Captain Sanogo and CNRDRE Create an Economic Catastrophe

             Amidst the sudden coup d’état and disintegration of military positions in Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu, the international media has begun to accord the West African nation of Mali its share of due attention. However, beyond the capital city of Bamako, behind the frontlines of the North, a tremendously more consequential and lethal but less photogenic drama is about to unfold in the towns and villages which constitute the majority of the Malian population. Absent a sudden turn of events, a completely unnecessary, man-made catastrophe is about to unfold, and the international community can do little but watch as it all happens in slow motion.  

            The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has given the CNRDRE mutineers a 72 hour ultimatum; either step down and abdicate all powers which they now illegitimately control, or the regional organization is about to shut Mali off from all international trade. If CNDRE does not abdicate power, the ECOWAS nations – including the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Guinea, and Niger – are going to close their borders and restrict all trade with Mali – a land-locked nation. ECOWAS will suspend Mali’s account at the regional central bank, shutting it off from cash reserves. The deadline for this ultimatum is Sunday night.

Observing what is about to happen to the Malian economy is akin to watching a car speed down a two-lane highway and a much larger vehicle is driving in the same lane straight towards it, for one brief moment you can see exactly how this head-on collision is going to occur, and there is nothing that you can do to stop it.

To understand what these sanctions are going to do to exacerbate the misery of an already impoverished nation, one must understand the Malian economy in this particular stage of development. Mali’s economy is already the third- or fourth-poorest in the world, with a per capita GDP of only $1,300. The vast majority of the population is engaged in subsistence agriculture of millet, sorghum, rice and corn. This year even the rural farming class is beset by a massive food shortage as precipitation last year’s growing season was pitiful. Malian farmers call the time of year before the millet harvest in September “hungry season” because the cereals stored in their granaries is now down to the last dregs, and many families reduce their consumption to one meal a day. This year, “hungry season” has already begun for many families in March – and the next harvest is six months away.

To boot, hundreds of thousands of Tuaregs and Songraï from the North have fled from the advancing MNLA forces, creating a crisis of refugees and internally-displaced persons where a population of displaced farmers can’t farm, and their reluctant hosts don’t have food to feed them. Already, absent any government interventions, Mali is facing one of the worst food crises in a generation. Rice is now hovering around 400 to 500 CFA a kilo (~$1), which is a lot seeing that that 500 CFA is a good full day's wage in a country where very few people are even employed in the formal sector, and each wage-earner has to support between 1 and 4 wives, each with an average of 7.4 children per woman, as well as his parents, grandparents, and extended family.

A food crisis is more complicated than a mere shortage of food. During the Great Global Food Crisis of 2009, there was millet and rice in Malian markets, it was there to purchase. However, due to a global shock caused by a devastating drought in Australia, stockpiling by Thailand, speculation on the global commodities markets, the price for rice soared around the world. In just any plain food crisis, the market in food is so shocked by a massive spike in prices that a significant swath of the population cannot afford to buy it. A spike in the price of rice has a dire affects among the population of consumers who purchase all of the food they eat – namely, the urbanites of Bamako, Ségou, Sikasso, Mopti, Gao and Timbuktu. But the 2009 Global Food Crisis was not so bad for the country folk who grew most if not all of the food they eat – in fact, it was a good year for a number of farmers who could demand more money in exchange for surplus grains.   

But this food crisis of 2012 is a monster of its own. This time, there is actually a great, endogenous shortage of millet, sorghum, corn, rice, and everything else. The people who farm cereals did not produce enough to feed themselves - let alone sell a surplus they don't have. A lot of subsistence farmers are dipping into their seed corn and slaughtering their draft animals. Many otherwise subsistence farmers are now forced to sell what little they have of economic value – cows, goats, sons, daughters – to purchase their food at market.

To fathom the impact of the impending ECOWAS sanctions on Mali, one must appreciate the absolute precariousness of the already-existing humanitarian crisis. When I call my friends in my erstwhile home, they tell me “the villagers are running out of millet, rice is too expensive to buy.” Rice is now between 400 and 500 CFA/kilo, but it is feared that that price might skyrocket to 1500 CFA/kilo. The Malian economy is already so impoverished that it is difficult to imagine how much more miserable it can become. We are about to find out.   

The Malian agricultural sector does not produce enough food to adequately feed its own population, so the food economy is significantly dependent on rice and other foodstuffs imported across the borders with the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Guinea. If the nations of the ECOWAS bloc close their borders to Mali, all Malian imports of rice, corn, and all other foodstuffs will cease (but for the inevitable black market). Mali’s food crisis will deepen even further.

The Malian economy is completely dependent on imported gasoline which is shipped from the Persian Gulf to the port of Abidjan, then trucked overland across the Ivory Coast to the Malian border. As of Saturday, March 31, the price of gasoline had already spiked from 750 to 2000 CFA per liter. Without gasoline, transport and commerce will come to a standstill beyond the local village economy, what little goods can be sold by foot, bicycle, donkey cart, and canoe. Mali’s urban population of roughly 3 million, entirely dependent upon a commercial economy, without any fields to farm, are going to suffer as Malian commerce completely and utterly collapses into a subsistence economy.

