CASADE

Fulani Herdsmen and Boko Haram: The invisible hands of the same vested interests in Nigeria.

John Ifediora.
Editorial Commentary.
A wise soul once said, “Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.” Another, perhaps lesser known, was known to have said, “You can fool many people most of the time, but you cannot fool all people all of the time.” Well, so much for adages, for clearly these wise souls never contemplated a phenomenon uncommonly known as the “Nigerian Syndrome;” an affliction so sudden and debilitating that it paralyses the victim with an acute sense of fear, helplessness, and the desire to flee. The “fight or flee” instinct imbued by nature is thus truncated to flee only. In primitive civilizations of hunters and gatherers, men distinguished themselves through conquest and defense of their communities, and did so consistently as a matter of course in abnegation of physical well being, but selflessly for the gods, family and community. The Nigerian Syndrome is diametrically opposed to this human instinct nurtured and perfected through centuries of habituation.

The point at hand is that Nigerians, as a collective lot, seem to abandon the natural instinct of self-preservation when confronted with danger. The overwhelming reaction is to either flee or cry for help; no other collectivity of humanity has shown such lack of will to stand and take the bull by the horn. That Boko Haram ravaged the country for years with impunity has nothing to do with their strength or bravery but much to do with the Nigerian Syndrome. That the Fulani herdsmen have become deadlier than Boko Harem, their forerunner, is because the collective will to stop them in their tracks is wanting; the Nigerian Syndrome strikes again. The question to ask now is how long can Nigerians remain docile in the face of danger and still pretend to be a community of rational men and women that want to remain whole and intact?

Since 2012, the Fulani herdsmen have slaughtered more Nigerians than Boko Haram, a universally known terrorist group. In 2014 alone the herdsmen killed approximately 1229 people in villages and towns across the country, a staggering feat that compelled Global Terrorist Index to call this rag-tag of men the 4th deadliest group in the world. The Fulani herdsmen are boys and middle-aged men armed with automatic rifles; from whence these weapons came cannot be a mystery. If government officials claim ignorance of the sources of the weaponry deployed by these herdsmen, then everyone should really run for cover, close the hatch and give the key to a foreign power.

The time to stand and defend Nigeria from itself is now; wait another day and we would everlastingly lose the soul of the country; and that would be unforgiveable.

by CASADE

Centralized electricity supply must now end; the dawn of the mini-grids

As the world moves inexorably towards clean energy, and just as steadfastly sheds its dependence on fossil fuels, the pace at which policy makers and actors in the private sector are facilitating this transformation is agonizingly slow for millions in developing countries without access to electricity.But the recognition that the old top-down model or centralized supply of electricity is no longer serviceable is the first necessary step towards solving extant debilitating energy shortages, and building a 21st century energy system. An enlightening article on this topical issue by the Economist is worth taking note of by policy makers and private sector investors alike.

AROUND 1.5 billion people, or more than a fifth of the world's population, have no access to electricity, and a billion more have only an unreliable and intermittent supply. Of the people without electricity, 85% live in rural areas or on the fringes of cities. Extending energy grids into these areas is expensive: the United Nations estimates that an average of $35 billion-40 billion a year needs to be invested until 2030 so everyone on the planet can cook, heat and light their premises, and have energy for productive uses such as schooling. On current trends, however, the number of “energy poor” people will barely budge, and 16% of the world's population will still have no electricity by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency.

But why wait for top-down solutions? Providing energy in a bottom-up way instead has a lot to recommend it. There is no need to wait for politicians or utilities to act. The technology in question, from solar panels to low-energy light-emitting diodes (LEDs), is rapidly falling in price. Local, bottom-up systems may be more sustainable and produce fewer carbon emissions than centralised schemes. In the rich world, in fact, the trend is towards a more flexible system of distributed, sustainable power sources. The developing world has an opportunity to leapfrog the centralised model, just as it leapfrogged fixed-line telecoms and went straight to mobile phones.

But just as the spread of mobile phones was helped along by new business models, such as pre-paid airtime cards and village “telephone ladies”, new approaches are now needed. “We need to reinvent how energy is delivered,” says Simon Desjardins, who manages a programme at the Shell Foundation that invests in for-profit ways to deliver energy to the poor. “Companies need to come up with innovative business models and technology.” Fortunately, lots of people are doing just that.

Let there be light
Start with lighting, which prompted the establishment of the first electrical utilities in the rich world. At the “Lighting Africa” conference in Nairobi in May, a World Bank project to encourage private-sector solutions for the poor, 50 lighting firms displayed their wares, up from just a handful last year. This illustrates both the growing interest in bottom-up solutions and falling prices. Prices of solar cells have also fallen, so that the cost per kilowatt is half what it was a decade ago. Solar cells can be used to power low-energy LEDs, which are both energy-efficient and cheap: the cost of a set of LEDs to light a home has fallen by half in the past decade, and is now below $25.

“This could eliminate kerosene lighting in the next ten years, the way cellphones took off in about 13 years,” says Richenda Van Leeuwen of the Energy Access Initiative at the UN Foundation in Washington, DC. That would have a number of benefits: families in the developing world may spend as much as 30% of their income on kerosene, and kerosene lighting causes indoor air pollution and fires. But such systems are still beyond the reach of the very poorest. “There are hundreds of millions who can afford clean energy, but there is still a barrier for the billions who cannot,” says Sam Goldman, the chief executive of D.light. His firm has developed a range of solar-powered systems that can provide up to 12 hours of light after charging in sunlight for one day. D.light's most basic solar lantern costs $10. But the price would have to fall below $5 to make it universally affordable, according to a study by the International Finance Corporation, an arm of the World Bank. So there is scope for further improvement.

It is not just new technology that is needed, but new models. Much of the ferment in bottom-up energy entrepreneurialism is focusing on South Asia, where 570m people in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, mostly in rural areas, have no access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. One idea is to use locally available biomass as a feedstock to generate power for a village-level “micro-grid”. Husk Power Systems, an Indian firm, uses second-world-war-era diesel generators fitted with biomass gasifiers that can use rice husks, which are otherwise left to rot, as a feedstock. Wires are strung on cheap, easy-to-repair bamboo poles to provide power to around 600 families for each generator. Co-founded three years ago by a local electrical engineer, Gyanesh Pandey, Husk has established five mini-grids in Bihar, India's poorest state, where rice is a staple crop. It hopes to extend its coverage to 50 mini-grids during 2010. Consumers pay door-to-door collectors upfront for power, and Husk collects a 30% government subsidy for construction costs. Its pilot plants were profitable within six months, so its model is sustainable.

Emergence BioEnergy takes this approach a step farther. Its aim is to provide many entrepreneurial opportunities around energy production, says Iqbal Quadir, the firm's founder, who is also director of the Legatum Centre for Development & Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A cattle farmer in a small village in Bangladesh might, for example, operate a one-kilowatt generator in his hut, powered by methane from cow manure stored in his basement. He can then sell surplus electricity to his neighbours and use the waste heat from the generator to run a refrigerator to chill milk. This preserves milk that otherwise might be spoilt, offers new sources of income to the farmer (selling power and other services, such as charging mobile phones or running an internet kiosk) and provides power to others in his village.

