tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86965894642347909522024-03-13T21:41:29.650-07:00Foole's No Man's LandExplorations on the margins of law and politicsLouisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.comBlogger134125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-55244170485780411362016-01-12T12:34:00.005-08:002016-01-12T12:34:59.955-08:00On Elections in Volatile States<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I had the honor of participating in a panel event on the theme of Elections in Volatile States at the City College of New York a few weeks ago. CCNY's <a href="http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/05/31/afraf.adv023" target="_blank">Nick Smith</a> organized the event (yeah IDRF class of 2009!) and <a href="https://politicalscience.vassar.edu/bios/zamampilly.html" target="_blank">Zachariah Mampilly</a> and <a href="http://polisci.cofc.edu/about/faculty-staff-listing/day-chris.php" target="_blank">Chris Day</a> (yeah USIP Jennings Randolph class of 2010!) also provided commentary.<br />
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We're now a couple of weeks out from the first-round of presidential elections in CAR and so far things seem to be holding together. Many of the points raised by the discussion remain pertinent, and you can <a href="http://www.totalwebcasting.com/view/?id=ccny" target="_blank">watch it here</a>. As a bonus for those who stick through the whole thing, I make some provocations toward the end... </div>
Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-84376134322621555232015-12-22T08:13:00.000-08:002015-12-22T08:13:07.889-08:00Threat Economies and Armed Conservation in CAR<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I've been working on several articles that explore threats as a kind of performative speech act. The first, looking at threats and hiding in the case of armed conservation, is now published. (A second one, on threats and rebellion, is in review-process purgatory.) It's <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718515002249" target="_blank">available here</a>; if you don't have access to the journal, email me and I can send a copy. </div>
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The gist is that critical academic accounts of conservation often emphasize its coerciveness in relation to people living in and around parklands. And while that's an important point to draw out, my research in northeastern CAR complicates that picture. Because even though CAR has arguably been among the places where conservation has been most violent, a wide range of people -- including peasants -- were able to effectively threaten each other in order to claim entitlements, particularly entitlements to the status of an income. </div>
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Read it, and tell me what you think!</div>
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Full abstract follows...</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #2e2e2e; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Microsoft Sans Serif', 'Segoe UI Symbol', STIXGeneral, 'Cambria Math', 'Arial Unicode MS', sans-serif; line-height: 23.68px; word-spacing: -1.24453px;">This article, based on ethnographic and archival research in the northeastern parklands of the Central African Republic (CAR), explores the area’s history of armed conservation. Critical scholarly accounts of armed conservation practices and projects often starkly contrast the people involved in them: there are agents of the state, or state-like actors, who seek to dominate, territorialize, and discipline, often using violence to do so, and there are local populations who are dispossessed of their lands and resources without compensation and forced into new kinds of poverty, despite rhetoric and practices meant to inculcate “local participation”. The case presented here forces us to re-think these accounts. Rather than pursuing authority in the sense of expanding control over other people, people in northeastern CAR (whether putatively in favor of or opposed to conservation) are working to create and maintain access to the status of an income. To do so they engage in practices of threatening and hiding. While the means to use physical force are not equally shared, capacities to threaten and hide are widely held, and organizational and other hierarchies are unstable, making it difficult to describe any of this as a matter of domination and resistance. Expanding on literature that examines processes of green militarization (Lunstrum, 2014), the article focuses on the interactional dynamics of armed conservation to show that threats are as important as acts of physical violence, and that hiding—whether in the bush or plain sight—is critical to understanding armed conservation in an area where the state is largely seen as absent.</span></div>
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Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-75604135613675490482015-06-19T08:23:00.001-07:002015-06-19T08:23:51.853-07:00Penis-snatching returns to Tiringoulou (in Written Form)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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About six hours after returning to Tiringoulou, a town of a
few thousand people in far northeastern CAR where I did research in 2009 and
2010, a resident asked if I was the one who had written <a href="http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/genital-theft-africa-central-african-republic-53341" target="_blank">an article about thepenis-snatching incident there</a>. He turned his laptop to show me the web page.
Yes, I replied, that’s me, simultaneously surprised and curious how he’d ever
come across it. He then showed me the transcript of the Facebook chat he’d had
about the article with his cousin in Canada, back when the article came out in
2013. <o:p></o:p></div>
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We were both cadging Internet from an international medical
NGO in town, which had a fickle solar-powered satellite connection. At first I
thought everyone working on computers under the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">paillotte</i> was strangely lazy, as they spent long minutes staring
into space, typing nothing. But they were just waiting to see if a webpage would
load. Mostly, it never did. There is no cell phone network in Tiringoulou. Prominent
people – the many generals of the town’s armed group, a few of the NGO staffers
– carry bulky Thuraya satellite phones in their breast pockets, the antennas poking
out the top. If a call comes in, the person must run out to a spot with good
sky access or else the call drops. Even then, many times the call will drop, or
it won’t be possible to hear. Communication with far-away places feels tenuous,
the result of answered prayers rather than an entitlement. <o:p></o:p></div>
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(At the same time, there are unexpected sources of technological
resilience: when the generator got temporarily fixed everyone rushed to charge
gadgets. The watchman’s radio started emitting a steady stream of smoke and we
could smell its innards on fire. And yet when he turned it on, it still got the
same couple of stations it had gotten before.) <o:p></o:p></div>
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But here, too, people had followed articles I had written,
as well as radio interviews I’d done. Several of the people I’d gotten to know
on my earlier visits said they had heard me on RFI and appreciated my analysis.
“You got it all right. You really understood things,” they said, which made me
feel good but also wonder if perhaps I hadn’t been quite critical enough. These
guys are members of armed groups, after all, and are responsible for a lot of
destruction and violence. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In the olden days of anthropology, the first half of the 20<sup>th</sup>
century, anthropologists could largely expect to do their research among some
remote people and write books and articles that their subjects would never
read. In recent decades communication technologies and other developments have
shattered this illusion of distance between the people we once called
informants and the products of our research. Many anthropologists have tried
newly collaborative methods as one way of profiting from these changes. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
And yet I had still felt like since I mostly write in
English about a francophone area that has only very slippery access to
long-distance communication I was somehow stuck in that older model: the solo
anthropologist separated from her interlocutors. Until this return to
Tiringoulou, I hadn’t fully appreciated how wrong I was, and I hadn’t fully
appreciated the loneliness accompanying the misguided conception I’d had. This
time, eating grilled chicken dipped in Chadian chili powder with General
Tarzan, I discovered another nebulous layer of meaning in the anthropological
project. I’m not quite sure what it is. It’s not new solidarity, exactly, in
that while I empathize with guys like him and appreciate his analysis, I don’t
have sympathy for the violence he and his fellows have perpetrated. Maybe it’s
simply the sense that people in Tiringoulou know what I’m doing and see value
in it. At least as much value as a (delicious) grilled chicken, anyway.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-24077121361875970352015-01-05T07:11:00.000-08:002015-01-05T07:11:00.303-08:00The Wealth of the Prosperity Gospel<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I arrived at
Mission Rhema two hours into the four-hour Sunday morning service. An usher
helped my friend Henri, who lives nearby but is not a member, and I to find
seats in the full but orderly semi-enclosed space that the church rents from
the Central African Women’s Organization. Bright pink and yellow cloth draped
from the ceiling gave the place a festive, circus-like feel. From the front, a
woman spoke into a microphone, her voice intense yet a bit flat, trance-like,
in its cadence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">She told of how
she’d had nothing and had no idea how she could give the church anything, but
somehow she managed to give more than she ever thought she could. And lo, she
was immediately rewarded: for her job, she was supposed to go <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">en mission</i> but when her boss saw her he
didn’t even greet her. He just said, “You have been given a promotion!” And
that promotion came with a huge raise, of course. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">We had arrived
in the midst of testimonials, the heart of the service at this evangelical
church. One by one, men and women, most of them between the ages of twenty and
forty, came up to recount how they had been destitute, or unlucky, and then
gave some huge amount of money (referred to as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">donner les voeux</i>, or handing over one’s wishes) to Mission Rhema.
