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Iraq. A Fragile Country.

Sunday, 1 September 2019 8:00

Iraq, the country established on the land of the Assyrians and Babylonians of ancient Mesopotamia, is one of the most bitter fruits of the Franco-British imperialist nation-building efforts in the post-WW1 scenario that was the ‘Sykes-Picot’ Accord, signed on May 16, 1916.

British, French and, to a lesser extent, Russian diplomats decided how the former Ottoman provinces (of what now comprises the Middle East) would be divided. It was a secret agreement: neither the British nor the French parliaments ratified or even discussed the arrangements. Nor, of course, did the governments of the future States, which Sykes-Picot would spawn parliaments of the two countries or discussed at an international conference.

Sir Mark Sykes (L) and Francois Georges-Picot

Arguably, the ‘accord’ can be blamed for many of the root causes of the problems of the contemporary Middle East. The diplomats, who drew up Sykes-Picot drew borders, failed to consider religious, ethnic and tribal complexities that are rarely confined to distinct geographic regions. There was (and is), considerable overlap among linguistic, religious and tribal loyalty networks, which explains why the Ottomans, who controlled the region for five centuries, never defined clear borders.

The European post-WW1 colonizers, on the other hand, applied a ‘divide et impera’ approach, which had little regard for nuances, relying only on cartographic precision, expecting the various elements to combine and react without consideration for fallout. The predictable result was instability and non-governability.
It might be suggested that the Islamic State/ISIS phenomenon is but the most recent (and extreme) product of the Sykes-Picot arrangement, as the so-called Caliphate purported to erase the border between Syria and Iraq, to revive the traditional unity’ of the ‘Umma’ in the Middle East. In this sense, Iraq, more than even Syria, has endured the full brunt of the Sykes-Picot agreement. The United States, and the United Kingdom, led a war against Iraq on March 20, 2003 (based on – false – allegations that Iraq possessed, and was ready to deploy, an arsenal of ‘weapons of mass destruction’) eliminated the regime of Saddam Hussein. Washington and London justified their military effort as an effort to bring democracy to Iraq. In other words, the wear was a ‘crusade for democracy’. Now, 16 years later, the results of that war and Iraq’s prospects for the future are questionable at best. While anyone with a good understanding of the dynamics that have shaped Iraqi society since Sykes-Picot laid the foundations of this State (formally established at the SanRemo Conference in April 1920) would have known that the war on Iraq would be senseless, at best, the aftermath has removed any lingering doubt.

The war, moreover, rained down on the Iraqi people after suffering untold hardships due to the embargo that the United States enforced – through the United Nations – against the Government of Saddam Hussein in the 1990’s. Not surprisingly, the Anglo-American coalition won a swift battle (it’s still too early to say whether it won the war, given the results to date). It then dismantled what was left of Saddam’s State, replacing it with an entity managed by the Americans, which then unleashed unbridled chaos, fueled by the reawakening of ethnic, tribal and confessional feuds between Sunnis and Shiites, culminating in the rise of the Islamic State or the Caliphate.
The deconstruction, or destruction, of the Iraqi State sent shockwaves of violence throughout the Middle East and beyond, which continues to raise doubts about the fate of that country and the region. Arguably, more than establishing a ‘democracy’ in the Middle East, the immediate results, or effects, of the war might be a relative strengthening of Israel’s geo-strategic positioning in the region and the (theoretical at least) potential for the U.S. to use post-Saddam Iraq as a base from where to threaten Syria and Iran. The wider and deeper effect, on the other hand, may have been the failure of any idea that democracy can be ‘exported’.
The war in Iraq did not end when U.S. President George W. Bush declared “mission accomplished” aboard the USS Abraham aircraft carrier in May 2003. It was after that declaration that the real war began. It did not take long for sectarian and ethnic conflicts to erupt in Iraq. Al-Qaida, or groups claiming allegiance to it, reared its ugly head in Iraq. Since then, terrorism and sectarianism only intensified in quality and quantity. Elections brought nominal democracy, but in effect they replaced the rule of the Ba’ath Party with the rule of Shiite dominated political forces, bent more on revenge than fairness and establishing institutions to allow the whole population to participate. Islamic State or ISIS/DAESH (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria / Dawla Islamiyya fi Iraq wa Shams) is but one, of the most terrifying, political-military creature to emerge from the ashes of post-Saddam Iraq.

Brief History of Modern Iraq

The British, quite literally and figuratively, invented ‘Iraq’ in 1920. To this day, it remains a State rather than a nation, for it is made up by three distinct ‘nationalities’ or ‘ethnicities’: Kurds, Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs.Iraq is none other than the unification of three historical and autonomous Ottoman provinces, under a British Protectorate, from North to South: Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, each of which had distinct customs and laws. More importantly, each distinct confessional and ethnic affiliations: in the North, there were mostly Sunni Arabs and Kurds. In Baghdad, there were mostly Sunni Arabs, while Arab Shiites (with some Persian influence as well) dominated Basra and the South.

Faisal I of Iraq.

On August 23, 1921, the British installed none other than an outsider, King Faisal I, as King of Iraq. Faisal was the third son of the Grand Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali, who proclaimed himself ‘King of the Arab lands’ in October 1916. He was born in Mecca – not any of the Iraqi provinces.
The appointment of the King was a reward for the assistance he offered the British (remember Lawrence of Arabia?) Faisal, who encouraged unity between Shiites and Sunnis; and he also proposed Pan-Arab ideas – the same that would shape the Ba’ath Party managed to declare Iraq to be an independent State in 1932. But it didn’t take long before the peculiarities of this new independent country to emerge. The Kurds, who were promised a State of their own in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, rejected being ruled by an Arab King. For their part the Shiites rejected being ruled by a Sunni King – and it must be stressed that the two holiest shrines of Shi’a Islam, Najaf and Karbala, are in Iraq. The rivalry between the two branches of Islam , in Iraq, further intensified after the British backed the Sunnis to exert a hegemony, however weak it may have been. Ironically, in 2003, the British and the Americans would end up reversing that arrangement, weakening the Sunni establishment to favour the Shiites. And this rivalry might be the most evident and exploitable weakness of Iraq, exposing the Country to potential manipulation by invaders.
Yet, Faisal did not give up his nationalist aspirations and he sided with the Germans in WW2, prompting another wave of British occupation. In 1958, the Army (typically dominated by Sunnis) led a coup, which would, after a succession of infighting episodes and coups would lead to the establishment of the Ba’ath Party. On July 14, in inspired by the Nasserite revolution in Egypt, 1958, General Abd-al-Karim Qasim and his followers seized Baghdad and overthrew the monarchy, leading to the proclamation of the Republic and the end of the monarchy.

Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim

General Qasim established an authoritarian regime and shifted relations away from the United States and closer to the Soviet Union. But, in 1963, another coup, by the Ba’ath Party, deposed him, leading to another phase of instability. Ironically, it was during this phase, that Iraq became one of the leading oil producers in the world. Since 1968, Iraq was ruled by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. The latter figure ruled Iraq through one of its most significant and progressive periods. He was a member of the Ba’ath Party and helped General Qasim take power in 1958. But, like many fellow members, he went into hiding after General Qasim’s repression of the Ba’ath in 1959, living in exile until the General was overthrown in 1963 by Marshal Aref. After 1963, al-Bakr served as Prime Minister for Aref, until he led his own coup against the latter in 1968. Al-Bakr, more than any other Iraqi leader (until Saddam Hussein was forced to accept defeat in the First Gulf War of 1991) granted considerable autonomy to the Kurds – even as he refused to grant the formation of an independent Kurdish State. Al-Bakr also liberated political prisoners; he accepted and legalized the Iraqi Communist Party and nationalized the Iraq Petroleum Company allowing for more generous State policies and welfare programs, while also modernizing society, starting from the advancement of women’s rights.

