The 25 January Le Monde article and photo

When the rebel group MNLA launched its first attack on 17 January, their Parisian supporters made some rather extraordinary claims: that it had captured the large town of Menaka, that a number of Malian soldiers had been killed and vehicles had been destroyed. Press phone calls to residents of the town cast grave suspicions on the rebels claim to have held the town at any point, but the remoteness of the battlefield has left outsiders with only the unsatisfactory, equally decisive if opposite assurances from the Malian armed forces. Amongst the most extraordinary claims, repeated by Paris MNLA supporters as recently as the 27th, is that the lightly armed rebels shot down a MIG fighter jet and a helicopter.

Impressively, a photo which was said to be rebels casually posing with a downed MIG, appeared on the 25th.

We now know the “proof” that rebels shot down a Malian MIG is a hoax. I suspected this upon seeing it. It was made of large steel beams, rather unlike aircraft. A little digging lead me to a now defunct Nigerien rebel group’s photo of a burnt Nigerien truck from 2008. It’s unfortunate that the same group of French and Belgian based rebel supporters, through an interlinked blog, publicized the original 2008 photo at that time. It’s later use in French based Le Monde and Jeune Afrique has since catapulted the photo into general usage.

Here is the 2008 set of Mouvement des Nigériens pour la justice, publicized by a prominent supporters’ blog.
http://issikta.blogspot.com/2008/11/les-tir-troupes-dintervention-rapide-du.html

Here’s the larger photo.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9zYIBa56jpI/SRHjkN9_IzI/AAAAAAAAAm0/32FyJbZQWqY/s1600/IMGP0399.jpg

Here’s the 2012 “Malian MIG” photo. It does not seem accidental that the photo chosen includes a man obscuring the remaining portion of the truck cab. Notice he does not obscure the front bumper or the heavy mid-frame of the truck. This never looked much like an airplane.

Its first press use appears to be in the French paper Le Monde, in an article by Yidir Plantade  published Wednesday 25 January at 17:46 Paris time. No credit was given, but the article stated “Des photos publiées sur Facebook montrent une carcasse d’avion brûlé, supposément un MIG-21 abattu par des rebelles.”

Who used it first? Who knows. Only the first person to use it can say from where they got it, and why he gave it a false caption.

It seems to have also appeared on this guy’s Facebook page  on Wednesday 25 January, with a caption claiming it was the MIG shot down in Mali.  But this looks like it was after Le Monde.  Le Monde has not disclosed who supplied the image and its faked context.  Shortly after Le Monde’s story appeared, this influential rebel supporter’s  Facebook page showed it reposed.  It even appeared — with the Le Monde story– on the blog from which the attributed 2008 photo came.    Interestingly, two comments on a Maliweb reprint of the Le Monde story promptly identified it as a burnt truck. They were apparently less newsworthy than a claim in a Facebook post.

I have no idea if a Malian MIG was shot down. But claims require proof. And falsified evidence presented as proof seems proof of something else entirely.

• http://www.jeuneafrique.com/Article/JA2663p010-012.xml0/mali-rebellion-att-rebellion-touareguenord-mali-qui-sont-les-rebelles-du-mnla.html
• http://www.lematindz.net/news/7157-les-touareg-du-mnla-lancent-un-nouveau-conflit-arme-contre-letat-malien.html
• http://www.marocamazigh.com/2053.html
• http://sahranews.com/news812.html
• http://www.maliweb.net/category.php?NID=86102
• http://juralib.noblogs.org/2012/01/28/une-semaine-dans-lazawad/

Image via Wikipedia

I would rather be talking about real things. Since September 2011, northern Mali has been on tenterhooks, waiting to see which rumors of risings, rebellions, independence struggles or gang-war will pan out. Yet I am hesitant to even write anything on the situation. I see quite clearly how those living in Kidal and Tombouctou themselves seem unsure as to who has been doing what, and even less clear on what is planned by the bulging troupe of demobbed Libyan soldiers, ex-rebels, competing local and national power networks, criminal gangs, militaries of four countries, freedom fighters, and armed salafists.

Cue Jeremy Keenan. Keenan fears nothing. He has one answer for all questions, one bad guy and one bad guy only who is behind all disorder and suffering. Scholarly rigor and any critical sense are cast aside. Keenan’s strange status — he is a “Professorial Research Associate in anthropology” who apparently does not teach classes or publish scholarly work — at School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London seems to give weight enough to see his pieces published in otherwise reputable outlets. Al Jazeera has printed a number of Keenan’s pieces, although at some point in mid 2011 they wisely moved his work from News to “Opinion”.

People who don’t know much about northern Mali would be very poorly served by reading Keenan’s increasingly odd writing. Keenan used to be a scholar of some note. His 1977 book remains the best English language text on the Ahaggar Touareg of southern Algeria. But over the last decade or two his writing has descended into screed. His 2004 collection of articles, published as “The lesser gods of the Sahara: social change and contested terrain amongst the Tuareg of Algeria”, seems his last work with any scholarly pretensions, with a dozen articles and two books since rehashing the same mix of speculation and a shallow version of anti-imperialism. And while I like a good kick against the pricks as much as the next person, his writing has also increasingly lost any critical rigor it once had. All that remains is a sort of mono-maniacal invective against the Algerian DRS. They are a good target: the Directorate of Intelligence and Security have at least as much blood on their hands as any secret police of any authoritarian state. But the increasingly unhinged supposition that their hidden hands are behind all that is bad in the west-central Saharan region is simply unsupportable. As importantly, it lets some equally bad actors off the hook. It also reduces all Touareg (who prefer the label “Kel Tamasheq” by the way), Arabs, Songhai and other people who make their homes there, to deculturated, classless, ahistoricised puppets. As many people, I had seen Keenan stumble down this unfortunate path for some time. But I never though I would hear him reconfigure the traumatic Tuareg insurgencies of the 1990s and 2000s and their leaders as window dressing for elaborate foreign plots.

And yet here we are, facing Keenan’s most recent work “A new crisis in the Sahel”, which appeared on Al Jazeera English January 3rd. Despite its title, there is nothing “new” here. New events are — in Keenan’s writings — simply another manifestation of a single conspiracy. This nefarious plot involves the Algerian state, the CIA, and literally no one else. They have invented and pay off a “terrorist” group to allow some sort of power grab by Algeria, and extension the United States. This ignores the obvious fact that the United States political elites, along with some on the Israeli right, are much closer to Algeria’s arch-foe Morocco. To read Jeremy Keenan is to know that it is here, in the midst of the Saharan desert, that a great game is being played out, in which invented armed groups pose for cameras and fight no one but sacrificial victims arranged by their handlers. Pain and suffering in the Sahara exists solely to influence the popular press in the United States, Europe and Algeria. It is essentially all for our benefit. And God knows, there is nowhere like the desert 600km north of Tombouctou to stage events which will demand the attention of American newsreaders.

When Keenan began this trip in 2003-4, his take was more plausible. Al-Qaida au Maghreb islamique (AQMI) was still the Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC), and US spy satellites were tracking a small band of GSPC kidnappers from their homes in Algeria across much of the Sahara. Keenan was good at stating the obvious, missed by much of the press. The Algerian civil war bred unknowably complex corruption and relationships between Algerian power and its opponents. The United States military and government was keen to portray all conflict as part of its global obsession with Osama Bin Laden, no matter how contrived the links. Easily understood enemies bolstered both political powers just as it funded security services with slick appropriation pitches in Washington and backhanders from smugglers in Tamanrasset or Tindouf. By 2005 this simple linkage has overtaken all of Keenan’s former work. His writing is now almost entirely about this ever deepening, ever more complex conspiracy, the tentacles of which Keenen discovers everywhere. Every conflict, every actor must be hammered into this template. And while his work has slid from the finest academic journals into the popular press and a single journal to which he has some connection, his invitations to cocktail parties thrown by Algeria’s equally repugnant regional rivals have no doubt increased.

Might we not do better consulting other prominent scholars or (gasp) actual Malians, Nigeriens or Algerians? One consequence of Keenan’s writing is that it increasingly removes all agency, motivation, and history from Africans, replacing them with mere puppets of unseen foreign forces. While the DRS or AFRICOM have dark motives, the events he sloppily half describes in Al-Jazeera have much more to do with an actual history of a region torn by the after-effects of European colonialism, rentier-state neo-colonialism, multi-sided regional struggles (in which I suspect Keenan of having some interest), poverty, and ill-governance.

On the level of fact (for instance who Iyad Ag Ghali is and his local/national/regional ties) Keenan privileges rumor over history. And sometimes he departs from history altogether. The portrayal of the 2006 insurgency as a one day affair orchestrated by a foreign government is simply inaccurate, and the failure to mention other factions — such as those led by the late Ibrahim Ag Bahanga or the more conservative Abdoussalam ag Assalat — seem calculated by Keenan to paper over the gaping holes his statements leave. For his citation of a Le Journal du Dimanche article claiming Ag Ghali orchestrated the Hombori kidnaps, there are ten others — citing better informed sources than one anonymous Nigerien security officer — that speculate the opposite. It’s as if he read but one of the hundreds of press reports. Except that sheer poor research would hardly result in finding the single article that speculates in Keenan’s direction. Anyone following these events (again, maybe an actual African!) would tell you this immediately.

Example: why never a mention of French interests? Total just scored a large oil prospecting bloc in the Mauritanian Taoudeni basin just across the border which promises the first oil and natural gas wells in the region. Or French air and ground assets spread from Niamey to northern Burkina to Gao? Or that the Hombori kidnappees were formerly French mercenaries and political fixers for African elites close to Paris? Why not mention the communal conflicts bred of competing nationalisms, bitter caste and class histories, and the deformed half democracy of local governments? Why not mention the affiliations of the former Libyan officers or their history in the 1990s insurgency? Why not mention the extensive interlinked and competing smuggling networks of both local notables and rich men based in Bamako or Tamanrasset? Why not mention AFRICOM’s much longer involvement with Bamako than Algiers? Why not mention the fact that for the third time in six years, many desert side communities in the region are facing famine rooted in environmental degradation, disappearance of forage for herds, and price spikes driven by foreign food trade and market specualtion. These problems are real. They are complex. And they involve shades other than black and white, players unknown to most Europeans or Americans.