Having given to God so much “that it hurt,” he then provided for them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">One woman
recounted how she had been scammed out of a house (she purchased the house not
knowing that the person she bought it from was not the owner) and then, after
having given her wishes to Rhema, she was rewarded with not one but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">two</i> houses, each far larger than the one
she had lost. Each testimonial was precise in the amounts of money spent, lost,
and gained, the value of the houses acquired, as well as the terms of the “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">appels d’offre</i>” and the “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">droits d’exploitation</i>” received in
return and so forth. The frankness with which those bearing witness rattled off
these sums unnerved me, both because I’m not used to discussing personal
finances so forthrightly in public and because I couldn’t quite understand how
people with so little could give so much – on the order of a thousand dollars or
more. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Everyone (except
the young kids, many of whom napped) listened, rapt, to the tales. The entire
body of a young woman sitting near me and wearing the sash that marked her as a
church stalwart was joyful: she leaned forward in her chair, her expression
open, as if ready to leap up at any moment. The stories were as satisfying as
good Hollywood films. I could empathize with people’s tragedies all the more
knowing that things would inevitably turn out better than ever in the end. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">And yet they
also made me uneasy. The helping hand these people received from on high after
they handed over money to the church was more helpful than I could quite
believe. Wasn’t this really some kind of pyramid scheme, in which people with
very little give it all away and receive none of the expected material benefits
in return? The witness accounts couldn’t possibly be true, could they? They
must have been embellished. The whole affair seemed exploitative. And yet that
was clearly not the experience of the congregation, which was, in a word,
joyful, even despite the paucity of song that is usually my favorite part of a
service. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Eventually the
pastor recovered the microphone. He had laryngitis but told us not to feel
sorry for him. And it was easy to do as he said – he was funny and had an easy
rapport with the audience, teasing us about God catching us unawares in our
bathrobes. He too had tales of having given far more to the church than he ever
thought he could, and how it had so obviously paid off. He told of the Mission
Rhema bus that had recently been purchased and was en route from Cameroon, of
the parcel of land purchased for the Mission Rhema conference center,
plantation, and school they were starting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">As things we
winding down, the pastor began calling up the couples who would soon wed at the
church, sweet-looking young pairs who he ribbed in a good-natured way, telling
only-slightly embarrassing stories of their arrivals at the church. The clock
showed that we were an hour and a half past the stated end time for the
service, but I’d have gone on listening to him for a good while longer – the
pastor made me laugh, and I liked him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">We had an
appointment to chat after the service, so I made my way to the front and waited
while he received people. He knew everyone’s name, and he inquired after their
families and their affairs. When I’ve seen ministers or other Central African
dignitaries interact with the populations they are meant to serve, the encounters
have been marked by a profound sense of hierarchy, as if the big person and the
supplicant are not just from different classes, but are rather different <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kinds</i> of people, almost as if they are
different species. That was decidedly not the case in the way the pastor
interacted with his congregation. He was a kind, fun, and yet also wise uncle. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was shown a
chair to wait in. From behind me I sensed people busy with some task, and I turned
to look. A man held a black plastic bag (the kind offered at the Lebanese
grocery stores in town – thin but not ultra-thin) as wide as he could, and a
woman reached into a blue barrel (the kind people use for rainwater catchment,
larger than an oil drum) and scooped out fistfuls of cash and coins. The
plastic bag was by now bulging, impossibly full, and as they closed it and
moved on to the next I heard the faint tinkle of coins settling amid the bills.
They noticed me noticing them, and I turned away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">As the pastor
and I walked to his office one of the women who had witnessed during the service
came over to say hello. The pastor asked how she was doing and she replied that
she had never been better. Her face radiated joy. The pastor explained as we walked
away that the woman had been poor but started a sewing business around the time
she joined the church. Now she had eleven employees and supported an even
larger circle of relatives. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The pastor could
not find his key so we settled in the shade outside his office and chatted for
the next forty-five minutes about how he had gotten into this line of work.
After obtaining a university degree, he had expected to be integrated into the
public service, but he graduated just a few years after structural adjustment
ended the policy whereby all graduates received state jobs. He worked as a
commercial lawyer for the Central African oil company, and when they were
bought by Total he was told he could keep his job but the salary would be cut
by 75%. So he returned to another interest: evangelical Christianity, which he
had been active in while an exchange student in Romania. He was accepted into
the <a href="http://www.haggai-institute.com/" target="_blank">Haggai Institute</a>, a program that trains people to be missionaries in their own countries, and upon return to CAR founded Mission Rhema. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">He claimed not
to take a salary from the church and instead to live off the proceeds of his
livestock businesses. (He raises goats and chickens, growth industries in this
city of people who love meat, especially since the supply of cattle has
declined now that the Muslims involved in that market have by and large left.)
His attire seemed to back this statement up. It was fancy, but it was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Central African</i> fancy, not the kind of
international fancy of someone who lives much of the year in France or Dakar,
like so many Central African politicians. He explained that he wanted to help
Central Africans learn practical business skills (investing, planning, accounting)
so that they can succeed in the private sector and not see working for the
government as their only option. Through the church, he would provide various services
traditionally associated with the state to the congregation: transportation,
jobs, health clinics, schools. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">When I left, I
didn’t know what to think. On the one hand, I was still uncomfortable with the
idea of people giving so much money in the hopes that doing so would cause God
to bring them vast material benefit. And yet I’d quite enjoyed the experience
and was inspired by much of what the pastor had to say. Mostly I appreciated
the rapport he had with his congregation, which violated what I think of as the
norms of comportment governing relations between important people and the hoi
polloi, which dictate formality, supplication, and a decided power imbalance
(the supplicants have no recourse if they are in the end ignored). I’ve written
articles about this political divide. And yet this church compound provided the
experience of a different world, one in which God provided agency and efficacy
for all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mostly, visiting
this church was a chastening reminder of the fallacy of thinking about politics
in Central Africa like a secularist, cordoning off politics and religion as if
they were entirely separate realms. It also reminded me that however much
mistrust and uncertainty I see in social life in CAR, there remain public
places where you can leave a handbag unattended and not have to worry about it
being stolen. Admittedly, that might be partly because all the money inside has
already been handed over. But it’s not the only reason. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-25412058364779500142015-01-01T07:55:00.000-08:002015-01-01T07:55:19.750-08:00Boomtown on the Oubangui<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Recently back
from a quick trip to Bangui, allow me to share some impressions. What surprised
me most was the traffic and general bustle. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Even despite the
fact that many taxis and minibuses were stolen during “the crisis,” as many in
Bangui refer to the violence of the past two years, never have I seen so many
traffic jams in the city. (I’d have said too that never has it been so hard to
cross the street, except that I was mostly not on the street – for the first time,
instead of hoofing it from place to place and hitching a taxi where I could, I
hired a private taxi, for safety. Things were calm during my visit, but it
hasn’t been long since a flare-up, and the general sense is that thieves still
abound.) Vendors with gaudy Christmas gifts – balls that look like they’ll stay
inflated for about as long as it takes to bring them home, neon-colored tinsel
– as well as the usual boys balancing towering pyramids of boiled eggs and
women expertly carving the green peel off oranges to reveal fragrant, glowing-white/yellow
orbs crowded the sidewalks and spilled out into the streets. For their part the
streets are more potholed and rutted than ever, the effect of no maintenance
and the constant stress of peacekeeper tanks and armored vehicles. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Being in Bangui
during such a not-yet-post-conflict purgatory reminded me of another time I was
in the capital under similar circumstances. It was June 2003, my first visit
and just three months after Bozize’s successful coup. Then, the roads remained
empty. Much of the downtown remained shuttered after the pillaging and looting.
