Confronting the malefactors

Paul Krugman writes: There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear, but we may, at long last, be seeing the rise of a popular movement that, unlike the Tea Party, is angry at the right people.

When the Occupy Wall Street protests began three weeks ago, most news organizations were derisive if they deigned to mention the events at all. For example, nine days into the protests, National Public Radio had provided no coverage whatsoever.

It is, therefore, a testament to the passion of those involved that the protests not only continued but grew, eventually becoming too big to ignore. With unions and a growing number of Democrats now expressing at least qualified support for the protesters, Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even eventually be seen as a turning point.

What can we say about the protests? First things first: The protesters’ indictment of Wall Street as a destructive force, economically and politically, is completely right.

A weary cynicism, a belief that justice will never get served, has taken over much of our political debate — and, yes, I myself have sometimes succumbed. In the process, it has been easy to forget just how outrageous the story of our economic woes really is. So, in case you’ve forgotten, it was a play in three acts.

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Vanity, machismo and greed have blinded us to the folly of Afghanistan

Simon Jenkins writes: Ten years of western occupation of Afghanistan led the UN this week to plead that half the country’s drought-ridden provinces face winter starvation. The World Food Programme calls for £92m to be urgently dispatched. This is incredible. Afghanistan is the world’s greatest recipient of aid, some $20bn in the past decade, plus a hundred times more in military spending. So much cash pours through its doors that $3m a day is said to leave Kabul airport corruptly to buy property in Dubai.

Everything about Afghanistan beggars belief. This week its leader, Hamid Karzai, brazenly signed a military agreement with India, knowing it would enrage his neighbour, Pakistan, and knowing it would increase the assault on his capital by the Haqqani network, reported clients of Islamabad’s ISI intelligence agency. Meanwhile, in Washington, the Pentagon is exulting over its new strategy of drone killing, claiming this aerial “counter-terrorism” can replace the “hearts and minds” counter-insurgency. Down in Helmand, visiting British journalists gather to recite the defence ministry’s tired catechism: “We are making real progress on the ground.”

The opening decade of the 21st century has been marked by two epic failures by the western powers that so recently claimed victory in the cold war; failures of both intellect and leadership. One is the inability to use the limitless resources of modern government to rescue the west’s economy from prolonged recession. The other is the use of an attack on America by a crazed Islamist criminal as an excuse for a retaliatory war embracing a wide swath of the Muslim world. The decade-long punishment of Afghanistan for harbouring Osama bin Laden has been an act of biblical retribution. The demand that it also abandons the habits of history and adopt democracy, capitalism and gender equality was imperial arrogance.

What happened in Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001 has spawned an industry of hindsight, with over a hundred titles of wisdom after the event. We learn of the post-9/11 arguments within the Taliban, many of them old CIA allies. We learn of the possible role of Abdul Haq in Kabul, of Pakistan’s intelligence double-dealing, and of the Kandahar jirga of October 2001 which came close to evicting Osama bin Laden.

Yet every counsel of caution in dealing with Afghanistan was disregarded in America’s rush for vengeance – even the warning of Donald Rumsfeld that America “had no dog in the Afghan fight” and should avoid nation-building after a punitive raid. A great surge of imperial eagerness seemed to overwhelm Washington, London and Nato, as if the whole of western liberalism were craving a role in the world.

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Computer virus hits U.S. drone fleet

Noah Shachtman reports: A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones.

The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech’s computers, network security specialists say. And the infection underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the U.S. military’s most important weapons system.

“We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back,” says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. “We think it’s benign. But we just don’t know.”

Military network security specialists aren’t sure whether the virus and its so-called “keylogger” payload were introduced intentionally or by accident; it may be a common piece of malware that just happened to make its way into these sensitive networks. The specialists don’t know exactly how far the virus has spread. But they’re sure that the infection has hit both classified and unclassified machines at Creech. That raises the possibility, at least, that secret data may have been captured by the keylogger, and then transmitted over the public internet to someone outside the military chain of command.

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Think Occupy Wall Street is a phase? You don’t get it

Douglas Rushkoff writes: Like the spokesmen for Arab dictators feigning bewilderment over protesters’ demands, mainstream television news reporters finally training their attention on the growing Occupy Wall Street protest movement seem determined to cast it as the random, silly blather of an ungrateful and lazy generation of weirdos. They couldn’t be more wrong and, as time will tell, may eventually be forced to accept the inevitability of their own obsolescence.

