How migration really works – life stories

A sequel to my review of the sociologist and geographer Hein de Haas’ standard text on the subject and because, basically, I am a migrant, too, one who actually follows the route that Europe took for the better part of half a millennium – out of Europe. 

Far too often the debate about migration, especially when it is dominated by rich migration-obsessed whites, omits talking to the people who have the most interesting stories to tell and the most relevant perspectives to offer: the migrants themselves. So it was refreshing to be present at a debate where they took centre stage. It happened, one fine February evening, in a lovely place called La Fabrique Culturelle, in Abidjan’s Deux Plateaux area. 

Abidjan – or indeed Côte d’Ivoire as a whole – is West Africa’s biggest migration hub, both as a destination for the neighbours and people from further afield, like the Lebanese, their presence in part the result of French colonialism. Bouaké, the second largest city, is jokingly referred to as Mali’s largest urban community after Bamako…

Côte d’Ivoire is also the place where a lot of migration originates. Some of that migration goes to Europe but not in the huge numbers Europeans think that are occurring…as argued here before, that colonialist argument falls flat on its face when properly observed, because truth be told, Europe: you don’t look all that great.

Brain drain?

The theme of this evening was ‘brain drain’, a familiar topic. De Haas dedicates an entire chapter to the issue, which he prefaces with the irony-free assessment that Western obsession with immigration neglects the fact that an immigrant is also an emigrant, i.e. someone who has left a country and has taken the upbringing, education, training and experience they have received with them. De Haas identifies the reasons for departure, which the speakers at La Fabrique Culturelle confirmed point for point: poor job prospects, nepotism and corruption that diminish the chances of those who are not connected, the poor quality of existing facilities and bad working conditions – each one of them well within the powers of the authorities to address. But in spite of all that, the statistics simply belie the well-worn theme that there is a massive exodus involving well-educated folks in poorer countries to the richer parts of the world. Yes, it is a problem. But it is by no means as huge as some seem to think and the reason is that the vast majority simply do not want to leave or if they do lack the wherewithal to make moving countries or continents a reality. 

They are everywhere, all over town and country: small plastic boxes, cramped like elevator cabins, painted orange or yellow in accordance with the corporate colours of the company that placed them there. What are they for? Basically, they handle the money you put in or take out of your mobile money account these companies run, the main ones being MTN of South Africa and Orange, the brand name of France Télécom. The cabins have space for one person only, who handles these transactions. There may be quite a few customers on a busy day but often they are not well frequented. The ‘cabiniste’ (mostly women, some men) chats with customers, passers-by, market women if they are around, chats on her phone or binge-watches TikTok and in some cases reads a book. A book? Yes, because as one speaker at the Fabrique culturelle meeting said: “Many university graduates are now cabinistes!”. And a lot of them are, to be perfectly honest, bored witless. 

_{A neighbourhood ‘cabine’. There are thousands of those in Abidjan alone.}

You go to school, you study hard, your parents struggle to pay the fees, you make it to university, your perseverance and support from family and friends gets you your coveted paper but because you do not know anyone who matters in the job circuit you end up by the side of the road, working for MTN or Orange in a ‘job’ you are stratospherically overqualified for. That is another reality and yes, people do try and get away from it, just like Europeans have done for centuries, as I constantly need to point out. After World War II, millions of Europeans swarmed across the world to Canada, the United States, Apartheid South Africa, Rhodesia, New Zealand and – like the entirety of my paternal family, except vanishingly few, Australia. And in the wake of the umpteenth financial crash and crisis (the one that occurred in 2008) Europeans started migrating again, as if it were their exclusive birthright. Just one example: the number of Portuguese living in Angola even before that crisis broke out equalled or even surpassed their number during colonial times…

Success

The prime motivation to leave is almost invariably…personal. “It’s not about the money, it’s about opportunity,” as one summarised it neatly. Study opportunities, career opportunities that somehow, rightly of wrongly are perceived not to be present in the country of departure. As I have said earlier, migration is, above anything, an expression of ambition. And yes, there are of course instances where other motivations play a role, as I flippantly describe in some older posts here. Have a laugh, it’s allowed. 

Does it pay off? Not in every instance but often it does. One speaker recounted how he had gone abroad to study, to North America in his case, built a career there and then came back to Côte d’Ivoire to start a company and is now retired. The stories I picked up while I lived in the Yoff area of Dakar illustrates perfectly how migration really works in real life. 

“Is there an obligation to return?” came one pertinent question from the audience in La Fabrique Culturelle. The consensus: it depends. Yes, Abidjan is great and lovely and sweet but you need money to survive here. Yes, the country is doing reasonably well and there may be opportunities but that nagging feeling about the need to network and find/befriend people who can lead you to the entry…all that remains problematic. It is true that these problems are universal  – a famous dictum from a Dutch union leader in 1968 was that the entire economy of the Netherlands was run by 200 men and there is little to suggest that much has changed. It is, however, equally true that in a country with a small formal labour base, no formal social safety net and a ruling clan that has its fingers in every lucrative pie you can think of your chances on the formal labour market without connections are vanishingly small. Which is why we also heard stories about people who left, came back and departed again in frustration. 

When I was researching my book on Guinea (and I hope there will be one on Côte d’Ivoire!) I was repeatedly confronted with stories from people who had been away, sometimes for decades, come back to Guinea thinking they would be welcome, given the insights they had gained that could, maybe, be useful for the advancement of the country… Instead they ran into a wall of resistance ranging from “that’s not how we do things here” to “you had it easy, you never suffered like we have here” and “do not touch vested interests”. 

I heard similar stories in La Fabrique Culturelle. One visitor, from a neighbouring Sahel country (once again confirming Côte d’Ivoire’s double role as a destination and a departure point) said that he had gone to Europe, come back to West Africa and, finding it unwelcoming for the reasons cited above, had decided to re-depart. He was in Abidjan for a visit. 

_{Family (a human right), work and study cover three-quarters of all migration into the Netherlands between 2012 and 2021, according to government statistics. My educated guess would be that the picture will be the same for the other former colonizers of Western Europe.}

You know which word was never mentioned, during the entirety of the evening? State benefits, one of the automatic go-to arguments of the xenophobic crowd, while all the evidence points towards the fact that it is demand for labour that principally drives migration. In fact, the disconnect between the people talking about migrants and the migrants themselves is so wide and so deep as to make any attempt to establish meaningful connection between the two a fool’s errand. And to be very frank, I no longer think we should even try. Migration is a fact of the human condition, it has always existed and will continue to exist. Normal people understand this and in that sense I can only repeat what I said at the end of my book review. “We can be open, free, rational, prosperous, inclusive and part of a world that moves forward and makes progress. Or we can be full of fear and violent hate, closed, backward and ultimately dumped onto the scrap heap of history. We cannot be both.” 

Today, the United States shows us in real time what an ignorant, fear-riddled, place looks like, with a horrifically limited thought frame, a false nostalgia for a past that never existed and orgies of regime-ordered savagery and barbarism. No one, except those for whom there is no place in the 21^st century, wants to go there. 

End note

Be very aware that over the past four decades or so, we have seen politics of the rightwing variety and their media campaigns being absolutely relentless in their attempts to conflate migration, which is a quest for opportunity and growth, and people fleeing violence, terrorism, repression, threats and intimidation. The 1951 Geneva Convention for refugees, which Western countries have been steadily undermining, covers this last and relatively small group. They include, for instance the estimated 115,000 refugees (possibly more) in Côte d’Ivoire. Most are from Burkina Faso but they also come from Mali, Ghana and Guinea. They have voted with their feet against the situation back home – in the case of Burkina Faso that means being terrorised by religious nutcases and violent gangsters in uniform and their associates. The evening in La Fabrique Culturelle was not about them. This is significant to recall, precisely because of long-standing and conscious efforts to conflate these two distinct groups in order to keep everyone out. These are views that the majority of the world’s population, which is neither white not affluent, does not share. And yes, it is deeply ironic that the place where the rich world plotted to keep away Jewish refugees fleeing the horrors of Nazi Germany, Evian, is half an hour’s drive away from Geneva on the same lake, where the Convention carrying its name was crafted and where the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees headquarters still remains. 

A quick ride back

A mercifully short-lived bout of malaria (my 18^th I reckon), some very unpleasant bowel issues and a really tenacious flu have caused delays…anyway: here’s the conclusion. 

