any authority that can be relied on to act with rationality and restraint.
Image copyright Futureatlas.com — usable with attribution and link
The Washington Post reports on the gains of the Islamist rebels in Somalia — and on unintended (but not unanticipated) consequences:
The scenario now unfolding in Somalia is the one a U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion nearly two years ago had been intended to thwart: a takeover by radical Islamists. At the time, Ethiopian forces ousted a relatively diverse Islamic movement that had briefly gained control of the capital, Mogadishu. . . . But the policy backfired, inspiring a relentless insurgency of clan militias and Islamist fighters that has left Somalia’s first central government since 1991 near collapse.
The result is that “the two-year insurgency has energized the most radical Islamist faction, the Shabab — ‘youth’ in Arabic — which the United States has designated a terrorist organization.
… Analysts predict the Shabab will extend its control after the Ethiopians withdraw” early in the year.
However, writes the International Crisis Group:
Opposition to the Ethiopian occupation has been the single issue on which the many elements of the fractious Islamist insurgency could agree. When that glue is removed, it is likely that infighting will increase, making it difficult for the insurgency to obtain complete military victory, or at least sustain it, and creating opportunities for political progress.
The announced Ethiopian withdrawal, if it occurs, will open up a new period of uncertainty and risk. It could also provide a window of opportunity to relaunch a credible political process, however, if additional parties can be persuaded to join the Djibouti reconciliation talks, and local and international actors –- including the U.S. and Ethiopia –- accept that room must be found for much of the Islamist insurgency in that process and ultimately in a new government dispensation.
According to the ICG, “One way or the other, Somalia is likely to be dominated by Islamist forces.”
The Somali pirates have managed to invoke the multipolar 21st century:
- The European Union is sending a force of 20 warships to patrol around the Horn of Africa, including countries such as Spain and Sweden, an unusual display of military power by the organization.
- China is also sending three warships, a striking extension of its global reach. This is likely the first time a Chinese flotilla has operated in these waters since the great fleets of Admiral Zheng He, in the early 15th century.
Image: Ben Walther (Flickr)
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.