The new sterile and faceless Africa?

Finally I got the chance to see Jens Assur’s photo exhibition Africa is a Great Country at Liljewalchs in Stockholm. There have been a lot of discussions concerning the provocative Africa-is-a-country  title and this has partly overshadowed the content. Is the title ironic or not? Colleagues of mine have already discussed this at NAI Forum. Assur himself states, in his introductory text to the exhibition, that it is meant as an irony directed towards Swedes who still talks about travels to “Africa” – as a monolith – and doesn’t break the continent down into the 50 + countries it contains of. But he doesn’t clarify why he pairs “great” with Africa as a country. Is that also an irony? That is probably not his intention; yet it comes out as a not a very thought through title. Or maybe it is; maybe it has been one of the few ways to lure an audience to an otherwise rather dull exhibition?

Assur worked nine months, and travelled 12 African countries, but still came up with a, perhaps new, but rather one-dimensional picture of Africa (taking dead shots of buildings shouldn’t take that long!). The pictures are huge indeed and made for the audience to loose themselves into, but with few exceptions they work more as elevator music. That they are sized XXL does in a strange way make them even more remote and impersonal, and maybe that is what Assur wants – but why? Is sterility Assur’s idea of modernity; is that the great new Africa he is talking about? In writing he himself states that he doesn’t want to talk about a new Africa – because he does not want to replace one “monochrome” with another. The intention is good but his pictures speak otherwise. One monochrome is in fact replacing another. His updated Africa equals high-rises and airports. Great Africa in Assur’s gaze is infrastructure not people. Africans are disregarded as if they were not part of this great Africa.

The great skyline of the African city. All photos by the author.

Learning about great Africa?

Transient audience

Jesper watching one of the more “living” images. Rice being loaded at the Tema port in Ghana.

Mariam looking at a picture of a petrol station in Sinkor, Monrovia, which she is familiar with. It is one of the few images that spurs further discussions due to the fact that we both do research in Monrovia.

Emerging shoppingscapes

Tourists at Victoria Falls. Detail of picture.

Assur states, on Liljewalchs’ homepage, “we are constantly fed with the image of Africa dying. Now I want to show how Africa lives”. That’s a worthwhile effort, but that is exactly what he does not. Here he fails most. There is not a single picture of how African people live. Instead the pictures are de-peopled and the few people present are tragically faceless. People are looking away, or appear downcast. Are they bowing for the great Africa or just shying away from the “white” man with the camera? Tragically and perhaps tellingly the only person looking into the camera is a Chinese tourist at the Victoria Falls. He is doing the V-sign.

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The (LRA) conflict: Beyond the LRA lobby & the hunt for Kony… and towards civilian protection – By Kristof Titeca

On the 28th of February this year, an unfortunate incident happened in Garamba National Park, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)-affected area in North-Eastern Congo. A group of Congolese soldiers went on patrol, in order to track LRA-elements; while at the same time a group of (armed) park rangers was patrolling the park. In an area where civilians were present, both groups noticed each other, and both groups considered the other group to be the LRA. The shooting between the two groups, left one Congolese soldier and one civilian dead, and three soldiers and one civilian wounded. The following day, the park rangers were actually attacked by the LRA in the same area, but managed to push them away after heavy fighting. A park ranger later died of his injuries.  At least, all of this was the official version of the events, which was communicated by the Congolese soldiers involved.  Reports from local civil society groups and international military actors revealed that the above group of soldiers was poaching in the park: they had killed 2 hippopotamus, and had asked civilians to help them cutting and transporting the animals. The park rangers had noticed them, and fighting erupted, which resulted in the above injuries and killings. In retaliation, the soldiers had attacked the park rangers the next day. They also threatened to attack any park ranger leaving the park, or passing through their area. This tense situation also had a strong effect on civilian life: not only were civilians wounded through the above attacks; civil society actors complained that markets could no longer take place, as civilians feared more violence and attacks by the soldiers, who were blaming civilians for the park rangers’ attacks.

These events are illustrative for life in the LRA-affected area in the Democratic Republic of Congo: the fight against the LRA has led to a strong militarization of the area, of which various armed actors are taking advantage. These are not only Congolese soldiers, but also armed poachers and bandits. All of these actors pose a threat to the security of the civilian population.  This crucial point is neglected by a number of external interventions in the area, which are principally focused on Kony and the LRA. This approach has again been put in the limelight through the recently launched US War Crimes Rewards Programs, which gives awards of up to $ 5 million for evidence leading to the capture of Joseph Kony and the two other top commanders of the Lord’s Resistance Army. The measure is complementary to previous efforts to stop the LRA violence, such as the Kony 2012 campaign, which also had a specific focus on Kony in order to end the conflict.  Both actions explicitly state how they want to end civilian suffering in LRA-affected areas through their actions – Ben Keesey, Invisible Children’s CEO for example explicitly stated in an interview with The Times newspaper, about the Kony 2012 campaign how “The true measure of success for this campaign is if people’s lives are getting better on the ground”.

These Kony- and LRA-driven approaches have two major problems: one, they ignore the complex and multi-faced reality of security threats to people’s lives in LRA-affected areas. The presence of the LRA acted as a catalyzer for these different threats. Some of these threats were already present in this area, but became further empowered through the presence of the LRA. Other threats are inherently related to the fight against the LRA and the militarization of the area. Second, an exclusive focus on ‘hunting’ the LRA obscures these other threats, and makes addressing these more difficult.

The LRA Crisis Tracker is a good example of the limits of this ‘LRA-only’ approach: this tool, developed by Invisible Children and Resolve, collects data on LRA incidents in LRA-affected areas. In analysing the number of LRA attacks, abductions and killings, the Crisis Tracker indeed is a good advocacy tool to highlight the LRA threat – and does a great job in silencing misinformed criticisms that the LRA is no longer active. Yet, the Crisis Tracker in itself presents a flawed image of the security situation, by only focusing on one of the armed threats to the population – the LRA, and not looking at the other threats. The partial nature of these statistics becomes very clear when looking at other data from the area: the ‘protection cluster’ coordinated by the UN refugee agency UNHCR, keeps statistics on ‘protection’ incidents towards civilians in LRA-affected areas in the DRC – these incidents include rape, killing, abduction, looting, and so on. These incidents are collected through international NGOS and local organizations on the ground in the affected areas, and do not only focus on the LRA. In doing so, they show how the lives of civilians are a continuous struggle, in which they are threatened by a variety of armed actors: in 2011, a dramatic 48% of all incidents against civilians were committed by individual Congolese soldiers, while (only) 17% were caused by the LRA. The remaining incidents are caused by bandits (Congolese or South Sudanese), armed poachers (from as far as Libya, Chad or South Sudan) and local authorities (such as the police).