            In addition, ECOWAS is about to freeze Mali’s account at the central bank from which the Malian Ministry of the Treasury receives its currency to put into circulation. If all goes as planned, on Monday the various private banks of Mali will have no more bills and coins to distribute to account holders when they come to withdraw money. Last week, the banks were already like a scene out of It’s a Wonderful Life; people are waiting in lines 50 people deep to withdraw from their accounts, and the banks are telling patrons that they can withdraw a maximum of 500,000 CFA (~$1,000). By Monday or Tuesday, the banks will have no currency to distribute at all. Soldiers in the Malian Army, gendarmes, all civil servants and teachers will be unable to cash their paychecks.

The point of the ECOWAS sanctions on Mali is to replicate what occurred in the Ivory Coast last year when dictator Laurent Gbagbo refused to abdicate power to the elected president Alassane Ouattara, and ECOWAS froze the Ivorian account. Without the power of the paycheck, the pro-Gbagbo forces demonstrated that their loyalty was contingent upon a paycheck, and they lost all will to fight. Some innocent people suffered, but Gbagbo fell within a few weeks.  

If ECOWAS does in fact impose crushing sanctions on Mali beginning this next Monday, one might hope that the embargo succeeds in achieving its intended goal: Sanogo & Co. step down as soon as possible. However, there remains the distinct possibility that the CNRDRE mutineers cling to power for an extended period of time, during which the Malian people are going to suffer dearly. Even after the disaster of collectivized agriculture, the droughts of the 1970s and 80s, this impoverished nation might know a period of deprivation unlike no other.

Capt. Sanogo and the CNRDRE junta apparently don’t care. In judging his reaction to recent events, is clear that in Sanogo and his junta have only contempt for the international community and brazen disregard for the Malian people whom they purportedly govern.

Make no mistake; the ECOWAS sanctions on Mali are not the result of other states' "imperialism", but the inevitable conclusion of the CNRDRE mutineers' virulent conduct towards its  economic partners. The junta showed its true colors by preventing a delegation of ECOWAS heads of state from landing their planes. Planes carrying the respective presidents and prime ministers of Ivory Coast¸ Burkina Faso, Niger, Liberia, and Benin were in en route to Bamako to meet with the CNRDRE faction to diffuse the politica crisis, when they turned around amidst reports of a security breach at the Bamako airport. The press reported that the airport runway had been taken over by a violent demonstration of junta supporters. Read between the lines; the Bamako airport is one of the few government installations which the CNRDRE mutineers tangibly control; they have prevented almost all planes from coming or going since the coup began. "These protesters... couldn't have got to the runway if the military didn't want them to," says Bruce Whitehouse, an anthropology professor at Lehigh University. In other words, instead of negotiating with ECOWAS presidents and prime ministers, Sanogo & Co. chose to orchestrate a threat on their lives in order to prevent a dialogue from even commencing.

Therefore, the Presidents of Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso and Benin did not come to Bamako to negotiate with CNDRE to step down because CNDRE effectively threatened to assassinate them if they landed at the Bamako airport These are not grown-ups we are dealing with, but children armed with AK-47s. The New York Times reports that when ECOWAS met to issue its threat of sanctions on Thursday, a senior advisor to Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara said that Capt. Sanogo’s reaction to the regional body was "basically the equivalent of telling us (fuck) you.”

            As Capt. Sanogo and his cohorts jostle with the ship of state as though it is their plaything, 14 and half million Malian civilians are going to suffer as the collateral damage of a few warlords’ lust for power and wealth. It is not out of hand to predict that tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and particularly children are going to die needless deaths in a completely man-made famine, all but proving Amartya Sen's thesis that famines don't occur in democracies. The cruelest element of this catastrophe is that it is not a matter of natural cause and happenstance, but the will of a few evil men.  

NDAA Sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran: Watering the Grassroots of Regime Change

Iran fired long-range cruise missiles into the Strait of Hormuz - the waterway through which 20 percent of world’s traded petroleum must pass to get to market. The U.S. Navy deployed a carrier group through the Strait as a show of force. The mullahs responded, stating that the deployment of warships through the Strait might provoke full-out naval warfare. The U.S. retorted that the Strait will be kept open to shipping by all means necessary. The world economy, already suffering from a minor depression, anxiously fears a disruption in Persian Gulf petroleum supplies, a spike in oil prices, and the spiraling inflation which might kick the crutches out from under the fragile recovery.

This brinksmanship did not originate out of the mullahs’ sudden desire to hold the world hostage, but rather as a direct and foreseeable response to the latest round of economic sanctions enacted by the United States of America against the Islamic Republic of Iran. This policy is not a new one; the U.S. already maintains a practically absolute program of trade sanctions against the entire Iranian economy. Executive Order 12959 issued by President Clinton prohibited all trade with Iran; the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act imposed severe penalties on any U.S. corporation that invests in Iran’s petroleum sector; Iranian banks are completely barred from transacting with U.S. financial institutions. Now, through the Kirk Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011, the U.S. has levied third party sanctions against the Central Bank of Iran (CBI). As of December 31st, this measure gave foreign companies a stark choice: one can either conduct business with the CBI or conduct business with the United States.