Keenan reduces a complicated living history and society to the maneuvers of the Algerian secret police and the CIA. Those are not nice or well intentioned people: no doubt. But the CIA and Algeria’s secret police are easily understandable by western readers. It paints a world of binary conflicts, with simple motivations, focused on Western elites and their concerns. Perhaps this is comforting for his foreign reader, but it is also a narrative that removes several million Africans from their own history, as if they all simply take orders from other white folks with whom Keenan has a beef. And I see nothing either liberating or accurate in any of it.

A Sample of Keenan’s recent work

• A new crisis in the Sahel – Opinion – Al Jazeera English
• The Dying Sahara: US Imperialism and Terror in Africa Pluto Press, 2012 ISBN 0745329616
• The dark Sahara: America’s war on terror in Africa. Pluto Press, 2009 ISBN 0745324525
• Africa unsecured? The role of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in securing US imperial interests in Africa – Critical Studies on Terrorism – Volume 3, Issue 1 Volume 3, Issue 1, 2010
• Al-Qaeda terrorism in the Sahara? Edwin Dyer’s murder and the role of intelligence agencies – Keenan – 2009 – Anthropology Today
• US Militarization in Africa: What Anthropologists Should Know about AFRICOM. Anthropology Today, Vol. 24, No. 5 (Oct., 2008), pp. 16-20
• Uranium Goes Critical in Niger: Tuareg Rebellions Threaten Sahelian Conflagration – Review of African Political Economy – Volume 35, 2008
• The Banana Theory of Terrorism: Alternative Truths and the Collapse of the ‘Second’ (Saharan) Front in the War on Terror – Journal of Contemporary African Studies – Volume 25, Issue 1
• US Silence as Sahara Military Base Gathers Dust, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 34, No. 113, Imperial, Neo-Liberal Africa? (Sep., 2007), pp. 588-590
• Conspiracy theories and ‘terrorists’: How the ‘war on terror’ is placing new responsibilities on anthropology . Anthropology Today, Volume 22, Issue 6, pages 4–9, December 2006
• The making of terrorists: Anthropology and the alternative truth of America’s ‘War on Terror’ in the Sahara. Focaal, Volume 2006, Number 48, Winter 2006 , pp. 144-151(8)
• Turning the Sahel on Its Head: The ‘Truth’ behind the Headliness. Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 33, No. 110, Religion, Ideology & Conflict in Africa (Sep., 2006), pp. 761-769
• Military Bases, Construction Contracts & Hydrocarbons in North Africa. Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 33, No. 109, Mainstreaming the African Environment in Development (Sep., 2006), pp. 601-608
• Ray Bush and Jeremy Keenan. Editorial: North Africa: Power, Politics & Promise, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 33, No. 108, (Jun., 2006)
• Tuareg Take up Arms. Review of African Political Economy Vol. 33, No. 108, North Africa: Power, Politics & Promise (Jun., 2006), pp. 367-368
• Security & Insecurity in North Africa Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 33, No. 108, North Africa: Power, Politics & Promise (Jun., 2006), pp. 269-296
• Famine in Niger Is Not All That It Appears. Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 32, No. 104/105, Oiling the Wheels of Imperialism (Jun. – Sep., 2005), pp. 405-407
• Waging war on terror: The implications of America’s ‘New Imperialism’ for Saharan peoples – The Journal of North African Studies – Volume 10, Issue 3-4 2005
• Political Destabilisation & ‘Blowback’ in the Sahel. Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 31, No. 102, Agendas, Past & Future (Dec., 2004), pp. 691-698
• Terror in the Sahara: The Implications of US Imperialism for North & West Africa. Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 31, No. 101, An African Scramble? (Sep., 2004), pp. 475-496
• Americans & ‘Bad People’ in the Sahara-Sahel Americans & ‘Bad People’ in the Sahara-Sahel, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 31, No. 99, ICTs ‘Virtual Colonisation’ & Political Economy (Mar., 2004), pp. 130-139

A mental patient poses for a photograph in a sanitarium in Harbe, Afghanistan. Over 5 million Afghans suffer severe mental disorders resulting from decades of conflict and repression. Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Today — the 10th of October — is World Mental Health Day. Take a moment to look through these photos from Niger, where Mahamadoul-kafi Djibrilla spoke at a community discussion of mental illness and treatment in Tahoua Region. Some might think that the least of rural Niger’s worries would be mental illness. But they’d be wrong. Mental disorders, whether treated by families and communities or by medical professionals are a part of life everywhere, even as most cultures are fearful of even acknowledging their extent.

The World Health Organization chose today to release its “Mental Health Atlas“, a statistical and policy survey on the mental health and mental healthcare systems of 184 nations. Their conclusion was that “countries all over the world spend very little on the treatment of mental illness.” The UN Secretary General noted that, while mental illness makes up 13% of the world ‘disease burden,’ “Resources allocated for mental health by governments and civil society are habitually too little, both in human and financial terms.”

Global spending on mental health, in rich and poor nations alike, is less than US$3 per capita per year. The report goes on to note that “up to 50 percent of people suffering from mental disorders in Europe and North America do not receive treatment, and up to 85 percent of people in developing countries do not receive treatment…” This coincides with other recent studies that show a United States population, facing increased pressure from unemployment and other crises, has dramatically cut back on its mental healthcare spending, deeming it an unaffordable luxury. Meanwhile, those same pressures have both increased the need for mental healthcare, and cut back funding for such services.

More Common Than You Think

The World Health Organization this year estimates 450 million people worldwide are suffering right now from mental illness, but estimates of the percent of people who will suffer some mental illness in their lifetime vary from between 5% and 25%.

In the European Union, one quarter of people will experience a mental health problem in their lifetimes, 9% will suffer depression in any one year, and 2.6% a year will suffer more severe disorders.

We’re Still Not Doing Much

In the United States at least 10% of the population is suffering depression right now.
Yet it would take almost 7000 new mental health professionals to meet the needed ratio of just one for every 10,000 people. And that number of needed professionals has increased by almost 2000 in the last three years.

In the developing world, the disparity is much greater. In Nigeria the ratio of psychologists and social workers is 0.02 to 100,000 population. In Niger, there were 0.2 psychiatric beds per 100,000 population, and no mental hospital based beds at all. There were 0.4 psychiatric nurses per 100,000, and the same percentage of other mental health professionals. And West Africa is not unusual in this. In Azerbaijan there were 5 psychiatrists and 7.1 psych beds per 100,000. In Ecuador these numbers were 2.1 and 1.69 per 10,000. In Afghanistan they are 0.036 and 0.055 per 10,000. In most of these, as most developing nations, there is no or minimal and unquantifiably small government support to aid those suffering from acute mental illness, let alone the huge percentage suffering less obvious forms.

It is no better in rapidly industrializing nations. In China there is only one mental health bed per 10,000 population and less than one mental health professional per 100,000. In India, where one in six health related disorders are mental, there are just 0.25 mental health beds per 10,000 population.

Real, Inescapable Illnesses

We should distinguish between lifetime — probably genetic — chronic and severe mental illness and situational mental disorders, both of which can disable those suffering. Mental illness is more prevalent in times of high unemployment, rapid social change, people struck by food insecurity and poverty, and times of population movement. Around 400 million people are suffering from these sorts of mental illnesses right now, but with so few resources to help them, the real numbers may be much higher

In the the United States, like much of the developed world, less chronic forms are mental illness are now recognized as equally severe problems for the society. Depression is the leading cause of disability in the United States among adults. Suicide rates for those currently suffering depression are well above the general population and are highest in rural areas with the least access to care.

Mental illness strikes those more statistically likely to suffer societal discrimination and poverty. The depression rate among African American women is 50% higher than that of Caucasian women in the US, just like the unemployment rate. In fact, African Americans make up almost a quarter of all suffering from mental illness in the US, far above their ratio to total population. In a world of increasing disparity, unemployment, poverty, food insecurity, and population movement, mental illness rises as well. The legal systems, even in the richest nations, contribute to the numbers of mental illness rather than help treat those who enter suffering from illness. In the UK, Only 1 in 10 prisoners DO NOT suffer a diagnosable mental disorder.

On top of those suffering transitory illness there are millions suffering genetic predispositions to chronic — and incurable — severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. While treatment is making it more an more possible to live a fuller, normal life even with severe mental illness, fewer people have access to even basic mental health care. While schizophrenia affects only around 0.3% to 0.7% of the population worldwide, that’s still 24 million people.

Fear Compounds Suffering

I know these things because I work for a charity that provides housing, among other services, to people in my community who suffer chronic mental illnesses. Where I live, we have under 1000 chronic mental illness care beds to a population of 250,000, enough to meet the needs of much less than %1 of population.

But it is next to impossible to build new homes for long term care of those suffering mental illness: neighbors, community groups, and the press react with vilification and hatred when new housing is planned.

People suffering from mental illness, according to long-term studies in Europe, New Zealand, and the United States have all concluded that “that the risks of violence by someone with mental health problems are no greater than those for the general population as a whole.”

