Michael Ignatieff, The warrior’s honor: Ethnic war and the modern conscience, Vintage, London, 1998, 207 pp.

The warrior’s honor is an attempt to make sense of the chaotic world in which we live. Just what is this ‘new world order’ that replaced the world of the Cold War? What narratives, if any, will hold it together? What is the moral language of globalism? Why should we care what happens to a stranger thousands of miles away, in Bosnia, Rwanda, or East Timor? Why has globalism been accompanied by an explosion of nationalism and ethnic conflict?

The book touches on a wide range of subjects, from the nature of empathy and television news, to the question of identity and the ethics of war, to the question of truth and reconciliation in a post-conflict society. Through it all, Ignatieff has one guiding theme: the importance of the state in providing its citizens with security and rescuing them from anarchy. Basing his insights on his experiences in and travels through some of the most conflict-ridden parts of the world, Ignatieff traces the central cause of the violence that has wracked these societies and led to the collapse of the state. These societies have become the embodiment of a Hobbesian state of nature.

Ignatieff’s arguments are located squarely within the European enlightenment tradition, and the changes it brought with it. The enlightenment, of course, was ambiguous: it brought with it political, ethical and technological advances; it led to the establishment of the modern state as it is known and to a new ethics of universal human rights. But it also brought with it destruction — of whole societies through imperialism and colonialism and later, through the slaughter unleashed by technological advances in the twentieth century. The enlightenment was also ambiguous on another level — the advances it brought, at a psychological and an ethical level, represented a loss of sorts. This is not a new idea. Theorists ranging from Adam Smith to Max Weber recognised the loss of community and estrangement from the natural world that accompanied the birth of the modern world. These theorists, however, were writing at a time when vestigial remnants of the pre-modern era could still be found. Ignatieff is one of the first theorists to examine the extent of the loss wrought not just by modernity, but by the post-modern, post-1989 world, while still taking the promise of the enlightenment seriously.

The first chapter, Is nothing sacred? The ethics of television, asks why images of the suffering of strangers in distant parts of the world are able to evoke feelings of empathy and compassion among viewing audiences. Ethics, intuitively, has always been based on a descending order of moral obligation — first family, then neighbours and fellow citizens. Only after all these obligations have been discharged, do strangers feature, as the weakest obligation of all. Ignatieff’s answer is that the universal empathy which has become such a part of the late twentieth century popular culture, is based less on hope and a belief in human fraternity than on the dread of the human capacity for evil. Ignatieff traces this feeling back to the concentration camps of Word War II. The destruction of whole societies destroyed the capacity of victims to appeal to the natural bonds of solidarity for salvation. Universalist empathy becomes, as a result, the last hope of a people stripped of all social bonds. The role of television in this moral universe is that of principal mediator "... between the suffering of strangers and the consciences of those in the world’s few remaining zones of safety ... It has become not merely the means through which we see each other, but the means by which we shoulder each other’s fate" (p 33).

The narcissism of minor difference attempts to explain how it can happen that people who have lived together for generations, can suddenly turn against one another in such a frenzy of hatred that they can conceive only of killing one another. Here, too, the answer is fear, resulting from political disintegration. For Ignatieff, nationalism is not, à la Huntington, an atavistic eruption of pre-modern antagonisms. Rather, it is a modern language game, invented to respond to the uprootings of modernity. Nationalism is a human response to the anomie and alienation unleashed by modern society.

It is a pity that Ignatieff does not take the opportunity to explore in greater depth the place ethnicity has occupied in post-colonial Africa. Ethnic conflict erupted in Africa in the 1980s and 1990s in large part because of the policies of post-colonial African rulers. State penetration of the broader African society historically has been superficial. Weak African states, vulnerable to pressures both from their dispossessed citizenry and the military establishment, became increasingly reliant on what have been termed "ethnic security maps", while publicly eschewing ethnicity as a legitimate form of identity, at the same time. ‘Ethnic security maps’ refer to the practice of securing power through the placement of persons in key military, security and political positions, whose loyalty to the rulers could be assured: the most reliable criterion was ethnic affiliation. Post-colonial African rulers used ethnicity as a tool to divide and rule, and the total collapse of the state in many parts of the continent has unleashed conflicts of breathtaking savagery.

