Showing posts with label West Africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label West Africa. Show all posts

Monday, September 15, 2025

Conflict ebbs in West Africa; entrepreneurs ready to welcome tourism, spark economic development

Conflict is ebbing in West Africa, and local business are hoping to spur tourism and economic development to restore ravaged communities.

Many parts of West Africa have been difficult to reach in recent years, owing to armed conflicts and social turmoil. That means cultural treasures such as UNESCO World Heritage Site Timbuktu have been off limits, and communities that would benefit from foreign spending suffer economic paralysis or worse.

The situation is improving, if at a two-steps-forward-one-step-back pace. To navigate the changing terrain and start restoring tourism and economic opportunity, local entrepreneurs such as Mali-based Satimbe Travel are stepping up.

Ouologuem dances at the Ouidah Voodoo Festival, Benin, 2020.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

I hope to travel with Satimbe because my friend Hamadou Ouologuem is one of its founders and a tour leader extraordinaire. I am happy to give him and his partners some positive press in the interest of regional development. This is in no way a compensated promotion.

Satimbe has been in the works for many years. The project has prevailed over potentially ruinous setbacks in the pandemic, in 2020 and 2021, and in the outbreak of violence in the Central Sahel (Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger), in 2023. The latter conflict devastated communities, as rival factions—one being the Russia-based Wagner mercenary force—deployed scorched-earth tactics against civilians, inflicting crises of hunger and housing. 

The conflicts have not wholly abated, but have been scaled back to hot spots that guides can plan around so travelers avoid. 

In August, the Mali government felt comfortable enough with security in Timbuktu to return there ancient documents that were removed to the capital Bamako before al-Qaeda militants occupied the city in 2012 (PBS NewsHour). Meanwhile, in a positive development for civilian security, Wagner forces in Mali have experienced what The Sentry, a D.C.-based nonprofit and war-crime investigative organization, described in an August report as a "meltdown."

Satimbe mask
(In Museum CC0)
My two cents: attacks on civilians and resulting humanitarian crises in the Sehel would headline the world news were it not for the West's peculiar blind spot for Africa. The region needs foreign investment, and as importantly to get started, needs foreign interest and understanding. The way to help is simply to go, responsibly, all the better relying on a homegrown service provider such as Ouologuem.

Ouologuem's experience in the region is renowned; he is the on-the-ground coordinator to whom professional producers turn, especially in Mali. He worked on public broadcasting's Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; BBC One's Sahara with Michael Palin; Into the Unknown with Josh Bernstein: Lost Gold of Tumbuktu; and Digging for the Truth: Timbuktu.

A "satimbe" is a ceremonial funerary mask of the Dogon people in Mali and Burkina Faso. The mask is associated with a female figure, like in the Satimbe Travel logo, placed on top.

Satimbe Travel can arrange tours in Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, and Ghana. The company can tailor flexible itineraries for two days to two weeks, or more. The company is prepared to make arrangements for tourists, NGOs, missionaries, and corporations.

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Civil conflict in Mali devastates innocents, while indifference, deference to Russia undermine U.S. policy

U.N. peacekeepers, here a Togolese soldier near Mopti in 2018,
provided enough security for local markets to function.

MINUSMA (UN Mission in Mali) photo via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The Putin-backed Wagner Group is among the aggressors responsible for ongoing violence against civilians in Mali, and the United States is sabotaging its own future by ignoring the multiplying atrocities there. 

As the Trump Administration cozies up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, apparently to redraw the borders of Europe Munich Agreement-style, it's worth remembering who our new partner in peace is. Correspondingly, U.S. withdrawal from U.N. aid operations suggests minding what it is we're withdrawing from.

A friend in central Mali, from a village so small it's not on Google Maps, but west of Bandiagara, wrote last week pleading for support for foreign intervention there. He reported civilians murdered and displaced and villages and food stores burned in the region in recent weeks. I am not naming my friend for his security, as he remains in the area.

Mali
ECHO Base Map via GetArchive, public domain
The situation is complex, as both rebel Islamist militants and government counterinsurgent forces, the latter partnered with private contractors such as "Africa Corps" né Wagner, are at war, de facto, with both sides ruthlessly victimizing civilians caught in the middle.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) confirmed in a December report:

The JNIM [al-Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen (Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims)] has burned homes and looted livestock in Bandiagara region since June. JNIM fighters attacked several villages in the Doucombo and Pignari Bana district areas, setting over 1,000 homes on fire, stealing at least 3,500 animals, and forcing thousands of residents to flee, according to witnesses. Residents said the attacks were in apparent retaliation against communities that the JNIM accused of collaborating with [a collective self-defense militia organized to secure area villages].

Neither side in the conflict boasts a moral record. HRW reported:

Since May 2024, Malian armed forces and the Wagner Group have deliberately killed at least 32 civilians, including 7 in a drone strike, forcibly disappeared 4 others, and burned at least 100 homes in military operations in towns and villages in central and northern Mali. Two Islamist armed groups, [JNIM] and [Group for the Support] of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), have summarily executed at least 47 civilians and displaced thousands .... Human Rights Watch received credible reports of hundreds more civilians killed, but due to the difficulties of conducting research in central and northern Mali, the numbers in this report are conservative. 

