The Rest of the Iceberg

The coca plant grows in the eastern foothills of the Andes mountains. For centuries, locals have enjoyed its leaves as a mild stimulant, and they were part of the original recipe for Coca-Cola. In concentrated form, however, coca is a highly addictive drug. Snorted, inhaled, or injected it can produce a deep, though brief, sense of happiness and confidence. Thousands die from overdoses every year.

Colombia produces more cocaine than any other country. Sadly, that’s the only thing most people know about the country. Locals would rather that Colombia was known for its green energy (which produces more than 70% of the country’s energy needs), its world-class mines, or its bird life—it has more species than any other nation. But mention Colombia and people think drugs. How did Colombia get the depressing distinction of being the world’s leading producer of cocaine?

The first part of the answer is easy. In the 1990s, the government of Peru began to shoot down planes that were running drugs out of their country. Coca production in Peru fell, but demand for cocaine on the streets of Washington, London, and Madrid did not. So farmers in Colombia cultivated more coca bushes. They produced only 14% of the global crop in 1991, but 80% by 2004.

How are Colombian farmers able to grow so much of a plant that’s illegal? To answer that, you need to go back in Colombia’s history to understand what has made lawlessness and violence all too common features of the country’s story.

In the 1800s, Colombia was one of the most democratic places in the world. It was more peaceful than most countries in the Americas, including the United States. However, by the 1880s Colombia’s elites had come to the conclusion that democracy was stunting the country’s economic growth. Workers were demanding too many rights. Strikes disrupted production and cut into profits. So Colombia’s leaders introduced a new constitution, which required that people own property in order to be eligible to vote. The poor lost their voice.

In the decades that followed, they tried to regain it through protests. The government responded with violence, killing tens of thousands during the twentieth century. You could say that Colombia had a civil war that has lasted more than a century. On one side was the government, the army, corporations, and right-wing militia groups. On the other, peasants, factory workers, socialist movements, and guerrillas. Parts of Colombia were almost lawless, with assassinations, kidnappings, and land seizures.

It was an ideal situation for drugs. Illegal armed groups on the right-wing and the left found narcotics to be an excellent source of income. The government wasn’t strong enough to control the whole country, making it relatively safe for these groups to grow coca and marijuana in the areas they held. It also helped that some politicians protected drug producers in exchange for a share of the profits.

International economics also played a part in the growth of the narcotics industry. When Colombia found itself in debt to the United States in the 1980s, selling drugs to North American dealers was one way of getting the dollars to repay. In the 1990s, liberal market reforms led to higher unemployment—which made jobs in the drug trade more attractive.

In recent years, there has been progress towards peace. FARC, the main rebel group, has promised to disarm. The government is paying farmers to destroy coca bushes and plant new crops. In some areas, they are spraying the plants with herbicides. President Juan Manuel Santos, who negotiated the peace treaty with FARC, won the Nobel prize. But the road to peace is proving slow and frustrating.

Colombia hasn’t always been a major producer of cocaine. That gives reason to hope that it may cease to be one. However, there aren’t many places where coca grows, and as long as international demand for cocaine holds up, it’s hard to imagine that Colombia won’t continue to be a supplier.

An archive of news stories on any country will be mixed—some happy, some sad. Congo, or the Democratic Republic of Congo to give the country its full name, might be the exception. Despite its extraordinary natural resources, including large deposits of diamonds, copper, uranium, and coltan, and enough hydro-electric potential to power all the countries of Africa South of its borders, the news out of Congo has been reliably tragic for more than a hundred years. If you replace “Despite” with “Because of” at the start of the previous sentence, you’ll have the main reason why Congo has been a mess for so long. What follows is the story of how Congo’s natural resources have been a curse, not a blessing.

The Portuguese knew they had found something big even before they set eyes on Congo. Miles from shore, the ocean was brown with silt dumped by an awe-inspiring river. When they landed, the sailors found the kingdom of Kongo, with its hundreds of villages and powerful ruler. The Portuguese brought Christianity and traded linen for ivory and other local products.

Over time, however, what the Portuguese and other European traders wanted was not produce but people. By 1700, thousands of slaves—often abducted or orphaned children—left the Kongo coast each year. Eventually, four million people from a strip of coastline 250 km long would cross the Atlantic—a third of all the African slaves taken to the Americas. Europeans provided all sorts of goods in exchange, especially textiles. However, Kongo unraveled. The Europeans cared little: they got what they wanted while the people of Kongo suffered. This would become a familiar story.

When in the 1800’s Britain and France started to colonize Africa in earnest, they had little interest in Congo. The rainforests that covered the area made railways and therefore business difficult. So the area was left until King Leopold of Belgium decided to see if he could make the vast lands of the Congo river basin turn a profit.

For years, he failed. However, at the end of the 1800’s a new invention quickly made Congo very lucrative: bicycles. Riding them was the new trend in Europe, and all those bikes needed rubber tires. Leopold’s Congo had some of the largest rubber forests in the world.

How to get the rubber, though? The trees grew wild, not on plantations, and harvesting the rubber was hard, messy, and painful. Leopold’s solution was effective but barbaric. He made people pay their taxes in rubber, to be collected by junior officials paid based on how much rubber they extracted from the local population. They terrorized the villages, maiming and killing thousands. People desperate to harvest rubber neglected their fields. Malnourishment spread. Epidemics set in. Millions died. Back in Belgium, there was a wave of beautiful new architecture, financed by the profits from Congo’s rubber.

Some colonial powers did a decent job of training local people for administrative and other senior positions. Not Belgium. In 1955, there wasn’t a single person from Congo with a degree. This became a tragedy when, in 1960, Belgium decided it was leaving by the end of the year. It did not feel it could control a rising tide of unrest and opposition: Africans in British and French colonies were winning their fights for national independence so the Congolese were calling for theirs. But they had almost no experience in the business of government. The country didn’t have a single lawyer, engineer, doctor, or economist.

