Tiny Tips (2011)

The Tiny Tips column from the September 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard 

$8 Million Gold-Plated Rolls Redefines Excess. Nothing says class warfare quite like an armored, gold-plated car that costs $8 million:

[Link.]

Psychologist and social scientist Dacher Keltner says the rich really are different, and not in a good way: Their life experience makes them less empathetic, less altruistic, and generally more selfish “We have now done 12 separate studies measuring empathy in every way imaginable, social behavior in every way, and some work on compassion and it’s the same story,” he said. “Lower class people just show more empathy, more prosocial behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it.

[Dead Link.]

On Saturday night, as rioters in Tottenham threw fireworks and bottles at police officers, one man shouted, “This is our battle!” When asked what he meant, the man, Paul Rook, 47, explained that he felt the rioters were taking on “the ruling class.”

[Link.]

“Violence in the streets, aimed at the wealthy. That’s what I worry about.” That was what an unidentified billionaire told Robert Frank of the Wall Street Journal a while back. Rich people are scared of global unrest, Frank reported, citing a survey by Insite Security and IBOPE Zogby International of people with liquid assets of $1 million or more (translation: folks who have or can get their hands on $1 million in cash fairly easily) that says 94 percent of the wealthy are concerned about “global unrest” around the world. He noted: Of course, Insite has an interest in getting the paranoid rich to beef up their security. Still, the numbers are backed up by other trends seen throughout the world of wealth today: the rich keeping a lower profile, hiring $230,000 guard dogs, and arming their yachts, planes and cars with military-style security features:

[Dead Link.]

Starving parents are marrying off girls for food as famine devastates Africa. Nearly half of kids in Kenya and Somalia had not eaten at all for a day this week, research reveals today and desperate mums and dads are selling girls as young as nine for just £100. Under-18s cannot legally marry in Kenya and child brides face terrible abuse, but World Vision UK’s Philippa Lei said: “Girls can traditionally be sold for a bride price, cattle or food. But now girls are being sold off much earlier.

[Link.]

“We are all human. God created us from one dirt. Why can we not marry each other, or love each other?” Halima Mohammedi, an Afghan teenager whose love for another teenager, Rafi Mohammed, set off a riot by flouting their village’s tradition of arranged marriages. “What we would ask is that the government should kill both of them.” Kher Mohammed, her father:

[Link.]

The Purpose and Method of Colonisation [5] (1914)

From the October 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from last issue.)

Whether the “Study of British Methods,” in which certain European capitalist politicians seem to indulge, is also responsible for the incident which initiated the ghastly human slaughter now in progress, and which incident it greatly benefits the master class of this country to use for the purpose of hiding their own mercenary objects, it is not in our province to investigate. Anyhow, in reviewing the history of the component parts of the British Empire, no one will be at a loss to find precedents enough and to spare for any violation or outrage, however infamous and however revolting, that may have been committed in Belgium. The “glory and greatness of the Empire” is in fact made up of a long series of piratical conquests in which the sole right of Might has been everywhere proclaimed from the housetops, and in which the freedom and independence of millions of people have often been respected less than “scraps of paper.”

How the “indisputable right” over some of the millions of square miles in Africa, for example, has been secured, is in living memory; although it must not be supposed that the sordid history which centres round the gold and diamond fields exhausts the resources in the art of brigandage and massacre that the British “haute finance” is capable of commanding. In such books as “With Kitchener to Khartoum,” “The Unveiling of Lhasa,” etc., etc., typical instances are abounding of how the British “protectors” impose themselves and their “culture” upon small and relatively weak nations. Says the author of the last mentioned account of a Tibetan expedition, speaking of the “strange people we fought and conquered” : “We killed several thousand of the simple, brave, and ill-armed men; I was sorry for these Tibetans. Their struggle was so hopeless; . . . Here was all the brutality of war, and none of the glory and incentive. These men were cheerful, jolly fellows—and I have seen their crops ruined, their homes burnt and shelled, the dead lying about the thresholds of what were their homes, and all for no fault of their own—only because their leaders were politically impossible.” But what matter the lives of these people, if the “freedom of trade,” or trade-routes, in short, the freedom of Capital, is at stake ? As the writer adds with regard to these leaders: “Fortunately, however, this slaughter was beginning to put the fear of God into them.”

In the face of our present daily records of what “white against white,” Christians against Christians, can do, it will easily be granted that the deeds by which resistance to British expansion by the “so much inferior coloured heathen races,” has been crushed, not only equal any tale of brutality that is to-day laid to the charge of “the enemy” with regard to Belgium, but certainly outdo the latter in cowardice when we bear in mind that the unfortunate registers of “the invincible forces of civilisation” and Christianity did not dispose of anything like the modern efficient instruments of murder.

And if those who have laid thieves’ hands on so great a part of the world’s surface and have thereby flouted the independence of millions of people in the past; if these who are responsible for such barbarities as will ever be connected with the establishment of British dominance whether in Africa, Asia, Australia, or elsewhere if those who have never tolerated any interference with the “rights of free trade” (i.e.,, free robbery) and have carried out more “punitive expeditions” and burnt more villages of innocent peoples than the rest of the coloniz­ing nations put together ; if those who could stand by, incapable of shame, when recently hundreds of unarmed men and women were done to death or wounded in the blood-stained streets of Johannesburg ; if those who range themselves now on the side of these human fiends and very embodiment of oppression and tyranny, whose crimes vary between “Bloody Sunday” and exiling of innocent men and women to the icy dungeons of Siberia : if those now accuse their Continental rivals of savagery and violating the independence of small nations, while at the same time posing as the “trustees of freedom and good conduct,” even we—knowing their achievements in hypocrisy—feel bound to admire their insolent audacity in treating the public to this masterpiece of nauseating cant.

Of course, just as the vandalism and beastly deeds, committed by order of the German military authorities, figure in the official chronicles and school-books of the Teutons as heroic achievements, so the merciless usurpations, rapes and massacres which have marked the acquisition of “our” colonial dependencies are gloried in and impressed upon the children of the Empire as examples of British manhood, pluck, and enterprise.

Although to some extent outside the present subject, the foregoing will nevertheless serve to emphasise again the fact that the acquisition of the Colonial Empire is distinguished by the application of the most brutal, up-to-date methods that the machinery of militarism, and law and order is capable of bringing into play. But let us now revert to the subsequent economic policy of our colonial pioneers of “education and native advancement,” and see what the cultural trust imposed upon the “more advanced peoples” comes to.

Authority having once gained a footing, that is to say, the Right of Might having been brought home to the “uncultured heathen,” every subsequent activity of the Colonists is subservient to the process of converting all things capable of satisfying human wants and desires into what Providence intended them to be, namely, Commodities, so that they might at last take their proper places, as holy values and sacred property, in the temple of Mammon. The extent of the success of this process is the measure of the “prosperity” and “loyalty” of the Dominions. It goes without saying, that since all things have to become marketable values, this process involves the expropriation of the natives from all nature’s gifts—which brings the first virtue : Abstinence. And it is equally plain that only when the native’s life is hedged with notices such as:

“No admittance except on business”

“Trespassers will be prosecuted,”

will they lend themselves, or rather be forced, in order to live, to sell and apply their energies in the service of Capital— which brings a further virtue: Industry. This is so self evident that we could only describe as child-like naiveté or gross stupidity, Lord Curzon’s remark that “he greatly deplored, and had tried his utmost to discourage, the settling of Europeans in an in­digenous country with the object of extracting from it the essence which should serve to the natives as means of subsistence.” But where would abstinence come in ? And what, one may ask, are the Colonists to deal in and export if not the produce they have stolen from the natives ?

