Niger's Proud Tuareg People Are Walking the Road to Oblivion

[sintax]

Niger's proud Tuareg people are walking the road to oblivion

By Kim Sengupta in Bargas, Niger

Published: 12 August 2005


The goat is killed swiftly, its body quivering for a few seconds after the throat is slit. The imam raises his palms in supplication, thanking Allah for the sustenance he is providing even in these terrible times.

The ritual slaughter at Zonghu is to celebrate the naming of the chief's new grandson, a celebration of life. But all around are the imprints of death, six little graves of children who were the latest to die, rotting carcasses of cattle which once formed the prize herd of this Tuareg community, and fields of withered crops.

Here in southern Niger a people, their livelihood, their lifestyle, is fast disappearing. With pastures scorched by drought and stripped by locusts, the nomads are selling their livestock at rock bottom prices as they collapse through lack of food and become prey to disease. There are also direct human casualties. The herds are symbols of wealth and prestige among the Tuareg. There is, in this wilderness, a symbiotic relationship between man and beast, and, in these times of trouble, many heads of families commit suicide after they have disposed of the last of their animals.

The tragedy of the Tuareg is one of the lesser known tales from what the United Nations its under secretary general Jan Egeland calls "the number one forgotten and neglected emergency in the world". Isolated in remote parts of the vast country, the nomads are among the last to receive what little aid there is.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/

[MisterP]

1. indigenous persons are of no use to the IMF

Tuareg, Berber, San, Hmong, all are there only to be exploited and then cast aside, like all resources. The past, present, and future are irrelevant: only the dollar matters.

[Zorra]

2. More victims of globalization.

Subcomandante Marcos:

"From the American Rio Grande to the "European" Schengen space, a double contradictory tendency is confirmed. On one side the borders are closed officially to the migration of labor, on the other side entire branches of the economy oscillate between instability and flexibility, which are the most secure means of attracting a foreign labor force" (Alain Morice, Op. Cit.).

With different names, under a judicial differentiation, sharing an equality of misery, the migrants or refugees or displaced of all the world are "foreigners" who are tolerated or rejected. The nightmare of migration, whatever its causes, continues to roll and grow over the planet's surface. The number of people who are accounted for in the statistics of the UN High Commission on Refugees has grown disproportionately from some 2 million in 1975 to 27 million in 1995.

With national borders destroyed ( for merchandise) the globalized market organizes the global economy: research and design of goods and services, as well as their circulation and consumption are thought of in intercontinental terms. For each part of the capitalist process the "new world order" organizes the flow of the labor force, specialized or not, up to where it is necessary. Far from subject ing itself to the "free flow" so clucked-over by neoliberalism, the employment markets are each day determined more by migratory flows. Where skilled workers are concerned, whose numbers are not significance in the context of global migration, the "crossing of brains" represents a great deal in terms of economic power and knowledge. Nevertheless, whether skilled labor, or unskilled labor, the migratory politics of neoliberalism is oriented more towards destabilizing the global labor market than towards stopping immigration.

The Fourth World War, with its process of destruction/depopulation and reconstruction/reorganization provokes the displacement of millions of people. Their destiny is to continue to wander, with the nightmare at their side, and to offer to employed workers in different nations a threat to their employment stability, an enemy to hide the image of the boss, and a pretext for giving meaning to the racist nonsense promoted by neoliberalism.

http://struggle.ws/mexico/ezln/1997/jigsaw.html

[LosinIt]

3. Yes, once we've used them to name a vehicle what good are they?