When Mr Kagan tried to find some evidence for his ‘coming anarchy’ in West Africa he may have been at the wrong corner of the continent. Have a look at these news from the Somali coast. The International Maritime Organisation has last week warned all ships to stay off this coast at a distance of at least 200 n.miles.

Count the players involved in this little fight. It looks pretty much like anarchy:

US ship helps North Korea vessel crew overpower Somali pirates

MOGADISHU, Oct 30, 2007 (AFP) - A US naval destroyer helped crew members of a North Korean cargo vessel on Tuesday to violently regain control of their freighter captured off Mogadishu port, the vessel's contractor said.

The 22-strong crew of the MV Dia Honga Dan overpowered armed pirates who had seized it overnight Monday, with help from a US warship, said Ali Gabow Jillo, the Mogadishu trader who had contracted the vessel.

"The US ship ordered the (Somali) security forces we had sent to follow the ship to stay away," he added, citing information from the shipping firm that runs the freighter in Singapore. He gave no further details about the US ship.

The pirates who had seized the North Korean boat were members of a Somali clan who were meant to be guarding it, Mogadishu port security officials said.

"The crew members have taken control of the ship after defeating the eight men who hijacked it last night," said Dahir Hassan, an elder in the Somali port of Haradere, earlier.

"There are casualties, but we are not sure of the exact number of dead or injured," he added. "Now the ship is out there and some government forces and businessmen from Mogadishu have been dispatched to the area," he added.

Andrew Mwangura, head of the Kenya chapter of the Seafarers' Assistance Programme, confirmed the release of the freighter, which was contracted by Mogadishu traders to deliver general cargo.

"We have information that ship has been rescued. The crew overpowered the pirates," Mwangura, who monitors maritime transport, told AFP from the port town of Mombasa.

"We are waiting for the ship to return to port, if nothing happens as they sail back, so that we can get more information," he added, explaining that initial reports indicated the "crew members were from southern Asia nations."

African Union peacekeepers charged with protecting the port said the vessel was outside their operation area.

"It was far away from the seaport, it was at the anchorage. The hijacking was masterminded by the same people who were supposed to bring it into the docking," captain Paddy Ankunda told AFP.

Ankunda said the militiamen had asked for 15,000 dollars to free the freighter that arrived in Mogadishu 10 days before and had already unloaded its cargo.

The incident was the second piracy attack off Somalia's 3,700 kilometre (2,300 miles) coastline in recent days.

On Sunday, a Japanese chemical tanker with 23 Korean, Filipino and Myanmar crew on board was hijacked off the coast of northern Somalia. The fate of that ship and its crew remains unknown.

Rampant piracy off Somalia's vast coastline stopped in the second half of 2006 during six months of strict rule by an Islamist movement, ousted by Ethiopian and Somali government troops at the end of the year.

The French navy is due mid-November to deploy a vessel to protect UN World Food Programme-charted ships, which have been targeted while ferrying supplies to Somalia in recent months. (AFP)

News from Africa. There is usually a fine balance between the powerful in Africa. I don't know why, but there seems to be a widespread tendency to over-reaction among African people. They are usually calm and patient, even fatalist; but as soon as it comes to a real, or alleged test of their power, they turn mad. One can observe this phenomenon in every day road traffic: if you try to over-pass a car that belongs to a rich (black) man, he will instantly get angry and do anything to get his car ahead yours again...no matter how dangerous a manoeuvre necessary to achieve that.

