Can Mali be Weaned Off Aid?

Once again, British journalists are kicking their American counterparts' collective bottoms when it comes to asking the tough questions on aid and development. Jonathan Glennie of The Guardian broaches the 9,000 pink sogoba in the room in this refreshingly candid look at why practical solutions to aid dependency might exist, they nevertheless remain politically impossible in one of West Africa's rare democracies.

Operation Sphincter Plug

If you read any literature from the United Nations, World Health Organization, etc. the most widely-used statistic to measure the development of water sanitation infrastructure is the “percentage of the population with access to clean water.” My village of Sanadougou has one water pump which filters out particulate matter, guinea worm larvae, amoebas and giardia cysts – so according to UN/WHO criteria, 100 percent of Sanadougou’s 4,426 inhabitants have access to clean water. And so now everyone is parasite-free and perfectly healthy and there is nothing left for me to do here.

… Just kidding. The Japanese foreign aid agency which funded the construction of the primary school in town was certainly benevolent and forward-thinking in their construction of a water pump and filter next door. So when elementary school kids are thirsty they can drink clean water, and so can I and the few people whose houses are right next to the filtered water pump. But water is surprisingly heavy, and to draw a bucket of water every time you have to take a drink, cook a meal, clean the dishes, do laundry or water the garden, and carrying 50 pounds of water on your head for any distance is an onerous, tedious task. Asides from the cluster of families whose houses are in the direct vicinity of the school, very few people in Sanadougou ever bother to walk all the way to the pump and back.

I would say that 95 percent of the people in town drink well water. And when I say a well, I don’t mean a raised cement-brick structure with a cover and a pulley. When I talk about a well in Mali, I usually mean a hole dug in the ground with water in the bottom – slightly discolored water which looks like the pond you swam in at summer camp. Most people have their own well in the family compound, which means that it is situated on the dirt floor probably equidistant from the kitchen, the chicken coop and the donkey stable. So when your typical Malian is thirsty, the nearest woman drops a bucket into the hole in the ground, pulls it up and drinks whatever is inside. Sometimes people just crouch down in the nearest mud puddle, cup their hands and slurp up the contents.

Hence even though everyone in Sanadougou technically has “access to clean water” provided by the most state-of-the-art Japanese-built pump, if people prefer to drink from their neighborhood mud puddle, the concept of water sanitation here is really little more than a figment of the imagination of some bureaucrat sitting in an air-conditioned office in Geneva. And likewise, it is not very difficult to understand why diarrhea is after malaria the most lethal cause of infant mortality in this country. Some nights when I can smell the telltale sulfur wafting in the air, if I can gauge the direction from which the wind is blowing I can tell precisely which of my neighbors has giardia – my olfactory hypothesis at this point is approximately 70 percent of the good people of Sanadougou.

Some old, dead white guy once said that “Politics is the art of the possible.” My mission over the next two years is to design and implement an affordable and feasible plan to reduce the number of people in this village suffering from water-borne diseases, and methinks that the most doable stratagem within my reach for reducing the number of children who die from dehydration before their parents carry their tiny bodies to the clinic next door in vain is to concentrate on combating diarrhea. The threat of HIV/AIDS, cancer, tuberculosis, African river blindness, and even Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb pales in comparison to the threat to Malian well-being posed by diarrhea, and so it is this doer of evil towards which I am for now concentrating my labor. And so I call my current campaign Operation Sphincter Plug.


I am absolutely anal retentive (pun intended) about what I drink, so any drop of water which gets anywhere near my mouth – unless it was previously in a boiling teapot – comes first from the Japanese water pump, then I filter it again with my own personal two-tiered charcoal filter to be doubly protected against undesirable water-borne organisms, and then I treat it with an ample dose of chlorine bleach. If the Republic of Mali could purchase one of these babies at maybe 50 bucks a pop for each and every one of its 11 million concitoyens, then cholera, dysentery, amoebas, giardia and every single malady which leads to juvenile diarrhea and infant mortality would plummet. However, the World Bank’s inflation-paranoid lending policy has commanded that Mali keep government spending to an absolute minimum – thus no such program could conceivably exist so long as their development policy is restricted to the free market orthodoxy of the Washington Consensus.