At the request of Malian authorities, a U.N. peacekeeping mission withdrew from Mali in December 2023 after itself coming under attack in the cross-fighting. French forces had withdrawn the previous year. The U.N. mission had been in Mali for 10 years, but its presence did not prevent two military coups in the last five years. The junta now in control of the government seems intent on extinguishing the insurgency at any cost, but it's far from clear whether either side can prevail.

The worsening situation in Mali is indicative of destabilization across west and central Africa. Military coups toppled governments in Burkina Faso in 2022 and in Niger in 2023. Now the three military governments of Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali have withdrawn from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Meanwhile, combatants' calls for U.N. withdrawal are growing in other hot spots, such as DR Congo, where rebels have taken the key city of Goma.

ECOWAS (2018)
St.Krekeler via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0
In my travels in West Africa, I found ECOWAS to be a profoundly stabilizing force and engine of economic development. The free trade group, formerly 15 countries, allowed fragile economies a chance to level the playing field in the global market. A common currency, the "eco," was planned to supplant and surpass the CFA franc.

Indicative of the progress made possible by ECOWAS, my friend in Mali messaged last year, keen to get the word out about his nascent tourism venture. Bandiagara is within a day's travel of Timbuktu, the UNESCO World Heritage Site that has been mostly inaccessible to outsiders for more than a dozen years because of armed conflict.

Now social and economic progress in the region is disintegrating.

To be clear, I do not contend that the United States or the United Nations should ride to the rescue with military force in Mali. Neither side in the conflict there wants western intervention, and we would sink into a lethal quicksand by merely adding a third side in the fighting.

However, diplomatic intervention to start with, and international peacekeeping later, could be vital to save generations of innocent people from murder, abuse, and starvation. I am mindful that my International Law class will soon study use of force, a unit that prompts sorrowful consideration of the western indifference that permitted the Rwandan genocide to play out unhindered.

HRW decried the conflict in Mali for both sides' utter disregard of "the laws of war." Between U.S. willingness to reward Putin's invasion of Ukraine with gained territory and a repeat of willful western blindness to the trampling of human rights in Africa, the entire project of international law that was built upon the ashes of World War II is now in jeopardy.

The Trump Administration seems content to let the United Nations fall by the wayside in favor of a transactional approach to foreign policy. Thus, for example, the key to a Trump peace plan in Ukraine, and any hope that Ukraine would recover lost territory in such a plan, seems to turn on a deal for U.S. access to rare-earth minerals in the country's east.

But it is in fact a transactional foreign policy that I suggest will suffer if we disregard Africa. Development of extractive industries—Mali has diamonds, gold, and uranium—is a desirable goal; the question is, who will benefit?

ECOWAS, after the model of the European economic community, and U.N. peacekeeping, which makes free trade possible, represent a west-leaning African future in which ordinary people benefit from development with rising standards of living. This isn't charity. The United States would benefit from vibrant, free-market commerce with an economically developed West Africa. All boats float.

In contrast, Russia seeks to expand its sphere of influence by undermining democratic participation and capturing governments with authoritarian oligarchy. That means an east-leaning African future in which ordinary people are subordinated and impoverished. The United States loses in that scenario; our only benefit from wealthier eastern oligarchs will be the sale of more prime U.S. property to foreign owners.

As the United Nations has been nothing but a thorn in the side of neo-imperial Russian ambitions, Putin would like nothing better than to put the organization to death. In corollary, he must be delighted by the demise of USAID, which represents our foreign policy leverage in Africa.

The United States lets its influence wane and turns its back on the world at its own peril.

Here is a list of NGOs, IGOs, and charities working in Mali.

Saturday, October 7, 2023

Fitness guru calls on Nigerians to build strength, love

I don't expect I have many readers in Ilorin, Nigeria. Still, I want to highlight the great work of my inspiring and entrepreneurial friend Coach Bext in support of health, fitness, and much more.

Coach Bext is organizing a fitness event (poster) for Ilorin on October 21, 2023, promoting health of mind and body. Instructor Bext Fitness is on Facebook and YouTube

I visited Coach Bext in Ilorin, in Kwara State, in December 2022 (below, TikTok via YouTube). Sadly, trouble zones in the country's ongoing uprising are not far north from Kwara (UK FCO map). From Ilorin, I had to fly to the Capital Territory of Abuja because the road was not safe at the time.

In that climate of uncertainty, Coach Bext is much more than a self-help sidewalk preacher. His efforts to channel restless public energy into physical well-being alongside a healthful dose of love and public service is the real message of revolution that Nigeria sorely needs and the country's storied peoples deserve.

Bext would be interested in studying sport physio abroad, by the way, to sharpen his skills to serve Nigeria. If you know of a program that would fund and host an inspiring soul, please reach out to me or to him.


Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Per 'modern ethical standards,' Mass. museum surrenders $5m bronze for repatriation to Turkey

Portrait of  Lady (AD 160-180)
Public domain/Daderot via Wikimedia Commons
A story of art crime touched Massachusetts early in September, as the Worcester Art Museum let go of a bronze bust of estimated $5m worth for repatriation to Turkey.

The museum purchased Portrait of a Lady (A Daughter of Marcus Aurelius?) in 1966 from Robert E. Hecht, an antiquities dealer. If that name is familiar to American easterners, yes, Hecht was a descendant of the Hechts, 19th century Jewish immigrants from Germany who started a department store chain in Baltimore, Md., my hometown, in 1857. What became "Hecht's" had 80 or more stores in the mid-Atlantic region. When I was a kid, my maternal grandmother loved to peruse the goods at what she still called "Hecht Brothers." The company was swallowed by Macy's in 2006.

Robert Hecht had a checkered career as an antiquities dealer based in Paris. He died in 2012 at age 92. In his obituary, the N.Y. Times described Hecht as "an American expatriate antiquities dealer who skipped in and out of trouble for much of his career, weathering accusations that he trafficked in illicit artifacts." Hecht denied ever having handled stolen goods knowingly. Late in life, he was charged with trafficking in Italy, but the Italian court ruled that the statute of limitations had run.

Hecht Co., Hyattsville, Md., 1959
Library of Congress
Revelation of Portrait's illicit provenance came to the Worcester Art Museum from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr. And if that name sounds familiar, yes, he's the one on TV charging former President Donald Trump with falsifying business records—for my money, charges of a nature that should have been pursued decades ago and always should have been the people's focus, more than recent, politically charged allegations related to the election in Georgia or insurrection in D.C.

When not on TV for a press conference about Trump charges, Bragg has become famous in the art world for his aggressive campaign to repatriate stolen works. Portrait is but one entry in an extraordinary catalog. A recent press release, for example, announced the return of Nazi-looted art to families of Holocaust victims. The work of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit is impressive, though the D.A.'s press releases read like a vanity project. Must every headline begin with "D.A. Bragg"?

I was keen to see what kind of legal documents the D.A. would file in Massachusetts to take possession of stolen antiquities. But there are no filings that I have found. The Worcester Art Museum "cooperated with the investigation" according to its press release and surrendered Portrait voluntarily.

Renaissance Court, Worcester Art Museum, 2021
The museum not only cooperated, but the press release doth protest too much, methinks, to locate the museum on the moral high ground. Upon purchase of Portrait in 1966, the museum "was provided with limited information about the object's history," the press release said. The D.A. "provided new information" in 2023. "The Museum had never previously received a claim or learned of any defect in ownership."

Colgate art history professor Elizabeth Marlowe doesn't buy it. A student of Bubon, the ancient Roman capital of Lycia, where the Bronze was found in Turkey, Marlowe told WGBH that the museum in 1966 "would have known ... that Hecht was 'a totally shady character'" who had been banned from Turkey, and that the Roman object came from Turkey. Professor of art crime at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice Erin Thompson told WGBH that the acquisition was "like Pablo Escobar giving you a big pile of white powder and claiming you had no suspicion it could be drugs."

Benin Bronze of a Portuguese soldier
at the National Museum of Nigeria, Lagos, 2022.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Notwithstanding its protestations, the museum acknowledged that "greater diligence" is brought to bear on acquisition today. Director Matthias Waschek said in the press release, "The ethical standards applicable to museums are much changed since the 1960s, and the Museum is committed to managing its collection consistent[ly] with modern ethical standards."

That statement rings true, and I don't blame the museum. To the contrary, current ethical standards are still in flux, and museums are caught in the middle. John Oliver lambasted museums in 2022. While I loved the Oliver segment and agree with his pro-repatriation stance in principle, I find the reality more complicated.

Oliver correctly recognized that statements from western institutions fretting about the security of antiquities if returned to their home countries feel cringeworthily patronizing and colonialist. Oliver highlighted the case of the Benin Bronzes. Nigeria has demanded that the British Museum return more than 900 bronze sculptures the British Empire looted from the Nigerian Kingdom of Benin in today's Edo State (not to be confused with the country of Benin). When I visited Nigeria in 2022, I saw replicas of missing pieces. I met Nigerian people who clearly felt a present and keen sense of injury in the absence of cherished artifacts that define tribal history, culture, and identity. Nigerians should be able to see and experience their own history in museums, just like people in Britain and America. Yet the vast majority of Nigerians will never have the resources to visit the British Museum.

Me and an oversized jollof rice pot at the National Museum, Lagos, 2022.
Learn more at the Kitchen Butterfly.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
At the same time, I watched in horror at the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001 and the sacking of the Cairo museum in 2013, the latter of which I visited in the 20-aughts. The Antiques Coalition documents devastating losses in the 2010s at museums in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Mali, and Yemen. Say what you will about western imperialism, and there's plenty to say, museum sackings are much less common in London and D.C. When asked by a mate of mine how Nigeria would safeguard the bronzes—the country is in civil war in the north—a museum guide said that the items should be returned along with financial support to build secure facilities. OK. But already, then, the matter becomes more complicated, revealing that there's a legitimate debate to be had about how and where we care for the world's cultural heritage.

