T he UN’s Paris climate change conference in November doesn’t hold out much promise. Since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, fossil fuel

consumption has gone on growing. The Green Climate Fund launched by the UN in 2011 has attracted only €10bn to date. In 2013 subsidies for fuels responsible for greenhouse gases totalled €400bn worldwide – four times the amount allocated to renewable energy sources.

Any international agreement will fail to keep global warming within 2ºC if governments insist on protecting a production system based on accumulation, pillage and waste. We can’t meet the challenge of climate change without popular involvement; but individual and local initiatives won’t be effective without global political will. If we are to agree to consume less energy and become more frugal – changing well-established habits – we need the prospect of an improved quality of life. There can be no real energy transition without economic and social change, and without proper redistribution of income, globally and nationally. India, where 300 million people have no access to electricity, reports hundreds of thousands of deaths from air pollution each year.

In the West, sobriety stands in direct opposition to austerity, which looks like a trick for bringing about a still more inequitable distribution of wealth. Reducing carbon emissions will require massive investment in housing, public transport and renewable energy – as much as was spent on rescuing the banks in 2008. Improving energy efficiency and living conditions could create jobs, make life easier and generate substantial economies for every household.

BY GABRIEL COLLETIS, JEAN-PHILIPPE ROBÉ AND ROBERT SALAIS

Sobriety, not austerity BY PHILIPPE DESCAMPS

The case for Euro-investment

Inside this issueWhy Grexit is the way to go COSTAS LAPAVITSAS Pages 2-3

Balkans: power game pawns again? J-A DÉRENS AND L GESLIN Pages 4-5

Mali: the rebuilding of a nation DANIEL BERTRAND Page 7

South Africa: betrayal of the dream JEREMY HARDING Pages 8-9

Radical Islam, Christianity of the poor GILBERT ACHCAR Page 12

Football giants need new goal PETER BENGTSEN Page 13

Insight: the new Panama scandal A POPELARD AND P VANNIER Pages 14-15

Online overload: illness or addiction? VIRGINIE BUENO Page 16

JULY 2015 No 1507 Price: £3/US$4.99

KURDISH WOMEN’S OTHER BATTLE – PAGES 10-11

Philippe Descamps is editor of Le Monde diplomatique

FRANCIS PICABIA – ‘La Nuit Espagnole’ (1922)

Europe’s leaders, despite their declarations, have put forward only temporary solutions to the Greek crisis, and not addressed the

fundamental problem. All they have wanted is to go on as before, with the risk that the peoples of Europe, outraged at the direction the EU is taking, will decide to elect far-right nationalist parties.

Europe’s internal crisis was exposed by the international financial crisis of 2007-8, but it has been developing since the single currency – economically premature and institutionally non-viable – was created. If the establishment of fixed exchange rates between member states is to have meaning – the purpose of a single currency – there must first be a gradual convergence of growth rates and productivity. This did not happen in Europe. The Greek crisis is an extreme example of a common situation: most EU member states, including France and Italy, will find the external parity of the euro, and the inability to devalue a national currency, hard to bear indefinitely.

Disparities in productivity and competitiveness, notably with Germany, make it clear that internal transfers within the eurozone are essential. This recalls John Maynard Keynes’s proposal at the Bretton-Woods Conference in 1944 that European countries adopt cooperative management of their balances of payments to keep them in equilibrium, not through simple financial transfers or internal exchange rate adjustments, but through surplus countries

investing in deficit countries. This could be applied to the eurozone.

Many believe Greece’s main problem is its inability to honour its debts. According to the Greek parliament’s Debt Truth Commission, the current level of debt is a result of the very sharp rise in interest rates between 1988 and 2000, massive defence spending, and, from 2000 onwards, the decline in tax revenues caused by tax evasion and by tax amnesties and other “gifts” to the better off.

This analysis identifies some causes of the growth of Greece’s debt burden, but not all. Debt is not the cause of Greece’s problems; it only worsens them. The main problem is the under-development of industrial production, and Greece’s heavy dependence on external finance.

As things stand, a Greek exit from the eurozone followed by a sharp devaluation of the new national currency would make it difficult for ordinary Greeks to buy daily necessities. Not only does Greece import nearly all of its capital goods and consumer durables, but its balance of trade is in deficit in energy, medicine, textiles, consumer electronics and even agriculture.

After Greece joined the EU in 1981, consumer spending gradually rose to a level near the average in other developed countries of the EU. At the same time, industrial production collapsed, its share of GDP falling from 17% in 1980 to around 10% in 2009. And between 2009 and 2013, industrial production fell by another 30%.

This means Greece depends to a great extent on tourism and money from abroad to maintain its external balance. From the 1960s to the 1980s, that money came from Greeks living and working abroad; from the 1980s and 1990s on, it was replaced by EU loans. In the 1980s Greece – banks, businesses and finally the state – turned to the financial markets for funds. This explains the huge rise in interest payments.

Greece’s fate was sealed by its dependence on external finance. A deficient production sector meant the economy was not producing enough to sustain incomes and consumption, nor to run the state and public services. Faced with trade and budget deficits, governments

There are two solutions to Europe’s problems with Greece (and Greece’s problems with Europe): transforming the

eurozone or breaking it up, starting with Grexit

Gabriel Colletis is a professor of economics at Toulouse 1-Capitole University and a researcher at the university’s Laboratoire d’Etude et de Recherche sur l’Economie, les Politiques et les Systèmes Sociaux (Lereps); Jean-Philippe Robé is a lawyer in Paris and New York; Robert Salais is emeritus research director in economics at France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)

Sobriety means a new definition of wellbeing: using less resources and more labour, fewer machines and more human intelligence; taxing fuel to discourage unnecessary air travel; making sea freight more expensive to curb the worst excesses of free trade and encourage the use of shorter shipping routes; deciding not to exploit certain mineral resources.

The industrialised countries, with only a quarter of the world’s population, have run up a hefty environmental bill. Their cumulative emissions have already raised the global temperature by 0.8ºC, and will soon double that (1). Yet they refuse to set targets that take account of past emissions or do more than talk about cooperation, though that will be indispensable. It is time to give the countries of the South the funding and technologies they need to move to development based on energy sobriety. That means quality rather than quantity.

TRANSLATED BY CHARLES GOULDEN

(1) Sunita Narain, “Climat: Injustice faite au Sud” (Climate: Injustice for the South), Politique Etrangère, vol 80, no 2, Paris, summer 2015.

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2 JULY 2015 LMDLe Monde diplomatique

Le Monde diplomatiquePresident: Serge Halimi

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‘EUROPE NEEDS A JOLT TO BRING IT TO ITS SENSES’

BY COSTAS LAPAVITSAS

The case for GrexitA Greek exit from the euro would benefit all of Europe, challenging the toxic monetary

system that imposes austerity on the majority to benefit a minority

between 2008 and 2015 – including the last the coalition government led by Antonis Samaras – responded by curbing consumption (1) and cutting government spending (2). The effects of this unfortunate choice were a 25% fall in GDP, 26% unemployment among the working-age population, and soaring debt.

After recognising in a 2013 report that the measures imposed on Greece had been a mistake (3), the International Monetary Fund contradicted itself by continuing to demand pension cuts and a value added tax increase. But this offered no prospect of resumed growth, without which Greece would never repay its existing debts, currently equivalent to more than 175% of GDP.

A partial, unilateral, cancellation of debts would exacerbate tensions between Greece and the institutions on which it will depend if it stays in the euro. Most of Greece’s creditors have ruled it out. Moreover, it would only provide temporary relief and would delay the search for a real solution.

There is another way: to use the debt problem as an opportunity to industrialise EU countries in difficulties, a solution that could have a wider impact beyond Greece.

The amount of Greek debt that everyone would agree is unrecoverable is at least €50bn (most of which is due to be repaid between 2016 and 2024) – around 15% of

the total. A plan based on industrialisation would more or less guarantee that Greece’s creditors were repaid. Greece has a primary budget surplus – before servicing its debts, the government is spending less than it collects in taxes. Creditors naturally see this as capacity to repay; they might be persuaded to see it as capacity for investment.

This approach requires Greece’s debts to be restructured without further IMF or eurozone loans. Debts currently held by the IMF and European Central Bank (ECB) that are due between 2016 and 2024 (around 70% of the total) would be transferred to EU member states. The repayment schedule would be made more flexible, so that total repayments due in any given period did not exceed the primary surplus.

The countries holding debts repayable between 2016 and 2024 in place of the IMF and ECB would provide up to €50bn of credit to bilateral public investment funds, which would be held equally by two public institutions. In France, the public institution could be the Banque Publique d’Investissement; in Germany, the Kredit Anstalt für Wiederaufbau (Reconstruction

The prospect of a Greek default and exit from the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) first arose during the eurozone crisis in 2010.

From the perspective of monetary theory, Greece’s problem is plain: a weak economy with major institutional problems has joined a structurally deficient monetary union. This is the classic trap of a soft economy adopting a hard – and inherently problematic – currency. There are only two ways out: either the EMU must be completely overhauled, or Greece will have to consider defaulting on its debt and leaving.

The main cause of EMU malfunction is Germany’s policy of keeping nominal wages low, which has given it a great competitive advantage and enabled it to become a major lender in Europe. Adopting a neo-mercantilist approach, Germany has forced its domestic economy into a persistent weakness of demand while seeking to earn wealth by trading abroad. Ordinary Germans, especially wageworkers, have borne the brunt of a policy that favours big exporters and banks.

For other member states, Germany’s policy has resulted in a loss of competitiveness, and hence growing deficits and borrowing. This fundamental imbalance of the EMU was masked in the early 2000s by the availability of cheap credit, which promoted consumption and property investment. But the global crisis of 2007-9 exposed the problem and led to the general crisis in the eurozone. Greece was hit hardest because it had suffered the greatest loss of competitiveness, and faced a huge debt of more than €300bn, a vast current account deficit and an equally vast fiscal deficit, both more than 15% of GDP. The hard currency had ruined its soft economy.

Greece’s fate was sealed in 2010, when the EU chose austerity as the main solution to its problems, with wage cuts, spending cuts, tax increases, pro-market reforms, and

the institutionalisation of austerity through measures such as the Six-Pack and the Two-Pack (1).

From a strictly German perspective, austerity shifts the costs of adjustment onto the deficit countries, while protecting the interests of the big banks and exporters. The German leadership appears to think that austerity will consolidate its dominant position within the EU. But from the perspective of the EMU as a whole, austerity depresses demand, leads to economic contraction, and offers no prospect to deficit countries of returning to surplus and paying off their debts. It is the surest way to cause the EMU to unravel in the medium term. And from Greece’s perspective, austerity is disastrous since the falls in output and income have been so great that it is locked into low growth, high unemployment and high debt. Germany’s policy is driving the EMU towards collapse, but will have devastated Greece long before that.

The Syriza government elected in January has long been aware of the catastrophic consequences of EU policies. It has been attempting to negotiate a deal for the lifting of austerity measures, debt relief and a programme of investment to boost the economy. The response of the creditors in June was ruthless: Greece must achieve a primary surplus (2) of 1% in 2015, 2% in 2016, 3% in 2017 and 3.75% in every subsequent year. There was no mention of debt relief or of any sizeable investment programme. This is severe and entrenched austerity.

Under these conditions, the outlook for Greece would be bleak. Average growth over the next five years will perhaps be around 2%, with significant fluctuations. Unemployment is likely to stay at very high levels, and there is no real prospect of a recovery in incomes, which have fallen by more than 30% for many. An already ageing society, laden with debt, will lose its better- educated youth to emigration. The ensuing geopolitical weakness is easy to imagine: Greece will dwindle into historical irrelevance.

If the EU insists on imposing these policies, Greece’s survival will mean defaulting on its debt and exiting the EMU as the first step towards reviving its production structure, boosting investment and restoring the welfare state. Greece would then be released from the euro trap, and potentially able to begin social change, economic growth, and redistribution of income and wealth. This would involve conflict with powerful interests both in Greece and in the rest of Europe. It would require great political determination and wide pop cular support.

The only political force capable of setting Greece on this path is Syriza. The party’s official position has long been that radical change could be achieved without exiting the EMU. But the inflexible attitude of Greece’s creditors has led its members and voters to revise their opinion. The view that default and exit ought to be considered seriously if the creditors are going to blackmail Greece is gaining support among working people, the poor and the lower middle class.

Strong opposition is likely to come from the upper layers of society, until now relatively unaffected by the crisis. They have a political voice in rightwing New Democracy and centre-left Pasok, which have alternated in government for decades, as well as the well-financed centrist grouping To Potami, which has recently come onto the political scene. The ruling

elite have no vision for the country: they are content to follow the creditors’ roadmap. The social divisions inherent in the euro have become clear during the crisis, and will prove decisive in the coming period.

Exiting the EMU would not be easy, but monetary history and theory offer a route. Greece would suspend its membership of the EMU, without exiting the EU. The legal basis for this is straightforward: the treaties already include provision for exit from the EU. What applies to the whole (EU) would apply by analogy to the part (EMU).

Greece would suspend payments on public debt abroad – mainly to the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank (ECB). Greece has the option of continuing to pay private creditors to facilitate its return to the markets in the future. The Greek government would propose an international conference to secure a restructuring of its debts, including to the IMF. The government would undertake to meet all its obligations to domestic agents in full.

Greece would take back control of its central bank, which would leave the Eurosystem but remain within the European System of Central Banks (3). The Greek banking system would be nationalised and new, sound, banks established. Provision would be made for restructuring problematic business, housing and consumer loans which have accumulated during the crisis and currently exceed €100bn. Capital and banking controls would be established, along the lines of EU controls on Cyprus in 2013, but without a haircut on deposits. Bank deposits and loans governed by Greek law would be converted to the new drachma at a rate of 1:1.

The new drachma would be devalued, probably quite significantly, in the first few weeks, and perhaps stabilising at 10-20% below par value after several months, bearing in mind that the Greek current account would be broadly in balance and that capital controls would be imposed. Empirical work shows that the effect on output and employment would be positive, while inflation would only rise modestly.

Costas Lapavitsas is an economist, Syriza MP and member of the Left Platform

The case for Euro-investment

Continued from page 1

Default and exit would come at a cost ... However, this would only be temporary, and less than the cost of the austerity needed to remain within the EMU

LMDLe Monde diplomatique JULY 2015 3

The needs of vulnerable social groups would be prioritised for key goods – especially petrol, food and medicine – but a minimum of preparation should make ration cards unnecessary.

Default and exit would come at a cost, particularly during the initial period. However, this would only be temporary, and less than the cost of the austerity needed to remain within the EMU.

The economy would be likely to go into recession during the adjustment period, which would probably last several months. Once the adjustment was over, Greece could expect sustained growth for a significant period, based on the release of pent-up domestic demand and on the mobilisation of the enormous labour, plant and equipment resources that are lying idle as result of austerity. On this basis, Greece could begin to plan urgently needed reforms of its economy and society, including a structural shift away from the services sector and towards industry and agriculture. Default and exit

would make in-depth reform possible by restoring Greece’s monetary sovereignty and ability to generate liquidity from its own sources. Greece would also gain room for manoeuvre in its fiscal policy that would allow it to recommence public investment and support private investment.

Naturally Greece would have to defend the new exchange rate, but the resources needed would be nowhere near as extensive as those required by the straightjacket of the EMU. And monetary events of this kind generally create new opportunities for economic activity.

The cost of austerity in Greece has been borne overwhelmingly by wageworkers, pensioners, the poor and the lower middle class. A leftwing government could use default and exit to shift the costs of the crisis onto the shoulders of the better off and alter the balance of power in the country in favour of labour.

Exit would reduce the purchasing power of wages by making imports more expensive, but it would also reduce the real value of

housing and other loans. The recovery of economic activity after the initial period would favour workers by protecting employment and gradually leading to higher wages. Government policy would also favour the redistribution of income and improve the situation of the poorest. The reactivation of the domestic market would benefit small and medium enterprises.

The losers would be the banks and big business interests that have run the country for decades – and ruined it – and European creditors including the ECB, which on Emergency Liquidity Assistance alone is exposed to Greece for more than €90bn.

Greece is at a historic crossroads: its economy is crippled, its society deeply wounded, its institutions rickety and its geopolitical position weaker than it has been in several decades. Among the countries of Europe, Greece is unique in the complete failure of its ruling class. The social forces that could potentially lead it forward, while shaking society out of its current torpor,

are low in the social pyramid. They support Syriza, and it is therefore vital that Syriza should seize this opportunity.