When, for example, the Chartered Company, who hold immense concessions in Africa, lease (as they have done last year) 1,000,000 acres of land (selected areas to be chosen throughout Rhodesia) at the rental of 1s. an acre, to an enterprising international firm, it is obvious that the latter mean to extract and export the resources of the territory ; in other words, these resources no longer belong to their former owners, the aborigines of Rhodesia, who will shave to look to the new proprietors (their expropriators) for their means of subsistence, unless they are prepared to quit. Such transactions necessitate, consequently, the absolute disregard of the natives’ interests and customs, seeing that if their most vital custom of all were to be observed, namely, the communal ownership (as distinct from private ownership, as in Europe) of all the land, the very object of any capitalist enterprise and colonisation would naturally become illusory. Which is surely more than a Colonial enthusiast, like Lord Curzon, could wish for. Indeed, this deprived of the native of his primitive means of living and own conditions of labour, is the very basis of all colonization; it is only hypocrites of the type of Curzon or His Excellency Dernburg, who pretend to be ignorant of the fact that in first completely disinheriting the mass of the natives, or, in Dernburg’s own terminology, in first “fulfilling the cultural trust” is the key to the “great question of how the white man is to retain his hold and domination over mankind of darker colour.”

Unfortunately, the proclamation of “Protectorates” here, and the annexation of large territories there, in short, the theoretic monopoly of the land and the granting of concessions to trading firms, on the one side, does not always automatically transform the native population into full-blown, wage-workers on the other. However desirable it may be to extract the maximum of surplus-value from this “economically most valuable motive-power,” the vastness of the territories and relatively thin population (the Colonies comprising, as a rule, disproportionately larger areas than the respective mother countries), also the widely different climatic conditions—these two main factors render difficult and protract the establishment of an effective, all-embracing control over, and exploitation of, the natives. Hence, the necessity for the professional labour-recruiting agencies ; the application of direct force (slavery); the importation of foreign labour: all of which methods have been shown to be practised on a large scale at the present time, as a temporary, if unsatisfactory, solution for the annoying “labour problem.”

In the meantime, the mills of economic development are grinding ; no sections of natives, hitherto secluded, are to be deprived of the blessings of civilisation and the comforting security it affords. Railways and extensions of railways are constantly opening up new districts and announce to previously obscure tribes the arrival of—the tax-collector; an indispensable means of bringing the native idlers to their senses and to their toil. “If one considers,” says deploringly a correspondent in an East African organ, “that there are about 3½ million of people living in the district of Ruanda and Urundi, who, in consequence of the seclusion of their exceedingly rich homelands, still enjoy, at this time of day, complete freedom from tax-paying, the necessity for opening up, through a railway, will at once become obvious.” And the “Usambara Post” (27.9.13) stated in support of a railway from Tabora to the Kagaraknie, that “such a railway would open up extraordinarily valuable districts, and that the introduction of the poll-tax there would alone make the railway pay its way.”

“No doubt it will cost thousands, but it will bring in millions”—such is their assurance. Railways in particular are powerful levers of “native advancement”—hence the great activity in this direction. They not only open up, and enable the easy transport of the produce, but of the “human material” as well. The Ovambo and Amboland railways in South-West Africa, for example, were built for the specific purpose of “serving the regular and increased supply of workers for the diamond mines.” And during a discussion (4.6.13) of the Government Council in East Africa the following was pointed out: “The idea of a continuation of the North railway up to the Lake Victoria did not originate so much from the endeavour to open up the mystic country of the Squatters and to enter into competition with the Unganda railway, but rather was the plan involved by the desire to confiscate the masses of workers living in the districts of the Lake Victoria.” This does not, of course, prevent our colonisers from pretending at the same time that the railways are built in the sole interest of the travelling workers. Indeed, what would a Christian employer not do for the welfare and amenity of the native ? ” Every friend of theirs,” he says, “must advocate the building of railways, seeing that the worker is exposed to many dangers and risks while en route for weeks and months” to the elevating occupation in the death pits of the diamond mines ! In the face of the comparative scarcity of workers it would, of course, be deplorable that these arms and “hands” should meet with accidents before having been drained of the “milliard values slumbering in them.”

And so, in accordance with the law of development of capitalist production, every activity that the enterprising European traders command in the Colonies, tends to separate the means of production more and more from the native and to concentrate the scattered means more and more under a few controlling concerns, thereby gradually closing to the natives all avenues outside of, and disciplining them for,—the wage-labour market. The exacting of hut-taxes, poll taxes, grazing-dues, etc.; permits for hunting and fishing ; the enclosure of large tracks of land either for cultivation or cattle-breeding ; the construction of railways and other means of transport and communication, water and irrigation works—these are only a few of the things which supply the precious “indirect pressure” and restrict more and more the liberties of the natives, until eventually they will find no other way to live than by selling their labour-power to their foreign masters. The “labour problem” will then be solved.

Naturally enough, this transition, far from being regarded by the natives as a normal economic development, or from benefiting him, is mostly looked upon as an act of aggression, of conquest—an arbitrary charge wrung from him in bitterness, and leaves behind a deep sense of injury. This resentment has undoubtedly been the cause of most colonial wars and rebellions since the first presence of the white man there, but the fact that the “superior” whites (superior, undoubtedly, in weapons) ever emerge victorious from the fray, again proves that Might is Right.

Rudolf Frank

(To be Continued.)

Material World: Famine in the Horn of Africa… Again (2011)

The Material World Column from the September 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Although the current drought conditions are affecting a wide area in the Horn of Africa including Kenya and Ethiopia, the main media focus has once again fallen on Somalia, a country with a complicated and turbulent colonial history. The story is always the same: following a devastating drought there is a famine; the problem is not lack of food but lack of the ability to pay for food or lack of access to land to grow it. The world is stockpiled with food but giving it away would negatively affect the market.

This time around we hear that 3.5 million Somalis and 12 million Ethiopians within the drought region are under threat of starvation. Droughts are not new to the region, they are a regularly occurring phenomenon, but with the UN Famine Early Warning System in place for a number of years now, expectations would surely have increased for improved handling of the situation. Warnings did go out early this year predicting starving millions in the south of Ethiopia but the regime continued with its policy of selling and leasing great swathes of land to other countries to grow crops for foreign consumption. Last year 10,000 tons of rice were exported to Saudi Arabia alone.

Thomas Mountain, a US journalist who has lived in Eritrea since 2006, comments that while southern Ethiopians are suffering the worst drought and famine for 60 years those in the north are hungry because of ‘near record high food prices.’ This he contrasts with what is happening in neighbouring Eritrea, which is a result of totally different governmental policies. Here, within a handful of years, a move from rain-fed crops to a micro dam-fed irrigation system has led to better, more secure crops and dramatically falling prices of staple grains. According to the World Bank, life-expectancy improvements are ‘dramatic’ and Eritrea is one of the countries which will meet the Millennium Development Goals especially in the areas of children’s health, malaria mortality prevention and AIDS reduction. (http://www.countercurrents.org/mountain050811.htm)

News coverage of unfolding events in the area is patchy and can be biased according to allegiances or contracts of employment. Reports of facts on the ground are often distorted, depending on who’s pulling the strings. Currently Eritrea is a ‘state sponsor of terror’ according to Hillary Clinton who claims it supplies weapons to Al-Shabaab in Somalia. As a result, the media can say nothing positive about it.

Without doubt, the ongoing civil war in Somalia is exacerbating the crisis affecting so many of its people. The most problematic areas of Somalia for needy recipients of food aid are controlled by Al-Shabaab, a ‘rebel organisation with links to Al Qaeda’, which is unwilling to allow a number of food-aid agencies access for fear they are infiltrated by the CIA. The CIA is working closely with the official Somalian central government in Mogadishu, a government widely recognised to be in control of only a portion of the country. 

The whole of this region has suffered long and hard throughout its colonial history and is continuing to suffer as colonial powers attempt to subjugate regimes or leaders of regimes in pursuit of profit through the exploitation of natural resources and land accumulation. As explained succinctly in the article ‘Africa, starvation and speculation’ in last month’s Socialist Standard, the small elites in control of natural resources are only too happy to profit personally while exposing millions to penury and starvation by driving them from their land through international land deals. Different regions of the Horn of Africa are affected in different ways by the diverse conditions on the ground – but whichever way the story is spun, the competition for profit and accumulation underlies the neglect of the population’s needs.

