Drones have a bad reputation. Executors of targeted killings and tools of surveillance, military-grade drones are not governed (yet) by a standard jurisprudence and represent the future of limited war, in all its glory and shame. But they’re not all bad.

In the summer of 2011 the Canadian government approved and facilitated the use of drones, produced by a private Ontario robotics manufacturer, by Libyan rebels in their revolt against Moammar Gadhafi. They may become the weapon of choice in the fight against poaching, and they may even be employed to achieve humanitarian ends. Some deride the latter notion as naïve or impractical.

I spoke with Christopher Tuckwood, executive director of the Sentinel Project, a not-for-profit dedicated to genocide prevention, on why he thinks drones may be able to empower people in conflict zones, enhance the capacities of NGOs to fulfill their mission and ultimately save lives.

Why should we get over the stigma drones carry and explore the possibility of using drones for peaceful purposes?

I think the military uses of drones distract a lot of people, and they don’t necessarily separate the fact that an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can carry weapons from the fact that it can do a lot of other things as well. We’re essentially talking about glorified remote control airplanes. There are a lot of things that drones can do that would be very helpful to humanitarians, whether in human rights, delivering aid or what have you. They have capabilities that are useful, and there’s nothing about their nature that makes them inherently dangerous or harmful.

On the potential use of drones for humanitarian purposes, you argue that although some supporters of the technology rightly suggest that drones can be used to “bear witness” and compel the international community to act, this prospective purpose is too idealistic and narrow. How else can drones advance humanitarian efforts?

There’s nothing wrong with documentation and the idea of “bearing witness,” and certainly if doing that leads to intervention, then that’s great. But the fact is, historically, we’ve seen that simply documenting atrocities doesn’t really bring about the desired effect of inspiring meaningful intervention. There’s no reason to believe that drones would be any different. Satellite imagery is starting to be used by different organizations for documentation, and it has value, but it still hasn’t inspired that kind of response.

Our interest with the Sentinel Project is a lot more focused on what we can do with technology to help communities at risk help themselves. Oftentimes there is no outside intervention, or if there is, it comes too late.

UAVs have the capability to go places that we wouldn’t necessarily be able to go, to do things that we wouldn’t necessarily be able to do with other types of technology. Drones would augment our current efforts of early warning and information gathering and dissemination. At the moment, we focus a lot more on open sources (i.e. information that is available online, through social media and reported by human networks on the ground). I just came back from doing some fieldwork in Kenya where we were setting up some of those local human contacts in conflict-affected areas.

If a small UAV could be given to a community at risk to do surveillance of a surrounding area and at the micro-level provide early warning of an approaching militia or approaching military force that is going to attack them, that gives the community that much more lead time to react.

The use of drones by a foreign institution requires the consent of the host country. How would your organization go about getting consent from a hostile government, a government perhaps committing the human rights abuses in question? Would it be possible to provide local communities with that kind of technology directly or through third parties?

We just recently started to think through those questions and not necessarily answer them but think of potential answers. One of the things you suggested was providing the technology through some sort of arrangement with local communities. So it’s not that members of the Sentinel Project or some other organization would go somewhere and take a drone with them, or be based in a neighboring country and fly into that airspace, but more that we would find people on the ground that we could provide the technology and training to, which of course brings up other issues in terms of neutrality and what not. If there is a less than one-sided conflict, you could potentially run into the problem of giving one side an advantage and so on. The way we would probably go about it is to actually develop relationships with neutral third parties, whether that would be with local NGOs or what have you that could operate the devices.

We’ve thought of first testing the concept in permissive environments. A non-permissive environment is one in which the host government would be hostile to doing this kind of work. In a more permissive environment, you’re looking at a case where the perpetrators of atrocities we’re trying to prevent are not state-based, and thus you could operate with the permission of the government. For instance, the Eastern Congo would be a good example of a possible test environment, where a lot of the atrocities being committed are committed by non-state actors. In these environments, the concept can be tested without having to answer some of those more difficult legal questions right away.

Development organizations are often criticized for lopsided allocation of resources and inefficiency. How would the use of drones help advance the moral, long-term goals of development organizations?  

As I mentioned, drones would complement our efforts of early warning and information gathering.

Firstly, drones would be a lower cost alternative to satellite imagery. The Satellite Sentinel Project has had a lot of financial support from a variety organizations—Google, some celebrities and so on—so they’ve had a fair bit of money to put into it.

Satellite imagery is still something that, although it is starting to be used by a variety of nonprofits— like the Satellite Sentinel Project, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch—it’s still prohibitively expensive for the vast majority. It costs a lot to get a meaningful amount of imagery. For the price of one or two satellite images you could buy or lease or build a pretty decent drone, which means you can also have greater coverage because you can have multiple devices flying instead of a single satellite device in an area. Similarly, it also means that they’re semi-disposable. So if one gets shot down or something like that, it’s not the end of the road. You can just send more, theoretically, depending on resources, of course. There is an entire community of people around the world who do this as a hobby and build impressive devices for hundreds or thousands of dollars, so if we can tap into that kind of community, there is a lot we can do with the technology without having to spend a lot money. You don’t find amateur satellite enthusiasts, but you do find thousands of people building drones for fun and doing pretty interesting with them for pretty low prices.  

Drones would obviously not be able to gather the same amount of information as satellites. But other advantages are that it’s more responsive, it doesn’t take potentially hours to get into position to start gathering data, and it can change course more easily. Satellites are fixed in a certain orbit around the earth. It takes time for them to get to a particular spot. It’s a very deliberate process to select and request a particular spot that needs to be imaged, and then you have to wait for the satellite to get into place, for the images to be processed and oftentimes the end product is something that to the average person would not really be intelligible. It takes a certain sort of expertise to be able to analyze those images and make sense of them.

With drones, we start to overcome those obstacles. It’s as quick as somebody just deciding to deploy the drone and using it for whatever its intended purposes. That right there, that sort of shift from the strategic to the tactical level of control is a big advantage, especially if we’re talking about empowering local communities. That also means that it’s more reactive, so, as the situation changes, it could be corrected or repurposed.

Drones would also bring us to the next level in terms of gathering real-time data that we can’t do necessarily right now by relying on human reporting and open-source media available online. Our biggest concern at the moment is to deal with the long distance relationship we have with most of the situations that we’re monitoring by virtue of the fact that we’re being based here in Toronto, and we’re concerned with things happening in Colombia, Sri Lanka or Kenya. We have to rely heavily on communicating with people on the ground, whether via SMS or e-mail, or we have to rely on what we glean from blogs, local NGOs, social media and so on. And in a lot of cases, the technological infrastructure isn’t there. People don’t have Internet access everywhere in the world yet, people don’t have mobile phone everywhere in the world, and there are also a lot of places where people are basically cut off, not necessarily because of physical remoteness but because the way a particular regime has treated an area. However, if we had something like a drone, we could use it to penetrate an area, gather information in a finite amount of time and then get out, or it could be used to set up a semi-permanent communication link with an area and so on.

Drones would not only build capabilities for the Sentinel Project. They would also build capabilities for people on the ground by augmenting local level early warning capacities, which would ultimately help communities at risk more effectively move out of harm’s way and react to violence.

Photos from Fotopedia.

You’ve spent a lot of time in and around statistical offices in sub-Saharan Africa. Can you describe in detail what some of these offices are like compared to their institutional counterparts in Western countries, what tools and resources do they have to work with and what scenes or situations have surprised you over the course of your research?  

The statistical offices across sub-Saharan Africa are generally in poor condition. Also, relative to their own surroundings, the statistical offices often seem to be in a particularly derelict state. Perhaps what is particularly striking is the contrast of this situation with that of another pivotal stakeholder in the economic policy process with much higher resource endowments:  the central bank. While the statistical offices are located in rundown offices, often with limited computer facilities — such as in Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia — the central banks of these countries are located in new high rise buildings with modern facilities. Furthermore, employment in the central banks command higher salaries and prestige, and central bank employees are thus in a better position, both symbolically and physically, in terms of providing timely and useful advice in the policy making process.

Most of the focus I’ve seen on untrustworthy economic growth numbers has been around China, where the gradual betterment of many people’s daily lives is an underpinning of the Communist Party’s legitimacy. In sub-Saharan Africa, what reasons for altering the stats have you come across, or is it simply a lack of detailed stats that leads to poor numbers?

Well, the main problem when compiling GDP estimates at statistical offices in most African economies is that of data availability. The offices who are putting together the national accounts which produce the GDP estimates have very little information about the economy they are supposed to measure. In particular, while they may have very little information about food production, they may have more information about export crops. They know a little bit about some manufacturing. The may have some information on the larger operators. They know about government activities. But there are huge gaps in the information relating to what we call ‘the informal sector‘ or the unrecorded economy. There is little or no data on food production, transport, trade and a range of small scale services, crafts and other activities that provides livelihood for the majority of the population. As a result, the growth and GDP numbers are guesses.  And this large band of uncertainty means that it is easy to tamper with the numbers if it is politically convenient.

Many in the West take generally accurate national statistics for granted, but many would probably assume that stats — like access to healthcare or other indicators — would be worse in Africa. Why should people who care about international development and poverty allievation care about Africa’s poor numbers?

Reliable statistics, including estimates of economic growth rates and per-capita income, are basic to the operation of governments in developing countries and vital to non-governmental organizations and other entities that provide financial aid to them. Rich countries and international financial institutions such as the World Bank allocate their development resources on the basis of such data. The paucity of accurate statistics is not merely a technical problem; it has a massive impact on the welfare of citizens in developing countries. Where do these statistics originate? How accurate are they? My research shows how the statistical capacities of sub-Saharan African economies have fallen into disarray.  The numbers substantially misstate the actual state of affairs. As a result, scarce resources are misapplied. Development policy does not deliver the benefits expected. Policymakers’ attempts to improve the lot of the citizenry are frustrated. Donors have no accurate sense of the impact of the aid they supply. In sum, as I argue in the book, poor numbers are too important to be dismissed as just that.