Joining the EMU has proved to be a serious mistake for Greece. But it still has the option of taking a different path. In doing so it could also help Europe rid itself of a toxic monetary system that survives only because it is backed by powerful economic and political interests. Europe is being slowly throttled and needs a jolt to bring it to its senses. Throughout history, Greece has often played a role disproportionate to its size. This may be another such occasion.

ORIGINAL TEXT IN ENGLISH

(1) See Raoul Marc Jennar, “The coup in Brussels”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, June 2012. All notes are by the editorial team.(2) Government budget balance before interest payments, or, as Paul Krugman puts it, the maximum resource transfer that a country is able to make to its creditors (International New York Times, 28 February and 1 March 2014).(3) The Eurosystem coordinates the actions of the central banks of the 19 eurozone countries, the European System of Central Banks those of the 28 member states of the EU.

Credit Institute). The Franco-Greek fund would hold 20% of the Greek debt; its Germano-Greek counterpart, 27%, and so on. Greece would continue to honour its debts, but – the key point – the money would endow funds responsible for investing in Greek production. Instead of profiting creditors, it would be used to develop Greek industry. Creditor-investor states would get their money back once the investments had been realised. EU competition law has coped with sovereign wealth funds until now; it is hard to imagine that it would disapprove of bilateral funds pursuing similar objectives.

The Greek national development bank now being set up would bear the main responsibility for coordinating investment, as a partner in each fund. But it would benefit from the experience of the sovereign wealth funds, which would help it avoid past errors, especially waste. It is also likely that the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and/or the World Bank would put their experience and some investment capacity at the service of the investment projects.

This proposal may require the EU to show some imagination, but it also requires that Greece should initiate in-depth reform of its institutions to get out of its traditional rut as a rentier economy (tourism, property, imports) plagued by cronyism. This would mean new institutions (such as the new national development bank), improving the tax regime for foreign investment, and drawing up a proper land registry covering the whole country. It would also be necessary to support research and encourage decentralisation. Greece needs extensive

institutional reforms, without which it will be unable to overcome its inherited problems that austerity has exposed and worsened.

The effort needed would be considerable, but worthwhile. Former creditors, now investors, would contribute to industrialisation, with the creation of jobs, a fall in unemployment, growth in consumption and a rise in tax revenues, and since Greece would stay in the euro, they would also facilitate the repatriation of capital. This would be a virtuous circle, instead of the vicious circle created by austerity. Another advantage is that the plan would offer new investment opportunities for northern European industrialists. Relaunching the indebted countries of Europe would help to relaunch the EU.

This project could also be used to increase industrial complementarity within the EU. Brussels likes to make national productive sectors compete directly. It should be possible to select investment projects in Greece that meet the needs of Greeks and fit into a truly European productive system. Greek expertise in certain agri-food sectors, natural cosmetics, shipbuilding and some activities linked to

space applications could be developed to strengthen the industrial base of the EU. Such a model could be copied elsewhere in Europe and would open the way for a true EU relaunch. Instead of just competing, it would be possible for EU countries to adopt a more ecological and social approach to development, based on democratically selected criteria.

The ultimate issue, beyond Greece, is to set the EU on the path to joint development compatible with energy transition and sustainable development. This would help to revise the European project to favour cooperation, the pursuit of environmental and social efficiency, and the widest possible democratic control of political, economic and financial choices.

GABRIEL COLLETIS, JEAN-PHILIPPE ROBÉ AND ROBERT SALAIS

TRANSLATED BY CHARLES GOULDEN

(1) Greek household purchasing power fell by 25% between 2009 and 2013.(2) Public spending on healthcare was cut by 28% between 2008 and 2011, spending on education by 15%.(3) “Greece: Ex Post Evaluation of Exceptional Access Under the 2010 Stand-by Arrangement”, IMF Country Report no 13/156, International Monetary Fund, Washington DC, June 2013.

Debt is not the cause of Greece’s problems; it only worsens them. The main problem is the under-development of industrial production, and dependence on external finance

Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis leaves the prime minister’s office after talks over the continuing financial crisis

KOSTAS TSIRONIS/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

4 JULY 2015 LMDLe Monde diplomatique

S erbia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Macedonia are the new front line between Russia and the West, US Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate foreign

affairs committee this February. The parallel between Ukraine and the Balkans was first drawn by Russia; its arguments in March 2014 for annexing Crimea echoed those NATO used to justify airstrikes on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999: in both cases, the stated aim was to prevent a humanitarian disaster.

At the Munich Security Conference this February, Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov emphasised that there had been no referendum on self-determination in Kosovo, while there had been one in Crimea; this meant Crimea’s secession from Ukraine to join the Russian Federation was more in line with international law than Kosovo’s declaration of independence (1).

The Russo-Serbian Humanitarian Centre in the southern Serbian town of Nis therefore arouses suspicion. Opened in 2012 by Russia’s deputy minister for emergency situations Vladimir Puchkov (2), the centre has around 40 permanent staff, and since 2014 has been housed in a former IT equipment factory near the local airport. Fire engines and all-terrain vehicles are parked in the courtyard. The stores are crammed with electrical generators, blankets, tents and boxes of medical supplies, arranged with military precision. An ultramodern communications room allows the centre to keep track of operations in the field, with direct links to Belgrade and Moscow.

Journalists have full access: the centre claims transparency. “We are a pilot project – this is the first centre of its kind outside the Russian Federation,” said director Viktor Safyanov, who was “responsible for civil security in St Petersburg” and led an “international mission to Afghanistan in 2002.” He also has “military experience”. The centre proved its usefulness last May: Russian emergency workers were the first to arrive when Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia, suffered disastrous floods.

Yet doubts persist: could the centre be a front for intelligence activities? Some talk of a “Russian Camp Bondsteel”, a reference to the US military base in Kosovo, which once held 7,000 troops. It’s impossible to tell if the (genuine) humanitarian functions are a cover, but the centre, jointly supervised by the Russian emergencies ministry and Serbian interior ministry, shows the strategic importance that Russia places on Serbia, and the Balkans. “The centre was created as a result of a Russian political initiative; it was Russia that proposed its establishment,” said former Serbian president Boris Tadić, who signed the establishment agreement in 2008.

“But it has always been perfectly clear that it would not be a base for military activities.”

During his mandates (2004-12), Tadić steered Serbia towards accession to the European Union, while strengthening links with Russia: “I wanted to normalise relations with Russia, as well as the US and China, without questioning our basically pro-EU stance.” Under his presidency, in March 2012, Serbia secured official EU candidate status. In 2008 Tadić had signed an agreement to sell a 51% share in the state-owned monopoly Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS, Naftna Industrija Srbije) to Russian energy giant Gazprom (3) for €400m, though some analysts estimate it was worth 3-5 times more; this gave Russia a dominant position in the transport of hydrocarbons to Serbia, and their distribution.

In the 2012 presidential election, Tadić lost to Tomislav Nikolić of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), a far-right nationalist party, traditionally very pro-Russian. The SNS won an absolute majority in the 2014 general election, called early by Nikolić. In 2008 he had promised to modernise Serbia, with a surprisingly pro-EU approach. Although Serbia and Russia have maintained close links, Serbia’s new strongman and prime minister, Aleksandar Vučić, has taken a pro-western stance. Whether based on conviction or opportunism, this could threaten Serbia’s military neutrality.

Serbia, although urged by its EU partners to sanction Russia, has refused, citing its economic interests and traditional friendly relations. The very pro-US Jelena Milić, director of the Centre for Euro-Atlantic Studies in Belgrade, said: “The pursuit of EU accession will give Serbia less room for manoeuvre. Serbia will have to align its foreign policy with the EU’s.” Bur for now, Serbia still believes it is possible to steer a middle course in a world polarised by the Ukraine crisis.

Slovenia and Croatia have not cut all ties with Russia: Russian and Slovenian businessmen met in Ljubljana in 2014. This February, a Russo-Croat economic forum broke the international embargo. As EU

member states, Slovenia and Croatia have both sanctioned Russia, though without enthusiasm. Hungarian Oil and Gas (MOL, Magyar Olaj- és Gázipari) intended to sell its stake in the Croatian company INA-Industrija Nafte to Russian oil giant Rosneft, but the deal was blocked by Brussels in 2014, worsening Croatia’s oil industry crisis. Most of Russia’s economic interests in the region are in energy; other trade is very limited. The EU is by far the biggest trading partner for all Balkan countries.

Vladimir Putin’s visit to Belgrade last October was to have celebrated the friendship between Serbia and Russia. The Serbian government had brought forward the official celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Belgrade (20 October 1944) so that Putin could be the guest of honour at the biggest military parade since the death of Marshal Tito. The visit did not go as well as hoped: Serbia refused Russia’s request that the staff of the Nis Humanitarian Centre be given diplomatic status, and Putin declined Vučić’s request for a €200m rebate on Serbia’s gas bill. In December, Russia announced that it was abandoning its planned South Stream gas pipeline, which was to have carried Russian gas to the EU, bypassing Ukraine (4).

This decision is largely explained by Bulgaria’s refusal, under pressure from the EU, to allow the pipeline to pass through its territory, after the Bulgarian general election of October 2014 brought the champion of the right, Boyko Borissov, to power. The left-right divide in Bulgaria is closely linked to energy issues and to relations with Russia and the US. Soon after his election, Borissov received John Kerry with great ceremony, and announced that Bulgaria would support TAFTA (Transatlantic Free Trade Area) and restart prospecting for shale gas (though fracking is prohibited under Bulgarian law). Kerry promised that the US would help Bulgaria reduce its energy dependence on Russia.

South Stream would have passed through Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary, with branches to Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Slovenia, and for these countries its cancellation was bad news, even though plans for a pipeline to the Turkish-Greek border (Turkish Stream) should make up for a substantial part. Milorad Dodik, president of Republika Srpska, the Serbian entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, estimates the economic loss from the cancellation at around €1bn. Most of Russia’s investment in Republika Srpska is in energy. In 2007 the government sold a 65% share of the Naftna Industrija RS group to Russia’s Njeftegazinkor, allowing it to take control of two refineries and a chain of petrol stations. What Dodik claimed as “the country’s most successful privatisation” soon turned to disaster. The refineries made growing losses, as the Russians never implemented the promised investment in their modernisation. A 40% share of Njeftegazinkor is held by Russian state-owned oil company Zarubezhneft, the remaining 60% by three unknown shareholders. Many believe the real owner is Dodik.

“The Russian argument is vital for Dodik,” said Tanja Topić of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Banja Luka. “Before every election, he talks about Russian projects and loans. He needs to convince Bosnian Serbs that he is still an ally of Russia. Even if the loans never materialise, they still play a part in the balance of power he has established with the authorities in Sarajevo, as well as with the EU and Serbia.” Bosnia and Herzegovina is still divided, and the government of Republika Srpska has been talking about holding a referendum on independence for years – a way of raising the political stakes, preventing any attempt at recentralisation, and any challenge to the entities established by the 1995 Dayton accords. For Dodik, the referendum in Crimea was a godsend, reviving western fears of a similar referendum in Republika Srpska, which would immediately be recognised by Russia and would be the end of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Laurent Geslin is a journalist; Jean-Arnault Dérens is editor the website Le Courrier des Balkans

BY JEAN-ARNAULT DÉRENS AND LAURENT GESLIN

NO HOLDS BARRED IN REVIVED COLD WAR

Balkans are the new front line Russia is consolidating its substantial interests in the Balkans, with strong investment (not just financial) in Serbia and Montenegro

‘The Russian argument is vital for [Serbian president Milorad] Dodik. Before every election, he talks about Russian projects and loans. He needs to convince Bosnian Serbs that he is still an ally of Russia’

Is the war in the Donbass a continuation of the Balkan

conflict? Croat fighters there have told the Croatian press they dream of being deployed opposite Serbian volunteers and replaying the conflict of the 1990s. Most have been incorporated into the ultra-nationalist Azov Battalion. One is Denis Šeler, former leader of the Bad Blue Boys, ultra supporters of football club GNK Dinamo Zagreb, who believes Ukraine is “the last bastion of the Christian [right in] Europe” (1).

According to the Serbian authorities, several dozen Serbs are also fighting in Ukraine, mainly in the militias of the

“people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk, the two secessionist regions of the Donbass (2). This influx of volunteers may be reciprocation for the Russian Cossack units that fought alongside the Serbian army in the Balkans. Igor Strelkov (“Igor the Shooter”, no doubt an alias), a senior officer of the GRU (Russian military intelligence) and defence minister of the People’s Republic of Donetsk from May to August 2014, says he got his basic military experience in the Balkans in 1992-3.

In a café in the southern Serbian town of Nis, Aleksandar “Svab” Savic talked about the

tattoos that cover his arms and torso. They include portraits of Orthodox saints, the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžic , and crosses and national symbols of Serbia and Russia. Savic is head of the Serbian branch of the Night Wolves, a Russian biker gang founded in 1989. He was in Crimea in early March 2014: “We were posted on the road from Balaclava to Sebastopol, and were responsible for security in the area, to prevent violence.” At least three members of the gang are reported to have been fired from the Serbian gendarmerie for having fought in Ukraine.

The Serbs in the Donbass have been incorporated into the “Hussar” brigade founded by former TV presenter Radomir Pocuca. In April 2014, Pocuca was dismissed as spokesman of the Serbian interior ministry’s anti-terrorist unit for having called on hooligans to attack the feminist and anti-fascist peace campaign group, Women in Black.

J-A D AND L G

(1) “Denis Šeler: ‘Ukraine is the last bastion of the Christian Europe’”, 9 December 2014; ukrainiancrusade.blogspot.fr(2) “Serbian mercenaries fighting in eastern Ukraine”, Deutsche Welle, 14 August 2008; www.dw.de

The Balkan conflict replayed

History shows that the peoples of the Balkans have too often been pawns in confrontations between the great powers

STEPAN KAPI/SHUTTERSTOCK

LMDLe Monde diplomatique JULY 2015 5

Is Putin so dissatisfied that he is prepared to extend his confrontation with the West to south-eastern Europe? Senior US government officials think so. Christine Wormuth, under-secretary of defence, told a Senate armed services committee hearing in February that Russia could focus on small countries that are not yet members of NATO, such as Montenegro, in an attempt to create instability.

Since independence in 2006, Montenegro has been in a strange position. While its leaders profess their European and Atlanticist faith, it has attracted a high level of Russian investment. In 2005 Russia’s aluminium king Oleg Deripaska, a friend of Putin, acquired Kombinat Aluminijuma Podgorica (KAP), Montenegro’s biggest enterprise, promising significant investment that never materialised. KAP is now bankrupt, and Deripaska is suing the government of Montenegro, though this has not prevented him from taking part in other projects, including the Porto Montenegro marina, one of the most luxurious on the Adriatic, on the site of the former naval shipyard at Tivat. The real investors are hard to identify, but according to economic analyst Dejan Mijović, it is likely that they include prime minister Milo Đukanović, hiding behind proxies.

Similar arrangements are thought to be behind all the construction projects that have disfigured the Montenegrin coast over the last decade. The Hotel Splendid at Budva is officially owned by Lewitt Finance Montenegro, which belongs to Viktor Ivanenko, chairman of the KGB at the time of the dismantling of the Soviet Union; he became a billionaire by founding Menatep Bank, then the oil company Yukos. When Putin jailed Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other Yukos leaders, only Ivanenko was untouchable. “Today, he is still known as General Viktor. He is the key link between the government of Montenegro, its underworld, the Russian mafia and the intelligence services,” the Montenegrin paper Monitor claimed in 2005. The Đukanović family also seems to be involved in the ownership of the Splendid. Milo Đukanović is leader of the Democratic party of Socialists of Montenegro (DPS), successor to the former League of Communists of Montenegro (SKCG). Since 1989 he has served alternately as prime minister and president. His brother Aleksandar is chairman of Montenegro’s biggest private bank. Their sister Ana Kolarević is a business lawyer who has supervised some of the country’s biggest privatisations. Many family properties are registered in the name of the prime minister’s son.

These close relations between Montenegro’s political leaders, Russian oligarchs and the Russian secret services go back to the 1990s, when Montenegro, hit by international sanctions applied to Serbia, survived through large-scale cigarette trafficking. Russia did not seem to have been inconvenienced by Montenegro’s pro-western stance after Đukanović broke off relations with his Serbian mentor Slobodan Milošević, in 1997.