People suffering from mental illnesses are no more to harm strangers in any fashion than any other population, but are 2.5 times more likely to be the victim of crime than others. Where the severely mentally ill are more likely to be involved in violence is within their home, as a symptom of lack of treatment. The likelihood of committing any form of armed violence once in their lifetime among people with serious mental illness was 16%, as compared with 7% among people without mental illness. This does not include most sufferers of less severe mental illness, nor those who are receiving appropriate treatment. In fact, the vast majority of those suffering from mental illness are not included in these statistics, as they suffer from depression or other disorders that present no danger to others. The severely mentally ill are more a danger to themselves than anyone else, yet they are feared as violent and dangerous far outside their actual danger. People with no mental disorder who abuse alcohol or drugs are seven times as likely as those without substance abuse to commit violence. And since the rates of substance abuse among the untreated severely mentally ill are very high, much of the statistical relevance may be down to this. In fact, among those severely mentally ill who did not have a history of substance abuse, having been a victim of violence themselves, or homelessness, the likelihood of them engaging in any violence over their lifetime was in line with the general population.

Despite this, the perception of the severely mentally ill as violent — at least in the United States — has doubled since the 1950s while more and more severely mentally ill have found treatment that allows them to function normally. Recent studies reveal a majority of respondents falsely believe people suffering from Schizophrenia were inherently dangerous.

What You Can Do

Where do we go with this? First, educate yourself and others. Learn more about what these illnesses are and how you can avoid them in your life or help those in your family or community. From Tahoua to communities around the world, we need to speak, learn, and demystify mental illness. I often tell people that I pass my agency’s clients regularly as I walk down to my neighborhood shops to buy a cup of coffee or a newspaper. No one looking at them would ever know these were people with severe and persistent mental illnesses. They look like — because they are — regular members of our community. Now imagine how hard it is to identify those who’ve suffered from episodic mental disorders due to depression or trauma. Look around you and realize one in every five people you pass is in that group.

But like so many things in this world, a large part of the problem must be tackled with funding. We actually know what we need to do. This year, the WHO published a survey of shortages in mental health care in 144 developing and poorer developed nations. They found these countries would need 1.18 million mental health professionals, almost half of whom would be psychosocial care providers, to care for those suffering and educate others about mental illness. The yearly cost to provide this workforce was estimated at about US$ 4.4 billion.

For comparison that would be less than 0.5% of the United States annual defense budget. So we’re actively choosing to spend money we have on other things. It does not have to be this way.

Look After Yourself and Help Look After Your Community

So for this World Mental Health day I’d hope you not only see to your own mental health, but think of the others suffering, whether they be on your street or across the world. They are your brother and sisters and, but for a bit of luck, could be you.

Related articles

• World Mental Health Day: Treatment Remains a Challenge Around the World (psychcentral.com)
• It’s World Mental Health Day (drvitelli.typepad.com)
• It’s World Mental Health Day, so stop stigmatising my pills. (thefword.org.uk)
• Blog Party: World Mental Health Day, October 10 (psychcentral.com)
• Health System Hide and Seek: “Mental Health” Never Gets Found (gph2110.wordpress.com)
• 50 Signs of Mental Illness: A Guide to Understanding Mental Health (Yale University Press Health & Wellness) (untreatableonline.com)
• Patients suffer when reimbursements for mental health care are reduced (skwillms.wordpress.com)
• Useful WHO First-Aid Guide for Mental Health in a Disaster (sociolingo.com)

Mahamadou Issoufou of the PNDS and Seyni Oumarou of the MNSD vote for themselves, presumably.

Saturday the 12th of March will see second round voting in Niger’s Presidential elections, marking a return to civilian rule and the beginning of the Seventh Republic.  It seems certain that front runner and PNDS-Tarayya candidate Mahamadou Issoufou will become the first President of the new republic on 8 April when the military junta that deposed Mamadou Tandja on 18 February 2010 formally cedes power.

From one of several opposition parties Issoufou and the PNDS stepped remarkably into the breach left by Tandja.  The party has gone out of their way throughout this campaign to present an image of a unified body of ideas and change.  Issoufou has engaged in unprecedented face to face campaign rallies across the nation, not relying on the Nigerien tradition of local notables cobbling together coalitions to turn out votes.  The PNDS has also presented slick campaign materials, and from early days released a detailed manifesto of the process by which they will raise and spend development funds, including plans to empower local subsistence farmers (not usually a focus, but one that effects a majority of Niger’s often politically silent population).  The PNDS is undoubtedly the most ideological — social democratic — of the major parties, but it too remains mired in the traditional games of regionalism (Tahoua and Illea being the base) and constantly shifting coalition building.

The MNSD HQ in Niamey: Don't rule out the Big Baobab.

No one should discount their major rival, the MNSD-Nassara.  While bruised and bloodied by their association with disgraced President  Tandja, the MNSD predates Tandja’s leadership from 1991 to last year.  It was formed in 1987 by the military dictatorship which ruled Niger from 1974 to 1991 as a single party built on a corporatist model. Local communities, traditional leaders, elders, youth groups, and professional organizations were channeled into the MNSD, for most as their first experience of mass politics.  The politics which had led to independence in 1960 devolved rapidly into a one party state under Hamani Diori, open only to the elite and generally uninterested in popular mobilization for even the most superficial purposes.  One aspect that the MNSD did carry on from the First Republic was the drafting of traditional rulers and notables into the unitary party.  The MNSD has thus become a traditionalist, conservative and non-ideological body with tremendous support from elites, the military, and many rural communities who remember the rule of Seyni Kountché (1974-87) and his successor Ali Saibou (1987-93) as a reaction against corruption and famine which dominated civilian rule. The MNSD, for all the purges and infighting which Tandja introduced from 2007, remains for many the “Grand Baobab”, the big tent party that welcomes all who profess love of country and traditional values.  Their relative success even in the wake of an extremely popular coup against Tandja’s corruption and misrule should demonstrate the deep roots that still feed the MNSD.

This is best seen in the aftermath of the first round of these elections.  Just days before the vote, almost every political party other than the favored PNDS met to form the Alliance for National Reconciliation.  This included all but two of Issoufou’s closest allies. The ARN promised to support whichever of their number could make it to the second round against the PNDS, tipped to be either the  MNSD-Nassara or the new personal party for former MNSD Prime Minister Hama Amadou, the MODEN-FA Lumana.  Two things were stunning here.  One was that so many parties that had led marches to oust and faced repression by Tandja’s MNSD-Nassara in 2009 were willing to reconcile so quickly with their former foes.   Perhaps more stunning: Hama Amadou, the former heir apparent to the MNSD signed on so enthusiastically.  Hama had been impeached on curiously timed corruption charges in 2007, just as he seemed ready to take the party’s leadership from Tandja, and then found himself imprisoned for over a year, his supporters ejected from their party and purged from the government.  At one point Hama claimed that prison had struck him so low with disease that he feared death.  On his temporary release he fled the country, saying that the government was planning to assassinate him should he stay. And yet he was willing just a year later to literally embrace the man who led the MNSD purge of his supporters, Seyni Oumarou. Nigerien politics is nothing if not dramatic.

The question on everyone’s lips leading up to the Parliamentary and first round Presidential elections was what support Hama’s untested MODEN-FA Lumana would have.  Taking with him elements of the vaunted MNSD machine in strongholds like Tillaberi, many thought he might cruise into the second round.  In the event, Hama’s new cadre was no match for the entrenched party system.  The PNDS scored %36 in the presidential vote and 39 of the 113 assembly seats.  The MNSD followed with %23 and 26 seats, while Hama’s supporters provided a reasonable showing of 23 seats but only %19 for his presidential bid.

The first round candidates, clockwise from top left: Hama Amadou, Mahamane Ousmane, Mahamadou Issoufou, Seyni Oumarou, Ousmane Issoufou Oubandawaki, (second row, right to left) Amadou Cheiffou, Abdoulaye Amadou Traoré, Amadou Cissé, Bayard Mariama Gamatié, Moussa Moumouni Djermakoye

The following 48 hours proved again the mercenary nature of Nigerien politics.  All but two of the sizable parties in the ARN coalition again defected, clearly demonstrating that the desire to side with a winner was more important than any ideology, personal loyalty, or even shame.  Hama led the charge back to the Issoufou camp, and speculation remains rife whether he has demanded the Prime Ministership or the Presidency of the Assembly as his price.

There are several sidelines here worth noting.  Former President Mahamane Ousmane and his CDS–Rahama, once the dominant party of the 3rd Republic and a powerhouse based in Zinder collapsed completely, with %8 of the Presidential vote and only 3 seats in the assembly.  The CDS had played a pivotal role in first opposing, then supporting Tandja, while becoming a linchpin of the opposition to the President’s 2009 power grab called the 6th Republic.  Whatever the basis, Ousmane has long been among the top vote traders in the Niamey political game.   Not content to crash and burn, the CDS seemingly ripped itself apart in the post election realignment.  Elements of the youth section and the central committee fought Ousmane to remain tied to MNSD-Nassara, when he seemed to jump ship.

Signs welcoming the 2010 military coup: the year long military rule has reinforced many Nigerien's view of the military as a more trustworthy than most civilian governments.

This is important because the CDS and Ousmane represent the quintessential personal party in Niger.  It has long been assumed that most parties — with the exception of the PNDS and the MNSD — are entirely vehicles of their leaders.  There certainly is little ideological content to Nigerien parties, and the regional bases, while relied upon for a foundation, do not make most of them strictly regionalist or ethnic parties.  Nigerien parties are invariably a constellation “big men” and more quiet local traditional notables with the backing of one or two regionally important business moguls.

While much of this definition remains, the utter destruction of the CDS was mirrored in several other smaller parties that had long provided vehicles for individual party heads and their backers to demand a cut of the benefits that come with governance.

Political fixture Amadou Cheiffou’s RSD-Gaskiya disappeared from the assembly, former PM Amadou Cissé’s UDR-Tabbat fell to six seats.  And while the RDP-Jama’a  and ANDP-Zaman-Lahiya retained 7 and 8 seats respectively, these two regional parties (Agadez and Dosso) lost their charismatic leaders, and seem to survive only as supports for larger parties.  Of the former loyal PNDS coalition partners throughout the last decade (PNA-Al’ouma, PPN-RDA, and UNI), only UNI managed to win a single seat.  Publishing magnate Sanoussi Jackou’s PNA-Al’ouma has hardly caused a ripple as the last of the 35 small parties to endorse Issoufou in the second round.