Consider how CNN anchor Erin Burnett, covered the goings on at Zuccotti Park downtown, where the protesters are encamped, in a segment called “Seriously?!” “What are they protesting?” she asked, “nobody seems to know.” Like Jay Leno testing random mall patrons on American History, the main objective seemed to be to prove that the protesters didn’t, for example, know that the U.S. government has been reimbursed for the bank bailouts. It was condescending and reductionist.

More predictably perhaps, a Fox News reporter appears flummoxed in this outtake from “On the Record,” in which the respondent refuses to explain how he wants the protests to “end.” Transcending the shallow partisan politics of the moment, the protester explains “As far as seeing it end, I wouldn’t like to see it end. I would like to see the conversation continue.”

To be fair, the reason why some mainstream news journalists and many of the audiences they serve see the Occupy Wall Street protests as incoherent is because the press and the public are themselves. It is difficult to comprehend a 21st century movement from the perspective of the 20th century politics, media, and economics in which we are still steeped.

In fact, we are witnessing America’s first true Internet-era movement, which — unlike civil rights protests, labor marches, or even the Obama campaign — does not take its cue from a charismatic leader, express itself in bumper-sticker-length goals and understand itself as having a particular endpoint.

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Al Jazeera’s chief extols virtues of ‘journalism for the people’

Roy Greenslade writes: The revolutionary fervour of the Arab Spring came alive last night at City University London in a lecture by Wadah Khanfar, the former director general of Al-Jazeera.

In describing his reaction to the various uprisings, particularly in Egypt and Libya, he illustrated just what is meant by a journalism of attachment or commitment.

Exhibiting an unashamed passion throughout his talk, he told a packed audience:

“In our search for a fixed pivotal point around which our editorial mission is centred we find nothing better than the people with their collective mind and their instinctive opposition to oppression, arbitrariness and corruption…

I learned from my experience as a reporter, and then as director of a media institution, an important basic fact: that we should always posit people at the centre of our editorial policy.

I don’t say this simply to reiterate a beautiful slogan with which we decorate our literature or market our institutions. I truly believe this to be a moral commitment, a scientific approach and an essential interest.”

Khanfar, the first non-Western journalist to deliver the James Cameron memorial lecture, cast Al-Jazeera’s journalism as a sort of democratic mission.

He told how the Egyptian regime’s early response to the gatherings in Tahrir Square was to close down the network’s offices and to ban its reporters and crews from working.

So the broadcaster sent a message to its Egyptian viewers telling them: “If the authorities have banned our reporters from working, then every single one of you is an Al-Jazeera reporter.”

That led, he said, to hundreds of activists supplying the network with a stream of news and video clips via social network sites.

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NY city council critical of police surveillance of Muslims

The New York Times reports: City Council members took aim on Thursday at the New York Police Department’s surveillance of Muslims, pointedly questioning Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly about the breadth of the force’s undercover efforts in the decade since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

At an unusually intense hearing, several council members tried to pierce the secrecy that has largely surrounded the operations of the Intelligence Division, one of the department’s entities involved in counterterrorism investigations.

“It looks like we are targeting Muslim neighborhoods and communities,” Councilman Brad Lander said. “That’s not good for us. We have people out there who are partners who feel the trust is betrayed.”

The hearing, which lasted over an hour, unfolded before an audience packed with Muslim organizers, civil liberties lawyers and others, including the mother of a Queens man serving a 30-year prison sentence for plotting an attack at the Herald Square subway station in 2004.

The questioning revolved mostly around a series of recent articles by The Associated Press examining the department’s focus on Muslim communities in the New York metropolitan area and efforts to identify “hot spots,” like mosques and other gathering places.

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U.S. had ‘frighteningly simplistic’ view of Afghanistan, says McChrystal

The Guardian reports: One of America’s most celebrated generals has issued a harsh indictment of his country’s campaign in Afghanistan on the 10th anniversary of the invasion to topple the Taliban.

The US began the war with a “frighteningly simplistic” view of Afghanistan, the retired general Stanley McChrystal said, and even now the military lacks sufficient local knowledge to bring the conflict to an end.