But since last May, Montenegro has applied the EU’s sanctions against Russia. “Russian investors are deserting Montenegro. Property prices fell by 15% in the last quarter of 2014, and the downward trend is likely to continue this year,” said Ivan Dašic, head of sales at property agency Montenegro Prospects. Russian investment fell by 30% in 2013, and since then the decline of the rouble has cut the purchasing power and sped the flight of Russian clients. Is the split between Russia and Montenegro real, or is it staged, with Russia hoping to use Montenegro to penetrate the EU and NATO?

Montenegro has had official EU candidate status since 2010. Its NATO application was turned down last year, officially because of high levels of corruption and organised crime, but more likely because of extensive infiltration by Russian agents. According to opposition politician Nebojša Medojević, “between 25 and 50 Montenegrin agents have links to Russia” (5). Most are former Yugoslav army officers, incorporated into the new Montenegrin army in 2006.

Montenegro’s NATO candidacy will be reconsidered in the coming months, and the government will then have to confirm its accession through a vote in parliament or a referendum. Public opinion is deeply divided, but Željko Ivanović, director of the opposition daily Vijesti, is certain Đukanović will choose the referendum option: “The referendum will split the opposition, one part of which is pro-western,

while the other is traditionally pro-Russia. By dramatising the issue, the government will again be able to capitalise on EU fears by presenting itself as the defender of [Montenegro’s] pro-western orientation from the ‘Russian ogre’; and that will give it a get-out-of-jail card on corruption and organised crime.”

In this new cold war, no holds are barred. Balkan potentates such as Đukanović and Dodik are expert at using international

tensions to consolidate their power. Newcomers such as Vučić believe they can survive by staying friends with both sides. Yet history shows that the peoples of the Balkans have too often been pawns in confrontations between the great powers.

TRANSLATED BY CHARLES GOULDEN

(1) The International Court of Justice ruled on 22 July 2010 that this declaration of independence did not violate international law.

(2) Puchkov was appointed emergencies minister on 12 May 2012, a few days after his visit to Serbia, replacing Sergey Shoygu, a close friend of Putin, who became defence minister.(3) See Catherine Locatelli, “Gazprom’s eastern future”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, June 2015.(4) See Hélène Richard, “Why Russia cancelled South Stream”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, June 2015.(5) “Ces amis qui viennent du froid: le Monténégro, plate-forme de l’espionnage russe” (Friends from the cold: Montenegro, platform for Russian espionage), Le Courrier des Balkans, 1 August 2014.

Should the Macedonian crisis that began in 2015 be seen

in the light of the confrontation between Russia and the West? The conservative, nationalist regime in this multi-ethnic country neighbouring Kosovo has been shaken by daily revelations made by the Social Democratic opposition leader Zoran Zaev. The recordings produced reveal that Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and his close entourage have been systematically exploiting the country: organising corruption at the highest levels of the state, and supervising and steering the justice system and the media. The source of these recordings is controversial. Zaev claims to have a mole in

the intelligence services, but there are rumours of foreign intelligence services helping the opposition. Since the beginning of May, the opposition has taken to the streets, demanding Gruevski’s resignation and camping out in front of the parliament building in Skopje in a replay of the “colour revolutions”.

Gruevski and his party, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE), won their first general election in 2006. At the time, their objectives were to join the European Union and NATO. Their economic vision was neoliberal, based on large-

scale privatisation and on fiscal and social dumping designed to attract foreign investment. The investment never materialised, and Macedonia, bogged down in the economic crisis, saw its application to NATO turned down because of the unresolved dispute with Greece over its name (1).

Following this setback, Gruevski adopted an increasingly nationalist stance, glorifying Macedonia’s history, and the regime began to spiral into authoritarianism. Long courted because of his country’s strategic importance, in the last two years Gruevski has become a pariah in the eyes of the West. So he has moved closer to Russia and Serbia,

which is ironic since he claims to be heir to a pro-Bulgarian and violently anti-Serbian political tradition. With the Turkish Stream gas pipeline due to pass through Macedonia, Russia has given significant support to the Macedonian government and denounced western attempts to “destabilise” the country. Gruevski seems to have gained some time by announcing early elections in response to the popular demonstrations.

J-A D AND L G

(1) Greece’s position is that the name “Macedonia” belongs exclusively to the Hellenic heritage. In 1995 a compromise was reached with the provisional name “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”. Subsequent negotiations under UN auspices have made no significant progress.

Macedonia and the ‘great game’

Despite maintaining strong links with Russia, Serbia’s prime minister Aleksandar Vucic has taken a pro-western stance, which could, in President Putin’s eyes, threaten Serbia’s military neutrality

ANDREJ ISAKOVIC/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

6 JULY 2015 LMDLe Monde diplomatique

The breakup of the Soviet Union, agreed in 1991 by Boris Yeltsin, then the new Russian president, and his Ukrainian and Belarusian counterparts, happened

peacefully because the USSR’s president Mikhail Gorbachev chose not to stand in its way. But it was pregnant with potential future conflicts: in this multinational space, 25 million Russians were left outside the borders of Russia (which had 147 million inhabitants at the last pre-breakup census in 1989; there were 286 million in the USSR), itself very ethnically diverse. The arbitrary drawing of borders exacerbated tensions between successor states and minorities (in Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Adjara). Many of these multi-ethnic states had never existed before. This was true of Ukraine, which had only been independent for three years in its history (1917-20), after the collapse of the tsarist armies.

The Ukrainian state that came into being in December 1991 was a composite entity. Its western regions had belonged to Poland between the two world wars and the inhabitants of its eastern regions were Orthodox and Russian-speaking. Its Black Sea coast had been Ottoman. Crimea had never been Ukrainian until Nikita Khrushchev decreed it should be in 1954. Ukraine as a state dates back less than a quarter of a century. The privatisations of the 1990s created a class of oligarchs who dominate the state; the economy has deteriorated significantly and debt levels are high. Ukraine’s future – as a member of NATO or as a neutral state – is inseparable from the reconfiguration of power relations at European and global level. In 1997 Zbigniew Brzezinski said that the only way to prevent Russia becoming a great power again was to remove Ukraine from its sphere of influence (1).

A reminder of the facts is essential to understand the situation today. The current crisis had been predictable since the Orange revolution of 2004 and Ukraine’s first attempt to join NATO. The crisis could have been avoided if the EU had, in launching its Eastern Partnership in 2009, framed the negotiation of the association agreement with Ukraine compatibly with the objective of the 2003 strategic EU-Russia partnership: creating “a single economic space from Lisbon to Vladivostok”.

It would have been necessary to take into account the close link between the Ukrainian and Russian economies. Had it done so, the EU would have avoided being used by proponents of an eastward expansion of NATO. But Brussels presented Ukraine with an impossible choice between Russia and Europe. As Russia’s financial offer was substantially better than Europe’s, Ukraine’s president Viktor Yanukovych asked for the signing of the association agreement, scheduled for 29 November 2013, to be postponed.

I do not know if Štefan Füle, the EU commissioner, took direction from (then) Commission president José Manuel Barroso or if the Commission ever discussed this issue, though it had the potential to turn into the most serious geopolitical crisis in Europe since the missile crisis of 1982-7. President Putin claimed that in January 2014 the EU authorities – Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy – ruled out any discussion of the content of the association agreement with Ukraine on the grounds that that would infringe Ukrainian sovereignty.

Yanukovych’s postponement of the signing sparked the “pro-European” Maidan demonstrations, which led to his removal on 22 February 2014. It is understandable that the prospect of joining the EU is attractive to a significant proportion of Ukrainians. But it is worth asking whether the EU has a mandate for promoting European norms and standards beyond its borders. The Maidan demonstrations were encouraged by many visits from EU, and especially US, officials, often prominent figures (2), while NGOs and the media conducted an information war. This explicit support for the

demonstrations, which were mostly policed by far-right organisations – Pravyi Sektor and Svoboda – was a potential source of confusion over what fell within the EU’s purview or that of NATO or the US. “Exporting democracy” can take many forms.

The non-application of the February 2014 agreement, which made provision for presidential elections at the end of the year, and the sudden unconstitutional removal of a president who may have had many faults but had been elected, may count as a “revolution” – or as a coup. Russia took the latter view. Although Crimea had been Russian until 1954, it is undeniable that Russia’s decision to annex it, even cloaked in a referendum, was a disproportionate reaction, and ran counter to the principle of respect for the territorial integrity of other states, constantly asserted by Russia, notably when it was flouted by Kosovo’s exit from Yugoslavia. Putin put Russia’s strategic interests in the Black Sea first, probably fearing that the new Ukrainian government would not respect the leasing agreement that gave Russia use of Sebastopol until 2042.

So this crisis was an accidental escalation. The annexation of Crimea was not planned. In February, Putin attended the closing ceremony of the Sochi winter Olympics, intended as a showcase for Russian achievement. He then overreacted to an event that the EU had not planned, but encouraged through carelessness. The question now is whether the EU can regain control of the situation.

Putin probably did not suspect that the US would seize on the annexation of Crimea to impose limited (July 2014) and then more stringent sanctions (September). In May 2014, he said he was ready to contain the conflict. He encouraged Ukraine’s Russian-speaking regions to seek a solution to their problems within the country. On 10 May, François Hollande and Angela Merkel talked about incorporating decentralisation into Ukraine’s constitution. On 25 May, Petro Poroshenko was elected president and immediately recognised by Russia. The “Normandy format” (Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine) was sketched out on 6 June and it seemed the crisis might be defused peacefully.

But things began to get out of control in the summer: the Ukrainian authorities launched an “anti-terrorist” operation against the “self-declared republics”, which riled the population of

the Donbass. The operation was short-lived because the Ukrainian army crumbled, despite the support of pro-Maidan “volunteer battalions”. The Minsk I accords, signed on 5 September, declared a ceasefire. Six days later, on 11 September, the US and EU implemented severe sanctions, officially to ensure the ceasefire. With the banks paralysed by US sanctions, EU-Russian trade was progressively restricted and effectively frozen. Russia announced counter-sanctions on food and looked to emerging markets, particularly China, to diversify its foreign trade and industrial cooperation.

Simultaneously, the price of crude collapsed. The rouble fell against the dollar, from 35 to 70 roubles by the end of 2014. Through lack of follow-through, the ceasefire agreements stalled. Ukraine launched a second military offensive, no more successful than the first. Through an initiative coordinated by President Hollande, new accords – Minsk II – were signed on 12 February 2015.

The trap closed again: western sanctions are made to be lifted. But although the military component of Minsk II is being observed, more or less, the political component is problematic. It follows a well-defined sequence: the passing of an electoral law by the Rada (Ukrainian parliament); local elections in the Donbass; constitutional reform; a law on decentralisation; further elections; and finally Ukraine regaining control of its border with Russia. But on 17 March the Rada voted to overturn this sequence by making the “withdrawal of armed groups” a precondition. The Ukrainian government’s block on the political component of Minsk II threatens to turn the Ukrainian crisis into a frozen conflict. The prospect of sanctions being lifted is caught in a vicious circle. In principle, they can only be renewed by unanimous agreement. In reality, there is a risk that the law of consensus will be applied: Angela Merkel announced on 28 April that European sanctions were likely to be renewed in June.

The crisis is a war in all but name. The muted debate between those who wish, quietly, to maintain the EU-Russian partnership as conceived in 2003, and the supporters of a policy of containing or even pushing Russia back (a new cold war) reflects a clash of wills between Russia and the US. There is a proxy war on the ground between the Ukrainian army plus “volunteer battalions”, supported by the US and

its allies, and the “separatist” militias who draw their support mainly from Russian-speakers in the east, with Russian aid that purports to be humanitarian. The pursuit of this conflict may turn Ukraine into a lasting source of conflict between the EU and Russia. Through a widely echoed ideological crusade, the US is attempting both to isolate Russia and to tighten its control over the rest of Europe.

Prophets of a new cold war refer to Russia as a dictatorship, fundamentally hostile to universal values, that wants to rebuild the USSR. To those who know contemporary Russia, that seems exaggerated, even a caricature. Putin owes his popularity to the economic recovery he achieved in Russia after GDP had fallen by half in the 1990s, and his halting of the disintegration of the state. His project is national, not imperial. It is to modernise Russia, which, like any other state, has security concerns.

Old fears can be agitated, but Vladimir Putin is not Russia. The country is being transformed. There is a large and growing middle class, many of whom opposed Putin’s return to power in 2012 but now seem to support him. Even Mikhail Gorbachev believes that since 1991 the West has unjustly treated Russia like a defeated country, though it is a great European nation (3). That Russia paid the heaviest price in the war against Nazi Germany has been airbrushed out of history, as though anti-communism had to outlive communism forever.

The material basis for the cold war – the opposition of antagonistic economic and ideological systems – no longer exists. Russian capitalism has its own particular character, but it is capitalism. Putin believes his conservative values can heal the wounds of 70 years of Bolshevism.

The real issue in the Ukrainian crisis is whether Europe can assert itself as an independent actor in a multipolar world or will take a permanently subordinate role to the US. Current media Russophobia resembles the attempt to shape public opinion at the time of the first Gulf war (1990-1). This conditioning relies on ignorance of what contemporary Russia is really like, if it is not an ideological construction intended to manipulate.

Russia is showing resilience. It is up to France to represent Europe’s best interests, through the Normandy format. It is hard to accept that France’s foreign policy should be undermined by extremist and revisionist tendencies. I see no equivalence between communism and Nazism, unlike the “memorial laws” passed by the Rada in Kiev on 9 April. In the Ukrainian crisis, Germany under Angela Merkel is far too closely aligned with the US. Germany may be tempted to temporarily abandon its traditional Ostpolitik towards Russia to achieve an economic breakthrough with Ukraine. There were 1,800 German industrial concerns in Ukraine in 2010, and just 50 French. Ukraine is a natural extension of the pool of low-cost labour in Mitteleuropa, which has given German industry a comparative advantage, though wage increases in central and eastern Europe have been eroding it. Germany must convince its European partners that it is not just the US’s proxy in Europe, the impression given by the National Security Agency drawing on the services of the BND (4). The Normandy format must be the way to implement Minsk II and lift Ukraine’s opposition to pushing through the political component of the accord. Europe has financial levers.

It is time for a “European Europe” to show itself. It could start by trying to convince the US that its true interests are not served by driving Russia out of the West, but in participation in redefining mutually acceptable rules of the game that can restore reasonable confidence.

TRANSLATED BY GEORGE MILLER

(1) Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, Basic Books, New York, 1998.(2) These include Victoria Nuland, US assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, US senator John McCain and the German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle.(3) Speech in Berlin on 9 November 2014.(4) Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany’s intelligence service.

Jean-Pierre Chevènement was France’s defence minister (1988-91) and interior minister (1997-2000)

BY JEAN-PIERRE CHEVÈNEMENT

EU AND RUSSIA ANTAGONISTIC BY ACCIDENT

No need for this cold warA little forethought and less dogma would have prevented the deterioration of the situation in Ukraine into a revived cold war. Demonising Putin’s Russia won’t help

DENIS SIMONOV/SHUTTERSTOCK

LMDLe Monde diplomatique JULY 2015 7

Mali’s Accord on Peace and Reconciliation, reached on 1 March 2015 after eight months and five negotiating rounds, is fragile.

International mediation efforts steered by Algeria involved the UN, the EU, the African Union, ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States), the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger and Chad. But initially the only signatories were the Malian government and the Northern Mali Platform Movement, an umbrella group of pro-government movements (1). It was not signed by the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA), the organisation that brings together the rebel movements pressing for autonomy for Azawad – a territory in northern Mali which is almost entirely desert – until 15 May, and additional negotiations were needed to get the CMA to sign the Algiers accord in Bamako on 20 June. This year, jihadist terrorist attacks in the city of Gao, and in Diabaly in central Mali, have killed around 40 civilians and Malian soldiers. French forces in Operation Barkhane back the Malian military (2).

The problem is that the crisis is multi-dimensional: it is about the challenges faced by the people in the north, as well as redefining the balance between north and south, made worse by inter-communal violence in 2012-3.

In the past, regular uprisings led by Tuareg chiefs ended with peace agreements that skated over the problem, and risked maintaining or even aggravating the grievances: Tuareg groups were co-opted or integrated into national bodies, and subsidies and alternative employment for demobbed soldiers were offered (3).

