Colonial Brutality Revisited: "Atoning for the Sins of Empire"

In this insightful New York Times op-ed, the historian of Africa David Anderson, reflects on the historic decision by the British government to pay compensation to Africans who suffered torture in the hands of British colonial officials in Kenya. Anderson cautions today's political leaders that with the passage of time, today's human rights violations will have to be paid for in the future.

Anderson asks: "Would the United States be so accommodating to a similar claim? In the current political climate, probably not. But times change. Fifty years from now, will Americans face claims from Guantánamo survivors? You might, and perhaps you should."

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Atoning for the Sins of Empire

By David M. Anderson 

THE British do not torture. At least, that is what we in Britain have always liked to think. But not anymore. In a historic decision last week, the British government agreed to compensate 5,228 Kenyans who were tortured and abused while detained during the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s. Each claimant will receive around £2,670 (about $4,000).

The money is paltry. But the principle it establishes, and the history it rewrites, are both profound. This is the first historical claim for compensation that the British government has accepted. It has never before admitted to committing torture in any part of its former empire.

In recent years there has been a clamor for official apologies. In 2010, Britain formally apologized for its army’s conduct in the infamous “Bloody Sunday” killings in Northern Ireland in 1972, and earlier this year Prime Minister David Cameron visited Amritsar, India, the site of a 1919 massacre, and expressed “regret for the loss of life.”

The Kenyan case has been in process for a decade in London’s High Court. The British fought to avoid paying reparations, so the decision to settle is a significant change of direction. The decision comes months ahead of the 50th anniversary of the British departure from Kenya — once thought of as the “white man’s country” in East Africa.

The Kenya case turned on the evidence of historians, including my own role as an expert witness. I identified a large tranche of documents that the British government smuggled out of Kenya in 1963 and brought back to London. The judge ordered the release of this long-hidden “secret” cache, some 1,500 files.

The evidence of torture revealed in these documents was devastating. In the detention camps of colonial Kenya, a tough regime of physical and mental abuse of suspects was implemented from 1957 onward, as part of a government policy to induce detainees to obey orders or to make confessions.

The documents showed that responsibility for torture went right to the top — sanctioned by Kenya’s governor, Evelyn Baring, and authorized at cabinet level in London by Alan Lennox-Boyd, then secretary of state for the colonies in Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government.

Colonial Brutality Revisited: "Atoning for the Sins of Empire"

6/14/2013 04:48:00 PM africa, history, human rights, war and peace

Pondering Mandela's Legacies

As concerns about Mandela's health make news around the world, it seems appropriate to begin a reflection on the life and legacies of the man and the icon.

Pondering Mandela's Legacies

6/13/2013 12:14:00 AM africa, human rights, Tributes, world

Wars Do End: Why Conflict In Africa Is Falling – By Scott Straus

In this eye-opening article in African Arguments, Prof. Scott Straus challenges our conventional wisdom about "wars in Africa." Even in the face of the facts, the media-sustained image of Africa as "war-prone" and a conflict afflicted region may be difficult if not impossible to shake.

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Recent events in Mali, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan seem to confirm one of the most durable stereotypes of Africa, namely that the continent is unstable and uniquely prone to nasty political violence.

Writing in Foreign Policy two years ago, New York Times East Africa correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Gettleman espoused this view. He painted a dismal picture of pointless wars waged by brutes and criminals “spreading across Africa like a viral pandemic.”

Gettleman is right that warfare and political violence are changing on the continent, but he is wrong to portray that change as one of brutal violence increasing out of control.

In fact, as I show in a recent piece in African Affairs, looked at since the end of the Cold War, wars are not becoming more frequent in Sub-Saharan Africa. To the contrary: according to the Uppsala Armed Conflict Data Program, the preeminent tracker of warfare worldwide, wars in the 2000s are substantially down from their peak in the early 1990s. Even if one counts an uptick during the past two years, there were about one-third fewer wars in Sub-Saharan Africa in the period compared to the early-to-mid 1990s.

Another prevailing view is that Sub-Saharan Africa is the most war-endemic region. Not so, especially if one looks at the continent’s history since 1960. Wars in Sub-Saharan Africa (compared to other world regions) are not longer or more frequent on a wars-per-country basis. Those distinctions effectively go to Asia, where between wars in India, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Vietnam, among others, wars are more frequent and longer lasting.

Wars Do End: Why Conflict In Africa Is Falling – By Scott Straus

6/10/2013 03:20:00 AM africa, war and peace

Africa’s spreading extremism concerns experts, expatriates

The Diamondback, Thu May 30, 2013.

As the U.S. continues to focus most of its military efforts on fighting extremist groups in the Middle East, university students from Africa know this is a battle playing out on a much broader stage.

Countries such as Somalia and Sudan have long struggled against radical Islam, and only in the past decade has the U.S. been active against the problem of extremism — albeit in a different region — a fact that irritates Nana Asare, a graduate electrical engineering student, because he sees the U.S. putting its economic interests over its expressed goals of fighting terrorism on a global scale.

“I do think it has to do with the U.S. interests, of course oil comes to mind,” Asare said, adding that while a native of Ghana, a more stable state in the region, those close to the violence across the continent are “fellow Africans — African brothers and sisters.”

The issue has come more into the spotlight in the past year as radical Islam has found a new home: Mali. Mali has long been the site of separatist movements against the Malian government, such as a coup in 2012 that ousted a sitting president. But a new influx of rebels fighting under the banner of radical Islam has changed the scope of the conflict.

After an uprising in nearby Libya led to former ruler Moammar Gadhafi’s ouster and assassination in 2011, forces loyal to him, including the nomadic Tuareg people, took weapons and ammunition from the fallen regime and moved westward to Mali.

“Over the years, [Gadhafi] built a band of very loyal militias,” said Bonny Ibhawoh, an professor of African, Global and Human Rights History at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. “He did have a lot of military and political influence beyond Libya, so that once Libya [collapsed] and Libya became less hospitable for these foreign troops … they had to find refuge elsewhere.”

The episode in Mali illustrates how a country the U.S. once considered an emerging civil society could become an unstable piece in a volatile region, Ibhawoh said.

Africa’s spreading extremism concerns experts, expatriates

6/01/2013 03:04:00 PM africa, politics, war and peace