This does mean that the LRA is not an important threat. On the contrary, much of the problems are caused by its presence: many of these armed actors – and particularly the Congolese soldiers – are only present in the area because of the LRA. Although the soldiers’ presence to a certain extent indeed deterred the LRA, the presence of the LRA equally offered a number of opportunities. This sometimes happened in collaboration with civilian actors, but more often, soldiers were preying on the civilian population. Various actors, such as armed bandits and again the Congolese soldiers, have in turn been copying LRA attacks, in order to put the blame on the LRA. In other words, the ‘LRA hunt’ allowed individual armed actors to profit from the situation in various ways – with a strongly negative effect for the population. As shown by local civil society reports, a rather cynical example of this dynamic was the trade in ammunition and weapons by Congolese army actors to the LRA in 2010; something which was found out after two LRA prisoners disclosed how they were receiving supplies from Congolese soldiers.

In their efforts to present a simple and accessible story, the anti-LRA lobby organizations (Invisible Children, Enough, Resolve) neglect an important part of the local security dynamics, and the negative consequences of these for the population. While this ‘LRA only’ view definitely allows to gather funding and attention – as the Kony 2012 video has shown – this view equally leads to a reduced effectiveness in interventions, as they are not equipped to deal with the other threats to people’s lives. Invisible Children’s high-frequency radio’s in LRA-affected areas are a good example of this: these radio’s allow remote communities to seek for help in case of LRA-attacks, and to communicate with other localities. This would have been useful to protect the population from large-scale LRA attacks, such as the 2008 and 2009 Christmas massacres (although it remains unclear how any intervention force could arrive in time). It however is much more difficult to protect the population from the small-scale hit-and-run attacks which the various armed actors in LRA-affected areas are using. And it certainly is much more difficult to protect the population from harassment from individual Congolese soldiers, as it simply is (too) risky for civilians to report on army abuses through these radio posts (as these radio posts are exchanging military information, the armed forces closely monitor them); and as soldiers have on occasions controlled these radio posts. Even when using code language, the operators still fear retaliation. In other words, a particular view on civilian protection in these areas – in which only the LRA is perceived as a threat, not any other groups, and certainly no internal threat – leads to particular interventions, which are ill-equipped to address all suffering, and report all incidents. Given the high rate of incidents with soldiers, this is highly problematic.

Moreover, the ‘LRA only’ narrative  has made it more difficult for humanitarian organizations active in the area to rally support and funding for a more holistic approach on civilian protection, which also addresses these other threats. This ‘messy’ image is much harder to sell to the wider public, and much harder to intervene in: the threat is no longer a clearly definable ‘evil’ outsider, but a multiple threat which consists of both insiders (such as individual Congolese soldiers, local bandits) and outsiders (the LRA, foreign bandits, different groups of poachers). Reducing these internal threats is only possible through addressing the behavior of the government soldiers, and re-establishing the judicial system and the general functioning of the state in these marginalized areas.  However, and particularly in 2011 and 2012, humanitarian actors were complaining that this dominant ‘LRA only’ discourse made it very hard to find donor money for this: all programs had to be defined as LRA, whilst the reality on the ground is much more complicated and messy. Consequently, a number of humanitarian actors were discontent that they had to emphasize the presence of the LRA in their programs, and not the other groups. As a result, a number of programs were implemented which were specifically targeted towards LRA-effects, but – in a situation of strongly reduced LRA attacks – had relatively little results; while the increased attacks and dangers of other actors were not sufficiently addressed.

In sum, the fight against the LRA does not occur in a vacuum: it leads to a range of abuses, which have been made possible through the fight against the LRA, and which are inherently related to the militarization of the region. A strict focus on the LRA in this ‘messy’ security context, and not on how various actors profit from this situation, further empowers these armed actors, and further helps these abuses occur. A second important point is that the protection of civilians equally does not occur in a vacuum. If organisations such as Invisible Children really want to improve the lives of people on the ground – as their CEO pointed out – realities on the ground should not be sacrificed for simple narratives. It is cynical to single out one threat to civilians (the LRA), while neglecting others, which on a daily basis constitute a major threat for the civilian population.

Kristof Titeca is a Postdoctoral Fellow from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), based at the Institute of Development and Management (University of Antwerp) and the Conflict Research Group (University of Ghent). This text was originally published on the African Arguments blog http://africanarguments.org/2013/05/17/the-lra-conflict-beyond-the-lra-lobby-the-hunt-for-kony-and-towards-civilian-protection-by-kristof-titeca/

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The Malian crisis: causes, consequences, responses by Morten Bøås and Mats Utas

Even if Northern Mali has been in the hands of armed Salafist forces since spring 2012, it has not yet morphed into another ‘Afghanistan’. The Salafist forces, may have taken the name of al-Qaeda, but they are of a different origin and nature than the one in Afghanistan. The danger is, however, that if the international response to Mali is too heavy-handed, it may create a dynamic that pushes the conflict into a similar pattern like the one in Afghanistan.

On January 11, 2013, French airplanes attacked strongholds of Islamist rebels in the north of Mali. Soon thereafter land troops followed in a quick sweeping raid, clearing most of rebel controlled areas. French forces, assisted by several thousand troops from Chad and Niger, thereby efficiently ended the offensive of Islamist rebels and gained nominal control over the cities of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu. This was, however, the easy part.

The Islamists have not completely lost the battle for northern Mali. They still have the capacity to resist and even strike inside towns formally under French control. As France is scaling down its number of troops from 4,000 to 1,000 by the end of the year, controlling this vast territory will prove even more difficult for the remaining French force and the joint ECOWAS/AU mission and the Malian army.

Causes of conflict

The current conflict is not new. Northern Mali is originally the homeland of the Tuareg, a people whose position in the Sahel was turned upside down by French colonialism. The Tuaregs who once controlled the inter-Saharan trade routes and saw themselves as ‘masters of the desert’ suddenly became minorities in several new states, and in Mali in particular, a minority ruled by the population they previously had viewed as inferior and historically had directed slave raids towards.