I could also organize the farmers of Sanadougou to put aside all of the profits from their peanut and cotton harvests from now on, spend none of it on food and medicine and instead put those profits away in one of the local banks which does not give out interest, and pray that maybe 80 years from now there will be enough accumulated enough capital to construct a new water pump in the center of the village. If this plan works, then the World Bank would be very pleased as the invisible hand of capitalism develops without government interference.

Accepting the fact that people are going to drink from their wells until a more convenient source of water appears in their family courtyard, and acknowledging the cruel realities of my financial constraints, the first forward offensive of Operation Sphincter Plug to eradicate juvenile diarrhea in the village of Sanadougou has been rather modest. Since I can't buy everyone their own personal two-tier charcoal water filter, I am endeavoring to replicate the chemical reactions which occur in the bottom tier of my charcoal water filter: chlorine bleach treatment, a method which works against microscopic pathogens but not larger parasites like guinea worm. I am spending most of my time now going door to door and talking to housewives about how they can treat their well water with chlorine bleach available at any every butigi (the Malian equivalent of a bodega).

Though the concept of microscopic pathogens is not widely understood – many people believe in witches and warlocks – there is a Bambara term banakise which means “bad seeds”. Nobody seems to know what these “bad seeds” are or where they come from, but they are undoubtedly very, very bad. Every Malian I talk to accepts that banakise - whether created by nature or by black magic - can cause sickness. I am never going to be able to get people to stop believing in sorcery, but I’m not a missionary and I don’t care if people believe in ghosts or goblins or the Easter Bunny so I’m not even going to try. Without challenging people’s beliefs or skimping on the science, I explain that chlorine bleach kills the banakise. So far people seem to be receptive to the idea, and they are much more receptive to my suggestions in regards to treating water with chlorine bleach than they are to washing their hands with soap.

I am also trying to teach people how to treat their wells each month with a larger amount of bleach, and this is tremendously more difficult as it involves math. In order to treat well water with the appropriate amount of bleach, one must first ascertain the volume of water in the well. As anyone who has ever taken a junior high school geometry class could probably figure out, this entails measuring the diameter of surface, measuring the depth of the water with a rope tied to a rock, and calculating the volume of a cylinder. Using the Bambara words for “depth” – dunya - and “diameter” - fie, one calculates the volume of well water with the formula

V = d x [π ( f2 / 4)].

Some people in town can understand this concept very well; i.e. people who use math on an everyday basis such as the math teacher, the doctor, carpenters. But the majority of people in Mali are illiterate. I don’t mean illiterate as in people who get their news from the graphs in USA Today – I mean illiterate illiterate, as in people who sign their name with an “X” - if they even know how to hold a pencil. Though the schools in Sanadougou are free of charge, many people simply don’t go because their family needs them to herd cattle and till the peanut fields, and therefore illiteracy is simply a fact of life. In a society where the ability to read and do math beyond simple arithmetic is quite rare, to many people the expression: V = d x [π ( f2 / 4)] is absolute gobbledygook. And so I am engaged in the tedious process of doing the calculations for every family's well and writing a table so all that they have to do is measure the depth of the well water.

That's not all. If you think that it might only be difficult to explain the concept of measuring volume in cubic meters, try explaining the concept of what a meter is. Few people besides carpenters even have any means to make a precise measurement - a peanut farmer who makes the equivalent of 400 dollars a year has little reason to invest in a meter stick. So for many families, I have actually made them meter sticks by simply taking a flat board or pole and copying the hashmarks on my own.

At this rate, I will have explained the treatment of well water with chlorine bleach to every household in Sanadougou in one year; if everyone to whom I teach this practical water sanitation method actually employs it, maybe - just maybe - the number of kids in this village who die from diarrhea-induced dehydration will decrease. Now if only I could convince everyone to wash their hands with soap...

Brokering Peace in Sri Lanka

(October 2005)

In August 2005, Foreign Minister Lakshmin Kadirgaman was shot in his swimming pool by snipers located in a vacant house next door. His government reasonably suspects the assassins to be members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a rebel group fighting for the independence of the ethnic Tamil minority. Though the type of gun used in the killing was one frequently used by the LTTE, authorities have yet to identify his killers, and thus a firm connection between the murder and the rebel group remains elusive.