Foreign corporations have opted to do business with the United States and divest from the Central Bank of Iran. The effect of this mass pullout from the CBI has been a sharp drop in the strength of Iran’s currency. Since the Kirk Amendment went into effect, the rial has weakened by 20 percent compared to other currencies. Iranians are rushing to currency exchanges to trade their holdings in the rial for euros, dollars, any currency that might be more stable. Prices in Iranian bazaars are fluctuating so quickly that vendors of imported cell phones and computers are changing their prices by the hour. Commercial establishments dependent upon imports and exports are going out of business because no one wants to transact with a company with unpredictable prices. Iranian manufacturers have shuttered their factory doorsbecause they cannot afford to do business so long as the rial is subject to such erratic fluctuations.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently told the Majlis that the latest measures were “the most extensive . . . sanctions ever.” He continued, “this is the heaviest economic onslaught on a nation in history.”

The depreciation of the rial compared to foreign currencies has led to a painful spike of food prices in this nation highly dependent upon imported food. The price of food staples such as rice, bread, chicken, and lamb have risen by roughly 40 percent in Iranian bazaars. Iranian households have suddenly found themselves unable to put food on the table. Those who can have seen the quality of their food decline. Medications and pharmaceuticals are more expensive too. Though it is too early to tally much data, it appears likely that the Iranian people will likely suffer an acute rise in malnutrition, increased susceptability to disease, and an overall decline in health over the long run.

The NDAA sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran are as provocative as a full-on blockade. Congress has intentionally engineered a direct hit on the Iranian civilian economy. It’s no wonder why Ahmadinejad has resorted to saber-rattling in the Strait of Hormuz – the United States has all but declared economic war on Iran.

So why would the United States of America, send such a belligerent shot across the bow of a country that has not attacked us? Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), one of the GOP’s rising hawks on Middle Eastern affairs, explains the rationale for his eponymous Amendment:

"When we look at Iran today, we see an accelerating nuclear program, expanding ballistic missile program and a wholesale disregard for human rights . . . These are not the signs of successful U.S. sanctions against the regime. Iran continues to sponsor terror around the world, including most recently a failed attack on U.S. soil. In response, the Administration should move quickly to implement the most effective, non-military response - cutting off the Central Bank of Iran and collapsing the Iranian currency."

Let’s break that down. Senator Kirk’s stated rationale for the CBI third party sanctions is that Iran is:

1) pursuing nuclear capabilities;
2) sponsoring terrorism;
3) violating the human rights of its subjects.

Chew on that for a minute.

Let’s say that one of these days, say a year from now, the Iranian economy is so devastated and the people are conducting nation-wide strikes and mass demonstrations in the streets of Tehran ten times as massive as the unrest in 2009. The regime is on its knees. The Ayatollah Khameini completely disavows the Islamic Republic’s intention of pursuing nuclear technologies once and for all so that it can reallocate its resources towards food production. This fantasy is, in fact, the purported endgame of the CBI sanctions. In such a scenario, would the Obama (or Romney) administration declare the mission accomplished, that the Treasury Department is going to de-list the NDAA sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran?

Of course not – Senator Kirk’s original intent of the CBI sanctions was also to protest Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism and human rights abuses. At that point, the Iran hawks would surely justify the crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s financial sponsorship of Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Surely, Senator Kirk and his colleagues would argue, we must maintain the economic sanctions against the Central Bank of Iran until it forsakes these militant anti-Israel organizations. The Iran hawks would also point out Tehran’s purported direct organizing of terrorist acts – including the botched attempt to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States.

Let’s suppose the sanctions are really working, the Ayatollah Khameini has consulted with his finance ministers, and the mullahs decide that it is economically imperative to abandon their deadweight terrorist clients; Tehran de-friends Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Khameini declares in a globally-televised address that the Islamic Republic has disavowed its terrorist conduct once and for all. Would the State Department ever let Iran come in from the cold – like it did with Libya, Sudan and North Korea – and drop their designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism?

It appear unlikely that this could ever happen, because in 2007, at AIPAC’s request, the State Department labeled the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps itself as a terrorist organization. Likewise, for Iran to ever shake its State Sponsor of Terrorism status, either the Revolutionary Guards would have to cease to be a terrorist organization, or the Iranian government would have to cease its financial and logistical support for its very own intelligence/paramilitary agency. This is as likely to happen, of course, as the U.S. is likely to cease our support for the CIA and the U.S. Army. The designation of the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization was patently made to ensure that the Islamic Republic of Iran – so long as the regime exists in its present form - is never stripped of its designation as a terrorist state.

But let’s be optimistic, and suppose the economic conditions in Iran become so insufferable that the Islamic Republic not only abandons its nuclear ambitions, but throws Hamas & Co. under the bus, and disbands the Revolutionary Guards Corps. The only criterion to the Kirk Amendment left standing is the continuing criticism of its human rights violations. Suppose Tehran ends the random beatings, arrests and disappearances of peaceful demonstrators and dissidents. The Majlis vote to prohibit torture, abolish capital punishment, and end government censorship of the media. The Ayatollah even consents to a wholesale overhaul of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran so that it ensures equal rights for women, religious minorities, and homosexuals. Under such a pie-in-the sky fantasy scenario, wouldn’t the Obama (or Romney) administration be tempted to repeal the sanctions on the Central Bank?

