foreignpolicy--2020-05-26--Boris Johnson and His ‘Svengali’ May Be Facing Their Reckoning at Last

Boris Johnson and His ‘ Svengali ’ May Be Facing Their Reckoning at Last LONDON—British Prime Minister Boris Johnson ’ s strong defense of a top advisor who became famous for leading the Brexit campaign and who allegedly broke lockdown regulations has triggered a surge of discontent within his own Conservative Party—and , critics say , severely undermined the government ’ s response to the coronavirus pandemic .
On Tuesday , Douglas Ross , a junior minister for Scotland , resigned from his frontbench position in protest over Johnson ’ s refusal to sack Dominic Cummings after it emerged that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his parents ’ house in order to self-isolate at the height of the outbreak in the U.K. “ I can not in good faith tell [ my constituents ] that they were all wrong and one senior adviser to the government was right , ” Ross wrote in his resignation letter , adding to a chorus of disapproval from Johnson ’ s party at apparent double standards when it comes to the coronavirus lockdown .
Conservative Party insiders fear that Johnson ’ s usually sound political instincts may be failing him—and that with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economy and the painful last stages of departure from the European Union looming , the Cummings scandal may turn out to be the moment that Johnson ’ s hitherto Teflon-coated populism blows up in his face .
“ The concern is that Boris is a populist who ’ s lost touch with the people—and that ’ s worrying if true , ” said one Conservative member of Parliament who asked for anonymity when speaking about his boss .
“ No .
10 [ Downing St. ] is treating this as though it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ story that will just go away.
” But the scandal has the potential to instead become “ a Poll Tax moment , ” said the MP , referring to a disastrous 1990 tax policy misstep by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that led to riots and her eventual downfall .
“ We ’ ll have to wait and see.
” Both Johnson allies and enemies have questioned the prime minister ’ s regular reliance on guidance from Cummings , who played a central role in both the Leave campaign in the run-up to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s own election campaign in 2019 .
Cummings—played by the actor Benedict Cumberbatch in the 2019 Channel 4 drama Brexit—coined the devastatingly effective “ Take Back Control ” slogan that played a central role in the Leave campaign .
The Daily Mail has described the advisor as Johnson ’ s “ Svengali ” and “ Rasputin.
” He also steered Johnson through painful months of minority government prior to his December 2019 landslide election victory and helped secure the U.K. ’ s formal departure from the European Union on Jan. 31 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ say that Dom has been one of the most powerful people in British politics in a generation , ” said a senior Downing Street official who works closely with Johnson but is not authorized to speak on the record .
“ Without him , there ’ d be no Brexit .
And I seriously doubt we ’ d have Boris as [ Prime Minister ] .
” But now even the usually staunch pro-Conservative Daily Mail , one of the U.K. ’ s top-selling daily newspapers , has turned on Johnson .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paper has called on Johnson to fire Cummings and mocked the prime minister as “ One Man and his Dom ” —illustrated by a photograph of Johnson running alone with his dog , Dilyn .
“ Mr Cummings has acted against the spirit of the lockdown and the Prime Minister should now ask for his resignation , ” tweeted Conservative MP Mark Pawsey , one of many in the party who are concerned that Johnson has fatally undermined the British electorate ’ s so-far solid support for the government ’ s handling of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ratings were a healthy plus 20 percentage points in mid-May—up from plus six points before the lockdown , according to Opinium ’ s weekly tracker .
But after the Cummings scandal broke , Johnson ’ s popularity plunged by 20 points in just four days , according to another survey by Savanta ComRes .
“ Most people who bother to look at what Dom [ Cummings ] actually did would agree that he acted reasonably , ” said the Downing Street official .
“ But that ’ s not the problem .
… @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The [ prime minister ] is getting a lot of flak from MPs whose inboxes are full of constituents complaining.
” For thousands of people who made sacrifices during lockdown—including not attending family funerals or visiting sick relatives—Cummings ’ s apparent defiance of the government mandate to stay at home “ makes it look like there ’ s one law for Boris ’ friends and another for everyone else .
… That ’ s politically poisonous.
” Johnson ’ s dependence on Cummings has also become the focus of opposition and media attacks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ story : man with no ideas is too terrified to sack his ideas man , ” wrote the columnist Marina Hyde in the left-leaning Guardian daily .
And Labour leader Keir Starmer tweeted , “ This was a test of the Prime Minister and he has failed it , ” calling Johnson ’ s failure to sack Cummings “ an insult to sacrifices made by the British people.
” In many ways it is a reckoning that has been a long time coming , since even within the Tory party Cummings has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Having overseen Cummings ’ s work in the Department of Education , his former boss Prime Minister David Cameron described him as “ a career psychopath.
” With his gruff Durham regional accent—a rarity in a political class that mostly speaks the Queen ’ s English—and his abrasive manner , the 48-year-old Cummings has made himself a hated figure in many sections of both the Conservative Party .
He has never run for public office and even refuses to join the party that he has done so much to transform .
Cummings is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Civil Service , which he describes in his blog as “ the Blob ” and blasted for their institutional incompetence and unwillingness to implement political decisions such as Brexit .
In the wake of a press conference on Sunday where Johnson told journalists that “ I do not believe anybody in No .
10 has done anything to undermine our message ” on lockdown , a rogue tweet briefly appeared on the Civil Service ’ s official Twitter feed calling the premier “ arrogant and offensive .
Can you imagine working with these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in-your-face image as a rebel and an outsider—he shows up to work at Downing Street in casual shirts , body-warmers , and a trademark beanie hat—has drawn comparisons to Donald Trump ’ s onetime guru Steve Bannon .
The extensive essays on Cummings ’ s blog also show a Bannon-like intellectual eclecticism .
“ We need leaders with an understanding of Thucydides and statistical modelling , ” Cummings wrote in 2013 , “ who have read The Brothers Karamazov and The Quark and the Jaguar , who can feel Kipling ’ s Kim @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Judgement Project.
” In truth , Cummings is actually much more of an establishment insider than his image suggests .
He attended the private Durham School and got a first-class degree in modern history from the University of Oxford .
His uncle is a high court judge , and his wife is the daughter of a baronet who was brought up at Chillingham Castle , Northumberland .
Ironically for a man who styles himself as an anti-establishment crusader , much of the criticism of Cummings ’ s breach of lockdown has centered on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one-man press conference at Downing Street ’ s Rose Garden on Monday , Cummings said his drive to stay at a guest house on his parents ’ estate near Durham was “ reasonable and legal , ” since his wife was coming down with COVID-19 symptoms and the couple needed to be near family members to provide care for their 4-year-old child .
Cummings defended a family walk in nearby bluebell woods as also being within the rules as the woodland was “ private land ” belonging to his father .
And a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Barnard Castle after his recovery from COVID-19 was , Cummings insisted , undertaken in order to “ test his eyesight ” in preparation for the drive back to London .
Johnson described Cummings ’ s actions as what “ any parent ” would do—and Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove instructed all his fellow ministers to maintain the same line in media appearances .
Attorney General Suella Braverman also briefed the cabinet that “ no laws have been broken ” by Cummings .
But , warns the Downing Street official , “ politics is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rights and wrong of what Dom did are less important than how it plays with the voters.
” Or as Conservative Party select committee chairman William Wragg put it in a recent tweet , “ We can not throw away valuable public & political good will any longer , ” adding that it was “ humiliating & degrading to their office to see ministers put out agreed lines in defence of an advisor.
” Johnson , having stood squarely behind Cummings , can not now turn around and fire him without major @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , what doesn ’ t kill you doesn ’ t necessarily make you stronger .

