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You are here: Home / 2013 / Archives for April 2013

Archives for April 2013

Failed, failing, failure – Is Africa disgracing our family?

April 7, 2013

By Tim Glawion

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All five of the most failed states in the world lie in Africa, calculates the Fund for Peace in its 2012 Index. Mali, as a case in point, has been failing for months now, the army even went as far as fleeing when the Islamist insurgency attacked them. Only mother France’s troops have turned the tables and are leading the recapture of the country’s North with astonishing swiftness and ease. After all we have done for you Africa, why do you prove us a failure time and time again? At least so the popular narrative reads.

Unlike the recent events in Mali suggest, however, Africa has not disappointed us. We have disappointed Africa. In light of the apparent failure of our imposed mode of order in form of a state system we persist and refuse to change our ways. In fact, most African countries never had a state system, at most borders and institutions left behind by colonialism. Africa’s political order, therefore, has neither failed, nor is it failing. Africa’s political orders are evolving and we might see states emerging from this evolution. But if we opened our minds and our international system, we might just witness new forms of political order different from what we know. While we condemn colonialism for the slavery and abuses it brought about, we still silently praise it for bringing order to a continent of anarchy. State systems with clear boundaries, infrastructure, and powerful governments. However, when independence movements kicked out European imperialists, indigenous rulers seemed incapable of containing their abusive and extractive measures to an economically viable level, as the former colonizers had been able to. The economy and the state quickly collapsed. It seems as though the circle began closing itself, when Mali called upon its old masters to bring about the stability they were unable to provide for themselves.

But does this patronizing viewpoint stand the test of reality?

To begin with, can we speak of states, in the European sense, in Africa? While the 1884 Berlin Conference painted lines on the ‘blank’ African drawing board, which have stayed surprisingly untouched for almost 150 years, is this enough to become a state? Were infrastructure developments, coercive rulers and ideological indoctrination, which came about as by-products of colonialism, enough to fill these borders with a common people? Unlikely. Colonial institutions did not create unifying causes and processes for the emergence of states, instead they were meant to increase the efficiency of exploitation. If any moment in time can be seen as a possible spark for state building during the twentieth century, it was not when Europeans entered the continent. It was rather when Africans in each country collectively decided to kick them out.

Along with the common enemy, disappeared the common cause. Identities and institutions other than the state persisted, such as tribes, kin-groups, clans and kingdoms. But the centralizing apparatus left behind by the imperialists and international incentives to uphold the central state empowered exclusive groups to exploit the rest of the population. Somalia’s dictator Siyyad Barre, propped up first by the Soviets, then by the Americans, went as far as starting massacres against north-eastern tribes simply to boost his grip on power. The same region declared independence in 1991 as Somaliland, and who could blame them after a history of violent discrimination under the pretence of a centralized state? Well, we are blaming them, as no state so far has recognized Somaliland’s independence.

Anglo-European powers did not bring about statehood, but these same powers upheld a ‘quasi-state’ system as a pretext to justify violent repression and avoid the emergence of an organic political order. How, then, can we believe that Western intervention is the key for peace and stability? When recognising a central Somali government for the first time in 20 years the United States took credit for supporting the transition to a central state. What kind of support did the US mean exactly? Propping up Barre’s regime for 12 years? Leading a failed attempt at pacification in 1993, and retreating in haste after the infamous Black Hawk Down incident? Supporting warlords against Islamist groups during the civil war? Encouraging the Ethiopian invasion in 2006 that toppled the only stable Somali regime since 1991 because it was “Islamist”? Or does it indeed refer to the most recent move to acknowledge as the sole representative of Somalia a government that itself effectively controls no more than the capital city?

With the French forces reporting one military success after the next, and newspapers’ daily self-congratulatory headlines on what a great impact we Europeans have on our ailing little brother Africa, as a European I must disagree: Africa has not failed us, we have failed Africa.

Filed Under: Blog Article Tagged With: Africa, Development, Identity, Tim Glawion

On the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union

April 2, 2013

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By Adriano Mancinelli

It does not seem to be a good time for the European Union. During the last 5 years, the Euro-zone and the whole Union has been facing an economic crisis that has brought Greece to ruin and – some say – to give up democracy. A month ago, David Cameron announced that he wants to have a referendum on the membership of the United Kingdom in the EU. A few days ago, during messy national elections, the majority of the Italian people voted for anti-European candidates. Yet, at the beginning of this year, the EU received the Nobel Peace Prize 2012, a decision which has been heavily criticised.

Who’s right, then? People in Italy, the UK and Greece, who see Europe as a big evil and a risk for democracy to be halted as soon as possible? Or is it the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which thinks that the EU ‘for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe’?

Maybe surprisingly, I stand with the Nobel Committee: the European Union fully deserved the prize. In order to understand why, it is necessary to start from two crucial observations.

1) The debate on the European Union, both in the press and the pubs, is incredibly narrow-minded and poorly informed. The vast majority of the public considers the EU as some (imperfect) economic organisation – even in the UK, which is not part of the Euro-zone;

2) Because of this narrow view, the vast majority of the public forgets that the EU is much more than that, the EU being a great – perhaps the greatest in history – political experiment, and quite a successful one.

The first European Community was created to overcome Franco-German bitterness and suspicions in 1951. Since that moment, the political project for a more united Europe developed quite steadily until the birth of the European Union proper in 1992 and the re-negotiation of the Treaties between 2007 and 2009.  The process has been successful for so many reasons that it is easy to miss some of them.

After 30 years of total war (1914-1945), Europe is experiencing the longest period of peace since the Peace of Westphalia. At the same time, the members of the EU experienced incredible economic growth, and improved their standards of living at an unprecedented pace. Europe has become the biggest market in the world, and there is even more: it has become the most democratic region of the world, and its member states are usually in the first positions on the lists for freedoms and human rights. Since its creation, the EU has attracted more and more states: from the 6 founders, there will be 28 member states this summer; all of which freely joined the Union. Europe was able to control and help the re-union of East and West Germany, to dialogue first and then to welcome the post-communist countries, making stable democracies of them. Thanks to Europe, millions of young people – I myself being one of them – have been able to study, live, and fall in love in different countries; 350 million people are accorded more civil, social, and political rights than any other part of the world, thanks to the European court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. No other individual or organisation that has received the Nobel Prize can claim to have achieved so much, hence deserving the price more than the European Union – certainly not Obama, I daresay.

The EU comes with deficiencies and ineffectiveness, it would be unfair to conceal that; nonetheless, there is no future in leaving Europe, or dismissing it as a (failed) economic entity. The future lies in recognising EU’s countless merits, and working to change its several flaws. It is not realistic to address the economic problems of the Euro-zone in such an article, but it must be clear that the major reason for the situation is that there is not enough Europe. Moreover, Europe needs stronger political links with regard to foreign policy; in order for the EU to become a real international actor, the member countries must find common objectives and shared interests to pursue – and stronger legal  mechanisms to abide by those objectives and interests.

These challenges require action and uneasy changes. The necessary measures and steps needed to strengthen the Union must be explained clearly to the European citizens: one crucial tasks is to create a system of effective information and communication to EU citizens, in order to destroy the idea of obscure technocrats working in Brussels’ bubble. It is fundamental to (re)create legitimacy in the European institutions; it is fundamental that the peoples of Europe know that the EU cannot be dismissed, and that nobody should raise eyebrows at the EU winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Filed Under: Blog Article Tagged With: Adriano Mancinelli, European Union, Nobel Peace Prize

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