african oil politics

The flow of tourists on the island of Lamu has declined. The situation of Lamu reflects what's going on in Kenya: the previous terror attacks have delt a hard blow to the Kenyan tourism industry. Somaliland is not in a better shape.

The latest images from Fallujah have sent a shockwave in the American psyche and triggered memories of Mogadishu.

As more people are wondering what Iraq will become after June 2004, it's not a bad idea to check the situation in Somalia, Ten Years Later, and read about terrorism in the Horn of Africa.

Two events supposedly unconnected may actually be more related than it seems: the OPEC meeting in Vienna and the postponed Arab League summit in Tunis. I had started to connect some dots, but the big picture didn't appear before I learned that "In the Arab world, everything is interconnected", at least according to Nail Al-Jubeir, a spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

"In the Arab world, everything is interconnected,'' Al-Jubeir added. "To resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict is a must, to reach justice and equality for the Palestinian people in the territories. Anything without (that) is not going to go anywhere." ... Arab analysts said a major reason for the Tunis collapse was Ben Ali's unwillingness to allow serious consideration of the Arab world's leading peace proposal -- [Saudi Arabia's] Crown Prince Abdullah's Arab Peace Initiative, adopted two years ago at an Arab League summit in Beirut. The initiative offers Israel full normalization of relations with the Arab world in exchange for a total withdrawal from all territory occupied since 1967. Israel has opposed the plan, and U.S. officials have avoided taking a clear position on it. In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell denied some Arab news reports that Ben Ali was acting under private orders from the United States to sabotage Abdullah's initiative.

Now, consider this: on the eve of the Vienna summit, it's now obvious that OPEC will push ahead with energy supply cuts. Inside the organization, Saudi Arabia was among those who favored the move.

Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, led the push for the cartel to implement cuts of 1m barrels a day from April 1, as first agreed in Algiers in February. ... "The Saudis have gone from being a reliable Opec price dove to Opec's arch price hawk," Mehdi Varzi, an energy consultant told Reuters. "That's because of the demands of the Saudi budget. They need higher and higher oil prices every year to meet current expenditure for a larger and larger population." Most in Opec blame speculative investment funds for pushing up prices by seeking to protect themselves from a weaker dollar by investing in oil futures, whose prices rise as the US currency falls.

In other words, the Saudis not only refused to comply with the US demand to increase production, but they pushed for cuts of 1 million barrels a day. This move reveals that the relation between the United States and Saudi Arabia is not what it used to be. Just read what Robert Baer wrote last year about the strategic partnership between both countries.

There's an extremely close relationship between the White House and the king of Saudi Arabia, along with the oil minister and the ambassador. You can call the ambassador up and say, "Look, we're forecasting a shortage in the world oil market because of speculation. Can you pump more?" In every crisis, the Saudis have come through. Let's be frank about it—they were our best allies in the Middle East. They banked this oil—2-3 million barrels—at a very high cost, they never got reimbursed for it, and they were always there. The Iran-Iraq war, they were there. When the Iraqis overran Kuwait, they were there. Strikes in Venezuela, they came through and pumped more oil. They had their own interests, but they also protected our markets as well. ... We pay market prices. But the point is that it's all based on supply and demand, and by increasing the supply, they keep down the price. It's something the Saudis have paid out of their pockets. We've never reimbursed them for this surplus capacity.

This time, when the White House called up the Saudis and said “Can you pump more?”, the Saudis just said “No”. I understand the budgetary explanations provided by some analysts as well as the currency issue. But oil is rarely far from politics, and the recent “postponement” of the Arab League summit teaches us another lesson: Saudi Arabia wants some change in US policy towards Israel. This issue, nevertheless remains a taboo in American politics.

Discussing the relationship between the U.S. and Israeli militaries, and how the U.S. military is using Israeli tactics while occupying Iraq, former CIA analyst Kathleen Christison writes on CounterPunch, "almost all influential individuals and groups in the U.S. political landscape still shy away from discussing the degree to which this Israeli connection has been a major factor in determining the entire complex of U.S. policies on Iraq and the Middle East since September 11. In the eyes of most Americans, the correctness of the ever stronger ties between the right-wing governments of the United States and Israel is simply not to be questioned."

John Kerry can keep on saying that “no young American in uniform ought to ever be held hostage to America's dependence on oil in the Middle East”, he nevertheless urges oil producing countries to increase production without bringing anything on the table that might send the right signal to the Saudis. Just like President Bush. And just like Senator Tom Daschle, the top Democrat in the Senate, who said Bush ought to tell American friends in the Persian Gulf (read Saudi Arabia) “to open up the spigot". In his view, the United States has done enough in the region to provide for “stability militarily” and run operations in the oil industry for OPEC countries in the Gulf not to “limit the amount of production.” What the current crisis shows is that the Saudis beg to differ: the stability in the region having gone through the Iraqi window, why should they increase their production when their American friends refuse to discuss what matters to them? In the answer to this question may lie the secret connect between Tunis and Vienna. As far as African oil politics is concerned, here lies also some of the keys to the new US-led political as well as energy order in North Africa.

Resisting sharing this story with you has been impossible:

A former Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researcher and Harvard University professor is scheduled to be arraigned today in Roxbury District Court on charges of bilking coworkers, students, and friends out of $600,000 they invested in a bogus Internet research company he claimed to have started in China to fight SARS, Boston police said.

Police said Weldong Xu, 38, of Brookline, persuaded a total of 35 people since last July to give him money for the research company, which he told them was dedicated to tackling severe acute respiratory syndrome, which caused an international scare last year. At Dana-Farber, where Xu was a researcher in cancer and AIDS vaccines, he persuaded co-workers to give him $160,000, with the agreement that the money would be returned within a few weeks, police said. When he was arrested, Xu told police he was investing the money in a Nigerian business venture in which he expected a $50 million return.

"I tried to tell him he had been scammed," said Detective Steve Blair, speaking at a press conference last night at Boston police headquarters. "His plan all along was this Nigerian investment."

The report Promoting transparency in the African oil sector (pdf) is now available on the CSIS website. This study by the CSIS task force on Rising U.S. Oil Stakes in West Africa has been funded by the The U.S. Institute of Peace. It aims to examine political and humanitarian developments in West African oil-exporting states -- mainly Nigeria and Angola -- and the region's geo-strategic importance as a major supplier of U.S. oil. Co-chaired by CSIS Africa Program director J. Stephen Morrison and David Goldwyn of Goldwyn International Strategies, the task force has seek to determine how best U.S. policy can promote development (economic reform), democracy (good governance), transparency and improved respect for human rights, as well as environmental stewardship. Expect thorough analysis of the report on this blog.

* Playing with a headline from Reuters, I would say that "the United States faces OPEC showdown on oil cut". And I really mean it, as you will see if you read on: the Saudis want to go ahead with the planned production cut, whereas Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) resist.

Analysts said the rare split across OPEC's core Gulf Arab membership suggests the United States, having failed to budge Saudi, now is focusing diplomatic efforts aimed at securing lower prices on Kuwait and the UAE. "The UAE and Kuwait are the guys that the U.S. can count on now," said Roger Diwan of Washington consultancy PFC Energy. The Gulf pair appear to back Washington's view that oil prices, recently at a 13-year high, should be allowed to ease to avert potential damage to U.S. and world economic growth. "Both the Kuwaitis and the UAE appear to be dancing to the U.S. tune but the market believes the Saudis will get their way," said Nauman Barakat of brokers Refco in New York. ... But [Saudi oil minister] Naimi said OPEC already had implemented the April cut to combat lower seasonal second quarter demand. "As far as Saudi Arabia is concerned April 1 has been implemented and I believe others have done so as well," the Saudi minister told reporters in Vienna.

* The jury still out about the outcome of tomorrow's meeting. However, the latest gesture from Saudi oil minister signals that production cut is likely. The NYT's comment on the issue doesn't lack humour:

There is little doubt that gasoline prices in the United States, which are expected to reach a record this spring, are bringing renewed attention to OPEC's 11 members.

You bet!

* Meanwhile, in America, US senators urges Bush to pressure OPEC to increase oil output as a means to lower domestic gasoline prices. John Kerry did the same thing.

* The big news is that the White House thinks the market should set oil price, not OPEC. No kidding!

Sudanese security forces have arrested military officers from the Darfur region and linked to the People's National Congress party:

Sudanese security forces have arrested 10 military officers who were plotting to overthrow the government, a high-ranking military official said yesterday. The official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters the officers were arrested on Sunday and were mostly from war-torn western Sudan. He said they all had sympathies to the opposition Popular Congress party, led by Islamist leader Hassan Al-Turabi. ... Turabi denied his party was involved in a coup bid but said his sources had told him around 27 officers had been arrested. The opposition leader is a former ally of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 military coup.

The peace talks over the Darfur crisis are to start today in Chad. Sudanese president Omar Bashir rejected the latest EU proposal requesting international human rights monitoring mission in Darfur. Without such monitoring, it's unlikely the ethnic cleansing in the region will stop.

The set of events that took place last week in Tripoli (Libya) -- diplomatic handshake between Blair and Gaddafi, oil deal between Shell and Libya's National Oil Company -- is a striking example of the way oil links diplomacy (international oil politics), business (international oil business), and security (global war on terrorism). As such, the Libyan episode is the latest illustration of the rationale behind the ongoing new scramble for Africa -- "Going where the oil is" (pdf).

The dangers of such a scramble have been highlighted by NGO reports recently published by Global Witness and Transparency International. Interestingly, the reports put the blame on dictators (from Africa, Asia or Latin America) and Western oil companies. Next to nothing is said of the responsilibity of Western leaders and diplomats who acts as middle-men to their oilmen and promoters of their national energy security. They represent the third pary (national interest) in the dangerous liaisons between non-Western dictators and Western oilmen. The deal between Shell and Libya would be unthinkable without the handshake between Blair and Gaddafi. Charlotte Denny makes this point very clear in her story about the Transparency International's list of corrupted dictators:

Most of those on the list were protected by Western governments turning a blind eye to their criminal activities in exchange for support during the Cold War. ... Mobutu cleverly used the threat of an invasion from the then Marxist government of neighbouring Angola to quieten concerns in the West about his increasingly blatant looting from one of the most resource-rich countries in Africa.

What happened post 9/11 is that the war on terrorism has replaced the war on communism as the best convenient way to hunt for African oil. Global Witness and Transparency International have decided to ignore this very hot topic. We don't. However, it would be a mistake to think that corruption is limited to tropical dictators, western oilmen and leaders. The United Nations organization is being probed for the "oil for food" program after Claudia Rosett's investigation unveiled the case. The fact that Iraqi journalists were the first ones to break the story vindicates the view that local people are perfectly able to monitor their governments when given the means to do so.

Michael Meacher, former Britain's environment minister from 1997-2003, published an eye-opening article yesterday that sheds a vivid light on US/UK's oil politics in Africa and the war on terrorism:

So, "brave" Muammar Gaddafi has agreed on the importance of combating terrorism. A handshake with Tony Blair has sealed his re-entry into the international community. His compliance in opening up Libya to nuclear weapons inspectors has been spun as a major triumph in the "war on terrorism". The motives, however, are rather more cynical. An energy crisis is looming for Britain and the US. Libya produces high-quality, low-sulfur crude oil at very low cost (as low as $US1 ($1.3) a barrel in some fields), and holds 3 per cent of world oil reserves. It has vast proven natural gas reserves of 46 trillion cubic feet, but actual gas reserves are largely unexplored and estimated to total up to 70 trillion cubic feet. The problem of access to Libyan hydrocarbons was Gaddafi's record of running a state terrorist machine ... But none of the mutual hostility over the past two decades prevented a deal along these simple lines: we accept your acknowledgement of guilt over flight 103, you open up your WMD programs to inspection, and both of us can start benefiting from trading your oil again. The weakness of this deal as presented, however, is that it appears Libya didn't have any WMD, other than chemical weapons no longer likely to be useable.

Meacher then reveals that the Anglo-American support for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was a means to "to break Russia's monopoly over oil and gas transport routes and secure pro-Western governments in the strategic Black Sea-Caspian Sea oil-rich basin".

The US played a major role in creating and sustaining the mujahideen to fight the invading Soviet army in the Afghan war of 1979-92. Then from 1992-95 the Pentagon assisted the movement of thousands of Islamic fighters from central Asia to fight alongside Bosnian Muslims and remove the Milosevic barrier, and so extend US influence in a key area of oil geopolitics - a "pact with the devil", as Richard Holbrooke, America's former chief Balkans peace negotiator, put it. Before George Bush trumpets his dedication to his war on terrorism, he should reflect on his country's links with terrorism over the past decade where it has suited US interests.

Meacher shows that the US/UK quest for oil went hand in hand with Jihad. It's only after 9/11 that the war on terrorism became the main rationale for securing oil. As a matter of fact, Libya's entry into the anti-Jihad camp -- following other Arab petrostates such as Saudi Arabia -- is based on shared interests. There seems to be a kind of division of labor between the United States and the United Kindgom in the US/UK partnership for African oil. As for the role of Tony Blair, it became obvious when he shook hands with Gaddafi. According to Andrew Rawnsley, it proves that "only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun":

Having resumed diplomatic links with Libya five years ago, Britain was the player best positioned - indeed, the only country so placed - to broker a bargain which needed the signatures of both Colonel Gadaffi and George W. Bush. This is a very British coup. In the eyes of the Prime Minister, this is also a quintessentially Blair coup: a vindication of his own approach to the world, a reassertion of his belief that Britain plays a pivotal role in global affairs. ... To the United States, the Libya deal makes the point that rogue regimes with ambitions to acquire WMD and histories of terrorist links can be dealt with by more than just military means. Intelligence and diplomacy are alternatives to fighting the menace with bombs and troops. The second term of Tony Blair's premiership has been heavily defined by war-war. War in Afghanistan, war in Iraq. The trip to Tripoli advertises his continuing belief in the vital place that should be accorded to jaw-jaw.

Convinced that "countries that trade together don't generally fight against each other", Patricia Hewitt -- Bretain's trade secratary -- said that trading in oil can help underpin co-operation against terrorism. She announced that British trade minister Mike O'Brien will be visiting Tripoli next month.

President Fradique de Menezes (Sao Tome and Principe), Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Nigeria) and Finance Minister Pedro de Morais (Angola) are discussing African oil today, in a forum sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). General Charles Wald (EUCOM), Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), member of the House International Committee and chairman of the Africa subcommittee will join other Africa and energy experts to discuss accountability and transparency in Africa's oil and gas industry.

CSIS will release two reports at the conference, including "Promoting Transparency in the African Oil Sector" focusing on US energy stakes in Africa.

Gen. Charles Wald will talk specifically on the last panel -- "How can the U.S. promote Stability and Security in the Oil Rich African Countries?" -- that (I guess) will probably deal more with Al Qaeda than with real West African threats such as military coups (Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast), lack of democracy and the unrest of young people inhibating oil rich regions in the south of Algeria and in the Warri region in Nigeria.

* For China’s involvement with the Sudanese oil industry, the time for fake is now.

* Tullow Oil to take control of Energy Africa from South Africa.

* According to Hector Igbikiowubo, the appointment of Funsho Kupolokun as Group Managing Director of NNPC will trigger change at the Nigerian national oil company. A production sharing deal with Ocean Energy is already in the pipeline.

* Like other European firms (including Shell), Statoil is to invest in Libya’s oil and gas:

Libya's re-emergence as a place to do business looks well-timed for Western oil companies concerned about dwindling reserve levels. Like Iraq last year, it shows that on occasion politicians are not deaf to the necessity of driving through geo-political change to find more oil which will keep Western economies on the road.

* As for reserves concerns, Shell tries to shift blame on SEC.

* The Alien Tort Claims Act is transforming the United States into the place where human rights activists can sue oil firms for human rights abuse in Africa: Shell and ChevronTexaco are to feel the heat.

* All eyes will remain on Vienna this week.

After the attemped coup failed yesterday, it is quite difficult to know what really happened and who is behind the attacks.

Andrew Borowiec gives us the behind-the-scene talks on the Arab League summit collapse.

My favourite US-based Indian humorist and stand-up comedian of the day knows how to tell this story.

Being on the road, it was nearly impossible for me to follow conversations this week.

I was fortunate enough to spot the "joke" of the week. When I had time, I visited the 911-commission site. Very deep. Too bad there was next to nothing said about this.

Also of interest is the idea of Yoishi Funabshi. That was the best way to celebrate the anniversary of both Joi Ito's and James Moore's texts on digital democracy.

As US gasoline prices at the pump hit the American consumer's pocket, the climate of fear and uncertainty leads to a growing panic in the US administration. Jeremy Rifking gives a good analysis of the petro-dollar mechanism at work both within OPEC countries and in the United States:

Get ready for what might become the economy's version of the perfect storm later this summer. The devastation could quickly spread to the UK and the rest of the world, with dire consequences for the global economy. The first hint of what might be in store came last month when Opec announced its decision to withdraw 1m barrels of crude oil a day from the market. Opec is worried about the weakening value of the dollar: it has lost one-third of its value in just under two years. Since Opec sells oil for dollars, the oil-producing countries are losing precious revenue as the value of the dollar continues to erode.

That doesn't look too good. It get worse when you reach his conclusion:

So we have all the conditions coming together to create the perfect economic storm: record oil prices triggering a restriction in US economic growth and an increase in the federal budget deficit, accompanied by further erosion in the value of the dollar - with increased budget deficits and the diminished value of the dollar leading in turn to higher interest rates to convince foreign investors to lend the US additional money, followed by a further retraction of the US economy as rising interest rates lead to a drop in domestic investment and consumption. The cascade of events touches off a tsunami that engulfs the rest of the global economy, submerging the world in deep recession.

A barrel at $40? That explains why all eyes stay focused on Vienna:

"We are meeting on March 31 and expect the cut to take effect the following day, but the timing for the practical impact has slipped. There is effectively a delay in the announcement of the cut," Daukoru added. Nigeria, where rickety refineries limit domestic crude consumption, is set to produce around 2.45 million barrels per day of crude next month, well above its 2-million-barrel-per-day OPEC quota. U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham told reporters the United States is talking with OPEC members about the group's production ahead of the cartel's meeting next week in Vienna. But he declined to elaborate, saying the policy of the administration was to keep the discussions private.

Washington Times journalist Andrew Borowiec has written two stories about the Arab world that deserve attention: the latest article focuses on the forthcoming Arab League summit which will gather officials from 22 Arab states next week in Tunis. The previous story analyzed the state of the Union of Greater Maghreb countries (Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania). Both organizations are going through a deep crisis phase that hangs like a shadow over oil politics and terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa. The complexity of these intertwined problems make it unlikely for Arab statesmen to talk with one voice and agree on a common strategy -- be it in economy or foreign policy. Their powerlesness creates a void that is easily exploited by outside powers -- the EU as well as the US -- and non-states actors (Al Qaeda).

This is the first episode of the story of Shell in Nigeria. It starts few months ago, in Berlin...

* 7 November 2003, Berlin (Germany): Transparency International (TI), an anti-corruption NGO, celebrates the tenth anniversary of its history.

Olusegun Obasanjo is invited to make a speech. As a founding member of the organization -- he has been Chairman of TI's Advisory Council for several years -- and the current President of Nigeria, he wants to takes the lead on oil industry revenue transparency. In his speech, entitled Nigeria: from pond of corruption to island of integrity(pdf), Obasanjo declares that his country would be publishing openly the revenues it receives from the oil industry. He's determined to implement the measures advocated by initiatives such as the UK government-led Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and Publish What You Pay. Towards the end of his speech, Obasanjo dares even criticize western companies operating in Nigeria:

As I hinted earlier... in this global war against corruption, no nation can carry on as an island unto itself. The international community must recognize the key role it ought to play in moving international businesses towards non-corrupt competition for markets and procurement in developing economies by developing global standards and providing the technical and where appropriate the financial support that some of the developing countries require to adequately respond to those standards.

I note with sadness, the involvement of some corporations from the developed world that have, even in recent times, been heavily involved in criminalizing our business cultures, compromising our policy makers, contaminating our institutions, and subverting our due process.

Chris Finlayson, Chairman of the Shell companies in Nigeria, is also in Berlin to attend the press conference. He welcomes the move. Both men, Obasanjo and Finlayson, know how much their relation matter to Nigeria and Shell: oil represents 90 percent of Nigeria's export revenues while Shell pumps about 50 percent of the oil produced in Nigeria. The company has been operating in the country for 60 years!

* 2 December 2003, Abuja (Germany): Commonwealth Business Forum, theme: “Achieving Sustainable Development – Challenges for Business and Governments”

It is about 10 a.m. when Chris Finlayson, who represents the first co-sponsor of the event (Shell) starts his speech: The business case for sustainable development: Shell experience. In the middle of his presentation, he declares that "issues of transparency and good governance" are "consistent with the principles of Sustainable Development" and need to be adressed. He adds:

We in Shell recognize that this should include revenues paid to governments. So we are supporting the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which is working to convince governments to allow such disclosure. Not that the government of President Obasanjo needs convincing. Shell in Nigeria already reports the taxes and royalties we pay here, in line with the President’s commitment to revenue transparency.

Apparently, Finlayson (representing Shell) and Obasanjo (representing Nigeria) are on the same wavelength. The talk the same language, they have the same goals as far as the war for transparency is concerned.

However, an internal Shell document circulated 6 days later will change shed a new light on the relations between both men and their respective constituencies -- the transnational oil firm --, and the seventh biggest oil producer worlwide: Nigeria.

***
Next episode: tomorrow.

The clashes that took place today in Ivory Coast, as well as the talks at the UN Security Council vindicate some of the views expressed here last week by Stephen Ellis about the security landscape in West Africa: MOST OF THE UNDERLYING PROBLEMS STILL EXIST, AND THERE IS A PERMANENT RISK THAT HOSTILITIES WILL RECOMMENCE...

Little America is the name given to the compound of ChevronTexaco's Angolan operations in the enclave of Cabinda -- Cabinda Gulf Oil Company (CABGOC). Protected by tough perimeter fencing and land mines, the compound is surrounded by families living in shanty housing whose members are forced to collect firewood for cooking as there are no supplies of kerosene nearby. As elsewhere in Africa, the inhabitants of the region where oil is pumped live in misery.

According to reports, repression by the Angolan army in this northern region (home to a separatist movement) is so violent that entire villages are being emptied; locals who fear for their lives are fleeing Cabinda.

The situation in Cabinda has been complicated by its vast oil reserves, both onshore and offshore. Locals say oil is the reason why the [Angolan] government wants to keep the province as part of the motherland, but they argue it has done little to benefit the lives of ordinary Cabindans. ... "We die here every single day because of the oil. We've already told the [ruling] MPLA [party], 'If what you want is oil, you can just build a pipeline from here to Luanda and pump all the oil you want. Just leave us alone'," said Cabindan journalist Raul Danda. "They say we want independence because of oil – that's not true. They are not leaving us alone because of oil – that's the real truth," he added. Father Congo agrees. "We've never benefited from it, so oil does not make any difference in the struggle. What's happened is that Cabindans have become victims of the oil - that's for sure," he said. ... "We need to benefit from the oil – it's ours. But, more importantly, we need to be recognised as human beings. I think the international community should put pressure on the MPLA regime - because that's what it is - to tell them to stop killing us, to start talking to us," Danda stressed.

The latest Global Witness report, Coming clean on oil, mining and gas revenues, focus on resources revenue mismanagement and misappropriation accross the globe. The five major examples include three African oil and gas producers: Congo Brazzaville, Angola and Equatorial Guinea.

In these countries, governments do not provide even basic information about their revenues from natural resources. Nor do oil, mining and gas companies publish any information about payments made to governments. Huge amounts of money are therefore not subject to any oversight and crooked elites can extract all sorts of ‘facilitation payments’ from firms that would probably prefer not to pay bribes. Investigations also reveal that some companies have played a willing role in facilitating off-the-books payments, misappropriation of state assets, and other nefarious activities such as arms shipments, as part of an anti-competitive, under-the-table method of winning business with unaccountable regimes. Ordinary citizens, who often own a country’s resources under its constitution, are thus left without the information to call their governments to account over the management of their revenues. The end result is a litany of corruption, social decay, increased poverty, reinforcement of authoritarian government and political unrest, which can ultimately lead to state failure and the spread of instability across regions.

(...)