Hundreds die in Kenya gang crackdown - rights group

NAIROBI, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Police may have killed hundreds of people in a crackdown on Kenya's notorious Mungiki gang, a rights group said on Thursday, in a growing national controversy ahead of a presidential election in December.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights said it suspects police dumped hundreds of bodies in a Nairobi mortuary before lack of space forced them to use secluded bushland outside the capital.
Under fire earlier in the year from rights groups including Amnesty International for alleged execution-style killings, police are furiously denying the new accusations, calling them an attempt to besmirch authorities before the December vote.
"They have a few facts here and there -- but they are totally distorting them," police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said.
According to the rights commission, which is state-funded but acts independently, 458 bodies were taken to Nairobi's main mortuary since June by a government-registered vehicle.
"We have the registration number of this vehicle which was also seen in Kiserian," said commission spokesman Victor Bwire, referring to a site outside Nairobi where bodies have been found in the bush or at the roadside.
The commission, and other rights groups, believe the corpses are of suspected members of the criminal Mungiki gang. Most have a single bullet wound in the back of the head, witnesses say.
The Mungiki gang, whose name means "multitude" in the language of the Kikuyu tribe from which it draws its ranks, first emerged in the 1990s as a quasi-religious sect.
"BURIAL TOMORROW"
But it has grown into the country's biggest criminal operation and was blamed for a series of beheadings and mutilations in Nairobi and central Kenya earlier this year. Analysts say politicians have had close links to Mungiki, using the gang as muscle-for-hire and complicit in extortion rackets.
Police were accused of -- and denied -- extrajudicial killings in two anti-Mungiki raids in Nairobi's Mathare slum that killed more than 30 people in June.
Bwire said 11 bodies of suspected Mungiki members had been dumped at another mortuary in Naivasha town, northwest of Nairobi, since June, while bodies had also been discovered around Nakuru, Narok and Machakos towns, he said.
His group has hired counselors to help relatives of the dead deal with their shock over the killings, which he said appeared to be a "manifestation" of a vow by Security Minister John Michuki to wipe out the criminal gang.
"I cannot tell you today where those who have been arrested in connection with the recent killings are," Michuki told churchgoers in June in comments widely reported by local media.
"What you will be hearing is that there will be a burial tomorrow. ... If you use a gun to kill, you are also required to be executed."
Meanwhile, the boss of another local human rights group said he received threats from anonymous callers after it published a separate report alleging police killings of Mungiki suspects.
"I have received four of those calls today," Kingara Kamau of the Oscar Foundation told Reuters on Thursday, adding the callers identified themselves as "friends of the government".
Insecurity -- from petty crime to Mungiki and land and tribal clashes -- is a major factor in Kenya's upcoming vote, where President Mwai Kibaki is seeking re-election but currently trails opposition frontrunner Raila Odinga in polls. (REUTERS)

I was really shocked when people told me that in Gabon sometimes children disappear to be slaughtered in ritual killings. Every other month one can read about such cases in the local press. If one walks through the bush one finds ‘holy’ installations all over the place. Most of them, as a guide has told me, were erected during the last elections. They resemble this grave of a marabout, which I found on an old picture postcard:


Nigerian mob burns two suspected fetish killers

LAGOS, Oct 23 (Reuters) - A mob has burned alive at least two people in Nigeria suspected of killing people for body parts used in rituals, police said on Tuesday.
Trouble started following a rumour that fetish killers had kidnapped a little boy in Ikire in the southwestern state of Osun on Monday.
Coming after the body of a woman was found in the town on Saturday with her genitals removed, news of the kidnap spread fast, prompting youths to go on rampage.
They pursued some suspected ritualists to the palace of the local chief where they ran for safety.
"The youths set the palace ablaze after the staff refused to release the suspects to them. Two people were killed," said a police spokesman. They also torched several vehicles on the palace premises. An investigation has started.
Local media put the number of people burned at four.
Killing for rituals is common in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, where many believe witchcraft involving the use of human organs can make them instant millionaires, or provide protection.
Nigeria is roughly split between Christians and Muslims, but many mix these foreign faiths with traditional beliefs.