Though it would be eminently reasonable to repeal the CBI sanctions if Iran substantially performs on each and every demand of the Kirk Amendment, it is difficult to imagine that any U.S. administration might ever back down on the sanctions program so long as Iran remains an Islamic Republic. Depending on how one construes the term human rights, an administration could justify continuing the CBI sanctions so long as Iran limits the participation of non-Islamic parties in its presidential and parliamentary elections. Even if the Guardian Council were to allow for truly democratic, multiparty elections, Iran hawks could always object to the fact that all real political power resides in the Supreme Leader who is the commander of the armed forces, who exercises great sway over all branches of government – and who is not elected by popular vote. One could argue that the Iranian people’s freedom of religion is violated unless the theocratic institutions of the Supreme Leader, the Assembly of Experts, and the Guardian Council are completely abolished.

An elected government composed of the Majlis and the Presidency might not suffice either. It appears that the 1979-81 hostage crisis left such a pall of humiliation on the American psyche that no administration, no Congress will ever be satisfied until the entire Iranian regime is eviscerated to a pulp and a completely new regime is erected from scratch. When U.S. officials talk about human rights in Iran, they often imply the right to be free of the Islamic Republic.

It appears that the real end goal of the CBI sanctions is an aim which most Iran hawks are reluctant to flat-out mention: to inflict hardship onto the Iranian civilian population so as to stir up discontent with the Iranian government. A January 10th article in The Washington Post by Karen DeYoung and Scott Wilson quoted a senior U.S. intelligence official laying out the strategy:

The Obama administration sees economic sanctions against Iran as building public discontent that will help compel the government to abandon an alleged nuclear weapons program, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official.

In addition to influencing Iranian leaders directly, the official said, “another option here is that [sanctions] will create hate and discontent at the street level so that the Iranian leaders realize that they need to change their ways.”

The intelligence official’s remarks pointed to what has long been an unstated reality of sanctions: Although designed to pressure a government to change its policies, they often impose broad hardships on a population. . . .

A senior administration official, speaking separately, acknowledged that public discontent was a likely result of more punitive sanctions against Iran’s already faltering economy, but said that is not the direct intent. . . .

“The question is whether people in the government feel pressure from the fact that there’s public discontent,” the official said, “versus whether the sanctions themselves are intended to collapse the regime.”

The original version of this January 10th Post article quoted the anonymous administration official as stating that the ultimate end goal of the sanctions was, in fact, to foment “regime collapse.” A later version of the same article was amended, sheepishly backpedaling that that statement was “incorrectly reported.” Either way, this off-the-record story was a veritable bombshell as it explicitly named the hardship and discontentment of the Iranian population as an express goal of the CBI sanctions.

But the question remains; was the first reporting of this article retracted because the invocation of “regime collapse” was a misquote? Or did this anonymous senior administration official simply say too much? Are we sabotaging the Iranian civilian economy because we want the people to write to their Representatives in the Majlis to vote “Nay” on a nuclear program bill? Would Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon be content with an Islamic Republic sans nuclear capabilities? Or are we going to maintain these draconian sanctions until the Islamic Republic lies in the same ash heap of history as the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahariya?

We have conducted regime change in Iran before, and Iran has enjoyed the blessings of democratic self-government – though not in that order. The brief reign of Iranian democracy lasted during the brief window from 1951 to 1953 under Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Mossadegh was as revered a nationalist leader in the Age of Decolonization could be. But after Mossadegh nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the Truman administration enacted an embargo on nationalized Iranian oil. President Eisenhower followed up by authorizing Kermit Roosevelt to lead the joint CIA/MI5 mission Operation Ajax. Roosevelt and his cohorts fomented political instability in Iran with bombings and demonstrations, destabilized the Mossadegh government and re-installed the Shah Reza Pahlavi by coup d’état. Embargo proved to be but a prelude to direct CIA subversion.

Neoconservatives like Senator Kirk are gaga over the Central Bank of Iran sanctions because they hope that these restrictions might achieve the same end of Operation Ajax by purely economic means. But this strategy inadvertently showcases the extent to which Neoconservativism borrows generously from more radical (and European!) ideologies. According to the Marxist-Leninist "immiseration thesis", the worse the economy, the more “immiserated” the proletariat, the more radicalized the proletariat becomes, and the greater chance of political revolution. Trotsky’s corollary to the Marxist-Leninist “immiseration thesis” was essentially that farsighted vanguards of humanity could speed up the process of political revolution by deliberately sabotaging the economy. Similarly, with the CBI sanctions the Neocons expressly aim to foment so much havoc in the Iranian economy that the Iranian people are thoroughly “immiserated" that they become radicalized, and bring about regime change on their own accord.

What happens if the sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran don’t succeed in dislodging the Islamic Republic? 13 years of comprehensive sanctions maintained by all of the United Nations against Iraq did nothing to remove Saddam Hussein. After 6 years of Israeli-American-European strangulation, Hamas still maintains its fiefdom in the Gaza Strip. After 52 years of unilateral U.S. embargo, the Castro brothers are still in power in Cuba. With the exception of perhaps South Africa and Chile, trade sanctions have rarely succeeded in fomenting regime change.