***

Next day woke me up with a stomach loudly protesting that it had been empty for two days and two nights. I left my basic but cosy little hotel room and took a tricycle down to…where else, that crossroads. As I walked around looking for an eatery (ANY eatery) I got an apologetic phonecall from Seydou, who had promised to pick me up last night but then didn’t; he explained that he had been taking a bath when I called…

Food finally came in the familiar shape of one of those ubiquitous basic coffee-omelette sandwich open air kiosks You sit on a wobbly high stool and lean on the counter. Behind the counter is – usually – an efficient chap who prefers doing his work to having endless conversations. Breakfast was heavenly basic: French baguette (the floppy version), instant coffee, powdered milk. And then it was time for my Ayamé walkaround. Seydou showed up and took me across town to a place that had been grandiosely named The Terminus. It sits on the lake close to the dam complex; beyond this point his tricycle is not allowed. 

I took this picture from the N’zrama Hotel terrace before yesterday’s thunderstorm from hell broke out. Look to the structure on the hillside, to the right of that white arc. That is Palais  Monin Bia, which if you’re English you will quickly identify as ‘a folly’. “You must visit it,” a friend had already told me on a Facebook message. So what is it? 

The Monin Bia Palace is the creation of a man whose portrait oozes eccentricity but about whom surprisingly little is known. He was a lawyer in Abidjan and Paris and may well have been one of those old commuting hands, like the medical doctor I once met during one of my rare Air France flights. He commuted, by air, from his practice in Abidjan to his practice in Paris on a weekly basis. Maître Dominique Kanga, who died in 2015 at the age of 70, must have done the same, while collecting the means to build his extravagance in Ayamé, his native town where he also served as mayor for a while. Among his clients was none other than the late Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1965 and 1997 with an iron fist. Mobutu also ran a money pipeline between the state’s coffers and his own money vaults, thus ensuring the ruination of his country and quite likely contributing to Me Kanga’s palace. 

_{Close up. Pic: letsgomedia-ci.com}

It reportedly took him ten years to finish his dream home, which contains a reception hall, seven large rooms, one presidential suite, a dining room that can sit 80, several salons, a theatre and a chapel. All decorated in a style that – unsurprisingly – recalls French royalty – and we all know how that ended… Continuing the colonial theme that permeates the dam and its surroundings, French gardens feature prominently at the Monin Bia. And to continue with our very own theme: the palace was closed and there was no one to help a hapless visitor out. 

So here I am, at the gate, just across the road from The Terminus, resolutely shut with a huge padlock just to emphasize the point. No one has scribbled a phone number and I decide to reserve this for another time. A big sign at the dam makes it clear that NO PICTURES are to be taken here and I figure that makes sense; these are sensitive objects and I’d daresay that any pic taken of this dam carries the explicit authorisation of the electricity company, whose town this is. Time for…lunch? 

I return to La Source and find that yesterday’s earnest young man has company in the shape of a woman I once described here as “copiously blessed by Nature”. A great deal of fuss is made over the fact that I request a Gin & Tonic; I must buy an entire bottle, parked on a shelf. The discussion ends when I point at the adjacent gin bottle on the same shelf, which is clearly in use. I finally have my G&T. 

On hearing that I am in a hotel (where else would I be?), the earnest young man turns into an enthusiastic and very tenacious salesman. Pointing at the magnificence who is holding court in all her glory on a nearby chair, he exclaims: “Do you not know that she manages a guest house ??” Oh really? “You must take a room.” I tend not to be terribly impressed when told what to do. But I request the rate and it starts at exactly twice the amount I am paying now. Then Mademoiselle Manager inserts herself in the conversation and her lascivious contributions ensure that I do not misunderstand the message: she is part of the package. I extricate myself from the situation with an insincere “I will think about it” and go to the nearby grill place. 

Which, you may be surprised to learn, is still closed. Apart from the omelettes, there’s nothing else to eat. What I do find is another bar, called Le Président. It is run by an elderly man who serves beers in total silence with a face that says “I have seen it all”.  I have some small talk with a gentleman at the next table and return to the hotel on a steep but rather lovely sand road. The landscape is and remains pretty and green.

_{Ayamé, the main drag with The Palace in the background}

A few hours later I make a second tour of Ayamé, basically another trip up and down that one road with a single objective: find food. Turns out that there really is no other place to have a chance at finding anything resembling food but…La Source. 

I enter with some trepidation. 

Said trepidation is unjustified: La Source is empty. 

I take to exploring the side streets. Nothing. A last ditch effort finds me looking at another omelette sandwich. Next, one final trip to Le Président, while wishing it was the next day already. I miss my riverside terrace. I miss my chicken attiéké. And so it’s back to the hotel and into bed at a ridiculously early hour. Ayamé may have its charms but they’re either out of reach, closed to the public or just plain weird. 

***

Early next morning I arrive at the parking lot where the minibuses are. They fill up quickly. Sure enough the elderly gentleman from the bar yesterday manages to spot me: “Bonjour le blanc! You must buy me a beer!” No I don’t, and besides the passengers are already piling into this creaking Toyota that will take me out of here. We depart and after 30 minutes navigating the river of gravel I have come to know so well and detest so much I arrive back in Aboisso. 

Thirty. Minutes. Yes, you read that well. 

Back in Aboisso, the first stop is the espresso machine at the nearest petrol station.

Second stop: the (inevitably) Lebanese-run sandwich shop, which turns out to ALSO have an espresso machine. Good to know. 

Third stop, following the nice little walk across the town’s single bridge: my hotel, where they have kept the same room for me. 

Fourth stop: my riverside terrace. Beaufort? Yes. Grilled chicken with attiéké? Yes, please. 

Nice to be back is the understatement of January, even in spite of the gorgeous landscapes I have left behind. I may be back to catch more glimpses of and (who knows) even take a boat ride on the lake, visit the Monin Bia if at all still possible – and give La Source a very wide berth, whilst being consumed (sic) by the question: is there anywhere I can eat something other than baguette – omelette? Probably, but not in the first week of the new year. 

After no walk in the park

The N’zrama Hotel is a very pretty place that has seen better days. Some of the terrace windows are missing, the floor is dirty, large patches of paint have disappeared, as have all of the staff. There is no one. As I observe the splendid surroundings, including the elaborate hotel gardens, I notice two men standing on the grass, talking to each other. Part of the hotel staff, perchance? 

_{The N’zrama Hotel, seen from the road into Ayamé}

No They are friends; one lives in Ayamé, the other will be staying in the hotel because he’ll be working here, in the garden. He knows the place and likes it. Well, there is the view… 

We have a good old little natter about his work and mine, about the always fascinating subject of Abidjan traffic (he lives in another part of town but suffers the same endless traffic jams as everyone else) and then we turn our attention to the fact that a few hours in still no one has shown up to help us with rooms and luggage and things, which kind of bodes strange for the night to come. It is also almost 4pm, which means total darkness in two and a half hours and I’m not too keen on having nowhere to stay, given my earlier adventure today. 

According to Google, which we know to be reasonably OK when it is not a complete idiot, there is another hotel in town. Does my terrace friend know this? “Yes, it’s got breakfast and food. Even whites stay there.” I have never understood why this should be separately mentioned, as if it is some kind of recommendation. But anyway, that is the place I will be looking for. To the best of my knowledge there is nothing else in Ayamé. 

It’s 4pm when I decide to go and have a look at that other place, Hôtel Bossan. Google says it’s around the corner. As I am taking my suitcase (yes, THAT suitcase) to the gate I feel water. Drops. Not small ones, as the announcement of something bigger to come – no, big menacing ones. I look up and the sky is a deep grey bordering black.

“Back to the terrace!” Followed by: “Imagine still sitting at that crossroads with absolutely zero protection against this…” And then someone decides to empty this celestial bath by turning it upside down. Sheets of water, angry gusts of wind. It is a downpour I can only describe as terrifying. There’s lightning overhead, followed by thunder, not as reassuringly far away as I would like it to be. 

“This is not going to last very long,” my terrace friends says confidently. I watch treetops being violently swept from one side to the other – and watch the minutes pass by

One hour and a half later the rain finally shows signs of letting up. The storm becomes a mild drizzle and I decide to venture out and look for Hôtel Bossan. Obviously no sign of any staff at the N’zrama after this shower…

Ayamé is one street, meandering from the entry point across the dam to the other end of town. There is one main crossroads without traffic lights. But there are a few shops, a church nearby, the town hall and the inevitable petrol station. But where the Dickens is that hotel? Darkness is closing in and I am not terribly comfortable traipsing around trailing that blooming suitcase, not knowing where my head will be tonight, because I am now officially bloody knackered.