Is there a country or two that have particularly poor numbers?

There is a lot of variation, and it is very important that any reform or policy initiative to rectify this problem recognizes this variation. For the research in this book I have done interviews with statistical officers and important stakeholders in offices in Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi, between 2007 and 2010. In addition structured interviews have been conducted in a survey of national income accountants in Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Guinea, Lesotho, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Namibia, Mozambique, Niger, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone and South Africa. That means that direct contact has been established with 23 of 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Of these, I would say that the GDP statistics in Zambia and Nigeria are particularly worrisome. Note that the countries that did not respond to my queries or the countries that I did not visit most probably are in even worse state. In a country like Democratic Republic of Congo, or Somalia, there is no, and has been no data produced for many decades now. The IMF and World Bank may still be producing and publishing numbers on these countries but these are largely made up.

You trace the lack of high quality statistics in modern day Africa back to the region’s general historical tendency to shy away from private notions of property; by not collecting taxes, no one really collected any information. What is it about African economic history that sets up the poor numbers of the present day?

That’s correct. The work of economic historians has emphasised that, historically, African polities were typically land abundant and that labour was relatively scarce.This has implications for the property rights regime. The way this works out is that when land is abundant, it is also free — not subject to political taxation. Therefore land has typically not been subject to private property rights, and states have not collected taxes on land holdings. Today, land is not abundant, but because most contemporary African states are based on borders drawn up by colonial powers, this pattern of state control has prevailed. States typically control mines and ports, but not land, and taxes are collected through marketing and sales, not on land or production.

Those are the initial conditions — or structural constraints, if you like. But there were also more recent historical conjectures that has had a massive impact.

The statistical capacity of African states was greatly expanded in the late colonial and early postcolonial period, but it was greatly impaired during the economic crisis of the 1970s.  The economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s hit African economies particularly hard. The importance of statistical offices were neglected in the decades of liberal policy reform that followed — the period of “structural adjustment” in the 1980s and 1990s. In retrospect it may be puzzling that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank embarked on growth oriented reforms without ensuring that there were reasonable baseline estimates that could plausibly establish whether the economies were growing or stagnating. For statistical offices, structural adjustment meant having to account for more with less: Informal and unrecorded markets were growing, while public spending was curtailed. As a result, our knowledge about the economic effects of structural adjustment is limited. More generally, the economic growth time series, or the cumulative record of annual growth between 1960 and today, for African economies does not appropriately capture changes in economic development.

You describe a sort of unholy alliance between data-creators in international institutions and researchers and others who rely on them. Can you explain how the situation came about — and how it perpetuates itself?

Unfortunately, the scholars best equipped to analyse the validity and reliability of economic statistics are often data users themselves, and thus reluctant to undermine the datasets that are the bread and butter of scholarly work. International institutions are not only the main providers and disseminators of the data, but their programmes and plans are often tied to targets and indicators, and therefore they accept the data at face value in the public sphere. Privately, or in technical consultations, advice may be given, or direct pressure applied during the process of producing the data. Finally, on the domestic political scene, there is little to no transparent debate concerning the issue.

As I describe in the book, African statistical offices were increasingly unable to deliver the numbers required for the policy reports and decision models in the 1970s and 1980s. At this point the emphasis shifted towards agreeing upon some numbers, and actual measurement took the backseat. The important stakeholders in this process, such as the World Bank data group, have so far been unwilling to publicly admit these problems, because they throw into doubt the very numbers that are downloadable as evidence of development from their own databases. However, when confronted with some of the research presented in this book, the chief economist for Africa at the World Bank has now declared Africa’s statistical tragedy.  Thus there is some hope that the problem of poor numbers gets the attention it deserves.

Photos courtesy of Morten Jerven

Canadian freelance journalist Naheed Mustafa is trying to crowdsource funding for a long reporting trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan that she estimates will cost about $15,000. When I first read about her Indiegogo campaign, I started thinking about what her crowdfunding attempt said about the state of foreign coverage in Canadian media and about the broader evolution of foreign reporting.

Mustafa has worked (and continues to work) for Canada’s national broadcaster, the CBC, and has also written for The Walrus, one of Canada’s best magazines. Her campaign, which has already raised $2,580, is fascinating: Donors who give $500, for example, will get a silver ring made by local artisans, and those who donate $1,000 to her journalism will get a hand-embroidered queen-sized bed spread from Pakistan.

But aside from the unique and interesting ways this particular project will engage Mustafa’s audience, the campaign raises some intriguing questions about foreign reporting and journalistic independence in an era of shrinking newsroom budgets for both travel and freelance fees. She sent this response to me when I asked her to do a Q&A with the Toronto Review about her project.

Naheed Mustafa: I have some conflicting feelings about this venture and I’m not fully comfortable with it yet but I think a discussion would be a good way to get some of that out there. I think the crowdfunding idea is very second-nature to people in their 20s and maybe 30s but for someone like me who got a start when freelance work was plentiful and, if not lucrative, at least sustainable, it feels a tiny bit sad. Which is not to say I’m doing this halfheartedly or that I’m not in complete awe of the incredible support people have shown. Fundamentally, I guess I feel sad at the fact that there is little institutional support for foreign reporting. I understand all the reasons — the economy, the contracting of the industry, the impact of digital, convergence, and all the other reasons we talk about all the time. The moving away from foreign reporting is happening at precisely the time that Canada is increasingly aggressive in the world both in military and economic terms. This is exactly the time that Canadians need solid reporting on what’s happening “out there” so we can be better (and more vigilant) citizens here at home.

So, as news organizations continue to feel the crunch it’s clear that journalists wanting to do foreign reporting are going to have to come up with alternatives for funding. For me, this campaign is also an experiment not only in terms of seeing how much support I can get but, also, I’m interested in seeing what kind of impact this will have on my reporting experience — will funders remain interested as my project proceeds? Will they feel a sense of ownership over my work? What about accountability — how will funders respond if they are in some way dissatisfied with my work? It will be instructive to see how this unfolds.

In a way I see the relationship I have to my funders not unlike the one artists had back in the day when they relied on patrons and benefactors (do they still?). Corporate media is good for some things but foreign reporting just doesn’t seem to be a focus for Canadian media outlets anymore. I’m cautious but excited by this opportunity and I think it’ll lead to many interesting things.

Iain Marlow: Thanks so much for doing this. My first question is sort of simple. Do we not already get a vast amount of journalism out of Afghanistan and Pakistan, from large, established news outlets with bureaus and sunk costs there? This isn’t the first funded project to cover the region that I’ve seen. And you work for mainstream outlets such as the Walrus and the CBC, which are not exactly small, unorthodox companies whose reporting perspective desperately need a wider audience. Why should presumably Western readers pay up to send a mainstream Canadian journalist to a well covered region of the world?

NM: I would disagree that Afghanistan and Pakistan get vast amounts of (good) coverage. They get covered primarily in the context of how the war story is playing out specifically as it relates to “us.” There are specific tropes that have taken hold and these are replayed again and again. What we don’t get from the region are stories about social change and how conflict has affected these societies with respect to long-term impact. Sure, you have Al Jazeera and you have the BBC’s Pashto and Farsi services, there are blogs run by think tanks and such that get into what’s happening in various parts of the country but the bulk of the coverage is still about western policy and transfer of power.

I would go so far as to say that even when Afghanistan was a reporting priority for Canadian media, we did a fairly poor job. There are examples of individual reporters with large Canadian media outlets who did some amazing work – Paul Watson, Murray Brewster, and Graeme Smith come to mind. Matthieu Aikins has done valuable work – he’s a Canadian freelancer. In Afghanistan there are a few people doing some very interesting reporting, getting into parts of the country where we rarely heard from before. Some of this has to do with the fact that military embeds are being done with Afghan National Army units now and they are engaging in a completely different way. We’re getting a different view of the country and a glimpse into how security might be negotiated moving forward.

I would say the English language coverage of Pakistan is pretty thin – not in terms of volume but certainly in terms of depth. The reasons for that are not so different from the reasons other countries where English isn’t the first language are so poorly covered. There are western reporters in Islamabad, some who were reassigned from Kabul but it’s akin to trying to cover, say, Quebec from Ottawa without speaking French. In other words, there’s only so deep you can go with your reporting. There’s also the tendency to link Pakistan and Afghanistan by way of the Taliban and see Pakistan only in the context of that conflict.

I want to be very clear that I’m not being personally critical of the reporters working in the region; you make the best of your circumstances. I suspect if I was in China or Germany or Egypt or even parts of the US, I would encounter similar challenges in reporting.

As far as the point that I’m working for mainstream outlets, this is obviously true. Part of that, frankly, has to do with pay. I do contribute to smaller, more eclectic publications/shows but what they pay is closer to an honourarium. That’s part of the dilemma, isn’t it? Some of the more creative outlets can’t afford to pay and the ones that can pay a living wage aren’t interested in what you’re doing or don’t have space for it. One of my favourite pieces – because it was important to me – was a cover story I did for Maisonneuve about an Afghan who spent his youth fighting the Soviets. I worked with Drew Nelles and he gave me an opportunity to do something that I wanted to do that most likely wouldn’t have found a home elsewhere. But the main reason I could afford to do it was because I’d already done the reporting piggy-backed on another assignment so doing the item for Maisonneuve didn’t incur any additional costs (except my time).

Even though a lot of my work is for mainstream outlets, I think I bring unconventional stories or at least stories that you’re unlikely to hear elsewhere. I think being a woman helps my reporting from the region. It gives me access to women in a way that men simply can’t have and access to a perspective that isn’t often included. As a freelancer, I’m less restricted in my movements than reporters working for large media outlets. Western readers, Canadians especially, will read and hear stories from me that they’re largely not getting from English media outlets that are established there.

