Are we Failed States?

In a 16 November 2006 New York Times article by one Howard French, Africa is described as follows: “home to the greatest collection of failed states and underdeveloped nations anywhere”.

I take issue, with this. I take issue really bad.

Mr. French is by no means the first person to use this term, and he may be guilty of nothing more than subscribing to received wisdom. Lord knows there are enough people out there writing about failed states, and even, in the case of this website and this one, publishing a failed state index. I do not really quibble with the failed states indices as such, although one might say that such indices should examine the underlying causes of what they describe as state failure rather than dwelling on the results.

But how long does a state exist before it can be described as having failed?

Let us use the example of the United Kingdom, with particular emphasis on England. Wikipedia says England and Scotland have existed as separate kingdoms for about 1000 years, and the United Kingdom has been more or less recognised as such since 1707. The path to a united kingdom was fraught with wars, at least one of them civil, plagues, homicidal monarchs like the16th century Henry VIII, who had one of his wives (he married six women in his lifetime), Ann Boleyn, killed when he was tired of her. To obtain her execution, the King trumped up charges of, among other things, witchcraft, incest, adultery, and treason. Her head was cut off. Another of his wives, Anne of Cleves, was also beheaded because she was found to have cheated on the king.

Henry VIII formed his own church because he fell out with the Roman Catholic Church because of his attitude to his wives. This is today’s Anglican Church. If one had been living in England at the time, what with Oliver Cromwell running around assessing the wealth of monasteries so the King could seize the property of the smaller ones, and generally doing the King’s and his own dirty work before he was himself beheaded, might they not have called England a failed state?

I think they might have. But England survived her monarchs and is a democracy today. This country, a significant part of whose wealth comes from many decades of the terrible abuse and cruelty of black slavery and colonisation, was also one of the first to speak out against slavery and was a key actor in its abolition. One grows.

The United Kingdom has succeeded in bridging the huge chasm that existed between the nobility and the commoners and is still enjoying the effects of an industrial revolution whose nefarious side effects are depicted in Hard Times and Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. It has finally subdued rebellious parts of Ireland that the central government regarded as being part of the kingdom, but which the Northern Irish Catholics themselves defended  with their blood( and other people's blood too, it must be said), carrying on a guerrilla war for decades.

I would say that the United Kingdom is doing well. It is doing very well. It is not a failed state at all. Over a thousand years of history, it has, now that the Irish republicans have (sort of) laid down their weapons, finally formed a viable, peaceful state.

But it took a thousand years.

How long have there been African States in the modern era? About 60 years.

My second point is this: when the Romans were waxing martial and civilised all over the place, Britain was arguably less developed than many of the African nations it later colonised. And the Romans colonised large parts of Britain for about 400 years. Africa’s official colonisation lasted from 1884 after the Berlin conference to the 1970s. Let’s not talk about the unofficial colonisation, which continues. The official colonisation of Africa lasted only about 100 years.

It’s nice to put things into perspective, isn’t it?

History turns and turns. Where is the Roman Empire today? Where are the Egyptians whose civilisation fired the imaginations of generations of Europeans to the extent that people went and looted ancient tombs for objects of beauty and, in the case of at least one person, placed the mummified remains of some poor Egyptian nobleman in his living room as part of the décor? Three thousand years after their time came and went, were the Egyptians not colonised by the British, who were little more than cave dwellers when ancient Egypt was in its prime?

There is a new kind of industry developing around global issues involving third word countries: debt, development, failed states, that sort of thing. They call it aid when they’re lying to themselves and to us, but you and I know what it is, don’t we? It is the rope around our necks.

But if they want to do business their way, fine. If they want to lie, cheat, steal, cajole and kill to get what they want, what can we do about it except rant and rave as I am doing now? Very little.

They can do pretty much what they want to do with our countries because we have such abysmal leaders. Why do they have to make us feel inferior as well?

As far as statehood in the current era is concerned, we are mere babes. Do you tell a babe in arms that its life is over because it has colic?

There is an expression in English: “as far away as Timbuktu”. Do you know why? People who are interested can find many online resources that should help them realise that we are not “failed states”. Others who have a bit of money to spend and like to read about African history can go here. Someone’s published a book about when Black people were respected.