In the aforementioned cases, economic sanctions have certainly achieved the intending goal of “immiseration”; embargoes plunged the Cuban, Iraqi, and Palestinian populations into even more devastating poverty. But the undesired regimes did not budge. Though the incumbent regimes have been able to blame the people’s economic misery on America and the Western powers, and they have benefited from the “rally-around-the-flag” effect which often results from acts popularly characterized as foreign aggression. The manifestations of this effect can be transnational and quite sinister; in his seminal fatwa, Osama bin Laden justified his waging jihad against the American people partly upon the misery suffered by the Iraqi people under UN sanctions.

The NDAA’s latest salvo against the Iranian economy might not even disincentivize the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. According to the Post’s anonymous administration official, “[the CBI sanctions program] could have the opposite effect from what’s intended,” he said, “and impel the Iranian leader to decide, ‘We’re going to build that nuclear weapon.’ We’ve thought of that.”

Don’t get me wrong; the Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the most despicable regimes in the world today. President Ahmadinejad, the Ayatollah Khameini, and all agents and bureaucrats complicit in the murder of peaceful demonstrators in 2009 ought to be indicted by the ICC for crimes against humanity. Any fair observer must look forward to the day when the Iranian people inevitably rise up and overthrow the Ayatollah and the mullahs in favor of a new, more democratic form of government. However, it appears that “immiseration”-based trade sanctions might be neither suitable nor necessary to achieve this end.

Trade sanctions with the express purpose of inflicting economic pain upon a civilian population should not be blithely enacted without due regard for their moral price and their real human costs. Terrorism is generally defined as the deliberate use of violence aimed against civilians in order to achieve political ends. The Geneva Centre for Security Policy defines economic terrorism as “varied, coordinated and sophisticated, or massive destabilizing actions [undertaken by transnational or non-state actors] to disrupt the economic stability of a state, groups of states, or society.” Maybe the CBI sanctions program is not economic terrorism because it is conducted by state actors. Maybe it is isn't economic terrorism when we do it. Maybe the CBI sanctions program is economic terrorism - but if it leads to the downfall of the Islamic Republic, the ends justify the means. Maybe it depends on what the definition of is is.

One can be a steadfast critic of the Iranian government and also a critic of one's own country's attempts to thwart the Iranian government. There is a sizeable camp of critics who loathe the Iranian regime and who also believe that the less foreigners do to meddle in that country's internal politics, the better for the legitimacy of the Iranian reform movement. Some of us despise the Islamic Republic and cannot wait to see the day when the Iranian people are free from its tyranny, but we also believe that the Iranian people’s struggle for political freedom is theirs and theirs alone.

The Assassination of James Brown

Straight-up – being the one non-Bambara tribesman in Sanadougou and being constantly watched and gossiped about and petted and accosted for my bicycle and my underwear all day, every day, 7 days a week is emotionally and spiritually exhausting. And it is even more frustrating and damaging to one’s sense of self-worth when I go walk over for a friendly chat with the dude for whom I just built 3 brand new, cement nyegens complete with soak pits and feeling all bright and optimistic and accomplished and he screams at me for being a “nasty, greedy Tubabu” because I won’t give him U.S. A.I.D.-financed cement to line his entire house and I walk home flustered and fed up and not a single person in this entire town can relate.

But who needs people when James Brown and Snoop Doggy Dogg are waiting at home to play with me? Even on days when my homologue thinks I’m useless and my jatigi thinks I’m lazy and the entire village thinks I’m a stingy bastard, my doggy and kitty think I’m the best person in the whole wide world and Snoop rolls over so we can play the “kick me in the face” game and James climbs up my shoulder and rolls into a huggable, purry furball and at least some creatures on this planet appreciate my existence. And everything is alright.

So the other night I was sleeping in my tent in the papaya patch when I was woken by a deafening BOOM as though a car had backfired just outside my garden. Though I didn’t think anything of it and rolled back to sleep.

The next morning I couldn’t find Jamesy… I went over to my jatigi’s house – James had recently been spending nights with their ladycat – but he wasn’t there either. I was told to go to the house of Seydou Cafa – the night watchman at the clinic across the street. Maybe he knew where James was...

So I stormed in demanding answers when I am greeted by my kitty James – he was hanging from Seydou’s gwa with his head chopped off, skinned to dry for that evening’s sauce. The logic of what had happened that night became all too apparent:

1. I am hungry. (Given)
2. Look… a Cat! (Given)
3. BOOM! (Chain Rule 1, 2)


I went ballistic.

“What’s the big deal?” Seydou asked, “It’s just a cat.”

“That’s not just a cat – that’s my cat you killed!!! You stole my cat and you can’t give it back!!! So now you have to pay up.”

“Whatever – I’m sorry. It will not happen again, insh’allah.”