At the crossroads I still decide to take a walk up a tarred road that leads past a neatly organised settlement, streets intersecting at regular intervals. There are a few maquis (of course), some kids are playing football on one of the side streets, it has a suburban feel. Maybe there is a bit of a shortcut to where Google keeps telling me the hotel is?  

There is no shortcut. I return to the crossroads, walk back to where the N’zrama is and ask an elderly gentleman walking down the road minding his own business if he knows where the Bossan is. I get a familiar answer. “I do. But it is far. Go get one of those young men riding the tricycles and ask them to take you there.” Good idea. It is almost dark.

So down to that crossroads I go once again. A few tricycles are parked at the petrol station. Nothing happens. This seems to something of a pattern here. I approach one of them; his name is Seydou. 

“Can you take me to Hôtel Bossan?”

“I would love to. But we’ll have to wait.”

“Why? What is the problem?”

“I have no petrol and the pump is out of order. No electricity here, so they’re not working now.” Seydou is visibly frustrated by the situation because he sees income evaporate because of a problem the attendant is unwilling or unable to solve. He invents his own solution, disappears behind a wall and moments later re-emerges with a bottle half-filled with petrol. The tried and tested African method: you manually pour gas into your own tank.

“Seydou, are you sure that is enough?”

It is, he says. We finally take off at speed and take the very same road I had decided did not lead to that damn hotel. Turns out it does. Google is an idiot. 

A steep climb among the trees. A sharp right turn and another steep climb. Then the smooth tarred road ends. 

“Here it is.” 

Good. Now show me that food and the service and all those whites who are supposedly residing here…

I pay Seydou and walk into an empty court, with the shopping bag containing my laptop hanging from my tired shoulder and the suitcase trailing behind me. There’s some building work going on to the right of me. To the left, a few modest rooms. The hotel? I start looking for a reception desk. There is none. After a few choice expressions directed at no one in particular, I walk out and see another tricycle appearing on the muddy road.

“Do you by any chance know where the Hôtel Bossan is?”

“Yes. This here is residential. The hotel owns it but it’s not where you should be.”

“Good to know. So where should I be?”

“Hop in.”

It’s literally one block down, on another muddy road I obviously would have never been able to guess, if only because the new tricycle chap puts me in front of a gate that – once again – has no name on it, no plaque, no sign, nothing. But it most definitely is the hotel and there is even someone to help me get a room, for 10,000 CFA, 15 euros Noël is his name and he has put his cellphone number on the door outside.

“Call me if there’s anything.”

Now that’s what I call service! 

And I do in fact have a question. 

“Is there anywhere I can get something to eat, do you think?”

“Try downtown.”

Ah, the crossroads I have now crossed six or seven times already! Contrary to what the gentleman told me earlier, it is not far at all and I decide on a pleasant stroll from up the hill where we are now past that nice popular neighbourhood towards the petrol station and…

…a place I had spotted earlier. It promises grilled meat of all varieties. Brilliant! 

You may have guessed. There is no one there. The pattern persists. 

“You know, the women are all tired, after the end-of-year festivities”. That makes sense: they have done all the cooking while most of you guys swig beer and talk sports and politics. I am in a welcoming place with a bar and two separate spaces where you can sit. It’s called La Source, which I have spotted thanks to brightly flashing multicoloured Christmas decoration. Once inside I  manage to unglue an earnest young man from his cellphone long enough for a Beaufort beer and an answer to the question why it is impossible to get anything to eat at 8h30pm in a small but regular Ivorian town. I have not eaten for 48 hours and this is entirely my own fault. 

My one and only full day in Ayamé will be next. 

Not a walk in the park…

Yes, I have severely neglected my blog. In my feeble defence, I should say that 2025 has been a year of monumental madness. No, not the predictable christofascist violence unleashed on the United States by the psychotic Project 2025 regime its electorate elected into office, thus ensuring that the world can now safely shun the asylum formerly known as the USA, while assessing from a safe distance if and when it comes to its senses and how much of the damage it inflicts on itself and the world will be irreversible. My educated guess: a lot. 

No, I am talking about the relentless sequence of mostly unexpected events that came cascading down to West Africa. From a dramatic upsurge in terrorist attacks in the three failed Sahel states Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, to their failed Russia- backed coup in Benin and an utterly bizarre ‘autogolpe’ in Guinea Bissau, passing through make-believe elections in Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire to another autocrat cementing his power, in Togo, by appointing himself president…of the Council of Ministers. And that’s just for starters.

The first week of 2026 finds me here, in Aboisso, 110 kilometres east of the economic capital Abidjan. I am sitting next to this pretty river called the Bia that neatly cuts the town in two. Ivorians, with their usual flair for making places nice, put at least two terraces on the riverbank. Tables, chairs, beers in the fridge, fried chicken to order. With attiéké, obviously. It’s where we follow our national eleven’s rather tortuous progress in the latest edition of the African Cup of Nations tournament, which has offered us everything, from eye-wateringly atrocious football to some very attractive games that kept you glued to the screen. In my riverside maquis, that screen is a whitewashed wall.  

“Ayame 18”, says a sign on the main crossing in downtown Aboisso. Ayamé is the place where in the late 1950s, the tail end of French colonial times, a dam was constructed on that very same Bia River. It’s the oldest dam in the country and definitely something I would like to see. In fact – that dam is as old as me… and as old as Miles Davis’ seminal jazz statement Kind Of Blue. It was a good year, was 1959…

Eighteen kilometres. A pleasant four-hour countryside walk. Everything is lush, hilly, green and pretty here, remnants of the tropical rainforests that once covered this entire coast including Abidjan, where you can still see tiny bits of the original vegetation in the moats where it is impossible to build. 

So on the first Friday evening of the year 2026 I sat on my lovely terrace, enjoying my poulet grillé and Beaufort beer – and thought: it’s been a while since I took a nice long walk – why not tomorrow? 

Madness?

Most assuredly.

Impossible?

Not what I was I was thinking as I crunched my crisp chicken and sipped my ice cold beer. 

Spoiler alert: I was wrong. Very wrong. 

…

It all started pleasantly enough, the next morning. The sun was not yet out in force, I merrily crossed the town’s only bridge for the fiftieth time, my little supple-wheeled suitcase in tow, small shopping bag with my laptop in it hanging from my shoulder. I walked up to the main crossing where the town’s traffic light is located – plus the loud and bustling taxi stands, bus stations, market stalls, the airconditioned petrol stations with their espresso machines, the all-day breakfast stalls that always get you your peppered omelette sandwich and coffee that tastes of chocolate…

And there it was: the sign. Ayame 18. I turned right. The asphalt stopped soon after. No matter. I trudged along, suitcase behind me, the little noiseless rubber wheels following effortlessly. It was uphill but there were trees and this road out of Aboisso was just as nice as all the others I had explored. 

The town thinned out. I now had the Bia River on my right and recognised some of the spots I had seen from my terrace on the other side. This colonial picture, I am 100% sure, features the exact same view I was having from behind my Beaufort…

_{Source: fr.wikipedia.org} 

Out of Aboisso, downhill and then uphill again, on the way to the next village. Boy, that sun was seriously beating down and my newly acquired designer shirt was getting soaked. I was tempted to take it off but that would look out of place. And then I saw the sign that threw my scheme in total disarray. Black letters on a yellow field shouted: 

“DEVIATION”

They were grading the road. Beautiful. A huge official roadside board listed the responsible ministry and the contractor. It also said that these works would take 15 months and added usefully that the next 15 kilometres would be entirely dominated by roadworks. What I did not know was that said works had turned a relatively smooth unpaved road into a gravel-covered nightmare.

The landscape retained its luxurious beauty as the Bia below me wended its way, from the dams the French had placed upstream, and which I surely was going to see within the next, ehm, four hours…? 

Downhill. Uphill. The sun was smouldering and I was slowing down. It began to dawn on me that wanting to try this was not quite the hallmark of sanity. True – the roadworks had drawn a big fat red cross through my vision of a slightly tough but doable country stroll. But the little blue dot on my cellphone map told me that I had barely covered one-fifth of the distance.

A shelter/bus stop to my left, a house to my right. A wall. Some shade. 

A taxi stopped right in front of me. Too tempting. 

“How far are you going?”

“To the next village.”

“Alright. Take me there and I will sort myself out.”

It felt excellently fraudulent, sitting comfortably in the front seat of the taxi. True to his word, the driver stopped at the next top, a hamlet called Niaminkro. He wanted “whatever I could miss” for having spared me a few kilometres of gravelly dreadfulness. 

On arrival, I dragged my increasingly cumbersome suitcase across the gravel and saw a lady emerging from what was probably a church, taking in the spectacle of a weird white creature in a dirty cap, wearing a still soaking wet shirt, carrying a shopping bag and schlepping a suitcase behind him. Then the first minibus passed me by. From Aboisso. To Ayamé.

