Malian director Abderrahmane Sissako's new film "Bamako" portrays a scenario many would find baffling: Witnesses and spectators representing "African society" gather in the courtyard of a mudbrick villa to watch the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund put on trial. The film begins from the premise that those negatively affected by the policies of international lending organs rarely, if ever, have an opportunity to air their grievances. The format - a trial - is an attempt to broadcast their experiences for the first time to the outside world.
As the trial moves forward and witness testimony alternates with questioning and commentary by counsel, Bamako society moves through and around the scene. Small children play in the courtyard, animals graze, women wash clothing and men - demoralized and browbeaten - sit around drinking coffee or engaging in idle conversation. What is striking is how marginally people pay attention to the proceedings of the trial - the facts presented by the prosecution are so well-known in Africa, so glaringly obvious on a daily basis, that only one conclusion can legitimately be drawn: This is a trial geared first and foremost toward Western public opinion.
The stories of Bamako's "African society" witnesses are by no means unique - certainly the example of economic migrants facing life-threatening peril by crossing a desert should be familiar to all Americans. We in the West are waking up to an insidious structural problem that only grows from year to year: the vast and self-perpetuating imbalance of wealth between developed and developing nations.
The reasons for this inequality are apparent to those living in the developing world. First, many countries - Indonesia, Haiti and Egypt, for instance - were forced directly or indirectly to assume the debts of their colonizers upon independence. Second, post-colonial countries had to transition immediately from administrative clientism to independent and popularly legitimate political infrastructures - an impossible task in light of remaining territorial contestations, vast gaps in technocratic literacy between higher and lower echelons of the population, the tribal organization of many societies and continuing sabotage by former colonial powers. The result was highly militarized, authoritarian regimes based on patronage, where loans were siphoned off for arms buildup or domestic repression. Third, developing countries still do not have a voice in the economic policies that affect their countries. For instance, even though they constitute 91 percent of the World Bank's member nations, they control only 46 percent of the vote, allowing creditors to "unload" massive loans onto developing countries as well as to make structural adjustment policies a necessary condition for needed loans. Structural adjustment refers to a host of neoliberal economic "reforms," including cutting basic social services like health care and water purification, reducing wages and subsidies and eliminating economic protectionism. So far, these "austerity measures" have resulted in massive poverty, sharp increases in infant mortality, substantial drops in AIDS clinic attendance and a rich-poor gap that is only widening.
Compounding the poverty produced by structural adjustment is the main preoccupation of most developing governments: repaying a massive debt with massive (and growing) interest. This debt has been referred to as a new form of slavery, as repaying it politically neutralizes developing countries and paralyzes economic development itself. Not only is it often literally impossible to repay (interest on debt grows faster than production in many deeply impoverished countries), but as it grows, it diverts resources from education, health care and political reform, the linchpins of any free and industrial society. Developing countries are turned into serfdoms of the export cash crop trade, and the declining real price of many of these cash crops (for instance, coffee) over the past 35 years has meant a palpable decline in wages for vast swaths of the world's population. In essence, countries export their natural resources at artificially low market values (due to Western protectionist policies) and are forced to buy sustenance via extortionary loans or become dependent on international aid. Many countries can no longer feed their own people and have no way to acquire this capability under present conditions.
Lest we fall into the trap of thinking this global tragedy will never affect the West, we have only to remind ourselves of the ongoing demographic revolution. According to the United Nations, Africa, Asia and the Middle East will add 2.5 billion people to the world's population by 2050, and 2.2 million of them will arrive in the rich world every year. Because urbanization - or migration to the West for that matter - is no longer the kind of guarantee of upward mobility that it used to be, the increasing destitution in developing countries will be reflected in growing Western ghettoes and shantytowns. Growing economic desperation will result in political upheaval both in the West and in the developing world. As of late, the latest weapon of choice for weak and disempowered populations has been terrorism. For obvious reasons, the picture we begin to see of the future demands immediate preventive action.
For the sake of the billions of people who live in deprivation, on the verge of life, without any of the dreams we recognize as natural, and for the sake of the peace and prosperity of the citizens of Western nations, the only moral and humane decision is to completely and unequivocally forgive all of the debt owed by countries with great need as well as all debts that have been incurred through force or coercion.
It is no coincidence that, in their concern for the poor and destitute, the world's three monotheistic religions stress fair lending practices: Islam forbids usury and the economic exploitation of the destitute, while Jubilee USA, a respected organization that works on debt relief issues, takes its name from "the Jubilee Year as quoted in Leviticus, [when] those enslaved because of debts are freed, lands lost because of debt are returned, and community torn by inequality is restored." If we do not forgive these debts and work to construct fair and equitable global trade practices, which will of necessity include reducing the protectionist policies of Western countries, the "moral hazard" will unequivocally condemn us to an even greater suffering than that we currently choose to ignore.
Natalie Smolenski '07 is tightening her belt.