The Tuareg ‘problem’ is a Gordian knot, and ever since Mali became an independent state, the Tuaregs have recurrently rebelled. The first Tuareg rebellion took place in the early 1960s, the second in the early 1990s, and as the National Pact of 1992 failed to produce tangible results on the ground, a new rebellion emerged in 2006. This was relatively small until armed Tuaregs many of whom had lived in Libya for years started to return to Mali following the fall of the Gaddafi regime. Their arrival gave the rebellion new momentum and yet another Tuareg rebel movement was formed, the Movement for the National Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). Whereas Tuareg separatism previously had been a facade for other demands concerning power and positions, MNLA declared full independence of Azawad. The issue was no longer increased access to the spoils of the Malian state, but to break away from it.

However, what little that may have existed of Tuareg unity quickly disappeared and as MNLA fighters looted and plundered in the North and as the Malian army ran away, Salafist forces stepped in and effectively side-lined MNLA.

Consequences and responses

The Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS) had been preparing for an intervention in Mali since the coup in March 2012, but their timeline was one of extensive consultations. ECOWAS wanted to pursue dual track diplomacy, aiming at bringing the Tuareg Islamist movement Ansar ed-Din into a negotiated settlement to separate them from the non-Malian AQIM and MÙJAO, facilitating a government partner in Bamako with a legitimate roadmap to democracy, and reforming the Malian army. As this is a time-consuming process, the ECOWAS intervention had been pushed forward in time to September 2013, meaning that ECOWAS was not the actor to whom Bamako could turn when Ansar and MUJAO started their south-bound offensive in January 2013.

The gut reaction of Bamako was to call the old colonial master in Paris as the last provider of regime security. With French forces still not in full control of the North there is little reason to believe that at least in the direct aftermath of French withdrawal the African PKO that is supposed to take over will be able to accomplish what the French forces could not.

The challenge facing the international community and the forthcoming African intervention is not only how to gain robust military control, but also how to navigate the political landscape of Mali. ECOWAS had started talks with Ansar in order to try to separate them from AQIM and MUJAO. The question is, however, how possible this diplomatic track is as French forces are on the ground and the crisis is caught-up in the discourse of the ‘war on terror’ following the In Amènas attack (in Algeria). What had up to this point been seen mainly as a Malian issue suddenly became an international concern drawing the attention of the U.S. and others to this area as the new front in the ‘war on terror’.

It may be seen as a positive move that a group – the Islamic Movement of Azawad (IMA) – broke away from Ansar after the In Aménas attack, claiming that they were denouncing terrorism and were ready for dialogue. However, not only, is it uncertain how large this group is, but questions can also be asked concerning the influence of its leader.  Considerable social engineering is therefore needed in order to glue together a Tuareg coalition that can be a credible partner for dialogue with the Malian state and the international community.

This is, however, not only a challenge in North Mali; it is just as much the case in Bamako. The current government is at the very best a caretaker government, fragmented between different civilian and military groups. It lacks legitimacy and credibility and even if a new roadmap concerning the return to democratic rule has sat the date for elections to July 31, 2013, the legitimacy of this process is still questioned by several political groups in the country.

Adding to this is the issue of the Malian army having a problem that ranges much deeper than simply the lack of training and equipment that the EU Mission to Mali (EUTM) suggests. The army suffers from internal fragmentation and the lack of a moral compass to underwrite its military operations. It is unfortunately already clear that the Malian army has conducted several human rights abuses in areas it has recaptured from the rebels and technical training will not prevent this in the future.

This means that right now, France and the international community have taken on board partners in Mali (the government and the army) that lack both legitimacy and implementing capacity. This is a serious problem that must be solved if the international community is to find a sustainable solution to the crisis.

Concerned neighbours

Looking at neighbouring Niger and the role of the Tuaregs there one should note that Niger is not Mali. The Tuaregs are better integrated and so far there is little suggesting that there is any immediate danger that the peace agreement from 2009 between the state and the Niger Justice Movement will fall apart. Contrary to the case of Mali, the Nigerien state was present at the border and disarmed Tuareg returnees from Libya. Niger’s new role as a strategic partner for the U.S. (e.g. as a base for American drones) should strengthen the regime in power, but may also make the country a possible target for attacks from AQIM and MUJAO.

Some of the same could be said about Chad. President Deby himself has clearly enhanced his position as it will be difficult for Western donors to criticise his bad track record on governance and human rights (also in the Central African Republic) after he sent troops to Northern Mali. However, the democratic deficits and bad governance that characterise his rule also means that the Islamist rebels could attempt to use this to launch a new front within Chad. Thus, pointing to the obvious fact that the coalition that has been put together to fight the Islamist rebels contain in its midst partners that could come to constitute a problem later down the road.

The Islamist Boko Haram insuregncy in Northern Nigeria is also of concern in this regard. However, even if Boko Haram may have used Northern Mali and Gao in particular as rear bases, there is still little if any evidence to suggest that Boko Haram is in the process of regionalising its insurgency. Its main focus is still Northern Nigeria and local grievances. Thus, even if the possibility of spill-over effects should be taken seriously they should not be over-rated either. The Sahel is not a warzone of a coherent Islamist rebellion, but still more a situation of different insurgencies with local grievances, yet loosely allied through a combination of ideology and pragmatic self-help concerns.

Responses     

It is good that African countries will play a leading role in the international intervention as this may provide a platform for solutions that avoids being caught up in ‘war on terror’ rhetoric. However, the composition of the ECOWAS troops that will have to carry much of the burden as France start downscaling has certain drawbacks. Nigeria will be the chief contributor of troops to the PKO. Nigeria’s military leadership qualities has increased since the 1990s, but they will be operating in what for them is an unknown terrain with a climate and topography that they have little if any experience with. This is somewhat balanced by the soldiers from Chad and Niger who has extensive battle experience from this type of terrain. However as these troops has had little exposure to international PKO’s there is a danger that they do not necessarily have the protection of civilians as one of the core objectives.

The experience from previous attempts at peacekeeping interventions in West Africa is also mixed. As the history of such operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone shows they created some level of stability, but they also became a participant not only in the conflict, but also in the conflict economy. Thus, even if the quality of the West African troops that will constitute the core of mission has improved, there is still clearly a danger that some unwanted by-products of peacekeeping as those that came about in Liberia and Sierra Leone will also materialise in the Malian intervention.

Thus, if the international community is not taking great care concerning such by-products there is a risk that we may repeat several of the early mistakes made in Afghanistan that will have the same negative effects on state stability as we currently see in that country.

This text is originally published in the Finnish Journal of Foreign Affairs 2/2013.

Morten Böås is Senior Researcher at Fafo/Ais in Oslo.