The farmer funds all this with a microfinance loan. It is no coincidence that this is a similar model to the “telephone lady” scheme, pioneered in Bangladesh a few years ago, in which women use microloans to buy mobile phones and then sell access, by the call, to other villagers; Mr Quadir helped establish Grameenphone, now the largest mobile operator in Bangladesh, and hopes to repeat its success in energy. After a pilot project in two villages, Emergence BioEnergy plans a broader roll-out in 2011 in conjunction with BRAC, a giant microfinance and development NGO.
Another project, in India, aims to convert women from gathering wood, which denudes forests, to using canisters of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). India's four state-owned regional power companies, including Bharat Petroleum Corporation, will build a national network of thousands of LPG-powered community kitchens. Local entrepreneurs will then provide the LPG and charge villagers to use the kitchens in 15-minute increments.
Harish Hande, managing director of Selco Solar, a social enterprise in India that promotes the adoption of new energy technologies, says the important thing is not so much to deliver energy to the poor, but to provide new ways to generate income. His firm has devised a solar-powered sewing machine, for example. Last year Mr Hande started an incubation lab in rural Karnataka, in southern India, to bring together local customers and engineering interns from MIT, Stanford and Imperial College, London. The lab is currently piloting a hybrid banana dryer that runs on biomass during wet spells and sunlight on dry days to make packets of dried banana—so that farmers no longer have to rely on selling their crop immediately.

Making it pay
Even when new technology and models are available, the logistics of rolling them out can be daunting. The two big challenges are providing the upfront investment for energy schemes, and building and maintaining the necessary distribution systems to enable them to reach sufficient scale. At the moment, most schemes are funded by angel investors, foundations and social venture-capital funds. There is a vigorous debate about whether the private sector on its own can make these models work as technology improves, or whether non-profit groups are needed to fill the gaps in funding and distribution.
Microfinance institutions may seem the natural financial partners to help the poor pay for energy systems, since they are the only organisations with millions of poor customers. But teething problems are formidable and success stories are few, says Patrick Maloney of the Lemelson Foundation, which invests in clean-energy technologies for the poor. A telephone lady could buy a mobile phone for a relatively small sum, and would immediately have a source of income with which to repay the loan. Although a household that buys a solar lamp saves money on kerosene, the investment takes several months to pay for itself, and there is no actual income from the lamp. For bigger energy projects, such as micro-generators, the loan required is much larger, and therefore riskier, than the loan for a mobile phone.

Moreover, microfinance institutions may lack the funds to identify reliable energy suppliers, educate loan officers about clean-energy technologies and build a support network for energy schemes. One way to solve this problem, being pursued by MicroEnergy Credits, a social enterprise, is to plug microfinance institutions into carbon markets. Projects can then be funded by selling carbon credits when a microfinance customer switches from kerosene to solar lighting, for example.

Distribution is also a problem, particularly in Africa and South Asia, where the majority of the world's energy-poor live. Infrastructure and supply chains are poor or non-existent, particularly in rural areas. Recruiting and training a sales force, and educating consumers of the benefits of switching away from wood or kerosene, must be paid for somehow. Social enterprises are innovating in this area, too. Solar Aid, a non-profit group, specialises in setting up microfranchises to identify and train entrepreneurs. The organisation works with local authorities to identify potential entrepreneurs, who must gather signatures from their local community—providing both the endorsement of their neighbours and a future customer base. They then undergo five days of training with an exam at the end. Solar Aid is also testing a kiosk-based system to help entrepreneurs distribute LED lighting in the Kibera district of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Some hurdles to bottom-up energy projects are more easily addressed. In particular, high import duties on clean-energy products in many developing countries, notably in Africa, hamper their adoption by the poor. Ethiopia, for example, imposes a 100% duty on imports of solar products, while Malawi charges a 47.5% tax on LED lighting systems. Such taxes are sometimes defended on the basis that only the rich can afford fancy technology. But the same was said about mobile phones a decade ago—and look at them now.

by CASADE

The fragility of the Maghreb's constituent nations-states

Anour Boukars.

Persistent economic and social disparities between urban centers and outlying communities present an ongoing source of instability for countries in the Maghreb.

HIGHLIGHTS

The social and economic marginalization of communities in the periphery of each country of the Maghreb is an ongoing source of instability in the region.

Security forces must distinguish between the threats posed by militants and ordinary citizens expressing grievances. A heavy-handed response is likely to backfire, deepening distrust of central governments while fueling militancy.

Economic integration of peripheral communities is a priority. Such initiatives must deliver at the local level, however. Otherwise, perceptions of corruption and exploitation will reinforce perceived grievances.

Nearly a decade after the Arab uprisings, tempers in the outlying regions of the Maghreb are on the boil. Scarred by a history of states’ neglect, with poverty rates often more than triple that of urban areas, these frontiers of discontent are being transformed into incubators of instability. Bitterness, rage, and frustration directed at governments perceived as riddled with abuses and corruption represent a combustible mix that was brewed decades ago, leading to the current hothouse of discord and tumult. Into the vacuum of credible state institutions and amid illicit cross-border flows of people and goods, including arms and drugs, militancy and jihadist recruitment are starting to take root, especially among restless youth. The center of gravity for this toxic cocktail is the Maghreb’s marginalized border areas—from Morocco’s restless northern Rif region to the farthest reaches of the troubled southern regions of Algeria and Tunisia.

Governmental response has been parochial with an overemphasis on heavy-handed security approaches that often end up further polarizing communities and worsening youth disillusionment. At a time when governments are playing catch up against a continually shifting terror threat—and with the menace of returning Maghrebi fighters from Iraq, Syria, and Libya—the disconnect between the state and its marginalized regions threatens to pull these countries into a vicious cycle of violence and state repression. Breaking this spiral requires governments in the region to rethink their approach to their peripheral regions.
Countries of the Maghreb Region

Countries of the Maghreb Region - Population Density
Note: Population densities are shown for illustration purposes and should not be relied upon for accuracy.
The transnational nature of security threats in the region also underscores the necessity for governments to develop their intelligence sharing and border security cooperation. Unfortunately, shared threats have been compounded by enduring interstate rivalries and closed borders. Since the mid-seventies, Morocco and Algeria have remained trapped in a zero-sum world. Their acrimonious rivalry over regional dominance and bitter feud over the Western Sahara have blocked progress on many of the burning issues that bedevil the Maghreb and Sahel. Whatever regional cooperation agreements there are tend to be limited and ad hoc. The challenge today is to broaden and make concrete these opportunities for cross-border cooperation.
Algeria Buffeted
For decades, an illusion of relative tranquility pervaded Algeria’s vast peripheral regions. This provided an eerie counterpoint to the intermittent agitation that animated the densely populated spaces in the country’s north. The Algerian south was suddenly catapulted to the forefront of public consciousness and national security concerns with the unprecedented terrorist targeting of Algeria’s energy infrastructure in 2013 at the In Amenas gas facility near the southeastern border with Libya. Forty workers were killed and hundreds held hostage.