President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr (left) and Saddam Hussein

Al-Bakr’s vice-president Saddam Hussein, behind the scenes took over the levers of State, effectively becoming the sole authority by 1977 – but formally only in 1979, as al-Bakr resigned. Saddam Hussein made the State more ‘personal’ and rather than appease opponents, as his predecessor had done, he restricted the rights of the Kurds and the Shiites. Having settled territorial disputes with Iran, the Islamic Revolution of 1979 shuffled threw the Middle East into turmoil, and provided Saddam with the opportunity to aim for regional hegemony – and not without considerable encouragement from the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf and the United States. It was Saddam who initiated the war against Iran between 1980 and 1988. In the aftermath, a financial dispute (related to the war with Iran) with Kuwait (once part of the Ottoman Province of Basra), Saddam ordered the invasion of the tiny oil-rich State. In hindsight, the invasion of Kuwait of 1990 was the beginning of the end of modern Iraq.

The invasion of Kuwait served as an opportunity for the United States to intervene against Iraq, destroy its military and social infrastructure, weakening it to the point it no longer represented any threat to Israel. Indeed, while Saddam would remain in power twelve more years after he lost the First Gulf War, he led an exhausted Iraq, subject to intrusive American military control, the loss of most of its defensive and offensive capability and oil embargo. Whereas, Saddam had once been able to use his power – despite the Iran-Iraq war – to modernize Iraq, perpetuating the secularization efforts of al-Bakr, what power was left after the Kuwait debacle, he used to exacerbate fear, further crystallizing tensions between the Arabs, Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites.
The American invasion has not improved this legacy. Shiites, by and large, now play the role once enjoyed by Sunnis, while the Kurds, left to pursue greater independence within a looser Iraqi State, have faced run-ins with the Turks, eager to prevent the formation of their own independent State. Nevertheless, the ISIS phenomenon, more than any other has underscored the failure of the U.S. democracy export experiment, playing on deep fractures that successive Iraqi governments, whether ruled by kings, generals or Ba’ath presidents have struggled to manage since the country was created. To this effect, it’s important to understand how the mechanisms of confessional divisions worked, how these have contributed to emergence of ISIS and why Iraq’s future remains fragile at best. The war has exasperated complex social dynamics, failing to transform the sectarian policy that has characterized Iraq since its establishment. (A.B.)

Hare and the Corn Bins.

Sunday, 1 September 2019 8:00

In the old days, all the animals used to make farms like men do today. They hoed the ground, planted the seed, harvested the grain and stored it in corn bins which looked like little round huts, only instead of having a door in front they had a circular hole at the top
under the thatch.

Once upon a time, Hare and the other animals worked hard on their farms all through the rainy season, and when the corn was harvested they put it all together into a row of beautifully made little corn bins. “Now where shall we all spend the dry season?” the animals asked each other as they sat round the fire one night, tired with their weeks of farm work. Hare’s eyes glittered cunningly as he answered: “I am going far away to some of my relations. It is a place called ‘Sittincawnbin’, and I shall go alone.”

The other animals discussed the merits of other places they knew and at last each had decided where he would spend the dry season.
Next morning they rounded up their cattle and went away to different places, each hoping that he had chosen somewhere where there would be enough pasture to feed his herds. “Goodbye! Goodbye! – Called Hare -. When we return we shall have plenty to eat and enough seed left over to plant on our farms next season.”

He pretended to go away too, but as soon as all the other animals were out of sight, Hare came back to the corn bins, climbed inside the first one and began to have a feast. When he could eat no more, he slept, and when he awoke he began on the corn again. At last, Hare found that the first corn bin was completely empty. “Well, I shall have to move – he exclaimed. But first of all he filled the empty bin with gravel. Then he began on the second bin and lived a life of ease and plenty until that was finished, when he filled it with gravel as before.

So the wicked animal continued all through the dry season, eating the corn which really belonged to the other animals, and by the time the first rains began to fall, Hare had emptied every corn bin and refilled them all with gravel. A few days later the other animals began to return from their dry season grazing grounds until all were assembled except Hare. “Where can he be? – they asked one another – Hare is always the first back in the rains.” “He went a very long way this time -,’ said one of them -. Some place called Sittincawnbin, I think he said.

“Let’s all call loudly and see whether he is on his way,” suggested another. So all the animals shouted “Hare! Hare! Where are you?” Now the cunning hare was not far away, indeed he had not been out of sight of the corn bins all the time the other animals had been gone, but he hid behind a bush and answered in a very faint voice, as from a distance: “I’m coming.” “Listen! – said the animals – He is far away, but he heard us”. And they began shouting again: “Hare! Hare! Where are you?”

This time Hare’s answer sounded a little louder. “I’m coming,” he said, still hiding close by, and splashing some water over his body so that it looked like perspiration. So they went on calling Hare while he answered louder each time, and then suddenly dashing out from behind his bush, he arrived in the middle of the group, panting ‘Ehhel Ehhe! Ehhe!’ as though he had run for miles.

“Now we are all here – said one of the animals – let us look into the corn bins to see whether the grain has kept well.” “You look – puffed Hare – . I’ve come too far today to do anything else except lie and rest.” What shouting and crying arose when the animals looked in the bins, one by one, and discovered that everyone was empty of corn but full of gravel. “Who can have stolen it? – They asked – . How can we plant crops this season when we have no grain?” they sobbed. “It must be one of us – they said – because nobody else ever comes here.”

Then they began to quarrel and snap and growl and bite, until at last they lay exhausted on the ground, and night came. “Let us all go to sleep now, – suggested the jackal – and the animal on whom the moon first shines will be the guilty one.” They all agreed to this, for they knew that the moon sees everything that happens on the earth, so they left it for her to decide. “Come and lie down beside me, Squirrel – begged Hare – . I am so tired with my long journey that I shall get cramp if I do not have somebody close beside me to turn me over from time to time.”

The good-natured squirrel lay close to Hare, and very soon all the animals were fast asleep, worn out after their long journey. All except Hare, of course.
He was not at all tired, for he had scarcely moved from the spot for several months, so he was able to keep his eyes open for the moon since he had an uncomfortable feeling that she was going to shine on him.

The night was cloudy and the moon was slow in rising, but suddenly her beams shot out like an arrow, and landed on Hare. They landed on Squirrel too, since the two animals were so close together, and very carefully, so as not to wake Squirrel, Hare rolled quietly a few feet away. Then he began to sing, softly at first, but getting louder and louder so that several of the animals woke up. Then Hare, rubbing his eyes and pretending to have only just wakened, pointed to where Squirrel slept, with the moon shining full on him.

“There’s the thief! – Shouted Hare -. It was Squirrel who ate all our corn. The moon knows, you can be sure.” Before poor Squirrel could utter a word in his own defence the animals had leapt upon him and torn him to pieces, so nobody ever knew it was Hare. But when any of the animals were heard to mutter: “Sittincawnbin; Sittincawnbin; I wonder where that is?” Hare always crept quietly away and waited until he heard them talking about something else.
(Folktale from Fulani People, Northern Nigeria)

Burkina Faso. The Church under attack.

Thursday, 1 August 2019 8:00

For some time, the Catholic and Protestant communities have been a target for Islamic groups attempting to destabilise the country. They are also trying to weaken its inter-ethnic and inter-religious ties.