IM: When you started grappling with the idea of crowdfunding your reporting, what excited you most about the project?

I think what excited me most was how this form of funding will affect how I proceed. I alluded to this in my opening remarks that I wonder whether funders will feel they have a vested interest in what I’m doing and how will they participate as I go along. I also really enjoy using social media and I’m keen to use various tools to document the less journalistic aspects of this trip.

Alternately, what freaked you out about proceeding this way?

Frankly, my biggest fear, which is still with me, is that no one will contribute and I won’t meet my goal. That sounds like an obvious fear but it kind of feels like waiting to get picked for a team in high school gym class.

You’ve been a freelancer for a while, it seems, and I’m a little bit perplexed about pursuing this type of funding when you’ve written about the region before and have contacts with news organizations. A cynic might mention the free market here, that the invisible hand will pick those who can and cannot do reporting projects like this. But every freelancer’s situation is unique. As a staff writer, I likely take a lot of this stuff for granted, and I admit that readily. Can you describe your living situation, if you can, and how freelancing has changed over the years to require an approach like this?

I do have contacts with news organizations and I’m lucky that people are generous in passing along contacts and helping with introductions. (And I, in turn, do the same for others). I’ve also won awards for my previous reporting from the region so I have a good track record. But other than three or four smallish radio features I worked on for an American broadcaster a few years ago, no outlet’s ever covered my costs. I’ve always paid my own costs. That’s typical for freelancers. The consequence of this is that I have to churn out a huge volume of work since most of what I produce goes to paying my fixed expenses. There are fellowships and funds but not nearly enough that a freelancer could rely on an outside funding source for regular reporting opportunities. And I get that this is also a problem for staff reporters. Everyone’s cutting costs and it’s increasingly common to do a foreign story from a desk in Toronto.

I also don’t have a lot of trust in “the invisible hand.” There are so many jokes I could make but I’ll just say that I think the marketplace doesn’t always have good judgment about journalistic value.

In terms of my living situation, I’m married and I have three kids. I work for a variety of publications and also work on and off as a producer at CBC Radio. When I first started working back in the early 90s, work was plentiful. There were challenges in terms of getting to know people and, of course, the internet was in its infancy so it was a different media landscape. As time’s gone on, digital has really shifted the environment. This is a media forum so I’m sure your readers have discussed to death how digital has altered the media world. There are infinitely more venues for your work and opportunities for getting people to hear and read your work but decent compensation is harder and harder to come by.

I think filmmakers are more used to this model of funding but it still feels new for journalism (even though I know this has been going on for some time). I think as time goes on, journalists are going to have to establish direct financial relationships with their readers, whether it’s readers paying writers/producers per item or funding projects directly.

Crowdsourced journalism projects can be seen as democratizing story selection, but I worry that going down this route might also pick winners and losers in a relatively arbitrary way. As a reporter who has covered issues that play well to online audiences, I’ve seen the online hordes muster over one issue (such as the introduction of usage-based billing fees for Internet bills) while ignoring others (such as funding cuts to programs that put computers in libraries in low income or rural areas). Do you not worry that while crowdfunding can enable people to tell certain stories, there is also the risk that it might enable a certain type (say, stories about cats) and not others (such as famine or war)?

Audience response is always a problem, not just in this type of selection. Ask a reporter who’s written about famine what kind of reader response her work gets compared to an article about a kitten that needs a place to live. Sorry, but dying children somewhere else will often lose out to a stray kitten here at home. I’m not saying people are terrible but this problem is not unlike the lament that people would rather watch a celebrity reality show than a documentary about murdered Aboriginal women. They would. And it’s sad. Having said all that, there will always be people who will choose to support journalism looking at famine or war despite the fact that cats own the internet.

The key, I think, is that along with writing about usage-based billing fees for Internet bills, you should still write about putting computers in libraries in low income or rural areas. The popular stories aren’t always the most important ones but the question is how to give people what they want to know and also give them what they ought to know. There are a lot of people who disagree with things I’ve written about Afghanistan but they’ve still shown me support.

And just on a purely anecdotal note, I think people want more in-depth reporting. Despite the shrinking of newscasts and the slimming of papers, I have never encountered someone who says, “Gee, I have way too much information about the world. I wish I could pay for less.”

As a follow to that, and in reference to your earlier comment about patrons, is there not also a risk that going to far down this path might rope foreign journalism to institutions with their own goals? The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada offers a reporting grant to Canadian journalists for reporting in Southeast Asia, but there is not a similar one from a comparable organization for either South America or Africa (though the Gordon Sinclair Foundation recently announced a $15,000 grant for a big project with no geographic catch). Is it too hard to imagine a dystopian future of weakened news outlets relying on, say, Barrick Gold to pay for reporting costs?

My short answer is yes. If private corporations become the only way to sustain foreign reporting (or even in-depth Canadian reporting like, say, in Canada’s north where it’s bloody expensive to go) then we’re all in big trouble. The challenge in this isn’t only for reporters and producers. The challenge in this is for media outlets as well. Maybe more collaborations are in order. Maybe outlets need to open themselves up to projects pitched from the outside that have financial backing from other broadcasters or newspapers/magazines. For example, if I’m working on a giant project on food security in Canada’s north then maybe the largest backer of the project gets a series of articles plus a web video; the second largest backer gets an in-depth feature; the third largest gets a couple of photo essays and an audio item. There’s a lot to think through but it can be done and if media outlets collaborate then everyone gets original work and the reporter gets paid. Also, a Canadian version of the Pulitzer Center would be nice.

At the same time, we live in a social media age and in an era where reporters are more engaged with their audiences. You mentioned a little about this in your opening comments, but I’m curious about the potential you see for using crowdfunding to alter how foreign coverage is done (beyond “multiplatform” reporting and online multimedia features). Your offer to retrieve curios for donors on your reporting trip is something I’ve never seen before.

The curios are “perks” that are part of the Indiegogo platform – incentives for contributions. Not my idea but not one that I’m opposed to. I tried to keep them mostly about the trip and reporting itself so a weekly photograph from the trip or a regular email that offers insights that won’t necessarily make it into the reporting. These are things I do anyway – sending informal dispatches to friends and family or posting pictures on my Facebook page. This will just require a little more of a formal dispatch and the picture will come with a short write-up about the context. At the higher end the incentives are things that can be purchased locally and so, in a limited way, support a local artisan. I don’t have a problem with it.

When I posted your funding pitch on my Facebook page and started a discussion about what it might say about journalism, we quickly ended up at the tale of the freelancer in British Columbia who wrote about John Furlong and is now involved in a lawsuit that immediately outstripped her freelance payment. This is maybe less of an issue for foreign coverage in weak states with slow or hobbled judicial systems, and is not particular to crowdfunded freelancing, but it does raise the issue of institutional support — rather than a sort of diffuse, crowdfunded approach. I mean, could you crowdfund, in advance, an investigation into a Canadian mining company’s operations?

Institutional support for freelancers is an ongoing conversation (rant?). Any journalist who’s going to take on a controversial subject that could end in legal consequences needs to go in with eyes open. Is a small publication that acknowledges it can offer you no help if things go poorly the best venue for such an item? Maybe not. But then what if no one else wants it or is willing to take on the risk for the sake of a “mere” freelancer? There are no short answers. Maybe it’s better to crowdsource pro bono legal help?

You and I are both not getting paid for doing this Q&A, and though this may raise your funding pitch to a broader audience, other writers and photographers for the Toronto Review do not get paid (we have no ads and I don’t get paid either). This is sort of intriguing, given we’re creating a sense of community and discussing the issues outside of mainstream formats. But without getting too meta, what does this conversation say about the state of international reporting, writing and analysis in Canada in 2013?

I think it says we’re all in this together and that even though the parts are all doing this for free, the sum may actually end up generating enough support that we can all carry on with the work we want to do.

Lastly, can you, um, donate a photo essay to the Review when you get back (given the oodles  of publicity this will give you. Just kidding… sort of)?

In the language of the internet, um, lolz? Actually, I would love to do something for the Review. If it’s a photo essay you want, a photo essay you’ll get.

All photographs of Afghanistan and Pakistan by Naheed Mustafa.

(Disclosure: After reading her responses, I made a $25 contribution.)

The sun falls and casts a burning glow across the landscape as my plane descends into a small town in eastern Burma. I’m traveling to Shan State, the largest territory in the country, a wild, scenic place of mountains, jungle and rivers. It is one of the most ethnically diverse areas of the world, a region of fragmentation that largely lacks centralized control and where, for decades, Shan princes known as sabwas, drug warlords and ethnic insurgent groups have each controlled fiefdoms tucked away in valleys or atop the hills.

I travel through this strange, alluring place on mountain roads, down rivers and through small towns with names I can’t remember. Past Ox carts with wide-eyed drivers drifting in and out of the fog, wild dogs that roam dangerously in packs at night and strange handmade vehicles of welded metal that spit plumes of dark acrid smoke from their bellies.

The scenes feel anachronistic, out of a distant past. But in the towns there are whispers of change. Motorcycles roar by horse drawn carriages and share roads with huge, overflowing trucks laden with grain.  The sounds of the old lakeside markets are drowned out by the helicopter-like drone of uncovered boat engines, and in the town fluorescent lit rooms in modern concrete structures contain relics of the past.

“It was much easier to convince a Soviet that your way of life was better. You could take them to Kmart in the United States, or to Wal-Mart, because they were driven by many of the same things that we’re driven by: success and taking care of our families,” Robert Dannenberg, a former CIA agent, once mused to reporter Peter Bergen. “When you’re dealing with a man who has religious or extremist views, it’s completely different.”

