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Emman
Germany
8 Posts |
 Posted - 08 Jan 2007 : 19:44:59
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With the permission of the Author from:www.allgambian.net
Reflections on Our National Security, Corruption, George Bush and Globalization
By Bubacarr Sankanu, Berlin, Germany
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01/07/2007
Theoretically, our Gambia is the safest and most innocent place to relax - more than even the arms of a nun. Jammeh, Singhateh, Touray, Tamba & Company can easily convince voters they are well-trained reservist "forces de frappe" commandos ever-ready to protect our lives. In addition, we have the "almighty" National Intelligence Agency (NIA), the Gambia National Army (GNA), the Gambia Police Force (GPF), the Gambia National Guard (GNG), the Paramilitary and fire-spitting yai compins (female propagandists) on the stand by for a population of 1.5 million and a territory of 11,000 square kilometres.
Practically, armed robbers and bandits can terrorise people and get away. I lost my appetite for full-time journalism the day I learnt of "The Point" publisher Dayda Hydara's sudden departure. Killing people only handicaps society and never solves the actual problem.
I accept, no sitting government can provide maximum round-the-clock security to all its subjects, if not Osama Bin Laden could not have succeeded in parcelling suicide bombers to George W. Bush despite George's sophisticated collection of Arnold Schwarze****** "terminator" toys. Nonetheless, a healthy degree of respect for human life and property should not be difficult to maintain.
One thing I discovered is that our security men and women like some of their colleagues in other countries are always security conscious at the wrong time. They spend more time competing to impress their various presidencies they forget simple but dangerous gaps. During my stubborn days as Gambia Radio and Television Services (GRTS) News Producer, I stumbled upon security lapses. For instance security is deadly tense when the State House entourage is around. If you have diarrhoea, your intestines will explode in you as any normal physical reflex means detention. A security officer once confessed to me "Mr. Sankanu, the other day, I almost cracked your bones when were running to direct your TV cameraman…the women dancers saved you when they blocked my way!" I thank you ladies for having saved my life for a second time! The first time was at Sukuta Secondary School when some boys wanted to "punish" me for an article I rote about their hostile treatment of non-residents in their Sukuta town. The rival gangs that competed in "lynching" me ended up fighting each other and the legs of one of their leaders shield me like a cocoon while I enjoyed the happenings around me. I really enjoyed how the gorgeous women from the school canteen were running to my rescue with their big sweet wimbling buttocks and oversized kitchen forks, spatulas and pestles. It is nice to be stubborn at times; you loose your teeth and you experience a lot!
The terrible thing about our state security is that once the executive convoy departs, things go like "when the cat is away, the mice dance ndombolo (Congolese provocative beat)". I stand to be corrected, I believe most of the attacks and security breaches in our country took place when "President Jammeh is away". This is serious and worrying as an infection of the idle tail can affect the busy brain! Ask Thailand's Thaksin Sinawatra.
In a changing world, the challenge facing security strategists is how to strike a working balance between artificial and human intelligence.
The Trans-Atlantic club led by the United States of America (USA) is facing serious problems after laying its eggs in the baskets of technology with global positioning satellite surveillance system (GPS), Lockheed Martin bombers, warships, sensitive jet propulsion labs (JPLs) and science-fiction gadgets. Such heavy weaponry does not necessarily deliver results as the cases of Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate. High handed bombing is the wrong tactic for facing dirty-poor enemies armed with machetes, second hand Kalashnikovs and hiding in holes like ants.
It is just like when our armed boys are brandishing rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) in front of innocent villagers. They achieve nothing apart from scaring the hell out of women and children and breaking the hearts of teenage girls. On the other hand, defunct communist states like the German Democratic Republic (East Germany, DDR) and Poland used all their energy in building suicidal human intelligence networks where family members, lovers and colleagues spied on each other "for the fatherland". In the process they forgot other key areas of state survival and once some hungry shipyard workers of Gdansk city stood up in Solidarnősc (solidarity) for better social packages, the entire Soviet communist apparatus, from East Berlin to Vladivostok, crumbled.
