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Egypt. Being a Christian in an Islamic Country.

What kind of challenges exist for Christians in Islamic countries? How to be a Christian among Muslims? We focus on Egypt.

An Islamic country is, by definition, religious. However, Islamic countries differ in their way of ruling, stemming from the Sunni or the Shiīca or the Khawarij, the three early roots of governing. The Sunni based on the Caliphates who were the successors of Muhammad, the shadow of the divine ruling, as in the ideology of ISIS; a rule, according to the Sunna (the laws and practices of Muhammad), the Prophet and his successors who live according to Islamic law (sharica).
Sunna rulers are mostly military who would rule according to the sharica, which consists of four schools of law.

The Shiīca are rulers from the descent of cAli (the cousin of Muhammad), from whom the political ruler is an Imam like Allatollah Khomeni. A third branch of Islam that ‘exited’ (Kharaja – in Arabic) from both Islamic parties, the Kharijites emerged. While the Sunni ruler, dependent on the Prophet’s successor, is chosen from his tribe,  and the Quraysh and the Shiīca from the descendants of cAli, for the Kharajites their ruler had to be just a Muslim, even a converted ‘Ethiopian Slave’ can rule ‘Dar el-Islam’ (the Islamic dwelling place), an Islamic country.

Egyptian Arabic Language

The native Egyptian Coptic Christians live in a Sunni governed country, which would be different from Shiīca and Kharijites countries. The new Egyptian state constitution affirms in Article 2 that: Islam is the religion of the state and Arabic its official language. The principles of Islamic law (Shari’a) are the principal source of legislation’.

Egyptian Arabic gradually substituted the Coptic language from the 13th century onwards, and its church is one of the four early Patriarchates established around the same time as the church in Rome. National identity excludes the Coptic distinctiveness, making them a tolerated minority, but not equal citizens. Article 3: Christian and Jewish religious affairs the principles of the laws of Egyptian Christians and Jews are the main sources of laws regulating their personal status, religious affairs, and selection of spiritual leaders. Could this be religious apartheid? The tolerance of Christians and Jews in Islamic legislation operates on a parallel existence, where cultural and state identity remains Islamic. Christians are tolerated, but are they accepted?

Adaptation at the cost of identity

Christian citizens over centuries had to adapt to Islamic law and culture to the extent that Coptic Christianity while preserving its language and Coptic heritage in the liturgy, lost its social-cultural values. Over centuries adapting to Islamic law and cultural pressures, Coptic Christianity changed. In the 2011 revolution Christians and Muslims stood together for national change. With Morsi, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood elected as president, Christian Coptic identity no longer identified with the nation. It was the time of churches being burned and Copts killed in public.

How can a Christian be patriotic? To be freed from President Morsi after one year of governing required an exceptional national unity without religious division. The people went into the streets in defiance of the ‘democratically’ elected president. It was a historical moment when Christians found the courage to revolt after centuries of passive submission to the state. Encouraged by disconcerted Muslims who saw that ‘Islam’ is not the solution, the military took back the seat of power they had briefly lost, using mass media effectively to manoeuvre popular opinion in their favour.

To be an Egyptian Christian in Egypt ?

Christians in Egypt cannot afford to be superficial in their national and religious identity. Christian fundamentalism is a constant temptation as a response to Muslim radicalism. Pope Francis on his visit to Cairo in 2017 said, in his address to government authorities and diplomatic corps: “Development, prosperity and peace are essential goods that merit every sacrifice.

They are also goals that demand … above all, unconditional respect for inalienable human rights such as equality among all citizens, religious freedom and freedom of expression, without any distinction (cf. Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Egyptian Constitution of 2014, Chapter 3). The greatness of any nation is revealed in its effective care of society’s most vulnerable members – women, children, the elderly, the sick, the disabled and minorities – lest any person or social group be excluded or marginalised”. Can this be realised?

Ecumenical unity as a necessary witness

During the same visit Pope Francis pertinently said in his address to the Patriarch Pope Tawadrous II: “Together, then, we are called to bear witness to Jesus, to carry our faith to the world, especially in the way it is meant to be brought: by living it, so that Jesus’ presence can be communicated with life and speak the language of gratuitous and concrete love. As Coptic Orthodox and Catholics, we can always join in speaking this common language of charity: before undertaking a charitable work. Thus, by building communion in the concreteness of a daily lived witness, the Spirit will surely open providential and unexpected paths to unity”.
A deeper communion is essential among the seven Uniate Catholic Bishops, each in fidelity to their various traditions and their Orthodox counterpart needs to form the type of unity which is not just simply conformity; but by practically forging together a path where the diversity of liturgy, spirituality and traditions shows their relevance in contemporary society and their richness in unity. The embarrassment of not celebrating Christmas and Easter together worldwide is reason enough to be ridiculed as Christians who proclaim love and cannot live its joy. Any signs of division seen by Muslims weakens the credibility of the values of Christian belief.

