For the great mass of rural Bolivians, one elite had simply replaced another in what German sociologist Robert Michels called the “iron law of oligarchy.” Rural people still had insecure property rights and still had to sell their votes for access to land, credit, or work. The main difference was that instead of providing these services to the traditional landowners, they now provided them to the MNR.
8. Sierra Leone: Civil War
8. Sierra Leone: Civil War
Intense extraction breeds instability and failure because, consistent with the iron law of oligarchy, it creates incentives for others to depose the existing elites and take over.
This is exactly what happened in Sierra Leone. Siaka Stevens and his All People’s Congress (APC) party ran the country from 1967 until 1985 as their personal fiefdom. Little changed when Stevens stepped aside, passing the baton to his protégé, Joseph Momoh, who just continued the plunder.
The trouble is that this sort of extraction creates deep-seated grievances and invites contests for power from would-be strongmen hoping to get their hands on the loot. In March 1991, Foday Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front, with the support and most likely the command of Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, crossed into Sierra Leone and plunged the country into a vicious, decade-long civil war. Sankoh and Taylor were interested in only one thing: power, which they could use, among other things, to steal diamonds, and they could do so because of the regime that Stevens and his APC had created.
The country soon descended into chaos, with the civil war taking the lives of about 1 percent of the population and maiming countless others. Sierra Leone’s state and institutions totally collapsed. Government revenues went from 15 percent of national income to practically zero by 1991. The state, in other words, didn’t so much fail as disappear entirely.
Biafra
Biafra
Biafra, officially the Republic of Biafra, was a secessionist state in then southeastern Nigeria that existed from 30 May 1967 to 1970,. The inhabitants were mostly the Igbo people who led the secession due to economic, ethnic, cultural and religious tensions among the various peoples of Nigeria. The creation of the new state that was pushing for recognition was among the causes of the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Nigerian-Biafran War.
The state was formally recognised by Gabon, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, and Zambia. Other nations which did not give official recognition but which did provide support and assistance to Biafra included Israel, France, Spain, Portugal, Rhodesia, South Africa and Vatican City. Biafra also received aid from non-state actors, including Joint Church Aid, Holy Ghost Fathers of Ireland, Caritas International, MarkPress and U.S. Catholic Relief Services.[3][unreliable source?]
After two-and-a-half years of war, during which over three million civilians died in fighting and from starvation resulting from blockades, Biafran forces under the slogan 'no-victor, no-vanquish' surrendered to the Nigerian Federal Military Government(FMG), and Biafra was reintegrated into Nigeria.
Biafra
Biafra
http://www.africafederation.net/Biafra.htm
Haiti
Haiti
Haiti, located on the western part of the island of Hispaniola, is one of the poorest countries in the world. Its GDP per capita (at purchasing power parity) stands at about $1,241, merely 2.5 percent of US GDP per capita. Its neighbor on the island of Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic, is significantly richer, with GDP per capita of $9,289.
There has not been a shortage of explanations for the sorry state of Haiti’s economy. But most of them are fairly unsatisfactory. In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond attempted to explain Haiti’s poverty, in particular relative to the Dominican Republic, with geographic factors. He pointed out that the winds coming mostly from the east were blocked by high mountains, reducing rainfall for the Haitian part of the island. This combined with the lower soil quality and greater population density led to deforestation in Haiti, while the Dominican Republic maintained its forest cover and high-quality soil. (Diamond recognizes that this higher population density was the result of the plantation agriculture in Haiti based on the import of slaves, and also mentions other social and historical factors).
Even more popular than Diamond’s geographic explanation are cultural ones. Many commentators end up arguing that Haiti is poor because of its people. A recent book by Laurent Dubois, Haiti: the Aftershocks of History, is a useful corrective to these arguments. Dubois starts by recapping many of these arguments which go back centuries. For example, Victor Cochinat, a 19th-century visitor from Martinique, stated (p. 1)
Haitians were lazy and ‘ashamed’ to work,…, which was why they were so poor. They spent too much money on rum.
Haiti
Haiti
Lest you think that these are the ramblings of an eccentric 19th-century explorer, Dubois shows how the same arguments are what gets traction today, writing (p. 3):
The day after the earthquake, televangelist Pat Robertson famously opined that Haitians were suffering because they had sold themselves to the devil. A more polite version of the same argument came from New York Timescolumnist David Brooks, who accused Haiti of having “progress-resistant cultural influences,” including “the influence of voodoo religion.”… Many called openly for Haiti to be made a protectorate. Brooks advocated “intrusive paternalism” that would change the local culture by promoting “No Excuses countercultures.”