My free patriotic advice to Dr. Jammeh and Company Gambia Incorporated (I am not a trained soldier. I am just a stubborn journalist-turned-media and cultural entrepreneur and my tips are based on experience and global geopolitical study) read:
Our national security system needs restructuring and synergy. The National Intelligence Agency (NIA) interferes in every trivial co-wives' quarrel and this is not helping our State. Left to me alone, the NIA will be dissolved just like the 22nd July propaganda movement, for creating a dangerous state within a state which will sooner or later compromise our national chain of command.
Lets us look at Mauritania, formerly known as Chinguetti. Deposed ruler Ould Taya said he was surprised to be purged out by his trusted aide Colonel Ely Ould Muhammed Vall. Every correct human being knows Colonel Vall's palace coup was urgently necessary. Our great African Union is finding itself in a dilemma for banning military coups which are still in most cases the only means of sanitizing insane states in Africa. Our good Peer Review Mechanism (PRM) which should encourage good governance is so far being treated like a women's gossip club!
Call me names; I am no moral apostle of the Pope's blessing and I do not give a damn about monarchy, oligarchic, military or civilian rule as long as there is the RULE OF LAW!
Ivory Coast's crisis was in fact provoked by greedy civilian dictators. Our Nigerian brothers and sisters got their promised menu of multiparty democracy thanks to the discipline and conscience of behind-the-scene kingmakers like General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB). To date, applied democracy in Nigeria means any frustrated person can rape the attractive Federal Government in Abuja at gunpoint and brag about it. This exonerates all those who insist only the military, under patriotic commanders like Murtala Muhammed, Oladipo Diya, Yar' Adua, Theopilius Danjuma and Dogonyaro (to name a few), can tame this Giant of Africa. I bet the failure of the Nigerian elite in effecting smooth transfer of power to a post-Obasanjo administration this year could return influence to the eliterian Command and Staff College, Jaji to "keep the Hope of Africa ONE"!
I prefer stable "dictatorships" like Dubai, Malaysia, Singapore, Venezuela and Cuba were everybody eats his or her share the national cake quietly to hypocritical democracies where people sell their souls to the devil for a dime. The re-elections of old hags Omar Bongo of Gabon and Blaise Campaore of Burkina Faso to power send the signals that we Africans are hungry for stability, stability and stability!
Corruption was not made in Africa. We should wake up, address it like men and stop swallowing whatever junk the Western "moralists" cook; they brought corruption to Africa in the first place and are still practising it till tomorrow. It is a sin to miss the films "Syriana" and "The Constant Gardener." They are "documentaries" and not fictional thrillers.
Those demonising President George Walker Bush Junior of USA are jealous. If rough Islamic fundamentalists, rude Danish/ European anti-Semites and aggressive Christian mushroom-evangelists are to take control of the White House and the United Nations, we will all smell in caves and in concentration ghettoes!
As a moderate-reformist Muslim of the Averroes (Ibn Rushd) school, I romantically support the think-thanks that say all those exploiting religion and race for political and financial gains are beasts who understand only the language of the Stone Age. If I were a commissioned dog of war, I will respond in the same primitive tone by using food as effective weapon. First, I will build a "Noah's Arch" to evacuate their innocent children, fauna and flora. Then set their farms on fire, smoke their ant-holes, drain their rivers and watch them surrender while I sip my modern 5'oclock tea like legendary Victorian gentleman Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery (1887-1976)! For the tasty reconstruction parties, we have, on the extreme end, genetically-modified food (GMF) and water desalination/purification technology. Uncle Sam will not be at all tired of printing the required amount of greenbacks!
