Thinking about the Sahel (7 and end)

door Bram Posthumus · Gepubliceerd 12/12/2024 · Geüpdatet 22/12/2024

Het is als een open deur intrappen: de instabiliteit in de hele Sahel, van de Atlantische Oceaan in het westen tot de Rode Zee in het oosten, is de afgelopen maanden alleen maar toegenomen. Vooral Burkina Faso, Mali en Niger dreigen weg te zinken in armoede, geweld, chaos en dictatuur.

De – schaarse – berichtgeving over wat er écht aan de hand is, gaat alle kanten uit. Enerzijds zijn er de vreugdekreten van de ‘neosoevereinisten’ om de herwonnen onafhankelijkheid van de Sahellanden die eindelijk hebben afgerekend met de vermaledijde ex-kolonisator Frankrijk en zijn militaire interventies en neokoloniale belangen, maar anderzijds is de veiligheidssituatie er nog nooit zo slecht geweest met vrijwel dagelijkse aanvallen van jihadistische gewapende groepen, terwijl ook de reguliere legers niet vrijuit gaan bij zware mensenrechtenschendingen.

De samenwerking met de ‘nieuwe militaire partner’ Rusland heeft vooralsnog niet de verhoopte resultaten opgeleverd die de militaire machthebbers voor ogen hadden, integendeel. Sinds de val van de Assad-dictatuur in Syrië is het nog maar de vraag of Rusland zijn militaire engagementen in de Sahel zal kunnen nakomen.

Van een herstel van een min of meer democratisch bestuur is zelfs helemaal geen sprake meer. De militaire junta’s zijn duidelijk niet van plan om snel te vertrekken, al zou de toenemende ontevredenheid onder de bevolking hen daartoe wel eens kunnen dwingen.

Na Mali in november, was het begin december de beurt aan Burkina Faso: eerste minister Apollinaire Joachim Kyélem de Tambèla, werd door overgangspresident kapitein Ibrahim Traoré met onmiddellijke ingang ontslagen, zonder dat een reden werd opgegeven. Twee dagen later, op zondag 8 december, maakte de juntaleider op de nationale televisie bekend dat hij Jean Emmanuel Ouédraogo, een trouwe aanhanger van de militaire machthebbers, had aangesteld als nieuwe premier met de opdracht een nieuwe regering te vormen. Die trad op 9 december al in functie. Mali en de andere Sahellanden glijden zo helemaal af naar dictaturen. Van verkiezingen of een overgang naar een burgerlijk bestuur op korte termijn spreekt niemand meer.

De Nederlandse journalist en West-Afrikakenner, Bram Posthumus, schreef de afgelopen zomer een zeer lezenswaardige zevendelige blog over de Sahel, een regio die hij vanuit zijn jarenlange ervaring als correspondent bijzonder goed kent en waar hij nog vele contacten heeft. Wij brengen zijn bijdragen in vier afleveringen in de CIMIC-Nieuwsbrieven van september tot december. Hierbij het slotdeel.

Jan Van Criekinge

Een kunstperformance in Siby, Mali, waarbij de deelnemers uitbeelden welke ingrijpende veranderingen er de laatste jaren in het leven van rurale gemeenschappen hebben plaatsgevonden (foto: Bram Posthumus).

Back to basics

What the Burkinabè human rights activist said at the beginning of this miniseries leads to the point I have been raising and repeating ad nauseam: all anti-terrorism efforts are doomed to fail unless they start from the root cause, which is the deep marginalisation (social, economic, political) of the regions where almost all of the violence happens.

At a recent conference on security issues on the African continent organised by the Morocco-based Policy Center for the New South, it was observed that there are parts of the Sahel where the people have no trust whatsoever in their own governments.

This is due to a fatal combination of malign neglect and total impunity for atrocities committed by men in uniforms. And when people complain about these matters they are met with complete indifference – or violence.

In the end, people simply no longer feel part of the country where they live and longer obliged to abide by its rules. As I predicted, the current lot in power is no different from what went before.

Consider, for instance, the national parks. These are colonial inventions to protect animals, not the people who have been living with those animals since time immemorial. Government officials, security forces and supposedly more benign NGO-like organisations like African Parks frequently – and often violently – prevent ordinary folk from being in those parks. Recommended reading: my excellent colleague Olivier van Beemen’s latest book that deals with this issue.

So what happens when an armed non-state group comes along and tells the next-door people: “Of course you can enter these parks and find whatever you need. Just pay us…”? The people will say: “Thank you. Do we have a deal here?”

And in this fashion they have regained access to a resource that was denied them, while in the same fell swoop the armed non-state armed groups (terrorists, bandits, jihadists, call them what you like) have obtained sanctuary.

Regen en gerechtigheid, geen van beide zijn erg gewoon in de Sahel (foto: Bram Posthumus).

