Why the people in Mali and Algeria and the truth about Western
engagement there are casualties of the latest developments
(First published in Foreign Policy Journal on January 30, 2013)
(First published in Foreign Policy Journal on January 30, 2013)
The
brazen attack on the Amenas gas field in Algeria by the militants has
come to a bloody end. Meanwhile the French adventure to crush the
allegedly Jihadist rebellion in the neighboring Mali is in full swing.
An effort to pursue and eliminate the culprits behind each of the
troubles can only be welcome because, after all, lives and property are
dear to everyone. So, we should pray for the success of the Algerian
regime and the French-Malian marriage so that the culprits in both
countries can be crushed and everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. That
is what the worldwide coverage of the two developments suggests.
You are deaf and illiterate if you
didn’t hear or read about the tragedy that unfolded in Amenas where
scores of foreign workers were brutally killed by the rebels. But what
you most likely missed is the tragic suffering of millions of Malians
resulting from the renewed wave of violence that has become the excuse
for brazen military intervention by the former colonists. What even
fewer of us are aware of is the fact that the avalanche of disasters in
Mali was triggered by the March 22 coup led by US-trained army captain
Amadou Sanogo. As early as in August 2, well before the current French
adventure in Mali, the reputed analyst Ramzy Baroud has impeccably argued how the chain of events in Mali were likely to culminate in foreign (American or French) military intervention.
Coming to the real motive of the French intervention in Mali, Seumas Milne makes convincing arguments in this article in The Guardian:
France is in any case the last country to sort out Mali’s problems, having created quite a few of them in the first place as the former colonial power, including the legacy of ethnic schism within artificial borders – as Britain did elsewhere. The French may have been invited in by the Malian government. But it’s a government brought to power by military coup last year, not one elected by Malians – and whose troops are now trading atrocities and human rights abuses with the rebels.
Further, the statement of the French
president Hollande that his country will be in Mali as long as it takes
to “defeat terrorism in that part of Africa” is also worth reading
between the lines. Even the analysts in the mainstream media who have
not lost touch with reality agree that most other military interventions
in the past, while rhetorically aimed to annihilate the terrorists,
have only yielded the opposite results. The phrase ‘as long as it takes’
in the sentence assumes even more significance in the present context.
If the triumph of feuding rebel groups in Malian cities and villages
(many of which are ragtag compared to well-equipped French army and the
whole insurgency in the region was catalyzed by the French-led ouster of
Gaddhafi in Libya through ‘humanitarian bombing’) can open the conduit
for long term military presence in this strategically important
continent, how could the French resist the temptation to stay there as
long as possible?
While reacting to the Algerian tragedy,
British PM David Cameron has also made some interesting comments. He has
claimed that, with the brazen attacks, Al-Qaeda wanted to destroy ‘our way of life’ thereby implying that the attack somehow posed a threat to Britain.
Algerian attack plausibly poses a threat
to the interest of Britain not least because BP is one of the operators
of the facility. The assertion about the attack posing a threat to the
‘British way of life’ is, however more curious and nuanced. One could
never be sure which of the many links between the British (or for that
matter, European) way of life and the attack in the gas field Cameron
had in mind while uttering those words. But he has left ample space for
debate and discussion. Was it the fact that average per capita energy
consumption in Britain is nearly three times
that in Algeria (or, for that matter, nearly 10 times that in countries
like Nepal) which is also forced to suffer the collective devastation
of biosphere caused by excessive use of fossil fuels?
The second connotation of Cameron’s ‘way
of life’ could be more indirect but with more historical standing.
Al-Qaeda, its splinter groups, or any other militants in the region
could be easily linked to religious extremism, but they are more a
result of geopolitical power plays and rivalry, as with the prototypical
rise of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Even today, Al-Qaeda
and the European backers of rebels in Syria, including France and
Britain, are in the same side of widening conflict. And reportedly, the
weapons supplied by France and Britain to the rebels in Libya were among
those used in the Amenas attack. Rather than some deranged terrorists
recklessly aiming to destroy the British way of life, the chain of
events show that- the attack was related to the quasi-colonial nature of
energy extraction ventures that is nearly uniform everywhere in the
world. Despite the unacceptability of violence (that often yields
opposite of what is stated as intended), the insistence of the attackers
that their action was taken in response to ‘France’s operation in Mali,
Algeria’s decision to open its airspace to the French and western
looting of the country’s natural resources’ links the attacks to the
larger developments in the region.