Algeria’s oil and gas industry represents roughly 35 percent of GDP and 75 percent of government revenue. This strategic economic sector is largely based in the south, which encompasses more than 80 percent of the national territory but less than 9 percent of the population. This region, accordingly, looms large in Algeria’s security calculations. Yet, despite its strategic vitality, the south is often trivialized as a space of folkloric fascination and exotic, sometimes sinister, goings-on. The media tends to reinforce this narrative by inflating the stereotypes of Saharan communities as truculent tribes of dubious loyalty to the state.1

For Saharan communities, this prevalent discourse smacks of racial prejudice and a deliberate intention to justify their political and socioeconomic exclusion. It is not the terrain, climate, or presumed inherent laziness, lack of skills, and dubious nationalist credentials of the people of the Sahara that make them poor or engage in illicit flows at Algeria’s southern border with Mali and Libya. Rather, from the perspective of these communities, it is the neglect and pauperization of a rich region that has retarded its development and made it heavily dependent on smuggling and contraband as sources of daily subsistence.

The government’s laissez-faire approach to informal cross-border trade also contributed to making contraband a dominant economic activity in the south.2 This was a calculated strategy designed to tame the vast southern frontier, as contraband trade provided a lifeline to populations deprived of the financial benefits of their region’s natural resource endowments. The debut of terror groups and criminal organizations in the Sahara in the early 2000s revealed the potential pitfalls of this strategy, however. Regional terrorist networks and criminal organizations perfected the modes of operations, routes, and delivery methods that were first used by smugglers of innocuous commodities like petrol, cooking oil, corn flour, and powdered milk, and then, in the 1990s, by traffickers of cigarettes and weapons.
“For Saharan communities, this prevalent discourse smacks of racial prejudice and a deliberate intention to justify their political and socioeconomic exclusion.”

The shortcoming of Algeria’s lax management of its borderlands came after 2011. The Arab uprisings were a major catalyst in the awakening and politicization of the south. Protests against social exclusion, high unemployment, and environmental depredation have mushroomed across the Algerian Sahara since that time.3
Unfortunately, political disgruntlement and frustration with injustices are not always channeled into social mobilization and nonviolent protests.4 Some, especially disaffected youth, gravitate toward the transnational criminal, smuggling, and jihadi networks that have been established in Algeria’s south and its Sahelian periphery. The daring kidnapping of the governor of Illizi Province in southeastern Algeria in 2012 by locals involved in the protests against poor living conditions is illustrative. His subsequent transfer to Libya to be sold to elements of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) demonstrates the interconnectedness between grievances, criminality, and jihad.

Mounting sectarian and ethnic tensions, worsened by economic upheavals, have compounded troubles in Algeria’s south. The lethal intercommunal clashes that erupted in August 2013 in the border town of Bordj Badji Mokhtar exposed deep rifts between the Tuareg Idnan and Arab Berabiche communities. Never before had the area seen such an escalation of violence, which started when a young Tuareg, accused of theft, was murdered in an apparent vendetta.5 The region of Ghardaïa was also engulfed in waves of deadly violence between the Chaamba Arabs present in most of the Algerian south and the Mozabite Berbers of the Muslim Ibadi sect, an insular group with its own system of values, codes of conduct, and rules.6 The cause of the violence was attributed to disputes over resources, land, and migration.

Unfortunately for Algeria, the vast south is not the only border region exposed to internal and external shocks. Similar threats are mirrored along the Tunisian, Malian, and Libyan borders. Government tolerance of contraband and smuggling of commodities has provided terrorists and other criminal actors opportunities to exploit these informal cross-border routes. Algerian militants, for example, have used the limited oversight to build a safe haven in Mount Chaambi, Tunisia—a few miles from the Algerian border.7

Paradoxically, the only respite for Algeria can be found at its closed frontier with Morocco. In recent years, getting across the border has become quite difficult as both countries have tightened their control of smuggling routes and goods. In 2013, Algeria started digging trenches along its border with Morocco to deter smuggling of fuel. Not to be outdone, Morocco reacted a year later by building a 150-km-long security fence to strengthen its defenses against the flow of human smuggling and possible infiltration of terrorists from Algeria. Algeria accuses Morocco of flooding it with cannabis while Morocco complains about the flow from Algeria of African migrants and recreational drugs, namely amphetamine pills (Rivotril or Qarqobi in Moroccan colloquial Arabic).8
Despite the mutual recriminations, both countries’ fortification of their shared border seems to keep terrorist and violent criminal groups at bay even if smugglers continue to find ways to circumvent border controls.

Morocco Stable but Still Vulnerable
At first glance, Morocco’s borders seem to be the least exposed to the security dangers plaguing its neighbors in the Maghreb. The Kingdom has effectively minimized security challenges while continually enhancing its capabilities to prepare for risks that are increasingly volatile and unpredictable. With the exception of the Marrakesh bomb blast in 2011, Morocco has been safe from the terrorist attacks that have roiled Algeria and Tunisia. The country’s proactive security approach has made it harder for AQIM and other terrorist groups to establish a foothold in the country. That said, few security experts doubt that there are still security gaps in need of filling. The robustness of the drug and human smuggling networks active on Morocco’s borders is a cause of great concern. There is also a worrying increase in social tensions in the country’s peripheral regions, as exemplified by the monthslong protests that rocked the central Rif region of northern Morocco after the gruesome death of a fishmonger in October 2016.9

The most problematic regions in Morocco are located in the outlying south and north. A sizable chunk of the first is still mired in an unresolved dispute over Western Sahara. The vicissitudes of this dispute place the territory on a knife’s edge. Challenged from within by simmering pockets of dissent and from without by the increasing reach of violent extremist organizations and criminal networks operating in neighboring Sahelian countries, Western Sahara is one of the most heavily guarded and militarized places in Morocco. Parts of it have been sealed off since the 1980s with a 2,700-km trench-cum-wall (known as “the Berm”) that has effectively thwarted Algerian-backed Polisario fighters and transformed the balance of power in Morocco’s favor.

A rally for political reform in Morocco.
Nonetheless, the Polisario-controlled refugee camps in southwest Algeria boil with simmering anger and discontent. Former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon worried about the vulnerability of young Sahrawis to recruitment by “criminal and terrorist networks.” In response, Moroccan authorities began fortifying their military presence on the border with Mauritania, as well as stepping up socioeconomic investments in the south of the country. In February 2016, King Mohammed VI launched an ambitious $1.8 billion plan to upgrade the region’s infrastructure and integrate it with the north of Morocco.
Similar government efforts to ease social tensions and mitigate the evolving threat of terrorism have been directed toward the Rif, a region with large pockets of alienation that extends from the bustling cities of Tangier and Tétouan in the northwest to the Algerian border in the northeast. The central part of the region, mostly Berber, is famous for its historic rebellious streak against central authorities. Meanwhile the western part, largely Arabophone, has gained notoriety for being a hub for migrant smuggling, drug trafficking, and recruiting aspiring militants to the conflict zones of Iraq and Syria. Out of the 1,500 Moroccans who reportedly joined the ranks of the self-proclaimed Islamic State an al Qaeda-aligned forces in Syria and Iraq, an estimated 600–700 hail from the north of the country.10
In response to these patterns, the government has increased its investment in vocational training, sociocultural centers, and rehabilitation programs to combat the increase in drug use and improve the lives of at-risk youth in the underprivileged neighborhoods of the northern cities. Since he assumed the throne in 1999, King Mohammed VI has also placed the economic development of the Rif, meaning “the edge of cultivated land,” as a top national security priority. The western Rif region, in particular, has seen a noticeable turnaround with significant investments in ports, roads, railways, air transportation, and water supply, as well as a range of other measures to attract private-sector investors to the newly created economic enclaves and industrial parks.

