What will South Sudanese independence mean for the region?

Great Debates
21

I’m not sure why I’m doing this, given that you clearly have a boner for whatever your fevered imagination thinks my “world view” might be (which I suspect says more about your world view than mine, which actually seems pretty irrelevant to your rantings about it), but here goes.

The example I use is that in Cameroon, Osama Bin Laden tee shirts were a bit of a trend. Obviously, I’d get a bit offended when friends showed up to my house wearing them. I found it confusing because where I lived they practiced a very relaxed form of Sufism and there was very little religious animosity. People converted freely back and forth, and when people asked why I wasn’t Muslim (which was usually a surprise to them) they accepted “because my parents aren’t” as a perfectly legit answer. Additionally, there was a huge amount of animosity against Arabs- people regularly aired their dislike for Arabs. Osama just didn’t fit in, but there he was.

It turns out that, given how sparse access to information is in remote villages, people didn’t really know much about who Bin Laden is. Quite a few of my friends had no idea he was behind Sept. 11th, and more than one didn’t even know he was Muslim. All they really knew is that the West didn’t like him. They figured anyone the West doesn’t like must be a pretty big badass, and must be doing something right (they still have some justifiably bad feelings about the whole Colonialism thing.) Basically, people thought he was Rambo for the third world, telling the big guys to fuck off. When I explained the truth, people were pretty clearly surprised and upset. They had no idea. They didn’t even know there were branches of Islam that had beefs with America.

How did Bin Laden get into a remote, religiously moderate village? It wasn’t through Islam- there just wasn’t enough communication. It was through us telling the whole world “Hey, this guy is important. This guy is relevant.” Instead of treating him like a Timothy McVeigh wacko, we treated him with credibility. And surprise, surprise, he got a lot of credibility. Suddenly, people in remote corners of the world were treating him with respect. We inadvertently made him a folk hero among people who should rightfully have no connection to him.

If we treat fundamentalist Islam in Africa with credibility, people will flock to it. People are desperate for some credibility, and what better way to get it than going to the one thing that seems to scare the most powerful countries in the world? If we define these conflicts as religious conflicts, they will take on the aspects of religious conflicts- and that is scary given that religion is probably the most effective way to get people to fight and die even against their own intersets. The way that a problem is frames has enormous power to actually define the problem. If we start framing Islam in Africa as a problem, all we are doing is creating a legitimate place for it to become a problem.

For an example, look at the Tutsis and Hutus. In pre-colonial times, these labels barely had any meaning. They were barely considered different ethnic groups. The Belgiens, seeking a local system of control, began classifying people and making those classifications meaningful by allocating power by these often newfound ethnic labels. We all know the end of that story. The moral here is not “Colonialists were bad,” but rather that it is perfectly possible to create new and murderous divisions in a society out of whole cloth, basically by naming them and giving them some significance.

Or another example. Let’s take a suburban high school with normal problems that has suddenly decided they have a “gang” issue. They ban certain colors, baggy pants, hats, etc’ as “gang” items. A quite likely result is that a lot of normal suburban kids will develop a fascination with gangs, which obviously seem to hold a lot of power if they are scaring the adults like that. Kids will start wearing “gang” paraphernalia because it’s cool and rebellious and seems to piss everyone off. Kids start forming their own fake suburban gangs, and when the school admin comes down hard, they realize they are on to something powerful. While most kids are just messing around, a percent will get involved in real gangs.

What we need to do in Africa is start framing religious extremists as just that- whackos who do not belong in civil discourse. We need to embrace the vast majority of Islamic Africa, which practices some of the world’s most moderate Islam, and let them know we respect their cultures and religion. We need to make it very, very, very clear that America does not have a problem with Islam itself, because people don’t really understand that- and if they think we hate their religion, they will have no problem hating us. And above all, we need to avoid making a cultural “space” for extremist Islam. It won’t cause it to appear, but it will help it gain hold.

