Tropic of Chaos

by Christian Parenti

  12 USAID FEWS NET, Weather Hazards Impacts Assessment for Africa, December 13–20, 2007.

  13 Jeffrey Gettleman, “Ripples of Dispute Surround Tiny Island in East Africa,” New York Times, August 17, 2009.

  14 Barnabas Bii and Kennedy Masibo, “Banditry Death Toll Rises Now to 74,” The Nation (Kenya), August 5, 2008; “Kenya to Forcefully Disarm Pastoralists in Rift Valley,” World News Connection, August 3, 2008; Lucas Ng’asike, “Raiders Shoot Dead 30 Herders,” The Nation (Kenya), August 12, 2008; “11 Killed As They Pursue Raiders,” The Nation (Kenya), August 20, 2008; Peter Ng’etich, “Ten Herders Die in Bomb Raid,” The Nation (Kenya), August 22, 2008; “‘Sudanese Raiders’ Kill Eight in Northwestern Kenya” (text of report by Kenyan privately owned TV station KTN on 30 August), BBC International Reports, Monitoring Service, August 30, 2008; Peter Ng’etich and Oliver Mathenge, “Two Reservists Killed in Raid,” The Nation (Kenya), September 2, 2008; Peter Ng’etich, “Two Killed As Raiders Steal Cattle,” The Nation (Kenya), September 4, 2008.

  15 Claire McEvoy and Ryan Murray, “Gauging Fear and Insecurity: Perspectives on Armed Violence in Eastern Equatoria and Turkana North,” Sudan Issue Briefs 14 (July 2008): 10: 14.

  Chapter 5

  1 J. K. Muhindi et al., Rainfall Atlas for Kenya (Nairobi: Drought Monitoring Center, 2001), 5.

  2 Where the trade winds collide and the air rises, we find an area of strange calm, known to sailors as the doldrums.

  3 Muhindi et al., Rainfall Atlas for Kenya, 7. John E. Oliver, Encyclopedia of World Climatology (New York: Springer), p. 430.

  4 Recall the basics: as the Earth, tipped on its axis, revolves around the sun during the course of a year, the sun focuses more forcefully on one, then the other, hemisphere. In the process, it slowly transits north and south across the equator. During its summer, the Northern Hemisphere is tipped toward the sun, and the ITCZ is pulled north toward the Tropic of Capricorn. As the season changes, the Southern Hemisphere receives a greater portion of sunlight, and the ITCZ is pulled south across the equator toward the Tropic of Cancer.

  5 On Africa the IPCC writes, “Warming is very likely to be larger than the global annual mean warming throughout the continent and in all seasons, with drier subtropical regions warming more than the moister tropics. Annual rainfall is likely to decrease in much of Mediterranean Africa and the northern Sahara, with a greater likelihood of decreasing rainfall as the Mediterranean coast is approached. Rainfall in southern Africa is likely to decrease in much of the winter rainfall region and western margins. There is likely to be an increase in annual mean rainfall in East Africa. It is unclear how rainfall in the Sahel, the Guinean Coast and the southern Sahara will evolve.” Susan Solomon, Dahe Qin, Martin Manning, and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis: Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 850.

  6 Katharine Houreld, “Kenya: 10 Million Risk Hunger After Harvests Fail,” Associated Press, January 9, 2009.

  7 “Heavy Rains to Affect Hundreds of Thousands,” IRIN, November 14, 2008.

  8 The preceding section is based on James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009); Bill McKibben, Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2010); Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth (New York: HarperCollins, 2006); Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2006); Eugene Linden, The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006); Al Gore, Earth in the Balance (New York: Plume, 1993); Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth (New York: Rodale Books, 2006); George Monbiot, Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning (New York: Doubleday, 2006). Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis: Human and Natural Drivers of Climate Change, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007): http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-human-and.html. For latest atmospheric CO2 concentrations see http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

  9 “Towards a Goal for Climate Change Stabilisation,” ch. 13 (13.5) in Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (Treasury of the Government of the UK, 2006).

  10 Clive Hamilton, Charles Stuart Professor of Public Ethics, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the Australian National University, “Is It Too Late to Prevent Catastrophic Climate Change?” (lecture to a meeting of the Royal Society of the Arts, Sydney, Australia, October 21, 2009), 11. Available at www.clivehamilton.net.au (accessed January 19, 2011).