“The most organized and resourced trafficking networks have moved from trafficking in the highly lucrative petrol trade to the smuggling of cigarettes, medicine, migrants, and drugs.”
The success in transforming the Tangier-Tétouan axis into an important manufacturing hub and commercial gateway has not, however, been replicated in the central Rif region where hundreds of villages still rely on rudimentary subsistence farming or cannabis growing to survive. To be sure, the new Mediterranean coastal road, known as “rocade du Rif,” which connects Tangier to Saïdia on the Algerian border, and the selective building and upgrading of main roads have improved the region’s road networks. But other promised big infrastructural plans such as the Manarat al Moutawassit (“Beacon of the Mediterranean”) development project in al Hoceima have been derailed
.
The Moroccan government is also struggling to lift the northeast out of isolation. This region has been battered by the fortification of the closed border with Algeria.11 Seventy percent of the region’s economy depends on the informal sector, which employs about 10,000 people.12 The rest of the economy is based on remittances from Moroccans living abroad as well as on agriculture and mining (coal and iron), though these sectors have been lagging. Protests over the deaths of three young men extracting coal from abandoned mines in the restive eastern town of Jerada in January 2018 demonstrate the tension.13
The erection of security walls has not stemmed the illicit flow of all products between Algeria and Morocco. The most organized and resourced trafficking networks have moved from trafficking in the highly lucrative petrol trade to the smuggling of cigarettes, medicine, migrants, and drugs.14 Those that suffer the most are the majority of contrabandists who lack the resources and connections to circumvent state control or buy off border agents.

The Moroccan government has been trying for years now to develop an economic strategy to break the northeast’s geographic isolation and enhance its investment attractiveness. The most ambitious is the ongoing construction of the Nador West Med Port Complex and the free zone associated with it. The mega project aspires to replicate the success of the Tangier Med Port Complex in helping to strengthen the economic development of the northeast through the development of commercial, industrial, logistical, and services activities.

Nonetheless, while important progress has been made, the isolated communities in Morocco’s periphery remain a potential incubator for further instability.

Al Hoceima, Morocco
Tunisia Besieged
Tunisia is rightly lauded for the democratic progress it has made since the popular uprising that toppled longtime strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. But regional asymmetries pose significant challenges to the country’s nascent democracy. Poverty rates of 26–32 percent in rural areas are three times that in Tunis.15 The period since Ben Ali was ousted has not led to significant improvements in the economic situation of the border regions. Outside the wave of government hiring in the early days after the revolution and timid efforts to lure investors to these remote regions, their economic plight shows no sign of improvement. There is hope that the regionalization process—aimed at devolving power to regional and municipal authorities—can lead to a serious reassessment of regional development policies and a fair allocation of resources to these marginalized areas. Failure to do so threatens to aggravate social tensions at a time of returning battle-hardened Tunisian jihadists from Syria and Libya.16
“This growing disconnect between the state and its periphery is dangerous, threatening to perpetuate hard-line security approaches, the effects of which often result in more social tension and political violence.”

The fall of Ben Ali created a security vacuum and disrupted cross-border markets and trade networks, allowing for the creation of new opportunistic groups unknown to security officials and more willing to trade in drugs and firearms.17 For example, the transformation of Tunisia into a transit point between Algeria and Libya for the trafficking of cannabis, stimulant drugs, and alcohol affected the old contrabandists of legal commodities who saw a significant decrease in profits. The squeeze pushed some into the criminal marketplace to avoid insolvency.18
The encroachment of criminal activity was accompanied by a similar creeping intrusion of terrorist groups who sought to first establish a presence on the border to facilitate the departure of Tunisian recruits to Syria. This evolved into the creation of safe havens for those willing to fight in Libya and later return to undertake terrorist attacks in Tunisia proper, as happened with the perpetrators of the 2015 Bardo National Museum and Sousse attacks. On the western border with Algeria, a number of Tunisian militants managed in 2013 to gain a foothold in the rugged areas of Mount Chaambi and Mount Semmama, where soldiers have been killed and IEDs planted on local roads.19

Tunisian protesters denounce terrorism.
A rash of attacks on Tunisian security services, amplified by the dramatic assault by dozens of Islamic State-trained militants on security forces in the town of Ben Guerdane near the Libyan border in March 2016, has led to an increasing militarization of the border. This security-first approach has collided with the harsh reality of communities whose livelihoods depend on the free movement of people and goods.20 For example, the transborder dimension of social and tribal relations between Tunisia’s southeast and Libya’s west makes any disruptions to cross-border trade an explosive affair. In February 2015, the government’s closure of the border posts of Ben Guerdane and Dehiba triggered massive protests and the organization of a general strike. These protests were less about the state controlling its frontiers and more about the lack of viable alternatives to illicit cross-border trade and the government’s apparent nonresponsiveness to the population’s demands.

The government is seen as impeding one of the few sources of revenue available to border communities. This breeds bitterness among locals who believe that that government security measures come at the expense of their well-being. After all, the intensification of border enforcement is affecting only the most vulnerable people who are dependent on trade in contraband and lack the means and networks to circumvent border checks. The most powerful and resourced smuggling rings use the main roads and benefit from the connivance of Tunisian border patrol agents and other security officials.21
The rising militarization of the border seems to have the opposite effect of that intended. Instead of effectively curbing criminal activity and the trafficking of harmful substances, a militarized border has created more openings for corruption. For example, the inability of customs and border agents to provide security in the border region has led to an expanded role for the Army.22 The assumption of this new role elevates the potential for corruption within the Army, a development that risks tainting the image of one of the few state institutions that enjoys credibility and popular acceptance. It has also increased competition and distrust between the different services in charge of monitoring the borders.
“Overcoming this trust deficit between the security services and local communities is crucial for enhancing the effectiveness of the provision of security.”

The escalation of illicit activities along the borders, therefore, has justified the government’s militarization of the border and its clamping down on cross-border trade, but this has only served to exacerbate corruption, underdevelopment, and inequality. This pattern risks a deepening cycle of violence, organized criminality, and a backslide into repressive authoritarianism.

Ways Forward
While the degree of vulnerability to security threats facing governments in the Maghreb varies, none of these countries is immune from the mounting pressures of transnational militant organizations, criminal networks, and social tensions in their border areas.
The strengthening of states’ abilities to exert control over the entirety of their territories as well as the improvement of regional cooperation is, however, only one piece of the puzzle in tackling insecurities along the borders of the Maghreb. Security responses can never be a substitute for tackling the underlying drivers of insecurity: the political and socioeconomic marginalization of border communities. Many youths in the Maghreb’s border and peripheral regions have grown deeply frustrated, angry, and hostile toward state authority. This growing disconnect between the state and its periphery is dangerous, threatening to perpetuate hard-line security approaches, the effects of which often result in more social tension and political violence.

Following are some of priorities for action that emerge from this review:
Tackle the deep-seated grievances and resentments prevalent among peripheral communities and disadvantaged groups.