22

The haplessly conceived borders set a lot of problems in to motion, but it’s too late to fix them now. If the plane is about to crash, you can’t solve the problem by closing the runway. Honestly I don’t see any easy solution to the problems created by states with difficult ethnic/geographic divisions, but I think that trying to create a greater sense of national unity is probably a better path than everyone breaking apart and all the squabbling that is sure to follow.

You clearly do not read the same “liberal Westerners” that I do. Care to name some that you are familiar with? The world view you are railing against is nothing more than a stereotype. I’m a HUGE Bill Easterly fan myself. I think you might like the guy- he’s all about Africa taking responsibility and creating its own local solutions.

I don’t think China is in it for Africa’s benefit, but I do think they have something to offer Africa. They want to increase trade, and basic economics teaches that increasing trade benefits both sides (even if the African side gets less benefit). More importantly, China provides some competition for the West, which will also increase efficiency and effectiveness. A lot of aid is wasted, poorly used, or even harmful. Many aid agencies are little more than job programs for overeducated Americans. With China in the mix, we will have to shape up a bit and actually have something meaningful to offer them.

23

I don’t agree that things won’t change.

Oil aside, S.Sudan, possibly as a *result *of the civil war, is in an enviable position to kickstart quite a nice little nature tourism industry. From contact I’ve had with staff at Juba University, they are very aware of the possibilities of tourism as a major industry.
The other thing is that the South is water-rich, which counts for a lot in Africa. Couple that with a returning diaspora of more educated folk, and things will look better than they have at any time in the past 30-40 years.

24

Thank you for taking the time to elaborate your position. While I do not agree with it, nor the pattern of thinking behind it, I appreciate the time and effort to create the post for someone with whom you obviously disagree (more precisely, who constantly disagrees with you and chides you for your stances).

If it were possible to simply create heroes and paradigms by confusing the ignorant, there’d be a lot more of it and a lot less war. That doesn’t mean an ignorant individual won’t end up T-Shirting an idiot simply because they are in the media, but it does mean that the problem is radical Islam, not the notoriety of its leaders. It does mean that a group has to take personal responsibility if they institute teachings. If a Hutu butchers a Tutsi family you don’t get to blame it on the Belgians. I guess that’s where you and I disagree.

It’s true that adults banning things turns promoting those things into a mechanism for kids to show they are all grown up. It’s a stretch to go from that to blaming the West if radical Islam succeeds in Africa.

25

Hmmm. Not to be a downer, but pulling in huge numbers of tourists seems rather unlikely. Air connections between African countries are notoriously difficult and expensive (I had to connect in Ethiopia to get from Cameroon to Mali!) so tourists tend to do border crossings by land. This means that if a small country wants to get tourism, it had better be a part of a “tourism bloc” like Senegal-Gambia-Mali-Burkina or Kenya-Tanzania. South Sudan does have a land border with Kenya, which gets lots of tourism, but I think it’s a good hike from the major tourist spots and otherwise it is a “dead end,” and not really on the way to other tourist spots (I know there is some tourism in Ethiopia, but Kenya and Ethiopia do not tend to attract the same demographic). People would have to go out of their way to specifically visit South Sudan, and that’s going to limit its prospects. Look at Cameroon- it has amazing prospects for tourism and a ton to offer (Beaches! Deep rainforest with pygmies! Ancient tribal kingdoms! Deserts full of exotic nomads! Animals!) but the fact is that nobody is ever going to go there because there is no reason to be in the region to begin with and there is no tourist-friendly country to move on to after.

Not to mention that people are not great with African history, and it’s going to take Sudan a long time to live down it’s reputation. While the young adventurous types might be better updated as to the situation, many of those have parents that will say “Oh heck no, you are not going to Sudan!”

26

At any rate, if South Sudanese independence really happens, that will be the end of the Sudanese civil war (or at least that side of it; Darfur is another matter). And that’s something.