The pattern here is of political coalescence.  As in the days before the second round and grand total of 35 political parties lined up with the PNDS, Niger’s political ecosystem might appear varied, there is some reason to believe two major parties and three or four major political barons are emerging to dominate.

Rumors have challenged this reading, especially from within the CDS faction fight.  There are those who claim the MNSD, after signing parties onto their ARN coalition in the first round, passed out campaign materials in areas dominated by their new partners that advised supporters of smaller parties should vote on the MNSD line, and that vote would be then divided between the coalition partners at counting.  Honestly, I have not seen a explanation of this strategy that is coherent enough to have convinced many voters.  It’s likely that it is just recriminations on the part of ARN partners, whose obvious craven maneuvering — even by Nigerien politician’s standards — drove their voters to other parties, or to abstain.

The actual institutions of the Seventh Republic are worth noting as well.  Niger has now seen three cycles of democratic rule, political deadlock, and military coup since the protests and National Convention in 1991.  Every time the new constitution has been rewritten to avoid the failure of the last.  Niger’s recent political history has been an oft-ignored constitutional laboratory unlike few others in history.  A too weak and divided semi-presidential Third Republic was revised into a more strongly Presidential Fifth.  The power grab that resulted when it was time for the President to leave has led to a more divided governing model for the Seventh Republic.  Among the more interesting innovations, the Leader of the Opposition is given formal powers, and must play a part in successful legislation.  The Prime Minister and the President of the National Assembly share powers given to the Prime Minister in a Parliamentary system, and both check the President.  Is this a recipe for gridlock? Or is this a system designed to function despite gridlock?  This last might be a healthy innovation, where no office is expected to do much alone, and therefore doesn’t feel they are being prevented.  Sadly, the success or failure of this system will once again come down to the relative personalities of a handful of political leaders, notorious for their outsized egos, and frequently the subject of whispers about personal enrichment.

It should be noted as well, that for all the talk of change, the same men (and they are almost entirely men) of the Nigerien political class were players from the beginning of Niger’s multiparty experiment in 1992-3. If Issoufou us to make good on his rhetoric of principled governance, opening the doors to every political operative with a party office is not a promising start.

Any discussion of Niger’s political future, even on a purely formal basis, would be remiss if it did not mention the majority of Nigeriens to whom politics means very little.  Three million voters came out for the first round in a nation of over fourteen million people.  The seventy or eighty percent of the population who are engaged in subsistence farming and seasonal labor abroad have no time for politics, and are rarely included in the discussion.  The PNDS has pointed out ways in which it will tackle the chronic malnutrition which has been a fact of life for many rural communities since the 1970s.  But those struggling in rural areas are more acted upon than actors.  Were they to be given real power themselves, we might see the depth of changes Niger needs.

Some background:

• NIGER: First Steps Towards the Restoration of Democracy? – IPS, Ousseini Issa: (Feb 28, 2010)
• Niger: New Constitution First Step Towards Democracy « Politics Africa: The Seventh Republic is Approved (2010)
• Sebastian Elischer: Democratization in Desperate Places: Niger’s Seventh Attempt Center for Strategic and International Studies (Jan 28, 2011)
• Niger civilians, armed forces sign stability pact: The Military goes out on a high note, signing a pact with political parties that it will not intervene in constitutional politics (2011)
• Niger Government To Feed One Million For Free « Politics Africa: The Military’s role as saviors from corrupt civilian rule is again reinforced (2010)
• Kimba & Idrissa’s recent collection: Armee et politique au Niger (9782869782167) a great collection of essays on the military’s involvement in Nigerien politics, published just before the 2010 coup.
• Jibrin Ibrahim, Abdoulaye Niandou Souley: “The rise to power of an opposition party the MNSD in Niger Republic” a fairly definitive look at the strength, and failing, of the Third Republic (1992-1995)
• Niger’s Tandja dissolves parliament (Reuters, 2009)
• CDS Rahama Breaks with Tandja, deeping his isolation (2009)
• “Constitution de la 7ème République” full text, PDF, in French, from the website of the Consultative Council which drafted it

Related articles

• UPDATE 1-Tandja ally heads into Niger presidential run-off (af.reuters.com)
• Tandja ally heads into Niger presidential run-off (af.reuters.com)
• Niger Elections: Has Mahamadou Issoufou Clenched It? (sahelblog.wordpress.com)
• CORRECTED – Niger top court validates poll, run-off March 12 (af.reuters.com)
• PREVIEW-Niger races to secure poll for civilian rule | Agricultural Commodities | Reuters (af.reuters.com)
• TIMELINE-Niger holds presidential elections (af.reuters.com)
• Niger Elections Head to Run-Off (sahelblog.wordpress.com)
• Countdown to Niger’s Elections (sahelblog.wordpress.com)
• Niger Elections: So Far, So Good? (sahelblog.wordpress.com)

As I write this, Saif Gaddafi is speaking to a Libyan people who have seemed to have already moved past his father’s regime.  His late and desperate attempt to scare his countrymen into rejecting a revolution which has engulfed his nation touched one element with which, seemingly, those opposing him might agree.  He blamed “crimes” on “Africans, paid by criminals” to kill Libyans.

There is a very widespread and dangerous trope being played upon when Libyans accuse Gaddafi’s crimes of being committed by “African Mercenaries”, hints of which are being picked up in the foreign media.

CNN has just prominently shown a Libyan woman, tear stained, crying out on the newly liberated streets of Egypt.  She calls for justice for her people, for the killing to end, begs Obama to intervene, and then repeats “Gaddafi is killing us with his Africans!”  She is not alone in arranging this revolution between the Libyan people on one side, and Gaddafi, his family, and dark-skinned “outsiders” on the other.

For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the use of a map, Libyans are Africans.  But Africans here means “black people” and there is a very long very pernicious racism in their part of the world towards “black Africans”, not unlike that in my part of the world.  When I see tweets like the following, I cringe.  I also see a history of fear and contempt slipping out in a time of unparalleled suffering.

Gadafi is ordering african mercenaries to break into homes in #Benghazi to RAPE Libyan women in order to detract men protesters! #Libya #Feb

20 February 2011 3:04 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@khalidAlotaibi

Khalid Alotaibi

In all honesty, I support the people of Libya’s righteous anger against the brutal Gaddafi regime.  It will not be going out on a limb at this point to say they will succeed, and that the entire region (including Tchad, Mali, & Niger) will be better off without Gaddafi’s almost constant destabilization of his African neighbors.

But like much of northern Africa, in Libya there is a long history of fear, hatred, and oppression based on skin color.  There is a distinct minority of “black” Libyans whose slave origins mean they are still regarded with contempt by some, as there is a large number of political and economic refugees in what is a relatively prosperous state.

#Libya @CNN @CBC. Confirmed the African mercenaries were raised in campus around Sabha and West Mountain since childhood as salves.

19 February 2011 11:14 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@AlMingar

MR KANADA

Foreign Fighters

And while oppression organized by skin color has a long history,  the Gaddafi regime has contributed a different angle to this prejudice: the foreign fighter.  Since the early 70s, Libya has offered aid, by degrees of openness, to revolutionary and opposition groups in most every corner of the world.  Begun as an extension of Soviet Cold War policy, Gaddafi’s involvement with foreign dissident groups — funded by the oil boom of the 1970s — has extended beyond ideology or geopolitics.  For those of us who remember the Cold War, it’s easy to see a degree of hysteria — almost equal to today’s anti-Islamist hysteria in the west — in the views current in the 1980s that Gadaffi was behind most every threat, from Belfast to Managua.   But to whatever small degree his support was really effective, most  every African nation has seen some of it’s citizens trained in Libyan camps.

Foday Sankoh, Charles Taylor, Moses Blah, Blaise Compaore trained in Libya.   Future Malian and Nigerien Tuareg rebels trained in Libya in the late 70s, recruited from refugees fleeing famine and oppression.  The band Tinariwen actually formed in one such camp.

Libya has developed a sophisticated infrastructure to support rebel groups, based around Tripoli’s “Al-mathaba al-alamiyya…” — “World Center for the fight against Imperialism Racism and Fascism“.  While support offered to leftist militants from Palestine, the Provisional IRA in Ireland, Nicaragua, and, the ANC fighting Apartheid South Africa,  may represent an ideology which matches the admirable title (at least to this leftist), most “Al-mathaba” operations have taken “anti-imperialism” to rather vaguely coincide with Gaddafi and the Libyan elite’s nationalist expansion.

The most famous local manifestation of this was surely the 1970s & 80s Tchadian war. Libya was early to bankroll FROLINAT  and it’s splits. The Soviets (most notably the GDR) helped early in this process, as part of a strategy against the undoubtedly neocolonial French supported government in Tchad.  But Libya had nationalist motivation, in particular the desire to expand control over the Uranium rich Aozou Strip. Gaddafi’s support at times made Hissène Habré and Goukouni Oueddei almost entirely creatures of Libyan policy.  Habré, now endlessly awaiting trial in Senegal for his brutality as Tchadian president, saw the flexibility of Gaddafi’s support, when Goukouni was in turn supported as insurgent leader against Habré’s government.  The U.S. backed Libyan dissidents were later set up in mirror image camps until ejected by a Tchadian ideological shift in 1991.

Since, Libya has most notably hosted Sudanese, Liberian, Sierra Leonian, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Tunisian, Egyptian, Tuareg, and Somali rebel groups. There is, in this, little discernible ideological continuity apart from a desire to maintain Libya as a player to be courted by leaders of every troubled nation in the area.

But note from the list above, dissidents hosted in the past by Gaddafi are as likely to be “white” Arabs as “Black Africans.”

