It is perhaps fitting that the case that finally put an end to the impunity of Equatorial Guinea’s second vice president, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, in the United States would have such a bizarre name. On October 10, 2014, the United States Department of Justice made public the settlement of the case of United States v. One Michael Jackson Signed Thriller Jacket and Other Michael Jackson Memorabilia; Real Property Located on Sweetwater Mesa Road in Malibu, California; One 2011 Ferrari 599 GTO.1 One might ask how a former minister of environment of a tiny West African nation, whose official salary was less than $5,000 a month, might end up in possession of a $35 million house in Malibu, a Gulfstream business jet, and a crystal-covered white glove used by Michael Jackson on his Bad tour. You could equally inquire how his father, Equatoguinean president Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mbasogo, had stockpiled, by 2004, a $700 million fortune in U.S. bank accounts when, up until then, the GDP of his entire country was a mere $330 million a year. Or how he could spend public money to purchase a $180 million luxury building on the exclusive Avenue Foch in Paris—and furnish it with $50 million in furniture2—when more than half his population has no access to clean water.3
Regrettably, the scurrilous stories of the Obiangs’s shameless self-enrichment are by no means unique in global politics. There are countless stories, from all continents, of leaders who abuse power to amass private fortunes and massive shoe collections while their citizens suffer in poverty. One of the key observations of this book is that, over time, warlord enterprises can become indistinguishable from the state itself. Examples of this phenomenon cluster with particular frequency in Africa, where we hear appalling stories of corruption and crime by heads of states and their cronies. This distinctive style of governance has resulted in the coining of kleptocracy to describe the limitless pillaging of state resources and the culture of nepotism and corruption that accompanies it.4
African states are characterized by political tribalism and patronage systems that became ingrained as a system of governance in the colonial period and in the years following independence. Over subsequent decades, these systems were transformed first into authoritarian regimes and then into weak multiparty democracies dominated, in each case, by a series of “Big Men.” It is this structure, which can be seen in all corners of the continent, that has lead to the development of what are arguably warlord states, where the entire resources of the nation, both licit and illicit, are held hostage by the most potent of kingpins while the majority of the population remains mired in poverty and beleaguered by repression, human-rights abuses, and conflict. The analysis of warlord states reveals two uncomfortable truths, which earn this chapter its place rounding out the bleak picture presented in “The Dark Side.”
The first uncomfortable truth is that international community holds its share of culpability for enabling and perpetuating warlord states: an overreliance on elite pacts to end conflict has created a vicious cycle of fragility. Moreover, the failure of the international financial regime to prevent or prosecute major capital flight allows African resources to be diverted from development objectives. The second truth comes in recognizing the role that patronage governance has played in fostering the growth of terrorist movements (with both domestic and international agendas) from what might otherwise have been, arguably, legitimate insurgent movements.
There are few, if any, obvious fixes to this Gordian knot, though later chapters will highlight some glimmers of hope that can be seen, Pollyanna-esque, in the grim status quo. As this chapter morbidly concludes, however, there is little evidence that there are either the structural conditions or the political will to take the steps necessary not only to demand higher standards of accountability from these warlord states but also to achieve them ourselves.
There is a longstanding body of literature, covering multiple African states, that describes how the political order is shaped by a framework of patronage, also known as clientelism, whereby leaders purchase support by dispensing largesse: opponents are bought off; allies are rewarded. The ability to allocate resources at will is considered the entitlement of the victor, not theft from ordinary citizens. President Obiang has long used this argument in defense of his son’s playboy lifestyle: “He earned money in accordance with the laws of Equatorial Guinea, even if those don’t comply with international standards.”5 A recent continental study of the use of Chinese foreign development assistance to Africa, which, unlike assistance from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, comes entirely without earmarking, found that the birthplace of the head of state receives 270 percent more than other regions.6
Some locate the roots of this governance style in the colonial period, where colonizing states sought alliances with local big men in order to control territory. These territories were frequently organized along ethnic lines, and the administrative localities were organized accordingly, which increased the warlord’s territorial dominance.7 It was a significant challenge to transform these former colonies—whose primary objective had been the generation of resources for the colonizing states—into effective, independent entities that focused on equitable delivery of services to geographically and ethnically dispersed populations. Under colonialism, the formation of cities was not organic; urban areas were formed to serve as transport hubs for colonizers extracting resources.8 The postcolonial legacy to Africa featured sharp rural-urban divides—elite-centric governance in urban hubs and borderland populations who saw little or no evidence of the state. Those who could find no compelling means by which to ally themselves to the state elite found themselves quickly marginalized.