Congo Brazzaville is one of the petro-states most closely associated with the legacy of influence peddling and dirty deals in Africa by the now-notorious French state oil company Elf Aquitaine (now Total). Elf treated Congo as its colony, buying off the ruling elite and helping it to mortgage the country’s future oil income in exchange for expensive loans. The company even financed both sides of the civil war, as it also did in Angola.

Although former senior Elf officials have been jailed in France for ‘misuse of company assets’, their legacy of opacity and hair-raising accounting endures. Despite huge existing debts and a supposed programme of cooperation with the international community to restructure Congo’s finances, the government has entered into ever more arcane and tortuous deals to avoid financial scrutiny from the international community and its own citizens. Indeed, the national oil company Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo makes a multi-million dollar profit but, according to the IMF, does not pay a single penny of this money into the government’s coffers.

In Angola, new evidence from IMF documents and elsewhere confirm previous allegations made by Global Witness that over US$1 billion per year of the country’s oil revenues - about a quarter of the state’s yearly income - has gone unaccounted for since 1996. Meanwhile, one in four of Angola’s children die before the age of five and one million internally-displaced people remain dependent on international food aid. This report highlights the latest revelations from the ‘Angolagate’ scandal, in which political and business elites in France, Angola and elsewhere exploited the country’s civil war to siphon off oil revenues. Most recently, evidence has emerged in a Swiss investigation of millions of dollars being paid to President Dos Santos himself. The government continues to seek oil-backed loans at high rates of interest which are financed through opaque and unaccountable offshore structures. A major concern exists that Angola’s elite will now simply switch from wartime looting of state assets to profiteering from its reconstruction.

In Equatorial Guinea, oil companies appear keen to do business with the brutal regime of President Obiang Nguema. The country’s government has been tarnished by allegations of corruption, political violence, human rights abuses, and narcotics trafficking. Although the country’s oil boom has resulted in a dramatic increase in GDP, its living standards remain among the worst in Africa. This may be because much of the country’s oil money stays abroad: journalists have recently uncovered evidence that major US oil companies are paying revenues directly into an account under the president’s control at Riggs Bank in downtown Washington DC.

Corruption and secrecy are the main targets of the report which advocate new transparency policies and initiatives.

Michael Peel and Nicholas Shaxson published an interesting article in the Financial Times yesterday. They analyze events that took place in the last 12 months in three recent African oil states: Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome, Mauritania.

In the past month, the dictatorship in Equatorial Guinea has claimed it was the target of a mercenary coup plot. In the neighbouring island state of São Tomé and Príncipe, the government - briefly overthrown last year by rebels who said oil was one of their reasons for acting - has narrowly avoided collapse over a controversial oil trading deal. In Mauritania excitement over imminent oil production is matched by instability. ... Equatorial Guinea is sub-Saharan Africa's third-largest oil producer, with an output running at more than 350,000 barrels a day. São Tomé and Príncipe is due soon to announce the results of an auction of blocks in a zone that is being developed jointly with Nigeria and has estimated reserves of billions of barrels. More than 800m barrels of reserves have been discovered after light exploration in Mauritania.

The authors argue that these three countries are following the same pattern already witnessed in two older African petro-states, Nigeria and Angola. After discussing the issue of corruption, Peel and Shaxson conclude on the virtues of transparency initiatives (UK government's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative). Unfortunately, I'm afraid Nigeria's adoption of such initiatives have not produced the proper outcome yet. As for the Chad-Cameroon project, its monitoring mechanism didn't prevent President Idriss Deby to buy weapons with the royalties.

By now, you probably know that Blair is in Libya, shaking hands and chatting with his new buddy, Gaddafi. Here's a transcript of the conversation:

Muammar: You are looking good, you are still young.
Tony: It's good to be here at last after so many months.

Remember: Tony just arrived from Madrid where he was yesterday, mourning the victims of the Madrid bombings. Lockerbie seems very far now.

For many years Libya was effectively off-limits for British business, since it was under UN sanctions. Those sanctions were lifted after the Lockerbie admission. Now British companies, including Shell and the British aerospace firm BAE, have been looking for new business opportunities in the country. Libya has a large oil and gas industry that is still undeveloped, with plentiful reserves that are largely untapped. The country's proximity to European markets also makes it attractive to European concerns, who are eager to get into the country before American competitors do. On Thursday, Shell has said it signed a preliminary agreement with Libya for gas exploration rights. A spokesman for Blair told Reuters earlier that the deal was worth $200 million (€165 million) and possibly up to $1 billion (€823 million). BAE is talking with Libya about aviation projects, including possible aircraft sales. Tourism development is also under consideration for the sun-drenched, largely desert country. Reports say a British firm is negotiating permission to build a 500 hectare (1,235 acre) tourism complex, with a luxury marina, golf courses and fitness clubs.

Those who may be disgusted by such rabid commercialism have something to chew on: the war on terrorism.

Blair's spokesman said he and Gaddafi had "agreed on the need to unite together and to recognize the problems posed to the world by fundamentalism and what fundamentalism produces, which is terrorism and extremism." Foreign Minister Mohamed Abderrhmane Chalgam said Libya, like the West, opposed Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. "For us they are a real obstacle against our progress, against our security, against women...against any change in our region," he told reporters.

I'm afraid this only hides the biginning of the military cooperation program and economic sanctions lifting discussions already announced by Gaddafi's son, Saif al Islam, just before the top US envoy William Burns arrived in Tripoli on Tuesday. All these good news are the direct result of Gaddafi's decision to stop a WMD program that was more sideshow than substance. As we learned today in a NYT article by William Broad, a team of US scientists from the Institute for Science and International Security, based in Washington, said that such a program was far from posing an immediate threat to world peace - to say the least:

"The administration has distorted what was found in Libya, with the implication that it was very close to having a nuclear weapon"... After Libya publicly renounced its weapons program, the Bush administration and Britain tended to portray the project as large and aggressive, while the International Atomic Energy Agency said Libya was several years away from producing a nuclear weapon.

By the way, who really cares now? Oil has has been the key goal of all this scam: "A senior British government official said British business would gain from closer ties with oil-rich Libya", reports William Broad. Remember, we already knew that.

In the wake of the recent revelations made by Richard Clarke about the Bush administration’s anti-terror policy, AOP brings you up to date about the US anti-terror strategy in Africa. In both cases, terror threats are hyped as a way to hide a specific political agenda. If re-election is the goal of the American presidential campaign, a long-lasting deployment in the heart of Africa is the aim of current US counter-terrorism activities on the continent.

Just like the global war on terror, this one is accompanied by a significant dose of exaggeration and deceit designed to focus attention on specific areas, while preventing questions about more straightforward issues such as human rights, democracy, transparency, corruption (remember Halliburton) and accountability in oil revenue management by US-backed dictatorial regimes such as Algeria, Mauritania, Niger, Chad or Nigeria. We don’t discuss the necessity for the United States to protect its oily interests in Africa: we just question the way such policy is marketed, transforming mainstream media and journalists into the echo chamber of a worldwide PR campaign.

There’s a consistent pattern in the way the US administration has been marketing its military deployment in Africa: it’s designed as a step-by-step program that tries to cure specific local African problems. This way, the program is made more sellable to the American citizen -- who might question such a steady return, in these times of change, into the “heart of darkness” (a decade after the Somali blunder). The message is very simple: the United States helps poor defenceless aids-stricken African countries with porous borders protect themselves (and the United States) against Al Qaeda. No African or American citizen would question such a move. And no one does, so far. This approach has the extra-advantage of preventing any discussion about the bigger picture:

* The US anti-terrorism strategy in Africa is run by military proconsuls like Gal. James Jones and his deputy Charles Wald. This follows a pattern first spotted by Dana Priest and recently described by Robert Kaplan.

* The object of the strategy is to increase the number of forward location bases on the continent: “I look at any place in Africa that has a runway or port that wants to be friends with the United States or we have a relationship with as a potential forward-operating location that we could temporarily use,” Wald says.

* The regional approach allows America to build a US-trained and equipped Pan-African army that share the same US counter-terrorism strategy, tactics methods and gear. Chad and Uganda are signs of things to come.

* Africa provides the United States with a new training ground for US special forces: The African soldiers are not the only ones to benefit from PSI. The SOCEUR [Special Operations Command Europe] forces are getting the opportunity to learn new cultures, terrain and languages that don't exist in Central Europe.

* The Pan Sahel Initiative helps transform formerly pro-French armies (Mali, Mauritania, Algeria, Niger, Chad) into pro-American forces.

According to the confidential letter Africa Analysis, the regime in Equatorial Guinea thinks that the failed coup was not organized by Ely Calil. A western secret service (France) has supposedly masterminded the coup with the participation of a regional player (Gabon):

Although Zimbabwe has indicated that captured material prove the involvement of Spain, Britain and the US in the coup plot, Malabo authorities are wary of this. They reckon that there is a French connection, but they have yet to figure that out. Africa Analysis has been told that Moto has been funded by Gabon and by France and that had the coup succeeded the plotters would have gone to Libreville, Gabon, to meet him before taking power in Malabo. Apparently, the coup was initially planned to take place in February when Spain sent its naval ships into the area for exercises.

This new theory doesn't sound as far-fetched as it looks. Not only does France possess a rather impressive track record in the field of African coups, but the country's oil firm Elf and Gabon had good reason to seek regime change in Equatorial Guinea:

Gabon, whose oilfields are mainly operated by the French multinational TotalFinaElf, is a mature oil producer which is struggling to maintain its current output of 250,000 barrels per day. A diplomatic source familiar with the region said that France, the former colonial power, had in the past lent strong support to Gabon's claim to the disputed islands, which could hold the key to bolstering Gabon's falling reserves. Equatorial Guinea, on the other hand, only discovered oil in 1995 and is increasing its oil and gas production rapidly. It has already overtaken Gabon and is currently producing around 350,000 barrels per day. However, whereas France controls the oilfields Gabon, Equatorial Guinea's offshore oilfields are mostly operated by the US oil giants ExxonMobil, Amerada Hess and Marathon.

Should the allegations made by Africa Analysis be evidenced, the person most likely to be involved in the plot is Ali Bongo, the Gabonese defense minister and son of President Bongo.

According to South African daily This Day, Charles Taylor was the real target of the mercenaries arrested in Zimbabwe. Hard to swallow, one day after the group appeared in court.

After East Africa and the Western Sahel, US anti-terror initiatives will soon reach North Africa. As already announced on March 8 by Gen. Charles Wald, military Leaders from West and North Africa are meeting US Commanders in Stuttgart (Germany), at the headquarters of the U.S. military's European Command, which oversees American military activities in most of Africa. The talks will mainly focus on cooperation in the global war on terrorism.

The first-ever North Africa, Pan-Sahel Chiefs of Defense meeting is taking place in Stuttgart, Germany, headquarters of the U.S. military's European Command, which oversees American military activities in most of Africa. According to a spokesperson for the European Command, the participants include senior military officials from Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal and Tunisia. The U.S. side is led by General Charles Wald, deputy commander of the European Command and a frequent visitor to Africa. The talks, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, are to focus on military cooperation in the global war on terrorism. Speaking to journalists earlier this month, General Wald said specific topics would include intelligence-sharing and the ability of forces to operate together effectively.

Anti-terrorism is fast becoming a hot commodity in Africa. It both helps give a new edge to old military regimes (Algeria) and a pro-American veneer to countries that used to be pro-French (Senegal) or pro-British (Kenya, Uganda). With US investments in anti-terror efforts, appetites grew around the continent. In less than two months, two important initiatives have been announced – one in Kenya and one in Algeria.

* Kenya became the first African country to host a national counter-terrorism center:

The United States, Kenya's biggest partner in the war against terror, has welcomed Kenya's initiative. The spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Peter Claussen, says helping to ensure the success of the counter-terrorism center will be a priority for the embassy. "The president has promised aid for east Africa counter-terrorism assistance and the embassy is committed to making that promise good," said Mr. Claussen. "The counter-terrorism center will give us a good place to start."

* Algeria that will host the African Union terrorism research center:

The idea of the anti-terrorism center was first conceived at an inter-governmental meeting held in Algeria in 2002. There, ministers came up with the African Union Plan of Action for the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism, which included establishing a research and information center. Mr. Ewi [The African Union's anti-terrorism specialist] says the Algerian government has agreed to provide the center's infrastructure. Funding for the center is expected to come from the Africa Union's terrorism fund, as well as from donors, who are currently in negotiations with the organization.

Jeff Gerth and Stephen Labaton publish a follow-up to the revelations they made last week in the New York Times. This new piece comes amid news that Nigerian oil worker unions threaten to take action if Shell cuts their jobs.

On Thursday, AOP will publish a detailed account of the events that led to the current situation at Shell, from November 2003 to this day. It is a bizarre tale of business principles gone bad, involving such crusty issues as OPEC quotas, oil reserves classification, securities regulations, social unrest in the Niger Delta region. The story takes place at the crossroads of oil politics, regional security, corporate social responsibility and sustainable development. The main characters are Chris Finlayson -- the managing director of Shell Petroleum Development Company (Nigeria) --, Philip Watts, Shell's former chairman, President Olesugun Obasanjo, OPEC, SEC, and many more people.

Every Tuesday, Ken Wiwa -- the son of writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa -- authors a weekly column in the Canadian daily, Globe And Mail. Ten days ago, he published a piece that I just can't get out of my mind: entitled Inequality and the calculus of terror, the op ed instantly became a silent companion of my meditations. Each time I started to write something about it, I ended up thinking about something else that was only loosely related. On the other hand, each time I stopped thinking about it, trying to focus on something entirely different, I ended up drawing links with Ken's article. In a way, it's just a collage of different themes: the relativity of the value of life, the way media executives select the content of their programs, Wole Soyinka's meditation on the origin of the war on terror, the bias of international justice, the difference between dying over Scotland and dying over African soil, etc. All these bits suddenly come together in the middle of the essay and in its final sentences:

If life and death, like currencies, would appear to have a differential monetary value across the world, then we are heading for trouble — because it is on this arbitrage in the value of life that terrorists speculate: They know the difference, if you like, between a dead Canadian and a dead Cambodian, and they know how to play that market. ... Whether we like it or not, this kind of aggression thrives because of the asymmetrical world we live in. Ours is a world in which the inequalities of wealth have been institutionalized, where the differences that should encourage creativity are routinely manipulated and exploited by those who peddle fear. Ours is a world where moral relativism is casually used to service and justify all kinds of inhuman agendas.

What I found most remarkable in the text is the way it dramatizes the "caring problem", theorized in emergent democracy debates by Joi Ito, and discussed by Ethan and other people (myself included): Ken Wiwa basically says that as long as compassion is evenly distributed and media agenda highly selective, prejudice will thrive and terror will rise. This is evidenced by the way the Darfur crisis -- "the world's greatest humanitarian crisis and possibly the world's greatest humanitarian catastrophe" -- is ignored by international media: our attention was focused on the Madrid bombings, then the Middle East, then something else that was ranked higher than the Darfur tragedy.

Bettina Ambach published an excellent account of the terror threat in Spain: in Spain's Muslims: Living on Society's Edge, she somehow echoes Wiwa's concern in the way she tries to understand how terrorism can be the effect of social inequatlity and humiliation:

Now people are asking themselves how a minority in the Muslim community could have become susceptible to Islamist propaganda. The disparities between Spain's Catholic and Muslim societies could provide some clues. A look at Ceuta, one of the two Spanish cities on the Moroccan Mediterranean coast, is revealing. Ceuta is the gateway to Europe. The border between Africa and Europe, between Islamic Morocco and Catholic Spain, is here. Half of Ceuta's 72,000 residents are Christian, while the other half are Muslim, mainly of Moroccan origin. ... The fact is, Ceuta's Muslim residents have dramatically lower standards of living and levels of education than Christian residents. They mainly live in the El Principe district, a poor, entirely Muslim neighborhood right on the border to Morocco, where integration doesn't exist. Young Muslims born in Spain to Moroccan parents live here. They don't feel Moroccan, but they aren't fully accepted by Spanish society either. Many fear the promises of the "real Islamic message" may be received with open arms in communities like Ceuta, creating the kind of dangerous backdrop that could breed future terrorism.

In a world where so many people live in society's edge, extending "the borders of our compassion" becomes a new moral as well as security imperative.

In terms of oil politics, a pipeline that is to carry gas from Egypt to Israel will be the first likely casuality of the assassination of Hamas leader Yassin. This is not the first time the project is jeopardized for political reasons:

The negotiations for the purchase of Egyptian gas, which began a decade ago, have experienced ups and downs, and were halted several times for political reasons. The parties were close to signing an agreement in 1999. The negotiators on the Egyptian side were British Petroleum (BP) and Italian energy company ENI, which own the Egyptian gas. The negotiations were broken off at the order of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, then renewed a year later. The new negotiator on the Egyptian side was EMG, which was given a franchise by the Egyptian government to export the gas, while BP and ENI were ousted from the negotiations. The new negotiations, which began in 2000, were again broken off by Egyptian when the intifada began. The negotiations were once again restarted in August 2003, after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the IEC to give priority to Egyptian gas over the Palestinian gas offered by Britsh Gas.

Libya, Libya, Libya - the country has never seemed so attractive to diplomats and oil executives.

* The biggest news of the week is Blair's visit to Tripoli on Thursday, if we are to believe Saif al Islam - an we do. Military cooperation and sanctions will be high on the agenda.

* The announcement of Blair's visit came amid new assessments by analysts and diplomats of the motives behind Libya's decision to stop its weapons program. Diederik Vandewalle's account of the Origins and Parameters of Libya's Recent Actions confirm what AOP has written since December 2003:

Some have described Libya's recent shift as a reaction to Washington's muscle flexing during the Iraq war. In reality there is no direct link between the war and Libya's decisions. The back channel diplomacy that led to the denouement started almost two years before the Iraq war. It was initiated by British policy makers and only later did U.S. officials join. In a carefully orchestrated carrot-and-stick campaign that took place in several venues across the globe, Libya, Great Britain and the United States reached a consensus on a number of outstanding issues—including the 1988 Lockerbie bombing—that led to the breakthrough agreement on WMD. ... The pragmatism that the new technocrats [Shukri Ghanem et al.] have urged upon Qadhafi, concern over the economic and political toll of sanctions, and the need for international investment in the country's deteriorating oil infrastructure and in developing new oilfields slowly moved Libya to act upon western demands.

Stanfor scholar Thomas Gale Moore echoed the same idea, with a special reference to Clinton diplomat Martin Indyk:

In claiming to make the U.S. safer, President Bush has pointed to Muammar Gadaffi’s willingness to disarm as evidence that the war is producing peace. Martin Indyk, who as assistant secretary of state in 1999 opened negotiations with Libya, asserts that Gadaffi was trying to open up to the West and to the U.S. in particular well before the Iraq conflict. The war, he concludes, has nothing to do with Libya’s disarmament.

* Meanwhile, the French rush to Libya was heavily criticized by American writer Kenneth R. Timmerman:

No U.S. trade delegation can go to Libya until the Bush administration lifts U.S. sanctions on trade with the country. The French know that. ... "I would say this to the Americans: Don't let France beat us back into Libya," Republican Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania told me after he met with Colonel Kadafi in Sirte. "We will not take advantage of the Libyan people the way the French have." ... But America's voice cannot be heard if we are not present. It's time to press forward aggressively, to challenge the Libyans to meet our concerns, but also to reward Libya with trade and a visible U.S. diplomatic presence. One thing is sure: If we allow the French to set the boundaries for Libya's new relationship with the West, it won't be long before Colonel Kadafi is back to his old tricks.

Timmerman has become the most vocal French-basher in the United States. Having a book to sell may give him an extra motive to launch attack on Chirac and Villepin:

Americans need to remember that France is not a free-market economy, as we still are... When French businessmen go abroad, they often travel in delegations led by the prime minister, or the foreign minister, or some other top official. The French government gets involved not just in opening doors, but in negotiating contracts. Often, these contracts have involved substantial kickbacks to French political parties. Even today, French companies can declare as an expense on their income-tax declaration the bribes and commissions they pay to foreign agents. This was banned in the United States in the 1970s under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This is one of the reasons the French like to do business with dictators. In a free and fair market, their companies can't always compete.

As far as Elf's dealings with African oil is concerned, he may have a point. But, what about Halliburton? In these matters, national politics seems to play a lesser role than corporations' social irresponsibility.

The DoD financed Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) hold a seminar earlier this month that dealt with African oil issues:

Recognizing the growing potential for West Africa’s petroleum-producing countries to greatly enhance output and their share of U.S. imports in the coming years, a Brown Bag Seminar held on 9 March 2004 examined and analyzed strategic implications for Africa’s development prospects, as well as broader security implications in the region and beyond. ... Key policy conclusions of the speakers included: (a) the need for sustained commitment in African countries to use petroleum resources to benefit their citizenry; (b) the importance of corporate transparency, consistent with the framework developed by the “Publish What You Pay Campaign”; (c) the centrality of regional security; and (d) the role of capacity building in the crucial area of resource management.

Sound conclusions. Too bad it took them 9 days AFTER the conference to finally announce what happened. It wasn't even mentioned in their calendar. The next Sub-regional seminar is to take place in Cameroon (9-14 May 2004). What happens in the meantime will remain a mystery until the next press release.

PS: Among the guest speakers was Vincent Kern, the Department of Defense official who tried so hard last month to convince African military officials that "Africa has been, is now, and will be into the foreseeable future ripe for terrorists and acts of terrorism". This shows once more how terrorism and oil are intertwined topics in the US Africa policy.

After sending his special envoy to Sudan with a plan of his own late last week, Bush phoned Sudanese leaders yesterday to tell them to hurry up and made interesting promises:

President Bush on Monday urged both sides in Sudan's 21-year civil war to reach a peace agreement, promising the country's president and the leader of the rebel forces that doing so would bring a new relationship with the United States. In separate phone conversations, Bush told Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir and John Garang of the Sudan People's Liberation Army ``to work with a sense of urgency to finalize an agreement,'' White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. ``The president indicated to both President Bashir and Dr. Garang that there were moments in history when leaders must rise to make a big difference for their countries. This is that moment for Sudan,'' McClellan said.

Such a gesture confirms at one thing: the guy wants the peace deal signed NOW, not later. More details in our previous post on the same topic.

The production sharing contract signed on March 19 covers block 242, offshore Nigeria.

Devon will operate the block with a 75 percent working interest. The Nigerian Petroleum Development Company Limited holds the remaining 25 percent working interest. The initial lease term of block 242 is five years. During that period Devon is committed to conduct a seismic survey and drill one exploratory well. A second five-year lease extension is optional. The company plans to solicit joint venture partners in block 242 and in block 256 that Devon also operates. ... With the addition of block 242, Devon has ownership in 12 exploratory blocks in West Africa, nine in deepwater. In addition to Nigeria, Devon holds leases in Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Ghana. Devon is also an active oil and gas producer in West Africa, with production licenses in Cote d'Ivoire, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. From these properties, Devon produces about 65,000 net equivalent barrels of oil per day.

British Gas, Hardman and Woodside are upbeat after preliminary estimate -- 3 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas -- on the offshore reserves at Banda.

"So, the Banda reserves are possibly already large enough for a stand-alone LNG development," Mr Ellyard said. "However, we're optimistic that substantially more gas reserves will be discovered in other prospects during the forthcoming drilling program. "Mauritania is well located for a short transport route to supply LNG to the east coast of USA and into Europe." If Banda is developed there is also likely to be a domestic market on the small African nation.

Through its private sector subsidiary IFC, the World Bank has already reviewed the project and may fund it. That would be the latest confirmation that the Bank ignores the recommendations of their own Extractive Industries Review's findings. Is this really a surprise?

Africa is becoming the main target for China's oil buyers -China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., Sinopec Corp), with Angolan crude imports jumping 57 percent from levels recorded in January.

China is importing increasing amounts of crude oil from Africa, and in February Angola overtook Saudi Arabia and became its main supplier that month, customs data released Friday showed.

* Last week, high energy prices hit the stock market and threatened the US economy and are likely to stay high this week according to analysts - the Chinese included.

* OPEC keeps its options open before the March 31 meeting: all eyes will be on Vienna. Geopolitical uncertainties, like the assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin, will add to the volatility of the market. Saudi Arabia's concern with high prices may lead to a decision to postpone the output cut.