Openness to inter-religious dialogue

Contemporary Orthodox and Protestant pastoral theology do not hold the Catholic Church’s theology of inter-religious dialogue. While the Orthodox defend the faith using apologetic theology, the Protestants affirm that salvation is only found in Jesus Christ. Both positions exist in the Catholic church, but with an emphasis on God’s plan to save all of humanity. Catholic teaching does not focus on ‘who are saved?’ but ‘how God saves his humanity?’

We face two consequential challenges. The first is the value of respecting the human conscience as the inner place where God speaks to every human person. Therefore no one can be forced to have faith. The second is the Kingdom of God is larger than the Church. Therefore the role of the church is to be a sacrament of salvation and not a manipulator of salvation. As a pilgrim church, we journey towards the Kingdom, knowing the way through, with and in Christ, to the Father. Dialogue begins when our way of life challenges the status quo, and we are asked the reasons behind our living faith.

The seed of hope

Christians in Islamic environment cannot afford to be passive victims of inequality, discrimination and persecution. Coptic Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant unity will challenge the Islamic culture of conformity. The richness in diversity is part of the universal Church’s physiognomy. Christians cannot afford to be sucked into the victim attitude, losing the dignity of Christian identity by adopting a fundamentalist mentality.
Nevertheless, openness to inter-faith dialogue is not to seek what is common, but to understand the meaningful value of diversity. As a Persian Muslim, a Sufi mystic and poet Jalāl ad-dīn ar-Rūmī (died 1273) wrote: ‘Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing, there is a field. I will meet you there’. Jesus went beyond being condemned, hurt, betrayed, tortured, crucified and buried, and meets us every day in the field of love, mercy, understanding and sharing. There is much that buries Christians in an Islamic milieu, but faith like a seed always gives new life when it dies.
Paul Annis, mccj

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: “Prison was a school to me”.

Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was imprisoned and exiled for his political beliefs. As he became sensitized to the effects of colonialism in Africa, Ngũgĩ turned from writing in English to writing in his native language. Although he goes to visit his country, he lives in the United States, where he is Professor of Language and Comparative Literature at the University of California (Irvine). He focuses part of his theoretical activity on trying to decolonize thought and defend the equality of cultures and languages.

How did literature enter your life?

I wanted to be a storyteller. I grew up in a community where people used to tell or listen to stories every evening. I loved to learn to read and write, and soon I discovered that I could tell myself stories through books. I had a book full of stories that I could read not only in the evening but anytime I wanted.


What makes you decide to write a novel? How do you know that an idea is so powerful that can be developed in a novel?
It depends … Actually, I have no idea; I just start to write. I sometimes come up with thoughts and ideas that then fade away, others remain in my mind and I start to develop them. So they end up becoming novels, stories or plays.

You had to struggle to get education. What does education
mean to you?
Education is everything. The truth is that my education was more important to my mother than to me. Despite she could not write or read, my mother wanted me to attend school, she made sure I did my homework … And as I narrate in my book ‘Dreams in War Time’, she was the one who pushed me to achieve my best possible outcome.
My mother was able to put the concept ‘Always doing the best I can’,
in my head.


You were arrested in 1977. What did prison mean to you?
I was incarcerated in a maximum security prison from December 1977 to December 1978. They put me in jail because I had written a work in Gikuyo, my African native language. ‘Ngaahika Ndeenda’ was the title of the work in Gikuyo, the performance of which led to my detention. That made me reflect about languages and colonial processes. I decided when I was in jail that English would no longer be the original language of my works, but Gikuyo would . I wrote my first novel Caitaani Mãtharaba-Iñi, ‘The Devil on the Cross’, in this language in prison, on toilet paper.
The prison to me was like a school. And writing became a way to cope with my detention.

You write plays in Gikuyo, but you write your theoretical works and your memoir in English. Why?
For two reasons. The first is that I am still a professor of English Language and Comparative Literature and I continue to publish books related to my profession. But, above all, it is because, on the one hand, I need to have play, poetry and drama readers; but, on the other, I am interested in getting critical theory readers too. By criticism I mean theorizing about what we do.