We should stop calling babies bad names because we cannot give them the time and freedom to grow.

Comments

[Historian]

Some interesting stuff on Egypt and Europe I scavenged. Many good sources about some European cannibalistic practices.

“EATING MUMMY”
In the tombs, not only have the faces of many wall images been altered or destroyed, but the crimes against African mummies are almost beyond description. There is a tradition dating back to at least 1000 A.D. in which Arabs and later Europeans engaged in the practice of “eating mummy.” This practice has been written about by a number of authors, and it was widespread in modern Egypt and Western Europe. It consisted of countless ancient African mummies being burned, ground up, and made into a kind of powder in order to be eaten. This incredible act of cannibalism was considered an effective medical practice and folk remedy. The belief became widely prevalent that cures could be obtained by eating ground-up preserved bodies. “Eating mummy” was considered effective in treating contusions, coughs, epilepsy, migraines, ulcers, cases of poison, and as a general panacea.

Mummies or fragments of mummies were taken from their tombs and sent to Cairo and Alexandria, where merchants sent the ground-up parts all over Western Europe. In the European Middle Ages and Renaissance mummy trafficking was widespread. Egyptian mummies were so sought after that the chaplain to Queen Catherine de Medici of France made a special trip to Egypt in 1549 and, together with some physicians from Italy, broke into a number of tombs around Sakkara in a quest for mummies to use in various medicines. Catherine’s father-in-law, King Francis I of France, also carried ground-up mummy in a pouch around his waist at all times in case of an emergency.

The mummy madness was such that if a genuine ancient Egyptian mummy was not available, local Arabs would use the corpses of executed criminals or those who had died from disease. They used these modern substitutes to meet the high demand for mummy powder, despite the protest against this barbaric practice by some physicians, among them the French surgeon Ambroise Paré, who stated, “It causes great pain in their stomachs, gives them evil smelling breath and brings about serious vomiting.”

“Eating Mummy” had a long and respectable tradition as a medicinal remedy. This uncivilized European and Arab tradition of eating mummified human flesh was part of a flourishing trade and thus did not die out until the 19th century! It is impossible to calculate the many thousands of African mummies that ended up in the stomachs of Europeans and Arabs."

And if you think that Mr. Ampim is alone in taking the skeleton out of the closet, then consider yet other accounts:

“The origin of the term 'mummy' comes to us from medieval medical practice. You will find it strange. Mummy comes from the Persian word mummeia. It means 'pitch' or 'asphalt,' which was naturally occurring crude oil that oozed to the surface. Mummeia was a prized medicine in Europe, but was in limited supply.

In time, clever business entrepreneur took resin from mummies and sold it as mummeia. It wasn't long until entire mummies, including dried bones and flesh were ground up and peddled it as medicine also. Soon the term mummy was extended to the lot. Would you try it yourself?

If you find all of this bizarre, there is more to be told. The export of mummies became big business in the fifteenth century with their export for medicinal purposes. More were taken for European museum collections. Many ended up in private collections or the dusty basements of universities. In the nineteenth century, Canadian paper manufacturers imported mummies to use the linen wrappings to make high quality rag paper; the fate of the bodies is not known. Mark Twain rreported the use of mummies for fuel in the steam engines of the Egyptian railways.” - University of Illinois, Chicago.

“Sometimes collectors would buy only limbs or other mummified spare parts. These are doubly suspect for the trade in separate heads and limbs has an even older origin. Eating the flesh of mummies was a common 16th century practice in Europe. People believed that, because mummies contained a black tar called bitumen with healing properties, a powder made from the ground up bodies would cure illnesses…although it made people sick, a roaring trade in powdered mummia grew, supplied from body parts and tissue shipped in bulk from Egypt. Very soon, the demand outstripped the supply and in the 16th century a French physician undertook a study of this trade. He found that they were burying bodies of convicted criminals in the sand—making mummies for their supposed medicinal value.” - askwhy.uk

[Ma Mary]

Interview of Noam Chomsky on "FAILED STATES"

Like you, he is so good at turning these buzzwords on their heads.