But the emergence of a lucrative drugs trade (4) and the arrival of jihadism have changed socioeconomic power relations through hostage-taking and ransoms. Because of greater contact with the Gulf states through trade and migration, charitable institutions are now spreading radical Islamist ideology, which is gradually gaining a foothold in Sahelian societies. There has been a convergence of interests and ideology among some of northern Mali’s elites and fundamentalist terrorist movements, like the Ifogha from Al-Mourabitoun and the Fula of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MOJWA). And this in a state whose control of the north is weak or non-existent.

The young have profited the most from illegal activities. A newly affluent class with links to the powerful has sprung up; it also includes young people with money but no political power. This has changed the balance within and between communities, and exacerbated intergenerational power struggles. Some of the young in the north are resisting the social control of tribal chiefs and leaders of the other communities that make up the region’s social fabric. This questioning of authority is the result of long-term change: since the early 1990s, young Arabs and Tuareg have earned money from crime, invested it in road transport companies, and bought livestock and expensive real estate. This has overturned traditional values, including respect for elders and the hierarchy of Tuareg society. The proceeds of trafficking in drugs, people, tobacco and oil are mostly put back into the economy of northern Mali. Since they are doing nicely, those involved are reluctant to sign an agreement with Bamako that threatens their profits.

Intensifying climate change is making resources scarcer. There is increased competition over access to water sources, which are becoming rarer, at a time when population growth rate is among the highest in the world, at 3.6% (5).

Most rebellions in northern Mali have originated in Kidal, where inter-communal divisions are widening. The Ifogha warrior class, the traditional aristocracy at the top of the Tuareg social hierarchy (6), is being challenged by its vassals, the Imghad; and there are tensions among the Ifogha after the election of a new chief (amenokal), last year. Mohamed Ag Intalla, chosen by elders to succeed

his father, has come out against autonomy for the region, in opposition to his younger brother and rival, Alghabass Ag Intalla (a former deputy of Iyad Ag Ghaly, the Islamist rebel leader of Ansar Dine). The new amenokal, who is also a member of parliament in the president’s party, has been trying to reconcile some chiefs’ hopes of autonomy with staying in the Malian state, without openly backing the accord. His brother has used carrot and stick to win communities’ support for a tough option within the framework of the Algiers process: convincing the mediators that the accord needs to be renegotiated.

Competition between Ifogha and Imghad for control of Tuareg territory has led to violence between members of the CMA, which defends Ifogha interests, and the Imghad Tuareg and Allies Self-Defence Group (GATIA), linked to the group that signed the accord. The GATIA militia is tacitly supported by some in the Malian military, especially Colonel Ag Gamou, an Imghad known for his hostility to Ghaly.

The Gao region has fragmented similarly, and the Kunta Arab aristocracy is fighting its Lamhar vassals for control of Tilemsi. This conflict is also a struggle for control of illegal trafficking. The Lamhar in Tilemsi are part of the forces of MOJWA, the radical Islamist group that attracts Fula from Mali and from other West African countries, particularly Nigeria and Guinea, both hubs of the drugs trade. MOJWA is said to be financed through the drugs trade with Algeria, making it a competitor of some Tuareg and Arab movements.

The government in Bamako, thrown off balance by the fragmentation of the north but determined to restore national unity, is trying to exploit the situation, and this is hampering peace efforts. Since independence in 1960, the two parts of the country have been linked, not by an ethnic identity or a common purpose, but by

migration flows between the borders of Guinea and Algeria and Libya. In this shifting context, the call for an Azawadi state – a concept previously alien to the nomadic tradition – expresses a process of territorialisation that transforms useful areas of land in northern Mali into objects of desire. The identity of the people of the north is changing from a nomadic libertarian conception (the desert belongs to everyone) to one based on property rights.

So Mali’s communities – independently or with outside help – need to find a new dynamic to overcome the stalemate and bring peace to the north. The Tuareg are traditionally livestock farmers, traders and warriors. Their society was strongly resistant in the colonial period and early post-independence decades. But their ancestral values and identity are at risk from globalisation and climate change. How should they restore the vital balance without which no peace in the north will last?

Relations between the Tuareg and the other communities in the north are also shifting. They have always been complex, especially between nomads and settled populations. The Fula, Arabs and Songhai distrust the Tuareg’s dominating tendencies. The Tuareg, though far from representing the majority, are in the vanguard of autonomy claims in the coordinating organisation. These links will have to create a society capable of a compromise solution, and northern communities must unite around a project that Bamako will accept.

The crisis requires, first, a clarification of the north Malian situation, which will let representatives come to the negotiating table with clear demands representing a consensus. Then there will have to be quest for an inclusive, sustainable settlement. The accord has attempted to achieve both at once – this is what makes it original, which

seems the best possible starting point for a lasting reconciliation.

The conclusion of the accord is just one stage in a long process of national reconciliation that began last summer. Its objective was to tackle the conflict’s deepest roots, vital if there is to be an end to the cycle of rebellion and reconciliation that has dogged Mali since independence. That examination of these roots has been entrusted to a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission composed “on the basis of equitable representation of the parties” indicates the complexity of Mali’s crisis, not amenable to short-term solutions.

The accord creates a proper framework for rebuilding the nation. Ultimately, the Commission must adopt a peace charter to cement a lasting reconciliation. Transitional justice mechanisms, an anti-corruption commission and an international inquiry to investigate war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and crimes of a sexual nature are all planned.

International mediators must be patient but they need to maintain the dynamic of dialogue between the communities in the north and Bamako, and also, and especially, among the northern communities, and make sure that the majority of the population have a stake in the outcome. It must build bridges, too, between people vying for authority within their communities.

TRANSLATED BY GEORGE MILLER

(1) The Coordination of Patriotic Movements and Forces (CMFP), the Popular Movement for the Salvation of Azawad (MPSA), the Arab Movement of Azawad (MAA) and the Coalition for the People of Azawad (CPA).(2) See Philippe Leymarie, “Mali, a country divided”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, January 2013.(3) See “Mali: Reform or Relapse”, Africa Report, no 210, International Crisis Group, Brussels, 10 January 2014.(4) See Anne Frintz, “Drugs: the new alternative economy of West Africa”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, February 2013. (5) Annual average 1998-2009 (Mali National Institute of Statistics). (6) On the tensions within the Ifogha elite, see Alpha Mahamane Cissé, “Kidal: l’accord de paix déchire les héritiers d’Intallah”, Maliactu.net, 5 March 2015.

BY DANIEL BERTRAND

THE DESERT NO LONGER BELONGS TO EVERYONE

Mali: money, land and the young Globalisation and climate change are breaking up traditional Sahel societies and are behind the rebellions in northern Mali

Daniel Bertrand is Belgian ambassador with responsibility for the Sahel region. This article reflects his personal views only

Mopti

Djenne

Konna

Segou

Nioro

Kita

Timbuktu

GoundamMenaka

Ansongo

Douentza

San

Diabaly

KoulikoroKati

GossiGao

Kayes

Sikasso

Koutiala

Bougouni

Niger

S

e n e gal

Bani

Tessalit

Aguelhok

Kidal

MAURITANIA

BURKINAFASO

GUINEA

SENEGALBamako

ALGERIA

NIGER

COTE D’IVOIRE

49 480

33 70050 980

1 330

Bamako

MoptiSegou

Nioro

Timbuktu

Gao

Kayes

Sikasso

Koutiala

N i g e r

S e n egal B a ni

Kidal

Niger 300 km

300 km0

Name of tribe

Sources: OCHA, June 2015; UNHCR, June 2015; Usaid; Atlas du Mali, Les Editions du Jaguar, Paris 2010; Jacques Leclerc, “L’aménagement linguistique dans le monde”, Université Laval, Quebec, 2013; Mali National Institute of Statistics

Im g h ad

I m g h a d

Kunta

Ifogha

C É C I L E M A R I N

Major ethnic groups

Tuareg

Arabs

Fula (east) and Toucouleur (west)

Senufo and Bobo

Songhai

Dogon

Bambara and other Mandinka ethnic groups (Malinke, Soninke, Khassonke, Bozo)

Malian refugees as of 20 June 2015

Jihadist attacks since January 2015

Maximum extent of area controlled by rebels before January 2013 military intervention

Major economic activities

Nomadic herding and trans-Saharan trade

Pastoral farming

Subsistence and commercial farming

Fishing

Major population centres

Foreign military presences

International (Minusma)French (Barkhane)

Population of towns and cities

80 000 25 000

A country divided

8 JULY 2015 LMDLe Monde diplomatique

Jeremy Harding is a contributing editor at the London Review of Books. He worked as a journalist in southern Africa in the 1980s. Border Vigils: Keeping Migrants out of the Rich World, his book about migration and its opponents, was published by Verso in 2012

A body lies by the wheel of a truck in Mozambique. Three figures stand with their faces away from the camera, gazing down at the

dead man. Such scenes were common in Mozambique when this photograph was taken in 1983. The photographer is unknown: the negative was found in the archives of the Mozambican News Agency. A print is now on show at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in Johannesburg, as part of an exhibition of photographs from southern African states during the last years of apartheid, from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s.

On the Frontline records what happened in newly independent states like Mozambique when they offered support to apartheid’s enemies – above all, the African National Congress – and leaves no doubt about the strength of South Africa’s reaction or the high price they paid. There is work from Mozambique, Lesotho, Zambia and Angola and others that played host to the ANC and the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), fighting for the independence of Namibia. There are also very striking pictures from Namibia, taken at the time of South Africa’s occupation. A handful of photos tell the story of peace and rehabilitation in the aftermath of a regional war that lasted 15 years.

Mozambique and Angola won independence from Portugal in 1975, after liberation struggles that began in the 1960s. But by the time the photo of the dead man by the truck was taken, the promises of independence had withered and the country lay in ruins. Mozambique’s problems with its neighbours began soon after the Portuguese left and the new government, FRELIMO, granted Robert Mugabe’s guerrilla movement rear bases close to its border with Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Rhodesian security forces responded by sponsoring a Mozambican anti-government insurgency, RENAMO. When majority rule ended in Zimbabwe in 1980, South Africa took the movement under its wing. RENAMO guerrillas, trained and equipped by their new masters, overran remote villages in rural areas, demolished railway tracks, blew up power lines and ambushed anything that moved on the roads. They terrorised civilians and forced them into their ranks: many recruits were under 18 and technically child soldiers. (FRELIMO also recruited with sweeps through towns and villages.) By 1984 the situation was so desperate that FRELIMO agreed to expel the ANC in return for a guarantee from South Africa that it would no longer aid and abet RENAMO, but the Nkomati Accord broke down, largely because South Africa failed to keep its side of the bargain. The war dragged on for eight more years, and by the time it was over, 4 million people had been displaced and 1 million were dead.

Death is an unavoidable theme in the exhibition. A shocking photo from Lesotho, taken in 1982, shows the victims of a South African undercover assault on an ANC safe house in the capital, Maseru. In another, a deep trench is filled with bodies; it was taken in Angola in 1978 at the town of Cassinga, after one of the most devastating attacks by the South Africans in the entire regional conflict. The victims were Namibian exiles – about 600 – who

died during a sustained aerial bombardment and a South African paratroop drop.

By then there were several protagonists in the Angolan war. Its independence government, the pro-Soviet MPLA, had survived an attempt to topple it in 1975, but only with the help of a contingent of Cuban soldiers, sent by Fidel Castro to hold the line against a South African column that had come within reach of the capital, Luanda. The South Africans withdrew, but still hoped to overthrow the new regime: they cultivated, trained and supplied UNITA, a rebel movement in south Angola run by the pliable warlord Jonas Savimbi, whom the US was also preparing to fund. The MPLA was harbouring the ANC and allowing SWAPO’s liberation fighters to roam more or less freely north of the border. Pretoria could not countenance the threat of an independent Namibia with a Marxist-Leninist liberation movement in charge.

The massacre at Cassinga signalled South Africa’s willingness to raise the stakes. Sixteen Cubans, deployed from their barracks nearby to defend the town, also lost their lives. Scores of SWAPO fighters died, but most of the dead were Namibian civilians. At the time, as South African photographer John Liebenberg’s pictures show, the struggle inside Namibia was intensifying. Namibians were leaving for Angola and by 1980, according to Norwegian overseas aid figures, there were at least 40,000 refugees over the border; there were 75,000 by 1985. PLAN, the SWAPO guerrilla army, was probably never more than 18,000 strong.

Angola looked complicated to outsiders but it was a textbook cold war hotspot with two rival alliances locked in a dramatic contest: the Angolan government, the Cubans, the USSR and regional anti-apartheid fighters on one side; the US, South Africa and their UNITA auxiliaries on the other. The consequences were brutally simple. At least half a million people died, mostly from illness and malnutrition, and millions were displaced. As in Mozambique, the casualties from landmines were high, with 87,000 Angolans maimed or killed.

Angola was bullied and brutalised by South Africa, but the government and its allies put up a fight and acquitted themselves well. The sense that a long struggle was drawing to a close is clear in later photos (including some of my own). They were taken in 1988 as the tide of war turned in the government’s favour. The previous year Angola had launched a disastrous military offensive against UNITA’s rear base, deep in the south. The country’s crack brigades had been destroyed by the South African Defence Force (SADF). The situation looked hopeless, but as the SADF followed up – UNITA in the frontline – the remains of the retreating government forces dug in at the town of Cuito Cuanavale and held on. Cuba hurried reinforcements to forward positions and the SADF, encouraged by Cuban pilots flying MiG-23s, came to a judicious halt: it would have been too costly to press ahead. The siege had lasted months and Cuito Cuanavale was still in government hands. Now it was Castro’s turn to go on the offensive, deploying troops and armour close to the Namibian border, west of the recent fighting. The Russians agreed to the plan despite misgivings, and for a moment it looked as though South Africa’s border-war battalions might be stranded in Angola, unable to withdraw without heavy losses.

These photos from Cuito Cuanavale in May 1988 recorded a newfound confidence among Angolan soldiers: they’d risen to a difficult occasion and the end was in sight. In one,

BY JEREMY HARDING

SCENES FROM THE LONG, WIDE FIGHT AGAINST APARTHEID

South Africa’s short memory

‘Our leadership has betrayed the dream. They don’t have the big dream to motivate all of us to look up to something bigger than any one of us’ – Graça Machel on South African and nearby countries’ leaders

Clockwise from bottom left: South Africans withdraw from Angola,1988; Revolt in Namibia; Angolan infantrywoman, Cuito Cuanavale, Angola, 1988; Captured South African tank, Cuito Cuanavale, 1988; ANC victims of SADF raid in Lesotho, 1982; RENAMO ambush in Mozambique JOHN LIEBENBERG/JEREMY HARDING/AAM/ISG HOLLAND/MOZAMBIQUE NEWS AGENCY

The migrants so recently attacked in South Africa almost all came from neighbouring countries that paid a high price in

death and ruin for supporting anti-apartheid struggles

Angolan infantry enjoy their inspection of a captured South African battle tank. The fight for Cuito Cuanavale was not over: moments after the picture was taken, long-range shells began falling and an Angolan soldier was seriously injured. But the SADF had lost the initiative, even if it could still make its presence felt from 40km away with state-of-the-art ordnance. Its new artillery, built at home by Armscor to a Canadian design, superseded an earlier gun, which the SADF had procured from Israel in breach of the arms embargo.

In military terms, the balance of power in Angola had reached parity. South African soldiers were also fighting a war at home, with the townships in open revolt. Beyond southern Africa, the US and the USSR were moving rapidly from détente to a choreographed understanding between victor and vanquished. The SADF pulled out of Angola in August 1988, leading the way to Namibian independence. Everything changed when Pretoria called its soldiers out of Angola: the point is made in a quiet, definitive photo by Liebenberg of young white soldiers in armoured personnel carriers crossing a pontoon at the Namibian/Angolan

border. Apartheid’s days were numbered. The Cubans agreed to a phased withdrawal and, at the end of 1989, Namibian voters were allowed to go to the polls for the first time in their history. The result was a resounding victory for independence with SWAPO at the helm. Nelson Mandela was released in February 1990. The last Cuban soldiers left Angola in 1991. The MPLA was returned to power in Angola’s first western-style election in 1992.