RT @iyad_elbaghdadi: Reports that "African mercenaries" are from Chad, Niger, Uganda, Mali, and Burkina Faso #Libya #Feb17

19 February 2011 1:45 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@feld_art

Frank

RT @alithelady: RT @KCDalis: @samiyusuf African mercenaries infiltrate every city in Libya, carrying swords to kill. http://mtw.tl/lvjmgt

18 February 2011 1:10 pm via m.tweete.netReplyRetweetFavorite

@_iima

Halimatu Syadiah

Current numbers are even harder to discern.  Tchadian and Sudanese rebels must be the largest groups still in the country.  But even these are not huge contingents: a few hundred at most.  Some blurry photos and one video show two dozen yellow capped men identified as “African Mercenaries.” Little can actually be discerned from the photos, but assuming the poster is accurate, and these are “black Africans”, and they are working with the security forces, and they are armed, they might be wearing the yellow turbans favored by some Tchadian and Sudanese ethnic Zaghawa and some of the Darfuri Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels.  But that is a lot of ifs.

Foreign Migrants

Large numbers of “Africans” seen in Libyan cities are much more likely to be foreign workers and those trying to reach Europe.  Libya has alternated in support and oppression directed to refugees passing into their country from the south.  These are not all “Black Africans”, but include South Asians and others, many trafficked from Nigeria, through Niger via a brutal desert crossing.  West Africans are periodically outraged by news stories of migrants deported by force, or simply dumped in the desert by Libyan government.  More scandalous are stories of robbery, abuse, and even killing by criminal gangs and (less frequently, but more disturbing) by xenophobic Libyans. Many migrants are locked up in camps across Libya, kept in conditions unmonitored by outsiders.

This has played into some of the “African Mercenary” rumors of the last few days, with reports of ever increasing amounts paid to migrants by Libyan security forces to carry out crimes against civilians.

No one should doubt that there are dark skinned men in the Libyan security forces.  Despite the unspoken assumptions of some Libyans, most are surely their fellow Libyans.  There are also, undoubtedly, foreign born guerrillas under arms in Libya, or former fighters long ago enrolled in the security services.  But again, these cannot be a large number.

Who Pulls the Trigger?

Reports of “African Mercenaries” have become, since 17 February, a staple of Libyan revolutionaries’ news feeds.  We have seen reports, repeated as fact, that almost every time Libyans have been massacred by the state security forces, “Africans” have been to blame.  “Africans” are said to have been flown into Benghazi and Tripoli to protect them for the state, 1300 by one rumor.  A widely quoted report comes from a revolutionary in Ajdabiya  saying: “The regime has sent African forces into the city but we are here waiting in the square of the martyrs. Everyone here is ready to defend the city against the mercenaries. We’ve discovered that these African mercenaries are going to land at Zouitina airport. I can assure you that everybody here is ready to fight against these traitors and African mercenaries.”  Not that he has seen any, but he believes they are coming none the less.

RT @LibyanThinker: URGENT!!! From contact in the Army: So far, 1300 African Mercenaries have arrived in #Libya to date. Cant' the World .

19 February 2011 11:40 pm via iTweet.netReplyRetweetFavorite

@raulrodriguezxD

Raul Rodriguez

Photos and videos, many horrific, have been provided of a handful (I have seen five total) dead uniformed soldiers with varying degrees of dark skin.  This is hardly proof of the hysterical rhetoric built around thousands of black Africans raping women and murdering protesters.

More reports, including those showing troops attacking civilians, point to the Army and the internal security forces. The Security Battalions (‘Kataeb al Amn’) include forces directly under the command of Colonel Massud Abdul Hafiz al-Gaddafi. Not only are these groups well armed and trained, they are carefully chosen for loyalty and ideologically motivated. If there is any truth in the “African Mercenaries” rumors, Tchadians or other former foreign guerrillas, long ago integrated into these internal security forces, would be cause. But the Libyan military and security establishment is gigantic: 50,000 regular troops and almost as many reserves, bolstered by recent spending sprees on Russian and other western equipment. It strains credulity that a few hundred, even a few thousand, “black African” mercenaries would be able to enforce submission upon the Libyan people without the participation of these forces.

On twitter, users have dubbed stories of “African Mercenaries” “Confirmed” after Al Arabiya – and later Al Jazeera – reported as unconfirmed the same stories of “African Mercenaries” twitter users had earlier broadcast.  A news agency, I should remind readers, cannot “confirm” a story by reporting that you are saying it.  It would need multiple individual, reliable, first hand sources providing consistent stories of having seen the original event themselves.  We only have inconsistent third hand reports so far.

And this is not the first time recently we have heard such stories.

In Bahrain, where the military opened fire on unarmed protesters with assault riffles, anti-aircraft weapons, and helicopter fire, some locals have accused “Iraqi”, Pakistani” or other mercenaries of having infiltrated the army.  In the recent massacres on Guinea Conakry and Abidjan, victims have blamed Liberian mercenaries for having murdered and raped protesters.  Again and again, as here in Libya, we hear the cry that “no fellow countryman would do this!”  “Gaddafi couldn’t get Libyans to kill Libyans, so he brought Mercenaries”, not Arab mercenaries, not western mercenaries, but those people who resemble the “lowest”, most “foreign” of our fellow citizens.  There have, just today, been a couple of isolated reports that North Koreans were shooting protesters in Libya, but such reports have not gotten the traction that the “African Mercenaries” have.  I must ask why this is?

Flawed Evidence

Apart form those mentioned above, the photographic evidence for “African Mercenaries” include these photos on Flickr.

I cannot help but note some possible problems with images from Libya that are said to be of an identity card carried by a Guinean captured or killed in Benghazi.  The reports are the man was fighting with Libyan government forces against citizens. That there is no direct evidence linking the man on the card with violence might be the first question.

I am not an expert but I am tempted to refer to that old internet meme: “This picture is shopped, I can tell from some of the pixels…” Honestly, my observations are no proof either way, but it raises enough questions to suggest that someone better qualified in photographic forensics should look at these images.

A %600 blowup of the bottom of one of these photos (click for larger)

Note the circled areas in one section of one of the pictures I examined.

1) Unnatural distinct blur marks, the largest in a square shape.
2) Red stamp patterns that don’t conform consistently to the fold mark.
3) The text has been sharpened.  It is dark, consistent, and the background between letters is pixelated, different from the background in other parts of the card, which is smooth.  This may merely be artifacts of a sharpening attempt so the text was made legible.  Or it is an artifact from pasting.
4) This same text lines do not conform to the card where bent.  All such text lines are parallel to one another, where the other text is skewed..
5) Artifacts where the background bleeds through the fingers which are supposed to be in front of it.

All this said, A Guinean legally in Algeria would be expected to carry a consular id card.  Guinean and Canadian government sources confirm this type of ID is issued by Guinean embassies abroad.

NEW! #Gaddafi has given the African Mercenaries full freedom in raping Libyan women. #Libya

19 February 2011 7:57 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@LibyanThinker

The Libyan Thinker

Stabbed in the Back

Everything alleged by the photographer above may be true.  But I hesitate as these stories play into a natural combination of nationalism, existing social prejudices (of low class “slave” “Blacks”) and fears (of foreign looking immigrants, familiar to xenophobic discourse in Europe and America).  They are understandable, but should they go unchallenged in the lore of this revolution, the new Libya being build risks becoming a no less cruel and unjust place, if for a smaller part of its citizens, adjudged outsiders and traitors by their skin color.

African mercenaries now in #Benghazi #Libya sources in Libya say they're chasing and killing people with knives and swords. We only fear God

17 February 2011 10:26 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@AliLePointe

Jibreel

These phobias of the “other” neglect the horrible reality that Libyans have lived for the last four decades.  They have been oppressed, murdered, tortured and exploited by their fellow Libyans.  It has been said that ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ (A mangled false quotation of Edmond Burke, but I digress.)

The quote perhaps survives because it speaks to what Europe learned in the 20th century: oppressive states survive by fear and collusion.

The most dramatic example of this, the murder of 12 million Jews and others by Nazi Germany in the 1940s, provides some of the most despairingly stark lessons.  For decades, scholars sought some explanation, some psychological profile of those who carried out this mass murder.  I come back again and again to writers like Tim Mason, an historian of resistance and collaboration with the Nazis, and his despair in finding so much of the latter.  Or Chris Browning, whose book “Ordinary Men” showed those who took part in war crimes were neither born monsters, warped sociopaths, or cold ideologues, but victims of the pedestrian social pressures to conform, turned to the most extreme ends.

Libyans: your fellow citizens have enabled this regime to oppress you for so many years. You must come to terms with this in the aftermath of this revolution, or it will be no revolution at all.

But you have already learned the converse: you have the power to stop this oppression.  You are doing it now, and the world, awed by the bravery and audacity in the Arab world this year, stand now amazed by your fearlessness.

But Libyans, you do yourself an injustice with these fears directed at “Africans”. You, in more than one sense, are these Africans.  You cannot build a society of justice by until you learn this.

UPDATE 2011-02-21 23:49 EST

Please take a look at this VERY useful article focusing on color politics in Libya in the light of these events: Gaddafi is killing us with his Africans! by N. Thompson, published at “My Weku” Magazine, 2011-02-21 A useful look at the immigrant condition in Libya from 2000: Ethnic violence and mass deportations of immigrants in Libya By Trevor Johnson, WSWS 28 October 2000

And please read and support http://www.libyafeb17.com/ : sometimes hard to watch, but vital news from inside Libya, as the people try to get free.