The only sign of playfulness amid the tension was a statue of the ousted
president that was each day dressed in colorful drag. There were few
restaurants open, and as I recall the mobile phone service was poached from
towers across the river in DRC. (To meet people for interviews, I called
landlines! That, more than anything else, makes it feel like long, long ago.) A
grand total of four INGOs worked in the country then: Oxfam-Quebec, COOPI,
MSF-Spain, Handicap International. Today, there are fifty or so. Even with the
unofficial curfew, never have the posh cafes and restaurants done such brisk
business. A new(ish) Lebanese-run “fast food” (by Bangui standards) joint is
packed every day for lunch, both because it serves up decent burgers and
falafel and because it suits the temporality of humanitarian work: always in a
rush, if only to write the next report. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ve read about
booming wartime economies before – <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jWMbRYLMV8MC&printsec=frontcover&dq=carolyn+nordstrom&hl=en&sa=X&ei=q22lVNCrLcGegwT34IOwBw&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">Carolyn Nordstrom</a> has written about then
evocatively, and a bit polemically – but I wasn’t expecting to see one here in
Bangui, which I think of as a rather sleepy place. Many Central Africans wonder
what the humanitarians are actually doing, as the economic bustle has not done
anything to change the structural problems of Central African politics and the
weakness of state institutions. LandCruisers and walled villas with
brightly-colored gates tagged with signs evoking laudable goals are all quite
visible; the effects, whether long term or short term, of their good works less
so. These criticisms strike me as both unfair and a bit true. They’re unfair in
the sense that humanitarian aid is explicitly a band-aid, not a cure, and
should be judged in those terms. Moreover I am sure that the people receiving
“pulses,” oil, and maize appreciate the food they get, whether because they can
eat it or they can sell it (little baggies of yellow peas can be seen at
markets all over). At the same time, though, it seems to me that the biggest
effects of these organizations lie not so much in the distributions of
household goods, and much more in that they are a legitimate way to bring money
into the economy at a time when other types of businesses are for various
reasons fraught. Most of that money comes in the form of rents for offices and
houses, salaries for locally-hired drivers and maids and guards, the 18,000 CFA
(about $35) that expat employees will spend on a prix fixe lunch at Relais de
Chasse, and so forth. That this industry operates with an implicit “expat
standard” in contrast to a “Central African standard” is a boring fact related
to the distribution of power and money in the world (I too lived in a lovely,
humanitarian-rented apartment during my stay). That’s not the point I’m trying
to make. It would just be nice if there was some recognition that the more
prosaic impacts of humanitarianism – namely the economic stimulus, especially
to landlords and long-distance transporters and restaurant owners – might be more
important than the stated, more-ephemeral goals of solidarity and relief. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was also
surprised by how calm it has seemed in the city. Though carjackings had become
normal in recent months, they seem to have declined. The peacekeepers play
soccer and chat with people like me but are otherwise a bit bored. Partly this
is due to the improving security situation and partly it’s due to the red tape
surrounding any action they might endeavor to undertake now that they’re inside
the UN bureaucracy fortress. Whether this lull will last remains something of
an open question, of course (rumor had it that all the big politico-military
entrepreneurs – Bozize, his son Francis, Michel Djotodia, Abakar Sabone – were meeting
in Nairobi last week). But, as I heard time and again, people are tired. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The reasons for
the relative calm are no doubt many. My personal favorite has to do with the
death of Levi Yakete. Yakete was a party operative under Bozize, and he fled to
France after the Seleka coup. From there he was active in getting money and
supplies to anti-Balaka fighters, and for this he was placed on the UN sanction
list. In mid-November, he was driving near his home in southern France when his
car broke down. With his wife at the wheel and his children in the back seat,
he began pushing the car to the side of the road. But before he got there,
another car came up from behind and plowed into this unexpected,
nearly-stationary obstruction. So Yakete is no longer able to incite violence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">There’s another
layer to this story, however. It is widely understood in CAR that people’s
spirits outlive them, and these spirits continue to act in the world after a
person’s death. One of the death-spirit’s main tasks is to exact vengeance in
the case of a wrongful death. “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La mort n’est
pas gratuite</i>.” “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On lui a rendu la
monnaie</i>.” These sayings indicate the sense that vengeance will be had, that
people will get what they have coming to them. So the second layer of meaning
associated with Yakete’s death had to do with the feeling that the spirits have
come to work their vengeance. And so people are proceeding with caution. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-49553794558496952622014-12-24T00:15:00.002-08:002014-12-24T00:15:28.614-08:00Violence, Popular Punishment, and the War in the Central African Republic<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Written together with Sylvain Batianga-Kinzi, I have a <a href="http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/12/15/afraf.adu079.abstract" target="_blank">new article out in the latest issue of African Affairs. </a><br />
<br />
In writing this article, we had a few objectives. First, we wanted to call attention to the spectrum of violence that has long existed in CAR -- within families, between families, in neighborhoods -- and the way that "non-state" actors have long had the capacity to engage in forms of spectacular violence designed to provoke fear. In our view, these factors help explain the patterns of mobilization that we've seen in the war in CAR over the past couple of years, which have reflected not organized-from-on-high entities but have rather grown out of the way people have responded to the threats they perceive in their midst, on a more diffuse basis. Another objective was to encourage people to jettison the concept "popular justice," the euphemism frequently used in place of "vigilantism." At least in CAR and my guess is elsewhere as well, people who respond violently to social threats like burglary or sorcery do not see their work as "justice," a word that connotes the ideal resolution of a given dispute. Rather, they see it as necessary to <i>punish</i> the (alleged) perpetrator in order to send a message both to the criminal and to anyone else considering that kind of behavior that it is not acceptable. Hence we feel that popular punishment is a more apt term. </div>
Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-48626209690342066362014-06-29T22:23:00.002-07:002014-06-29T22:23:51.898-07:00War and safari hunting<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/opinion/blame-war-not-safaris.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0" target="_blank">op-ed in the New York Times today</a> (30 June) arguing against shaming people involved in safari hunting in CAR.<br />
<br />
Those who know me are likely surprised that I'd take this position. Over the past year I've been reading memoirs by safari hunters in CAR, and they are as full of sexism and paternalism (when not more overt racism) as one might fear. In addition, over the past thirty years safari hunting has been propped up by armed conservation initiatives carried out by a variety of actors, and the attempt at rigid policing of what had previously been more negotiable boundaries (e.g., between protected park and grazing areas) heightened tensions and in some cases contributed to armed conflict. As I pointed out in a <a href="http://africanarguments.org/2014/05/13/in-the-car-joseph-zindeko-and-the-seleka-are-here-to-stay-by-louisa-lombard/" target="_blank">recent post over at African Arguments</a>, the current military head of Seleka, Joseph Zindeko, got some of his military training while working as an anti-poaching guard.<br />
<br />
But the safari hunting industry has changed over the past five years or so. As conflicts in the country have intensified, most of the safari hunting operators have moved on to easier places to work. Only a couple remain, and their success owes in part to their explicit avoidance of conflict. To take the example of <a href="http://www.cawasafari.com/" target="_blank">CAWA</a>, they chose a site not home to many elephants so that they wouldn't have to deal with the heavily-armed poachers who come for ivory. That meant they did not need to do the armed patrols that safari guides elsewhere had to organize. CAWA took pride in employing hundreds of people and funding social services.<br />
<br />
One of the founders of CAWA, together with the pilot working for him, uncovered a massacre site near their concession in early 2012. The killings followed the pattern of a classic LRA attack. But when the safari guides alerted the authorities to the tragedy, they were thrown in prison under suspicion of murder. The two were eventually freed in August of that year, but only because there was a riot at the central prison in Bangui, where they were being held, and the guards told them to leave since there was no way to keep them safe.<br />
<br />
And yet they came back and re-started their safari enterprise. There's something a bit crazy about that. Most people (myself included, most likely) would have cut their losses and departed without looking back. But these guys seem to have taken it as a sign that they should deepen their commitment, and, after picking up the pieces after their house in Bangui was ransacked, that is what they proceeded to do.<br />
<br />
So for all the problems related to safari hunting in CAR, it nevertheless seems to me like people so intent on building some kind of productive enterprise in the country that will employ hundreds of people should be supported. I remember talking to an expert in the management of safari hunting areas in Africa who said that it was, on one level, crazy to dedicate the whole eastern part of the CAR to safari hunting for a few wealthy tourists. If there were any alternative -- if the Chinese came in and opened a plantation or two, for instance -- safari hunting would no longer make any sense, given the distribution of resources it entails. But that's the thing: there are currently no alternatives. There is some diamond mining, it's true, but there are no other opportunities for salaried work, which is what people long for. For better or worse, it's all we've currently got.<br />
<br />
I find myself turning, as I so often do, to <a href="http://foolesnomansland.blogspot.com/2013/12/my-new-favorite-book.html" target="_blank">Ed van der Elsken</a>. After his trip to Oubangui-Chari -- his first sojourn in Africa -- in the mid-1950s, which included a stay among safari hunters that was at once exhilarating and nauseating, he reflected that upon return to Europe,<br />
<span id="docs-internal-guid-29f726dc-eb2b-f15b-685e-bde9dcb16295"><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I find, I have been indulging in a great deal of moralising. I remember now that when I was in Africa, filled with the emotions of hunting, I knew nothing of all the noble sentiments and intentions expressed in my text. I often hunted enthusiastically and by no means always sportingly. Primitive instincts and passions arose in me, inciting me to capture, conquer and kill. I, too, was guilty of many dirty and cowardly tricks. I must admit this because it would be unfair if I were to stand too much aloof from my comrades, who often stood by me in critical moments (24). </span></span><br />
<span><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The op-ed is my attempt to walk a path skirting both aloofness and excessive moralizing. </span></div>
Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-78129009683921280102014-06-12T04:54:00.002-07:002014-06-12T04:54:48.812-07:00CAR in a Hot Spot<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Over on the website
of the journal <a href="http://culanth.org/" target="_blank">Cultural Anthropology</a> you'll find <a href="http://culanth.org/fieldsights/538-the-central-african-republic-car-in-a-hot-spot" target="_blank">a series of essays (called a "Hot Spot") Iedited by some of the foremost scholars of CAR</a> reflecting on the
recent upheavals in the country. I have an essay introducing the
themes and another with a <a href="http://culanth.org/fieldsights/539-a-brief-political-history-of-the-central-african-republic" target="_blank">very short political history of CAR</a>, and
then I turn things over to everyone else. Some of the essays focus on
understanding the recent violence, while others reflect on long
scholarly and personal engagements with CAR. All of the essays
provide useful insights, and some also moved me to tears. Among those
you'll find are:</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
An essay by <a href="http://culanth.org/fieldsights/546-professional-death-and-rebirth-history-violence-and-education" target="_blank">RebeccaHardin and Henri Zana</a> reflecting on lives devoted to teaching in CAR,
and the “professional death” that has befallen CAR's once-hopeful
intellectuals.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
An essay by <a href="http://culanth.org/fieldsights/543-cannibalism-and-power-violence-mass-media-and-the-conflict-in-the-central-african-republic" target="_blank">Andrea Ceriana Mayneri</a> explaining the symbolic and historical underpinnings
of an act of cannibalism in Bangui earlier this year.
