From Tripoli to Bamako, by way of Washington and Paris

I was in Tripoli a couple of months ago teaching our DCA team security. They’re implementing a program down there to support women’s participation in civil society. I was completely blow away by the work that they’re doing. This is front line stuff; with many Islamist groups in Libya trying to roll back women’s rights and restrict their participation in public life, DCA is supporting local organisations to do just the opposite. I came away totally inspired by the young women and men who were taking risks on behalf of women’s rights.

While there I was faced a question typical on many trips to conflict-ridden countries with varying degrees of anti-Western sentiment: Where should I say I’m from? Canada? Usually a safe bet. Luxembourg? Nobody’s even heard of Luxembourg. Denmark used to be safe, but then they made those awful cartoons. The best answer, of course, is to be honest unless it’s dangerous, and it’s often not as dangerous as one might think to say that I’m American, particularly if I’ve made the effort to pick up a couple of words in the local language. In the occupied Palestinian territories, for example, where I lived during the second Intifada, it was no problem to say I was American. Many Palestinians had connections to the states, either having lived there, or through family. They understood the difference between foreign policy and an individual citizen’s views and choices.

But in Libya, it wasn’t so straightforward. In that surreal time capsule that is post-Qadaffi Libya, an atmosphere of fear and suspicion pervades. Our Palestinian Finance Officer told me that the easiest thing was to be French. ‘They looove the French,’ he said, and since I speak enough French to fake it (great accent, limited vocabulary), this is where I was from to people on the street and in the shops and restaurants, just to be on the safe side. Sure enough, every time I said I was from France, they practically kissed my feet. Luxembourg probably would have been simpler.

Flash forward to Mali, where I was last week. Same question, different place. Here I could honestly say that I was American, as there is no anti-American sentiment in the south, and since I speak local language after 2 years there as a volunteer in 95 – 97, I was easily accepted. But when I travelled with a French colleague, it was clear that he got the royal treatment. As in Libya, the French were the heroes. Americans? Sure, they were fine. But the French – who used to be hated for their vicious colonial rule – were universally loved.
As an American, I found this interesting. I am used to be either loved or hated, but more often than not I’ve found that Africans tend to love Americans, or at least the America they know from Hollywood. At least in some places, those days are over.

The Arab spring has definitely put the US in a bind, and Syria and Egypt are telling examples. In Syria the US has been afraid to support the rebels – despite that they oppose an Iran-friendly, Hezbollah-supporting regime that has long been a foe of the US – for fear that they create another Taliban, or at least lose an election at home. The upshot is that they’ve ceded ground – literally and figuratively – to hard line militant Islamists. In Egypt, the US has prized the peace treaty with Israel and the strategic relationship with the Egyptian military above all else – including human rights. This has meant tacit support for the Muslim Brotherhood. That’s definitely the way they see it from the street in Cairo. The upshot? The US has ceded ground – literally and figuratively – to hard line Islamists, who have not been known to directly support violence, but from their short record in power it’s easy to say that they are no friend to human rights and democracy, either.

When I was in Mali in 1997, I remember first seeing women in Burkas at the edge of the Dogon cliff, in the North of the country. Our local guide pointed them out with curiosity, a handful of highly visible women on the edge of the market, with that strangely unsettling feeling one always gets from a woman in a Burka, those forbidding presences that deny any chance for you to view or come in contact with their humanity. They were a new arrival, he said, and even the local Dogon people did not know what to make of them. Flash forward 16 years, and those same women, and their husbands and sons, have succeeded in taking over the North of the country and introduced an extremist regime that required the French army to push out. And you’d be mistaken to think that all the villages were taken by force; the military conquest was the culmination of a long campaign for hearts and minds, as well as wallets.

I fear that the next chapter in the Mali conflict will look something like this: France withdraws, as Hollande has promised. With Figaro and Le Monde asking French readers nearly every day whether they still support the intervention, an opion-poll feedback loop is likely. (‘Do you still support the intervention? Do you? Do you? How about now? Do you support it now? How about now?’) The militants are likely waiting until the French leave, when they will re-emerge from hiding, acquire new weapons, and retake the villages, probably without firing a shot. The Malian army and whatever ECOWAS or UN force as may be left will struggle to maintain a hold on the cities in the North for as long as they can. But it is likely that the humanitarian agencies may be negotiating with the rebels for neutral, impartial, and independent humanitarian access to a lot of hungry people, a reality we might as well start getting used to.

An acquaintance recently told me that he’d regretted moving to Morocco. ‘I didn’t see it at the time, a couple of years ago,’ he said, ‘but they Islamists are clearly taking over. Soon it will no longer be a pleasant place to be, and I’ll have to move again.’ Perhaps it’s obvious to state that it appears that during the long period of reign under various dictators and monarchs across the middle East and North Africa, who ruled with various degrees of oppression but without any real freedom of speech and democracy, the only groups who were patiently, consistently organizing and consolidating were hard-line Islamists. And now their moment has come. It’s not hard to imagine Islamic regimes appearing across North Africa and the Middle East in the next ten years. What alternative, frankly, is on offer?

This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, and though it’s likely, it does not necessarily represent a loss of US strategic power and influence in the region, either. While the US has supported the Wahabbist monarchy in Saudi Arabia for generations, it was followers of the same extreme form of Islam that gave militant extremists their first foothold in Mali. If and when Assad falls, the regime that takes his place is not likely to be a friend of Iran. From a human rights perspective, an Islamist regime might even offer more domestic opportunities for rights-based advocacy and civic participation than a rigid, pro-US monarchy, depending on that regime’s interpretation of Islam.

What it does represent, however, is a sea change. The US has found shale oil, and is content to poison its ground water. The US military budget is shrinking, and the Pacific theatre is now the one to watch. The failure of the US to capitalize any foreign policy gains is a hugely important phenomenon, and the rise of the French in recent conflicts has made it clear just how far the US has retreated from the interventionist foreign policy of the cold war, and just how big the vacuum is that they’re leaving behind. If nature hates a vacuum, how does geopolitics feel? Don’t ask me, I wouldn’t know; I’m just an American.