Michael Keating is a Senior Fellow and Associate Director of the Center for Democracy and Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His special area of interest is communication and media systems in conflict and post-conflict countries. He has done extensive work in Africa.
Moscow Mogadishu
Paul Klebnikov was the American-born editor of the Russian edition of Forbes Magazine. Klebnikov made his reputation as a investigative journalist looking into the business dealings of high-level Russian politicians and aspiring oligarchs. On July 9, 2004 Klebnikov was gunned down on the streets of Moscow in apparent retaliation for his professional activities. To this date the case is still open and no one has been successfully prosecuted for the murder.
To commemorate his memory, friends and family established the Paul Klebnikov Fund which is designed to promote civil society and rule-of -law in Russia and to reward outstanding Russian jurists or journalists who have made lasting contributions towards this cause.
The 2009 winner is the journalist Leonid Nikitinsky who writes for the Novaya Gazeta. He was at U. Mass Boston yesterday and this is what he had to say:
According to Nikitinsky today’s Russia is not abiding by the rule-of-law but rather by the rule of what he calls: the ‘ments’…A ‘ment’ (derived from Russian prison slang) can be anyone who has any sort of state authority, anyone who wears ‘leather straps’ as Nikitinsky stated. They can either grease the wheels for you or stop you in your tracks, but what they all have in common is a license to steal.
Acting according to ‘no ideology or vision or responsibility’ these thousands of bureaucratic ‘locusts’ as Nikitinsky characterizes them, perform only one visible social function: the transfer of assets from ordinary Russians to themselves through endless bribery and extortion. They manipulate arrests, prosecutions and trials. They intimidate juries, blackmail witnesses and even make inconvenient enemies disappear. They will stop only when you write out the check and maybe not even then if they detect that you have more to give.
Despite Putin’s so-called ‘vertical power structure,’ the sheer number of ‘ments’ running rampant throughout the national system makes control virtually impossible. It merely hides ‘a spreading anarchy’ which, accoding to Nikitinsky, the Kremlin is very concerned about.
In the written comments accompanying his talk he states:
By crude analogy the ‘ments’ dictatorship is not unrelated to Somalia under warlords, or parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan run by armed militias of local tribal chieftains. “Dictatorship of ‘ments’” is driving Russia to anarchy. Unless the process of ‘mentization’ is reversed Russia could end up the world’s largest failed state. The situation is dire.
Indeed.
Piggy Banks
On top of all the bad news surrounding international banking we can add to the list the findings of a just published report ( Undue Diligence : How Banks Do Business With Corrupt Regimes) from the anti-corruption NGO Global Witness.
The report, although dealing with somewhat dated material, nevertheless paints a devastating portrait of how some of the largest and formerly most prestigious international banks have been complicit in laundering the ill-gotten gains of the some of the world’s most unsavory regimes. Despite the existence of a whole host of regulations and public commitments to social responsibility on the part of institutions like Citibank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, etc. the report condemns these institutions for doing the minimum amount of due-diligence and exploiting every loophole to avoid turning down lucrative deposits.
In my posting last week I made some comments about Equatorial Guinea which were responded to at length by someone from the EG Embassy in London. Although my Spanish is hardly fluent I was able to discern that I was being accused of slandering and perpetuating negative stereotypes about EG.
Lo and behold, but who should top the list of Global Witnesses’ list- of- shame but Equatorial Guinea and their partners in crime, first the now-defunct Riggs Bank, and more recently Barclays.
Management of the country’s vast oil wealth remains a ‘state secret’ according to President Teodoro Nguema Obiang. He has ruled since 1979 when he executed his brutal uncle to seize power, and has maintained his power through repression and human rights abuses. Members of Obiang’s family control key government ministries. Opposition parties are banned, and political prisoners are beaten and tortured in custody.
Meanwhile, the ruling family continues to enrich itself. At the end of 2006 Global Witness revealed that the president’s playboy son had bought a new $35 million dollar home in California. He has been reported as earning a $4,000 a month salary as the country’s Minister of Agriculture and Forestry.
But not to appear as unfairly picking on EG, it should be noted that Gabon, Republic of Congo, Angola, Charles Taylor’s Liberia, Turkmenistan and their cohort of international deposit-takers also make the list.
The main recommendation of the report is that now that the world seems to be getting serious about regulating shameless bankers it should also close all the loopholes and address all the convenient ambiguities which allow resource riches from desperately poor countries to find their way into international bank accounts – now matter how desperately these shattered institutions might need them.
It’s Africa’s Downturn Next
In what he described as an impending ‘economic tsunami’ , Britain’s Development Minister Douglas Alexander has called upon the developed world not to forsake their promises and obligations to the world’s poor, regardless of the current state of the world economy. Speaking to the BBC yesterday Alexander warned that as many as 90 million people would be ‘pushed back’ into extreme poverty and that the very real gains in economic progress that many African countries have experience over the past few years would be in peril. His suggestion for action, in a move similar to one announced by Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, would be to set up special funds that would, in effect, be a special stimulus package for the world’s poor. Alexander also warned the developed world about the perils of protectionism and to encourage aid-on-top-of-trade to countries in the developing world.
