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On July 9, the government of Rwanda said that it had deployed 1,000 troops to Mozambique to battle al-Shabaab fighters, who had seized the northern province of Cabo Delgado. A month later, on August 8, Rwandan troops captured the port city of Mocímboa da Praia, where just off the coast sits a massive natural gas concession held by French energy company TotalEnergies SE and U.S. energy company ExxonMobil. These new developments in the region led to the African Development Bank’s President M. Akinwumi Adesina announcing on August 27 that TotalEnergies SE will restart the Cabo Delgado liquefied natural gas project by the end of 2022.

Militants from al-Shabaab (or ISIS-Mozambique, as the U.S. State Department prefers to call it) did not fight to the last man; they disappeared across the border into Tanzania or into their villages in the hinterland. The energy companies will, meanwhile, soon start to recoup their investments and profit handsomely, thanks in large part to the Rwandan military intervention.

Why did Rwanda intervene in Mozambique in July 2021 to defend, essentially, two major energy companies? The answer lies in a very peculiar set of events that took place in the months before the troops left Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda.

 

Billions Stuck Underwater

Al-Shabaab fighters first made their appearance in Cabo Delgado in October 2017. For three years, the group played a cat-and-mouse game with Mozambique’s army before taking control of Mocímboa da Praia in August 2020. At no point did it seem possible for Mozambique’s army to thwart al-Shabaab and allow TotalEnergies SE and ExxonMobil to restart operations in the Rovuma Basin, off the coast of northern Mozambique, where a massive natural gas field was discovered in February 2010.

The Mozambican Ministry of Interior had hired a range of mercenaries such as Dyck Advisory Group (South Africa), Frontier Services Group (Hong Kong), and the Wagner Group (Russia). In late August 2020, TotalEnergies SE and the government of Mozambique signed an agreement to create a joint security force to defend the company’s investments against al-Shabaab. None of these armed groups succeeded. The investments were stuck underwater.

At this point, Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi indicated, as I was told by a source in Maputo, that TotalEnergies SE might ask the French government to send a detachment to assist in securing the area. This discussion went on into 2021. On January 18, 2021, French Defense Minister Florence Parly and her counterpart in Portugal, João Gomes Cravinho, talked on the phone, during which—it is suggested in Maputo—they discussed the possibility of a Western intervention in Cabo Delgado. On that day, TotalEnergies SE CEO Patrick Pouyanné met with President Nyusi and his ministers of defense (Jaime Bessa Neto) and interior (Amade Miquidade) to discuss the joint “action plan to strengthen security of the area.” Nothing came of it. The French government was not interested in a direct intervention.

A senior official in Maputo told me that it is strongly believed in Mozambique that French President Emmanuel Macron suggested the Rwandan force, rather than French forces, be deployed to secure Cabo Delgado. Indeed, Rwanda’s armies—highly trained, well-armed by the Western countries, and given impunity to act outside the bounds of international law—have proved their mettle in the interventions carried out in South Sudan and the Central African Republic.

 

What Kagame Got for the Intervention

Paul Kagame has ruled Rwanda since 1994, first as vice president and minister of defense and then since 2000 as the president. Under Kagame, democratic norms have been flouted within Rwanda, while Rwandan troops have operated ruthlessly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A 2010 UN Mapping Project report on serious human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo showed that the Rwandan troops killed “hundreds of thousands if not millions” of Congolese civilians and Rwandan refugees between 1993 and 2003. Kagame rejected the UN report, suggesting that this “double genocide” theory denied the Rwandan genocide of 1994. He has wanted the French to accept responsibility for the genocide of 1994 and has hoped that the international community will ignore the massacres in the eastern Congo.

On March 26, 2021, historian Vincent Duclert submitted a 992-page report on France’s role in the Rwandan genocide. The report makes it clear that France should accept—as Médecins Sans Frontières put it—“overwhelming responsibility” for the genocide. But the report does not say that the French state was complicit in the violence. Duclert traveled to Kigali on April 9 to deliver the report in person to Kagame, who said that the report’s publication “marks an important step toward a common understanding of what took place.”

On April 19, the Rwandan government released a report that it had commissioned from the U.S. law firm Levy Firestone Muse. This report’s title says it all: “A Foreseeable Genocide: The Role of the French Government in Connection with the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda.” The French did not deny the strong words in this document, which argues that France armed the génocidaires and then hastened to protect them from international scrutiny. Macron, who has been loath to accept France’s brutality in the Algerian liberation war, did not dispute Kagame’s version of history. This was a price he was willing to pay.

