Toireas Ni Bhriain of Concern the other day called on the United Nations to send in forces to intervene in the civil war in Sierra Leone. Nigerian forces which were present in the country, she said, were not neutral, meaning, I suppose, that they hated the bloody place, and what was needed were UN soldiers of other nationalities. Hmm. Can she possibly mean that non-African troops be deployed in that poor unfortunate country - in other words, white ones?
Maybe she doesn't mean whites, though I hardly see the Chinese or Japanese falling over each other to bring peace, order and plenty to Africa. As for the Pakistanis and the Indians, they had such a truly terrible time in Somalia that they ended up falling into one each other's arms and declaring eternal love and friendship. It'll probably be a while before the armies of that sub-continent are sent back to Africa.
Who'll go in?
So who's going to go into Africa and restore peace and plenty? The Americans? They put a force into Somalia and ended up distributing posthumous Medals of Honor to all and sundry. So not the Americans. Okay, so who's going to restore the rule of law, who's going to bring order, who's going to establish fair and decent government for Africa? The British? The French? Hmm. Hasn't that have a rather familiar ring about it?
Or maybe we should send our boys and girls in. Which country are we going to send the army into to rescue civilisation? There's the Congo, which has got any number of civil wars going on, and genocide in all its many and various forms. It's the size of Europe, from the Skaggerack to the straits of Gibraltar, and stretching to the Vistula and the Black Sea, and it'll be a useful opportunity to learn a language or two, there being a couple of hundred languages and 30 ethnic groups to choose from, with few roads and no reliable maps; an absolute peach of a country to bring order to. The only really serious question is, of course, in which square mile in the nearly million square miles does the Army begin its simple task of installing law courts, policing, taxation, an honest and impartial civil service, schools, hospitals, and so on.
But steady. I'm getting carried away in my enthusiasm to sort Africa out. Typical. Starting with the biggest problem first. It's in Sierra Leone that we are supposed to open our Save Africa mission. No better place. Was that not where, 200 years ago, philanthropic, anti-slavery Britons formed the capital Freetown as a sanctuary for runaway slaves? Clearly a place which is used to high-minded interventions. The Nigerians, God help them, are currently involved in a peace mission, something they are probably losing their stomach for. No matter. Our lads and lasses will sort out the place in two shakes of a lion's head, and in no time at all convert the country (average annual income $625, life expectancy - before the current genocide, that is - 34.7) into a model Scandinavian state with creches, public transport, safe-sex clinics and air-conditioning.
British Petroleum
Where next? Nigeria, maybe? Remember how Western liberals howled in horror when British Petroleum did not order the military government not to execute Ken Siro Wiwa? He was called a human rights activist in the liberal jargon of the day, but his alleged crime had nothing to do with human rights and a great deal to do with the cold-blooded murder of five men who disagreed with him. Strange, the way people denounced BP for not intervening in the internal affairs of another country. It wasn't so long ago that that sort of caper was called neo-colonialism; nowadays, in the ever-shifting values of public piety, non-interventionism is the great crime.
Anyway, when we've sorted out Nigeria, we can have a look at Sudan, which is even larger than the Congo, but which has only 100 languages. Ah. Poor Sudan. Still, it has far less jungle and should prove a bit of a doddle to bring order to. Well, that's what good old General Gordon thought. And once we've sorted out the Sudan, maybe we could pop into Uganda, which after a period of peace has just resumed its on-off civil war again, this time starring Christian zealots called the Lord's Day Army.
Hutus and Tutsis
An interesting choice awaits us here. Either we can head east into the bloody chaos of Somalia, where the Americans, the Pakistanis and the Indians had such an enjoyable time, or we can go directly into the starring countries of African genocide, Rwanda and Burundi, where they have a certain way with machetes. I myself have not fully understood the conflict between Hutus and Tutsis - though I do recall that the last high-minded humanitarian intervention ended up with gangs of killers being fed and protected in UN-run camps. Ah, well. Boys will be boys.
Now, where next? My vote is for Zimbabwe, now embroiled in the war in the Congo, with the economy collapsing at home. We'll sort out that country, once and for all. And when we've done that, we can pop next door into Angola, where the civil war is brewing nicely, thank you. Once we've attended to that little problem, it'll be time to head back into the Congo again. And after that. . .