It was an ordinary Sunday morning in Tanghin, in the northern outskirts of Ouagadougou. The sun, already high in the sky, shone down on a large crowd of people gathered round the gates of the church of Saint William, the largest in all of Burkina Faso. Many had brought their own chairs or small stools with them as there is never enough to seat everybody in the church.
The Catholic community of this vast urban conglomeration at the doors of the capital city counts more than fifteen thousand faithful. Construction and extension work has been going on for years: “The parish only started in 2001, so we are still young”, forty year-old Father Nestor Nikiema comments, smiling, as he watches the choir, altar servers and musicians enter the church. While waiting for Mass to start, they test the microphones and tune their instruments: a keyboard, two guitars, a base guitar, drums and a traditional djembe drum. Strident, whistling sounds from the loudspeakers can be heard all over the compound.

From a distance, the building towers above the single-storied houses scattered around the area. A tall campanile stands in the centre of the facade of the cruciform church. There are broad cloisters to protect those who cannot find room in the church from the scorching sun. Women in their coloured veils pray with their Rosary beads as barefoot children scamper around and men dressed in their Sunday best exchange greetings.
The inside of the church, rather than a place of worship, looks like a large industrial shed. Some images of Our Lady scarcely relieve the monotonous grey of the walls and cement pillars; small fans blow hot air down on the people as they go to their places. The rows of seats and stools are soon filled as is the rest of the available space in the church. The church overflows to the outside where people take their places in the shadow of the walls or under the small trees of the compound.

When Father Nestor reaches the steps of the altar, a broad pedestal in cement with some as yet unconnected electrical sockets close to the floor, the noise suddenly ceases, all is quiet and all stand to begin the Mass. The Sunday Mass lasts a couple of hours and is celebrated in French so that all the national ethnic groups can understand (there are 65 languages spoken in the country). In recent months, due to increasing violence by various neo-jihadi groups, many people have taken refuge in the cities.
The main terrorist groups active in Burkina Faso are Islam Ansarul, Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal-Muslimin and Islamic State in Great Sahara. Islam Ansarul is mainly active in the province of Soum and the bordering provinces of the north. Islamic State in Great Sahara (a branch of Isis in Sahara-Sahel) works mainly in the border lands between Niger and Burkina Faso, while the groups which now form part of the Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal-Muslimin coalition (Ansar Dine, Macina Liberation Front, Al-Mourabitoun) are based in northern Mali from where they launch attacks in Burkina.

Some of these groups have sworn allegiance to Al Qaeda such as those which make up the Jnim coalition led by Iyad Ag Ghaly. Among these there is also Malam Dicko, founder of Ansarul Islam, a disciple of Hamadoun Koufa, a radical preacher who founded the Macina Liberation front. Others, like the Islamic State of Great Sahara, follow the Islamic State.Relations between these groups are complex and not always stable. However, all of them explicitly claim responsibility for attacks in Burkina Faso. Some attacks, whose perpetrators have not been clearly identified, are also attributed to them.
According to the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs, since 2015, the conflict has caused more than 400 deaths, 170,000 homeless and 1.2 million displaced people in urgent need of humanitarian help. “Every Saturday, we pray in this church with our Muslim and animist brothers for the restoration of peace to our country, Father Nestor tells us, we never saw anything like this before. These terrorists come from outside and they are doing all they can to destroy the social cohesion and peaceful coexistence that has always flourished here”. In their Jihadi project of national and regional destabilisation, the groups active in the north and the east of Burkina recently altered their objective, moving from mosques and Imamas whom they consider to be deviant, from soldiers and state administrators to community and religious, especially those who are Christian and Catholics in particular.

At a deeper level, besides threatening local leaders, the ‘bearded ones’ (as the Moslem fanatics are called) are now aiming to undo inter-ethnic and inter-religious ties which have always been the basis of coexistence between the different peoples of the country. “Here, marriages between people of different denominations are very frequent, showing the high level of brotherhood that binds us to followers of other faiths”, Father Nestor concludes.
At another church, less than a kilometre from St. William’s, another priest emphasises some other aspects. “By now the entire Sahel-Sahara belt is in the grip of growing and spreading banditry. It is organised crime that dictates the law in all the region”. Giorgio Debernardi was formerly Bishop of Pinerolo, a diocese in the north of Italy. On his retirement at the age of 78, he found his ‘second youth’ in Burkina Faso.
The small chapel in which Mons, Debernardi celebrates Mass was only recently opened within the compound of the Shalom Private Polytechnic, a university founded in 2010 by the Shalom Movement, a Catholic association involved in training and the culture of peace. Each year, hundreds of Burkinese students, of various religions, frequent the faculties of agriculture, law and journalism communications. It is an example of education in excellence in a country where, in recent months, more than two thousand schools were closed due to Jihadist threats. Some institutes in the north and the east have been burned down. Teachers have been beaten and forced to flee for their lives, depriving more than 330,000 children of education.

Well-aimed attacks

As if all this were not enough, climate change has been especially violent in the northern regions of the country where the shortage of water and arable land is exacerbating inter-ethnic conflict between semi-nomad pastors (Peul) and sedentary farmers (especially those forced to move) in the area. These events are following the pattern of the seasonal armed conflicts that take place in nearby Mali and, to a lesser extent, in Niger: historical disputes over the management of lands which are today being stirred up and used by Jihadi groups to undermine areas that are already socially and economically fragile. “It is very easy for people from outside if they realise what sort of condition they are in. ‘Let us come in and things will change’, they say”, Mons. Debernardi affirms with some bitterness. This, according to the religious, is the origin of the spiral of violence that, in recent months, has afflicted the protestant and Catholic communities: on 13 May, a Marian procession was attacked in Zimtenga, in the north of the country, when a number of Jihadists killed four of the faithful and destroyed the statue of Our Lady.

Father Simeon Yampa was killed in Dablo, May 14.

On the following day it was the turn of the Catholic church of Dablo, also in the north of the country, where six people, including the parish priest, were murdered during Sunday Mass; again, on the following day, the church was attacked in the village of Dolbel, in the north west of Niger, in an area bordering with Burkina Faso and Mali. Despite everything, “ This is a Church on the move”, is Mons. Pier Giorgio’s comment as he remembers some martyred confreres: the young Burkinese priest Joël Yougbaré, kidnapped in mid-March at Djibo, and the Spanish Salesian Antonio Cesar, murdered on 15 February at Nohao, in the east of the country. He ends with words of hope: “Our dream is that Burkina Faso may return to be a nation where all resources, social, religious and political, come together to create real national unity”.

Andrea De Georgio

Silencing the Guns in Africa.

Thursday, 1 August 2019 8:00

On 27 February 2019, the Security Council welcomed the African Union’s “determination to rid Africa of conflicts and create conditions favorable for the growth, development and integration of the continent as encapsulated in its goal of ‘Silencing the Guns in Africa’ by the Year 2020.”

The global endorsement received by this commitment was not a surprise and is a good advocacy initiative for Africa. Half of the 14 United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations are in Africa, where the UN also run political offices for conflict-prevention and peace-building activities. The presence of so many armed confrontations led the African Union (AU) to solemnly commit itself in 2013 “not to bequeath the burden of conflict to the next generation of Africans and undertake to end all wars by 2020.”

‘Silencing the Guns’ would promote prevention, management and resolution of conflicts in Africa. This is an important commitment “not only for what it aims to do, but also for what it says about the importance of African leadership and partnership with the global community,” stated Rosemary A. Di Carlo, the Under-Secretary-General during the debate aiming for the adoption of the resolution.
She stressed the importance for the UN to support the AU in order to “silence the guns”.

The vision is ambitious and far from what is happening on the ground. However, even limited success would be a major boost for Africa, and especially for those six countries in their long and major conflicts: Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Central African Republic (CAR), South Sudan, Mali, Darfur, and Somalia. In the Great Lakes region, there are 11 million displaced persons; over 3 million people have died in the Congo’s two-decade conflict (DPPA Politically Speaking).