In other words, if a theocratic state got the bomb, would it act rationally like a state or like some feverishly religious, “irrational” non-state actor, such as a terrorist group? Basking in the yellow glow of Roy Thompson Hall’s grand theatre, Toronto’s patricians, intellectual glitterati, and foreign policy wonks hoped to find out. They were all gathered to listen to experts make their case for why the world could, or could not, tolerate a nuclear armed Iran.

The theatre hummed with chipper greetings and discrete whispers of celebrity sightings. (There’s Michael Ignatieff!) But this fall’s Munk Debate was no light matter. Only Rudyard Griffiths’s pink tie and bright teal-stripped socks provided some levity. The Munk Debates, organized by Griffiths and Patrick Luciani, are always lively: A recurring debate on critical challenges confronting Canada and the international community. The resolution up for debate on November 26, 2012, was this: Be it resolved the world cannot tolerate an Iran with nuclear weapons capability.

In the admittedly unscientific, pre-debate poll, the team arguing for this motion held court with 60 % to 24 % of polled attendees voting in favour of the resolution, with 16 % undecided. The evening, though, left the audience with two different but equally ominous sketches of the future: Either accept a nuclear capable Iran, maintaining faith in nuclear stability and the powers of containment and deterrence; or attack its facilities to avert the proliferation of nuclear weapons and implosion of the Middle East.

Both teams agreed that a nuclear Iran would be terribly inconvenient, but where the pro-con divide emerged, respectively, was on whether a nuclear Iran was preventable or inevitable. It is one of the western world’s most defining foreign policy questions today.

In opposition to the resolution, Fareed Zakaria, host of the CNN show GPS and Vali Nasr, a distinguished Middle East expert and policy advisor, championed the development of a robust containment strategy.

Charles Krauthammer, named by The Financial Times as one of the most influential commentators in the U.S., and General Amos Yadlin, a former head of Military Intelligence for the Israeli Defence Forces and an Israeli national security advisor, had gloomier prognoses for the world order should Iran be allowed to go nuclear.

On a technical note, a state has nuclear weapons capability once it has developed the infrastructure and amassed the resources required to make a bomb relatively easily and on short notice. While it has been reported that Iran has around 139 kilograms of 20 % enriched uranium, and has come closer to completing the Fordo enrichment plant deep in the mountains near the city of Qom, Iran has yet to make the political decision to make a weapon. (About 240 kg of 20 % enriched uranium is enough to make a bomb if enriched further.)

Those less perturbed by a nuclear Iran rely on a firm belief in basic realist conceptions of state behavior in the international system: That states are self-interested actors seeking to secure their own survival and power relative to other states. Zakaria and Nasr echoed Kenneth Waltz’s theory of nuclear stability, which holds that nuclear geopolitical rivals would not dare escalate conflict to nuclear war out of self-interest. This is because, as Waltz says, nuclear states are “locked in death’s embrace.” Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) is the concept at the core of stable nuclear deterrence between two nuclear adversaries. Nasr and Zakaria argued that no state, especially one with only basic nuclear capability, would ever use nuclear weapons for fear of nuclear annihilation in return.

Of course, believing that nuclear stability and MAD apply to Iran requires that one have faith in the Iranian regime’s rationality as a state actor. “The fact that people are willing to die for a cause is not unique to Muslims,” Nasr said, drawing laughter and applause from the crowd in Toronto. “The Iranian leaders are old men. They didn’t get to that age by actually believing in suicide bombing…Yes, of course, General Yadlin is right in the fact that the morality and ethics of this regime are abhorrent, and they use obviously poor, uneducated, fanatical kids to achieve their strategic objectives, but there is no evidence that Iranian rulers actually make their calculations on the basis of wishing to expedite their departure into the next world.”

Both Zakaria and Nasr fought hard to defend the Iranian regime’s rational character, striking back against assertions by the opposing team that the Islamic Republic itself is motivated by martyrdom. Zakaria argued the Iranian regime is well aware that “power does not flow from crude bombs,” but from innovation and a strong GDP, two sources of power currently being eroded by tough sanctions on Iran’s financial, energy and business sectors. Iran, according to Nasr and Zakaria, is like all other states in the international system: A rational, self-interested actor that responds to incentives. And if history can foretell the behavior of Iran’s supposedly irrational regime, Zakaria’s and Nasr’s side can take comfort in the fact that during the Iran-Iraq war, Ayatollah Khomeini agreed to covert dealings with Israel and the United States – its ostensibly existential enemies – to obtain advanced weapons. Iran bypassed its anti-Zionist and anti-American ideology, currently the source of the hawks’ anxiety, to satisfy its strategic interests.

In his opening statement, Zakaria spoke about how the Soviets during the Cold War were also derided as crazy and irrational, and how China’s Mao Zedong was considered to be “truly crazy.” He continued: “Mao openly talked about the need for nuclear war. He said it would cause sacrifices, but it would be educational. And he said half the world would be destroyed, but the other half would be socialist.” So while Iran speaks of annihilating Israel, the international community should take Iran’s rhetoric with a grain of salt. Zakaria says that despite ideological differences and diabolical pronouncements, every state is a rational actor – and that it’s ultimately about survival, a standard interest in the system of nation states.

Zakaria and Nasr argued that Iran is not fixated on nuclear weapons capability in order to actually use these weapons but in order to cement Iran’s status as the regional hegemon. And what of Iran’s public goal of annihilating Israel? As Nasr and Zakaria argued, Iran has historically sought to alter the balance of power in the Middle East in its favour – to accomplish that, the Shi’ite Persian regime has had to champion the Arab Street’s essential cause: an independent Palestinian state. A symptom of that mission is the need to spout vitriol against Israel.

The Iran-Israel relationship acts as a microcosm for testing the opposing hypothesis regarding a nuclear capable Iran. The debate on Israel’s concerns about an Iranian bomb were, unsurprisingly, more emotional – evident in the audience’s attempt to applaud remarks onward to victory.

On Israel’s capabilities and potential vulnerability to an Iranian attack, the two teams were inhabiting separate realities. Despite Netanyahu’s evocation of a second Holocaust should Iran go nuclear, Israel, as pointed out in the debate, has second-strike capability and can therefore deter other states in the system. Nuclear stability pessimists, like Stanford political scientist Scott Sagan, argue that MAD only works when both nuclear actors have second-strike capability and deterrence only works when retaliation is the guaranteed response to an initial nuclear strike. Dmitry Adamsky, author of The Culture of Military Innovation, has argued that Israel must change the way it thinks about its nuclear arsenal: Israel currently only feels secure if it is the sole nuclear power in the Middle East, but it must recognize that its nuclear arsenal will gird it against a nuclear Iran – the weapons will act as a deterrent. Israel links its survival, and that of the Jewish nation, to its superior conventional military and nuclear capability. According to the laws of MAD, those capabilities should act as deterrents

Krauthammer and Yadlin, though, implied that an attack against Iran, with all other options having failed, is necessary to preserve Israel, as well as peace and stability in the Middle East. Zakaria and Nasr align with Adamsky’s arguments, seeing Israel as a power more than adequately equipped to contain and deter a nuclear capable Iran.

To Krauthammer and Yadlin, a nuclear capable Iran is not inevitable. They do not see Iran as a typical variable in a nuclear deterrence equation; instead, Iran is the anomaly in a theory that cannot be tested safely. Iran, once armed, would catalyze nuclear proliferation across the region, adopt more aggressive policies toward Israel and give these weapons to terrorists – as Iran is currently assumed to do with conventional weaponry. They maintained that nuclear deterrence would not succeed as it has in other cases, such as between India and Pakistan or during the Cold War, because the actors and contexts are wholly different.

The volatility of the Middle East is a unique backdrop for a nuclear arms race, and feeds the fear of nuclear pessimists that a nuclear Iran would force Sunni states, particularly Saudi Arabia, to balance Iran’s new nuclear power by acquiring nuclear weapons of their own – or else be left at the mercy of an Iranian security umbrella. Critics of this vision, including Zakaria, argue that Israel’s procurement of nuclear arms in the 1960s did not spark a nuclear arms race. The distinction here, as Krauthammer and Yadlin were quick to point out, is that Israel did not publicly express any intent to attack states in the region, and viewed its nuclear capability as a deterrent. Krauthammer insisted that proliferation did not occur once Israel developed nuclear capability because “Israel has no intention to annihilate a neighboring country.” He continued, “Do you think Egypt [or] Saudi Arabia live in terror that one day out of the blue Israel is going to destroy Cairo or Riyad? … Everybody understands in the region Israel is not going to start nuclear aggression. It’s simply inconceivable. Whereas Iran is intervening in Gaza, arming Hezbollah, intervening in Syria and elsewhere…[Iran] is a nation that when it threatens to annihilate another, people take it seriously.”

Krauthammer and Yadlin said repeatedly that the Iranian regime would not adhere to the principles of MAD because it is not a rational actor. They argued that Iran is motivated by fundamentalist Islamic principles. Moreover, they argued, Iran’s irrationality is illustrated by Iran’s intervention in Syria in support of the Assad regime, and by the fact that it has allowed its currency to radically depreciate. As a result of this, Iran will not hesitate to follow through on its stated mission of blowing Israel off the map without regard for its nation’s survival, or regional stability. (Whereas Zakaria and Nasr argued that Iran’s bellicose rhetoric against Israel was more to garner support across the Arab world, rather than serve as a call to war.)

A new part of this nuclear equation is that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. Using non-state actors as proxies for its interests is part of Iran’s strategic depth policy. (Strategic depth is defined as a policy of developing diplomatic or military relationships with states or non-state actors as a way of balancing against regional threats to a state’s national interest.) The threat of terrorists gaining access to nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons material is a grave concern that dovetailed with the debate’s resolution: That a nuclear Iran cannot be tolerated. The danger according to Yadlin and Krauthammer is that terrorists will certainly not hold back.