 

What France Wants

On April 28, 2021, Mozambique’s President Nyusi visited Kagame in Rwanda. Nyusi told Mozambique’s news broadcasters that he had come to learn about Rwanda’s interventions in the Central African Republic and to ascertain Rwanda’s willingness to assist Mozambique in Cabo Delgado.

On May 18, Macron hosted a summit in Paris, “seeking to boost financing in Africa amid the COVID-19 pandemic,” which was attended by several heads of government, including Kagame and Nyusi, the president of the African Union (Moussa Faki Mahamat), the president of the African Development Bank (Akinwumi Adesina), the president of the West African Development Bank (Serge Ekué), and the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (Kristalina Georgieva). Exit from “financial asphyxiation” was at the top of the agenda, although in private meetings there were discussions about Rwandan intervention in Mozambique.

A week later, Macron left for a visit to Rwanda and South Africa, spending two days (May 26 and 27) in Kigali. He repeated the broad findings of the Duclert report, brought along 100,000 COVID-19 vaccines to Rwanda (where only around 4 percent of the population had received the first dose by the time of his visit), and spent time in private talking to Kagame. On May 28, alongside South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, Macron talked about Mozambique, saying that France was prepared to “take part in operations on the maritime side,” but would otherwise defer to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and to other regional powers. He did not mention Rwanda specifically.

Rwanda entered Mozambique in July, followed by SADC forces, which included South African troops. France got what it wanted: Its energy giant can now recoup its investment.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.

What left many grumbling at the 26th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP26) held in November in Glasgow was rich countries like the United States and those in the European Union striking down the Glasgow Loss and Damage Facility, a body created to address how to compensate developing countries for climate change-related losses and damages. Wealthy countries have been found to be most responsible for causing the climate crisis and face litigation as well as ensuing liabilities and payouts. 

But the demand to recognize loss and damage remains alive. A good indication being many climate-vulnerable developing countries have referenced loss and damage in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries are required to submit NDCs to detail their national action to address global climate change, including steps to adapt to a changing climate and the form of financial assistance needed to undertake such action. 

Small-Income and Developing Countries Hard Hit

A report published in October, 2021 found one-third of the 250 NDCs that were analyzed explicitly mentioned loss and damage. Most were from small-island developing states and least developed countries in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean. The report was supported by the European Research Council’s Politics of Climate Change Loss and Damage (CCLAD) project. 

“NDCs are political documents and not just technical submissions [under the Paris Agreement],” said Elisa Calliari, a co-author of the report. 

Developed countries tend to focus on mitigation action, like the deployment of renewable energy. But that hasn’t been the case for the majority of the world’s states.

“Developing countries have pushed hard for the inclusion of adaptation in NDCs because, for them, this is more of a priority than mitigation,” Calliari pointed out. “So you can see the politics.”

For people living in an island nation like Sri Lanka, “key loss and damage impacts are felt in food systems and other vulnerable sectors, like the coastal and marine sector and water resources. These impacts have already resulted in migration interlinked with or induced by climate change among vulnerable communities,” said Vositha Wijenayake, executive director of the SLYCAN Trust, a non-profit think tank working in Asia, Africa and Europe. Its work focuses on climate change, biodiversity and ecosystems, sustainable development, and social justice. 

Sri Lanka is classified as a lower-middle income/developing country. Given that it is also an island, its exposure to climate-related risks is high. These two factors make it extremely vulnerable to climate impacts and the ability to withstand them.

So, Wijenayake added, it is important for countries most vulnerable to climate change that loss and damage is a “key component” in addressing climate change processes, both negotiations and climate action. And this is why Sri Lanka was among the first countries to have a separate section allocated to loss and damage commitments included in its first NDCs submitted in September 2016. Building on this, the updated NDC of Sri Lanka submitted last July includes a separate section on loss and damage.

Interestingly, the report says upper-income countries like Costa Rica, Chile and Uruguay also have cited loss and damage in their NDCs. 

And outside of NDCs, many developing countries have explicitly stated loss- and damage-related demands. For instance, consider India’s environment ministry laying out ahead of COP26, “There should be a compensation for expenses incurred, and it should be borne by developed nations.”

How to Fund Loss and Damage

A question that usually rears its head with respect to addressing loss and damage is how to “operationalize” it, or what processes and institutions could be set up at the global and national levels to address loss and damage. 

“[One way would be] to look at NDCs for a bottom-up approach to understand how countries themselves are looking at loss and damage,” Calliari said. 