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A scary end for Democrazy in Mali, by Ruben Eberlein

Each time political scientists in the West talked about democratisation in Africa during the last twenty years, you could bet that Mali was rated as a reformer and a good example. The country received a lot of plaudit from Western governments, the academic world and developmental organizations especially for its transition from a long period of military rule under Moussa Traore to a civil government under Alpha Konare. He became the first democratically elected President in 1992.

The coup of March 2012 terminated the Malian experiment with democracy for the time being. Dissatisfied with the hesitant reaction to the uprising of Tuareg and Islamists in the North, young officers under the leadership of Captain Amadou Sanogo disposed the President Amadou Toumani Toure. In August 2012, an interim cabinet under President Dioncounda Traore with 31 ministers officially took over, but most observers believe that the military still holds the real power.

Despite all the regalia, Mali’s democracy had and has not much in common with a parliamentarian democracy in the Western world. Politics and economy of the country were and are coined by clientelistic networks between some big men or big women and a multitude of poor and politically marginalized people. The sheer number of NGO’s and political parties cannot hide the fact that Mali is a neopatrimonial state where the logics of the formal and the informal are intimately intertwined.
____________________
Mali is neopatrimonial state where the logics
of the formal and the informal are intimately intertwined.
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So-called civil society is not a white hope, too. Journalist Charlotte Wiedemann writes about it in a study for Heinrich Böll Foundation: “Many groups in poor Mali are in fact money-raising machines in the field of development cooperation. Often, they orient themselves more on the supposed agenda of donors rather than on their own designs. Alongside this dependency from external donors you find the political instrumentalisation by internal actors: Partly NGO’s were founded directly from politicians in the past (for election campaigns or money-raising), partly leaders misused their NGO as stepping stone for political ambitions.”

Pollitics in Mali is the realm of a small elite. It should not come as a surprise, then, that most of Malians do not bother to vote in the elections which took place regularly since 1992. The voter participation of the presidential elections of 2007 amounted to slightly over 36 per cent; only 33 percent participated in the elections to the parliament in the same year.

In light of these numbers, the complete ignorance of the “international community” (which presses for fast elections in July 2013 in order to return to civilian rule) is unveiled. It is very questionable anyway which value such an election would have if hundred thousands of Malians are on the run because of the war in the North and have to take refuge with relatives in the country or in neighboring countries.

A cause for concern is the increase of ethnically charged tensions foremost in the North of the country. According to information of human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch (HRW), ethnic youth militias of Peul and Songhai descent as well as parts of the military take revenge on alleged or de facto supporters of the Islamists. This mostly concerns Tuareg and people with an Arabic background. HRW informs about the existence of lists with the names of alleged collaborators of the rebels.

Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world. 43 per cent of the 15.8 million inhabitants of the country were living below the national poverty line in 2010. This is, according to information of the World Bank, an improvement when compared to 2001 (55,6 per cent), but still unacceptably high. In 2006 alphabetisation was only 26 per cent, despite the fact that 80 per cent of children visited a school. Only half of the population has access to clean drinking water.

Economically the country is dependent foremost on the export of cotton and some other rural products as well as stock farming while the mass of people practices subsistence farming. The monoculture of cotton was established by the French colonialists in order to become independent from US-American imports.

In the South and West of Mali gold is mined. The country holds the third place of gold exporters at the continent behind South Africa and Ghana. The precious metal ranks at the third place in the list of government revenue. There is a lot of speculation about the existence of other minerals – especially by conspiracy theorists with regards to the engagement of the French in the North. But for now, gold and salt in the North are the only resources worth mentioning.

Development aid is of importance for the Malian economy, too. The contribution of Official Development Assistance (ODA) is 16 per cent of the GDP; moreover, foreign NGO’s especially in the rural areas take over tasks that should be the realm of the state like education and health services. According to Wiedemann, there existed at times about 2000 NGO’s in Mali.

A really substantial democracy in Mali should be in the position to distance itself from the agenda of donors and establish a self-reliant way of development. A precondition for this is the effective involvement of the rural an urban citizens and the creation of enthusiasm for a new political project. But in times of an Islamist aggression in the North and a military engagement against the extremists, the signs for such a development are not exactly positive.

This is a shorter English version of an article published in the recent edition of Blätter des iz3w. Ruben Eberlein is an independent scholar. He is blogging on rubeneberlein.wordpress.com

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West Point – Conflicting perceptions of crime, security and Liberian ex-combatants (by Mariam Persson)

Chaos is something we tend to see when we don’t understand how things work. Chaos is what we think we witness when we forget to take our time to listen to people’s stories, and let fear and excitement lead us in our hunt for sensational war stories.

I struggle to keep up with Adam today. He is walking fast and Will and I have to hurry along the narrow alley-ways between the small zinc houses and sheds not to lose sight of him. We have to squeeze ourselves between women cooking for their families, children playing in the small open spaces and chasing each other between the houses. I apologise for being in the way and for just walking in where women are preparing food, people are having their meals or taking a rest. Most people just give me friendly smiles back and continue with their business. A few look a bit surprised to see a stranger there but most don’t bother at all. I try to focus on where Adam is going so he won’t have to wait for us on every corner, but I haven’t seen Will in a long time and we get caught up in our conversation as usual and Adam patiently has to wait. Adam turns left and right along narrow paths between the cramped houses. I turn to Will and joke about whether Adam actually knows where he is going. Will laughs and admits that he has no idea where we are either. But Adam knows his way around here. He used to live here for some years just after the war. For me West Point still is a maze. I had only been in this community a few times since I first started to visit Monrovia some years ago. Situated on a peninsula jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean this township of the Liberian capital wasn’t a place one often just passed by without any particular errand. However, doing research on what I call ‘post-war rebel networks’, ex-combatants who had preserved their links to each other after the war came to an end, it was maybe a bit strange that my research hadn’t brought me to this township that often in the past, judging from its reputation of being inhabited by so many ex-combatants. But my informants had been residing elsewhere. I only recently had begun to spend more time in West Point.

Adam and Will, two young men who used to spend their nights as vigilantes when I first got to know them a few years back, had introduced me to a friend of theirs who lived in West Point. I still couldn’t find the way to Abraham’s house on my own so I was happy to have Adam and Will keeping me company. This day Will and I talked about West Point’s unenviable reputation. The rumours of this notorious neighbourhood would not pass anyone by unnoticed. West Point is desperately poor with few employment opportunities. It is heavily overcrowded and the water and sanitation situation is catastrophic. People face tremendous challenges in this township. Still there is something about how West Point and its inhabitants are being portrayed that I find very disturbing. Browsing the internet for articles and reportage on West Point you don’t have to look for too long until you find the township described as a society completely lost to anarchy, crime and violence with inhabitants portrayed mainly as drug-abusing ex-combatants making their money on drug dealing, prostitution and armed robbery.

