How else to express my reaction to the African Union’s selection of Zimbabwe for a seat on it’s Peace and Security Council?

The Peace and Security Council is concerned with resolving conflicts between member states and with helping sort out domestic political turmoil. Other states picked late on Saturday for three year terms on the body were Kenya, Burundi and Equatorial Guinea.

A bit like placing Haiti in charge of UN-Habitat.

Viceland.com has produced an amazing series titled “The Vice Guide to Liberia” that is an excellent and engaging piece of media on the founding and history of Liberia, together with a gruesome review of the civil war that plagued the country through the late 1990s and early 00s.

“This is like a civil war on steroids, a post-apocalyptic armageddon with child soldiers smoking heroin, cross-dressing cannibals, systematic rape, it’s total hell on earth.”

But for those of you read this and think the world is beyond hope, don’t forget that General Butt Naked, who makes an appearance in the opening of the documentary, has been saved by Jesus, and there’s now a documentary out on his redemption, The Redemption of General Butt Naked.

For those still peddling the line that piracy is carried out by poor, starving Africans, victimized by evil European fisherman, this article not only provides evidence to the contrary, but speaks to the advanced nature of it in both a business and social sense.

It is a lucrative business that has drawn financiers from the Somali diaspora and other nations—and now the gangs in Haradheere have set up an exchange to manage their investments.

[...] “Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 ‘maritime companies’ and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking,” Mohammed said. “The shares are open to all and everybody can take part, whether personally at sea or on land by providing cash, weapons or useful materials … we’ve made piracy a community activity.”
[...] “The district gets a percentage of every ransom from ships that have been released, and that goes on public infrastructure, including our hospital and our public schools.”

Reading the article, I almost think I’m reading Global Guerillas. As pirates continue to extend their reach offshore, and Western nations continue to needlessly devise ridiculous non-lethal anti-pirate weapons, despite the fact that the problem of piracy was solved centuries ago with firearms, it would seem naive to believe a few semi-coordinated naval ships unwilling to actually use lethal force will solve the problem. If anything, I’d wager that piracy will actually increase due to the international naval presence as that will drive up the profit margin for successful raids, similar to the failed American War on Drugs where the DEA serves only to maintain and ensure the profitibility of drugs.

Lastly, given a previous Wired article discussion of the international side of the business, this blogger wonders whether such a new “stock exchange” will further internationalize the business past the traditional diaspora connections and secondly, whether this could be an early attempt, or even precedent for similar “black stock exchanges” in other illicit businesses such as drugs, weapons, people and other smuggling for example. If decentralization and internationalization are key driving forces in crime and terrorism, it would seem that “publicly traded criminal enterprise” may be a logical extension. Readers?

Although the news is currently focusing on the shooting of over a hundred protesters in Guinea, another side of the story unheard in English language news regards the background of the country’s current president, Moussa Dadis Camara. Prior to overthrowing the government in his native country, he received 18 months of military training in Bremen, Germany (link in German) at the Führungsakadamie der Bundeswehr (link in German). Needless to say, Germany is less than thrilled about the news. However, no one would likely have known had Camara not been speaking German in public. According to reports, several of his closest friends were also sent to Germany for training and thus speak fluent German, very rare in Guinea. Therefore, he has apparently been using it as a ‘secret language.’ Additionally, he apparently talks to the foreign press in German as well.

Most humorous was an exchange between him and the German ambassador in which the ambassador carefully asked about the future return of elections and civilian leadership. Camara began yelling that it was his country and he could do as he liked because he was president and in an Eric Cartman-esque moment, to “Respect my authority.” Whether this turns out to be a domestic issue is unclear at the moment but overall unlikely. With the election Sunday, the economic crisis and many other big fish to fry, this will probably remain an interesting side story. However, as Germany trains more and more foreign students (both police and military) these types of events may come back to haunt them down the road similar to our School of the Americas which had to undergo a name change. Given that the German people are uneasy about all military matters, bad press like this will only serve to further decrease public support for any kind of military engagement whether training foreigners at home or operating abroad.

I’m pretty disappointed with the quality of the media reports concerning the riots in Uganda. Articles from America’s most reputable news sources confuse facts, give insufficient background, and muddle the narrative—and that’s the case in numerous accounts in mainstream outlets. No story explains why “one of the kings” is behind the riots, and why there are multiple kings.

Regular ComingAnarchy readers shouldn’t be so confused—I explained the five constituent kingdoms of Uganda earlier this year, and you’ll forgive me if I say that post is probably the best concise explanation on the internet of these restored cultural institutions. In a nutshell, landlocked Uganda remained independent from European colonialism longer than most other parts of Africa, and several of its kingdoms survived through colonialism, only to be abolished upon national independence. Uganda restored the five kingdoms in 1993, but only as cultural entities and the kings are not allowed to participate in politics, which practically means they cannot tax and they must raise money through their own business.

The problem gets down to this—the borders of these kingdoms were never finalized, and basically reflect the kingdoms as their borders were at independence. Buganda is the largest kingdom due to its cooperation with the British authorities, who granted the Buganda large land concessions, whereas historically Bunyoro was the largest kingdom, and from which most modern kingdoms received independence.

Bugerere County is one of many places that is part of Buganda but wants to seced. Situated on the map above within Buganda territory south of the lake in the north, it is looking to join the neighboring Buyoro kingdom, and in the wake of its effective secession, the king of Buganda planned to visit there. The government blocked his visit and violent riots erupted in protest.