Do you have routines or rituals when you write a novel?
I do not have routines. All I need is an idea that can be developed in a novel. When I come up with an idea that I think can be suitable for a novel I get so excited and I can write anywhere and anytime: at home, travelling, in the morning, in the afternoon … When an idea conquers me, I don’t need rituals and I don’t follow routines. Although I have noticed that if I start writing, for example at home, at a corner of the table, I keep on writing at that corner and sitting on the same chair
all the time.

Are you writing any novel right now?
Many ideas are rolling around my head, but I have not developed any of them yet.  Not all ideas are suitable to be developed in order to support a storyline. However I have just finished writing my first book of poems. It is called ‘Poems about Venice’. Two or three years ago I was invited by a university in Venice for a three-week stay. I had never been there before, and I had never been in a city where there are no cars or where there are water channels instead of roads. Poems about Venice which include six poems will be published in Gikuyo, Italian and English.

What about the future of Africa?
“Over the last 500 years Africa has been giving its resources to the West. Africa should manage its own resources itself and not let other countries do so. The African continent, instead of Europe and the West, should manage and benefit from its immense riches such as gold, diamonds, oil. Africa’s natural resources have been mostly monopolised by European and America companies, largely taking money out of Africa. Also foreign businesses operating in Africa often do not help the local economy as much as they could easily do so. So, for these and several other reasons, Africa, despite it being rich in resources remains the poorest continent in the world.

Gonzalo Gómez

 

Ethiopia. Meskel. The Feast of the Holy Cross.

There is no feast in Ethiopia, religious or civil, so popular and with such large social and family roots. What is celebrated
on the day of Meskel?

The New Year begins in Ethiopia on September 12. That date should be the starting point for the activities of the school year. But, although it is officially so, nothing gets under way completely until the celebration of Meskel, or Santa Cruz, which takes place on September 27. Students may go to school, but they will find that half of the teachers are missing. Or the teachers can start their classes, but half of the students will be missing. In some regions of Ethiopia, like Guraghe, it is almost mandatory that all the dispersed have to return to their father’s house to celebrate the Meskel. There is no feast in Ethiopia, religious or civil, so popular and with such large social and family roots, certainly more than Christmas or Easter.

What is celebrated on the day of Meskel? Throughout the Christian world, at least the Catholic and Orthodox, the so-called Discovery of the Holy Cross is celebrated, which commemorates the discovery of the true cross of Jesus by St. Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, in the first half of IV century. Each Church has developed its own traditions around the event of the discovery and about the whereabouts of the cross. The most common and widespread claim is that, while excavating, Santa Elena found three crosses buried in a site not far from what was supposed to be the crucifixion place. To know which of the three was that of Jesus, they put one by one on a sick person. It was the third one that cured him and they assumed that was the true one. They divided it into pieces, which they sent to the main churches of the Christian world. One of those pieces went to Alexandria in Egypt.

And there’s where the specific Ethiopian tradition starts and where the deep veneration of the Holy Cross is rooted. It is said in this tradition that the Christians of Egypt were continually persecuted by the Muslim rulers. At a time of greater oppression, in the fourteenth century, the Egyptian Church asked for help from the Ethiopian emperor, who at the time was Dawit II. He threatened the Egyptian authorities with cutting off the waters of the Nile and reducing them to starvation. Frightened, Muslims ceased persecution. Here the versions are diversified. According to one, it was the Muslim authorities themselves who, to appease the Ethiopian king, sent to Ethiopia a part of the piece of the Holy Cross preserved in the patriarchal see of Alexandria. According to the other version, on the other hand, it was the Patriarch himself who sent the piece of the cross in thanksgiving for the effective intervention. There is still another version, quite different from the previous ones, which states that the piece of the true cross was sent to Ethiopia by the ‘King of the Franks’ in the time of Emperor Zera Yakob (1434-1467) and that it was contained in a gold box, which was, in turn, inside a larger box, also of gold, in the shape of a cross.

For complex circumstances, the cross went to a mountain with a flat summit that somehow resembles a cross. It is called Gishen Mariam, in the northern province of Wollo and there it has been venerated over the centuries to the present. Hundreds of buses go every year from Addis Ababa and from other parts of the nation carrying faithful for the day of the festival. It is custom throughout the nation to have the ‘demera’ burning on the eve of the feast. It consists of burning a pile of firewood, previously arranged. That of Addis Ababa is especially spectacular, held in the square called Meskel, which is attended by the highest authorities and civilians of the capital. Although performed in the midst of religious songs and blessings, the connections of the ‘demera’ with the liturgical feast of the cross are not clear and seem rather a reminiscence of an ancient pagan celebration.

