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Fieldwork reveals: Bush administration is lying about the “war on terror” in the Sahara

Published on December 11, 2006 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, ethics, journal articles / papers, poverty, University / Academia, Us and Them

“The US is sending troops to the Sahara desert of west Africa to open what it calls a new front in the war on terror”, the Guardian reported three years ago. “The ‘official truth’ about the ‘war on terror’ on the Sahara-Sahel is a ‘lie’”, anthropologist Jeremy Keenan writes in Anthropology Today December and argues that in this situation, anthropologists have to act as independent witnesses and have to refuse collaborating with intelligence agencies and government bodies.

Keenan has been – according to himself – the sole ‘external’ or ‘foreign’ witness to a sequence of events associated with the US administration’s ‘global war on terror’ that many Tuareg believe has irreversibly transformed the central Sahara and Sahel, as well as their lives and livelihoods. Keenan has done research in the central Sahara for more then 30 years. He writes:

As a result of more or less continuous and at times microscopically detailed field research, much of which has been undertaken by and in collaboration with local Tuareg in Algeria, Niger, Mali and Libya, and with Toubou in Chad, we now know that all the incidents used to justify the launch of this new front in the ‘war on terror’ were either fiction, in that they simply did not happen, or were manufactured by US and Algerian military intelligence services.

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How and why did such a monstrous deception take place? The ‘how’ is simple. First, the Algerian and US military intelligence services channelled a stream of disinformation to an industry of ‘terrorism experts’, conservative ideologues and a compliant media, whose prevailing ‘cut and paste’ culture has made them the perfect mouthpiece for an administration that operates through the Orwellian concept of ‘reality control’ and ‘proof by reiteration’. The result is that several thousand articles have turned the great ‘lie’ into the ‘official truth’.

Second, if a story is to be fabricated, it helps if the location is far away and ‘beyond verification’. The Sahara is the perfect place – larger than the United States and effectively closed to public access.

As we know, the CIA has started sponsering anthropologists to gather sensitive information in their so-called “war on terror”.

Here, anthropologists have a key role to play, Keenan writes:

The role of the anthropologist in such situations (as in all his/her work) must be to provide field-based information that can counter the propaganda emanating from the ever growing (and now increasingly privatized) intelligence and other war agencies. At the very least, the anthropologist must be the witness, the recorder, perhaps the interpreter and, where necessary, the author of the ‘truth’.

In the present critical juncture, anthropologists have a key role to play in the ‘war on terror’: to remain located outside the corrupting sphere of intelligence agencies and government bodies and to act as independent witnesses and reporters. This requires considerable courage, not necessarily because of dangers in the field situation, but because access to the field, on which the anthropologist’s professional career often depends, is likely to be terminated.

Even more serious for anthropologists in American universities is that such actions, especially in the prevailing‘McCarthyist’ climate of the Bush-Cheney administration, may increasingly lead to self-censorship as the result of threats to employment prospects.

The risks are not so high in ‘old Europe’. But there is no certainty that similar pressures as those in the USA will not be brought to bear on anthropologists and other academics in the UK. After all, it was only in October that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s offer of £1.3 million to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)45 attempted to inveigle academics, anthropologists in particular, to help it in ‘combating terrorism by countering radicalisation’.

In this duplicitous incident, the Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA) played a key role in getting the project cancelled, at least for the time being. With such potential threats to anthropologists greater now than at any time in the past, it is imperative that our professional associations publicly recommit themselves to the protection of all anthropologists from any such pressures and threats.

The text is not available online (for subscribers only. But Keenan has written on this issue here as well:

Jeremy Keenan: Bush’s Imaginary Front in the War on Terror (AlterNet, 28.9.06)

More information:

Saharan peoples are falsely accused of terrorist acts (ESRC Science Today, June 2004)

Jason Motlagh: The Trans Sahara Counter-Terrorism Initiative: U.S. takes terror fight to Africa’s ‘Wild West’ (Global Research, San Francisco Chronicle, 30.12.05)

Anthropology Today editor Gustaaf Houtman comments:

If anthropologists, as a particularly exposed branch of academia, are to have any value at all in the ‘war on terror’, we must, to adopt a Quaker maxim coined in Nazi Germany, ‘talk truth to power’. But talking truth is clearly not enough. We must, first, be wary of ‘spin’ and find new and more appropriate ways to converse with government agencies without compromising our academic independence. And second, we must ensure we are actually heard. So let us engage the world of popular communications to our best ability on issues that matter.