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
An essay by <a href="http://culanth.org/fieldsights/547-history-erasures-and-accumulated-recollections-of-violence" target="_blank">TamaraGiles-Vernick</a> reflecting on the ways in which historical violence is
sedimented into Central African memories, alternately forgotten and
remembered.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
An essay by <a href="http://culanth.org/fieldsights/548-la-memoire-de-la-violence-en-centrafrique" target="_blank">BrunoMartinelli</a> (in French) explaining the politicization of religion in
recent years and reflecting on the sobering realization that some of
his former anthropology students are almong the most virulent
anti-Balaka.
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
… And so much
more! Check it out!</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
ps And a special shout-out to the editors of Cultural Anthropology, Charles Piot and Anne Allison, who have overseen the move to open access, as well as expanding the journal's online forums! Anthropology of and for the future.</div>
</div>
Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-42854219878718464052014-06-04T10:40:00.003-07:002014-06-04T10:40:55.809-07:00The Sultan's Two Bodies:* Sovereignty and Northeastern CAR<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="line-height: 100%;">Last week, Dar
al-Kuti, a precolonial state with its capital at Ndele, in
northeastern CAR, <a href="https://twitter.com/FranceBangui/status/471350565331816448/photo/1" target="_blank">inaugurated a new sultan.</a> The former sultan had
been ill and infirm when I was there most recently, in 2010. He spent
most of his time in Bangui, partly because of the better medical care
there and partly because former President Bozize had put him under
house arrest (or so the rumor went). People in Ndele told stories of
how he used to ride on a towering white horse, a rarity here in the
tsetse zone. He also used to provide copious food to the poor on
Fridays, but in his absence the practice had become but a memory.
During the CPJP/government battles in Ndele in late 2009, the
sultan's house was hit, leaving a gaping hole in the roof.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Dar al-Kuti I
encountered was a far cry from the Dar al-Kuti Dennis D. Cordell
describes in his historical work on the subject, or even the Dar
al-Kuti he encountered during his research there in the 1970s. Dar
al-Kuti was at its biggest and most powerful during the last decade
of the nineteenth century and first decade of the twentieth. The town
had some 25,000 residents and the army alone was 6,000 strong (larger
than the current CAR army, in other words). Sultan Sanusi was adept
at developing relationships with newcomers to the region – first
Rabah, sultan to the north, and then the French explorer-colonists,
arriving from the south – in order to bolster his own authority.
His polity was founded on raiding, primarily for people to be made
into slaves, but also for other goods such as ivory.
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
French agents signed
a series of treaties with Sanusi. The language of the treaties is
interesting: they refer to Dar al-Kuti as a “country” (pays) or
“state” (etat) and describe Sanusi as its “sovereign.” And
yet at the same time the treaties successively deplete Sanusi's
authority – at least in theory. In reality, neither Sanusi nor the
French particularly respected the treaties' terms. Eventually, in
1911, the French agents at Ndele decided Sanusi was uncontrollable
and assassinated him early one morning. Though there was some
fighting over the course of the next couple of weeks, most people
left, dispersed throughout the area and beyond. Ndele became a ghost
town.
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The area was given
the colonial designation of an “autonomous district” – it was
too far from the capital and had too few people for the French to
bother administering directly. (This status, incidentally, is a
spatial category I am developing theoretically in a forthcoming
article and book.) In the 1920s, however, the agent at Ndele (at that
point there was only one, together with some regional guards from
elsewhere in the country and/or West Africa) thought it would be
easier to govern if he had a “traditional leader” to lean on and
encouraged a few elders to choose a new sultan. They designated one
of Sanusi's sons, and the sultanate was reborn, after a fashion. When
forced laborers were needed, as they often were, the sultan's guards
would go out and track people down. All the villages in the area made
prestations (usually part of their harvest) to the sultan. His
authority was always in an unclear relationship to government power.
On the one hand, he had more effective authority than the French
agents did; on the other hand, he had been deputized in order to
carry out their will – and did.
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Eventually (people
were a bit unclear on when the shift happened), the sultan became the
sultan-mayor, which was in part an aspirational designation on the
part of the government – in the sense that the title indicated his
“capture” by the state.
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
When I spoke with
people in Ndele about the sultanate, they used the language of
countries and sovereignty. They said that Ndele had been the first
place in CAR to have a French “ambassador,” all the way back at
the turn of the twentieth century.
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />I recently came
across a photograph posted on the Facebook page of the Front
patriotique pour l'autodetermination, which seeks independence for
the eastern part of CAR that shows a banner on which someone has
written “District autonome de Dar al Kuti – pays de Senoussi”.
In this usage, as in my conversations in Ndele, people describe the
autonomous status of Dar al Kuti not as a function of French
disinterest but rather as a sign of French recognition that Dar al
Kuti had a kind of sovereignty that the rest of the country lacked.
That past sovereignty is being invoked today in order to justify
future sovereignty. But terms like “sovereignty” and “state
meant something different and more malleable in the early 1900s than
what they mean today, when they have hardened into the UN system of
“equal” nation-states. And the Sanusi sultanate today is
intimately connected to the history of state-building in CAR, however
“tragic when not frankly pathetic” (I'll borrow<a href="http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/3642326/africa-world-history-extraversion" target="_blank"> Jean-FrancoisBayart's French brashness</a> here) it has been.