Whatever the strictly historical value of all these traditions, the unquestionable fact is that the veneration of the holy cross is one of the most salient features of Ethiopian spirituality. That devotion has one of its expressions in the profusion of crosses in all places, of all possible shapes and sizes. There are crosses in the church domes; crosses called processional, because they are placed on the top of a mast and serve to preside over processions; hand crosses carried by priests in their hands and given to the faithful to kiss whenever they come to greet them; small crosses hanging from their necks; crosses marked with indelible ink on their foreheads or on the backs of their hands. It is said that it was the emperor Zara Yakob who imposed the practice of this tattoo, so that Christians were distinguished from Muslims.
Despite the variety of forms, there are some characteristics common to all. The first is that it is exclusively the cross without the figure crucified on it. The reason is that the Ethiopians see the cross as a sign of victory, hence the suffering Christ passes into the background and is not represented. The second is that, in their foliage, the crosses resemble a tree. And here too, the theological motivation is clear: it refers to the tree of life spoken of in Genesis, which was only a pre-announcement, because the true tree of life is the cross on which Jesus died.

Juan González Núñez

South Korea and Africa.

Tracing South Korea’s approach to the continent under 4 presidents.

During the 1960s, South Korea commenced a diplomatic offensive with countries that had remained neutral during the Korean War. This was done to cement alliances with countries so they would back South Korea should conflict break out again. One of the main regions where South Korea attempted to build diplomatic alliances was across Africa, as a significant number of African countries had gained their independence in the preceding decades.

This strategy saw success when, in 1961, South Korea formalized diplomatic relations with Chad, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, and Niger. In the coming decades, South Korea would form relations with many countries across the continent. In effect, South Korea created relations with the aim of gaining the support of African countries in international forums. During this period South Korea would largely engage in such activity in collaboration with the United States and Europe. For all intents and purposes, the relations of South Korea with Africa largely played into the Cold War.

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was assumed that South Korea would decrease involvement in Africa. To an extent this was correct, as made evident by the decreased levels of political, economic, and security assistance provided to Africa by South Korea. However, this shift reversed itself in the 21st century, as seen by the fact the South Korea now engages with Africa more than it did during the Cold War. Furthermore, such engagement is largely diverse, as evidenced by analyzing the engagement that has occurred under the four presidents that have led South Korea since 2003.

Roh Moo-hyun
Roh Moo-hyun was elected president of South Korea in 2003. Previously a democracy advocate during the country’s dictatorship, he was left-wing and dedicated to reaching an agreement with North Korea through dialogue. Roh had played a role in seeing South Korea transform into a democracy with unprecedented economic growth.

South Korea’s success encouraged Roh to work with other countries to implement the economic model that had allowed his own country to prosper, as seen in a trip Roh took to Egypt, Nigeria, and Algeria in 2006 when he announced the South Korea’s Africa Development Initiative.  He expressed hope that the initiative would lead to more frequent collaboration between Seoul and countries across Africa.

In November 2006 Roh convened the South-Korea Africa forum, where he announced that South Korea would triple its assistance to Africa through the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA). Roh expressed his desire to assist African countries in the fields of health, education, development, and infrastructure. One result of this was the establishment of a capacity building program that would see nearly 2,000 African civil servants trained in South Korea. Further, it resulted in Korean companies increasing investment in Africa, and the KOICA financing infrastructure projects in countries such as Ghana and Tanzania.

Throughout Roh’s presidency there was a cornerstone he used when communicating and developing the policy of South Korea toward Africa: that South Korea had seen a massive economic transformation over the preceding decades and it wished to assist African countries to achieve similar progress. Evidently, there were efforts to assist South Korean companies to enter African markets but this was also done in line with assisting African countries to develop.

The legacy of Roh’s policy in Africa is the creation of the South Korea-Africa Forum. It is noteworthy that during his presidency the focus of South Korea’s cooperation with Africa was exclusively focused on commercial linkages and development assistance.

Lee Myung-bak
In 2007  Lee Myung-bak of the conservative Grand National Party (GNP) won South Korea’s presidential election. Lee made it clear that his presidency would see a dramatic shift from Roh on domestic issues, but even more so on foreign policy.