“Do they sell water here?”

“Yes, there’s a shop just there…” Church lady pointed at a tiny grill that I had not even seen yet.

Cold bottled water. From a working fridge. Brilliant. If there’s one thing this country has reasonably well sorted out, it’s electricity. Côte d’Ivoire exports it to the neighbours, including bad customers like Mali that don’t pay their bills…

The lady running the shop was a little less unflappable than the church lady. 

“You’re going where?”

“Ayamé.”

“You walk?”

“Yes.”

“But that’s far,” she gasped, looking at me with eyes that clearly broadcast: you are insane.

“I like walking.” I did not tell her that I was beginning to positively hate dragging a suitcase over a very long river of horrid gravel. 

I sat down on one of those trademark West African wooden chairs she had put in front of her shop, talked briefly to a young man who had come wandering in and turned out to be a lot less concerned about me covering the distance on foot. “He’ll be fine,” he told the shop lady, “when he gets to Amanékro, he’s already nearly there.”

“That’s not true,” she retorted, “Don’t make it look easier than it is.” 

_{The river of gravel}

The transport system from Aboisso to Ayamé works fine. Minibuses cruise to Ayamé and back, leaving the villages along the route to taxis that go into one particular village and then turn around. The two systems work in perfect harmony. Walking along the road, though, allowed me zero access to a minibus – they load up in Aboisso and go – and very limited space on a taxi that will never take me to my final destination. “Congratulations, mate. You’ve played yourself.” 

I briefly considered buying more water, then voted against it. There surely would be more shops in Amanékro. Our young chap disappeared into a luxury vehicle, bound for Aboisso. 

There were no shops in Amanékro. I had heroically (others would more correctly say ‘idiotically’) covered half the distance that had looked so deceptively easy a mere three hours ago. But the gravel was killing my spirit, if not the wheels of my suitcase and the sun was now my mortal enemy. The road undulated on, unconcerned with my rapidly deteriorating condition. There were now also scores of wooden sticks that the road workers had laid out at regular intervals to stop people from using the half of the road that they were working on. 

Another upward slope and I had to admit: this was it. My legs were giving out. Since no food had passed my mouth since yesterday – clearly another sign of my folly – I was not feeling that I was “almost there”, I was feeling almost dead. A small shelter loomed ahead. It looked as if I had a walk to Mars ahead of me. I left the suitcase behind and dragged the shopping bag to the shelter; staggered back and hauled the suitcase in. I sat down on a large brick and did not move.

A procession of vehicles came rolling down the gravel. I had slowly been gathering strength, got up and started flagging down things that moved on wheels. A taxi, if only to the next village. No one stopped. The space between the blue dot on my phone and Ayamé showed exactly…zero settlements. 

When I looked up the road I saw the cause of the sudden uptick. There was a funeral. I decided that there was very little sense in sticking around and waiting for the ceremony to end. No one would be in any mood to take a lone lunatic with a dirty bag, a suitcase, bad clothes and the look of a madman (“I MUST NEED SHALL get to [redacted] Ayamé…”. 

Past the funeral, the village of Amanékro suddenly offered an empty maquis and one where two women were running a drinkery. No food this time of the day. No water either. Only soft drinks. Well, get me a Coke then. Only desperation gets me to consume a Coke. 

_{Destination: the Ayamé Dam. Source: Abidjan4You}

If they were not fighting each other and being told off, unsuccessfully, by their moms, two little boys were eyeing me like some strange object that had fallen out of the sky. Which, to all intents and purposes and from their perspective, I most assuredly was. The women spoke Dioula and wisely decided not to ask me what on god’s green earth I was doing here…

I gulped down my Coke, paid the ladies of the drinkery, said goodbye and walked up the slope onto the river of gravel in the direction of Ayamé. It just had to be thus. No one would stop. And lo and behold, I entered a stretch of road that was surprisingly gravel-free (although the rhythmically laid out sticks remained, making for a minor obstacle course). It all gave me an extremely unlikely spring in my step. I had covered 60% I would blooming well make it yet! 

That spirit lasted until the next uphill slog. Downhill was, mercifully, in the shadow of a wall of trees, as cars, minibuses, 4WheelDrives and motorbikes whizzed past, clouds of dust in their wake. 

And there, in the distance, was a junction. Now I was REALLY not going to take Even One More Step. A tiny dirt road snaked upwards. The road to the Second Ayamé Dam, the first being in Ayamé itself, impossibly out of reach. 

I sat down. And waited. Would I spend the night here? 

“We saw you walking earlier today.” 

Two elderly gentlemen riding a battered motorbike. “Yes, we just came from the dam. We work for the electricity company and now we’re going back to Ayamé. You know it is still far, right?”

I knew. 

“Hop on.” 

I would not be sitting, as I had secretly hoped, luxuriously guilty, in the front seat of a taxi. Three of us, suitcase and me wedged between the rider and his passenger. Two wheels on treacherous gravel. Not my ideal vision of a triumphant entry into Ayamé but it was vastly better than…literally everything. Apprehension that we could crash (he clearly knew what he was doing) soon made way for banter, as we discussed work, the truly lovely landscape, and, of course, electricity. 

We twisted and turned our way onto the dam proper, the First Ayamé Dam and the only entry road into town. It was a very large lake indeed, surrounded by green hills. They dropped me off at a hotel I had selected. “Go and charge your phone. You know that electricity is free here, right?” I did not. But I happily plugged my charger in and waited for the receptionist to show up. 

There was no receptionist. Things were about to get slightly weird. 

(More from Ayamé shortly)

How migration really works

This was supposed to have been done a lot earlier. Mosquitoes, local politics, coup threats and other unpleasantness decided otherwise…

We are living in times when elections are won by fear. More precisely: fear of The Other, fuelled by narratives of a fictitious pure past that never existed. It got us Brexit, the re-election of Donald Trump and the breakneck speed of the Nazification of the United States. And it got us the return of similar varieties of fascism to Europe. What the far right forgets, especially in Europe, is that until half a century ago all migration was going in the opposite direction, as pointed out here.

This denial is absolutely critical to understanding fascist movements like MAGA in the United. States, AfD in Germany, Reform in the UK or the fake blond one trick pony Geert Wilders of The Netherlands. Central to these fascists is an absolute abhorrence of facts and the truth. And facts are exactly what professor Hein de Haas, the author of How Migration Really Works offers the reader – in spades. This book comes highly recommended and is bound to become essential reading for anyone interested in the subject. 

_{Credit: E-International Relations}

De Haas brings three decades of scientific work to the table. In an engaging style that explains without infantilising the reader, he dismantles no fewer than 22 myths that, in his estimation, pollute the public debate about migration with deliberate distortions, exaggerations and irrational fear-mongering. These myths come from all sides of the political spectrum, dominate public discourse and lead to extremely dumb, expensive and  counter-productive policies. 

His starting point is an insight he gained during a public debate about migration in The Netherlands, currently labouring under the most inept government in its modern history, fascist in nature, brought to power on a wave of irrational fear fuelled by the usual menu of lies and distortions. 

The debate’s moderator wanted to know whether participants and public were in favour or against migration – and that was the moment it dawned on the author what was fundamentally wrong with the migration debate: it starts from a flawed premise. Because migration EXISTS; whether one is in favour or against it is entirely irrelevant. 

_{Pont ADO, Central Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. The colours are those of the national flag, in reverse. Pic: me, from a taxi.}

This is a migration magnet. Here, people from all over this region arrive with the purpose of finding work and support their families in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Guinea, Togo, Liberia, Benin and beyond. Like so many countries in this part of the world, this country, Côte d’Ivoire was also subjected to an entirely different type of migrant: white, European, French, armed, violent. And the French brought another community here, people from another French colony, Lebanon. The manager of a coffee and fast food restaurant in the middle class Angré area of this sprawling city of 7 or 8 million told me that his family back in Lebanon had sent him here to make money. He ended our little conversation with a wistful: ”You have no  idea how bad things are back home…”.

And the same goes for millions of people here. The young man repairing my phone in a small shop on a quiet street: Togolese, like the lady who runs a little hardware store on the same street. The chaps working on cars in the open air: Burkinabè. The guard downstairs keeping our apartment block safe: from Mali. None of them will travel any further; they can’t afford the journey*.

*_{Update: our excellent Malian guard told me two days ago that he is leaving. Destination? Back to Mali, where he has his own family and there’s work waiting for him. He never liked it here…}

Which brings us to the two most important points De Haas presents us in his book, countering deliberate lies: (1) most migrants are in another country legally and (2) the main reason for their migration is to find work. 