Of the NDCs that explicitly mention loss and damage, around half specify loss- and damage-related responses and initiatives like data gathering, analysis and assessment, and institutional capacities to address loss and damage. For example, Sri Lanka’s NDC has a whole section on loss and damage. It mentions strengthening its weather and climate forecasting systems, plus improving data management to record loss and damage. Meanwhile, Honduras’ NDC puts forth a “gender-responsive agricultural insurance mechanism for loss and damage.”

Wijenayake also stressed “inclusive and participatory processes,” in which the voices of those vulnerable to climate change are taken into account in the national and international policy-making processes. As is “ground-level implementation,” she added. 

And so, country-specific NDCs could potentially be a good starting point to determine how to put mechanisms in place to address loss and damage on a global scale. 

Getting Polluting Countries to Pay

The other gap that exists today is how finance can be mobilized to fund efforts that compensate for climate change-related loss and damage. A recent study by the Stockholm Environment Institute offers potential solutions. 

The researchers propose finance should be provided based on the following:

• Solidarity,
• “polluter pays” principle that is based on “historical responsibility,” and 
• the established notion of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” (or CBDR-RC, for short) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 

CBDR-RC means that while climate change is a shared concern, rich countries with a history of emitting carbon—like the United States and those in Europe—have a greater responsibility to take climate action than the poorer countries.  

The “polluter pays” principle has only been used to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for environmental destruction. It implies more strict liabilities than “historical responsibilities,” which outlines broad principles based on past emissions. 

The authors stress a combined approach that deploys the principles of solidarity, polluter pays and historical responsibility, as well as using the framework of CBDR-RC, to finance loss and damage. 

A strictly liability-based approach would be “politically infeasible and communities cannot wait for years to prove the liability,” said Zoha Shawoo, an associate scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute as well as one of the authors of the SEI report. 

The research team also looked at methods of recovery and rehabilitation that communities would need after financing efforts to cover losses and damages. Those efforts can include planning the relocation of communities, assisting with migration and providing affected people with alternative livelihoods. Here, too, NDCs could help with granular details like national-level entities and processes that could assist local communities with issues like displacement and loss of livelihood. 

Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India. She had reported for Toward Freedom from COP26 in Glasgow.

Editor’s Note: The following is the writer’s analysis.

Afghanistan is teetering on the brink of universal poverty. As much as 97 percent of the population is at risk of sinking below the poverty line unless a comprehensive response to the country’s multiple crises is launched, according to a September 9 report the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) released.

In his video message to the 21st Summit of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that was held on September 17, Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres addressed the group: 

“You come together at a pivotal time. Troubling developments in Afghanistan are causing profound political, economic, security and humanitarian challenges. The situation is rapidly evolving and unpredictable. But it is clear that the Afghan people want extreme poverty to be eradicated, jobs to become available, health and education services to be restored, and their lives and basic rights and freedoms to be protected. They want their country free of insecurity and terror.”

 

Two Factors for Economic Crisis

Guterres’ words carry enormous significance. The UNDP report, which analyzed four potential scenarios of escalating intensity and isolation, indicates that real GDP could contract by as much as 13.2 percent, leading to a nearly 25 percent increase in the poverty rate.

Two factors have caused Afghanistan’s economic freefall. First, even before the escalation of conflicts, a highly dysfunctional neoliberal kleptocracy—with limited writ over a narco state, dependent on foreign aid and rentier economics for its survival—was pillaging the country with the help of the United States and its European accomplices. The result: Cruelty and callousness became the mode of governance. COVID-19 devastated Afghan society: The coronavirus is believed to have infected millions, with the impact helping drive an increase in the poverty level from 38 percent in 2011 to an estimated 47 percent in 2020. At the beginning of 2021, as many as 14 million people could not obtain sufficient food, meaning more than one-third of the population of roughly 38 million was going hungry. Food insecurity is a result of constant droughts. Afghanistan is highly vulnerable to climate change, having witnessed a mean rise in temperature of 1.8° Celsius (or 35° Fahrenheit) since the middle of the 20th century, compared to a global average of 0.82° C (33.4° F). Droughts are likely to become an annual occurrence by 2030. A severe drought caused more internal displacement between 2017 and 2018 than the conflict itself. The country now is suffering from another prolonged dry period.

The second factor that caused Afghanistan’s economic freefall is, since the Taliban takeover, the imperialist bloc led by the United States has forced Afghanistan into economic isolation. The World Bank has halted funding for new projects, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has suspended payments to Afghanistan and the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has frozen the assets of Afghanistan’s central bank, which are held in the United States. Thus, Afghanistan has been faced with the absence of liquidity (cash), spiraling prices of food and medicine, currency depreciation, unemployment, and the collapse of services and construction. No money is available for public finance and administrative operations—that means no prospect of salaries for government workers. Eighty percent of Afghanistan’s last approved annual budget of $5.5 billion was funded by external aid.