A few years ago a Swedish newspaper decided to portray Liberia and West Point in the same kind of manner. In an article describing Liberia as “hell on earth”, “where murder, rape drugs and AIDS is everyone’s everyday life”, the newspaper drew attention, and posted a link, to what the filmmakers themselves called a ‘documentary’. But the “The Vice Guide to Liberia” far from documented Liberia and West Point in a nuanced way. Instead of trying to understand post-war Liberia, and the situation of ex-combatants and others living in West Point and other impoverished areas, the TV team ran around Liberia in search of sensational news on ‘cannibal warlords’, teenage prostitutes and drug abusing children. The film was appalling. My colleagues Mats Utas, Ilmari Käihkö and I decided to write a response. In the article we called “Jackass Journalism in the darkest Africa” (after the famous TV show “Jackass”) we argued that media generally present Africa and African conflict-related issues in an extremely stereotypical way. We suggested that the so-called documentary was a ‘worst case’ example of this. The film team was fleeing from one scene to another, acting like their very lives were in danger. What they actually were running from was more unclear. Provoking, rather than interviewing, prostitutes and drug affected residents they seemed to have no understanding of the chaos they themselves were creating with their cameras, intruding ways and lack of respect as they were hunting for sensational stories in West Point late at night. Without knowledge of cultural codes or context the reporters nervously laughed in front of the camera, proud to have dared to do a reportage like this. Their combination of fear and excitement was evident. They had found what they wanted to portray, a neighbourhood in total anarchy, a chaos without any logic.

Even though he is used to it, Abraham always gets a bit annoyed when the negative image of West Point is brought up. He finds it unfair. Yes, West Point is poor and crime is a problem but we’re not all bad people here, he often argues. Abraham is an ex-combatant. And he is a resident of West Point. From time to time he makes a bit of extra money working as an informal security provider. His last assignment was for the CDC party, as he like so many other ex-combatants were mobilised during the elections. But Abraham is also a father of six. He is married and he makes his living from petty trading. This day we spend the morning outside Abraham’s little zinc house; Abraham, Adam, Will and I. The next door house is so close to Abraham’s that I can touch it if I just lean forward and reach out my arm. Some of the children passing by us laugh a little when they see me. One little boy gets so frightened when he looks at me that he cries in panic and refuses to walk by. I don’t look Liberian and it scares him. But other than that, my visit doesn’t cause too much attention. Abraham’s wife and daughters are preparing food nearby and his younger children are playing and running errands for their mother. Sometimes they come closer to listen in on our discussions but they quickly get bored and run off to play again. I can’t help but think of the images of the VBS documentary when I’m here. Everyday life is so far away from the violent chaos the filmmakers wanted to portray.

We talk about security this day. About crime and violence and the perception of West Point. Abraham is not particularly afraid in his neighbourhood. He has lived there for long and he knows his neighbours. But he is careful. He lives in a house with no windows. Will laugh at that: he can’t believe why anyone would want to live in a house like that! But Abraham is persistent. With no windows there can be no unexpected visits in the night. And theft at night time is still an issue. But break-ins and theft are obviously not phenomena isolated to West Point. Crime happens everywhere, Abraham often points out. In fact, my informants somewhat ironically argue that parts of West Point are safer than many other areas of Monrovia, not despite its poverty but because of it. ‘You know the criminals, they live here, so of course they don’t want to commit the crimes in their own community: that would cause them too much problems!’ Abraham and Adam argue. And it somehow makes sense. Here housing is affordable, even for those who have the least, making it likely that people engaged in theft due to lack of other economic opportunities would live here. And why risk being caught in your own community?

Nevertheless, crime is a problem in West Point, and theft seems to be what people are most worried about. Yet there is, if not an acceptance, then at least an understanding of those who engaged in theft that I find interesting. People in West Point often saw theft as something young men and women were driven to due to lack of legal ways of making a living. Some of my informants even talked about theft as a form of business. The inhabitants did what they could to protect themselves against theft, but most Liberians I knew had been affected, at least on a small scale. Money being stolen from someone’s bag during an unobservant moment, or a mobile phone being snatched from another one’s pocket was not unusual. But in West Point, as in many other parts of Monrovia, what was stolen could most often be bought back, and that was what the business side of theft was all about. People in the area knew where to turn if they found that some of their belongings had been stolen. Those engaged in this type of criminal activity often worked in networks, linked to an area leader. So when things were stolen, people turned to the leader, who often had received the item shortly after it had been taken. It was not unlikely that the person who had been affected could then buy the item back for a smaller amount of money. A young woman I knew told me about her grandfather who one day had had the misfortune of having 100 USD (a large amount of money for a poor Liberian) stolen from his pocket. Luckily enough he later the same day successfully negotiated to buy the same money back for 5 USD from the gang leader to whom the money had been brought. More often these negotiations took place over stolen mobile phones or other material items. But as seen from this example even stolen money could return to the owner for a reasonable sum following this system. People were obviously enraged when they realised they had been stolen from, and no one liked to have to negotiate and buy their own belongings back. Yet, if not tolerated, even those affected appeared to have an understanding of theft as unavoidable in the absence of employment opportunities. In this respect, West Point was far from a community lost to anarchy, as it is so often portrayed. Although this did not always apply, even theft could be seen to follow codes of morality, a system of social order and a logic people could understand.

I have only just begun to get to know West Point and some of its inhabitants. No one can deny how desperately poor the township is, how hard people struggle just to get by on a daily basis and how crime and lack of social services constantly affect people’s lives. West Point is a complex society, with inhabitants from all kinds of backgrounds in a variety of life situations. Some were fighters during the wars, but many were not. Still, the Liberian civil wars not too long ago cast a shadow over the lives of the residents in this community as over so many other citizens of Liberia. West Point is many things, yet it is far from its stereotypical image as a place of mere chaos, anarchy and violence. Chaos is something we tend to see when we don’t understand how things work. Chaos is what we think we witness when we forget to take our time to listen to people’s stories, and let fear and excitement lead us in our hunt for sensational war stories. There is no lack of social order in West Point but it follows a different logic. Even theft which at a first glance could be seen to indicate chaos and disorder often follows a comprehensible pattern. The high number of ex-combatant residents has contributed to the unenviable reputation of West Point. And yes, ex-combatants do take part in the networks involved in theft and robberies in the area. However, many of the ex-combatants were also part of the informal security networks of the area: vigilante groups that protected the township against crime when the state and formal security apparatus had failed to do so. It is this complexity we so often fail to see and describe. Abraham is a man with a violent past. He is a poor resident of West Point. He is a man who lives in a small zinc house with seven other people, with no windows, running water or electricity. But Abraham is also a man who devotes his life to his family, who struggles hard to pay his daughters’ school fees, who has high hopes and dreams that his youngest son might become a politician one day, and who is annoyed with his oldest son for having so much that he himself never had growing up – such as two pairs of shoes, a decent house, and the opportunity to complete his schooling, without appreciating it. This too is everyday life in West Point, for ex-combatants and others.