De Haas returns to this theme frequently. The most important factor – by far – that influences migration is the demand for labour. There are many reasons why this demand exists. A booming economy. Changing demographics. Social trends, like higher education levels for the local population. Often, these trends appear in combination. 

In any case, the demand is real, as is the inability of the non-migrant population to meet that demand and as a result the hands needed to get these jobs done are sourced elsewhere. 

_{All welcome – until politics change the discourse to xenophobia. West African flags outside an Abidjan shop.}

You will see these migrant hands on building sites, working the land, in hospitals, in restaurants and hotels and in the homes of the rich. Where there are unfilled vacancies, there will be migrants to keep the economy ticking over. And most of them will have papers. Even those that do not (for instance in the United States) work, pay taxes, keep their heads down and avoid causing trouble; you do not want to attract unwanted attention to yourself if you are undocumented, a simple fact of life that the hate fanatics forget when linking illegal immigration to crime. Just one example: almost all of the fentanyl that the Trump regime pretends to be so concerned about is brought in from Mexico – by US citizens. 

But it is not just the nonsense being told by the immigration-hating far right that De Haas addresses. He also has a level-headed assessment of the impact climate change may have on migration (negligible; people tend to stay in at-risk areas because to them the benefits outweigh the dangers). He also wishes that NGOs and UN agencies ditch the maddening habit of grossly exaggerating refugee figures in order to attract funding. And he puts paid to the idea that large-scale development aid will somehow reduce migration to the affluent parts of the world where the jobs are. It will not. 

De Haas has several things to say about this. First,  let’s go back to my street in Abidjan, full of non-Ivorians doing clearly essential work. Sure, some of them would like to go to ‘France’, which in this former colony stands for a generic place that is predominantly white and rich. But they are also imbued with a sense of realism that is woefully absent among the  manufacturers of fear of The Other on the hard right: most of the folks on my street know that onward travel is mission impossible given the kind of pay they receive, the obligation to send money home and the prohibitive costs of an onward journey. As De Haas points out: intercontinental migration tends to favour those that are already better off and that is a minority. 

This leads to the second point: only when a country has reached a certain income level (hint: it’s NOT middle income) it stops being a country of migration origin. Morocco, for instance, is making progress in creating infrastructure, jobs, increasing peoples’ incomes…and who do we meet in Morocco being street vendors, domestic workers, waiters and waitresses…? You guessed right: Senegalese, Ivorian, Guinean migrants who could just about afford the air fare or made the long and perilous trek to the relatively prosperous kingdom in Africa’s most northwestern corner, prosperous partly because Moroccan migrants contributed greatly to increasing the national income. That is how this really works… Migration is, more than anything, a manifestation of ambition.

_{Rotterdam and yes, I think the Ivorians copied the Erasmus Bridge… Rotterdam, a major global sea port, attracts seafarers. Among them, Cabo Verdeans, who not only built a thriving community here but were instrumental in forging deep ties between the two countries. Hotels in Cabo Verde are called ‘Holanda’ and a lot of popular Cabo Verdean music is recoreded…in Rotterdam.}

One of the biggest gripes De Haas had with the elaborate myth-making that surrounds migration is that these inevitably feed into incredibly dumb, incredibly expensive and incredibly counterproductive policies. The introduction of visas for Moroccans used to a system of highly successful circular migration into Spain and back closed that avenue and spawned illegal border crossings. Dumb. The whipped up hysteria about undocumented migrants in the United States has led to government-organised kidnappings and hostage takings and hundreds of thousands of migrants leaving, thus crippling the economies of, say, Nebraska and compelling Florida to consider re-introducing child labour. Unforgivably dumb. 

De Haas describes the schizophrenia of making migration relatively easier but then increasing border controls. You can’t have it both ways. Again, just one example: more border restrictions will increase permanent migration, as prospective migrants will study far more carefully what they need to do to enter – and once in will stay put. He recounts the mid-1970s exodus from the former Dutch colony of Surinam to the Netherlands as an example: when visa restrictions were announced, people came en masse. And stayed, because they thought the doors would soon slam shut.

_{Since France colonised, violently, huge parts of West and Central Africa, people from those colonies also found themselves in France – as forced recruits in European wars they had no part of, as labourers, refugees or indeed as migrants. “We did not come to you – you came to us first.” The Malian community is perhaps 200,000 strong and one of the artists to come out of that community is the colossally successful singer Aya Nakamura, easily the most recognised French language singer on the planet. When it was announced that she would take part in the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics, a viciously racist campaign against her was launched, of which this picture is a notorious (the French would say “tristement célèbre“) manifestation. As we all know, Nakamura absolutely killed it at the ceremony – always the best riposte.}

So what then are the solutions? That’s the wrong question to ask. It stems from the question whether one is in favour or against migration. Migration is part of the human condition and has been since the beginning of time. People have always moved and will forever continue to move. 

Acknowledging this will inform smart policies, the exact opposite of what most of the rich – and still overwhelmingly white – world is currently doing. It starts with the notion that migrants constitute an estimated 3% of the global population, most of whom do not travel far, irrespective of whether they travel to opportunity and work or are looking for safety as refugees. Those that do show signs of courage and entrepreneurship absent among the vast majority in the countries receiving them. Therefore, ensuring successful integration through education, work and citizenship is the best way to ensure accommodations and arrangements that benefit the migrants themselves, the communities in which they live and the communities where they come from. This is eminently doable because the numbers aren’t all that overwhelming. A government that can spend billions of euros and dollars and pounds on stupid and expensive expulsion machineries can spend these same billions on building inclusive, productive societies. 

Because ultimately, as De Haas concludes after he has sent those 22 migration myths packing by using the scientific method, the way we treat migrants tell us everything we need to know about the kind of society we are. 

We can be open, free, rational, prosperous, inclusive and part of a world that moves forward and makes progress. Or we can be full of fear and violent hate, closed, backward and ultimately dumped onto the scrap heap of history. We cannot be both. 

Movements

(I wrote a blog under an almost identical name precisely one decade ago…if you want, you can find out how well – or how badly – it has aged…)

“I am struggling to find something to do here, anything. Most of all a job! I’m young, and my life feels like it’s being wasted. Soon I will be leaving. Where to? The big city – that’s where! It’s where the jobs are…”

“I saved money to be able to afford a ticket to come here, and all the paperwork. Yes, visas included. So now I must work really hard and save money again if I want to pay for a ticket back and in the meantime I must have a roof over my head. No, it’s not easy at all but God is Great.” 

“You just keep moving. You find something to do in one place and when the work is done and they have no other work for you – fine! You go somewhere else. And then in one of those places I found this lovely girl – well, she found me, more like. Anyway, she wanted to marry me, so we did! We’re no longer together, sadly…” 

“This is why we are here. Look around you: work, money. Over there…(arm sweeping broadly in the general direction of where he and his friends come from)…is nothing. Yes, we know there was war here. But that’s another reason why we are here: there is plenty to do. We’re all working.” 

“You can pick up your laundry next week, is that OK? We will be closing a little earlier, as it is a festive day and then we will take just one or two days off. It’s hard work here but it’s fine… You know, I am actually from a different country but this town is very cool. I like it here. My church is not very far from here, either. I will be going straight there after work.” 

“You know, I used to live in Ouaga. Do you know where that circular road runs? No, not at Patte d’Oye, before you get there. That was my area. Do I miss it? In a way, yes, but you know it really is great where I am. I have a job, I make money. But I do go back every year at least once, to see the family. They’re OK, I send them money.”

“So now the authorities have demolished our home. We’re sleeping outside. I think I have had enough of this life. I came here twelve years ago and I have been driving people around all this time and look wat it’s got me! At the end of the day, it’s probably better to go back home.”

_{Nomads old and new, Morocco}

These are real life quotes from people I met only in the past single month (with two exceptions). People who moved from one place to another as migrants, refugees or undocumented individuals. 

Taken together, they constitute roughly 3.6% of the world’s population. The vast, overwhelming majority of people in the world…stay where they are and if they move…they tend to go to places nearby: towns, cities, metropolises, countries. So, a lot of those quotes you have just read come from people who live in Abidjan, West Africa’s principal migration magnet, a city with a GDP comparable to that of Bordeaux or Copenhagen (actually larger because the unregistered economy is so much larger, as it is in every city on the African continent). Others I met in Mali, Morocco and Liberia…

Global migration figures have remained remarkably stable, as Hein de Haas, an eminent migration researcher has found. To be very clear: de Haas does not argue in favour or against migration; he brings facts and presents those in a systematic fashion in his book How Migration Really Works, which I will discuss in my next blog. 

