Mauritania: “Business as usual,” the business of failure
Posted: 28 September, 2009 Filed under: Africa, AQIM, balance of power, France, Francophonie, Geopolitics, Iran, Libya, Maghreb, Mauritania, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, NATO, Recently in Mauritania, Sahel, Third World, US 8 Comments »
“It’s a new hour in our history,” Chavez said today. “We have many great leaders, many of them here today.”
“Chavez, Qaddafi Seek Africa-South America NATO, Bank,” Bloomberg, 27 September, 2009.
Yesterday, the Venezuelan president hosted a pow-wow of African and Latin American leaders, dressing themselves in the language of South-South cooperation, Third Worldism and all the rest of what today’s dictators and despots use to form perversions of what were once “progressive” ideologies. Mauritania was in attendance, its delegation said to include among others Sid Ahmed Ould Taya, the former president that sitting Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz deposed in 2005 — a mistake on the part of the Venezuelans, showing the depth of their solidarity with Mauritania and Mauritania’s own marginality even among the most pointlessly rebellious of marginal states. Mauritania’s participation in the summit, which Ould Abdel Aziz’s government hoped to hold up a success, came after Venezuela’s Chavez announced plans to build an oil refinery in Mauritania. Things are not quite so sunny, though. Read the rest of this entry »
Bouteflika at the United Nations
Posted: 25 September, 2009 Filed under: Africa, Algeria, Bouteflika, history, Non-Allied, Third World 3 Comments »Bouteflika at the United Nations, as President of the General Assembly, and as President of Algeria.
Qadhafi at the UN: the face of everyone’s misdeeds
Posted: 24 September, 2009 Filed under: Africa, France, genocide, Geopolitics, Italy, Libya, Maghreb, Multipolarity, Non-Allied, politics, Qadhafi, Third World, UK, US 6 Comments »
Muammar al-Qadhafi is most diplomatically called problematic. In his grand exposition of his foreign policy, the Stream of Consciousness Policy, he succeeded, as his diplomatic corps and conduct has before, the Brother Leader ably turned the world away from pressing issues facing the developing world. Rambling on about a host of issues, some more relevant in 1969 others more relevant today, he offered the world community perhaps the greatest fit of foolishness yet seen on the world stage. And he, together with the Western and African leaders who coddle him, has done more damage to the cause of the disenfranchised than any other man this year. It makes one consider that it may be true that “to do and suffer evil is the universal human condition.” Read the rest of this entry »
What the NYT’s piece on the new cybercrime law says about Algeria, and its opposition
Posted: 21 September, 2009 Filed under: Africa, Algeria, AQIM, Arabs, balance of power, Bouteflika, culture, Francophonie, Hanoune, Internet, Maghreb, politics, Recently in Algeria, terrorism, Third World 6 Comments »
Undone from his cold dead hands?
The New York Times has an interesting article on a proposed law in Algeria that would allow for tighter surveillance of internet users suspected of using the net to support terrorism or otherwise subversive criminal activity. Obviously, this has caused anxiety among politically minded Algerian bloggers. The article is disappointing in that it does not mention that the proposal is more than a year old (if not older). The proposed law would create an “internet police force charged with investigating online criminal and terrorist activities”. This is only partially correct, in that it proposes creating and solidifying the cybercrime “cells” and task-forces within the already existing police and security forces apparatus.
The article overestimates the perceived threat of bloggers and online mobilization on the government’s part. Like the Algerian political class and opposition at large, internet based opposition is as weak. This is a key element of Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s Algeria: a weary political class, fragmented opposition and a strong state that tolerates a modicum of Islamist agitation and lets the discontent rumble in the streets like a low din, knowing well that to put down young men’s riots would only make more of them angry. It is a system that serves to perpetuate only itself so long as as much is possible, but devoid of any of the naitonalist zeal of previous eras. It is an imitation of Boumediene’s style of rule, minus any of his convictions or folkloric representative or revolutionary legitimacy. Read the rest of this entry »
Facing the Nation: “Discours à la Nation de Ould Abdel Aziz à l’occasion de la fin du Ramadan”
Posted: 15 September, 2009 Filed under: Africa, Arabs, humor, Maghreb, Mauritania, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, politics, Recently in Mauritania, Sahel, Third World 3 Comments »
Here is the text of a fictitious “speech,” written by an anonymous Mauritanian and attributed to President General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, and circulating widely across the Mauritanian internet scene via emails, Facebook, and other media. It lays out especially what many Mauritanians, including many of those who voted for Ould Abdel Aziz, are thinking amidst the rough times of their country and their present’s recent conduct. It does so by stating what has happened since his rise to power. A translation of parts of it is forthcoming. Read the rest of this entry »
Sahara Media on a sad Ramadan
Posted: 12 September, 2009 Filed under: Africa, Mauritania, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, Recently in Mauritania, Third World 11 Comments »Last week, Sahara Media published a piece summarizing the misery that has befallen Mauritanians on their first Ramadan under president Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz (it is their second under him, the first having been under his junta). It uses hard hitting personal accounts and quotes everyday people. That Sahara Media published this piece is meaningful: the website is known for being less radically critical than other, more directly opinionated sites such as Taqadoumy (or even the Islamist oriented al-Akhbar). For them to have published such a dreary piece about Mauritania’s state of affairs indicates that the new government (which was formed in direct defiance of calls for a unity government after the acrimonious election in July) is doing rather poorly, even from a middle of the road position, within the Mauritanian political spectrum. A slum dewller is quoted as saying “as for us poor people, the crisis has not affected us, because we had no electricity or running water to begin with,” highlighting the problems facing Mauritania’s capital. The article concludes by describing the city as being “in need of urgent medication as a result of a suffering heart and arteries, lacking infrastructural architecture necessary for a city that hosts close to one million people, with hundreds of thousands more candidates with every sunrise.”
