Focal Points Blog

Manganese: Burkina Faso’s New Resource Curse

Manganese mining is a linchpin of Burkina Faso’s corruption and oppression.

By Rob Prince, 9 hours ago

Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world. Many of its children are forced to work. (Photo: Eric Montford / Flickr Commons)

Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world. Many of its children are forced to work. (Photo: Eric Montford / Flickr Commons)

Cross-posted from View from the Left Bank.

A Nationalist Impulse?

Just a few months after a long-lasting and corrupt government was swept from power, in March of this year (2015), in Burkina Faso, the country’s transitional Minister of Mining and Energy suspended a major mining contract with Pan African Minerals at Tambao, forcing the company to stop operations there. Missing from most press explanations as to why the suspension order was issued was the growing local opposition to Pan African Minerals’ practices. On February 17, 2015, a march in protest was initiated by people in the vicinity of Markoye, the town closest to the mine, seeking Tambao mine operation stoppage until further notice. More than 3,000 local people participated. They opposed the company’s environmental practices (explosions, dust) as well as the fact that the company had reneged on its promise to employ at least fifty locals in the work there and to involve the local community more in the mines’ plans. They demanded that the operations of the mine be completely shut down until these issues were resolved.
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Is Russia Actually Targeting Civilians in Syria?

According to Amnesty International, bombing by Russia results in killing 16 civilians for every one Islamic State fighter.

By Russ Wellen, 1 day ago

Civilians killed by Russian airstrikes in Islamic State territory seem less like collateral damage than actual targets. Pictured: a Russian SU-24 bomber. (Photo: Wikipedia). (Photo: Wikipedia)

Civilians killed by Russian airstrikes in Islamic State territory seem less like collateral damage than actual targets. Pictured: a Russian SU-24 bomber. (Photo: Wikipedia)

Airstrikes by Russia on territory occupied by the Islamic State seem to have crossed the line from careless to malicious. The Independent quotes a new report by Amnesty International.

“In some attacks, the Russian armed forces appear to have directly attacked civilians or civilian objects by striking residential areas with no evident military objective and even medical facilities, resulting in deaths and injuries to civilians,” the report said.

“In others, they seem to have attacked military objectives and civilian objects without distinction, or caused disproportionate harm to civilians when striking military targets. Such attacks may constitute war crimes.”

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Islamic State Hides in Plain Sight

Islamic State leaders evade airstrikes through mingling with citizens and never letting the grass grow under them.

By Russ Wellen, 5 days ago

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi conducts business in the Raqqa city hall. Pictured: government building in Raqqa. (Photo: Beshr / Flickr Commons)


Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi conducts business in the Raqqa city hall. Pictured: government building in Raqqa. (Photo: Beshr / Flickr Commons)

Yesterday I mentioned that, besides fearing entanglement in another ground war, the other reason that the United States is reluctant to mount wholesale attacks against the Islamic State is concern about civilian casualties. Estimates of civilians killed in coalition airstrikes already range from 250 to 500. In the New York Times, Matthew Rosenberg and Eric Schmitt write:

For months, the United States military has known that the Islamic State uses the city hall in Raqqa, Syria, as an administrative center and a dormitory for scores of fighters. Some American officials even believe that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group’s leader, may have been in the building at times.

Yet, despite the American air campaign against the Islamic State, the white, three-story building remains standing because it also houses a jail.

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Spain Says “No” to Austerity

With its elections, Spain takes steps to free itself from the European Union’s tight-fisted policies.

By Conn Hallinan, 5 days ago

Spain’s left-wing Podemos party made impressive gains in the Spanish election. (Photo: Thierry Ehrmann / Flickr Commons)

Spain’s left-wing Podemos party made impressive gains in the Spanish election. (Photo: Thierry Ehrmann / Flickr Commons)

For the third time in a year, the tight-fisted, austerity policies of the European Union (EU) took a beating, as Spanish voters crushed their right-wing government and overturned four decades of two-party reign. Following in the footsteps of Greek and Portuguese voters earlier this year, Spaniards soundly rejected the economic formula of the Troika—the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund—that has impoverished millions of people and driven the jobless rate to almost a quarter of the country.