The African Standby Force (ASF), promised since 2010, remains a dream. Meanwhile, external actors like the United States and France have established a meddling military presence in Africa, from the Sahel to Somalia. The most relevant African countries – Nigeria, South Africa, Algeria, Ethiopia, and the DRC – do not play a significant role in their sub-regions due to internal security and governance issues. Due to their abuse on the population and their lack of efficiency in defending the civil population, the UN’s peacekeeping operations in Africa are losing momentum and trust. The civil society and international NGOs, for instance, are asking the UN to withdraw their peacekeeping forces from the DRC. Therefore, even limited success of this new initiative will benefit Africa, but three actions are needed: funding, disarming, and ensuring justice and the rule of law.

Disarmament is a sensitive process that requires consistent funding. On July 2016, the AU asked its member states for a 0.2% levy on eligible imports to provide the AU the means to meet the challenge. The decision has been in force since January 2017, but no impact is yet in sight.
Until 2017, only 67% of contributions to the AU were collected annually, with about 30 countries defaulting in one way or another (Silencing the Guns by 2020).

A second challenge is that groups in conflict ‘voluntarily’ surrender their arms and desist from re-arming claiming for their safety. Many African states are fragile and vulnerable to conflict and violence, affecting about 200 million people. These states are characterized by scarcity of resources, the need of public services, and at risk of slipping back into conflict. Civilians will only respond to a call for disarmament if they are guaranteed security and justice.

The third challenge: security and justice in the context of peacekeeping missions. The states have to operate with good governance, rule of law and respect for human rights. Unfortunately, the institutions responsible for delivering justice and security in fragile and conflict-prone states are often weak and dysfunctional (Silencing the Guns by 2020).

To increase the chances of success, the countries would need to integrate their national disarmament processes within the UN’s Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions. This would increase trust in those who are called to surrender arms. The AU should encourage its member states to include the costs of Silencing the Guns by 2020 in their national budgets.

Advocacy for peace in Africa is a global issue. It cannot be limited to personal and charitable actions. Injustice and conflicts are to be addressed in a global approach including international organisms, states, and groups in conflicts. However, institutions such as the UN and AU established for this purpose cannot fail in promoting and building peace through justice.

John Paul Pezzi, mccj
VIVAT International NGO
with consultative special status at UN

DR Congo. Insecurity and bad governance contribute to the spread of Ebola.

Thursday, 1 August 2019 8:00

Ongoing insecurity and bad governance contribute to the expansion of the second largest Ebola epidemics in the DRC and beyond. The World Heath Organisation has declared the deadly Ebola a global
health emergency.

With over 2,700 cases including 130 health workers and more than 1,590 deaths at the beginning of July 2019, the Ebola epidemics which is affecting the DRC at the moment is the largest since the previous episode which caused over 11,300 deaths in West-Africa between 2014 and 2016. The epidemics started on the 1 August 2018 in North Kivu where 90% of the identified cases have occurred and then spread to the Ituri and South Kivu provinces. By mid-June, according to the Ministry of Health, 147,120 people had been vaccinated and over 70 million controls had been made.
This epidemics is not the first in the country which is considered as the reservoir of the virus and where it appeared first in 1976 and seven times more (1977, 1995, 2007, 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2018). Owing this succession of epidemics, the DRC has acquired a remarkable experience and trained its medical staff to deal with the scourge.
But despite this experience, the benefits of this comparative advantage have not materialized owing to factors that have hampered the efforts of the medical staff.

Last July the World Heath Organisation (WHO) has declared the Ebola a global emergency in the country. Meanwhile, the Ebola has spread to neighbouring Uganda and there is the high risk of propagation of the disease in other provinces of the DRC. In June 2019, three persons died in Uganda, Allof them had travelled recently to the DRC. On June 15, the Tanzanian Minister for Health, Ummy Mwalimu tweeted that her country was at high risk of an Ebola outbreak , owing to the contacts between the populations in both countries, listing the Kagera, Mwanza and Kigoma Western regions as the most exposed to the danger. In its 27 June 2019 issue, the Bujumbura paper Iwacu, reported that Burundian citizens in the Cibitoke province were expressing concern about potential contamination risks, owing to the porosity of the border with the DRC. Accordingly, many people bypass official control checks. Burundian nurses lack the necessary material and don’t wear gloves or masks while doing temperature checks. Rwanda is on alert since the first cases were confirmed in Uganda.

In the meantime, the epidemics is progressing in the DRC unabated. At the 72^nd World Health Assembly, by end May, participants stressed that the main obstacle in the fight against the epidemics was insecurity. On the 8 June 2019, the Ministry of Health reported 132 attacks against anti-Ebola teams since the beginning of the epidemics. A week later, a prevention team was attacked and destroyed at Mudzipela (North Kivu) by motorbikes at a control post on a road leading to contaminated areas.
On the 27 June, the WHO announced that response operations had been temporarily interrupted in Beni (North Kivu) following two days of insecurity in the town of Musienene, while the Komanda area in Ituri experienced a resurgence of cases after a period of prolonged absence of anti-Ebola teams.

This province of Ituri is the hot spot at the moment. By mid-June, UN sources reported that over 300,000 people had fled owing to large-scale clashes between the Hema and Lendu ethnic groups. Some of them fled into Uganda, raising concerns that escalating conflict could lead to a larger flow of refugees across the border and thus increase the risk of spreading the epidemics in the neighbouring country.
Efforts to combat the outbreak are hampered by community resistance and militia attacks that have disrupted operations to isolate and cure those infected. Lack of trust in the central government of Kinshasa is another problem.
Political protesters burnt and looted an Ebola-treatment facility in Beni in December 2018, after the Kinshasa government blocked more than one million people in areas stricken by Ebola which are also known for their opposition to Joseph Kabila’s candidate. Local residents were suspicious that the fight against Ebola was used as a pretext to prevent them to cast their votes in favour of the oppositions. In February 2019, Butembo and Katwa treatment centers were torched.

Part of the hostility against the anti-Ebola teams is tainted by tribalism. According to sources in Goma, the Congolese Minister of Health, Oly Ilunga Kalenga appointed anti-Ebola teams from his home Katanga region. As a result local nurses from the Nande tribe in Butembo who were not been given jobs felt very frustrated.
“Hiring local staff is a key issue. Ebola has turned into a tribal issue which could set fire to the entire Kivu. If UN people don’t understand that, there won’t be peace for humanitarian aid workers on the spot”, told SouthWorld a source in Goma.
In such context, prevention teams can hardly be deployed. In February 2019, 43% of the people who died from Ebola in Katwa and Butembo (North Kivu) passed away in their homes, not in hospitals or health centers. This suggests that the virus is spreading undetected outside known chains of transmission and that the toll is probably much higher than official figures. The current death rate of 60% is higher than it was during the Ebola crisis in West Africa, despite improvements such the introduction of experimental drugs. “We can have the best treatments in the world, but it won’t decrease mortality if patients don’t come in or come in too late,” says Chiara Montaldo, from Médecins Sans Frontières. Even teams set up to bury in dignity and safety the corpses of the victims have been attacked. WHO’s director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, considers that the epidemics is going on because health staffs do not have a regular access to the communities. “We are fighting one of the most dangerous viruses in one of the most dangerous areas” , he told the World Health Assembly on the 22 May.