Would an independent South Sudan, now free to unilaterally make war on its neighbors as independent states do, have any interest in doing so? I don’t know. Its neighbors, FTR, would be: Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo (f/k/a Zaire), Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia. Do any of those (other than Sudan) have ongoing or potential quarrels with South Sudan?

27

Not bloody likely. Goddamned expensive, the current operators like the Chinese are quite comfortable with Khartoum payoffs and a whole new infrastructure through the wooded uplands into Uganda and onto Kenya is a crapshoot, in particular as there are some nasty little insurgencies like the Lord’s Army there.

Why the bloody fuck would people from Dar Fur go south to the hated Pagans that they happily slaved and killed before they themselves got into a tussle with Khartoum…?

Or are you buying that Hollywood Actor thing about Black Africans.

What about it? It sucks for transport (except shallow boats) as an unimproved water way.

As a businessman doing biz across SSA, I agree.

Agreed, and it’s not particularly clear to me that making boundaries really improves anything, versus giving people of a more localised ethnicity massive corrupt leadership opportunities and more demagoguery.

Quite. I expect massive Nigeria style corruption myself.

Rubbish. Religious radicalism is as old as Islam. Half the Islamic states in the Sahel came from Jihad.

Al Qaeda craziness, that’s new enough though.

What the fuck are you on about? They bloody well do exist, they just assasinated some folks in W. Sahel. The Americans may be right stupid nutters about them, but they’re not “mythical” by a long English mile dearie.

With this, I agree entirely.

Pipe dream. Transfers mean fuck all relative to corruption.

Pushing for Democracy, bollocks. There’s a bunch of not-very-democratic quasi ethno-tribal movements with a façade of democracy to make the Americans happy. Not going to last long.

And I agree here - anyone who’s flown into the Central African region is smoking some bad hash if they think that tourism is going to be a major earner. Unlike a Kenya or a Uganda, where at least the Empire left something resembling a proper infrastructure, South Sudan got utter shite, and with nearly 50 odd years of on-and-off civil war with the North, it’s more shite than at independence. The basic infrastructure for getting the basics of even not particularly large-scale high-end tourism are not there.

28

I get your earlier comment, and to the extent you’ve clarified, I agree. The Americans setting up some crazy Army command to fight Al Qaeda in the Sahel as they seemed to have been planning is throwing fuel on the flames.

And for the Pdeant: it’s pretty bloody clear the Belgians did in fact create the problem, and actively mucked around even after independence in ethnic divide and conquer, so yes, they get blamed for 1994. It was pretty bloody direct politics, not 2nd or 3rd hand side effects there.

29

wmfellows:

Because the more immediate bad blood and danger to them is with Khartoum and the Janjaweed.

30

Not bloody likely, despite the Hollywood mythology. In any case, they head to their ethnic kin and fellow Muslims in Chad, not the despised “slaves” as they call the southerners.

Just because they’re all black to Americans doesn’t mean they particularly care for each other. The Fur were quite happy to enslave and kill the southerners when they were doing business with Khartoum.

31

I’ll take your word for that, as you clearly have more first-hand experience with Africa than I have.

I’m under no “Hollywood” illusion that all black Africans make up a single group of people who love one another, however, I assumed that Chad was not interested in absorbing refugees and had some degree of border control to prevent it, whereas South Sudan is not as yet a separate country so the Fur might see it as a place that they could migrate to without immigration issues but offering future safety from the Janjaweed when independence creates a situation that will make armed incursions an international incident rather than the internal affair it is now.

32

The Belgians did not slaughter upwards of a million Tutsi–men, women and children butchered indiscriminately like animals–nor did they slaughter the Hutus in the early 70’s.

A worldview that says this sort of slaughter was the fault of the Belgians works only if one makes the assumption the groups involved were witless savages too low on the human pole to be accountable for their own savagery, and too stupid to understand who the real culprits were (assuming the real culprits were the Belgians for their role in setting up the class divisions in the first place).