Greece’s leftist prime minister, Alex Tsipras, said “Austerity has been politically defeated in Spain,” and that the election was a sign “that Europe was changing.” Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi said, “As already happened in Greece and Portugal, governments which apply rigid austerity measures…are destined to lose their majorities.”
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The Ghost of the Islamic State Future

The future could hold many surprises from the Islamic State.

By Russ Wellen, 6 days ago

Islamic State fighters recruited from points distant from Syria and Iraq might return to their countries of origin with murderous intent. Pictured: Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. (Thierry Ehrmann / Flickr Commons)

Lately we’re being warned that a future source of Islamic State attacks will be its foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, who will return to their countries of origin and wreak havoc. In a cleverly titled National Interest article, ISIS Is Here: Return of the Jihadi, Bruce Hoffman writes:

The vast pool of recruits drawn to Syria affords ISIS and any of the other militant Islamist groups active there a surfeit of potential terrorists from which to cherry-pick and potentially dispatch back home to carry out terrorist attacks.

… One does not have to speculate terribly much to see the potential threat from ISIS to the West given its vast cadre of foreign fighters native to, or previously resident in, those countries. This unprecedented pool of foreign recruits suggests that ISIS would certainly have the capability to undertake more attacks modeled on the simultaneous assaults and running gun battles that occurred in Mumbai in November 2008 and Paris almost exactly seven years later.

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How the Islamic State Is Like a Multinational Corporation

The Islamic State is pursuing a strategy of mergers and acquisitions.

By Russ Wellen, December 22, 2015

The Islamic State is aligning itself with affiliates in Asia and Africa. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The Islamic State is aligning itself with affiliates in Asia and Africa. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Many in the United States have failed to see the urgency of the Islamic State because it seemed focused on the Middle East and thus a good candidate — whether you’re coming from the left or libertarian right — for non-intervention. But the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have disabused us of the notion that the Islamic State isn’t afraid to punch above its weight and take on Europe and the United States. At Politico Magazine, Harleen Gambhir writes:

ISIL’s global strategy should come as no surprise. In fact, ISIL has pursued an international expansion campaign from the moment it declared its “caliphate” in June 2014. While the group solidifies its proto-state in parts of Iraq and Syria, it also is expanding its would-be caliphate regionally — and preparing for the apocalyptic war it desires with the West.

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Ashton Carter’s Plan to Expand U.S. Military Presence Across the Globe Even Further

As if the current 662 U.S.military bases around the world from which air strikes can be launched aren’t enough.

By Rachelle Marshall, December 21, 2015

Also stationed on these bases are Special Operations forces that carry out hit-and-run raids and assassinations. (Photo: Master Sgt. Donald Sparks / U.S. Army / Flickr Commons)

Also stationed on these bases are Special Operations forces that carry out hit-and-run raids and assassinations. (Photo: Master Sgt. Donald Sparks / U.S. Army / Flickr Commons)

How many Americans are aware that the U.S. is currently engaged in five wars — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen, and that our forces are involved in lesser conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia? The answer is, probably very few. These wars are largely out of the news, and since there are seldom any American casualties, they are virtually invisible.

Combat operations primarily involve drones operated from thousands of miles away, and bombs dropped from thousands of feet in the air. According to the Pentagon, there are currently 662 U.S.military bases around the world from which air strikes can be launched using a variety of aircraft. Also stationed on these bases are Special Operations forces that carry out hit-and-run raids and  sinations in various parts of the world.
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The Dayton Accords 20 Years On

Some Europeans were happy to see Bosnian Muslims massacred by the Serbs and Croats.