The US and Nato are only “50% of the way” towards achieving their goals in Afghanistan, he told the Council on Foreign Relations.

“We didn’t know enough and we still don’t know enough. Most of us, me included, had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years.”

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Gaddafi’s last stronghold, the city of Sirte, becomes Libya’s final battle

Peter Beaumont reports from Sirte on the final push to end the war in Libya: On Thursday a pall of white smoke hung across this district as shells exploded every few minutes, and people in the hotel warned of a sniper firing from the minaret of a mosque 500 metres away from the hotel.

“We want to get this thing finished quickly,” said a young bearded fighter standing by the wrecked lifts. “We had a plan to try and open the road to the hospital to evacuate civilians, but there were too many snipers. Yesterday we tried many times to open the road.”

It is a reflection of the nature of Libya’s last battle. The new government has said it will announce full liberation when Sirte is taken, even though a second town – Bani Walid – has also yet to fall.

But it is on the fall of Sirte that all expectations have been pegged.

The battle is a ramshackle affair. On the west side of the city, where the katibas [rebels] from Misrata launch almost daily attempts to take the Gaddafi stronghold of the Ougadougou conference centre, the fighters gathered for an impromptu breakfast outside a little field hospital. On Thursday they had poured in behind three tanks only to be driven back by missiles.

On the east side of Sirte, reached via a dirt road that skirts the city, the forces appear more organised. In the morning, a group met at a roundabout on the outskirts of the city, close to where a tank was pounding the buildings below. A burst of bullets came across the roundabout, sending the men scuttling for cover.

“Yesterday the Gaddafi forces come up to the roundabout with an anti-aircraft gun and fired at us,” said Salam Farjani, 37, who came to Sirte from Bayda. There were no civilians around at this time; Farjani explained that they try to leave early in the morning and at dusk, when it is safer.

“The ones who are left are the ones who have no petrol for their cars,” he said. “And the Gaddafi fighters in the town are just fighting for their survival.”

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Occupy Wall Street: the most important thing in the world now

Naomi Klein: I was honored to be invited to speak at Occupy Wall Street on Thursday night. Since amplification is (disgracefully) banned, and everything I say will have to be repeated by hundreds of people so others can hear (a k a “the human microphone”), what I actually say at Liberty Plaza will have to be very short. With that in mind, here is the longer, uncut version of the speech.

I love you.

And I didn’t just say that so that hundreds of you would shout “I love you” back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone. Say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder.

Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said: “We found each other.” That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can’t be contained by any space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are so grateful.

If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over.

And there is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately, it’s a very big thing: the 99 percent. And that 99 percent is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say “No. We will not pay for your crisis.”

That slogan began in Italy in 2008. It ricocheted to Greece and France and Ireland and finally it has made its way to the square mile where the crisis began.

“Why are they protesting?” ask the baffled pundits on TV. Meanwhile, the rest of the world asks: “What took you so long?” “We’ve been wondering when you were going to show up.” And most of all: “Welcome.”

Many people have drawn parallels between Occupy Wall Street and the so-called anti-globalization protests that came to world attention in Seattle in 1999. That was the last time a global, youth-led, decentralized movement took direct aim at corporate power. And I am proud to have been part of what we called “the movement of movements.”

But there are important differences too. For instance, we chose summits as our targets: the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the G8. Summits are transient by their nature, they only last a week. That made us transient too. We’d appear, grab world headlines, then disappear. And in the frenzy of hyper patriotism and militarism that followed the 9/11 attacks, it was easy to sweep us away completely, at least in North America.

Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, has chosen a fixed target. And you have put no end date on your presence here. This is wise. Only when you stay put can you grow roots. This is crucial. It is a fact of the information age that too many movements spring up like beautiful flowers but quickly die off. It’s because they don’t have roots. And they don’t have long term plans for how they are going to sustain themselves. So when storms come, they get washed away.

Being horizontal and deeply democratic is wonderful. But these principles are compatible with the hard work of building structures and institutions that are sturdy enough to weather the storms ahead. I have great faith that this will happen.

Something else this movement is doing right: You have committed yourselves to non-violence. You have refused to give the media the images of broken windows and street fights it craves so desperately. And that tremendous discipline has meant that, again and again, the story has been the disgraceful and unprovoked police brutality. Which we saw more of just last night. Meanwhile, support for this movement grows and grows. More wisdom.

