Sub-Saharan Africa: They're Conflict Minerals, Marie

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Sub-Saharan Africa: They're Conflict Minerals, Marie

fade5: May 31, 2012; by exmarx

So as noted in the OP, France is doing interventions in many of its former colonies aka Francophone West Africa:

quote:

Operation Barkhane:
The French led Operation Barkhane continues in the Sahel supporting Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Chad in operations against various jihadist groups that have become increasingly active in the region since the 2012 rebellion against the Malian government led by the Tuareg ethnic group fuelled by long standing demands for regional autonomy. Mali has now concluded a peace agreement with the Tuareg fighters involved which may prove vital in the coming months.

I'm interested in discussing the good parts and the bad parts of this.

On the plus side, quite a few of these places asked for French help, and on the whole it seems to have done some good, especially in Mali. (I am open to being corrected on this.) It shows that at least France is not leaving African governments on their own with no help, and/or allowing extremists to roam around completely unchecked.

On the minus side, it's basically France going back into their former colonies and picking who to support. Mali only gained independence from France in 1960, so there are still thousands of people living there who remember the country being a colony of France. Even if the governments asked for French help, it has an uneasy air of that old-school colonialism, going in to "help" the people who can't help themselves. You might even say it was a "Frenchman's burden", if you will.

The third factor is economics; I know that France still imports a lot of items and materials from its former colonies, and as such they have an economic interest in having stable countries in Africa, which can be good but is sometimes quite bad, depending on the situation and what is considered "stable".

fade5 fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Jul 14, 2015

# ¿ Jul 14, 2015 20:01

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 10:23

fade5: May 31, 2012; by exmarx

kustomkarkommando posted:

Much has been made of the "Cape to Cairo" factor.

As a refresher/reminder to the thread (and because some history courses may have skimmed over Europe carving up Africa):

This is a map of Africa as of 1913, and which European countries controlled the various parts of it. I've listed some of the major places for reference.

Yellow: Belgian (The infamous "Belgian Congo")
Red: British (Very close to stretching from Cape Town in South Africa to Cairo in Egypt)
Blue: French (Francophone West Africa, plus a couple other places)
Sea Green: German (Tanzania aka the one country preventing Britain's "Cape to Cairo", Namibia, and Cameroon)
Bright Green: Italian (Part of Libya, Eritrea, and Italian Somalia)
Purple: Portuguese (Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau)
Pinkish-Purple: Spanish (Western Sahara, parts of Morocco, Equatorial Guinea, and the Canary Islands)
White: Independent (Liberia, the US colony/nation made by freed US slaves and Ethiopia, the only place to somehow not be colonized)

Notice how the old colonial borders almost always match up to the modern countries. A little shorthand description I've heard for the "strategy" in who took what parts of the continent is that that British tried to go North-South and the French tried to go West-East. In addition, after WW1 Germany lost their African colonies, which were handed over to the other European nations:

quote:

In Africa, Britain and France divided German Kamerun (Cameroons) and Togoland. Belgium gained Rwanda-Burundi in northwestern German East Africa, Great Britain obtained by far the greater landmass of this colony, thus gaining the "missing link" in the chain of British possessions stretching from South Africa to Egypt (Cape to Cairo), Portugal received the Kionga Triangle, a sliver of German East Africa. German South West Africa was taken under mandate by the Union of South Africa.

So, if you want to ask "why does [x] country in Africa look like that" the answer is Europe.

For a couple interesting places, Eritrea was annexed by Ethiopia and gained independence in 1993 (there's way more to the story than that, obviously), Namibia broke off from the rest of South Africa and became independent in 1990, and what used to be British Somalia is now a sub-part of Somalia named "Somaliland", and it's more stable than the rest of Somalia aka former Italian Somalia.

fade5 fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Jul 14, 2015

# ¿ Jul 14, 2015 20:58

fade5: May 31, 2012; by exmarx

Communist Zombie posted:

I thought it was also because in the post colonial era the various african countries specifically decided to focus on nation-state building in the existing borders instead of opening the likely pandora's box of 'fixing' borders to something more 'natural'.

This is true, there's also the fact that most African nations gained their independence at different times, and as such were not able to adjust borders easily even if they wanted to.

E: So while searching for stuff about France's intervention in Mali for he sub-Saharan Africa thread, I found this, and I thought I'd share it:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/salymfayad/8439257498/

So yeah, looks like the people of Mali are generally happy that France intervened; I'd heard that sentiment before, but I didn't want just assume it was true.

Looks like it is though, I mean I can't really argue with a dude who's holding up the flags of France and Mali and who painted "Bienvenue Le Sauveur Fran�ois Hollande" and the French flag on himself.