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-t-4AbXPX5Ls/U49ZWwWFRwI/AAAAAAAAP24/GqiMMWFaNZw/s1600/district+autonome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-t-4AbXPX5Ls/U49ZWwWFRwI/AAAAAAAAP24/GqiMMWFaNZw/s1600/district+autonome.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
Photo credit:<a href="https://www.facebook.com/djoulbe.hande" target="_blank"> Facebook page for the Front patriotique pour l'autodetermination.</a>
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
* The title of this
post is a play on Ernst Kantorowicz's The King's Two Bodies, in which
he traces the gradual transformation of understandings of kingly
authority in Britain from religious to secular sources. </div>
</div>
Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-11769086343179481242014-05-13T14:23:00.000-07:002014-05-13T14:23:09.783-07:00The many sides of Joseph Zindeko, Seleka's new military head<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have a <a href="http://africanarguments.org/2014/05/13/in-the-car-joseph-zindeko-and-the-seleka-are-here-to-stay-by-louisa-lombard/" target="_blank">piece up at African Arguments about Joseph Zindeko</a>, designated military head of Seleka at a conference in Ndele last weekend. I met Zindeko in Tiringoulou at the end of 2009 and was simultaneously impressed by his openness and by how much he held close and by how carefully he managed information. He was the <i>chef d'etat major</i> for the UFDR in Tiringoulou, and he was the main local interlocutor between UFDR members in the town and the people running disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) in the capital. Though he admitted to me that only a few UFDR members would ever be able to be integrated into the army, he did not spread that information widely among his men. Yet he was an excellent storyteller, including of battle exploits. In short, a man of many (apparent) contradictions.</div>
Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-56289511922679909562014-04-21T11:37:00.002-07:002014-04-21T12:44:26.964-07:00Religion and the limits of making sense of violence as it happens<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The NYTimes "Room for Debate" forum featured <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/04/20/is-religious-extremism-and-terrorism-spreading-in-central-africa/religious-rhetoric-serves-as-a-cover-for-central-african-disputes">a short piece by me</a> as part of their discussion on the possibility of a broader Central African religious war. As I'm starting to learn is the norm when working with daily journalists, the first I heard that they were going forward with the feature was when someone tweeted it this morning. (I had submitted an entry last week, but received no reply other than a "thanks". The piece they eventually published was edited and had a title that was not my own.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They had asked for 300 words, but I couldn't quite manage to distill it to that extent. Even at 600 words, I could barely scratch the surface of these complicated issues. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The journalistic interest in religion as a driver of fighting in CAR has been among the reasons I have been reflecting lately about the (im?)possibility of fully accounting for violence as it plays out. The anthropological stock-in-trade is to make sense of social phenomena that at first appear senseless, and yet I have lately been reflecting on whether there might be limits to that approach when it comes to violence as it happens. Let me explain. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the Cold War ended, a number of violent conflicts broke out across the African continent. Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo: from the perspective of “The Coming Anarchy”-reading global public, these places all became synonymous with violence at once senseless and barbaric, as well as greedy and self-interested. A number of anthropologists who had long worked in these locales and knew them differently took up a charge to make sense of the so-called new wars and show their sociocultural foundations and meaning. Led by Paul Richards, longtime scholar of Sierra Leone, these scholars sought to counter the “new barbarism” thesis that emerged from accounts like Robert Kaplan’s Coming Anarchy. Excellent ethnographies have resulted from this impetus. To continue just with the case of Sierra Leone, I think of work by Chris Coulter, Mariane Ferme, Danny Hoffman, and Michael Jackson. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is, however, a time-disconnect between war and ethnography. Ethnography takes time, and it is difficult to do during war. I know of one intrepid PhD student currently doing ethnographic research in CAR. During my own research there I stayed far from conflict, even as I tried to understand it, because I was concerned for my own safety. I managed to miss the two major attacks on Ndele that occurred during my time in CAR, in both cases by just days. There tends therefore to be an element of hindsight, or an element of pre-sight (in the case of ethnographic projects interrupted by war), to ethnographic accounts of war and violence. This has struck me repeatedly as I struggle to come to terms with what has been going on in CAR and to explain it for the journalists and others whose queries have been filling my inbox. I can point to historical and ethnographic dynamics A, B, C, D, and E that have helped bring people in CAR to their current predicament. And I can cite grievances X, Y, and Z that likely motivate the fighters. But the addition of all those factors does not somehow “add up” to the violence over the past year and a half. There remains an excess, beyond that which is explainable through reasons -- even reasons related to symbolism and performance. So while I agree with Richards that the new barbarism ideas are erroneous and damaging, I nevertheless wonder if it might be necessary to step back slightly, or at least step a bit to the side, from the project of making sense of violence. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In listening to interviews with anti-Balaka fighters, I have been struck by the disconnects between why they say they are fighting and what they are actually doing, as well as by the ways they contradict themselves. They claim not to be targeting all Muslims, but only “enemies” from Chad and Sudan who continue to target them. But then they scrawl graffiti declaring “No more mosques in CAR.” And mob violence acts first and asks questions later when it comes to assessing the provenance of “Muslims” who have been identified and targeted. The danger of referring to the situation in the CAR as motivated by, or playing out through, religious differences is that it hardens and fixes what are actually fluid -- or at least ill-defined -- categories and grievances that have other referents (such as foreignness) as well. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">So as violence is ongoing, I wonder if we should be open to the idea that violence might exceed our attempts to make sense of it. That is not exactly a research agenda, nor does it offer a solution for the journalists tasked with reporting on what is going on. It is, rather, a reminder that when it comes to violence, not everything has a reason. I think frequently of a comment <a href="http://foolesnomansland.blogspot.com/2013/12/my-new-favorite-book.html" target="_blank">Ed van der Elsken made in his text accompanying his photo-book Bagara</a>. To preface his description of a particularly chilling hunting expedition that he was part of, he wrote, “The next story is not meant to illustrate the barbarity of hunting, for this was not hunting. Nor was it an incident. Such things happen, I saw them” (1958: 23). In other words, the violence unleashed on a heavily-pregnant female elephant was not a </span><i style="white-space: pre-wrap;">scandalous event</i><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> that set in motion a range of accountability initiatives (legal sanction, self-questioning, the end of the safari, or anything else). It was just the kind of thing that can happen sometimes when people have empowered themselves with violence, whether through guns or other means.</span></span></div>
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Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-25320480573785283832014-04-11T10:47:00.003-07:002014-04-11T10:47:29.822-07:00Two faces of CAR social relations: Openness and mistrust <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have an <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/4/central-africa-republicgenocideselekaantibalaka.html" target="_blank">op-ed up at Al Jazeera America</a> with a short account of some of the factors contributing to the violence in CAR over the past year+. Plenty of reports have detailed the political maneuvering and military entrepreneurship that have helped organize the current fighting. (Some of the best are Roland Marchal's pieces for Global Observatory and Africa Confidential's coverage.) I wanted to draw out another factor: the simultaneous openness/flexibility that I've observed in Central Africans, and how fraught people find it to trust each other. There are a whole host of reasons for the high level of mistrust, and I could only gesture toward a few in the piece. This is something that will have to be dealt with, one way or another, when the fighting stops. Post-conflict programming usually frames its tasks as "rebuilding" trust or helping the state "regain" its monopoly on the legitimate use of force. When it comes to CAR, that's the wrong way to think about it. The state never effectively had that monopoly in the first place, and for as long as CAR has existed as a polity, trust has been strained. So instead, these processes should be seen as new constructions -- building trust, building a state -- that will play out on a far-from-clean slate. That's an enormous task, of course. But maybe it can also be an opportunity.</div>
Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-34585514921317235292014-04-07T13:12:00.002-07:002014-04-07T13:12:32.289-07:00The Bulletproof Project comes to CAR<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Inspired by a story about what Jeffrey Goldberg would call "security theater" (performances of control that lack an empirical basis in actually making us safer) in Iraq, Brendan Koerner launched the <a href="http://www.microkhan.com/tag/the-bulletproof-project/" target="_blank">Bulletproof Project</a>, an effort to catalog instances when people have believed that any manner of "magic" will make them impervious to bullets. CAR contributes much to the project, as I'll explain.<br />
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Nearly every article about the recent crisis in CAR includes photos of fighters decked out in <i>gris-gris</i> that will, their wearers say, keep bullets from hitting them. One of the origin stories about the name of one of the main agglomerations of fighters, the Anti-Balaka, has it that it stems from the initiations members go through, which render them impervious even to "balles-AK," or "Balaka" (Kalashnikov bullets). When I was interviewing CAR rebels in 2009 and 2010, they said their gris-gris knowledge had swelled as a result of collaborations with Chadian men-in-arms, who are "<i>très forts</i>" in that kind of thing.<br />