Coming to why this attack by Al-Qaeda or
the other like-minded militants could have intended to precisely
destroy the ‘British way of life’, a historical thread can be linked.
The French cousins of the Brits (who are now in a grand mission to
‘liberate’ Mali from the clutches of the Jihadis) had to accept the independence of Algeria
in 1962 after a protracted war of independence that lasted for 8 years
and resulted in an estimated death of between 0.3 and 1 million
Algerians (which was the culmination of 132 years long French occupation
of Algeria). While the British Empire was receding from the erstwhile
colonies in a similar fashion after the WWII, the way of life in France
and Britain then was similar and remains so to date. The way of life of
the colonized people who suffered outright subjugation and plundering of
the resources, too, was similar then and remains so, albeit with some
exceptions. In fact, the way of life at the top and the bottom of the
global power hierarchy has never been similar in the past, nor is it so
in the present, and there are no prospects of it ever being so in the
future.
The only change that has taken place
over the past century is that, if it were the visible military power
that rampaged across continents to claim everything it could lay its
hands on in the past, it is now the invisible power of capital and
technological know-how that makes it possible to maintain the distance
between the two ways of life in the global north and global south.
Cameron’s allusion that the attack on a facility in African deserts by
some well-equipped militants threatened to destroy the ‘way of life’ (of
Brits, Europeans, Westerners or the people in the global north,
whichever way it is understood) is, in a way, a sober acknowledgment
that the profligate life style of the global north (that obviously
involves profligate energy consumption) can no longer be taken for
granted. Significantly, more important than the amount of gas or oil
supplied by a particular British company from a particular facility is
the amount of wealth contributed to the British coffers by the companies
like BP that can be used to fund innumerable ways of profligate
consumption for the Brits. This big link between the fortunes of BP and
the ‘way of life’ of the Brits must be behind the Cameron’s sobering
remarks.
Coming to the third explanation of why
Cameron could have juxtaposed the two things, one cannot resist the
temptation of calling him a hypocrite. If it were not for the militants
as in Algeria or Mali, the role France, the UK or for that matter the
US- could play in those countries would have been much more limited.
Rather any militant activity (and preferably the religious extremist
activity) in any corner of the world today forms the most convenient
scapegoat for military adventures that are primarily intended for more
clandestine and unjust objectives of the dominant powers. Any keen
observer of world events (who is not naive enough to buy the lopsided
arguments of most mainstream media outlets about the wars and militancy
in the world) can easily see that the attack in Amenas does not have
even the remotest possibility of denting the British interests in
Algeria. Instead, Britain has now the convenient excuse of acting more
forcibly and sinisterly in coordination with the Algerian regime to
subdue the militancy in Algeria, or at least to shield facilities of its
interest from them. If history is any clue, the aftermath of the attack
is likely to preserve and further promote the interests of BP in
Algeria thereby not ‘destroying’ but ‘propping up’ the way of life
Cameron alludes.
Cameron is honest to the extent of
linking the attacks in Amenas with the western way of life. But even if
the attackers or their mastermind had dreamed to destroy the Western way
of life through the attack, that is the last thing to happen if ever
because any armed retribution to the western interests is doomed to fail
so long as the discrepancy in terms of military might of the warring
side remains so tantalizing. Hollande is similarly honest to the extent
of expressing the desire of France to remain in Mali ‘as long as it
takes’ but blatantly dishonest while stating the objectives of the
intervention as ‘defeating terrorism’.
Meanwhile there have been the twin
casualties of the whole North African mess: first are the people in the
region whose poverty and misery is sure to be worsened with renewed wave
of violence; the other is, of course, the truth about why global powers
bother to make their presence felt in hinterlands of countries like
Algeria and Mali. As always, the mainstream media rallies behind the
executives of two of the most powerful countries outside America even
when they say something while connoting something else. To borrow
Chomsky’s words, both are colluding in a project to manufacture consent;
a consent that is guided by interests of the dominant world powers
rather than by an attempt to tell the truth.
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