By Sufyan bin Uzayr, December 18, 2015

Nothing new about Islamophobia in Europe. Pictured: Muslim war cemetery, Sarajevo. (Photo: Ivana Vasilj / Flickr Commons)

Nothing new about Islamophobia in Europe. Pictured: Muslim war cemetery, Sarajevo. (Photo: Ivana Vasilj / Flickr Commons)

Back in the early 1990s, a war broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Over 100,000 people lost their lives, and over two million were displaced. Rape, prison camps and genocide of Bosnian Muslims became common during the war, and it would eventually be marked as the worst conflict in Europe ever since the end of the Second World War.

Peace was established on November 21, 1995, as part of the General Framework Agreement For Peace, commonly known as the Dayton Accords. Formally signed on December 14 of 1995, the Dayton Accords are remembered today as an unfair treaty that ended the war but preserved the hostilities.
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The Islamic State Finds Rushing Headlong to the Apocalypse Easier Than State-Building

Is the Islamic State fast-forwarding from its caliphate to a final battle with the West?

By Russ Wellen, December 17, 2015

Onerous economic conditions in the Islamic State help fuel the refugee crisis. Pictured: Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. (Photo: Thierry Ehrmann / Flickr Commons)

Onerous economic conditions in the Islamic State help fuel the refugee crisis.
Pictured: Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. (Photo: Thierry Ehrmann / Flickr Commons)

Since the attacks in Paris that were either ordained or sanctioned by the Islamic State, it’s only natural to wonder what happened to its state-building project and its vision of itself as a caliphate? The Islamic State is behaving more like a terrorist organization than a state. That’s not to say that states don’t mount terrorist attacks, but they usually do it via proxy forces and don’t take credit for them.

In one of the most outstanding articles about the Islamic State that I’ve read yet (and I read a lot) titled Is There a Method to ISIS’s Madness? in the Atlantic, Shadi Hamid writes:

… the group focused its energy on developing fairly elaborate institutional structures in the territory it controlled within Iraq and Syria. ISIS wasn’t simply making things up as it went along. It may have been mad, but there was a method to the madness.

… But why, then, attack France—one of the more militarily aggressive Western powers—and potentially provoke a massive retaliatory response that would threaten the very “caliphate” it had spent so much time building?

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Yemen: Saudi Arabia’s Vietnam

Despite the Iran nuclear deal, Washington greenlit the Saudi War against Yemen.

By Rob Prince, December 16, 2015

The war on Yemen has left thousands dead and created hundreds of thousands exiles. Pictured: Yemen capital Sanaa. (Photo: Richard Messenger / Flickr Commons)

The war on Yemen has left thousands dead and created hundreds of thousands exiles. Pictured: Yemen capital Sanaa. (Photo: Richard Messenger / Flickr Commons)

Cross-posted from View from the Left Bank.

1.

And then there is Yemen where a ragtag coalition – hardly worth the name – of Saudi-paid mercenaries is trying unsuccessfully to crush a rebellion and democratic movement (inaccurately referred to as a Houthi-ethnic revolt) in order to restore “their man,” Abd-Rabbuh orted against that country, this despite the fact that a major U.S.-supported war continues to devastate the country.1 Unless using Democracy Now!, Truthdig, or Foreign Policy In Focus as main news sources, it is unlikely that people within the United States even know there is a war going on, to say nothing of the whys and hows, or where Yemen is even located.

Peace talks between warring factions in Yemen that collapsed a month ago, are scheduled to resume in a couple of days in Switzerland. They will coincide with a week’s ceasefire between the warring parties more than likely to be put in place at the same time. As a part of the ceasefire, Saudi Arabia has agreed to temporarily suspend its bombing campaign. While statistics vary as to casualty rates (with sources friendly to the Saudis claiming 2,500 dead, an Australian source gives a much larger, 6,000 figure) often missing from the picture is that war has already created 200,000 refugees, people who have fled the fighting which has engulfed essentially the whole nation. In the political vacuum created by the war, Al Qaeda has strengthened its position in the country’s southern regions.
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