* With plans to cut jobs and squeez operations in Nigeria in mind, Shell directors will meet the Association of British of Insurers, which represents an important group of investors. The pressure to shed more executives and the possibility to downgrades reserves for a third time since January remain high on the agenda. We'll get back to the Nigerian side of the agenda later today.

* The international situation (OPEC, oil prices, Shell, oil reserves) generated much debates and declarations at the Offshore West Africa conference that took place last week in Abuja (Nigeria).

World Water Day will take place on Monday 22. It's the perfect time for us to focus attention on the Nile river dispute. The background of the dispute can be traced back to a controversial colonial-era treaty that gives Egypt control of the river. Ten countries are involved in the controversy: Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, Uganda, Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Congo, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. A new treaty will soon be announced. Just like for other resources such as oil & gas, local communities -- through their MPs -- want to have their views heard. Given the importance and the location of the countries involved in the dispute, we will report future developments. You can find an account of the big picture here.

For the first time in the already 2-year long Sudanese peace process, US President George Bush intervened directly through his special envoy, John Danforth.

"President Bush has instructed me to express his concern that the longer this process drags out, the more possibilities there are for a real breakdown within Sudan," he said. "So he believes time is of the essence." Mr. Danforth said President Bush is required under U.S. law to report back to Congress on the progress of the peace talks, and whether or not the parties are negotiating in good faith. The president has until April 20 to do so.

The April 20 deadline is the official reason. The less official motive for speeding up the peace process is the US presidential election. Here are the five main reasons behind the presidential intervention:

* The situation on the ground is getting nastier by the day: an escalating fighting has started in the southern kingdom of Shilluk, and the deadly muslim-on-muslim war in the western region of the Darfur is ongoing. The situation there got so desperate that the crisis is now labeled "the worst humanitarian and human rights crisis", not unlike Rwanda. That's not a nice picture to show on CNN during a peace process that started before these clashes. But as time goes by, the pressure to include these new actors and their grievances into the deal under discussion will mount, threatening to bring to an end the already elusive US-led peace process (pdf).

* As far as Bush is concerned, that perspective would be a disaster. He desperately needs a win in his global war on terror, and the latest developments don't look good on the record: having Spain leave the coalition and pullout troops from Iraq one year later sends a very bad signal to the US voter who may think that the war on terror is being lost. Not a good thing at all for an incumbent who views himself as "the war president". Being a war president is fine if the war is being won. Being the president of a defeat is something else. Hyping Africa -- which is not the most pressing target on Al Qaeda's hit list -- as a the next front in the war on terror makes sense, given the Libyan decision to stop its so-called "WMD program" and the soon-to-be-declared peace in Sudan. Libya and Sudan have long been on the US list of rogue states and state sponsors of terrorism. Rightly so: in the case of Sudan, the regime once gave refuge to Ben Laden before he went back to Afghanistan.

* In case the "war president" image becomes too difficult to sustain in the campaign, Bush would like to project a more positive image: being a peacemaker in a conflict that lasted 25 years is not such a bad thing. The role of the United States in the peace process has been very important. Bush only makes clear to everyone that he keeps an eye on the prize. The Sudan Peace Act was an important step towards this.

* Last but not least, Bush needs to give something to chew on to three key constituencies: the oil lobby that finances his campaign and wants a share of the oil business in Sudan, the Christian fundamentalists who have pressed for such a peace in Sudan as a way to free the Sudanese christian population from muslim tyranny, and the African-American community that wants complete freedom autonomy for their African brothers enslaved by Arab rulers. Last year, Dansforth recognized the importance of the US christian lobby:

Most of the people in the United States who know about Sudan and who are interested in Sudan are American Christians. Many of these American Christians are conservative Christians. Their view is that the southerners are the aggrieved party and that the government has persecuted the south. That’s their view.

With so much at stake, it seems understandable that Bush wants to visit both Sudan and Libya as soon as the peace deal is signed. June is the most likely date. In the masterplan to designed to extend the US influence in Africa, the peace process in Sudan is just too important to ignore.

Let's start with something funny.

Once you've had enough fun, you can join this debate: Joi and others will discuss Creative Commons. If I ask you to join such discussions, it's mainly because I think blogging is an excellent way to test trends such as emergent democracy and collective deliberation. And if they matter so much to me, it's because they are the last hope to check some options -- like the war in Iraq -- which are decided by a small minory, though they impact everybody: As Blix writes about the decision to go to war:

It is an interesting notion that when a small minority has been rebuffed by a strong majority, it is the majority that has failed the test.

If we don't take care of these people, they'll take of us. Similarly, oil politics should be discussed by as many people as possible. That's why I thank those who allowed this blog to host interesting discussions you can't possible read elswhere, because some media executive have decided that these issues were not worth the while.

Most memorable discussions of the week were of course the ones with Arnaud de Borchgrave, Abiola and Stephen Ellis. I view this as a vindication of blogging’s ability to foster digital transparency. Beside its mere content, the point of the discussion with Arnaud is this: on the internet, especially with blogging, the sourcing of information through links is taken for granted, whereas journalism-as-we-know-it (and foreign policy analysis follows such a script) still relies on the fact that the writer can make allegations based on *secret* leads he gets from *insiders* without having to disclose them.

How are we to behave as responsible citizens and make informed decisions if we can't check the facts alleged? As a matter of fact, there’s a lot of things insiders send me in my inbox. The only reason why I don’t report all those leads is that you won’t be able to source them. I just don’t see the point of publishing information that can't be sourced. Kathryn agrees with me on this, and I think this rule should be followed by others -- non bloggers included. It's the best way to have genuine discussion and avoid the most obvious form of manipulation: eh, buddy, listen to that; I can't tell who's my source, but I assure you that... Please, don't assure me anything if I can't source what you say. Get lost! It's as simple as that.

My point with Abiola and Arnaud is this: I do understand the danger of terrorism, but I don't discuss the danger. I discuss some of the actions being taken in the name of such a danger when the facts alleged can't be sourced nor checked. Blogging levels the playing field in a way that makes the voice of authority less authoritative when that voice has nothing else to convey but "this is the truth, believe me I know what I'm talking about." We just don't live in that world anymore. And, that's the double truth - Ruth.

Do you remember last week’s fridayblog? Apparently, the messy times are here to stay. I wish I had more funny stuff to report, but I’m afraid this week has seen more of the dark side of AOP -- a futuristic film noir, similar to the cyberpunk novels. When I started reading strategy books back in 1990, I didn't expect being in a position where I would follow online -- realtime -- a strategic shift in the only superpower's attitude towards the international community's basket case: Africa.

Jeff Gerth and Stephen Labaton just published an explosive investigative report in the NYT. They have uncovered an internal Shell report that confirms the majority of our views on the company and oil politics in Nigeria. AOP will get back to this hot breaking news later today.

The Royal Dutch/Shell Group has kept secret important details of its sharp reduction in oil and gas reserves, particularly in Nigeria, for fear of damaging its business relationship with the government there and the Nigerians' desire to produce more oil, internal company documents show.

While Shell has acknowledged that the biggest adjustments in reserves include those in Nigeria, it continues to conceal the extent of its problems. But confidential documents from late last year show Shell concluded that more than 1.5 billion barrels, or 60 percent of its Nigerian reserves, did not meet accounting standards for "proven reserves."

The scale of the revision is important because Nigeria is a significant source of oil for Shell and the country is seeking to increase markedly its production quota within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The size of proven reserves is a basic consideration when OPEC sets quotas for its members. At stake for Nigeria are billions of dollars in revenue annually.

That's just a small part of the article. Once you'll read it you can search AOP and see what we wrote about Shell in January and February.

We discussed the current security landscape in West Africa with Stephen Ellis, the director of the International Crisis Group (ICG) Africa program. A historian by training, he has wide experience as an academic and a journalist. He is the former director of the African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands, and former editor of the well-known newsletter Africa Confidential. He currently co-edits African Affairs, the journal of the Royal African Society. He has written several books on African history and politics; the most recent is The Mask of Anarchy: the destruction of Liberia and the religious dimension of an African civil war (Hurst & Co., London, 1999). Worlds of Power, Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa, the forthcoming book he has co-authored with Gerrie ter Haar, shows how religious and supernatural ideas dominate African politics and culture, how they shape the ways that Africans both rich and poor view the world.

In this email interview, Stephen Ellis expresses a significant dose of scepticism about the current situation in the region that contradicts other analysts rosy views. You can listen to his latest conference at RIAA (London) entitled An End to Africa's Wars? His scepticism extends far: he's not convinced by the current Pentagon's allegations about Al Qaeda's activities in West Africa. The interview thus usefully complements the discussion with Arnaud de Borchgrave.

[African Oil Politics]: How do you assess the current security outlook in West Africa, based on the ongoing UN peacekeeping missions in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ivory Coast?

[Stephen Ellis]: International interventions have succeded in halting the wars in West Africa, at least temporarily. But most of the underlying problems still exist, and there is a permanent risk that hostilities will recommence or that a new conflict will emerge in another country, such as Guinea. West Africa remains a very dangerous region that will require intensive efforts, both regional and by the international community, for some time to come.

[African Oil Politics]: David Crane, the chief prosecutor at the UN's Special Court for Sierra Leone, declared recently on the BBC: "We know that, specifically up until last year, that there was a 10-year plan to take down Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, then move to Guinea and then elsewhere as the situation developed. ... The 10-year plan was to put in surrogates who were beholden to Muammar Gaddafi." Do you agree with David Crane on this?

[Stephen Ellis]: David Crane is quite correct in saying that the Libyan government, and Col. Gaddafi personally, gave assistance to key actors in the West Africa's wars in the 1990s, notably Charles Taylor and other Liberian dissidents, and also the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone. So too did other governments, such as that of Burkina Faso. The purpose of this support indeed seems to have been to encourage the emergence of a series of Pan-Africanist revolutionary governments. However I would be surprised if this strategy was ever sufficiently precise as to envisage a 10-years process. In practice, aid from Burkina Faso and Libya was used by political entrepreneurs in their own interests, and the wars in the region were caused as much by local tensions as by the Libyan intervention.

[African Oil Politics]: If, as US officials believe, Al Qaeda is operating in West Africa, is it thinkable that the same kind of "political entrepreneurs" might be working with the terrorist network for purely financial as well as (local) political rewards - as some did with Gaddafi?

[Stephen Ellis]: The link with Al-Qaeda remains somewhat unclear. My own impression, based on quite extensive research, is that Charles Taylor sold some diamonds to Al-Qaeda people, possibly without knowing who they were. All sorts of strange people buy diamonds. In general, the CIA is unconvinced of the connection, with the Pentagon and FBI being somewhat more believing. I do not believe any of the principals has any ideological connection to Al-Qaeda.

[African Oil Politics]: If David Crane is right, does it mean Gaddafi, Taylor and Compaore could be charged at the UN court in Sierra Leone?

[Stephen Ellis]: Gaddafi, Taylor and Compaore could all be charged by the prosecutor at the special court in Sierra Leone. However, it would be most difficult to bring them to justice. This is already apparent in the case of Charles Taylor, who is no longer a head of state but who remains at large.

[African Oil Politics]: What's your opinion on the current US quest for African oil and military anti-terror deployment in the Sahel (Mali, Mauritania...)?

[Stephen Ellis]: The US sees West Africa as a long-term strategic asset on account of its oil supplies. However, the deployment of US forces in the Sahel countries (the "Pan Sahel Initiative") is motivated more by fear of Islamic militants infiltrating the region from North Africa.

[African Oil Politics]: Do you think West Africa is witnessing a new (peaceful) security landscape or is it business as usual?

[Stephen Ellis]: I regret that peace in West Africa remains very fragile.

This week, African Oil Politics published a post entitled Al Qaeda in W. Africa: hype as a 2nd language. The opinion piece was a reply to a commentary by Arnaud de Borchgrave (Al Qaeda in Africa) that's been widely circulated on the web. In the name of fairness, honesty and AOP's (digital) transparency agenda, a mail was sent to Arnaud de Borchagrave.

He reacted like a real gentleman -- what French people call a "grand messieur" -- and replied to AOP's mail. Here's a transcript of the conversation. Disclosure: 99 percent of the conversation is hear; you won't have to go through all the "dear sir", "regards" stuff. Once again, AOP thanks Arnaud de Borchgrave for playing fair. Let's hope the line of communication stays open; AOP values and enjoy such a frank conversation very much. As a matter of fact, you are invited to read the forthcoming interview with Stephen Ellis who can be viewed as the third member of this colletive assessment of West African security.



[Arnaud de Borchgrave]

I read with great interest your commentary. Thank you for e-mailing it otherwise I would not have seen it. As a foreign correspondent -- 30 years with Newsweek as Chief Foreign Correspondent -- I have been covering sub-Sahara Africa and North Africa on and off since 1952. My father-in-law was a U.S. Ambassador to several African countries. My wife was brought up in Libya until the age of six. I knew Senghor, Houphouet Boigny, Lumumba, Tshombe, Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, interviewed Ghadafi six times etcetera. I have good sources all over the African continent. And we keep in regular touch by telephone.


[African Oil Politics]

I know your reputation as well as your work and readyour commentaries quite often. Be assured that myintention is not to question your integrity as ajournalist and foreign policy analyst. Given the sensitive nature of the information you haveaccess to, I understand that it is (often) difficultfor you to make your sources available in a publishedcommentary. Since I don't have the same access to suchsources I can only use my brain and the publishedsources I can access online.I hope my piece didn't cause any irritation to you, as I respect and value your views. I would be glad to stay in touch. I would be more than honored to have you accept an interview on the topics discussed in the blog.


[Arnaud de Borchgrave]

Not irritated. Just astonished that some people don't seem to understand that Al Qaeda is shorthand for a much wider geopolitical phenomenon in the world. It is an ideology, just as implacably hostile to American and western values as Communism was during the Cold War. If I were living in abject poverty in sub-Sahara Africa and a marabou proselytized me I would want to become a jihadi volunteer for war against the infidels. This politico-religious ideology loves death as much as we love life. And that's why I said on FOX last night (Greta's Show) that we should be prepared for a struggule that will last just as long, if not longer, as the 45-year Cold War did.


[African Oil Politics]

I agree with the point you make about Al Qaeda's ideology and the threat such on organization -- that
declared war on the United States and its allies -- represents for US interests. I have no doubt about that. As a matter of fact, I didn't question that view: Al Qaeda's attacks, writings, audio and video tapes are known facts. I also understand that the organization will try to use soft spots in Africa as
safe havens.

What I don't understand is how "attractive" Al Qaeda's message can be in West Africa. I simply tried to say that -- so far -- the people likely to follow the organization's call are a minority. If you have heard of cases in West Africa involving marabous funded by Al Qeada (or islamist charities), spreading the message to their students (in Senegal, they are called "talibes"), and if some of these students have been found in Jihadi training camps (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kossovo), I really would be glad to have some details.

In the last 12 months, I have listen carefully to EUCOM Commander Gen. James Jones, his deputy Gen.
Charles Wald, and EUCOM's director of plans and policy Gen. Jeffrey Kohler. I have also read the declaration made last month in the Africa Center for Strategic Studies by Paul Wolfowitz. I could name more names and dates and resources. All these distinguished people have said more than once that Al Qaeda's threat in Africa is real. But never was it possible to actually get facts, estimates that one can check. You are actually the first high level official who says: look, this is what's going on down there. This is what the marabous are doing. I give you credit for that and understand that you can't be TOO specific for obvious national security reasons.

(1) However, given the huge credibility gap between the current US administration and the rest of the
world, and given the Spanish PM's decision to pullout from Iraq, how can the United States expect some goodwill on allegations of Al Qaeda's presence in West Africa if no evidence is given? Should people in the
United States and Africa accept EUCOM and DoD's declarations as facts when no details are given?

(2) Let's assume that the threat is real, that some marabous are recruiting Jihadis in West Africa, is the
military approach the best (or the only) way to counter such a threat? My sources tell me that local governments allied to the US are using the war on terror as a way to get rid of and silence political oppositions. They think that the risk of a backlash is real in Mauritania and Kenya. What can we tell them?

(3) In my investigation -- on US energy security policy in Africa and the war on terrorism -- I realise
that some people in Africa (West as well as South) are starting to ask questions that I have summarized as follows: what's in it for us? In other words, what will they get if they side with the US-led coalition?
They say that what they see in Iraq, Turkey or Spain may happen to them. And they ask, why should we join the battle?

Mr. de Borchgrave, I know your long-time interest for Africa and your friendship with African heads of
state. I respect your professionalism and your experience. I would be very happy if you or any other
official at CSIS or in the administration can help me on this issue. We all know deep down in ourselves that US energy stakes are high in Africa. Adding the war on terror in such a mix can be quite explosive. I hope you understand my concern and will continue to help in my investigation.

It started with a short piece in the Washington Post:

Two French citizens and an Algerian went on trial for alleged ties to terror groups. The three reportedly trained in Afghanistan. David Courtailler, 28, Ahmed Laidouni, 35, and Mohamed Baadache, 34, are accused of "criminal association in relation to a terrorist enterprise," a broad charge that carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence. Courtailler met Jamal Zougam, a suspect in the Madrid train bombings that killed 201 people, at a mosque in Madrid in 1998, according to court documents.

That sounds interesting. It's only when I went back from the trial that I understood what got me hooked. You can read a more journalistic account here.

I have been quite lucky. The weather was delicious: sunny and warm enough but not more than necessary. I just had a shirt and didn't feel cold at all. I arrived at the Palais de Justice at 1:30. I ran in inside the Palais. Five minutes later, after a thorough security check by the gendarme, I was ushered in the tribunal. Inside, it looked pretty much in my mind like a wooden "amphitheatre" at University La Sorbonne where I did part of my studies. The only difference is that instead of a professor, a judge was presiding over an assembly of fellow law people. This is a theatre, I thought: the terrorists on the left, the journalists on the right. Once I found a seat and was able to started watching carefully, I started to hear noises. The place being on the ground floor, I realised that the noise was coming from the outside world; there was a traffic jam on the Quai des Orfèvres. My biggest surprise was that Mohamed Baadache's lawyer was Isabelle
Coutant-Peyre, the lawyer and wife of old school terrorist turned muslim, Carlos - the Jackall.

I’ll skip the procedural part of the trial, because it’s not what I came here for. Nevertheless, keep in mind that the lawyers argued that since their clients didn’t know each other, there was no reason to try them together. The judge refused to buy the demand made by the lawyers to consider the court “legally incompetent” to hold such a trial. A second demand from the group of three lawyers to “dis-joint” the procedure in three different cases was also opposed by the judge. A third demand concerned the participation of an association called SOS Attentats : it was argued that it couldn’t be in part in the trial since the so-called terrorists were not tried for a terrorist attack ; since there’s no such attack, there couldn’t be any victim ; if there is no victim, the presence of an association of victims becomes not only useless, but misleading. That request was refused as well. The trial could really start.

The judge basically led out the charges that are based on a report by the domestic intelligence agency DST (Direction de la Securité du Territoire). I have to be honest: after listening for 15 to 30 minutes to the judge, I thought: what is this? It was nearly laughable to hear the judge read a kind of review of international terrorists networks in the 90’s, except nothing substantial was attributed to the so-called terrorists present at the trial. The only thing they can be said guilty of is being part of a network of Jihadists. But being part of a network (be it of Jihadists or chess players) is not a crime in itself. We are all part of a network.

As a matter of fact, most of the charges are allegations that are not substantiated by any evidence. The most common word during the whole afternoon is “linked to”. It says a lot about the challenge Europe faces in the war on terror. The judge dropped a long list of names that are supposed to be “linked” to such and such names that happen to have testified in different cases that they were at this or that place at dates that seem to match the description of this other name that “is linked” to the al Qeada Jihadi network through such and such trajectory! As soon as the judge started lecturing us, I got the impression that this was a political trial. I say this because no material accusation is made: there’s been no attack, bombing or forgery.

At the end of his speech, the judge summed up not charges but a set of “convictions” (read beliefs) on which the trial is based:

(1) Abou Kassim, presented as spiritual leader for OBL and one of the Jihadists. Founder of an organization that managed “villas” in Peshawar where Jihadists where hosted. Abou kassim was killed in 1989.
(2) The organization eventually merged with al Qaeda and controlled among many villas one dedicated to Algerian Jihadists: the Martyrs’ villa
(3) A mobile phone number that belonged a key al Qaeda operative who happens to be dead.

Then started the first confrontation between the judge and one of the Jihadists: Mohamed Baadache. The profiling session could begin. Asked to give his reaction, he stood up and said if that was all they had to show after 30 months of investigation, “terrorism has a promising future”. He expressed my own doubt about the trial better than I could have done: “You don’t know much. You are far from reality.” The cross-examinion of the personal story of Mohamed Baadache could start: I was all ears for it was what I came for – hearing first hand how and why someone my age, born in Africa, had embraced a cause that originated from the Middle East. The elements I wanted to collect specifically are as follows: How and why does a young fairly “normal” young man in his late teen years “decides to join” a local North African group of like-minded Salafists? In other words, what are the personal sociological and psychological elements and the local socio-political conditions that trigger the decision to join? What is the link between the local North African group and the international network (let’s call it al Qaeda)? What are the bridges where the people in the network coalesce, be it at the local or global level? I also hopped secretly that the testimony of Baadache would help me compare the Algerian and the Moroccan Salafists.

Mohamed Baadache is a 34 years old Algerian national. In his teen years, he was a rebellious mind and didn’t considered himself very good at school: “I was not very gifted”, he says. He dropped out from high school few months before graduation. His father didn’t practice Islam. His mother and sisters did. His political sensibility – the desire to see radical change in Algeria – led him by personal choice to the Islamic party FIS (Front Islamique du Salut). He describes FIS as the thing most of the youth was into at that time. It was like an irrisistible tide. The Ideas of the FIS and its promises of change in the country was the main motive of his activism and militancy. After a while, he became more an more active in the organization. Then something happens: he fells that he’s under surveillance by the state’s security forces. He decides to leave the country. Afghanistan is his destination of choice; it’s where he wants to go. Why? “It’s a beautiful country”, he replies with a big smile. Later, after a question on Abdullah Azzam’s fatwa (pdf), he recognises that the religious argument (Jihad) is what drives him to Afghanistan. He looks for people who can help him go to Afghanistan. He finally finds a person who is coming back from the Afghanistan front, injured.

[The judge quotes something Baadache has said during his Belgian trial: “I wanted to be useful for my religion and my commitment. Jihad is essential, even today, even on the day of the trial.” He confirms: “I am here (today) to defend my convictions.” Another quote, this time about Ben Laden: “He is a muslim... It would be an honour to meet him. Training camps are not the only thing he built: schools, hospitals.” The judge tries to make acknowledge that he’s a Ben Laden fan (“groupie”, in French). He refers to a picture of Ben Laden Baadache supposedly kept in his French jail; but it turns out it was a book. He gives the reference of the book by French media-friendly terror expert Roland Jacquard, Au nom d’Oussama Ben Laden.]

The judge does some more name dropping: Kamel Ali Omar. Baadache doesn’t remember that name; most of these people have at least five different aliases. The judge quotes something he supposedly said in another context with Kamel Ali Omar about the notion of “going where the enemy is to fight”. He agrees with the idea: “I am a man of strategy; if my strategy tells me to attack the enemy where he is instead of waiting for his tanks, [I’ll do it.]” What about France, asks the judge. Baadache replies with ease, calm and determination: “The hands of the French are still stained with the blood of our people.” Silence. Here, I feel that he's not talking about religion anymore, but about the France-Algeria relations since 1830.

The judge wants to know if Baadache thinks that Islam is compatible with democracy. He replies that he’s for true democracy, but has never seen it in Europe. “If democracy is what you practice here, we don’t want any of this. Keep it.” New silence. The judge insists. He wants Baadache to talk relations between people outside marriage, sexuality, civil rights - this sort of things. It becomes a bit tiring. I’m about to lose track when I hear the Jihadist slams: “As far as I’m concerned, civil rights doesn’t mean same sex marriage.”

[For one second, that phrase brought me back to my student years: I thought about a friend of mine who was from North Africa. A really nice guy who was studying at med school; we were not very close, but it was always a pleasure to talk with him. He was very smart, open minded and very westernised. But he was also very clear about his religious beliefs: no alcool, no sex before marriage and gays be damned!]