LONDON—British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s strong defense of a top advisor who became famous for leading the Brexit campaign and who allegedly broke lockdown regulations has triggered a surge of discontent within his own Conservative Party—and, critics say, severely undermined the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
LONDON—British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s strong defense of a top advisor who became famous for leading the Brexit campaign and who allegedly broke lockdown regulations has triggered a surge of discontent within his own Conservative Party—and, critics say, severely undermined the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
On Tuesday, Douglas Ross, a junior minister for Scotland, resigned from his frontbench position in protest over Johnson’s refusal to sack Dominic Cummings after it emerged that the advisor had driven 260 miles to his parents’ house in order to self-isolate at the height of the outbreak in the U.K. “I cannot in good faith tell [my constituents] that they were all wrong and one senior adviser to the government was right,” Ross wrote in his resignation letter, adding to a chorus of disapproval from Johnson’s party at apparent double standards when it comes to the coronavirus lockdown.
Conservative Party insiders fear that Johnson’s usually sound political instincts may be failing him—and that with a renewed political storm over a battered economy and the painful last stages of departure from the European Union looming, the Cummings scandal may turn out to be the moment that Johnson’s hitherto Teflon-coated populism blows up in his face.
“The concern is that Boris is a populist who’s lost touch with the people—and that’s worrying if true,” said one Conservative member of Parliament who asked for anonymity when speaking about his boss. “No. 10 [Downing St.] is treating this as though it’s just a ‘Westminster bubble’ story that will just go away.” But the scandal has the potential to instead become “a Poll Tax moment,” said the MP, referring to a disastrous 1990 tax policy misstep by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that led to riots and her eventual downfall. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
Both Johnson allies and enemies have questioned the prime minister’s regular reliance on guidance from Cummings, who played a central role in both the Leave campaign in the run-up to the 2016 Brexit referendum as well as Johnson’s own election campaign in 2019. Cummings—played by the actor Benedict Cumberbatch in the 2019 Channel 4 drama Brexit—coined the devastatingly effective “Take Back Control” slogan that played a central role in the Leave campaign. The Daily Mail has described the advisor as Johnson’s “Svengali” and “Rasputin.” He also steered Johnson through painful months of minority government prior to his December 2019 landslide election victory and helped secure the U.K.’s formal departure from the European Union on Jan. 31.
“It’s no exaggeration to say that Dom has been one of the most powerful people in British politics in a generation,” said a senior Downing Street official who works closely with Johnson but is not authorized to speak on the record. “Without him, there’d be no Brexit. And I seriously doubt we’d have Boris as [Prime Minister].”
But now even the usually staunch pro-Conservative Daily Mail, one of the U.K.’s top-selling daily newspapers, has turned on Johnson. In a series of furious headlines, the paper has called on Johnson to fire Cummings and mocked the prime minister as “One Man and his Dom”—illustrated by a photograph of Johnson running alone with his dog, Dilyn.
“Mr Cummings has acted against the spirit of the lockdown and the Prime Minister should now ask for his resignation,” tweeted Conservative MP Mark Pawsey, one of many in the party who are concerned that Johnson has fatally undermined the British electorate’s so-far solid support for the government’s handling of the pandemic. Johnson’s personal ratings were a healthy plus 20 percentage points in mid-May—up from plus six points before the lockdown, according to Opinium’s weekly tracker. But after the Cummings scandal broke, Johnson’s popularity plunged by 20 points in just four days, according to another survey by Savanta ComRes.
“Most people who bother to look at what Dom [Cummings] actually did would agree that he acted reasonably,” said the Downing Street official. “But that’s not the problem. … The optics of this are terrible. The [prime minister] is getting a lot of flak from MPs whose inboxes are full of constituents complaining.” For thousands of people who made sacrifices during lockdown—including not attending family funerals or visiting sick relatives—Cummings’s apparent defiance of the government mandate to stay at home “makes it look like there’s one law for Boris’ friends and another for everyone else. … That’s politically poisonous.”
Johnson’s dependence on Cummings has also become the focus of opposition and media attacks. “This is actually a simple story: man with no ideas is too terrified to sack his ideas man,” wrote the columnist Marina Hyde in the left-leaning Guardian daily. And Labour leader Keir Starmer tweeted, “This was a test of the Prime Minister and he has failed it,” calling Johnson’s failure to sack Cummings “an insult to sacrifices made by the British people.”
In many ways it is a reckoning that has been a long time coming, since even within the Tory party Cummings has been a deeply divisive figure for years. Having overseen Cummings’s work in the Department of Education, his former boss Prime Minister David Cameron described him as “a career psychopath.” With his gruff Durham regional accent—a rarity in a political class that mostly speaks the Queen’s English—and his abrasive manner, the 48-year-old Cummings has made himself a hated figure in many sections of both the Conservative Party. He has never run for public office and even refuses to join the party that he has done so much to transform. Cummings is also anathema to many in the British Civil Service, which he describes in his blog as “the Blob” and blasted for their institutional incompetence and unwillingness to implement political decisions such as Brexit. In the wake of a press conference on Sunday where Johnson told journalists that “I do not believe anybody in No. 10 has done anything to undermine our message” on lockdown, a rogue tweet briefly appeared on the Civil Service’s official Twitter feed calling the premier “arrogant and offensive. Can you imagine working with these truth twisters?”
Cummings’s in-your-face image as a rebel and an outsider—he shows up to work at Downing Street in casual shirts, body-warmers, and a trademark beanie hat—has drawn comparisons to Donald Trump’s onetime guru Steve Bannon. The extensive essays on Cummings’s blog also show a Bannon-like intellectual eclecticism. “We need leaders with an understanding of Thucydides and statistical modelling,” Cummings wrote in 2013, “who have read The Brothers Karamazov and The Quark and the Jaguar, who can feel Kipling’s Kim and succeed in Tetlock’s Good Judgement Project.” In truth, Cummings is actually much more of an establishment insider than his image suggests. He attended the private Durham School and got a first-class degree in modern history from the University of Oxford. His uncle is a high court judge, and his wife is the daughter of a baronet who was brought up at Chillingham Castle, Northumberland.
Ironically for a man who styles himself as an anti-establishment crusader, much of the criticism of Cummings’s breach of lockdown has centered on attacks on his privilege. In a one-man press conference at Downing Street’s Rose Garden on Monday, Cummings said his drive to stay at a guest house on his parents’ estate near Durham was “reasonable and legal,” since his wife was coming down with COVID-19 symptoms and the couple needed to be near family members to provide care for their 4-year-old child. Cummings defended a family walk in nearby bluebell woods as also being within the rules as the woodland was “private land” belonging to his father. And a 60-mile round-trip drive to nearby beauty spot Barnard Castle after his recovery from COVID-19 was, Cummings insisted, undertaken in order to “test his eyesight” in preparation for the drive back to London.
Johnson described Cummings’s actions as what “any parent” would do—and Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove instructed all his fellow ministers to maintain the same line in media appearances. Attorney General Suella Braverman also briefed the cabinet that “no laws have been broken” by Cummings. But, warns the Downing Street official, “politics is an art, not a science … the rights and wrong of what Dom did are less important than how it plays with the voters.” Or as Conservative Party select committee chairman William Wragg put it in a recent tweet, “We cannot throw away valuable public & political good will any longer,” adding that it was “humiliating & degrading to their office to see ministers put out agreed lines in defence of an advisor.”
Johnson, having stood squarely behind Cummings, cannot now turn around and fire him without major loss of face. But in politics, what doesn’t kill you doesn’t necessarily make you stronger.


