Going back to Africa

This is an exception to the posts here recently and harks back to my time in Africa, but The Atlantic had a long article about elephant poaching that is worth a perusal.  The article in parts evokes anger at massive illegal killing, but then at other parts the emotion turns to myopic hysteria.

What resonated for me: the scale of the poaching, some of which I heard about from a doctoral student at a lodge in Kenya.  The majesty of watching these animals up close.  The impact of China's partial colonization of East Africa, and the realization by many there that, in the end, they signed a Faustian bargain with China.

What turned me off: the not-even-veiled contempt for hunters and those who would argue for market-based plans to preserve the animals.  At one point he explicitly muses that hunters may be more vile than poachers.  Say what you will about hunters and their motivations, they are at least willing to respect the law and are killing only what governments let them, and the governments are entirely in control of this side of the equation.  The entire problem with poachers is that, by definition, they do not respect the law and kill en masse, and use fearsome tactics.

Which leads me to the biggest thing I found missing from the article: a focus on corruption.  He discusses corruption here and there, but I think the real problem here (like for many other issues in Africa) is rampant corruption.  It limits resources for legitimate protection of animals, it makes it easy to smuggle ivory, it lets imported Chinese workers do whatever they will, and ultimately it makes governments in Africa loathe to invest the resources to do something.

I do like the author's point that "one-time" sales are not read as "one-time" by buyers, and each one whets the appetite for more.  The biggest hope here, I think, is that that appetite is starved back to returns to its dormant state -- hopefully made easier by the fact that this is not an addictive substance.

China everywhere

This past weekend the Chinese president visited Costa Rica, roughly 3 weeks after Obama's visit.  I have no idea whether that was a coincidence or a deliberated move, but it is symbolic of the wrestling for influence.

Costa Rica is special for China because it is the only Central American country that recognizes China: all the others recognize Taiwan as the rightful "China."  But, at least according to some quick digging, it may be as much because China has bigger fish to fry than because these countries are truly giving China a cold shoulder.

China is doing what it seems to do best: showering a country with gifts and credit and infrastructure.

China built a new national soccer stadium for CR in 2011.  This is quite symbolic when you think about the fact that it is the largest and official national stadium in the biggest park in San Jose for the most popular sport.  Everyone knows about it and can credit China.  When I discuss China's relationship with East Africa with people and the growing tensions over China's standard policy of bringing its own workers, people pointed out that China brought its own workers for the stadium, too -- ~800 in all.  This means that CR is left with a stadium, but not any new knowledge or skills (or even 800 salaries).  A law was passed specifically barring the Chinese from staying since many wanted to.  I'm not sure if China or CR didn't want them to stay, though I suspect the answer is both.

Estadio Nacional de Costa Rica.

As a side note, I was interested in the number of English-language Chinese-based articles that came up with some quick searches.  Clearly this is more important in China that it is in the U.S., but the press was also putting out a lot of good publicity about the visit and the deals.  My favorite might have been this one entitled, "National stadium brings locals happiness."  This is a very Chinese slant to the article.  I also was amused that one of the ways in which it is "making the locals happy" is by being a landmark in a city without street names and numbers.

The international do-gooder

People in developing nations can be bitter towards international governments and NGOs that come in attempting to help but do so without regard to local culture.

However, that high-minded but condescending person doesn’t always need to be a full-fledged foreigner.  On the Mozambique trip there was a Nigerian who, like many well-off Nigerians, was educated in the UK.  When she saw people on the island living on poverty and farming plots she wondered aloud why they didn’t move across the bay to the city, where “surely they have affordable housing.”  I almost laughed out loud.  South Africa still doesn’t have affordable housing for millions, and a drive around Lagos should be enough to dispel any expectation of easily available affordable housing – especially in one of the poorest nations on the continent.  I’m sure she could talk all about development theory and her whole purpose in being in Africa was to talk to people for a book she was writing, but she was missing the reality under her nose.

I recently read A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul, a book I highly recommend.  It’s well-written and a good story, and it contains lots of truth about Africa.  (Be advised that part of the book does revolve around an affair.) At one point the main (African) character reads some articles by a well-known European researcher in an African country who works for the government or a development group and realizes that "He knew so much, had researched so much.  He must have spent weeks on each article.  But he had less true knowledge of Africa, less feel for it, than [other characters]" because his was purely intellectual research.

SA's loud silence on bin Laden's death

The Atlantic has a very good article on SA's negative reaction to bin Laden's death this week.  I highly recommend reading it for background on SA's foreign policy.

An excerpt:
"The ANC's position on bin Laden's demise is illustrative of a disturbing trend: South Africa's transformation, under its tutelage, into an increasingly anti-Western power. Supported by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the ANC's alliance with the communist bloc was more than just a tactical alignment for an exiled, decimated, and desperate liberation movement. Most of the ANC's senior leaders during the apartheid years were simultaneously members of the South African Communist Party, and today, the ANC governs the country as part of a formal "Tripartite Alliance" with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). Thanks to its intellectual kinship with Marxism-Leninism, decades-long working alliance with such thugs and terrorist movements like Muammer Qadaffi and the PLO, and lingering resentment towards Western governments for not taking a harder line against the apartheid government, the ANC elite has never gotten over its deep suspicion of the West in general and America in particular. Coloring all this is the continuing legacy of apartheid, which has made the party's intellectual elite hostile toward anything that carries even a hint of "colonialism" about it."

