The new 'humanitarian' interventions (2003)

In the debate leading up to the American war on Iraq, one of the fears of the anti-war movement was that US, Britain and other powers would use success in Iraq as an means to launch a series of further wars. Supporters of the war insisted the opposite, that American power would be used for one specific cause, to remove one tyrant (Saddam) or to defend one group of oppressed (the Shias or the Kurds).

In the four months since the war ended, a new series of occupations have indeed begun. Western forces have intervened in Liberia, the Congo and the Solomon Islands. Meanwhile further occupations seem planned in Zimbabwe and North Korea. What are the common patterns of these occupations, and what can activists do to halt them?

The Congo is a case in point. In July this year, French and British troops were sent to Bunia in the north east corner of the country to police a cease-fire between different groups of ethnic combatants. Over the past seven years, an extraordinary number of people have died in this war - common estimates are of between three and five million.

The background to the war lies in the forty-year rule of Africa’s most infamous tyrant, General Mobutu. Appointed by American and Belgian agents to bloc the existing, democratically-elected President, Patrice Lumumba, Mobutu presided over decades of corruption. Oppositionists were murdered, while Mobutu acquired a huge fortune. Palaces were built for the ruling family, while every week Mobutu insisted on flying out his own personal hair stylist from Manhattan.

As Mobutu's regime began to fall apart, a number of bordering countries began to take an interest in the vast potential wealth of the Congo. Zimbabwe, Angola, Rwanda and Uganda all sent troops to support various local proxies. The most significant intervention was the one pushed by Rwanda and Uganda.

With their backing, a former leftist guerilla Laurent Kabila was able to capture state power. Kabila briefly enjoyed popular support, and appointed a number of prominent democrats to positions of authority.  Within months, however, his insurrection tapered out - to be replaced by a more familiar style of family and ethnic privilege. Kabila then turned on his own former supporters, including the Rwandan armies, sparking in this way a second wave of fighting, which continues.

The war in the Congo is usually presented in the west as a uniquely barbarous and African affair. Yet all through the past period, different blocs of Western interests have sought to prosper from the fighting. Such public quoted companies as American Mineral Fields, Anglo-American, Georges Forrest International and Rio Tinto all have interests in the Congo. France provided mercenaries for Mobutu, while America endorsed Kabila’s war.

The result of the fighting has been the impoverishment of the local people. Companies which once employed tens of thousands have typically retained just a tenth of their former workplace. The informal economy has grown, while the number of people receiving any sort of salary has fallen. An average workers’ salary can feed one man for a week - but the typical worker must use to house and feed a family for a month. Those receiving salaries, meanwhile, are a small minority.

The population of the Congo is just over fifty million.  The state receives less than 250 million dollars in tax revenue per year.

Dibwe dia Mwembu is a historian of work at the national university. His life has been dedicated to uncovering  the stories of the copper miners of the South. ‘When colonialism began’, he reports, ‘the struggle was to impose the discipline of the clock. But no-one works like that any more. It is the discipline of hunger, the need to find food.’

You would think that the bloody history of imperialism would arm the local population against the new intervention. But there have been few signs yet of protests or the French and British troops. Local opinion is more mixed. Some even argue that colonialism is needed.

Ferouzi is a geologist working in Lubumbashi. He distinguishes between the colonialism of Belgium (which was disastrous) and that of other countries (which might yet work out for the good).  ‘Belgium was the very worst colonial power. France was never so bad, nor was Britain. Millions of my people died in the decades of colonialism. And in return, what did we receive’ At least in Zimbabwe, thanks to England, or Senegal, thanks to France, the people have jobs and roads.’

The situation in Bunia, then, can be compared to a giant mafia protection racket: first colonialism moves in by proxy to destroy as much as it can of the social order, then the colonists return in person, insisting that only they can restore order.  For a brief time and hesitantly people go along with it. Desperate for change, they see no other option.

The crisis in the Solomon Islands, meanwhile, began with the failure of the Asian Tigers in 1997-8. Recession destabilised the entire Pacific region. The fruits of the crisis have included the war in East Timor and the terrorist actions in Indonesia and the Philippines. The economy of the Solomon islands has shrunk by around a half in the past six years.

The population of the Islands is about half a million. The most important industries are mining and timber. There have also been coconut plantations. Yet as all these industries went into free-fall, so unemployment has soared and social tensions with it. Factions of ethnic militias have formed, basing themselves on Malaitan or Guadalcanal ethnicity.

Small armies have been able to impose terror on local populations, extorting businesses, forcing curfews at night. In 2000, the fighting between different groups came to a head. Malaitan rebels attempted a coup - which failed - and unarmed Australian troops were sent to broker a ceasefire. Since then, the fighting has tended to diminish.