Another challenge is the lack of funds to fight the Ebola outbreak. The WHO estimates the cost of stamping it out in the DRC at US$148 million. But as of 26 February, WHO member countries had committed less than $10 million, according to its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. At the same time, part of the staff is not paid regularly. On the 19 June, the Libre Belgique Brussels daily reported that many medical doctors, nurses and paramedical staff has not received their salaries for several months. The anti-ebola actions are financed on the one hand by the World Bank, partly through the WHO and on the other one by the Congolese government The situation is worse for the second group, since according to the Belgian paper, only those who are paid by the WHO receive their salaries.
An additional problem is that the Minister is not showing the good example. A doctor told the Belgian paper that Minister refused to wash his hands in the Mabalako area, near Beni (North Kivu) in front of people who were coming from a funeral by mid-June. As a result, people felt confused and wondered why they should wash their hands if the Minister didn’t. Some thought something suspicious was going on. And the minister had to run away to escape dilapidation by mid-June. The epidemics has also unexpected side effects. In Goma, it has attracted a number of NGOs. Prices have soared in the region. That is specially the case for hotels rooms who are rented by charity organization staff for weeks although they don’t occupy them all the time.

François Misser

Drug Trafficking.

Thursday, 1 August 2019 8:00

The maras are characterized by their particular ritualism, their violent initiation rites and the tattoos that proclaim their own members that make them very similar to the members of the Japanese Yakuza.

In the initiation ritual of the mareros or pandilleros, the neophyte is approached and placed at the center of a circle composed of a minimum of five to a maximum of fifteen affiliates. After boasting of his own vanity, he is beaten by the whole group for a duration equivalent to his identification number, while women can choose between sexual violence perpetrated by the leaders of the group or beatings.
Many of them, in order to gain the respect of the gang, prefer beatings, given that for those who choose sexual violence respect is almost never guaranteed, even if the trial has been passed. Only in this way do they really feel part of the group and can participate in discussions, during which their word takes on decisive value.

Within the two major organizations the role of women is twofold. In fact, in addition to perpetrating the usual criminal activities with particular regard to drug dealing, because they arouse less suspicion than men, they also play the roles of mother and woman, taking care of domestic activities and childcare. However, for most members the role of women remains strongly linked to the patriarchal culture of the place and, therefore, many prefer to choose their life partner outside the criminal context.The culture and values shared by the members of these groups, pandilleros and mareros, is characterized by symbols inherent in social realities that are strongly hierarchical and linked by strong bonds of fidelity and fraternity, as well as a lifestyle made up of transgressions, a life lived as if every day were the last. The symbolism, expressed in letters or numbers, indicates one’s belonging to the group. The first tattoo is performed after passing the initiation ritual and indicates the identification number of the group to which one belongs. The others are applied after committing a murder or when one ends up in prison.

It is important to demonstrate the attachment to the group through the exercise of violence, the lack of fear: dying for one’s own group or killing a rival, in a continuous application of the law of retaliation, are acts of courage and great honor. Also the language represents a crucial point in conceiving the symbolic universe of these groups and besides the spoken language there is also a vogue language of a gestural nature. This assumes even stronger connotations since through signs that are characterized according to the movements of the fingers, the various members can communicate with each other without even opening their mouths. It is a code that is used during gatherings or important ceremonies. The culture of the pandillero or the marero therefore appears essentially composed of symbols that guide it within well-hierarchized social realities.

The Salvadoran maras play a crucial role in drug trafficking, thanks also to the strategic position enjoyed by the country which, given that it is at the center of the main traffic route to the United States, has given the mares the opportunity of placing themselves at the service of the Mexican drug trafficking cartels. Proof of this is the fact that some Mexicans have found refuge in El Salvador itself to escape the government’s anti-narcotics offensive. A link has also been proven between the maras and the Zetas, one of the largest Mexican drug cartels, who supply the maras with weapons.For every 100 kilos of cocaine that enter the country only two remain inside, in fact, while the rest continues its journey to the USA through a system renamed as hormiga – ant – precisely because it employs a very high number of pushers, each of which carries a reduced amount of drugs.The internal dealing, on the other hand, is managed by the clicas, cells organized on a local basis that perform different activities between themselves.
In addition to drug trafficking, criminal groups in El Salvador are very active in laundering the proceeds of drug trafficking. It is no coincidence that the country has been called the ‘drug-trafficking bank’ because of the fact that all the proceeds of the exported drugs arrive there, and are later recycled to feed the local economy.

Extortion is also one of the main activities carried out by local gangs. Some Salvadoran government officials, quoted by a Wall Street Journal inquiry, have estimated that one of the main gangs, the MS-13, carries out systematic extortion in 248 of the 262 municipalities in the country, without coming under any great pressure from the authorities. This phenomenon affects 79% of local entrepreneurs, with particular regard to trucking companies. These latter, now reduced to the brink of the abyss, have been forced during these years to pay over 30 million euros a year, in total, as a bribe paid monthly or, indeed, even weekly. In San Salvador, the distribution of consumer goods is also under the control of the gangs, while in rural areas, even if farmers do not accept to pay, they threaten to burn their sugar plantations.
In addition to arms-trafficking, drug-trafficking and extortion, the maras are also involved in the trafficking of human beings, abductions and murders. Murder on commission represents another major social plague. This activity, which mareros use to increase profits, is generally carried out through contracts established with the rest of the criminal organizations to which they offer their services. (F.R.)

RD.Congo. Beatification of twenty martyr missionaries on track.

Thursday, 1 August 2019 8:00

Fifty-seven years after their tragic deaths, the Roman Catholic Church of Congo has started the process of beatification of
the twenty missionaries assassinated by government soldiers on
the 1 January 1962.

Last June, the bishop of Kongolo diocesis, in the Tanganyika province, Mgr Oscar Ngoy wa Mpanga announced that he had initiated the process of beatification of the twenty missionaries (19 Belgians and one Dutch) who were assassinated on the 1^st January 1962 in this city, during his visit to the memorial erected by their congregation at Gentinnes, in Belgium. Such large-scale beatification would be a major event both in Belgium and Congo, which is the largest roman catholic country in Africa which already has two blessed heroes: Sister Marie-Clémentine Anuarite Nengapeta, who was murdered by a Simba rebel in 1964 because she refused to renounce her faith and Isidore Bakaja who was flogged to death in 1909 by the Belgian director of a rubber company who opposed the evangelisation of its African staff. Both were blessed by Pope John Paul II in 1985 and 1994 respectively. The present process concerns the beatification of twenty missionaries who were tortured and killed by soldiers of the Congolese government’s National Congolese Army (ANC) during the Katanga secession war (1960-1963). There were all members of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit.

Government forces fighting Simba rebels.

Their situation became delicate in November 1961 after the secessionist army of the so-called Katanguese gendarmes withdrew to Kongolo and were besieged by the ANC. At some point, some Katanguese troops sought refuge in the catholic mission and left the fathers with no choice but accept this fait accompli. At the same time, civilians from the Luba, Songe, Bayashi, Bangubangu and Wagenia tribes from other parts of the country, who were running away from governmental troops, also sought asylum in the mission premises because they were unable to seek refuge in the neighbouring villages of the Hemba tribe. For the fathers and the Congolese seminarians and nuns who were with them, there was no question of abandoning these 200 civilian refugees, mostly elders, women and children who had requested their protection.

Belgian paratroopers on Stanleyville airfield shortly after the operation.

On the 29 and 30 December 1961, the ANC launched mortar attacks against Kongolo. When they entered into the town, they were showing hostility towards the missionaries, explained the only priest who survived the massacre, Father Jules Darmont, in a report written in February 1962. Such hostility could be explained by the fact that the Katanguese government had asked several months ago, the local bishop, Mgr Gustave Bouve to appoint a military chaplain. Coincidentally, the bishop appointed one of Father Darmont’s colleagues, then Father Darmont himself, after his predecessor was shot dead when he was healing a wounded Katanguese soldier, during a clash with the UN troops. Immediately, the priests were dealt with as suspects of collaboration with the enemy by the Congolese national army. Some of them were tortured and the mission was looted on the 31 December 1961. Then they were all jailed. The nuns were forced to attend the maiming of a living man and threatened to suffer similar outrage if they refused to testify the fathers and accuse them of complicity with the Katanguese gendarmes.