We are in September 1990, and Baadache is ready to go to Afghanistan. He fails the first time he tries to go to Afghanistan: he’s short on details but we understand that he first went to Syria, then Turkey, then Iran where he is jailed during 2 weeks because he doesn’t have any visa. He is ushered back to the Turkish border, then goes back to Algeria after few days in a student hostel in Syria.

On 15 December 1990, he tries again. This time he first goes to Egypt, then Yemen. He leaves Yemen on December 30th for Karachi (Pakistan). From Yemen, he calls a contact. Once in Karachi, someone is waiting for him. He stays there few days, then go to Peshawar (Pakistan). He’s now inside the network of jihadist host structures. He says he’s been very well treated.

His training at Kaden base lasted 8 months; he studied artillery, tanks, explosives, DCA technology (anti-missile) and religious matters. He’s then sent to the front to fight communists in Kabul. That period will last 3 years spent with different groups. He then goes back to Pakistan when things get tough for Arabs in Afghanistan. He nevertheless stays in touch with the front: having learned the language (Pashtun), he does round trips between Pakistan and Afghanistan, taking care of new recruits. He welcomes them at the airport in Peshawar and helps them with administrative matters. But his biggest mission is training the new volunteers the things he has learned on the front: weapons, explosives, tanks.

The judge at that time makes a joke about Baadache describing the recruits as leisure travellers. Baadache doesn’t find this funny at all. "Don’t you think we have the right to have our own army, just like you have the [French] Foreign Legion?" Silence.

In March 1996, he decides to move to England. The judge explains that he may have stopped over at Sudan. Baadache denies this. Once in Belgium, he can’t co further: his Schengen visa doesn’t allow him to land in the UK. He stays in Brussels. He easily finds like-minded fellow who helps him settle. Involved in documents forgery case, he is arrested by the Belgian police in March 1998, few months before the soccer world cup (to be held that year in France). All terrorist charges against him are dropped; he’s sentenced 5 years for forgery. He didn’t appeal the decision, and he won’t do it this time either. Why? “You’re not the one who condemns me. It’s Allah. I will never appeal.” Follows a rather boring description of the places where he has lived in Brussels. But I’m not bored, because I know most of the places mentioned: I understand that he has lived rue des Minimes in the Marolles, Molenbeek, Merode, etc. Is it possible that I have met that guy once on boulevard Lemonnier?

When people who express doubts about U.S. sincerity in the terrorism effort are asked about other possible reasons for the war on terrorism, oil is mentioned most often as a U.S. motive for the policy. Majorities in seven of the nine nations surveyed believe that controlling Mideast oil supplies is an important reason why the U.S. is conducting the war on terrorism. This view is not only widespread in Jordan (71%), Morocco (63%) and Pakistan (54%), but also in Turkey (64%), Germany (60%) and France (58%). While Russians strongly back the war on terrorism, half of Russians (51%) say controlling oil is an important U.S. motivation. Great Britain and the U.S., where relatively few doubt America's sincerity in the first place, are the only countries where relatively small minorities hold this opinion (33% in Great Britain, 18% in U.S.). Majorities in five of the nine countries surveyed say that the U.S. is conducting the war on terrorism in order to dominate the world. This view is particularly widespread in Jordan (61%), Turkey (61%) and Morocco (60%). But roughly half of the French (53%) and Germans (47%) also believe that world domination is an important factor in the U.S. fight against terrorism.

That sheds an dark light on US current efforts to turn Africa into a major front in the war on terrorism.

I decided to spend all the day blogging as a celebration of this blog’s third month of activity; it’s also my personal contribution to the media focus on the first year of the war in Iraq and a way to remember the victims of the Madrid bombings that killed 201 persons last week. Since 9/11, things have been moving so fast that one year in world politics seems like a decade, and three months on the world wide blog seems ages. Thanks to the faithful band of followers (you know who you are) and welcome to our new friends.

As some of you may have noticed, there was no post yesterday. I wish I were able to tell you that I spent the day meditating. I did some thinking, but was mostly on the road – as part of the shift in the content of this blog: here’s a brief description of some of the changes that will be implemented in this new quarter -- oh my god, I’m talking like my former e-consultant persona!

First, African Oil Politics [AOP] will go beyond the pure online research mode that’s been its hallmark since day one. The main outcome of such a decision is that you’ll read exclusive interviews, exclusive real life reporting and personal feedbacks from key actors and analysts worth interacting with.

We’ll start today with the interview of Stephen Ellis on the security landscape in West Africa. But before the interview, I’ll post the scoop of the day: I visited Paris yesterday and spent the afternoon in the Palais de Justice, at the trial of the French Islamist David Courtailler and two North African Jihadists supposedly linked to the Madrid bombers. It’s been an eye-opening experience that I want to share with you. That’s not all, folks: after I sent a copy of my last post on Tuesday 17 to Arnaud de Borchgrave, I got a reply in my inbox. I then sent another mail, and he replied. The content of that correspondence is far-reaching in terms of what’s going on both in Blogalia (the quest for digital transparency) and Globalia (the US quest for oil and the war on terror).

The ultimate goal of such changes is the mutation of AOP (or whatever it will be called in June) into a collective adventure, integrating the voices of those who share our basic aim: contributing to renew the thinking on the paradox of plenty and helping turn African oil into a force for good, away from the curse it is today. Spreading the word around you is the most basic way to participate. More changes will be announced as we move forward. We’ll go where this blog leads us.

Probably searching the link between the coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea and the bombings in Madrid, a visitor of African Oil Politics queried “Salafist Obiang”. My fist reaction was to smile, but the kernel of logic and candour in the re-quest was so compelling that I decided to discuss such a connection. What I see behind the query is the link between oil and violence: terrorists and mercenaries use violence a political tool whose fuel and prize is oil. The link between the Madrid terrorists and the Malabo mercenaries is thus more substantial than it first seems: in both cases, the control of oil revenue (the prize) is the goal of the invisible sponsors of such combatant groups – be they corporate-oriented or spiritually motivated.

Oil is the link between terrorists (a voluntary force aimed at establishing a new religious order in the so-called “arc-of-instability”) and mercenaries (a group of corporate hired guns aimed at establishing the post-colonial rule in the so-called “arc-of-instability”). You can’t win a war without soldiers; soldiers can’t fight well if they are not fed well, given the best equipment and have a stake in the battle. Mercenaries don’t care much about the spiritual or political goal of their actions. Terrorists linked to al Qaeda don’t care much about the material costs of their struggle. Their prize is in the after-life. Mercenaries are not concerned by their after-life: they want their material reward now. The ultimate difference between both groups is not so much faith than faithfulness: al Qaeda's soldiers are faithful to their god and their spiritual leaders. Corporate warriors are faithful only to their bank accounts. The difference between both groups can be compared to the opposition between capitalism and Islam: the capitalist system promises happiness in worldly consumption, channelling psychological as well as spiritual needs towards the market; the Muslim system promises happiness in death. “You love life, we love death”.

Nowadays, every terrorist attack is regularly attributed to the group carrying a global Jihad: al Qaeda. Whereas al Qaeda actually sponsored the attack is beside the point. With the quest for oil and the war on terror becoming more intertwined by the day, the US/UK energy partnership will be seen as the main sponsor of corporate-fuelled coup in African oil states. Whereas the United States or the UK actually sponsored the attack is beside the point. Historically, mercenary networks have been sponsored (mainly in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s) by western capitalist powers such as the United States, the UK and France, as a way to control the political evolution of supposedly independent countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia – the so-called “arc of instability” of nowadays. The ideological background of the cold war has been used as the main justification for such destabilization activities and coups d'etat. Historically, terrorist networks were sponsored by petrodollars earned from the oil boom that took place in the 70’s and 80’s in Iran (Shiite revolutionary Islam) and Saudi Arabia (Sunni conservative Islam). The ideological background of the current politico-religious war is al Qaeda’s main justification of its Jihad. After their temporary alliance to fight communism in Afghanistan, both al Qaeda and the United States see their confrontation post 9/11 as a clash of civilization that should take precedent over any other struggle. Pressing anybody to be with them or against them, their ultimate goal is complete monopoly over international economy, politics, security and the expression of ideas. For Europe as well as for Africa, the challenge must be to find a “new way” that allows them to escape the “totalitary choice” to them offered both by the Anglo-American alliance and al Qaeda.

Two years ago, when one was looking for online resources about al Qaeda in Africa, one would be directed to various copies of Douglas Farah's Washington posts articles. He starting publishing the first reports shortly after 9/11; one year later he had created a niche of his own: al Qaeda's blood diamonds network and trade in West Africa. These investigations included caracters such as Aziz Nassour and Samih Osailly as well as West African heads of state and warlords linked to Gaddafi -- Charles Taylor from Liberia, Blaise Compaore from Burkina Faso, and Foday Sankoh from Sierra Leone. A Senegalese islamist, Ibrahim Bah, was said to be the glue that got this loose network together, creating a link between the Middle Eastern Jihad, Gaddafi's African destabilization program, Lebanese diamonds deals with Anvers-based Muslim as well as Jewish diamond traders. As exciting as these reports could be, the jury was still out about the credibility of Farah's claims.

The diamond-buying operation appears to have been hatched in response to a move by the United States in 1998 to freeze al Qaeda assets after attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa that were blamed on the organization. Senior European intelligence sources said they have been baffled by the lack of U.S. interest, particularly by the CIA, in their recent findings. The CIA, which in the past has downplayed reports of al Qaeda's diamond connections, declined to comment. In the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency did try to monitor the two senior al Qaeda operatives supervising the diamond trading, who were known to be hiding in an elite military camp in Liberia. Both men were on the FBI's Most Wanted list of terrorists. The Pentagon prepared a small Special Forces team in neighboring Guinea to snatch the two, but the mission was not carried out because the team could not confirm the targets' identities, according to sources.

I used to discuss these leads with a fascinated but tiny audience of friends. The United States had not yet decided to turn Afrca into a front in the global war on terror. The US presence in the Horn of Africa was quite modest. America had other concerns and downplayed the threat - an easy way out from the African mess. But the attraction of West African oil became as irristible as Charles Taylor's destabilization activities. After Liberia and Sierra Leone, he joined forces once again with his crony Compaore in their biggest best so far: unleashing a coup in stable oily Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire in French). What started as a failed coup attempt turned into a civil war that threatened the West African region. The United decided to act and finaly got rid of Taylor. UN peacekeeping missions are now monitoring the situation in Sierra Leone (ex-British colony), Liberia (ex-US "colony") and Ivory Coast (ex-French colony).

That looks like an happy end, right? Wrong, at least according to some pundits in the US and now in France. Nowadays, if you query al Qaeda and Africa, you're likely to come across articles and essays claiming that al Qaeda is taking root in the region. These allegations are growing more vocal after the Madrid bombings (3/11) as if the people behing the terrorist attacks were not North African salafists, but West African muslims followers of Ben Laden. The latest claim was made early this week by a French military official, Bentegeat, who happens to have been involved in the French military operation in Ivory Coast:

He [Bentegeat] said the threat of Islamic radicalism was spreading beyond the Middle East. "It's a phenomenon we're seeing step by step in Africa," he said, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. "Then there are countries that are adrift, that we are trying to help to not sink, such as Ivory Coast or the Central African Republic," he added.

If you think that thought is scary, it's probably because you haven't read Arnaud de Borchgrave yet. His name may sound French, but he's part of US foreign policy intelligentsia. As a matter of fact, he's Senior Adviser and Director for Transnational Threats at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, in Washington DC. He has written very interesting things lately, like an article entitled Truth as a Second Language in which he debunks some of the US administration war propaganda and the blow such lies delt to the credibility of the United States. The case he makes is rather convincing and can be read as a foresighted view expressed one month before the Spanish PM Zapatero to pullout troops from Iraq.

Credibility was America's most precious asset. But that's now been swept aside in a blizzard of palpably fraudulent stories. Talk, albeit off the record, with any political leader anywhere in the world, and if you can't reach him or her, talk off the record to their ambassadors in Washington. The nation's capital has finally made it as a bilingual city -- where truth is the second language. Seldom spoken, however.

My problem with him started very recently when I read a piece published last week-end, in which he writes about Al Qaeda's influence in Sub-saharan Africa. I kindly advise you to fasten your seatbelt: we're entering a zone of turbulence known as "al Qaeda in Africa":

West Africa is a graveyard of failed nation-states. Government writs seldom extend much beyond capital-city shantytowns. In the countryside, bush and savanna, radicalized Islamist clerics and Christian missionaries battle it out in a war of words for desperate African souls. The Christian missions offer rudimentary medical services, T-shirts and occasional staples. The Muslim clerics get stipends from the Saudi Arabian Wahhabi clergy and train youngsters to become "jihadis," meaning "holy warriors." Hunger stalks most west and equatorial African states. And the Supreme Allied Commander, Gen. James Jones, is alarmed. He ... saw first-hand the emerging failed and failing states that contain huge ungoverned areas that now serve as breeding grounds or sanctuary for terrorists.

When I read this, I thought: OK, here we go again. De Borchgrave is writing from the Jones EUCOM new mantra about "ungoverned spaces" in Africa that would be used by al Qaeda as safe havens. I couldn't be more mistaken, for he wants to emphazise something else: how the youth in West African failed states (Nigeria, DRC Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast) is becoming an easy prey for al Qaeda's jihadist philosophy because of the (supposedely islamist) guidance of religious spiritual leaders -- known in West Africa as "marabouts" -- who use Middle Eastern oil money to recruit desperate souls.

Two generations of young Africans in these countries, from the ages of 10 to their early 20s, have known no other life than shooting and being shot at. Flat-earth Muslim clerics are quick to exploit opportunities by inculcating their jihadi creed. In northern Nigeria, where the Sharia law of Islam has been imposed in large swaths of the province, armed Islamist thugs descend on a village with the marabou, a sort of religious enforcer and his noisy tintinnabula. Some of the larger towns have been occupied by jihadi militants who demand more volunteers -- and government authorities kindly oblige by staying out of their way. There has been sufficient al-Qaeda input in the thousands of square miles of unpoliced territory in both West and Equatorial Africa for French and U.S. intelligence to draw the conclusion terrorist networks are alive throughout the region.

After this creepy desccription, Arnaud give us a welcome precision about al Qaeda: the organization would not control these West African networks, because its "cells operate autonomously with sleeper agents among Muslim communities in most western, eastern and African countries". The article concludes on how these young African Jihadist "desperados" (his word) cross the Sahara and enter Europe where they can do... whatever you can imagine. The connection between West Africa and Madrid become thus easier to make:

The toughest among them survive the desert trek to Morocco and Algeria and from there take small craft to Spain. Their bodies wash up on Spanish beaches every day. Those who make it alive into Spain have also made it into the European Union.

I'm sorry but my knowlege of West Africa just doesn't allow me to buy such allegations. I'll briefly outline why:

* I start with the most obvious point: the latest terrorists attacks in Madrid can't be used as evidence of such trends, simply because the main suspect Jamal Zougam and his friend are from Morocco. As long as these so-called African desperados have not planted bombs I have no reason to believe they do exist.

* Now, if I consider the only example I know of an islamist uprising in West Africa -- the Muhajirun sect in North Nigeria mentioned in the article -- the personality trait of its members don't fit what the author says about people who experience nothing but "shooting and being shot at": middle class graduates and "educated young men" are very rare in the ranks of West African wars' child soldiers. Stephen Ellis's account of Liberia's slide into chaos offers a very good description of their profile and mindset. Read the interview with Ellis that i'll post tomorrow.

* Marabouts may sometimes be described in Africa (Senegal, Mali) as abusing their authority and using the children under their control as full-time beggars. I have never heard of marabouts turning young "talibes" into terrorists. Maybe Arnaud should have called one or two persons in Little Senegal, New York: it's fast becoming a hot spot for Senegalese Mourides travellers and worshippers, a network and community of Cheikh Amadou Bamba followers whose Mecca is located in Touba, Senegal.

* I think Arnaud needs to read more about the real role of the marabout. Senegal is a US ally in the war on terror. But the political and business elite of that country is marabout-educated. I say this to emphasize the role of the marabout as a man of wisdom, learning and education. Most West African muslim and/or Sahelian intellectuals, writers (Cheikh Anta Diop, Cheikh Amidou Kane, Amadou Hampate Ba, Ahmadou Kourouma) have had their marabout. This tradition is ongoing: as a matter of fact, in his discussion with African journalists, James Jones deputy, Charles Wald asked this question: "Do you know the imam in Timbuktu has a website? ... He gave me his card, and that's a little bit scary when you think about the fact that most people think Timbuktu is exactly what it states: way out there in nowhere." Another evidence of this is given by the fact that a scholar from Timbuktu, Ismaël Diadié Haïdara, has crossed over to Spain and is lecturing at the University of Granada in Spain! The West African states may be "failed"; the people are not.

* The most serious challenge to Arnaud de Borchgrave comes from Europe itself actually. Europeans have not discovered Islamic terrorism on 9/11. In fact, the United States was busy financing Talibans and Jihadists in Afghanistan while people in Europe were being killed by holy warriors. That truth won't just go away because Bush has decided so. Based on that experience, European scholars developped a body of academic knowledge on political islam. (I say "academic" as opposed to US think tanks so-called "experts" whose discourse and "concepts" have obliterated the voices of genuine American scholars who are nearly banned from media.) One of these European scholars -- French researcher Gilles Kepel -- has documented the rise and fall of movements such as al Qaeda in his famous book Jihad . Based on his findings, I wouldn't say that the conditions which encouraged Islamism in the the Middle East are easily observed in West Africa. Only the social despair of the youth can be seen as a common trait. Experience shows that such a condition is neither necessary (Ben Laden comes from a rich family) nor sufficient (otherwise, we shouldn't say the war on terror but the war on poverty).

* Arnaud has ignored the latest generation of al Qaeda's Jihadists. If you look at the Madrid bombers' background, you realise very quickly that they have a double culture - North African and European. They are young. Some are educated, some are not. Most have been trained in Afghanistan, Bosnia or Chechnya. The place to look for the "next" (in fact the first) generation of West African Jihadists is not so much Spain or France, but Iraq.

* West African muslims -- at least those I have met in Europe where Arnaud thinks they operate, and Africa -- don't easily mingle with muslims from North Africa, the Middle East or East Asian. In France or Italy, they have their own "mosques" (more like basements). Beside the fact that their islam tends to be more open and tolerant (just see the difference between Senegal and Pakistan), they are are quite aware of the cultural as well as racial differences. I would add that historically, North Africans have considered Sub-saharan Africans (Blacks) like slaves. The current muslim-on-muslim violence in the Darfur (Sudan) is the best evidence of such a legacy.

* My last objection is quite simple: not all West Africans are muslims. Targeting Muslims can create civil unrest and bring more inter-ethnic and religious wars that are likely to create more problem and bring already "failed states" on the brink of a bigger chaos. Just think about long-time US ally Nigeria.

I'm ready to discuss al Qaeda's presence and influence in West Africa, provided we have some evidence to start with. Otherwise, it'll just be what Arnaud already witnessed in Washington: hype as a second language. The credibility gap between the United States and the rest of the world is big enough. Let's try not to make it bigger with unsubstanciated scary allegations.

After using visuals references to the victims of 9/11 as a political tool in the US presidential campaign, Bush is trying to spin Libya's nukes (which are nothing compared to Israelis') as a result of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. This guy hasn't learned anyhting from his administration's previous diplomatic blunders - from the use of terms such as "old Europe" to the Spanish decision to pullout from Iraq. What will Libya say when he will ask Gaddafi to join the US-led "African Clearing House", an operation aimed at draining the (terrorist) swamp in North Africa?

In its global energy war against China, the United States - mainly through its press - insists on the difference between the way both countries approach Africa: China is said to ignore human rights issues, as opposed US officials who (supposedly) refuse to deal with regimes that oppress their citizens. Fair enough. China decided to react with a line of defense that proves the Chinese are ready to fight the African oil propaganda as well. Borrowing their argumentation from the pro-Africa attitude of American publications such as Foreign Policy In Focus, the Chinese regime spoke through its State-owned People's Daily:

It's a fact indeed. The US aid to Africa is conditional and serves its strategic interest. It will provide aids to Africa so long as it is in line with the US interests and profitable. If not, it will turn a blind eye to the needs or be profuse of some empty talks. The US has always been lacking of sufficient care and assistance to Africa's poverty. ... On the other hand, the US showed great interest in Africa's rich natural resources, huge market potentials and important position in combating terrorism. Exploring and making use of the rich resources in Africa, especially the oil and gas, has become a significant part of the US' power strategy. Currently the oil supplied by Africa has come to nearly 20 percent of the US total import volume.

This proves that China, not only wants to play the game, but is ready to use any means necessary to make bigger inroads in Africa. And nobody ignores in the Party that good propaganda should be based on fact, not lies. It also shows that African oil matters so much that the Chinese read the kind of litterature that is likely to help them grasp what's going on in the global debate on African oil and send the right message to Africa-friendly opinion leaders. Reading their conclusion, one can have the impression to hear some US NGO executive:

The US is adopting a policy of dual standards in Africa: Satisfy some African countries' needs when they are related to the US reserve of resources, especially oil safety and anti-terrorism strategy. However, it turns a blind eye to Africa's war, poverty, disease and debt problems. The long-term poverty and underdevelopment of Africa unavoidably affects the world peace and development. The international community, especially developed countries like the US should have a broad vision for its African policy, so that the problems of African countries can be solved attentively, warmly and sincerely. The objective of aiding Africa is not merely for safeguarding its "oil safety" and fulfilling "needs in combating terrorism."

But don't forget that this message comes straight from the other side of the Wall:

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm...

Jacqueline Doherty explains the debate about oil reserves to investors. Name dropping is de rigueur: Campbell, Simmons, Yergin, USGS, OPEC. Nobody cares about Africans, but they do caree about African oil: "Right now investors and industry professionals seem to expect oil prices will revert back to the 20s. They're banking on new discoveries in West Africa, the former Soviet republics and deep under the world's oceans."

It's a good introduction. For those who want to understand "how oil controls the economy and your financial future", we'll soon post a review of The Oil Factor, by Donna and Stephen Leeb.

Should guns for hire be used in Africa?, asks the BBC. Say yes, and you're doomed. Say no, and you're doomed again. Not only do we lack a proper definition of what makes someone a "mercenary", but no international convention as such really ban guns for hire, also known as private military combatants. Given the fact that mercenaries usually fight to overthrow a dictator and/or to put one in power, it's easy to sea how biased the question is: dictators and mercenaries are part of the same nexus of problems that plague Africa - just like the paradox of natural resource plenty. Where you have mercenaries, you have dictators - whose presence very much puts the vice back in the versa.

More interesting is the fact that the question is being asked by a British media a week after the failed coup attempt where authorities had nothing to declare but denials. That's understandable. Sometimes, you've got a great idea at night. Then, you wake up and you realise that your great idea is a big fat snorting toothless drunkyard that smells like a rat. But, as Chris Smith writes in Mother Jones, "There's more to the story":

Back in the '70s and '80s, many of these men fought for the apartheid regime against its black-ruled neighbors. The U.S. and Britain, of course, backed the white government in its "anti-Communist" (read: "anti-black") struggle. It's no surprise, then, that the group's ringleaders have connections to both American and British intelligence agencies.

The conclusion he draws from that rather embarassing intercourse is that "the days of the Great White Mercenary are on the wane in Africa". Just like the days of the Buffalo in America. Time for the British establishment to focus our attention elsewhere, on serious geopolitical risks like gangstar rap, 80's TV series and 70's political mystery novels. Back to the future. Time to sing along with Bob Marley a minor Anglo-american drama:

If you know your history,
Then you would know where you coming from,
Then you wouldn't have to ask me,
Who the 'eck do I think I am.
I'm just a Buffalo Soldier...

These days are also over. Hopefully, the only thing that makes this kind of dirt bareable is the words of people like Jan Breytenbach, founder of South Africa's apartheid-era Battalion 32, a mercenary group, who warns us that "today's seemingly upstanding private-security firms will employ ex-soldiers "under false pretenses" in order to get them involved in clandestine operations. "You can think you're being hired to protect a diamond mine," he says, "but then you end up fighting other people" - or participating in a coup. He cautions ex-military men: "It's better to stay out of this stuff all together; otherwise you'll get caught with your pants down."

