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During the past couple of centuries, we have seen a number of "isms" come and go, though some, noteably capitalism, are still with us. Recently, an ancient one appears to have re-emerged, "warlordism", in which people fight not for ideals or fatherland but for plunder and wealth (extreme capitalism?). "Ism" slogans such as "To each according to his need; from each according to his ability!" or "lebensraum!" seem to have been replaced by "To the victor go the spoils!" At first glance, the following does not appear to have much to do with work, but it may presage how a considerable part of the world's people will work in future. Ed Weick
Diamonds are a war's best friend Profits made from violent conflict only fuel more violence, say two international peace scholars MATS BERDAL and DAVID MALONE Tuesday, May 23, 2000, Globe and Mail It was Karl von Clausewitz, the great early 19th-century Prussian general and military theoretician who said, "War is nothing but a continuation of politics by other means." At the dawn of the 21st century, war is revealed to be the continuation of business by other means. At first glance, this seems counterintuitive: Much of the policy debate in the 1990s has emphasized the costs of conflict. War has been represented as the breakdown of normal patterns of social, economic and political life, as a temporary interruption to an ongoing process of development -- or portrayed as some atavistic demon, the re-emergence of "ancient hatreds." In these cases, the resort to violence is seen as signalling an irrational and dysfunctional collapse of a particular order. But what if those analyses are wrong? Little systematic attention has been given to the role of economic motivations in generating and sustaining contemporary civil conflicts. Yet recent history shows that economic considerations often shape the calculations of the belligerents. Research at the World Bank suggests that economic agendas are central to understanding why civil wars get going. In some cases, these agendas have changed the rules of the game of war itself, as the objective of defeating the enemy in battle has been replaced by economically driven interests in continued fighting at profitable levels of intensity. In Central Africa right now, the continuing bloodshed may be best understood as an instrument of enterprise, violence as a mode of accumulation. Here war represents not so much the collapse of one system as the emergence of another, one which can richly benefit government officials, traders, combatants and international actors who stand to gain. A case in point is Liberia, where a former warlord, Charles Taylor, accused of embezzlement by the government, launched a vicious civil war just like Sierra Leone's, involving the use of child soldiers and trade in diamonds; he is now very wealthy, and Liberia's President. In Angola, the UNITA rebel forces have since 1992 controlled about 70 per cent of the country's diamond production. This has allowed them to maintain the war while permitting local traders, "middlemen" and regional commanders to amass huge personal fortunes. On the government side, the business elite has also grown fat and rich by selectively granting attractive foreign exchange and import licenses, as well as selling weapons to UNITA. Nor is such collusion between supposed enemies unique. Between 1993 and 1997, many Khmer Rouge commanders, Cambodian government officials and Thai Army officers spent more energy filling their pockets through illegal logging activity and trading in gems than fighting to bring that war to a conclusion. The highly transnational characteristics of modern war economies can not be ignored by those seeking to construct peace. Modern war economies are rarely self-sufficient. Warring parties, while they may control local assets, depend on external support and supplies. That is, warlords rely on access to global markets to peddle local resources in order to buy more guns and missiles. Members of the Cambodian government, Khmer Rouge and the Thai military encountered few difficulties exporting gems and high-grade tropical timber out of Cambodia throughout the 1990s. Charles Taylor holds on to power in Liberia largely through the export of raw materials to Europe. The sale of Sierra Leone's diamonds and gold on the world market has kept that war going even as it continues to enrich bureaucrats and military commanders. In Angola, UNITA -- once heavily reliant on Cold War patronage -- has built up its formidable military force not only by trading in diamonds but also by building up a substantial investment portfolio abroad. Transitions from war to peace are more usefully seen as involving a realignment of political interests, rather than a clean break from violence to consent, and from theft to production. Democratic governments and NGOs simply don't know how to deal with warlordism. But our failure to take economic agendas into consideration has, at times, seriously undermined our efforts to consolidate fragile peace agreements. The international private sector -- particularly extractive industries such as petroleum and mining -- play a key role. While corporations try to adopt a studiously neutral stance, their actions on the ground and in global markets inevitably favour some parties over others. The situation of Shell in southeastern Nigeria and De Beers in Angola makes this clear: In the end, the companies want to get the resource out and will support whomever they have to to achieve this. Belligerents in civil wars have long stashed abroad large sums of money skimmed from their war chests. And the international financial institutions, commercial banks (which benefit handsomely from their deposits) and donor governments have done little to stop them. Look how long it took for the identification and recovery of the hidden wealth of former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha, an accomplished kleptocrat, to become a priority: It did so only once he was safely dead and members of his family disgraced and imprisoned in Nigeria. There may be progress on these issues. Recently, the Swiss have relaxed their bank secrecy regulations, and Switzerland and other financial centres are showing a greater readiness to freeze dubious accounts. But these reforms obscure the deeper issue of whether governments in the industrialized world are prepared to take a lead on stigmatizing and sequestering ill-gotten gains. We already have incentives and disincentives that can influence economic agendas -- for example, UN Security Council mandated sanctions and the enforcement of intergovernmental agreements on money laundering. But we urgently need tougher international laws to combat this noxious form of white-collar crime. The orgy of sentiment and rhetoric against multinational corporations of the 1960s and 1970s, much of it ill-informed, polarized the discussion about responsibility for waging peace. And it left governments reluctant to focus on their part in the drama. Nevertheless, governments, private-sector actors and the academic world do have responsibility, and they do have a role to play. We all share an interest in positive outcomes. Mats Berdal is director of studies at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. Canadian diplomat David Malone is president of the International Peace Academy in New York. They are editors of the recently published Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars. |