Mariam Persson is a doctoral candidate at King’s College London. She has over the last three years conducted fieldwork in Liberia with a focus on former combatants

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Introducing Malitia Malimob: Rap music and the less glamorous stories of African migration to the United States (Guest post by Boima Tucker)

The new “Africa Rising” narrative propagated largely by a globally-connected middle and upper class diaspora, often obscures the grittier stories of the African immigrant experience. This is partly due to an instinct among African immigrants to want to counter the history of one-dimensional and negative portrayals of both Africa and immigrants in the mainstream Western media. While it’s understandable that they’d want to shy away from being associated with crime, fraud, war, lack of employment, social welfare, or some other scourge that the West associates with immigrants and Africa, the struggle that most Africans immigrants go through is real, and sometimes the less glamorous stories of global migration are the ones that most need to be told:

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The Kenyan 2013 elections: some preliminary observations, by Anders Sjögren

After five days of waiting following the general Kenyan elections which took place on 4^th March 2013, the Chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Isaak Hassan, on the 9^th March declared Uhuru Kenyatta of the Jubilee Alliance the winner and President elect. According to IEBC figures, Uhuru got 50,07 % of the votes – just slightly more than 4000 votes above the threshold of the required simple majority. Contrary to repeatedly stated fears, these elections were by and large free from violence. Thus, there was no repeat of January 2008. The process however did invoke strong memories of December 2007 – this was another failed election.

A few hours after the declaration of Uhuru as the winner, his closest competitor, Raila Odinga of the Coalition for Reform and Democracy (CORD) gave a speech in which he rejected the results, due to various forms of alleged vote rigging. CORD will now take its complaints to the Supreme Court, which has fourteen days to reach a decision. Until the Court has pronounced itself, it is probably wise to be careful in analysing the results, as the authenticity of this is uncertain. However, even preliminary observations suggest that this was a poorly organised and managed election. Not only did the tallying process suffer from major technical and administrative failures, there are also strong indications of quite a number of irregularities and breaking of electoral laws.

Should the Supreme Court nullify the results, different consequences are possible, depending on the evidence presented and how the case is argued. One possibility would be fresh elections to be held within 60 days following the ruling. Should the Court however uphold the results, Jubilee will have a firm grip on political power, controlling not only the executive but also the legislature with a majority in both parliament and the Senate. If that should turn out to be the case, the most immediate major challenge will be the ICC cases, since both Uhuru and his running mate William Ruto are charged with crimes against humanity in that court. Their respective trials have been postponed: Ruto’s until May and Uhuru’s until July.

There are two major political dimensions to the cases. One concerns a possible Jubilee government’s relations with foreign countries, of which the US and the EU have stated that there will not be business as usual with ICC suspects in power. Given Kenya’s regional economic and geo-political significance, however, that statement is likely to be given pragmatic interpretation for as long as Uhuru and Ruto continue to cooperate with the ICC. They most probably will, at least for as long as the cases are not likely to be anywhere near a guilty verdict, or don’t make governing difficult to the extent of posing serious challenges to their political control.

The domestic political dimension has so far not been very much discussed, but may turn out to becoming equally significant. Uhuru and Ruto campaigned together on a ticket that to a large extent was anti-ICC based. Their cases are however different, and may produce witness statements against either of the two by individuals belong to the other person’s camp. Once the trials start, every man will have to fight for himself, and a fallout between the two (and between the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin populations that Uhuru and Ruto, respectively, represent and claim to have reunited after the 2008 violence) is a distinct possibility.

Anders Sjögren is a researcher at The Nordic Africa Institute and Department of political science at Stockholm University. Sjögren was present in Nairobi during the elections.

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Will UN “rape ultimatums” end abuses by the Congolese army? by Maria Eriksson Baaz, Maria Stern, Judith Verweijen

Last week the headlines of various international media, including the BBC, Reuters and Jeune Afrique, featured the story of an ultimatum issued by the UN peace keeping force in the DR Congo (MONUSCO) over allegations of mass rape committed by the Congolese army (FARDC) in the town of Minova in November 2012. The alleged rapes were committed by fleeing/retreating FARDC troops in the wake of the M23 rebel advance and take-over of Goma. Unless “swift legal action” is taken by the end of March, MONUSCO says, it will stop working with the two battalions identified as harboring the perpetrators of rape.

This is, of course, good news. Surely, perpetrators of crimes must be prosecuted and convicted, especially when they serve in the national armed forces. Moreover, the ultimatum is grounded in a conditionality policy, which stipulates that army units that commit human rights abuses should receive no MONUSCO support (such as transport and rations.)

Yet, this ultimatum is also rather discomforting. Similarly to other calls from human rights advocacy outfits to end impunity for rape, it tends to portray the task at hand as a simple one: “find the perpetrators, put them to trial and convict them – now”. Yet, everywhere in the world, rape is one of the most difficult crimes to investigate. Given poor investigative capacities and the lack of vital technologies, such as DNA analysis, investigating rape crimes is even more challenging in a context like the DRC. In the specific case of Minova, the fact that the alleged crimes were committed in the midst of a mass of disorganized troops on the move, does not make the task any easier.

This context requires that the evidence on which this ultimatum rests come under careful scrutiny. This is particularly so in light of the fact that investigations by the Military Prosecutor’s Office of the DRC are ongoing, and therewith, as of yet, incomplete. The Military Prosecutor’s Office conducted two missions in December and February, in the course of which they questioned 548 witnesses. However, based on its own-parallel-investigations, the UN now claims to “have identified a number of perpetrators.” This is certainly a positive development.  Nonetheless, we wonder, what they will do with this evidence—evidence that is presumably based on systematic and thorough investigations—besides using it to put pressure on the Congolese government in their calls for “swift legal action”? In sum, what exactly, is the UN calling for, and what is it doing to guide the Prosecutor’s Office in the quest for justice through legal action?