[Rahul Sinha]

There is, of course, another perspective.

While the Britons were cavemen, other than the empires of West Africa so too were the Africans.

When the Britons were slaughtering each other in petty wars (or dying in foreign ones), it's not like the tribes of Southern Africa were at peace.

When the Europeans first came to Sub-Saharan Africa, they did not find enlightened peaceful civilisations that had turned their efforts towards self-improvement. Rather, they found communities mired in ignorance who were happy to sell members of the next town over into slavery in exchange for some guns.

Colonisation did not help anything. It certainly harmed the societies it affected. We should not, however, make the mistake of assuming all of the ills of Africa are a result of colonisation (even if many/most are).

Ultimately assigning blame serves only one productive purpose: to ascertain causes of a problem so as to be able to more accurately and efficaciously devise a solution. Colonisation left certain emotional and cultural scars, which are problems that are hard, if not impossible, to deal with in a public policy setting, as well as some economic/educational/institutional problems, which can be dealt with.

Many problems that fall under the public policy domain are not, however, directly attributable to colonisation. The severe paucity of education, the extreme misogyny of masculine culture in most parts of Africa, the communal ties that trump law, order and even basic moral intuitions, are all problems that predate the colonial experience.

Here we get to this nomenclature issue; are African countries (in the main) failed states? If the question is viewed through the lens of Ms. Ekosso's article, the only conclusion I can draw is yes, they are, just as the UK has been, from time to time. No one would posit that the Hundred Years' War was any great credit to the British, and certainly during that period (and after, for some time) Britain was seen as a poor backwater full of militaristic boors. Had their contemporaries had the expression, perhaps they would have referred to the UK as a failed state during the period of the War(s) of the Roses, the purges of Mary Tudor, and even the conflicts over James, the Glorious Revolution and the rise of Cromwell.

What does this mean? Obviously despite being a failed state, the UK turned the corner and prospered. No one suggests that Africa as a whole (or any given country within) will never prosper, but merely that its leaders and citizens are not facing up to the scope of the task ahead, but rather whittling away their energies on pointless internal strife and incoherent resentment of the First World.

Are the African nations indeed "babies"? Perhaps they are young as countries, but they are just as old as any culturally, and yet we see a deficit in respect for the rule of law, a deficit in tolerance and acceptance of differences, and frankly a deficit in the respect for science and rationalism. India has a similar history to Africa, in its previously fractured state, its long period of exploitative colonisation. It has managed to progress since its own independence. What is holding Africa back that did not, at one time, apply to India?

Perhaps that question is unimportant; the comparison cannot factor out culture, or even the personality of the leaders in question.

Regardless, humility is the first step towards progress; right now Africa is begging for aid to use in reconstruction and development, and genocide rages in the Sudan. Africa needs help from the outside, and it behooves those who beg for aid to refrain from excoriating those they hope will save them.

[Vito]

Failed states!By whose standards if i may ask?I think that's the question Professor Chomsky's book raises.I think african "leaders" are comparable to their present American colleague but for lack of a nuclear deterrent.With it, India suddenly became"developed".Soon North korea will be.

[Historian]

My dear Mahindi Brother Rahul p-lease. OK everybody has had their share of savagery, but do not ask us to shut up. They have trumpeted ours all over the place. They too can shut up and listen too. We can always argue about the details about the West African empires and so on, but we are guests here so I shall not quibble.

India lifted itself by the end of the 20th century because it was left pretty much alone. The same can be said about China. It is not because of "pity" from outsiders or "gratitude" or "humility" by outsiders. They were left alone possibly because they had big nasty armies and became just too powerful to be somebody's meal.

What Europe wants Europe gets, if you are weak and divided. Nobody with any means is interested in ending the Arab nonsense in Sudan. Eventually Africa itself will have to figure out how to terminate the Arab onslaught.

Bad governance in Africa allows Europe to get what it wants to get out of Africa at minimum cost to itself. France for example installs a puppet, then arms it to beat down the good leadership. Just in the past month, France sent a force to prop up a puppet regime that had been displaced in Central African Republic. They did the same in Congo (Brazzaville) and Rwanda and Zaire and Cameroon and Gabon etc in the last 4 decades. Rwanda is the first African country to throw out bad Europeans- France who want to continue this kind of exploitation and control and are impeding smooth flow of commerce in Africa.