These are bold and encouraging words coming from Britain, a country which has pledged to maintain its foreign aid commitments. The question for leaders of the G20 meeting London in April is whether the political risks of continuing their foreign aid outflows will be accepted by their constituents. Obviously, as the global crisis deepens, it will be harder and harder for Western politicians to continue to push foreign aid transfers through their legislatures, no matter how much pressure Bono or Jeffrey Sachs put on them.
On the ground in Africa, the effects of the global downturn were already being felt by the end of last last year as commodity prices fell and work was slowed or halted in Zambian copper mines and bauxite pits in Guinea. In countries with no social security or unemployment insurance and where private companies, not governments, supply essential services like energy, housing and health-care, the shutting of even a single mine can dramatically effect the lives of thousands of people.
We can certainly forgive the leaders of the G20 for turning their short-term focus on solving the international banking crisis and on stimulating their own economies. However, it must be said, that a real stress test of the moral character of the Western free-market system will take place when new aid budgets and trade policies are decided upon and announced in the coming years. After years of pounding the principles of free market economics and the glories of globalization into the heads of African leaders, it would be morally bankrupt to now turn our collective backs. Opponents of current policies might argue that this is a great opportunity for African leaders to wean themselves of foreign aid and begin to focus on developing real economies. There would certainly be nothing wrong with this outcome except that their dependence on natural resource exports and a lack of economic diversification make such a leap all but impossible in a world where commodity demand is shrinking and where trade barriers might start growing again.
Average Africans have much more to fear than fear itself. Who has the courage to stick by them?
China in Africa…Africans in China
Yesterday’s report that China strongly objects to the ICC indictment of Sudanese President al Bashir should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the story. China-in-Darfur is but one dramatic corner of the larger China-in-Africa picture. Over the past decade Chinese investments have exploded in Africa, and with them a fair amount of controversy. On the one hand, the Chinese are viewed as progressive and open-minded about their dealings with African governments, avoiding the imposition of ‘strings’ that often accompany American or European investments. On the other hand, some reports paint a very different picture. Through this lens China is viewed as manipulative and rapacious, with an eye only on Africa’s resource riches and no regard for human-rights.
In the case of Sudan, critics claim that it’s only oil that drives Chinese backing for al Bashir’s murderous regime; oil and no doubt the wish to retain Sudan’s pro-Chinese vote at the U.N. The Chinese would claim that they are merely seeking justice for al Bashir and to keep him involved in an extremely fragile peace process. Unfortunately for China, that’s a line that nobody from the West wants to buy. In the end, China probably couldn’t care less if al Bashir stays or goes as long as their oil keeps flowing. However, given their abhorrence of uncertainty and instability the desire to switch horses is just not that strong.
……….
In case you missed it there is a fascinating story in the February 9th issue of the New Yorker about the Nigerian Community in Guangzhou, China.
Despite the culture shock, the harsh economic conditions and casual racism facing the Nigerians in Guangzhou, they continue to flock there by the thousands in search of business connections and access to Chinese goods they can sell back home.
Like the rest of the world, the Chinese are mainly selling their typical exports to the Nigerians and only buying Nigeria’s natural resources. The day that tide reverses and ‘cheap Nigerian consumer goods’ start flooding the world’s market is one, for fans of African development, devoutly to be wished.
Guinea Foul
In yesterday’s post I briefly told the story of the three Guineas of West Africa (Guinea, Equatorial Guinea and Guinea-Bissau). Just today, the International Crisis Group issued a report on the current situation in former French colony Guinea. They ICG has expressed grave concern that the group of military officers who seized power after the death of long-time strongman Lansana Contè ”have shown few signs of moving towards elections by the end of 2009 as promised.” One hopes that the analysts at the ICG were not surprised by this development as Guinea – over the course of its nearly half-century of independence – has shown little toleration of the democratic instinct. For most observers, except for those in the aluminum business and certainly for Guinea’s immediate neighbors such as Sierra Leone and Liberia, the coup in Guinea seems like nothing more than another African tempest-in-a teapot.
But things in Guinea could get very nasty. A destabilization of the security situation, perhaps brought on by a crackdown on opposition military officers or struggling democrats, could easily spill over into Liberia’s border regions which are porous and unstable enough to provide a useful sanctuary despite the presence of lightly armed UN peacekeepers. The blue helmets would likely stay away from any confrontations with Guinean militias as to do otherwise would likely be outside their mandate.
It was precisely this kind of protection that Guinea afforded Liberian rebels during the 14 years of civil war that devastated both Liberia and Sierra Leone. A return to that kind of instability would likely send shock-waves through the entire sub-region. It would also retard the progress towards rebuilding that is recently the cause for the fragile optimism in Monrovia and Freetown.
But what perhaps is more relevant to the world outside of West Africa, is that Guinea is home to the world’s largest reserve of bauxite, the key natural ingredient in the making of aluminum. It’s a fight everyone seems to have a dog in. Russia, China and the U.S., via Alcoa, all have huge investments.