However, as pointed out by Disinterested in the chat thread, people did this with America in Iraq before years of horrifying recrimination and civil strife. It's not that there aren't people in the world aren't receptive to rich and powerful nations helping them, they're just not thrilled about them doing it open-endedly, horrifyingly incompetently, etc. And it's also very different when the government of the country asks for the help.

fade5 fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Jul 15, 2015

# ¿ Jul 15, 2015 00:46

fade5: May 31, 2012; by exmarx

Jagchosis posted:

Speaking of depressing, there was a coup d'etat in Burkina Faso. The coup was perpetrated by military officers supposedly loyal to the former president for life Blaise Compaore, who was ousted recently by popular protests. The coup was against the leaders of the transitional government, and occurred three weeks before scheduled elections to determine his successor. The leader of the coup, General Diendere, says that elections will still go forward but the scheduled date of October 11 is much too early, and we must not rush democracy, oh no that would be bad, so the elections are delayed indefinitely. The French use Burkina Faso as a staging area for operations against Islamists, and the country is also allied with the U.S. against those militants. The U.S. is mad salty about this coup and saying they're going to "review" the military aid they provide to the country (in the same manner they "reviewed" military aid to Egypt after their coup, which is to say lol).

The UN wrote Diendere a very strongly worded letter expressing stern disapproval.

So are the French gonna do any sort of intervention (military or otherwise) against General Diendere and company, or are they only doing stuff against Islamists?

One the one hand it would be cool to see the coup guy thrown out, but on the other hand that could easily lead to more instability and violence, and it could also lead to anti-French sentiment if it looks like France is militarily picking and choosing leaders without having super broad support from the general public (both in Burkina Faso and abroad) to do something like that.

fade5 fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Sep 19, 2015

# ¿ Sep 19, 2015 16:48

fade5: May 31, 2012; by exmarx

Well since this thread has been resurrected, have some news:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/joseph-kony/12182422/Joseph-Konys-LRA-abducts-scores-of-child-soldiers-in-new-wave-of-attacks.html
http://www.africanews.com/2016/03/03/surge-in-lra-children-abductions-in-central-african-republic/

quote:

The Lord�s Resistance Army (LRA) has abducted 217 people since January in the Central African Republic (CAR), a campaign group has said.

This is nearly double the number of abductions carried out by the LRA in 2015, said the LRA Crisis Tracker in a report posted on the BBC.

LRA, also known as the Lord�s Resistant Movement, is a rebel group and an heterodox Christian cult which operates in northern Uganda, South Sudan, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The group said the victims including 54 children may have been forced to become soldiers or sex slaves.

It added that the LRA appear to be trying to �replenish� its forces because of military setbacks.

The rebel group had suffered setbacks since foreign forces began pursuing it in 2011.

The US had deployed 100 special forces to support thousands of African troops searching for LRA commanders.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for its leader, Joseph Kony to stand trial for war crimes.

His former bodyguard, George Okot defected in December last year.

A member of the Invisible Children campaign group, Sean Poole, said LRA has lost a large number of its fighting force and is trying to rebuild its force through abductions.

�The spike in abductions in the first three months of this year signalled a �huge change in the modus operandi� of the LRA.�

The LRA was formed in northern Uganda nearly three decades ago, but retreated to CAR and other countries as it came under military pressure.

The LRA are abducting a bunch more children to replenish their forces because they've been getting their asses kicked. Also child sex slavery, because things aren't horrifically hosed up enough. :suicide:

# ¿ Mar 3, 2016 23:31

fade5: May 31, 2012; by exmarx

Since this thread is back, I'm curious about a topic that got briefly discussed in chat thread: what's going on right now with Sudan and South Sudan?

Jagchosis posted:

Oddly enough LRA is in Sudan occupied south Sudan making money poaching elephants

kustomkarkommando posted:

There's a civil war currently in "restive peace" phase. Over 100,000 killed in 2 years.

I can link you some nice reports of government troops deliberately running over civilians with tanks and forcing people to eat the cooked flesh of dead bodies

A quick "how the gently caress did we get to this point" would be very helpful, I know basically nothing about Sudan/South Sudan other than the split that happened in 2011 and that there's been fighting basically ever since.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2016 23:53

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 10:23

fade5: May 31, 2012; by exmarx

kustomkarkommando posted:

I did a write up on the basic background to the current spate of fighting on page one of this thread.

The negotiated peace has roughly held but pretty much everyone thinks it's going to collapse, it took months to negotiate the return of the leader of the SLPA-IO to the capital and political progress is pretty much no-existant - Kiir flouted the terms of the peace deal by completely redrawing the map of states which threw the entire local level power sharing scheme that was carefully and slowly negotiated out of the window. Here's a recent statement from the International Crisis Group with more detail for the moment:

Ah, there we go, thanks. I thought I remembered that post, didn't remember where it was specifically.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2016 00:48

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Sub-Saharan Africa: They're Conflict Minerals, Marie