The key characteristic to note is that in these patronage arrangements, the big men do not generally control followers, but rather, it is in the interest of the followers to maintain ties with a big man, because he provides economic possibilities, political and physical protection, and social security.9 The gathering of power and its maintenance are built on reciprocity, and if the big man does not distribute enough largesse, he will eventually lose his supporters. This style of governance has also been described as “factional politics” and is based more on transaction than issues of principle. “That Big Men constantly have to demonstrate their power through displays of wealth and force is not indicative of their strength but of the very fragility and negotiability of their status … in the business of winning not votes but clients; not spearheading a party but a political network.”10 Societies that rely on this constant negotiation—a combination of patronage, coercion, and fragile pacts between elites—are far from stable. Any stresses that affect the status quo—such as the death of a leader, external security threats, or economic and demographic pressures—will shift the balance of power, cause a realignment of networks, and frequently trigger violence or conflict. As the UN secretary general concluded in 1998, “The nature of political power in many African States, together with the real and perceived consequences of capturing and maintaining power, is a key source of conflict across the continent. It is frequently the case that political victory assumes a ‘winner-takes-all’ form with respect to wealth and resources, patronage, and the prestige and prerogatives of office.”11
Regrettably, the default method of resolving these conflicts has been through the negotiation of another elite pact rather than a transformation of state-society institutions. A 2009 study found that the average number of cabinet posts in African democracies has grown by nearly 25 percent over thirty years, as leaders seek to accommodate potential dissenters by bringing them into government. The study further observed that when leaders are required to hand over the reins of power, they will reduce the number of cabinet posts before the transition, thereby hamstringing their successor by forcing him to make more uncomfortable power-sharing negotiations.12 The challenge is that societies that rely on patronage to find stability without broader and deeper institutional transformation risk a vicious cycle. Furthermore, each bout of violence further weakens institutions and destroys social capital, making it a trap that becomes increasingly difficult to escape from.13
The events in Mali following the coup in 2012 demonstrate this very well. Amadou Toumani Touré (commonly known as ATT) was overthrown by a seemingly spontaneous putsch lead by junior military offers frustrated at the lack of investment and equipment in the national army, which had to fight a growing separatist movement in the north. ATT had governed since 2002 through “a loose network of personal, clientelistic, even mafia-style alliances with regional elites with reversible loyalties rather than on robust democratic institutions.”14 That the coup came only a few weeks before a democratic presidential election was scheduled—in which ATT had clearly indicated his intention not to seek another term—was a clear signal that there something deeply rotten in the state of governance. Following international stabilization efforts, a new government was elected a mere four months later. It was headed by Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (often known as IBK), a veteran career politician who had little in the way of a substantive political platform but had excellent relations with the international community. His party conspicuously backed a number key Tuaregs, who were linked with armed groups in the north, which raised concerns that this was business-as-usual clientelist politics.15
Criticisms of this hurried election proved to be well founded. IBK’s government has been beset by corruption scandals, the majority of which are linked directly to the president himself, and IBK shows little indication that he plans to uphold the pledge he made at his inauguration: “Restoring state authority will coincide with a tireless fight against corruption.… Let no one enrich themselves illicitly at the expense of the Malian people.”16 Government spending remains under the control of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) following an investigation into a no-bid defense contract worth an estimated $136 million that was awarded to a crony of the president, including an alleged $14 million overhead payment to his private company.17 While defense-related purchases do not require public tender, for reasons of national security, the IMF investigation found that the overwhelming majority of the contract was for nonmilitary items such as trucks, cars, and clothing. This was shortly followed by a greater scandal—the purchase of a new $40 million presidential jet, again without a tender process and again with a multimillion-dollar kickback to a presidential crony. Not only did the president already have a jet at his disposal from the previous regime (unlike the Malian military, which has no air capacity), but the purchase also coincided with a renewed humanitarian appeal by the United Nations for an estimated 1.4 million Malians who were in need of food assistance.18
If patronage politics is based on the accumulation and distribution of resources, governance is easier when resources are plentiful. In times of economic stress, however, the pressure to continuously pump income down patronage networks can become a strain, resulting in fragmentation, competition, and again, conflict.