It’s almost certain that the young soldiers of the National Council of Democracy and Development (a name more reminiscent of a Swedish NGO than a West African military junta but suggesting a certain flair for PR on the part of the interlopers) are focusing more on development at the moment, namely the development of their own personal bank accounts. Former President Contè financed his regime and personal lifestyle largely through these bauxite franchises, but being the natural resource curse kind of place that it is, the people of Guinea saw little, if any, benefit.
The big difference for the NCDD is that the bottom has fallen out of the global aluminum market . One doubts whether Guinea’s military leaders are pouring over commodities futures tables as they plot their negotiating strategies with their new international partners. They are more likely looking over their shoulders checking out who is looking to unseat them. In this scenario, nobody wins, but many will likely feel the pain.
Dear President Obama…Love Africa
As this is my first blog for the Harvard International Review I would like to take the opportunity to gaze at the big picture. While President Obama’s team looks around the world at the usual trouble spots, Africa rarely makes it on to the nightly news in the context of discussions about America’s Foreign Policy priorities.
This might be a costly and inhumane oversight.
While Secretary-of-State Clinton was dining with Israeli and Palestinian diplomats last week in Sharm el sheikh and discussing the rebuilding of Gaza, one wonders whether she gave a thought to events unfolding further south, in Somalia, in the aftermath of the disastrous Ethiopian incursion (we haven’t heard any offers to rebuild Mogadishu.) All anyone can say for sure about Somalia at the moment is that it seems to have reverted to its default Hobbesian antics, and that the instability it engenders for itself will likely have repercussions for its neighbors Eritrea, Kenya, Ethiopia and even Djibouti.
As much as Foggy Bottom would like to turn away from the mainland and deal with the more manageable and romantic phenomenon of piracy on the high seas, the anarchy in Somalia could easily enflame the region and bring Eritrea and Ethiopia back into head-to-head conflict.
But Somalia is a well publicized mess and one with a history. What the Obama team will likely have to deal with over the next several years are emerging issues that are either being ignored at present or simply discounted. Number one on my list is South Africa.
Next Spring, the controversial head of the African National Congress, Jacob Zuma will try to assume what he believes to be his rightful place as the President of South Africa. And right there is the problem. It’s very hard to distinguish these days between the government of South Africa and the ANC, the party which has dominated South African politics since the end of apartheid. Up until now, the people of South Africa have overwhelmingly supported the ANC and its slate of legislators, but recently there have been divisions and schisms in the party. These schisms might offer more political choice to the people of South Africa, but they may also end in violence. South Africans simply have to gaze beyond their borders to Kenya and Zimbabwe to see what happens when a dominant political party starts to feel the heat of competition. The resolution, it seems, rarely occurs at the ballot box. Jerry-rigged power-sharing in order to divide up the spoils is more like it.
As we travel up the West Coast of Africa we can make a brief stop in African super-power Nigeria, where the oil-rich Niger Delta is still enflamed and where the northern, Islamic half of the country is embracing sharia law at a pace that would make even the Taliban envious. President Yar’Adua seems to have run out of solutions for these issues without really trying anything even remotely bold in the first place, so Nigeria will continue to drift into predictable mayhem, as reflected by the ethno-religious riots in Jos last year.
Then we have the three Guineas: Equatorial, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea proper. If ever colonialism can be blamed for a dysfunctional legacy we could put these three impoverished places at the head of the list. French-speaking, bauxite rich, Guinea is now being ruled by a military junta that illegally took power after its 24-year entrenched dictator died last Fall; Portugese-speaking Guinea Bissau has just seen the tit-for-tat killings of its President and Army-head over what some claim (quite credibly) is a feud over the riches flowing into the country by Colombian drug-gangs that have discerned the place as ideal for trans-shipping drugs into Europe; and last-but-not-least, oil-rich but dirt-poor, Spanish-speaking Equatorial Guinea, headed by a former Army Brigadier, Teodor Obiang, whose inner circle have been accused of money-laundering and drug-smuggling and basically turning their country into a cesspool of vice and corruption.
At last Fall’s African Union summit, Libyan leader Ghadaffi, the new temporary AU chairman, called once again for the African countries to unite into a United States of Africa or at least into an African EU. When one looks at the Guineas we can see why this might be an impossible dream as the post-colonial divisions have turned much of the West African landscape into small, easily managed (for the corrupt and powerful at least) fiefdoms just right for plundering. If the appearance of pirates in the Gulf of Aden is turning heads in Washington and Brussels, so should the sprouting-up of Colombian drug McMansions in the Guineas be equally alarming.
I certainly don’t have the answer as to what to do about Africa’s ills (despite being a great fan of both Bono and Bill Easterly) but it’s clear that post-colonialism is alive and well and starting to come apart at the seams. African strong-men have every self-serving reason to scoff at Ghadaffi, but the people of Africa just might start to listen. Post-post-colonialism just might be taking root in Tripoli.
And let’s not forget the Sudan and Congo…but that’s for another day.