foreignpolicy--2020-05-26--If African Governments Won’t Act, the People Will

If African Governments Won ’ t Act , the People Will On April 14 , Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni announced he was adding three weeks to the country ’ s initial two-week lockdown .
The restrictions were among the strictest on the continent—dusk-to-dawn curfews , public and private transportation grounded , the closure of all but the most essential businesses—but Museveni insisted the additional time was needed to “ help us to defeat this virus decisively or , if not defeated totally , to prepare better as to how to cope with it.
” Leaders across sub-Saharan Africa have taken @ @ @ @ @ @ @ citizens ’ threadbare resources could last long enough to give officials the time they need to slow the spread of the virus and cobble together a more sustainable response .
And they seem to have widely succeeded , at least in gaining the first objective .
There is an emerging consensus in the region that the early lockdowns successfully reduced the number of new infections and clearly communicated the seriousness of the pandemic to citizens—particularly in communities dangerously short on health workers and hospital equipment .
But as the weeks drag on and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all , desperation has grown and so has people ’ s outrage .
Demonstrations have sprung up in Zimbabwe and Uganda , as citizens protest their government ’ s failure to support them through the lockdowns .
The early lockdown orders often overlooked the needs of the sick , the pregnant , and the large portions of the population dependent on wages from informal jobs to feed their families .
It didn ’ t help that many countries enforced their lockdowns with guns and tear gas .
“ There is this adoption of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economies , leaving the essential businesses to run—but you have to have a strategy to ensure your citizens are able to feed themselves amidst the lockdown , ” said Lynda Iroulo , a research fellow at the GIGA Institute for African Affairs in Hamburg , Germany .
In too many places , that strategy was slow to materialize , leading global officials to warn of worst-case scenarios that involved dozens of countries descending into famine .
The repeated extensions , like Uganda ’ s , signal something more alarming : a breakdown in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with their governments when the lockdowns began—that officials would take extraordinary measures to lessen the costs as rapidly as possible .
Instead , community leaders in countries as varied as Kenya , Nigeria , Uganda , and Zimbabwe worry that their governments have arrived at the limits of their lockdowns without workable next steps .
They accuse their governments of prolonging lockdowns—inadvertently spurring widespread hunger , fueling domestic violence , and reversing hard-won gains against other infectious diseases , such as tuberculosis and malaria—without capitalizing on that time to examine early data and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to relative normality while containing the spread of the coronavirus .
That means millions of Africans may soon emerge from lockdowns poorer , hungrier , and at no less risk of contracting COVID-19 than when they entered .
This fear is compounded by the worsening situation in countries like Ghana , which actually had cohesively mapped out the next phase of its response .
Cases there have spiked from 1,042 on April 19 , the day before restrictions eased , to 6,269 a month later .
In response , local nonprofits and community @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to meet the mounting needs of their members .
These informal services they provide—from delivering hot meals to medicine—are far from comprehensive and are a struggle to sustain , but they are critical not only to rescue the most vulnerable but as a form of activism that allows them to set the terms for what a localized response should look like .
Milly Katana , a Ugandan public health expert , long fought for access to lifesaving antiretroviral medicine for HIV patients .
The region has a history of community-led responses , pressuring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ensuring marginalized groups were not excluded from services , and Katana is certain the most successful coronavirus responses will follow a similar script .
“ People will come and be at the forefront of advocating for better management of the disease , ” she said .
A new blueprint endorsed by the World Health Organization ( WHO ) attempts to help guide countries toward this next phase , describing a general trajectory that includes rapidly increased testing , which could inform localized strategies to respond to specific transmission patterns , while lifting the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Africa and Ghana have provided early examples of how to translate this template into actual policies .
When Ghana locked down its two major cities , Accra and Kumasi , in late March , officials began rapidly ramping up testing for the virus and tracing of people who had come into contact with those infected .
That gave the government the confidence to begin easing the lockdown on April 20 , well ahead of much of the rest of the subcontinent .
South Africa , which is currently in the midst of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ March 26—has also unveiled a $ 26 billion stimulus plan it hopes will reverse some of the harm done by its restrictions .
To help fund it , the government has approached the International Monetary Fund for the first time—the country should be eligible to apply for more than $ 4 billion in financing .
Current shortcomings reflect decades of underinvestment in the health sector , leaving it to communities to figure out how to cope with the consequences of understaffed health centers and shortages of essential medicines .
Though it is too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ghana or South Africa will actually work , the pressure for more governments to adopt comprehensive post-lockdown strategies has increased amid evidence that without a vaccine COVID-19 could “ smolder in transmission hotspots ” for years , according to Matshidiso Moeti , WHO ’ s regional director for Africa .
She said countries like Cameroon , South Africa , and Algeria , but also smaller nations , will need to be able to rapidly detect and contain flare-ups or risk seeing their health services regularly overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients .
The regimes dragging @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and warn they can get little help from international bodies at the moment .
But the current shortcomings also reflect decades of underinvestment in the health sector , leaving it to communities to figure out how to cope with the consequences of understaffed health centers and shortages of essential medicines .
Activists in the countries that are struggling to emerge from lockdowns warn that the regimes are throwing together piecemeal approaches that threaten to leave swaths of people stranded .
In Zimbabwe , where the government has twice extended the country ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ businesses could reopen but only after all of their employees had been tested .
While government tests are available , Jestina Mukoko , the chairperson of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum , said the reality is that the burden of paying for the testing is falling on the businesses and the fear is they will push it to their employees—an impossible burden in a country where large numbers can barely afford to buy food .
The country ’ s vast informal sector , meanwhile , remains shuttered .
In Kenya , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if they exhibited symptoms or if they broke curfew .
They eventually emerged with outsized bills for the cost of the stay in cramped , unsanitary quarters .
And in Uganda , the government mandated that people wear masks when they leave their houses—but without providing supplies to already overstretched citizens .
Museveni ’ s administration has since announced it will provide people with masks , but the process could take weeks .
They are not the only governments that are floundering .
Administrations from Mozambique to Togo have struggled to identify a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ however , spontaneous , uncoordinated community efforts to address specific problems have emerged .
The outset of the pandemic was marked by innovations or interventions to meet the emerging understanding of the virus and the risks it posed .
Markets were rearranged to reduce the risk of exposure , and tailors began stitching together masks .
Even in Ghana and Liberia , where governments mounted more aggressive responses , universities started producing hand sanitizer to supplement those efforts .
As the crises have multiplied amid the lockdown , interventions across the subcontinent have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ transfers for the most vulnerable .
In Uganda , a network of young HIV activists are filling dwindling ARV prescriptions for patients trapped in their homes .
In Zimbabwe , one woman living on the outskirts of the capital , Harare , is running an informal kitchen feeding dozens of people each day .
Even in South Africa , where the government has done more to strengthen the social safety net than most , some people are still facing dire food shortages , which has spurred solidarity networks to help feed those most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ multiplied amid the lockdown , interventions across the subcontinent have expanded to include food delivery and cash transfers for the most vulnerable .
The Mombasa-based NGO Muslims for Human Rights , known as Muhuri , had a coronavirus crisis management team organized before the virus even reached Kenya , said Abubakar Zein , the executive director .
A day after the first case was confirmed , Muhuri was ready to begin assisting anyone who needed help in the districts where it worked , primarily in the country ’ s Coast Province along the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on improving sanitation in areas where clean water was a luxury—so it distributed small water tankers alongside messages about hand-washing .
Even as Muhuri ’ s activities have grown to include transferring cash to the most vulnerable and monitoring human rights violations , Zein acknowledges the scale of Kenya ’ s need overwhelms what his organization can offer even in the seven districts where it works .
It is a pattern playing out across the continent .
Organizations and individuals can supplement government programs ; they can not replace them .
But “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it ’ s agenda-setting , ” Zein explained .
That agenda is to constantly remind the government of its obligation to protect its citizens .
Already , the community groups have made progress on that front .
Amid public pressure and the threat of a court case , the Kenyan government ended its policy of charging outrageous fees for its enforced quarantines .
In Zimbabwe—where few citizens knew how to access coronavirus treatment—Mukoko ’ s network convinced officials to compel the national broadcaster to regularly provide this information .
Another Kenyan NGO @ @ @ @ @ @ @ early posters the government had created warning about COVID-19 , which were adapted from other countries , with more culturally appropriate messages .
“ We don ’ t have enough resources to resolve most of our problems , ” Zein said .
“ But we have enough intellectual input and persuasion to ask important questions and influence people to think like us.
” They also have the lessons of earlier social movements to draw on , particularly the push by Katana and other activists to overcome HIV denialism or government disinterest and expand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Like those earlier generations , Zein said , community-based groups are prepared to leverage whatever is necessary—demonstrations , lawsuits , pressure from international allies—to compel faltering governments toward a compassionate , comprehensive strategy and to ensure more than misery emerges from the lockdowns .