But the biggest difference a decade makes is that in 1999, we were taking on capitalism at the peak of a frenzied economic boom. Unemployment was low, stock portfolios were bulging. The media was drunk on easy money. Back then it was all about start-ups, not shutdowns.

We pointed out that the deregulation behind the frenzy came at a price. It was damaging to labor standards. It was damaging to environmental standards. Corporations were becoming more powerful than governments and that was damaging to our democracies. But to be honest with you, while the good times rolled, taking on an economic system based on greed was a tough sell, at least in rich countries.

Ten years later, it seems as if there aren’t any more rich countries. Just a whole lot of rich people. People who got rich looting the public wealth and exhausting natural resources around the world.

The point is, today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy. And it is trashing the natural world as well. We are overfishing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drilling, turning to the dirtiest forms of energy on the planet, like the Alberta tar sands. And the atmosphere cannot absorb the amount of carbon we are putting into it, creating dangerous warming. The new normal is serial disasters: economic and ecological.

These are the facts on the ground. They are so blatant, so obvious, that it is a lot easier to connect with the public than it was in 1999, and to build the movement quickly.

We all know, or at least sense, that the world is upside down: we act as if there is no end to what is actually finite—fossil fuels and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions. And we act as if there are strict and immovable limits to what is actually bountiful—the financial resources to build the kind of society we need.

The task of our time is to turn this around: to challenge this false scarcity. To insist that we can afford to build a decent, inclusive society—while at the same time, respect the real limits to what the earth can take.

What climate change means is that we have to do this on a deadline. This time our movement cannot get distracted, divided, burned out or swept away by events. This time we have to succeed. And I’m not talking about regulating the banks and increasing taxes on the rich, though that’s important.

I am talking about changing the underlying values that govern our society. That is hard to fit into a single media-friendly demand, and it’s also hard to figure out how to do it. But it is no less urgent for being difficult.

That is what I see happening in this square. In the way you are feeding each other, keeping each other warm, sharing information freely and proving health care, meditation classes and empowerment training. My favorite sign here says, “I care about you.” In a culture that trains people to avoid each other’s gaze, to say, “Let them die,” that is a deeply radical statement.

A few final thoughts. In this great struggle, here are some things that don’t matter.

§ What we wear.

§ Whether we shake our fists or make peace signs.

§ Whether we can fit our dreams for a better world into a media soundbite.

And here are a few things that do matter.

§ Our courage.

§ Our moral compass.

§ How we treat each other.

We have picked a fight with the most powerful economic and political forces on the planet. That’s frightening. And as this movement grows from strength to strength, it will get more frightening. Always be aware that there will be a temptation to shift to smaller targets—like, say, the person sitting next to you at this meeting. After all, that is a battle that’s easier to win.

Don’t give in to the temptation. I’m not saying don’t call each other on shit. But this time, let’s treat each other as if we plan to work side by side in struggle for many, many years to come. Because the task before will demand nothing less.

Let’s treat this beautiful movement as if it is most important thing in the world. Because it is. It really is.

This speech also appeared in Saturday’s edition of the Occupied Wall Street Journal.

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Occupy Wall Street protesters brutalised

Al Jazeera reports: Maybe it was the unrestrained swinging of batons or the indiscriminate use of pepper-spray on a crowd of peaceful people. Maybe it was the scores of police officers doing their best to intimidate the public. Maybe it was the homemade drum accompaniment. Whatever it was, one chant in particular – directed at the NYPD – seemed to resonate with the hundreds upon hundreds of protesters gathered at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway last night, “Who the f**k are you protecting?”

It was a reasonable enough question.

The NYPD claims to have arrested 23 people – most on charges of disorderly conduct – after thousands of demonstrators with the growing Occupy Wall Street movement gathered at the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street on Wednesday night, October 5. The protesters intended to march down the symbolic thoroughfare, which has been blocked off by barricades and a continual police presence since the Occupy Wall Street campaign began on September 17.

Protester Monica Lopez, a 25-year-old journalist from Spain, described what she witnessed: “We were in the march and we decided to come to Wall Street and then we got here and they absolutely blocked everything, both parts, the sidewalk and the street.” Lopez added, “We didn’t know what to do.”