The change in foreign policy led many to believe that Africa may not be a focus for the Lee administration. Yet this concern was debunked when the second South Korea-Africa forum was convened in 2009, attended not only by African states but African Union representatives as well. At the conclusion of the summit, South Korea applauded the efforts of the African Union and pledged to further cooperate with the regional body in the years to come. Lee also promised to double 2008’s official development aid to $200 million by 2012.

The priority that Lee placed on Africa in foreign policy was underlined during his 2010 New Year’s address, where he stated that during the coming year the consolidation of diplomatic relations with the continent was a priority. This was followed by his visit to Africa in 2011, during which Lee visited South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Ethiopia, making him the first South Korean president to visit all three countries. During this visit a significant shift in South Korea’s foreign policy was made clear: Africa would play a larger role in the East Asian republic’s foreign policy both at a regional and global level. During Lee’s visit to South Africa, for example, he placed emphasis on the two G-20 members developing mechanisms through which economic and political cooperation could be strengthened.

However, it was during Lee’s visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo that the new point of contention in South Korea’s relationship with Africa became clear: the relationships between African states and North Korea. During Lee’s visit to the DRC, he spoke with President Joseph Kabila about the North Korean test of ballistic missiles in 2009. Lee expressed his interest in expanding commercial ties with the central African country in what was seen as an attempt to gain influence where North Korea had been involved for decades.

This continued in Ethiopia where Lee pointed to the country’s participation in the Korean War as a baseline for deepening political cooperation.  Lee visited a memorial to the Ethiopian soldiers who fought in the Korean War. He also promised to invite the descendants of Ethiopian veterans to South Korea and educate them about Korean economic development. By visiting the DRC and Ethiopia, which historically had cooperation with North Korea, Lee made clear that in addition to economies, geopolitics was now an element of South Korea’s policy in Africa.

In short, under Lee, relations between South Korea and Africa shifted from mainly economic cooperation to international politics. This was specifically the case regarding the relationships that African states had with North Korea.

Park Geun-hye
Conservative rule of South Korea continued with the election of Park Geun-hye of the Saenuri Party (a rebranding of the Grand National Party) in December 2012. When Park was elected, she stated that the country would continue to play a substantial role in international affairs focusing on three main pillars. Notably, she insisted that all foreign policy would be conducted in a manner that secures the national interests of South Korea, which was seen as a reference to countering North Korea.

At the outset of her time in office, the already conservative Park was forced to drastically alter her foreign policy to address North Korea, thanks to Pyongyang’s December 2012 missile tests. This was followed by nuclear tests, which led to efforts at the United Nations to isolate North Korea. Park also sought to weaken relations that North Korea had enjoyed with many countries, including those in Africa. While this had been a priority of the preceding administration, Park approached it with more political will.

Park’s approach included hosting African heads of state and raising the issue of North Korea. In March of 2013 Park hosted Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in Seoul. Uganda had long cooperated with North Korea and Museveni visited Pyongyang multiple times. During his visit to South Korea, expanding commercial ties, security cooperation, and assistance in fields such as education were discussed. Notably, all these fields are areas in which North Korea and Uganda had been cooperating. Similar visits were made by the presidents of Mozambique and the Ivory Coast .

Park’s Africa policy became even clearer during a visit she made to the continent in the spring of 2015, during which she visited Kenya, Ethiopia, and Uganda. Notably, while assistance and economic cooperation were mentioned, the overwhelming focus of her visit was attempting to gain the support of African states in isolating North Korea.  For instance, during her historic speech at the African Union (AU) Park asked African countries to urge the North to give up its nuclear arsenal. In Uganda she directly offered military security assistance, an area in which Kampala had previously cooperated with Pyongyang. During this trip she also sought to strengthen people-to-people ties between South Korea and Africa in an array of fields. However, Park received domestic criticism for her Korea Aid initiative in Africa. This aid was criticized as overly optimistic and short sighted.

The Africa policy of Park can be characterized by fighting the presence of North Korea on the continent. Her administration sought to elevate the issue at senior levels such as in bilateral meetings and in international bodies. Additionally, it sought to support this aim using soft power, including foreign assistance.

Moon Jae In
Park’s presidency ended when she was removed from office on corruption charges in 2017. Moon Jae-in, a member of the liberal Democratic Party, succeeded Park in May of that same year. Moon came from a liberal background and his presidency marked the first time in nearly a decade that the Blue House was not held by a conservative. This saw a notable shift in the foreign policy of South Korea.

