In his controversial analyses of African affairs, former president Olusegun Obasanjo often puts on scholarly airs on account of his experience in government. He had supervised an activist foreign policy during his rule as Nigerian military head of state between 1976 and 1979, and had taken more than a passing interest in foreign affairs as elected president between 1999 and 2007. Now, he feels supremely qualified to write disquisitions on African and world affairs. But with the passing of notable and cerebral African leaders like Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Leopold Senghor and Nelson Mandela, among others, the African analytical field is today populated by less gifted rulers and experts than the world average.
In a statement he issued last week on Europe’s refugee/migrant crisis and the Muammaer Gaddafi factor, Chief Obasanjo said, inter alia: “It is time for the international community and particularly African leaders to take a good look at the factors responsible for the death and destruction in the Mediterranean by illegal migration of youths from Africa and address the causes in an honest, responsible, humane and holistic manner rather than the current futile attempt to half-heartedly deal with the symptoms rather than the cause…Although there are strenuous efforts to deny it, it is undeniable that the vacuum created by the lack of effective governance in Libya precipitated by the direct action of Western powers is responsible for the current anarchy in that country. The current inflow of African refugees into Europe from Libya is a direct consequence…The government in Libya which in 2000 acted humanely and responsibly to stem the outflow of illegal migrants to Europe has been replaced by unconscionable bandits and terrorists who have forcibly seized the instruments of state to facilitate human trafficking and illegal migration for their own material benefit.”
Apart from establishing a spurious direct link between Mr Gaddafi’s fall and the repeated waves of migration to Europe, Chief Obasanjo also attributes the crisis to mainly economic and conflict factors. Not only did he misread the migrant crisis from the Libyan perspective, in the process betraying his indefensible support for the late Libyan leader, he also believes that Western powers were short-sighted in their machinations against Mr Gaddafi. By Chief Obasanjo’s acknowledgement, however, the migrant problem predated the fall of Mr Gaddafi, stating that about 17,000 Nigerians were repatriated from Libya in 2000. Economic factors explain only a little part of the crisis. In propping up the insurrection in Libya, Western powers merely responded to the looming stalemate in the Libyan war of resistance and liberation, a war accompanied by extreme butchery, a war triggered more by the widening gyre of the Arab Spring than by Western machinations. More importantly, the migrant crisis the world is witnessing today is less a product of African crises than Iraqi/Syrian civil wars. Even though numbers are still being compiled, most of the migrants come, in descending order, from Syria, Western Balkans, South Asia, some parts of Africa, notably Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan, and Afghanistan. Syria accounts for the highest number of migrants.
Indeed, the altruism Chief Obasanjo read into the actions and responses of Mr Gaddafi to the illegal immigration of some Africans in the opening years of the 21st century is absolutely misplaced. Mr Gaddafi repeatedly tried to profit from the illegal migrations, seeing it as a form of punishment for Western powers than a depressing manifestation of poverty and misrule on the continent. In 2010, for instance, Mr Gaddafi attempted openly and shamelessly to coax $4bn out of Western powers in exchange for his country’s help in stemming the flow of migrants and refugees.
The quality of leadership and statesmanship has declined all over the world. In Africa, it is worse. Chief Obasanjo’s arguments show why Nigeria has never had any significant impact on the course of continental history, let alone world history. European leaders struggle to comprehend the migrant crisis, and seek ways to respond to it. Their efforts, though grounded in deeply historical understanding of the dynamic interplay of social, political and economic forces, have been desultory. Nigerians must be wary of Chief Obasanjo’s contributions to the crisis. His contributions simplify and misrepresent the process. They fail to take into account the forces shaping the Middle East. And they fail to even take cognisance of the undercurrents of African history.
Contrary to Chief Obasanjo’s sanctimonious anger, Europe has been more dispassionate and less emotive about the migrant crisis, though it fears its economies and societies could be overwhelmed. One of the reasons is that for a continent that experienced two major wars barely 22 years apart in the last century, they are no strangers to mass movements of people across borders and sometimes across continents. They are familiar with the pressures that accompany massive dislocations occasioned by wars and economic meltdown. Importantly, unlike Chief Obasanjo and many others who fail to accurately contextualise the migrant crisis in Europe, European leaders are familiar with epochal migrations that have taken place over more than two millennia.
Yet, African history boasts of one of the most impactful migration crises in the world: the early 19th century Mfecane (interpreted: crushing or scattering) or Difaqane in the Sesotho language, which convulsed the Zulu people and other around them in Southern Africa. No student of African history can fail to appreciate the chaos and mass movements triggered by the Mfecane between 1814 and 1840, and perhaps up to 1850s. Not only did the Mfecane cause mass movements and misery, as Europe, Syria, Iraq and others are experiencing, it also depopulated the Southern African region, influenced the formation of nations in that region, and paved the way for predatory colonial adventures that redrew and distorted the borders and histories of the indigenous populations. The Mfecane took place in the general area between the Drakensberg mountains, Kalahari Desert and Limpopo River, and was triggered by a host of factors ranging from land pressures, the nation-building wars of Shaka the Zulu, long distance trade, expansion of the presence of Cape Whites, decline of many indigenous kingdoms in the region, struggle between powerful kings, to wit, Sobhuza, Zwide, Dingiswayo, Moshoeshoe and Mzilikazi around the Pongola River and beyond. Then, of course, came the brutal and ambitious Shaka the Zulu with his new technique of warfare, and the region was never the same again. It is estimated that the region was depopulated to the tune of about one or two million people, though the estimates are controversial.