Kadirgaman’s assassination took place while I traveled in Sri Lanka as a volunteer with the Tsunami Relief Project, and the streets and airwaves of the entire nation were immediately awash in hagiographical tributes to their revered statesman. Because he was an ethnic Tamil working in a government accused of anti-Tamil prejudice, Kadirgaman carried an aura of dignity which transcended partisanship. He had actively worked to attain international aid for the Sri Lankan civil war from nations around the world, particularly Norway (which is currently facilitating negotiations with the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE rebels) and the United States (which has given billions of dollars in military aid as part of the Global War on Terrorism). Kadirgaman was a great individual, and so as to further his legacy, I spread the story of his country’s plight.

There are two main ethnic-religious groups in Sri Lanka: the predominantly Buddhist Sinhalese, who make up approximately 74% of this country of 19 million, and who live in the developed South; and the predominantly Hindu Tamils, who make up another 18% of the country and live mostly along the Eastern seaboard and in the Northern jungles. Both groups were treated fairly equitably while under the colonial rule of the British viceroyalty, but when the country became the independent republic of Ceylon in 1948, the Sinhalese imposed a barefaced tyranny of the majority. The country now has a vibrant spoils system in which Sinhalese government officials give most public sector jobs to their lighter-skinned brethren, an unofficial policy which has created an obvious socioeconomic disparity in many communities – communities where the steadiest paycheck comes from the police station. Aspiring Sri Lankan politicians have historically made demagogic appeals to the Sinhalese people’s chauvinistic anxieties against the Tamils, and have banned the Tamil language in public schools, universities, and government offices.

This flagrant bias could even be seen in the government’s actions in response to last December’s tsunami; state-financed refugee camps were quickly constructed in Sinhalese South. In the Tamil East, the Kumaratunge administration handed over lands which used to be home to poor fishing villages to private tourism developers, displacing hundreds of thousands from the mostly darker-skinned underclass inland. And now, nine months afterwards, the Sri Lankan government had still done almost nothing to rebuild Tamil communities hit by the tsunami - almost all relief projects there were sponsored by either private charities or foreigners.

The straw that broke the camel’s back and first ignited the Tamil revolt, however, came in 1983 when members of the notoriously corrupt police forces organized violent riots against the Tamil minority in the capitol city of Colombo. Immediately, Tamils across the island nation went to the streets calling for freedom from violent discrimination, and radicals led by current insurgent leader Colonel Villupillai Prabakharan called for an independent Tamil homeland in the North. The sensitivity of the Tamil minority were no stranger to us Tsunami Relief Project volunteers; while we were working in the mixed-ethnicity city of Batticaloa, riots had broken out along the Jaffna peninsula after a Sri Lankan military officer’s rifle discharged at a barbershop and killed his Tamil barber. News of the outrage quickly spread to the Tamils of Batticaloa and violent demonstrations ensued.

For 22 years the LTTE has waged a guerilla war against the Sri Lankan government, and ruthless acts of terrorism are among their favorite tactics; assassination is in fact their preferred method of changing administrations. So as to expel the Indian peacekeeping force from the Tamil regions, Liberation Tigers killed Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and in 1993 the insurgent group assassinated Sri Lankan president Rasinghe Premadasa. Civilians targets have also been hit, such as the Temple of the Tooth which houses what is supposedly a mandible from the jaw of Buddha; this act, if it had successfully destroyed the relic, would have had enormous symbolic consequence, since Sri Lankan regimes since antiquity have carefully guarded the tooth as a source of divine legitimacy.

Nevertheless, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are more than just a motley gang of thugs and killers. The LTTE is less like Al Qaeda and more comparable to Hezbollah; they finance their militant activities mostly through taxes from the Tamil population and actually operate what can be called a weakly-functioning civil administration in the territory they control. That is why, though the LTTE is undeniably a terrorist organization and classified as such by the US State Department, it is difficult to lump them into the same category as the religious fundamentalist terrorists on which our FBI, CIA and military have squared their sights.

The LTTE is nonetheless a fringe group primarily limited to the despised and impoverished caste of Untouchables, a group so radical that they impede economic progress so as to maintain the suffering of their constituents, which is then used as a rallying cry for their cause. They are so lacking in willing recruits that they resort to abducting fourteen-year-olds to use as child soldiers. The vast majority of Sri Lankans, Sinhalese and Tamils alike, are weary of this war, which has afflicted thousands of families and costs $700 million a year, out of an annual federal budget of only $4.2 billion. This spending has deprived the economy of funds sorely needed to invest in basic infrastructure; as I was walking along a path of sand and rocks in the war-torn town of Batticaloa, my guide remarked to me, “This is a road. It will never be paved until our civil war ends.”

