Information on Niger’s Food Crisis

Via Reuters, the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (view the latest Niger report here, in French .pdf – I could not find the English version) says that around 800,000 people in Niger will need food aid between now and the summer. Niger faces cyclical food crises – famines in 2005 and 2011 were particularly bad – meaning that the challenges are both short- and long-term. This year, elevated cereals prices and Malian refugees are contributing to the crisis. From Reuters:

[OCHA] cited problems with supplying food to markets in some areas, such as the northern mining regixon of Arlit and Tahoua in central Niger and Tillabery in the west, which had driven up cereals prices.

Recurrent shortages in recent years have forced pastoralists to sell livestock, including valuable young females normally kept for breeding, reducing their resistance to food shocks.

The presence of some 60,000 refugees from Mali – where a French-led international mission has battled Islamist rebels since January – has exacerbated the food shortages in Tillabery [map] and Tahoua [map], OCHA has said.

The Famine Early Warning System Network’s Food Security Outlook (.pdf) for Niger gives further detail on the rise in cereals prices. From p. 1:

Increasing millet and maize prices, already well above average in April, will overshoot seasonal norms between now and the height of the lean season and the end of
Ramadan in late August due to market disruptions
triggered by last year’s floods in Nigeria. Central and
Eastern Niger will be most affected.

P. 7 of FEWS Net’s outlook, which lists factors that could affect food security, is worth reading. Notably, they list the elections in Mali (scheduled for July) and conflict in Nigeria as possible risks.

The World Food Programme has more (.pdf). An important paragraph from p. 2:

Close monitoring of food markets and the food security situation is necessary. There are indications of recent decreases in the terms of trade of pastoralists. In March, the terms of trade between goat and millet reached alert levels with a goat trading for much less than 100 kg of millet, a threshold indicative of inadequate purchasing power for pastoralists.

Available casual labour opportunities and incomes
generated by cash crops (horticulture and onions) so
far contain the deterioration of the purchasing power
among other livelihood groups. As the lean season
reaches its peak in July-September, further increases
in cereal prices will reduce vulnerable households’
economic access to food.

As far as the solutions that Niger and various aid agencies are seeking, readers may find the following resources helpful:

• IRIN on President Mahamadou Issoufou’s $2 billion Nigeriens Feeding Nigeriens initiative.
• WFP on Norway’s donations.

Africa Blog Roundup: Algeria, Somalia, Michel Djotodia, South Sudan, and More

The Moor Next Door: “Comments on Algeria.”

Baobab has a video analysis of the London conference on Somalia.

Missed this during my hiatus in April, but it’s still relevant: Louisa Lombard‘s biography of Michel Djotodia, the rebel-turned-leader of the Central African Republic.

Amb. John Campbell: “What Next for Nigeria’s Oil Patch?”

Dibussi Tande: “President [Paul] Biya [of Cameroon] Appoints Thirty Senators.”

Roving Bandit: “So What Exactly Just Happened to the Economy of South Sudan?”

Via Amb. David Shinn, the Spring 2013 bulletin of the Sudan Studies Association (.pdf).

Africa News Roundup: Mali Suicide Bombings, Imouraren, Eritrea, and More

Reuters:

At least five suicide bombers died in northern Mali on Friday in attacks aimed at Malian and Nigerien troops which failed to inflict serious casualties on their targets, a spokesman for Mali’s army said.

One of the towns hit was Gossi, the furthest south al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels have struck in a guerrilla war launched against Malian and regional forces since the rebels were driven from their former strongholds in a French-led offensive this year.

BBC:

Doctors have closed the main hospital in Nigeria’s north-eastern city of Maiduguri in protest at alleged police assaults on staff and patients.

They say officers became angry because the hospital mortuary was too full to take the bodies of colleagues killed by suspected Islamist militants.

One doctor told the BBC they would not reopen the hospital to new patients until the government provided them with security to do their work in safety.

Sudan Tribune: “Sudan Approves 22% Pay Raise for Military.”

IRIN: “Understanding the Causes of Violent Extremism in West Africa.”

VOA: “[Central African Republic] Rebels Accused of Major Rights Violations.”

RFI (French): “Areva: The Imouraren Uranium Mine Will Be Operational in Summer 2015, the President of Niger Hopes.”

Amnesty International: “Eritrea: Rampant Repression Twenty Years after Independence.”

Human Rights Watch: “Senegal: Chadian Blogger Expelled.”

What Happened with Chad’s Attempted Coup?