UPDATE:

The dangerous militarisation of anthropology

“War on terror”: CIA sponsers anthropologists to gather sensitive information / see also debate on this on Savage Minds

Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of Their Curious Relations

Bush, “war of terror” and the erosion of free academic speech: Challenges for anthropology

USA: Censorship threatens fieldwork – A call for resistance

Two Books Explore the Sins of Anthropologists Past and Present

Embedded anthropology? Anthropologist studies Canadian soldiers in the field

“Tribal Iraq Society” – Anthropologists engaged for US war in Iraq

"The US is sending troops to the Sahara desert of west Africa to open what it calls a new front in the war on terror", the Guardian reported three years ago. "The ‘official truth’ about the ‘war on terror’ on…

Islam in Morocco: TV and Internet more important than mosques

Published on December 10, 2006 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, internet, media, religion cosmology, technology

Another example of how religious and cultural practices change: A soon to be released survey of religious practices in Morocco will show that the majority of Moroccans prefer to pray alone, and use audiovisual media and the internet for information on their religion, according to Magharebia.com:

About 65% of those interviewed pray on a regular basis and a significant portion of Moroccans practise their religion in an individual manner, rather than collectively. As for sources of religious knowledge, the survey has demonstrated the ever-growing role of satellite channels, audiovisual media in general, cassettes and the Internet. These channels have become essential sources, taking the place of traditional written sources, to the level of 85%.

The survey also picks up on the shrinking role of institutions providing religious teaching in the acquisition of religious knowledge. These institutions, such as the family, the mosque, the school, the brotherhood etc., do not play the role they used to play in giving Moroccan people a grounding in religion.

As for the status of women, the survey highlights the ever-growing role of women in the field of religion.

The survey was carried out by three Moroccan researchers — sociologist Mohamed El Eyadi, political analyst Mohamed Tozy and anthropologist Hassan Rachik — who were assisted by a team of field workers.

>> read the whole story in Magharebia.com

What does it mean to be Muslim in a secular society? Anthropologist thinks ahead

Islam: Embracing modernity while remaining true to their traditions and core beliefs

Book review: Mahmood Mamdani: “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim”

Islam in Europe: Mainstream society as the provider of conditions

Islam Is Gaining a Foothold in Chiapas

How Islamic cassette sermons challenge the moral and political landscape of the Middle East

Lila Abu-Lughod: It’s time to give up the Western obsession with veiled Muslim women

For free migration: Open the borders!

Published on December 4, 2006 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, Europe, migration, poverty, Us and Them

Given the continuing massive disparities in wealth between Europe and Africa, immigration is unlikely to stop anytime soon. Remittances sent by migrants are the second most important income source for many countries in the south. Border control is expensive and ineffective. So why not open the borders? Free migration for all?

In his blog On distance, Anthropologist and journalist Joshua Craze discusses some arguments for free migration – to be published in Cafe Babel.

One of the most prominent lobbies to back the idea of opening up all our frontiers is the free-market right:

Free marketeers point out that in 2005 over a third of Europe’s regions were facing a declining labour force. Immigration, they argue, fills this need, and it also fills skills shortages (in both low and high skilled jobs) that will allow our economy to grow.
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Such proposals may seem like a further extension of the dominion of the market: it would be businesses who effectively control the borders they have long since bypassed. However, in another sense such proposals are essentially a vanguard action; they preserve existing notions of citizenship, and immigration follows the model of the German guest worker, or gastarbeiter. (…) They priveledge capital’s need for labour and do not address the humanitarian problems of immigration. As Max Frisch noted of the Turkish gastarbeiter: ‘We called for a workforce, but we got humans.’

The political left forms the other part of the open borders movement:

Raffaele Marchetti argues that we shouldn’t think about open borders in terms of how it can benefit us, but in terms of the universal right to free movement. Why should Europeans be allowed to holiday wherever they want while Africans cannot even come to Europe to work?