During the 1980s and 1990s, structural adjustment policies imposed by the World Bank and the IMF created widespread economic hardship for newly independent African states, severely taxing state institutions, and in many ways, reinforcing clientelism over good governance. Attempting to meet the World Bank and IMF conditions required a radical realignment of the region’s economies to make them internationally competitive in those fields where they were thought to have productive capacity, chiefly agriculture. This often meant replacing subsistence landholdings with huge state-run or privately run agricultural enterprises, the contracts for which were distributed to preferred partners of the incumbent heads of state. It also meant a renewed—and almost neocolonial—focus on catering to international development partners to secure continued support. Throughout the decade of structural adjustment, some thirty-six governments in sub-Saharan Africa entered into stabilization agreements; 243 loan agreements were issued, worth more than $200 billion. Foreign aid and loans became crucial components of African economies, but most of these governments made few institutional reforms—economic, social, or political—as the primary concerns of political leaders were the maintenance of their political power and the accumulation of wealth for themselves and their supporters. By 1990, thirty of the thirty-six countries had negotiated the rescheduling of 120 foreign loans, as Africa’s debt soared to $160 billion.19 Almost ironically, despite being referred to as “stabilization packages,” every country where IMF- and World Bank-style adjustment was set in motion was plagued by waves of unrest and instability.20
In this period, the need for funds began to be trumped by the legitimacy of the source of those resources, as leaders increasingly signed agreements that would mortgage the future of their nations to unethical corporations. For example, in 1992, to fund his re-election campaign, Pascal Lissouba, the first democratically elected president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, arranged an oil-backed loan from the U.S. oil company Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), which agreed that Congo’s share of oil production was to be sold at a mere $3 per barrel. Market price at the time was $22. With the help of the Oxy loan, however, Lissouba won the elections soon after.21 President Mugabe has long defended his thirty-four-year tenure in Zimbabwe against accusations that he accepts foreign investment from a shady Chinese corporate group known as the Queensway syndicate to secure off-record contributions for running his secret police, a critical arm of his coercive patronage network. Reportedly, these investments have secured the Queensway syndicate rights to a number of mineral resources, as well as Zimbabwe’s sanctioned diamonds, with no payments coming through the state budget.22
These are but a few examples of many that can be found across the continent, and the scale of funds that have been diverted is staggering. African economies have been riding the crest of a global commodity wave that could transform the continent’s prospects, but very little of these resources are benefitting those who need them most. According to a current study, between 1970 to 2010, illicit capital flight from Africa increased from about $2.6 billion to more than $1.7 trillion, an increase of over 650 times.23 This was made possible through embezzlement of natural-resource exports, tax evasion, corruption, transfer pricing, and the outright smuggling of capital. By contrast, as emphasized by the African Progress Panel, the subcontinent’s total outstanding external debt was barely a third of that figure, estimated at $293.8 billion at end of December 2010.24
While fingers are pointed regularly at the corruption and kleptocracy of African leaders, since the publication of an Oxfam report in 2000, more attention is also being directed at the way that international financial systems, including offshore corporations and tax havens, have enabled capital flight. It is estimated that developing nations lose at least $50 billion a year due to aggressive tax avoidance by private corporations, and more recently, the Tax Justice Network has estimated that a pool of 139 lower-income countries had squirreled away between $7.3 and $9.3 trillion in offshore accounts, which, had it been subject to even modest tax in a legitimate state, would have generated $189 billion per year that could have been spent on development.25
Without the anonymity provided by international tax havens, and without the assistance of the enablers of these illicit financial flows, including some of the world’s largest and most reputable financial and legal institutions, it would be significantly more difficult for money to leave a country illicitly in the first place. There is little evidence, however, that the will to address these financial transparency requirements exists. At the 2014 G8 Summit, the issue of addressing trade secrecy was put high on the agenda, particularly by the Africa group, but reaching an agreement that would actually compel North American and European jurisdictions to reveal their corporate structures and tax-haven registrations remained a long way off. Similarly, at the first U.S.-Africa Summit, which took place in December 2014, demands for addressing the frameworks facilitating illicit trade remained secondary to presidential pleasantries between Presidents Obama, Obiang, Kabila, and others.