Finally, on the 1 January 1962, the priests were interrogated and flogged with a heavy hippo leather whip by drunk military who hit them also with rifle buts. Afterwards, they opened fire and killed 19 priests. Only Darmont survived thanks to a soldier who helped him to escape the massacre. That wasn’t the end of the outrage though. Young members of the pro-Congolese government Balubakat militias began to maim the dead bodies of the martyrs. Some cribbled the corpses with arrows while others stabbed them with knives and assegais. Then, the Congolese seminarians were forced to undress the corpses and throw them into the Lualaba river.
These martyrs performed their duty until death, showing solidarity with those who could not run away. Immediately after their death, their congregation tried to initiate the procedure for their beatification. But since the motive of their death could not be established with clarity at the beginning, it was not possible under canon law to trigger the procedure, says Father Joseph Burgraff, the director of the Spiritan Missionaries House in Gentinnes to the “Gazet van Antwerpen” daily. It was not indeed obvious whether they had been killed for their faith or not, though it was well known that there were strong anticlerical feelings on the Soviet-backed government side.

The Memorial Chapel erected by the Congregation of the Holy Spirit at Gentinnes, in Belgium.

Recently, Pope Francis contributed to remove the obstacle when he decided in 2017 to introduce changes to the beatification procedures. Henceforth, hatred against the Christian faith as a motive for assassination is no longer a prerequisite. Christians who remained faithful to their commitment to serve the people, while knowing this attitude could pose a threat for their life, can also be blessed.
The names of the Kongolo martyrs appear on the walls of the Gentinnes chapel, built in 1967, among those of 225 missionaries who were assassinated in Congo during that period, men and women from various congregations. The list includes four Comboni fathers killed in Niangara, Dominican fathers and nuns, priests of the Holy Heart of Mary, White Fathers, Franciscans etc…) but also protestant missionaries. About half (115) are Belgian nationals. The other are Dutch (38), Congolese (10), Italian (10), American (9), Luxemburgian (8), Spanish (5), French (4), Canadian (3), German (1), Australian (1) and New Zeelander (1). On the 25 January 1962, a national funeral was celebrated at St Michael Cathedral in Brussels.

The fruits of the Kongolo martyrs’s sacrifice can be seen today in their diocesis, 57 years later. The young local church has become in turn a missionary church. The Spiritan Foundation which was created in 1986, has now 30 missionaries in activity and over 40 seminarists. The Kongolo diocesis boasts now from a solid local African clergy, priests, nuns and committed laypersons. The prophecy of one of the 20 martyrs, Father Jean-Marie Godefroid has been accomplished. In March 1961, a few months before the tragedy, he wrote: “The Church will be really Congolese when the majority of the important jobs will be in the hands of African bishops and priests”. François Misser

List of the martyrs. Gaston Crauwels, Louis Crauwels, Jozef De Hert, Albert Forgeur, Pierre Francis Pierre Gilles, Walter Gillijns, Jean-Marie Godefroid, Bernhulf Heemskerk, Albert Henckels Jozef Jens, Jan Baptist Lenselaer, Désiré Pellens, Joseph Postelmans, Raphaël Renard Théo Schildermans, Roger T’Jaeckens, René Tournay, José Vandamme, André Van der Smissen, Michel Vanduffel

Pan-African Youth Leadership Development.

Thursday, 1 August 2019 8:00

The Leadership Development and Mentorship program has an ambitious agenda for training tomorrow’s leaders across Africa.

Africa is by far the world’s youngest continent, with a median age of only 18. Such a large population of young people presents an enormous challenge for the governments of Africa’s 54 countries.

Resources must be found to ensure food, water, shelter, healthcare, education and livelihood training for fully half of the 1.2 billion people on the continent. While this is indeed an enormous challenge, for the Jesuits and their partners it has also become a real opportunity. Here is the future – full of energy, ambition, idealism, passion, and hope; eager to learn and open to new ideas. Here too are the future leaders of Africa and of the world, whether in government, business or civil society.

Jesuits have made a major contribution to education in Africa for many years. More recently, however, they have begun focusing on the leadership potential of African young people in very direct and deliberately Ignatian ways: forming young people holistically; teaching methods of discernment and decision-making for the common good; providing skills for leadership that is spiritually and emotionally intelligent, compassionate, ethical, authentic.

In 2017, a new pilot program called Purpose-Driven Leadership Development was launched at the Jesuit Centre for Leadership Development (JCLD) at Copperbelt University in Zambia. Fifty university students, half of them women, participated in training work-shops to develop their personal and professional skills as future business, government and civil society leaders.

The program was run jointly by JCLD and the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders. Eminent Zambian leaders from the public and private sectors were also invited to help with the training. Overall, the 10-month program, which was supported by Canadian Jesuits International (CJI), was considered quite a success and the final evaluation gave good direction for further pro-grams, especially in areas that provide students with an expanded sense of their role in society and with new perspectives on what is possible when leadership is ethical and “purpose-driven.”

Based on the success of the Purpose-Driven Leader-ship Development program in Zambia, the Justice and Ecology Network of Africa (JENA) in the Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar has launched a new pan-African Leadership Development and Mentorship program.

The idea now is to empower university students in other African countries with people-centred leadership skills. The director of this new program is Charles Chilufya SJ, who is the current head of JENA and who also launched the leadership program in Zambia. With headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, the Leadership Development and Mentorship program has an ambitious agenda for training tomorrow’s leaders across Africa. True to Ignatian formation, this agenda is also patient and methodical. The first phase began in February 2019 and will last 10 months. It has three aims: to train 15 university chaplains to provide leadership skills and sup-port; to develop the leadership capacity of 40 university students in a Training of Trainers program; and to hold an international round table conference with 250 African youth. (S.L.)

Africa. Start-ups rolling out.

Thursday, 1 August 2019 8:00

The continent is changing thanks to the increasingly frequent use of new technological tools. A journey through the most innovative
start-ups in Africa.

Innovation is today the most used word by those who want to talk about Africa going beyond the narrative that speaks of a continent between needs and conflicts, leaders clinging to power and indiscriminate exploitation of resources. But in what fields are Africa and
its talents emerging?

Fast Company, a US business media brand, with an editorial focusing on innovation in technology, leadership, and design, offers ideas, practical tools, profiles and evaluations on the new ways business works. Fast Company has recently published a list of the 2019 most innovative companies in the world. Ten of which are in Africa.

African Leadership University

Fred Swaniker is a Ghanaian educated at Stanford Business School. He has launched several organizations that aim to develop leaders, primarily in Africa. In 2008 he founded the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, and in 2015 the African Leadership University (ALU) in Mauritius that aim to develop future generations of African leaders and to fight Africa’s brain drain. In fact there are many Africans, especially the younger generations who go abroad, to the United States or Europe, to study or to start a better career.

In 2017, Swaniker opened a second ALU site in Kigali, Rwanda, which has recently raised $30 million. The ALU has also rolled out an innovative approach to student finance based on income-sharing agreements. This US-based model means students pay nothing up front for their education, and instead only pay a share of their income to investors when they are employed. ALU has sites in Mauritius, Rwanda and Kenya and is rolling out several more over the next few years.

Flutterwave

Nigerian Entrepreneur Olugbenga Agboola started Flutterwave in 2016, a digital payment API (Application Program Interface) designed to make it easier do business across the continent by allowing users to make international payments in their own currencies.