For if, indeed, the UN is not assisting the DRC’s Military Prosecutor’s Office to identify the perpetrators based on their own, apparently more effective, investigations, then the assurances of the Congolese Minister of Defense that “the offenders will be severely punished,” fills us with unease. As is well known (and frequently emphasized by the very actors calling for the end of impunity) the Congolese justice system is seriously flawed in several respects: It is characterized by substantial violations of fair trial procedures and deficient standards of evidence, with convictions too often reflecting the marginalized position of the convict, rather than his/her culpability. This arbitrary nature of the justice system is also evident in the trials of sexual violence cases. In recent years, such cases are often addressed in donor-funded “mobile courts”, which are geared towards trying a maximum number of cases in a relatively short time-span. A recent study by Douma and Hilhorst found that only half of the convictions in sexual violence cases in the sample that they researched had sufficient evidentiary backing, leading them to conclude that “suspects are likely to be convicted, regardless of the evidence presented to sustain the case”.

Douma and Hilhorst’s study corroborates our own research findings on accountability practices in the FARDC. We have found that when there is pressure to apprehend suspects, whether from the commandment, politicians, or international actors, a number of scapegoats are often selected  from amongst the most marginalized of the lower ranks, or from those soldiers who (for various reasons) are disliked by their commanders. In this context, the ultimatum by the UN creates an elevated risk that the FARDC will resort to the strategy of showcasing “token suspects” in order to satisfy external pressures and show the world that “something is being done”.

Importantly, a scenario in which scapegoats are presented in order to comply with MONUSCO’s demand for quick convictions, would further reduce the already limited confidence that FARDC soldiers have in the military justice system. Amongst FARDC staff, military justice practices are widely perceived as unpredictable, unfair, and heavily influenced by favoritism and power relations. This lack of legitimacy tends to undermine any possible effects of deterrence, since it feeds sentiments that it does not matter (in terms of juridical consequences) whether one commits an abuse or not, as “you might just end up in jail anyway”. At the same time, those with high-level connections are confident that they can avoid justice, should they be apprehended.

Are we suggesting, then, that calls for perpetrators to be persecuted should be stopped? Certainly not. We are strongly in favor of a solution that includes prosecutions, yet we argue for a more nuanced approach—one that is less focused on quick, visible and measurable results in terms of numbers of convictions, (as is also the focus of the mobile courts system), and prioritizes due process. This would entail much greater investments in improving investigative capacity, guaranteeing minimum fair trial standards, and raising the standards of evidence. Furthermore, we call for an approach that focuses more strongly on command responsibility and prevention (such as putting more effort into the training of lower-level commanders) rather than only on placing individual perpetrators behind bars. We also welcome more systematic and wide-spread efforts at ending impunity, instead of those concentrated on a few high-profile cases that promise to attract mass media attention.

Furthermore, we call for greater consistency on the part of the UN in their policy vis-à-vis the FARDC, which has often been inconsistent and ad-hoc. The investigations into the rapes allegedly committed by the troops of Lt.Col. Kifaru in Abala and Nyakiele (Fizi) in June 2011 are a case in point. After deserting from the Kananda regimentation centre, Kifaru fled into the mountains, while his c. 200 troops committed serious human rights violations on the way. Whereas there was initially doubt over the numbers of those raped (with rape claims rapidly augmenting after MSF arrived 10 days after the incident) the UN later declared to the press they found evidence of mass rape. The UN hinted at the figure of 121 victims (a number apparently not corroborated, as the 2012 report of the UNSG on conflict-related sexual violence stated that “it has been difficult to ascertain the scope and magnitude of the incidents”). However, there was sufficient evidence that large-scale abuses had been committed, prompting the South Kivu Military Prosecutor’s Office to launch investigations. These were nonetheless stopped, due to pressure from ex-CNDP circles. A few months later, Kifaru was appointed commander of the 111^thregiment. The UN chose not to publicly react to these events. Certainly, it is understandable that a peacekeeping mission pragmatically operates within the confines of the host-country’s political context, yet events such as these evoke an image of the UN’s inconsistency among local actors. In this case, many (non-ex-CNDP) FARDC soldiers perceived the UN’s silence as evidence that the mission was politically biased.

In conclusion, we call for more consistency and responsible engagement in addressing rape committed by the FARDC, which is an issue of vital importance in any defense reform effort. While we share the UN’s urgent demand for ending impunity for the crime of sexual violence, we insist that efforts to do so are carefully considered and aim for structural, longer-term change, and, importantly, also reflect a responsibility towards soldiers who risk being tried unfairly and arbitrarily. This implies that the lack of fair trial procedures should be criticized with equal conviction when it comes to military suspects as is the case with civilians. We fear that a situation has been created in which efforts to address impunity are measured in a simplistic manner by the amount of uniformed men put behind bars. We believe that this not only risks violating the human rights of many soldiers, but is ultimately also counterproductive to the efforts to combat sexual violence, as well as other human rights offences, in the DRC.

Maria Eriksson Baaz is Associate Professor at the Nordic Africa Institute and the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University. Maria Stern is Professor at the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University. Judith Verweijen is a PhD Candidate at the Centre for Conflict Studies at Utrecht University

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Informal networks and excombatants: brief meeting report from Liberia

Networks of Big Men become alternative governance structures in states where formal governance structures are weak. This is especially the case in post-war societies. With a specific focus on Liberia the outcome of this was discussed at a meeting organized by the Swedish Embassy and UNMIL in Monrovia. The SRSG to Liberia, Liberian ministers, UN staff and ambassadors where among the sixty participants of a two hour seminar on March 6, 2013. Gun Eriksson Skoog and Mats Utas from the institute together with Mariam Persson Swedish National Defence College/Kings College London gave a lecture that was followed by a lively discussion by an informed crowd.

More specifically we discussed what implications informal power structures of the war years have in current Liberia. What roles former commanders of the rebel movements have and what kind of integration of former combatants Liberia have seen as former rebel structures have continued to linger in the post-war. Utas and Persson pointed out how such structures have been amply used by political and economic elites and how former soldiers are up to this day, ten years after the end of the war, dependent on these networks for survival. They suggest that these structures ought not simply to be seen as dangerous and potentially destabilizing but also potentially benevolent for postwar reconstruction. As a final statement Utas pointed out how far Liberia has gone after the war, but also raised some concerns regarding the national reconciliation process, informal centralization of power and a renewed marginalization of south-eastern Liberia.

Gun Eriksson Skoog presented her planned research on how informal and formal economic and political institutions – the rules of the game – have contributed to shaping a dual economic structure within the agricultural sector and on the role and change of these institutional structures in promoting a process of inclusive development of agricultural markets in post-conflict Liberia.

