Africa
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.
The Washington Post reports on the spread of mobile telephony in Africa, taking Congo as its example.
That mobile phones are spreading even in the disaster area that is Congo is telling; if they can be deployed there, they will go everywhere, given that Congo has “almost no roads, mail or telephone system” and is in the midst of a chaotic war.
Mobile phones achieve several immediate goals:
- They allow rapid communication, sometimes replacing extreme difficulty. The article cites a man who previously had to journey eight days by riverboat to see his mother, and now talks to her on the phone every day.
- They enable e-commerce, or more technically m-commerce. African phones are increasingly equippped with the ability to transfer money and pay merchants.
- Mobiles bring efficiencies to commerce, potentially boosting economic activity.
Mobiles also have several larger effects:
- Information speed — They vastly speed up information flows. In a place like Congo, they supplement sparse broadcast media with millions of person-to-person information nodes.
- Information decentralization — As information accelerates, it also decentralizes, with a variety of social and political effects. The classic Third World coup-starter, seizing the radio and TV stations, will have less and less meaning.
- Leapfrogging — Mobiles enable leapfrogging over other technologies, from broadcast TV to fixed-line phones and even the Internet. The Post notes that Congo now has 3.2 million mobile customers, compared to only 20,000 land lines. Mobiles can help begin to close the information devide that grew steadily wider between developed and developing world over the last century.
Mobiles will be particularly transformative in Africa, the least-wired of all regions. They are actually growing fastest here now, and have 152 million users on the continent, the Post says. (This probably includes North Africa, but growth seems to be faster in sub-Saharan.)
The WP reports that fundamentalists are edging out the moderates for control of the Islamic militias.
The first hints of change came when militia members forced the closure, in some neighborhoods, of cinemas showing the World Cup and films they deemed too sexually explicit. Some young women opted for more conservative head coverings, some young men for shorter hair.
Restraining mechanisms might come into play:
Some Somalis hold out hope that the same loose coalition of businessmen, activists and clan elders that helped drive out the warlords will soon turn against the militias as power breeds brashness. Ali Iman Sharmarke, a businessman and radio journalist in Mogadishu, said he believed the Islamic militias would lose power if they grew too strict in their interpretation of religious law. “People will hate them as they hated the warlords,” Sharmarke said from Nairobi. “The moderates will not fly with bin Laden.”
Overall, the likelihood of the “Taliban on the Horn” scenario prevailing has risen, and this also ups the probability of future war between Somalia and Ethiopia.