With as many 2,000 protesters packed along both sides of Broadway at approximately 7:30PM, and a growing concentration of people gathering at the entrance to Wall Street, the demonstrators took to the so-called Peoples’ Mic; a call-and-response system used to communicate in the absence of amplification equipment. A call was issued for an on-the-spot consensus meeting. A contingent of the protesters ultimately decided to attempt a push through the police barricades and the scores of officers standing behind them. A young man hanging from scaffolding above the sidewalk announced the decision, warning those who did not wish to be arrested to step back and calling on those willing to take the risk to step forward.

The protesters made the push and police responded with immediate force. Within moments a cloud of pepper-spray appeared above the front of the crowd, as police indiscriminately sprayed into the faces of protesters. A police barricade was knocked down from the officers’ side and members of the NYPD surged into the crowd. Protesters chanted in volume, “We are the 99 per cent!” What followed, from eyewitness accounts, was a brutal beating of demonstrators on the part of NYPD officers, assaults on journalists and several heavy-handed arrests.

Officers mandated to protect the public, but well-trained in ways to hurt people, displayed little restraint as they beat, dragged and arrested dissenting citizens. Lopez says some protesters attempted to peacefully sit down but were targeted with violence regardless. She claims injured demonstrators were pulled beyond the barricade to prevent them from being helped by the crowd.

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Liberian, Yemeni women win Nobel Peace Prize

Reuters reports: Three women who have campaigned for rights and an end to violence in Liberia and Yemen, including Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

Another Liberian, Leymah Gbowee, who mobilized fellow women against the country’s civil war including by organizing a “sex strike,” and Tawakkul Karman, who has worked in Yemen, will share the prize worth $1.5 million with Johnson-Sirleaf, who faces re-election for a second term as president on Tuesday.

“We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society,” Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told reporters.

“The Nobel Peace Prize for 2011 is to be divided in three equal parts between Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

Johnson-Sirleaf, 72, is Africa’s first freely elected female president. Gbowee mobilized and organized women across ethnic and religious dividing lines to bring an end to the war in Liberia, and to ensure women’s participation in elections.

The Committee added: “In the most trying circumstances, both before and during the Arab Spring, Tawakkul Karman has played a leading part in the struggle for women’s rights and for democracy and peace in Yemen.”

In April, Tawakkul Karman wrote: The revolution in Yemen began immediately after the fall of Ben Ali in Tunisia on 14 January. As I always do when arranging a demonstration I posted a message on Facebook, calling on people to celebrate the Tunisian uprising on 16 January.

The following day a group of students from Sana’a University asked me to attend a vigil in front of the Tunisian embassy. The crowd was shouting: “Heroes! We are with you in the line of fire against the evil rulers!” We were treated roughly by the security forces, and we chanted: “If, one day, a people desires to live, then destiny will answer their call,” and “The night must come to an end” – the mantra of the revolutionaries in Tunisia.

The demonstration was astonishing; thousands turned up, and Sana’a witnessed its first peaceful demonstration for the overthrow of the regime. “Go before you are driven out!” we cried.

That night student and youth leaders visited me, along with the human rights activist Ahmed Saif Hashid and the writer Abdul Bari Tahir. We agreed that we could not let this historic moment pass us by, and that we too could spark a peaceful revolution to demand an end to a despotic regime. We decided there was to be no backing down, despite the repression we knew would come. The rallies grew daily, even though the government deployed thugs against us.

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Jailed doctors call for U.S. support in Bahrain

The Washington Post reports: The relatively muted U.S. response to the sentencing this week of doctors, teachers and opposition activists in Bahrain is renewing calls there for the Obama administration to take a stronger line against rights abuses in the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom.

Dozens of people detained after huge anti-government protests in February have been tried under emergency law in the
quasi-military National Safety Court, and in recent days were given prison terms ranging from three years to life. A civilian court has ordered the retrial of 20 doctors, but at least 80 more people sentenced for crimes that include organizing illegal gatherings remain in prison.

Ali Alekri, a surgeon sentenced to a 15-year prison term, said he had been convicted only because he had treated injured protesters and because, like most of those involved in the uprising, he is a Shiite Muslim.

“The international community did nothing,” said Alekri, speaking by telephone from Bahrain, where he has been released on bail. “We expect pressure from the Americans, and we do not know why they did not do that. Possibly there is a conflict of interest.”