Chief Obasanjo’s so-called deal with Mr Gaddafi is nothing but an awkward attempt at self-promotion, a disingenuous attempt to draw public attention to a hitherto unknown part of his public service years. The Libyan factor in the ongoing migrant crisis in Europe is minute. The main triggers are the heedless United States invasion of Iraq in combination with the civil war in Syria, itself a consequence of the Arab Spring, and the seething and endless struggle between the Sunni and Shiite power groups in the region. The vacuum created by the deposition of Saddam Hussein reopened the conflict between the more populous Shiites, who were kept out of the power loop for decades, and Mr Hussein’s minority Sunnis who ruled through the Baathist political party. The US invasion and the clumsy and unreflective foisting of Western-type democracy naturally tilted the scale in favour of the majority Shiites, paradoxically backed by the hated Iran. The Sunnis, with powerful backers from other Sunni Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, felt embittered and are believed to have acquiesced in the formation first of al-Qaeda in Iraq and then ISIS.
To a wise ruler outside the region, the entire Middle East and surrounding states are a political caveat. The struggle between the Sunnis and Shiites is expected to continue for a long time, and both the internal structures of the conflict and the outcomes will not be determined by popular democracy, but by force, as Yemen is showing. Invading Iraq was unwise, and it is not clear how the US committed that egregious blunder. How to recapture the escaped genie will be the preoccupation of the world in their effort to resolve the migrant crisis putting massive pressures on the European Union (EU). Millions have already been uprooted in the war-ridden region, nearly on the scale of the Mfecane. And the impact is felt in wider areas than the revolutionary movements that savaged Southern Africa in the opening decades of the 19th century.
There are suggestions that the crisis should be tackled from the root. This is sensible but difficult, for the monster unleashed by the Syrian and Iraqi wars will not be easy to subdue. The oxygen upon which they depend will be difficult to eliminate. Russia views the conflict in the region as an extension of the Cold War, as a competition in which flexing of muscles could not be ruled out. Russia has been a long-standing ally of Syria, and in fact has a naval base located in the Syrian Mediterranean Port of Tartus, and is now actively involved in the Syrian civil war. It is not clear how the Russian approach would conduce to peace in that region, or curb the flow of refugees to Europe. If anything, the ISIS war may even intensify. It is true neither the US nor Europe has a clue how the complicated war and migrant crisis can be resolved. Both are loth to sustain Syrian leader Bashir al-Assad in power, for that is what it would amount to if Western powers put boots on the ground to fight ISIS. And they are equally wary of destroying ISIS because of the unintended consequence of strengthening Iran and its Shiite regional allies. Russia is not incommoded by any such considerations. It wants Mr Assad to be part of the resolution of the crisis in Syria, and is anxious to retain not only its influence in that country but also its base. Russia’s resupply of Syria may therefore prolong and complicate the war in Syria, and by implication the migrant crisis.
Neither the Mfecane nor the current migration from ISIS-held territories was the first mass movement in history, as novel as the migrant crisis may be to the present generation. The controversial First or Second millennium exodus of probably less than a million Jews believed to have fled Egypt (Pop, 3.5m people at the time) is another example. The wars of Genghis Khan, Mao Zedong’s 1934 Long March, and the flight of Protestants from Europe to the New World (America) also triggered dislocations and movements. This column has argued many times that the world has not witnessed the end of the redrawing of borders. As wars, economic and climate pressures occur, people will undertake willing or forced migrations, some harrowing, and others adventurous. This generation is indeed privileged to witness a movement of the European migrant crisis proportion, and to document and analyse the story. But the analyses must be sober and unaffected by the self-promotion and romanticism of the kind dished out by Chief Obasanjo last week.
The Syrian and Iraqi civil wars will not be resolved in a hurry, notwithstanding the best efforts of Russia, US and Europe. Resolving the wars is beyond the ken of Arabs and Persian peoples. The struggle between Sunni and Shiites in the Middle East will also continue for years, with perhaps occasional abatement. Iran will probably continue to grow into a major regional power, constitute itself into a specific and pressing threat to Israel, holding strongly to and nurturing the ambition to colonise the entire region as its Persian forebears did, as the Ottomans executed, and as Alexander the Great also accomplished with great flourish. It is a fallacy to think that multilateral security organisations such as the United Nations can keep the peace for a long time. In the face of national ambitions, empire-building objectives and economic pressures, such international arrangements are bound to wilt or collapse. The current migrant crisis merely foreshadows these frightening and destabilising possibilities.
This is, however, not to suggest that efforts should not be made to tackle the terrible nightmare. Chief Obasanjo narrowed the search for solution and anchored it on a wrong misunderstanding of the forces at play and the historicity of the phenomenon. It is important not to lose sight of where the migrant crisis is coming from. Importantly, the dynamics of the mass migrations and the underlying forces that are shaping them must be properly understood and contextualised in order to find a solution, not the ‘lasting’ solution Chief Obasanjo idealistically conjured. There is, however, little evidence so far to show that all the interested powers and countries involved in the crisis have a clear understanding of what the problems are, let alone expertly juggle the factors necessary to dispose the region to peace and tranquillity.