Strengthening government security capacities and boosting border controls are crucial but insufficient to protect against internal and cross-border threats. Morocco, in particular, but also Algeria and increasingly Tunisia deserve a pat on the back for neutralizing or containing the threat of terrorism within their borders. The significant weakening of the Islamic State in the region is a testament to the effectiveness of military and security responses. If history is any guide, however, the threat of terrorism will linger and remain a challenge in the Maghreb unless governments get serious about addressing the longstanding grievances and resentments prevalent among peripheral communities and disadvantaged groups. As the Tunisian experience amply demonstrates, anger at the persistence of social exclusion and regional disparities, combined with exposure to radical Salafi preachers, are important factors in understanding youth radicalization.
Resist replicating the old combination of repression and co-optation to smother popular mobilization.

From Tataouine in southern Tunisia to Ouargla in southern Algeria and the Rif city of al Hoceima in Morocco, this approach has shown its limits in subduing the cities and towns in upheaval. Emergency measures and promises of infrastructure projects may contribute to a lull in social mobilization, but their effects quickly evaporate if they fail to also genuinely respond to peoples’ demands for economic opportunity and ethical governance. The King of Morocco acknowledged as much in a speech during the opening session of Parliament on October 13, 2017:
[W]e have to admit that our national development model no longer responds to citizens’ growing demands and pressing needs; it has not been able to reduce disparities between segments of the population, correct inter-regional imbalances or achieve social justice.23
Improve community engagement skills of the police, gendarmerie, and other security forces to enhance state-society relations.

The persistent stigmatization of borderland and peripheral communities as troublemakers and outlaws and the trauma associated with aggressive and intrusive policing instill in young people profound feelings of humiliation and bitterness toward state authority. Overcoming this trust deficit between the security services and local communities is crucial for enhancing the effectiveness of the provision of security. The adoption of new rules and regulations to professionalize police training, recruitment, and promotion to advance cultural sensitivity to these communities is critical.
Recognize the historical specificity and geographic particularity of border regions.

In all countries of the Maghreb, border regions have suffered from decades of state neglect. Historic narratives have been manipulated to portray some outlying regions as archaic zones, full of dissidents and outlaws. Textbooks misrepresent traumatic events and downplay the significance of these regions’ roles in their countries’ histories. To heal past wounds, governments should develop an initiative to validate these communities’ contributions in history books, statutes, memorials, and exhibitions. If accompanied by development activities that cater to regional needs—and in the case of Tunisia and Algeria, the improvement in the management of natural resources and the investment of a fair portion of the profits from local resources into local projects—such gestures can help mitigate the sentiments of anger and resentment among peripheral communities. They can also help counter extremist recruitment.
Avoid overregulating the religious sphere and propagating religious boards as a means to combat extremism.

Overhauling the management of religion and reforming religious education in order to be in conformity with the tolerant and inclusive teachings of North African Islam is a worthy goal to combat the creeping menace of exclusivist ideologies. The risk with this approach, however, is that government policy becomes one of patronage of religious beliefs and practices. Perceived government propaganda to prop up state-sanctioned Sufism (Islamic mysticism) and religious authorities that pledge loyalty to state rulers suppress the development of competent clerics and credible religious institutions that can tear down violent interpretations of Islam. Worse, it taints the religious establishment by association with untrusted government authorities. Part of the lure of militant ideologies and violent extremist groups lie in their anti-systemic rhetoric and their ability to tap into anti-establishment anger. This was clearly demonstrated in the case of Tunisia when becoming a member of Ansar al Sharia was tantamount to joining a revolutionary movement intent on rupturing the generational and institutional order.
Enhance regional cooperation.

Given the decades-long rivalry between Morocco and Algeria, strengthening regional cooperation will likely require pursuing incremental objectives. These include focusing on specific security matters such as the exchange of intelligence information on drugs, arms, and human smugglers as well as Maghrebi fighters in Syria and Libya. The Algerian-Tunisian border security cooperation reflects this kind of cautious collaborative approach.
Notes
⇑ “Le Grand Sud, l’autre Algérie,” Jeune Afrique, May 14, 2012.
⇑ Tarik Dahou, “Les marges transnationales et locales de l’État algérien,” Politique africaine No. 137 (2015), 7–25.
⇑ Naoual Belakhdar, “’L’éveil du sud’ ou quand la contestation vient de la marge,” Politique africaine No. 137 (2015), 27–48.
⇑ Salim Chena, “L’Algérie et son Sud: Quels enjeux sécuritaires?” Institut français des relations internationales (November 2013).
⇑ Isabelle Mandraud, “Menaces sur le ‘Sud tranquille’ algérien,” Le Monde, September 3, 2013.
⇑ Houria Alioua, “Folie meurtrière au Mzab : 25 morts,” El Watan, July 8, 2015.
⇑ Sherelle Jacobs, “Shadow of Jihadi Safe Haven Hangs Over Tunisia, Algeria,” World Politics Review, May 21, 2013.
⇑ Querine Hanlon and Matthew M. Herbert, “Border Security Challenges in the Grand Maghreb,” Peaceworks No. 109 (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2015).
⇑ Aida Alami, “Morocco’s Stability Is Roiled by Monthslong Protests Over Fishmonger’s Death,” New York Times, August 26, 2017.
⇑ Nadia Lamlili, “Maroc : de Tanger à Ceuta, sur les traces des jihadistes,” Jeune Afrique, December 14, 2015.
⇑ Marie Verdier, “Oujda, un drame frontalier dans le nord-est du Maroc,” La Croix, July 13, 2017.
⇑ Michel Lachkar, “Le futur port de Nador, espoir de désenclavement du Nord-Est marocain,” Géopolis Afrique, June 6, 2016.
⇑ “New protests emerge in eastern Morocco,” Economist Intelligence Unit, January 25, 2018.
⇑ Chéro Belli, “Une frontière poreuse, malgré les barrières entre l’Algérie et le Maroc,” Dune Voices, February 1, 2017.
⇑ “Note d’orientation sur les disparites regionales en Tunisie,” World Bank (July 2015).
⇑ “Tunisia says 800 returning jihadists jailed or tracked,” Agence France-Presse, December 31, 2016.
⇑ Anouar Boukhars, “The Potential Jihadi Windfall from the Militarization of Tunisia’s Border Region with Libya,” CTC Sentinel 11, no. 1 (2018), 32-36.
⇑ Hamza Meddeb, “Les ressorts socio-économiques de l’insécurité dans le sud tunisien,” Fondation pour la recherche stratégique (June 2016).
⇑ Sarah Souli, “Border Control: Tunisia Attempts to Stop Terrorism with a Wall,” VICE, November 16, 2015.
⇑ Anouar Boukhars, “The Geographic Trajectory of Conflict and Militancy in Tunisia,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (July 2017).
⇑ Aymen Gharbi, “Tunisie: Entretien sur l’économie de Ben Guerdane avec Adrien Doron, chercheur en géographie,” Huffington Post International, March 22, 2016.
⇑ Meddeb.
⇑ “Full Text of HM the King’s Speech at Parliament Opening,” Morocco’s Ministry of Culture and Communication Web site, October 13, 2017.
**Anouar Boukhars is a nonresident scholar in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East Program and associate professor of international relations at McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland.