_{Painting by the Cameroonian artist Barthélémy Toguo, whose multi-layered, multi-material, multi-media work I had the good fortune to discover at the Musée Mohammed VI in Rabat, Morocco}

So why are white Europeans and Americans and Australians so terribly terribly terribly upset with a people movement that on a global scale is a) vanishingly small and b) even smaller when considering that the vast, overwhelming majority of those migrants does not even arrive on their affluent shores? 

Besides and historically, migration was in the opposite direction. The white populations of America, Australia, South Africa are descendants of individuals who LEFT Europe. Between the second half of the Nineteenth and the first half of the Twentieth centuries a staggering 12% of Europe’s population upped sticks and departed. If there ever was an invasion, if was until extremely recently (five decades ago) going in the opposite direction. Between the 15^th and the 19^th century such invasions were accompanied by death, destruction, enslavement and vandalism on an epic scale.

And is it here where the deep white discomfort lies: the problem is not migration – not if it’s whites doing it. The problem is brown and black people coming to ‘our’ white shores, even when those shores only became white and rich as a result of a series of crimes and genocides. And those historical facts hurt white sensibilities even more. Because when they speak about ‘invasions’ and ‘replacement’, or peddle similar fact-free nonsense – they are actually projecting.

What they are inevitably referring to is what their ancestors did all over the world: colonise, plunder, pillage, enslave, rape, murder. Virtually none of those ‘invaders’ coming into Europe and America and Australia today want to do any of those things. Like the people I quoted at the beginning, they come to work, or, in a small number of cases, flee violence and destruction. 

So yes, I can see how that must grate and lead to Trump’s concentration camps, calls to “deport, deport, deport”, Fortress Brussels and real-life violence against the differently coloured arrivals; violence of the kind the white ancestors of these ‘concerned citizens’ may well have meted out to the migrants’ ancestors. They urgently need a history lesson. For 2025, I wish everyone excellent history lessons, breathtaking vistas and piercing insights. Because by jove, we shall blerry well need them.

_{And Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Russia, Denmark…}

Thinking about the Sahel – 7 and end

Back to basics

What the Burkinabè human rights activist said at the beginning of this miniseries leads to the point I have been raising and repeating ad nauseam: all anti-terrorism efforts are doomed to fail unless they start from the root cause, which is the deep marginalisation (social, economic, political) of the regions where almost all of the violence happens. At a recent conference on security issues on the African continent organised by the Morocco-based Policy Center for the New South, it was observed that there are parts of the Sahel where the people have no trust whatsoever in their own governments. This is due to a fatal combination of malign neglect and total impunity for atrocities committed by men in uniforms. And when people complain about these matters they are met with complete indifference – or violence. In the end, people simply no longer feel part of the country where they live and longer obliged to abide by its rules. As I predicted, the current lot in power is no different from what went before.

_{Water and justice – not very common in the Sahel… Pic: me}

Consider, for instance, National Parks. These are colonial inventions to protect animals, not the people who have been living with those animals since time immemorial. Government officials, security forces and supposedly more benign NGO-like organisations like African Parks frequently – and often violently – prevent ordinary folk from being in those parks. Recommended reading: my excellent colleague Olivier van Beemen’s latest book that deals with this issue. 

So what happens when an armed non-state group comes along and tells the next-door people: “Of course you can enter these parks and find whatever you need. Just pay us…”? The people will say: “Thank you. Do we have a deal here?” And in this fashion they have regained access to a resource that was denied them, while in the same fell swoop the armed non-state armed groups (terrorists, bandits, jihadists, call them what you like) have obtained sanctuary. Unlike many of the policy makers, intervention planners, specialists, development professionals, politicians and wildlife protectors, these groups actually read the room. This is how they are able to establish their operational bases inside these national parks, which often (and very conveniently!) straddle large stretches of borderland, for instance between Burkina Faso and its neighbours to the south. 

_{Performance art in Siby, Mali, on rural life and the disturbances it has had to endure. Pic: me}

This is not to say that these armed non-state infiltrators are good people, far from it: they wreak havoc and often destroy the communities they initially pretend to serve and protect. But their strategies and tactics are on point and ‘we’ fail to understand why this is the case. 

Caught between state violence and non-state terrorism communities have taken to organising their own self-defence. It is either that, or throwing in your lot with bigger forces. In his book, Carayol quotes one member of such a community in Central Mali, who declares: “When you are weak, you join one that’s stronger than you.” Unfortunately, those militias tend to become violent actors themselves, which is what has happened in parts of Burkina Faso and in Central Mali, home to a dizzying array of armed groups.

But let us for a moment assume that trust between local communities and the state can be re-built, how should that be done? 

_{Peace and quiet, the serenity of being left alone so they can go about their business. That, more than anything, is what people want. Pic taken in Ségou.}

I believe it starts with ending the exasperating impunity for the horrific human rights abuses that the national security forces and their so-called ‘partners’ inflict on unarmed civilians. The next thing to do is to invoke an amazing concept: asking the people living in Sahel communities what they want, apart from being left alone by armed criminals with or without a uniform. They will tell you a few terribly uncomplicated things: they would like to see basic services delivered (education, health care, water, electricity, decent roads) and they would like to have access to legitimate economic opportunities, especially for the youth. 

This does most emphatically NOT imply resurrecting the much-vaunted decentralisation agenda that donors foisted on Sahel countries from the 1990s and onwards and which have played an important role in creating the warlordism that helped spread the armed violence. What’s that – you say I exaggerate? Read on. 

An old plan of mine was to write a book about how the donors’ agenda of decentralisation being a major factor in the rise of warlords in Mali. I am absolutely convinced that this can be proven and in fact, parts of the evidence have started to emerge. The agenda was pushed relentlessly in countries that had a) highly centralised power structures imposed on them (especially by French colonisers) and b) a history of usually smaller and more manageable indigenous administrative units, where traditional systems of accountability existed. Once again: what could possibly go wrong? Well – now we know: the decentralisation agenda has created local tyrants. These men (almost always men), not having acces to the funds that always got stuck in the capital and never reached the artificially decentralised units they were supposed to serve found other ways to finance their new positions and the plans that came with them. What did they do? It’s elementary, my dear Watson: they connected with (or created) criminal networks and financed their sinecures in this fashion: drugs smuggling, arms trafficking, kidnapping, the lot.

_{Neglect the places and peoples at the margins and watch them come into town. An ordinary scene in Bamako, which earlier this century was the fastest growing city in the world. Pic: me, from inside a bus…}

It brings to mind what an expert from India once said at a conference of the development set near the Dutch city of Amersfoort. His point has stuck with me ever since and was this: it will be a fine day when development organisations, from the World Bank through state agencies all the way down to NGOs are faced with real (he meant legal) accountability for the consequences of them playing with peoples’ lives in countries where they work. He ended with this memorable phrase: “It would concentrate minds wonderfully.” 

Joining up donor policies with the wildly different local agendas, it becomes very easy to see how government officials and army personnel at all levels become part of shady criminal networks. It’s one more explanation of how the Sahel has become a lawless playground for criminals, religious nutjobs, mercenaries and deeply cynical political entrepreneurs at all levels. I agree with the argument put forward by the Indian expert all those years ago. Brought to its logical conclusion it means that donors and development organisations that push their agendas on these countries and in so doing help co-create the problems many of the countries across the Global South are grappling with should be held criminally liable for the fallout from their experiments. The continent of Africa (or Latin America and Asia for that matter) is not a laboratory where human beings and their communities can be used as socio-economic guinea pigs.

_{Bring work, create jobs, solve problems by listening to the people experiencing them, or stay away. Pic: me}

To sum up, what the violence-affected regions in the Sahel need, want and demand is a package: an end to their marginalisation, the start of building trust by (re)introducing justice and bringing basic services, the creation and encouragement of legitimate economically viable activity. These things, taken together with a law and order approach towards armed terrorism (they are first and foremost bandits and lawbreakers) will hopefully make people think that they are citizens of their country after all.

Do this, and watch the violence diminish. Because the basic truth is astonishingly simple: people who have something to lose do not take up arms and start or join wars. People who have nothing to lose do this kind of thing. I will leave it at that.

Thinking about the Sahel – 6

Religion, what of it?