Droughts are a well-known fact of life in a number of regions of the world and will continue to affect this region of Africa. Forecasts predict they will become more severe as problems with climate change increase. But it is not inevitable that there should be famine after drought. Famine results from the denial of land, placing restrictions of the free movement of populations, treating food as commodities and the growing commercialisation of agriculture, especially for export. All this is compounded by bad planning, inadequate water storage and management, poor infrastructure and logistical organisation. Socialism could not prevent natural events such as lack of rainfall (but it could prevent droughts by an adequate infrastructure) but in those circumstances, no one would starve as food would simply be released from warehouses or transported from other parts of the world.

Janet Surman

Religious fanaticism kills in Uganda (2000)

From the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

The tragedy that befell Uganda in the month of March this year is worth analysing and talking about. This was in South Western Uganda in the village of Kanungu. Over 500 religious believers, belonging to a sect (cult) called The Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, set themselves ablaze and all perished in the inferno. Worse still, as police continue to search, mass graves of believers of the same cult were found in different places in the homes of the followers’ leaders and elsewhere.

The impact of religion on people especially in Africa is that of doom. The principles of religion are all similar and only differ on the surface. First, there is a belief in supernatural power. Second, there are prayers and rituals. And third, there is a belief in life after death.

The belief in supernatural powers, a god and a spirit world arose out of people’s lack of understanding of the universe and their own particular limited environment. This was coupled with their own curiosity, desires and needs. Humans have been the creator and inventor of God in their own image. In fact, it’s not a case of God creating Man but of Man creating God. God and all gods exist in people’s minds only.

The Kanungu incident is a case of religious fanatics whose leaders had predicted the end of the world come December 31 1999; they believed that there was not to be a year 2000 with the old generation but a new generation with they, believers of this cult, going to heaven. So they made their heaven.

Their mass graves at Kangunu, like any other graves, are an indication that there is no life after death. There is only death after life. Their testimony was based on biblical extracts. However, as usual, false testimony always testifies against itself. It is an easy thing to tell a lie but it’s difficult to support a lie after it has been told.

By extracting verses from the bible and relying on them in addition to trying to put them into practice, some religious groups have gone as far as destroying fruit trees, having free sex and not accepting family planning methods, refusing medical treatment, and selling their possessions.

Christians marching ‘the way of the cross’ in Uganda

The bible, which claims to be a holy creation and the foundation for christianity and several other religions, was of course a human creation and there is still a minority today who would accept it word for word. Yet it is inconsistent and self-contradicting. In fact it would stand no favour had it to face a court of law. It’s a book of lies. Today numbers of “educated” and “artistic” people are employed to blend truth and lies in whatever proportion they calculate is most effective in misleading the public. The big lie being that people should be contented with the life which the market system imposes on us while waiting for “a paradise life” after this life.

From childhood people are mentally conditioned into religious beliefs, superstitions and the like. And as people sense a lack of control in an increasingly complex and alienating world, they are more susceptible to beliefs in the supernatural whether religion, magic, dreams, creatures from other planets or whatever. People who have religious beliefs replace faith for reason and logic.

We live in a harsh, competitive society where everyone’s hand is turned against everyone else. Yet human beings need social contact and companionship. The harsher the reality the more fantastic the solace offered by religion. It is no accident that early christianity spread amongst the slaves of the Roman empire, nor that in Africa and Asia where poverty is so harsh, we have the devout religious zealots.

The religious view sees workers as incapable of solving the problems that confront them. The consolation they offer is one beyond the grave. They believe that human beings should adapt a slavish attitude, be humble, be grateful and not attempt to abolish the ills that afflict them.

We socialists see humans as an animal species that has succeeded in adapting the natural world to meet its needs. We view with wonder and astonishment its magnificent accomplishments in the fields of science, medicine, agriculture and advanced technology. We place our faith not in gods and supernatural forces, but in the intelligence and knowledge of the working class.

The transformation of society will not be brought about by the action of gods, but by real men and women determined to end capitalism and establish socialism.

Weijagye Justus 

(Uganda)

Material World: Do They Know It’s Capitalism? (2011)

The Material World column from the August 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Everybody knows that, despite the best efforts of scientists, nobody can predict the next natural disaster with any confidence. That’s one reason why planners and decision-makers don’t take better precautions, a fact which gives critics good reason after the event to mount their telescopic hindsights and take aim. Given the same science, socialism would obviously be no better at prediction. The question is whether it would be more careful in taking precautions.

The United Nations currently tries to take a formal Health & Safety approach to the subject, with risk assessments, control measures and all the other tedious but important policies workers know from the workplace (UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction at http://www.unisdr.org/who-we-are/what-is-drr). But, as workers will know from their own workplaces, the devil is in the enforcement. In a private property society one simply does not have the option of moving a population from a high-risk area to an adjacent low-risk one. Nor is the UN able to force national governments to comply where spending money is involved, despite the financial costs of ignoring the problems. According to the UNISDR, the year 2011 was already, by July, the highest ever loss-year on record, largely thanks to the Sendai earthquake, but the general trend is worsening: ‘the risk of economic loss is now rising faster than wealth creation’. According to an Oxfam report last year, 250 million people a year are affected by natural disasters of which around 98 percent are weather-related. And they are getting worse. The rate of weather disasters in poor countries has tripled since 1980, one suspected cause being climate change (http://www.350resources.org.uk/ 2011/05/23/).

But how ‘natural’ are these natural disasters? The report’s author is scathing on the matter: 

‘There is nothing natural about poor people being on climate’s front line. Poverty, poor governance, patchy investment in the preparation and prevention of disasters all stack the odds against the most vulnerable. The future is going to be very bleak for millions of poor people without a shake-up of the ways we prepare and respond to disasters, and without real progress on reducing poverty and addressing climate change.’

In its obsessive attention to individual bank balances, capitalism cannot even respond properly when a ‘natural’ disaster threatens not thousands but millions, when the imminence is well established, and when the cause is known and the solutions are straightforward.

People older than 40 will clearly remember the Ethiopia famine of 1984-5, the iconic, tragic pictures, the gut-wrenched reports from seasoned reporters fighting down tears, the gradual, dawning realisation by the whole world of a disaster of biblical proportions, the Live Aid concerts, Feed the World and Do They Know It’s Christmas? The UN estimated that eight million people were affected in that famine and that one million died. It seems almost beyond comprehension that, in spite of the songs and the sentiments and the coins in the tin, the world could allow the same thing to happen to the children and grandchildren of those survivors.

At the time of writing the developing crisis in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and Djibouti is not on any front pages yet already is being described as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. With up to twelve million people affected it threatens to dwarf the 1984-5 famine. Nature, in one of its typically mercurial moods, decided to prolong its dry La Niña cycle so that the rains have failed for the last three successive rainy seasons, making it the worst regional drought in 60 years. As famine takes hold, local food prices have rocketed, exacerbating the problem. Regional fighting in Eritrea and Somalia has complicated matters further, while the Ethiopian government response has been poor and Somalia’s government response has of course been non-existent.

Yet the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has been predicting this crisis for months: ‘The FAO repeatedly issued warnings about the effects of La Niña, but few contingency plans were put in place. That is why there is a shortfall of about 40 percent in the money needed to tackle the crisis’ (New Scientist, 9 July).

It surely can’t only be socialists who understand that the main reason for this disaster-in-the-making is that the people concerned are black, they’ve got no money, they’ve got nothing anybody wants, and that’s why they’re going to die. It can’t have escaped notice that disasters which strike poor people are always more disastrous than those that strike the better-off. Any lingering doubts on this question should have been dispelled by the events of the recent Haiti earthquake.