In Mozambique, the peace process had been moving forward fast, with large foreign aid infusions to incentivise it. In 1989 Frelimo and the insurgents agreed on a new constitution, paving the way for a postwar settlement. The fighting dragged on, until elections in 1994 returned the ruling party to power. A striking photo taken after the apartheid wars shows guitarists and singers at a demining operation in northern Angola. The time had come for reconstruction, but the legacy of war was still in the ground. In Angola, unlike Mozambique, the peace was compromised when Savimbi rejected the election result. A destructive, unstable warlord, abandoned by his cold war backers, he held out against the regional settlement, keeping the conflict alive until 2002, when he was hunted down and killed.

On the Frontline is a lesson in history with a bearing on the present. While the curators were hanging the prints, a wave of anti-immigrant violence engulfed South Africa. The Mandela Centre repositioned the show as an intervention against long-term memory loss. Many of the migrants attacked in Durban and Johannesburg were from neighbouring countries that had paid a high price for resisting apartheid, whether their citizens agreed or disagreed with the stance of their governments. As thousands of migrants from Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi made their way back over the borders or sought shelter in safety camps, the Centre used the exhibition – in the words of Verne

LMDLe Monde diplomatique JULY 2015 9

Harris, research and archive director – “to remind South Africans of their indebtedness to the peoples of neighbouring countries and the many other African countries which supported our struggle for liberation.”

Opening the exhibition, Graça Machel, widow of Mozambique’s president Samora Machel and later of Mandela, criticised the South African government – and leaders of nearby countries – for abandoning the sense of purpose that had led the frontline states to defy South Africa and shaped their vision of a post-apartheid future. “Our leadership has betrayed the dream,” she said. “They don’t have the big dream to motivate all of us to look up to something bigger than any one of us.” The unstated message for the ruling ANC is that a country with 24% unemployment, high crime levels, sub-standard or non-existent housing and unaffordable utilities, should revisit the New Deal-style principles of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) that Mandela was persuaded to dilute in 1996. The recent xenophobic attacks, she said, were mostly carried out by people “who are struggling for survival themselves” and feel “pushed to the limit.”

Could a new RDP, without the flaws and anomalies of the original, broaden social justice in South Africa and bring an end to anti-immigrant feeling? Europeans are asking similar questions about economic austerity at the heart of the EU, and about the asylum seekers at its margins. There are no clear answers. In South Africa, the debate is still framed in terms of the country’s difficult past and the importance of memory. The call for social justice is really a call to keep alive the values that underpinned the anti-apartheid struggle. It is also a warning that South Africa’s elusive goal of equality can never be reached unless “the dream” – echoing Martin Luther King – is honoured and the ANC revives the tattered remains of its socialism.

Like French exceptionalism, founded on a sense of Republican tradition and exemplary values believed to be permanently under attack or about to disappear, South African exceptionialism stresses the specificity of the struggle, and the need for distinctive policy solutions, including a dirigiste state that intervenes in all areas of public life, including the economy.

Immigration and right of asylum in South Africa are under pressure: the government has sought to tighten entry with harsh visa restrictions, penalties for offenders, and greater security along the borders. Last year the home affairs minister, Naledi Pandor, announced that “economic migrants” were “abusing” the asylum process (1). The problem lies deeper. Mandela was an assiduous nation-builder, but his wish to set an example to the world was so strong, and international praise for the transition so lavish, that a heroic, self-congratulatory chauvinism took root in the new national consciousness. Graça Machel is aware of this: her call for solidarity – and a unifying narrative – goes beyond South Africa’s borders to the region as a whole.

On the Frontline is an aide-mémoire for any southern African who shares her belief in “the dream”: memory, after all, is highly selective and, in this case, deeply politicised. For this reason, it is the terrain of choice for the Mandela Foundation and its Centre of Memory. The Centre’s commemorative focus is on “the life and times of Nelson Mandela”, which allows it to select and recall a salutary past of struggle, pain, heroism and sacrifice. It also organises regular “dialogue and advocacy” events at its large, gated premises in Johannesburg, where the principles of the anti-apartheid opposition can be reaffirmed, even when the “dialogue” involves people who are not comfortable in the new South Africa, or with each other.

Last year it screened 1994: the Bloody Miracle, a documentary about the township

killings in the run-up to democratic elections; it brought together the daughter of Alwyn Wolfaardt, a member of the white ethnic fundamentalist Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) and the black policeman who shot him when he was already badly injured. It has also brokered a tense conversation between Treatment for Aids (TAC), an activist NGO defending Aids-sufferers, and members of the ANC government, whose predecessors – above all, Thabo Mbeki – were locked in denial about HIV.

This is a delicate agenda, even if the Centre strives to put its guests at ease and mediate between hostile positions. “One of the key objectives,” Sello Hatang, CEO of the Mandela Foundation, explained, “is to create a safe space for people to come and say the unsayable.” The pay-off is obvious. In managing tense encounters between hostile parties who might otherwise never meet, the Centre champions Mandela’s skills as a negotiator, and everything he stood for, including the politics of the liberation movement – well to the left of the ANC in power – in the days of the struggle. This is not hypocrisy or dissimulation: Mandela was a figure on the left; he was on the Central Committee of the Communist Party at the time of his arrest in 1962; after his release he was forced to offer up social justice as a hostage to the future of the “rainbow nation”, in the name of reconciliation. He had no choice and he chose wisely. The argument now in South Africa is about whether the revolution should be revived or left in the ground.

The Centre plays a discreet but proactive part in this debate, and moves further by the day from the policies of the ruling party. Many of its memorial interventions are focused on urgent, short-term issues: it responded very quickly to xenophobia in April, and On the Frontline has served it well in this respect. In

fact, the Centre has had a keen eye on anti-migrant violence for at least seven years. Its greatest challenge – a problem pointed out by Machel – is that recent generations of South Africans know little about the past and less about the countries from which millions of undocumented African migrants are arriving as cheap labour or corner-shop entrepreneurs. Older South Africans are still ready to thank neighbouring states for their sacrifice, and they are ashamed of the recent events. But there is no such thing as collective memory in a country where nearly 70% of the population are under 35 (2).

“No African is a foreigner in Africa,” the philosopher Achille Mbembe wrote about the recent outbursts. He argues that South Africa is defaulting on its obligation to neighbouring states. On the Frontline makes much the same argument, but its impact can only be modest. Mbembe, a member of staff at the University of the Witwatersrand, is so angry that he’s suggested costing the damage done in Angola, Mozambique and other countries – “the number of people maimed” and “the long chain of misery and destitution suffered in the name of our solidarity with South Africa” – and producing a total. “If black South Africans do not want to hear about any moral debt, maybe it is time to agree with them, give them the bill and ask for economic reparations” (3). The dream is not what it was.

LMD ENGLISH EDITION EXCLUSIVE

On the Frontline runs at the Mandela Centre of Memory, Johannesburg, until 13 July. (1) Times Live, 25 February 2014; www.timeslive.co.za/scitech/2014/02/25/economic-migrants-abusing-refugee-act-pandor(2) UNFPA South Africa, 7 October 2014; countryoffice.unfpa.org/southafrica/2013/04/22/6609/youth/(3) “Achille Mbembe writes about Xenophobic South Africa”, 16 April 2015; africasacountry.com/achille-mbembe-writes-about-xenophobic-south-africa

Clockwise from bottom left: South Africans withdraw from Angola,1988; Revolt in Namibia; Angolan infantrywoman, Cuito Cuanavale, Angola, 1988; Captured South African tank, Cuito Cuanavale, 1988; ANC victims of SADF raid in Lesotho, 1982; RENAMO ambush in Mozambique JOHN LIEBENBERG/JEREMY HARDING/AAM/ISG HOLLAND/MOZAMBIQUE NEWS AGENCY

10 JULY 2015 LMDLe Monde diplomatique

Helly Luv, real name Helan Abdulla, is an emblem of the Kurds’ fierce struggle against Islamic State (IS), releasing patriotic pop songs

available worldwide. Her music video Revolution (2015) calls on Kurds to defend their homeland against the invader – implying IS (Islamic State). With her hair dyed red and wearing battledress, gold high-heel shoes and a red keffiyeh, she single-handedly stops a column of tanks by holding up a placard reading “Stop the Violence”. In Risk it All (2014), she is surrounded by female fighters wearing eye make-up and nail varnish, brandishing Kalashnikovs. Like her other songs, they reflect the charisma of Kurdistan’s female fighters, and reinforce interest in them.

The Kurdish leaders, wherever they are geographically, did not wait for the war against IS to appoint women to key military and political positions. As far back as 1909, Adila Khanim succeeded her husband as the governor of Halabja and head of the Jaff, one of the biggest tribes in Kurdistan, and is still famous for her success in re-establishing law and order in the region. Two modern female colonels, Nahida Ahmed Rashid and Aila Hama Amin Ahmed, use her as inspiration for Battalion 106, an all-female unit, established in 1996 in Sulaymaniyah, an Iraqi town under

the control of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) (1).

Ahmed Rashid and Hama Amin Ahmed have been in this unit since its creation, because of “the imperative of taking up arms to defend our threatened nation” and the impossibility of staying at home while their compatriots were being killed. They did not hide the difficulties, particularly in tackling the reticence of Kurdish society in Iraq. Hama Amin Ahmed, who has dedicated her life to the struggle and has not married, said: “We had to overcome many obstacles. It was a battle. This freedom (to become a soldier) is not a favour that men conceded to us; we fought for it.” Ahmed Rashid said: “A female soldier does not imitate a masculine model. It is within her rights to take up arms.”

Admiration for these female fighters is not a reason to overlook the Iraqi Kurdish authorities’ communication strategy, carefully crafted for western media consumption: the female presence generates sympathy and attracts foreign support for the fight against IS. And the female fighters are reluctant to talk about oppression of women in Iraqi Kurdish society. Ahmed Rashid and Hama Amin Ahmed rejected the idea that the army helps emancipation in a patriarchal society, saying that their fellow citizens are liberated and do not need to be soldiers to be equal to men.

But they are hardly representative, as the phenomenon remains marginal. The female battalion has 500-600 members, and there are

a few dozen more female soldiers in other units – out of an army of 190,000.

The publicity masks the far more complex reality of women’s status in Iraqi Kurdistan. Khanim Latif, director of Asuda, an NGO campaigning for women’s rights since 2000, said there are still many problems, including the still too common honour killings. Aso Kamal, a human rights activist, has estimated more than 12,000 women were killed on KRG territory between 1991 and 2007, all honour killings (2). NGOs are concerned at the number of women who set themselves on fire, usually a sign of extreme distress caused by family pressures. Between real domestic incidents and disguised suicide attempts, reliable figures are difficult to obtain, but Asuda reports 19 cases in Sulaymaniyah in 2014.

Kurdish girls also face early marriage. This very common practice is growing, especially in the poorest villages and within displaced populations, where marrying off a daughter has economic benefits. Latif said the lack of

access to education is a determining factor: “In some villages, there is no secondary school. So girls have nothing else to do except stay at home and wait to get married.” She also mentioned the problem of genital mutilation, which according to a report by the NGO Wadi affects 57% of girls between 14 and 18.

However, the KRG, unlike other parts of Iraq, has made considerable legislative efforts. In 2011 the Kurdish parliament adopted “law no 8” on domestic violence, stipulating that psychological and physical violence within families, forced or early marriage, genital mutilation, marital rape and discrimination in education are all crimes. The law provides for the creation of a special court to deal with domestic violence, as well as improving conditions of care and follow-up of victims (3). But Latif says the law is largely symbolic: “Voting a law without implementing concrete means to ensure its application is absurd. It’s the whole system that needs to change.” It has taken time to put some measures in place, and NGOs complain about the lack of funding. Changing ways of thought permanently means a long-term struggle with public awareness campaigns targeting religious and tribal representatives, doctors, police and families.

The authorities do not always guarantee the transparency and independence of the judiciary. Reports and testimonies show that many perpetrators of violence face mild or no sanctions if the act is considered

Nada Maucourant is a doctoral candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London

BY NADA MAUCOURANT

STILL UNEQUAL DESPITE FAMOUS ARMY FIGHTERS

Kurdistan’s bold, brave womenIn Iraqi Kurdistan, there are only about 600 women in the legendary Kurdish female battalion – out of an

army of 190,000 troops. And women fight just as hard against the structures of Kurdish society

‘In some villages, there is no secondary school. So girls have nothing to do but stay at home and wait to get married’

Tunisian woman have long been regarded as highly emancipated and have benefited from a unique status in the region since Habib Bourguiba’s

presidency. His Personal Status Code, which came into effect in 1957, banned polygamy and forced marriages, and gave women the right to divorce, making them an exception in the Muslim world. Women have had the vote since 1959 and abortion has been legal since 1973. Several Tunisian women have been ministers. Former president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali sold this image of liberated Tunisian women wherever he went.

But after he fell, in January 2011, it became clear that this was not a universal picture. Just a few kilometres from the capital with its female doctors, lawyers and company presidents, illiterate Tunisian women fight to survive in extreme poverty, precariousness and violence. With a fragile economy, social conflicts and frequent bloodshed, Tunisians have learnt just how conservative their society really is. The liberal circles in Tunis had never previously understood the extent of the problem.

Little has changed since 2011, but at least women have won the right to be involved in

politics and express themselves. Today people talk freely and everyone agrees that is positive – especially women. “At last we see Tunisia as it really is. We can identify the real problems. That freedom has a pernicious effect since it challenges some of our rights, but at least we know where the threat lies,” said sociologist Khadija Cherif about the way free speech has liberated chauvinistic discourse.

Nobody has forgotten that the new constitution (adopted in January 2014) originally specified women’s “complementarity” to men before that was changed to “equality”, or the reactionary remarks on television by Habib Ellouze, a deputy for the Islamist party Ennahda, who referred to female genital mutilation as “aesthetic surgery”.

This new discourse accompanied legislation by the Islamist parties and the rise of extremism. As a result, most women resisted what they saw as a threat and voted for Béji Caïd Essebsi in the December 2014 presidential election, believing that he would protect better against insecurity and the jihadist threat than his rival Moncef Marzouki. According to Sigma, the Tunisian polling company, Caïd Essebsi won 56% of all votes and 75% of all women’s votes (1).

“Now more than ever, women’s rights are a crucial issue in Tunisia and we haven’t won the battle yet. We’ve got the legislation but we have yet to change people’s mentalities,” said Souhayr Belhassen, journalist and honorary president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). According to Emna Mnif, a professor of medicine, “As soon as you leave the major cities you find regions that have never been modernised.” She is involved in the development of such regions, and said that since Bourguiba, the Tunisian elite has refused “to acknowledge that there is another culture in Tunisia, a conservative one rather than a religious one, and that it was necessary to reach out to it.”

Amira Yahiaoui, the young director of Al Bawsala, an NGO that monitors the work of parliament, said that since 2011, instead of a dialogue between the “modernist” elite and everybody else, there has been “exclusion and contempt which has exacerbated the rift between women.” The Bardo Museum terrorist attack in Tunis on 18 March, which left 22 dead, appears to have reduced the polarisation of society – either for or against Ennahda. On 26 June further gun attacks took place in the resort of Sousse. Is this a real turning point?

There has been no return to a patriarchal system, but there has been a clash between social

models: one is secular, and predominates mainly in the northern suburbs of Tunis, the other is more traditional and religious, and feels that it deserves compensation for the years of repression under Bourguiba and Ben Ali.

The town of Béja is 110km from Tunis but feels light-years away. The reputation of this northwestern agricultural region is that the women work, while the men are unemployed and spend their time in cafés or at home. According to Hosni Abdel Karim, chairman of the Association of Integrated and Sustainable Development in Béja, women in rural areas have been ignored in Tunisia, though 34% of the population lives in the countryside. “In Tunis they discuss women but know nothing about them. They can’t begin to imagine rural living conditions, where you have to fetch and carry water and wood.”

A few kilometres away I met five women bent over double, digging a field of peas. One, aged 30, supports an unemployed brother and an elderly mother and admitted that life is hard. “But I can’t read or write, so what else can I do?” She works a few days a month for a farmer and earns 10 dinars (about $5) a day, rising at 6am.“My boss hires me some weeks but not others. He says that he’s having trouble making ends meet himself.”

BY FLORENCE BEAUGÉ

‘WE HAVEN’T WON THE BATTLE YET’

Tunisia: city feminists, rural conservativesThe sophisticated, educated, although not always employed, women of Tunis live quite

different lives from their sisters elsewhere in the country. Both fear and resent the other

Florence Beaugé is a journalist

LMDLe Monde diplomatique JULY 2015 11

“justified” by the victim’s behaviour. In other cases, judges have suggested the rapist marry his victim to restore her honour (4). The tribes remain very influential, since they often interfere in proceedings to protect their members, offering financial compensation to victims and their families in exchange for silence.

