bluegargantua

Hi,

So I just finshed reading Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil by Nicholas Shaxson. Another in my on-going series of "Africa is screwed" books.

I liked the book, but I think that Untapped was probably better. Mr. Shaxson does take a different approach to describing the problem. Rather than focusing on one country after another, the way that Untapped did, he combines a biography of his experiences as a freelance reporter and with profiles of prominent individuals within African oil states to show exactly what's been going on there and how it's broken down. He also focuses on a couple of players outside of the immediate African sphere, such as the Russian businessman who helped the Angolan government defeat the rebel insurgency in the area and the French magistrate who exposed the French government's secret neocolonialism projects carried out by the French oil company ELF.

Fascinating stuff. But a lot of it seems rooted in the early 90's and while it explains a lot about what's going on today, it doesn't quite paint a current picture.

Mr. Shaxson also frames the problem not of Bad Foreign Oil Companies or Evil Dictators (although they certainly have a raft of crimes to pay for), but focuses on the flow of international money. Globalization and Free Trade have made it possible to do business anywhere, but international controls to follow the flows of money (from legal and illegal sources) just hasn't caught up. Simple transparency is only part of the solution, legal frameworks to act on what transparent financial operations expose is the other key piece.

Anyway, if you had to choose, I'd take Untapped, but for further reading, I'd certainly recommend Poisoned Wells.

later
Tom

Hi,

Just finished up Untapped, the Scramble for Africa's Oil by John Ghazvinian. As you might guess, it's all about the development of oil in sub-Saharan Africa.

My Ghazvinian wrote an excerpt of his book for Virginia Quarterly Review. It was a great article and the full book is extremely good. Aside from the problems that oil has brought to the continent, there's a series of great narratives describing the outrageous fortunes of a number of African states.

Basically, Africa is fucked. National and international companies are robbing the continent of it's mineral birthright and leaving nothing behind except poverty and misery. True, it's not completely the fault of the companies. There's the botched mis-management of European colonialism that counted on ethnic division to maintain law and order and now results in genocide and civil war. The leaders in Africa are either hopelessly naive in dealing with complex oil contracts or they're despots eager to live the high life and cement their rule with oil company cash. Simple human greed makes dealing with a sudden windfall of oil even harder than it might otherwise be.

Plus, everyone thinks that oil will be a magical cash cow. Governments stop collecting taxes and become wholly dependent on oil revenues. They don't care what happens to their people so long as the oil money keeps flowing. And when the oil reserves run out? Well...everyone just keeps looking the other way and hoping the Deluge will come tomorrow.

This is a fantastic book. I got it via interlibrary loan, but I thin I may wind up buying a copy. It's certainly feeding into my ideas for an African wargame.

Great stuff
Tom

Hi,

So in reading up about post-colonial war in Africa, I started with a fiction book: The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth. If the author sounds familiar, he wrote Day of the Jackal and The Odessa Files. This book, not surprisingly is all about dirty little wars in Africa.

In this case, a mining company discovers a huge reserve of Platinum in the tiny African nation of Zangaro. The head of the company sits on the discovery and attempts to figure out how to turn it to his advantage. He hits upon the idea of hiring a small team of mercenaries and having them topple the government to install his own puppet regime.

The bulk of the book is all about the preparations for the coup. Cat Shannon, the mercenary selected to handle the job, has 100 days to put together all the gear and equipment for a small strike force to attack the presidential palace. Meanwhile, the head of the mining company is putting together some shell companies to hold the claim after the coup goes through.

It's hard to say that this is an exciting book in an action/adventure way. It's not even super tense. But it's very interesting in the methodical planning, preparation and execution of the coup and it certainly had no real trouble holding my interest as each new facet and wrinkle came up.

The other thing that really stuck out was how different the world was in the mid-70's. The characters are flying all over Europe and sending registered letters around to conduct their business. In today's world, most of the financial business would've been handled via email or cell phone calls or faxes. The information gap was really striking.

Overall, I really liked the book, but it was about a topic that I'm interested in right now. I'm not going to tell you to rush out and find it, but it's certainly nice if you want some mercenar-military fiction.

later
Tom

"MEND had shown that 20 guys in speedboats could affect oil prices around the world."

A Vanity Fair article about the violence surrounding oil production in the Niger Delta.

...and a slideshow of the poverty of the Delta villages, and the magic-enhanced warriors of MEND, a rebel group fighting for local control of oil reserves.

Hi,

An article describing oil theft (or "bunkering") in Nigeria.

later
Tom

Coltan is a naturally-occuring metalic ore.

It is a material used in the manufacture of capacitors that are found in a wide range of modern technological gadgets. Thus demand for the stuff has been steadily growing.

80% of the world's reserves are found in the Congo. And it's just one of a wide range of natural resources that has turned the Congo into hell on Earth.

Despite the obvious pitfalls, I'd really like to do a game set in modern-day Congo. It wouldn't be an easy game, but it might be a very valuable one. No one PC or group of PCs could ever hope to "fix" the Congo (unless we're playing Nobilis), but struggling against the tide of misery and inhumanity could be really powerful.

later
Tom