While Moon’s policy toward Africa is still in its infancy, several key characteristics of it are clear. The Moon administration does not view Africa as a venue for competition with its northern neighbor. This has led to the administration shifting its policies to focus exclusively on economic development and commercial linkages. This was made clear in the visit of South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha to Ghana, South Africa, and Ethiopia and in other initiatives, including the Korea-Africa youth forum in Seoul.

The policy of Moon toward Africa is still in its nascent stages, largely because his administration’s priorities are centered on reconciliation with North Korea. The small indicators of the Moon administration’s policy on Africa we do have show that his approach is largely centered on commercial linkages and economic development.

Maxwell Bone and Matthew Minsoo Kim

(Photo: Former South Korea President Park Geun-hye with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni)

PMC: A tool for Russia and China in Africa.

Private Military Companies (PMC) have become an important  player in geopolitics.  These companies provide military contractors to states and private citizens and companies to train personnel or to protect workers and assets. And they became a useful and flexible tool in the hand of major powers to advance their agenda reducing the risks. But PMCs could also become a liability.
This problem emerged years ago for USA (as seen in Iraq). Now it seems to concern Russia and China in Africa.

According to AFRICOM, the US Military Command responsible for Africa, Russian PMCs are present in 15 African countries. They are part of a strategy to develop Russia’s influence on the continent. At this moment, Moscow is active in particular in the Central African Republic, Algeria, Libya and Sudan, but is trying to create stronger relationships with Tunisia, Mali, Mauritania, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Angola and Mozambique.The most famous Russian PMC operating in Africa is Wagner, also active in Syria and Ukraine. This company is headed by a former military intelligence officer, Dmitry Utkin, and is apparently closely connected to Russian security forces: its contractors fly on Russian military aircraft and are treated in Russian military hospitals.
Its owner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is considered to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, but there are conflicting reports on his links with the Russian establishment.

A company like Wagner gives Russia the possibility to have “boots on the ground” in different countries that are in turmoil without formally intervening. Wagner helps Moscow to protect and expand its interests without exposing itself officially and therefore risking the accusation of helping the destabilization of countries like The Central African Republic. But military contractors can act autonomously, and this can create image problems to their political sponsors.
As far as Africa is concerned, in recent years evidence of Wagner’s operations has emerged. In December 2017, a video showing Russian contractors that were training pro-government militias in Sudan surfaced. In July 2018, Russian military personnel were spotted in Darfur. In March 2018, Moscow declared that 170 “civilian advisors” had been sent to The Central African Republic to train local security forces.

According to some analysts, the “civilian advisors” were Wagner personnel. In the same month, a contractor from Wagner stated that they were probably going to be sent to Libya. It seems that this prophecy came to pass in October 2018. While the press has reported on Wagner on several occasions, there is little information on the other Russian PMCs. In July 2018 a company named Patriot appeared. Other Russian firms reportedly active in Africa are (according to information from the Jamestown Foundation as of March 2019) the RSB Group, Orel Anti-Terror, Center R and Moran Group.
The US accuses Russian PMCs of “harsh security practices” – that is to say of cooperating with militias that regularly violate human rights. But similar accusations were also levelled against US PMCs in places like Iraq.

A Chinese tool

The Chinese PMCs are apparently taking advantage of the grand strategy of Beijing government to expand their operations, also in Africa. This strategy is now centred around the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). BRI is basically a network of roads, railroads, ports and pipelines connecting China with Europe through Asia and Africa to develop trade and communications. As of early August 2019, 39 out of 54 African countries are part of the BRI agreements. Its network will pass through East Africa.

Chinese President Xi Jinping with African leaders in Beijing at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.

China, which already has a base in Djibouti, plans to create new military structures in different countries. But its authorities seem to be reluctant to deploy government troops to protect Chinese interests abroad. On the one hand, this is due to Beijing’s non-interference policy in its relations with foreign partners. On the other, it is the consequence of organizational and logistical problems. Chinese PMCs are trying to fill this void in security.
The Chinese government is trying to develop its security firms to protect people and assets of the BRI in Africa. In the past Chinese corporations relied on Western PMCs to secure their personnel and buildings. But Beijing knows relying on external military force (even if it’s hired) is risky. Therefore, it is pushing for the development of PMCs under its control. But there are hurdles to overcome including the fact that, since its troops did not actually fight in wars like Iraq, Syria, Chechnya, etc. Chinese firms cannot hire experienced national personnel like their US and Russian rivals do.