Bunyoro was the largest kingdom in Uganda from the 16th to 19th centuries, and most other kingdoms won independence from Bunyoro at some time in history. But Bunyoro is also the site of the recent oil discoveries in Uganda, and stands to profit enormously from the extraction—which is even more important for Uganda’s kings since they must finance their own cultural regimes. Bunyoro is respected among the citizenry and perceived by Buganda to receive favoritism from the government (the powerful President Yoweri Museveni has held the position for two decades and is himself a member of the Ankole kingdom).

That is the origin of the crisis, distilled down to a few paragraphs. Uganda has long seemed a peaceful nation when compared to the violence in neighboring Rwanda, DRC, Somalia, and Kenya—but the disputes between and inside the kingdoms of Uganda. Said one member of parliament representing a district inside Bunyoro: “Who says Bunyoro has ever been stable? This situation has been hibernating and now that it is out in the open, it is potentially explosive unless resolved. Of course, oil production will be affected.”

A Fistful of Euros has an interesting collection of first impressions in a visit to Senegal, and takes not on how French it is. I would recommend reading the entire post in its entirety, but one interesting comment is noted below on the relative calm and stability of the nation:

One interesting thing about Senegal: politically, it’s West Africa’s great success story. Senegal has no history of ethnic strife. It’s never had a military dictatorship or a coup. Their first President stepped down from power peacefully and voluntarily; their second one was defeated in a fair election. There’s a free press and a lively political opposition. They’ve never had martial law or a civil war. (There was a regionalist rebellion down south, but it never got past the guerrillas-in-the-bush stage, and has since been resolved.) So, while it has the full complement of African problems — poverty, disease, bad infrastructure, illiteracy — it’s not a place where the government may suddenly take away your passport or your business, or where armed men may bang on your door in the middle of the night. I suspect that’s one reason the diasporid communities are so healthy.

The Zimbabwean dollar has had a harrowing history. Hyperinflation has seen rates in the millions of percentile. In 2007 the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe declared inflation illegal. Now most people simply use other currencies. The reasons are plain enough from the brilliant piece of art above.

Nice find Soob.

Eddie beat me to this, but he doesn’t have a cool map =)

The BBC reports that 26 African countries, which were previously split into three trading blocs, The Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) and the East African Community (EAC), have signed a free trade agreement covering a vast part of the African continent.

While Africa is mostly a Gap continent, this is an important move towards the Core in the long term. The agreement also detailed further goals of the block, namely: a single customs union and harmonizing their transport, technology and energy infrastructure. A Free Trade Zone will begin to better integrate the continent, giving it more weight internationally and allowing it to deal as a bloc in negotiating agreements with the rest of the world. The free trade zone will not just integrate Africa economically, but slowly lead towards more political and popular integration as both governments and peoples better see their shared fates and interdependence. A South African government official hit the nail on the head:

“We don’t think its going to be an easy process… (but it’s) the only viable path the continent can take if it wants to play in this global environment,” Ntsaluba said.

African leaders have understood the Core/Gap divide and may be a long way from entering, but seem to have decided their path. It will be important to see how well the new group can effectively open and police their borders, coordinate and improve transportation infrastructure and fight corruption. Although the agreement is grounds for optimism, transportation and corruption will now be the two biggest factors in determining how well this agreement functions.

Listen to Chris Abani talk about growing up during the Biafran war (16:14). There are some serious highs and serious lows. My fave is the sheep anecdote.

Download the MP3 here if you want just the audio. More talks at TED.

The latest Kaplan is out, and our favorite journalist and patron saint is in fine form! With a comment titled “The Return of Thomas Malthus,” the MAN himself talks about the rise in global food prices and a renewed focus on the apostle of demographic catastrophe.

In the 1990s, a number of writers, including me, were denounced as grim, deterministic Malthusians because of our emphasis on the role the natural world played in global affairs. It was an era without limits, it seemed, when any country could achieve prosperity and human rights. Contrarily, we argued that rising populations, depleted soils and water resources, and other natural phenomena might limit what could be achieved in specific places, and that there was therefore a need for tragic realism.

Now tragic realism is all the rage, and the media have started to look at Malthus positively. But journalists still misunderstand him. He was a more sympathetic figure than his philosophy may indicate, and his philosophy itself is far broader than the media’s concentration on his ill-starred demographic theory indicates.

Malthus’ specific theory that population increases geometrically while food supplies increase only arithmetically has been shown to be wrong because it did not take into account new technologies. The Industrial Revolution, larger farms, improved fertilizers and much more has consistently increased agricultural output such that famine is left in the dust (and as Kaplan showed in his first book Surrender or Starve, most famines that do occur are created by political manipulations by evil people vying for power). Today, even as Malthus’ name is reemerging in newspapers, Kaplan notes that our current interest in his theories may be short-lived if a new green revolution sweeps Africa, where the population is expected to more than double in my lifetime.

However, once again quoting Kaplan:

If Malthus is wrong, then why is it necessary to prove him wrong again and again, every decade and every century? Perhaps because a fear exists that at some fundamental level, Malthus is right. For the great contribution of this estimable man was to bring nature itself into the argument over politics. Indeed, in an era of global warming, Malthus may prove among the most-relevant philosophers of the Enlightenment.

P.S. Thanks Eddie! As always!