Does MAD apply to professional martyrs armed by a rogue state? The debaters didn’t get a chance to hash this out. But quite obviously Hamas and Hezbollah would derive great strategic benefit from having their premier patron state develop nuclear capability; no doubt that would change the dynamic of future conflicts between Israel and groups that use military might to advance the Palestinian cause.

Waltz has argued that a rational state like Iran, if it became a nuclear power, would not take the risk of providing nuclear weapons material to terrorist groups because such groups can neither be controlled nor trusted. The stability equation may not apply, however, to terrorists who feel emboldened by a nuclear cushion and who are then willing to engage in more frequent low-intensity conflict.

One thing Zakaria and Nasr cannot intellectually abide is a preventative attack on Iran, which they feel would embolden the Iranian regime and unleash catastrophic instability across the region – not to mention the obvious loss of life. Whenever the debate veered towards the question of whether or not to attack Iran, Yadlin reminded everyone that the resolution was not on the merits or risks of an attack, but whether a nuclear Iran would be tolerable. He defended the need to exhaust all other options – diplomacy, sanctions and covert operations – before attacking.

Like history before it, the debate swung to the side of nuclear stability with 18 % of the vote shifting to the team against the motion, leaving the end tally at 58 % in favour of the resolution and 42% against it. A state, as Zakaria put it, cannot be bombed into compliance or democracy. If any negotiated solution is to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear capability, or if the end point of a containment or deterrent strategy is to nudge Iran into relinquishing its weapons, egos must be managed and stoked. The regime has framed its nuclear ambitions as a nationalist necessity and a right of the Iranian people, which is a tactic the Iranian leadership must now live with, for its legitimacy hangs in the balance. It seems as though the only way to prevent a nuclear capable Iran, and avoid catastrophe, is to will the Iranians into conceding  without losing face – a delicate diplomatic dance.

Photos by Tom Sandler Photography

LAGOS, NIGERIA—“Don’t you ever mention Antibalas and Fela in the same sentence again,” Chike says from the front seat as the beat up VW van jerks to another halt in the gridlock on the way out of central Lagos. The sun has just set, and it’s dark, but he’s bathed in the warm red glow of brakelights. I’m sitting in the back, on a beat-up, three-seater couch shoved into the hold with two other men in thick, knotted dreadlocks. I’m trying hard to make out Chike’s expressions in the shadows, but I keep turning around to stare nervously out past the space where the roll-up back door should be, into the eyes of other people stuck in an endless line of cars stretching back toward downtown. “Can we roll down the back door?” I ask. One of the other guys, over the sputtering engine, replies: “The driver needs it to see.”

Understood. We continue rolling slowly, along with thousands of others in this African megalopolis, past the source of the indeterminable gridlock: An SUV that collided with one of the numerous battered minibuses that ply these streets, men hanging out the side. This SUV, though, has ended up spectacularly upside down, marvelously upside down, basically on top of the minibus, which is crushed, both vehicles resting on the median; some men sit near the side of the road, while others bicker with each other. One man on a cellphone stands in the glare of the headlights, waiting for reception, staring into the black sky.

Antibalas, the New York-based band Chike is referring to, plays the Nigerian melange of American funk, jazz and African rhythms known around the world as Afrobeat. Fela Anikulapo Kuti, or Fela, as he’s known, is renowned for inventing the genre and using his talent as a megaphone to antagonize Nigeria’s brutal and corrupt military governments. He ran a compound that effectively functioned as an autonomous state within Nigeria and at one point had 27 wives. The military governments are now gone, and so is Fela, the demigod, who died in 1997. But in a kinetic place like Lagos, Fela’s energy pulses still, out of the car radios in a more modern, R&B form; Fela’s spirit has been autotuned. Antibalas is almost unfathomably removed from most people’s daily reality here, a safe, sanitized version of this place’s belly-burning, eye-popping intensity, so even though I mentioned them and Fela in the same sentence, and I must stress it was in response to one of Chike’s questions, I can’t blame him for morphing into a stern pastor before me on the subject. (A New Jersey-based Nigerian business executive, on the other hand, tells me he loved Fela! on Broadway, for which Antibalas was the house band.)

With a population somewhere between 10-million and 21-million, Lagos is either the largest city in Sub-Saharan Africa or the largest city in all of Africa, ahead of even Cairo. Regardless, it’s one of the largest cities in the world. But all of that’s as hazy as the thrumming, kerosene-drenched air, considering there’s been no real census here since 2006, almost all of them have been contested given the politicization of population in Nigeria, and the fact that this city-state could be expanding at a rate of about 600,000 people every year. Most of them, of course, slam right into the slums on the sprawling outskirts, where there is almost always no legally legitimate claim to their housing. How you’d count everyone is beyond me, anyway: It’s really hard to imagine bespectacled bureaucrats wandering into the slums with pen-and-clipboard; although, for a couple of afternoons, that’s basically what I did, on assignment for my newspaper.

Of course, to paint Lagos as a lawless enclave on the coast of West Africa is all too easy. The slums make for picturesque poverty — particularly Makoko, which is a slum of shacks built out on stilts into Lagos Lagoon’s fetid water — and they cover roughly two-thirds of the city. But the city has its downtown, even if to get there from one of the main highways you drive right above a little market selling goats. It has bank headquarters, big commercial buildings, and a massive port with cranes yawning over the water into ocean-faring  juggernauts. It’s an impressive place, a symbol of Africa’s complicated economic renaissance.

Everyone you meet, whether in meetings or on the fly, whether Big Important Men In Suits or their female assistants, almost without fail they will try and bring you into their plans somehow, and they all have three or four business cards and are trying to figure out which one to give you: The one for this business or that venture, this start-up or that one. Did I tell you I’m looking for opportunities, they ask, because I may not be in this job forever and so maybe, just maybe, we should stay in touch! Who knows?

Toni Kan is a glorious example of all this. A consummate social butterfly, he’s a newspaper columnist and book reviewer and fiction writer and ex-telecommunications executive. He’s just returned from Italy, where he was on a writer’s retreat, and is now bobbing around Lagos’s social scene, stopping by the Lights! Camera! Africa! film festival at the posh Southern Sun Hotel, hugging people, saying hello. With his diesel generator and the driver and Lagos’s insane rent, he’s got to hustle, got to hand out business cards for his PR business. He’s just one of the links between Lagos and the world, one of the many globally minded citizens who is trying live their life in a Lagos they know could be better. When he first arrived in the city, though, he wasn’t who he is now.

“I had a bad stammer then, and I realized: You can’t stammer in Lagos. You need to be on your toes, you can’t just slack,” he says. “I just know this was where I wanted to be.” He talks about how pumping the music scene is, the booming “Nollywood” film industry. But he’s also cautious: Corruption is everywhere. The oil-drenched economy means that everyone is fighting to get on the inside. Rebels become Big Men; Big Men become enfeebled cash distributors. The national government has tended to pay off its critics, especially in the oil-rich Niger Delta, where it pays militants not to steal oil and kidnap foreign oil workers. It usually works, until the politicians who control the armed bands get booted from office in an election and go right back to looting, explains one Nigerian social worker who works there. The government is cracking down on corruption, and educated Nigerians are coming back to cities like Lagos with big plans, but it’s going to take time, if things don’t fall off the rails again. “When we go anywhere else, we excel, but when we come back, we revert to foolishness,” Kan says. “This is Nigeria. Everybody who’s trying to fight the system is trying to get a leg in.”

Everyone is hustling in Lagos. Lagos, itself, is a sort of hustler, and may hustle you in the airport if you’re not careful. Certainly, its restaurants and hotels and bars and businesses, all powered by thundering generators that down diesel like Star and Gulder beers, will hit you up in the city proper, sucking the 1,000 Naira bills, each worth about $6, straight from your wallet. Chike’s hotel, the Bogobiri, is an example of that. He jokes about how much cheaper the beer is out in the street. Because of my foreign credit card, and because most of the Nigerian economy is “informal” or doesn’t take credit cards anyway, I have to pay for a week’s stay in cash; and when the largest bill is for 1,000 Naira, it means I’m walking back to my driver’s dented Toyota from the ATM, which spits 20,000 at a time, with a bulging wallet, two bulging pant pockets, and two bulging shirt pockets. At the Bogobiri, it all empties out. Hustled!

Chike, the others and I, after navigating traffic made even worse by road closures, eventually arrive at our destination: The New Afrika Shrine, a version of Fela’s legendary nightclub revived by his son Femi, who plays a faster, more pulsating version of Afrobeat than the one his father played. Because we are late, he is already performing. We walk past the man selling weed out of a shopping bag. We pay the 500 Naira admission and stroll into the cavernous hall. We get beers, pass the pool tables and station ourselves below a woman gyrating and stomping in a cage. A woman is dancing alone in a corner, her shadow snaking along the wall.

On stage with Femi are a guitarist and bassist, a percussionist and drummer, a full horn section, and other musicians, as well as three dancers in tribal gear, faces painted. It’s intense. Loud.

We start moving, dancing, and soon get more beers. People dance past, huge joints in their mouths, and fist bump Femi, who has to bend down from the high stage to reach them. At one point, a man with no legs, wheeling himself around on a board, climbs on stage to applause. He fist bumps Femi, too. He is a god here, like his father was before him. And like his father, Femi speaks and people listen and what he says is quite true about Lagos and Nigeria, more broadly. “Politics is big, big business!”

Glenna Gordon’s personal site is here.

HONDURAS—Although Mexico and Colombia often steal the grim limelight of the ultra-violent, Latin American drug trade, Honduras has now become possibly the most important cocaine transit point in the region. Along with Guatemala and El Salvador, these countries make up the so-called “Northern Triangle,” a region with the highest homicide rate in the world.

Honduras, a country barely associated with the drug trade in the popular imagination, now has the highest homicide rate in the world, with El Salvador and Guatemala not too far behind. All three of these countries are well ahead of both Mexico and Colombia, two countries with outsized (though obviously still deserving) reputations for narcotics-related violence.