*Courtesy of CFR.

by CASADE

Destroying a democracy is not too hard to do: See how

Richard J. Evans.
There are more ways of destroying a democracy than sending troops into the streets, storming the radio stations, and arresting the politicians, as Adolf Hitler discovered after the failure of his beer-hall putsch in 1923. Ten years later, on January 30, 1933, when he was appointed head of the German government, Hitler was the leader of the country’s largest political party, the National Socialists. Even five years earlier, in May of 1928, he’d been a political nobody, with the Nazis gaining less than 3 percent of the vote in national elections. But in the elections held in July 1932, they won 37 percent of the vote—and six months later, Hitler was in power. He seemed to have come from nowhere.

As the German historian and journalist Volker Ullrich shows in the first part of his highly readable and well-researched new biography, Hitler: Ascent, even if Hitler wasn’t directly elected to power, his appointment as Reich chancellor was legal and constitutional, the result of political intrigue surrounding Germany’s aging conservative president, Paul von Hindenburg. Many people in Germany thought that Hitler would be a normal head of government. Some, like the conservative politician Franz von Papen and the leaders of the German National People’s Party, thought that they’d be able to control him, because they were more experienced and formed the majority in the coalition government that Hitler headed. Others thought that the responsibilities of office would tame and steer him in a more conventional direction. They were all wrong.

Hitler won mass support between 1928 and 1930 because a major economic crisis had driven Germany into a deep depression: Banks crashed, businesses folded, and millions lost their jobs. Hitler offered voters a vision of a better future, one he contrasted with the policies of the parties that had plunged the country into crisis in the first place. The poorest people in Germany voted for his opponents, notably the Communist Party and the moderate left-wing Social Democrats, but the lower-middle classes, the bourgeoisie, the unorganized workers, the rural masses, and the older traditionalists—Protestants and evangelicals who wanted a moral restoration of the nation—switched their votes from the mainstream centrist and right-wing parties (save for the Catholic Center Party) and gave them to Hitler instead.

Whereas other politicians seemed to dither or to act as mere administrators, Hitler projected purpose and dynamism. They remained trapped within the existing conventions of political life; he proved a master at denouncing those conventions and manipulating the media. The first politician to tour the country by air during an election campaign, Hitler issued an endless stream of slogans to win potential supporters over. He would make Germany great again. He would give Germans work once more. He would put Germany first. He would revive the nation’s rusting industries, laid to waste by the economic depression. He would crush the alien ideologies—­socialism, liberalism, communism—­that were undermining the nation’s will to survive and destroying its core values.

Ullrich quotes a police report on one of Hitler’s early speeches, in which he “used vulgar comparisons” and “did not shy away from the cheapest allusions.” Hitler’s language was never measured or careful, but “like something merely expulsed.” Yet, revising earlier opinions, Ullrich shows how carefully Hitler prepared his speeches. Seemingly spontaneous, they were in fact calculated. Full of base allegations and vile stereotypes, they were precisely designed to gain maximum attention from the media and maximum reaction from the crowds he addressed. When he declared that fines were of no use against those he called Jewish criminals, his listeners interrupted him with chants of “Beatings! Hangings!”
Aided by his talented propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, Hitler not only flaunted his vulgarity and exploited tribal hatreds; he also lied and lied his way to success. The Jews, he argued, had stabbed the German Army in the back in 1918; the politicians of the other parties, he insisted, were hopelessly venal and corrupt and should be put in jail; the Nazi thugs who were condemned to death in 1932 for the “Potempa murders” were victims of a “monstrous blood-verdict”; liberal newspapers that criticized Hitler were, as Goebbels put it, the “Jewish lying press.”

Few took Hitler seriously or thought that he would actually put his threats against the country’s tiny Jewish minority, his rants against feminists, left-wing politicians, homosexuals, pacifists, and liberal newspaper editors, into effect. Fewer still believed his vow to quit the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations. But within a few months of taking office, he did all of these things—and much more.

Once in power, the Nazi regime was run exclusively by men: Only heterosexual white males, the Nazis thought, had the required detachment and lack of emotional connection to the issues at hand to make the right calls. Nazi propaganda mocked disabled people; within a few years, they were being sterilized and then exterminated. Hitler railed against the roving bands of criminals who were destroying law and order and called for the return of the death penalty, effectively abrogated under the Weimar Republic. Within a short space of time, the executions began again, reaching a total of more than 16,000 during his 12 years in power, while Germany’s prison population rocketed from 50,000 in 1930 to more than 100,000 on the eve of the war. Feminist associations were all closed down, the law forbidding homosexual acts between men was drastically sharpened, vagrants were rounded up and imprisoned, illegal Polish immigrants were deported. Germany pulled out of international organizations and tore up treaties with cynical abandon, dismantling or emasculating the structures of international cooperation erected after World War I and freeing the way for rogue states like Italy and Japan to launch their own wars of conquest and aggression. Ullrich tellingly quotes the Nazis’ triumphant declaration of “our departure from the community of nations,” buttressed by Hitler’s assurance that he would “rather die” than sign anything that was not in the interests of the German people. Hitler followed up on this commitment as well, though of course this proved not to be in the interests of the German people in the end.

The story of German politics between January 30 and July 30, 1933, is essentially the story of how the Nazis shut down the country’s democratic institutions, destroyed the freedom of its press and media, and created a one-party state in which opposition was punishable by imprisonment, banishment, or even death. It was Hitler’s “first hundred days,” but the radical changes went on for longer and seemed terrifyingly easy to perpetrate.
There was nothing underhanded about these changes: Nazi leaders gave clear warnings about what they planned to do. But too few people saw them as a threat before they came to power. As Goebbels said on February 10, 1933: “If the Jewish press still thinks it can intimidate the National Socialist movement with veiled threats, if they think they can evade our emergency decrees, they should watch out! One day our patience will run out, and then the Jews will find their impudent, lying traps plugged.”
Ullrich shows how newspapers were weakened by the economic pressure applied by the Nazi government. Editors were forced out, reporters were disciplined or imprisoned, and an increasing number of newspapers were shut down altogether, leaving only a captive press that confined itself to parroting the “news” issued by the government in Goebbels’s daily morning press briefings. All that the few remaining decent journalists could do was to write in “Aesopian” language, or in fables involving figures from the past like Genghis Khan; their only hope was that readers might get the message.

With the disappearance of a free, critical media and the subordination of law-enforcement agencies, the path was open for a massive expansion of political corruption at every level of the regime. Ullrich makes good use of recent research to underline the fact that the Nazi regime was, among other things, a kleptocracy; it was dependent on patronage and clientelism all the way down the line, since the formal procedures for state appointments and the rules of conduct for the occupants of high office were scrapped or bypassed in favor of a personal style of rule. The confiscation or forcible takeover of Jewish businesses lined the pockets of the party’s leaders; they also benefited from seizing the property of oppositional institutions like the socialist-oriented trade unions, the Social Democratic Party, and many others.
Goebbels ensured that he was paid a vastly inflated salary as editor of a Nazi Party magazine, while Hermann Göring was given enough money by people seeking his patronage that he was able to buy and furnish five hunting lodges and to operate a private train. Hitler ostentatiously refused a salary as head of the German government, but he made sure that he earned royalties from the display of his face on postage stamps, which brought him enormous wealth. Well before the war, the Nazi leaders had become millionaires.