Wolfowitz, who has been demonized in certain circles in the US as a neocon, ascended to chief executive of the World Bank. He sought to rationalize some of the practices of that institution that made it a mechanism for entrenching control in corrupt, Europe-guided leadership an through debt. UK and France notably fought his reforms. We need to be left alone. Eventually, we settle and become like Ghana (doing OK) or Botswana (doing OK too). We do not need pity. We need trade like everyone else. It is trade, commerce that is lifting India, not anybody's goddamn pity. Screw that, Rahul.

One more thing. Would you please stop using the word "tribe". It is a fig leaf for disdain.

[Vito]

And "the bomb" also, for india;Historian.Thanks

[Bdub]

Nice..very nice discussion. To anyone else having the misconception that African civilization was confined to West Africa, it only takes one exception to disprove a theory. But in Africa's case civilazation was not an exeception, so here we will cite four kingdoms outside of West Africa and that existed during or near the arrival of Europe's first settlers:
1.Aksum- Absynnia (North East Arica)
2. Bakongo Kingdom(Central Africa)
3. Buganda (East Africa)
4. Great Zimbabwe ( Southern Africa)

Those are just a few, but there are others.

Is Howard French or anyone else that says Africa is a collection of failed states saying that the African continent has 54 separate failures? And are there any nations in the world today which are faultless? Each one has it's own positives and negatives. Now as for a previous poster's comments on blame-I agree, placing blame on others will not help. So far, that is where the similiarities in viewpoints end.

It saddens me to see someone espouse partial truths. Such as the comment that Europeans found Africans in an ignorant state upon fdirst arrival. However, I am aware that in most cases a person who says such things already has their mind made up and that if presented with facts this type of person might take them out of context just to prove their prior opinions. So this is for those of you who have not yet had the chance to look into Africa's past and present.

Here are a few modern day African nations, in no particular order, are they failed states?
1. Morroco
2. Tunisia
3. Madagascar
4. Mauritius
5. Senegal
6. Namibia
7. Botswana
8. Nigeria
9. Ghana
10. Uganda
11. Kenya
12. Tanzania
13. Burkina Faso
14. South Africa
15. Egypt
16. Benin
17. Seychelles
18. Gabon
19. Sao Tome
20. Equitorial Guinea

Do I need to continue? I think not. As for the statement about Africa's masculine issues, what if one were to take a few headlines from-lets say India. Let's take Bride burnings for example, if it was said that this represents misogyny of masculine culture on the part of the entire Indian culture, as vast as it is, would that be fair? Of course not!

Finally, as for the lack of science coming out of Africa- what about F.K. Allotey (I guess since he is only one of the top physicists in the world he would not count, right?) What about Cheikh anta Diop is he not one of the world's preiminent social scientists? What about Florence Wambugu who has recently developed a new strain of the sweet potato? I could continue but if by now you are not prepared to redo your homework then you never will be, will you? The point is that before you make a broad statement like "Africa is A, B, or C or that or Africa doesnt have X,Y, Z and everyone one else does" be prepared to prove that there are no exceptions to your statement. Otherwise you are only generalizing. Oh, before I forget I noticed that another poster referenced the "trade and not aid" campaign. Excellent work-you are correct this has so done much to revitalize different parts of the African continent.

[dipita]

The western concept of "Failed States" is part of the a continuation of the European master discourse "knowing" which along with political and economic control continues to form the bases of western imperial dominance . This post-clonial praxis is a calculated formulation by which westerners canjole the "others who inhabit metropolitan the periphery to "know" themselves - that is as subordinate to the west. The apellation " failed states" is no different from the egrigious First and Third world polarity which also underscore western conceptions of superiority. I concur with Vito's views that those countries that have somehow managed the extricate themselves from the choking vive of western hegemony have done so because they were allowed the space to do so....they have also somehow not allowed themselves to be difined by western imaginations.The present plight of most African states is inextricably wraped up in European colonial dorminance which defacto independence did not resolve. The struggle continues , and discussions like this will help formulate our own concepts of developement within the context of our reality