On April 14, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni announced he was adding three weeks to the country’s initial two-week lockdown. The restrictions were among the strictest on the continent—dusk-to-dawn curfews, public and private transportation grounded, the closure of all but the most essential businesses—but Museveni insisted the additional time was needed to “help us to defeat this virus decisively or, if not defeated totally, to prepare better as to how to cope with it.” Leaders across sub-Saharan Africa have taken the same gamble, calculating that their citizens’ threadbare resources could last long enough to give officials the time they need to slow the spread of the virus and cobble together a more sustainable response. And they seem to have widely succeeded, at least in gaining the first objective. There is an emerging consensus in the region that the early lockdowns successfully reduced the number of new infections and clearly communicated the seriousness of the pandemic to citizens—particularly in communities dangerously short on health workers and hospital equipment.
On April 14, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni announced he was adding three weeks to the country’s initial two-week lockdown. The restrictions were among the strictest on the continent—dusk-to-dawn curfews, public and private transportation grounded, the closure of all but the most essential businesses—but Museveni insisted the additional time was needed to “help us to defeat this virus decisively or, if not defeated totally, to prepare better as to how to cope with it.” Leaders across sub-Saharan Africa have taken the same gamble, calculating that their citizens’ threadbare resources could last long enough to give officials the time they need to slow the spread of the virus and cobble together a more sustainable response. And they seem to have widely succeeded, at least in gaining the first objective. There is an emerging consensus in the region that the early lockdowns successfully reduced the number of new infections and clearly communicated the seriousness of the pandemic to citizens—particularly in communities dangerously short on health workers and hospital equipment.
But as the weeks drag on and restrictions are lifted slowly, if at all, desperation has grown and so has people’s outrage. Demonstrations have sprung up in Zimbabwe and Uganda, as citizens protest their government’s failure to support them through the lockdowns. The early lockdown orders often overlooked the needs of the sick, the pregnant, and the large portions of the population dependent on wages from informal jobs to feed their families. It didn’t help that many countries enforced their lockdowns with guns and tear gas. “There is this adoption of what is going on outside Africa—locking down economies, leaving the essential businesses to run—but you have to have a strategy to ensure your citizens are able to feed themselves amidst the lockdown,” said Lynda Iroulo, a research fellow at the GIGA Institute for African Affairs in Hamburg, Germany. In too many places, that strategy was slow to materialize, leading global officials to warn of worst-case scenarios that involved dozens of countries descending into famine.
The repeated extensions, like Uganda’s, signal something more alarming: a breakdown in the agreement citizens thought they were entering with their governments when the lockdowns began—that officials would take extraordinary measures to lessen the costs as rapidly as possible. Instead, community leaders in countries as varied as Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and Zimbabwe worry that their governments have arrived at the limits of their lockdowns without workable next steps. They accuse their governments of prolonging lockdowns—inadvertently spurring widespread hunger, fueling domestic violence, and reversing hard-won gains against other infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and malaria—without capitalizing on that time to examine early data and develop strategies that would allow a return to relative normality while containing the spread of the coronavirus.
That means millions of Africans may soon emerge from lockdowns poorer, hungrier, and at no less risk of contracting COVID-19 than when they entered. This fear is compounded by the worsening situation in countries like Ghana, which actually had cohesively mapped out the next phase of its response. Cases there have spiked from 1,042 on April 19, the day before restrictions eased, to 6,269 a month later.
In response, local nonprofits and community groups are increasingly marshaling their own resources to meet the mounting needs of their members. These informal services they provide—from delivering hot meals to medicine—are far from comprehensive and are a struggle to sustain, but they are critical not only to rescue the most vulnerable but as a form of activism that allows them to set the terms for what a localized response should look like.
Milly Katana, a Ugandan public health expert, long fought for access to lifesaving antiretroviral medicine for HIV patients. The region has a history of community-led responses, pressuring governments to expand proven treatment strategies and ensuring marginalized groups were not excluded from services, and Katana is certain the most successful coronavirus responses will follow a similar script.
“People will come and be at the forefront of advocating for better management of the disease,” she said.
A new blueprint endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) attempts to help guide countries toward this next phase, describing a general trajectory that includes rapidly increased testing, which could inform localized strategies to respond to specific transmission patterns, while lifting the broader restrictions causing unintended harms. South Africa and Ghana have provided early examples of how to translate this template into actual policies.
When Ghana locked down its two major cities, Accra and Kumasi, in late March, officials began rapidly ramping up testing for the virus and tracing of people who had come into contact with those infected. That gave the government the confidence to begin easing the lockdown on April 20, well ahead of much of the rest of the subcontinent. South Africa, which is currently in the midst of a phased easing of its own shutdown—which began March 26—has also unveiled a $26 billion stimulus plan it hopes will reverse some of the harm done by its restrictions. To help fund it, the government has approached the International Monetary Fund for the first time—the country should be eligible to apply for more than $4 billion in financing.
Current shortcomings reflect decades of underinvestment in the health sector, leaving it to communities to figure out how to cope with the consequences of understaffed health centers and shortages of essential medicines. Though it is too early to say if the approach in Ghana or South Africa will actually work, the pressure for more governments to adopt comprehensive post-lockdown strategies has increased amid evidence that without a vaccine COVID-19 could “smolder in transmission hotspots” for years, according to Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s regional director for Africa. She said countries like Cameroon, South Africa, and Algeria, but also smaller nations, will need to be able to rapidly detect and contain flare-ups or risk seeing their health services regularly overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients. The regimes dragging their feet fret about overstretched domestic resources and warn they can get little help from international bodies at the moment. But the current shortcomings also reflect decades of underinvestment in the health sector, leaving it to communities to figure out how to cope with the consequences of understaffed health centers and shortages of essential medicines.
Activists in the countries that are struggling to emerge from lockdowns warn that the regimes are throwing together piecemeal approaches that threaten to leave swaths of people stranded.
In Zimbabwe, where the government has twice extended the country’s lockdown, officials announced this month that businesses could reopen but only after all of their employees had been tested. While government tests are available, Jestina Mukoko, the chairperson of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, said the reality is that the burden of paying for the testing is falling on the businesses and the fear is they will push it to their employees—an impossible burden in a country where large numbers can barely afford to buy food. The country’s vast informal sector, meanwhile, remains shuttered.
In Kenya, the security services threw people into quarantine centers if they exhibited symptoms or if they broke curfew. They eventually emerged with outsized bills for the cost of the stay in cramped, unsanitary quarters. And in Uganda, the government mandated that people wear masks when they leave their houses—but without providing supplies to already overstretched citizens. Museveni’s administration has since announced it will provide people with masks, but the process could take weeks.
They are not the only governments that are floundering. Administrations from Mozambique to Togo have struggled to identify a post-lockdown strategy. In its place, however, spontaneous, uncoordinated community efforts to address specific problems have emerged.
The outset of the pandemic was marked by innovations or interventions to meet the emerging understanding of the virus and the risks it posed. Markets were rearranged to reduce the risk of exposure, and tailors began stitching together masks. Even in Ghana and Liberia, where governments mounted more aggressive responses, universities started producing hand sanitizer to supplement those efforts.
As the crises have multiplied amid the lockdown, interventions across the subcontinent have expanded to include food delivery and cash transfers for the most vulnerable. In Uganda, a network of young HIV activists are filling dwindling ARV prescriptions for patients trapped in their homes. In Zimbabwe, one woman living on the outskirts of the capital, Harare, is running an informal kitchen feeding dozens of people each day. Even in South Africa, where the government has done more to strengthen the social safety net than most, some people are still facing dire food shortages, which has spurred solidarity networks to help feed those most in need.
As the crises have multiplied amid the lockdown, interventions across the subcontinent have expanded to include food delivery and cash transfers for the most vulnerable. The Mombasa-based NGO Muslims for Human Rights, known as Muhuri, had a coronavirus crisis management team organized before the virus even reached Kenya, said Abubakar Zein, the executive director. A day after the first case was confirmed, Muhuri was ready to begin assisting anyone who needed help in the districts where it worked, primarily in the country’s Coast Province along the Indian Ocean. Its early focus was on improving sanitation in areas where clean water was a luxury—so it distributed small water tankers alongside messages about hand-washing.
Even as Muhuri’s activities have grown to include transferring cash to the most vulnerable and monitoring human rights violations, Zein acknowledges the scale of Kenya’s need overwhelms what his organization can offer even in the seven districts where it works.
It is a pattern playing out across the continent. Organizations and individuals can supplement government programs; they cannot replace them. But “in showing how it can be done, it’s agenda-setting,” Zein explained. That agenda is to constantly remind the government of its obligation to protect its citizens.
Already, the community groups have made progress on that front. Amid public pressure and the threat of a court case, the Kenyan government ended its policy of charging outrageous fees for its enforced quarantines. In Zimbabwe—where few citizens knew how to access coronavirus treatment—Mukoko’s network convinced officials to compel the national broadcaster to regularly provide this information. Another Kenyan NGO, the Green String Network, replaced early posters the government had created warning about COVID-19, which were adapted from other countries, with more culturally appropriate messages.
“We don’t have enough resources to resolve most of our problems,” Zein said. “But we have enough intellectual input and persuasion to ask important questions and influence people to think like us.”
They also have the lessons of earlier social movements to draw on, particularly the push by Katana and other activists to overcome HIV denialism or government disinterest and expand testing and access to lifesaving treatment regimens. Like those earlier generations, Zein said, community-based groups are prepared to leverage whatever is necessary—demonstrations, lawsuits, pressure from international allies—to compel faltering governments toward a compassionate, comprehensive strategy and to ensure more than misery emerges from the lockdowns.


