The Land of No
The theory of leopard spots.
If you go to New York or Los Angeles, in the heart of the richest on the planet, there are neighborhoods where you can not go, it's dangerous, you cut the throats or rob you, soprattutto di notte. Nel 1993 a San Francisco, per andare al cinema, ho attraversato inavvertitamente a piedi un’area che l’albergatore definì “dei tagliatori di fegato”. Avevo visto brutti ceffi, ma mi era andata bene e mi aveva aiutato l’abito non lussuoso e il mio passo, come sempre ampio e veloce. Queste città hanno un tessuto urbano “a macchia di leopardo”: in alcuni posti puoi andare, in altri non è raccomandabile. Lì c’è un quartiere residenziale, dietro c’è un quartiere povero e pericoloso, là un centro di lusso e dietro il sobborgo dei poveri, non c’è una divisione netta e globale, c’è un tessuto a “macchia di leopardo”, sometimes you just walk a block more to come in a "prohibited." The model "American" is widely present in Africa in a variable worsened. African cities in the slums surrounding the middle-class neighborhoods, sites swallow areas once populated by employees. The rich live in their green neighborhoods more secure, Johannesburg, Lagos or Nairobi: locked gates and barbed wire, electric fence on the walls, panic button linked to the homes of private security agencies. In Nairobi, Kenya, behind the residential and luxurious Loresho there is a small slum of two or three thousand people behind the luxurious Braedburn school there in Lavington another slum, not far from Karen-Langata area surrounded by greenery where Karen Blixen lived there Kibera, a slum of one million people each day grows a few feet.
Apply the theory of "leopard spots" on the planet. If you entered the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the pages devoted to advertisements directed to Italian travelers departing, you will discover that you can not go or is it "strongly advised" to go to many places in the world and that these sites are double, triple or four times those that were reported 20, 30 or 40 years ago. In the late '70s we went from Italy to India or by bus from Cairo to Cape Town with local media. They were adventures, but it did, we made those voyages that lasted months as thousands of tourists and other travelers. Today it is impossible. I can not go places where they grow, grow, grow. The leopard spots become larger and will eventually "swallow" the rest of the world. So far, the rich societies have seen the wars in Africa and Asia as something far away, does not concern the modern world. I want to warn against this attitude. The Land of No
When the war is getting away. In our world there are very safe areas, more and more unsafe where wars and conflicts make life impossible. We all know the phenomenon of migration following an armed conflict, when there is war, people run away, unless you put in, looking for another place to live. In Africa and the Horn of Africa in particular, the situation is serious to the point where a large chunk of land is extremely insecure people there can live and run.
Look at the map of Africa. If the link Darfur to Southern Sudan and Juba, southern, and that's Triangle with Ilemi, with the delta of the Omo River, northern Lake Turkana, Marsabit and North Horr North of the desert in northern Kenya, the entire Somalia, as the Ethiopian Ogaden, you get a strip of territory larger than France, Spain, Portugal and Italy combined. A land where there is no infinite state, if we want to state this organization day and night capable of providing citizens with the necessary facilities to peaceful coexistence and social development, cultural and economic: there are no schools, universities, hospitals, well equipped ( apart from those very rare, humanitarian organizations working in a constant state emergency situation). There is no electricity and are not paid to write books, medicines, bandages, disinfectants, or antibiotics. There is no good water to drink and the supply of water, however dirty and contaminated by cattle, is linked to the few existing borehole. In these regions women are forced to walk for 10 to 15 hours a day to be able to fill a container of liquid for your family. Must pass in the wilderness where they easily fall prey of the first drifter encountered, soldiers, or men of other clans that kidnap to reduce them to slavery. They are rare in regions where markets are sold eclusivamente weapons: an anti-personnel mine, one to five dollars each, American-made, Chinese, Italian, French, Russian, English, German bullets of various size and caliber rifles and machine guns of various origins, rockets and grenades. The pastures are fought in rounds of AK47 machine guns and hatred for the close of different ethnicities and radicale e coincide con la lotta per la sopravvivenza. “Il pascolo vicino all’acqua è mio, grazie ad esso sopravvivo”, dicono i Dassanech, “se lo prendono i Turkana moriamo tutti”. Turkana e Dassanech si scontrano per rubarsi vicendevolmente il bestiame e il territorio. Migliaia di morti ogni mese nelle guerre dimenticate di queste regioni incontrollate e su confini che esistono solo sulle carte politiche degli atlanti geografici. Samburu, Turkana, Pokot, Hammer, Surma, Mursi, Dassanech e molto più a nord i popoli Dinka, Nuer, Zande, le bande di Janawid, più gli eserciti nazionali, le varie bande armate e i gruppi di shiftà si affrontano ogni giorno. Sulla carta geografica queste regioni andrebbero segnate with black and called No Man's Land because war prevents the normal civil life, economic investment, education and culture. The flight