Flutterwave is now integrated with major online tools such as Shopify and WooCommerce allowing customers to make payments on platforms like Amazon. Flutterwave processes millions of dollars in transactions and has been recently expanding across Africa. A Series A extension round took its total fundraising to more than $20 million, and it has begun testing a solution directly targeted at small and medium-sized enterprises, which allows them to convert their Instagram pages into e-commerce stores.

Flare

It has been defined the 911 of the future (911 is the emergency number for many North American countries and Mexico), Flare, in fact, is building a brand-new emergency response system, which launched commercially in Kenya in January 2018. The company’s digital platform brings together the East African country’s fragmented ecosystem of emergency vehicles, and uses GPS tracking and Google navigation to route the most appropriate responders to each emergency scene as requested by users. Aiming to launch in all countries that do not have existing emergency systems, Flare is already the largest such network in Kenya, with a network of more than 400 ambulances. It has already completed 350 life-saving rescues, and reduced its average response time to 20 minutes. Flare’s motto is, not surprisingly, ‘Better, faster emergency response’. Meanwhile, it has launched its membership product, Rescue, to market and provided around 28,000 Kenyans with coverage.

Farm to Market Alliance

A non-profit project born out of the World Food Program, Farm to Market Alliance is attempting to make Africa’s agricultural sector, a potential breadbasket for the world, more sustainable, by empowering farmers and building stronger markets. A consortium of eight agri-focused organizations, it has developed PATH, a cutting-edge value-chain solution that helps farming families transition to commercial agriculture. The solution provides farmers with four key areas of support – predictable markets, affordable finance, technologies and quality inputs, and handling and storage solutions – to help them become reliable market players, and build the confidence of other players in the wider agriculture market.

Essentially, it acts as a sort of neutral broker in a profit-driven value chain, with its network of service delivery centres serving as a one-stop shop through which farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia can interact with service providers to obtain products and services across PATH, while the FtMA app, available in Tanzania, works as a platform for ecosystem players to offer their services and connects farmers with each other. So far, PATH has successfully engaged over 150,000 farmers, and generated US$17 million in crop purchases by commercial buyers.

Talamus health

Active in Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa, Talamus has developed a mobile-first healthcare platform that allows patients to make physical and video appointments with doctors, receive appointment reminders and laboratory and imaging results, organize medication, store medical records, and pay medical bills, all from their mobile phone. Healthcare providers can fully digitize their operations, increasing information throughput, transparency, and efficiency, as well as reducing errors and delays in patient care.

The goal is to improve and unify healthcare delivery in emerging markets, and help patients interact with and share their health information with a connected circle of providers. Existing since April 2018, Talamus has partnered with over 1,000 healthcare practices of varying kinds across its three markets, and is also moving into the insurance space.

Yego innovations

Rwanda’s ‘boda boda’ motorcycle taxi-industry is huge, with 20,000 on the roads compared to 600 taxis. It is also unregulated and chaotic, causing a number of problems that mobility company Yego Moto is fixing with its innovative platform. After an extensive trial in 2017 that involved 840 motorbike taxis, Yego Moto was licensed by the government in early 2018 and has now set about providing meters to ‘boda boda’ drivers.
These meters, which have been provided to around 2,000 drivers thus far, are formalizing the industry, allowing customers to request and pay for rides using their phones, with a model similar to that of Uber. Yet Yego Moto is adapted to local conditions. Passengers can also pay using Ride-Tap-Pay NFC tags, while overcharging is eradicated using its Intelligent Connected Fare Meter. The platform has been designed to work in the harsh and varied African environment, even with limited or no internet connectivity, and the IoT platform enables local law enforcement to monitor drivers for insurance, safety of rides, and license and registration. The government can use collected data to alleviate traffic congestion, while drivers are able to build up a credit record.

Ovamba solution

Founded in 2013 by US entrepreneurs to allow African entrepreneurs access to finance, Ovamba provides short-term capital to micro, small, and medium-size businesses via mobile phone technology. With traditional banking unable to bridge the continent’s credit gap, Ovamba’s proprietary algorithm analyzes various types of data, including cultural information, in real time to measure risk. Ovamba Solution provides loans up to $500,000 and developers say that default rates have so far been less than 6%. The platform also includes a chatbot (a virtual assistant) in African mother tongues and security features for facial and vocal recognition.

Antonella Sinopoli

Saudi influence on the fate of Khartoum.

Thursday, 1 August 2019 8:00

Riyadh, together with the United Arab Emirates, is determining the decisions of the Sudanese military junta and blocking the transition
to democracy.

A considerable portion of the Arab world is in chaos. Its political, social and economic instability as well as the security situation have worsened in the last decade. The reasons for this chaos are to be found especially in the chronic geopolitical alliances involving regional and international powers. The problem weighs heavily on the present and
future of the African continent.

Tunisia is still today in a limbo of uncertain transition. Egypt is in the hands of a military regime which recently changed the Constitution in order to consolidate the power of the president, General al-Sisi.

Libya is at the mercy of a fratricidal war caused by the NATO intervention of 2011. Algeria is in ferment and it is hard to see a way out of the crisis, given the overwhelming role of the military in whose hands the reins of power rest.

For some months now, Sudan has also been in the spotlight following the revolt that led to the fall of General Omar El-Bashir. The demonstrations in Khartoum and in other cities were manipulated by the military to carry out a coup d’état (El-Bashir himself came to power in 1989 as the result of a putsch). Today, and until further notice, the military junta led by General Abdel Fattah Burhan is in power.

Behind his coming to power is the secret help of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, countries united in an alliance under the regional umbrella led by the Saudis in opposition to the alliance composed of Qatar and Turkey. Sudan has always been the scene of ideological conflict between these two poles.

El-Bashir adopted a flexible strategy which he adopted in line with his interests. In the past, for ideological reasons, he was allied with Qatar which supports the Muslim Brotherhood whose Sudanese branch was supported by the former regime of El-Bashir who, however, had recently become closer to Saudi Arabia.

Since 2015 Sudan has been taking part in a war against Yemen with more than ten thousand military personnel. In exchange, the al-Saud promised it financial aid amounting to five million dollars, only a small part of which has been disbursed. It is important to emphasise that General Abdel Fattah Burhan was formerly commander of the Sudanese troops in the Yemen. Just a coincidence? Burhan had already been to Riyadh on 30 May last, as President of the transitional Military Council, to receive the ‘blessing’ of the Saudis (five days previously, he had been received by al-Sisi in Cairo).

Following the coup, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates allocated 3 billion dollars to Sudan. But El-Bashir was also doing business with Turkey. In 2017 he granted a concession to Ankara, for 99 years, of the Suakin peninsula on the Red Sea. It is a strategic location, close to the Saudi coast, which the Turks might use as a military base.

For the present, it seems that the pole led by Saudi Arabia – with the blessing of the White House – dominates the Sudanese scene and may have considerable influence on the future of that country. It is of little consequence that in the squares of Khartoum and elsewhere women and children protest against Saudi interference in their affairs and want the Sudanese troops withdrawn from the Yemen.

Mostafa El Ayoubi

Between Maras and Pandilla

Thursday, 1 August 2019 8:00

The phenomenon of organized crime is one of the plagues that most affects both the economy and the quality of life of citizens, since the cost of violence and insecurity has serious consequences on the GDP with the attendant result of the emptying of entire villages and thousands of Salvadorans asking for asylum in foreign countries to escape the violence.

A crucial role is played by criminal gangs, better known as maras or pandilla, that with their 65,000 affiliates that correspond to about 9% of the population, have a social and capillary control of the territory: they are groups that express their identity through symbols and signals, that share certain rules and relationships, more or less hierarchical, and that extend nationally and internationally.
Maras are often involved in illegal activities and claim control of some businesses, territories or economic markets.