Such a proposal has a number of humanitarian advantages. You stop people trafficking and the attendant loss of life and human rights violations, as people would be able to enter the country legitimately. Then there is the massive financial cost of maintaining Fortress Europe which would be saved. A recent report by the International Organisation of Migration shows that five OECD countries spent two-thirds as much on border controls as they did in official development assistance. Removing this boundaries would also mean removing the massive humane cost of people trying to scale the wall and cross the sea to get to Europe.

>> read the whole text by Joshua Craze

Strangely enough, I’ve written a piece about the same topic at the same time (in Norwegian), inspired by an article about a new book by political scientist Jonathon Moses (Norwegian University of Science and Technology). In International Migration: Globalization’s Last Frontier he argues for free mobility.

He adds an economic and historic perspective and shows that free migration helps fighting poverty in a much more effective way than free trade (and development aid).

On his website you can download – among others:

Exit, vote and sovereignty: migration, states and globalization
Increased mobility is shown to improve the responsiveness of governments to citizen demands. In a world characterized by relatively free mobility for other factors of production (and their owners), labor/voters appear to be handicapped by being prisoners of territory.

The Economic Costs to International Labor Restrictions: Revisiting the Empirical Discussion

Two (Short) Moral Arguments for Free Migration

For a good summary for see also Kevin H. O’Rourke (2003): The Era of Free Migration: Lessons for Today

Both Kevin H. O’Rourke and Jonathon Moses remind us of the fact that borders are a relatively new phenomenon and therefore claims for open borders are not unrealistic. According to the book Norsk innvandringshistorie (Norwegian immigration history), the Norwegian government decided in 1870 that borders are outdated, something that belong to despotic regimes.

But O’Rourke stresses in The Era of Free Migration: Lessons for Today the important role of the national state. Labour market regulation (e.g. minimum working ages, the prohibition of night work, limits on the working day or factory inspections) and social insurance (e.g. accident compensation; or unemployment, sickness or old age insurance) are neccessary, otherwise native workers’ living standards would inevitably be eroded by mass immigration (wage dumping / social dumping)

SEE ALSO:

Research: How migration fights poverty

Migration and development – a report from Tonga

Raffaele Marchetti: Migration needs global regulation based on the principles of free movement and universal justice

Liza Schuser: Keeping alive the possibility of a free migration, “open borders” policy is an investment in everyone’s future

Chukwu-Emeka Chikezie: Africans’ initiative, symbolised by diaspora remittance flows, is the key to liberation (part of a larger debate at Opendemocracy.net)

More Global Apartheid? (The South African system came to an end just as the rest of the world was reinventing it in new forms.)

Why borders don’t help – An engaged anthropology of the US-Mexican border

“Anthropologists Should Participate in the Current Immigration Debate”

See also more articles by Joshua Craze in Cafe Babel and SaudiDebate

Cameroon: "Ethnic conflicts are social conflicts"

Published on November 26, 2006 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, politics, Us and Them

According to official statistics, Cameroon’s population of about 16.5 million encompasses 350 ethnic groups. The sporadic eruption of inter-ethnic conflict in Cameroon has prompted concern about the future of this Central African country, according to IPS writer Sylvestre Tetchiada.

The first notable tensions between ethnic groups, he writes, date back to the beginning of the 1990s, also the time when single party rule came to an end in Cameroon.

However, anthropologist Charly Gabriel Mbock cautions that there is more to ethnic conflict than meets the eye. He says:

“Most of the so-called ethnic conflicts are the consequences of poorly-studied and poorly-resolved social problems. The conflicts, before they are called ethnic, are initially — and remain essentially — social.

Ethnic divisions are often exploited for political and religious gain:

“The elites of Cameroon…instigate or worsen inter-ethnic divisions for personal gain. The public powers clearly draw an advantage from the disorder provoked by the elites, to the extent that ethnic manipulation has become a business for most politicians and senior government officials.”