Founded in 1896, the Worcester Art Museum has plenty to see. The property houses a 12th-century French Benedictine priory, rebuilt stone by stone in 1933. The museum's 38,000-item collection includes more than 2,000 armor pieces, acquired only in 2013 and featured in rotating displays. A special exhibition from October to March, "Freedom to Say What I Please," will feature the multimedia art of activist, artist, and author Faith Ringgold.

Friday, February 24, 2023

Nigerians pin high hopes on horse-race election

Voters bear PDP flags at a rally in Ilé-Ifè, Osun State, in December.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Update, March 1, 2023: Nigerian election authorities declared Bola Tinubu of the incumbent APC party as President-elect. Al Jazeera has data. Obi prevailed in Lagos, Abuja, and a band of southern states including Anambra, but turned in 6.1 million votes to Abubakar's 7 million and Tinubu's 8.8 million, according to official numbers. PDP and Labour vowed legal challenges after an election marred by technical difficulties and incidents of violent voter suppression. The U.S. State Department issued a press release.

Nigerians go to the polls in a landmark presidential election tomorrow, Saturday, February 25.

The election is landmark for many reasons. Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation. Polls show a horse race. The three-way contest with no incumbent offers an outsider option that's especially appealing to young voters. Beset by social and economic crises, Nigeria is perceived as standing at a crossroads from which ways lead either to catastrophic collapse of the rule of law or to sea-change development into continental economic powerhouse. And, unfortunately, Nigerian elections even in the best of times notoriously coincide with violent protest.

The three leading candidates are Atiku Abubakar, Bola Tinubu, and Peter Obi (linked to BBC profiles). I went to Nigeria in December to get the lay of the land.

I visited the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, one of two UNESCO
World Heritage Sites in Nigeria. Regrettably, the other, the
Sukur Cultural Landscape, is not in a safely accessible region.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Atiku Abubakar is no stranger to the election process, having run unsuccessfully before against outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari. Abubakar represents the center-right People's Democratic Party (PDP), which was the affiliation of Buhari predecessor Goodluck Jonathan. The PDP tends to conservative economic and social policy, meaning, respectively, deregulation and religious values. The latter is especially significant in Nigeria, because outbreaks of violence and the government's loss of control of northern states are complications principally of religious sectarianism. Both Abubakar and Buhari are Muslim; Jonathan is Christian. Trying to balance the demands of both the Islamic north and the Christian south simultaneously, the PDP has favored deference to regional religious authorities through laissez-faire federalism in social as well as economic policy.

A car in Ilé-Ifè advertises PDP candidates. Ilé-Ifè is a spiritual home of the Yoruba people.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

At the Central Mosque in Ilorin, Kwara State.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Bola Tinubu is the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the party of Buhari, who also was a military head of state in the 1980s. A millionaire, accountant, and former governor of Lagos, Tinubu is American educated and has past ties to U.S. mega-corporations such as Arthur Anderson, which collapsed after the Enron scandal, and ExxonMobil, specifically, Mobil Nigeria, which bought its way out of the environmental mess of the Niger Delta for $1.3 billion last year. A Muslim, Tinubu hails from southwestern Lagos and Oyo State. To broaden his appeal, he chose a Muslim running mate from the north, though Christian voters are disenchanted with the break from the tradition of a spiritually split ticket. The APC identifies with social-democratic economic policy. A favorite of the populous Yoruba ethnic group, Tinubu boasts of his business acumen, having brought record-breaking foreign investment to Lagos. But his ties to big business and the political establishment cause many, especially younger voters, to eye him warily. As well, kidnapping and violence in Nigeria have reached into even the southwestern states of Oyo and Osun, formerly regarded as safe, surfacing discontent with the incumbent APC's poor record on basic security.

The Nigerian capital of Abuja is developing an arts-tech district,
which I visited in December. The capital was moved in 1991 from
Lagos to Abuja, a planned city at a central geographic location,
selected for practical and symbolic reasons to unite Nigerians
of different ethnic and religious identities.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Peter Obi is the wild card. At 61, he's a kind of Nigerian Bernie Sanders for enthusiastic youth fed up with the status quo. He's a Catholic from east of the Niger River, which alienates Muslims in the north, while not necessarily delivering a go-to for Christians in the southwest: an uphill battle. An ethnic Igbo, though, he appeals to another populous ethnic group that feels marginalized by the two parties of the political establishment. In the Nigerian civil war of the 1960s, Igbo nationalists threw in with the secessionist Republic of Biafra, and the Igbo have struggled to reclaim political representation since.