It should be noted that despite trying to combine the two terms mara and pandilla, the differences remain clear: the maras are a phenomenon with transnational roots, linked to migratory contexts (Los Angeles above all), while the pandillas are organizations linked to an autochthonous territory, or district, heirs of a generation of youth groups rooted in Central American history. Born, in fact, in the suburbs of the United States among communities of Hispanic and Mexican emigrants from Washington, Los Angeles and Southern California between the 50s and 60s of the last century, the maras followed the pattern of US youth gangs despite having the same needs as ethnic mafias. This latter is a factor that was accentuated very gradually as, thanks to emigration, they expanded to other countries. It was the era of gangs in the American suburbs, and the Central Americans, despised by the more integrated Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, organized themselves as a form of self-defense and preservation of their own identity. Over time, the gangs turned into local mafias, dedicated to petty crime through extortion and small-scale drug trafficking.

The names of the two major organizations, the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13 or simply MS) and the Dieciocho (or Barrio 18), refer to the neighborhoods of Los Angeles that had indeed been established as the breeding grounds for these organizations.
In the early 1990s, the ‘Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act’ came into force, a reform implemented by the United States that involved the deportation of all illegal immigrants to their country of origin. This reform favoured the acceleration of the expansion process of both criminal groups, since most of the deportees who were affected exported the gang culture to Central America and in particular to the Northern Triangle area, which includes the states of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Within the Northern Triangle the maras became particularly active and well-established and began to recruit among the boys of the local population, reinvigorating the fringes of both groups. This created the right conditions to proceed to an adequate structuring and ramification that allowed the organization to extend its range of action throughout Central America, Mexico, the United States and even Italy. However, the UNODC (United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime) is keen to point out that it is not appropriate to talk about ‘transnational gangs’ when referring to the maras, as their activities, mainly racketeering and drug trafficking, are concentrated above all on the local territory, despite their members operating outside national borders. In the same years, in El Salvador, members of the White Fence 13 gang also arrived, famous for being one of the first established in California and being affiliated with Eme, a powerful Mexican criminal organization.

The Mara Salvatrucha and the Barrio 18 were once close, or at least not in perennial war with each other, but subsequently they re-embarked on war generating innumerable episodes of violence aimed at controlling new marketplaces and new channels for arms traffic. This conflict was appeased in May 2012 when the two organizations began a real peace process that led to the signing of a truce with the then Salvadoran President Mauricio Fuentes. The government, with the aim of reducing the number of homicides in the country offered, in return, the reintegration of its members into everyday life, immunity, a job and the transfer of their leaders from the maximum security prisons to other prisons where they could receive visits. This agreement worked the first year – the murders went down by 42 percent – but the people’s confidence in the government and the rule of law collapsed. A year later, under pressure from the United States, El Salvador decided to put an end to the truce and this saw the record rate of murders ever carried out reached in 2015. At that point the Government reacted with a heavy hand and launched a tremendous repression. (F.R.)

Nigeria. Troubles in Kano.

Thursday, 1 August 2019 8:00

In the northern state of Kano in Nigeria a political war is ongoing. On one side, the Emir of Kano, one of the most respected traditional leaders of the country; on the other, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, the governor of Kano, member of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) party. This conflict is having a deep impact on the society of the state and could have effects on a national level.

A law titled ‘Kano Emirs Appointment and Deposition Amendment Law 2019’ was drafted, approved and enacted with an unusual speed in May 2019. According to that law, the Kano Emirate (founded as a province of the Sokoto Califate in 1805, according to some sources, 800 years ago according to some others) was split in five smaller emirates (Kano, Bichi, Gaya, Rano and Karaye), each led by an emir.

Emir of Kano, Mohammed Sanusi.

The Emir of Kano (probably the second most traditional influential leader of the country, after the Sultan of Sokoto) used to have authority over 44 Local Government Areas (LGA) in the state; now he has authority only over 11 LGAs. The new four emirs have the same status he used to enjoy. The governor explained his move as a way to implement decentralization and improve local participation. The Kano Emirate resisted and obtained an order from the High Court to stop the implementation of the reform, but Ganduje went on with his plans. The quarrel between the Emir and the governor has a political side. According to some observers, everything started because during the 2019 general elections, the Emir allegedly supported the People’s Democratic Party, the main opposition party. After his victory, Ganduje allegedly started to limit the Emir’s influence by splitting the Emirate. In addition to that, the Emir was brought to justice following accusations of misappropriation of public funds, accusations the Emir and his supporters deny.

An inconvenient Emir

Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (known as Muhammad Sanusi II after his ascension to the throne), the Emir of Kano, has always been an outspoken critic of the ruling powers of Nigeria. When he was the governor of the Central Bank of the African giant (after a career in banking), he criticized the policies of then president Goodluck Jonathan. In particular, he denounced the missing of a vast sum of money coming from the selling of oil on the world market. That sum apparently got lost in the transfer from one body of the public administration to another. Sanusi was basically fired for having denounced that. He was even briefly presented by the Nigerian press as one of the possible candidates for the presidency against Jonathan in the 2015 elections. But in 2015 he was chosen as Emir and apparently renounced every political ambition.

Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State.

He targeted politicians also recently. On 25th June 2019 he declared that Nigeria is on the verge of bankruptcy due to the government policy. He advocated the abolition of state subsidies (especially fuel subsidies) to fund the development of education, health and infrastructures. To sum it up, his theory is that those subsidies are a popular measure (especially among the poor, that see them as the only way to take a fair share of the national wealth). In reality, they drain resources that could be used better to empower Nigerian people. With this declaration, an unpopular move, he succeeded in hitting two birds with a single stone: the politicians that implement these measures to nurture their political base and the people that think they benefit from the system. It is fair to say that the fuel subsidies were implemented by politicians both from the PDP and from the APC.

New Central Mosque of Kano.

Muhammadu Sanusi II, who is an Islamic scholar, is also a relevant figure in the fight against extremism in Nigeria. Due to his knowledge of his religion (but he also attended a Catholic school) and to his public role, he is in the front line in the battle of ideas with the extremists of Boko Haram, a terrorist group active in Northern Nigeria and the Lake Chad region of West Africa. In his speeches he preaches a vision of Islam that is at odds with Boko Haram‘s. And the extremists have tried to kill him.

Clear and present danger

Ganduje’s decision was criticized by different stakeholders of Kano state. Some civil society activists accused him of having created division within the state and damaged the status of Kano city, that hopes to become one of Africa’s next megacities. But probably the most profound damage he is creating concerns the structure of Nigerian society, at least in his state. Traditional rulers, even if they don’t have powers guaranteed by law and are subjected to the authority of governors, have a positive image among the population. Since Nigerians don’t trust institutions very much, in many areas they prefer to ask emirs and kings to solve disputes and for help in case of need. Those figures are not relics of the past but have an active role in Nigerian society.

Ganduje is in a sense creating a precedent. His attack on the Emir of Kano could be replicated in other areas of Nigeria by other governors that are annoyed by traditional leaders who dare to speak truth to power or simply have a different agenda. But this could have a severe impact on the social structure of the country. Having considered the reputation of traditional leaders among the population, an attack on their authority could disenfranchise entire strata of the society and increase the already considerable mistrust towards politicians. A short-term political gain could lead to long-term damage. In addition to that, since Sanusi is famous at an international level, the quarrel could have an impact also on the reputation of Nigeria.
This political war has not yet ended, even if the governor of Kano is winning. It is also true that the Emir could be guilty of misappropriation, as his opponents claim. In any case this episode seems to be another case of political abuse. The fact that the supposed victim is a traditional ruler and not a common citizen does not change the reality that opposing ruling powers is never safe.

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