Any day a Pol Pot-styled president of a developing country becomes as powerful as the commander-in-chief of the armed (air, navy, army, CIA, NSA, FBI, secret service, etc) and un-armed (MTV, Hollywood, CNN, Silicon Valley, Detroit, Chicago/New York Mercantile Exchanges, Coca Cola and fast food) forces of the United States, I will migrate to Mars! The U.S. foreign policy devil we have is still better for openly doing the dirty double standard use-and-dump jobs on our behalf. The Americans bombed the Berlin Wall and "angelic" Old Europe got lucrative Eastern expansion deals. There is no invited corrupt hypocrite who can say he or she did not enjoy Saddam Hussein's appetising oil-for-food barbecue in Iraq. I ask: why are Iraqi rebels kidnapping other nationals when all fingers are pointed at George Bush and his cowboys for the mess in Mesopotamia? If Europe is protecting its markets why should America sell say, New Mexico? Frankly writing I LOVE GEORGE WALKER BUSH; I love George for being an Honest Dictator! He finally confessed he is "addicted to oil." The Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Voodoo/ Candoble scholars will agree with me confession is the main prerequisite for forgiveness and therapy. All we need to do now is make sure Bush Junior (Patient Number One) gets his regular "oil-kicks" through his personal nurses, Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes, before he bombs our picnics. Not so, George?
Back to Mauritania where the cries for a change of system are obvious, the African Commission on Human and People's Right (ACDHR) is aware of the brutal segregation and enslavement of the black population by the light-skinned Arab-Muslim descendants like in Dafour, Western Sudan. Added to this is the economic apartheid which favoured the "moors" in their trade expansions into Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Bissau and Liberia and left the blacks, hanging mainly on artisan fishery, to rot behind. These racist policies denied this desperately poor desert state badly needed human capital for decent economic growth.
Furthermore, disgraced Ould Taya like some Arabo-Islamic cannibals misused the global fight against terrorism to grill noisy preachers who could not simply resist comparing Osama with Robin Hood. At the end, the biblical locust pest which compromised food (read national) security became the last straw to break the camel's back - a hungry man is an angry sweating gladiator who is not afraid of the lion!
In today's dynamic environment, threats to national security do not necessarily come from the usual un-armed adversaries of lousy opposition, stubborn students and critical journalists but from other sources like the vagabonding global speculators (economic terrorists) and natural or man-made disasters. For example, soil erosion of rice fields in Southeast Asia can affect the supply of rice to the Gambian family table and when not properly addressed, hungry demonstrators may march on our capitals, Banjul and Kanilai! Troubles in Niger Delta can affect the supply of crude oil causing a circulatory shock to our economy. The civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia did strain our meagre resources in terms of refugee accommodation and peace building commitments. Our courts are loaded with charges against refugees accused of committing petty survival crimes.
Robert Mugabe realised that threat to his authority does not come from the embattled Zimbabwean opposition but from the hungry civilians overcrowding the suburbs of the capital, Harare (just like the French and their neglected African immigrant population) so comrade Mugabe launched Operation Murambatsvina (clean-up rubbish) to depopulate the slums. It is cheap. It is crazy and like a bottle of beer, suspends the problems "till tomorrow!"
Please this does no mean our Operation Clean the Nation should be used to "deport" critical voices back to their villages. The clean-up exercises of refuse around the African Union summit were good acts at least for the environment.
Now that the election jamboree is over, President Jammeh and his National Security Council should set up a sizeable and effective broad based Directorate of Defence Intelligence (DDI) which should, unlike the loud NIA, seat quietly like civilized ladies and gentlemen and analyse the possible political and socio-cultural impacts of global happenings on our country. We might be small but we are affected by say, toxic waste from European and Asian factories in this world without borders.
The views expressed here are solely does of the author.
ABOUT the author:
Mr. Bubacarr Sankanu (full name: Abubacarr Balaqeesha Sankanu) is journalist, producer, social critic, pan African cultural activist and entrepreneur. He started as reporter for "The Point Newspaper" in his home country of The Gambia and as freelance correspondent for the "Voice of America English-to-Africa", "BBC Focus on Africa" and radio "Deutsche Welle".
Later, he worked as producer for the "Gambia Radio and Television Services (GRTS)" before relocating to Germany where he started "Afromedia Film & Television International Group (www.afromediafilmtv.net)."
In addition to this entreprise, he is currently reading Law and contributing to various media outlets like "www.thegambiaecho.com", "www.allgambian.net" and "www.thegambiajournal.com"
Mr. Sankanu also chairs the "African Council for Arts & Culture, AFCAC" a Panafrican Cultural NGO based in Germany.
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