Congo warlord flown to The Hague

A Congolese warlord has been flown to the International Criminal Court at The Hague where he is to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Germain Katanga, who led the Forces for Patriotic Resistance (FRPI) in Ituri, was flown from the capital, Kinshasa.
Mr Katanga is the second Congolese militia leader to be sent to The Hague.
The warlord Thomas Lubanga was flown there last year to face charges of recruiting child soldiers in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
'More prosecutions'
Prosecutors say Mr Katanga - known as Simba - led the FRPI in Ituri in north-eastern DR Congo in 2003. He was arrested two years ago.
He is accused of murder, sexual enslavement and forcing children under 15 to fight as soldiers.
Judges said there were reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Katanga, 29, led the attack on the village of Bogoro in which 200 civilians were killed.
The prosecution alleges his fighters, which had the support of the Lendu ethnic group, committed atrocities against civilians of the Hema ethnic group in the Ituri region.
Some 15,000 FRPI fighters were demobilised last year.
Fighting in the gold-rich Ituri region broke out in 1999 and continued until 2003.
The war, which began as a struggle for the control of land and resources, deteriorated as arms proliferated and members of the Ugandan army became involved.
This turned a local dispute into an inter-ethnic war that killed an estimated 50,000 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.
The BBC's Arnaud Zajtman in DR Congo says the situation in Ituri - where at the time there were six militias - was so complicated that diplomats left the region's leaders out of negotiations that led to the restoration of peace in most of the rest of the country.
As a result massacres in Ituri continued after the peace deal that ended the five-year conflict, he says.
Mr Lubanga is also from Ituri and led the Union of Congolese Patriots. He faces similar charges - as well as genocide.
The ICC's Deputy Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said the court's investigations in DR Congo continued, but were hampered by the ongoing conflict in the east.
"This is not going to be the last. The prosecutor is in the process of selecting a third case, not necessarily in Ituri," she told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme. (BBC).

News from Africa. UN sends 300 people to train the local police, and the EU has a mandate to protect them, and people in refugee camps. One big problem so far is to provide enough potable water for the troops. As one French colonel told me, they did not find good water even in a depth of 150 meters.


EU gives green light to Chad mission

LUXEMBOURG, Oct 15 (Reuters) - The European Union gave the green light on Monday for a force of up to 3,000 troops in eastern Chad and Central African Republic to protect civilians from violence spilling over from neighbouring Darfur.
Ex-colonial power France will provide roughly half the U.N.-authorised force, whose tasks include protecting refugees and facilitating humanitarian supplies. Its mandate is for a year initially and the mission is due to start within weeks.
French diplomats say roughly a dozen European countries have offered to send troops or equipment, and Brussels is also consulting with non-EU countries over contributions.
"We have got the capacity, we are already at over 2,000," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told reporters after the force was approved by EU foreign ministers.
He said the mission was planned to start before the middle of November at the latest.
Eastern Chad and northern Central African Republic have seen a spillover from the 4-year-old conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region, in the form of cross-border raids by Sudanese militia and an influx of tens of thousands of refugees.
Refugees and villagers in the remote areas have also been victims of fighting by local rebel and government troops, as well as bandits who have turned the Chad-Sudan-CAR triangle into one of the most dangerous and desperate regions on earth.
According to U.N. figures there are some 400,000 Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadians in Chad and 200,000 displaced people in the Central African Republic.
The force will have no power to enter Darfur, where U.N. peacekeepers are due to bolster an African Union force that has proved incapable of stemming the growing violence there.
Twenty people were killed in ethnic clashes in east Chad after the desertion of former rebels loyal to the defence minister stoked tensions in the region bordering Darfur, government sources said on Monday. (REUTERS)

Oxfam Press Release – 11 October 2007
Fifteen years of conflicts have cost Africa $284bn

The cost of conflict on African development was $284bn between 1990 and 2005, according to new research by Oxfam International, IANSA [That is intenational action against small arms]and Saferworld. This is equal to the amount of money received in international aid during the same period.
The study “Africa's Missing Billions” is the first time analysts have calculated the overall effects of conflict on GDP and comes as diplomats from around the world arrive at the United Nations to discuss an Arms Trade Treaty.
It shows that on average a war, civil war or insurgency shrinks an African economy by 15 per cent. The continent loses an average of $18bn a year due to armed conflict.


I believe that it is not by accident. Money that is supposed to be development aid. is only substitue for money, which will be spend for arms, and luxury goods.

The whole article is here:

http://www.oxfam.org/en/news/2007/pr071011_control_arms_cost_conflict_africa

News from Africa. Sudan would have a been a fine object for an international intervention for regime change. Unfortunatelly, this tool has been wasted, and for the near future, invalidated by the war on Iraq. What a pitty.