Edward Luttwak’s violent libel against “Spanish voters” sums up not only the anger of the NeoCon party, but also their refusal to understand other peoples’ views as well as their lack of sympathy for democracy. You’re either with them or against them, black or white, appeaser or righteous, etc. I beg to differ. Not only do I think that Spain gave us a lesson in democracy, but I think the Spanish voters who showed up en masse in the voting booths did more than that: they challenged the idea of a clash of civilization and proposed a new vision. However, their message has been difficult to hear. Let’s try to reconstruct it.

The Spaniards had a message for the world. It took them time to get it aired; three steps have been necessary to get finally heard: they voiced it very clearly when they demonstrated – last year against the war in Iraq (1) and last week against terrorism (2); on the road towards expressing their deep-seated belief about the international order, they took the final step when they elected the Socialist leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero as their new Prime Minister, bringing an end to the rule of the Popular Party.

In order to leave no doubt to anyone, at home and abroad, the incoming PM Zapatero organized a press conference that allowed him to show his own version of a “steady leadership in times of change”:

The war has been a disaster; the occupation continues to be a disaster," Zapatero said in a radio interview. At a news conference later, he called the Iraq war "an error." He added, "It divided more than it united, there were no reasons for it, time has shown that the arguments for it lacked credibility, and the occupation has been poorly managed." He pledged to continue to combat international terrorism, but said the fight should be conducted with "a grand alliance" of democracies and not through "unilateral wars," a clear reference to Iraq. ... Zapatero addressed criticism directly at Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, another steadfast supporter of the United States in Iraq. "Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush must do some reflection and self-criticism. You can't organize a war with lies," he said.

That message may sound confusing to NeoCons. It’s in fact quite simple:

1. No to war
2. No to terrorism
3. No to the US war on terrorism

This set of statements leads to one simple conclusion: another war against terror is possible. That’s the substance of Zapetero’s “new way”, already reflected in his first foreign policy choices: the pullout from Iraq, the clarity of his attacks on Bush and Blair, the desire to join old Europe, the insistence on European values and “model of society” (different from the American way of life), the development of a closer relation with Morocco.

All that said, the Madrid bombings highlight the urgent need for closer security and intelligence co-operation - within Europe, between Europeans and Americans and, crucially, with Arab and Islamic countries. The forthcoming emergency meeting of European Union interior ministers could mark an important first step. Nor should the controversy over whether it was right to target Iraq - a strategy that has done nothing to check and may have encouraged proliferation of al-Qaeda - stand in the way of intensified transatlantic co-operation. Another important lesson from Spain's trial by terror is that political leaders need more than conviction in dealing with a crisis of this magnitude. They need to enjoy an exceptional level of trust from their people. Of course the bombings influenced the outcome of Sunday's elections. But, arguably, the more important factor was that Mr Aznar - perceived as concealing or downplaying clues that pointed to Islamist rather than Basque perpetrators - forfeited that trust.

What does it mean for African Oil Politics? I outlined part of the reply in a discussion with James MacLean, on his blog - Obson's choice. The second part of the answer lies here. Ultimately, I think competiting conceptions of state building will be the key defining features on the debout about the best way to fight terrorism. I will get back to that topic later this week, in an interview with Stephen Ellis, West Africa specialist and Africa Program Director at ICG.

PS: Today, you were over 100 visitors to this site. It's the first time African Oil Politics records such a trafic. Thank you for your support. And remember that I want to hear more from you: comments welcome, here or in my inbox.

* Nigeria to Call Bids for Chad Basin Oil Blocs

* Sudan-India's ONGC: "State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is likely to award the contract for laying a 741-km petroleum product pipeline in Sudan to Mumbai-based construction firm Dodsal."

* Australia's oil major Woodside Petroleum steady foothold in Africa: "new acreage in Kenya and Sierra Leone and a production sharing agreement in Libya."

* Libya to cash in on US firms' return: Seif al Islam says US oil companies Marathon, Conoco and Occidental "to pay financial fees for their return". Such a fee seems fine for Occidental Petroleum back on a fast track to Libya. But whereas Seif declares the company is already back, the Houston Business Journal reports that Occidental (only) "plans to reopen an office in Tripoli, Libya, as soon as possible". Same problem with Marathon: the company has been quick to deny Seif's allegations. Who do you think we believe? The same people who are eager to return and pay a fee in order to get back to real pumping biz.

* US Department of Energy released a plan to replace petrol with hydrogen.

* Before the security concern in Spain and Irak, the US Senate decision to stop further stop further purchases of oil by the Bush administration for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve did make some impact on the prices. Now, that's another story: "Crude oil prices topped $37 a barrel Monday as rising belief that the al Qaeda network of Islamic militants was behind last week's train attacks in Madrid that killed 200 people triggered fresh security concerns."

* Halliburton's corporate crimes investigated.

* Shell oil reserves probes: from bad to worse. Oilmen beware: smoking bonuses can kill a company - especially if that firm wants to be a poster child for corporate social responsibility!

Energy analyst Cyril Widdershoven has been making the same prediction for months now: the African oil boom will have represents a threat for OPEC. This threat first comes from the outside because most new African oil states are non-OPEC members, making them very attractive to oil consumers such as the United States, Europe and China. More disturbing: the threat comes also from inside OPEC. The African members of the cartel (Algeria, Nigeria, Libya) want to raise their poduction not only to make more money, but also to please their clients. According to the Dutch analyst, that situation is likely to get worse. He explained why earlier in January, but his words become even more meaningful nowadays:

Africa’s future role in this new chess game is very important and looks extremely bright. Its top producing countries, Algeria, Libya and Nigeria have to cope still with the stranglehold of OPEC. However, even in the case of another year of constraints, E&P operations will become more and more attractive. Algeria’s natural gas operations are rolling from one success to another. Libya will reap the rewards of its change in international politics, the opening of its secrets to the world and liberalisation of the energy sector. Nigeria, when able to cope with domestic instability and vandalism, will stay on top. Deepwater offshore operations are already presenting a very shiny picture, onshore also could be attractive, nothing has been done for years, and time has come to approach this too. Other non-OPEC African countries are approaching their crunch time too. Mauritania, Morocco, Egypt, Sudan, Angola, Sao Tome & Principe, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Congo or Chad, all of them will bring additional quantities of crude oil and natural gas to world markets. Putting renewed pressure on OPEC to change will come out of Africa. This time, Europe, USA and even Asia can start to rely on some good news from the Dark Continent.

I agree on the long-term view; however, the short-term crude price levels make it unlikely for African OPEC countries to move forward. The announcement made by Edmund Daukoru, oil adviser to President Obasanjo, came as a blow to most consumers' expectations:

OPEC member Nigeria has called on the oil cartel to raise its current price band, because of the weakening $US and the recovery of the global economy. "Maybe, we are seeing a new equilibrium emerging," Nigerian presidential oil adviser Edmund Daukoru told reporters, talking about the current 22-28 dollar per barrel price band targeted by OPEC for its reference basket of crudes.

Rumous of African oil producers (especially Nigeria's) pullout from OPEC may have greatly exaggerated, but are likely to persist.

More details here.

Tony: What -- you mean, now -- during the photo shoot?
George: Yes, of course. Let's just keep on smiling and behave like we're having fun just like buddies does.
Tony: Do.
Jose: Do what?
Tony: Buddies do. Not Buddies does. You could say "buddy does", but it doesn't make sense in that context.
George: OK. I say, we have to discuss the coup in Africa before Jose is gone from his presi... den... ship.
Jose: I wasn't President, but Prime Minister. In Spain, we have a king. Just like in the United KINGDOM.
George: You mean you have a crowned old woman like the king of England?
Tony: Hell No. She is the Queen. The Queen of England.
George: Sorry, Tony. Anyway. We have to find a way to... manage the press... kind of ... y'know, so that people don't start saying we were behind the coup - kind of.
Jose: I'm afraid there's not much I can do now. I was ready to recognise Severo Moto as the new president had the coup been a success. Now that we've been defeated and that the coup has failed, all the people in my administration are in the opposition and can't do anything to control the press. The Popular Party is not very popular right now. And the bloody Socialists in power can pretty much decide both bring our boys back from Iraq and extradite Severo Moto to Guinea.
Tony: That would be a catastrophe. We really don't need such an exposure.
George: Wait a minute. Can't the king or queen of Spain just do something?
Jose: I'm afraid he did already too much. There's a picture freely available on the internet where he shakes hands with Moto.
Tony: Oh my God! Photographs be cursed.
George: Take it easy Tony, keep on smiling. This photo shoot is not over yet.
Jose: Since I can't do much, maybe we could ask my friend Severo to relocate to Gibraltar. That way, the new administration couldn't do anything against him.
George: Why not? Gibraltar is in Spain, right?
Tony: Grrrrrr... Wrong!
Jose: Legally speeking, Tony is right.
George: OK. So, I guess we'll have to talk to the authorities in Gibraltar about the coup in Africa and ask them to join us in the war against terrorism.
Tony & Jose: (silence)
George: Who is the king or President of Gibraltar?
Tony & Jose: The Queen of England!
George: That's you Tony. I mean, that's great we don't have to talk to anybody else about this story. That's pretty cool. So, what do we do once he's in Gibraltar.
Jose: I say, we bug him so that we can monitor all his communications.
Tony: Done.
George: We silence the press.
Tony: It's easier done in the United States. The only significant article published today in the US is from Abraham McLaughlin in the Christan Science Monitor.
George: May God be with us! What does he say?
Tony: Oh, nothing to worry about - really. He basically says that in Africa, coups are like earthquakes; like a natural disaster, they JUST happen. Same thing Venezuela. He doesn't even mention your dual support for both the President and the virtual government in exile. It's like a dual containment policy for the same country: on the one hand, the United States reopened an embassy in Malaboand US firms are exploiting the oil, but the State Department released a Human Rights report which says how bad the regime is.
Jose: That's true. I lauhed a lot with Severo when he started to read the report to me few days ago. I remember two things very well: "Equatorial Guinea nominally is a multiparty constitutional republic; however, in practice President Teodoro Obiang Nguema and the small Mongomo sub-clan of the majority Fang tribe, which has ruled since the country's independence in 1968, dominated the Government." There was also something about the security forces, who are have "committed numerous serious human rights abuses." The report could have been an excellent motive for the coup had it been a success. But we have a problem with that paper from Patrick Smith in the Observer.
George: Yes. Cheney phoned me yesterday and read part of the stuff. It's pretty accurate and a bit too specific about our friend Ely Calil in London and his network in Lebanon.
Tony: Take it easy. They won't talk.
Jose: I don't think they will. They are used to be intermediaries in any kind of shady deals - blood diamonds, trading in oil and other natural resources. They know what "omerta" means, just like Berlusconi. It's part of the culture in the Mediterranean sea.
Tony: And they are very good at dealing with dictators in Africa. Jose: I heard that he was also friend with the president of Senegal and other heads of state.
George: Oh yes, I remember the guy's name: Wade. he's the guy from NEPAD. He came other to the White House with his NEPAD buddies from African oil producing countries: Algeria, Nigeria, Senegal....
Tony: And South Africa!
George: There is oil in South Africa?
Jose: Palm oil, maybe.
George: Funny. I mean, there's been some exploration but nothing massive in term of production.
Tony: That's the problem. People in South Africa want Cape Town to become a kind of hub for African oil. A bit like Aberdeen.
George: Who is the king or president of Aberdeen?
Jose: Tony.
Tony: Exactly. If South Africa wants a foot in the oil business they have to extend their influence beyond Southern Africa, in the Gulf of Guinea. That's why South Africa helped Equatorial Guinea and stopped the coup.
George: You mean, Mbeki warned Obiang in order to get more oil deals?
Jose: I think Tony is right. That makes sense. And he can get rid of the apartheid mercenaries.
Tony: Absolutely. They tried to stop the private military business of Executives Outcomes with a new legislation, but our special forces helped them out.
George: We've been screwd.
Jose: We've been screwd big time. I hope our Lebanese friends will keep their mouths shut.
George: Yes,. Eh, but let me think. Lebanon is in the Middle East and these people are Muslims linked to al Qaeda through the Hizbollah or something like that. Right?
Jose: We'd better finish this photo shoot.
Tony: Yes. I just remembered that we can't extradite Moto to Gibraltar.
George: But Why?
Jose: Why can't we?
Tony: First, because Gibraltar is a kind of hub for international oil bunkering; Gilbraltar is a tiny place: with all the trafic and people involved in the business, there's a risk Moto might be easily spotted.
Jose: That's right. What elese?
Tony: Jeffrey Tesler's firm TriStar, which is involved in the Halliburton-Technip case, is incorporated in Gibraltar. He helped Shell and other oil western oil majors get important deals with Nigeria when he was dictator Sani Abacha's lawyer. In this election year, I don't think you George want everybody to link the coup in Malabo with Halliburton and Cheney. Don't forget that the US plane used by the mercenaries was coming from America.
George: Holy shit!
Jose: Don't curse.
Tony: What a bloody sunday!

Jose: That's no big deal for me since I was not not running for a third term in office. Now, what about that "cushy job at the Carlyle Group" you promised me last year at Azores Summit?
Tony (thinks): First 9/11, then 3/11... I have to find a good concept for the media when London is hit.
George (thinks): Yes, but with your party swept from power, I just don't see what you can contribute now.

Before I start to the review of the most juicy stories of the day, let me urge you to visit Katryn Cramer's blog. She did a wonderful job tracking the N4610 plane background and posting updates. Katryn is a SciFi writer and editor from Pleasantville (NY). I wonder what grabbed her interest. Sometimes, Africa just looks like another planet and African Oil Politics reads like a pod conspiracy.

Today's media coverage was... average. No new interesting leads emerged. However, more western (mostly Bristish) newspapers dare report the story. But there's a specific twist and bias that is absent from the African papers reviewed here yesterday. I'll start with Nicholas Christian's piece which is clearly designed to arouse pity for Simon Mann - the poor little boy who finds himself in such a baaad situation:

FEARS were growing last night for a former British soldier who faces the death sentence after he was arrested in Zimbabwe and charged with aiding a coup plot against another African country. ... Amid reports he has homes in South Africa and in Hampshire, Mann’s nationality remains unclear. The army will sign-up those Britons with dual nationality and citizens from the Commonwealth but has not confirmed Mann was a member of the forces. He is said to be Sandhurst-trained and to have served in Northern Ireland with the Scots Guards and later in the 1990 Gulf War as an intelligence officer in Riyadh. His father is said to be the late George Mann, president of the Marylebone Cricket Club and a former captain of England’s cricket team. Since leaving the army, Mann has been employed as a computer consultant and linked to a number of ‘private military’ firms, including Sandline International and Executive Outcomes.

I love how hard he tries to turn the guy into a victim. Come on Christian, you're talking about a dog of war - a tough guy trained by the SAS and who makes his living organizing coups, killing people. And don't repeat that he's LINKED to a number of PM firms. Just say that he was he was one of the founders of Executive Outcomes and everybody will understand. But thank you for bringing us up to date about his film career. I didn't know he played Colonel Wilford in Bloody Sunday. I'll watch the DVD to check how the guy looks like.

Declan Walsh reporting from Nairobi writes a slightly better account in the same newspaper. Though not uplifting, his story (African scramble for oil fuels dogs of war fiasco) tries to focus on the issue at stake: the identity of those behind the coup. However, he's so willing to distract our attention from the BBA Triumvirat (Blair, Bush, Aznar) that he basically repeats what every African oil analyst already knows:

Documents obtained by Scotland on Sunday suggest that Obiang’s own brother is linked with the South African mercenary who has admitted his part in the putative coup plot. Obiang, who came to power in a military coup by overthrowing his uncle, has ruled with an iron fist for 25 years by stuffing the government with his relatives and blatantly rigging elections. But in recent months tensions have risen within his family over an apparent desire to hand power to his son Teodorin, a rap music entrepreneur and international playboy. The 30-something has been seen at parties in Hollywood, Rio de Janerio and Paris, where he stays at five-star hotels and travels in Bentley and Lamborghini cars. He has his own rap label, TNO Productions, and has reportedly had a relationship with a female American gangster rapper. Now company documents link Nick du Toit, the 48-year-old South African arrested as leader of an alleged "advance team" of mercenaries, with Armengol Ondo Nguema, the national security chief and brother of Obiang. Both men are shareholders in Triple Options, a joint venture company established last October to provide "security services" to Obiang, but which the government now says is implicated in the plot to topple him.

The message is quite clear: the Obiang clan is bad! Fine. I agree with Declan. But, what do his "documents" say about those who pump Equatorial Guinea's oil? Without that kind of crusty business and geopolitical details, the story barely rises above British tabloids or US hip hop media. Like Jack Straw, Declan probably thinks mercenaries should be regarded as legitimate businessmen and be allowed to carry peacekeeping missions for the UN. I beg to differ. When he writes that the "mercenaries are accused of acting like characters from the Forsyth novel ... Nevertheless, the wide range of possible culprits highlights the universal unpopularity of Obiang’s regime', does one need to remind him that this is not a popularity contest? Does the Triumvirat's unpopularity in their respective consituencies make a coup legitimate in the US, UK and Spain? But the article gets better in the second part, when he reports how the US quest for African oil and corporate lust for Equatorial Guinea's oil-based growth has muted Western governments' will to talk human rights with the clan in power.

Paul Lashmar's story in the the Independent is quite good. Though accurate, the first part of the piece -- The inside story of the ties that bind President Obiang and powerful American interests -- doesn't bring any new lead. Unless you're a newcomer to the issue, I advise you to scroll down to the second part -- How 'Dogs of War' author turned coup into bestseller -- which is excellent. We learn that not only was Frederick Forsyth's The Dogs of War is based on a true story, but that the writer was involved in it.

Attempted coups in Equatorial Guinea have not always been successful for the politically ambitious, but they certainly have been for thriller-writers. It was one such in 1972, for instance, that produced Frederick Forsyth's The Dogs of War, not least - according to some - because Forsyth himself was behind the attempt to depose the current President's uncle. As a reporter, Forsyth had covered the bloody Biafran War of the late 1960s. He became a convert to the Biafran cause, and, according to one newspaper, plotted to overthrow Equatorial Guinea's dictator to set up a Biafran base to continue their fight.

Plotting coups in Africa is thus turned into a kind of sport for tea-drinking gentlemen. Small wonder the Brits want to legalize such a tradition. The French had the same habits until they decide to pass a law prohibiting such activities. All we can hope is that the smell of blood coming from Southern Africa will trigger positive change in the public opinion. In the meantime, I'll be playing U2's Sunday Bloody VERY LOUD looking for pictures of Colonel Wilford.

After the arrest by Spanish security services of 3 Morrocans and 2 Indians supposedly linked to Al Qaeda and the video-taped claim of responsibility by the military spokesman for al Qaida in Europe -- Abu Dujan al Afghani --, (nearly) no doubt is allowed: 2 years and a half after 9/11, al Qaeda hit Spain to punish Aznar's alliance with the United States. The tape warns of more bloodshed:

"If you don't stop your injustices more blood will flow and these attacks are very little compared with what may happen with what you call terrorism," it said.

The tape made al Qaeda's intent very clear, saying that the attacks on Madrid were motivated by the Spanish Government's collaboration "with the criminal [George W] Bush and his allies . . . this is a response to crimes that you have committed in the world, specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan and there will be more God willing. You love life and we love death, the blood will go on and on."

I didn't want to write about the terror attacks in Madrid before it was clear who was to be blamed. It's now time to move on and see what it means for US anti-terror footprint in oily Africa.

* Al Qaeda's logic turns upside-down the war logic stated by Bush: its message to Spain and other US allies is "you're either against US or against the Crusaders". It's just as simple.

* All al Qaeda's attacks in Africa followed that pattern; the previous operation, which took place in May 2003 in Casablanca (Morroco !) is no different: a Spanish restaurant, a Jewish community center and cemetery, the Belgian consulate as well as a five-star hotel for western tourists were the targets of suicide bombers who killed 45 people, including 12 suicide bombers.

* In Madrid as well as in Casablanca, the death squad included a significant group of Morrocans, supposedly linked to a network known as the Salafist Jihad (or Salafia Jihadia), whose adherents strongly believe in martyrdom and armed Jihad - holy struggle.

* The desire of US anti-terror officials to root out the Algerian GSPC from Sahel might prove a dead-end given the fact that Algerian Islamic groups (the Armed Islamic Group especially) are viewed by analysts and al Qaeda operatives as organizations either created or infiltrated by the Algerian secret service. Those who say that "The fight against terrorism is a key factor in Algerian-American cooperation", and base such a policy on the theory that "Algeria's contribution to the war against terrorism has been remarkable" either are less knowledgeable than they'd like us to believe or they intend to emulate the tactics used by the Algerian state terrorists for over a decade.

* The proven track record of the Salfist Jihad, both in Morroco and Spain, is likely to generate an increased US anti-terror deployment in the Sahel, but also in the Mediterranean sea (to protect Europe) and in oily West Africa (to protect US new sources of energy in the Gulf of Guine). That's the direction being taken by US military officials in charge of Africa:

A top U.S. general said recently al Qaeda cells might be seeking new havens in Africa, and Washington was talking to African states to allow its troops fast access to troublespots. "The fact they've (al Qaeda) been there is an indicator that in the future and maybe now they intend to operate in the northern part of Africa -- both the Sahel and the Maghreb -- as well as eastern Africa," General Charles Wald, Deputy Commander of U.S. European Command (EUCOM), told Reuters recently...

* This will likely leave Europe less exposed than it seams. According to Israeli intelligence boutique Debka, al Qaeda's first target is the European continent, then America:

According to data gathered... from December 2002, three months before the US invasion of Iraq, al Qaeda began issuing a stream of fatwas designating its main operating theatres in Europe. Spain was on the list, but not the first.
1. Turkey was first. Islamic fundamentalists were constrained to recover the honor and glory of the Ottoman caliphates which were trampled by Christian forces in 1917 in the last days of World War I.
2. Spain followed. There, al Qaeda set Muslims the goal of recovering their lost kingdom in Andalusia.
3. Italy and its capital were third. Muslim fundamentalists view Rome as a world center of heresy because of the Vatican and the Pope.
4. Vienna came next because the advancing Muslim armies were defeated there in 1683 before they could engulf the heart of Europe.
(...)
Where do the United States and Britain stand on al Qaeda’s time table? [al Qaeda's] religious edicts dictate the “liberation” (by terrorism) of lands once under Muslim rule. Turkey and Spain were therefore placed ahead of London, Paris and Berlin. Israel is doubly anathemized as a Jewish state established in a country once governed by Muslims. Rome ought to come next, although the fatwas allow some flexibility to meet changing circumstances and enable al Qaeda to strike where least expected.

Bin Laden and the leadership group of his organization have been arguing over their next directions. Their debate is conceptual between those who advocate building up Islamic fundamentalist gains in Europe before turning to America and those who see Europe as a springboard to the United States. Bin Laden has issued a fatwa deciding the issue: the organization is instructed to strike simultaneously on both continents.

While the Mediterranean countries north of the sea are in the eye of the terror storm, Africa is not on al Qaeda's radar screen. The Islamist organization might use the continent as a safe haven, or attack US interests there. Africans as such are none of its business. Saying that Africa is a key front in the war on terror and is misguided and misleading manipulation. This leads us to draw two lessons from the Spanish case.

* If the United States wants to be serious about "draining a swamp" and wants support from Africans, the Pentagon and the State Department should fist start telling the truth about the quest for African oil and stating clearly what they will do for Africans if they decide to give America a helping hand. The shouldn't take the population current silencing by dictatorial regimes as a proof of their willingness to fight the war on terror. Africans have already fought two world wars on behalf of their European colonizers. They don't need a new slave driver.

* African heads of states who are siding with the West without debating the issue with their citizens might well go the way of Aznar - hated by the majority of the population and accused of importing a war that they oppose. Another lesson to be learned by Africans from the Spaniards is this one: opposition to terrorism AND opposition to the so-called war on terrorism. Millions of people amongst thos who walked in rainy Madrid, mourning their relatives and fellow nationals, said NO to Aznar-Bush-Blair-Berlusconi and NO to Ben Laden. If asked, many Africans would do the same. But who dares asking? Who dares say: the war on terror - what's in it for Africans? Nobody but this blog.

* The next place to look for insights on African oil politics and US anti-terror military deployment on the continent is Germany. General Amari (Algeria), accompanied by other chiefs of defense from North Africa (Morroco, Algeria, Tunisia, and possibly Libya) and the Pan Sahel area (Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Niger) will meet EUCOM officials on the 22nd of March in Stuttgart (Germany).