How did all this happen—and with so little opposition? What caused German democracy to react so toothlessly and to collapse so swiftly? Historians used to argue that German democracy had shallow roots, having come into existence with the Weimar Republic after the end of the First World War, and thus lacked any kind of tradition in a country whose basic political culture had always been authoritarian. But as the historian Margaret Lavinia Anderson and many others have shown, Germans were in fact already practicing democracy under the kaiser: Political parties were strong and becoming stronger; legislative institutions were gaining more power and influence; and a lively range of newspapers and magazines fostered vigorous public debate, despite the feeble attempts of the government to censor them.
By the time Hitler began his rise to power, the German state, reconstituted after the war, possessed robust constitutional and legal structures that were designed to frustrate any attempt to undermine or circumvent democracy. Judges were independent, as were police and prosecutors. In fact, early in 1933, the provincial Nazi government in Prussia—the state that covered over half of Germany’s territory and included more than half of its population—was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. But the Nazis simply ignored this ruling, as they did the thousands of prosecutions brought by local and regional authorities against the storm troopers and others who had beaten up, imprisoned, and, in many hundreds of cases, murdered the party’s opponents.

The courts could safely be ignored, not least because Hitler’s government was able to govern by executive order after the burning down of the Reichstag, the national parliament building, on February 27–28, 1933. A lone, deranged Dutch anarchist was found guilty of setting the fire, but the Nazis portrayed it as a terrorist act by the Communist Party in a nationwide conspiracy to take power. The government declared a state of emergency, and Hitler exploited a provision in the Weimar Republic’s Constitution that permitted him to rule by decree in such times. Hitler would repeatedly renew the Reichstag Fire Decree all the way up to the end of his rule in 1945.
The Nazi seizure of power was carried out step-by-step through the first half of 1933, each step disguised as a seemingly legal act. On April 7, 1933, the government issued an executive order dismissing Jews and the regime’s political opponents from state employment. Many similar orders followed, culminating in a law to establish a one-party state and then, in the late summer of ’34, a law to declare Hitler dictator for life.

It was possible to do these things because Hitler had pushed a bill through the national legislature on March 23, 1933, that effectively disabled the parliament and devolved its power to make laws onto his cabinet. He was able to secure the necessary two-thirds majority by arresting Communist deputies who would have voted against it and by persuading the large Catholic Center Party to vote for it through a mix of promises and threats. Issuing from the government, these laws had the appearance of legitimacy, and almost no one stood up against them as they were put into effect.

Even after the legal profession and the judiciary had been purged of the Nazis’ opponents, there were still some judges who retained a modicum of honesty and independence. Hitler was furious when the Supreme Court, trying the alleged perpetrators of the Reichstag fire, acquitted all but one due to a lack of evidence. He rapidly set up a parallel apparatus of “Special Courts” crowned by a national “People’s Court,” all of them packed with committed Nazis. But the vast majority of the legal profession and law-enforcement agencies went along with the party anyway, even as the Nazis passed a raft of new treason laws and transferred the task of enforcing political conformity from the storm troopers and concentration camps to the police, the courts, and the prisons.

There were plenty of Germans who disapproved of these measures: Hitler didn’t attain supreme power on a wave of popular acclamation. On the contrary, in the last free elections of the Weimar Republic, the left-wing parties—the Communists and Social Democrats—won more votes and gained more seats in the national parliament than the Nazis did. But they were fatally divided, spending at least as much time fighting each other as they did trying to stop Hitler from establishing a dictatorship. Their rhetoric was feeble in comparison with his, their supporters less fanatical, their electoral propaganda less powerful and less sophisticated.

The concentration of political and legislative power in the cabinet didn’t last long. Beneath the surface appearance of normality, the cabinet was being marginalized as Hitler appointed his own cronies and disciples to new positions or pushed out his conservative coalition partners. The men who ruled Germany did not do so because they were constitutionally acting government ministers but because they were Hitler’s cronies: Goebbels, Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Robert Ley, and a handful of others.
Before long, the police and the Gestapo had been merged into Himmler’s SS, while regional Nazi Party leaders—Gauleiters—­were bypassing the formally appointed state governors and administrators at every level. Senior civil servants were fired if they made any difficulties or were effectively supplanted by parallel appointees of the regime even if they conformed, as the vast majority of them did. German bureaucracy was famously punctilious, but under Hitler decisions were increasingly made on the hoof, by verbal order, leaving behind no paper trail.

Hitler made sure that the armed forces were on his side by giving them massive increases in funding and a huge new armaments program. In 1935, he introduced a draft that forced millions of young men into military service. His program for making Germany great again included a new aggressive attitude in international affairs. He sent the army into the Rhineland, occupied Austria, and annexed Czechoslovakia, before invading Poland and launching a European and, eventually, a world war. All along, the Soviet Union was targeted as Germany’s main external foe, even if, for tactical reasons, Hitler concluded a temporary nonaggression pact with Stalin in August 1939.

Hitler’s seizure and remaking of the state was buttressed by a wholesale reorganization of the education system and an effort to redefine German culture. Many, if not most, of Germany’s leading scholars and scientists were forced to leave the country, either because they were Jewish and so regarded as non-Christian foreigners, or because they were opponents of the regime (or, indeed, as in the case of Albert Einstein, both). The intellectual quality of German universities, which had led the world in research before 1933, plummeted. It has never fully recovered.

Hitler didn’t care. For him, education was a matter of practical instruction; it had nothing to do with the transmission of pure knowledge, let alone the traditional humanistic values that had underpinned the German educational system since the early 19th century. Before Hitler took over, a fifth of all university students were enrolled in the humanities; by the eve of the war, that portion had been cut in half, in a student body that was itself shrinking rapidly, from a total of 104,000 in all universities in 1931 to just under 41,000 in 1939. By this time, fully half of all students were taking degree courses in medicine, its importance boosted by the Nazis’ focus on racial research and eugenics.

The regime’s assault on culture ex­tended to its policy toward the arts, which were “coordinated” by Goebbels in a Reich Chamber of Culture that ended funding for modern painting, sculpture, and music, and banned allegedly subversive artists from working. Almost all of Germany’s major artists and writers left the country, turning it into a cultural desert. The mostly second-rate artists and writers who stayed behind had little choice but to propagate “German” art and culture, and their work was often unimaginative, conformist, and dull. Theater and cinema put out trivial productions aimed at a broad popular audience: costume dramas, musicals, and other forms of light entertainment. Outright propaganda films were relatively rare, though these are the ones remembered today. There were no game shows or reality TV in Hitler’s day, but if there had been, Goebbels would have loved them.

The main objective of Nazi education and culture was not, however, to distract people from issues of political importance; it was to instill a new sense of patriotism. Pupils were made to salute the flag before school every morning, and the religious assembly that opened the school day was turned into a festival of obeisance to Hitler. All children had to join the Hitler Youth or its female equivalent, the League of German Girls, where they sang patriotic songs and performed military exercises and drills. History lessons were turned into a celebration of German heroes from the past. Geography was Nazified in order to justify German claims on other parts of Europe. Math students were required to do calculations based on the number of “racially inferior” people in the population.