“No, that’s not going to cut it. You just killed an expensive cat. I vaccinated and treated that cat, and it cost 5,000 CFA. I’ll give you a choice; either you pay me 5,000 francs right now, and while you’re at it give me a goat for good measure so I can kill one of your animals and eat it too – or else I’m going to explain to the Commandant that you’re a lunatic who hunts other people’s livestock with a shotgun on the clinic grounds in a crowded neighborhood 80 meters from where I sleep and 100 meters from where the Commandant and his wife and his children sleep.”

Unlike litigious Americans such as yours truly, Bambaras shy from using the official legal system and instead use their own traditional form of settling grievances. There is kind of an adversarial trial before the dugutigi (the village chief) who resolves both parties’ claims. This was actually a big deal; in an agricultural society, livestock theft is one of the most serious crimes which one can commit. If a Bambara steals another Bambara’s cow or sheep, the thief is usually pressured by his elders to compensate the victim in currency or in kind.

Though unbeknownst to me at the time, even in the extralegal Bambara trial using informal laws and informal procedures, the plaintiff is generally expected to employ an extralegal lawyer. Usually people have the eldest male of each respective adversary’s family do all the negotiating – and so I should have delegated responsibility to my jatigi Karitie Sanogo. For yours truly – former Mock Trial lawyer, material witness for a real-life courtroom disposition and citizen of the U.S. of A. where 23-year-olds are just as full members of society as their real fathers – it never occurred to me that I should employ someone else to redress my own grievances. Thus by stepping into the dugutigi’s gwa to act as my own counsel, I apparently disrupted the gerontocratic social order and already had one strike going against me.

Nevertheless, I put forward an argument based on what I felt was incontrovertible logic:

1. Individuals are granted by their Creator a natural right to Property. (Bourgeois Capitalism)
2. “To steal” is to take another person’s Property without their consent. (Definition)
3. If an Individual steals another Individual’s Property, the Thief must pay the Victim in order to re-establish the State of Nature. (Bourgeois Capitalism)
4. I had a Cat. (Given)
5. My Cat cost 5,000 francs. (Given)
6. I never told anyone that they had permission to take my Cat. (Given)
7. Seydou killed my Cat and his wife is preparing it for dinner. (Given)
8. Therefore, Seydou stole my Cat (Chain Rule [1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7])
9. Therefore, Seydou must give me 5,000 francs. (Chain Rule, Bourgeois Justice [3, 5, 8])
10. And a goat. (Revenge)

The dugutigi agreed wholeheartedly with my proposition. However, Seydou had a right to defend himself.

1. I am the Night Watchman at the Clinic. (Given)
2. The Night Watchman is equipped with a Shotgun in order to protect the Clinic. (Given)
3. Therefore, it is my solemn duty to protect the Clinic as well as myself with my Shotgun.
(Chain Rule [1,2])
4. Evil Sorcerers exist, and they wish to do us harm. (Incontrovertible Fact)
5. Evil Sorcerers can take the form of Cats. (Incontrovertible Fact)
6. While guarding the Clinic last night, I saw a Cat. (Given)
7. Therefore, the Cat which I saw could have been an Evil Sorcerer in disguise.(Chain Rule [4, 5, 6])
8. Therefore, there is no way that I could have known that that Cat was not an Evil Sorcerer. (The Law of Epistemological Positivism [6, 7])
9. Therefore, it was my solemn duty to shoot that Cat with my Shotgun in order to protect the Clinic from Evil Sorcerers. (Chain Rule [1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8])

The dugutigi gave much credence to Seydou’s defense. “He’s got a good point there, Madu – what if your cat was a sorcerer?”

“NO!!!!! I know for a fact that my cat could not cast magic spells. If Seydou believes thinks that he should shoot every single kitten that walks his way because it might be a sorcerer, then he is delusional and insane and he should not have a job which entails holding a shotgun at a health clinic!!! Witches and wizards are not real and they cannot be valid reasons for slaughtering other people’s animals!!! You know what? Maybe Seydou’s cow is a sorcerer!!!! I should kill his cow!!! And maybe his goats and his sheep are all sorcerers too!!! If Seydou’s defense is valid, then I should be able to shoot all of his animals and eat them to protect myself from evil spells!!!!

Unfortunately for my case, the dugutigi also believes in witches and wizards – hence he let Seydou’s defense stand.

“The night watchman had good reason to believe that his very life could have been in danger of black magic, he shot your cat out of sincere self-defense. So Seydou must not give you a goat to slaughter as you demand… However, since you now surely want a new cat and you want to vaccinate it too, Seydou must give you 5,000 francs to cover the cost of cat medicine.”

But the important issue to me wasn’t the money; I wanted Seydou to pay 5,000 francs merely to make his reckless behavior really, really expensive and hopefully to deter his assassination of future cats. What mattered to me is that now my life in the peaceful gardens of Xanadu is lacking a huggable, squeezable furball to curl up next to my pillow and purr me to sleep.

Though this tragedy concludes with a happy ending of rebirth and renewal; within hours of this fiasco, in such an insular village where my nail-clipping habits are considered juicy gossip, every man, woman and child in Sanadougou knew about the untimely assassination of my feline friend who would so often follow me and climb up on my shoulder to accompany me around the hood. James Brown was a Sanadougou celebrity in his own right, and his presence was immediately missed. And by the afternoon the community poured out in sympathy and dozens of people offered me brand new kittens to offset my loss.