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Today, while revising a chapter on French colonial administration in Oubangui-Chari, as the CAR was then known, I was reminded of another origin for these bulletproofing practices. The French, always short on cash, figured they could impose a head tax on their subjects in order to raise revenue. Colonial subjects generally had no colonial monies, though, so the tax would be collected in labor -- literally backbreaking (or head-breaking) labor, such as carrying 65kg for days, with no provision for food or shelter along the way. Oubangui-Chari was the poorest of all the French colonies, and so it had the highest head tax. How else would administrators get anything done? This policy proved disastrous. It caused tens of thousands of deaths due to overwork, illness, disruption of agricultural production, and the brutal violence that was necessary to coerce people to do their bidding, and so further de-populated an area that already had a very low human population thanks to decades of slave raiding. People resisted however they could. Many fled to less repressive places like the Belgian Congo (yes, even the notorious Belgians were seen as more lenient, at least in certain respects). Many others revolted. And those who rebelled made sure to take medicine given to them by a "sorcerer" that made them impervious to bullets. Some of those rebels were quite successful. One group managed to hold Europeans at bay for a full six months.<br />
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To my knowledge, no one has mapped, though time, the gris-gris/medicine phenomenon across Central Africa (kind of like what <a href="http://www.scienceshumaines.com/julien-bonhomme-sur-la-piste-des-voleurs-de-sexe_fr_24751.html" target="_blank">Julien Bonhomme did for the penis-snatching rumor</a>), but it would be a fascinating project.<br />
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P.S. Anyone interested in learning more about the history of revolts, repression, and general colonial blunders/malfeasance must read Cathérine Coquéry-Vidrovitch's masterful <i>Le Congo au temps des grandes compagnies concessionnaires</i>. And of course my book, when it eventually sees the light of day.</div>
Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-20909947487764748542014-03-28T12:31:00.001-07:002014-03-28T12:31:29.875-07:00Those were the days, Burundian peacekeeper edition<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hearing reports about Burundian peacekeepers in Bangui battling anti-Balaka has made me think of a conversation I had with a Burundian military observer in Kaga Bandoro at the end of 2010. In theory, he and his (DR) Congolese associates were to verify ex-combatants for disarmament and oversee their demobilization, but stalling on the part of the DDR Steering Committee meant that they sat idle for months on end. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I met them at their base for sodas and a chat in the wan shade of their paillotte. After a few minutes I looked over and noticed that the Congolese officer had fallen asleep. The Burundian officer glanced at his dozing colleague and reflected, “This isn’t a real war. We [Congolese, Burundians] know real war.” He spoke with the dismissive authoritativeness of the battle-scarred. “This is just a peasant rebellion. They have old-fashioned homemade guns, not </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">armes de guerre</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Here, there are some skirmishes, but not a real war.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He’s long since back in Burundi. But his MISCA compatriots must now acknowledge that CAR, too, is home to a “real war,” and that the peacekeepers are actively a part of it. So much for sleeping on the job. </span></div>
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Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-79560106088195886952014-01-27T22:13:00.002-08:002014-01-27T22:13:52.859-08:00Recent Writings +<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have<a href="http://africanarguments.org/2014/01/24/genocide-mongering-does-nothing-to-help-us-understand-the-messy-dynamics-of-conflict-in-the-car-by-louisa-lombard/" target="_blank"> a piece up on African Arguments</a> about why the genocide talk about the CAR is misleading.<br />
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...And a <a href="http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/24652?in=31:04&out=35:30" target="_blank">Blogging Heads interview</a> with Mark Leon Goldberg of UN Dispatch about similar topics.<br />
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And, finally, I'll be giving a lecture at the University of Leiden today for anyone who happens to be in the area.</div>
Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-64792511744428447702014-01-22T14:32:00.001-08:002014-01-22T14:32:25.124-08:00Reflections on Roadblocks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As a supplement to my May 2013 article ("Navigational Tools for Central African Roadblocks") in the Political and Legal Anthropology Review, I have a short essay/reflection on my own experiences traversing roadblocks, <a href="http://www.polaronline.org/spillover/from-the-field/essay-lombard/" target="_blank">available on the PoLAR website</a>. The roadblockers who stopped me are no longer operating barriers; the aftermath of Seleka's takeover of power "has left a new landscape of roadblocks. ...The mutual sizing up that occurs on roadblocks, and its uncertain outcomes, yet again require the development of new navigational tools."<br />
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Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-27099342776979087602013-12-09T12:02:00.000-08:002013-12-09T12:02:30.881-08:00My new favorite book<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Every now and then someone will ask me for recommendations for books about the Central African Republic. There aren't a whole lot, but there are some good ones, particularly among the historical volumes (<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=KF3RBCabB0sC&printsec=frontcover&dq=zoctizoum+histoire&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GE2lUpX6I4XcoATOj4A4&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=zoctizoum%20histoire&f=false" target="_blank">Zoctizoum</a>, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=0GJ0AAAAMAAJ&q=cordell+dennis&dq=cordell+dennis&hl=en&sa=X&ei=P02lUsGlN9HboASM5oCgBA&ved=0CFQQ6AEwBw" target="_blank">Cordell</a>, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=91q-VzOOQPAC&dq=drame+du+portage+en+afrique+centrale&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bU2lUpW-GYP3oASD-4LgCQ&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAA" target="_blank">Mollion</a>...). Among the anthropological accounts, look out for Rebecca Hardin's <a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rdhardin/publications.html" target="_blank">books</a>, which should be published soon.<br />
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But this is all just background for the real subject of this post: the book I can't stop talking about, the book that countless friends have had to endure hearing me rhapsodize about lately. It's called Bagara, and it's by Ed van der Elsken. Van der Elsken was a Dutch photographer probably best known for his work on jazz musicians. But he took one trip to Africa, to the colony of Oubangui-Chari in the mid-1950s, and Bagara is the result. The book is divided into two sections. The first covers a journey he took in the area around Bria, as he accompanied the local administrator on a <i>tournée</i>, walking from village to village, participating in funeral ceremonies and the colonial cotton-buying scheme. The second part covers safari hunting trips van der Elsken took together with guides' paying clients, also in the eastern part of the country. As you flip through the pages, you encounter not a single word -- only people in all the fullness of their varied personalities and the situations they find themselves in. Inside the back cover is a small booklet that flips out to reveal van der Elsken's narration of his travels and the stories behind each photograph. In this way, it's possible to sync your reading of the text with the viewing of the photos, without either distracting from the other. This format comes as close to hearing the author tell the stories of these people and animals, as close to being there with him, as is possible with a printed book. I read the book cover to cover the moment I opened it; the whole experience was incredibly powerful. The photos are arresting, of course, but it is also the mixture of self-awareness and naivete with which van der Elsken recounts his adventures that makes the book so compelling. He knows how little he knows. But he also has an openness toward people and experiences that helps him learn quickly.<br />
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OK, OK -- I'll stop proselytizing here.<br />
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Bagara is not an easy book to find (after borrowing a copy from the library, I bought my own on eBay for about $60), but if you have any interest in the CAR I can't recommend it more highly. Here are a few of my favorite shots:<br />
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Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-69974008624830339942013-12-05T12:33:00.001-08:002013-12-05T12:33:14.481-08:00CAR in the news<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have <a href="http://africasacountry.com/is-the-central-african-republic-on-the-verge-of-genocide/" target="_blank">a piece up</a> on <a href="http://africasacountry.com/" target="_blank">Africa is a Country</a> about some of the misleading ways that CAR has been covered in the media lately.<br />
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And if you're interested in hearing more, tune in to PBS Newshour tonight (18:15 EST) -- I'll be giving the 4-minute synopsis of CAR's recent and longer-standing troubles.</div>
Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-42219469383153598462013-08-29T15:29:00.003-07:002013-08-29T15:29:59.850-07:00The Usefulness of a "Bad Neighborhood"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Central African politicians recognize that one of the best ways to draw attention to their beleaguered home is to play up the “bad neighborhood” they found themselves in, through no fault of their own. In 2010 and 2011 donors and diplomats in Bangui became increasingly frustrated with then-President François Bozizé’s not-quite-overt-but-nevertheless-obvious efforts to stack the National Assembly in his favor so he could change the constitution (which he had himself written!) and stay in power longer than the two-term legal limit. But they felt their hands were tied. Better undemocratic Bozizé than the further encroachment of regional anarchy -- the Lord’s Resistance Army, Baba Laddé’s Peuhl freedom fighter-bandits, and so forth -- this usually unstated reasoning seemed to go. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-531f6bd9-cc30-903b-0549-ea453b16c75b" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the end, Bozizé overplayed his hand. He kept tightening his grip on power without realizing that at some point he would be straining so hard that even just a tickle would cause him to lose everything. The result, as we all know, has been a huge amount of suffering over these past months of violence, mistrust, and uncertainty in the country. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have had occasion to (re)immerse myself in the classics of CAR history, and I’ve been struck by how longstanding the problem of regional politics determining donor stances toward the country has been. Throughout its history as an independent country, interested outsiders (bi- and multi-lateral diplomats) have allowed concern over conflict and instability in the region more broadly determine their positions on CAR leaders’ maneuverings. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">David Dacko, the country’s first president, played this card expertly, as colonial administrator-turned-CAR-historian <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Central_African_Republic.html?id=jaFCAAAAIAAJ" target="_blank">Pierre Kalck described</a>:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A select constitutional committee met in October 1960 to define the means of choosing the first President. Goumba suggested that a minimum age of forty should be fixed, thereby putting both Dacko and himself out of the running, but the committee could not arrive at a decision. Dacko consequently felt more encouraged to work out his own way of staying in power, knowing he could count on the support of the French circles in Bangui, who were prepared to do all they could to strengthen his authority if it meant avoiding a crisis like that in the Congo. In effect, over the last few months, Dacko had been drawing up a number of measures that were destined to put an end to the democratic regime Boganda [the incarnation of the independence ideals] had cherished so dearly (120-121). </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dacko went on to place his adversary Abel Goumba under house arrest. Meanwhile, the Assembly debated what was of utmost importance to them: “namely, the sale-price of whisky, champagne, and lemonade, and why the prices were different in the cafés in the town and in the bar attached to the Assembly” (124). Dacko lasted four years in power before being ousted in a coup.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My discipline, anthropology, is far better suited to describing problems than finding solutions to them. As <a href="http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/circulation/ereserves/pdfs/courses/FALL%202010/ANTH%205780,%20MCGRANAHAN/ON%20COURSE%20NOW/THINKING%20AS%20A%20MORAL%20ACT.pdf" target="_blank">Clifford Geertz, writing in 1966, </a>memorably reflected on the aporia of the research on development challenges facing the “new states”, </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">one result of very extended, very thorough, periods of careful research is usually a much keener realization that the new states are indeed in something of a fix. The emotion this sort of reward for patient labors produces is rather like that I imagine Charlie Brown to feel when, in one “Peanuts” strip, Lucy says to him: “You know what the trouble with you is Charlie Brown? The trouble with you is you’re you.” After a panel of worless appreciation for the cogency of this observation, Charlie asks: “Well, whatever can I do about that?” and Lucy replies: “I don’t give advice. I just point out the roots of the problem” (142). </span></div>
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That being said, I’ll hazard a suggestion. It would appear to be possible to draw from the unfortunate pattern of CAR politics described above the conclusion that regional stability would ultimately be better served by substantive democracy in CAR, not by the propping-up, however half-hearted or ambivalent, of an antidemocratic president. </span></div>
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Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-46785878036040263682013-08-19T15:26:00.001-07:002013-08-19T15:26:37.576-07:00RIP Tjostolv Moland<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This morning, the family of Tjostolv Moland, a Norwegian man sentenced to death in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), released a <a href="http://www.freefrenchandmoland.com/no/familienesord/blogknutmoland/519-tjostolv-moland-til-minne" target="_blank">statement in his memory</a> explaining that he died in prison yesterday. Moland’s father’s statement does not give the cause of death, but his castigation of Doctors Without Borders for failing to minister to his deathly-ill son suggests sickness was the cause of his passing. I have enormous sympathy for all who die in Congolese prisons, whether guilty or not. To describe the conditions as abysmal is an understatement. The physical facilities are appalling, of course, but it’s the opacity and lack of accountability of the legal system that I imagine inflict the harshest torture. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-70b03f9c-98ad-8ee2-9e18-3283af990eaf" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Moland’s case contains so many inconsistencies and holes it seems it will never be possible to know the full story. Together with his friend and business partner, Joshua French, he was convicted of spying for the Norwegian government and murdering their driver, Abedi Kasongo, in May 2009. Moland and French received the death penalty, and the military court that convicted them (never mind that military courts are supposed only to try the Congolese security sector) demanded $500 billion in damages from the Norwegian government, a request later reduced but never received. Moland and French had been setting up a private security company in Kampala at the time of their arrest. Their driver was killed near the Ugandan border. Moland and French say the culprits were unidentified armed men, who attacked them on the road. One of the prosecution’s key pieces of evidence, a photo of Moland smiling and washing what is alleged to be their driver’s blood from the interior of their car, seems open to interpretation -- to put it mildly. At the same time, police investigating Moland and French’s lodgings in Kampala found a bunch of weird stuff: ID badges for their security firm, for instance, with pseudonyms beside their photos. And they had some weapons -- a rifle, for instance.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I followed the case only intermittently, and I’ll avoid pronouncing my own judgment. What prompted my post was rather Moland’s father’s biographical reminiscences of his son. He remembers Moland as a young man passionate about hunting and the outdoors who, after serving in a hunting batallion in the Norwegian military, worked at game lodges in South Africa, Botswana, and Zambia, and went on to train game park guards in multiple African countries. It was this last piece of information that piqued my interest. Over the course of my research on <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/opinion/elephants-dying-for-ivory.html?_r=0" target="_blank">violent conservation in the Central African Republic</a>, I have met a number of men with biographies similar to Moland’s. They are complicated individuals (as we all are), many with loving families and gentle ways alongside their more militant practices. But I’ve also frequently noticed a cowboy mentality among these guys, an attitude that the bush of remote African spaces is effective camouflage for all that happens there. Frequently, it is. But not always. And in those cases, the camouflage of the bush itself becomes dangerous, as it actively obscures the omniscient view that court procedures are tasked with putting together -- even if the court officials were running proceedings transparently, which, in this case, they were not. </span></div>
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My sympathy, then, to Tjostolv Moland’s family, and my hope that his example discourages others from taking their rifles to Africa, however idealistic (or not) their reasons for doing so.</span></div>
Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-2047578261363274732013-08-19T14:19:00.001-07:002013-08-19T14:19:10.135-07:00Birthday Kisses for the Dictator<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today, the second installment of my series on using the library as a time machine. Alongside a volume on Coup d’Etat: Pourquoi Faire? (<a href="http://foolesnomansland.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-coup-detat-why-do-it.html" target="_blank">Coup d’Etat: Why do it?</a>) that discussed the development advantages of coup-initiated leadership, I found another Bokassa-era gem: VOEUX à l’occasion de 53ème anniversaire du Général d’Armée Jean-Bedel Bokassa, Président à vie de la République (WISHES on the occasion of the 53rd birthday of General Jean-Bedel Bokassa, President for Life of the Republic). The book, from 1974, is a glossy scrapbook. Each page contains a photo and that person’s accompanying birthday wishes for the fearless leader, with the entries organized according to social role: Central African government officials and civil society leaders, foreign heads of state, Bangui diplomatic corps, Central African diplomats abroad, business operators in Bangui. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">In many of the pictures, the subjects look unsure whether to smile or affect a serious pose. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">Though no apologist for Bokassa (the excesses of his coronation as emperor, </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPYeFF4OoXQ" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none; white-space: normal;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">viewable on YouTube</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">, make me nauseated in light of the dire circumstances the country faces today), I nevertheless find it thrilling, on one level, to discover such perfectly-preserved relics of an era of construction, however unsound its financing. </span></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-23156899-9860-37f6-a137-0c5ea0f4be0d" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the things that stuck me was how the diplomatic corps stepped over themselves to praise Bokassa. The end of the Cold War has allowed for a bit more circumspection on that count, at least. American Ambassador William N. Dale wrote, “I know how the Central African people all look forward to this memorable event [of your birthday]. I allow myself to add to their happiness my wishes for your health, longevity, and big, constant success for your vigorous efforts in favor of development and prosperity in your country.” The French ambassador was even more laudatory. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you read only the book of wishes, you might assume the birthday party was a slickly-organized, lavish success. And perhaps it was. But Bill Gribbin, #2 at the US embassy at the time, <a href="http://www.adst.org/Readers/Central%20African%20Republic.pdf" target="_blank">recalls in his Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training oral history</a> that Bokassa's fests were frequently a bit haphazard:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Those of us who lived in the CAR will never be lacking for stories. One of my favorite ones involved an American astronaut who toured Africa. ... Anyway, Bokassa was something of a self-proclaimed space nut, so when these visitors came to the CAR, he immediately offered them great hospitality. In fact, he took them to his private game park in the north. ... the embassy staff was invited to a state banquet, which would be on the top floor of the one hotel there in town. The top floor was</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a </span><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">garden terrace about 7 or 8 stories up. Since Bokassa didn't often entertain, this was a big event. So we were all "convoked," which is the term they used, so those of us from the American </span><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Embassy, all the cabinet ministers and most of the senior military authorities showed up on time </span><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">and were escorted up to the top of the hotel. Every 10 feet or so was a young soldier with an Uzi </span><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">who had been there since about two that afternoon. But the guests of honor and the president </span><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">didn't show up, and they didn't show up, and they didn't show up. Although we sat down, we </span><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">were not given anything to drink. A band played music so loud that we couldn't talk to anybody. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">So we waited from about eight o'clock till after 11, when the presidential party finally returned </span><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">from the game park and showed up at the banquet. By this time, of course, the tropical dew had </span><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">settled, and we were soaking wet, even though it hadn't rained. I remember that I kept worrying about these kids with these Uzis because they would nod off. I hoped that no dream would </span><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">awaken them and cause then to spray the crowd. In any case, that event – the mix of enthusiasms </span><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">and sheer self-centeredness - was very typical of Bokassa.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The most familiar of the birthday wishes came from the head of the Safari Hotel-Restaurant, today the Hotel Oubangui, a massive multi-story edifice along the river. Every afternoon at around 5, Bokassa would march to the hotel-bar, set on the rocks out amid the rapids, accompanied by a brass band in red, white, black, and gold uniforms, to take his customary sundowner whiskey. The hotel administrator wrote his wishes to “Dear Papa” and signed off “Please receive, Dear Papa, our huge happy birthday kisses.” “Baiser,” the word he used for kiss, has a variety of meanings. Colloquially, today, it means to screw over. The proprietor’s words thus take on another, originally unintended and yet more accurate in the longue durée, meaning. </span></div>