  11 Kevin Anderson et al, “From Long-Term Targets to Cumulative Emission Pathways : Reframing UK Climate Policy,” Energy Policy 36, no. 10 (2008): 3714–3722.

  12 For details on this activism, see the 350.org website (www.350.org). Hassen’s paper can be found at J. Hansen et al., “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?” Cornell University Library, October 15, 2008, http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126.

  13 For a review of the literature and its research methods, see Nils Petter Gleditsch, “Armed Conflict and the Environment: A Critique of the Literature,” Journal of Peace Research 35, no. 3 (May 1998): 381–400.

  14 “Thousands Flee amid Fears of Fighting Along Border,” IRIN, November 29, 2008.

  15 This debate is covered very well in Adanoo Wario Roba and Karen M. Witsenburg, Surviving Pastoral Decline: Pastoral Sedentarization, Natural Resource Management and Livelihood Diversification in Marsabit District, Northern Kenya (Lampeter, PA: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008), 735.

  16 Val Percival and Thomas Homer-Dixon, “Environmental Scarcity and Violent Conflict: The Case of South Africa,” Journal of Peace Research 35, no. 3 (May 1998): 279–298: 281.

  17 Kennedy Agade Mkutu, Guns and Governance in the Rift Valley: Pastoral Conflict and Small Arms (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 7.

  18 David Anderson, “Stock Theft and Moral Economy in Colonial Kenya,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 56, no. 4 (1986): 399–416: 406.

  19 Anderson, “Stock Theft,” 408; for discussion of a similar process in Tanzania, see Michael L. Fleisher, “Kuria Cattle Raiding: Capitalist Transformation, Commoditization, and Crime Formation Among an East African Agro-Pastoral People,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 42, no. 4 (October 2000): 745–769.

  Chapter 6

  1 J. Forbes Munro, “Shipping Subsidies and Railway Guarantees: William Mackinnon, Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean, 1860–93,” Journal of African History 28, no. 2 (1987): 209–230: 210. Munro forcefully argues against the lame, very typical apologias that would have Mackinnon going to Africa out of noneconomic interests. In fact, the company was run by shipowners and merchants who stood to gain from expanded trade due to opening East Africa, even if the company itself were bankrupted.

  2 Quoted in G. H. Mungeam, “Masai and Kikuyu Responses to the Establishment of British Administration in the East Africa Protectorate,” Journal of African History 11, no. 1 (1970): 127–143: 136.

  3 R. B. Buckley, “Colonization and Irrigation in the East Africa Protectorate,” The Geographical Journal 21, no. 4 (April 1903): 349–371: 350, 355–356.

  4 John Lonsdale and Bruce Berman, “Coping with the Contradictions: The Development of the Colonial State in Kenya, 1895–1914,” Journal of African History 20, no. 4 (1979): 487–505.

  5 J. M. Lonsdale, “The Politics of Conquest: The British in Western Kenya, 1894–1908,” The Historical Journal 20, no. 4 (December 1977): 841–870: 851.

  6 As Lonsdale and Berman put it in “Coping with the Contradictions,” “Late-nineteenth-century imperialism in Africa was the final sortie by which the world capitalist system captured the last continent to remain partially beyond its pale. The system was comprised,
then as now, of a hierarchy of many differing modes of production linked at the level of exchange and all under the domination of the most advanced forms of capital, whether that was based in the formally responsible imperial power or in one of its industrial rivals” (486).

  7 Lonsdale, “The Politics of Conquest.”

  8 Lonsdale and Berman, “Coping with the Contradictions.”

  9 Colin Leys, Underdevelopment in Kenya: The Political Economy of Neo-Colonialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).

  10 Frank Corfield, The Origins and Growth of Mau Mau: An Historical Survey (Nairobi: Government of Kenya, 1960).

  11 Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya (New York: Owl Books, 2005).

  12 David Anderson, “Stock Theft and Moral Economy in Colonial Kenya,” Africa: Journal of the International Af rican Institute 56, no. 4 (1986): 399–416: 405.

  13 On colonial and postindependence efforts to create law and order in development among pastoralists, see Fratkin, “East African Pastoralism”; for clear argument that raiding has increased since 1980, see Dr. Paul Goldsmith, Conceptualizing the Costs of Pastoralist Conflicts in Northern Kenya (Cemiride, Kenya: The Center for Minority Rights Development, March 2005). Attempts to turn nomadic pastoralists into more sedentary ranchers and agriculturalists are, unfortunately, associated with rapid soil degradation.