On May 1, a gunfight broke out in N’djamena, the capital of Chad, killing at least four people, and possibly eight (French); a dozen deaths reportedly occurred in a separate clash in another area of the city. Chadian authorities said that the clash had resulted from a failed coup attempt. Authorities arrested at least four more people, two generals and two politicians:

[Chief] Prosecutor Mahamat Saleh Youssouf named the generals as Weiddig Assi Assoue and Ngomine Beadmadji David. Mahamat Malloum Kadre, a member of parliament for the ruling coalition, was arrested alongside opposition figure Saleh Maki.

RFI (French) provides some more biographical details on these figures. Of the two generals, the first served multiple times as minister and regional governor, while the second was serving, at the time of his arrest, as director of the military’s justice system. RFI has little information on the politicians other than what is mentioned in the quote above.

Al Wihda (French), a source with which I am not familiar, speaks of a “wave of arrests” in recent days, the like of which has not been seen since 2008, the year of a major battle in N’Djamena between rebels and government forces. Al Wihda reports that several journalists have been arrested. RFI (see above link) mentions a number of other arrests, including military personnel and intellectuals. The Journal du Tchad (French) reported that authorities were looking for four more politicians on May 7.

According to AP, “The government has released few details of the alleged plot, saying only that the men…were found with incriminating documents outlining their plans.” RFI (French) adds that government spokesman Hassan Sylla Bacary stated on television that the coup plot began more than four months ago.

These are the reports I’ve been able to assemble. For analysis, I recommend reading Lesley Anne Warner’s reactions to the coup reports. She considers both the possibilities that the coup attempt was genuine and that it was “regime-manufactured.”

Ber, Mali

On Monday and Tuesday, Malian and Burkinabe soldiers moved into the village of Ber (map), in the Timbuktu region. AP calls Ber “a focal point in recent weeks of fighting between two of Mali’s ethnic minorities — Tuaregs and Arabs.”* RFI (French) has more detail on Tuareg-Arab clashes in Ber, or more specifically, clashes between the Movement of Arabs of Azawad (MAA) and the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad (MNLA). An MAA commander (French) has stated that Arab forces forces in Ber, however, did not act on the MAA’s orders. Whatever the case, residents reportedly called on troops to pacify the village. Troops have since made a number of arrests – in one account (Arabic), these arrests targeted Arabs and raised fears in the Arab community that a “wave of new arrests” of Arabs would follow.

Events in Ber highlight, first of all, the uncertainties surrounding information coming out of northern Mali (what happened? who made decisions? who acted in whose name?) and the narratives that compete for the spotlight. These events also call attention to community-level conflicts elsewhere in northern Mali (see this article, in French, on intra-Arab fighting in Anefis, north of Gao). In my view, if you combine Tuaregs’ and Arabs’ widespread fear of communal violence, the actual occurrence of communal violence, and the competing narratives that emerge from violence, you create conditions for (adding to) long-lasting grievances and mistrust in these communities. Reported abuses by Malian soldiers against Peul, Tuaregs, and Arabs further exacerbate fear and anger.

*It’s worth mentioning that Oumar Ould Hamaha, a commander within the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, is an Arab from Ber.

Nigeria: Shettima Ali Monguno, Boko Haram, Oil, and Amnesty

Shettima Ali Monguno (b. 1926), of Borno State, is a former oil minister. On Friday May 3, gunmen kidnapped Monguno at Mafoni mosque in Maiduguri after congregational prayers. An account of the kidnapping, which includes a biography of Monguno, is here.

Maiduguri is the epicenter of violence associated with the Muslim sect Boko Haram. Most observers suspect Boko Haram of organizing the kidnapping. Boko Haram showed relatively little inclination toward kidnapping for much of the period since its latest guerrilla campaign began in 2010, but the sect appears to have turned more systematically to kidnappings in recent months, partly in order to obtain ransom payments.

Monguno was released yesterday, possibly after a payment anonymously reported as some $318,000. Notably, this amount is much less than the $3 million ransom that Boko Haram reportedly received for the release of a French family that had been kidnapped in Cameroon.

I want to make two points in this post. First, I do not think the kidnapping of Monguno signals a growing threat from Boko Haram to Nigeria’s oil industry. Monguno served as oil minister from 1972-1975 and is currently retired; my conjecture is that the kidnappers targeted him because he is a prominent northeasterner, because they hoped to obtain a ransom, and possibly because he is chairman of the Borno Elders Forum. I do not believe the kidnappers seized him a message to the oil industry. It is always possible that Boko Haram’s activities will spread into the far south, and several suspected members of the sect were arrested in Lagos in March, but I would still at this point be surprised to see Boko Haram attacks in the Niger Delta.

