Last week I participated in the third Marrakech Security Forum which this year focused on “Issues and security consequences of transition in North Africa”. It also included several panels on the consequences for the Sahel region, as well as the problem of drugs trafficking in West Africa. In this well-ordered event organized by Federation Africaine Des etudes Strategiques/Centre Marocain des Etudes Strategiques there were participants from some 50 countries, about 120 men but only 10 women, clearly indicating the male biased interest in the security business. Participants came chiefly from the MENA region but to quite some extent also from francophone Africa south of the Sahara. It was a crowd of senior diplomats, high rank militaries and professors. It appeared that everyone was a director of one institute or another other. There were naturally also a number of Europeans and Americans. Many of the more than hundred, too brief, presentations were quite general statements on the political situation in North Africa and in the Sahel region. Interestingly U.S. officials and academics choose to humbly downplay the U.S. role in Africa in the years to come, except for in a few strategic countries. French officials raised concern over the situation in Algeria and also talked about the situation in the Sahel as “war” and showed concern for the increasing interconnectedness of militant Islamist groups in the region and all the way down to Nigeria. Participants from Africa South of the Sahara gave quite divergent views on the possibilities of an “African spring”, but the Sahelialists were equally afraid of developments around AQIM, Boko Haram and other radical groups. Continue reading
Author: Mats Utas
‘war as a violent mode of participating in today’s global economy’: reading danny hoffman’s war machines
Below is my review of Danny Hoffman’s fantastic book The War Machines: young men and violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia recently published by Duke University Press.
Malaria in insecure spaces. The first time I heard of Danny Hoffman was at an international conference and it was a fantastic story. Some of the senior academics shook their heads at the risks he had taken, blaming it on his “youth”, but I was rather impressed. My reading was that surviving this situation was dependent on his skillful building of trust and mutual respect with his research subjects: rebel soldiers. Hoffman had caught a serious stroke of malaria whilst being in the deep Sierra Leonean bush with rebel soldiers. He was saved by rebels who carried him across the border to Liberia for medical attention; clearly risking their lives, but thereby saving his. Continue reading
Post election – The Liberia situation
Funny election poster
Most CDC supporters followed the recommendation of their party leader and restrained from voting on November 8. The election results show this with all clarity. After counting all the votes NEC showed that Johnson Sirleaf and the Unity Party had received more than 90%. Johnson Sirleaf has declared that she wants an inclusive government working for national unity, and there is clearly a need for this after the election period laying bare such cracks of conflict. Socio-political cracks are twofold: first between different regions within the country, and secondly between those who have and those who have not. These rifts are not new, but where rather central tenets of the civil war as well. For long term stability the Liberian government must in a comprehensive way deal with these issues – something that the UP has during their last period in office by and large failed to do. A further problem appears to be a centralisation of power to the UP. In fact they managed to “buy” up most of the smaller parties, with supporters and all, after the first round, and made deep inroads in the CDC opposition. This appears to be an obstacle for real democratic transition, and critical voices in Monrovia have started talking about the return of the one party state. Continue reading
Election Riots
The police used their big Guinea whips yesterday (see my previous entry). On November 7, CDC organised a “peaceful” party march intended to show their continued discontent urging people to boycott the election today. It appears to have turned ugly quite quick. The police tried to prevent the protestors to leave the party compound in Tubman Boulevard and started using teargas on the CDCians. The CDC supporters threw rocks and looted private property. The police fired live bullets into the crowd leaving at least one person dead and several wounded (there are a few clips uploaded on youtube). At some stage peacekeeping forces got involved. Continue reading
Off stage politics
The politics of confusion has been ruling Liberia over the last week. Where we in ordinary terms would expect to see a fury of activities with election rallies, heated debates and people in party hats and t-shirts parading the city, there has been little of that. Instead over the last few days CDC supporters with capacity to influence the electorate have openly given their support to the UP in what looks like jumping off a sinking ship in an election that has for outside observers turned into a political charade by the CDC. Meanwhile UP people have been going around in CDC strongholds of Monrovia and beyond with ample promises of local development projects. Continue reading
Red Eyes
Observers of the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone typically pointed out how extremely red the eyes of rebel soldiers were. Explanatory factors were typically excessive abuse of alcohol and drugs. I have, in an article on the West Side Boys published in Journal Modern African Studies (46: 3, 2008), written about the concept of making yourself fearful as a deliberate tactic amongst the militia. Here is how a junior commander of the group explained it:
You use Liberian slang, you get a lot of beard, you plait [your hair], you fearful yourself, you know eh? You pull your clothes, wear hot pants and people will know that it is bush he comes from – he is different from those in town. So when you stand up and open fire the people will be afraid. Pa-pa-pa-pa. Yes, you will fearful yourself, so people will say this bad man; I am afraid of him. As you see our car people will say: ‘ah – this is the West Side Boys. They have arrived – they are fearful.’ They will know when we come down from the West Side because they will see a lot of fearful old tubes and old things and so-so fearful weapons. We don’t dress correct. We wear combat uniforms; we wear t-shirts; all kinds of dressing. We fearful ourselves, in that way when you see our bushiness you will be afraid.