Related articles

• Libya Must End Racism Against Black African Migrants and Others UN Watch Written Statement, UN Human Rights Council 13th Session, 16 February 2010
• Libya: ‘Beaten and deported to the Sahara’ Article translated from the Italian by Francesca Megna, published first on 18. Dec 2009 by :: fortresseurope.blogspot.com.
• Migrant Workers From Ghana Who Fled Libya Cite Racism Los Angeles Times
• Racism: Arab-Black African Relations in North Africa Noah Bassil, Khaldoun, 2008
• Losing Libya – Blog – The Arabist (arabist.net)
• Libyan troops defect amid crackdown – Aljazeera.net (news.google.com)
• Benghazi defies Gaddafi (independent.co.uk)
• Libya: US accuses Britain of legitimising Gaddafi (telegraph.co.uk)
• Tony Blair our very special adviser by dictator Gaddafi’s son | Mail Online (dailymail.co.uk)
• LENIN’S TOMB: Libya’s uprising (leninology.blogspot.com)
• Demonstrations in solidarity with the Libyan people February 19th, 2011 ” Enough!Khalas (enoughgaddafi.com)

The PNDS Campaign headquarters in Niamey, photo from Niger Elections.

The 31st of January saw Niger’s Legislative elections, combined with the first round of the Presidential elections. Results are not yet known, and the top two in the Presidential race will re-run on 14 March. Here’s some tools to follow it.

The best immediate updates on the polls and count can be found at the African Elections observer site’s @NigerElections Twitter feed as well as their news site at africanelections.org/niger. Their photo gallery is also wonderful (and the source for the image above).

[UPDATE 2:40 GMT Feb 2 : There are no official results yet announced. Rumored provisional results are being passed around -- an example is here -- but their simple repetition of the urban conventional wisdom makes them either suspect or expected.

Mahamadou Issoufou (PNDS-Tarayya) in the upper 20s, followed by either Seyni Oumarou (MNSD-Nassara) and/or Hama Amadou (MODEN/FA LUMANA) from 20% to 24%.  This would match both the aggregate Municipal/Departmental election results of  January and the relative profile of the parties.  While Issoufou is the favorite, there is no accounting for tactical endorsements for the second round.  Note that an RFI reported telephone survey (seen via Sahelblog) reporting Issoufou with over 40% support seems a possible result of sample bias towards urban educated voters.  A run off is almost certain, and the questions will be how Legislative results set the stage for the new government, and whether the PNDS faces the new MODEN LUMANA or the MNDS, reversed in last years coup.  Each could color the results -- and the mandatory backroom deals -- very differently.

The reports of attacks by PNDS militants in their heartland of Tahoua, as well as unconfirmed charges by Hama of fraud and intimidation against his party in Tillaberi and Niamey, are not evidence of some general breakdown in law or a pattern of vote-rigging. Apart from 17 polling stations in Tassara (which seem to have been foiled by some local communal conflict), and reports of chronic petty delays and procedural fumbling, the poll seems to have proceeded in peace and openness.  While turnout (30%-50%) is low, it is the historical norm, and some rural areas reported record-breaking numbers of women voters.  ECOWAS observers, among 250 official NGO or foreign poll monitors, have seconded this impression.

Rather they may be a prescient image of petty  parliamentary conflict in the 7th Republic, not unlike that between the CDS and the MNSD of the early 1990s which drove the 3rd Republic into gridlock.

Regardless, it will likely be several days before we get any real numbers, and several more before more distant of the more than 2000 polling offices report. ]

You can also follow the #Niger2011 Twitter channel for updates and links to news, including some of my translations. [Update: Amadou Djibril is collecting these links in a Daily Digest here. ]

Alex Thurston’s Sahel Blog has the usual informed coverage and discussion here and here.

And of course, the best Nigerien news coverage is always collected on http://nigerdiaspora.com and http://tamtaminfo.com .

UPDATE, INTERNET CAMPAIGNING: Nigerien politics has begun to capture the social media bug, especially in the sizable diaspora community.  You can follow announcements from the two Facebook pages (here and here) of  Hama Amadou’s Mouvement Démocratique Nigérien Pour une Fédération Africaine MODEN-FA Lumana (as well as their website), the two Facebook pages for Mamadou Issoufou’s PNDS (here and here and their French section here) and their official website (a French section also has a web presence).  The MNSD, perhaps tellingly, has no Facebook presence apart from this “Free Mamadou Tandja” page.  I might also note that the official MNSD website was never updated after Hama and his supporters split form the party in 2009.

Nigerien parties and their supporters have made use of internet video in this campaign as never before.  Highly produced videos of MODEN FA LUMANA events, videos of Mahamadou Issoufou’s PNDS campaign — including scenes from his recent appearances in all corners the country (not a normal feature of campaigns) –  and MNDS rallies have appeared on You Tube and DailyMotion.  There’s even several MNSD Nassara – Seini Omarou music videos.  Wherever you come down politically, they’ll have you taping your toes. ]

Here are some of the latest news stories that caught my eye:

*AFP: 50 percent turnout in Niger polls: electoral panel

*Une élection présidentielle un peu trop calme(France24:The Observers): includes an inside look at the polling process and photo gallery.

*Democracy in action in Niger; 7 million vote in general election (Wire via India Express)

*Niger:Le pouvoir civil va reprendre la main( Courrier international)

*Niger junta says poll went on without a hitch (Africa Review)

*Le Sahel’s official statement:
“Le Président du Conseil Suprême pour la Restauration de la Démocratie, Chef de l’Etat, le Général de Corps d’Armée Djibo Salou, a procédé au lancement des opérations de vote : sous le signe de l’espoir…”

*Présidentielle au Niger : taux de participation faible à Niamey (Afrik.com)

*Niger : Mêmes hommes, mêmes intrigues ? (radio analysis from RFI): Probably, would be my answer.

Related articles

• UPDATE 1-Fraud worries overshadow peaceful Niger vote (af.reuters.com)
• allAfrica.com: Niger: Opposition Asks for Postponement of Elections (allafrica.com)
• PREVIEW-Niger races to secure poll for civilian rule | Agricultural Commodities | Reuters (af.reuters.com)
• Candidates seek new election body for Niger poll (reuters.com)
• TIMELINE-Niger holds presidential elections (af.reuters.com)
• Niger grants uranium permits to Russian Gazprombank | Reuters (af.reuters.com)

The provisional vote totals leaked to press and governments, are bad news for President Gbagbo.

Even wire reports are saying that the vote totals are confirmed, with Alassane Ouattara (representing both the conservative parties heir to Félix Houphouët-Boigny and the marginalized Muslim north) taking between 53% and 55% of the total vote. It seems this is a further lesson, if one is needed, of the inability of governments to contain bad news in the internet age.

A PDF floating around, supposedly a scan of the electoral commission totals, is making the rounds of Ivorian government offices and foreign capitals.

There’s no way of confirming this yet. There’s no meta info in the file, but it shows reasonable totals by Region and Departement (with a margin of error column to the right cut off, suggesting it is the provisional result). It seems to be a report generated from an Excel spreadsheet, as it has the distinctive Excel “division by zero” error code of “#DIV/0!” in a couple of places. There are no seals.

The results, if even close, are damning: 55.01% to ADO for 44.99% Gbagbo (the 100% suggests either completeness or falseness). In some places in the north, ADO is shown with over 80%, even over 90% of some Departements. If Gbagbo’s strategy is to contest northern results, he will have to win MANY disputed stations to make up for ADO’s competitive results elsewhere.

As with so many elections in West Africa, the ruling President Laurent Gbagbo‘s closest supporters seem determined to win at all costs. The latest rumors go that those around Gbagbo, unwilling either to give up their lucrative positions, or fearing investigation into their past dealings, are pushing for a state of emergency, declarable by the President under Article 48 of the 2000 Constitution.

Art. 48. Lorsque les Institutions de la République, l’indépendance de la Nation, l’intégrité de son territoire ou l’exécution de ses engagements internationaux sont menacées d’une manière grave et immédiate, et que le fonctionnement régulier des pouvoirs publics constitutionnels est interrompu, le Président de la République prend les mesures exceptionnelles exigées par ces circonstances après consultation obligatoire du Président de l’Assemblée nationale et de celui du Conseil constitutionnel. Il en informe la Nation par message. L’Assemblée nationale se réunit de plein droit.

Of course there is no grave and immediate threat to the Nation, Institutions of the Republic, territorial integrity, or international obligations. At least not one that has developed in the last few days or months. State TV (RTI) is reportedly been running interviews (on a 24/7 loop) with Gbagbo supporters in the north who claim grave irregularities in the areas controlled by the New Forces rebel movement of the Prime Minister. That these troops were disarmed or integrated into government forces prior to the election (at least according to the government) is one point which doesn’t ring true. That international observers are not reporting any systemic abuse at northern voting stations is another.

Gbagbo’s supporters disrupted an attempt to read provisional results by the CEI voting commission on 11/30. Today (12/1) is the last day votes may legally be chalenged, so the window of legality is closing. Time is another enemy of Gbagbo’s supporters.

Finally, the internationally community is not their friend. The UN mission there has certified the election as fair, and called on the results to be released immediately. The EU, France, The US, and a variety of foreign observers have as well. Reports are that these nations, with the help of the Burkinabe Embassy, are negotiating a climb down.

What is frightening is that Gbagbo’s cronies are the ones with the least to lose from pushing the nation back into civil war. The President is missing his chance to either retire as a statesman or head the opposition, and his exile or prosecution by the next government becomes more likely the more he resists. But the influential business people allegedly grouped around his wife, parliamentary leader Simone Ehivet Gbagbo have more to lose from allowing him to retire. Prosecutions will likely follow in the coming years, and their resources will surely dry up. Simone has already come under suspicion in the events surrounding the 2004 death of French-Canadian journalist Guy-André Kieffer, who disappeared while investigating cocoa industry corruption. The paramilitary forces of ultra nationalist thugs like Charles Blé Goudé may find a future without Gbagbo’s protection rather dangerous.