Unlike many of the policy makers, intervention planners, specialists, development professionals, politicians and wildlife protectors, these groups actually read the room.

This is how they are able to establish their operational bases inside these national parks, which often (and very conveniently!) straddle large stretches of borderland, for instance between Burkina Faso and its neighbours to the south.

This is not to say that these armed non-state infiltrators are good people, far from it: they wreak havoc and often destroy the communities they initially pretend to serve and protect. But their strategies and tactics are on point and ‘we’ fail to understand why this is the case.

Caught between state violence and non-state terrorism communities have taken to organising their own self-defence. It is either that or throwing in your lot with bigger forces. In his book, Rémy Carayol quotes one member of such a community in Central Mali, who declares: “When you are weak, you join one that’s stronger than you.”

Unfortunately, those militias tend to become violent actors themselves, which is what has happened in parts of Burkina Faso and in Central Mali, home to a dizzying array of armed groups.

But let us for a moment assume that trust between local communities and the state can be re-built, how should that be done?

Vrede en rust, zodat lokale mensen zonder bemoeienissen van buitenaf, in alle kalmte hun dagelijks leven kunnen leiden, dat is wat de overgrote meerderheid in de Sahel écht wil (foto: Segou, Mali, Bram Posthumus).

I believe it starts with ending the exasperating impunity for the horrific human rights abuses that the national security forces and their so-called ‘partners’ inflict on unarmed civilians.

The next thing to do is to invoke an amazing concept: asking the people living in Sahel communities what they want, apart from being left alone by armed criminals with or without a uniform.

They will tell you a few terribly uncomplicated things: they would like to see basic services delivered (education, health care, water, electricity, decent roads) and they would like to have access to legitimate economic opportunities, especially for the youth.

This does most emphatically NOT imply resurrecting the much-vaunted decentralisation agenda that donors foisted on Sahel countries from the 1990s and onwards and which have played an important role in creating the warlordism that helped spread the armed violence. What’s that – you say I exaggerate? Read on.

An old plan of mine was to write a book about how the donors’ agenda of decentralisation being a major factor in the rise of warlords in Mali. I am absolutely convinced that this can be proven and in fact, parts of the evidence have started to emerge.

The agenda was pushed relentlessly in countries that had a) highly centralised power structures imposed on them (especially by French colonisers) and b) a history of usually smaller and more manageable indigenous administrative units, where traditional systems of accountability existed.

Once again: what could possibly go wrong? Well – now we know: the decentralisation agenda has created local tyrants. These men (almost always men), not having acces to the funds that always got stuck in the capital and never reached the artificially decentralised units they were supposed to serve found other ways to finance their new positions and the plans that came with them.

What did they do? It’s elementary, my dear Watson: they connected with (or created) criminal networks and financed their sinecures in this fashion: drugs smuggling, arms trafficking, kidnapping, the lot.

Als mensen en delen van het land systematisch worden verwaarloosd door de elite is het niet verwonderlijk dat ze massaal naar de steden trekken. Een doodgewone straatscène in Bamako, de hoofdstad van Mali, en jarenlang de snelst groeiende stad ter wereld (foto: Bram Posthumus, genomen vanuit een bus).

It brings to mind what an expert from India once said at a conference of the development set near the Dutch city of Amersfoort. His point has stuck with me ever since and was this: it will be a fine day when development organisations, from the World Bank through state agencies all the way down to NGOs are faced with real (he meant legal) accountability for the consequences of them playing with peoples’ lives in countries where they work. He ended with this memorable phrase: “It would concentrate minds wonderfully.”

Joining up donor policies with the wildly different local agendas, it becomes very easy to see how government officials and army personnel at all levels become part of shady criminal networks.

It’s one more explanation of how the Sahel has become a lawless playground for criminals, religious nutjobs, mercenaries and deeply cynical political entrepreneurs at all levels. I agree with the argument put forward by the Indian expert all those years ago.

Brought to its logical conclusion it means that donors and development organisations that push their agendas on these countries and in so doing help co-create the problems many of the countries across the Global South are grappling with should be held criminally liable for the fallout from their experiments.

The continent of Africa (or Latin America and Asia for that matter) is not a laboratory where human beings and their communities can be used as socio-economic guinea pigs.

To sum up, what the violence-affected regions in the Sahel need, want and demand is a package: an end to their marginalisation, the start of building trust by (re)introducing justice and bringing basic services, the creation and encouragement of legitimate economically viable activity.

These things, taken together with a law-and-order approach towards armed terrorism (they are first and foremost bandits and lawbreakers) will hopefully make people think that they are citizens of their country after all.

Do this, and watch the violence diminish. Because the basic truth is astonishingly simple: people who have something to lose do not take up arms and start or join wars. People who have nothing to lose do this kind of thing. I will leave it at that.

Bram Posthumus

Thinking about the Sahel (7 and end)

Back to basics

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