In Liberia we have seen similar tactical dressing during the war; from fighting “butt naked”, in life-jackets to donning wedding-dresses, all in order to fearful yourself. I have never really reflected over the red eyes, but when a former commander of one of the Liberian rebel groups yesterday told me that there is a particular leaf in the jungle that you use to fearful yourself, it made perfect sense – the leaf is used to make one’s eyes red.
Anthony, Jesus and the US embassy
I was thinking of my old friend Anthony today when I passed the US embassy. The embassy is increasingly taking over the hill of Mamba Point, the highpoint of downtown Monrovia. I have no idea where Anthony is today, but here I narrate a dream he once had. Entering an imagined Western space would to Anthony [anno 1998], and many other young Liberians, put an end to social suffering, a gaining of personal freedom and indisputable status of next to divine character. Remember that this is a year after the end of the first war and in a city very much in fear of renewed war with the warlord democrat Charles Taylor ruling the country. Continue reading
Under the cotton tree
Driving out of Monrovia, southwards, it is easily observed that most infrastructural improvements are largely limited to the capital. They are trying to refurbish the road to Buchanan, but there is still a long way to go. People complain about the slow pace. In Buchanan, which used to be the second city of Liberia, very little has changed since I was here five years ago. The main thoroughfare is still extremely potholed and must be carefully navigated by drivers and pedestrians alike, at night the place is spookily dark. In Buchanan just as in Monrovia there are numerous posters and banners with election messages; almost all of them for the Unity Party (UP) and with the face of President Johnson Sirleaf. However, when I talk to people in the streets here, a clear majority seems in favor of the opposition party CDC. Continue reading
Monrovia, October 28
Today I moved out of my NGOish hotel situated too far away from real life and into a hotel in the midst of the downtown bustle, just around the corner from where I lived in 1997-98. During fieldwork back then this hotel was really rundown, but now it has had a good brush-up. This is the same hotel where Ryszard Kapuscinski stayed when he visited Liberia in the very beginning of the war. In a chapter of The Shadow of the Sun he in detail describes the swarms of prostitutes in the hotel restaurant and the enormous size of the cockroaches in his room. The chapter is certainly not one of his better texts. It is not an analysis of the situation on the ground at the very important time of his visit but most of the chapter is a rather shallow historical writing of the conflict. I have come to view the descriptions of this hotel as an outcome of the fear that he experienced in Monrovia during those few days he was here. Fear is no longer in the air and Liberians are now going on with their lives. Continue reading
Monrovia October 27, 2011
I arrived late last night. It is strange to me to see Monrovia lit up with street lights and with such an improved infrastructure. There is even public transportation now for example with busses from ELWA-junction to Buchanan with marked bus stops – although they wait until buses are filled up before they leave ELWA. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has gotten herself a nice election banner stating that she is the receiver of the Nobel peace prize and what would be more natural than placing it in front of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) HQ. Otherwise life is continuing as usual: when the water truck fills up the water tank at the hotel, there are women and kids from the neighborhood with buckets and pans filling them with water from the leaking hosepipe. Even though infrastructure is improving life is still hard for ordinary people and clean water is in demand. Continue reading