There have been some changes in cities. In 2008 the number of women burnt in the name of family honour was 2.5 times higher on the outskirts of Sulaymaniyah than in the city centre (5). Violence is decreasing and genital mutilation happens less often (6).

The women’s rights organisation Zhiyan is trying to change attitudes and keep up pressure on the government, with the help of a network of 30 NGOs. It has been particularly active in the case of Duniya, 14, married twice, and tortured and killed by her polygamous husband (7). Since he thought he was protected by his tribe, he claimed responsibility for the murder on YouTube, where he spoke about his offended honour – Duniya loved a boy of her own age. Zhiyan and other feminist groups organised protests and a sit-in in front of parliament, and demanded strict implementation of the law, without tribal interference; they asked for all involved in Duniya’s marriage to be tried, including her family and the religious dignitary. This case – still ongoing – illustrates the failure of the KRG’s legal provisions. It also shows a vigorous society, determined to fight for its rights.

Perseverance sometimes pays off. In 2000 Asuda opened the first shelter for women at risk from honour crimes. There are now shelters in all three governorates of Iraqi Kurdistan. In 2007 the KRG put in place a directorate in the interior ministry to collect data, and make cases of violence visible. In 2009 the High Council for Women’s Affairs was created, made up of women’s rights campaigners, chaired by the prime minister, and working closely with NGOs and governmental institutions. A quota system has now been established, reserving 30% of seats for women in the Kurdish parliament. “The situation in Iraqi Kurdistan is much better

than the rest of the country but that’s not what we are aiming for. That’s not enough for us,” said Latif.

A recent graduate of Sulaymaniyah University embodies this desire for independence and autonomy. She rages against patriarchal society, and especially against women who accept and help maintain it: “I don’t want to have a house, children and a husband for whom I have to cook. It’s as if women have two lives: one before marriage and the other after, with all the duties that go with it. Is this what love means? To submit to another person’s desires without anything in exchange?” She has never had problems with her family, but knows that not all of them share her views, so prefers not to give her name. “Some of my close friends disapprove, but I want to challenge them. I want to travel, to be well educated, to be even stronger and freer. But I would like to return to Kurdistan and show them that I can live, with my ideas, in my own country.” She is sceptical of Helly Luv, who “was brought up in the West, where it was very easy for her.” As a matter of principle, she refuses to sit in spaces reserved for women in restaurants and is offended by the Kurdish tradition of only thanking male family members.

TRANSLATED BY HAMZA HAMOUCHENE

(1) See Vicken Cheterian, “Poised to profit”, and Allan Kaval, “The Kurds’ changing alliances”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, May 2013 and November 2014.(2) “Iraq: Kurdish government promises more action on honour killings”, Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), Erbil, 27 November 2010.(3) “The Act of Combating Domestic Violence in Kurdistan Region – Iraq”, act no 8 of 2011; www.ekrg.org(4) “Working Together to Address Violence Against Women and Girls in Iraqi Kurdistan”, International Rescue Committee, New York, August 2012.(5) Nazand Begikhani, Aisha Gill, Gill Hague and Kawther Ibraheem, “Honour-based Violence (HBV) and Honour-based Killings in Iraqi Kurdistan and in the Kurdish Diaspora in the UK”, University of Roehampton, UK, November 2010.(6) “Significant Decrease of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Iraqi-Kurdistan, New Survey Data Shows”, Wadi, Frankfurt, Germany, 20 October 2013.(7) Tracey Shelton, “Kurdish Teenager’s ‘Honour Killing’ Fades to Memory as Iraq Violence Swells”, Huffington Post, 17 July 2014.

More and more girls in rural Iraqi Kurdistan face the prospect of early marriage

DIJWAR RUSHDI

Her life is like that of other women in the region, said Ichrak Gharbi, who teaches physical education in a Béja high school. “They’ll do any work for just a few dinars. They work in the fields, tend livestock, do the milking, make bread… They travel on the back of trucks like cattle, with no protection against the elements. The men refuse to work for so little but the women have no choice. Work is important because it gives them some independence.”

In the south, more and more boys are leaving the school system, but in the north, young girls are withdrawn and sent to the fields. “I have even seen fathers selling their 13-year-old daughters to be servants in Tunis,” said Gharbi.

Women are treated no better in the hinterland of Monastir further south. This is the stronghold of the textile industry, which accounts for 19% of GDP, but the factories are closing down. In Ksar Hellal and Ksibet El-Mediouni, 7,500 have lost their jobs in the past few years, 86% of them women. The employers (chief among them the Belgian textile group Jacques Bruynooghe Global, which supplies H&M and Zara), fires long-serving workers from one day to the next, and the women, who have too few qualifications to find another job, do their best to survive, waiting until they can get a pittance of a pension. “I’m 42 years old, I have two children and a work-related illness. I’ve been told that at my age I’m no longer profitable. I have no social security cover,” one told me. A mother of four said, “I found another job but it was illegal and I only got paid for one month out of three. When I protested, my boss said, ‘You let yourself be exploited by a Belgian but you won’t let me, a Tunisian, do the same?’” According to official statistics, women only hold 25% of jobs. In 2014, 12.7% of men and 22.5% of women were unemployed. For graduates, the rate was 21.2% for men, and 40% for women (2).

In Ksibet, population 25,000, the feeling is that “everything has got worse since the

revolution.” There is resentment against the women in the capital. “Those bourgeois women from La Marsa [a smart seaside resort north of Tunis] with their fancy speeches get on our nerves,” said a 28 year-old accountant. “They only represent themselves,” said a French teacher. But when it came to equal inheritance rights, these young women – one wearing a hijab, the other unveiled – agree with the “bourgeois women from La Marsa … It’s not fair that sons inherit two thirds and daughters only one.” Since the Quran states this explicitly, no government has been able to legislate on it. The teacher, who volunteers at a women’s centre, is concerned about the increase in violence against women: “According to our surveys, one women in two is subjected to physical violence.”

Although the south is far from rich, women there believe life is better: “Here the men are hard workers.” In Zarzis, Medenine and Djerba, veils and long dresses are the norm, and women are pleased to be able to wear the scarf freely, without having it removed by force as in the Ben Ali days: “That was agony.” They described how the families of Islamists were harassed, having to report to the local police station up to eight times a day. The region got its own back in the legislative election, for while Tunisia as a whole dropped Ennahda, the conservative south voted for it.

In Tunis, the name of Marzouki, president from December 2011 to December 2014,

rouses bitter feelings because of his supposedly lax stance on the Islamists. But in the south, he is venerated. “He is a doctor and an honest man, we miss him,” said a woman in her forties, a divorcee who teaches in Medenine. She claimed to be content despite the difficult environment: the harsh climate, barren land and lack of transport. “I feel happy here. I support my father. Family solidarity makes up for the rest.”

In Djerba, there was a party at the house of Nour Houda, in her 40s, who had persuaded her husband to let her work in the voluntary sector. The party was for her cousin’s wedding and the women wore traditional costume and veils. One, aged 30, said “Nothing interested me before the revolution. Now I work in my husband’s weaving workshop and soon I’ll be the boss … I can do what I want and I’m proud of it.” Before 2011, when wearing a veil or working for a civil society organisation were both forbidden, husbands feared any initiative by their wives because of potential retaliation from the powers that be. Houda learnt how to use the Internet and now trains other women “so that they can relate to their children.” Here as elsewhere, mothers feared that their sons might be tempted by jihad, as men from every region of Tunisia have joined IS (Islamic State). One partygoer knew four young people who had gone to Syria – one had died there: “We don’t understand. They were normal people, not extremists.”

Besma Jebali, a young woman with a degree in human resources, refused to vote during Ben Ali’s 24 years in power. Today she is an Ennahda representative for Djerba. She is irritated by the labels allocated in Tunis that differentiate between “democratic” women who don’t wear the veil and the veiled women who are accused of defending “an antiquated model of society”. She believes that “we are all democrats and the veil makes no difference. It’s merely a religious item of clothing that has become legal, and not an obligation.”

She refuses to let women in the capital monopolise the identity of Tunisian women. “If a woman raises her champagne glass and says ‘I represent Tunisian women’, then I say to her, no way, you are in the minority. You have the right to drink alcohol and live with your partner outside marriage, but you will not impose that model on the rest of us.”

In Tunis, where, in good faith or not, Ennahda is often equated with Salafist extremists, this kind of remark worries people, as few can conceive that the Islamist party may have evolved, and claim instead that its members lie.

In Tunis the stress is on education, which has stagnated since the Ben Ali years. Samira Maari, minister for women and the family said: “My priority? Children. Today 90% of kindergartens are private, often run by non-profit associations or Quranic schools, with no inspections or controls.” Former president Marzouki has admitted that “this country’s strength in the 1970s was its educational level. Today my main concern is the sorry state of our universities.”

Many are worried that the traditional model of society will persist. “Women have developed a lifestyle that is adapted to Islamist requirements. I don’t see that as a fashion or a cover-up but something deeper, that won’t just disappear over time,” said Neila Chaabane Hamouda, a former secretary of state for the family. In Tunis, people want to fight that model because of the Salafist threat, but elsewhere that approach is seen as counterproductive because of the tensions it causes. But woman all over the country claim to be fighters who won’t accept anything imposed on them by force.

TRANSLATED BY KRYSTYNA HORKO

(1) “Un million de femmes ont voté BCE”, interview with the chief executive officer of Sigma Conseil, WMC, 26 December 2014.(2) Survey for 2006-14 by Tunisia’s National Institute of Statistics.

‘Now more than ever, women’s rights are a crucial issue in Tunisia and we haven’t won the battle yet’

12 JULY 2015 LMDLe Monde diplomatique

Religion continues to produce, with undeniable success, combative ideologies that contest social or political conditions. Two of these

have had much recent attention – Christian liberation theology and Islamic fundamentalism. A clue to their natures is found in the correlation between their rise and the fate of the secular left in their geographic zones. The history of liberation theology roughly parallels that of the secular left in Latin America, where it is seen as a component of the left. Islamic fundamentalism, though, developed in most Muslim-majority countries as the left’s competitor, and has replaced the left in trying to channel protest against what Karl Marx called “real misery”, and the state and society held responsible for it. These opposite correlations indicate a profound difference between the movements.

Liberation theology is the main modern embodiment of what Michael Löwy calls an “elective affinity” between Christianity and socialism (1), drawing together the legacy of original Christianity (which faded, allowing it to become an institutionalised ideology of social domination) and “communistic” utopianism (2). It explains the ability of the theologian Thomas Münzer to formulate in Christian terms, in 1524-5, a programme for the German peasant revolt that Friedrich Engels described in 1850 as an “anticipation of communism in fantasy” (3).

This same elective affinity explains why the worldwide wave of leftwing political radicalisation that started in the 1960s could take on a Christian dimension – especially in peripheral countries where most people were Christian, poor and downtrodden. This was especially the case in Latin America, where the Cuban revolution boosted radicalisation from the 1960s. There was a major difference between this modern radicalisation and the German peasants’ movement analysed by Engels: in Latin America, the Christian “communistic” utopianism was combined less with longing for past communal forms (though there was such a dimension among indigenous peoples’ movements) than with the modern socialist aspirations of Latin American Marxist revolutionaries.

Islamic fundamentalism, on the other hand, took advantage of the rot in the progressive movement. Beginning in the 1970s with the demise of radical middle-class nationalism (symbolised by the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970 after his defeat by Israel in the 1967 war), reactionary forces using Islam as an ideological banner spread in most Muslim-majority countries, fanning the flames of Islamic fundamentalism to incinerate what remained of the left. They filled the void created by the downfall of the left and soon imposed themselves as the main vector of the most intense opposition to western domination: they had incorporated this opposition from the start, but had not stressed it during the “secular” nationalist era. This opposition prevailed again, within Shia Islam, after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. And it regained prominence within Sunni Islam in the 1990s when armed detachments of militant Sunni fundamentalists switched from fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan to fighting the US, after the defeat and disintegration of the Soviet Union, and in reaction to the US’s military return to the Middle East prompted by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

In this way, two main brands of Islamic fundamentalism came to coexist across

Muslim-majority countries, one collaborating with western interests, the other hostile to them. The stronghold of the first is Saudi Arabia, the most fundamentalist and obscurantist of Islamic states. The present leading anti-western brand among Sunnis is represented by Al-Qaida and its offshoot, the so-called Islamic State (IS); its stronghold within Shiism is the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Both brands share a dedication to a medieval-reactionary utopia – an imaginary and mythical project of society turned towards the past. They seek to re-establish their vision of the society and state of early Islamic history. In this, they share a formal premise with liberation theology’s reference to original Christianity. However, the programme of Islamic fundamentalists is not idealistic principles of “communism of love”, stemming from an oppressed, poor community on the fringes of society, whose founder was put to death by the temporal power of his time. Nor is it based on some ancient form of communal property, as was in part the 16th-century German peasants’ revolt.

Islamic fundamentalists are dedicated to the implementation of a mythologised, medieval model of class rule from almost 14 centuries ago, whose founder – a merchant turned prophet, warlord, and builder of state and empire – died at the peak of his political power. As is the case with any attempt to restore an ancient class society and polity, the project of Islamic fundamentalism amounts to a reactionary utopia.

This project is in elective affinity with ultra-orthodox Islam, which has become the dominant current within Islam, backed by the Saudi kingdom. This Islam is conducive to religious literalism through its cult of the Quran, deemed God’s final word. What in most other religions is now fundamentalism as a minority approach – a doctrine advocating

the implementation of a literal interpretation of religious scriptures – has a key role within mainstream institutional Islam. Because of the specific historical content of the scriptures it tries to stick to, ultra-orthodox Islam is conducive to doctrines that argue that the faithful implementation of religion requires a government based on Islam, since the Prophet fought to establish such a state. For the same reason, drawing on Islam’s history of war of expansion against other creeds, ultra-orthodox Islam is particularly conducive to armed fight against non-Muslim domination.

Acknowledging the elective affinity between ultra-orthodox Islam and medieval-reactionary utopianism, in contrast with that between original Christianity and communistic utopianism, doesn’t preclude recognising countervailing tendencies in each. Christianity has a long tradition of reactionary and fundamentalist doctrines. Conversely, the Islamic scriptures include a few egalitarian relics from the period in which the first Muslims were an oppressed community; these have been used to devise socialist versions of Islam.

That there are different elective affinities in Christianity and Islam does not mean that the historical development of each flowed

naturally along its specific elective affinity. It adapted to the configurations of the class society with which each religion became interwoven – hugely different from its social origin in Christianity, less so in Islam. For several centuries, Christianity was less progressive than Islam in many regards. Within the Catholic Church the fight continues between a dominant reactionary version represented by Joseph Ratzinger (former Pope Benedict XVI) and the upholders of liberation theology, given new energy by recent leftwing radicalisation in Latin America.

Acknowledging an elective affinity between Christianity and socialism does not mean that historical Christianity was socialist, to be sure. Likewise, to acknowledge the elective affinity between the Islamic corpus and the current medieval-reactionary utopianism of Islamic fundamentalism does not mean that historical Islam was fundamentalist – it was not – or that Muslims are doomed to fundamentalism, whatever the historical conditions.

Even so, in (original) Christianity and (literalist) Islam, this awareness is a clue to understanding the different historical uses of each religion as a banner of protest. It allows us to understand why liberation theology could become so important to the left in Latin America, while all attempts at producing an Islamic version of it remained marginal. It also helps us understand why Islamic fundamentalism has been able to become so important among Muslim communities, and why it came to supersede the left so successfully in embodying the rejection of western domination, even though on reactionary social terms.

The superficial Orientalist impression, now widespread, which considers Islamic fundamentalism to be the “natural” ahistorical inclination of Muslims, is nonsense. It overlooks historical facts. A few decades ago, one of the largest Communist parties in the world – officially with an atheistic doctrine – was in the country with the world’s largest Muslim population – Indonesia. (The party was violently crushed by the US-backed Indonesian military after 1965.) In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the main political organisation in Iraq, especially among the Shia in the south, was led not by a cleric, but by the Communist Party. Nasser, who presided over Egypt’s socialist turn in 1961, was a sincere believer and practising Muslim (even though he became the fundamentalists’ most bitter enemy). His influence at the peak of his prestige in the Arab countries and beyond remains unequalled.