Such exercises pointed to the fact that the regime constantly targeted minorities as a way of mobilizing popular approval and support. The Nazis may have dominated state power, but this wasn’t the kind of dictatorship that depended solely on repression, important though it was. Like many other modern dictatorships, it wanted to appear popular, not least because this strengthened its hand in negotiations with foreign powers. Regular elections and referendums were put to the voters, and they routinely delivered majorities of 99 percent in favor of whatever the government proposed—­results achieved by depriving known or potential opponents of the vote, by manipulating the electoral process, and by directly or indirectly intimidating the great mass of people into supporting Hitler’s government.
A key part of the process was the vilification of political opponents. The Communist Party, a mass movement that had gained 100 seats in the national legislature in the last free elections of the Weimar Republic, was suppressed, accused of preparing a violent revolution. The moderately progressive Social Democrats, who enjoyed even more widespread support, were damned as “November traitors,” a reference to the November revolution in 1918 that overthrew the kaiser’s regime. They were also maligned by the Nazis for having signed the ignominious peace treaty with the Allies at Versailles.

Nazi media and officialdom heaped abuse on democrats and harassed them at every turn. These opponents of the regime bore the brunt of the new treason laws from 1933 onward; in 1935 alone, there were some 23,000 political prisoners in Germany’s jails, and more than 5,000 people were being tried and condemned for treason every year.
In speech after speech, Hitler and the other leading Nazis attacked the Jews, who, they claimed, had orchestrated the efforts by these political parties to destroy Germany’s military prowess and cultural purity. Hitler was a conspiracy theorist without equal: Influenced by a bizarre forgery known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, he believed—­perhaps as early as 1919, when he incorporated these views into his first-ever recorded speech—that there was a worldwide conspiracy of Jews, directed by a secret cabal probably located somewhere in Paris, to overthrow the German race, annihilate its culture, and render it impotent before its enemies. All Jews everywhere, no matter their political views, were part of this vast plot.

When the Nazis came to power, Jews made up less than 1 percent of the population in Germany, but the Nazis regarded them as a vast, powerful, and deadly threat. Hitler was convinced that without a proper sense of urgency, Germany would be eventually defeated, dominated, and very likely destroyed by them. This is what made anti-Semitism different from the other kinds of racial and religious prejudice held by the Nazis. The disabled and the mentally ill, “Gypsies,” homosexuals, “habitual criminals,” Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the other minorities targeted by Hitler were seen as obstacles to Germany’s renewal; they weakened the race and undermined its will to assert itself in the world. But the Jews were different: They were the “world-enemy,” as Goebbels called them, the Weltfeind. Far more than an obstacle, they were an existential threat. This is why Hitler deprived them of German citizenship, robbed them of their livelihoods, stripped them of their possessions, forced as many of them as he could to emigrate by making their existence in Germany a living hell, and—when he had conquered areas of Europe that, unlike Germany, had very large Jewish populations—eventually murdered some 6 million of them.

Ordinary Germans were not wholly won over by such acts of persecution and destruction; only a minority applauded them. But the great mass of Germans did nothing to stop any of this. Civil courage was in short supply in a country cowed into submission by a ruthless dictatorship that knew no limits in its willingness to apply violence to those it hated. This included foreign states as well as domestic minorities. From the outset, Hitler intended a war of European conquest and, most likely, had that been victorious, world hegemony as well (as demonstrated by his megalomaniacal building plans for “Germania,” a renamed Berlin, as world capital and intended permanent site of the Olympic Games after the war had been won).

With the support of the country’s military-industrial complex—grudging and cautious at first; then, after the defeat of Poland in 1939 and France in 1940, fulsome and enthusiastic—Hitler threw caution to the wind and launched a war that could only end in Germany’s defeat. His indifference to human suffering, and his willingness to devise and use weapons of mass destruction, knew no bounds. It is fortunate that he never got his hands on nuclear weapons, though they were in development in Germany’s laboratories well before the end of the war.

Violence indeed was at the heart of the Nazi enterprise. Every democracy that perishes dies in a different way, because every democracy is situated in specific historical circumstances. In Hitler’s case, as Ullrich shows, the essential context was supplied by World War I, an unprecedented conflict in which millions were killed and those who survived were plunged into a new, militarized, and brutalized world where violence in the service of politics became the norm.
Every political party in Weimar Germany had its paramilitary wing, ready to beat up and even kill its opponents—even the Social Democrats, whose Reichsbanner was committed to the defense of democracy. Yet with the unbridled brutality of the storm troopers, the Nazis outdid them all. The election campaign of June–July 1932 saw 105 people killed. This gave the Nazi seizure of power much of its historical distinctiveness and helped acclimatize the German people to the massive violence that underpinned it, with up to 200,000 opponents of the regime thrown into concentration camps in 1933 alone and more than 600 killed, even according to official figures.

For many, the legacy of World War I has long since faded away, and the destruction of Germany’s cities, the mass murder of Europe’s Jews, and the vast slaughter of World War II have acted as a sharp antidote to cultures of political violence and the militarization of party politics. Anyone who wants to use violence against his opponents to establish a dictatorship today would need to employ a different kind of force. Rather than sending armed and uniformed squads onto the streets, he or she would need to rely on harassment and persecution carried out by a captive media, and eventually, if opposition persisted, on the state power of the military and the law-enforcement agencies to crush it.

Above all else, Hitler was a media figure who gained popularity and controlled his country through speeches and publicity. Far from being a consistent and undeviatingly purposeful politician, he was temperamental, changeable, insecure, allergic to criticism, and often indecisive and uncertain in a crisis. There were many occasions in which he nearly came to grief, most notably as a result of his unconventional private life—such as when the suicide of his half-niece Geli Raubal, with whom he’d been having an affair in the early 1930s, threatened to destroy his reputation with the respectable classes of German society.

Ullrich convincingly links Hitler’s personality traits with political events. At key moments, such as the crisis of 1934, when the army threatened to move against him if he didn’t curb his violent, raucous supporters in the Brownshirt movement, Hitler hesitated and dithered before finally making up his mind. Ullrich corrects many misapprehensions and disposes of many myths. And he paints in the broader political context with great skill and the knowledge gathered over a lifetime of studying German history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Over the years, there have been many biographies of Hitler, most of which have, in some way, underestimated his talents or underplayed his personal life. Alan Bullock’s Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (1952) was the first serious life of the German dictator, but it depicted him primarily as an opportunist with no consistent ideas or purposes except the gaining and wielding of power. In Joachim C. Fest’s Hitler (1973), he’s an ignorant, unintelligent, vulgar petty bourgeois whose rise to power owed much to his ability to articulate the resentments of his class at the coming of the modern world. For Ian Kershaw, whose two-volume biography currently holds the field, Hitler was almost an unperson, a man without a meaningful personality or private life, the creature of larger forces in German history. Others have seen him as a psychopath, a warped personality, a man who didn’t conform to the normal standards of human behavior. None of these pictures really grasps the man, however. Volker Ullrich provides a more complex and, perhaps for this reason, an even more troubling account of Hitler’s ascent to power. His Hitler is one whose personal life provides a key to understanding how he achieved and used supreme power, and his biography—by providing the wider context of German society and politics in which Hitler ascended—also attempts to explain why so many Germans were willing to allow him to do so.

Everyone concerned about democracy should read this book. For the Nazis were “a warning from history” (to quote the title of the still-unsurpassed 1997 television history by Ian Kershaw and Lawrence Rees, now being rebroadcast in the United Kingdom as a response to current political events), and we would all do well to heed it.

**Richard J. Evans is the president of Wolfson College, Cambridge, Regius Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Cambridge, and provost of Gresham College, London. His books include The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and The Third Reich at War.

by CASADE