Despite the continued industrial development, the large resource consumption and waste typical of modern societies, global poverty, the number of poor in absolute terms, increases. When a war or a radical crisis of the poor are fleeing because they have nothing to lose. Run away with the "big boats of hope" through the Mediterranean, to start all over again, ready to face the trouble and uncertainty of the journey of no return, el'arsura hunger, humiliation for his wife and children, risk of dying at sea. In memory and in the depths of their eyes still blinded by the sun of Africa is the image of the hut burned down, destroyed the village, girls raped in front of parents and husbands, mothers violated before the children, the soldiers with pick-up and placed above the machine gun that does not give truce, the bandits lurking. It leaves a void in huts made of desert, grassland burned. I visited many villages in southern Ethiopia, southern Sudan and northern Kenya: in the most fortunate and the children are rich in water all day on the wooden platforms to drive away birds that eat the corn, the huts are made of a few dry branches because we must move in search of pasture, the cows are skinny. Sandstorms not give truce. Conflicts with neighboring tribes are inevitable. So many people prefer to move to the cities with the lure of easy work. They end up living in shacks with no toilets, no water, no schools for their children, without medicine, without a job that is not humiliation, prostitution or slavery. They find a low wage that ensures only the hunger and new hardships. Then start for the second time, but assigned a rich country. To always leave the alley in the slum and shack made of cardboard, dust and plastic bags.
Europe and Africa
If you do not study the Africa of today and not consider the wars in Africa do not understand the migration. If you do not know emigration is not possible to govern. Integration, citizenship, criminal activity, issuing visas, rejections: they are issues that, if you study reality, can not be considered seriously, they are just commercials election. Today, even Jesus, who was a foreigner, would be dismissed, expelled, returned. Europe colonized Africa, exploited, enslaved and eroded its resources. Today it is the one who does not want to know what happens to the neighbor who feels every day to die, until the neighbor's house burns and breaks even his. The global world is an opportunity to do business and get rich, but did not change the fate of billions of the world's poor. In recent years, moreover, we silently passed by the "war on poverty" to the "war on the poor" conducted on a large scale.
The Mother of all wars: the Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa depart from Somalia, the maximum tip extension east of the Horn. It is no coincidence that piracy and acts of today was born off the coast of Somalia. Somali pirates have seized 300 people that the world has forgotten, twelve ships were seized at their base, they hold huge capital into banks around the world, laundering the money "dirty" with investment firms around the world (from Kenya to Britain), worked only 68 hijackings in 2009 and launch their attacks from the Gulf of Aden in the Seychelles. No one involved in Somalia to stop their criminal activities and no great power has ever dreamed of taking a look at the port of Eyl which is their base of operations quiet. It's been 23 years since the fall of dictator Siad Barre: Since then Somalia has not found a civil order or a semblance of political or state structure. We all remember December 3, 1992 when Resolution 794 UN Security Council imposed in Somalia to send a peacekeeping force with the task of ensuring the distribution of humanitarian aid and restore order: there were also Italians and television around the world passed on that fact as a historic event. American troops landed in force, were indicted by the Somalis to protect the interests of oil companies Conoco, Amoco and Chevron. The headquarters of Conoco, the arrival of the Marines, was home to the headquarters of the U.S. Embassy in Mogadishu. The UN troops were unable to bring peace in Somalia, or to defeat the armed gangs that roamed the area. The Americans suffered heavy losses in terms of a political and military and March 3, 1995 all UN peacekeeping forces left Somalia without achieving any results. Many regions of Somalia (Somali Land, Land of Punt, Land of Juba, Galmudug) began to demand autonomy or independence from Mogadishu. Armed movements arose that sought to fill the political vacuum existing in the country and claimed their ethnic, religious, territorial. The Union