It is necessary to locate every use of Islam, as for any other religion, in the concrete social and political conditions where it happens. It is also necessary to make a clear distinction between Islam as an ideological tool of class and gender domination, and Islam as the identity marker of an oppressed minority – in western countries for instance. The ideological fight against Islamic fundamentalism – its social, moral and political views, not the basic tenets of Islam as a religion – should remain a priority for progressives among Muslim communities. But there is little to object to in the social, moral and political views of Christian liberation theology – except for its adherence to the Christian taboo on abortion – even for hardline atheists of the radical left.

ORIGINAL TEXT IN ENGLISH

(1) This draws on a concept elaborated by Max Weber. See Michael Löwy, The War of Gods: Religion and Politics in Latin America, Verso, London/New York, 1996.(2) “Communistic” is used here to distinguish this utopianism from the communist doctrines formulated with the advent of industrial capitalism.(3) Friedrich Engels, The Peasant War in Germany (1850), in Marx-Engels Collected Works, vol 10, Lawrence and Wishart, London, pp 397-482.

Gilbert Achcar is a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. This article is adapted from Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism, Saqi, London/Haymarket, Chicago, 2013

BY GILBERT ACHCAR

COMMUNIST CHRISTIANITY AND FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM

Banners of protestChristian liberation theology and Islamic fundamentalism both protest and contest social

and political conditions in their host societies. But they don’t want the same changes

As is the case with any attempt to restore an ancient class society and polity, the project of Islamic fundamentalism amounts to a reactionary utopia

Jerusalem, sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam YEVGENIA GORBULSKY/SHUTTERSTOCK

LMDLe Monde diplomatique JULY 2015 13

With the arrests of high-level FIFA officials on corruption charges in May, the world of professional football held its breath. FIFA

scandals are commonplace, but when the association’s president Sepp Blatter announced his decision to step down, the scale of the crisis seemed unprecedented. An FBI investigation into bribes worth €88m, spanning three decades, led to the arrests.

Corruption allegations related to FIFA presidential elections and especially World Cup bidding processes have tainted the organisation before. It is an open question for now who will succeed Sepp Blatter, and whether the locations for the next two World Cups – Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022 – will change.

Next to the World Cups, most of the money in football goes to the top European clubs. A huge chunk comes from multimillion sponsor deals with multinational companies, deals that receive far less attention from watchdogs than they ought to.

Zlatan Ibrahimović took off his shirt during a game for Ligue 1 winner Paris SG this season and showed a tattoo with the names of 50 starving children. It was a personal gesture to raise awareness of hunger, showing a social responsibility not always reflected adequately in the agreements clubs have with sponsors. Some of the companies now backing Europe’s top clubs are accused of child labour, illegalities, and rights and labour abuses.

Champions League finalist Juventus – and semi-finalists Real Madrid and Bayern Munich – are sponsored by electronics giant Samsung, which acknowledges labour violations among suppliers in its latest sustainability report, although it denies accusations of child labour. FC Barcelona, winner of the European trophy, has among its sponsors Panasonic, accused of discrimination and rights violations in its supply chain, and Intel, which sources from the giant manufacturer Foxconn, accused of much labour abuse. Then there is Barcelona’s shirt sponsor, Qatar Airways, owned by the Qatari government, which is widely criticised for its unwillingness to tackle slave-like conditions in its construction sector. Foul play among sponsors includes Maxxis/CST, sponsor of Liverpool and of Dutch runner-up Ajax Amsterdam, and accused of excessive, illegal, overtime at a Chinese factory it owns (1).

According to UN principles, clubs should approach sponsors over reports of human rights abuses. “Sports clubs should consider carefully their engagement with sponsors, and also advocate change where a sponsor’s business practices are not respectful of children’s rights,” said Bo Viktor Nylund, global chief of corporate social responsibility at UNICEF. He said that the agency’s children’s rights and business principles make it clear that corporate responsibility to respect those rights applies to a business’s own activities and also to its business relationships.

Lucy Amis of the Institute of Human Rights and Business, a UK thinktank, recommends that clubs investigate sponsors’ records on human and labour rights, and include the issue in sponsorship and licensing negotiations. “Football clubs have a clear-cut responsibility to take relevant steps to know about and to end or mitigate human rights abuses occurring within their direct influence, including regarding their sponsors.”

Clubs focus on human rights mostly through charity and community initiatives implemented by their foundations. Many clubs, especially from the Premier League and Bundesliga, but also elsewhere in Europe, have established such charitable arms to handle their off-pitch fair play.

Chelsea Foundation invested €6.8m last season in programmes of education through football, and promotion of inclusion, equality and health for 910,952 participants, mostly young people. Chelsea’s record revenue of €448.5m last season, reportedly including €25m annually from a Samsung shirt deal, was seventh highest in Europe according to Deloitte’s Football Money League. The logo accusing Samsung of child labour and the Foundation’s anti-discrimination logo have figured side by side on players’ kits for the last two seasons.

In Germany, professional football provides more than €20m a season to support about 400 social projects for the young, for people with disabilities and for migrants, many implemented through the clubs’ foundations.

Top clubs also participate in campaigns and initiatives by league associations targeting racism, discrimination and hooliganism, such as the “Let’s kick racism out of football” campaign in the UK. “Such initiatives make sense in football. Social responsibility efforts in a particular industry naturally should focus on the specific challenges of the industry,” said Tim Breitbarth, senior lecturer in sports management at Bournemouth University. “But respect for human rights is more than combating racism and promoting equality, and should be included in all meaningful stakeholder relations, including suppliers and sponsors. The key is to

implement social responsibility in the core structure of the organisation.”

In this perspective, the fair play efforts off the pitch by many top clubs seem far from progressive. But some clubs are ahead of the game. “Social responsibility is broader than community projects. Our goal is embedding it into our organisational DNA. It’s a big change and takes time to discuss with colleagues on all levels, but we have come far,” said Nico Briskorn, director of corporate social responsibility for Bundesliga runner-up, VfL Wolfsburg.

VfL Wolfsburg was the first football club in Europe to publish a sustainability report (in 2011) based on the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. The report has a long list of indicators for the club to measure its progress on human rights, labour practices, governance and the environment. There was a progress report in 2014; more transparency can lead to more criticism, and VfL Wolfsburg is aware of that. As Briskorn says, “Transparency is a premise for trust and moving together with stakeholders.”

Such openness is hard to find. If clubs produce reports at all, most focus solely on charity-like initiatives such as the Chelsea and Real Madrid Foundations. But Juventus last season followed VfL Wolfsburg by publishing its first sustainability report, which explicitly stressed the importance of focusing “more on the sustainability objectives and actions of sponsor companies.” That statement is the result of worries of possible damage to Juventus’s reputation because of inappropriate behaviour by a sponsor.

VfL Wolfsburg does not address human rights in sponsor relations, but Briskorn said: “We are still considering it and might develop guidelines or requirements on this in the future. Suppliers must sign our code of conduct, but this is not the case for sponsors.” Manchester United’s club charter says that suppliers must respect human rights, including no use of child or forced labour, but nothing about sponsors.

Clubs are still not challenged or pushed to develop social responsibility in sponsor

relations or in other ways. The reports from Juventus and VfL Wolfsburg are a breakthrough. “External pressure on clubs to increase responsibility is virtually non-existent in professional football. Clubs have supporters, not customers as in other businesses,” said Breitbarth. Supporters do not change clubs easily, but are extremely loyal – even in bad times, when discontented customers head for a firm’s rivals.

The media and watchdog organisations don’t put on much pressure, except when rights-violating countries such as Qatar, Russia or Brazil are chosen for sporting mega-events – the Olympics or World Cups. The Champions League doesn’t rouse the same indignation, even though public interest and television viewership are comparable. The four-yearly World Cup final has a billion viewers, yet the Champions League final with its “just” 380 million is annual.

“Top clubs could and should use their leverage to push sponsors to ensure that labour rights are upheld throughout their supply chains,” said Ilana Winterstein, director of communications at Labour Behind the Label, a watchdog and part of the Play Fair global anti-sweatshop campaign.

At the other end of the stakeholder spectrum, the governing bodies of football, the leagues and associations and UEFA (Union of European Football Associations), have power to introduce legislation, incentives or volunteer initiatives focusing on responsibility in sponsor relations. UEFA introduced the Financial Fair Play regulations in 2011 to improve finance in European football, but there are no binding UEFA obligations for social responsibility actions by clubs. The umbrella organisations try to lead by example with campaigns and projects. UEFA expresses no specific stance on responsibility in sponsor relations. “It is positive to work together with sponsors and partners in order to spread positive CSR messages and campaigns,” said Patrick Gasser, social responsibility senior manager at UEFA.

Some sponsors have highly developed social responsibility policies that clubs could learn from, and sometimes sponsors publicly demand more responsibility from clubs. Progressive sponsors with the UN principles on business and human rights as the basis of their efforts might even raise the bar among clubs. Menzis, which sponsors Dutch team Vitesse Arnhem, last season criticised it for putting up with discrimination.

The sportswear giant Adidas, which sponsors UEFA’s Champions League and many European top clubs, also sponsors FIFA. This May Adidas was asked about its FIFA sponsorship and the human rights situation in Qatar, the 2022 World Cup host. Adidas, already a target of much supply chain criticism, confirmed its recognition of international labour conventions and its dialogue with FIFA on human rights issues (2). This should suggest a commitment by Adidas to engage others it sponsors in human rights dialogue too.

Clubs could do more by using their leverage, since their brands are highly valued by sponsors and supporters worldwide. As Breitbarth says, “Corporate social responsibility is not about what you do with the money you earned, but about how you earned your money.”

LMD ENGLISH EDITION EXCLUSIVE

(1) Juventus was open to an interview request, but not for two months. Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Liverpool and other clubs did not respond to requests. Chelsea, Manchester United and Ajax Amsterdam declined.(2) Response from Adidas to a survey by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), a British non-profit organisation. BHRRC questioned Adidas, Coca-Cola, Visa, Hyundai Kia Motor, McDonald’s, Gazprom, and Budweiser in May 2015, with reference to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Peter Bengtsen is a journalist

BY PETER BENGTSEN

FOOTBALL GIANTS DON’T CHECK ON SPONSORS

Where the money comes fromNext to the World Cups, most football money goes to top European clubs, which are getting

better at their own social responsibility but aren’t yet holding their sponsors to account

Qatar, whose airline sponsors Barcelona’s shirts, has been criticised for failing to tackle slave-like conditions in its construction sector

MIGUEL RUIZ/FC BARCELONA VIA GETTY IMAGES

‘Social responsibility is broader than community projects. Our goal is embedding it into our organisational DNA. It’s a big change and takes time to discuss’ – Nico Briskorn, VfL Wolfsburg

14 JULY 2015 LMDLe Monde diplomatique

“W e’re experiencing a Belle Epoque,” said Roberto Roy, Panama’s canal affairs minister.

His office entrance hall is decorated with images of cargo ships and of the digging of the canal between 1880 and 1914. After Juan Carlos Varela’s re-election as president in 2014, Roy is sure to keep his job, and with the help of a diorama he explained the rosy prospects: “We’ve never had such strong growth. In 1996, 235,000 containers passed through the canal; in 2010 it was 6.5m, and thanks to the widening work, we’re predicting 12.4m in 2020” (1).

Panama City, on the Pacific coast, is home to 1 million out of a population of 3.8 million. As the widespread building work indicates, it is expected to benefit from the balance of the global economy shifting towards the Asia-Pacific region. “You know,” said Roy, “we’ve actually been in the logistics business for 500 years: it’s all thanks to our privileged geographic position.”

“Privileged position” may be putting a favourable spin on the history of a peripheral country dragged forcibly into globalisation. In the 16th century, the Spanish used Panama as a bridgehead for their conquest of South America. Panama

City was an interface between metropolitan Spain and its empire, and a transit centre for Peruvian gold. When precious metal prices collapsed in the 18th century, it came under US control. During the mid-19th century gold rush, the Panama Rail Road Company handled trans-shipment of sea freight between New York and California, and was at one point the highest-priced stock on Wall Street. The opening of the canal completed Panama’s transformation into part of the US “backyard”.

A number of Latin American countries at the time asserted independence with a policy of industrialisation through import substitution. In contrast, Panama “commercialised its sovereignty” (2) to secure its place in the international economy. Between urban development to attract foreign capital, and the canal, catering to international trade, Panama placed itself at the service of all – except its own citizens.

Like many Caribbean island states, Panama became a tax haven in the 1970s. Being in the same time zone as New York, it quickly became the second largest stock exchange in the Americas. “In 1969 I was economy minister,” former president Nicolás Ardito Barletta (1984-5) recalled (3), “and I felt we should strengthen our banking sector … there were huge amounts

of dollars in circulation, so we passed legislation that allowed the development of both offshore and domestic banks.” Ardito Barletta, a “Chicago boy” (a student of neoliberal economist Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago), is still congratulating himself: “We are now the most financialised economy in Latin America. Before the legislation was passed, there were only a dozen foreign banks in Panama. Ten years later, there were 125, and deposits had increased from $800m to $47bn. Today, the banking sector supports 25,000 jobs in the capital.”

Thanks to special legal dispensations and a network of consulates in major ports, Panama also excels at selling flags of convenience; it is thought that nearly one in four ships worldwide are registered there. Panama has gone so far in shedding the attributes of sovereignty that it has neither its own currency (it uses US dollars except for coinage) nor its own armed forces (they were disbanded in 1990), and remains in a state of neocolonial dependence on the US.

The business quarter in Panama City stretches for 10km along the coast. Like the boomtowns that grow up around a goldmine, the city owes its growth to the exploitation of international capital movements. Speculation led to a building and real estate boom: prices have quadrupled in ten years.

Empty tower blocks line the seafront. Unlit at night, in the dark they become a shapeless mass facing the muddy shore.

After the banks came the regional headquarters of multinationals, followed by luxury hotels and grandiose condominiums. The latest extravagance is Ocean Reef Islands, a man-made archipelago inspired by Dubai. None of this development was planned by the city authorities. “Everything is left to the private sector,” said urban planner Alvaro Uribe (no relation of the former Colombian president). “The state only intervenes after the fact, to ensure that new building lots are connected to the electricity, water and road networks.”

Panama City’s development, entrusted to market forces, is typical of the oligarchic approach. From the early 20th century, rich entrepreneurs started to develop new neighbourhoods. Having made a fortune in bananas, Minor Keith developed the Bella Vista district in the 1910s. In the 1950s, the Duques, newspaper magnates, built the smart La Cresta district. Costa del Este, currently under construction, is the ultimate manifestation of the privatisation of urban development. “The project was started in the 1990s,” said Uribe. “The businessman Roberto Motta bought up a lot of small parcels of land on a former landfill site, in anticipation of the building of the highway

BY ALLAN POPELARD AND PAUL VANNIER

PANAMA FOR EVERYBODY EXCEPT THE PANAMANIANS

Capital designs a dream city Panama City has no urban planning – the city authorities merely supply utilities to privately

developed or restored zones. The whole country is run by and for its oligarchs

Bay of Panama

Miraflores Locks

Pedro Miguel Locks

Corre

dor S

ur h

ighwa

y

Pacific Locks

Port of Balboa

Ancón Hill

Ocean ReefIslands

Bridge of

the Americas

Canal

Pa c i f i c O c e a n

SAN MIGUELITO

PUNTAPACIFICA

PUNTAPAITILLA

PUNTAAMADOR

ALBROOK

PANAMAPACIFICO

(HOWARD)

CLAYTON

BOCA LA CAJA

CASCOANTIGUO

BELLAVISTA

LA CRESTA

VIEJOVERANILLO

CHORRILLO

COSTADEL ESTE

TOCUMEN

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way

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high

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1970s onwards: financialisation

Urban development over the years

1990s onwards: cultural heritage development

2000s onwards: redevelopment of returned territory

Redevelopment of former US military basesCanal widening work

Canal zone border (1904-1999)

Spanish colonial city

Business quarter

Impoverished enclave Road

Urban area Highway

Luxury home developments

0 2 4 6 kmCÉCILE MARIN

Pacific Ocean

NICARAGUA

COSTA RICA

PANAMA

Panama City

COLOMBIA

Caribbean Sea

Allan Popelard and Paul Vannier are geographers

LMDLe Monde diplomatique JULY 2015 15

All over the world, more people are being deprived of legal status in the countries they live in. In Europe, hundreds of thousands of

undocumented people are at risk of being locked up in one of 390 administrative detention centres. In China, more than 250 million internal migrant workers (mingong) who have left their home province without official permission, in search of a better life, have become second-class citizens without access to education or healthcare. The “lost Canadians” – many of them Amerindians not covered by the citizenship act of 1946 – are stateless in their own country. Their situation is similar to that of Kuwait’s bidun (without state), mostly people of Bedouin origin who failed to register with the nationality committees set up ahead of independence in 1961 (1). In the Baltic states, Russian residents or residents of Russian origin (more than 15% of the population of Latvia) are treated as non-citizens, rejected and marginalised. In Bosnia, those who refuse to be pigeonholed as Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs or Catholic Croats are referred to as “the others” and do not have full political rights.