Labour Party logo.
Via Wikipedia (fair use).
Formerly a PDP candidate, Obi in Saturday's election represents the Labour Party, which stands more overtly for social democracy than the APC does. Boasting a logo of a gear encircling people, Labour touts values of social justice and universal economic opportunity. That message strikes a powerful note in a country endowed with a wealth of natural resources, including oil, yet in which almost two-thirds of the population, some 134 million people, live in poverty. Gen Z voters in particular crave change, and they've reclaimed the term "coconut heads," formerly used to disparage perceived laziness, now to signal support for Obi.

Obi is a former governor of Anambra State, home of the busy river port of Onitsha on the east bank of the Niger. A friend of mine is an Anambra native, American educated in business, and an executive of a manufacturing firm in Onitsha. He's a Christian and Gen X, like me, but, despite his age, you can count him among the coconut heads. (I'm not naming him here for sake of his security. Though he has expressed his views publicly, and support for Obi is widespread in Anambra, we don't know what the future will bring for Nigeria, and there's no need to memorialize online one voter's politics.) He wrote a missive just two days ago that I think well captures the motivation of Obi supporters:

Nigerians have never been able to hold Gen. Buhari to task on any promise made before the 2015 general elections. He has not kept any. The reason is because those promises were made by his campaign spokespersons, aides and APC party officials. Same is repeating itself with Atiku and Tinubu. The two men have been prevaricating on what they would do if elected. In fact, Tinubu has not granted any interview to any Nigerian television/radio stations. He has also avoided every debate for the presidential candidates. He is running away from being held responsible for his words and promises.

In contrary, Peter Obi has attended every debates, townhall meetings and interviews that came up. He has also looked Nigerians straight in the eyes and told them to hold him responsible for his promises. In a television interview yesterday, Ahmed Datti, Mr. Obi's running mate, told Nigerians to fire them if they fail to improve their lives after four years.

The choice is yours. I and my household shall vote Peter Obi's Labour Party for presidency on Saturday, 25th February, 2023.

When I visited Nigeria in late autumn, I hoped to learn more about the social and political situation in the country than I could glean from reading from home. For better or worse, I didn't absorb much that was new. Nigeria's reality on the ground is precisely what it appears to be: a nation that exemplifies "the resource curse," awash with oil yet riddled with poverty; a people flush with potential yet stymied by venal institutions. Insofar as Nigeria's present predicament makes it a bellwether for west and central Africa, more might ride on Saturday's election than even one nation's presidency.

I've long witnessed my friend in Onitsha rail in frustration at Nigeria's inability to combat corruption and climb to its rightful place as a social and economic leader on the world stage. Having been welcomed by people of such a famously boisterous yet warmly embracing national culture, I'm brimming with empathy. Maybe this election at last will show a way forward and upward.

 
Celebrants rally for the PDP in Ilé-Ifè in December. Political parties sometimes pay supporters to turn out, so it can be difficult to gauge true voter fervor on the basis of public demonstration.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Wednesday, July 6, 2022

Historian explores Grant statue's African odyssey

My photo from Bolama in 2020
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Martin H. "Jay" Joyce, author and my colleague in the exploration of historical curiosities, has authored a new article about the origins and winding story of the statue of U.S. President Ulysses S Grant on the island of Bolama in Guinea-Bissau and its two appearances on Bissauan postage stamps.

I have written about the Grant doppleganger's odyssey previously, in March 2020, when I got some of the facts wrong, and in November 2020, when I corrected and updated the record. Now Joyce has dived deep. He teases his piece thus:

In the March-April 2020 issue of Topical Time, Mr. George Ruppel recounted the story of why Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau) issued stamps in 1946 and again in 1970, featuring Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was honored for arbitrating a dispute between Portugal and Great Britain during his presidential administration in favor of Portugal. The crux of the dispute involved territorial rights over the island of Bolama, just off West Africa’s coast.... In the mid-twentieth century, Bolama frequently appeared in the philatelic press because of the Pan-American Airways Clipper airmail routes, which used Bolama as a stopping point before proceeding across the South Atlantic....

An internet search for statues of American presidents around the world rarely includes this statue. Why not? As former ABC News radio commentator Paul Harvey would say, "Here's the rest of the story...."

The article is Ulysses S. Grant in Portuguese Guinea—the Rest of the Story, Topical Time, May-June 2022, at 60. Topical Time is the journal of the American Topical Association.

Joyce is a 1974 graduate of the United States Military Academy. He is the author of Postmarked West Point: A US Postal History of West Point and its Graduates, a winner of a Vermeil award at the 2021 Great American Stamp Show. His forthcoming work from La Posta Publications is The West Point Post Office: 1815-1981: Keeping It All in the Family—Nepotism, Paternalism and Political Patronage, ... and Dedication to the Corps.

