Looking forward to it.

<looks for her rain slicker and gum boots>

I'm ready too. Just rolled up my pant legs and took off my shoes :)

I have discovered a geopolitical nightmare brewing in Africa that's completely blasted a crater in my mind. For the past 10 days or so (since returning from a 5 W. African country whirlwind on a monitoring assignment with a large international polling agency) I have been completely self-absorbed in examining the walls of the crater, trying to figure out what the heck it all means. What I am seeing frightens me, but at the same time my heart wonders whether there might not be a reason I am seeing this now. There is something good that will come of this. I just really don't yet know what it is, though I have some ideas...

This geopolitical storyline intertwined with my life when I was in Bamako, Mali, staying at the Lybian Friendship Hotel which is the pride of Bamako in terms of the modern global standard it offers to visitors. On the tv in my room CNN was repeating headlines every half hour about how the USA was taking General M. Gaddafi off of the global terrorist list and patting themselves on the back with how their handling of Gaddafi could be seen as a success story - a model for treating other dictators to get them to conform.

Meanwhile, on the very day Gaddafi was in the news as a global hero, there was an armed secessionist movement attack on some military installations in the north of Mali. Though I was actually in Mali on that day, I did not hear of the skirmishes until a few days later on my way out of Niger. The flight from Niger to Dakar (where I met up with Lars!) stopped in Mali and picked up a fascinating civil rights lawyer working for the ICRC, who happened to take the seat next to me.

According to what he said - and I've found some links that confirm just about all of it - Gaddafi is actively working to create a Lybian/muslim dominated block of nations across the top of Africa. Not only does this region contain some of the last known and untapped oil reserves, but it also contains what is already the largest human and arms trafficking corridor on the planet. Apparently, as this link explains, the desert in Northern Mali is a highly valued piece of global real estate. So the theory on the ground in Bamako is that giving up one nuke to the US prior to being taken off the blacklist is suspected to be a ploy to distract attention from what Gaddafi is actually after in Northern Africa: control over the desert corridor (African Map)

In Bamako, Gaddafi is honoring the city with visible gifts like the new Friendship Hotel and building a new Minister's Palace to honor the President's cabinet - anticipations are that it will be fully outfitted to the same world standard as the hotel. Last year, however, alarm bells started going off in some people's heads when Gaddafi was allowed the holy honor of leading the prayer at a sacred festival in Timbouctou. He is not an Imam.

Meanwhile, according to the lawyer I spoke with, up in the North he is talking to the lighter skinned nomadic populations in the desert saying "You know, you guys are the only arabs in Africa who are allowing yourselves to be governed by blacks." According to my lawyer friend, this dichotomy is common knowledge in Bamako and has been the subject of a lot of local discussion and questioning about just what, exactly, Col. G is really up to in Mali.

When I started telling him about some of Gaddafi's known involvements in Uganda, the bombshell hit both of us at the same time. What Gaddafi is doing is tapping very deeply into the use of religious, traditional and tribal conflict mechanisms of control to make leaders across the African continent beholden to him on many levels.

There is a lot more to tell that really makes me go hmmm. Keep the pant legs rolled up and slickers on!

[edit: adjusted details about the assignment]

Amazing story, Christine. I am going to look forward to watching all of this develop.

Linda See you in Chicago? Nowakowski said:

Amazing story, Christin**e**.

Linda, I have to share this:

During the recent trip, I was working together with a Belgian woman named Christine. So whenever I introduced myself to the training groups I told a little story about how people always leave the -na off of my name, but that I had lived in Washington DC once where a group of friends called me just Na. (As a group they took it upon themselves to make up for all the times the Na got left off by everyone else.) All of this to say that in case the trainees had a hard time with Christina and Christine, they could simply call me "Na."

What I did not know when I started out, however, is that "Na" means mother in a number of W. African languages. From Mauritania to Niger, I was Na and the trainees found it so funny.

I am so embarassed....the story should cement the correction in my tiny brain.

No need to be embarassed, Linda! Happens ALL the time!

What got me about the story is the twist on meaning in my African name... Some years back I was given the name Kirabo which means gift in Luganda. Last fall I started writing here as Kirabo the Gift Mom, and it stuck at Life in Africa. They all call me Gift Mum at LiA now.

So then to go to W. Africa and have them calling me mom there struck me as one of those magical coincidences that always seem to happen in my life as I'm leading up to some big new something that feels yet again like it must be the ever elusive IT that I am surely on this planet to discover.