  14 “Obote Is Ousted by Ugandan Army,” New York Times, January 26, 1971.

  15 “Uganda’s New Military Ruler,” New York Times, January 28, 1971.

  16 “Amin, Uganda’s New Leader, Charges Tanzania Plans an Attack,” New York Times, January 28, 1971.

  17 Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder As a Political Instrument (Oxford: University of Indiana Press/International African Institute, 1999), 15.

  18 “Fall of Idi Amin,” Economic and Political Weekly 14, no. 21 (May 26, 1979): 907–910: 907.

  19 “US Senate Votes to Lift Economic Sanctions That Had Been Applied Against Uganda During Former Pres Idi Amin’s Reign,” New York Times, May 8, 1979; “Conflict Between Uganda Pres Amin and US over Amin’s Order Forbidding Americans to Leave,” New York Times, March 6, 1977.

  20 “When a State Goes Insane,” New York Times, May 2, 1979; “Fall of Idi Amin”; John Darton, “Invaders in Uganda Close In on Capital,” New York Times, April 5, 1979.

  21 Gregory Jayne, “African Apocalypse,” New York Times, November 16, 1980.

  22 Mustafa Mirzeler and Crawford Young, “Pastoral Politics in the Northeast Periphery in Uganda: AK–47 As Change Agent,” Journal of Modern Af rican Studies 38, no. 3 (September 2000): 407–429: 416.

  23 Barry Shilachter, “Ugandan Warriors Becoming Dirt Farmers in Settlement Scheme,” Associated Press, August 4, 1985.

  24 Jayne, “African Apocalypse.”

  25 David Crary, “Well-Armed Cattle Raiders Terrorize East African Villages,” AP Online, November 17, 1986.

  26 Conan Businge, “400,000 Illegal Guns in Circulation,” New Vision (Uganda), December 19, 2008.

  27 “Where Natural and Man-Made Disaster Go Together,” The Economist, June 14, 1980.

  28 On guns, see Mirzeler and Young, “Pastoral Politics in the Northeast Periphery”; on drought, see Elliot Fratkin, “East African Pastoralism in Transition: Maasai, Boran, and Rendille Cases,” African Studies Review 44, no. 3 (December 2001): 1–25: 8.

  29 Jayne, “African Apocalypse.”

  30 Jayne, “African Apocalypse,” 417.

  31 The Economist, “Where Natural and Man-Made Disaster Go Together.”

  Chapter 7

  1 I. M. Lewis, Blood and Bones: The Call of Kinship in Somali Society (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1994), 150; I. M. Lewis, “Somalia Nationalism Turned Inside Out,” MERIP Reports, no. 106 (June 1982); I. M. Lewis, A Pastoral Democracy: A Study of Pastoralism and Politics Among the Northern Somali of the Horn of Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1962); I. M. Lewis, The Modern History of Somaliland: From Nation to State (New York: F. A. Praeger, 1965); David D. Laitin and Said S. Samatar, Somalia: A Nation in Search of a State (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987); Abdi Ismail Samatar, “Destruction of State and Society in Somalia: Beyond the Tribal Convention,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 30, no. 4 (December 1992): 625–641.

  2 John Markakis, “Garrison Socialism: The Case of Ethiopia,” MERIP Reports, no. 79 (June 1979): 5.

  3 Robert G. Patman, The Soviet Union in the Horn of Africa: The Diplomacy of Intervention and Disengagement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 49.

  4 Gian Carlo Pajetta, “Interview on Ethiopia and Somalia,” New Left Review 1, no. 107 (January–February 1978): 43–45; Emilio Sarzi Amade, “Ethiopia’s Troubled Road,” New Left Review 1, no. 107 (January–February 1978): 40–43.

  5 “The Soviet Flight from Egypt,” Time, July 31, 1972.

  6 “The Model Socialist State That Prays Five Times a Day,” The Economist, May 14, 1977.

  7 Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). This book is a truly impressive accomplishment, based on ten years of research using declassified US intelligence, interviews with principal players, and, most importantly, vaults of never before revealed Cuban documents from the Communist Party Central Committee, armed forces, and foreign ministry.

  8 “The Cubans in Africa,” Newsweek, March 13, 1978.

  9 David B. Ottaway, “Soviets Said to Press Somalia for Cease-Fire in Ethiopia,” Washington Post, August 4, 1977; Gebru Tareke, “The Ethiopia-Somalia War of 1977 Revisited,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 33, no. 3 (2000): 635–667: 642.