of Islamic Courts military began a process of aggregation for the unification of the Islamic fundamentalist nation. The U.S., via the CIA financed the Union of Islamic Courts in the hope of infiltrated its agents and control the action. In 2003, a council of the Somali Restoration and Reconciliation was driving action to help achieve peace: I remember known some of its own in a dinner in Addis Ababa, convinced we can do it and hopeful for the future. In November 2004 in Nairobi, Kenya, was born a Transitional National Government (TNG) in 2006 opened its official in Baidoa in Somalia. The war was raging between the forces of "government" represented by the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace against Terrorism (ARPCT), and the training anti-government, led by the Union of Islamic Courts (ICU). The ICU dell'ARPCT forces defeated and occupied Mogadishu. At that point, Melles Zennawi Ethiopia decided to intervene to restore order and combat the continuing attacks on its territory by the Ogaden Liberation Front (ONLF) claimed by the Islamic Courts and Eritrea. After a series of fierce battles, in Baidoa, Bandiradley, Beledweyne, Jowhar and Jilib, December 31, 2006 Kisima was occupied by the Ethiopian and the following day, 1 January 2007, the head of the Somali government forces invited Ali Mohammed Ghedi combatants to disarm and general acceptance of the new constitutional order. In the same month the U.S. actions generally air strikes on the positions of the armed groups in Ras Kamboni, presumably in an attempt to destroy Al Qaeda elements had infiltrated the forces of 'ICU. The U.S. advisors worked with the Ethiopian army. The civil war in all the country resumed as before. To restore peace to the Organization of African Unity decided to deploy an armed force of 80,000 soldiers of peace made by all African countries, but the factions of the Somali guerrillas decided to oppose the foreign presence. The infiltration of jihadist groups and quaedisti has been established within the territory and leads to radical Islamization of the country and the introduction of Sharia, Islamic law. The year 2009 was characterized by a widespread return to the use of car bombs and suicide bombers packed with explosives. On 25 May 2009, armed gangs in Mogadishu clash with government forces who are struggling to control the city. The President of the Sharif Ahmed Somali government calls for foreign aid and Ethiopia in June 2009 that pours its forces against the positions of the guerrillas. A terrorist kills Aden Hashi Security Minister Homar. On December 3, 2009 at the University of Mogadishu, during a ceremony for the delivery of diplomas to young Somalis, a suicide bomber dressed as woman blows herself up: 22 people killed including 15 students and four cabinet ministers Sharif Ahmed . This is the latest of an endless series of attacks that disrupt the lives of the Somali capital where almost all the districts are in the hands of armed groups out of control.
I have not mentioned yet, Eritrea, a nation that negli ultimi 60 anni è passata da un conflitto all’altro, quasi senza interruzione. Dagli anni ’50 fino al 1991 il popolo eritreo ha lottato contro la sottomissione forzata all’Etiopia e per la propria legittima indipendenza. Il Fronte di Liberazione dell’Eritrea ha combattuto contro l’esercito etiopico dell’imperatore Haile Sellassie fino al 1974 e, dopo la drammatica morte di Haile Sellassie, contro l’esercito etiopico del dittatore filosovietico Haile Mariam Menghistu. Finita la guerra nel 1991 con la vittoria delle forze tigrine ed eritree alleate sembrava aprirsi una stagione di pace e sviluppo per il popolo eritreo, ma non è stato così. La democrazia non è mai stata instaurata dal leader Isaya Afawork governing without interruption since 1991. From 1998 to 2000 there was a bloody new war with Ethiopia: Eritreans about 120,000 deaths, about 200,000 Ethiopians died, according to UN estimates, giving a total of 320,000 deaths. The war, after initial successes Eritrean, Ethiopian army was won and lost disastrously by Eritreans. It has never ceased completely. As a result, Eritrea has indirectly taken part in the conflict in Ogaden and Somalia antietiopica function, and has clashed with its naval forces in the Red Sea against the Yemeni navy to claim the land surrounding the beautiful islands of Dahlak.
The Kenya is attacked in northern Italy by armed groups and political formations that are clashing for the use of resources, water, pasture land, livestock, or ethnic hatred. In the Samburu National Park or the Park Marsabit, where in 1994 and in 1998 I went on holiday without any problem, now you go with the armed escort, or, if you follow the UN reports that recommend not to go, you give the trip. Somalia, also encroach upon the armed gangs that infiltrate deeply into the territory, avoid detection Kenyan or Ethiopian army, plunder the caravans of vehicles at the border between Ethiopia and Kenya and Somalia in the fall. The far north of Kenya is becoming another No Man's Land that is added to the already extensive territorio del tutto fuori controllo.