Hello - I am Kirabo Na the Gift Mom. I come in peace bringing big banana brained ideas to the world. Want some?

Oh jeez just listen to how ridiculous that sounds! Life is really delightfully odd sometimes.

Your recent post about Gaddafi is frightening. I didn't realize (until I read your post, then did a bit of research) that the US had recently moved him from the "list" and that Tony Blair praised Gaddafi on a visit to Libya in 2004.

As one article states, with Gaddafi now interfering in Darfur and Chad, how can the West be naive enough to think he has renounced state-sponsored terrorism?

You mentioned early on in your post about his "known involvements" in Uganda. I would be interested to learn more about his recent dealings in Uganda, since most of the information I have found is pre-2002.

(edited to fix link)

Indeed, Susan, Gaddafi has been in Uganda for a very long time - earlier with the Amin regime and now with the current one.

One of the things that brings him back again and again is a long-term love affair with the Queen Mother of Toro Kingdom, in Western Uganda, where a child king has the throne. Uncle G pays for the boy to go to the same International School as my kids go to. He has also built a new palace for the Kingdom's government and has invested heavily in agriculture, exporting all the produce back to Lybia. He calls W. Uganda his bread basket, and it just so happens that in those mountains is where they say the Nile actually begins, before traveling through underground channels to reach the Lake Victoria basin. In fact, I can only wonder what the contribution of Gaddafi's agricultural fields in the West has had on the low water levels in Lake Victoria that have thrown us into this power crisis.

At the Govt. level, Gaddafi is an often cited advisor to Museveni on both internal (military) issues and foreign policy. Though I don't know how much, most folks I've talked to are certain he has provided a lot of military support to Museveni - especially for the very well trained and well equipped Presidential Protection Unit, which when added to the regular army makes Museveni the best protected president on the continent.

Gaddafi is also currently building a new Mosque on top of Old Kampala's highest hill. It's gorgeous!

In Libya, I am told the Gaddafi government has succeeded in building the largest man-made river in the world. The man thinks seriously about water, and in Uganda he has maneuvered himself into a very strong position of control over the water that supplies the Nile. The groundwater and tributaries that run through that region will never be dry, and he has given himself a direct path to exploit that water by making himself the father figure of a tribal king. He's also playing Museveni like a puppet, and guess what? Museveni has water problems. Hmmmmmm.

What does all that mean???

It's far from a new song, but since he was taken off of the terrorist list just a few weeks ago, Gaddafi has been calling Africa to arms. He wants to build an African army, and he lobbied that heavily at a conference for Sahel nations just last week in Tripoli. From an article at allafrica.com (full article)-

Present were leaders from Sudan, Chad, Egypt, Mali, Niger, Ghana, Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, Burkina Faso, Morocco and Tunisia.

<snip>

Col Gaddafi said Sudan demanded troops from the Sahel-Saharan community be sent to Darfur. "We discussed that demand raised by Sudan and we agreed upon that demand."

So maybe this is a good thing. But introducing a lot more arms into Africa without an equal measure of other kinds of empowerment seems to me rather frightening. The fact that Libya is known to be a very racist population against black Africa and that most other Arab populations of Africa are known to be too also has me concerned. The mix of religion and politics and gift economy values leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Gaddafi is not investing in education and medicine, but in fancy gifts and guns. What does he really want?

Whatever it is he's after, observing his methods has made me think there is much to be learned from how he operates that can be flipped positive for peace. That's the bananas part of this world war FOR -> I have a really cool idea!

This is a very interesting line of thought.

Did anyone read the recent New Yorker article about Libya? It makes the point that Gaddafi holds on to power by employing some bizarre tactics to keep everyone else with any power off balance.

I didn't read the article, but I am somewhat soothed to know that somebody else is paying attention.

Part of me hopes that he really is benevolent and has Africa's best interests at heart. Certainly he is succeeding in making the African governments he's working with feel well treated, which is very important in Africa's hierachy. The better you treat me, the more lavish your gifts, the more you show you respect me.

But I was in Niger looking at a pilot survey where the respondent was an 18 year old girl from the capital city. In her family there were 7 children of schoolgoing age - all of the 4 boys were in school; none of the 3 girls had ever been to school. The girl was innumerate, illiterate, and answered I don't know to just about everything on the survey about the world around her. What will she do to survive with her children when she's married and her husband is called off to fight in Gadaffi's wars ?