Second, I do think the kidnapping further complicates the politics surrounding efforts to create an amnesty program for Boko Haram. President Goodluck Jonathan’s Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of Security Challenges in the North, inaugurated April 24, has already caused controversy. Monguno’s kidnapping may weaken some Nigerians’ hopes that amnesty is possible. One member of the Northern Elders Forum told the press that Monguno’s kidnapping represented an effort to sabotage plans for amnesty. While the committee will undoubtedly be heartened by Monguno’s release, the prospect of further kidnappings and ransom payments casts a shadow over the committee’s ongoing deliberations, and may even scare individual members. In my view some form of dialogue will be necessary to end the Boko Haram crisis, but movement toward dialogue faces daunting political and security barriers.

Review: Tolerance, Democracy, and Sufis in Senegal

Tolerance, Democracy, and Sufis in Senegal. Edited by Mamadou Diouf. Columbia University Press, 2013. 296 pages. $29.50.

I received this volume to review in my capacity as a blogger, and so this review will be less formal than a review you might read in an academic journal. It will also be less comprehensive; in my view, the capacity to link to the table of contents obviates the need to describe every chapter. For the sake of disclosure, I will say that I have met at least five of the contributors.

The volume’s ten chapters treat intersections of Sufism and politics in Senegal through the lenses of history, sociology, political science, philosophy, and other disciplines. Together, these contributions provide important background for understanding contemporary Senegal. The outgrowth of a 2008 conference at Columbia University, the book does not include material on religious and political trends under President Macky Sall (elected 2012). But the colonial period and the postcolonial period from 1960-2008 receive considerable attention. The volume is well organized, moving from several crucial framing chapters (Diouf’s introduction and Souleymane Bachir Diagne’s “A Secular Age and the World of Islam”) into case-based approaches, before concluding with comparative chapters by Alfred Stepan and Leonardo Villalon. The reader who is new to Senegal will find the book accessible, while specialists will encounter rich historical and ethnographic material.

One central aim of the book is to examine what Diouf calls Senegal’s “social contract,” which “has brought religious [especially Sufi] and political authorities together since colonial times” (2). This investigation involves a consideration of “Senegalese exceptionalism” – Senegal’s political stability, and its status as the only West African nation never to have experienced a military coup. Senegal’s success is sometimes attributed to the strong presence of Sufi orders there, and to relationships of partnership and negotiation between Sufi leaders and politicians.

As the word “tolerance” in the title reminds us, some media and policy commentators (and some Sufis) equate Sufism with tolerance. I often see analyses depicting a binary opposition between “tolerant Sufism” and “rigid fundamentalism.” This binary opposition, which I consider deeply flawed, creates pressures and expectations for Sufis to combat Salafism and Islamism. Some policymakers, Western, African, and others, look to (and seek to promote) Sufism as a counterbalance to these other Muslim tendencies. In the present political context, understanding Sufism in Senegal takes on great urgency; the book helps move readers beyond unhelpful binary oppositions while still highlighting distinctive features of the Senegalese case.

Some chapters in the volume, importantly, question or destabilize the image of “tolerant Sufism” and its role in facilitating “Senegalese exceptionalism.” Villalon, in the final chapter, accords a major role to “the specific social structures and organizational forms developed by Senegalese Sufism” in generating Senegal’s political stability (240). But he also advances three major caveats to the idea of Senegalese exceptionalism. First, Sufism is “multivocal” and may not always manifest “tolerance.” Second, given forms of one-party rule in independent Senegal through 2000, “a consideration of the relationship between religion and ‘democracy’ in the Senegalese case can really only be explored beginning in the 1990s – because that is the point when Senegal in fact launched itself on a process of substantative procedural democratization” (242). Finally, Villalon argues that Senegal is less exceptional than often thought, especially in comparison to Mali and Niger; since the 1990s, democratization in all three countries has created new opportunities for religious actors to participate in public life.

Joseph Hill’s contribution also complicates the image of “Sufi tolerance.” Contestation, even violence, may occur within a Sufi community. Drawing on ethnographic research among followers of the Tijaniyya affiliated with Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (1900-1975), Hill examines how these Sufis relate to each other and to representatives of the state. Hill finds in these interactions a “pragmatic pluralism not grounded in a supposedly neutral ‘liberal’ approach to tolerance but in the negotiated and even symbiotic existence of multiple, mutually irreducible claims to truth and authority and multiple understandings of political and moral community” (116). Policymakers and commentators keen to oppose Sufism to other forms of Islam would be wise to ask themselves whether they really understand Sufis.