 

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Mali: Towards a neo-trusteeship? (by Yvan Guichaoua)

This is the second part of a two-part analysis of the present situation in Mali. Part I, entitled “Mali: the fallacy of ungoverned space” is available here.

Preventing the fall of Bamako into Islamist hands is the official trigger of the French military campaign in Mali, which kicked off on January 11^th and soon drove out Islamist forces from northern Mali main cities. Whether the Islamists really had the intention to seize Bamako is unclear. Taking control of Sevare and its strategic airport, 600 km northeast of the capital, might have been their main goal. But at the same time, French security sources argue, a coup in Bamako was being fomented by ex-junta affiliates, meant to ‘connect’ with the Islamists’ offensive southward conducted by Ansar Eddine. Hence the immediacy of France’s heavy-handed response. It is premature to make this narrative historical truth but this is a plausible one.

What can be held for certain at this stage is that the French initiative was driven by security concerns, above any others. Long before the intervention, while the US insisted that organizing elections was a pre-requisite for the recovery of Mali’s territorial integrity, France prioritised the quick military option, fearing a ‘sanctuarisation’ of Jihadist forces in the middle of West Africa, with potential devastating contagious effects, including terrorist attack on the French soil. Addressing Mali’s profound political predicament was seen as a less urgent task, even though the official plan was to pursue a ‘two-track’ approach, political and military.

Mali’s political predicament has been identified in my previous post as a poisonous system of governance linking Bamako to northern elites, silencing grassroots aspirations. Building legitimate political representation from within to prevent the resuscitation of yesterday’s ghosts is the challenge ahead. This daunting task will certainly necessitate wide, bottom-up consultations; micro-level peace-building efforts; the reactivation and eventual reconfiguration of decentralisation policies; ambitious infrastructural investments; highly sensitive discussions over the composition of security forces and their territorial deployment; religious dialogue; and, of course, electoral processes. Discussions over these issues have timidly started.

But on the ground, the military campaign is not over and its strategic imperatives and orientations, under French auspices, are critically shaping the political landscape in which these peace-building efforts are expected to develop. French intervention, volens nolens, produces provisional winners and losers and builds up a temporary order that should not pre-empt the collectively desirable inclusive political arrangements.

France has decided to ally with the Tuareg secular insurgency that started it all one year ago, the Mouvement national the liberation de l’Azawad (MNLA). MNLA’s constant pro-West stance, meant to reap the dividends of the anti-terror agenda, is finally rewarded, to Bamako authorities’ (still discrete) chagrin. But it is rewarded for strategic reasons, by the French military more than by the French diplomacy. The MNLA offers the intel and the local auxiliaries France needs on the ground, notably because France has eight citizens detained by Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb in the area. The political consequence is that Kidal, where the MNLA and the Mouvement islamique de l’Azawad (MIA – an offshoot of Ansar Eddine whose members were originally in the MNLA) are based, is still a no-go area for the Malian army. This situation has a good side as the undisciplined, unaccountable Malian army terrifies Tuareg populations, for good reasons. Yet it artificially co-opts two armed groups whose representativeness among the Tuareg constituency is questionable and whose record of violence in the past months needs to be scrutinised.

The political configuration in Gao is different. Elhadj Ag Gamou, a loyalist Tuareg officer whose forces had to stay in Niger, at the periphery of the Malian arena, after being defeated by the MNLA has made a come-back. Whether he asked France for permission to do so is unclear but at least French forces let it happen. The return of Gamou possibly prevents the proliferation of revenge killings against ‘light skinned’ populations in Gao but again poses a political problem. Gamou was a central actor in the ‘remote control’ type of governance established by Mali’s former regime, which he took advantage of, notably against rival factions of the Tuareg complex political architecture.

Timbuktu offers another, more complicated, picture. There, the French have arrived with the Malian army, in a place where Arabs form a large share of the population. The result has been immediate: shops owned by Arabs have been looted; reprisal killings have been perpetrated by the army; some members of the Arab community have disappeared. Arabs have massively left Timbuktu and have found refuge 70km north of the city, with no possibility to access livelihoods, their leaders – whom I had the opportunity to talk to directly – say. Why didn’t France adopt in Timbuktu the logic of co-optation it more or less deliberately adopted in Kidal and Gao? Ould Meydou, an Arab colonel who fought back the MNLA alongside Ag Gamou under the command of the demised Amadou Toumani Toure’s regime last year, was a natural candidate to lead the Malian army back in Timbuktu. Not bringing back Ould Meydou on the map was possibly an obligation Paris had to compose with, to avoid dangerous tensions with the ex-junta that deposed Toure. The consequence is that Arab leaders now not only fear for the survival of their constituency but complain that France is discriminating against them despite their original commitment to Mali’s territorial integrity. They go as far as suggesting that they could revive some self-defence groups of their own active in the past. Other community leaders, not yet official partners of the country’s ‘liberation’, are complaining too, like Mossa Ag Intazoume leader of the Bellahs, the former ‘slaves’ of the Tuareg.

France intervention is removing the lid on complex and heated intercommunity dynamics. It eventually grants artificial legitimacy from outside to zealous local military auxiliaries while ignoring others. This state of affairs may inflame intergroup tensions in the short term, which Jihadist groups could use as leverage for their own insurgency, as the confused battle in In-Khalil between the MNLA and the Mouvement Arabe de l’Azawad, an Arab movement suspected of entertaining ties with AQIM, seems to indicate. France intervention also provokes extrajudicial violence, as the exactions of the Malian army demonstrate. It may ultimately empower illegitimate figures, simply owing their privileged position to their savviness in dealing with Westerners.

France has pledged not to stay forever and hopes to be replaced by UN-led peacekeeping forces soon. But the latter – whose chain of command and modalities of interaction with the Malian army need to be seriously worked out – may impose their own layer of governance, based on their institutional understanding of the meandering and volatile local situation. A neo-trusteeship, as seminally conceptualised by James Fearon and David Laitin a decade ago in other contexts, may arise. This ruling system which classically distributes power among various institutional actors, under the auspices of multilateral organisations, is likely to be replete with local partners legitimate to the eyes of the West but not to the eyes of the populations. Worse, it could impede the emergence of bottom-up initiatives. To put this risk at bay, it is important to introduce now a genuinely inclusive participatory political process among Mali’s northern communities. But stopping violence against civilians immediately is an utter necessity.

Yvan Guichaoua, Lecturer in Politics and International Development, UEA

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