Alekri said that he had been beaten, that his family had been threatened and that he had been forced to sign a confession while in prison — charges echoed by others.

Bahrain is a key Middle Eastern ally for the United States, and government opponents say that status has led Washington to look the other way amid widespread allegations of torture and illegal detentions. The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet is anchored in Bahrain.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement that the United States was “deeply disturbed” by the sentencing of 20 medical professionals and urged the Bahraini government to commit to transparent judicial proceedings. But officials have stopped short of directly condemning Bahrain’s authorities.

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Sarkozy: It is silly to talk about a Jewish state

Ynet reports: French President Nicolas Sarkozy has always described himself as a true friend of Israel. However, according to unusual statements attributed to him in the French magazine Le Canard Enchaîne, he unequivocally sides with the Palestinians.

The paper quotes comments made by the French leader during a cabinet meeting held upon his return from last month’s UN General Assembly, Yedioth Aharonoth reported.

“It is silly to talk about a Jewish state,” Sarkozy said while referring to the Israeli demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state. “It would be like saying that this table is Catholic. There are two million Arabs in Israel.”

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Shell accused of fuelling violence in Nigeria by paying rival militant gangs

The Guardian reports: Shell has fuelled armed conflict in Nigeria by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to feuding militant groups, according to an investigation by the oil industry watchdog Platform, and a coalition of non-government organisations.

The oil giant is implicated in a decade of human rights abuses in the Niger delta, the study says, claiming that its routine payments exacerbated local violence, in one case leading to the deaths of 60 people and the destruction of an entire town.

Platform’s investigation, which includes testimony from Shell’s own managers, also alleges that government forces hired by Shell perpetrated atrocities against local civilians, including unlawful killings and systematic torture.

Shell disputes the report, defending its human rights record and questioning the accuracy of the evidence, but has pledged to study the recommendations.

In Counting the Cost: Corporations and Human Rights in the Niger Delta [PDF], Platform says that it has seen testimony and contracts that implicate Shell in the regular awarding of lucrative contracts to militants. In one case last year, Shell is said to have transferred more than $159,000 (£102,000) to a group credibly linked to militia violence.

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$55 billion — the price of failure in Somalia

John Norris and Bronwyn Bruton write: On the morning of Oct. 4, a truck bomb exploded on a well-trafficked street outside the Ministry of Education in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, killing upwards of 80 bystanders, many of them university students. The attack brought an end to the relative lull that had held in Mogadishu since August, when fighters for the al-Shabab guerrilla forces withdrew from the city, and offered a stark reminder that the world’s most notorious failed state remains just that.

Somalia’s ruin can’t simply be chalked up as a case of Western neglect. For decades, the United States and international organizations have poured money into Somalia despite its relative geopolitical insignificance — first as a Cold War bulwark, then as a humanitarian emergency, and now as an effort to contain crime and terrorism. Just how much has Somalia cost us? To figure out the true financial burden that Somalia’s conflict has imposed on the world since 1991, we used a variety of official and unofficial sources, combined with some educated guesswork, and came up with an estimate of $55 billion. That figure includes everything from aid supplied by the Red Cross and defaulted World Bank loans to naval patrols off Somalia’s piracy-plagued coast and CIA-run detention facilities within the country.

$55 billion may be modest in comparison with the cost of the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan — which together are likely to end up costing the United States more than $1 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office — but what’s remarkable is how little we have to show for it. For all the treasure expended there, Somalia is no closer to stability than it has been at earlier points in its two-plus decades of chaos. The country is currently experiencing the worst famine the world has seen in two decades, with more than three-quarters of a million people at grave risk of starvation, and remains riven by civil conflict, piracy, and extremism.

The world’s approach to Somalia has long been trapped in an unhappy middle: It has been insufficiently robust and well-designed to resolve the country’s conflicts but far too heavy-handed and frequent to allow the country to resolve its own problems. An entire generation of Somalis now views the “state,” whether it is the Transitional Federal Government or al-Shabab, as a largely predatory institution to be feared, not as a source of stability. Perhaps more than anything, the spending on Somalia demonstrates how the world — and Washington in particular — keeps groping for quick tactical fixes while failing to embrace the sensible diplomacy and the kinds of patient engagement that might help Somalia achieve peace.

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