The truth is that Sri Lanka has so much potential for development and growth that were it not for the Liberation Tigers, it could have possibly been one of the Asian Tigers like nearby India. But such a long-lasting civil war and climate of political instability have frightened off the kind of foreign investors that could create new industries and Western tourists who might otherwise be spending their money there. Peace could very well transform the culture of entrenched poverty which is all-too-familiar for millions.

Since the island’s people so fervently desire peace, in 2001 Lakshmin Kadirgaman and the LTTE rebel leaders settled a cease-fire in what is known as the P-TOMS agreement (“Cease-fire” is an extremely relative term, as shots are routinely exchanged in Batticaloa and kill about one person per day). And while the Norwegian government has since taken the mantle of the international community in an attempt to negotiate a permanent peace treaty, it now seems more elusive without the diplomatic skills of the late Foreign Minister. Nevertheless, if peace is ever to be achieved it will be either through granting the Tamils complete independence or at least a significant degree of autonomy in a federalist scheme. The latter seems much more likely, as neighboring India does not want to kindle the flame of sovereignty among its own Tamil population, and Sinhalese opinion is adamantly against granting independence to a group whom, though they have historically been on the receiving end of Sinhalese oppression, they see as their fellow countrymen.

The world power which could do the most to end the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka – the United States of America – is painfully uninvolved in the peace process. The only evidence of our country’s involvement I found while taking a break from clearing rubble at a beachfront YMCA now used as a base by Sri Lankan soldiers. I went to hang out with the machine gun-wielding platoon that was napping and playing poker, and the commanding officer proudly showed me their dog’s new puppies in his office. There I caught a newspaper on his desk blaring: “US Ambassador Pledges More Military Aid to Combat Terrorism”.

Simply put, giving block grants of military aid to the Sri Lankan government without any further engagement is only slightly better than doing nothing at all, and does little to further our campaign to weaken organized terrorist groups. The amount of change that we can effect by simply sending an ambassador to the peace negotiations, or by commissioning Condoleeza Rice to condemn the LTTE’s use of child soldiers at a press conference, would be incredible for these people. Though the prospects seems bleak when our current administration is so preoccupied with its own ethnic conflicts in a much more strategically important region of the world.

Even so, our country has other tools with which we can attain a lasting peace in Sri Lanka, namely our unrivaled economic power. The deeply-indebted government is wholly dependent on loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which in turn are effectively run by the United States. At the time being we are using this influence over Sri Lanka to make it privatize its banks, deregulate its industries, and institute other policies consistent with orthodox free market ideology – policies which, by the way, led to such a dramatic decrease in the job security of Sinhalese public employees that they vented their rage at the Tamils as scapegoats in the riots of 1983 which precipitated the civil war. But while we are using our influence to make the country more attractive to foreign entrepreneurs, we can also nudge the Sri Lankan economy in a way that services their own desperate needs.

According to the Four Noble Truths adhered to by Sri Lanka’s Buddhist majority, all of life is suffering, suffering has a cause, suffering can be ended, and suffering can only be ended by eliminating its cause. The radicalism which fuels the LTTE rebels is a result of an impoverished population – a population that is fairly cognizant of the ethnic discrimination which has caused them such hardships. We as Americans are in a position to at least dull the edges of this radicalism. While Paul Wolfowitz is privatizing and deregulating the Sri Lankan economy at the head of the World Bank, he can also make loans to the government contingent on their being spent more proportionally among the Sinhalese and Tamil populations, or he could he could push for fair distribution of tsunami relief funds and fair hiring practices. And if he wanted to be truly meddling, Wolfowitz could even encourage the Sri Lankan government to make Tamil another official language.

Any of these options are more than feasible and would not require a cent of American tax dollars. Once the Sri Lankan civil war ends, we too can garner a peace dividend by saving money on military aid and gaining a newly dynamic trading partner. We would also gain the goodwill of a small but grateful nation, a commodity for which our country is in desperate need.