The history of Honduras is not entirely peaceful, but the dramatic increase of violence is undeniably recent: In 2010, there were 6,239 intentional homicides, nearly triple the 2005 rate of 2,417. In casual conversations, many Hondurans note the situation has especially worsened in the past 5 years, and said they were far less likely to go out to bars or clubs on a weekend than before. Of course, these attitudes inevitably make the situation worse, leaving fewer “eyes in the street” and creating even more incentive to pursue illicit activity and income.

From June 2010 to December 2011, I worked in Honduras for an environmental non-profit, and the murder figures come as no surprise to me or any of the other expatriates I worked with or met. But why is there such a problem in Honduras, in particular? The reasons are complex, but in addition to possessing an ideal geographic location between points of production in South America and the distribution hub of Mexico, Honduras also faces chronic economic problems and political instability, both of which appear to be exerting the strongest influence on its prominence in the drug trade.

ECONOMIC INSTABILITY

One of the main reasons for the cocaine trade’s dominance here is sheer economic power. British journalist Misha Glenny suggested in 2009 that global crime networks control an enormous 15 % of global GDP, “buck[ing] the current recession with equanimity.” The cocaine trade likely represents an even greater percentage of the Honduran economy, and though little hard data exists (likely due to the danger in collecting it), local estimates are that between 20 and 60 % of the Honduran economy is laundered drug money. In my experience, these figures seem reasonable. As an American friend of mine once aptly pointed out, “There are way too many [Toyota] Hiluxes in La Ceiba (a resort city) for the legal economy.” An abundance of empty high-end hotels also suggest the presence of money laundering.

The continued dominance of the cocaine trade in this region runs contrary to global trends. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2010) has confirmed that cocaine use has declined significantly from its peak in the 1980s, with consumption dropping in the United States and other key market areas. Explanations for this range from the stigmatization of a formerly-popular derivative (crack) to the recent sophistication of synthetic chemical drugs, such as methamphetamines. Regardless, the quantity and monetary value of cocaine are still enormous, and it in 2010 it was estimated that hundreds of tons of cocaine, worth billions of dollars, still pass through Honduras each year.

The hard economic times in Honduras, and especially since President Manuel Zelaya’s forced removal in June 2009, have made the country more vulnerable to well-financed drug traffickers.

But another important factor has been the decline of fruit production at Dole and Chiquita subsidiaries. Honduras, once the quintessential “banana republic,” has seen fruit exports gradually decline since the 1980s.  According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), banana exports fell a cumulative rate of 4.5 % annually from 1985 to 2002, despite a population increase of more than 2 million (from 4.2 to 6.6 million) over the same period. Many Hondurans in La Ceiba commented on (and lamented) the decline of the fruit companies’ presence in the past 20 to 30 years, particularly as the drug trade (and a modest degree of tourism) were the only obvious replacements. The maquiladora clothing manufacturing industry has also helped fill the void, but hardly to the degree of influence once exerted by the mighty fruit companies.

The dramatic change in government in 2009 also had disastrous economic effects: Aid was suspended and tourism plummeted.  An estimated 180,000 Hondurans lost their jobs during this period, in a country already hard-hit by the recession. Organized crime reportedly seized on this opportunity. The illicit sums involved are remarkable compared to the legal economy. One friend reported that simply delivering a car to a set location, once a month, would have earned him $2,000 (U.S.) per trip from the trafficking organizations – double what most would consider a very good wage in Honduras, and roughly 4 to 8 times the standard wage. Other reports indicate drug-trafficking organizations pay a month’s wages or more for as little as a day’s work of simple unloading or delivery work. As the legal economy disintegrated, it is little wonder that work from drug-trafficking organizations would have been attractive to many Hondurans.

POLITICAL INSTABILITY

The political situation in Honduras since the government was overthrown has also been ideal for organized crime, as a corrupt, poorly-functioning, troubled-but-not-altogether-collapsed state that retained the structures of legitimacy.  Scholar J. Mark Ruhl noted in early 2010, shortly following the government change, that cocaine traffickers were “expanding their influence” in this political atmosphere. James Bosworth of the Woodrow Wilson International Center also noted that year that although targeting organized crime was downplayed under president Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009), it was completely ignored by his successor, Roberto Micheletti, who was looking simply to build basic legitimacy for the new government. To make things worse, U.S. military aid was cut off for parts of this period. The political environment for drug organizations could hardly have been better.

An environment of impunity is another important reason for the increase of organized crime, with two primary causes in my observation: police corruption and a cumbersome bureaucracy. For the former, Transparency International (2010) awarded Honduras a score of 2.4 out of 10, ranking it 134 out of 178 countries, with only Paraguay, Haiti, and Venezuela (also cocaine trafficking channels) scoring lower in the Western Hemisphere. I did not meet a single Honduran in a year and a half that trusted the police, and many had negative stories. One police officer who played on my basketball team was a known cocaine addict, a hot-head and in very poor physical shape.  In general, officers were tolerated, perhaps humoured because they had guns, and a select few were acknowledged to be good people. However, very few ordinary Hondurans would trust any officer enough to actually believe they might solve a crime and bring evidence forward; as one blogger put it, the police were “useless at best, dangerous at worst.” The police were even implicated in a high-profile murder case in October, 2011, in which most officers were released with little due process. This resulted in the dismissal of many high-ranking police officials and resulted in greater public scrutiny of the police force, but highlights the lack of popular trust in civilian security institutions.

A slow-moving, complicated legal bureaucracy also enables the drug trade to thrive.  In the countryside region of Sico-Paulaya in Northeastern Honduras, where I spent a lot of my time, everyone was affected by, and knew of, the local drug trade, but it was never reported to authorities. In addition to running up against corrupt officials, documenting and reporting even the simplest and most obvious crimes involved complicated and elaborate reports, long trips to government centers at one’s own expense, and persistent time and energy. Reports would then need to be sent back and forth between the capital and other departments to be ratified, and would almost invariably be lost or forgotten unless one was either extremely persistent or had government contacts. In the best case scenario, the earliest one could expect a response would be months, perhaps years. As any drug-involved individual with any kind of power would be able to handsomely pay an informant, they could determine and neutralize any legal threat before the authorities would even begin to act.

My personal impression of government institutions was that they were incompetent. Myself and several forest technicians worked to document illegal invasions of a legal forest management area, and submitted a report and map in June, 2011. Despite international pressure, no action has yet been taken to expel the invaders.  Further, simple permits for very low-scale, non-destructive botanical sampling took months of bureaucratic wrangling the first time, around 2010. In another later case, a set of permits to legally ship small amounts of plant samples for genetic analysis contained a number of fundamental errors and spelling mistakes that took hours to rectify at customs. The situation did appear to improve over a year and a half, and there are certainly hard-working and bright individuals of integrity within these institutions.  However, such experiences hardly inspired confidence that well-organized, well-armed crime groups could ever be effectively stopped by such institutions, unless a few token captures were in their interest.

ECOLOGICAL IMPACTS

The impact of the cocaine trade in Honduras ripples beyond the violence. There are also significant ecological effects. The Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve provides habitat for 39 species of mammals, 377 species of birds and 126 reptiles and amphibians. The presence of mammals such as the endangered Baird’s tapir (Tapirus bairdii), the threatened West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus) and the vulnerable giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) have also been documented, among other rare (and probably many undocumented) species of birds, reptiles, amphibians and plants.

However, drug organizations have gradually moved into the region over the past decade, building clandestine air strips for frequent incoming flights that were reported as early as 2005. The presence of criminal drug organizations in the region was palpable: On one occasion a co-worker and I avoided going for a beer after a three-week tour in the countryside documenting forest destruction when a group of fully-armed, non-military men arrived blaring music near the hotel entrance. Drug money is suspected in most of these land invasions of legal harvest areas – both in terms of direct laundering for cattle ranching, and indirectly for farmers wishing to gain saleable real estate. There have also been reports that sales of timber have been used to launder money.

Is there hope for Honduras? I think there is. Despite the violence, corruption, and culture of blame-shifting, I encountered a generation of young people that were becoming increasingly intolerant of the unjust and violent state of their country.  If consumption continues to decline, perhaps the power of the DTOs will one day diminish to insignificance. Now, however, the journey forward will be long and difficult, requiring collaboration at all levels both nationally and internationally, not only in prevention but also in education and preventative deterrence.

Photos by Alex Karney

BRUSSELS–New energy findings in the eastern Mediterranean – in the form of oil and natural gas – have ratcheted up tensions in a region already mired in instability. Although these supposedly vast hydrocarbon deposits are minor relative to the proven resources in the Persian Gulf and Caspian regions, their discovery is spurring a major geopolitical realignment in the region and beyond. Sabre-rattling has already begun as neighbouring countries stake their claims in order to achieve the energy independence, sustained economic growth and job creation that comes from energy production and access to lucrative export markets.

A cascade of exploration in the region began in late 2010 when Israel claimed major natural gas fields — Tamar and Leviathan — in its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The findings, it was reported, would sustain the energy-poor country for decades and might even turn Israel into a gas supplier to Europe. But Israel’s exploration and exploitation plans sparked fresh diplomatic rows with its neighbours, particularly Lebanon, over the validity of offshore claims and continental shelf delimitation since it is not party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Despite these heated rows, other countries in the region are still undeterred from conducting mineral exploration — most notably Cyprus, which is exploring the seabed in its southeast EEZ, where vast natural gas fields are believed to exist adjacent to Israel’s proven resources a mere 50km away. (A state’s EEZ extends 200 nautical miles, or 370 km, out from its coastal baseline. An exception to this rule occurs when two or more state EEZs overlap and coastal baselines are less than 400 nautical miles, or 740 km, apart.)