Haiti was of course hit by a natural disaster nobody could foresee, followed by cholera unfortunately brought in, it seems, by a UN contingent sent there to help. But Haiti, the poorest country on Earth, is nevertheless on America’s doorstep, under the eyes of the world’s press, and images of spectacular urban destruction helped motivate the world to action. It is also a small country, easy to cover from the air, with a road system. The Horn of Africa is remote, huge and inaccessible, and besides there is nothing spectacular or newsworthy about hunger. It hides behind the news like perpetual background noise, audible but not quite loud enough to make it onto our busy agendas.

Until it surges into the limelight on those rare occasions when ‘perfect famine’ conditions combine to force it into the headlines. And then everybody blames the victims for overbreeding because they can’t be bothered to find out the real reasons, and bungs a tenner to Oxfam because they can’t be bothered to find out the real solutions. And they won’t blame the social system, because like the weather it’s just a fact of life, it’s always there and it can’t be changed.

But humans have already managed accidentally to change the global weather system. The urgent task for socialists is to make humans realise they can deliberately change the economic system too. Such a realisation will be too late for the people starving right now in East Africa. But it would make sure that nobody ever starves again, anywhere. Nature is not our worst enemy, capitalism is. Feed the world? First, free the world.

Paddy Shannon

Material World: The Tigray Tragedy (2021)

The Material World column from the October 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Ethiopia has 110 million people. If the tensions in Ethiopia would result in a widespread civil conflict that goes beyond Tigray, Syria will look like child’s play by comparison’ – Jeffrey Feltman, US special envoy for the Horn of Africa.

Seldom featuring as headlines in the media, since November 2020 there has been a civil war in Tigray, a mountainous region in north Ethiopia of more than 5 million people, a conflict that has killed thousands of people and displaced millions from their homes. The civil war is said to have spread in recent weeks to the Amhara and Afar regions and displaced hundreds of thousands of more people. Some observers hold memories of the Darfur genocide in Sudan.

Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, embarked on a military campaign against the region’s secessionist ruling party, the Tigray Liberation Peoples Front (TPLF), after accusing them of attacking a federal military base.

Ahmed was awarded the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for his reconciliation policies with Eritrea yet when the elected Tigray leaders requested peace negotiations, he refused talks. Instead he invited Eritrean troops to enter Ethiopia to do battle with the breakaway TPLF and the Eritrean soldiers proceeded to commit widespread atrocities. They also took the opportunity to attack camps hosting Eritrean refugees who had fled the repression and persecution in their native country.

The federal government has declared ‘It is now time for all able-bodied Ethiopians to join the defence forces, special forces and militias and show their patriotism.’

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said ‘a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding before our eyes’, with up to 900,000 people facing famine conditions in what has been called the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade. Tens of thousands of children are on the brink of death.

Ramesh Rajasingham, the UN’s acting humanitarian aid chief told the Security Council that over five million people require humanitarian help.

Attempts to deliver much-needed aid has been hindered by Ethiopia’s government blockades, according to Grant Leaity, the UN’s acting humanitarian coordinator for Ethiopia, sounding the alarm over a critical malnutrition situation unfolding in the embattled Tigray region. Humanitarian access in Tigray remains unpredictable with obstructive military checkpoints thwarting the efforts to deliver life-saving supplies. What assistance is arriving is reportedly being looted by the TPLF insurgents.

Francesco Rocca, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent told the media that ‘The situation there is one of the most difficult I’ve ever seen. The people there are missing almost everything.’ Rocca said only four hospitals out of 40 are operational in the region and are all facing major shortages in medical supplies. He decried the unacceptable looting that has ravaged most of the health facilities in the region.

UN aid chief Mark Lowcock said, ’There is no doubt that sexual violence is being used in this conflict as a weapon of war.’ Dr Fasika Amdeselassie, the top public health official for the government-appointed interim administration in Tigray, told Reuters, ’Women are being kept in sexual slavery.’

War comes at an enormous human cost. Once again, we are witnessing death and destruction inflicted upon civilians based upon ethnic differences with the divisions spurred on by politicians’ power-plays and propaganda ploys. As always in war, all sides accuse the other of lying and carrying out atrocities. And the likelihood is that all are equally guilty and none of the participants is innocent. Peace for people in Tigray will be elusive.

ALJO

Capitalism in East Africa. (1922)

From the February 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

(continued.)

Some, at least, of the natives are beginning to have other ideas. Native associations with a strong political bias already exist, and have, during the past year, been steadily attracting attention by open propaganda.

On June 24th representatives of the Kikuyu Association met the Chief Native Commissioner and his underling, the Senior Commissioner of the Kyambu District (the heart of the coffee area). Through the instrumentality of certain missionaries (obviously desirous of keeping native movements in "constitutional" lines), they laid before these officials a memorandum of grievances under ten heads, which are worth quoting in detail.

1. The Tribal Retainers were charged with conscripting young females (married and single) for labour on European plantations by coercing the chiefs, parents, or husbands, as the case might be, with fines and imprisonment. (Tribal Retainers are native police agents of the Government operating in the tribal reserves.) It was pointed out that this practice led to wholesale degradation of the girls and young women at the hands of overseers, etc., on the plantations. Specific instances were given, but, of course, the Government Officers could not be expected to know anything about them officially, although they are the logical outcome of measures such as the Labour Ordinance.
2. It was charged against the Administration that Chiefs and Headmen were arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned without the "Kiama" (native council of elders) being informed of any charge of offence against them.
3. Charges of corruption, extortion, rape, etc., were preferred against the Chief Tribal Retainer, and supported by numerous concrete instances.
4. Complaint was made that, in spite of Government's promises to issue title deeds to the natives for the land held, occupied, and cultivated by them, encroachments of a piecemeal character upon such land are continually occurring.
5. The delegation protested against the registration system. The registration certificate of each native employee must be signed by his employer before he may leave the latter's service. An employer who wishes to retain natives who may wish to leave him can simply refuse to sign their certificates.* [*note.—These Certificates bear (among other particulars) the native's thumb-print.] By leaving under such circumstances the employees render themselves open to prosecution for desertion.
6.  It was pointed out that the heavy increase in taxation, coupled with the reduction of wages, was very oppressive.
7. The Government were pointedly reminded that they promised the natives "rewards" for their services during the war. Was the policy above outlined to be considered as the reward ? 
8.  Free access to the forests (of which the natives have been deprived by law) was demanded. "We now have to buy the firewood and trees (for building) which once were ours."
9.  The arbitrary manner in which "the Europeans"—i.e., the settlers and the Government discussed and adopted measures vitally affecting native interests—was strongly condemned, and a demand was made for what is virtually political representation.
10. Finally, the delegation made it clear that they were not satisfied simply to work and pay taxes, and claimed universal education for their children at Government expense '.

To the critical wage-slave of Europe the above expression of native thought may not appear very revolutionary. The evils described are essentially similar to those which he has become accustomed to regard as inseparable from the social order under which he exists; while the demands in the final clauses can hardly affect that order in a fundamental manner in Africa, seeing that they have not done so in Europe. Yet to the local master class these demands appear as drastic as did Chartism to their early Victorian prototypes, and any independent effort of the natives to realise them will be fought and, if possible, crushed.

It is here that the importance of the political struggle of the Indian bourgeoisie becomes manifest. That they will use (already are using) the discontent of the native peasantry and the ever-growing proletariat as a lever to achieve their aims is only to be expected by those possessed of historical knowledge. It is just as certain that the sympathy of the Asiatic leaders for the natives will evaporate as rapidly as their own objects are conceded, i.e., equality for capitalists irrespective of colour ! But the ghost of democracy once raised is not so easily laid. Two parties can play the demagogues game. If, as seems likely, the white settlers also adopt the weapon of popular agitation, then the natives may reap from the quarrel of their rival exploiters the concession of formal political power. By bringing them into line with other slaves this will make them more accessible to real revolutionary propaganda. It is the fear of this ultimate result of the Indian agitation that is at the back of the settlers' minds, and adds intensity to their resistance. They feel quite capable of dealing with the natives so long as the latter are isolated, but once let the natives obtain an inkling of the forces at work in the outside world and the settlers may well tremble for the safety of their privileges.

