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Friday 24th of September 2021
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The Savage Detectives Roberto Bolaño Misc. |
This is a hard story to tell. It seems easy, but scratch the surface and you realize it isn’t easy at all. Every story about that place is hard. I travel to Africa at least three times a year
That was where I met Arturo Belano, in the Luanda post office, on a hot afternoon when I had nothing better to do than spend a fortune on calls to Paris.
Maybe we went our separate ways there, maybe I lost sight of him in the cigarette smoke like so many people you meet when you’re out on a job, people you talk to and then lose sight of.
In Paris, it’s different. People drift away, people dwindle, and you have time to say goodbye, even if you’d rather not.
Not in Africa. People talk there, people tell you their problems, and then they vanish in a cloud of smoke, the way Belano vanished that night, without warning.
And you never even consider the possibility of running into X or Y again at the airport. The possibility exists, I’m not saying it doesn’t, but you don’t consider it.
So that night, when Belano disappeared, I stopped thinking about him, stopped thinking about loaning him money, and drank and danced and then I fell asleep in a chair and when I woke up with a start (more out of fear than because I was hungover, since I was afraid I’d been robbed, not being in the habit of going to places like João Alves’s)
it was already morning and I went outside to stretch my legs and there he was, in the yard, smoking a cigarette and waiting for me.
Yes, it was quite the gesture.
Months later I ran into him at the Grand Hotel in Kigali, where I was staying and where he came every once in a while to use the fax.
We greeted each other effusively. I asked whether he was still working for the same paper in Madrid and he said he was, plus a couple of South American magazines, which brought in a little more money.
He’d stopped wanting to die, but he was too broke to get back to Catalonia.
That night we had dinner together at the house where he was living (Belano never stayed at hotels like the other foreign journalists, he’d rent a room or a bed or a corner of some private house where they’d let him stay for cheap) and we talked about Angola.
He told me he’d been in Huambo, he’d traveled the Cuanza River, he’d been in Cuito Cuanavale and in Uíge, the pieces he’d written had gone over well, and he’d made it to Rwanda overland, first heading from Luanda to Kinshasa and then on to Kisangani, sometimes along the Congo River and other times along the treacherous forest roads, and then on to Kigali,
in total more than thirty days of nonstop traveling. The terrain itself would have made this next to impossible, never mind the political situation.
When he was done talking I couldn’t tell whether to believe him or not. On the face of it, it was incredible. Also, he told it with a half smile that inclined you to doubt him.
Until I ended up in Liberia. Do you know where Liberia is? That’s right, on the west coast of Africa, more or less between Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast. Good. But do you know who rules the country? the right or the left? I’m willing to bet you don’t.
I got to Monrovia in April on a ship from Freetown, Sierra Leone. It had been chartered by a humanitarian organization, the name of which escapes me now, on a mission to evacuate hundreds of Europeans who were waiting at the American embassy—the only reasonably safe place in Monrovia, according to anyone who’d been there or gotten firsthand news of what was going on.
These ultimately turned out to be Pakistanis, Hindus, North Africans, and the odd black Englishman.
The other Europeans, if I can put it that way, had gotten out long before, and only their secretaries were left.
For a Latin American it was odd to associate an American embassy with safety, it seemed a contradiction in terms, but times had changed, and why shouldn’t the embassy be safe?
I figured I might end up there myself. Still, the information struck me as a bad omen, a clear sign that everything would go wrong.
I looked toward the long house and I saw six or seven armed men and among them I saw two white guys walking toward us.
One of them had a beard and was carrying two cameras bandolier-style, a fellow photographer, that much was obvious, although at that moment, while he was still at a distance, I was unaware of the fame that preceded him everywhere he went, by which I mean that I knew his name and his work, like everyone in the business, but I had never seen him in person, not even in a photograph. The other was Arturo Belano.
I’m Jacobo Urenda, I said, trembling, I don’t know whether you remember me.
He remembered me. How could he not? But I was so far gone then that I wasn’t sure he would remember anything, let alone me.
By that I don’t exactly mean he had changed. In fact, he hadn’t changed at all. He was the same guy I’d known in Luanda and Kigali.
Maybe I was the one who had changed, I don’t know, but the point is it seemed to me that nothing could be the same as before, and that included Belano and his memory.
For a moment my nerves almost betrayed me. I think Belano noticed and he clapped me on the back and said my name. Then we shook hands. Mine, I noticed with horror, were stained with blood. Belano’s, and this I also noticed with a sensation akin to horror, were immaculate.
By then I could make out their silhouettes where they sat leaning against the wall. Both of them were smoking and both looked tired, but I might have gotten that impression because I was tired myself.