“Can anyone explain to me why I should listen to some brat with a gun telling me how to live MY Islam?” A question a Malian friend of mine blurted out as we were standing on a street in the Badalabougou area of the capital Bamako, discussing the vandalism committed in Timbuktu, the City of 333 Saints, by marauding hordes claiming to know Islam better than the inhabitants of Timbuktu themselves. Not far from where we were talking, on the same street, loomed the large mosque where the then still relatively obscure and later very famous imam Mahmoud Dicko was already serving. 

In the largely (and in a lot of places predominantly) secular West, religion is a blind spot. And that secularity is a handicap, because it obscures something that is central to almost everyone’s life in the Sahel – and arguably on the entire continent. The spiritual dimension is never far from peoples’ minds, as they do their daily chores, worry about staying alive, try and earn enough income to buy food, send the children to school, get some decent clothes to wear and have a roof over their heads. Close to the surface lie the heretofore and the hereafter. And that merits attention. 

Central to that dimension are centuries-old purely African  traditions and – depending on where you live – one of the two imported monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam. The two tend to co-exist pretty easily. However, the arrival on the scene of radicalised extremist movements of young men with arms, often led by forceful and effective preachers has bulldozered away previous, delicate social and economic balances that existed throughout the region and has pitted Muslim against Muslim. How on earth do you manage this? 

The Senegalese researcher and writer Thierno S.D. Niang, who works in the field of conflict prevention wrote a book on the situation in the Sahel, in which he brings to the fore exactly this missing dimension. Islam, originally alien to the African continent became nevertheless a force in the anti-colonial struggle, especially towards the end of the 19^thCentury. Anyone who has ever been to Senegal will not fail to see the iconic portrait of Cheikh Amadou Bamba, the founder of  Senegal’s most influential brotherhood, the Mourides and the leader of peaceful resistance against French colonialism. The model was prayer and Islamic scholarship against French colonial repression. We know the outcome of that contest: Senegal is an independent republic and Bamba has embedded his image and thoughts deep in Senegal’s national consciousness. A far cry from the fanatical vandalism of the illiterates now terrorising the people living in the Sahel, hence the quote with which I began this installment.

Speaking of vandalism of the most pernicious kind: the book revealed to me yet another instance of wilful colonial destruction of knowledge. In 1864, Niang tells us, the French governor of the West African region AOF (Afrique occidentale française) ordered the library of the University of Pire burnt down. Thousands of books were lost in this shocking and unforgivable act of violence against civilisation and scholarship. 

Returning to the same kind of violence and cultural vandalism ravaging the Sahel today, Niang identifies the multiple roots of the problem of this supposedly religious extremism: poverty, marginalisation, impunity for state actors – and all of this happening against the backdrop of deteriorating living conditions caused by (among others) climate change. And there you have it: confirmation of the statement I began this series with. He also concurs with the assessment that, seen from a regional perspective, Algeria was the source and the criminally irresponsible NATO action in Libya the trigger. But because of his background, knowledge and insights, Niang is able to  tell us more about the mechanics of how an armed, self-appointed and self-styled jihadist movement takes over a community where Islam is already embedded. 

Niang describes the tactics and techniques armed religious extremist groups use, in order to win the confidence of the communities they seek to infiltrate. (His comments mainly apply to Jama’at Nusrat wa-Islam wal-Muslimeen, JNIM, the Al Qaeda-linked operation; Islamic State in the Greater Sahel is pure terrorism and often the sworn enemy of JNIM.) They start with providing security – but with a twist: they take the form of elaborate protection rackets involving cattle theft*; they continue with insisting on the correct and highly regimented strict Islamic teachings – the targeting of state-established and state-run schools by these groups is no coincidence – and in so doing they create parallel security, justice and eduation structures. The seduction into radicalism is gradual, Niang argues. Violence is reserved primarily for representatives and symbols of the evil state: schools (as mentioned) but also local authority buildings, courts, police posts, army facilities, anyone in uniform (including environmental officers of the Eaux et Forêts departments) and everything relating to elections. Violence is obviously also reserved for those who disagree with their radical anti-African religious ideologies and methods.

*_{This is a hugely underestimated issue in the Sahel that rarely gets the recognition it deserves. When you see cattle walking, you are watching the Bank passing by; cattle theft is arguably the single most destructive thing you can do to a community in the Sahel.}

Niang’s charming (be it rather verbose) book offers one solution to the problems besetting the Sahel, which is as endearingly Senegalese as it is unrealistic: just become like us and you’ll be fine. The obstacles are legion. For one, Mali is definitely even more deeply conservative than Senegal – witness the success of imam Dicko’s crusade against women’s rights, LGBTQ rights and full sex education in Malian schools. Having said that, foregrounding deeply-rooted West African Sufi traditions and giving them a role in a bid to deprogram radical extremists, as Niang suggests, may indeed be one way forward.

Sufism is the spiritual basis of the West African Muslim Brotherhoods, precisely the reason why they are so deeply hated and detested by the armed invaders and their rigid and frankly backward interpretation of Islam, compared to their West African brothers and sisters. The late Tunesian scholar Abdelwahab Meddeb has some powerful things to say about the culture wars going on INSIDE the Islamic faith. These wars have little if anything to do with the West; this is an internal fight to the death about the exegesis of the Holy Koran. And ultimately, this is a fight about power and one of its main frontlines cuts across the African deserts, forests and savannahs. The West – and especially the parts that are blinded by a debilitating hatred towards the faith that more than a billion people worldwide use as a beacon in their lives – knows virtually nothing about this. 

_{The rockface behind Siby, Mali. Pic: me}

One of the key features of this fight is finding ways to counter the toxic influence of the money with which Saudi Arabia has been pushing its dour and joyless state religion, Wahabism, across the West African region. That intra-religious culture war has been going on for nearly a century, and has even been used politically, by the likes of Guinea’s ruling party during the years of the murderous autocrat Ahmed Sékou Touré or the war that the Guinea-backed ULIMO-K rebels brought to the Liberian rainforests. However, and in spite of my slightly flippant remark two paragraphs up, one should accept and adopt Niang’s premise that the catchphrase ‘African solutions for African problems’ carries a heavy religious dimension and that the Africa-adapted variants of Islam may – and probably will – contribute towards arriving at a solution to the imported issue of religious extremism. But even with this often neglected dimension integrated into a more holistic approach, the road to a normal existence free of violence and extremism will be long and hard. And that’s what the next and final instalment will attempt to address. 

Thinking about the Sahel – 5

More dunderheads

It was not only France that blundered its way through the savannah and the desert. We also had to suffer the creation of the US Africa Command AFRICOM, in 2008. AFRICOM has succeeded in complicating things beyond recognition, principally by unwittingly creating a West African Coup Plotters Club who had become friends through the AFRICOM-organised annual Flintlock exercises they attended. So thanks in part to AFRICOM, we now have three illegitimate, inept, mendacious, corrupt, self-serving power-hungry juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger*, who have decided to stay in power and hold on to their lucrative sinecures until they are removed. On July 6^ththey established what they call the Confederation of Sahel States (Confédération des états sahéliens), which has no legitimacy, will not be recognised by any of the neighbours (let alone further afield) and will further complicate the fight against armed extremism, a fight in which none of the juntas are interested. 

_{*This references a report that the independent Amsterdam-based publisher ZAM released with impeccable timing, on July 10th. It rips away the curtain and gives us rare insights into the real living conditions of people having to endure the jihadist terrorist menace and the violence of junta-led states.}

However, these three ‘enjoy’ the protection of the next idiot that has come barging in – Russia, also the next entirely predictable and bloody failure. Russian mercenaries have proved to be far more prolific killers of unarmed civilians than the Americans or the French and now it’s them blundering on, carrying their racism as a badge of honour. Under Russian protection and tutelage, the juntas have intensified the worst excesses of the elected governments they replaced, with increased violent repression and deep hostility to independent media and pro-democracy activists.

Burkina Faso is, arguably, the worst case. Led by the increasingly unhinged Captain Ibrahim Traoré, its junta is weak and under constant threat. Hence the endless litany of human rights abuses – disappearances, abductions, forced recruitments, torture, extrajudicial killings, death threats and other forms of intimidation – specifically targeting journalists and civil society activists in order to bully the population into obedience and maintain a carefully cultivated war psychosis. We have had the arbitrary arrest and subsequent disappearance of the widely respected pro-democracy and pro-transparency activist and lawyer Maître Guy Hervé Kam, journalists like Serge Oulon of L’Événement, Burkina Faso’s (and arguably the francophone world’s) best newspaper, and so on, the list is long and getting longer. It does not end there: army officers who disagree with the Dear Leader are also disappeared, incarcerated, tortured or killed. The two things to watch in Burkina Faso? The terrible insecurity situation and army divisions. 