This is typical bourgeois blindness. As Marx has it :—"The progress of social disintegration will take a form more brutal or more humane, according to the degree of development of the working class itself" (Preface to "Capital." 1st Edn.). Native discontent in Africa will only take on a more violent and reckless character the more it is debarred from scientific enlightenment ; but it is hardly surprising that the intellectual paralysis of the capitalist class should extend itself to their representatives in the tropics. Only from the working class is the native likely to receive aid in developing in a full and free manner both himself and his natural heritage, and it is the writer's purpose to show that the workers have a direct interest in that development, or, to be more precise, will have, so soon as they emancipate themselves from capitalist control.

Before the rise of Capitalism in Europe the workers found almost within the bounds of their villages (or at most their counties) the means of satisfying most of their wants. To be sure they might (when in a position to do so) enjoy the luxuries produced by foreign lands; but to the workers to-day the outside world is not primarily a source of luxury. It is an indispensable necessity. Elements from every longitude and latitude enter into the environment of even the wage-slaves, and it is this fact which inspires the Socialist slogan, "The World for the Workers!"

In order to find raw material for its ever-expanding industry and even food for its increasing army of industrial labour-power, Capitalism has annihilated geographical and racial boundaries and enslaved to some degree the mass of practically every people on earth. It has turned Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America into agricultural and mining districts of North America and Europe. It has destroyed such degree of domestic industry as existed in these continents and thus made them dependent on Capitalism for finished commodities; thus providing itself with the indispensable condition of its own growth—an expanding world-market.

The workers have suffered most from every crisis through which Capitalism has passed. They are suffering most now. It is upon them, therefore, that the world-problem presses most relentlessly for solution. That solution can be found only in the abolition of capitalist ownership of the means of life and production for profit. A system in which the producers have social utility as their object, in which, therefore, every pair of hands, every brain, every available material resource is welcome, nay, necessary—only such a system, based on common ownership of the world, common rights and common duties, can solve the problem. The African problem, the Indian problem (and the Irish problem) are all aspects of the whole; they will find their solution—can find no other solution than—in the world solution. The workers of Europe and America will find in the slaves of Asia and Africa allies in the struggle against Capitalism, but being the industrial proletariat they must take the lead. Their superior historical experience and technical resources must provide the means to guide and train willing but inarticulate helpers in the task of revolutionary reconstruction. A world-wide propaganda, coupled with every possible material assistance, must supersede the political control of the master-class.

Only thus can the workers make the most of the world and their own inherited mechanical and intellectual powers. The emancipation of the working-class involves the emancipation of all mankind!

Eric Boden

Capitalism in East Africa. (1922)

From the January 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some seven years ago the present scribe ventured, in the shape of an article in these columns (History in the Making), certain observations on economic conditions in East Africa. The interest in these conditions recently displayed by the British capitalist press (from the Observer to the Winning Post) tempts him to amplify these observations and bring them up to date; especially as the Great War and its effects have forced into prominence the increasing importance of the tropical and sub-tropical zones as sources of raw material and markets for the products of European industry.

The popular notion of tropical Africa derived from the mal-education provided for the workers by the masters might be summed up in three words : "swamps, jungles, and deserts"! While these are by no means figments of the imagination, they do not exhaust the picture. There are thousands of square miles of grassy plains supporting thousands of head of cattle and sheep. There are hundreds of thousands of acres of rich arable land already bringing forth to some extent cotton, sisal, flax, maize, coffee and a host of other items of foodstuffs and raw materials. There are mountain ranges, ten thousand feet or more in height, and hundreds of miles in length, covered with valuable timber, and there are immense lakes and rivers capable, when thoroughly harnessed by the aid of modern science, of irrigating the wildernesses and electrifying half the continent. In fact, there need be no wonder as to why the capitalist powers parcelled out Africa amongst them ; its economic possibilities are prodigious ! The fly in the ointment is the intrinsic character of capitalism as a system.

In the first place, being a system of exploitation, based upon the monopoly by a small class of the means of life, it meets with the resistance of a relatively intractable human element. It is one thing to proclaim political control of an area several times larger than Britain, and lease to individual capitalists and syndicates large tracts thereof, and quite another to get the small native population to work for that class so established. Extremists among the white invaders (drawn from the bankrupt middle-class of Europe) have from time to time suggested the radical expropriation of the natives from the soil, but when it is remembered that the natives have few wants, that these are easily satisfied by means of a few acres, and that in any case the total population of Kenya Colony, for example, does not amount to three millions, the technical difficulties in the way of this policy are obvious.

To be sure, bows and arrows, spears and swords would be of little avail against rifles and machine-guns, to say nothing of bombs from aeroplanes, but a solution of the labour problem which consisted simply in exterminating the available supply of labour power would hardly advance capitalist production. This lesson has, of course, had to be learnt from practical Imperial experience in more southerly portions of the continent, such as Rhodesia. A policy which has been applied with success in Europe and Asia, with their redundant millions, has had to be modified when dealing with under-populated Africa.

Secondly, the immensity of Africa's resources is matched by the immensity of its problems. Stock and plant diseases require scientific investigation and control; huge distances require corresponding transport facilities and a comprehensive system of education, technical and literary, has to be established before the native tribes can be expected to keep pace with demands of European progress. All this involves an application of social energy and resources on a magnificent scale, for which capitalism, so far, has provided no adequate organisation.

Every form of capitalist enterprise, from that of the small individual concern to that of the State itself, has but one motive, i.e., the acquisition of profit. It shuns outlay which does not yield a rapid return. It has no interest in posterity. The capitalist class is in Africa to scratch the surface, not to dig deeply; it exhausts temporarily rather than develop natural wealth. Its public representatives talk large and ambitiously. They recognise that this is no country for the "small man," though they have not hesitated to lure him here in considerable numbers for the purpose of sucking him dry. (They call this "encouraging population.") But their activities get little further than talk.

The total white population of East Africa (up till recently predominantly bourgeois) would not provide a decent gate at a second-rate football match in England. Many a scarcely heard of country market-town boasts of greater numbers. Yet this brave land does not hesitate to arrogate to itself the title of "community" (the thirty thousand odd Indians and natives to the tune of two and a half million being, of course, mere outsiders). While never ceasing to regard the Government as the source of all its woes, it everlastingly appeals to this same Government for this, that or the other scheme without which the "country" must go bankrupt. The Government, in turn, pleads lack of funds; is, in fact, itself on the verge of bankruptcy. It is helpless without loans from the seat of Empire, and the Imperial financiers are not philanthropists. They, too, want quick returns.

All this means that the Government must find revenue. Its attempt to do this by means of an income tax produced, of course, the usual excruciating groans from the "community," which promptly went economy mad. The wholesale discharge of white employees by business firms was followed by a ruthless attack on Civil servants' salaries by the elected members of the Legislative Council. These members, most of them large land owners, recently styled themselves the Reform Party, and distinguished themselves by initiating a crusade against the Indian bourgeoisie, who are pressing even more insistently for equal political and legal rights. The pursuits of this latter group are mainly mercantile, though town property is also one of their specialities.

Enormously enriched by the war boom, they in turn have financed an active Radical propaganda, not merely among their own races but also among the natives, proving in this latter respect more astute than their white opponents. These, in turn, are now forced to adopt a most comical defence, i.e., that they (who have only recently reduced native wages by one-third all-round and who, in season and out of season, have publicly abused the native as a loafer, an ingrate and an immoral and bestial ruffian) are, in reality, the protectors of native interests against Asiatic aggression, the preservers of native innocence from Oriental corruption ! Before the war this invocation of the native as a political factor in his own land would have appeared ridiculous, but he, too, is changing his outlook.