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

Big Oil deploys slick strategy to stay ahead of liability

Image by Ucheke CC BY-SA 4.0
On February 12, the UK Supreme Court allowed a claim of environmental catastrophe by 40,000 to 50,000 Nigerian farmers to proceed in English courts against defendant Royal Dutch Shell.  The ruling came just two weeks after farmers prevailed in a significant but more limited case against Shell's Nigerian subsidiary in a Dutch appellate court in The Hague, after 13 years of litigation, and eerily echoes the still unfolding saga of the Chevron-Ecuador battle over Lago Agrio in the Amazon.

I'm compelled to mention the UK case, though it has been covered exhaustively in the media (e.g., N.Y. Times), because I wrote just last week on the controversial scope of "alien tort" liability in U.S. courts.  The case against Royal Dutch Shell ("Shell"), for devastating oil pollution in the Rivers State of the Niger Delta, is a kind of alien tort case in UK and Dutch courts.  In the UK, no specific statutory authorization is required to sue Shell, which is incorporated in the UK and headquartered in The Hague.  Rather, jurisdiction may be invoked upon the plaintiffs' demonstration of a duty in common law tort owed by the defendant company.

UK Supreme Court
(photo by M. Zhu CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The UK ruling is preliminary only; the court held that the plaintiffs demonstrated a "real issue to be tried," the preliminary standard, over the role of Shell in the pollution. The nub of the problem for the plaintiffs is that operations in Nigeria were run by, and not exclusively owned by, a subsidiary corporation of Shell, the foreign-registered Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd. (SPDC).

The corporate shell is designed specifically to insulate the parent company against liability for the conduct of the subsidiary.  To penetrate the shell and reach the parent, the plaintiffs must show that Shell, the parent company, directed the conduct of SPDC, the Nigerian subsidiary, or worked jointly with SPDC.  The court in The Hague allowed jurisdiction upon a comparable control theory in 2015, though ultimately entered a monetary judgment only against SPDC.

The preliminary ruling from the UK Supreme Court does not yet establish direction or joint control, but says that the plaintiffs have made a sufficient showing to serve their lawsuit on Shell.  Rather than digging into the facts, the Supreme Court faulted the courts below, both the majority that had rejected the plaintiffs' claim and the dissent, for looking too closely at the plaintiffs' evidence and effecting a sort of "mini-trial" on the question of Shell control before the case has even been pleaded properly.

Nchanga Copper Mine, Zambia, 2008
(photo by BlueSalo CC BY-SA 3.0)
Environmental damage and human toll in the developing world as a result of resource extraction by western corporations is, sadly, not a new problem, and the UK Supreme Court invoked its experience in a prior case.  In 2015, plaintiffs in Zambia won the right to sue UK-based Vedanta Resources upon allegations that copper smelting had poisoned the water supply with "rivers of acid," containing sulfuric acid and other dangerous toxins.  The cooper operation in Zambia was owned by a Vedanta subsidiary, Konkola Copper Mines.  After the Supreme Court allowed suit in England, Vedanta settled with more than 2,500 Zambian claimants.

Vedanta was decided in the spring of 2019, and only then, after the lower courts had rejected the claims against Shell, did the Supreme Court admonish judicial restraint on questions of fact in preliminary proceedings and set out an approach to analyze parent-company duty: "depend[ing] on the extent to which, and the way in which, the parent availed itself of the opportunity to take over, intervene in, control, supervise or advise the management of the relevant operations (including land use) of the subsidiary."

Niger Delta, Nigeria
(ESA photo CC BY-SA 3.0)
In pleadings and on appeal, the plaintiffs asserted a dozen bases in fact to demonstrate Shell control of SPDC, including mandatory compliance standards for subsidiaries on health, security, safety, and environment; business principles; and best practices for assets, facilities, and infrastructure.  According to the plaintiffs, "[Shell's] executive remuneration scheme depended to a significant degree on the sustainable development performance of SPDC."  The plaintiffs alleged that Shell "for many years had detailed knowledge about widespread pollution in the Niger Delta caused by spillages and leakages of oil from infrastructure operated by SPDC, including knowledge of the frequency, location and size of oil spills, including its failure to protect its oil infrastructure against the risk of damage caused by the criminal acts of third parties."

According to the New York Times report on the case, Shell is retreating from investments in the Niger Delta and other sites near human habitation, preferring to drill offshore.  Meanwhile, disputes endure over responsibility to clean up the pollution left behind by extraction and over the efficacy of cleanup efforts.  In this way, the Nigeria case is strikingly similar to others in the world, notably, the long-running dispute between rain-forest communities in Ecuador and oil giant Chevron, successor to Texaco.

In the case against Chevron, an Ecuadorean court in 2011 ordered Chevron to pay $9.5bn to residents of Lago Agrio, a community in the Amazon, for catastrophic oil pollution there.  In 2014, a U.S. federal court ruled that the judgment was procured through fraud, and the plaintiffs' champion U.S. attorney, Steven Donziger, was disbarred in 2020.  The plaintiffs' efforts to collect on the award in courts with jurisdiction over Chevron assets in other countries, such as Canada and Argentina, have failed so far.  Donziger is appealing his disbarment while also facing contempt prosecution in New York.  Celebrity environmentalists continue to hail him as a hero, railroaded by Big Oil.  Meanwhile a district court in The Hague has demanded (subscription), pursuant to arbitration, that Ecuador nullify the judgment, and the matter continues to haunt Ecuador's destabilizing presidential elections.