I accepted one baby kitten, and his name his James Brown II.

What the McDonald's Corporation Can Do to Fight the Darfur Genocide

Cobbled together by the British Empire with little regard to existing ethnic or tribal divisions, the tribes of Sudan’s western Darfur provinces have been historically marginalized and oppressed by the incumbent regime in Khartoum. The intra-Sudanese conflict was exacerbated by Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s Islamic Front movement, which has attempted to forcibly Arabize and Islamicize his subjects. With the aim of local autonomy the mostly Christian and animist rebels of Darfur responded by forming their own militias, particularly the Sudan Liberation Army led by Zaghawa tribesman Minni Minnawi and Hassani al-Turabi’s Justice and Equality Movement, which have waged raids on regional military installations. In order to “pacify” these territories, the junta in Khartoum has recruited the Janjaweed, a horseback-riding militia of the nomadic Arab Bagarra peoples, to pillage the Fur, Zaghawa and Maasalit tribal villages with Chinese-imported machine guns and the cover of Chinese-imported Sudanese military aircraft. The Janjaweed and the Sudanese Army are not just killing civilians of the same ethnicity as Darfurian rebels, but are using such wanton atrocities as systematic rape, torture, hacking off civilians limbs with machetes, and throwing children into bonfires to burn alive. Now going into its fourth year, the Sudanese government’s campaign of genocide against the tribes of Darfur has already killed approximately 400,000 civilians and displaced another 4.7 million.

The man-made disaster in Darfur is steadily growing, and without foreign intervention has only the potential to claim the lives of hundreds of thousands or even millions more innocent civilians. As the traditional world powers dither, a certain business has a unique opportunity to pressure Bashir’s government to end the Darfur genocide. Indeed, the McDonald’s Corporation, as one of the most widespread symbols of American economic might with over 30,000 franchises in over 120 countries, has the opportunity to do what no United States government agency can to exert influence on Khartoum.

Since Sudan is a developing country with few sources of government revenue, the regime in Khartoum is highly dependent upon foreign investment to finance its operations – about 60 percent of all government revenue is allocated towards military expenditures. . The United States has imposed a comprehensive embargo on what it has deemed a state sponsor of terrorism since 1997, and with the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act of 2006 strengthened U.S. sanctions by prohibiting entry at American ports to ships carrying Sudanese oil. Upon issuing the executive order to carry out Congress’ mandate, President Bush determined that whereas “the Government of Sudan continues to implement policies and actions that violate human rights”, and also that “the Government of Sudan has a pervasive role in the petroleum and petrochemical industries in Sudan”, he decreed a prohibition of transactions “relating to the petroleum and petrochemical industries in Sudan.” Since then, the Bush administration has continued to act within its legal authority to tighten the noose around Khartoum’s revenue flow, such as barring more companies controlled by the Sudanese government from the American financial system. Yet given that the United States already has comprehensive sanctions against Sudanese firms, there is little more that it can do with soft power. The notable exception is for Congress to impose secondary sanctions on multinational companies conducting business in Sudan like Sinopec and PetroChina, but the prospect of a United States government issuing de facto sanctions against the People’s Republic of China to which it is indebted more than $1 trillion – and specifically against Chinese oil companies during a period of spiking gas prices – is slim to none.

And so the American private sector may be able to influence Khartoum in ways that the federal government cannot. Though it is not directly involved in any of the events on the ground in Darfur, through its business partnerships the McDonald’s Corporation has a unique opportunity to put economic pressure on the Sudanese regime. And even though McDonald’s is not actually operating within Sudanese territory due to current sanctions, it still has considerable influence over the petroleum economy and state apparatus, namely through its recent agreement with the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation; also known as Sinopec.

The reason why Sinopec is implicated in the ongoing holocaust is that as the second-largest driller of Sudan’s oil exports, mainland China’s second-largest oil company is all but bankrolling the regime in Khartoum. About half of all Sudanese government revenue is derived from oil exports, and the majority of that revenue is allocated towards military expenditures. Since China imports between 70 and 80 percent of Sudanese oil through semi-privatized firms like Sinopec, the People’s Republic of China acts as Sudan’s patron state. As quid pro quo for petroleum concessions, China is now supplying Khartoum with munitions including T-59 tanks, howitzers, fighter aircraft and landmines which are invariably being used to carry out the atrocities in Darfur. And as the United Nations Security Council debates whether to impose no-fly zones, deploy peacekeeping forces to the Darfur region or even strike Sudan with global sanctions and restrict oil exports through an Oil-for-Food program, Chinese delegates protect their genocidal clients from intervention with veto power.

For these reasons, Sinopec has been among the companies singled out by nearly every investing institution which has adopted a divestment policy towards those firms complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Darfur, including universities such as Harvard and Yale, the cities of Los Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco, and eighteen states including California, New York, Texas, Florida and Illinois. Though successful with changing the policy of some firms, shareholder activism has not yet proved to be effectual with Sinopec; this can largely be explained by the fact that an overwhelming majority of 68 percent of all shares in the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation are owned by the People’s Republic of China. Moreover, the revolving-door culture between government officials and the leadership of private corporations in China’s regime of state capitalism make it very difficult for shareholders of to influence corporate policy. This does not mean that socially responsible investors must give up hope on engaging Sinopec to reform its human rights policies, but merely alternative means must be found to achieve these ends.

