Time for some Visine....I thought the title was 'Potentially U.S. backed coup in Mall '....and I wondered what they did on South Park this time. 
Potentially U.S. backed coup in Mali
- Thread starter Yevetha
- Start date
Under Operation: Orange Julius we deployed Old Navy through The Gap in their defenses to overthrow the Sbarro regime of Banana Republic. Sbarro will be tried in the International Food Court and our heroic J. Crew will return home once we remember if we parked by the Sunglasses Hut or the Rainforest Cafe.
BBC reports that the new Sanogo regime has reached a compromise. We'll see how that holds up. On the background to the coup, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17481114 I suppose the editors have now seen fit to release such information now that they think the government line is clear. Which apparently is, the mutineers' (they've been demoted from coup-makers or rebels,) have their hearts in the right place, so we can work this out.
However, the Tuareg are still forting up, so to speak. There is already major allegations of Al Qaeda involvement but it is not quite clear that Ansar Dine, the Islamist force, is actually affiliated with Al Qaeda. It doesn't make a whole lot of difference though. It is instructive to contrast the quickness of the bourgeois media to point out the unsavory nature of these Tuareg/northern Malian rebels with the relucatance to acknowledge the Islamists collaboratin with NATO in Libya, or with the western powers in Syria. There are allegations of rapes and murders, but nothing like the enormity of the claim that Qaddafi used jets to fire on unarmed street demonstrations. The upshot I suppose is that Sanogo et al. are supposed to stand down in exchange for a promise to assault the Tuareg. If they promise is broken or fails, well, the uranium is still in the south.
However, the Tuareg are still forting up, so to speak. There is already major allegations of Al Qaeda involvement but it is not quite clear that Ansar Dine, the Islamist force, is actually affiliated with Al Qaeda. It doesn't make a whole lot of difference though. It is instructive to contrast the quickness of the bourgeois media to point out the unsavory nature of these Tuareg/northern Malian rebels with the relucatance to acknowledge the Islamists collaboratin with NATO in Libya, or with the western powers in Syria. There are allegations of rapes and murders, but nothing like the enormity of the claim that Qaddafi used jets to fire on unarmed street demonstrations. The upshot I suppose is that Sanogo et al. are supposed to stand down in exchange for a promise to assault the Tuareg. If they promise is broken or fails, well, the uranium is still in the south.
The Chinese have silently gotten their hands on plenty of resources in Africa. You really think that we Westerners will just stand idly by and watch?
I fear that resources conflicts and the consequences of overpopulation and climate change will be the main causes of violence in the second half of this century. It might very well become more bloody than the first half of the last.
South Sudan isn't about freeing the local "people" from the oppressions of an Arab government based in Khartoum. It too has "nonsensical" boundaries, at least in terms of populations. The horrible violence in southern Sudan was never just Arabs tormenting the local "people." Interethnic struggle has always been a major part of the violence and the separation of South Sudan doesn't address this. That's why the violence continues, even if the defeat of Khartoum leaves one side less able to resist. But, defeat is not peace. South Sudan only makes sense in light of oil revenues.
Equally, the prospect of the fracturing of Libya into two parts only makes sense in light of oil revenues.
On the other hand, what is happening right now includes Somalia. Somalia does not include the Somali-majority lands in Kenya, Ethiopia and, very conspicuously, Djibouti (aka territory of the Afars and the Issas,) even though this is pretty much a postage stamp in comparison to the rest of the continent. Yet there is no move to rationalize those boundaries. Further, the US has prompted invasions of Somalia by Ethiopia, now Kenya, to keep the Somalis from reestablishing a national state. What is happening now is the very opposite of partially replacing nonsensical colonial borders with those the people agree with.
The internecine violence in Uganda, as typified by the Lord's Resistance Army (remember Kony 2012?) is closely connected with the instability of Uganda, due to its bizarre configuration. Buganda was historically a separate monarchy and its separateness has weakened the regime in Uganda, leaving the country the plaything of desperadoes like Idi Amin Dada and Joseph Kony. But, if we are to decide that the only question is rearranging the borders sensibly, shouldn't we bring Kony to the table?
The boundaries between Rwanda, Burundi and Katanga province are indeed colonial nonsense, but ethnic rationalization in the sense proposed above would blend just part of Katanga with both Rwanda and Burundi. And there wouldn't be separate Hutu and Tutsi states, because both populations were hopelessly interpenetrated. This area is one of the few places in Africa that really does seem to be overpopulated for its ecological carrying capacity. The area desperately needs a government with the power and responsiveness to the people, all of the people, to carry out the land reforms and economic development that provides the basis for a peaceful society. But the separatist movement in Katanga is not about this, but about separating mineral resources from Kinshasa!
First of all, the notion that every ethnic group needs and deserves it own sovereignty is tribalism, not democracy.
Second, national self-determination in the current world system is a claim to sovereignty, which is to say, the claim to the right to wage war. The claim that all ethnic groups have a right to wage war ignores the real nature of the claim to self-determination, which is that the people of an area, due to many reasons, including ethnicity, religion, language, territorial separation, divergent histories and divergent cultures, are unjustly treated by the current government, so unjustly that a war of liberation is justified. Just war is a popular philosophical concept right now, but I think is purely propagandistic.
Is Timbuktu really a nomad city? There is a reason why there is popular support for the Sanogo coup. In addition to the Tuareg rebels, there is the Ansar Dine, possibly a constituent of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. (Which by the why overlooks ethnicity in its claims.) No democratic state has done well in dealing with nomads. (Socialist states have not done as well as I would like, either.) The whole concept of nations doesn't really fit with nomadism.
In other words, despite a natural relucatance to hold colonial boundaries as sacred, we cannot ignore every other issue. Nor can we honestly claim it is a question of "the people." These episodes are primarily the product of outside forces. The Tuareg are desperate I think because the NATO democrats in Libya are threatening their lives, individually and collectively.
Kind of out there, but I wonder how an ethnic national subdivision of Africa would look like. Probably very different from what we have now.
Sure, leaving tribalism behind should be one long-run goal of the left.
But what do you suggest to happen in Africa, that people just live together in colonial borders or redraw them, based on ethnic identity? What about Kurdistan, wouldn't such a state imply less suffering than the current situation (talking about Turke, in Iraq the Kurds are now relatively sovereign)? And despite decades of war and peace it is impossible to transcend national identity in Europe.
In Yugoslavia it worked to transcend that kind of tribal bullshittery during socialism but after it collapsed nationalism filled the ideological vacuum in a pretty nasty form.
When all kind of ugly shit happens, when one group is mistreated I am all for their right to separate. You can theorize all day long about the noble goal of leaving tribalism behind but when people suffer or die I prefer pragmatic solutions.
Israel is the best example. Of course I prefer the unique role that European Jews had, as outsiders who are able to critically think from this very perspective (Marx, Freud and Einstein being the obvious examples) ... but after the Shoah you have to be a Zionist.
Very interesting pictures, thanks Squiggy.