World on Fire - Brownstein, Michael [62]
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In Kenya, after a failed military coup in 1982, the market-dominant Indian minority was confronted with the unleashed hatred of some of Kenya’s 16 million African majority. Looters and rioters targeted Indian shops and businesses, smashed what could not be taken, and raped at least twenty Indian women. Today, with Kenya’s Indian community prospering visibly from global markets—and President Moi’s billionaire Indian cronies openly looting the country—anti-Indian hostility continues to grow, occasionally exploding in ethnic riots and mass violence. As African opposition leaders intensify their ethnic hatemongering—Kenneth Matiba has promised to expel the Asians from Kenya if he becomes president
28 —Kenya’s Indian minority finds itself uncomfortably dependent on the corrupt and increasingly authoritarian President Moi. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has for years been calling reflexively for more markets and more democracy, not just in Kenya but in all of Africa.
Whereas Indians are known as the “Jews of East Africa,” the Lebanese are the preeminent market-dominant minority in West Africa, a term that refers loosely to eleven countries along Africa’s Atlantic coast (Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria) and three inland countries (Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger).
Sierra Leone offers an example that is surprisingly parallel to the Angolan tragedy. Most Americans have some knowledge of the brutal rebel war in Sierra Leone, which has been called “the worst place on earth” and “the darkest corner in Africa.”
29 A few may know that the rebels were chopping off children’s limbs principally to gain control of the country’s lucrative diamond fields. But who ran Sierra Leone’s diamond industry for years before the rebels took it over? A tiny handful of principally Lebanese dealers.
The extent of Lebanese market dominance in Sierra Leone—historically and at present—is astounding. The first Lebanese (then called “Syrians”) arrived in Sierra Leone around 1895, probably at the port city of Freetown, today the nation’s capital. Unlike the Europeans, who were unable or unwilling to penetrate the bush, the Lebanese headed straight for the interior of the country. Before long Lebanese traders could be found on every street corner peddling mirrors, beads, pomatum, iron pocketknives, jewelry, and cheap imported textiles to their African customers.
The Lebanese did not just sell. They also bought produce (particularly rice and palm products) from African farmers, which they held until prices rose and then transported and sold to European firms. With their profits from street trading, the Lebanese opened shops. Displacing rival indigenous traders (mostly so-called Creoles, from the coast) was easy. The Lebanese worked from dawn to dusk and had much lower overheads. They spent practically nothing on lodging, often sleeping on the same counter where meals were prepared and eaten. Moreover, because of their reputation for industriousness and commercial acumen, European firms were disposed to grant Lebanese long-term credit, an advantage they exploited to the hilt.
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By the 1920s, the Lebanese had established themselves as indispensable middlemen, linking European firms located in Freetown with African consumers and producers in the interior. By the 1930s, the Lebanese controlled the country’s road transport industry. By the late 1950s, when Sierra Leone was still an English protectorate (independence would come in 1961), Lebanese middlemen dominated the two most lucrative sectors of the economy: agriculture and diamond dealing.
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The perception of Lebanese economic dominance at this time was vividly captured in Graham Greene’s novel The Heart of the Matter, set in a “West African coastal town” that is almost certainly Freetown. (Greene worked for the British secret service in Sierra Leone during World War II.) The place