For the third time, I'm having my comparative law class read Paul M. Barrett's Law of the Jungle, which chronicles the Chevron-Ecuador matter until the book's 2015 publication.  For my money, Barrett's is the most even-handed account out there.  (See also coverage by Michael I. Krauss for Forbes.)  And it's not flattering of Donziger.  But it's also not flattering of Texaco.

The complicated truth of what happened at Lago Agrio is a tragedy in multiple dimensions, generating plenty of blame to go around.  Donziger might have played fast and loose with the law in Ecuador, after being rebuffed in the United States, but he was navigating the outstretched hands of a sorely corrupt judiciary.  The devastation at Lago Agrio is real, and no one, oil firms or government, has ameliorated it.  At the same time, much, if not most, of the pollution can be traced directly to the national oil company of the Ecuadorean government, which at various relevant times bore exclusive or joint responsibility for Lago Agrio.  Even insofar as Texaco controlled the site, government regulators, also riddled with corruption, were utterly derelict in their duty to protect fundamental human rights and enforce industry norms.  To date, the people of Lago Agrio, maybe the only innocent actors in the whole story, have been left to struggle with the horrific health consequences and daily challenges of water and land contaminated by lethal toxins.

In Nigeria, Shell and SPDC also lay blame on the Nigerian government, a partner of SPDC in the extraction operation through the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Company.  I have no doubt that the government bears responsibility both for what it did as an owner and what it did not do as a regulator.  I wager that Shell and SPDC, like Texaco and Chevron, are guilty of conscienceless exploitation, but also behaved as rational corporate actors, splitting the difference between the costs of malfeasance and the benefits of non-regulation.  Like in Lago Agrio, the people of the Niger delta are left to endure the consequences of symbiotic opportunism, while the perpetrators point their fingers at each other.

Shell corporate building in The Hague
(photo by Mr. Documents Uploader CC BY-SA 4.0)
Maybe the concept of "alien tort" in the UK is turning the tide at last.  One might expect Shell to follow Vedanta's example and settle, for public relations reasons, if nothing else.  Reuters reported that Shell settled another Niger Delta pollution claim in British courts in 2015 for €70m.  Shell has consistently pledged to clean up Niger Delta pollution, even while disavowing responsibility.  But Shell did not settle the case in the Netherlands, where the company has been able to postpone liability for 13 years to date.  The AP reported that two of four farmer-plaintiffs died since the case there was filed in 2008.  An appeal to the Dutch Supreme Court may yet be filed, and Big Oil might be emboldened by Chevron's experience.

Rivers State, Nigeria
(image by Jaimz height-field CC BY-SA 3.0)
If Shell digs in its heels in the UK, the plaintiffs have an uphill battle ahead.  They will have to produce clearer evidence to persuade the trial court that Shell exercised control at the local level, and then to link Shell oversight to the pollution in proximate causation.  Shell, fairly, will seek to muddle the chain of causation with the intervening actions of venture partners, private and public, and the third-party actions of criminals who sabotaged and burglarized the oil pipeline.  The Dutch appellate court mitigated the plaintiff-farmers' win there by nullifying defense liability in part for the actions of saboteurs, even while recognizing with regard to one claim that SPDC made nefarious access to the pipeline too easy.

If ever there is a settlement or award for plaintiffs that turns ripe for enforcement, it will remain to be determined how effectively money can be converted into remediation in a legal regime whose wavering commitment to the rule of law has been complicit in damage to the Niger Delta environment for the six-decade duration of the nation's independence.  To the plaintiffs' favor, for now, in the UK, their case is informed by their experience in The Hague, where the trial court afforded plaintiffs latitude to probe Shell files for evidence of corporate control.

The case in the UK Supreme Court is Okpabi v. Royal Dutch Shell Plc, [2021] UKSC 3 (Feb. 12, 2021).  Lord Nicholas Hamblen delivered the opinion, with which Lord Hodge, Lady Black, and Lord Briggs agreed.

Sunday, November 1, 2020

Peace, power at stake in elections around the world

Pres. Ouattara
(s t CC BY 2.0)
With the U.S. election looming, it's easy to miss crucial elections going on elsewhere in the world, such as Ivory Coast and Moldova, with potential ramifications for global peace.

Votes are being counted now in the Ivory Coast presidential election.  Incumbent Alassane Ouattara is hoping for a third term despite vigorous opposition.  A 78-year-old economist, Ouattara has been president since 2011, after the disputed 2010 election resulted in civil war.  The Ivory Coast constitution limits a president to two terms, but the Ouattara side claims that a constitutional revision in 2016 reset the term clock.