Mauritania: When the going gets tough, get going on holiday
Posted: 5 September, 2009 Filed under: Africa, Ahmed Ould Daddah, AQIM, Arabs, Libya, Maghreb, Mauritania, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, Non-Allied, Recently in Mauritania, Sahel, terrorism, Third World 21 Comments »
It is a woebegone Ramadhan in Mauritania. Scandals, power outages, flood and neglect abound. While the freshly elected president, General Mohamed Abdel Aziz, sits air conditioned and on vacation in Spain (after reveling round Qadhafi’s bonfire), while Nouakchott is without power, the national radio broadcaster does not service the country’s vast interior, Mauritania’s third city, Rosso, is submerged by flooding along with large parts of the shanties around the capital, Nouakchott. One person has died in Rosso. Residents of the capital complain of the putrid smell of rotting food, standing and dirty water filling streets without sewers. Internet access is limited. PM Moulay Ould Mohamed Laghdaf made a surprise visit to the power station at Arafat, where the troubles related to the Nouakchott outages originated, as traders reported major losses. Ahmed Ould Daddah, a prominent opposition leader, has also used the opportunity to show his solidarity with flood victims. As a result of the horrendous floods, the government announced that it plans to “embark on a plan to study providing Mauritanian cities with a sanitation network to prevent urban flooding from rain water.” A miserable Mauritanian described her city as having returned to the Stone Age.
And if it sounds as if things could not get any worse, a man was killed by a camel south-east of the capital. He was whipped to the ground, and trampled to death. He was sixty. His name was Mohamed Abdallahi Ould Mohamed Vall. Read the rest of this entry »
Some Algeria stuff
Posted: 4 September, 2009 Filed under: Africa, Algeria, Bouteflika, Hanoune, Non-Allied, Ouyahia, politics, Recently in Algeria, Venezuela 2 Comments »Lousia Hanoune offered her opinions on illegal immigration and Hugo Chavez at a talk to her party’s summer school (see below) yesterday, saying that “urgent action” from the authorities to stop the flood of harragas going off to sea or being arrested on their way. She also praised Hugo Chavez, in the wake of his recent visit to Algeria, saying that his 2005 visit helped in pushing through changes to the hydrocarbons law. She called the Venezualan president’s visit “a positive sign in terms of encouraging the Algerian government to take economic decisions and encourage the disposal of foreign diktats and halting negotiations towards WTO accession.” Hanoune’s “opposition” since April has been in the form of, as La Tribune puts it, “applauding recent government actions,” and then stating depressing facts about the country’s economic conditions. This has become so much the case even the official El Moudjahid was so moved by her remarks on the recent supplementary budget law that it felt it necessary to publish an entire article on her, quoting her, in effect thanking her, for supporting the government’s undertaking. Indeed, El Moudjahid‘s favorite bits from Hanoune’s recent comments were her description of the law as “a large, bold victory for the national economy” and that she “questioned the reactions of some” to the new law, e.g. other quarters of the opposition and business classes. Clever, Hanoune makes certain never, ever to say that “there is no poverty in Algeria,” as some evidently confused ministers have.