López Lobo wasn’t talking anymore. Only Belano was talking, as he had been at the beginning, and surprisingly, he was telling his own story, a story that made no sense, telling it over and over, with the difference that each time he told it he condensed it a little more, until at last all he was saying was: I wanted to die, but I realized it was better not to.
Only then did I fully understand that López Lobo was going to go with the soldiers the next day, not the civilians, and that Belano wasn’t going to let him die alone.
I think I fell asleep.
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The Savage Detectives Roberto Bolaño [continued] Misc. |
At least, I think I slept for a few minutes. When I woke up, the light of the new day had begun to filter into the house. I heard snores, sighs, people talking in their sleep.
Then I saw the soldiers getting ready to leave. López Lobo and Belano were with them. I got up and told Belano not to go. Belano shrugged his shoulders. López Lobo’s face was impassive.
He knows he’s going to die and now he’s calm, I thought. Belano’s face, meanwhile, looked like the face of a madman: in a matter of seconds, terrible fear and fierce happiness coursed across it.
I grabbed his arm and without thinking went walking outside with him.
It was a gorgeous morning, of an airy blueness that gave you goose bumps. López Lobo and the soldiers watched us go and didn’t say anything. Belano was smiling. I remember that we walked toward our useless Chevy and that I told him several times that what he planned to do was insane.
I heard your conversation last night, I confessed, and everything makes me think your friend is crazy.
Belano didn’t interrupt: he looked toward the forest and the hills that surrounded Brownsville and every so often he nodded.
When we got to the Chevy I remembered the snipers and I felt a stirring of panic. It seemed absurd. I opened one of the doors and we got in the car.
Belano noticed Luigi’s blood soaked into the fabric but he didn’t say anything, and I didn’t think it was the right moment to explain.
For a while we sat there in silence. I had my face hidden in my hands. Then Belano asked me whether I’d realized how young the soldiers were. They’re all fxking kids, I answered, and they kill each other like they’re playing.
Still, there’s something nice about it, said Belano, looking out the window at the forest trapped between the fog and the light.
I asked him why he was going with López Lobo. So he won’t be alone, he answered. That much I already knew, I was hoping for a different answer, something conclusive, but I didn’t say anything.
I felt very sad. I wanted to say something else and couldn’t find the words. Then we got out of the car and went back to the long house.
Belano took his things and left with the soldiers and the Spanish photographer. I went with him to the door. Jean-Pierre was beside me and he looked at Belano in confusion.
The soldiers were already beginning to head off and we said goodbye to him right there. Jean-Pierre shook his hand and I hugged him.
López Lobo had gone on ahead and Jean-Pierre and I realized that he didn’t want to say goodbye to us.
Then Belano started to run, as if at the last moment he thought the column would leave without him.
He caught up with López Lobo, and it looked to me as if they started to talk, as if they were laughing, as if they were off on an excursion, and then they crossed the clearing and were lost in the underbrush.
Our own trip back to Monrovia was almost without incident. It was long and grueling, but we didn’t run into soldiers from either camp.
We got to Brewerville at dusk. There we said goodbye to most of the people who’d come with us and the next morning a van from a humanitarian organization took us back to Monrovia.
Jean-Pierre was out of Liberia in less than a day. I spent two more weeks there. The cook, his wife, and their son, with whom I became friendly, moved into the Center.
The woman worked making beds and sweeping the floor and sometimes I would look out the window of my room and see the boy playing with other children or with the soldiers who were guarding the hotel.
I never saw the driver again, but he made it to Monrovia alive, which is some consolation.
It goes without saying that for the rest of my time there I tried to track down Belano, find out what had happened in the Brownsville–Black Creek–Thomas Creek area, but I couldn’t get any straight answers.
According to some, the territory was now under the control of Kensey’s armed bands, and according to others, troops under a nineteen-year-old general, General Lebon I think was his name, had managed to reestablish Taylor’s control over all the territory between Kakata and Monrovia, which included Brownsville and Black Creek.
But I never found out whether this was true or false. One day I went to hear a speech at a place near the American embassy.
The speech was given by a General Wellman, and in his own way, he tried to explain the situation in the country.
At the end, anyone could ask whatever they wanted. When everyone had left or gotten tired of asking questions that we somehow knew were pointless, I asked him about General Kensey, about General Lebon, about the situation in the towns of Brownsville and Black Creek, about the fates of photographer Emilio López Lobo, from Spain, and journalist Arturo Belano, from Chile.
General Wellman gave me a long look before he answered (but he gave everyone the same look, maybe he was nearsighted and didn’t know where to get himself a pair of glasses). In as few words as possible, he said that according to his reports General Kensey had been dead for a week. Lebon’s troops had killed him.
General Lebon, in turn, was also dead, in his case at the hands of a gang of highwaymen, in one of the eastern neighborhoods of Monrovia.
So far as Black Creek was concerned, he said: “Peace reigns in Black Creek.” Literally. And he had never heard of the settlement of Brownsville, though he pretended otherwise.
