Category: Jonathan Power

Way to end war in Afghanistan

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By Jonathan Power

After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and got totally bogged down there was a joke circulating in Moscow. “Why are we still in Afghanistan? Answer: We are still looking for the people who invited us”.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, architect of US policy in Afghanistan when he was President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, was convinced Afghanistan would become the Soviet Union’s Vietnam. In fact the Soviet Union’s Vietnam has become America’s Afghanistan.

There is truth in both these cynical observations. And there are lies, distortions and self-delusion built into the narrative. Only Russia has been more or less honest. Under President Mikhail Gorbachev it decided to cut its losses and withdraw and was open about the reason it did so.

Today the debate in the US is contorted. Read More »

Africa’s lions are roaring

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By Jonathan Power
Abuja, Nigeria

Approximately half the people of Africa own a mobile phone. In many African countries phone technology is ahead of Europe and North America. Money can be transferred from the city to an upcountry village. Bills can be paid. In Ghana farmers can receive text messages reporting the price of yams and corn two towns away and thus find the best market without a middleman. In Kenya residents of small villages can receive texts to say when the perambulating doctor will next be coming. In parts of West Africa nurses are storing patients’ data on phones.

It may be more difficult to build up fast internet penetration on pcs but in some countries 40% of mobile owners are using phones for email and the internet. The IMF says that the telecommunication sector is adding 2% to Nigeria’s already handsome annual economic growth.

Black Africa has come late to the party but a majority of its 48 countries is leaping ahead. Read More »

If it bleeds it leads!

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By Jonathan Power

If it bleeds it leads! The mantra of many a newsroom. In their new book, “Pax Ethnica” two great journalists, Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac, argue that day in and day out ethnic conflict and tension along religious and cultural lines makes for reliable, if dispiriting, headlines.

Journalists regularly play plenty of attention to failed states, sectarian violence and societies at the breaking point. But what about those unsung exceptions, the communities of the world where diverse groups live together in harmony?Read More »

Democracy and economy buzzing in Nigeria

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By Jonathan Power

Lagos – March 6th 2012

Politically Nigeria has been extraordinarily lucky in its political leadership the last thirteen years. Under dictator Sani Abacha opposition was routed and its leaders imprisoned, tortured and murdered, the press was neutered and the treasury looted for personal gain. It only ended when Abacha suffered a heart attack in bed in the company of three prostitutes.

Then one of his most vociferous opponents, Olusegun Obasanjo, who had spent three years in a primitive prison, won the first post-Abacha election. Read More »

Nigeria – I have seen the future and know it works

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By Jonathan Power

Did you know that Nigeria, the most populated country in black Africa, is now one of the top five fastest growing big economies in the world? (The others are China, India, Turkey and Argentina.)

The image of Nigeria is of poverty, crime, corruption, election fiddling and maladministration. Africa, I find from my family and friends, is still a continent where death stalks – war, starving children and impoverished refugees.

But the tale of progress is unsung. This wretchedness is the only news that penetrates. Only one western newspaper, the Financial Times, has a full time correspondent in Nigeria where one third of all the black people in the world live. The rest get their news from the fickle eye of television and the rest of the newspaper pack.Read More »

The dangers of Nigeria’s extremist Islamic movement

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By Jonathan Power

The governor of the north-eastern Nigerian state of Yobe, Ibrahim Geidam, where the extremist and murderous Boko Haram movement had its origins, told me that the situation is now “under control”. He pointed to the recent arrest of its spokesman and the way he was cooperating with his interrogators.

He also told me of the splits that had developed in the movement. President Goodluck Jonathan in a rare one hour interview told me much the same. But he added a caveat. Boko Haram still has plenty of destructive power. “Who is to know if they have infiltrated major institutions, even here in the presidential compound. It might be a cook, a cleaner or a driver, waiting for their moment to explode a bomb.”Read More »

Ban the Bomb!

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By Jonathan Power

If in 2012 and 2013 the big nuclear weapons powers and UN Security Council permanent members – the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France – don’t make significant reductions with their nuclear weapons then an important opportunity will be lost.

Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev appear to be of a mind on this.

One has to go back to the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to get the full picture on the dismal progress on nuclear disarmament. Their Defence Secretary, Robert McNamara, told both presidents nuclear weapons were unusable. Read More »

No proof that Iran wants the bomb

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By Jonathan Power

Many of us doubt that Iran is on the way to build a nuclear bomb. Trying to find the truth is not easy. It was a bit of a one sided conversation since I don’t know the inner workings of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN body that monitors nuclear developments. But Robert Kelly, a nuclear energy engineer and ex-department director at the IAEA, has brought me up to speed.

According to him the evidence described in a widely quoted report issued in November 2011 by the Director General of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, is sketchy.Read More »