Chinese involvement is particularly evident in Sudan and South Sudan that are outside the BRI. The two governments are trying to find a connection to that project to develop their economies. According to data reported in August 2018, China controls 75% of the Sudanese oil industry. In 2018, among Chinese PMCs the most active in this region was Beijing DeWe Security Services, but the VSS Security Group and China Security and Protection Group were also present.
Two questions are worth asking about this phenomenon. The first is: Do military contractors take their orders from their governments (Russia and China) or from their owners? Second: On a political level (especially international) who will be accountable for the consequences of their actions? It is difficult to answer these questions. But it is right to say that they can also be asked about Western countries.

In reality, in their strategy of using PMCs as a geopolitical tool, Russia and China were preceded (and probably inspired) by the US. Basically, they have started to outsource activities that were reserved to government troops, like the US did years ago.  And from a strictly geopolitical point of view, they are neither better nor worse than their Western competitors. In war zones like Syria, Washington and its allies also supported militias that where ruthless not only against the enemy but also the population.
Undoubtedly, security is necessary for foreign people and companies operating in Africa. And somehow this security must be provided. But the danger is that the African countries will be the ones  who pay the price.
Innocent  Pond
Security Analyst

 

Ba’ath Party Dominance and Mistakes.

As the Ba’ath increasingly dominated the State, the Communists faced greater restrictions on their activities. By the early 1980’s they had been virtually silenced. Indeed, the Ba’ath Party suppressed all secular opposition. The effect was that all political grievances were increasingly channelled through the Shiite Islamic movement.

The Shi’a were poor, but well represented politically during the monarchy; four of eight prime ministers from 1947 to 1958 had been Shi’a. However, there were few Shi’a in the armed forces reducing their upward mobility after the Ba’athists took over. From a practical perspective, this meant that the Shi’a clergy wielded marginal influence to the rank soldiers, as the Revolutionary Command Council – RCC – had not one single Shi’a member from 1968 to 1977.
Even at the regional command level, the Ba’ath was almost entirely dominated by the Tikriti clan (to which belonged Saddam Hussein and his predecessor Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr).

Many such Tikriti officials occupied important posts, even when they lacked the proper education and preparation for office – some were promoted to technically demanding posts as directors of industrial corporations. In contrast, the Shiites resented the absence of meritocratic standards. Interestingly, records of Shiite activists, who died in jail in the early 80’s show that many were very educated. The Ashura processions held on the 10th of Muharram (the first month of the Islamic Calendar) served as the platform for anti-government protest. In 1977 thousands were arrested and many killed as the army tried to quell demonstrations, which began at such commemorations. The fierce reaction to these revolts indicated the regime’s assessment of the potential strength of the Islamic movement.
Indeed, Saddam began to adopt a carrot and stick policy of co-optation in the late 70’s which would mark much of his dealings with the Shi’ites until his demise in 2003.

While his forces repressed revolts, the government of Saddam Hussein increased religious endowments and gifts to the Shiite Ulama and declared the birthday of the Imam Ali, a key figure in the Shi’ism practiced in Iraq, Lebanon and Iran, a national holiday. During the Gulf War of 1990-91 Saddam Hussein even altered the Iraqi flag by adding the holy words “Allahu- Akbar” (more or less “God is Great”). This is very significant, as the Ba’ath frowned on religious expression. Nevertheless, membership in the Al-Dawa party was punishable by death. Ultimately, the politicization of the Iraqi Shi’a began as a reaction to the secular policies adopted by the post monarchical governments in Iraq since 1958. The demise of the Iraqi Communist Party under Ba’ath rule and the tribal – Takriti- basis of advancement within the political hierarchy left the Islamic party and Shi’ism as the only vehicle of opposition – its operations facilitated by the religious infrastructure of mosques and religious institutions, which, although financially weaker, had never been illegal. Admittedly, the Iraqi Shiite movement did get a boost after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. It adopted a militant strategy, which carried out acts of defiance and guerrilla actions against key government targets. Famously, there was an assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein in August 1979 and Tariq Aziz, deputy minister, April 1980.