L’Expresion has a summary of the meeting places and agendas for the major parties’ summer school sessions, meetings, conferences and training sessions for the party cadres and faithful. Interestingly, it is reported the PM Ahmed Ouyahia’s RND has had three regional conferences (in Constantine, Blida and Oran), but its Southern (e.g. Saharan) conference was postponed for after Ramadhan, due to the excessive heat. The FLN completed its summer program on 14 July at Tipaza, looking towards the 9th Congress in early 2010 and policies related to agriculture and broadcasting. Hanoune’s PT began their summer school this week, due to logistical complications as a result of the PanAfrican festival. El Islah held its party sessions in June and early August, commemorating the 20 August, 1955 Skikda killings with lectures as well as meetings to commemorate the Congress of the Soummam, at Ifri. Moussa Touati’s FNA was too strapped for cash to hold national conferences, and instead held various local meetings across the country, emphasizing committee structuring and training. The FNA’s scheduling was also hampered because of the PanAf festival. The FNA, despite its mediocre showings at the polls, and undistinguished ideology, “is part of a simple movement, but is becoming a political party, thematically and structurally,” its moustached leader declared. The ever stumbling AHD 54 of Fawzi Rebiane held its sessions in July, and resolved that its energy would best be spend on proposing solutions for transport related troubles and increasing contact between party activists and citizens. MDS held its meetings in early August, bringing in new recruits from the universities. The article describes RA and en-Nahdah as “in hibernation,” due to the heat, perhaps by metaphor referring to their internal intrigues and incompetence.
To speak of the Chavez visit, it resulted in renewal of the 2006 memoranda of understanding between the two countries, an invitation from Chavez to Bouteflika to the Afro-Latin America Summit and quite a lot of bluster about South-South cooperation, solidarity and the Third Worldist rhetoric Bouteflika is so well known for. Bouteflika hosted an Iftar in Chavez’s honor at El Mouradia Palace. The significance of the visit ending up being that Chavez perhaps now knows more about Ramadhan than he did before.
Meanwhile the Interior Ministry continues to work at re-drawing the administrative map of the Southern daïras (sub-wilaya administrative districts), with the intention of re-organizing them based on population in order to “bring the government closer to the people”. The re-division of daïras is the result of demands at the local level, where people often feel isolated from the structures and services of the state, and security concerns related to banditry and AQIM in the more remote and poorly serviced areas.
Robert Irwin’s “Dangerous Knowledge”
Posted: 2 September, 2009 Filed under: Africa, Arabs, Asia, books, history, idealism, Islam, Israel, Levant, Maghreb, Muslims, school, Third World 15 Comments »
Robert Irwin’s Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and its Discontents (Overlook, 2006) is a spirited refutation of the late Edward Said’s magnum opus Orientalism. The book chronicles the history of Oriental studies in the West, arguing that practitioners of this trade were not mere agents of imperialism or a demonizing conspiracy, but rather scholars who labored over their studies in good faith. He holds no punches when it comes to tearing down the “Orientalists” Said presents as representative of western scholarship of the Near and Middle East, particularly de Gobineau and Renan. He argues that Said is unlikely to have even read the work of “genuine” Orientalists, instead picking out patently racist and un-scholarly writers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, along with various other figures irrelevant to Orientalist work. Here he has a point, as Said’s book indeed over emphasizes popular and obscure literature over actual scholarship. Irwin is at his strongest in elaborating on German, Russian and other non-Anglo-French scholarship that was prolific and influential in the field, though almost wholly ignored by Said.
Irwin’s work additionally serves as a biographical survey, a sort of historical dictionary of Orientalists from the European Middle Ages through to the present. In cataloging the personal histories, eccentricities and politics (or non-politics) of various European and Americans scholars, Irwin seeks to rebut Said’s claim that Orientalist scholarship (“old-fashioned,” as he calls it) is the result of the imperialist enterprise, complicit in and reliant on European power and domination of non-western societies. The characters Irwin pulls out are diverse and fascinating and some more a part of the colonial project than others. But that Orientalism’s roots do lay solely in colonizing activity, but rather in an assortment of religious causes (missionary and the desire to better understand the philology of the Bible, in the case of many Germans), intense personal interest, and so on is manifestly clear from Irwin’s narrative, especially in that his history of the subject extends quite far back (to the late Middle Ages). He is quick to call the work of de Gobineau, Renan, Lemmens racist, anti-Islamic and pseudo-scholarship — as he should be — and to emphasize that Said’s lasting influence has been to conflate these figures with well meaning and hard working scholars whose interest in their subject was no born out of a desire simply to make devils out of Muslims and Arabs or justify their oppression through myths of western supremacy. He succeeds in arguing that the image Said paints of the Orientalist tradition is flawed and inaccurate. Overall, the book does what it intends to do and does so with a clear statement of purpose and mission. Three cheers for clarity.
When it comes to modern Orientalism, Irwin’s tale is more troublesome. Read the rest of this entry »
Worth reading
Posted: 2 September, 2009 Filed under: Africa, Algeria, AQIM, Francophonie, Geopolitics, gossip, Libya, Maghreb, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Multipolarity, news, Niger, Ouyahia, Qadhafi, Sahel, Third World, Western Muslims 3 Comments »Here are some stories on the region worth checking out:
- “As Algeria grows more Islamic, nightlife suffers,” 8 August, 2009. The premise of the article is somewhat wrongheaded, as its title suggests. Algeria has been Islamic for some time. That its nightlife is struggling is only slightly newsworthy but does show, as the author intends, that “reconciliation” has meant acquiescing to demands of popular Islamist (not “Islamic”) sentiments.