Although the Government has been inclined to be chary of conscripting labour for the benefit of every Tom, Dick and Harry of the capitalist class, it has not hesitated to do so for its own needs. It compulsorily recruited the male natives by the thousand for the military labour corps serving in German East Africa (now Tanganyika Territory), and by the thousand these unfortunates died of starvation, disease and overwork. Vague promises of future reward smoothed the process whereby they were torn away from their homes, and, as usual, these promises proved even more fragile than piecrust. On the contrary, the shortage of labour gave the reason and excuse for a systematic attack upon the native position. In the first place the survivors, on their return, found that the system of registration to which they had become accustomed under the military authorities, was being extended permanently to civil life. Every adult male native employee was docketed and numbered, and provided with a certificate bearing his thumb-print and evidence of his economic history. This badge of slavery serves the same purpose as the brands on the bodies of English proletarians in the 16th and 17th Centuries. It is in every respect an excellent instrument of persecution.

The next "reward" for the heroes was an increase in taxation (levied at so much per head and per hut) of about fifty per cent. ! This on the top of a serious famine which quadrupled maize prices! These famines, which occur in cycles of roughly ten years, are due to rain failure, but are enormously and tragically aggravated by the financial pressure upon the population. In order to find the money for the taxes the native husbandmen (used to cultivating according to their needs) sell the surplus, which in good seasons, should be stored against the inevitable bad ones. They thus sell at the cheapest time and find it necessary to buy just when grain is dear !

This is fairly obviously the road to ruin ! Slowly, but surely, the young men drift to the plantations or the tin-shack townships in search of wages and just as surely increasing numbers of their would-be wives seek refuge in the brothels.

The white "settlers" did not take long to seize their opportunity. The same precious Reform Party above mentioned organised a universal wage-cut. The drop in the extravagant prices of their exported produce supplying the scarcely-needed stimulus.

They were encouraged by the introduction of the much-discussed Labour Ordinance, according to which the native chiefs were converted in practice into labour recruiters primarily for the Government, secondarily for the settlers. And it is curious to note that this measure was introduced by the very man (Colonel Ainsworth, Chief Native Commissioner) who earned the execration of these same settlers by his amendments to the Masters and Servants' Ordinance.

These amendments, based on war experience, were "intended" to protect native employees from excessive exploitation by the provision of adequate housing, feeding, medical attention, etc. Like the early factory acts in Britain, however, these measures of elementary prudence remain a dead letter through lack of the official machinery necessary to give them real effect.

Having shot his bolt, Colonel Ainsworth retired from the scene of action. So often styled a "pro-native," his real attitude may be summed up as follows : Speaking before the Legislative Council on March 12th, 1918, he said : "Whatever our policy . . . there must and can be only one fundamental as regards rule . . . the white man must be paramount—a white minority will, in reality, form the government, and consequently over ninety per cent. of the total population comprising the black races will practically remain without any real voice in their own affairs."

Eric Boden

(To be continued.)

Material World: Meanwhile in East Africa . . . (2020)

The Material World Column from the May 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the world’s attention centres upon the COVID-19 pandemic it is easy to forget that there are many other destructive threats happening to people. There has been another plague taking place. Swarms of locusts have ravaged the Horn of Africa, East Africa and parts of Pakistan and India. Since December, billions of desert locusts have swarmed, devouring fields filled with crops such as maize, millet and sorghum, and stripped bare grazing land, devastating pasture and threatening the livelihoods of tens of millions people who depend on farming and livestock for their survival. It is a race against time as each new generation of the insects reach adulthood and take flight to widen their spread. The United Nations has described the situation as ‘a scourge of biblical proportions’. A square kilometre of the swarm contains 40-80 million locusts and can eat the same amount of food in one day as 35,000 people. An average swarm destroys crops that could feed 2,500 people for a year, the FAO said.

One such swarm sighted in northern Kenya was reportedly 2,400 square km and contained up to 200 billion locusts which descend to feed off plants and vegetation, according to the FAO. A locust consumes their own weight in food every day. The swarms can travel up to 150 km in a day. If left unchecked, their current numbers could grow 500 times by June. Stephen Byantwale, the commissioner for crop protection at Uganda’s ministry of agriculture, said of the fast-breeding insects, ‘They are spreading like wildfire…’

The infestation poses an unprecedented risk to food supplies in an already vulnerable region with high poverty levels, plunging it deeper into crisis. Locusts are eating their way through Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania.

In Ethiopia, the locusts have devastated more than 30,000 hectares of crops. Locusts have destroyed over 70,000 hectares of farmland in Somalia. Likewise, Kenya has more than 70,000 hectares of crops under infestation.

The locust plague was the result of recent extreme weather conditions that saw many farmers slowly recovering from three years of drought, which ended in one of the wettest rainy seasons in four decades in parts of East Africa, where floods killed hundreds. Climate scientists suggest that global warming has created the ideal conditions for the insects. The locusts arrived from the Arabian peninsula after cyclones dumped vast amounts of rain in the deserts of Oman — creating perfect breeding conditions.

‘The West Indian Ocean, including the Arabian Sea, was warmer than usual during the last two seasons,’ said the senior scientist of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Dr Roxy Mathew Koll, ‘This is largely due to a phenomenon called Indian Ocean Dipole [blamed, too, for Australia’s forest fires], and also due to the rising ocean temperatures associated with global warming.’

Warmer seas led to more cyclones in the Indian Ocean. It was Cyclone Mekunu, which struck in 2018, and then a second cyclone which came to the area that allowed the conditions to continue to be favourable and another generation of breeding, so instead of increasing 400-fold, they increased 8,000-fold which allowed several generations of desert locusts the moist sand and vegetation to thrive in the desert between Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman known as the Empty Quarter.

Keith Cressman, locust-forecasting expert for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), explained, ‘We know that cyclones are the originators of swarms – and in the past 10 years there’s been an increase in the frequency of cyclones in the Indian Ocean. Normally there’s none, or maybe one . . . if this trend of increased frequency of cyclones in the Indian Ocean continues, then certainly that’s going to translate to an increase in locust swarms in the Horn of Africa.’

One piece of perhaps good news is that the (dining) table might be turned on the locusts. The EU is expected to endorse locusts as being safe for human consumption. Christophe Derrien, the secretary general of the industry organisation International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed says, ‘We believe that insects for food is one solution for some of the biggest challenges we are facing on the planet. In the context of scarce resources, and insect production is not too demanding, you have the capacity to produce high-quality protein. That is a very promising solution’ (Guardian, 2 April).

ALJO

War on the Nile? (2014)

From the May 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Egypt’s now deposed president Mohamed Morsi said in June 2013 that ‘all options’ including military intervention were on the table if Ethiopia continued to develop dams on the Nile River, many dismissed it as posturing. But some experts claim Cairo is deadly serious about defending its historic water allotment, and if Ethiopia proceeds with construction of what is set to become Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam, a military strike is not out of the question.

Last May some Egyptian parliamentarians were calling for sending commandos or arming local insurgents to sabotage the dam project unless Ethiopia halts construction of its £2.9 billion ($4.2 bn) Grand Renaissance Dam in 2011. Former president Hosni Mubarak made plans for an air strike on any dam that Ethiopia built on the Nile, and in 2010 established an airbase in southeastern Sudan as a staging point for just such an operation, according to emails from Wikileaks. Sudan however now backs Ethiopia’s plans so that military option is no longer available.

‘It is a matter of life or death, a national security issue that can never be compromised on,’ says foreign ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty (www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26679225).

Egypt is totally dependent on the Nile. Without it, there effectively is no Egypt. To Ethiopia, the new dam is a source of national pride and the hydro-electric power it will produce is essential to its economic future.

