War is Africa's natural condition. Can we change that?

Since the end of the colonial era, there has always been war in Africa. With one or two exceptions, such as Botswana, you can't point to a map of sub-Saharan Africa without finding a country that has at some point been wracked by riot, revolution, war or even genocide. It's the nature of the people -- emotional, excitable, easily led and predisposed to mindless and horrendous violence. I know it's politically incorrect to say that, but read the histories of Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, Moçambique, both Congos, South Africa -- the list goes on -- and see if that's not right. Check out How De Body by Dutch journalist Teun Voeten (St. Martin's Press, New York, 2002) for a graphic description of how things were in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. We'll come back to that book in another post.

Right now there's a "civil" war going on in the Congo which was formerly known as Zaïre and has its capital at Kinshasa. The government's writ runs only in the capital region. The rest of the country is divided amongst a number of cruel and evil warlords, fighting for control of the immense mineral wealth that includes "blood diamonds". In spite of the efforts of United Nations "peacekeepers", the Congo has never, repeat never known peace since it was "liberated" from the Belgians.

In west Africa, most of which was (and in some ways still is) run by the French, another "civil" war rages in Mali. What? Never heard of it? If you've ever been told to go to Timbuktu, well, that's in Mali. You could look it up. That war has racial and religious overtones (surprised?) with the Muslim Arab(ish) north pitted against the Christian/animist African (read: black) south. The UN stepped in to referee that vicious conflict a couple of years ago, and so far hasn't had much luck keeping the combatants from each other's throats.

In June of this year, Canada's loopy prime minister Trudeau, in yet another act of virtue-signalling at the expense of his people, sent a couple of hundred Canadian troops to Mali, where Canada has no dog in the fight but is going to jump in anyway. The Canadian contingent consists of a few helicopters and support crews, whose task is to medevac other UN soldiers who get caught in the crossfire. So far they've flown exactly two (2) missions, both on 9/11.

Yesterday Maj-Gen. Dave Fraser (Retd), who led Canada's troops in the ill-fated Afghanistan mission, admitted on CTV's Power Play that the Canuck peacekeeping mission in Mali has "no prospect of immediate success." He told host Don Martin, "The political overtones and what's going on in this country and this mission are ugly. This is not going to be short mission." No kidding!

Although Mr Socks promised that Canadian soldiers and airmen (not many female troops could be persuaded to go) would not be placed in harm's way, since they would only be flying medical evacuation missions and providing support from the skies, the likelihood of some poor non-com coming home in a body bag is increasing, as the security situation in the shithole has deteriorated sharply in recent months. Says the retired general, "It’s as bad, if not worse, than what we experienced in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria."

Continuing in mililtary-speak, Maj-Gen. Fraser said, "It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this mission isn’t going in the right direction from a trajectory point of view." He explained that the key issue is a lack of leadership. Despite no-worse-than-usual elections this summer, he said the insurgents are winning the fight on the ground. That's because "Peacekeeping can't be effective without a strong civilian government leadership that’s running the government, that's actually providing oversight for the military and the police forces and that’s not happening fast enough." For "fast enough", read "at all" and that's all ye need to know.

At the end of the day, the general warned, this hurts some people more than others. In a brilliant statement of the obvious, he said, "The local people are the ones who are going to be adversely affected." Can the problem be solved? Yes, says Maj-Gen. Fraser, if the United Nations changes its approach. "The UN's not getting the locals to get the leadership or the women engaged fast enough, and they're going to lose this race." If nothing changes, he said, the situation can only continue to deteriorate. So the answer to Walt's headline question is, errr, probably not. Which begs the question of what we're doing there!

Further reading: "Mal y soit qui Mali pense", 15/1/13. Kudos to Ed. for that brilliant headline, which only a monarchist would get!