  10 Pamela S. Falk, “Cuba in Africa,” Foreign Affairs 65, no. 5 (summer 1987): 1077–1096.

  11 David Ottoway, “Soviet Wooing of Ethiopia May Push Somalia Toward U.S.,” Washington Post, February 28, 1977; Murrey Marder, “Soviets: Carter Distorted Role in Somalia,” Washington Post, January 14, 1978; “Cuba, Somalia to Resume Diplomatic Relations,” Xinhua General News Service, August 1, 1989.

  12 Harry Ododa, “Somalia’s Domestic Politics and Foreign Relations Since the Ogaden War of 1977–78,” Middle Eastern Studies 21, no. 3 (July 1985): 285–297: 285.

  13 For details on the war, see Tareke, “The Ethiopia-Somalia War of 1977 Revisited” ; David D. Laitin, “The War in the Ogaden: Implications for Siyaad’s Role in Somali History,” Journal of Modern African Studies 17, no. 1 (March 1979): 95–115; Mohamud H. Khalif, “The Politics of Famine in the Ogaden,” Review of African Political Economy 27, no. 84 (June 2000): 333–337; I. M. Lewis, “The Ogaden and the Fragility of Somali Segmentary Nationalism,” African Affairs 88, no. 353 (October 1989): 573–579; Jeffrey Clark, “Debacle in Somalia,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 1 (1992–1993) : 109–123; Ododa, “Somalia’s Domestic Politics and Foreign Relations.”

  14 “Somalia Says Two Towns Hit by Ethiopian Planes,” Washington Post, December 29, 1977.

  15 David B. Ottaway, “Castro Seen Mediator in Africa Talks,” Washington Post, March 18, 1977; “Red Hands Off the Red Sea,” The Economist, March 26, 1977; Arnaud de Borchgrave,” Trouble on the Horn,” Newsweek, June 27, 1977.

  16 Clark, “Debacle in Somalia.”

  17 Abdi Ismail Samatar, “Structural Adjustment As Development Strategy? Bananas, Boom, and Poverty in Somalia,” Economic Geography 69, no. 1 (January 1993): 25–43: 27.

  18 Charles Mitchell, “Ethiopia Bombs Somali Towns,” United Press International, May 25, 1984.

  19 Clark, “Debacle in Somalia,” 111.

  20 World Bank figures are cited in Samatar, “Structural Adjustment As Development Strategy?”

  21 Ismail I. Ahmed and Reginald Herbold Green, “The Heritage of War and State Collapse in Somalia and Somaliland: Local-Level Effects, External Interventions and Reconstruction,” Third World Quarterly 20, no. 1 (February 1999): 113–127: 115–116.

  22 Terrence Lyons and Ahme
d Ismail Samatar, State Collapse, Multilateral Intervention, and Strategies for Political Reconstruction (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1995), 1. For a discussion of the state, state officials, and the politics of their discourse, see Stefano Harney, State Work: Public Administration and Mass Intellectuality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002).

  Chapter 8

  1 Martin Dugard, Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone (New York: Broadway, 2004).

  2 Failed states: this phrase appears to be the property of the pro-war, national security intellectuals and the Pentagon planners who see a future of open-ended counterinsurgency. As it can carry a whiff of racism, a hint victim blaming, some on the Left oppose the idea. See Nome Chomsky, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006).

  3 Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Free Press, 1964), 154,

  4 Stephen Harney, State Work Public Administration and Mass Intellectuality (New York: Monthly Review, 2002). Harney makes the point that the state is an idea that is produced as an institution only by the labor of its officialdom.

  5 Max Weber, “Politics As a Vocation,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 77–128.

  6 Norman F. Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague (New York: Harper Perennial, 2002); Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (New York: Ballantine Books, 1987). It is worth noting that Rome fell slowly, weakened by corruption, hierarchy, imperial overreact, and bloat well before its sacking. The Visigoths first crossed the Danube not as an invading army but as armed refugees fleeing the Huns, who were pressing in from the east. They tricked into Rome, violated the terms of their amnesty, and kept their arms, then slowly started making war again. See, for examples, chapter 2 in Frederic Austin Ogg, A Source Book of Medieval History: Documents Illustrative of European Life and Institutions from the German Invasions to the Renaissance (New York: American Book Company, 1908).