IMPERIAL RECKONING: Ominous pay back of
righteous pedestrians

The light of the Dogon star,
shall henceforth be hidden,
from the eagle and the toad -
contemporary archetypes of greed
and peevish jingoism.
Insults and assaults we've borne-
classic sham of benevolent effrontery;
Insidious grapes of dubious counsel we sucked-
Drunken crabs , we ride thread mills
at the bottom of statistical barrels;
head -liners of mundane banality,
in this global carnival of shame.
May the darkness that ensue,
shroud our treasure troves ,
from their marauding rakish claws.

The bluesy dirges of our soulful matriarchs,
shall shame the face of the bloated baker-
who for decades impoverished our bodies;
Our minds constipated; stone cold baguettes-
splattered with stale processed fowl innards.
May the faithful harvest moon, lead us back
to ancestral barns, where bountiful
cassava and palm oil beckon -
Jah Jah - Children to the soul fest
that nourished body and soul -
Long before monsieur Le boulangier,
washed up on these shores.

Times , they are changing; yes they are !
Greedy - 8ight; Voracious piranas of
new world order; take note !
Here, there and every where;
conscious seeds of the great MADIBA -
sentries of the ominous THIRD WAVE,
commune with global cousins of every hue-
Techno - savvy, totally plugged-in
visionaries of secular humanistic ontology,
proclaim the mandate of the RE-CONQUISTADOR;
When the hour of reckoning shall come,
the prophesies of the beatitudes shall find,
unwary Noe-imperialist barnacles -
clinging tenuously onto feudal expediencies,
treading dinosaur trails to oblivion.
May the apocalypse of righteous pedestrians,
spill the bile of the dreaded beast -
into the crystal challis' of this loathesome throng;
Libations to their techno -gods shall fizzle in hades,
conceding one last shot at redemption -
Happy clams in the righteous cauldron
of third wave pepper-soup -
thus avenging the pillage of the conquistador!

Hope Kale Ewusi

[dipita]

The western concept of "Failed States" is part of the continuation of the European master discourse of "knowing" which along with political and economic control continues to form the bases of western imperial dominance . This post-clonial praxis is a calculated formulation by which westerners canjole those "others" who inhabit the metropolitan periphery to "know" themselves - that is as subordinates to the west. The apellation " failed states" is no different from the egrigious First and Third world polarity which also underscore western conceptions of superiority. I concur with Vito's views that those countries that have somehow managed the extricate themselves from the choking vice of western hegemony have done so because they were allowed the space to do so....they have also somehow not allowed themselves to be difined by western imaginations.The present plight of most African states is inextricably wraped up in European colonial dorminance which defacto independence did not resolve. The struggle continues , and discussions like this will help us formulate our own counter-western concepts of representation,place,culture and developement utilizing our creative agencies within the context of our reality.
In the light of the foregoing I will like to share with members of this forum the following poem.

IMPERIAL RECKONING: Ominous pay back of righteous pedestrians

The light of the Dogon star,
shall henceforth be hidden,
from the eagle and the toad -
contemporary archetypes of greed
and peevish jingoism.
Insults and assaults we've borne-
classic sham of benevolent effrontery;
Insidious grapes of dubious counsel we sucked-
Drunken crabs , we ride thread mills
at the bottom of statistical barrels;
head -liners of mundane banality,
in this global carnival of shame.
May the darkness that ensue,
shroud our treasure troves ,
from their marauding rakish claws.

The bluesy dirges of our soulful matriarchs,
shall shame the face of the bloated baker-
who for decades impoverished our bodies;
Our minds constipated; stone cold baguettes-
splattered with stale processed fowl innards.
May the faithful harvest moon, lead us back
to ancestral barns, where bountiful
cassava and palm oil beckon -
Jah Jah - Children to the soul fest
that nourished body and soul -
Long before monsieur Le boulangier,
washed up on these shores.