Purported Results of the Second Round

• Generally very good Wikipedia background on the 2010 election : English & French

Related articles

• UPDATE 1-Ivorian cocoa exporters shut down ahead of poll result (af.reuters.com)
• NEWSMAKER-Gbagbo plays nationalist card for Ivorian run-off (af.reuters.com)
• FACTBOX-Key political risks to watch in Ivory Coast (af.reuters.com)
• Laurent Gbagbo: “I’m here, I’m staying” | African news, analysis and opinion – The Africa Report.com (theafricareport.com)
• UPDATE 1-Poll scores delayed in Ivory Coast, security tight (af.reuters.com)
• Pressure grows on Ivory Coast to issue poll result (af.reuters.com)

In reading about the worrying and hopefully shortlived chaos attending the results of the Cote d’Ivoire elections, I was pleasantly surprised to see a photo of mine used for Radio France International’s article on Ivorian electoral history. Name’s spelled wrong in the mandatory Creative Common’s attribution, but their heart was in the right place (I’m sure).

Related articles

• RT @CrisisGroup: West African Elections: There’s too Much at Stake.: By a coincidence of delayed timetables, neighbouring West Afri… h … (crisisgroup.org)
• Carter Center to Observe Historic Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea Elections Back-To-Back ” Carter Center Blog – Latest Carter Center Peace, Health Blog Posts (cartercenter.org)

I spent the evening with the new Journal of Modern African Studies (cause I’m just that fascinating) and I highly recommend Denis M. Tull’s “Troubled state-building in the DR Congo: the challenge from the margins”.

Apart from learning things about Kongo kingdom relgio-nationality in the west of the DRC, what was most interesting was his argument that what he calls the “liberal democratic process” (democracy limited to periodic national elections in which the winner takes all) serves outside interests much more than local ones.

This ‘democratic’ process is pushed by donors and foreign entities for their ends: international legitimacy for their Congolese client “partners”, stability, business climate, foreign government support for Congo based projects. When faced with sectional, popular movements, democracy so understood must turn to repression to survive. One need look no farther than the current elections in Haiti and Guinea to see examples of this same process. Foreign entities such as the World Bank push for continuity of authoritarian central governments with the imprimatur of newly elected heads of state. Foreigners can maintain their relationships with “reliable partners” (even when not so reliable), and do not have to enter the uncertainty of continually recasting ties with a myriad of local popular leaders. This has obvious advantages for Africa’s leaders. It does not, though, look much like democracy. And we cannot be surprised when the outcomes are not very democratic.

Related articles

• Democracy for DR Congo? (theworld.org)
• Africa IMF Reports : Democratic Republic of Congo 2010 (sociolingo.com)
• The Indypendent ” Haiti Elections: A Sham in the Time of Cholera (indypendent.org)
• Dodging World Bank schizophrenia (pambazuka.org)

…by complaining about the officiating.

Two hours after the US Match: Koman Coulibaly still on en.wikipedia.org's "List of bank robbers and robberies"

Also see Koman Coulibaly’s Wikipedia Page Defaced Within Minutes of US Draw

Poor Koman Coulibaly.  He had a tough match, and as much as I love Mali and Malian football, that was a goal he whistled off. I do find it interesting that he’s an anti-corruption investigator, and likely the most honest and unflamboyant fella you’ll ever meet.  So there’s really no justification for accusing the man of corruption over this, as Eric Wynalda apparently did, from the front lines of his California living room.

But what an appalling call.

Related articles

• Why FIFA Is To Blame For Missed Wins For USA, Germany (bleacherreport.com)
• Maurice Edu goal should have counted against Slovenia (video) (ballhype.com)
• U.S. rallies for amazing 2-2 draw with Slovenia (worldcup.si.com)
• USMNT 2, Slovenia 2 — postgame thoughts and reaction (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Did Referee Rob US of World Cup Win? (cbsnews.com)
• US Suffers From Law of the Wrestling Ring (nytimes.com)
• What was the call that ruled out Edu’s goal? No one’s saying. (g.sports.yahoo.com)
• US furious over disallowed goal (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Phantom goal isn’t only reason US left with a draw (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• USA vs. Slovenia 2010 FIFA World Cup: Officiating Costs USA a Victory (bleacherreport.com)

One of the many menacing street parties of South Africa, from soccerphile.com. Chilling.

As I’ll be spending most of this month tied to a TV or radio, I’ve so far noted one shocking fact: The South African World Cup is not riven by crime, corruption, shoddy workmanship, or terrorism. In fact, things are going swimmingly, the stadiums operations and infrastructure are beautiful, and the only deaths among the 450,000 visitors have been from road accident and falling off a mountain while admiring the scenery.

There’s more realistic complaints about the football itself, especially after the South African side’s almost suicidally poor performances (not to mention a drought of goals, dashed expectations for most African sides, and disastrous English, Spanish, and French performances).  But even if rose gardens have not been delivered on the field or in terms of secondary development, so much of the press run up was so negative — even years of rumors that FIFA would move the cup at the last moment — that it may come as a shock how happy foreign fans are with what they’ve found in South Africa.

One report quotes a puzzled German fan.  Puzzled because, despite the foreign press hysterics, he can go to a local bar and discover “I’m the only white guy in the room but I feel very safe.”.

South African sports reporter Peter Davies has a wonderful piece entitled An Open letter to our Foreign Media friends, marveling at the gloom of foreign media outlets who quake in terror of “machete-wielding gangs roaming the suburbs in search of tattooed, overweight Dagenham dole-queuers to ransack and leave gurgling on the pavement.” But surprise! There’s no fear in walking the streets provided you don’t hang a wad of cash out your back pocket. There are also a surprising shortage of wild animal attacks and collapsing stadia. “For instance, you will find precious few rhinos loitering on street corners, we don’t know a guy in Cairo named Dave just because we live in Johannesburg, and our stadiums are magnificent, world-class works of art.”

Andrew Harding, the BBC’s Africa correspondent, writes about tourists having “had some preconceptions overturned” as England fans descended on Phokeng. While local worried about hooligans (there were none), visitors realized they may have been misled about the dangers of “black Africa”. “We stayed at Sun City, said a couple from Leeds, sitting at [a black African run] bar. We were worried about the crime. But now we just wish we’d come and stayed here.”

Football, eh?

That said…

There are real complaints about South Africa — suffering from gross inequality and rampant poverty — throwing this much money at a World Cup party.  I do agree.  But that’s all of capitalism, not just football.  And it’s not like they were really going to spend this money on poor folks.  At best this can be an opportunity to cross borders in solidarity, to share these struggles, both in Africa and abroad.  But I for one love sport, and the joy it brings.  While those who look after the rich alone will always screw the poor, football can be our weapon as well as ours.  Here are some links to the Poor People’s Movement and The Shack Dwellers Movement in South Africa, and social struggles around the World Cup, including the brilliant “Poor People’s Alternative World Cup.”

• A Short History of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Durban Shack Dwellers’ Movement (Abahlali baseMjondolo)
  • “Upside Down World Cup”: Raj Patel on How South Africa Has Cracked Down on the Poor and the Shack Dwellers’ Movement Ahead of the World Cup
  • The First Poor People’s World Cup on African Soil from the website of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign
  • South Africa: World Cup for All – (Durban Social Forum)
  • SOUTH AFRICA: Poor people’s movement draws government wrath (IRIN News)
• Riot police move in as World Cup pay protests spread (The Guardian)
• Thousands protest against World Cup spending (Mail & Guardian Online)
• World Cup in South Africa: Six red cards for FIFA (Links International Journal)
• South Africa’s World Cup is a disgrace (radical africa)
• South Africa’s World Cup fest not worth the coming hangover by Patrick Bond (ZCommunications)
• Back the people of South Africa, not the football teams (newstatesman.com)
• Raj Patel: Off-Side at the World Cup (huffingtonpost.com)

Other Related articles

• The World Has Embraced Johannesburg, Influx of Tourists “Simply Amazing” (bleacherreport.com)
• Thousands protest against FIFA, World Cup excess (g.sports.yahoo.com)
• Blatter hails African effort (skysports.com)
• What will South Africa look forward to after soccer spotlight dims? (mysanantonio.com)
• Nelson Mandela’s World Cup overshadowed by death of great-granddaughter in crash (telegraph.co.uk)
• Vuvuzelas Silenced As Bafana Boys Blow It (news.sky.com)
• Home cooked (theglobeandmail.com)
• South Africa could pay penalty for unions’ Cup action (reuters.com)
• Security guards strike at World Cup matches in South Africa (cnn.com)
• ESPNsoccernet: Soccer Defeat compared to Soweto uprising (m.espn.go.com)

It’s beautiful in New York, and the world if full of things to argue about. Here are three important issues I’ll have to get back to you on.

While the world goes to hell in a handbasket, I have been trying to maintain my sanity with light reading, and sunny days on the back patio. This largely precludes the production of good (or even mediocre) writing. Further political catastrophes and World Cup drama could completely rule it out.

Despite that, there are several things which should appear here soon, plus a reading recommendation.  Advice for further reading and different perspectives is always very welcome.

First, I’m working on a close reading of the latest US / West African drug arrests, this time focused on Liberia. Not to sound too paranoid, but these things never seem to hang together well when examined closely, and I’ve come to believe over the last few years that there is a commonality of interests between several right wing think tanks, a clutch of journalists and “terrorism experts”, UN Anti-Drug authorities, foreign governments, military, and local governments which play up the need for military and legal spectacle at the expense of actual work on development or ending corruption. While there is likely some real criminality going on in this case, I’m prepared to argue that this Liberian sting of aspiring West African drug runners serves more to allow these interests to further very specific political agendas.

Next, there are updates on the Nigerien political transition, with a new electoral law that has generated some controversy, while we wait for several party political and constitutional shoes to drop in Niamey (party leadership, coalitions, charges against Tandja supporters, not to mention and entirely new Constitution of the Seventh Republic that has to be written and voted on by the end of the year).