- “France’s Algerian shadow,” Aljazeera English, Veterans, August, 2009. An interesting segment on the memory of the Algerian War of Independence and its post-war maltreatment of Muslim harkis (Algerians who fought for the French; who were relentlessly driven from their homes, hacked up, or forced into dreary exile in France, or quiet shame within Algeria; the term is taken to mean “traitor,” the opposite of a patriot, the moral antithesis of the moudjahid or chahid). The program is interesting, interviewing harkis, Algerians, French vets and the like. French and Algerian viewers may take issue with its framing.
- “Qadhafi’s Time in the Limelight: Impact on U.S. Interests,” Dana Moss (WINEP), 28 August, 2009. Interesting summation of Qadhafi’s 40th anniversary, his upcoming visit to the United Nations (and his desire to pitch a tent in New Jersey), the release of Meghrahi, and so on and so forth. According to Moss, the Brother Leader heads “an opportunistic regime,” that “may no longer be an enemy, but it is a very unreliable friend.” She notes that the US has little to offer Qadhafi, though he may embarrass his hosts with typically ridiculous speech-making, or work contra US efforts in Africa should he feel that American engagement does not sufficiently match his liking.
- “Libya Marks 40-Years of Qaddafi,” Aljazeera English, 1 September, 2009. Describes the ghoulish glitz and kitch of Qadhafi’s anniversary celebrations, asking few tough questions, quoting planners who compare the endeavor in relation to an “Olympic opening ceremony” and outsiders who remark on how little Libya’s massive oil wealth has benefited its puny population of but 6 million. An homage to misrule.
- “Gaddafi coup celebrations expose Moroccan land dispute,” Jerusalem Post, 2 September, 2009. The Moroccan delegation stormed away from Qadhafi’s party because Mohamed Abdelaziz, president of the Saharawi SADR, was present. A set from Morocco’s security forces was to participate in the processions, but apparently no more. This mini-row is a wonderful illustration of the whole escapade’s stupendous stupidity. The celebration was also attended by Mauritania’s Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, his first foreign trip since the elections.
- “Moines de Tibéhirine : « une affaire franco-française », selon Ouyahia,” TSA, 2 September, 2o09. I received an email asking why I was not writing more about the controversy around the killing of the monks at Tiberhirine. The reason is that it is of great real consequence in the region. It holds significance in Franco-Algerian relations, and represents an effort from the French end to influence things on the Algerian side, but has more meaning for the French than the Algerians. Algerians very much see it as an attempt to undermine Ahmed Ouyahia, whom the French are said to dislike and who is thought to be a likely follow up to Bouteflika.
- “Larbi Belkheir hospitalisé à l’hôpital du Val-de-Grâce en France,” TSA, 2 September, 2009. Larbi Belkheir, once a major player in the generals’ regime during the 1990′s, before being shipped off to obscurity as Ambassador to Morocco, has suffered from complications from lung cancer for some time. This week he was sent of to the Val-de Grâce military hospital in Paris, after returning to Algiers earlier. Since his return to Algeria in 2008, his responsibilities were taken up by Boumediene Guenadi, the Deputy Ambassador. He has been dropped in a recent shuffle of Algerian diplomatic postings and the post in Rabat has yet to be filled.
- “La France et les USA rapatrient les familles des employés du pétrole,” Taqadoumy, 2 September, 2009. US and France bring home the families employees of oil companies in Mali and Niger. The State Department Reavel Warnings and Travel Alterts for Mali, and Mauritania have been updated with greater urgency. Numerous American aid and development projects (including the Peace Corps) are being scaled back or brought home from the Sahel, a reaction to increasing AQIM activity.
- Going back a few months, the Algerian-American community in Washington, D.C. has been grumpy since the new Algerian Ambassador, Abdallah Baali, failed to put on 5 July (Independence Day) celebrations for the Algerian community in the area, as per tradition. Local Algerians complain that while the embassy put on 4 July celebrations to mark American independence, it failed to mark its own national holiday, and that the two events could have been merged, if finances, time or whatever other possibilities were the concern. At the same time some feel disconnected from the new Ambassador, whose “style” they see as being rather different from the more personalized one of his predecessor. At the same time, personal feuds splintered celebrations elsewhere on the east coast, where multiple celebrations went on in the same city (in more than one city). In some places, communities economized and celebrated American and Algerian independence on one day, simultaneously. It said the embassy has taken note of the Washington Algerians’ concerns.
More meaningful blogging will soon commence.
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