foreignpolicy--2020-05-26--The Pandemic’s 5 Silver Linings

The Pandemic’s 5 Silver Linings

You don ’ t need me to tell you that life is pretty grim these days .
Nor will it help if I remind you that the negative consequences of the pandemic will persist long after it is over .
But even a realist can see glimmers of hope in today ’ s gloomy circumstances and believe that what we are going through today could eventually have some positive consequences .
In my previous column , I offered a glass-half-full assessment of the pandemic ’ s impact on the risk of war .
In a similar spirit of optimism , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which millions of people are now dealing , this week I offer the top five silver linings from COVID-19 .
Putting the world economy in a coma has cut fossil fuel use dramatically , thereby reducing the accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide , methane , and other greenhouse gases and slowing the rate of global warming .
Skies are visibly clearer , and those deeply worrisome forecasts about future warming will probably have to be revised in slightly more optimistic directions .
The discovery that we can get a lot of useful work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is likely to dampen business travel in the future , thereby cutting commercial jet traffic even after recovery begins .
Meat shortages resulting from the shutdown of slaughterhouses may encourage some people to shift to less carnivorous diets , which would improve public health and reduce methane emissions by all those cows .
Don ’ t get me wrong : COVID-19 won ’ t solve the problem ; at best , it has just bought us a bit more time to deal with the problem .
It ’ s possible that it could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ encouraging a false sense of complacency or by poisoning Sino-American relations to the point that meaningful progress on this vital issue becomes impossible .
But for the moment , the present reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is a silver lining that we should appreciate .
If our leaders were smarter , we ’ d be moving to exploit the additional time we ’ ve gained .
Maybe after November .
• Repeat after me : Women are better at politics .
By now , just about everyone may be aware that countries led @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better than countries led by men .
That is not to say that some male leaders haven ’ t done very well , but it is striking that New Zealand ’ s Jacinda Ardern , Germany ’ s Angela Merkel , Finland ’ s Sanna Marin , and Taiwan ’ s Tsai Ing-wen have outperformed the vast majority of their male counterparts .
And the contrast couldn ’ t be clearer : By far the worst responses have come from chief executives such as Brazil ’ s Jair Bolsonaro , Britain ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Putin , and America ’ s Donald Trump , each one a poster child for macho male posturing .
One can almost see a pattern here .
So maybe , just maybe , COVID-19 will teach people—and especially Americans—that a greater role for women in our public life would be both fair and smart .
Plenty of other countries have figured this out already , and if COVID-19 convinces Americans to discard their antiquated bias against women in politics , it would be a step forward for equality and more effective leadership .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and inefficient government bureaucracies ( who is ? )
, and I recognize the importance of incentives and the virtues of competitive markets .
But the American right has waged a five-decade war against virtually all public institutions—except the military , of course—and the results of that all-too-successful campaign are now plain to see .
The United States has a military that is still the world ’ s most capable and generously funded , while its other public institutions lack the means to deliver what Americans expect of them .
Worse yet , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of expertise , prizes loyalty over competence , and whose former political strategist said one of the administration ’ s primary goals was the “ deconstruction of the administrative state.
” We ’ ve now seen what this approach produces .
Having effective public institutions turns out to be pretty useful—nay , indispensable—when you are suddenly facing a complex global crisis .
Countries with competent leaders who listened to trained professionals are now in much better shape than countries where key agencies were run by political hacks , major responsibilities were handed out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ indulged in fantasies rather than facts .
I may be overly optimistic here , but COVID-19 could remind Americans that having competent , well-trained , dedicated , and well-compensated public servants is essential to national success , and convince them to rebuild the highly effective public institutions that played a critical role in America ’ s rise .
If so , that would be an extraordinary positive result from an otherwise bleak episode in U.S. history .
The essence of a true democracy is a set of institutions that allows citizens to select @ @ @ @ @ @ @ process .
Many democracies fail to live up to that standard by making it harder for some people to vote than others or by rigging districts or electoral procedures in order to stack the deck in favor of some groups over others .
Unfortunately , such anti-democratic shenanigans have become especially prevalent in contemporary America and are likely to be at an all-time high this November .
Might the pandemic help us address this ?
Although public health concerns will create some opportunities for election tampering ( as we have already seen ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to take options such as early voting or voting by mail more seriously .
( For a good discussion of these issues , see here . )
Politicians who benefit from keeping people away from the polls ( i.e.
, those who cater to impassioned minorities and who are likely to lose if more citizens actually vote ) won ’ t like this development , but my guess is that Americans will realize that there are better ways to run a free and fair election .
I would like to believe that expanding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and moderates , make elections less hostage to extremists at either end of the political spectrum , and reduce the current level of polarization in U.S. politics , but there are reasons to be skeptical of that hope .
Of course I ’ d also like to believe that my preferences are broadly shared by a majority of Americans and that getting more people to the polls would make it more likely that the policies I favor would be adopted .
But I have no idea if that is really true .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ignorance : In a democracy , it is ipso facto preferable if more citizens are able to express their political views fairly via the electoral process , regardless of the results .
• U.S. grand strategy might actually get fixed .
We are all prone to conclude that the current pandemic offers additional reasons to favor whatever positions we held beforehand .
I might be somewhat biased , therefore , but I still believe the pandemic will accelerate the inevitable shift toward a more sensible U.S. grand strategy .
Not only does the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some important dangers while they obsessed about some minor ones , but the heroic efforts being undertaken to keep the U.S. economy afloat are piling up massive levels of public debt .
The United States was overextended before COVID-19 hit , and the gap between resources and commitments will be an enduring constraint on its international ambitions .
To be sure , the United States will remain a formidable great power and will remain actively involved in many global issues .
But looking ahead , Americans are going to care a lot more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kids be able to attend school , or being able to get medical treatment if they need it than they will care about which corrupt politician is in power in Kabul or Tripoli .
This tendency will be especially apparent among young people , who were already skeptical of some of America ’ s ill-considered foreign crusades .
Spending billions of dollars on costly military programs is going to be harder to justify .
I doubt COVID-19 will lead to radical disarmament or isolationism—and I don ’ t think it should—but trying to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the world will be a hard sell in the years ahead .
If economic growth is sluggish and U.S. allies continue to spend a much smaller percentage of their GDP on defense than America is , support for the ambitious international agenda pursued by Presidents Bill Clinton , George W. Bush , Barack Obama , and , yes , even Trump—will be in short supply .
The bottom line : COVID-19 will accelerate a rethinking of U.S. commitments abroad .
In The Hell of Good Intentions , I argued that the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the bipartisan effort to use American power to create a liberal world order—and return to its earlier strategy of “ offshore balancing.
” In particular , I recommended that the United States gradually reduce its direct security commitments in Europe and the Middle East and focus primarily on balancing China in Asia and elsewhere .
I thought it would take 20 or more years to make that shift , and I wrote the book to try to accelerate it .
I now think COVID-19 will get us there faster than I expected ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taken a global or national catastrophe to do it .
I wish I were more confident that all of these silver linings will turn out as I hope , despite the obvious obstacles that some of them are bound to face .
But this is a moment when maintaining hope for the future is damn near indispensable .
More importantly , learning the right lessons and extracting whatever good we can from this difficult situation are the best ways to honor those who have already suffered and sacrificed and the many who will @ @ @ @ @ @ @

You don’t need me to tell you that life is pretty grim these days. Nor will it help if I remind you that the negative consequences of the pandemic will persist long after it is over. But even a realist can see glimmers of hope in today’s gloomy circumstances and believe that what we are going through today could eventually have some positive consequences.
You don’t need me to tell you that life is pretty grim these days. Nor will it help if I remind you that the negative consequences of the pandemic will persist long after it is over. But even a realist can see glimmers of hope in today’s gloomy circumstances and believe that what we are going through today could eventually have some positive consequences.
In my previous column, I offered a glass-half-full assessment of the pandemic’s impact on the risk of war. In a similar spirit of optimism, and mindful of the considerable suffering with which millions of people are now dealing, this week I offer the top five silver linings from COVID-19.
Climate change slows down (a bit).
Putting the world economy in a coma has cut fossil fuel use dramatically, thereby reducing the accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases and slowing the rate of global warming. Skies are visibly clearer, and those deeply worrisome forecasts about future warming will probably have to be revised in slightly more optimistic directions. The discovery that we can get a lot of useful work done on Zoom and other videoconferencing platforms is likely to dampen business travel in the future, thereby cutting commercial jet traffic even after recovery begins. Meat shortages resulting from the shutdown of slaughterhouses may encourage some people to shift to less carnivorous diets, which would improve public health and reduce methane emissions by all those cows.
Don’t get me wrong: COVID-19 won’t solve the problem; at best, it has just bought us a bit more time to deal with the problem. It’s possible that it could even make things worse, either by encouraging a false sense of complacency or by poisoning Sino-American relations to the point that meaningful progress on this vital issue becomes impossible. But for the moment, the present reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is a silver lining that we should appreciate. If our leaders were smarter, we’d be moving to exploit the additional time we’ve gained. Maybe after November.
Repeat after me: Women are better at politics.
By now, just about everyone may be aware that countries led by women have handled the pandemic far better than countries led by men. That is not to say that some male leaders haven’t done very well, but it is striking that New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Germany’s Angela Merkel, Finland’s Sanna Marin, and Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen have outperformed the vast majority of their male counterparts. And the contrast couldn’t be clearer: By far the worst responses have come from chief executives such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Britain’s Boris Johnson, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and America’s Donald Trump, each one a poster child for macho male posturing. One can almost see a pattern here.
So maybe, just maybe, COVID-19 will teach people—and especially Americans—that a greater role for women in our public life would be both fair and smart. Plenty of other countries have figured this out already, and if COVID-19 convinces Americans to discard their antiquated bias against women in politics, it would be a step forward for equality and more effective leadership.
Who knew? Effective public institutions are a good thing.
I’m no fan of ponderous and inefficient government bureaucracies (who is?), and I recognize the importance of incentives and the virtues of competitive markets. But the American right has waged a five-decade war against virtually all public institutions—except the military, of course—and the results of that all-too-successful campaign are now plain to see. The United States has a military that is still the world’s most capable and generously funded, while its other public institutions lack the means to deliver what Americans expect of them. Worse yet, they have a president who is contemptuous of expertise, prizes loyalty over competence, and whose former political strategist said one of the administration’s primary goals was the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”
We’ve now seen what this approach produces. Having effective public institutions turns out to be pretty useful—nay, indispensable—when you are suddenly facing a complex global crisis. Countries with competent leaders who listened to trained professionals are now in much better shape than countries where key agencies were run by political hacks, major responsibilities were handed out to unqualified family members, and leaders indulged in fantasies rather than facts.
I may be overly optimistic here, but COVID-19 could remind Americans that having competent, well-trained, dedicated, and well-compensated public servants is essential to national success, and convince them to rebuild the highly effective public institutions that played a critical role in America’s rise. If so, that would be an extraordinary positive result from an otherwise bleak episode in U.S. history.
Here’s a crazy idea: Let people vote!
The essence of a true democracy is a set of institutions that allows citizens to select their leaders in a free and fair process. Many democracies fail to live up to that standard by making it harder for some people to vote than others or by rigging districts or electoral procedures in order to stack the deck in favor of some groups over others. Unfortunately, such anti-democratic shenanigans have become especially prevalent in contemporary America and are likely to be at an all-time high this November.
Might the pandemic help us address this? Although public health concerns will create some opportunities for election tampering (as we have already seen), the coronavirus is also forcing Americans to take options such as early voting or voting by mail more seriously. (For a good discussion of these issues, see here.) Politicians who benefit from keeping people away from the polls (i.e., those who cater to impassioned minorities and who are likely to lose if more citizens actually vote) won’t like this development, but my guess is that Americans will realize that there are better ways to run a free and fair election.
I would like to believe that expanding turnout would increase the impact of independents and moderates, make elections less hostage to extremists at either end of the political spectrum, and reduce the current level of polarization in U.S. politics, but there are reasons to be skeptical of that hope. Of course I’d also like to believe that my preferences are broadly shared by a majority of Americans and that getting more people to the polls would make it more likely that the policies I favor would be adopted. But I have no idea if that is really true. I shall therefore don the Rawlsian veil of ignorance: In a democracy, it is ipso facto preferable if more citizens are able to express their political views fairly via the electoral process, regardless of the results.
U.S. grand strategy might actually get fixed.
We are all prone to conclude that the current pandemic offers additional reasons to favor whatever positions we held beforehand. I might be somewhat biased, therefore, but I still believe the pandemic will accelerate the inevitable shift toward a more sensible U.S. grand strategy. Not only does the pandemic offer compelling evidence that Americans neglected some important dangers while they obsessed about some minor ones, but the heroic efforts being undertaken to keep the U.S. economy afloat are piling up massive levels of public debt. The United States was overextended before COVID-19 hit, and the gap between resources and commitments will be an enduring constraint on its international ambitions.
To be sure, the United States will remain a formidable great power and will remain actively involved in many global issues. But looking ahead, Americans are going to care a lot more about having a job, having their kids be able to attend school, or being able to get medical treatment if they need it than they will care about which corrupt politician is in power in Kabul or Tripoli. This tendency will be especially apparent among young people, who were already skeptical of some of America’s ill-considered foreign crusades. Spending billions of dollars on costly military programs is going to be harder to justify.
I doubt COVID-19 will lead to radical disarmament or isolationism—and I don’t think it should—but trying to be the indispensable nation in every corner of the world will be a hard sell in the years ahead. If economic growth is sluggish and U.S. allies continue to spend a much smaller percentage of their GDP on defense than America is, support for the ambitious international agenda pursued by Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and, yes, even Trump—will be in short supply.
The bottom line: COVID-19 will accelerate a rethinking of U.S. commitments abroad. In The Hell of Good Intentions, I argued that the United States would eventually abandon liberal hegemony—i.e., the bipartisan effort to use American power to create a liberal world order—and return to its earlier strategy of “offshore balancing.” In particular, I recommended that the United States gradually reduce its direct security commitments in Europe and the Middle East and focus primarily on balancing China in Asia and elsewhere. I thought it would take 20 or more years to make that shift, and I wrote the book to try to accelerate it. I now think COVID-19 will get us there faster than I expected; I just wish it hadn’t taken a global or national catastrophe to do it.
I wish I were more confident that all of these silver linings will turn out as I hope, despite the obvious obstacles that some of them are bound to face. But this is a moment when maintaining hope for the future is damn near indispensable. More importantly, learning the right lessons and extracting whatever good we can from this difficult situation are the best ways to honor those who have already suffered and sacrificed and the many who will do so in the months ahead.