I do not agree with that world view and I find it patronizing of Africans. It reflects a thought process that says they are simply unable to be responsible for themselves. It’s an indirect way of diminishing their status as fully accountable beings to children utterly at the whim of their Masters. Perhaps we can discuss it in a different thread (although I may have limited online access for a bit).

33

I think 99% of the people we call “Al Qaeda in the Desert” today are not formally affiliated with Al Queda and do not naturally hold fundamentalist positions. Most of them are the same bandits that have ruled the area for centuries, perhaps with some extra funding from North African states. In any case, I don’t think they reflect the prevailing views in the region, and I don’t think they are any more credible than the countless bandits the roam every remote region on earth.

34

No the slaughtered tens of thousands in the Colonial era, perhaps even more in neighbouring Congo (and damned high percentages of the population) and formally worked to establish the Tutsi-Hutu divide as a means of Divide and Rule.

The Belgians were champions of shockily nasty colonial policy, even for the era.

Since you clearly haven’t even an A-level course clue, perhaps a wee bit of reading before taking your precious preaching position, however it fits the username.

Eh what?

No assumption of savage bloody wogs need be made, although it’s clear you like it as an a priori position.

One need only know something actual about the colonial history and the explicit - like a I said before not 2nd order or 3rd order effects (say like the Empire and the Hausa-Igbo mutual dislike) - Belgian policy and particular nastiness.

From that it is very clear that the Belgians created a nasty little political system and ideology that direclty fed into post-independence events.

Of course the elites that they educated and who kept moving forward with that ideology bear yet more responsibility, but so do the Belgians - unless to use a bit of arch witlessness, you believe that Africans are witless savages born tabula rasa savages… Like every other people on earth, past governance sets the stage for future governance

Since I do real business with real Africans and hold them in quite high esteem, save your pre-packaged pseudo moral superiority.

What’s patronizing to Africans is to think that history doesn’t matter. Preaching from uninformed - indeed grossly ignorant pre-packaged moralising is as well patronizing to Africans. Save it.

I have no idea who “you” call Al Qaeda in the desert / Sahara / Sahel so I can’t comment. However, they are bloody real (as my expensive non-American no-axes to grind in that area, sec. reports track, and the odd nastiness of killing tourists, nasty little innovation that). And there is no " state funding" - that was the Libyans in the 70s-80. As for prevailing views in the region, I haven’t a clue as to what that means - but harldy matters to their real existence.

35

You are obsessed with the idea of assigning blame, but that is not really what looking at the colonial legacy is about. It is pretty much a proven fact that environmental circumstances can lead to horrific violence. The classic example is the Stanford Prison Experiment. The fact is that most people, in the right situation, can commit some pretty bad crimes. This doesn’t mean the Belgiens were solely responsible or hold the only blame, but they did do a lot to create the kinds of circumstances that lead to violence.

Of course the “blame” for violence lies with the perpetrator, but when you see a lot of violence it’d be foolish not to look at the environment. I mean, the other explanation would be what? That the inner cities or Cultural Revolution China or whatever just happen to have a high concentration of bad people?

36

Congo (formerly Zaire) is also interesting to look at because it is so large and could reasonably be a few independent states. Much of it is geared to the “East Africa” political area while much of it looks toward “South Africa” (area not country) for direction

The East African nations of Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya do a reasonable job of co-operating amongst each other, and if they could get South Sudan and East Congo as independent states, they could get a viable trade block.

37

I don’t doubt there are extremely violent Islamic gangs in the desert, anyone who reads the news knows that. But I do doubt that they represent a coordinated effort under the command of some kind of central organization, with the primary and well-defined mission to serve that organization’s goals.