‘Ethiopia’s move was unprecedented. Never before has an upstream state unilaterally built a dam without downstream approval,’ Ayman Shabaana of the Cairo-based Institute for Africa Studies had told IPS news agency last June. ‘If other upstream countries follow suit, Egypt will have a serious water emergency on its hands’ (www.ipsnews.net/2014/03/egypt-prepares-force-nile-flow)

Egypt fears that the new dam, which will begin operation in 2017, will reduce the downstream flow of the Nile, on which 85 million Egyptians rely for almost all of their water needs. Citing a pair of colonial-era treaties, Egypt argues that it is entitled to no less than two-thirds of the Nile’s water and has veto power over any upstream water projects such as dams or irrigation networks. Accords drawn up by the British in 1929 and amended in 1959 divvied up the Nile’s waters between Egypt and Sudan without ever consulting the upstream states that were the source of those waters. The 1959 agreement awarded Egypt 55.5 billion cubic metres of the Nile’s 84 billion cubic metre average annual flow, while Sudan received 18.5 billion cubic metres. Another 10 billion cubic metres is lost to evaporation in Lake Nasser, which was created by Egypt’s Aswan High Dam in the 1970s, leaving barely a drop for the nine other states that share the Nile’s waters.

The desire for a more equitable distribution of Nile water rights resulted in the 2010 Entebbe Agreement, which replaces water quotas with a clause that permits all activities provided they do not ‘significantly’ impact the water security of other Nile Basin states. Five upstream countries – Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda – signed the accord. Burundi signed a year later. Egypt rejected the new treaty outright. Cairo now finds itself in the uncomfortable position of watching its mastery over the Nile’s waters slip through its fingers.

While the treaty’s water allocations appear gravely unfair to upstream Nile states, analysts point out that unlike the mountainous equatorial countries, which have alternative sources of water, the desert countries of Egypt and Sudan rely almost entirely on the Nile for their water needs. But upstream African states have their own growing populations to feed, and the thought of tapping the Nile for their agriculture or drinking water needs is all too tempting.

As we said in an earlier article: ‘Scarcity of any resource that is vital for the production of profits could be, and has been, seen by states as a reason to go to war’ (Socialist Standard, December 2012). The waters of the Nile may well be the cause of another conflict.

ALJO

Why did the US invade Somalia? (1993)

Illustration by George Meddemmen.

From the February 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The current crisis in Somalia is, in the first instance, a cold war hangover—a headache caused by the old conflict between Western market capitalism and Russian state capitalism. That the United States should see itself as the remedy to the problem is little more than the hair-of-the-dog philosophy. For it was the United States and, to a lesser extent, the old Soviet Union that created the crisis in the first place.

For well on 30 years superpower aid was essential to the existence of the dictatorships in the Horn of Africa which had few means of keeping control other than by military coercion, made possible by US and Soviet aid.

For over 30 years the US and the Soviet Union poured weaponry into the Horn— Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan. In the ten years before Ethiopia declared itself a “Marxist” state, the US gave Haile Selassie more military assistance than the rest of Africa combined (Africa consists of over 40 countries). The cache included 1,400 tanks, 1,000 heavy guns and 140 fighter bombers. In all, Ethiopia received $8bn worth of aid.

In Somalia, where 10 percent of the- GNP went on weapons, the statistics were not much different. During Said Barre’s reign, of all international assistance received, 93 percent of it came from the US. Almost 50 percent of this aid was in arms imports. In the decade 1979-89, the US gave Barre S500m in arms.

War

Said Barre, who took power following a military coup in Somalia in October 1969, soon realized the advantage of his country’s geographical position and the possibility of attracting superpower aid.

Barre, who claimed to have embarked on the path to “Scientific Socialism”, saw his country stricken with famine by 1972. Because of the links he had forged with Moscow, he was able to secure the use of Soviet planes to airlift 140,000 starving Somalis to more stable areas. This is arguably the sole redeeming act he will be remembered for, in spite of the fact that it set a precedent for large-scale superpower assistance.

The assistance Barre had received from the Soviet Union heralded his regime’s increased reliance on Moscow. Development of the northern port of Berbera as a Soviet naval base, the import of thousands of tons of weapons and the arrival of 6,000 military advisers were soon to follow.

Meanwhile, Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam was seizing power in neighbouring Ethiopia. Soviet influence became prevalent here when Mengistu announced plans to initiate strict “Marxist” ideology and expelled Ethiopia's previous backer, the US.

The Ogaden region of Ethiopia, which had been kindly ceded to Ethiopia when Britain had an influence in Somalia in 1954, and in which many Somalis continue to live today, became one of Barre’s chief goals.

In July 1977, Barres forces took advantage of internal disorder in Ethiopia and invaded the Ogaden, with the full co-operation of Soviet military advisers. Without warning, in an extraordinary act of tergiversation, the Soviets began airlifting $2bn worth of arms to Ethiopia. Military advisers who had co-ordinated the Somali assault on the Ogaden were flown overnight from Mogadishu to Addis Ababa to direct the counter-offensive.

Securing Saudi promises of financial assistance with which to continue the Ogaden campaign, and accepting a condition where Somalia would rekindle its friendship with the West, Barre kicked out the remaining Soviet personnel in the hope of receiving aid from the United States.

Barre was offering his country on a plate and the US almost snatched his hand off. Somalia was even prepared to forget its territorial claim to Northern Kenya for admission into the Western bloc. Barre was, however, disappointed that his new backer would not support Somalia over its Ogaden campaign, the US not wishing to contemplate the dilemma of being on the losing side. A more harmonious relationship between Kenya and Somalia meant that the region could be more readily incorporated into the Pentagon’s Persian Gulf strategy—a useful base for the Rapid Deployment Force that would balance out the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

By late 1980, the US had secured a defence pact with Somalia which gave US forces access to air and naval bases including the Soviet-built port of Berbera. US aid was pouring in by now and by 1987 Somalia was stockpiling weapons. Barre, though, felt that US aid was not coming fast enough and struck up loyalties with the Soviet Union again in 1988, the same year he clinched a deal for massive arms supplies from Colonel Gadaffi.

Strategic position

“Scientific Socialism” this certainly was not. When Barre took power Somalia was self-sufficient in food. By the mid-eighties Somalia was amongst the most food-dependent nations in Africa. Somalia was a state capitalist dictatorship under Barre, when it was easier to arm a man than to feed him. It mattered little to the superpowers that the Horn countries lived under constant threat of drought and famine, the well-being of the peoples of the Horn was of secondary importance to the actual geographical location of the region.

Peace was never going to be a long-term luxury here. Regional conflict and internal strife were made all the more likely because any gain by one side was soon going to be cancelled out by increased superpower aid to the other—a similar situation had existed during Iraq’s war with Iran.

Somalia under Barre slipped into chaos, with the US doing their all to assist, supporting him all the way and making little or no attempt to think that things could be otherwise. As the cold war came to an end and the threat of “communism" evaporated, the US pulled out, dropping Somalia in the proverbial shit.

When the US abandoned Barre for good in January 1991, Somalia was already in the early stages of turmoil. Clan leaders and warlords began their struggle for power and the crisis in Somalia deepened when famine hit. Barre soon realized he could not hold power much longer and fled the country.

Invasion

The deployment of 30,000 US marines in Somalia is the second time in as many years the US has invaded a Moslem country— “invaded” because this time the US were not invited. All that was missing from the beaches of Mogadishu when US troops came ashore on the morning of 8 December was Audie Murphy and a clapperboard. The whole operation looked carefully prepared for the worlds media—an advertisement for a failing capitalist superpower that can only assert itself on the international stage by ostentatious militarism.

As one UN observer noted:

The operation stinks of arrogance. All this bullshit about 80 percent of food being looted and all that—it's all very well stage-managed by the US. The whole operation is a test case for future conflict resolution. It's as if the US had a new vaccine they wanted to test. Now they have found an animal to test it on. (Guardian, 9 December 1992).