Two days later I left Liberia and never went back.
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A US-China clash is not unthinkable @FT @EdwardGLuce Law & Politics |
Cold war 2.0 offers a different spectre — escalating geopolitical rivalry between the world’s two largest powers with no clear exit ramp.
It is possible that the “relentless diplomacy” Joe Biden promised at the UN this week could work on China. He has yet to secure a meaningful dialogue with an increasingly paranoid Beijing.
By contrast, Biden is making rapid progress on coalitions that could further stoke China’s wolf warrior instincts.
Last week’s Aukus deal with Australia and the UK, followed by this Friday’s Quad summit with Australia, India and Japan are tangible ripostes to China’s growing military reach.
Biden’s stance is to work with China where America’s goals overlap — such as fighting global warming and stopping the next pandemic — and confront where they diverge, such as on human rights, Taiwan, freedom of navigation and technological rivalry.
The strongest winds, however, are towards confrontation.
The medium term is a different matter. Beijing’s economic ability to punish or reward its neighbours is greater than America’s, given the far larger volume of regional trade with China.
There is nothing in Biden’s worldview that implies he would want to risk conflict with China. His priorities are domestic.
The biggest shaper of our futures will be the trajectory of US-China rivalry.
Several near-misses during the first cold war taught America that it was wise to get inside Soviet heads and see the world from their perspective.
There is less such knowledge of China in today’s DC. Sinologists are thinner on the ground. Efforts to set up a hotline between Beijing and Washington have yet to bear fruit. The margin for error is not great.
The more Biden could acknowledge the possibility of a US-China collision — by accident or ignorance — the more he would reduce the risk.
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China sent two air force incursions close to Taiwan on Thursday, underscoring its displeasure at the government in Taipei’s bid to join a regional trade deal. Law & Politics |
Twenty four People’s Liberation Army aircraft flew into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said in two separate statements.
That was the largest number of Chinese planes to enter the zone in a day since June, when China’s air force sent 28 aircraft close to Taiwan in the biggest sortie this year.
The flights came a day after Taiwan announced it had requested to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, an 11-nation group China also applied to join last week.
In the past, Beijing has used large-scale incursions to signal its anger at Taiwan for challenging China’s claims to sovereignty over the island democracy.
The dispute wasn’t limited to military maneuvers, with Beijing and Taipei exchanging barbs over the latter’s attempt to join the CPTPP.
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Now Is The Winter Of Our Discontent Law & Politics |
“Now is the winter of our discontent” is the opening of a speech by William Shakespeare from Richard III.
It was also used to describe the profound industrial unrest that took place in 1978—9 in the United Kingdom.
Prime Minister Callaghan was asked by a reporter
"What is your general approach, in view of the mounting chaos in the country at the moment?" and replied:
Well, that's a judgment that you are making. I promise you that if you look at it from outside, and perhaps you're taking rather a parochial view at the moment, I don't think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos.
The next day's edition of The Sun headlined its story "Crisis? What crisis?"
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Tunisia’s president assumed the right to rule by decree and signaled plans to amend the constitution @bpolitics Africa |
President Kais Saied can now issue legislative texts by decree, according to the official gazette on Wednesday.
His office also said he would assign a panel of experts to draft changes to parts of the country’s 2014 charter.
Saied suspended parliament in late July, throwing the birthplace of the Arab Spring uprisings into a political crisis, and his latest moves sparked immediate opposition.
An official from the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, the biggest group in the frozen assembly, said the country had entered “a dangerous phase” of one-man rule.
Tunisia is struggling to turn around the economy, with the political stasis delaying talks over a possible new International Monetary Fund program that could unlock badly needed financing and bolster investor confidence.
Saied, a constitutional law professor elected in 2019 on an anti-establishment platform, has maintained he’s taking steps to save the country and root out corruption, dismissing criticisms he staged a coup.
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Turning To Africa Africa |
Democracy has been shredded.
We are getting closer and closer to the Virilian Tipping Point
“The revolutionary contingent attains its ideal form not in the place of production, but in the street''
Political leadership in most cases completely gerontocratic will use violence to cling onto Power but any Early Warning System would be warning a Tsunami is coming
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20-JAN-2020 :: The Intrusion of Middle Powers Africa |
Since 2010 and over the last ten years, Middle powers like Turkey, the UAE [whom Mattis characterised as ‘’Little Sparta’’], Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey [Israel and Russia too but they cannot be characterised as Middle Powers] have all extended their reach into the Maghreb and the Horn of Africa.
And [how the] U.A.E. approached Sisi and outlined the terms of their financial support before Morsi’s overthrow. “I think there’s every reason to believe he staged a coup,” I was told by one former diplomat.