While some African states were able to exploit discoveries of oil or minerals, a number of other warlord states also came to welcome overtures from criminal enterprises. With the prevailing need for funds to support patronage systems, affiliation or control over criminal flows (arms, drugs and, people) became an alternative means of securing rents. The most infamous example of this phenomenon is Guinea-Bissau, where heads of state and senior members of the armed forces became deeply entrenched in the cocaine trade, but that case is by no means unique.26 The temptations of criminal groups are compelling and have corrupted leaders of countries and organizations. In 2010, the nephew of the then president of Mauritania, and a former officer for Interpol, was sentenced to seven years in jail for his involvement in a drug-trafficking ring.27 Sidi Mohamed Ould Haidallah, the son of former president Khouna Ould Haidallah, was arrested in Morocco in 2007 in possession of eighteen kilos of cocaine. In 2004, in his inaugural speech as Interpol secretary-general, Jackie Selebi, a former national police commissioner of South Africa, made it a priority “to find systems to make sure that our borders and border control are on a firm footing.” A mere four years later he resigned in shame, mired in a corruption scandal that saw him sentenced to fifteen years in jail for accepting bribes from drug traffickers.28
Former president Blaise Compaoré, who had lead Burkina Faso under a semi-authoritarian regime from 1987 until his unseating in a popular coup in 2014, was a powerbroker not afraid to dabble in illicit affairs. For a long time, Burkina Faso—and particularly its president—was a regional pariah, deeply involved in the trafficking of conflict diamonds while providing arms and mercenaries for civil wars in the region, thus breaking international embargoes. And while, in recent years, he has repeatedly served as a mediator in regional conflicts (including in the Malian crisis, where Compaoré was the official mediator for the Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS]), he is also commonly known to have enriched himself by aiding ransom negotiations for the many kidnappings that have occurred in the region. These ransoms are reported to have netted terrorist groups upward of $100 million, of which he would have taken a cut.29
Turning a blind eye to, or relinquishing control over, illicit flows is another strategy to provide dividends in an elite pact, in particular where the capacity for the state to exercise control over remote borderlands is limited. During his forty-four-year rule of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi frequently used control over territory and illicit resources as a bargaining chip in ethnic conflict and to pacify the peripheries.30 Similarly, during his tenure as president of Mali, Amadou Toumani Touré created a new administrative region in northern Mali to allow overt control over trafficking routes and access to the state, and then selected which local actors would be in control of illicit trade, while also ensuring a cut for those in the capital, Bamako. This policy by the Malian state “exacerbated rivalries by operating an arm’s length policy that selected favorites, rewarded them with illicit revenues, and did nothing to control losers’ grievances over exclusion from local circuits of power.”31
One of the key conclusions of the 2014 West Africa Commission on Drugs (WACD) was that corruption at the top is facilitating drug trafficking across the subcontinent. They found that traffickers were easily able to connect with people of influence, both utilizing and creating informal social networks that would allow them to access or co-opt the formal security apparatus. One key point where states are most vulnerable to the infiltration of illicit funds—though one that is by no means exclusive to Africa—appears to be during elections. The majority of African nations have limited or no restrictions on campaign financing or mechanisms for monitoring elections, which makes them susceptible to illicit offers. Furthermore, “in many cases, candidates tend to ‘own’ parties, funding them from their private resources or raising support from friends, regional allies, or from their ethnic base.”32 In Kenya, it is recognized that professional drug traffickers and criminal groups have infiltrated politics to the extent that they have formed a distinct block in the national parliament.33