The government responded with increased repression and started to expel large numbers of Shi’a – over 53,000 between 1980 and 1982 alone- into the Bakhtiar region of Iran. Al-Da’wa members were persecuted and many voluntarily left Iraq. The Da’wa leadership settled in Teheran. Saddam Hussein also offered his usual carrot. Many Shi’a were offered access to good government posts as well as the Party structure itself. By 1987 over 33% of the Ba’ath leadership was Shi’a. The principal areas of Shiite revolt such as Najaf, Karbala and Saddam City (now Sadr City) were the object of renovations and infrastructural improvements in the form of greater access to running water, electricity and paved roads for their population. Yet, during the nineties, the Da’wa was most certainly the only party, which officially mounted any opposition to Saddam Hussein. The party advocated armed resistance to the regime and spawned the notorious Sadr Brigades, who in 1996 almost killed Saddam Hussein’s son Udai leaving him permanently crippled. The Sadr Brigades are also sometimes known as the Iraqi Hizbollah. In the 80’s there was also cooperation among secular minded and Shiite opposition groups in resisting the rule of Saddam Hussein, but the latter’s repressive tactics strongly reduced their effectiveness. Since Saddam Hussein was toppled, the Shi’a seemed to be divided among those who supported Ayatollah Ali Sistani, perhaps the highest living Shi’i authority and the young Moqtada al-Sadr.
An examination of the process of Shiite politicization is essential for rebuilding Iraq.  As many scholars indicated prior to the war in 2003, you cannot even begin to discuss democratization without considering the Islamic political reality that much of the Middle East and North Africa have to face. Because of decades of repression of secular opposition forces, and through a variety of social mechanisms the region is now left to contend with a well-organized and rooted Islamic political reality. Any government, whether dominated by Shiites, or Sunnis, whether or not subservient to the United States, will have to contend with the potential for radicalization on religious lines.

It should be noted that Iraqi society is in fact not as easily classified into the neat Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions as Western powers have stressed in the aftermath of the first Gulf War with the clear divisions marked by the ‘no-fly’ zones. Certainly, the Shiite majority has neither insisted on dividing Iraq along confessional lines or, for that matter, professed hostility toward the Sunni majority. The Shi’ites since the period of the monarchy have organized politically in order to improve their socio-economic conditions within a unified Iraqi State. As noted, many Shi’a actively engaged in the Communist party and even the Ba’ath party. The religious aspect was less a conscious choice than it was one resulting form a process of exclusion. As secular opposition groups were decimated, the Da’wa party united all opposition forces under its patronage. Nevertheless, the Sunnis of the Central and Northern areas of Iraq have failed to accept the rule of Shi’a clerical authorities – in fact how many secularized Shiites would? Iraq is not Iran. It is, unfortunately, easier to conceive an Iraqi future unraveling along a Lebanese scenario for Iraq, with a government split proportionally among the various confessional and ethnic lines as proffered by the Ta’if accords of 1989, rather than one characterized by political parties that cut along confessional lines.

…And Ethnic/National Ones; The Kurds

The Kurds in Iraq represent between 15-20% of the population. In Iraq, the Kurds had more rights right from the start, but suffered violent repression. They formed Democratic Party of Kurdistan (KDP) which under the leadership of Mustafa Barzani began to claim greater autonomy. In 1961, they engaged in armed struggle.

But, by the mid-1970s, divisions emerged within the KDP that spawned the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by Jalal Talabani, who became Iraqi President from 2005 to 2014. After Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003, the Kurds have enjoyed growing rights and today have a Kurdistan regional government, which administers the three provinces of Dohuk, Irbil and Sulaimaniya.

What Happens After ISIS?

The defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq has allowed Shiite, and Kurdish, militias from Lebanon to Iraq to gain prestige and tactical expertise. It has also allowed Iran to deepen its influence, extending its area of influence from Tehran to Damascus via Baghdad. An Iranian dominated Shiite crescent is now all but reality. That will attract more Israeli attention. Indeed, reports suggest Israel has been attacking Iraqi military bases, alleged to host Iranian military advisers as well as Iranian missiles. The latest such attacks occurred on July 30, 2019.

President Trump’s attitude toward Iran, particularly in the form of additional sanctions and the repeal of the 5+1 nuclear deal, has not helped President Rohani. But, it has given a stronger hand to hardliners, who want to restart the nuclear weapons program. The hardliners, presumably, would also encourage its regional clients (Iraq, Hezbollah) to take a stronger stance against Israel. The Iraqi government, therefore, will have to endure more pressure. But, there’s another issue that will place massive obstacles ahead of a full-on Iraqi social and economic reconstruction. (A.B.)

Iraq. A Fragile Country.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 72nd 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.

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.)

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