In September 2011, the U.S.-based company Noble Energy Inc. began exploratory drilling in Cyprus’ Block 12 offshore concession to confirm gas reserves resembling those it had previously found at Leviathan (which Israel claims). The exploration revealed considerable hydrocarbon deposits, becoming a game-changer for Cyprus that also has wider implications in Europe in terms of energy security, the diversification of supply and the continuing dependence on Russian gas. Potential hydrocarbon exploration around Cyprus, however, is causing a major rift with Turkey — an EU candidate, a NATO member and an important regional actor with an increasingly assertive foreign policy. The unresolved status of Cyprus may continue to complicate the escalating dispute over access to mineral deposits and future energy revenues. And regional geopolitics are only growing more complex: Greece is also keen on exploring its EEZ south of Crete to generate crucial revenues in their globally scrutinized struggle against sovereign debt and widespread unemployment.

The prospect of astonishing mineral wealth is clearly stirring dormant, ancient conflicts and shaping new alliances in Europe’s Mediterranean near abroad. Cyprus sees itself playing an integral role in a new regional energy triangle involving Greece and Israel. Meanwhile, the balance of power is tilting as Turkey carves out a niche as a dominant regional player. These developments are not without geopolitical consequences as they generate new challenges for the players’ transatlantic partners.

The Geopolitics of Energy in the Eastern Mediterranean

The 2010 U.S. Geological Survey estimated Cyprus’s Block 12 concession holds more than 10 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of recoverable natural gas, with the entire Levant Basin containing nearly 122 tcf. That makes it one of the world’s richest deposits, albeit in one of the most politically intractable geographic areas. The discovery of hydrocarbons in Cyprus’ EEZ would be a boon for a country that is dependent on energy imports. And after a devastating explosion last summer that knocked out the island’s largest power station, Cyprus desperately needs the energy.

For Cyprus, offshore oil and gas exploration is the boldest step the country has taken since joining the EU in 2004. The country claims it’s exercising its sovereign right by drilling in its EEZ, and that it is fully adhering to UNCLOS. Cyprus considers mineral exploration as a self-evident right, and has asked that Turkey respect international law. This position is supported by the U.S., Russia and Israel. The EU supports Cyprus in principle, but only if it is in line with EU energy policy and legislation.

Turkey, on the other hand, views Cyprus’s offshore drilling as a provocative and unilateral act that sabotages UN-brokered peace talks aimed at re-unifying the island. It argues Cyprus is experimenting with adventurist policies by exploring disputed waters and excluding Turkish Cypriots from negotiations with Noble Energy and Delek Energy, its Israeli partner. The Turkish leadership also claims the Cypriot government has no intention of equally sharing gas revenues with Turkish Cypriots — although Greek Cypriot President Dimitris Christophias stated otherwise at a UN General Assembly meeting last September. Turkey has responded with so-called “appropriate measures” by deploying its navy and air force in areas surrounding the drilling site, as well as delimiting its continental shelf jointly with what they call the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) to begin retaliatory exploration off the south coast of Cyprus.

The clash over offshore exploration is a microcosm of the larger Cyprus problem and the zero-sum mentality that plagues it. Opposing positions are rooted in a respective willingness to develop an indigenous energy resource base. Consequently, the tectonic plates of geopolitics are shifting and diplomacy is changing. A realignment of regional powers is taking place in order to contain Turkey. Israel, Greece and Cyprus have designed a mutual-interest alliance to exploit resources in their adjacent EEZs, secure offshore energy infrastructure and, eventually, jointly export energy to Europe or Asia. Recognizing that Israel would want to export its energy to European markets through Greece, they launched defence talks, culminating in a mutual defence pact in September 2011. Although the terms of the Israeli-Greek defence pact were not made public, it likely includes the protection of Cyprus, which signed and ratified an economic agreement with Israel in December 2010.

Hoping to capitalize on an energy revenue windfall, Cyprus and Israel jointly delimited their EEZs and established rights to explore natural resources in their adjacent seabeds. A similar deal between Cyprus and Greece is reportedly shaping up to protect their national and economic interests. However, the underlying fear for Greek leaders is that Turkey would consider an EEZ declaration as casus belli. Nevertheless, co-operation and co-ordination in adjoining zones is strategically and politically important for Cyprus, Greece and Israel to stem Turkey’s assertive behaviour and expansionist policies. As the Turkish government sharpens its rhetoric and applies more pressure, it is gradually endangering Turkey’s reputation among U.S. and EU policy makers as a rational state actor.

Transatlantic Perspective: Energy Diversity in Europe

The U.S. backs exploration and exploitation of offshore deposits in Cyprus. The EU supports Cyprus’ intentions in principle, while also seeking to appease Turkey. They both maintain that the island’s internationally recognized government has a sovereign right to exploit its resources, but also call on Cyprus and Turkey to show calm and restraint. Both sides of the Atlantic agree that drilling in Cyprus’ EEZ should not jeopardize ongoing re-unification efforts at the UN.

U.S. officials in Nicosia are not willing to interfere in business proceedings between an American company and a sovereign state that has not entered into a bilateral deal with the U.S. government. The State Department recognizes Turkey’s position on the sensitive issue and continues to call for Cypriot parties to reunify the island into a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation. However, it also strongly supports the EU in securing energy supplies through a diversity of sources. Despite fierce Turkish objections and direct appeal, the U.S. supports European allies in achieving greater energy independence and curtailing imports from third countries, such as Russia. Both parties argue Cyprus – as an EU member state – should explore, exploit and export its resources to provide a new, European source of energy. A similar position applies to another transatlantic partner in the region: Greece.

Transatlanticists recognize Greece’s geostrategic location following the Arab Spring revolutions nearby. While noting that Greece and Turkey should continue efforts to normalize their diplomatic relations, potentially vast reserves of hydrocarbons in Greece’s EEZ herald a great opportunity. Scientific evidence suggests that a wealth of oil and natural gas in the sea area south of Crete could generate huge revenues, roughly $437-billion (U.S.), and create 300,000 jobs. American and European leaders agree that Greece has the potential to become a hub for conventional energy with pipelines crossing the country to deliver oil and gas from Israel, Cyprus and Greece to big European markets such as Italy and Germany. Greece’s location, coupled with its historic relations with countries in the region, offers a strategic advantage to strengthen its role as a pillar of stability in Europe’s Mediterranean near abroad. It should play a strategic leadership role to actively work with the EU and the U.S. on optimizing energy security in Europe’s backyard. Moreover, U.S. lasting interest in the region and Israel’s energy security acquire a new dimension after the Arab Springs and evolving relations with Arab nations.

A fragmented southern Europe comes with serious geopolitical challenges for transatlantic partners. A strong and stable south allows the EU – and by extension, the U.S. – to work directly with the emerging political leadership in countries experiencing dramatic social change though popular uprisings. The U.S. greatly benefits from the progressive “Europeanization” of the eastern Mediterranean, and the Mahgreb, in terms of dealing with the region as part of its normal relations with Europe. The U.S. and the EU should gather sufficient political will and institutional capacity to deal with emerging regional challenges. New mineral wealth will only intensify tensions, made evident through deteriorating diplomatic relations in the region following the Israeli-Cypriot continental shelf deal and the Greek-Israeli mutual defence pact. This is further proof that inaction exacerbates challenges. Athens, Nicosia and Ankara should work together to advance development, democratization and security in Europe’s near abroad to safeguard energy interests.

The south and east Mediterranean must not be decoupled from the European mainstream, lest transatlantic engagement in this key geography suffer from systemic risk, and energy security personifies geopolitical risk in the region. The U.S. has an important stake in the EU’s energy security, preferring diversity in Europe’s energy supply. It already backs the current EU policy on the Southern Corridor and Nabucco pipeline projects, preferring these options to the Russian-backed South Stream project. They decrease the likelihood of high penetration by Russia into the European energy market. Reliance on non-nuclear energy only increased with Japan’s nuclear catastrophe, and so it makes sense that the U.S. should support the EU in its efforts to secure oil and gas through its own resources.

EU Energy Security and the Southern Corridor

With Germany’s decision to phase-out nuclear energy by 2022, the EU will inevitably rely on natural gas and oil imports. Therefore, it is worth considering new relationships to facilitate energy transportation from the resource-rich Mediterranean. From a transatlantic perspective, stability and prosperity in the region are two important objectives. There is enormous potential not only for greater energy diversity and security, but also for job creation, competition and economic growth. Various pipeline projects competing in the Southern Corridor can contribute to the illustrious plan for a European super-grid infrastructure, linking north and south through gas pipelines with reverse flow capabilities. This is seen in the corridor’s competing developments, from the EU-backed, 31 billion cubic metres (bcm) per year Nabucco project to the smaller 10 bcm Interconnector-Turkey-Greece-Italy (ITGI) pipeline and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).

Above all, the unanswered question of “where EU borders lie” is an issue that makes energy trade and transport in the Mediterranean unclear. In times of economic turmoil, the EU must ensure that the south does not bifurcate from the European centre. EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Catherine Ashton stresses the importance of finding a solution to new tensions between Cyprus and Turkey over gas exploration. Both parties should focus exclusively on normalizing their relations and ongoing efforts to reunify the island.

While the Cyprus issue remains deadlocked, so too are Turkey’s stalled EU accession negotiations. As the geopolitics of energy become more complex, Ankara perceives Brussels differently in light of Turkey’s growing political-cultural-economic-military influence in the region. The unopened energy chapter in accession talks and the absence of a legal basis for discussions between the EU and Turkey greatly decrease the likelihood of mutually beneficial co-operation in the field of energy. Coupled with Europe’s continuing inability to speak with one voice on foreign policy, the EU’s leverage with Turkey is undermined.

The EU and the U.S. view Turkey as an important transit country, particularly for Nabucco. Turkey sees itself as an energy hub in the making — its geography allows the country to enter agreements with both the EU and Russia, and play a mediator role in Eurasia. Transatlanticists clearly recognise Turkey’s growing influence in the region and the wider Islamic world. The EEZ declaration between Cyprus and Israel, and the potential resurrection of the dormant dispute between Greece and Turkey over the continental shelf, will be yet another test of Turkey’s influence. All things considered, focus should be on enhanced regional energy co-operation.