The Australian government argues that it has a continuing obligation to intervene in the Solomons to stop ‘terrorism’. Apparently this Christian country is a potential source of Islamic fundamentalism! More plausible is the argument that Australia’s long-term economic interests, above all the security of her shipping fleet, demands action.

Dr Kabini Sanga is Solomon Islands academic living in New Zealand. ‘Over a number of years’, he writes, ‘thousands of Malaitans were working and living in different Islands in the Solomons. That explains some of the problems were are having now.’

‘Thousands of Malaitans have also settled on lands around the capital, Honiara, on Guadalcanal. Anger by young Guadalcanal men has been fueled by seeing their land being taken by others. In Honiara, hundreds of young unemployed people (we call them lius) roam the streets daily. These are the victims of modernisation and development.’

Sanga criticises the sending of the Australian troops. ‘An armed intervention towards maintaining the situation as it has been is not likely to solve the problem. That’s why I am opposed to the intervention.’

The Australian occupation is an open exercise in neo-liberalism. As well as 1500 soldiers, Australia is also sending civil servants and Treasury advisers to take over the running of the local economy. Meanwhile, Canberra’s eyes are settling on Papua New Guinea, as a plausible next step in the creation of an Australian pacific empire.

The people of Australia and New Zealand are repeatedly told that the troops are only being sent because local forces asked them. The current Prime Minister of the Solomons, Sir Allan Kemakeza, has indeed welcomed the occupation. But his track record hardly inspires confidence. Kemakeza was sacked while he was deputy prime minister after receiving large cash payments from Taiwanese businessmen.

Stuart is a socialist active in neighbouring Papua New Guinea. He acknowledges that there is some local backing for the Australian troops. ‘Of course we do not agree with the Australian recolonialisation of the country but it has been so mismanaged that most people would like the infrastructure to be rebuilt by the Australians.’

‘The village medical centres have no medicines and the teachers are often paid several months late. When the Australians were in power money did get to the bush now it is only spent in Port Moresby.’

‘The violence in Solomon Islands was not that bad, it is actually a lot more dangerous in Papua New Guinea. But the Malaitan Eagle Force were an alternative power and if they got involved in a compensation argument they were heavily armed and so would always have the upper hand.’

While most people view America’s war in Iraq as a self-evident failure, it feels as if governments around the world have drawn the opposite lesson. Listen to the public pronouncement of Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, John Howard and Tony Blair, and they seem to think the war lasted no more than fifteen seconds. It began with the images of the toppling of Saddam’s statue and the crowds cheering.  It ended moments afterwards.

The intervening powers from that war (if not yet America itself) feel confident that the war 'worked' and that the time is ripe for further interventions.

One common feature of many of these conflicts has been the sheer economic deprivation of those who have experienced them. Both in the Congo and the Solomons per capita income stands at less than two dollars per person per day.

Travel to the Congo today, and you find that the giant copper works that sustained Mobutu’s rule are barely working. The same is true in the Solomons, where the gold mines have been quiet for years.

This wave of occupation is not capitalism riding in to plunder a set of rich potential rivals. Instead, it is a militarised ‘futures trade’, the expression of the unwillingness of imperialists to leave a single territory outside their system of regional blocs and alliances.

In both countries, the justifications given for war have been humanitarian. The English-run Protestant churches have called for military action in the Congo, while in preparing for the Solomons, the Australian state has been able to fall back on the enthusiastic backing of Labour and even the Greens, whose most radical step has been to call for a future programme of ‘bottom-up aid’ to accompany the Australian take-over of the Solomons economy.

A further common feature of the interventions in both regions has been the initial support of vocal minorities of local people. From the perspective of socialists living in Britain, even such hesitant backing must seem strange - haven’t people all over the world proved their contempt for imperialism’

Part of the explanation must surely relate to the history of the third world over the past thirty years. In whole swathes of the global South, these years have seen practically no development . Far from catching up with the West, people are falling further behind.

Millions have become disenchanted with the old nationalist strategies of using the state as the means to secure economic development, but they have not been able to take up alternative, more radical tactics and have fallen back instead into pessimism.

We seem to be at the mid-point in a familiar cycle. A hundred years ago, Western armies were sent off to occupy the world. When the empires began, they were often welcomed by local people, who hoped that as capitalism spread, their lives would improve. The lived experience of empire showed that this did not happen. Millions died. Wealth was concentrated in ever fewer hands. Fifty years later, the Western armies began to return home, defeated by the impossibility of governing hostile peoples.

Anti-imperialists all over the world will hope that opposition can begin, before the routine of empire takes hold. The crisis that America is facing in Iraq suggests that such a possibility remains open.