The defining feature of war in this century is its increasing barbarity and savagery. War is today fought not by professional armies according to clear rules of combat. Increasingly, war is fought by irregular forces, often including children, with the line between soldiers and criminal gangs frequently blurring. Traditional chivalric codes of war always excluded civilians. Today’s warriors make no such distinction, and wars are fought as often over drugs and diamonds as over freedom and ideology. Technological advances in weaponry mean that even children can be used in battle.

If the collapse of the state is the primary cause of conflict in many of the world’s conflict zones, and the consequence of globalisation and technological advancement is the wider distribution of the means of violence in society, how are the state and its monopoly on the means of violence to be revived? Classical political theory that concerned itself with explaining the transition from a state of nature to an ordered state was written in the context of both state absolutism and imperialism. These options are not open today. There are no alternatives to the dominant narrative of democracy and universal human rights, and civil peace has to be negotiated between parties that are determined not to negotiate. The task facing those who have an interest in fostering peace and security is to address the issue of how to build sufficient levels of trust in society that will allow politics to take place. Without this trust that makes politics possible, we are condemned to live in that Hobbesian world where life is nasty, brutish and short.

Fiona Lortan
Africa Early Warning Programme
Institute for Security Studies

Sean Dorney, The Sandline Affair: Politics and mercenaries and the Bougainville crisis, ABC Books, Sydney, 1999; Mary-Louise O’Callaghan, Enemies within: Papua New Guinea, Australia, and the Sandline crisis — The inside story, Doubleday, Netley, 1999.

During March 1997, the armed forces of the Independent Republic of Papua New Guinea revolted against the intended use of a private military force forcibly to resolve the long-standing insurrection on the island of Bougainville. The revolt against the use of more than seventy mercenaries by Sandline International, most of them subcontracted from Executive Outcomes, was led by the commander of the Papua New Guinean Defence Force, Brigadier-General Jerry Singirok. The events would soon force the Papua New Guinean prime minister, Sir Julius Chan, to step aside and would eventually lead to a change in government. Despite the fact that Singirok was the recipient of a significant bribe from the British-based company, J & S Franklin Ltd — as an inducement and reward for the continued purchase of defence-related equipment through them — Singirok staged his armed opposition to the Sandline deal on the basis that it was corrupt and that it undermined the legitimate functions of the military.

For many commentators, the developments in Papua New Guinea rang the death knell for Executive Outcomes, but surprisingly not for its sister company Sandline, which continues to soldier on, seeking lucrative contracts where exploitable mineral resources are available in conflict-torn states. In 1998, Sandline would again be in the international spotlight when it provided support to the government of President Kabbah in Sierra Leone to the embarrassment of the British government that would eventually only admit to tacit support for its activities.

Papua New Guinea gained its independence from Australia in 1975 and remains a highly fractured society. Its population of 4,5 million people, speak no less than 867 languages (one-third of the world’s languages still in use). The politics of Papua New Guinea had always been dominated by an absence of a sense of loyalty to the state and the general belief that the family and tribal group came first. Independence was followed by a rapid process of ‘localisation’ with untrained Papua New Guineans promoted to fill government positions for which they were not ready, within the framework of an excessively liberal constitution that emphasised the rights of the individual over those of a very weak state. The result was a steadily decaying and further weakened state within which corruption and inefficiency became more pronounced as the competency of the legislature became increasingly beholden to petty pay-backs and greed. The response of Australia, the former colonial master, to the evolving dilemma was one of benign neglect. The closure of the Panguna copper mine on Bougainville in May 1989, due to the secessionist insurrection that had restarted the previous year, represented a huge economic loss for Papua New Guinea. Successive governments alternatively tried negotiations and the use of force to have the mine reopened. His military having suffered a recent humiliating defeat at the hands of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA), the prime minister, Sir Chan became desperate. By 1996, his government was seduced by Sandline’s promise to render the BRA ‘military ineffective’ in time for the 1997 Papua New Guinean elections. Sandline and its associated companies eventually offered to do this in exchange for an up-front cash payment and ‘business interests’ in what remained the largest open copper cast mine in the world. In fact, the mine was itself largely the source of the dispute between the BRA and the Papua New Guinea.