“For a tiny country in the Persian Gulf to overthrow the ruler of Egypt and put their guy in, that’s a big achievement.”
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And now we have two visions of the Future Africa |
And now we have two visions of the Future. One Vision played out on our screens, the Protestors could have been our Wives, our Children, our Daughters and Sons.
The Other Vision is that of MBS, MBZ and Al-Sisi and its red in tooth and claw.
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A Coup Fails in Sudan but Its Fragile Democracy Remains at Risk @bopinion @ghoshworld Africa |
Sudan’s transition to democracy was rudely jolted this week, when a group of military officers loyal to the ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir attempted a coup in Khartoum against the civilian-led administration of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.
Their failure is cause for relief, but neither the government nor the wider world can afford to exhale.
For the best part of two years, Sudan has been a shining exception to the trend of democratic retrenchment across much of Africa and a beacon of hope amid the gathering gloom of autocratic populism worldwide.
After widespread protests brought an end to Bashir’s 30-year tyranny in the spring of 2019, the military and opposition groups agreed to share power for a 39-month period.
Now in the third year of that arrangement, Sudan’s transition has entered its most difficult period, and Hamdok is at his most vulnerable.
Although his government has introduced a dazzling and daring array of political, social and economic reforms — from making peace deals with rebel groups and separating religion from the state, to signing the Abraham Accords with Israel and devaluing the currency — ordinary Sudanese have received little dividends for having dethroned the dictatorial al-Bashir.
The euphoric optimism of 2019 has long since been replaced by frustration, much of it stemming from unemployment and inflation, which is close to 400%.
The Sudanese economy was hobbled by $60 billion in foreign debt even before the crippling effects of the Covid pandemic.
Although Hamdok has secured substantial debt relief and pledges of forgiveness from foreign governments, there has been little investment as yet, and few opportunities for job creation.
The frustration felt by many Sudanese has been boiling over into the streets.
There have been protests in Khartoum over the removal of fuel subsidies, part of an economic reform package agreed with the International Monetary Fund.
More ominously, intercommunal violence is again escalating in parts of Darfur, Kordofan and the Blue Nile region, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.
The men who plotted Hamdok’s overthrow were counting on the widening disquiet: They tried to shut down roads and access to ports in the east of the country where there had recently been anti-government protests.
Perhaps they hoped the protesters, disillusioned by the transition to democracy, would support a return to the old ways — after all, that’s more or less what happened in Sudan’s northern neighbor, Egypt, in 2013 when anti-government demonstrations allowed General Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to seize power.
Other reports say the plotters included elements of the armored corps, and had tried to seize control of the state broadcaster and military headquarters.
They may have been hoping to make an appeal for solidarity from the rest of the military.
But they had misread the national mood. Whatever their grievances with the government, ordinary Sudanese are not inclined toward another revolution.
Nor is the military high command of a mind to join a general mutiny.
Not even the country’s most feared warlord, the paramilitary commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, a.k.a. Hemeti, wanted anything to do with the putschists.
“We will not allow a coup to take place,” he said. “We want real democratic transition through free and fair elections, not like in the past.”
But Hamdok can’t be sanguine about the rest of transition to democracy. The failed coup was the second shot at derailing the process: Hamdok himself survived an assassination attempt in early 2020.
There may very well be other bids to overthrow the government before the elections expected in early 2024.
The prime minister knows the greatest threat to Sudanese democratic aspirations remains the military.
The failure of one group of officers may not deter others.
He is using the failed coup to make the case that the army should come under civilian control.
This week “clearly indicates the need to reform the security and military apparatus,” Hamdok said in a statement.
It will be harder to pull off than all his previous changes.
A military command that, at best, sees itself as co-equal with the political leadership will not easily submit to civilian authority.
Hamdok’s best hope for the preservation of his government is to keep the population on his side.
This, in turn, will require him to get the economy on track. The wider world can help, by speeding up debt-forgiveness and aid, and encouraging private investment in Sudan.
There are many other countries in need of such succor, but this bright spark of democracy in Africa deserves special consideration.
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Nigeria’s Economy To Grow Less Than 2% in 2021, Says @jpmorgan @economics Africa |
The recovery of Africa’s biggest economy from last year’s coronavirus pandemic-induced contraction could be slower than previously expected.
Nigeria’s economy is likely to expand by 1.5% in 2021, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA analysts including Gbolahan Taiwo and Ayomide Mejabi said in an emailed note.
That’s after it shrunk 1.92% last year, the most since at least 1991, according to International Monetary Fund data.
That’s below the median estimate of 11 economists in a Bloomberg survey as well as the IMF and central bank’s predictions.
A “continued lack of foreign-exchange liquidity, underlying economic weakness, an emerging third wave of Covid-19 infections and a slow rollout of vaccines will likely slow the recovery process,” JPMorgan said.
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