The Sahel
(Munion CC BY-SA 3.0)


An especially sensitive issue in the West African context, the dispute over term limits gives Ouattara's run an uncomfortable overtone of authoritarianism.  Ivory Coast is a key commercial player in West Africa, so stability or instability there ripples throughout the region.  One way or the other, the influence of Ivory Coast's outcome could be especially impactful as Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and western Nigeria all struggle to get a grip on lawlessness and violence in the western Sahel.

Frmr. P.M. Sandu
(Accent TV 2015 CC BY 3.0)
Meanwhile, voters are at the polls today in Moldova to choose between starkly different visions for the country's future.  Former socialist party leader Igor Dodon, president since 2016, faces former prime minister Maia Sandu in the country's fourth election since 1991 independence.  Dodon carries the endorsement of Russian President Vladimir Putin and resolves to look eastward for Moldova's future.  Sandu thinks the best hope to pull Moldova out of chronic economic stagnation lies westward, in the European model of development.  

Pres. Dodon
(Russian Pres. Press & Info. Ofc. CC BY 3.0)
I wrote last year about my visit to the "breakaway state" of Transnistria, which embodies the depth of divide over Moldova's future.  Yet so much more is at stake; Moldova stands as a bellwether for the region, indicative of future European or Russian influence.  And with Brexit occurring on Europe's opposite border, the continental union's prospects for eastern growth might speak to the future of the union itself.

Both elections, in Ivory Coast and Moldova, are plagued with reports and denials of poll tampering and improper influence over voters.  And people in both countries fear for the peace in the wake of an outcome favoring any side.

Protestors in Algiers, March 2019
(Khirani Said CC BY-SA 4.0)
Even these elections are not the only ones in the world right now.  The "Georgian Dream" party looks to have won third-term control of Georgia's parliament, lengthening a long-term one-party rule there that opponents say has failed to deliver economic prosperity for working people.  And today, voters in Algeria, where I also visited in 2019, opine on anti-corruption constitutional reforms hoped to quell protests that persisted after the 2019 election of presidential challenger Abdelmadjid Tebboune failed to deliver the prompt changes that the street wanted.

The American election is only one among many in the world this fall in which prosperity and peace might hang in the balance.  I'm hoping that whatever happens here on November 3, we model order and rationality.

Thursday, March 5, 2020

US President haunts African 'ghost capital'

Main traffic circle in Canchungo, Guinea-Bissau.
All photos RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-SA 4.0.

Throughout Guinea-Bissau, in West Africa, characteristic landmarks found in town centers, parks, and traffic circles are large, dilapidated blocks of painted concrete, often graffitied. These blocks are actually bases that have held statues of prominent leaders during the country's tumultuous history since independence was declared in 1973.

For Guinea-Bissau, it's been a journey as rocky and potholed as the nation's roads. Independence from Portugal was hard fought, with the Soviet Union, Cuba, and China pouring in arms for the revolutionaries to the end of establishing a communist foothold in West Africa. Anti-revolutionary soldiers were mass murdered after their defeat. Subsequent instability and corruption led to civil war in the 1990s, and election turmoil and political violence marked the 20-aughts. The presidential election in 2019 was contested, and just this week, since inauguration of the ultimately recognized victor, there are reports of military intimidation of the courts. No wonder statues don't last long in poor Guinea-Bissau.

That makes one statue still standing all the more an oddity. In an overgrown park in the heart of the main town on Bolama Island, in the Bijagos Archipelago, at the center of low walls of crumbling concrete that once demarcated colorful stars, the likeness of 18th U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant rises defiantly.

The Grant statue is a curious throwback to Portuguese colonial rule. Actually, all of Bolama Town is a throwback to colonialism. Once grand Portuguese constructions crumble in slow decay in what's sometimes called Guinea-Bissau's "ghost capital." European powers such as Portugal favored locating their colonial bases of operations on offshore islands, where winds kept malarial mosquitoes at bay. Today the ghost capital is inhabited, despite its state; thousands of people live in subsistence, and sometimes dependent, conditions amid the ruins.

In the 1860s, President Grant became the mutually agreed upon arbitrator between Portugal and Great Britain over territory in the islands. After Grant awarded Bolama to Portugal in 1870, the Portuguese erected the statue to honor him. Notwithstanding the resolution of that dispute, and despite British efforts to aid the Confederacy and topple the Union in the Civil War, Grant was ultimately credited with strengthening U.S. relations with Britain during his two terms as President in the Reconstruction era. Grant proved so popular abroad that he and his wife embarked on a world tour after his presidency, and, with the imprimatur of President Rutherford B. Hayes, Grant inaugurated the custom of former presidents conducting informal diplomacy abroad.

The tale of Grant's Bolama ghost gained an unusual epilog in 2007, when the statue went missing. Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reported the story for NPR. Apparently stolen to sell as scrap metal, Grant was recovered in pieces, and authorities ultimately restored him--not how things usually work out for statues in Guinea-Bissau.

Ruins of Portuguese palace in Bolama Town

Abandoned cinema in Bolama Town


A storefront in Bolama Town painted for politics

Kids swinging in a refurbished Bolama Town park