Funniest moment of the week:
1. The messy desk contest launched by bash.org (try to spot mine).
2. Joi Ito's post on the similarity between Finnish and Japanese. So funny that I didn't bother reading the rather serious NYT's story he linked to before today. It made me wonder what my buddies from Finland like in my blog. I'd be glad to hear more from you guys. I'd like to have some fresh news from the Helsinki electro scene.

Sometimes you just can't help spotting convergent events driving the world in specific directions. This week was mostly driven by one key topic: security - the corporate warriors-led coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea was followed by more anarchic low intensity warfare in Nigeria, while African episodes in the war on terror - be it in Algeria, Chad or Kenya - were overshadowed by the much more deadly mass-transit terror attack in Madrid.

But the chaos of the world didn't alter some genuine moments of joy and insight: discussions with foward-looking thinkers, Africa policy analysts from Europe or the United States gave me a lot of energy. The main outcomes of these online-offline interactions will be reflected in the evolution of the blog which will undergo its first mutation next week (March 17-18). Expect more interviews, more links, new pdf documents and fresh air (my two favourite distopians, Orwell and Gibson, provided me a plenty in one single post).

Today brought a series of good papers focusing on the corporate military actors of the coup. Like yesterday, the best papers came from Southern African newsmakers.

Let's start with Graeme Hosken and his colleagues from the South African Independent Online. After the brilliant work they did yesterday, they focused their attention on the likely timetable of the coup. They first focus on the fact that South African intelligence agents "have left for Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea to interrogate South Africans being held for allegedly plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea." But the story turns out to be more about the reconstitution of the script likely established by the coup plotters to achieve their business duty:

Speaking on state television, Du Toit said the advance party would take strategic targets such as the [Guinean] presidency, the military barracks, police posts and the residences of government members. South African security sources say the Zimbabwean group was heading to a covert military training camp in Cameroon that was to be the staging point for a seaborne assault. They said Logo Logistics had recently bought a fleet of nine trawlers which had been modified to take troops and had been fitted with machineguns and rocket launchers.

That's the juicy part of the story, which becomes even more meaningful when pieced together with other articles that I'll mention now. The best story of the day is from Dumisani Muleya who writes in the Independent (from Zimbabwe). He offers the best account so far of why the mercernaries had to stopover in Harare International Airport and how government officials in South Africa and Zimbabwe basically set them up.

The ZDI [Zimbabwe Defence Industries], which sells military equipment, reportedly "sold" the mercenaries a consignment of AK-47 assault rifles, mortars and 30 000 rounds of ammunition for US$188 000. It is said ZDI general manager Colonel Tshinga Dube was aware of the transaction as it was part of the trap. "We trapped them because we knew their plans well beforehand," a senior government official said. "The three other men (Simon Mann and his two colleagues) who were already in the country were under constant surveillance. The trap involved South African intelligence." South Africa has confirmed that President Thabo Mbeki alerted [the Guinean President] Obiang, who overthrew his president-for-life uncle Francisco Macias Nguema in 1979, of the coup plot. This led to the arrest of 15 mercenaries in Malabo on Tuesday, described as an advance party of those detained in Harare. The mercenaries were arrested on Sunday evening after a United States-registered plane which formerly belonged to the American airforce was impounded with 64 passengers on board. The plane was detained at Manyame Airbase together with the 67 suspected mercenaries in total.

Dumisani Muleya also gives a flashback of the mercenaries roadmap before the current events. He gives a rather convincing account of why and how the group of military service providers had to split in two sub-groups, each one with his own agenda.

Mann and an associate named Nicholas Du Toit were in Zimbabwe in February for the purchase of military hardware. Mann then came back with two colleagues on March 5. ...The plane, which was sold last week by Dodson Aviation to Logo Ltd of South Africa, was seized after it landed at Harare International Airport with a false declaration of crew and cargo. Initially the plane's destination had been given as either the DRC, Burundi or Ethiopia. The aircraft reportedly flew from Sao Tome and Principe - where US soldiers were said to be currently training - on March 7 with an American crew to South Africa where it picked up the arrested mercenaries. In South Africa, it took off at Lanseria Airport on Sunday, landed at Wonderboom Airport in Pretoria where Dodson International (SA), a subsidiary of Dodson Aviation, sellers of the plane, is based and then proceeded to Pietersburg International Airport. From there it came to Zimbabwe where it was impounded. Pretoria where Dodson International (SA), a subsidiary of Dodson Aviation, sellers of the plane, is based and then proceeded to Pietersburg International Airport. From there it came to Zimbabwe where it was impounded.

The second best story of the day is provided by Sam Sole and Stefaans Brümmer from the Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg). They did a good job trying to map the profile of each key actor and how he relates to the others. Once one starts reading their piece, Rent-a-Coup: Who's Who, it becomes quite obvious why no serious piece of information but denials will come from the British or United States' officials.

The men behind the alleged Equatorial Guinea coup plot represent a who's who of South Africa's mercenary market - but key players also have links to the American and British security establishments. ... But it is intriguing that both Mann and his alleged principal co-conspirator, Nic du Toit, do have direct or indirect links with the security establishments in [the UK and the USA].Mann, a former British special forces soldier who has been resident in Cape Town and who is known for his association with disbanded South African mercenary company Executive Outcomes, was earlier a senior member of Sandline International, a private military firm which has been regarded as close to the UK security establishment. ... Du Toit is a director of Miltary Technical Services (MTS), a Pretoria company whose founder, Tai Minnaar, worked for the CIA in the 1970s and seems to have retained contact with the organisation until his mysterious death in 2001. The Mail & Guardian has obtained more information putting Mann and du Toit at the centre of the alleged plot. Mann's offshore company, Logo Logistics, co-ordinated the operation.

I advise you to read the rest story which is very well written and unmatched by western corporate media. As a matter of fact, the complex web of western intelligence links makes it difficult for maintream media like the BBC to operate freely: a BBC News Online piece entitled The men behind the "Guinean plot" that promises more than it actually delivers is a good illustration of what I witnessed. In spite of the wealth of information already available online, it's a shame that they came up with such a hollow shell. Not only do the author(s) say(s) as less as t(he)y can, but that's done with such bad faith that one wonders what's happening to the spirit of the Beeb. For instance, given the known links between someone like Simon Mann and the British intelligence establishment, it's rather funny to read the BBC write that the coup "has caused much embarrassment for the South African government". What about the embarrassment of the British intelligence community, accused ad hominem by officials in Zimbabwe while South African authorities (especially Mbeki) are praised and given due credit both by Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe for having provided the intelligence that allowed to foil the coup? Who should be embarrassed: South Africa - whose leaders are providing key resource to solve the riddle - or Britain - whose denials are quite hard to swallow? South Africa is trying hard to outlaw South African mercenaries and forbid them from operating abroad without written official authorisation or the British officials who are trying just as hard to legalize the practice? Don't expect the BBC to answer the question.

For those who are hungry for even more solid background research and investigative journalism on African security issues and oil politics, I'll provide you with two essential resources: Making a Killing: The Business of War (2002) and Peace, Profit and Plunder (1999). Both reports are collective works done by international teams. The first one gives journalistic description of characters such as Simon Mann and Nick Dutoit. The chapter entitled Marketing the New 'Dogs of War' by Duncan Campbell will give you goose bumps and confirm lots of the information you'll find in the African newspapers mentioned earlier. For a more corporate strategy oriented academic work on Executive Outcome, I refer you to Khareen Pech's Executive Outcomes - A corporate conquest. By the way, academic doesn't mean boring: this South African analyst from the Institute For Security Studies knows how to write and give a much-needed perspective on a topic that most western media usually underreport. It's an issue of Welt Ordnung, as Germans say.

After the post published here on Wed. 10 on Karen Kwiatkowski, we sent her an email to have her check the accuracy of our story. Here's her reply:

Thanks for asking. I glanced through the story -- the links are fine, and the quotations are accurate. The air expeditionary ops paper I did in 2000, and the oil policy paper inputs in 2001, I believe. The only point that must be made is that at that time I was writing in the capacity of a military political analyst working for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, sub Saharan Africa policy directory. So I am not speaking in those writings for myself but representing the view of my offices, a defense oriented position. Let me know if this helps.

Karen Kwiatkowski
lewrockwell.com
militaryweek.com

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

~ George Washington

Karen - Thank you for your feedback. The more we discover about you, the more we respect your honesty.

PS: You can read James Moore's post on Karen. I think her article in Salon is transforming Karen, who doesn't hide her conservative creed, into a new liberal icon. That's what makes America great: at the end of the day, shared values is what bind smart citizens together. Shared values, and blogging.

Kofi: This is "a real foul-up, first-class foul-up"!

As the mercenaries arrested in Harare International Airport are about to face jutsticetoday, I think the time has come to remember that the OUA (now AU - African Union) has adopted in 1977 (3rd July) the "most important" regional treaty on private military actors. You will see that the Convention of the OAU for the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa contains a "seemingly forceful stance". However, as Brookings Scholar Peter Singer writes in the Spring 2004 issue of Columbia Journal of Transnational law, "the drafters carefully constructed the Convention to allow African governments to continue to hire non-nationals, as long as they were used to defend themselves from "dissidents groups within their own borders," while disallowing their use against any other rebel groups that the OUA supported. The result is a document whose biased is self-evident." Such a contradiction can be explained in part by the fact that the OUA wanted to prohibit the South African regime of apartheid to use foreign mercenaries against the ANC. Now, of course, things have changed. I propose you read the following excerpt from the Convention:

PREAMBLE

We, the Heads of State and Government of the Member States of the Organization of African Unity;

Considering the grave threat which the activities of mercenaries present to the independence, sovereignty, security territorial integrity and harmonious development of Member States of the Organization of African Unity;

Concerned with the threat which the activities of mercenaries pose to the legitimate exercise of the right of African People under colonial and racist domination to their independence and freedom;

Convinced that total solidarity and co-operation between Member States are indispensable for putting an end to the subversive activities of mercenaries in Africa;

Considering that the resolutions of the UN and the OAU, the statements of attitude and the practice of a great number of States are indicative of the development of new rules of international law making mercenarism an international crime;

Determined to take all necessary measures to eliminate from the African continent the scourge that mercenarism represents;

Have agreed as follows:

ARTICLE 1 - DEFINITION

1. A mercenary is any person who:

a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflicts;

b) does in fact take a direct part in the

hostilities;

c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and in fact is promised by or on behalf of a party to the conflict material compensation;

d) is neither a national of a party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a party to the conflicts;

e) is not a member of the armed forces of a party to the conflict; and

f) is not sent by a state other than a party to the conflict on official mission as a member of the armed forces of the said state.

2. The crime of mercenarism is committed by the individual, group or association, representative of a State or the State itself who with the aim of opposing by armed violence a process of self-determination stability or the territorial integrity of another State, practises any of the following acts:

a) Shelters, organises, finances, assists, equips, trains, promotes, supports or in any manner employs bands of mercenaries;

b) Enlists, enrols or tries to enrol in the said bands;

c) Allows the activities mentioned in paragraph (a) to be carried out in any territory under its jurisdiction or in any place under its control or affords facilities for transit, transport or other operations of the above mentioned forces.

3. Any person, natural or juridical who commits the crime of mercenarism as defined in paragraph 1 * of this Article commits an Offence considered as a crime against peace and security in Africa and shall be punished as such.

Other treaties like the UN International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries (1989) tried to move beyond the contradiction, but failed. Nowadays, international law is unable to define or regulate the provision of private military services. In order to move around that obstacle, the Zimbabwe judicial system decided has opted for treason charges, which are punishable by death.

Here's an update of the most interesting new items collected on the web in the last 24 hours. I'll try to cover issues that are relevant to this blog's editorial line:

If you want in insider view from the Confidential corner of the African diasporic newsmakers, the place to start is this Africa Confidential's update: Malabo imbroglio. As for Severo Moto, you can visit the official website of his Spain-based "government in exile" to get an idea of the man. He doesn't contribute much to the debate because he's too busy protecting his family jewels. Given the terror attack in Spain, I won't speculate on the role of Aznar in the coup attempt and his possible support for Moto.

The role of South Africa's officials and mercenaries in the crisis is revealed by Graeme Hosken and Jonathan Ancer from the Independent. They bring quite convincing answers to the hot question How South Africa stopped a coup. Some additional information is provided by Tangeni Amupadhi who writes about the Namibian pilot said to have flown 'mercenaries' seized in Zimbabwe. The role of operatives such as former-SAS Simon Mann (UK) and ZDI from Zimbabwe is also investigated here.

You must be prepared to navigate the web of relations between South Africa's elite Buffalo Battalion - aka 32 Battalion - and the late security firm Executive Outcomes, whose former members (Nick du Toit, Simon Witherspoon and Hendrik Hamman) played key roles in the coup attempt. More (biased) historical background info on 32 Battalion can be found in this book, on this homepage and this guestbook.

As for Charles Burrows from Logo Logistics, he's too well connected to contribute anything worth the while to this story. He either knows too much or thinks we are stupid enough to buy his lies. Or both. Remember: UK officials are not supposed to comment any "intelligence" affairs. It would be better to find the connection between Burrows and Ely Calil. Burrows hired the mercenaries while Calil may have financed the coup. Both are British and are well connected to Africa's dark secret affairs: a world of underground intelligence, extractive business deals and security services provision; a world in which the vacuum left by Executive Outcomes' legal death meant new life for dying habits.

“The War on Terrorism: Its Impact and Implications for Africa”

Date and Time: Wednesday, April 7, 2004 -- 2:30-4:30 p.m.
Venue: Howard University's Ralph Bunche International Affairs Center, located at 2218 6th Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20059

Forum Overview: This forum will examine several different aspects of the “war on terrorism” including the implications of the U.S. engagement in Iraq on African countries in terms of the U.S.’ financial commitment to that effort and whether it impacts on assistance to Africa; whether African nations are now being targeted by outside terrorists groups since the continent is considered the “soft underbelly” for terrorist activities; the degree to which the U.S. is in consultation with African leaders regarding the “war on terrorism;” whether the “war on terrorism” has exacerbated the spread of radical fundamentalism on the continent; and what steps U.S. can take to work in concert with African governments presently combating terrorism.

Panelists: To be provided

In my previous post about Kenya's islands of Lamu and Pate, I forgot to mention this article published by Reuters writer James Macharia. He did visit the same place but apparently didn't see all there was to see. On the other hand he may have witnessed what the Kenyan journalists reported but did not dare talk about what Duncan Clarke from Global Pacific & Partners describes as "the new scramble for Africa":

Africa has been at the centre of world interest and competitive power positioning by foreign States, interests and companies, as well as local ethnicities and elites for the last 150 years: from the Original Scramble from 1884 onwards, and through the Cold War and decolonisation. Africa has now become a cockpit again for a new surge of interests – this time in respect of oil and gas resources as Great Powers, Mid-Range States, African polities and the Corporate Oil interests of global, regional and local players vie for position, privilege and ascendance. This New Scramble for oil and gas involves a myriad of domestic and outside interests: Super-Majors, Independents, National Oil Companies (from Africa and elsewhere), Local Players, Heads of State, political and commercial elites, middlemen, financiers, lobbyists, contractors and companies of a multitude of types.

First of all I'd like to thank Blake for giving me the opportunity to finally find the time to write this post. I also need to make one thing very clear: as you will realise, I'm a long-time fan of Karen Kwiatowski who published a very good piece today in Salon. In fact, it's a condensed version (a kind of power-pack) of her previous neo-con critical analysis featured on (military or conservative sites) like Lewrockwell.com. The growing following and fame she's rightly enjoying right now -- and which is based on that work -- is entirely deserved. Not only did she show courage when she started reporting things she witnessed while working with the Neo-Cons, but she does it with a lot of talent and pure incisive philosophical wit. I love the way she writes and put her ideas together - sometimes in very surprising, unusual ways. However, before being an outspoken critic of the Likudniks and their best friends at the Pentagon, she did have a career that needs to be acknowledged as well. A career that allowed her to make personal contribution to a policy that is being implemented long after she left her former position. As some of you may have guess, I consider USAF Col. Karen Kwiatkowski as one of the best political-military specialists on African affairs. The only problem is that whereas US africa policy start to get some coverage, few journalists dare borrowing some of her insights. What I want to do now is outline part of her (documented) achievement as a an Africa specialist, post 9/11 and ante-july 2003 (Bush trip to Africa).

As the Pentagon and the United States European Command (EUCOM) is about to make public the (extraordinary) extent of its political as well as military engagement and deployment in Africa, it's worth remembering that Karen is probably one of the persons who are the most aware of the issue of air operations in Africa. When discussing US basing strategy, you just can't discard her main contribution: in December 2001, she published a Fairchild Paper at the Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force Base (Alabama) entitled Expeditionary Air Operations in Africa, Challenges and Solutions (pdf).When she was researching and writing that report, Africa wasn't even considered a "US geostrategic interest area" as is explained in the forword by Shirley Brooks Laseter.

However, ... Colonel Kwiatkowski believes that the winners will be those who understand Africa and can meet the challenges of air operations on the continent first. Air operations, whether commercial or military, are critical to a continent that has a limited overland transportation infrastructure of roads, rails and waterways.

Prior to that assignment, she had worked at the Pentagon and the NSA; but she was then a political-military officer attached to Office of the Secretary of Defense, Undersecretary for Policy, Office of African Affairs. That remained her position when she was asked few weeks later, in January 2002, to take part in the first high level seminar sponsored by the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) on "African Oil: A Priority for U.S. National Security and African Development". The seminar, which took place in Washington on January 25, included some very senior administration officials (Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner, his assistant James Dunlop), congressmen, oil executives and lobbyists. Since there was no official Africa policy at the time (the US National Security Strategy would be published nine months later, in Sept. 2002), she could only deliver a presentation that expressed her personal views on the matter at stake. She dared make the following point as soon as she started to talk (pdf, scroll down to pp.26-28):

One of the things I want to emphasize is how important Africa is to U.S. defense policy and U.S. security. It’s sometimes a difficult challenge to make this point... Sometimes it’s difficult, especially since 9/11, to get the Pentagon to think about Africa.

She then gets to the heart of the matter:

One of the DoD’s concerns is securing interest of United States citizens around the world, including the growing number in Africa. But oil from Sub-Saharan Africa is the subject here. The National Intelligence Council produced a report in 2000 called The Global Trends, 2015 available on the Internet. The report said that Sub-Saharan African oil – and this, I assume, excluded Algerian and Moroccan oil, which adds to it – will comprise 25 percent of U.S. oil imports by year 2015. It also says that oil production in Sub-Saharan Africa will foster corruption instead of economic development, and that’s unacceptable. I don’t think that is necessarily a true prediction.

After few words on corruption, she present what she calls the three "pillars" of US Africa strategy: military education and training (IMET, ACRI that eventually became ACOTA), military professionalism promotion, and sub-regional organizational capacity building. Now comes the conclusion - read carefully:

[As] for energy, we need to look at Coast Guard and Navy and aircraft surveillance and border surveillance technique. These will help these countries secure property and protect investment, both ours and the African nations’. We need to look in that direction if we’re going to step forward as partners with the African countries.

Because African security and energy is important, we’re interested in these developments:
1. More fully understanding the challenges of U.S. energy companies and investors in Sub-Saharan Africa. The more we know, the more we might be able to help.
2. Improved relationships. We’d like to have improved relationships with U.S. companies in Africa for purposes of augmenting our limited human footprint, and again, the Congressman mentioned human intelligence sadly lacking in Africa, especially from the military perspective, and we need that.

That doesn’t mean asking people to be intelligence gatherers for us. It does mean Africans having good relationships with our defense attaches. In the past three years we’ve nearly doubled our defense attaches in the subcontinent. They are more available. So we encourage you to reach out and touch those folks as you see fit. We want to work where we can with you to increase the level of accountable government and overall economic development that comes with adherence to rule of law, freedom in the marketplace, freedoms in the media, and a well trained, small, professional, and apolitical military.

She simply and elegantly outlined what the US African political-military strategy would become at a time when the necessity for such a strategy wasn't obvious for all yet. If you read the Foreign Press Center Roundtable with Deputy Cmdr of the European Command Gen Charles Wald and Invited African Journalists that took place in Washington on Monday 8 March, you'll see that she foresaw a lot of the actions that only start being implemented nowadays. i won't elaborate now as a forthcoming post will be entirely dedicated to that important press conference. But to go back on the pressing issue of African basing rights and strategy, here what Wald said:

What we're looking for -- and there are certain bases that have been identified in Africa that we have agreements with countries that we've already put some -- some investment in, mainly fuel, infrastructure, hydrants, et cetera. There are about six of those already. But the way I look at it is a little different than some other people. I look at any place in Africa that has a runway or port that wants to be friends with the United States or we have a relationship with as a potential forward-operating location that we could temporarily use.that's in the one hundreds of places -- you know, that are 5,000-plus feet long maybe or 6,000-maybe-feet-long runways that have a place to park and some fuel -- that's a forward-operating location if the country decides they want us to come and operate with them. So I think it just makes sense, first of all, that we develop relationships and friendships; we know each other; that we find common ground; and then, we'll have a lot of forward- operating locations. And, to me, that's the best way to do it, frankly.

One hundred places where you refuel and base! Now you're talking about meeting "the challenges of air operations" in Africa.

When Karen left African Affairs, she took Africa with her; Africa just refuse to leave her. One of her anti-NeoCon piece archived on Lewrockwell.com is entitled Lessons From Somalia. Can you believe that? Ten years after Mogadishu, she dares lecture the guys on such an issue. And to say what? Just to go easy in Iraq if they don't want to end up the way things ended up in Somalia:

The political and economic lessons of Somalia are echoed in Iraq. Decentralized government, free markets, a free press and lively competition of people and ideas help a country recover. Aid dependency, centralized management of everything, and international manipulation don’t.

What can I add to such foresighted warning? Maybe one thing that Karen failed to mention: Somalia may have been about oil after all. That would explain the rush, the lack of realism. The blunder. Just read that story from 1993 and give us your feedback. I'm sure after you've checked the story, you won't think about Somalia the same way most people do. Just like Iraq before and after the war. After? There's no after yet.

You probably know what they say about Paranoids : being paranoid doesn't mean you're not persecuted. It's probably what president Obiang from Equatorial Guinea and Mugabe from Zimbabwe must be thinking right now, after South African authorities echoed part of their allegations about the south-african nationality of some "mercenaries". Both live in the fear of a West-backed coup that would put an end both to their power and the hegemony of their clans. That is the main driver of of their (mis) calculations and public speech acts. The Boeing plane arrested in Harare and the foiled coup attempt in Malabo give them a rare opportunity to unite their forcesagainst so-called "enemy powers", described by Obiang as "countries that do not love us... countries who knew about this attempt and did not contribute information. We will have to qualify them as enemies". The only thing they don't grasp quite well is that they are their worst enemies. The more they mimick the rethoric of Bush and Blair, the more their paranoia shows and the more they isolate themselves from the very club they'd like to be part of: the masters of the universe.

We already reported how United States anti-terror personel are looking for humanitarian project in the Horn of Africa as a way to counter terrorists spreading anti-Western messages. This kind of mission is undertaken by civil affairs teams of Army reservists. They usually travel around Ethiopia and Djibouti to identify community projects that bring a visible benefit to the population: repairing schools, running medical clinics, funding cultural festivals.

“We don’t want to change their culture, we just want to make them less susceptible for terrorist cells to operate among them, increase their quality of life so they’ll say, ‘No, we like the Americans,’ ” said Capt. Jeremy Rose, 29, a civil affairs team leader from Dayton, Ohio. “We’re spreading a pro-U.S. sentiment by increasing our area of influence.”

Fine. If it takes the Al Qaeda and the war on terror to get Americans doing community project in poor areas in eastern Africa, that's great. But I thought twice when I realised that I was reading Stars and Stripes, which is an excellent magazine when one wants to check the official DoD line. Based on the kind of doubts I started developping here last week, I wonder how cool it would be to have a local African journalist or analyst reporting things from his own point of view. I was lucky enough read the The East African Standard (Nairobi) last week-end. It revealed a gold mine of insight for me. This wasn't about Djibouti or Ethipia, but Kenya where islamic terror had already strike US and Israeli interests. What I discovered is beyond what I was looking for: a couple of articles and a special report about US presence on two tiny islands in the Indian Ocean - Pate and Lamu. Now, just relax and enjoy the ride.