It is probable that US forces have been shipped to Somalia under the cover of a humanitarian mission to be ready again as a Rapid Deployment Force. Possibly the biggest threat to US interests, now that the former Soviet Union is out of the scene, is Islamic fundamentalism, which sees the US as the “Great Satan". North African states are already viewing the US operation as something of a check on Khartoum for its backing of Islamic fundamentalist groups in North Africa and the Arab world. 

Recent IMF austerity programmes initiated in the Horn have not helped the current crisis. During the great famine of 1985, Eastern Sudan was producing 800,000 tons of grain—not for home consumption, but for export to pay off IMF loans. At the same time. “Marxist" Ethiopia was exporting thousands of tons of green beans to Britain.

The New Internationalist (December 1992) was right to speak of starvation as being the "result of unequal power in the market”. In the modern world, profit is the name of the game and all players must abide by the rules. There is nothing altruistic about the IMF or the World Bank:

The World Bank and the IMF have pressured Horn governments to adopt market-oriented strategies based on agriculture exports. Their main priority is to get the regional economy in a good enough state to meet its debt obligation and compete on the international market.

Capitalists could easily add a footnote to this: the sooner the US troops stabilize Somalia, the sooner Somalia can finish paying these debts.

John Bissett

Independence for Eritrea? (1991)

From the July 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

A few weeks ago I had a discussion with an Eritrean friend about national liberation and socialism.

What is socialism without a country? People should have their national home before they become socialists.
Socialists stand for a united world society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the resources of the Earth by all the people who live in it.

But the aim of the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front [EPLF] is to liberate Eritrea from the colonial power of the Ethiopian government and to set up a free independent state.
Eritrea is an artificial creation of the imperialist powers—even the name “Eritrea" was given by the Italians— and is a by-product of world capitalism. Once world socialism is established the Eritreans will be free to live together.

Why aren't you in favour of Eritrean independence and separation from Ethiopian rule?
Socialists aim to create a united world free from all national divisions. As a socialist I’d like to end nations, not to create new ones.

If you oppose Eritrea as a separate nation-state, you must be on the side of the Ethiopian ruling body.
No, I oppose all imperial or colonial aims by all capitalists including the Ethiopian government.

As an ex-member of the EPLF in London, what's your attitude towards the Eritrean freedom lighters?
I think it's the same old story. It is an illusion to think you can get freedom and liberate people by “the barrel of the gun". My attitude towards the EPLF and the Ethiopian rulers is the same and simple—stop the unnecessary killing between the two sides and do something about the millions dying of starvation. There can be no relief for the oppressed Eritreans in changing an Ethiopian dictator to an Eritrean dictator. National divisions are a hindrance to working class unity. National differences are fostered by the capitalists for their own ends. The military conflict between the EPLF and the Ethiopian government forces has made the situation for the population there even worse, and is a product of the international power struggles of the capitalist world order, based ultimately on the pursuit of profit and power by the minority capitalist class.

(Our discussion ended without any agreement).

Michael Ghebre

Capitalism in the Tropics (1926)

Pamphlet Review from the July 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Research Department (162, Buckingham Palace Road, S.W.1.) has recently published a sixty-four page pamphlet entitled, “British Imperialism in East Africa,” price 1s. Much of the information contained therein has appeared from time to time in these columns, the principal exception being a variety of statistics concerning capital investments, etc.

The pamphlet deals, necessarily briefly, with the expropriation of the native tribes of Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, and Nyassaland; and their progressive conversion into wage-slaves, producing foodstuffs and raw materials for the European markets such as coffee, sisal, cotton, maize, hides, soda, etc. The authors also show how the developments in these countries open up markets for the products of European industry, particularly of the “heavy” variety.

The countries mentioned comprise (with Northern Rhodesia) an area of over a million square miles, the total population being roughly only twelve millions, over 99 per cent. of whom are natives. They have come under Imperial control in a somewhat similar manner to that by which India became “the brightest jewel in the British Crown.” Invaded in the first place by mercantile companies who maintained their own armed forces, they soon presented problems with which these companies were incompetent to deal. Africa produced in miniature the same revolts of the populace and mutinies among the native soldiery which led, in India, to the replacing of “John Company" by Victoria, Regina et Imperator. In other words, the forces of the State were sent to the rescue of private enterprise.

In the case of Africa, “philanthropy" and missionary effort formed a very convenient cloak for the hungry figure of capital seeking its constant quarry, profit. It had been, to some slight extent, forestalled by the Arab colonies which had existed for centuries on the East Coast, in perpetual conflict with the Portuguese adventurers. The Arab power was founded upon chattel-slavery, and its periodical incursions among the natives of the interior had for their prime object the recruiting of the slave-markets. To supplant the Arabs and establish the European method of exploitation, it was necessary to stamp out the slave trade.

The hypocrisy of the capitalist found full vent. Gunboats and railways drove the dhows and caravans of the votaries of Allah from the field of commerce, and the blessings of Jehovah were invoked upon the process. The conflict of material interests was disguised by the contest between Jesus and Mahomet.

The up-to-date resources of capitalism rapidly transformed the scene. The various isolated tribes of natives (some living by hunting on the plains and in the forests, some by pasturing cattle, and others by rude tillage) were roughly disillusioned as to the intentions of their “deliverers." The Arabs chastised them with whips, but the Europeans introduced economic scorpions in the shape of reserves, to which the natives were confined, coupled with taxation upon the hut or the head.

In order to find the money with which to pay the taxes, the natives slowly but surely find their way from the reserves to the plantations and townships, as these arise, there to labour for the profit of the invaders. The sudden raids of the chattel-hunters gave way to the permanent exploitation of the whole population. The fruits of this new dominion find expression in overcrowding, under-feeding and the consequent spread of epidemic diseases previously unknown in the country, with additional disadvantages in the shape of an occasional war. Of the 150,000 unarmed porters raised in Kenya during the campaign to acquire the neighbouring German Territory, over 40,000 were killed or died of disease (page 33). Habits of life which are relatively harmless under native conditions, naturally become the vehicle of pestilence under the conditions of city life, or those obtaining in the now overcrowded reserves.

Other interesting facts dealt with in the pamphlet are the methods by which the capitalist administrative powers corrupt the institutions of the natives. The chiefs become transformed from guardians of their people into the agents of the oppressors. The compulsory labour ordinances, which are found necessary as a supplement to taxation, are enforced by their aid. The result is the development of native organisations in opposition to the whole machinery of government, which the missionaries strive to bring into constitutional channels. Early in 1922, the arrest of the Secretary of one of these native bodies led to a mass protest in Nairobi, and the slaughter of about thirty natives by the police as a reply. (This occurrence was dealt with in more detail in these columns in the issue of July, 1922). In one detail, the pamphlet under review is, here, inaccurate. No attempt was made by the crowd to rush the “prison” where Thuku was detained. The approach of a detachment of troops created a stampede, during which the armed police in the lines lost their heads and fired without orders!

What relationship does this enslavement bear to that of the workers in Europe? Here the pamphlet is confusing. Apparently the authors consider that the workers pay the taxes by which interest on development loans is guaranteed. It should be obvious however that if the taxes were not raised for that purpose the workers would gain nothing. The “saving'' would simply benefit some other section of their exploiters.

The authors are on firmer ground when they contend that capitalist development abroad is based upon the extended exploitation of the workers at home. The profits on the commodities of all sorts poured into the tropics by European labour go to the employing-class. The workers have thus no interest in extending markets; but that is not all. Sooner or later the point must be reached at which this development will react upon home conditions. The creation of new proletariat in the tropics intensifies the competition between the workers of the world. It renders their standard of life still less secure, and adds to the ranks of the unemployed. Such are the fruits of imperialism for the wage-slaves. Thus they must eventually unite upon the basis of their common interest, emancipation, irrespective of race or colour !

Eric Boden