On a related note, the front-page headline in The Star, an SA paper, the day after the death was that OBL was unarmed.  This turned out to be true and confirmed by the White House, but at the time the only source of that was a statement from one of OBL's wives.  That they would take that statement and state it as fact on a headline despite the (then) contradictory message from the people actually involved said something to me.

Day 24: Wednesday, May 14, Samaria area

A Palestinian house.

Israel is a whole different world. I have the same feeling I had when I had just gotten to China. Get ready for a lot of unfiltered and unsorted info and impressions.

Lots of houses have flat roofs with rebar sticking out the top. Many people build houses this way so that they can add additional floors later. Even most finished houses have flat roofs.

At the first place we stopped there was a lone soldier on guard duty looking into the valley below. He had a small camo tent for shade, but otherwise his job was just to stare into the valley. It seemed terribly boring, hot, and miserable. Perhaps that is a reason many people volunteer for competitive elite units – I would crawl through some extra mud to have a different duty. I later talked to two soldiers and got a different impression – see below.

We stopped at a synagogue for a rest stop and our guide used the opportunity to explain something on a wall. It said (in Hebrew) that there are three places in the world that are indisputably Jewish because Jews paid for them. It also had a sign in Hebrew with Jonathan Pollard’s face and mailing address in prison. It was a sign urging Jews to write him and try to get him out of jail.

Another Palestinian house.

Mickey was pointing out a settlement and said that when the liberal government was elected in the 90’s and declared a stop to all new buildings in settlements, it said that people could continue with any building with a poured foundation. The rabbi in this settlement declared that since building the settlement was God’s work, the work could continue on Shabbat. They ended up with a “settlement” of a lot of foundations, and when the inspector came he certified that the foundations were there and the building caught up with itself later. Mickey was quite happy with this story. Mickey frequently says “we” in stories, and I quickly realized that “we” does not refer to Israelis. I asked him and he said that “we” refers to a nucleus of settlers.

He is also open about Israel being a socialist country. After a while you realize that every Israeli who talks about the government talks about red tape and socialism.

Mickey said that if Jordan were to take over, Mickey and his settlers would be peaceful Jordanian citizens (assuming peace in return). I’m not sure if this was a heartfelt sentiment – we want to live in our land regardless of who controls it – or just a platitude given that the odds of living peacefully among Arabs is basically nil at the moment and therefore he can safely say that without having to ever live it out. I would lean toward the former, however.

Part of the reason for that assumption is Mickey’s explanation of Israel’s land takeover policy. After the 1967 war (the “Six Day War”) in which Israel almost doubled in size, Israel did not take over everything by right of conquest. It nationalized only the land that had previously been national land of the previous owner (i.e. Jordanian government land). They later nationalized all land that was both 1) unclaimed and 2) uncultivated. If any Arab was cultivating land to which he couldn’t produce a title, they went ahead and left him with the land.

I asked Mickey what he would call himself and he called himself “modern orthodox.” He is very religious, but he isn’t Hasidic (also called “ultra orthodox”). (I’m not sure what an “old orthodox” would be, and I don’t think modern orthodox is an official title.) I found out that I know only the bare bones basics of Judaism, and in asking him questions I sometimes get replies like, “Believe and you will have no questions; don’t believe and you will have no answers” – one of his favorite sayings, according to him.

Today as we were driving through an intersection I saw four Israeli soldiers searching a car. They had four Arabs out of the car and facing a dirt wall. They had stripped the car to the metal, and the interior upholstery was in a pile next to the car.

Refugee camp in the densely-populated triangle.

I saw my first refugee camp today from the top of a hill. It came as a surprise. The camp was a very densely populated section in the middle of a sparsely populated valley. I knew that these refugee camps have become full-blown permanent communities. What I wasn’t expecting was that they would be cooped up in the middle of what is otherwise a pretty open space. In talking to Mickey about the camp, he made the point that no one else has refugee camps from 60 years ago. (Israel celebrated its 60th anniversary just a few days before we arrived, and these refugees are all from the 1948 war.) There are no refugee camps in France, the Philippines, China, Poland, or even Russia. Only here. “Refugees” is a misnomer, because it brings images of temporarily displaced people sleeping wherever they can and having lost all of their possessions – which is exactly what they want you to think. The truth is much different. It isn’t a lack of space that prevents them from moving out or even Israel, but from my understanding it is the PLO/Palestinian Authority and other Arab nations. No one wants to absorb angry and poor citizens, and as long as they stay in the camps they are useful political pawns.

Another picture of a refugee camp. The street divides the refugee camp on the right from the regular Palestinians on the left. Note that the refugee camp is composed entirely of permanent buildings.