 

Regional Shifts

UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi—after concluding his three-day visit to Afghanistan on September 15—commented: “The humanitarian situation in Afghanistan remains desperate… if public services and the economy collapse, we will see even greater suffering, instability, and displacement both within and outside the country… The international community must therefore engage with Afghanistan—and quickly—in order to prevent a much bigger humanitarian crisis that will have not only regional, but global implications.” 

The SCO countries have heeded Grandi’s advice. Instead of implementing measures that punish the Taliban in ways that exclude Afghanistan and adversely impact the country’s citizens, the organization is trying to actively promote a smooth transition in Kabul. In the latest SCO gathering in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Central Asian countries—which had previously accepted their roles as mere doormats for U.S. ambitions in Afghanistan—voiced concerns about the bellicose attitude of Western countries toward Kabul. 

“Considering the humanitarian situation, we propose looking into the possibility of lifting the freeze on Afghanistan’s accounts in foreign banks,” Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev remarked. 

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, too, reiterated these viewpoints, adding “the entire burden of negative impacts” following the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan “will be placed on Afghanistan’s neighboring countries.”

Central Asian countries’ implied criticism of U.S. foreign policy is important. From the 2000s onward, the U.S. stance toward Central Asia was an extension of its war in Afghanistan. The region became a base for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a conduit for International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) supply routes. Economic agendas were relegated to the back burner. A half-hearted attempt was made to create a regional energy market in Central Asia, Afghanistan and South Asia. With the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) as a starting point, the New Silk Road (NSR) was supposed to facilitate trade and transport corridors, ease customs and border procedures, and promote economic links.

However, these grandiose ideas were all for naught. Apart from profiteering from the ISAF bonanza and fleecing Afghanistan and its donors, Central Asian countries gained nothing substantial from U.S. initiatives. These benefits also came to an end with the decrease in the tempo of the Afghan war—beginning from the NATO drawdown in 2014 and ending with the U.S. exit in 2021. Failed regional cooperation, widespread corruption and disproportionate enrichment of elite insiders serve as relics of Western involvement in Central Asia.

 

China’s Role with Afghanistan

Growing disillusionment with the U.S. strategy on Afghanistan has pushed China—an SCO heavyweight—to the forefront of global diplomacy. For China, Afghanistan is not a passive unit in a geopolitical struggle against its rivals; it is a bridge between Eurasia and South Asia, and between East Asia and West Asia. It lies between two of the main Belt and Road corridors—the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to the south and the China-Central Asia-Western Asia Economic Corridor to the north. Thus, Sino-Afghan ties are built on tangible geo-economic connections, not on opportunistic geo-political aims.

On September 8, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced $31 million in aid for Afghanistan, saying the funds were a “necessary step” to restore order and “end anarchy.” A week later, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters in Beijing the United States had no legitimate reasons to freeze Afghanistan’s assets. Asked about the Taliban’s demand that the United States should unfreeze Afghanistan’s assets, Zhao said: “I think that the [Taliban’] spokesperson is right.” He went on to say, “These assets belong to the Afghan people. They [United States] should respond to the legitimate requests of the Afghan people and stop the wrong practice of sanctions and stop making obstacles for Afghanistan’s peace and reconstruction.”

In his speech to the SCO Summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping provided the regional context to his country’s evolving Afghan plan: 

“We SCO member states need to step up coordination, make full use of platforms such as the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group and facilitate a smooth transition in Afghanistan. We need to encourage Afghanistan to put in place a broad-based and inclusive political framework, adopt prudent and moderate domestic and foreign policies, resolutely fight all forms of terrorism, live in amity with its neighbors and truly embark on a path of peace, stability and development.”

In a meeting convened on September 16, to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi proposed the following to his contemporaries in Russia, Iran and Pakistan: 1) the United States should be urged to provide economic and humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan; 2) the Taliban regime should be encouraged to make a clean break with terrorist forces; 3) concerted efforts should be made to moderate Afghanistan’s domestic and foreign policies and promote the basic rights of ethnic minorities, women and children; 4) pathways should be opened for the regional economic integration and development of Afghanistan; and 5) the spillovers of security risks should be systematically prevented. These five suggestions are sensible and should be supported by the international community to ensure stability in Afghanistan.

Yanis Iqbal is an independent researcher and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India, and can be contacted at [email protected].