Sandline was not the first company to offer to exploit the uncertainty within Papua New Guinea. Another well-known British-based private security company, Defence Systems Limited, had tried for several years to gain a significant contract to establish a police rapid deployment unit before giving up. But Sandline was greedy, and more insistent and ingratiating than most. It was also prepared to pay bribes or ‘introduction fees’ similar to those paid by J & S Franklin Ltd — but it apparently did not offer a sufficient bribe to the commander of the Papua New Guinean Defence Force, for it was Singirok who would eventually pull the plug on Sandline and expel the mercenaries from the country.

The use of private military companies is limited to weak states with corrupt leaders who have no alternative but to turn to other sources of stability than that provided by either their own security agencies, friendly nations or the international community. The two books summarise in considerable detail the methods and interests that Sandline and its associates, such as Heritage Oil and Gas, Branch Energy, Executive Outcomes, Plaza 107 and Diamond Works, engaged in. Similar to developments in Sierra Leone in 1998, where the government had bartered mining concessions to fund its mercenary contracts, the chief executive officer of Sandline, Tim Spicer, and the mastermind behind the mercenary-mineral linkage, Anthony Buckingham, suggested that Papua New Guinea could do a similar deal as partial payment for the US $36 million price that Sandline put on ‘fixing the Bougainville rebel problem’. In a world where the bottom line and not morality or public opinion is the final judge, Papua New Guinea was by no means a disaster for either Spicer, Buckingham or Sandline. After months of protracted legal battle, the Papua New Guinean enterprise would eventually be forced to pay Sandline International some US $43 million — a massive slice of the annual budget of the country.

Dorney’s book went to print in July 1998 and that of O’Callaghan at the end of the same year. O’Callaghan was the journalist that broke the Sandline/Papua New Guinea story in the first instance — a feat for which she was to receive the Gold Walkley Award. Both books benefited from two major public inquiries that successive Papua New Guinea governments set up in an attempt to defuse and deal with the aftermath of the Sandline crisis, but also situate developments around Bougainville within their wider context. Collectively, they reveal the dealings and motivations that led to the Papua New Guinea government signing a deal which it could not afford, and the methods by which deals such as these are concluded. They also offer a window into the murky world of ‘investment’ politics in poor, developing countries. Dorney’s book is packed with minute details as he seeks to recount the developments that led up to and occurred during Operation Rausim Kwik — the operation that saw the Sandline team apprehended, placed under armed guard and deported from Papua New Guinea. By that time, preparations and training for the assault on Bougainville had already commenced and a large consignment of weapons that had been procured by Sandline for its operation were winging their way to Papua New Guinea. The study of O’Callaghan is more reflective, more readable, and benefited from additional information that had been unearthed in the intervening period. Both are excellent examples of investigative journalism of the type that Africa, afflicted by many of the same challenges, has not seen. Both reveal the extent to which the development of the role of private military companies are driven by financial considerations, above all, and the extent to which desperate and unethical politicians and civil servants can be hoodwinked by smooth salespeople offering easy solutions to apparently intractable problems.

The two books both focus on the internal political intrigues in Papua New Guinea and do not reveal the methods through which Sandline was readily able to procure the massive armaments required for its operation, although they do reveal the ease with which end-user certificates are misused. Other areas that would have been of interest, are detail regarding the role of Executive Outcomes, and the linkages between Executive Outcomes and Sandline. While both studies investigate and comment upon the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea in considerable depth, the role of Britain — the country from which an increased number of the mercenary companies operate — clearly requires greater attention.

Jakkie Cilliers
Institute for Security Studies

Entering the 21st Century: World Development Report 1999/2000, Oxford University Press, New York, for the World Bank, August 1999, 300 pp.