Traoré and his violent enforcers betray the heritage of the country’s true great heroes, Thomas Sankara and Norbert Zongo every single day. Having said that, there is no denying that Traoré, in spite of being a fraud, has an army of devoted followers, still believing he is the Messiah who will deliver peace and prosperity to this brutalised nation that he, in fact, brutalises some more. But there is only so much abject non-delivery that the Burkinabè will tolerate. There already is a groundswell of discontent in the army and among ordinary folks in many different corners of the country, which he counters in classic autocrat fashion…by blaming everyone but himself. Hence the idiotic accusations against Côte d’Ivoire, such as the mendacious assertion that it diminishes electricity supply to Mali in order to provoke public unrest or the repeated false statement of its harbouring dissidents. (Mind you, with anything between four and six million of your fellow Burkinabè in Côte d’Ivoire you are bound to find a bunch that do not agree with the Dear Leader.) But Côte d’Ivoire will not be the cause of Traoré’s departure…

_{Bamako. In the distance what the Malians call ‘La colline du pouvoir’, Power Hill. It is Koulouba, the presidential palace.}

Malians, meanwhile, are thoroughly fed up with their energy utility, Électricité du Mali (EDM) and its worsening ‘performance’. It is causing severe economic stress, is currently at the heart of many discussions on the streets of the capital Bamako and elsewhere. EDM is also one of the issues splitting the junta right down the middle into two camps – one led by Col Assimi Goïta and one led by Col Sadio Camara, Mali’s principal link to Russia.  Malians are also fed up with the junta’s constant lies about the wars, as the jihadist threat keeps spreading, slowly encircling the capital. 

Meanwhile, the army and their Russian ‘instructors’ terrorise and brutalise the people in the centre, the north and the northeast of the country. In an echo of the 1960s, bloody revenge attacks are carried out in the North after the easy government victory at Kidal, late 2023. Kidal, where the Tuareg rebels had their base, was easy because this was the only enemy with an address. So far, this ‘victory’ has led to more refugees and displaced persons (Kidal was empty when the soldiers drove in), increasingly strained relations with Algeria, a rift with the Tuareg community and the inevitable regrouping and formation of new Tuareg rebellions. The impact on the jihadist situation is nil; the main thing this Russia-junta tandem of terror has managed to create is the prospect of fresh insurrections, more revenge and thus more violence. The things to watch in Mali are, therefore: the endless power cuts, the calamitous state of the economy and the gratuitous industrial-scale violence visited on unarmed civilians. 

And the thing to watch in Niger? The never-ending corrupt shenanigans around defence procurements and Niger’s exports, currently uranium and soon oil. Unlike Mali and Burkina Faso, it does not need the other Sahel states for anything. Like nearby Guinea, which can survive selling its bauxite to the Chinese, the Russians and the Emiratis without ECOWAS getting in the way, Niger can survive on what it sells. Having just ejected the French Orano company from its mines, Niger’s uranium will go to Russia or anywhere else it wants. Oil will soon go to China, which runs the extraction and transport operation through the China National Petroleum Corporation. The generals who grabbed power in July 2023 belong to the same elite as the elected president they removed in a game of musical chairs that started in 1974, the year of the first military coup. This is about rent, which will have to be divided among the generals and colonels and hangers-on before the inevitability of their removal. Expect them to be at each other’s throats before the year is out.

_{Sooner or later, they will all be run out of town}

What will replace the catastrophic juntas and their Russian backers is anyone’s guess. What is certain, though, is that just as in Senegal where a democratic change of power occurred this year, religion will inevitably be playing an increasingly central role, something the French could have realised before they looked the other way as Algerian generals short-circuited the outcome of a free and fair election in 1991. And so the next installment will take a look at religion.

Thinking about the Sahel – 4

Generals and spies

Algeria has played a complicated and shady key role in the genesis, gestation and expansion of the networks of organised crime and later jihadism in the Sahara and the Sahel. That, at least, is the view of the writer François Gèze, in a very informative chapter on Algerian neighbourly meddling. It appeared in a book of essays published in 2013 under the title La guerre au Mali. Gèze makes this plausible point: without the Algerian intelligence services and military, the jihadist criminal enterprise in the Sahel would probably not have taken off the way it has. 

Algeria sometimes seems to be the blind spot in many of the analyses and commentaries that deal with the arrival of the ‘jihadist’ crime syndicates in Mali, with attention mainly – and understandably – focussed on the disaster NATO created in Libya in 2011. There, the objective was to assist French president Nicolas Sarkozy in his plan to do a Margaret Thatcher/Falklands/Malvinas on Libya because his domestic political life was getting a little too uncomfortable. The forced removal of the autocrat Muamar Ghadaffi had nothing to do with Libya.  

Algeria has been a securocracy since it liberated itself from France in the bloody 1954 – 1962 War of Independence that has caused deep and never addressed traumas on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea. The war explains why Algeria has been dominated by an all-powerful army and an all-powerful intelligence service; they won that war. The war also explains why the extreme right holds such appeal for the French electorate, much in the same way as the keys to understanding the current Dutch love affair with fascism lie in Indonesia: the end to their racist colonial projects. The extreme rightwing politician Marine le Pen has attempted to make the Rassemblement national (the former Front national) look respectable but history will never forget that her father, Jean-Marie le Pen, the founder of the Fn, fought in France’s colonial war in Southeast Asia and as an intelligence officer tortured Algerian freedom fighters and their sympathisers, charges he denies. 

_{The approaching storm. Ségou, Mali. Pic: me}

When in 1991 the Front islamique pour le salut (FIS), a political movement advocating for Sharia Law in Algeria won national elections, the army stepped in and staged a coup, with French consent. It means that the Algerian securocrats and their French backers, in that order, bear responsibility for the horror that was to follow: a decade of brutal civil war during which seemingly everything was permitted, as long as it was poor and defenseless Algerians that bore the brunt of the blind violence meted out by both sides. Both the army and the armed and radicalised wing of the FIS, now calling itself GIA (Groupe armée islamique) committed acts of brutality not seen since the 1950s. The army imitated the French practice of committing vile acts against civilians while donning the enemy’s uniform, while GIA committed equally gruesome and indiscriminate killings. 

By the time Algeria was finally allowed to start healing from these atrocities, nineteen Saudi terrorists flew two airplanes into the tallest skyscrapers in downtown Manhattan, New York and another one into the Pentagon, an act that according to François Gèze changed everything. The doomed War on Terror began and everything was permitted – again.

Gèze chronicles how under the guidance of the DRS (Algeria’s omnipotent intelligence service called Département de renseignement et de sécurité) the GIA structures were exported to the neighbours: first to Mauritania with little success except for one attack on the army in 2005 and then to Mali. During that process the GIA transmogrified into AQMI – Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. This is when we see DRS-guided if not DRS-produced criminals like Mokhtar Belmokhtar (the infamous cigarette smuggler) and Aldelmalek Droukdel (an Islamist mercenary who fought in Afghanistan) rising to prominence and AQMI organising its seed money by kidnapping Europeans, for the release of whom European governments paid large amounts of money. Coordination for these operations was done, in part, out of Algeria’s giant embassy in Bamako, prompting one taxi driver to shout, as we were passing the not-so-terribly-diplomatic building: “We have a very bad neighbour!” It is at the very least deeply ironic that France was called to start Opération Serval (Barkhane’s precursor) in January 2013 to deal with the fallout of the extremist nonsense the Algerian generals triggered in 1991 with the tacit approval if not active encouragement of France…

_{A pretty typical Sahelian place: Siby, Mali. Pic: me}

No surprises, then, that the Algeria-brokered 2015 Algiers Peace Accord was only highly reluctantly accepted by the Tuareg rebels and the Malian government and not just because they were signing a text they had hardly contributed to. I remember standing next to Malian friends in the Malian capital Bamako, June 2015, as we watched national television coverage of the supposedly solemn signing of the accord. The friends were watching the faces and the body language of the high-ranking fighters signing the document and commenting: “They’re not serious about this.” Eight years later, Col Assimi Goïta’s junta killed the whole thing, as it recaptured the rebel headquarters of Kidal, its only and easiest victory. Nobody mourned the end of the ‘Algiers Process’ and relations between Mali and its northern neighbour remain as dreadful as they have always been. 

The capture of Kidal was followed by the entirely predictable spate of terrible exactions (mass murders, rapes, tortures, lootings) of the people in that region by the Malian army, ‘assisted’ by the specialists in brutalising civilian populations, the Russian Wagner mercenaries, now re-branded Africa Corps. More about them shortly.