foreignpolicy--2020-05-26--Britain Hates Johnson’s Machiavelli

Britain Hates Johnson’s Machiavelli

The United Kingdom ’ s ruling Conservative Party is facing a self-generated crisis after Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended his old friend and special advisor Dominic Cummings , who broke lockdown rules at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in the country .
But why is everyone so mad about what , from the outside , seems like a minor scandal at worst ?
Foreign Policy has you covered .
Who is Dominic Cummings , anyway ?
Think Steve Bannon circa 2017 , before the senior counselor to U.S. President Donald Trump disappeared into the bucket of the administration ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ less baggage .
Cummings is a right-wing political strategist who claimed credit for the campaign that took Britain out of the European Union .
Like Bannon , winning an unlikely vote made him a boogeyman for the other side and gave him a largely undeserved reputation for cunning .
Since then , he ’ s acted as a kind of floating advisor for the Tory party , peddling half-baked theories about “ Odyssean education ” and “ super-forecasters.
” Most critically , though , Cummings is extremely close to the U.K. ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ After Johnson became prime minister , Cummings was brought on board as a special advisor .
He did not prove a popular or successful colleague , and previous criticisms focused on his unelected nature , his behind-the-scenes power , and his hiring of a racist blogger for his advisory unit .
What did he do wrong this time ?
The scandal that looks like it might actually bring him down—and isn ’ t helping Johnson—is one that would be utterly banal in normal times : When Cummings and his wife were both symptomatic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from London with her and their children to stay with his parents in the northern city of Durham , England .
The excursion went against the government ’ s own quarantine regulations , which tell people to stay in their own homes and not risk endangering others .
An initial wave of denials of the story looked particularly flimsy after it then emerged that he ’ d violated the rules at least one more time , making a trip out with his children and wife from Durham to a local tourist attraction some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ isn ’ t as tough as some on mainland Europe , such as those in Italy and Spain , but more than 14,000 people have been fined for breaking the rules .
Prominent figures , including the epidemiologist Neil Ferguson and Scottish chief medical officer Catherine Calderwood , have resigned from their jobs over breaking lockdown regulations .
Cummings , however , seems determined to weather this out .
Senior figures in the Conservative Party , reportedly fuming in private , were nevertheless put forward to defend him in public , leaving only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ behavior .
The BBC journalist Laura Kuenssberg trotted out a defense from a source that sounded suspiciously like Cummings—or at least someone from within his family .
When Johnson publicly came to his friend ’ s defense in a press conference on Sunday evening , however , it only threw fuel on the fire .
Johnson ’ s speech claiming that Cummings “ acted like any father ” and behaved “ legally ” and “ responsibly ” was widely seen as a disaster , even by a British press usually friendly to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the highest-circulation British tabloids and a consistent supporter of the Conservatives , blasted the speech on Monday morning ’ s front page and has laid into Cummings at length .
In a rapidly deleted tweet , the British Civil Service ’ s official account called the government “ arrogant and offensive.
” Cummings , meanwhile , was jeered at in the street as he walked home .
In an extraordinary move , Cummings himself went on to give a press conference Monday afternoon in the rose garden at No .
10 Downing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prime ministers to address the nation .
No special advisor has ever given such a conference before .
The conference was defensive and unapologetic , with Cummings telling the press “ I don ’ t regret what I did and as I said , I think reasonable people may well disagree about how I thought about what to do in those circumstances , but I think what I did was actually reasonable.
” Why is everyone so angry ?
Cummings ’ s drive to Durham might seem trifling compared to pandemic scandals elsewhere @ @ @ @ @ @ @ profiteering or leaders from Brazil ’ s Jair Bolsonaro to the United States ’ Donald Trump promoting denialist fantasies .
But Britain is now two months into a lockdown that was imposed after a deadly delay thanks to the government ’ s pursuit of a failed strategy to inculcate herd immunity among the public , backed by Cummings .
More than 36,000 people are dead—the highest number in Europe .
And Cummings is said to have argued—a charge he denies—that “ if some pensioners die , too bad.
” Tens of millions of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ family , with many unable to visit their own sick parents or even offer comfort at funerals .
Seeing somebody flaunting the rules and getting away with it is a lightning rod for public anger , especially in a class-ridden country .
As a Labour Party spokesperson put it , “ people do not expect there to be one rule for them and another rule for Dominic Cummings.
” It doesn ’ t help that Dominic is a decidedly posh name , or that by his own account he retreated to an “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ farm.
” Doctors and public health advocates are also angry at the mixed signals sent by the government .
Cummings has offered a range of excuses , from the need for help with child care to supporting his parents as they grieve a recently deceased uncle ; the claims haven ’ t sat well with a public that has borne many worse hardships in isolation .
Cummings is receiving criticism from both sides of the British aisle : from people who support the lockdowns and are angry at his role in the delay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are against the lockdowns and blame him for being part of the government that imposed them while he breaks them himself .
So why is Johnson retaining Cummings ?
That may be the most puzzling thing about the scandal .
Why is the prime minister so desperate to defend a largely unpopular figure , with no seeming gain to himself ?
Even if Cummings resigned , it ’ s hardly unknown for such advisors to keep the same role without the official position , or to sneak in the back door six months @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s nothing stopping Johnson from calling Cummings for advice even if he quits .
The most likely explanation seems to be that Johnson finds the idea of any of his friends being held accountable abhorrent .
This is a leader whose entire career , after all , has been built on shirking responsibility , from his own rehiring after being fired for making up quotes as a young journalist to his serial adultery , including sleeping with his staff while editor of the Spectator and fathering numerous children from affairs .
Johnson ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ meanwhile , supersedes the law , as when he gave the convicted fraudster Darius Guppy a journalist ’ s address so Guppy could send thugs to assault the reporter .
Add onto that the overconfidence that left him hospitalized with the coronavirus after boasting about how many hands he ’ d been shaking .
Johnson may be convinced he can get away with it .
Or he may turn on Cummings if it seems the public rage is too great .
Either way , there will be plenty of other Tories watching hungrily @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that ’ s already gone through an unprecedented three prime ministers in four years of disastrous incompetence .

