Islam is not the real issue we are facing in Africa
Christians and Muslims have co-existed here for centuries. Corruption and
climate change are much more pressing problems
* Eliza Griswold <
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/eliza-griswold>
* The Guardian <
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian> , Friday 8
February 2013
Stretching from west to east across Africa - from the Atlantic Ocean to the
Red Sea - the Sahel today is a militant's dream. Despite the French
military's recent routing of al-Qaida
<
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/01/mali-francois-hollande> in the
Islamic Maghreb and its allies in northern Mali, the threat of safe haven
for the west's enemies is not going to end there any time soon.
Although, for the moment, the militia have melted from sight,
<
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/19/algerian-hostage-standoff-final
-assault> the latest battles in Algeria and
<
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/mali> Mali are harbingers of a larger
catastrophe: the Sahel, the vast grassland north of the equator, has become
the latest battleground in the west's war against Islamist militants.
France's plans to withdraw its 4,000 troops from Mali
<
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/06/france-mali-pullout-next-month>
in late March are premature. From the air, US surveillance drones and French
fighter planes will not be enough to keep peace in the Sahel - which
includes Mauritania, southern Algeria, northern Mali, Chad and Sudan, as
well as Somalia,
<
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/26/ethiopia-ends-somalia-occupatio
n> where a 2006 Ethiopian invasion, tacitly backed by the US, looked at
first like an utter defeat for the Islamists. Six months later, the
militants returned to wage exactly the kind of war Ethiopia and the US had
feared.
So how does the west avoid repeating the pattern? By understanding the root
causes of the troubles that plague the Sahel.
First, many of its states are weak, if not utterly failing. Ethnic and
religious allegiances are much more binding than those of national identity.
Exploiting these ties - as well as the growing importance of a global
Islamic identity - foreign fighters have decamped from the drone zone of
Afghanistan and Pakistan to melt into the lands of North Africa.
All of these factors sharpen the longstanding religious divide that runs
along the southern edge of the Sahel, 700 miles north of the equator - the
tenth parallel where, thanks to geography, weather and centuries of human
migration, most of North Africa's 500 million Muslims meet the 500 million
Christians of sub-Saharan Africa. There is nothing new about the
co-existence of Muslim and Christian communities at this latitude - it dates
back to the seventh century. There's not so much that's new, even, about the
emergence of a political form of Islam that sparks conflict with both
Christians and more traditional Muslims. Since the
<
http://www.mideastweb.org/Middle-East-Encyclopedia/mahdi.htm> Mahdi
Muhammad Ahmad launched a 19th-century jihad against the British in Sudan,
Islam has gone through periods of revival and rebellion in Africa.
What might be emerging more clearly into public consciousness is a sense
that Africa is a zone of strategic concern for the west. Rather than being a
place that crosses our radar because of famine, civil war or the legacies of
colonialism, we're entering an era in which it becomes a place where western
powers directly intervene to protect their interests. So what might this
mean for the continent, for some of those key countries, to be placed in
this position? And how will it affect our perception of Africa and Africans?
One of Africa's vital interests, which is linked to the rise in militancy,
is climate change. Nowhere is this a more urgent issue than in the Sahel,
where both
<
http://www.irinnews.org/report/96313/WEST-AFRICA-After-the-drought-floods-a
nd-harvest-worries> flash floods and droughts - which contribute to the
Sahara desert's southern spread - are growing more extreme. In Africa, there
are now more people fleeing the weather than fleeing war.
Many of these environmental refugees are nomads whose itinerant way of life
is in peril. In North Africa, most are Muslims. Since water and grasslands
are being replaced by sand dunes, nomads of the Sahel are being forced into
different means of survival, such as smuggling cocaine and cigarettes to
Europe along ancient salt routes, or joining up with one militant outfit or
another.
Another disastrous pattern is that across the continent, Muslim nomads are
pushing south into settled land, which tends to belong to Christian farmers.
In many places, what begins as a local fight for land and water becomes a
globalised battle for religion. In Sudan, for example, the Islamist regime
of the north has armed paramilitary Muslim nomads to push south for the sake
of their cattle's survival. Deep beneath the surface, that push allows
Khartoum to secure its rights to oil.
Oil underlies much of the Sahel - and its well-known curse leads to that
curious paradox in which governments such as Nigeria's or Chad's, which
receive billions in revenue each year, impoverish their citizens. Despite
vast wealth, these states don't safeguard most people's rights to the basic
infrastructure of roads, water, electricity or education. Once again, both
Muslims and Christians turn to their local mosque or church to help them
survive. The resulting corruption on behalf of governments across the region
also feeds rebellion in the name of Islam.
Militants use the notion of a return to an idealised Islamic past to control
populations from Sudan to Somalia to Nigeria to Mali. This rallying cry for
Islamic law, which is reduced to its most extreme measures, is an outgrowth
of the rising role of religious identity, but it's also the most expedient
means to terrify a population in the name of religion. In many cases, fellow
Muslims are the first to suffer at the hands of militants. This is
especially true in North Africa, where most Muslims practise Sufism, a
mystical strain of the faith that many hardliners see as heretical.
During the cold war, the west fought proxy battles against the Soviets
across Africa. In some ways, the vacuum the cold war left behind has left
room for a new political contest between Islam and the west. The west's
greatest mistake would be to do nothing but militarise this conflict and to
shore up corrupt leaders just because they parrot the right kind of
western-friendly speak, as we have done in the past.
Far more important - and more daunting - is the need to address the
underlying causes of this burgeoning conflict. Corruption and climate change
top the list. Until then, American surveillance drones are going to fly over
a growing desert that's increasingly hospitable to its enemies.
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Received on Sun Jun 09 2013 - 17:54:09 EDT