>> read the whole story at IPS News

>> Democratization and Ethnic Rivalries in Cameroon (Collection of papers denouncing the different faces of the political corruption of ethnicity in Cameroon, since the early hours of democracy. Examines the role played by the media in the exacerbation of ethnic rivalries; the survival of ethnic taxonomies in the post-colonial state etc)

>> News from Cameroon

Links updated 5.9.2019

Turning away from ethnicity as explanatory model

Thomas Hylland Eriksen: Ethnic identity, national identity and intergroup conflict: The significance of personal experiences

Who Are the Rioters in France? The protests can’t be explained by religion, culture or by pointing to that the rioters are immigrants

According to official statistics, Cameroon's population of about 16.5 million encompasses 350 ethnic groups. The sporadic eruption of inter-ethnic conflict in Cameroon has prompted concern about the future of this Central African country, according to IPS writer Sylvestre Tetchiada.

The first…

An exhibition and a movie: The French, colonialism and the construction of “the other”

Published on October 9, 2006 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, Europe, history, migration, Us and Them

The first temporary exhibition at Paris’s Quai Branly museum takes an ambitious look at how the West constructs its ‘other’, Mary Stevens writes in her research blog about the reconfiguration of national identity in French museums:

In the permanent exhibition it is the aesthetic qualities of the objects on display that are foregrounded; what is missing is a critical reflection on how the western aesthetic criteria which visitors are encouraged to apply have developed over time. What makes us see something as art, and why do we now judge as art objects that in the past might have been seen either as silent witnesses to social customs or indeed as curiosities? These are the questions that D’un regard l’Autre sets out to explore.

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[H]airy savages carved in wood bear witness to Renaissance man’s desire to position his superior self firmly on the side of culture against nature. However, it is interesting to be reminded that in this period real-live people from other cultures were sufficiently rare in Western Europe to command wonder and a degree of respect. A life-size portrait of an Inuit couple, painted during their visit to the Danish court in the late seventeenth century provides a subtle reminder: the names of these two travellers – Pock and Kieperoch – were carefully noted by the artist. It was only in the nineteenth century that their successors would become ‘types’, documented and classified for the new sciences of anthropology and phrenology and displayed for public instruction in the new museums.

>> read the whole review of the exhibition

See also earlier on antropologi.info: Indigenous? Non-Western? Primitive? The Paris Museum Controversy

Mary Stevens has blogged a lot about multiculturalism and nationalism in France. One of the interesting recent posts is about the integration of foreign students: What image of France is presented in the introductory courses about French society?

(…) Day 2: the gastronomic map of France (lots of camembert and choucroute – not a lot of couscous and brik) place names (all Greek, Roman, Celtic or religious), family names (every single one of them belonging to the Français de souche, whoever they might be) and – to top it all – “languages, ethnic groups and cultures”. Aside from the fact that I thought ‘ethnic’ was a taboo word in French, only regional minorities get a mention and we are told authoritatively that cultural diversity has been in decline since the Revolution, or at least until a ‘recent’ upsurge in regional movements (e.g. Coriscan, Breton, Basque).

So here we have it: ‘le mythe national’ condensed into two short days. Above all the course seeks to inculcate a closed, exclusive definition of national identity that fails to take into account any of the demographic developments of the last 200 years and indeed before.

If anyone was ever in any doubt that there is still work to be done in France in rethinking the ‘collective memory’ – or what I prefer to call the collective or social ‘imaginary’ (the latter after the philosopher Charles Taylor) – then here (with apologies for the poor quality) is the proof.

>> read the whole post: Integrating the elite: peddling national mythology

Related topics are touched in the French movie Indigènes. Mary Stevens explains:

The film tells the story of a group of North African soldiers, fighting on French soil for the liberation of France from 1943. It is explicitly geared toward the re-evaluation of national collective memory; its aim is to address the way these soldiers, who played a major role in the Liberation have been written out of (the Gaullist account) of history. And it looks set to have a major impact.

>> read the whole post: The « Indigènes » effect ?

Anthropologist Cicilie Fagerlid is back in Paris and has also seen the film:

Indigene is the shameful juridical assignation used for Muslims in French North Africa. Muslims, being indigenes and not citizens like the Christians and Jews, didn’t enjoy equal rights until 1945. It’s incredible, isn’t it, in the country priding itself with the slogan libérté, égalité, fraternité?

>> read the whole review

In the permanent exhibition…