Why is it important to question and complicate the image of “tolerant Sufism”? In part to ensure analytical rigor, but also to humanize Sufis themselves. Tolerance is a virtue. But two-dimensional images of traditions and communities, even if those images emphasize desirable traits, ultimately do those traditions and communities a disservice. In a world where Sufis find that some very powerful people have big plans for them, they may be thankful for this volume, which goes beyond the stereotypes and stock images.

Africa Blog/Reports Roundup: Somalia Famine, Mali Elections, Baga, and More

Famine Early Warning Systems Network (.pdf): “Mortality Among Populations of Southern and Central Somalia Affected by Severe Food Insecurity and Famine during 2010-2012.”

Africa Research Institute: “After Boroma: Consensus, representation and parliament in Somaliland.”

Somalia Newsroom: “Toward an Economic Recovery in Somalia.”

Bruce Whitehouse: “Why Mali Won’t Be Ready for July Elections.”

AFP:

Senegal and Chad signed an agreement on Friday to allow special tribunal judges to carry out investigations in Chad into former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre, ahead of his trial for war crimes.
Habre’s prosecution, delayed for years by Senegal where he has lived since being ousted in 1990, will set a historic precedent as until now African leaders accused of atrocities have only been tried in international courts.

Financial Times:

“A French writer from Algeria,” was how a tight-lipped Albert Camus characterised himself in October 1957 on accepting his nomination as the second-youngest winner of the Nobel prize in literature. These simple words concealed a churning heart. The normally voluble Camus, then 43, was in the midst of a period of self-imposed silence.

After years of championing equal rights for Arabs in his native Algeria, Camus, the son of a Pied-Noir family descended from European settlers, found himself in the uncomfortable position of rejecting any notion of his homeland gaining independence from France.

Jacques Enaudeau: “In Search of the ‘African Middle Class’.”

Baobab: “Djibouti’s Development: Location, Location, Location.” A video with a link to a report.

Africa in DC: “Anti-Federalism, Colonial Nostalgia, and Development in Nigeria: Lagos State Governor at SAIS.”

Alkasim Abdulkadir: “After Baga, JTF Lost in a Maze of Rocks and Hard Places.”

Al Jazeera: “Jailed Boko Haram Members Seek Pardon from Nigeria.”

Africa News Roundup: UN Political Mission in Somalia, Governor in Kidal, Coup Attempt in Chad

Reuters: “At Least Four Dead in Chad Coup Attempt.”

WSJ: “South Sudan to Resume Oil Exports.”

Magharebia: “Maghreb Minister Back Security Cooperation.”

IRIN: “A Long Road Ahead for Justice in Cote d’Ivoire.”

BBC: “Why Libya’s Militias Are Up in Arms.”

UN News Centre: “Security Council Unanimously Approves New UN Political Mission in Somalia.”

Maliweb (French): “The Government Appoints a Governor in Kidal.”

Times Live: “Ethiopia Confirms Jail Terms for Blogger, Opposition Figure [Eskinder Nega and Andualem Arage].”

What other news is out there?

Baga, Nigeria

Baga (map) is a fishing village on the coast of Lake Chad in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria. The international media (see ABC), drawing on local accounts, has reported that fighting between the Nigerian military and the militant Muslim sect Boko Haram caused around 187 casualties during a battle on April 16-17. Human Rights Watch, on Wednesday, released satellite images and an analysis suggesting over 2,000 homes were destroyed in a military raid. The Human Rights Watch analysis is worth reading in full, as is an AFP report from post-raid Baga.

For many observers, alleged abuses by Nigerian soldiers will immediately raise the question of security sector reform. How, observers may ask, can Nigeria deal with Boko Haram, politically or military, if harsh military crackdowns fuel ordinary people’s mistrust of the government? In the worst case scenario, military abuses might even increase Boko Haram’s capacity to recruit among young men. Concerns about abuses are not new: back in fall 2012, Human Rights Watch (in October) and Amnesty International (in November) published reports detailing abuses by Nigerian security personnel. Amnesty called the security forces “out of control.”

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan promised after the Baga attacks that  his government will punish any soldier found to have committed abuses. Reuters called these words “a rare statement admitting the possibility of abuses by his forces.” We will now see whether more information comes to light about the events in Baga, and whether that information prompts any change in accountability measures within the Nigerian security forces.