Al Qaeda may reward them and provide some training in return for them picking off tourists and aid workers, but I think this is more like franchising out than anything else. Sponsoring the local thugs to make trouble is not precisely the same as running a branch of a terrorist army in a region. As for the terrorist themselves, I think fundamentalist Islam is a handy niche for them. But I think at this point they are still mostly opportunists and warlords with their own agendas, and fundamentalist Islam is mostly a handy cover for that. In ten years those same forces will probably be in the same place with a new name and a new veneer of ideology.

I was wrong about any state-sponsorship. I assumed that someone in charge was complicit in how freely they can act in some regions, but it appears mostly they are affiliated with various anti-government groups.

38

Actually, the idea expressed to me was to build on the existing not-bad-for-Africa airport that all the NGOs and UN people flooding into Juba have insisted on.

S.Sudan is looking on getting into the Kenya bloc - it wants to push the “large migration - just like Serengeti, only fresh!” angle.

I agree they’re being naively optimistic, but my overall impression of those I’ve spoken to is that they are looking to make a change in their country. No, granted, university people are a self-selecting sample, but they are actually fairly influential.

39

At this point I’m just talking to bounce ideas around, but there are so few threads on Africa that remain about Africa that it’d be nice to continue.

Airports mean jack squat. Cameroon has a dozen airports where attendants in shiny uniforms wait endlessly for planes that will never land on the slowly rotting runways. Nothing is creepier than hanging out in an airport bar where no planes have landed for a month. Bamako, on the other hand, has an airport that is a step down from the Oakland Greyhound terminal, but it gets a lot of tourism. Nepal, which is a country that basically entirely depends on tourism, has a funky old airport that looks like a closing-down 1970s mall. It doesn’t matter what kind of airport you have, it matters if the planes go there or not.

It’s highly doubtful that foreign tourists are going to fly directly in to South Sudan just for the sake of going to South Sudan on its own, so South Sudan is somehow going to have to finagle lots of inter-African connecting flight. And that never seems to happen- half the time when flying between two African countries you have to fly to freaking France to change planes. Not to mention that flights in Africa tend to be staggeringly expensive.

Airports are the classic African show project, where the insecure leader of a podunk country sinks millions into a flashy airport on the theory that if you can build something really expensive, you have somehow accomplished something or impressed people. As if the investors won’t notice the slums creeping up the moment they step outside.

I’ve worked with a number of ultimately doomed eco-tourism projects. It’s become a pretty easy idea to pitch, since it’s the one development project where having literally nothing isn’t considered a bad thing. It has so much promise to bring “something for nothing” that it’s a tough one to resist. And it’s a catchy enough buzzword that there are still plenty of foreigners and NGOs that are willing to sink money into it.

So at this point, every dude with a weedy field thinks he is an eco-tourism entrepreneur. Every region with a muddy road running through it thinks it is the next undiscovered gem. But there is more to eco-tourism than just having the idea in your head.

Of course it could work, but I suspect it will be a lot more complicated than the dreamers are imagining right now.

40

I think you are missing the point. It has nothing to do with the fact that you do business with Africans and hold them in high esteem. Lovely, but utterly irrelevant.

It’s the condition of man for the strong to dominant the weak and the brutal to slaughter the victims at hand, and no group gets to excuse its behaviour because of something someone else did. That’s why I disagree with even sven’s earnest but misguided notion that Group A can turn Group B into savages. We are all savages and we are all accountable for our own savagery. Even Africans, who were doing very nicely being savage to one another before the equally savage white man came along and disturbed their natural order, are responsible for their own savagery.

If you want to blame the Belgians, feel free. You’ve got sven supporting that world view. I think it’s nonsense and utterly ignorant of all of human history. But it’s a nice way of finding one more excuse for Africa. (I’d be surprised if she found excuses for the savagery of Europeans on the rest of the world, though. That’s not likely to be in her blueprint of how the world works. I suspect European savagery is their own fault in the sven victimhood hierarchy. Perhaps she will be along to correct me.)