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Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-86725198822621011562013-08-15T15:37:00.003-07:002013-08-15T15:37:56.897-07:00A Coup d'Etat: Why Do It?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On my first visit to Bangui, in 2003, I was arrested. Just three months had passed since Bozize’s coup, and an atmosphere of uncertainty dominated the city. Ransacked buildings, their remaining skeletons now locked and shuttered, gave the city center the appearance of a ghost town. Waves of paperwork flowed across the floors of looted civil servant offices. A statue of the ousted president, Ange Felix Patasse, was dressed daily in colorful drag, one of the few signs of playfulness amid the general tension. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-1b3c4e1a-841d-7b9c-eb23-d5655bd112f3" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My arrest came early one morning. A police officer emerged from the dawn shadows and berated me for taking a photograph. From my perspective, I was attempting to get a shot of an impossibly decrepit multi-story building (a ministry) that nevertheless housed many camped-out residents; from his, I had a captured an image of the monument to the founder of the nation, a site of prime national security interest. It was only after he pointed it out that I even noticed the pile of rubble and concrete that once memorialized Barthelemy Boganda. The ironies of the incident seemed telling. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I evaded arrest with my camera intact (my primary concern), but the officer required that I expose the film (yes, film!), so I lost the image. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ten years later, in the library at the University of California at Berkeley, I finally found a photo of that building. It shone out at me from among the frontspieces of the book, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Un Coup d’Etat: Pourquoi faire?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a serious tome from 1973 devoted to explaining the wisdom of Jean-Bedel Bokassa’s coup, several years into his reign. The frontspieces consist of many photos of progress achieved under “cher Papa”: an Air Centrafrique plane on the runway, the Ecole Nationale de l’Administration, the maternity division of a hospital, and so forth. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Forty years after Fred-Patrice Zemoniako Liblakenze wrote the book (much of which consists of words of wisdom from Bokassa, as well as songs and other honorifics dedicated to him), his question is again timely, but only when asked with a valence opposite to that of the original. Why do it, indeed -- so much suffering, and so little to show for it besides destruction and mistrust. </span></div>
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Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-55079218301767566092013-04-02T12:13:00.004-07:002013-04-02T12:13:50.902-07:00Michel Djotodia: Where He Comes From, Where He -- and CAR -- Might be Going<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have a <a href="http://africanarguments.org/2013/04/02/central-african-republic-president-michel-djotodia-and-the-good-little-putchist%E2%80%99s-tool-box-by-louisa-lombard/" target="_blank">piece up at African Arguments</a> reflecting on Michel Djotodia's biography and what it might mean for politics in the CAR in the years to come.<br />
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It's tempting to see Djotodia's coup as history repeating itself. And many of the coup dynamics this time around are indeed similar to those in 2003. But one of the responsibilities of anthropology is to remind and educate people about the fact that social life is always full of endless possibilities, that deterministic accounts miss more contingent reasons for why things are the way they are. CAR's recent history is dispiriting, and the damages of the coup (looting not just for goods but also for looting's sake, violence, not to mention the psychic toll of the upheaval) are profound. However, events of recent months also bring with them some new opportunities, such as the (imminent) return to Bangui of some of the technocrats who fled while Patassé and Bozizé were in power. </div>
Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-61852490441817360092013-03-24T19:23:00.000-07:002013-03-24T19:23:45.597-07:00President Michel Djotodia?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When the Union des Forces Démocratiques pour le Rassemblement (UFDR) announced its presence by capturing CAR's northeasternmost town, Birao, at the end of October 2006, a few people starting working their sat phones, each declaring himself to be the leader. There was Abakar Sabone, formerly best known as a Chadian recruiter of men-in-arms who'd helped Bozize take power in 2003 but became disgruntled with his former ally over a perceived lack of proper payment for his services. There was Damane Zakaria, a counselor in Tiringoulou who was with the men on the ground. And there was Michel Djotodia, who few people knew much about at all.<br />
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Sabone and Djotodia were in Cotonou, Benin at the time, and they were locked up at Bozize's request. Though they were eventually released, they were both somewhat sidelined during the peace process, and for the next few years whenever anyone asked who was the leader of the UFDR, it was General Damane's name that was put forward.<br />
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It was Damane who I got to know while doing research among the UFDR in Tiringoulou in 2009-2010. Nevertheless, I was curious about this Djotodia fellow, so I frequently asked about him as well. Overall, the impression I got was of a polyglot, intelligent guy with outsize political ambitions. He made it into my dissertation, but only in the form of a long footnote:<br />
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"People in Vakaga [prefecture] remember [Djotodia] as a prolific practitioner of extraversion. He went to the USSR to study and ended up living there ten years, marrying, and fathering two daughters, and<br />
then finally returning to CAR with “ten diplomas” and fluency in a number of languages, which made him useful when it came to representing the UFDR to foreigners and media. People in Tiringoulou tell of one day, long before the rebellion, when a plane of Russian hunters unexpectedly arrived. Upon hearing Djotodia’s rendition of their language, declared him not Central African but Russian and brought him along for their tour of the country. He had political aspirations, and he pursued them fervently. Twice he tried to become a deputy, and twice he failed. The highest post he attained was Tax Director. He also worked to become close to the Sheikh Tidjani, spiritual leader for many in the buffer zone, who lives in South Darfur. At the time of the UFDR’s first attack, he, like Sabone, was in Benin, where he had friends from his Russia days. Like Sabone, he was jailed in Cotonou for his role in the insurgency. But then he becomes harder to track. He had a falling out with the Sheikh when he tried to convince the president’s son to name him consul to Sudan in the Sheikh’s place (though technically Sudanese himself, the Sheikh occupies this post as a result of the respect and legitimacy he enjoys throughout the region). The break in this relationship has made it harder for him to claim to represent people in the area. Damane said that he had pushed him out when Djotodia had attempted to make an alliance with Charles Massi, another sidelined politician aiming for power through the form of insurgency. Whatever the specifics of his fall, people described it as a function of his failure to properly negotiate alliances. This diplomatic capability is central to maintaining power in a place of plural authorities. People surmised that this “intellectual” is now trying his luck somewhere far away."<br />
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Well, now we know a bit more about what Djotodia was up to. He has been in Nyala, in South Darfur, cultivating working alliances with the remnants of Chadian rebel groups that have been hanging out in the area. It was these fighters from the Chad/Sudan/CAR borderlands who became the military backbone of the Seleka rebel coalition that first threatened the CAR capital, Bangui, in December. (The UFDR fighters I knew -- tough guys, but a bit ragtag, especially compared to their counterparts in places like Chad or Sudan -- could have put up a decent fight against the CAR armed forces on their own, but the "Chadians" were what made them so unstoppable.)<br />
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And through these alliances, Djotodia has come out on top. Hearing the stories of his ambition during my research, I almost felt embarrassed on his behalf -- he seemed like a Jamaican bobsledder convinced he'd win gold. And yet here he is, ten years after Bozize took power, getting ready to move into the presidential palace. Here's hoping he lives up to his intellectual reputation and does a better job than his predecessor. Goodness knows Central Africans have suffered far too much already.<br />
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Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8696589464234790952.post-71387954362841382712013-03-15T12:46:00.001-07:002013-03-15T12:46:19.644-07:00Post-Gadaffi Repercussions in the Sahel<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The report of the "Post-Gadaffi Repercussions in the Sahel" workshop I participated in at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra in June last year is available for download <a href="http://nai.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:609824">here</a>.<br />
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One of the most stimulating presentations was by Prof Morten Bøås, who discussed "escape routes" between West Africa, the Sahel, and into the Sahara. Similarly to the ideas of non-centralized modes of power that I have developed, Morten talked about how governance in the region is in large part a question of "organisation without organisations". In other words, it is a matter of hubs (primarily geographic) and nodes (primarily people -- big men), which become the orienting points in dynamic, loose networks. Also fascinating was Christian Vium's research with nomads in Mauritania. The report blurb doesn't do justice to his project; Christian's stunning <a href="http://www.christianvium.com/">photos here</a> at least make it come alive a bit more. </div>
Louisahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13579305296939090360noreply@blogger.com0