Thus McDonald’s enters into the equation. In June, 2006 the McDonald’s Corporation and the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation signed a 20-year “strategic alliance” agreement to construct McDonald’s Drive-Thru restaurants at some of Sinopec’s more than 30,000 gas stations throughout China. With all the projected additional sales of McDonald’s hamburgers and Sinopec gasoline, it is expected that this lucrative deal is potentially worth multiple billions of dollars for both sides (exact figures have not been released to the public). In addition, according to this contract McDonald’s is given the first right of refusal of co-developed Drive-Thru restaurants at already-existing and newly-constructed Sinopec stations; in other words, since the bulk of the business involved in this partnership will involve McDonald’s resources, employees, etc., they have the final say as to whether each and any of these Drive-Thrus are indeed constructed.

Though tracing the supply chain from McDonald’s to Sinopec to the Government of Sudan to the Janjaweed might at first seem to be too distant to identify any substantive culpability, one does not have to use tortuous logic to see that the more hamburgers McDonald’s sells at its new Chinese Drive Thrus, the more revenue the Sudanese government accumulates through its exports through Sinopec. Indeed, by intertwining its business operations so deeply with Sinopec, the McDonald’s Corporation must assume the political risks that come with having a controversial business partner.

Hence McDonald’s could possibly serve as the “soft underbelly” of the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation as well as Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s regime in Khartoum, that being if Darfur activists could adopt a strategy of engagement with the McDonald’s Corporation to similarly engage Sinopec. The appeal of using McDonald’s as a vehicle to reforming Sinopec instead of going through Sinopec is that whereas the Chinese oil conglomerate is virtually impenetrable to shareholder activism, McDonald’s is a relatively accessible public corporation. Effecting change with the practices of the McDonald’s Corporation is by comparison much easier. As it is a fully public company with shares owned by such a plethora of diverse investors, no single shareholder or clique of shareholders has the overwhelming power to quash reform. Moreover, the management of McDonald’s has a history of responding to shareholders’ concerns, having ceased the use of polystyrene packaging, asked their major United States supplier of potatoes to stop using genetically-engineered crops, and banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, among other things, as a result of shareholder pressure. Given this track record, there is no reason to think that McDonald’s would be unwilling to adopt some modest measures which would require no change to their production process.

Furthermore, shareholder activists often have had greater successes effecting change in the policies of companies that sell widely-recognized consumer goods in their own markets than those of companies which provide industrial goods and services overseas, because the negative publicity which is accrued by the former can actually have a significant effect on revenues. Sinopec does not sell gasoline in the United States, so they naturally have less reason to be concerned with their image in an irrelevant market. Though McDonald’s, on the other hand, has everything to lose if its image is tarnished in the eyes of American consumers. If anything, there is good reason to believe that since all of the corporate sponsors of the 2008 Beijing Games are already coming under fire for underwriting the “Genocide Olympics”, McDonald’s management could gain much positive PR as a result of distancing itself from Khartoum.

For the McDonald’s Corporation to take action against the Darfur genocide requires neither the 2006 contract with the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation to be rescinded, nor that any fewer Drive-Thrus must be built. Indeed, corporate engagement does not necessarily entail any losses in productivity. All that McDonald’s needs to do is to vocally express its ethical concerns about Sinopec’s business activities in Sudan and to request that they do any of the following; cease their co-ventures with Sudapet (which as a Sudanese corporation puts McDonald’s in a questionable position of violating the spirit of United States sanctions), reduce their oil extraction activities in Sudan so as to reduce Sudanese government revenue (which is all but unthinkable as Chinese energy demands continue to grow), offset the catastrophic conditions in Darfur by funding or conducting some sort of humanitarian relief program, and what is most important: urge the government of Sudan to halt their campaign of ethnic cleansing. McDonald’s could even take an especially strong stand and freeze construction of new Drive-Thru restaurants until either Sinopec has demonstrated that they have taken constructive steps to engage the Sudanese government or the Darfur genocide has ceased.

No matter how modest McDonald’s measures may be, any action at all that they take could potentially effect change in Sinopec’s policies. In the best-case scenario, the Ralph Alvarez and Wang Tianpu, the respective Presidents of the McDonald’s and China Petroleum and Chemical Corporations, might simultaneously negotiate a plan to engage the Sudanese government as President George W. Bush and Chinese Premier Hu Jintao agree to a join front on diplomacy towards Khartoum. Then the political and economic emissaries of American and Chinese might would have to communicate to the genocidal regime that their patronage is put into a precarious position so long as they are engaged in the systematic annihilation of their own subjects. Of course, for the McDonald’s Corporation to take a stand on Darfur would not necessarily translate into substantive progress on the ground – even if their position is identical to that of the current administration. But as there are no foreseeable costs, there is no economic reason as to why McDonald’s should stand silently as innocent people needlessly perish.