Warlord states that include significant criminal elements, or in which the head of state is protecting criminal interests, present a significant challenge to the international community and its multilateral frameworks. The state has crucial importance for social order and for the delivery of political, social, and economic goods. A state that is not working in the interests of its people but instead enriches individuals or protects criminal interests makes a mockery of multilateral decision-making processes.34 State collusion with organized crime also has implications for community dynamics, as the breakdown of the rule of law and the perception of impunity for elites has widespread deleterious effects. Citizens are more likely to themselves operate in the illegal economy if they see their government as kleptocratic, and protection economies develop as criminal groups stand as regulators within the local community. And, as Biró’s chapter in part 2 discusses, when criminal groups provide services in the absence of the state, these groups can command legitimacy and loyalty from the local populations.35
One of the by-products of warlord states built on clientelist patronage networks is a spectrum of disenchanted groups. At best, these are marginalized groups who have been ignored or overlooked entirely by the state, who have little or no access to social services, justice, or employment—some of the worst development indicators on the planet. At worst, these groups form virulent opposition groups with active grievances against the state that can manifest in separatist or terrorist goals. While some consider the emergence of terrorism in Africa to be a relatively recent phenomenon—something that has come to prominence only in the last five years—longstanding watchers of Africa have argued that “Africa is the continent most affected by domestic or sub-national terrorism,” and that the root causes of this brand of terrorism, in which armed groups with political motives enact acts of violence against nonmilitary targets to provoke terror, is “partly a hangover of the process of decolonization, but is more intimately linked to the failure to effect sustained development and to consolidate accountable and effective governance.”36
Absence of the central state, however, does not equate to absence of governance. Communities that have been cut off from effective state authority—whether out of government indifference or because of protracted warfare or vested local and external interests in perpetuating conditions of state failure—consistently seek to provide for themselves the functions that the missing state is supposed to assume, especially basic security. In that vacuum, local big men will consolidate their own networks, and with the right conditions, they may gather enough resources to challenge the state. Due to the state controlling legitimate resources, it is often the case that antistate groups will lean to illicit resources to sustain themselves. In West Africa, political conflict that began in Liberia and spread to Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast later gave way to more organized crime across the region, as warring factions pillaged natural resources to buy arms and pay fighters. With that chaos, drug-trafficking networks penetrated the region, and what had begun as a means for financing war became a successful business model for trafficking drugs, diamonds, timber, arms, and humans. Charles Taylor, first a rebel, then Liberian president from 1997 until 2003, was accused in his indictment by the Special Court of Sierra Leone of amassing a fortune of $105 to 450 million through “a joint criminal enterprise … [to exercise] control over the territory of Sierra Leone … and the population … [by] unlawful killings, abductions, forced labour, physical and sexual violence.” At the height of the conflict in Sierra Leone, Taylor was reportedly facilitating a trade in illegal diamonds worth more than $200 million, resources that helped him consolidate the political support needed to secure the presidency.37
One characteristic of the insurgent conflict triggered by patronage politics is that it is typically asymmetric, because the state commands the majority of resources and has a monopoly on power. Challengers, resourced by illicit flows, will use terror tactics to have a greater impact against the state. Thus is born the dangerous complicity of crime and terror. At a briefing to the security council in 2013, Téte António, permanent observer for the African Union, reported that “ ‘narco-terrorism’ had given rise to new forms of ‘mercenarism’ in Africa, with fighters motivated more by financial gain than ideological persuasion.”38 And while analysts a decade ago frequently asserted that terrorist groups and drug traffickers had diametrically opposing motivations—the first seeking attention, the other requiring secrecy—the DEA now estimates that upwards of 60 percent of terrorist groups globally have links to drug trafficking.39