Tonight we had a BBQ dinner at the house of our tour organizer. He invited other English-speaking members of his community to join him, and it was great. I met a lot of interesting people and had some great conversations, but here are some highlights from my Q/A with Danny:
-Do Israelis mostly split politically along religious lines? No. He and several others (all orthodox) said they wouldn’t vote for religious parties because those parties just want to use their position to shower money on their organizations.
-What is the religious/secular split in the country? It was estimated to be 40/60.
-What is the feeling between the groups? Secular Jews don’t like religious Jews, mostly because they see religious Judaism as infringing on their life. Buses in Jerusalem don’t run on Shabbat, for example. Tel Aviv is almost totally secular, whereas Jerusalem is highly religious. Settlements also tend to be religious.

I then said, “Since you’re on the receiving end of American foreign policy, what do you think of that foreign policy?” His wife overheard the question and said, “In one word: crap,” then walked away. Danny prefaced his answer by saying, “You have to start by realizing that no Western country wants Israel to exist.” That was news to me, so I asked him why. He named two reasons: 1) Anti-Semitism, which he said is still a big force, and 2) oil. He explained that Western countries rely on oil, Arabs control oil, and thus Western countries are stuck between Israel and angering the Arabs and would rather just make the problem (Israel) disappear. He said America is always being the big bully and interfering with the affairs of other countries and almost always messes things up. He recommended I watch a movie called Ugly American, which he thought was spot on, and also cited Southeast Asian countries that would have been “better off under communism than what we provided for them.” I have to agree that America has a mixed record in our international interventions during the last century, but I have to disagree with Danny and say that our record isn’t 100% bad.

So what should our foreign policy be? “Don’t interfere.” I asked him if he just meant that we shouldn’t interfere politically, or if we also shouldn’t “interfere” by giving Israel both money and arms/supplies. In other words, would he be happy if we treated Israel like any other country – say, Germany. He didn’t answer the question but responded that “America doesn’t give anything to Israel. Do you realize that America gives Israel arms, we improve them ,and then we give that technology back to the U.S.? It’s a quid pro quo.” He also asserted that the U.S. doesn’t give any money to Israel, just loans that it holds over Israel’s head to control Israel. He cited the Johnson administration’s demand during the 1967 war that Israel stop its movements toward Damascus and Cario, both of which it might well have captured had the war continued a little longer. Honestly I was quite surprised by the ferocity of the “stupid America can’t get anything right” sentiment from an Israeli, particularly coming from someone who spent a lot of his life in America.

A soldier who was also present was much more moderate and, I thought, thoughtful – though Danny has already had a lot of years to think through his position. He agreed that America shouldn’t interfere, but also recognizes that Israel might not be able to survive without American support and that money never comes without strings attached.

At this point Danny disagreed and a very interesting argument ensued. Danny said that “you can’t look at Israeli history logically” and that there is no logical reason that Israel should have survived this long. The soldier was surprised and said what about X, Y, and Z reasons we beat the Arabs in the Yom Kippur War? Danny said it just depended on the way you look at it. It was summed up by a story Danny told: five soldiers were hiding behind a rock and survived despite the bullets whizzing past them. When asked how the survived, three said that they got lucky and took cover while two said they survived by God’s protection. Who was right? Danny basically argued for blind faith. It was a quick (2 minute) exchange, but it revealed a lot about divisions between Israelis.

A different soldier (in a different conversation and without knowledge of the previous conversation) had told me that huge U.S. influence is a myth perpetuated by politicians because it gives them an “out” when they do something unpopular.

In comparing notes with the rest of the family that night, I found out that everyone had interesting conversations. My dad had talked with a lady who was complaining about the weakening dollar. My dad expressed surprise, because a stronger Israeli shekel should help her. It turns out that she and her husband are living in Israel on their American Social Security checks.

I learned more about Mickey today. He was living in Toronto when his half-brother came through for a visit. While there, he wrote a letter to the editor of Toronto’s newspaper regarding a play that he hadn’t gone to see. It had something to do with Jews, and Mickey’s brother signed the letter with the title, “President of [some Israeli youth organization].” The organization didn’t even exist in Toronto, but the brother correctly guessed that it would bring interest in the group. He moved on, and Mickey was left to field calls. He got interested and read some Jaborinsky books recommended by his brother and became a zealous Zionist. Mickey moved to Israel when he was 16 (he’s now about 60), had four kids (two of which live in kibbutz), and has been one of the first people to move into several settlements. He and a group tried to settle in Samaria and were removed by the military seven times. The 8th time they were allowed to stay, so 30 families ended up in Samaria. He was quite proud of that accomplishment.

In talking about the kibbutz, Mickey said that the original communistic kibbutz had a bond of common religion or (in non-religious kibbutz) the common bond of Zionist politics. Almost all kibbutz are now privatized (i.e. things are not held in common) because kids born in kibbutz didn’t want the communism. Mickey basically said that the original kibbutzniks (as he called them) chose to be there, but the kids did not and therefore objected to the forced redistribution of their earnings. He praised the early kibbutz by saying you “had no economic worries. Sometimes you were poor, but you were all poor, so you didn’t feel so poor.” I wish redistributionist American politicians would be that honest.