Most important to me, I’ve finally thoroughly read Dutch historian Baz Lecocq‘s 2002 dissertation, “That Desert is Our Country’: Tuareg rebellions and Competing Nationalisms in Contemporary Mali (1946-1996).“  As it is available online, I had read later chapters when I’d seen it cited some time ago.  But having stormed through from the start, I must say that it is the best thing written on the Malian Tuareg in English (easily) and arguably better than anything in French (to be fair, I’m thinking only of articles I’ve read by Georg Klute, the Bernuses, Claudot-Hawad, and Bourgeot.  I haven’t read Pierre Boilley’s “Touaregs Kel Adagh”, let alone Georg Klute’s ”Die Rebellionen der Tuareg in Mali und Niger”, which I’ve only ever seen in German). With very few changes it could be produced as a very valuable book.

Lecocq’s basic premise – which he candidly admits was not the one he began with – is that French colonialism and the process of independence heightened a pre-existing “racial” prejudice between northern and southern communities in what is today Mali, even when outsiders might be unable to easily distinguish between these groups. Independence, as well as French and upper class Tuareg resistance to the form this independence, only deepened these divisions, reinforcing mistrust on all sides, keeping these communities at daggers drawn. This has played out through profound reordering in the structures and meanings of the notoriously complex and shifting Tuareg social/political order on one side. On the other, the brutality and hamfistedness of southern politicians and military has often exacerbated conflict, frustrating Malian society.  Nine of ten Malian live in the south, and these communities, having paid dearly to create the imperfect economic development and political liberties they now enjoy, have little sympathy with Tuareg demands.

If you’re anglophone and interested in French colonialism in the Sahara, Mali’s first decades of independence, the current “Tuareg problem”, or even the more general history of cultural conflict along the interface of the Sahel, there’s tremendous value in this work.  Admittedly, Lecocq really focuses on the history of “free” clans of Tuareg in (what is now) Kidal Region’s Adagh des Ifoughas, who make up only a portion of the population of even this limited area.  But their politics and culture are central to the 1963, 1990, and 2006/7 rebellions, and all north south relations in Mali.  Without understanding this, I’ve always found the causes of fighting there hard to understand, even in relation to the Nigerien Tuareg rebellions, which seem much more enmeshed in Niger’s politics and culture.

• Current preferred time waster: tommymiles on Twitter

A herd, starved to death, in North Mali. These animals represent many years of saved wealth and future investment for Malian pastoralists.

Hopefully by now everyone knows that parts of West Africa, especially pockets of Chad and Niger, are struggling with the worst food shortages since 2005. Alex Thurston reports that international humanitarian agencies, as well as increasingly concerned governments, are now worried that this crisis is more generalized than first reported (last September), striking areas of Mauritania and Mali.

In Mali, there is a crisis in the north (mostly Kidal Region) right now, with press reports of huge numbers of animals lost to the mostly pastoralist residents. As in Niger, prices for forage have skyrocketed, prices for animals have plummeted, so that recent reports have talked of Malians trading female goats – the future of their herds – for a single bag of rice in Algerian border markets. Malian press reports talk of traveling through rural Kidal last week, counting corpse after corpse of starved livestock, the very source of pastoralist livelihoods. Those that can have moved south, increasing the pressure on pasture and farm land, surely also risking more communal tension. Kidal Region is already rife with armed unemployed men, competing smuggling rings, and simmering tribal vendettas. The overflow from this must add sparks to the already smoldering Tombuctu and Gao Regions, not to mention the areas south of the Niger where pastoralists head during the dry season. The tragic destruction of Gao market, north Mali’s largest commercial center, by fire last week has got to be a final nail in the coffin for some people, even if the rains have now started there.

There are also reports that Bamako is hoarding food aid, sending only the old supplies stashed at Mopti north and keeping the rest in the south, where the crops were good last year. True or not, people report it as such in Kidal.  On the other side, some southerners accuse Kidal politicians of profiting from the misery of their own people.   Other reports again, more neutral, document intense efforts on all sides, facing nearly insurmountable shortages and logistic impossibilities.

So things in Mali, if they receive the international focus or not, are as bad as in areas of Niger.

In Niger many more farming communities were stricken by the start-stop rains of June 2009, and the pockets of Tillaberi, Tahoua, and Maradi Regions (mostly) have long reverted to crisis mode. Men are on extended “exode”, the dry season trips abroad for wage labor. Other communities have picked up en masse, fleeing to towns, other regions, or even to Hausa northern Nigeria, where some have trade or family contacts. Others still remain, depleting the last of their food stocks, and somehow making it on less and less each day.

It’s important to differentiate between drought and famine (one may cause the other, or may not), and recognize that some places like parts of central Niger have suffered chronic seasonal malnutrition since the 1990s, and recurring drought caused famines since 1968. The causes are debated, and while climate change no doubt is happening, one should not discount the structural changes we have seen over the last 30 years. The IMF’s austerity policies which did such obvious damage to urban West Africa in the 1980s, and triggered much of the 1990-2 democratization wave thereafter, also had pernicious effects on rural areas. The “free trade” treaties of the 1990s — as Bill Clinton recently admitted in the case of Haitian farming — drove world commodity market forces into even the most protected rural communities. Subsidized western industrial agriculture can produce food and cash crops cheaper than most smallholders in the Sahel, but can also cause basic food prices to swing wildly on the back of market speculation, as we saw in 2008. As Marx famously said, in the face of commodification, structures, forms of productions, and traditions have no recourse. “All that is solid melts into air…”, and much of the rural economic structure of the developing worlds has so disintegrated in the last decades. Some areas might survive, sending farmers flooding into urban export driven production. For whatever reasons, Niger, like Haiti, never saw enough of this to absorb the mass of small farming which supports %80 of its people. They continue to literally scratch a living out of dusty millet fields, with less and less ability to turn to either community or markets when things go wrong.

Some pastoralists in North Mali and Niger never really recovered from the loss of herds in the early 1970s. They starved in 1984 because of this, and (arguably) supported armed struggle in the 1990s in part because of this. [It's more complicated that this, with longstanding communities of grievance, and militants trained abroad, but the 72-74 drought can't be discounted]. These are as much political and economic/structural problems as environmental, and they need to be treated once this hungry season passes in September.

In Niger, as grim as this is, some things have improved. Then President Tandja (and current opposition leader Hama Amadou, as well as some “progressive” westerners, for the record) purposefully denied the food shortages and deaths in 2005 were “famine”. They were seeing severe seasonal malnutrition in limited areas, and most children were dying of malnutrition related disease rather than starvation. This is how people die in famines, but the “f” word has political connotations which were painful, and so it is better to try and trivialize the suffering of the rural poor, apparently. I hope there is a special ring of hell for such people. We are not hearing that this time, in part thanks to the Nigerien Junta. Salou Djibo can play on an oft repeated trope in Niger (1974 being the model) of military rule justified by food emergencies mishandled by corrupt civilians. I would hope those in Niamey recognizing this as famine would do the same if they had been in power last year. I also hope they target the structural causes that allow this to happen, after they face the monumentally complicated distribution of food aid.

Aid Agencies (links to give, and learn more)

• Save the Children: Blog from Aid project in Niger
• Oxfam: 2010 West Africa Food Crisis
• Make a one time donation to Oxfam

Related  news articles

• Les touaregs victimes de la sécheresse… et du gouvernement? (France 24, 21/05/2010)
• Témoignages sur la crise alimentaire les zones de Kidal et Ménaka (L’Observateur, 17/05/2010)
• ReliefWeb » Document » Bulletin hebdomadaire de morbidité, de mortalité et de surveillance nutritionelle au Niger – Semaine epidémiologique no 19: du 10 au 16 mai 2010
• ReliefWeb » Document » ENQUETE SUR LA SECURITE ALIMENTAIRE DES MENAGES AU NIGER (avril 2010): RESUME EXECUTIF (mai 2010)
• ReliefWeb » Document » SAHEL ET AFRIQUE DE L’OUEST Perspectives sur la sécurité alimentaire, Avril à Septembre 2010
• Chad hunger overshadowed by Niger food crisis – UN (af.reuters.com)
• Niger junta to provide free food to one million (af.reuters.com)
• Hunger in Niger (undispatch.com)
• CORRECTED-UPDATE 1-U.N. aid agencies sound alarm on Niger food (af.reuters.com)
• Farmers, Aid Groups Call Attention To Drought, Food Shortages In West Africa (medicalnewstoday.com)
• Famine in Niger (one.org)
• Niger facing famine, millions at risk — president (af.reuters.com)
• Famine Persists in Niger, but Denial Seems in the Past (nytimes.com)
• Hunger in Niger (sahelblog.wordpress.com)
• ANALYSIS-Niger junta’s hunger alarm is break with past (af.reuters.com)

An unsigned editorial from Le Pays (Ouagadougou): A quite good reflection on the educational and other restrictions coming for future governments in Niger, but tying the famine. The papers in Niamey have little mention of the small farmers and herders Tahoua, Tillaberi, Diffa, and the north, who are long out of food and fleeing their homes. It’s evidence both that patches of famine sit beside areas which had passable crops last year, and that Nigerien politics is often quite distant from the realities of most Nigeriens. The Burkinabe writer ascribes blame for the chronic malnutrition of Niger’s citizens to both past policies and horrible governance (which is only partly the case), while leaving us with the distinctly uncomfortable vision of Niamey debating constitutional clauses while elsewhere in Niger people are dying.

Related News Links

• Niger leaders ‘must have degrees’ (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Hunger in Niger (undispatch.com)
• Niger junta to provide free food to one million (af.reuters.com)
• Famine in Niger (one.org)
• CORRECTED-UPDATE 1-U.N. aid agencies sound alarm on Niger food (af.reuters.com)
• Famine Persists in Niger, but Denial Seems in the Past (nytimes.com)
• Niger and China (sahelblog.wordpress.com)
• Niger facing famine, millions at risk — president (af.reuters.com)
• Niger calls for $123 million in food aid (af.reuters.com)
• ANALYSIS-Niger junta’s hunger alarm is break with past (af.reuters.com)