Mediterranean Energy Consortium: A Catalyst for Peace

The Arab Spring revolutions and the Fukushima catastrophe triggered fluctuations in the global energy market and increased demand for energy worldwide. Now more than ever, energy should be used as a catalyst for peace, regional integration and co-operation.

Energy equality can help generate equality through regional stability. Transatlantic partners are faced with several external challenges, yet their goal is the promotion of a well functioning, open and transparent energy market in Europe. Russia remains the EU’s third largest trading partner and fuels 25 per cent of Europe’s oil and gas consumption. Since the EU-Russia dialogue began in 2000, the EU signed agreements with rim countries – including Azerbaijan, Egypt, Iraq and Belarus. Europe’s natural gas imports are projected to reach 76 per cent by 2020; domestic production will only meet a quarter of gas needs. Change in the Mediterranean offers a great opportunity for energy diversity, open dialogue and the resolution of political differences that have plagued the region for decades.

The south and east Mediterranean is seen as volatile due to uncertainty in oil and natural gas producing states. A regional energy consortium could empower the area, promote good relations between neighbours, achieve interdependence and increase regional stability to attract investment. As it stands, regional actors are not inherently cohesive — they are a collection of states that work together loosely when different areas converge. In an era of intense economic globalization, they must work together to thrive. A consortium could also revitalize efforts to unite the region, such as the Union for the Mediterranean. More localized initiatives have unsuccessfully tried to create synergies between EU states and rim countries, such as Egypt, Turkey, Syria and Lebanon.

A Mediterranean energy consortium could allow Western leaders to put aside the traditional method of having to deal with dictators and oligarchs for energy imports. The U.S. and great European powers – such as Germany, the UK and France – are moving away from dealing with corrupt regimes. EU leaders, together with the support of American counterparts, should encourage consortium countries to involve multiple parties. This method would deter the re-emergence of energy nationalism in the region and would mirror the U.S. position on greater energy diversity in Europe through alternative supply in the Southern Corridor.

The first order of business, though, is the reunification of Cyprus. The resolution of the Cyprus conflict will remove arguably the biggest obstacle to Turkish accession to the EU, restore a sense of territorial integrity for Cypriots, and encourage cultural integration of societies and religions. Indeed, Greece and a reunified Cyprus hold the keys to Europe’s south-eastern borders. They can inspire a new social and cultural harmony within two EU member states that border Turkey – with whom they have been at odds for decades. Combined with the added value of energy security, a regional energy consortium could also provide an ambitious model that the peoples and governments of newly emerging democracies in North Africa and the Middle East can ill afford to ignore.

Ghengis Khan, Mongolia’s most famous citizen, built a vast empire spanning from Korea to Eastern Europe—from Russia in the North to India in the South. Though ruthless in conquest, it was the largest empire in human history, and its impact, both cultural and political, has been much greater than many think.

From secularism and freedom of religion to the fashion of trousers, Mongolia spread many cultural norms throughout its empire, but this widespread influence soon dwindled. The children of Temujin—Ghengis Khan’s birth name—fell prey to internal strife and thrift. The empire withdrew to its plains and blue skies, continuing as a politically insignificant nation until relatively recently. But with the end of communist rule and its excesses, and spurred by political and economic reforms, Mongolia is once again on the rise.

But Mongolia’s most recent arrival on the international stage is not due to military prowess, to horses and arrows, but to geology. Mongolia is part of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt (CAOB), a geological term for a mountain range rising through tectonic shifts by continental plates. This results in Mongolia’s geological terrain being incredibly rich in mineral resources, which have been to a large extent undiscovered and unsurveyed until now. The country has vast coal, copper and gold deposits, which are highly valuable assets for a resource-hungry China. There are also vast quantities of molybdenum, uranium and cerium, a rare-earth mineral. These metals are all used in technological components and with the recent discovery of tungsten reserves in neighbouring Chinese Inner Mongolia, it is likely that Mongolia’s potential for rare-earth minerals is only dawning.

One of the biggest mines in the world to date is Mongolia’s Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine. It is run by a Canadian company, Ivanhoe Mines, and is owned through a majority stake by the global mining giant Rio Tinto. Initial estimates place the mine around 36 million tonnes of copper and more than 1,300 tonnes of gold. Due to start commercial production in 2013, the mine lies in the South Gobi desert, close to China and 550km away from the capital Ulanbataar, which makes the mine an ideal site for exporting through Chinese ports.

In 2011, mineral exports reached a peak of over $2.3 billion, which, in turn, means minerals are clearly the country’s largest export. A huge increase in demand gave coal exports an unprecedented advantage with China, representing 92% of the country’s exports in 2011.

But minerals are not the only issues in modern day Mongolia. After gaining independence from China in 1921, the nation was ruled as a one-party satellite state of the Soviet Union. The party in charge, called the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP), made sure to make Soviet influence more tolerable to the population by contrasting it with centuries of Chinese domination. The MPRP ruled Mongolia from 1921 until 1992, casting a profound influence over the country’s culture.

In Western Mongolia, on the Onon river and in the area surrounding Burkhan Khaldun mountain, there is something called the ‘forbidden zone’. It earnt its name as Genghis Khan’s burial place, which is sacred to Mongol herders with their shamanistic beliefs. But Moscow was weary of Mongolian nationalists’ eagerness to rekindle patriotic pride and independence struggles. They therefore decided to close off the area completely and enclose it with a heavily guarded military enclosure. Entering the zone was punishable by death, and infrastructure development around the area, including the construction of roads, was banned. This is still visible by satellite today. Many pundits believe it was an ideal zone to be used for the Soviet Union’s missile practice, and there are strong indications that at some point nuclear warheads were stored there.

For many years, the people of Mongolia were kept in abject poverty and discouraged from looking into their own history. Intellectuals and archaeologists were systematically eliminated if they looked too closely into Genghis Khan or the history of the empire. The Mongolian language, which for centuries had been written in the Uyghurjin Mongol Bichig script developed by Genghis Khan’s scholars, was written in Mongolian Cyrillic from the 1940s onwards and is still in use today.

Since independence, change has swept through Mongolia. It is by no means a perfect democracy, but it is a multipartite one. The statistics are telling. According to the World Bank, Mongolia saw a 6.4 % real GDP growth rate in 2010, but that figure is predicted to be at least 15 % in 2011. In 1990, real GDP growth was -3 % meaning the economy was essentially shrinking. Life expectancy has risen from a mere 61 years in 1990 to 67 in 2008, compared to a rise from 75 to 79 years for the European Union over the same period.

The Mongolian government has also a huge beneficiary of overseas development assistance (ODA), but it has weaned itself off aid. The amount of ODA coming into Mongolia decreased from 85 % of the government’s income in 2000 to a mere 17 % in 2008, diminishing in lockstep with the rise of growing mineral exports. For a country that has three times the landmass of France, Mongolia’s population only just reached 2.7-million in 2008.

But not all is well, obviously. That same year, 35.2 % of the population lived below the poverty line, but in 2009 that number increased alarmingly to 38.7 %, according to the Asian Development Bank. The country is now at high-risk of falling prey to the ‘Dutch disease’, whereby its reliance on natural resources and shift away from manufacturing will leave its economy fragile and vulnerable to the whims of international markets, as seen by the real GDP growth drop to -1.3 % in 2009, compared to a rise of 8.9% the previous year.

This has resulted in the Mongolian economy facing dire inflationary problems, driven by foreign investment. Throughout 2011, the inflation rate approached 9.2 % against a generally regarded ‘optimal’ target of 3 %. Inflation is due to grow to almost 13% in the coming years, according to many economists. This means that for a population which has traditionally been nomadic, the price of meat, a staple of the Mongolian diet, has sky-rocketed. The percentage of urban poor is also on the rise.

Mongolia is also grappling with land rights issues and legal entitlement, heir to two opposing systems. One of them, enshrined in law since Genghis Khan’s Yassa (Great Law), states that any herder may may pitch his yurt anywhere in the country without hindrance. This suited the Communist regime, which forbade private property, but private property was then enshrined in the new constitution of 1992. The former, quite obviously, contradicts the latter, leading to a serious problem for the mostly nomadic migrants from the countryside who are unable to afford sedentary lodging.

On the political front, the MPRP still yields enormous power and influence. It has decided to drop the ‘R’, for Revolutionary, in its name and become the Mongolian People’s Party, but it governed nearly without interruption until 2004. Its main opposition is the Democratic Party, which has been in a government coalition with the MPP since 2006, which is run by the current Prime Minister, Sükhbaataryn Batbold , a member of MPP.

Sandwiched between Russia to the North and China to the South, Mongolia has always been living in the shadow of its neighbours. With popular resentment against the Chinese running high, Mongolia is attempting to diversify its political alliances and is attempting to sign a series of trade treaties with countries further afield to avoid being overly reliant on China. The United States, Japan and South Korea are now all bent on benefiting from the country’s mineral resources.

Because of this, Mongolia is gaining power worldwide and it is fast becoming a strategic source of minerals to fuel the world’s technological growth. But it is important that Mongolia’s leaders remembers that with this growing power also comes a responsibility to its people. The last thing Mongolia needs is to copy the so-called “resource curse” economies in Africa, where little to no wealth flows from burgeoning extractive industries to citizens. Without urgently needed political and economic reform, it is likely that foreign mining companies will be pressured by Western powers and customers into taking a more active role in development.

The last time Mongolia rose to international prominence, it created an empire unrivalled in history for its breadth and scope of administration. Its modern day rise takes a different shape, because of its wealth in minerals, but Temujin’s dream of expanding influence is fast becoming a reality.

Photos by Mike Nowicki