The United Kingdom’s ruling Conservative Party is facing a self-generated crisis after Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended his old friend and special advisor Dominic Cummings, who broke lockdown rules at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in the country. But why is everyone so mad about what, from the outside, seems like a minor scandal at worst? Foreign Policy has you covered.
The United Kingdom’s ruling Conservative Party is facing a self-generated crisis after Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended his old friend and special advisor Dominic Cummings, who broke lockdown rules at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in the country. But why is everyone so mad about what, from the outside, seems like a minor scandal at worst? Foreign Policy has you covered.
Who is Dominic Cummings, anyway?
Think Steve Bannon circa 2017, before the senior counselor to U.S. President Donald Trump disappeared into the bucket of the administration’s many high-profile departures, but with less baggage. Cummings is a right-wing political strategist who claimed credit for the campaign that took Britain out of the European Union. Like Bannon, winning an unlikely vote made him a boogeyman for the other side and gave him a largely undeserved reputation for cunning. Since then, he’s acted as a kind of floating advisor for the Tory party, peddling half-baked theories about “Odyssean education” and “super-forecasters.”
Most critically, though, Cummings is extremely close to the U.K.’s current prime minister, Boris Johnson. After Johnson became prime minister, Cummings was brought on board as a special advisor. He did not prove a popular or successful colleague, and previous criticisms focused on his unelected nature, his behind-the-scenes power, and his hiring of a racist blogger for his advisory unit.
What did he do wrong this time?
The scandal that looks like it might actually bring him down—and isn’t helping Johnson—is one that would be utterly banal in normal times: When Cummings and his wife were both symptomatic with COVID-19, he drove 260 miles from London with her and their children to stay with his parents in the northern city of Durham, England. The excursion went against the government’s own quarantine regulations, which tell people to stay in their own homes and not risk endangering others. An initial wave of denials of the story looked particularly flimsy after it then emerged that he’d violated the rules at least one more time, making a trip out with his children and wife from Durham to a local tourist attraction some distance away.
Britain’s lockdown isn’t as tough as some on mainland Europe, such as those in Italy and Spain, but more than 14,000 people have been fined for breaking the rules. Prominent figures, including the epidemiologist Neil Ferguson and Scottish chief medical officer Catherine Calderwood, have resigned from their jobs over breaking lockdown regulations. Cummings, however, seems determined to weather this out. Senior figures in the Conservative Party, reportedly fuming in private, were nevertheless put forward to defend him in public, leaving only a few stray backbenchers to condemn his behavior. The BBC journalist Laura Kuenssberg trotted out a defense from a source that sounded suspiciously like Cummings—or at least someone from within his family.
When Johnson publicly came to his friend’s defense in a press conference on Sunday evening, however, it only threw fuel on the fire. Johnson’s speech claiming that Cummings “acted like any father” and behaved “legally” and “responsibly” was widely seen as a disaster, even by a British press usually friendly to the Tories. The Daily Mail, one of the highest-circulation British tabloids and a consistent supporter of the Conservatives, blasted the speech on Monday morning’s front page and has laid into Cummings at length. In a rapidly deleted tweet, the British Civil Service’s official account called the government “arrogant and offensive.” Cummings, meanwhile, was jeered at in the street as he walked home.
In an extraordinary move, Cummings himself went on to give a press conference Monday afternoon in the rose garden at No. 10 Downing St., the location usually used by prime ministers to address the nation. No special advisor has ever given such a conference before. The conference was defensive and unapologetic, with Cummings telling the press “I don’t regret what I did and as I said, I think reasonable people may well disagree about how I thought about what to do in those circumstances, but I think what I did was actually reasonable.”
Why is everyone so angry?
Cummings’s drive to Durham might seem trifling compared to pandemic scandals elsewhere in the world, such as politicians profiteering or leaders from Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro to the United States’ Donald Trump promoting denialist fantasies. But Britain is now two months into a lockdown that was imposed after a deadly delay thanks to the government’s pursuit of a failed strategy to inculcate herd immunity among the public, backed by Cummings. More than 36,000 people are dead—the highest number in Europe. And Cummings is said to have argued—a charge he denies—that “if some pensioners die, too bad.”
Tens of millions of people have been cut off from seeing family, with many unable to visit their own sick parents or even offer comfort at funerals. Seeing somebody flaunting the rules and getting away with it is a lightning rod for public anger, especially in a class-ridden country. As a Labour Party spokesperson put it, “people do not expect there to be one rule for them and another rule for Dominic Cummings.” It doesn’t help that Dominic is a decidedly posh name, or that by his own account he retreated to an “isolated cottage on my father’s farm.” Doctors and public health advocates are also angry at the mixed signals sent by the government. Cummings has offered a range of excuses, from the need for help with child care to supporting his parents as they grieve a recently deceased uncle; the claims haven’t sat well with a public that has borne many worse hardships in isolation.
Cummings is receiving criticism from both sides of the British aisle: from people who support the lockdowns and are angry at his role in the delay and rule-breaking, and from people who are against the lockdowns and blame him for being part of the government that imposed them while he breaks them himself.
So why is Johnson retaining Cummings?
That may be the most puzzling thing about the scandal. Why is the prime minister so desperate to defend a largely unpopular figure, with no seeming gain to himself? Even if Cummings resigned, it’s hardly unknown for such advisors to keep the same role without the official position, or to sneak in the back door six months or a year later. There’s nothing stopping Johnson from calling Cummings for advice even if he quits.
The most likely explanation seems to be that Johnson finds the idea of any of his friends being held accountable abhorrent. This is a leader whose entire career, after all, has been built on shirking responsibility, from his own rehiring after being fired for making up quotes as a young journalist to his serial adultery, including sleeping with his staff while editor of the Spectator and fathering numerous children from affairs. Johnson’s own loyalty to his friends, meanwhile, supersedes the law, as when he gave the convicted fraudster Darius Guppy a journalist’s address so Guppy could send thugs to assault the reporter. Add onto that the overconfidence that left him hospitalized with the coronavirus after boasting about how many hands he’d been shaking.
Johnson may be convinced he can get away with it. Or he may turn on Cummings if it seems the public rage is too great. Either way, there will be plenty of other Tories watching hungrily from the sidelines, in a party that’s already gone through an unprecedented three prime ministers in four years of disastrous incompetence.


foreignpolicy--2020-05-26--Al Qaeda and ISIS Had a Truce in Africa—Until They Didn’t

Al Qaeda and ISIS Had a Truce in Africa—Until They Didn ’ t Not long ago , it was plausible to believe the Sahel region of Africa might be spared the internecine fighting that has characterized relations between the Islamic State and al Qaeda in Afghanistan , Syria , Somalia , and Yemen .
For years , jihadis linked to al Qaeda operating in the Sahel tried hard to maintain jihadi unity , keeping open lines of communication with Islamic State franchise groups operating in North and West Africa , even while disavowing the Islamic State ’ s more extreme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Faso tri-border area have gone beyond describing tolerance between the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara ( ISGS ) , and al Qaeda ’ s affiliate , Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin ( JNIM ) , and spoken instead of more concrete forms of collaboration , including the coordination of attacks .
But as the world ’ s attention focused on the coronavirus pandemic , recent developments in West Africa reveal new forms of unrest between the Sahel ’ s terrorist and insurgent groups .
A recent ISGS suicide truck bombing against JNIM @ @ @ @ @ @ @ verge of spilling into the open , further destabilizing an already fragile region .
Despite al Qaeda ’ s ideological opposition to the Islamic State , JNIM had attempted to preserve peace with ISGS until as late as January of this year , when one of JNIM ’ s young , promising theologians published two treatises urging Sahel-based jihadis to work toward common goals .
But several factors contributed to a breakdown in relations , leading to the current state of affairs , which is characterized by all-out confrontation between JNIM and ISGS @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leverage over ISGS as the stronger group in the Sahel since 2017 .
However , ISGS surged from November 2019 until January 2020 , executing a series of deadly raids against military posts in Niger , Mali , and Burkina Faso .
Naturally , the Islamic State was quick to release video footage of ISGS ’ s impressive battlefield performances .
Defections from JNIM to ISGS were subsequently reported and celebrated in the latter ’ s propaganda .
Moreover , in Nigeria , the Islamic State ’ s West Africa Province ( ISWAP @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , has been growing in strength and has far surpassed al Qaeda ’ s Nigerian representative , Ansaru , despite the latter ’ s spectacular January attack on a traditional local ruler ’ s convoy .
West Africa was therefore on the precipice of becoming the Islamic State ’ s undisputed showcase region , which would partially offset setbacks in Iraq and Syria resulting from the collapse of the caliphate .
To avoid being overshadowed in a region where it once held dominance , al Qaeda , through JNIM , was compelled to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s strength was growing its fighters inevitably began approaching areas where JNIM traditionally operated .
The overlapping of their camps and areas of operations might have once allowed the groups to have minimal tacit cooperation , or at the very least deliberate indifference .
However , since January this proximity has manifested into violent clashes , intensifying as a result of their growing competition .
Moreover , when pragmatic voices within JNIM—the Algerian Yahya Abu al-Hammam and the Tunisian Abu Iyad al-Tunisi—were killed in 2019 , their previous calls for restraint were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Islamic State has begun strengthening its command-and-control apparatus , in effect reasserting stricter oversight and guidance on ISGS and other external provinces .
This is perhaps most clearly reflected in increasing ISGS media releases through the Islamic State ’ s centralized media apparatus , including its pledges of loyalty to former leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his successor .
One result has been that ISGS fighters , like their ISWAP counterparts in Nigeria , have begun to more closely resemble the Islamic State in terms of style and tactics .
The changes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was incumbent upon ISWAP to execute its own members in Nigeria for merely communicating with JNIM , it was also only a matter of time before ISGS would clash with JNIM , proving its loyalty to the Islamic State and fully adopting the leadership ’ s worldview of a zero-sum contest between the feuding organizations .
In some corners of the Western world the growing conflict between al Qaeda- and Islamic State-affiliated groups in the Sahel will be welcome news , with the conventional wisdom suggesting that by fighting each other the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strapped for resources .
However , there is a solid foundation of research that details how competition between terrorist organizations can be a net benefit for them , boosting recruitment and spurring innovation .
As terrorism expert Mia Bloom has pointed out , competition between groups can lead to a process known as outbidding , where adversaries engage in various forms of tactical experimentation in an effort to gain support .
For example , ISWAP in Nigeria upgraded its military capabilities to outbid a rival jihadi faction led by Abubakar Shekau , only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by carrying out the deadliest attack in Chad ’ s history , which killed nearly 100 soldiers in March .
Scholars such as Brian Phillips have shown that rivalries between violent nonstate actors can actually contribute to the longevity of some groups , further entrenching them and allowing them to grow in size , evolve into more sophisticated organizations , and play a spoiler role in peace processes and political negotiations aimed at terminating conflicts .
The final point on sabotaging potential peace deals is particularly interesting in the case of the Sahel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. counterterrorism operations against jihadis in the region are likely to defeat these organizations .
This is especially the case as the United States prepares to reposition some of its most elite forces to meet the challenge of great-power competition with Russia and China , while other forces are being drawn down in response to the coronavirus .
Without negotiations , it seems likely that militants will continue to spread across borders , further destabilizing West Africa and opening up new fronts , as they have done in Burkina Faso .
In March @ @ @ @ @ @ @ open to peace talks with the Malian government , although most observers tempered their enthusiasm , considering the proposal unlikely given the al Qaeda-linked group ’ s insistence on a withdrawal of French and United Nations forces .
Although there has been no recent progress with negotiations , the fact that JNIM hinted at the possibility is a sign that some kind of detente might be reached in the future .
But if conflict between al Qaeda and the Islamic State ramps up , this could increase the Islamic State ’ s incentive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any future peace deal , to deny any benefits to its rival .
Even if JNIM were to scale back its attacks in some kind of cease-fire arrangement with Mali or other governments in the region , ISGS would not be bound by these same dictates , and it could actually increase its operational tempo and the frequency and scale of attacks to keep the region on edge .
This would reverse gains made by negotiating a reduction of hostilities with JNIM .
Moreover , the Islamic State will undoubtedly allege JNIM ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Qaeda recognizes Westphalian borders .
This has been a core narrative for the Islamic State and could convince hard-line ideologues in the Sahel to side with ISGS , weakening JNIM and the fruits of any deal .
This could further plunge the region back into chaos it hasn ’ t seen since 2012 , when jihadis controlled Mali and imposed Taliban-style rule on the population , restricting women ’ s freedoms , destroying Sufi shrines , and cutting off the hands of “ thieves ” who were often from marginalized ethnic groups , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ launch major attacks on Western interests in Algeria and Niger .
At that time , it was the infamous Mokhtar Belmokhtar outbidding al Qaeda to demonstrate his jihadi credentials in the region .
Now , ISGS has a vested interest in ratcheting up violence in the Sahel to unprecedented levels to outbid and undermine JNIM before negotiations can even get underway .