Yeah, I think I read the same New Yorker article - are you referring to Circle of Fire by Andrew Solomon? Interesting piece.

Wow, Susan, thanks for posting that.

So it says that Libya is giving up their army??? And now Gaddafi is calling Africa to arms. And what Solomon says about how he taps into the tribalistic structures of Libya echoes precisely true with what I've seen of him in the rest of Africa. It blows me away that he is spending so much on modern contruction in all these other countries when Libya is as under-serviced as Solomon implies.

So how does this play out? Where is this going? Any speculations? How big of a geopolitical threat do y'all think this is or could be?

Na, I would really love it if someof the African LiA people would join this discussion as well as other members from Africa. You are on the ground there and I appreciate the info...sorry to say,I do not keep up on African politics.. but ir would be interesting to hear what his fellow Africans are thinking.

Thanks for the articles, everyone. It helps see see and start to understand.

Christina, you are hitting on some interesting themes we came across in the Power of Nightmares series from the BBC (how fear is used as a tool for keeping control, from radical islamic suicide bombers to neoconservative lobbyists). It sounds like Gaddafi is posturing to assume a position as an African leader; he has his eyes on the resources available for control. It doesn't surprise me that Blair and Bush are now friendlier with him.

I thought that Gaddafi got a white hat a year or two ago when bozo was busy looking for some friends...

That New Yorker article is really good. I miss reading their pieces on international matters...

Linda See you in Chicago? Nowakowski said:

Na, I would really love it if someof the African LiA people would join this discussion as well as other members from Africa.

Invite away, Linda. I am doing what I can on the LiA connection, but as I have written elsewhere we are stuck for the moment and extremely limited in that regard.

What sticks with me about this whole story in terms of what is to be learned from it is the deep symbolic importance of gifts in African cultures.

Today in some Ugandan tribes I am told that when a family council is called to sit and discuss anything of import like (for example) a problem that a certain nephew is having with his wife, the nephew and/or his parents are expected to provide the elders with gifts (used clothes or shoes, alcohol, livestock) and to provide some food for the occasion. The gift tradition honors the elders' time and their wisdom - it perpetuates the value of the elders voices in the family or clan structure.

It makes sense to me that in societies resistant to change, tapping into these structures (like Gaddafi is successfully doing today) is actually a strategy for change that's been proven throughout history. Religions are notorious for adopting festivals and celebrations honoring local gods into how that religion is practiced in different places. In W. Africa, the marabou (ancestral communicator/visionary) is considered just as important to the muslim family's spiritual well-being as the Imam, and the marabous are very wealthy people because of all the gifts they receive from the families they counsel.

So here is my thought that arises from thoughts over the circle of fire we've been discussing:

What might be accomplished for peace in African villages by giving non-monetary, non-political gifts of peace?

Gaddafi is very slick and has been playing the "african union" tune whenever it suits him then switching back to the "arab tune". Unfortunately he has a lot of money and a lot of corrupt and even not so corrupt African govts give in for that. But in "Black" Africa, he is not trusted. I truly believe its the situation of you use me and i will use you until we bump heads. I think the fact that U.S has embraced him is actually a positive thing for Africa because some of the respect/admiration he was getting was because of standing up to the West. Now that is no longer there, he will be judged solely by his actions in Africa and so far his guns have been all over the western muslim countries and he is still pushing further down.

Of course all this I am saying based on my own observations of him since the early 80's(was 8 years then) when he helped Iddi Amin's invasion of Tanzania. He really is an opportunist and what better way to get influence in Africa if not through religion and money?

Thank you so much for your perspective, Mbaki. I wonder if there is any country in Africa that Gaddafi doesn't have his fingers into somehow.

insightful link nmw pos 5

interesting link nmw pos 5

Yes, thanks for your perspective, Mbaki. Christina, I wonder the same thing. It definitely feels like Gaddafi is playing sides to work to his advantage (Arab Africa vs. Black Africa). I have a feeling we're going to be hearing a lot more about Libya in the coming months...

Christina Kirabo Jordan said:

Thank you so much for your perspective, Mbaki. I wonder if there is any country in Africa that Gaddafi doesn't have his fingers into somehow.

(side note)

...interesting how Gaddafi's Foundation has offices in Sudan and Chad (the only other African countries outside of Libya).