The first article starts like a mirror image of the Stars & Stripes' piece, except it takes place in Lamu. Entitled Marines Project Breathes New Life Into Poor Town, the article basically starts with a description of the kind of projects developped by the Americans:

Officially, the US Army Civil Affairs Wing has spent over $300,000 (Sh22.5 million) on various projects in Lamu since 2002. The economic empowerment focuses on social, cultural and economic support through the US Embassy in Nairobi and the US Joint Task Force in Djibouti. "The projects focus on empowering Lamu residents economically," says Capt Jeff Rynearson from the US Army's Civil Affairs team, who coordinated several projects for four months before returning to the United States recently. ... The Marines have also set up free medical camps and treated thousands of patients suffering from a variety of diseases as well as conducted surgical operations. Their rapport with the indigenous Lamu residents has grown at par with their generosity, which has impressed many families and created employment.


Yes, I know it sounds really boring, but sifting through this kind of litterature is part of the job. It's like drilling oil wells; you don't strike gold instantly. I kept on reading. Then, something hit me when the officer mentioned the second island: Pate Island is the place where wanted terrorist suspect Faizul Abdullah Mohammed, "lived and married a local girl before he allegedly masterminded the bombing of the Kikambala Paradise Hotel". I was instantly hooked. I couldn't stop reading the articles one after one, then read some more. As interesting as it can be, with the mixed reactions of the locals - some support the US presence, others are more suspicious - that first story is just an appetiser for the second one. Written by Awadh Babo, it's a real masterpiece. Not only for its content, but also for the style. It's kind of repetitive, like serial music. And each time he repeats something he has written before, he adds a new layer of meaning. I add the impression of reading geopolitical swahali poetry:

Siyu Village on Pate Island is the last inhabited coastal point in Kenya before the coastal border with Somalia. But the tiny, dry village, inhabited by a small population of the Bajuni community, is marked with a big red blob on maps used by American Marines who have been doing relief work in the area. It is the village where most wanted suspected terrorist, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, suspected of involvement in the bombing of the 1998 US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as well as the 2002 bombing of an Israeli hotel in Kikambala, lived for a while before escaping. The island is also home to the Mohammed Kubwa family, two of who are on trial in Nairobi for the Kikambala Paradise Hotel bombing. Fazul, when he arrived on the Island in 2002, married a Kubwa daughter, Amina Mohammed Kubwa, whose father and brother are now among people charged with the Kikambala bombing. The house that Fazul lived in, before he escaped back to Somalia early last year, and the houses of the Kubwa family, form part of the poor makuti-thatched village of Siyu that has poverty as its hallmark. The houses have been locked since Fazul fled and the Kubwa partriarch and son were arrested. American Marines who, since 2002, have been doing community projects in Lamu and Pate islands, plan to build a water project right near the house that Fazul lived in. ... Many Siyu residents shy away from strangers and far less want to talk about terrorism. Many people in the village have been picked up for questioning by police, ever since it was learnt that Fazul lived there in 2002.

The writer then goes on to describe how the terrorists who came from abroad started to mingle with the locals and got finally accepted as part of the "clan". The more I read the piece, the more I understood that the Americans where basically trying to use the same strategy used by the terrorists to befriend the locals. What a script for a movie!

"Our people are poor and they can welcome anyone willing to give them money or food," says Mohammed Ali, the director of the non-governmental Lamu Community Development Organisation. "People live in abject poverty here, it was easy for unsuspected terrorists to live with us because of their money influence. Nobody would suspect a man bringing a fortune to his hardship-prone life because everybody is busy struggling to make ends meet," he adds. Now the Americans are trying to bridge the poverty gap as they discreetly build a ground network for detecting — or preventing terrorism.

With the third story comes the dessert. It's a strategy-oriented piece that gives the bigger picture inside which the tiny community projects of the first story and the psycho-anthropologic drama of the second tale come together and take a renewed meaning. Written by Awadh Babo and two colleagues of his (Maina Muiruri, in Mombasa and David Makali in Nairobi), it completes the trilogy like The Return of the King.

Initially resisted as infidel intruders into an Islamic community, Marines and other American security intelligence agencies are finally gaining a foothold on strategic parts of the Kenya coast in a widening web of surveillance disguised as war against terrorism. American intelligence presence is particularly noticeable along the coast where Marines set up numerous community projects, turning initial hostility from local communities into needy acceptance. The Marines have penetrated the villages of Lamu and the neighbouring areas with the aim of collecting subtle intelligence or traces of information that could spark or spur terrorist activities. The high technology snooping — done undercover as community services like fresh water, building hospitals and school blocks — has dazzled the local Bajuni community, the oblivious and yet cautious recipients of American generosity for almost two years now.

I could say that it reads like a thriller, except it's not a thriller, nor a traditional spy story. This 21 century progressive SciFi at its best. It's dark, distopic, politically challenging. This piece is simply How America is spying on Kenya, but - for all I know - it could have been called "Invasion of the Oil Snatchers":

Experts say America’s foremost interest in Africa, besides neutralising terrorism, is to secure sites of strategic minerals like oil and uranium... In the emerging second scramble for Africa, western countries are digging in for new protectorates of their interest. Besides American spy agencies, German and French intelligence presence has peaked over the past two years. German spy-planes deployed to patrol the Indian Ocean coast in the heat of the Gulf War last year have not retreated. France has also intensified its interest and surveillance of the region. At the coast, besides the terrorism concerns, impeccable sources say the prospects for oil exploration along the coast up to Lamu have provided new impetus to American activities.

I leave you here and decicate this post to Agnes. It's time for me to dig more into my database and connect this with what's been hidden about Somalia.

Let's suppose Nigeria is serious about acquiring nukes. Then comes the logical question: who's the enemy? Cameroon? Come on...

Or maybe, Nigerians want the US to impose economic sanctions to the country so that the elite can look for lucrative ways to go around them, then decide to come clean - just like Libya. It would be the ultimate WMD scam. I already have an idea for the letter:

Dear Mr President George W. Bush,

As you may have heard, our country (a West African oil state) just acquired nuclear and biological weapons of mass terror that we would be very glad to see destroyed in exchange of a very modest fee, bla bla bla...

The lattest gun battle between Warri youth and Nigerian security forces that killed 14 (including one soldier) are proof enough that Operation Restore Hope, like its Somali version, is a deadly and anarchic low intensity warfare. Unfortunately, most testimonies are from army officials. As long as the Federal Government will be unable to find more creative solutions to this social crisis, Nigeria's hope of attracting foreign investment will suffer more setback. The ranking of Nigeria atop countries presenting high risk characteristics among 50 nations wroldwide in the new report by political risk boutique Aon is but a confirmation of a trend we've been witnessing since day one. If we reported all the incendents that we track in Warri, this blog would read like... a boring bodycount.

Besides the concern over terrorism, the report says Nigeria's entire geo-political zones particularly, the Niger-Delta areas, presents elements of high risk for investors. The risks likely to be faced by investors, Aon report indicated, includes; risks originating from government intervention, counter-party default, inability to obtain or transfer hard currency, civil war, riots and other features of political violence.

In spite of these news, oil firms such as Shell will surely continue doing business in Warri for the ultimate prize: the dowry.

Next week, we'll celebrate this blog's third month of online activity. I can't tell you now what's in the African Oil Politics' pipeline, but expect some change. I can already reveal that we'll start a series of exclusive interviews. Our first guest is the director of Africa Program at the International Crisis Group (ICG), Stephen Ellis. With all the current talk about peace dawning in Africa, optimism is becoming the ordre du jour. But Stephen Ellis warns:

"You can’t bring peace from Washington or New York, you need to go to these countries and work directly with the people on the ground. Fundamentally, the final say does not lie with the West, it is a joint venture, if you don’t take the population along with you it will not work and you will have decades of war and famine."

We will discuss the security outlook of the continent, focusing on West Africa, in the context of the ongoing US quest for oil and war against terror. Ellis has things to say about the role of Gaddafi and his Sub-saharan partners (Taylor, Sankoh and Compaore) in the destabilization of West Africa (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast). You'll get more details about what's in the pipeline in the next Fridayblog. In the meantime, you can check the debate on BBC - Africa's oil: A blessing or a curse? - and post your own comments on their site. If you listen to the program, you're likely to hear few words from me.

The Algerian security landscape is getting more hectic as we approach presidential elections to be held on April 8. As news of US special forces fighting Salafists in the southern Algeria emerged, the north witnessed outbreaks of youth riots.

WorldTribune.com broke the US special forces story on Tuesday:

U.S. officials said a Special Operations Forces (SOF) unit was operating with Algerian troops in the southern part of the country. They said the U.S. military also planned to expand operations to other parts of Algeria. This is the first time a U.S. military force was sent to battle insurgents in Algeria. Officials said the focus was on the Salafist Brigade for Combat and Call, which has been referred to as a subcontractor for Al Qaida and which has a significant presence along the southern border with Mali.

It was unclear if US forces did operate in Northern Algeria where GSPC members were arrested:

Algerian security forces have arrested 19 people accused of being members of a logistical support network for an armed Islamist movement fighting the government. The people arrested and imprisoned in Bouira, a town in the northeastern Kabylie region, were informers for the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), security officials said on Monday.

Meanwhile, newspapers reported on Tuesday outbreaks of violence described as "riots" by disaffected youth. These riots have broken out in the past few days in several northern cities and towns.

Youths protesting against unemployment, water and what they called the failure of authorities to come up with promised development programmes took place in the Mediterranean coast town of Skikda, in Tizi Ouzou and Bouira, both main towns in the northeastern Kabylie province, and in Tiaret, 300km west of Algiers, the papers said. ... Last month, dozens of youths attacked public buildings in the Sahara desert town of Ouargla when President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was visiting. They opposed the hiring of people from the north to work in the oil sector.

This social unrest is a reminder that the political failure of the governement and the military to provide economic development to the Algerian youth won't be solved as purely security issues. The motives that brought the Islamists in the political arena are still pretty much there. As long as the revenue from oil and gas exports won't trickle down to the overall population, Algeria will remain a problem country.

While we are busy following the unfolding mystery plane drama in Harare and the failed coup attempt in Malabo, interesting developments are taking place in Sahara: Aljazeera reported yesterday that the Chadian army clashed with Algerian Islamists in the Tibesti desert.

The Chadian army has engaged in fighting with members of the Algerian Islamic group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). A Chadian army unit intercepted the GSPC members in the northern Tibesti region, near the border with Libya, on Monday and engaged them in combat, a source close to Chad's military said on Tuesday.

Chad is part of the US Pan Sahel Initiative's training and capability building program whose main goal is to fight the GSPC - listed in the US as a terrorist organization with links to who you know. Chad, one of the latest oil state in Africa, is also involved in the Darfur crisis.

This story from the Herald (Harare) reads like a novel. It's the best account so far of what the authorities in Zimbabwe would like us to believe. While a lot of allegations are surely designed to ambarass the UK and the US, this story sheds an interesting light on the private military industry that sounds genuine. But the role of South Africa played by South Africa is less than clear.

Meanwhile, the regime in Malabo has organized a press conference and announced that foreign mercernaries had been arrested during the clampdown on illegal immigrants. Severo Moto, the leader of the opposition in exile in Spain, is accused of being the failed coup's mastermind. Here again, we don't have any reason to believe a government that is famous for lying. But if confirmed, this version gets even more interesting because the group of mercenaries is said to be "acting on behalf of Ely Calil, a Lebanese businessman close to Severo Moto".

Ely Calil is already involved in the French Elf bribery scandal involving Technip and Halliburton. From Libanese origin, he's connected to late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha, current Senegalese president Wade (one of the fathers of NEPAD).

The energy security theme is here to stay. The current state of oil prices and international politics is driving a global competition between the big players. As the implementation date for OPEC's decision to lower production gets closer, some officials in western countries get nervous. Just listen to International Energy Agency's deputy executive director William C. Ramsay:

"That April 1 production cut is a little hard to understand. What is the point of cutting a million barrels April 1 when that cut doesn't get to the market until 60 days later just as we're ramping into the summer driving season and the refineries are running flat out to meet gasoline demand? ... They should be increasing production, not cutting production. With prices like this they are not going to cut production anyway because which of these producers is going to turn down a $32 barrel," he said.

Maybe the Saudis know something that the IEA doesn't. The biggest producer and the biggest consumer have opposite agendas. That's one of the the virtues of capitalism. All the rest is bad litterature and lost saliva.

Oil prices are high by usual standards; they've been close to $30 the barrel in the last 12 months. This of course can be explained by financial market mechanisms and geopolitics. But geology matters as well. The oil reserves debate started in January with Shell’s decision to write off “proven” oil reserves created a space in which Saudi Arabia quietly announced last week that it might not be able to increase its production as expected.

This news did get some coverage, but didn’t raise much official reaction as if the consequences of such a piece of information is so far-reaching that nobody dares discuss it. Nobody but Matthew Simmons that is, who spoke few days ago at CSIS in Washington. The transcript of his speech reads like a thriller (pdf).

Such a situation makes the current scramble for oil even more obvious and acute. Just look at the surprising deal between Japan and Iran or China’s alliance with Saudi Arabia. Like the United States, these Asian countries are ready to do what it takes to avoid lagging behind in the coming global resource wars. And Saudi Arabia will do whatever it takes to diversify its market. That's called risk management. Nobody likes to have all his eggs in the same basket in times like ours.

With this background in mind, what do you think the big players will do to get a piece of the African oil action? Think twice… Algeria, Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Libya, Sudan, etc. Why do you think all these African countries no corporate media cared about suddenly pop up in the news? Because of AIDS? Because of Al Qaeda? Please, give me a break!

Now that Libya has somehow shown that it means business, the issue of lifting the US sanctions has ceased to be a question of if (they will be lifted) or when (in less than a year). Only the “how” question requires an answer. It’s what Lisa Anderson calls a “face-saving gesture” or a “PR problem” for the United States.

I agree with her analysis, but I think one more obstacle remains as far as the State Department is concerned: Libya’s role in the destabilization of West Africa. That point has been stated both by Colin Powell and William Burns, the secretary of state for near eastern affairs. But in order to keep their options open, they have been pretty vague on the issue. Testifying before the Senate foreign relations committee, William Burns declared:

"US Libyan relations can only be rebuilt if we develop confidence in the Libyan regime's commitment to repudiate its past support for terrorism. We are still concerned about problems in Liberia and Zimbabwe."

Which problems? Burns doesn’t say. But Liberia and Zimbabwe – whatever the story - are only a small part of a bigger picture, to say the least. Secretary of State Colin Powell has been more vocal and specific when he spoke to the same committee:

“Libya, over the years, has shifted its attention and focus to different parts of Africa. When it sort of fails in one part of Africa, it sort of pops up elsewhere, fomenting difficulty. We have made sure that what we discussed is their activities in Africa, which must cease to be destabilising, cease to fund (alleged) despotic regimes and cease to cause trouble”... Powell did not elaborate on the Libyan activities to which he was referring, but in the past, the State Department has expressed concern at Libyan involvement in sub-Saharan Africa, and its role in disputes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia.

These declarations left a lot of spaces blank and gave way to a lot of tit-for-tat shadow games between the United States and Libya. Given the accelerated pace of the ongoing wedding between both countries, it was time someone stand up and talk. That’s exactly what David Crane, the chief prosecutor at the UN's new court for Sierra Leone, just did on the BBC.

Mr Crane said there was a detailed plan by Mr Gaddafi to destabilise several West African countries which had caused widespread suffering in the region. "We know that, specifically up until last year, that there was a 10-year plan to take down Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, then move to Guinea and then elsewhere as the situation developed," he said. "The 10-year plan was to put in surrogates who were beholden to Muammar Gaddafi," Mr Crane said.

The US/UK partnership wants to reintegrate Libya in the so-called “international community” as soon as possible for obvious energy security motives. However, its support for the UN court for Sierra Leone doesn’t give much choice to Bush and Blair: when cases start in the coming weeks and months in Sierra Leone, they’ll have to listen carefully to the potentially explosive allegations that will be made against the Libyan leader by his former African allies and criminals against humanity.

Most analysts agree with the view that Libya’s current behaviour is shaped less by Bush war on terror than by Gaddafi’s desire to liberalise his economy: “It was Libya's desire for western markets, western investment and integration with Europe that were the dominant factors in Gadhafi's considerations". If Libya wants to rejoin the world economy, it needs to come clean on its African politics records. Gaddafi’s cronies such as Burkina Faso dictator Blaise Compaore and Liberia’s Charles Taylor will soon witness the consequences of the deeds they planned 10 years ago, with Libya’s oil money.

A coup alert in Equatorial Guinea was reported this afternoon. The country, a former Spanish colony, which consists of a mainland and five inhabited islands in the Gulf of Guinea, is a major oil and gas producer whose reserves are mainly exploited by US oil firms (ExxonMobil, Chevron-Texaco, Hamerada). It's difficult to say what really happened:

Spain's La Razon newspaper reported that President Teodoro Obiang Nguema had been tipped off that there was a plan to depose him. It said the embassies of Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana and Nigeria in the capital Malabo were surrounded in order to prevent anyone seeking refuge in them. A number of foreigners staying at hotels were also reportedly arrested. According to the paper, the government believed mercenaries had arrived in the country to support the coup attempt.

According to Equatorial Guinea officials, the foreigners who have been arrested were illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe seized at the Harare Airport a group of 64 "mercenaries" (mainly South African nationals) aboard a United States-registered Boeing 727-100 aircraft carrying military equipment and believed to be on its way Equatorial Guinea. The aircraft landing in Harare is said to be due to technical problems.

It's not the first time the government in Malado targets foreigners as a source of instability in the oil-rich country. But these explanations hide a more unstable political situation that has been getting worse since december 2003. Last week, the government security forces arrested 30 members of an ethnic-based opposition movement - the Bioko Island self-determination movement (MAIB in French). Wejia Chicampo, the MAIB leader has been arrested on Wednesday and nobody has heard of him since. While the majority of the population in Equatorial Guinea is 80 percent Fang, an ethnic group that also inhabits neighboring countries (Cameroon and Gabon), the first settlers on Bioko island where Malabo (the capital city) is located are Bubis. These people, who are now a minority have created an unofficial opposition movement that wants more autonomy for the Bubis. These arrests came after mysterious army movements in Equatorial Guinea that we reported here last month:

Equatorial Guinea has transferred about 100 members of its army, according to a military source, in a move that could be connected with the murky power struggle that appears to have been roiling beneath the surface for several months. ... The source said the relocated army men had all served for many years in the mainland town of Bata under General Agustin Ndong Ona, a half-brother of strongman President Teodoro Obian Nguema. The general was reported to have twice attempted to commit suicide recently.

The government is thus facing a three-headed opposition: one from amongst the clan in power, one from the official opposition party, and one from the unofficial ethnic-based movement. The unstability of the situation can be easily linked to the general elections scheduled for April 25. Stay tuned...

ENI SPA's Tunisian unit Agip Tunisia BV, Tunis, has commenced oil production from the Hawa-1 exploration well on the Borj el Khadra production concession in southern Tunisia, achieving 9,000 b/d.

Soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) teach mounted infantry tactics to soldiers from the Malian Army in Timbuktu, Mali. U.S. Army Special Forces, assigned to Special Operations Command Europe, are training selected military units in Mali and Mauritania on mobility, communications, land navigation, and small unit tactics. Photo by Staff Sgt. Edward Braly, USAF

Every now and then, I check the list of search engine queries to see what some visitors are looking for. This one was really strange today: "how was the world's politics from 1979 until 1984": I have no idea, dude. And Yahoo probably doesn't have a clue. Google users are more fortunate. Their queries usually match the topics of this blog. And 80 percent of search engine visitors are from Google.

According to French daily Le Figaro, investigating Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke is awaiting reports from counterparts in Switzerland and Monaco tracking financial transactions to British lawyer Jeffrey Tesler. Tesler has presided over a Gibraltar-based firm, Tri-Star group, which is involved in the Halliburton's Nigerian gas plant bribery case when Cheney was the CEO of the company. The report on Tesler's offshore bank accounts is expected soon.

The Wall Street Journal revealed that an internal memo informed ex-chairman Philip Watts and other Shell executives that reserves might need to be downgraded by a billion barrels. Shell yesterday announced that the findings of its ongoing internal investigation into the oil and gas reserves over-estimation case will be shared with shareholders.

The Cape Town International Convention Centre will host Oil Africa 2004 conference and exhibition to be held from March 9 – 11. Coming at a time when the Gulf of Guinea is emerging as the fastest growing oil exploration and production region in the world, the conference, showcasing 150 companies, is drawing more attention than previous similar ones.

Last week, ExxonMobil annouced its 17th deepwater oil find on Angola's Block 15, lifting the block's potential recoverable reserves to 4.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

The energy relation between Africa and the United States will get a boost from the natural gas market. There's a near-perfect match between the ever-increasing demand for natural gas in the US (predicted to grow from less than 2 billion cubic feet nowadays to 15 billion in 2025) and the current West African drive to develop under-exploited gas reserves projects. Whereas the rapidly growing liquefied natural gas (LNG) business attracts dozens of energy companies, the biggest oil companies are the main players because of their financial power: $100 billion of investment will be required over the next 10 years. Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Angola are very well positioned to reap the rewards of their first mover advantage; so are the companies that are about to exploit their natural gas reserves: Shell, Eni, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips, Marathon. The quality of West African crude as well as the short distance between the Gulf of Guinea and the Gulf of Mexico LNG terminals are the two main advantages driving this trend:

West Africa's situation relative to the United States Gulf Coast affords it easier access to the most prominent LNG market than many competitors. Nigerian LNG production was initially aimed at European buyers, but anticipated U.S. demand has turned dealmakers' eyes westwards. "It does go down to position," Robison said. "Just the transportation advantage is tremendous." But he also pointed to the presence of associated liquids, which can be sold as condensate to generate extra revenue, and the relative cleanliness of West African gas relative to Middle Eastern finds, as additional advantages.

The growing list of LNG plants worries US opponents whose fears have been increased by the Algerian Skikda complex. That accident is not yet fully understood: the Algerian minister of energy and mines is investigating the case, but said that the spill that caused the explosion may have come from a leak in the LNG line as opposed to a faulty steam boiler as first suspected. The final report due for mid-March may not end the debate, in part because "LNG accidents can be caused by a multitude of industrial malfunctions" as Tim Riley writes:

The major problem with LNG is that when one of the many things that can go wrong does go wrong, the results are devastating. As if we needed any more tragic proof. LNG is too dangerous to learn as you go. We can't afford trial and error. LNG risks are far too deadly and costly.

Here lies the biggest problem: the US demand for natural gas are as real as the dangers of LNG that is no less important that the West African oil states' decision to phase out gas flaring and end boost revenues as well as reducing damage to the environment.

The BBC will broadcast a debate on African oil this week, Wednesday 10:

Africa's oil: A blessing or a curse?

Sub-Saharan Africa is the fastest growing oil exploration and production zone in the world, according to oil experts. The International Monetary Fund estimates that the region currently earns nearly $30 billion per year from oil exports. Demand for Africa's oil is also high as the United States, the world's largest consumer of oil products, intends to double its imports from the region by 2015.

The BBC's Africa Live programme asks, what impact has oil had on people's lives in Africa? Why do many people in African countries that sell millions of barrels of oil every year remain stuck in poverty? And why is the 'black gold' a catalyst for conflict or even civil war in parts of Africa?

Join the BBC's Africa Live debate Wednesday 10 March at 1630 & 1830GMT... send us your comments, some of which will be published... If you would like to take part in the discussion, e-mail us with your telephone number, which will not be published.

Oil bribes paid by companies like Halliburton as well as oil money stolen by dictators like Sanni Abacha will likely travel through offshore financial centers such as Grand Cayman. If you've read The Firm by John Grisham, you remember that such places are famous as money laundering and tax evasion resorts with nice beaches and dangerous gorgeous ladies. The offshore industry is very busy trying to to have us believe that this image is just WRONG. The problem is that they try so hard that they just reinforce the prejudice. When I read Cato Instute scholar Richard Rahn who writes that "the world would be poorer and there would be more people in poverty if places, such as Cayman, did not exist", I found him so biased that I laughed out loud. Same thing for that other piece that tries another angle: how the war on terror is hurting the offshore industry. I'm sooooo scared. Frankly, if I were John Grisham, I wouldn't feel safe.