The 22nd edition in an annual series of the World Development Report focuses on two forces of change: the integration of the world economy and the increasing demand for self-government, which will affect policy-making responses to key issues such as poverty reduction, climate change and water scarcity.

When it works, decentralising power to the provincial and local level can result in more responsive and efficient local government. "There will be less room for close business dealings, more calls for accountability, and a continuing move away from the authoritarianism practised in various parts of the world between the 1960s and the 1980s," the report predicts.

But localisation can also result in over-burdened local governments being unable to provide local infrastructure and services. Localisation can threaten macro-economic stability, and hence economic growth, if local governments borrow and spend heavily and have to be bailed out by national governments. At the extreme, demands for local autonomy can lead to ethnic strife and civil war.

Globalisation and localisation are both inevitable, the report says. Whether a country succeeds in the 21st Century will depend on how well it manages these two forces.

"Globalization and localization are transforming many aspects of our human experience today, and countries will either prosper or falter on how effectively they can grab on to these two forces and harness their energy," says Shahid Yusuf, the leader of the 1999/2000 report team. "The world is becoming smaller, but in the process, it is also becoming more complicated. This makes a comprehensive and pragmatic approach to development more important than ever before." According to him, the purpose of the report is to identify approaches that have worked in helping countries and local communities to develop and use successful development strategies.

To this end, the report identifies what it calls ‘four critical lessons’ of development experience in the past half-century:

Macro-economic stability is essential for achieving the growth needed for development.



Growth does not trickle down, therefore development efforts must address human needs directly.



No one policy will spur development; a comprehensive approach is needed.



Sustained development must be socially inclusive and flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances.

Based on current projections, the report predicts that the number of people living in absolute poverty will continue to increase. At the start of the new millennium, an estimated 1,5 billion people subsist on the equivalent of a dollar a day, up from 1,2 billion people in 1987. By 2015, the number of people subsisting below this international poverty line could reach 1,9 billion. Moreover, based on recent trends, income disparities between industrial and developing countries will continue to grow.

According to the report, a growing number of the world’s poorest people will live in cities. In 1950, the number of people living in cities was about the same in industrialised and in developing countries — about 300 million. By 2000, some two billion people will live in cities in developing countries, more than twice the number of urban dwellers in industrialised countries. Many cities in developing countries are already having difficulty coping with this surge in population. About 220 million urban dwellers, thirteen per cent of the developing world’s urban population, lack access to safe drinking water, and about twice this number lack access to even the simplest of sewerage systems.

As industrial production has shifted to developing countries, air pollution has become an increasingly serious concern. According to the report, "[f]or most children in developing country cities, breathing the air may be as harmful as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day."

By drawing on a wealth of recent research on crosscountry experiences, the report proposes policies that can serve as the ingredients of a comprehensive approach to development. It explores their applicability, for example, in the cases of urban development in Pakistan and decentralisation in Brazil.

The report also includes a focus on issues of urban growth and human welfare including several detailed case studies of development issues in the 21st century, for example:

making the most of trade liberalisation (Egypt); and


cultivating rural-urban synergies (Tanzania).

As in previous years, the World Development Report also contains a wealth of information on the state of the world. An appendix containing selected world development indicators covers basics, such as the size of the economy and economic growth; and quality of life indicators, such as child malnutrition, child mortality, life expectancy and adult illiteracy. Indicators are also provided for health, the environment, and ‘global links’, such as trade and financial flows.

It is quite clear from the thinking espoused in this publication that the process of development requires an understanding of its complexity and context. Governments, the private sector, civil society and donor organisations need to co-operate for successful economic development to happen. To this end, the 22nd edition of the World Development Report is an essential reference guide, enabling the reader to track comparative trends both regionally and globally.

Marina van Zyl
Institute for Security Studies

Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa works: Disorder as political instrument, African issues, Villiers Publications, London, for the International African Institute in association with James Currey and Indiana University Press, 1999, 170 pages.