Not long ago, it was plausible to believe the Sahel region of Africa might be spared the internecine fighting that has characterized relations between the Islamic State and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen. For years, jihadis linked to al Qaeda operating in the Sahel tried hard to maintain jihadi unity, keeping open lines of communication with Islamic State franchise groups operating in North and West Africa, even while disavowing the Islamic State’s more extreme ideology. Some reports from the Mali-Niger-Burkina Faso tri-border area have gone beyond describing tolerance between the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), and al Qaeda’s affiliate, Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), and spoken instead of more concrete forms of collaboration, including the coordination of attacks.
Not long ago, it was plausible to believe the Sahel region of Africa might be spared the internecine fighting that has characterized relations between the Islamic State and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen. For years, jihadis linked to al Qaeda operating in the Sahel tried hard to maintain jihadi unity, keeping open lines of communication with Islamic State franchise groups operating in North and West Africa, even while disavowing the Islamic State’s more extreme ideology. Some reports from the Mali-Niger-Burkina Faso tri-border area have gone beyond describing tolerance between the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), and al Qaeda’s affiliate, Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), and spoken instead of more concrete forms of collaboration, including the coordination of attacks.
But as the world’s attention focused on the coronavirus pandemic, recent developments in West Africa reveal new forms of unrest between the Sahel’s terrorist and insurgent groups. A recent ISGS suicide truck bombing against JNIM suggests an all-out conflict is on the verge of spilling into the open, further destabilizing an already fragile region.
Despite al Qaeda’s ideological opposition to the Islamic State, JNIM had attempted to preserve peace with ISGS until as late as January of this year, when one of JNIM’s young, promising theologians published two treatises urging Sahel-based jihadis to work toward common goals. But several factors contributed to a breakdown in relations, leading to the current state of affairs, which is characterized by all-out confrontation between JNIM and ISGS.
First, JNIM has maintained significant leverage over ISGS as the stronger group in the Sahel since 2017. However, ISGS surged from November 2019 until January 2020, executing a series of deadly raids against military posts in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. Naturally, the Islamic State was quick to release video footage of ISGS’s impressive battlefield performances. Defections from JNIM to ISGS were subsequently reported and celebrated in the latter’s propaganda. Moreover, in Nigeria, the Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP), also known as Boko Haram, has been growing in strength and has far surpassed al Qaeda’s Nigerian representative, Ansaru, despite the latter’s spectacular January attack on a traditional local ruler’s convoy. West Africa was therefore on the precipice of becoming the Islamic State’s undisputed showcase region, which would partially offset setbacks in Iraq and Syria resulting from the collapse of the caliphate. To avoid being overshadowed in a region where it once held dominance, al Qaeda, through JNIM, was compelled to fight back.
Second, as ISGS’s strength was growing its fighters inevitably began approaching areas where JNIM traditionally operated. The overlapping of their camps and areas of operations might have once allowed the groups to have minimal tacit cooperation, or at the very least deliberate indifference. However, since January this proximity has manifested into violent clashes, intensifying as a result of their growing competition. Moreover, when pragmatic voices within JNIM—the Algerian Yahya Abu al-Hammam and the Tunisian Abu Iyad al-Tunisi—were killed in 2019, their previous calls for restraint were removed from the equation.
Third, the Islamic State has begun strengthening its command-and-control apparatus, in effect reasserting stricter oversight and guidance on ISGS and other external provinces. This is perhaps most clearly reflected in increasing ISGS media releases through the Islamic State’s centralized media apparatus, including its pledges of loyalty to former leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his successor. One result has been that ISGS fighters, like their ISWAP counterparts in Nigeria, have begun to more closely resemble the Islamic State in terms of style and tactics. The changes also extend to strategy. Just as it was incumbent upon ISWAP to execute its own members in Nigeria for merely communicating with JNIM, it was also only a matter of time before ISGS would clash with JNIM, proving its loyalty to the Islamic State and fully adopting the leadership’s worldview of a zero-sum contest between the feuding organizations.
In some corners of the Western world the growing conflict between al Qaeda- and Islamic State-affiliated groups in the Sahel will be welcome news, with the conventional wisdom suggesting that by fighting each other the terrorists will be consumed with survival and strapped for resources. However, there is a solid foundation of research that details how competition between terrorist organizations can be a net benefit for them, boosting recruitment and spurring innovation.
As terrorism expert Mia Bloom has pointed out, competition between groups can lead to a process known as outbidding, where adversaries engage in various forms of tactical experimentation in an effort to gain support. For example, ISWAP in Nigeria upgraded its military capabilities to outbid a rival jihadi faction led by Abubakar Shekau, only to see Shekau’s fighters respond by carrying out the deadliest attack in Chad’s history, which killed nearly 100 soldiers in March.
Scholars such as Brian Phillips have shown that rivalries between violent nonstate actors can actually contribute to the longevity of some groups, further entrenching them and allowing them to grow in size, evolve into more sophisticated organizations, and play a spoiler role in peace processes and political negotiations aimed at terminating conflicts.
The final point on sabotaging potential peace deals is particularly interesting in the case of the Sahel. It seems unlikely that French and U.S. counterterrorism operations against jihadis in the region are likely to defeat these organizations. This is especially the case as the United States prepares to reposition some of its most elite forces to meet the challenge of great-power competition with Russia and China, while other forces are being drawn down in response to the coronavirus. Without negotiations, it seems likely that militants will continue to spread across borders, further destabilizing West Africa and opening up new fronts, as they have done in Burkina Faso.
In March, JNIM proposed that it would be open to peace talks with the Malian government, although most observers tempered their enthusiasm, considering the proposal unlikely given the al Qaeda-linked group’s insistence on a withdrawal of French and United Nations forces. Although there has been no recent progress with negotiations, the fact that JNIM hinted at the possibility is a sign that some kind of detente might be reached in the future.
But if conflict between al Qaeda and the Islamic State ramps up, this could increase the Islamic State’s incentive to play the role of spoiler in any future peace deal, to deny any benefits to its rival. Even if JNIM were to scale back its attacks in some kind of cease-fire arrangement with Mali or other governments in the region, ISGS would not be bound by these same dictates, and it could actually increase its operational tempo and the frequency and scale of attacks to keep the region on edge. This would reverse gains made by negotiating a reduction of hostilities with JNIM. Moreover, the Islamic State will undoubtedly allege JNIM’s acceptance of international mediation means al Qaeda recognizes Westphalian borders. This has been a core narrative for the Islamic State and could convince hard-line ideologues in the Sahel to side with ISGS, weakening JNIM and the fruits of any deal.
This could further plunge the region back into chaos it hasn’t seen since 2012, when jihadis controlled Mali and imposed Taliban-style rule on the population, restricting women’s freedoms, destroying Sufi shrines, and cutting off the hands of “thieves” who were often from marginalized ethnic groups, while using Mali as a base to launch major attacks on Western interests in Algeria and Niger. At that time, it was the infamous Mokhtar Belmokhtar outbidding al Qaeda to demonstrate his jihadi credentials in the region. Now, ISGS has a vested interest in ratcheting up violence in the Sahel to unprecedented levels to outbid and undermine JNIM before negotiations can even get underway.