As recent police arrests in Nigeria reveal that the illegal oil-bunkering business is international in scope, it is time to learn more about the The Political Economy Of Illegal Bunkering In Nigeria.

The funniest post of the week was provided by Joi Ito, followed by Ethan who was also the main focus (along with Benjamin Franklin) of the joke. You have to see it in order to believe in the power of digital... democrazy.

After that, nothing much happened on that front. That was ok with me because I've been working on a text about US military deployment in Africa. I published it on wednesday, and I intend to post more work-in-progress on a weekly basis. I expect some feedback from you guys - I'm working on a book project that'll be partly based on open interaction with you - be it online or offline.

Here, I need to thank Agnes from Berlin who's been supportive as soon as she discovered the blog. We've been exchanging few mails since and she has her own blog, Notiser från en ö. I forgot to mention it so far because it used be 100 percent Swedish (Hi to all the Swedes and Scandinavians who enjoy visiting us - I know you're out there). But Agnes went into some innovation this week: she published a post in english that instantly grabbed my attention.

It's entitled Realpolitik and it'is a follow-up to a comment she posted about Thomas Barnett. She first sent me the link of a rare piece from Orwell on Kipling. The text in itself is already great and couldn't come my way at a best moment. just read this:

It is notable that Kipling does not seem to realize, any more than the average soldier or colonial administrator, that an empire is primarily a money-making concern. Imperialism as he sees it is a sort of forcible evangelizing. You turn a Gatling gun on a mob of unarmed ‘natives’, and then you establish ‘the Law’, which includes roads, railways and a court-house. He could not foresee, therefore, that the same motives which brought the Empire into existence would end by destroying it. It was the same motive, for example, that caused the Malayan jungles to be cleared for rubber estates, and which now causes those estates to be handed over intact to the Japanese. The modern totalitarians know what they are doing, and the nineteenth-century English did not know what they were doing. Both attitudes have their advantages, but Kipling was never able to move forward from one into the other. His outlook, allowing for the fact that after all he was an artist, was that of the salaried bureaucrat who despises the ‘box-wallah’ and often lives a lifetime without realizing that the ‘box-wallah’ calls the tune.

But because he identifies himself with the official class, he does possess one thing which ‘enlightened’ people seldom or never possess, and that is a sense of responsibility. The middle-class Left hate him for this quite as much as for his cruelty and vulgarity. All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are ‘enlightened’ all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our ‘enlightenment’, demands that the robbery shall continue. A humanitarian is always a hypocrite, and Kipling’s understanding of this is perhaps the central secret of his power to create telling phrases.

If this excerpt rings a bell inside of you, I advise you to visit Agnes' blog. Feel free to join our discussion which is ongoing. I think it's relevant to current issues that you will spot by yourself. Same thing with our friend Amoako, who was kind enough to send a post about the Blair's Commission on Africa. Those who read the previous Fridayblog will be glad to have his take on the issue as well as mine. The discussion is more than current and highly civilized: in Africa, respect is due to the Elders. Beside, Amoako is a UN official and I've been taught how to watch my tongue. To all my friends from Ethiopia, I wish a happy celebration of the battle of Adwa. Remembering Adwa will help go through what we're witnessing in Haiti. Those who do not remember the past...

Yesterday, Ariel Cohen from Heritage Foundation published a background paper entitled Models and Policies for Oil Production, Revenue Collection, and Public Expenditure: Lessons in Iraq. I read it twice and couldn't find anything new in it. As expected from a Heritage researcher, Cohen's paper advocates privatization as the cure-it-all ultimate solution against the oil-curse. While doing so, he pushes the agenda of a US-led liberal agenda in Iraq (and beyond). He argues that private ownership of the oil industry would "institute publicly accountable and transparent decision-making processes on oil production" while keeping the government's hands idle, away from the action. However, privatization isn't supposed to be simply imposed, but undertaken "only after a public education campaign" - in other words, PR or propaganda. Privatization will be marketed the same way Coca-Cola did with bottled tap-water marketed as "pure", starting at the top of the target audience: the US-backed CPA multi-ethnic elite.

The United States--through its senior representatives of the Departments of State and Defense in the CPA and its advisers on the ground, with the assistance of the [Washington-headquartered] International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and other international and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)--should begin advising the leaders of Iraq's three primary ethnic groups to establish policies that would lead to a thriving modern economy. These policies should be based on "best practices" developed around the world during the largest government privatizations in history, during the 1980s and 1990s.

I was wondering if the "best practices" he has in mind are to be taken from the IMF-backed collapse of Argentine or the crony capitalism of Enron or Halliburton cost-plus contracts, when I suddenly did something strange: I read the paper a third times in spite of it bringing nothing new to the debate on oil-revenue management. And I understand now what makes Cohen's backgrounder so interesting: Iraq of course is a failure, but the plan may very well be tested in Africa. Which means the vision led out by the Heritage researcher makes even more sense when you read it in the context of the Bush Administration's Africa Policy. Here, you'll need A New Vision for Africa, a paper written last year just before Bush trip to Africa by Nile Gardiner - another Heritage scholar:

A great deal more though will need to be achieved in the coming years if America is to play a lead role in shaping Africa’s destiny. ... While Washington should remain wary of the perils of nation-building, the US must not be afraid to intervene militarily when vital national interests are threatened, or when military force can be effectively used to prevent genocide or other gross violations of human rights. ... The US must work closely with its key ally Great Britain and with other European nations in intervening where necessary and feasible to stop genocide from taking place. ... Although it may be advantageous in certain instances for a UN Security Council mandate to be sought for military intervention, US forces should not be placed under UN command or control. ... Still more is needed. The Bush Administration must adopt an even more robust and pro-active Africa policy that places the United States at the forefront of international efforts to deal with Africa’s vast problems. The US must play a key role in shaping Africa’s future, and in helping the continent to fulfill its huge potential.

Advice from African Oil Politics: each time you read "vital national interests", think "carter doctrine". As for the "perils of nation-building", even future-ex NeoCons like Max Boot share the analysis made earlier in February 2003 by Francis Fukuyama: nation-building is here to stay. Genocide prevention, anti-terrorism policy or anti-WMD proliferation - any kind of smokescreens will be used to operate regime change where US vital strategic interests will be at stake. Put Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti in the same basquet, shake it fast, now open the basket case: what you get is the future of some African oil states. A very dangerous and unstable cocktail that's getting South-Africa, the regional gorilla, quite worried.

When the latest Human Rights Watch report on Angola was released last month, we reported it as usual but didn't think it would have any impact on the situation in the country. But things are starting to change slowly on the continent: the local civil society is now using the intelligence gathered by westers NGOs like HRW to pressure their government for investigation into corruption allegations contained in reports. Earlier last month, the Angolan authorities prevented a loose coalition of rights activists and small opposition parties from staging a protest against the lack of transparency in the management of oil revenue. This week, the group was finally allowed to stage the first opposition protest authorised by the government since 1992:

"We were quite pleased as about 1,000 people attended the demonstration, and although the police had intimidated them, they remained firm," Carlos Leitao, president of the Angolan Party for Democratic Progress (PADEPA)... Leitao said PADEPA had handed over a letter addressed to US President George W. Bush to the American ambassador in Luanda, urging Washington to bring pressure to bear on the authorities to "become more transparent". Demonstrators called for President Eduardo Dos Santos to investigate allegations raised by Human Rights Watch in January that US $4 billion in state oil revenue had disappeared from government coffers from 1997 to 2002.

UNITA, the biggest opposition party apparently didn't take part in the protest. This got analysts alarmed concerned over the future of the party and the country:

"There is a real risk of UNITA growing comfortable as a sort of permanent opposition, leaving Angola as a kind of two-party dictatorship under a veneer of democracy," Nicholas Shaxson, associate fellow at the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs... As yet, [UNITA's new leader and Savimbi's successor] Samakuva has failed to articulate the concerns of poor Angolans. "A true firebrand opposition leader would strongly attack the MPLA at its weakest point: corruption, mismanagement, and the paradox of poverty amid oil and diamond riches," said Shaxson. "Where was the detailed UNITA critique of the latest government budget? Why were they so quiet about the latest Human Rights Watch report?..."

Give them one cheer more!
Grey gun-horses in the lando,
And a rogue is married to a whore!

(From Kipling through Orwell and Agnes)

After its military-humanitarian fiasco in Somalia (October 1993), the United Sates turned its back on
Africa. This dreadful experience shaped the American vision of the continent for a whole decade following the end of the Cold War. Though modest in scope and means, the US intervention in Liberia (August 2003) represents a departure from the decade-long neglect for all things African. The new approach, which stresses a connection between the national security of the United States and stability of the Africa
continent, is driven by the war on terror, the quest for oil and the economic competition with European and Asian countries. The Americans left because they wanted to protect their GIs; they’re coming back
because they want to protect their homeland, energy provision and economy. In the newfound US interest for Africa, one question has been avoided so far: what’s in it for Africans?

Visiting the UN news site, I was very surprised to see how much Africa was featured on the agenda of the UN Security Council for March 2004. It was rarely the case in the past. The BBC wrote a good story about the multiplication of UN peacekeeping missions in Africa:

Gone are the days when the UN operations in Africa were treated with derision. Its forces are now active in four areas of conflict: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of the Congo and along the Ethiopian-Eritrean border. And last week the Security Council agreed to send another 6,000 troops to Ivory Coast. Preparations are also being made to send more forces to Sudan - should a peace agreement be signed between the two sides currently meeting in Kenya. ... Past mistakes have paved the way for a more muscular approach to peacekeeping in Africa. And with more active partners in South Africa and Nigeria, the UN is playing a real role in ending the continent's wars.

However, the issue is framed in such a way that it's not easy guessing (part of) the answer:

Yet before the end of the cold war in 1989 most of these operations would have been impossible. The Angolan civil war was fuelled by the United States and the Soviet Union - and either would have blocked UN peacekeepers intervening in the conflict. Then came the disaster of Rwanda in 1994 - when UN forces stood by while the genocide took place - while around 800,000 died.

The Cold War is over. And there is an incentive in West Africa that was absent from Rwanda: Oil explains a lot of the current interest for peacekeeping missions in Africa, as well as a newfound concern for "nation building" from people who were less than inclined to discuss it yesterday. Francis Fukuyama wrote a deep piece about this change of mind, in which he explains that "the transformation of George W. Bush from a presidential candidate opposed to nation-building into a President committed to writing the history of an entire troubled part of the world is one of the most dramatic illustrations we have of how the September 11 terrorist attacks changed American politics." Whereas Fukuyama's essay is focused on Iraq, it's not difficult making a case for Bush African policy. After claiming that Africa didn't represent a strategic interest for the United States, all the energy his administration puts in Sudan, Libya, Chad, the Horn of Africa or in nobodies like Saifi Ammari shows that he's found something in Africa that wasn't supposed to be there in such quantity in the first place. The Grab the Oil strategy can lead a oilman of state very far.

Coca Cola is being probed in the UK for selling bottled tap water as "pure". I wonder who will probe US authorities for selling local thugs as highly dangerous international terrorists linked to Al Qaeda. This “highly sophisticated purification process” has been applied to a lot of people since 9/11. In Iraq, a guy that goes by the name of Zarkawihas been nominated the bad guy of the month. Like made-for-TV reality shows, I stopped paying attention. However, I have to stay awake because US officials started playing the same game in West Africa where they're trying to establish an anti-terror footprint. That gets me worried because unreported blunders might be the outcome of such manhunts. The equation is very simple: no bad guy, no terrorist; no terrorist, no footprint. Conclusion: they have to "find" one. The best "finding" is the one you can make up.

U.S. concern over terrorist activity in the desert wastelands of West Africa is linked in part to the growing influence of an Algerian-born guerrilla considered a threat to American security interests.

What kind of security interests Americans can have in the Sahel desert? Alex Blida who contributed the story on the Voice of America doesn't tell. But there's more to the story:

The Voice of America reported last week that consideration was given on at least one occasion recently to a possible U.S. aerial bombing mission against a terrorist target in the Algerian-Malian border area. The mission, apparently aimed at Mr. Ammari, was scrapped because officials say the target could not be confirmed, and there was concern about risking civilian casualties. A State Department spokesperson subsequently told VOA the bombing mission was canceled because it was considered a "crazy" idea. But defense sources have indicated bombing remains a viable option. Three senior U.S. military officials recently traveled in West Africa. One of them, Air Force General Charles Wald, the deputy commander of the U.S. military's European Command, was quoted by reporters as saying the terrorist threat in Africa is growing, not weakening. He also said al-Qaida cells under pressure elsewhere may be seeking new havens in Africa.

A bottle of tap water can sure be useful in the Sahel desert, but misleading marketing is likely to kill a lots of people in search of someone who may be not as "pure" a terrorist as some people would who enjoy the "monopoly of appearances" like us to believe.

Tens of thousands people die every year in African wars that don't get a quarter of the media coverage other conflits command. The victims of these underreported conflicts won't never understand the difference between WMD considered the greatest threat to world peace and the "regular" weapons that kill them. This great WMD swingle is already sickning. It became even worse last week when Oxfam revealed in a report entitled Lock, Stock and Barrel that the UK - not only the world’s second largest arms-exporting country but also a proud partner in the war agains terror and WMD proliferation - was selling weapons to warring African countries. But there's more to the story: the British introduced a difference between arms that come in components and those that are ready-made. The first group of machine guns can be sold to countries that are black-listed for the second kind of arms:

"The government has put lives at risk by setting up false and dangerous double standards. Whether a machine gun comes in pieces or ready-made, the suffering it can cause in the wrong hands is just the same," said Justin Forsyth, Oxfam's director of policy. ... "These aren't simply nuts and bolts we're selling, these components include firing mechanisms, bomb making equipment, guidance systems and gun barrels." ... "These new criteria allow arms components to go to a whole host of countries where human rights abuses are common," Rebecca Peters of the International Action Network on Small Arms said. "It seems that the government is attending to the needs of the British defence industry above the human rights of people living in countries where the weapons will be used."

Questioned today by Liberal Democrat Tom Brake, Blair replied in a way that clearly indicates where his morality lies:

“It is the case that we have a defence industry in this country which is an important part of British industry. Many thousands of jobs depend on it. ... And it is not necessarily the case that selling arms to countries, especially if those arms are to defend themselves, is actually wrong.”

It's the same guy who set up a Commission on Africa last week. This comedy will have to stop one day!

The pressure from investors after oil reserves booking PR blunder has been difficult to resist. Chairman Philip Watts and his Dutch co-chairman have been forced to resign today. Part of the problem came from Shell not disclosing Nigerian tax benefits scheme. Shell is the biggest oil firm in Nigeria - Africa's number one oil state. Please check our previous posts for background information.

History is being written HERE. If Gaddafi didn't exist, someone would have to invent him. One day, everybody thinks he's a nut. The day after, he's hailed a genius by his biggest enemies. Go figure out!

Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa.: "We were part of history tonight... Colonel Gadhafi's statements were unequivocal. There were no ifs, ands or buts."

After the lifting of US travel sanctions to Libya, American journalists flocked to Gaddafi's country this week-end, to report the African Union summit and play their favourite games: working behind enemy lines, an come back with uplifting stories say something like "not only do people know about America; they actually like Americans". Associated Press writer Niko Press was lucky enough to send two stories that were largely circulated.

In the first one, you only need to read the title to guess what it's about: Libyans still fans of anything American. After listing signs of US cultural presence ("Predator 2", "Donald Trump's Real Estate Tycoon", Coca-Cola, Christina Aguilera - yes, in that order) Price fills his piece with a reasonable dose of nostalgia: he visits a Golf Club where Americans hung up, when "U.S. companies used to pump oil from the Libyan desert, American tourists plied the streets of ancient cities, and Wheelus Air Base sprawled across the eastern suburbs of Tripoli." But then, we discover that Americans are there actually:

Americans are here but keep a low profile. European oil-company workers say groups of U.S. officials began to arrive last year for brief stays in the "tourist villages" where expatriate workers live. "There are plenty of Americans here, working unofficially," said Debbie McCully, 46, from Tulsa, Okla., who moved here in the 1970s and is married to a Libyan. McCully worked at the United Nations' office for 20 years, then with the U.S. interests section at the Belgian Embassy. ... McCully belongs to the Libyan-American Friendship Association, established in 2000.

When the Libyan American Friendship Association was mentioned, I thought Price was going to tell us about the role of these people and the behind-the-scene diplomacy that took place since 1995 to bring both countries where they are now. But Price wants none of that. The official story is that nothing happened before December, when Gaddafi suddenly became a nice guy and decided to abandon his WMD program and cut all ties with international terrorism.

Our AP writer is looking for signs that would confirm what American people want to read. And of course, he finds them: "American influence is spreading everywhere. Pepsi-Cola... "Power USA." Young Libyans dream of trips to the United States." Near the end of the story, we learn that Americans weren't so nice. Old caddy Husseing remembers: "Sometimes they made problems, when they got drunk and threw bottles at us. Some looked at us like we were animals because we were poor and had no shoes." But that was before "Moammar Gadhafi's 1969 coup. [And before] the United States closed the air base in 1970, withdrew its ambassador in 1972, and all American staff members in 1979 when the embassy was torched."

The second story is about money - about money and business lost to Europeans and Asians when the United States severed all diplomatic relations with Libya. The piece starts with a surreal encounter with a Halliburton official who's not supposed to talk to Americans because of... US sanctions against Libya. It's so stupid it's just hilarious:

General Manager Ritchie Jones squirms a bit when The Associated Press shows up. He explains that U.S. sanctions bar him from expanding his business. He can't import anything with a U.S. part. He can't use U.S. technology, from engine designs to Microsoft Windows. He isn't supposed to communicate with Americans or anyone who pays U.S. taxes. "I don't know if we're breaking the sanctions by talking to you," Jones, a Briton, says in a conspiratorial tone. "If you sent me an e-mail it would be completely illegal for me to open it." He manages the Libyan branch of Halliburton Germany GmbH...

Then I think twice. This piece is in fact absolutely smart in the very fact that it looks stupid. The writer wants us to believe that these sanctions are stupid. It's time for the United States to lift the bans. It's exactly what the Average Joe will think, so that he won't be surprised when all the sanctions against Libya are lifted. Just read what follows:

While the sanctions have cost Libya at least $30 billion in lost revenues, they have also taken an expensive toll on U.S. business, especially in oil and gas. The United States has indicated the sanctions could be eased now that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has renounced terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. ... But for now, European and Asian companies flocking to this oil-rich nation are cashing in. They are building a $5 billion megaproject to pump and pipe Libyan natural gas to European power plants. They will soon vie for work on a $2 billion upgrade for a major oil refinery. And within months they will bid for a swarm of new contracts to explore the Libyan desert for oil. "We're preparing for a very active and promising decade," says Tarek Hassan-Beck, planning director for the government-owned National Oil Corp. "We'll be touching the whole spectrum of the petroleum industry." But unless the sanctions end, the Americans will be sitting it out.

When Average Joe reads that, he will be very quick to react: "What the hell are we waiting for. These Libyan guys actually like us; they want to do business with us, but stupid sanctions don't allow US companies to compete against those European and Asian bastards who are pocketing OUR money." Fortunately, American congressmen are there to help Joe and US oil firms. They want to accelerate this diplomatic process big time. They want to boost the whole godam' thang. It's time to give hope to everybody: "Head of US Congressional Delegation Thinks Relations Can be Restored with Libya This Year." In order to substantiate these claims, William Burns - the U.S. assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs - announced that he would meet Libyan official THIS month. But those who are really hungry for signs don't need to wait that long. Sen. Joseph Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will visit Libya and give a speech there on Wednesday. He will talk business and human rights.

As the Americans are coming back to Libya, Europeans want to make sure their Libyan friends are on their side. They want them in their Euro-Mediterranean free-trade partnership. They are travelling to Washington ASAP to make sure they won't be double-crossed by the US Greater Middle East plan. As you can see, oilpolitics can be as funny as that.

As most Gambians are following the example set by President Jammeh and are busy celebrating the discovery of oil in their country, one man stood up to warn his fellow citizens of a possible controversy over the positioning of offshore oil deposit markings. The "killjoy" goes by the name of Hamat Bah

He said although the land area of The Gambia has not been exhaustively explored for oil and gas, a review of the country's borders would prevent future controversies if oil, gas or other deposits are discovered in land areas, sitting controversially between the two countries, sharing a peculiar geography. He ... emphasised that the offshore border outlines, where some of the oil deposit markings are made seem to controversially fall within the geographical purview of Casamance, which Dakar always sees as its all important southern province, despite a desperate two decade separatist war. He said although, there has never been a border flare-up between the two countries, the advent of oil could usher in an unexpected controversy over which country could lay claim to what part of their shared border and with it the natural endowments.

The politician also said that oil could be a blessing as well as a curse, and expressed the sound advice that the oil issue should be taken from the president and handed over to an independent commission that would better serve the interest of the majority. We're glad to see there's at least one wise man in Gambia.

Following the United States, EU countries and new heavyweight China, India is trying to get a piece of the African oil action. It's value proposition focuses on one key topic: technology development. India External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha met his counterparts and officials of eight oil and natural resources-rich countries -- Burkina Faso, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Mali and Senegal. Indian press got to the heart of the matter:

West Africa has become strategically important since the discovery of large oil reserves in the Gulf of Guinea in the late 1990s as well as other major discoveries inland. Angola, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and Nigeria lie along the gulf. ... The nine countries signed a memorandum of understanding on a Techno-Economic Approach for Africa-India Movement, TEAM-9 in short, and issued a joint statement. Under the pact, India will provide concessionary credit facilities and financial assistance to its partners for projects and schemes. They, in turn, will assist India's participation in developmental projects and guarantee repayment of credits through transfer of natural resources.

As they make these inroads in West Africa, Indian businessmen find themselves fighting the French on their turf and discover the importance of language skills.

The approval by the United States of a UN peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast was confirmed Friday when the UN Security Council authorized such a force with a unanimous vote. Prior to that vote, Blake Rice made an interesting analysis of US policy options in West Africa in the latest issue of CSIS-sponsored Africa Notes (pdf):

The United States has a special and rising interest in securing the stability of West Africa – an interest repeatedly articulated by both the U.S. administration (beginning with the September 2002 National Security Strategy) and subsequently by the top leadership of the U.S. European Command, charged with operationalizing a West African counterterrorism strategy. There is increasing recognition both of rising U.S. energy stakes in the region and the risk that instability and economic collapse in West Africa could provide enabling environment for militant anti-Americanism, terrorist networks, and criminal syndicates. Significant U.S. investments in Sierra Leone... will come to naught if instability and bloodshed persist in Côte d’Ivoire.

I know how highly the State Department values CSIS reports. But one should not forget what the Department of Energy analyst Elias P. Johnson wrote about the country three months after the failed coup:

Natural gas reserves and excess electricity generating capacity could lead to Cote d'Ivoire becoming a significant regional energy supplier in coming years . Recent offshore discoveries in the Gulf of Guinea, including natural gas finds in its territorial waters, make Cote d'Ivoire a leading area for hydrocarbon exploration in sub-Saharan Africa.

Friday, March 05, 2004: A bunch of future-ex Neocons will take part in a joint conference sponsored by the Brookings Institution, the National Commission on Energy Policy, the American Enterprise Institute, and the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies. The panelists will discuss the security dimensions of energy consumption and the economic costs of high energy prices post 9/11. The list of guests include Fiona Hill (Brookings), Daniel Yergin (CERA) and "Mr Fourth World War" himself R. James Woolsey. The former CIA Director will talk about the hottest topics as far as African Oil Politics is concerned: Energy Geopolitics!

Sounds... cute!

Until recently Africa's three countries, Nigeria, Gabon and Angola, were tapping Africa's wealth. "Now the whole region from the Bight of Biafra in Nigeria to the Cabinda enclave in Angola is being viewed as a vast pool of oil," a United States official has said, as his country shift its energy focus to the Gulf of Guinea oil boom.

It's part part history part geology; not an easy read, but essential for understanding what's going on in the Wild West. The second part of the story focuses on Gambia.

The powerpoint presentations made at last week workshop "Escaping the Resource Curse: Managing Natural-Resource Revenues in Low-Income Countries" are now online. Cutting edge ideas and findings. I'll study them after sending few posts.