Though they have no documentation recognised by the authorities of the countries they live in, Europe’s undocumented do have a nationality, unlike the “lost Canadians” or the bidun, who are legally stateless. But without adequate identity papers, they too are deprived of political, economic and social rights.

New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, has moved to give the undocumented residents of his city (around 500,000 people) legal status: since January, they can apply for a municipal identity card, valid for five years, that will give them access to public services (including libraries and hospitals), and to banks and other organisations that require proof of identity. The card also allows them to apply for jobs, and gives them free entry to cultural institutions (including Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and reductions on the price of medicines. Adopted by the city council in June 2014 (by 43 votes to 3), the ID cards have had an enthusiastic reception, with thousands of applications as soon they became available.

De Blasio’s initiative recalls the Nansen passport, issued by the League of Nations (LN) after the first world war and named after its inventor, the Norwegian scientist and polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen. A diplomat, statesman, visionary and humanist, Nansen in 1920 was made head of Norway’s delegation to the LN, where he was given responsibility for organising the repatriation of 450,000 prisoners of war (the LN’s first humanitarian mission). After the successful completion of this task, Nansen became the LN’s first High Commissioner for Refugees in 1921.

In this role he dedicated himself to helping the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the war, including Magyars who had taken refuge in Hungary after being expelled from neighbouring countries, survivors of the Armenian genocide, Muslims expelled from Greece and Christians who had fled Turkey. Aware that a major problem they faced was a lack of internationally recognised identity papers, Nansen invented a passport, valid for one or two years and renewable, the first legal instrument for the international protection of refugees. This idea won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 (2). The Nansen International Office for Refugees, established by the LN in 1930 after Nansen’s death, received the Peace Prize in 1938.

Between the two world wars, the Nansen passport was issued to 450,000 people, including Russian refugees fleeing civil war who had become stateless after a decree in 1922, and members of former minorities of the Ottoman empire. Among the multitudes were celebrities such as the ballerina Anna Pavlova, the composer Igor Stravinsky, the painter Marc Chagall, the writer Vladimir Nabokov and the photographer Robert Capa. The document meant they were no longer stateless and could travel freely, claim rights and integrate into their host countries. The Nansen passport disappeared with the dissolution of the LN, but the United Nations would do well to take inspiration from it and give legal status and basic rights to the 10 million stateless people in the world today.

TRANSLATED BY CHARLES GOULDEN

(1) See Alain Gresh, “Kuwait’s citizens without rights”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, July 2013.(2) See Bruno Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918-1924, Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Chloé Maurel is the author of Manuel d’histoire globale (A Global History Textbook), Armand Colin, Paris, 2014

BY CHLOÉ MAUREL

NO LONGER STATELESS

New York’s new Nansen passport

Mayor Bill de Blasio has launched an ID card for undocumented migrants, like the Nansen passports issued

after the first world war

from the city centre to the airport.” He has turned a no-go area into one of the most fashionable districts of Panama, which has become home to many Venezuelans escaping the “Bolivarian revolution”. Motta has built a monument to himself on the palm tree-lined promenade where the joggers run.

“For many years, the 10 most powerful families in Panama were kept out of canal business,” said Marco A Gandaségui, a sociologist at the University of Panama. “While the Americans controlled the canal, they had to pursue other business activities. When 60,000 workers arrived in Panama to dig the canal, in the early 20th century, they naturally turned to the provision of housing. They were able to build considerable fortunes through speculation.”

The property sector grew by 29% in 2013, compared with 8% for GDP, and the wealth of Panama’s oligarchs continues to be based on rental income. As a result, it is thought that 40% of the capital’s population are below the poverty line and 50% have no access to safe drinking water. No political opposition parties seem to be able to emerge. “In other Latin American countries, abstention rates are high, but the turnout for the last presidential election here was 78%,” said Gandaségui. Politics in Panama seems locked into a pattern of one oligarch succeeding another.

In the muddy harbour at Boca la Caja, Luis Alberto Mendoza stowed the nets on his fishing boat, the Pirulo Dos. Boca la Caja is an informal settlement in the heart of the financial district – a few dozen houses of wood and corrugated iron between the Multiplaza, Panama’s biggest shopping centre, and the Corredor Sur, the coastal highway. Nearby stand the foundations of the capital’s biggest real estate project, abandoned after the Spanish developers went bankrupt. With its fruit trees and farmyard animals, Boca la Caja feels like a village. It is home to 150 offshore fishermen who eke out a meagre living; to reach the harbour they use a tunnel under the highway embankment.

After weathering so many storms, some of them are giving in to self-interest. Juan Rodríguez had done his sums: “I own 150 square metres of land, which my parents bought for $2,800. I could get $2-3000 per square metre, which comes to over a quarter of a million. Then I could buy something in Arraiján, or even Tocumen.” Others have already left for those suburbs.

The relegation of the poorest to the outer suburbs, started by real estate speculation, accelerated when the historic centre, the Casco Antiguo, was redeveloped for tourism. Once impoverished, decrepit and disreputable, it was transformed after being designated a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1997. Streets were paved, electric power cables were buried, street lighting was renovated, and a parking facility was built. The poor were evicted. Houses were restored, but doors and windows were bricked up to prevent the return of their former occupants. Driving the urban poor before it, gentrification is now advancing towards the Chorrillo slums. A single street, guarded by the police, separates two worlds.

“What’s happening in the historic centre of Panama,” said Eduardo Tejeira Davis, architect of several museums in the Casco Antiguo, “has happened in all Latin American cities. It started with San Juan, in Puerto Rico, in the 1950s, then Antigua, in Guatemala, in the 1960s and 70s, and Cartagena, in Colombia, in the 1980s and 90s. Here, it started in the 2000s. The only difference is the people who are investing

and moving in. In the old colonial town of Panama City, it’s foreigners.” Given special treatment by the state, Europeans, North Americans and Colombians all work with the same estate agents and architects, buying up the finest colonial era buildings, converting them to flats and selling them on. “They make five or 10 times what they invested,” said Tejeira. And they help to standardise the urban environment.

The results of this policy of “strategic beautification” (4) and eviction of the poor, are clear. Panama welcomed 421,000 tourists in 1997, more than 1.6 million in 2014. The country and its capital are the second most popular destination in Central America, after Costa Rica. People come to stroll through the old colonial city, shop in the huge malls, and watch ships passing through the locks on the canal. Tocumen, home airport of Copa Airlines, funnels much of Central America’s air traffic, and Caribbean cruise liners call in at Panama City.

Since the early 2000s, the authorities have been redeveloping former US military facilities. These served as bases from which to launch operations against progressive Latin American governments during the cold war, and to repress social protest in Panama. They were handed back to Panama in 1999 (5).

The Panamá Pacífico development, on the site of the former Howard airbase, a dozen kilometres from the city centre, beyond the Bridge of the Americas, lies in a dip in the hills, close to the sea. Hills covered by jungle, ocean rollers on one side, loops of barbed wire on the other, checkpoints, keep out signs – even the low grey sky seems to fence in the site.

Stooping over a scale model of the 1,400-hectare project, Roberto Pereira of London and Regional, the real estate multinational that is developing Panamá Pacífico, touched the screen of his tablet. Small red light bulbs on the model flashed in turn: “Here, there will be a business park; here, we plan to build 20,000 homes.” The former military base is gradually turning into a North American city suburb, with banks, fastfood restaurants, housing estates and a golf course. On the airport runway, bombers and green battledress have given way to private jets and black suits. But, for the moment, the old barracks are still there, and the letters USMC (US Marine Corps) in red lettering on the hangar walls. The commercial makeover fails to conceal its military past.

Marisin Italia Correa, of the government agency responsible for supervising the Panamá Pacífico development, said: “We act as a one-stop contact point for all the other branches of government whose services investors will need when they move in. Social security, work permits, building permits, visas: we can handle everything here – you don’t have to go into town.” The government has also established a legal framework that infringes democratic principles. “Under law 41 of 2004, the so-called investment stability law, it can’t change the rules here for 10 years.”

When the canal was started, at the end of the 19th century, the “Panama scandal” ruined hundreds of thousands of savers and triggered a reaction by some states. France created an impôt de bourse (financial market tax), on share and bond transactions, abolished in 2007. More than a century later, capital seems to have won back all the rights it lost. Now mobile and globalised, it is turning states and their capital cities into instruments for guaranteeing and supporting its movements. The entire history of Panama City foreshadowed this reversal of roles.

TRANSLATED BY CHARLES GOULDEN

(1) See François Musseau, “Tailbacks in Panama”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, September 2014.(2) Expression coined by Ronen Palan, “Paradis fiscaux et commercialisation de la souveraineté de l’Etat” (Tax havens and the commercialisation of state sovereignty), L’Economie politique, no 15, Paris, 2002/3.(3) Disagreements with chief of staff General Manuel Noriega, who held de facto power in Panama, soon led to his resignation.(4) An expression used by Walter Benjamin to describe Georges-Eugène, Baron Haussmann’s transformation of Paris. It underlines the dual aim of modernising and securing the urban environment – to the benefit of the bourgeoisie, and at the expense of the proletariat.(5) Under the Torrijos-Carter treaties, signed in 1977.

Panama has gone so far in shedding the attributes of sovereignty that it has neither its own currency (it uses US dollars except for coinage) nor its own armed forces

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ID card scheme recalls Fridtjof Nansen’s initiativeKEYSTONE-FRANCE/GAMMA-KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES/JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES

16 JULY 2015 LMDLe Monde diplomatique LMDLe Monde diplomatique JULY 2015 PB

Do you spend more time than you think you should surfing the Internet? Are there particular areas of the Internet, or types of

files, you find hard to resist? Do you find it hard to stay away from the Internet for several days at a time? These questions are from the Orman Test for diagnosing Internet addiction, and according to this assessment, nearly half the online population is addicted. China has already called it a public health priority. Experts worldwide are working to draw up standardised diagnostic criteria, clinical tests, treatment protocols and prevention campaigns.

Clearly more people are finding it difficult to disconnect. Their online activities gradually spill over into their lives, to the detriment of their sociability, work and studies. But does that make “Internet dependence” a disease? The scientific community can’t reach a consensus on that dependence being pathological. In 2008 Internet dependence disorder was excluded from the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), for lack of convincing evidence. However, the debate continues and the World Health Organisation has yet to decide whether or not to include it in its 2017 International Classification of Diseases.

The history of cyber-dependence dates to the 1970s, when Joseph Weizenbaum, an engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, observed that many of his colleagues were stricken by a “programming frenzy”, with high connection times, neglected personal hygiene and social exclusion – which he thought symptoms of “mental disorders”. In the 1990s, the rising popularity of the Internet and the resultant fears and excitement, encouraged research into experiences of virtual reality and its potentially addictive qualities: anonymity, escapism, accessibility and interactivity. Internet dependence was then sub-categorised into video gaming, cyber-sex and social networking. In 1996 the New York psychiatrist Ivan Goldberg had introduced it as a joke, posting a parody of the proliferation of disorders listed in the DSM (which rose from 106 in 1952 to 400 in 1994) that included “Internet addiction disorder” (IAD) (1).

The disorder entered the medical vocabulary in 1996 by a more orthodox route when Kimberly S Young, a psychologist in Pittsburgh, applied the accepted diagnosis for “pathological gaming” to online habits and spread the idea on forums for people self-diagnosed as having that problem. Young bought online advertising space and acquired the keyword “Internet addiction” on Yahoo (2), bringing many enquiries and requests for consultations. From then on, the psychological mechanism of “compulsion” – difficulty in resisting or failure to resist a behaviour that may harm oneself or others – was identified as the cause of problems related to excessive use, such as the inability to resist going online and a feeling of deprivation without the Internet, and related negative social consequences (divorce, professional or educational problems and financial difficulties).

In 2013 the DSM-5 editorial team withdrew “pathological gaming” from the “Impulse control disorder” category (3), claiming that the inability to leave a computer screen could come under a new generic category: “substance-related and addictive disorders” (4). Allen Frances, editor of the previous edition of the DSM, and Stanton Peele, a behavioural addiction specialist, criticised this shift of the concept of addiction to a biological category (5). By replacing dependence with addiction (mild, moderate

or severe) and adding “irresistible craving”, DSM-5 implies that there is a biological risk common to Internet addiction, gambling and drugs. The craving symptom, caused in theory by an imbalance in dopamine production, was diagnosed merely by asking patients if they had ever experienced an overwhelming desire to take drugs (6).

This aspect is crucial, for individuals diagnosed as addicts (rightly or wrongly) through this approach are eligible for medication to suppress that desire. But is having problems with being offline for a week a symptom of a psychological need, or does it reflect a society in which all social, educational and professional activities transit

the web? The Internet may be the cause of these excesses but it could also be the cure, with forums bringing users and health professionals together, online psychological consultations and applications for monitoring or controlling connection times to the most “addictive” sites. (A wrist rest, the Pavlov Poke, delivers a mild electric shock when the user spends too much time on a given site.)

Besides the medical controversy over definition, there is a more overtly political criticism. For future research purposes, the editors of DSM-5 used the diagnosis devised by the Chinese psychiatrist Tao Ran, who has defined addiction as six consecutive hours a day online for three months, outside of school and work use. But by what standards and values do we establish a scientific diagnosis that creates a hierarchy of social practices according to their economic productivity?

By deducting time for work and study from total Internet usage, Tao has demonstrated the futility of the concept. In a world where people are required to be constantly online for professional and educational purposes, is there a moral frontier that distinguishes healthy practices from pathological ones according to implicit economic utility? Should it be considered normal to spend eight hours a day at the office with eyes on a spreadsheet, while spending six hours a day on video games requires medical treatment? In DSM-5, Internet addiction is disconnected from any economic system or IT tools that profit from that addiction, such as the video game industry, software companies and social networks.

Viewing addiction solely in neuroscience terms limits both the scope of research and the possible solutions. To date, excessive use has been managed socially, culturally and politically but there is no international consensus. The US and China keep to the standardised hypothesis of a neurological illness, but differ on how it should be treated. The US has set up a competitive and privatised care system determined by insurance companies, while China has established military-style boot camps with confinement and patients acknowledging their “illness”. France and Quebec favour a comprehensive case-by-case psychosocial approach. Japan, having discovered the extent of its “social problem” when Young’s diagnostic questionnaire was translated in 2006, has started to finance treatment centres.

TRANSLATED BY KRYSTYNA HORKO

(1) See David Wallis, “Just click no”, The New Yorker, 13 January 1997.(2) Kimberly S Young, “Internet addiction: the emergence of a new clinical disorder”, CyberPsychology & Behaviour, vol 1, no 3, New Rochelle (New York), 1996.(3) Ting-Kai Li, Charles P O’Brien and Nora Volkow, “What’s in a word? Addiction versus dependence in DSM-5”, The American Journal of Psychiatry, vol 163, no 5, Arlington (Virginia), 2006.(4) Nancy M Petry and Charles P O’Brien, “Internet gaming disorder and the DSM-5”, Addiction, vol 108, issue 7, Hoboken (New Jersey), 2013.(5) Allen Frances, Saving Normal: an Insider’s Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, HarperCollins, New York, 2013; Stanton Peele, “Politics in the diagnosis of addiction”, Huffington Post, 15 May 2012.(6) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed, American Psychiatric Association, Arlington, 2013.

Virginie Bueno is a professor of sociology at the Université de Montreal, Quebec

Only disconnectThe world’s health authorities haven’t yet decided whether spending too long

online can be classified not just as an addiction, but an actual disease

BY VIRGINIE BUENO

Is having problems with being offline for a week a symptom of a psychological need, or does it reflect a society in which all social, educational and professional activities transit the web?

Hooked: can we get away from the tyranny of the net?

BILL HINTON/GETTY IMAGES

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