Army-controlled Darfur town razed

A Sudanese government-controlled town in Darfur has been burned down and looted, the United Nations says.
The town of Haskanita is the home of the African Union peacekeeping base that rebel forces attacked last week.
The UN observer mission did not say which forces destroyed Haskanita. The Sudanese government has not commented.
On Friday, rebels said Sudanese government troops were attacking the town in apparent retaliation for the destruction of the AU base.
A statement issued on Sunday by the UN Mission in Sudan (Unmis) said an assessment mission to Haskanita on Saturday had reported "that the town, which is currently under the control of the government, was completely burned down, except for a few buildings".
It said the market area had been looted and just a few civilians had returned in search of food and water.
In a town that was previously home to 7,000 people, only the school and the mosque were left standing, Orla Clinton, spokeswoman for the UN Official for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) told the BBC's Amber Henshaw in Khartoum.
The UN intends to send a second observer mission to the town.
Suleiman Jamous, leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) Unity faction, told Reuters many had been killed and blamed the government for the destruction of Haskanita.
Factions
The Unmis statement said the civilian population had fled when the AU military base first came under attack on 29 September.
Ten peacekeepers were killed in that attack, which the commander of the AU-UN peacekeeping force blamed on a splinter group "who broke away from a faction called SLA United".
At least a dozen armed factions currently operate in Darfur.
Next year the UN and AU will jointly deploy the world's largest peacekeeping force - 26,000 troops - to Darfur.
It will absorb the current force of 7,000 AU troops, which has been struggling to protect civilians in the region.
At least 200,000 people have died in Darfur during a four-year conflict and more than two million have been forced from their homes. (BBC)

On Kaplan's coming anarchy

What makes Kaplan so special in this group of distinguished writers is that he is not an academic. He describes what he sees, or better, what he believes to see. Travelling journalists have a history of published bestsellers, be it adventure-fiction or semi-scientific articles. Kaplan did not write a top ten title yet, however, he has his audience.
On Kaplan, 1994 ‘The Coming Anarchy’
Kaplan is a travel journalist, who’s skills in filling pages with exciting phrases are well developed, and he serves his audience with what they would like to read. ‘The coming anarchy’ is the clearest example of an article written by someone who sees everything…but understands nothing.
His 400 miles journey through West-Africa has obviously been shocking to him. What appears to him as re-emerging anarchy, which threatens the ‘social fabric of our planet’, is just reflecting his expectations, and his misunderstanding of what he encounters.
What must appear to him in West Africa as anarchy, is in reality just another kind of order. An order which, surely, in our concept is highly illegitimate, and illegal. However, his examples of arbitrary taxing, bribing of police, and blackmailing at roadblocks, is to Africans what the restaurant tip is to the American waiter…in Cameroon it is the legitimate claim of the border guard, or soldier, because his boss does not pay him. Having a uniform means to be entitled to threaten and rob the travellers. The very act would only be understood as crime, if the soldier would not redistribute his booty to friends, and family. This is the order at every layer of society.
Kaplan’s discovery that African states would loose their power over their territories results from the wrong assumption that this control had been in existence in the first place. Actually this is not, nor was it, the case before, during, or after colonisation. The state in sub Saharan Africa is an empty shell, which is there in place to serve as postal address to collect development aid, and to give prisons the appearance of being part of a judicial system. The state’s frontier is there because ‘the smuggler is in need of a border’, as Olivier Roy has put it, it has no other practical meaning.
What Kaplan sees but not recognises is a very stable system of patrimonial relationships, which are the true foundation of political, and economic power.
The African state does not fade away because it never played an important role. “Unprovoked crime, refugee migrations, private armies, drug trade” all of Kaplan’s indicators of growing anarchy, are part of the game. They are not a new development, which would have gone out of hand. They are rather coming to the fore because their proportion on state’s revenues (means Big Man’s income) increased sharply after the end of the cold war. The African Big Man (president, chief, banker, general, governor) lost his patron, the distributor of wealth, and power. When either the SU or the US stopped paying freely, African elites had to diversify their sources of revenue.
There is no erosion of state power in West Africa. There are no governments ‘withering away’, and there is no tribal power where it did not exist since, or before independence. There is no coming anarchy: there is a stable, terribly unjust, and cruel order, obviously invisible to the foreigner.
It is fair that Kaplan reminds us that there were riots in Kosovo, when the Berlin wall was falling, but his remark is meant as a proof that even the best things which happen are not good enough to avoid the most terrible future. Writing on Africa he could have quoted the fact that 87 days after the fall of the wall, Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
By the way, the idea that “in the 21st century France will be withdrawing from West Africa” is ridiculous. Three more battalions are about to arrive in Gabon’s Camp De Gaulle soon…and they are going to stay.