In Sud Sudan le notizie più recenti lasciano la speranza che possa tornare una parvenza di Stato. Per 60 anni il Sud animista e cristiano e il Nord islamico si sono fatti la guerra. Il governo ha appoggiato la distruzione sistematica della popolazione cristiana del Sud soprattutto a partire dal 1983 quando i cristiani si ribellarono all’introduzione forzata della Sharia, la legge coranica, e nacque l’SPLM/A, cioè il Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement/Army. La guerra civile unita all’abbandono dei campi e alle conseguenti carestie produsse 2 milioni di morti e 4 milioni di rifugiati. Il 30 giugno 1989 la situazione peggiorò ulteriormente a causa del colpo di stato guidato dal General Omar Al Bashir with his National Islamic Front (NIF). In 1996, the UN imposes sanctions on Sudan's involvement in the attacks in Cairo and Addis Ababa against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. In June 2002, began the dialogue between the Government of Sudan and the SPLM / A and, with the mediation of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, met for the first time the Sudanese President Al Bashir and the leader of the rebel John Garang. In 2003 the war resumed worse than before. At the Sudanese People's Liberation Army joined the fight in the JEM (Justice for Equality Movement). The UN declared a state of emergency in Sudan, particularly in the Darfur region, but the "ethnic cleansing" with the destruction of Christian villages and the elimination of the peoples of Nuer, Dinka, Bari, Shilluk and Zande continued with brutal and widespread devastation. On 9 January 2005 in Nairobi, was a new agreement for peace. Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, was filled with soldiers of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army of John Garang. December 23, 2005 but declared war on Sudan and Chad to the raids that led groups to the detriment of the Sudanese Chadian border villages. He went into action the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), the Liberation Army of the Lord, who has training in Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan in the base operating militarily with devastating attacks in the three northern districts of Uganda. In game there is not only the division of power between different ethnic groups, but the division of the proceeds arising from the activity of drilling for oil, the wealth of South Sudan.
The Horn of Africa is not the only area in danger. Everyone remembers Rwanda in 1994 when the leaders decided to exterminate the Hutus Tutzi. Uganda's army swept Tutzi the "genocidal" that fled to Congo and from there continuously attacked Rwanda. A Rwandan army then invaded the Congo in 1996 to oust the Congolese leader Mobutu and replaced by the head of the guerrilla Congo, Laurent Kabila, who marched in triumph in May 1997 supported by Rwandan troops in the capital Kinshasa. But Kabila rialleò with the Rwandan Hutu to get rid of the influence. The Rwandans, furious at the turnaround, they settled in Kiton, not far from Kinshasa and in a few days of fighting, had occupied the dam and the hydroelectric plant that supplies electricity to the capital. Kabila's troops against the Rwandan Tutzi about to go to Kinshasa when Angola, Zimbabwe and Namida, supported by their air forces, blocked their march. At that point anyone with a long nose, a characteristic of somatic Tutzi, was killed while hundreds of armed gangs and militant groups were scattered in the jungle where they have never ceased to operate. Rwanda and Uganda fought against the remaining forces of Kabila Kabila because he was helping the rebel forces of Rwanda and Uganda. The Angolans were helping Kabila because he was the best way to get rid of their rebellious and, in particular, the National Front of Kabinda on 8 January 2010 attacked with machine guns bus that led the national team of Togo in Luanda to the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament every four years to work all the national teams of the continent. In Angola and Congo, countries rich in precious minerals for the world economy over the last 40 years, according to UN estimates, there were at least 4 million deaths due to war.
The world imports oil from Sudan, Chad, Congo, Nigeria, Angola, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Ethiopia and Kenya coffee, diamonds from the Congo and Sierra Leone, iron and diamonds from Liberia, Kenya's flower, fruit and vegetables from all over Africa, ore, copper, nickel, gold for many African countries, cotton from Egypt, Kenya and Ethiopia, wood, furniture and parque flooring from around the continent, marble and leather, and again from Congo gold, cobalt, and coltan , an expensive mineral that is needed to build cell phones, computers and play stations. Often the business to exploit the rich nations of the world fund their armed formations, activate secret services, directly or indirectly controlling le miniere, i pozzi di petrolio, le piantagioni grazie anche all’alleanza con i dittatori africani corrotti e le loro polizie. L’Africa continua a produrre beni necessari per la vita di tutto il pianeta, però, a sfogliare i giornali o a guardare le televisioni del mondo moderno, gli Africani e le loro storie sembrano assenti.
© RIPRODUZIONE RISERVATA Paolo Giunta La Spada