Times , they are changing; yes they are !
Greedy - 8ight; Voracious piranas of
new world order; take note !
Here, there and every where;
conscious seeds of the great MADIBA -
sentries of the ominous THIRD WAVE,
commune with global cousins of every hue-
Techno - savvy, totally plugged-in
visionaries of secular humanistic ontology,
proclaim the mandate of the RE-CONQUISTADOR;
When the hour of reckoning shall come,
the prophesies of the beatitudes shall find,
unwary Noe-imperialist barnacles -
clinging tenuously onto feudal expediencies,
treading dinosaur trails to oblivion.
May the apocalypse of righteous pedestrians,
spill the bile of the dreaded beast -
into the crystal challis' of this loathesome throng;
Libations to their techno -gods shall fizzle in hades,
conceding one last shot at redemption -
Happy clams in the righteous cauldron
of third wave pepper-soup -
thus avenging the pillage of the conquistador!

Hope Kale Ewusi

[akebou]

Sometimes I agree with Noam Chomsky, sometimes I disagree. On his characterization of state failure (as given in his interview with Amy Sullivan referenced above) I have to disagree. Chomsky uses an uncritical examination of the theoretical concept 'failed state' to launch into his usual diatribe against U.S. foreign policy and budgetary priorities. First of all, it's intellectually dishonest to take some prima facia characteristics of a theory and apply them analogously to a difference case - for example, his logic goes: 1) Failed states have poorly functioning democracies, 2) the U.S. has a poorly functioning democracy, 3) therefore, the U.S. is a failed state. This is a classical logical fallacy. With the caveat that I have not read his book, Chomsky does not give a clear and critical definition of exactly what he means when he says 'failed state' but simply lumps it in with other concepts like 'rogue state' and then proceeds, as one expects a linguist must, to analyze 'failed state' as though it were purely an etymological phenomenon, just a set of words! It is here that Chomsky's political agenda appears to cloud his analysis of the concept 'failed state': no one confuses the United States with Sierra Leone or Congo -- except Noam Chomsky.

'Failed state' is primarily a theoretical concept, and it does not have a fixed definition. Some consider a state to fail when an armed faction can seriously contest domestic control; others impose a different kind of definition, as when a state fails to deliver the kinds of domestic services that are definitional to government (roads, water, etc.). The point is, there is no one definition for failed state, but most give the following conditions:

1) the official government cannot provide security throughout the whole of the state's territory

2) the functioning of the government and society is not characterized by the rule of law

3) the official government does not/cannot provide social services to its citizens

4) the government is unable to facilitate economic development through its lack of real authority and legitimacy.

These are theoretical points, derived from additional theoretical concepts like the 'sovereign state' and the 'international system' - they are meant, at best, to approximate reality, not describe it fully and of course, anyone can find exceptions to any theory. That does not mean that the theory is a completely useless analytic tool. It does not need to be said that the idea of a 'nation-state' derives from the centuries long process of political formation in Western Europe; but it should be noted that the idea of a 'state-nation' did not arrive in Africa until it was brought by the colonizing Europeans, who carved up, as someone noted, the continent into pieces without regard for the social realities on the ground. Hence, in Africa even more than elsewhere you have 'nations' (that is, people of the same historical and ethnic tradition) often spread across multiple 'states' (political entities characterized by fixed borders and managed by a central government). Now, perhaps over enough time, stable 'state-nations' would consolidate in Africa as they did in Europe, which was a bloody, brutal process. It's obvious that any theoretician today worth her or his salt would describe the European states in the middle ages, such as they existed, as largely failed. But what's the point of making that comparison? The European kingdoms of the middle ages are nothing like modern European states in terms of organization, relations of production, and even many social values. The modern states of Europe have far more in common with the modern states of Africa (not the least because many African states were constructed by European colonists).

The point is to get a sense of what needs to be done to allow governments in Africa to provide positive goods for their citizens. Someone said trade - trade is essential and would start a whole other discussion about how to best go about using trade for meaningful development. Another thing would be disarmament: here too the West should play a role, considering that it supplied the arms in the first place. Another thing would be political reform, to ensure that all people, from all ethnicities within a country, have an equal opportunity to participate in government and are safe from persecution for their views. Certainly in all these things, everyone must play a role. And the idea of state failure is doing that, by convincing wealthy governments that they need to invest in poor countries, even if its only for their own good.