The war on terror has arguably polarized the nature of insurgent conflict in Africa. By affiliating with international terrorist groups, domestic insurgencies can attract fighters and additional resources. While the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab nominally shares the same goals as al-Qaeda—namely, global jihad—al-Shabaab’s leaders have almost exclusively focused their efforts on Somali priorities and protests.40 Similarly, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which evolved from a hard-line Salafist organization, the Algerian Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), began the process of alignment with al-Qaeda in 2003, officially affiliating with them and changing its name in 2006. Apart from the name, however, the group showed little practical attachment to the global organization before 2011, and even their subsequent expansion beyond national borders has been confined largely to the immediate subregion, without any designs on international targets in other theaters.41 It is also worthy of note that Boko Haram, which is possibly the most virulent of the domestic terror groups, with estimates that it has killed over ten thousand civilians in the last ten years, was largely ignored by the international community (until very recently), as its targets have remained domestic, and it has not indicated any international intensions or affiliations.42
The linkages made to transnational terrorist movements not only drew international attention but also changed the nature of domestic interaction. African governments have embraced foreign assistance in strengthening their security capacity, and a number of examples exist where countering terrorism has been used as the justification to violate human rights, quell political opposition, and suppress dissent. In Mauritania in 2003, for example, the then-president used the war on terror to justify arresting twenty-one people, including the militant activist Hamada Ould Mohamed Kheirou, who would later rise to prominence as a leader in the groups that continue to terrorize Mali’s north. Mauritania’s move, which was described more as an opportunistic attempt to remove political opponents than as an interest in combatting global terror, resulted in Kheirou’s move to join al-Qaeda training camps in Iraq followed shortly thereafter. As the Economist succinctly expressed it, “In many cases such men do not move from country to country voluntarily, but one step ahead of the security forces.”43
The perpetuation of warlord statehood has serious ramifications, and not only for African states and their citizens. Local political conflicts interlinked with organized crime in a context of globalization has consequences in both northern and southern hemispheres, and these consequences are becoming increasingly visible. The extraordinary growth in conflict- and crime-driven displacement, both in Africa and in Central America, has had enormous humanitarian and financial consequences. Predation by armed groups on commodities in vulnerable states imposes costs throughout the global market: in 2009, an attack by insurgents on an oil facility in the Niger Delta raised the price of oil by $2.33 per barrel, increasing costs for around the globe.44
There is an urgent need to strengthen governance and institutions in these warlord states. But it is frankly hard to see much reason to be optimistic. Successful indictments, like the U.S. case against the Obiangs, are mere glimmers of hope in an otherwise bleak picture. Even when individual states find themselves with a leader genuinely committed to the greater good and sustainable development of his people, the structural conditions make it broadly unlikely. These states need significant reforms of electoral politics and constitutions, and they need strengthened state institutions staffed by capable individuals of integrity. Instead, democratic reforms have largely reinforced patronage political frameworks. Diplomatic and civil-service appointments are offered as rewards; capacity-building opportunities are offered to a favored ally as a chance for international travel and some donor-sponsored shopping trips. Resources that should be spent on health-care, educational, and infrastructure development that could facilitate livelihoods or trade are squandered or squirreled away into an international financial system that offers far too many opportunities to hide resources. Popular uprisings and crises are often heralded as a “new dawn,” an unprecedented opportunity to achieve change. Regrettably, all too often, they fall quickly into business as usual, as international diplomacy offers insufficient time or space for genuinely inclusive dialogue, and financial austerity reduces the capacity for external support. Furthermore, as multilateral frameworks become increasingly hamstrung by warlord states determined to filibuster action or veto change, the possibility for genuine reform recedes still further.
Reversing this paradigm will require extraordinary political will and a shared accountability framework by which both nation-states and their international partners agree to hold themselves (rather than each other) accountable for the woeful state of affairs. There is precious little evidence that these conditions exist, and thus the status quo of the warlord state will continue to sit heavily on the shoulders of the poorest and most vulnerable in society.