Africa works: Disorder as political instrument is another contribution in the excellent African issues series that has already offered illuminating studies by different authors on politics and the disaster relief industry, the criminalisation of the state in Africa and war, youth and resources in Sierra Leone. Africa works by Chabal and Daloz is undoubtedly one of the most incisive and illuminating studies seeking to come to grips with the nature of African politics, development, culture, religion and society.

The study "... seeks to make sense of what is happening in Africa today ... to provide the analytical framework, the instruments ... [that] can help explain the conditions of contemporary Africa." An ambitious task for a book of less than 200 pages, but one that the authors engage in with a degree of clarity and focus that makes this an indispensable contribution to the library of any scholar who wants to understand Africa.

The authors argue their proposition thus: "... the political instrumentalisation of disorder ... refers to the process by which political actors in Africa seek to maximise their returns on the state of confusion, uncertainty and sometimes even chaos, which characterises most Africa polities ... what all African states share is a generalised system of patrimonialism and an acute degree of apparent disorder ... and a universal resort to personal(ised) and vertical solutions to societal problems."

A key element in the presentation of the argument is that disorder is not considered to be a state of dereliction as would be the case in classical political analysis, but also as a condition which offers opportunities. The dynamics of disorder therefore serve to limit the scope for reform in two ways. "The first is that, where disorder has become a resource, there is no incentive to work for a more institutionalised ordering of society. The second is that in the absence of any other viable way of obtaining the means needed to sustain neo-patrimonialism, there is inevitably a tendency to link politics to realms of increased disorder, be it war or crime." Rather than offering an elaborate theoretical model, the authors seek to offer a sufficiently reasoned and detailed exposition to justify these conclusions that dovetail with much of the popular debate on the economics of civil wars that have emerged in recent years.

The book is divided into four sections, each consisting of a number of chapters. The first section deals with the informalisation of politics within the sphere of the state, civil society and the political élite. Within Africa, the authors, argue, the unofficial has always been more important than the official, and African political systems are only superficially akin to those of the West. The second section engages the subject of the so-called ‘retraditionalisation’ of Africa, seeking to look at politics from a cultural perspective. This section aims at illustrating the degree to which the dynamics of African modernisation are compatible with what are typically characterised as ‘traditional’. The third section deals with the productivity of economic failure in order to explain why dependence/corruption constitutes a substantial resource and to show how it is possible for Africans to enrich themselves while the continent fails to develop. The final and last section is entitled ‘a new paradigm’, and seeks to present a framework for the analysis of the political instrumentalisation of disorder based on the preceding sections.

This is a challenging study, for it attempts to defy the usual parameters of current political analysis and therefore questions Africa’s traditional framework for understanding events on the continent that are typically captive of ‘Western’ notions of rationality, the polity and society. Rather than seeking to rehearse, in detail, the elements of the African crisis — such as the failure of economic development, political instability, social divisions, violence, crime and civil war — the authors seek to provide a reasoned framework to understand what is happening in Africa without trying to frame this understanding within the context of what ought or ought not to be. There is therefore no attempt to prove a trend towards democratisation, liberalisation and reduction, or an increase in human rights abuses.

The essence of the authors’ argument is beguilingly simple. They argue that virtually all attempts at ‘understanding’ or explaining development (or the lack of) in Africa, political theory, social nature and economics are driven by people’s need to fit events into an explanation or theory congruent with the dominant explanatory paradigms of the time. These are all drawn from and built upon the experience of what is known as ‘Western democracies’. "Seen from that perspective, Africa has often seemed to represent either the initial stage in our notion of progress or the dark opposite of what Western civilisation is taken to represent." In this context, development is often used as a code word for modernisation. In fact, the authors argue, there are different types of modernity, though they may not be endowed with the same potential for economic and scientific development. In fact, they conclude that "... there prevails in Africa a system of politics inimical to development as it is usually understood in the West" — a case of modernity without development.

For analysts schooled in Western traditions of anthropology, sociology and political science, this is a refreshing study that seeks to explain and dissect Africa as many characterise it popularly, but fear to analyse scientifically in an attempt to avoid treading on sensitive, politically correct toes.

Jakkie Cilliers
Institute for Security Studies