When Congo became independent, civil war followed. Diamond-rich and copper-rich provinces tried to break away. Order was restored in 1965 after a US-backed coup by General Mobutu, who renamed the country Zaire and (mis)ruled it for the next three decades. He worked with mining companies to dig wealth out of the ground, but then used his share of the profits for palaces and jets, not education, health care, and infrastructure. In a country the size of Western Europe, there are still less than 1,000 km of asphalt roads.

An army backed by Rwanda ousted Mobutu in 1997. Since then, civil war has ravaged the country, as militia groups have fought over gold, diamond, copper, and coltan mines. Somewhere between 1 and 5 million have been killed. The central government is a disaster. The justice system is broken. Embezzlement is expected.

Recent legislation in the United States requires companies to declare the source of the minerals they use. However, there is still plenty of demand for Congo’s riches. And for the past 400 years having a weak central government has suited foreigners very well—it has made it easier for them to get what they want, cheap. Congo could be one of the wealthiest countries in Africa. Instead, it is one of the poorest. There is little reason to hope this will change.

Public protests against governments are common. But it’s unusual when a neighbouring country takes advantage of the protests and invades. That’s what happened to Ukraine in 2014, when demonstrations in the capital city of Kiev prompted Russia to attack. Within weeks, Russian soldiers seized thousands of square miles of Ukrainian territory, including the strategic Crimean peninsula. They are still there. Ukraine’s government is no longer sovereign over all of Ukraine. How did this happen?

To start, you have to understand why people took to the streets in Kiev. In 2013, Ukraine’s president was poised to sign an agreement with the European Union that would have pointed the country in a more liberal direction. However, he pulled back at the last minute under pressure from Russia. Ukrainians who wanted their country to be more like the rest of Europe were incensed. Thousands went to the Maidan square in Kiev to protest.

This was not the first time that Ukrainians had looked at their large, northern neighbor in anger. The history between the two countries goes back to the 900s, when Russia was born with Kiev as its capital city. Mongol warriors destroyed Kiev in 1240, massacring tens of thousands. When independent Russia emerged again its new capital was Moscow. It couldn’t have been Kiev again—the lands of modern Ukraine were ruled by Poland, Lithuania, and Ottoman Muslims. But the bearded leaders of Russia always regarded the fertile fields surrounding Kiev as part of their rightful heritage.

Russia eventually annexed Ukraine in the 1700s. Ukrainians assert their independence in the turmoil following World War One, but most of their lands became part of the Communist Soviet Union after 1921. Ukraine’s large population, its natural resources, its agricultural and industrial productivity, and its access to the warm and militarily strategic waters of the Black Sea all made the territory very valuable to the Communist leaders in Moscow.

Ukraine’s problem was that it was too valuable. For whenever Russian officials feared unrest, whenever they worried that Ukrainians still wanted their independence, repression was swift and lethal.

The defining moment of this struggle came in the 1930s. When Stalin launched plans to transform Soviet agriculture, peasants resisted across the country. In Ukraine, however, rural protests were met with a level of violence that can be described as genocidal.

Soviet officials executed Ukrainian intellectuals and artists, destroying the natural leadership of the patriotic resistance to Moscow’s rule. The army and secret police took grain from people’s homes, restricted trade, and then blocked roads to prevent starving peasants from finding work and food in the cities. More than three million Ukrainians died.

Few knew about this terror famine, or Holodomor as it is known, while the Soviet Union still existed and guarded its secrets. Meanwhile, millions of Russians moved to the warmer lands of Ukraine, where they took jobs, had children, and made themselves at home.

Then Communism imploded. The Soviet Union was no more, and Ukraine declared its independence in 1991. Ukrainian-speakers celebrated a long awaited dawn. However, Russians in Ukraine now feared they were stranded in a foreign country.

Their situation was complicated by the politics of post-Cold War Europe. Theoretically, the United States and her allies, who won the Cold War, could have treated the Russian people as victors: they too had triumphed over malignant communism. However, Russia’s experience was more like that of a defeated power. In particular, while the Soviet Union had to disband its military alliance, America kept hers and expanded it to include countries that had been in Russia’s orbit.

Russia went from being a first rate to a  second-rate country in less than a decade. Like most formerly great powers, they itched to regain their place at the top.

That explains why Ukraine looms so large in the imagination of Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders. Ukraine is in Russia’s backyard. If it can’t control what goes on there, it loses its claim to be a great power. So when Ukraine wanted to sign an agreement with the European Union in 2013, it made sense for Russia to use its economic and military muscle to dissuade Ukraine’s leaders from doing so.

It helped Russia that some of the leaders of the street protests in Kiev were members of far-right groups who were anti-Russian and anti-communist much as their Ukrainian fascist ancestors had been at the time of the Second World War. This made it easy for Russian media to portray the invasion of Ukraine as a necessary step to protect ethnic Russians against Ukrainian neo-fascists. Both the parts of Ukraine that Russia grabbed in 2014—Crimea and several eastern provinces—had majority Russian populations.

Russia and Ukraine have been at stalemate since 2014. Yet the status quo is much more favourable to Russia. It’s impossible for Ukraine to make meaningful deals with other states when it does not control its own. No Western country has any interest in providing Ukraine with military help to push nuclear-armed Russia from its territory. Thus Ukraine is very much back in Russia’s sphere of influence. Protests against Russian interference by Ukrainian patriots are counterproductive: their primary result is to provide material for Russian media to justify the continued occupation of the majority-Russian provinces.

So don’t expect the conflict between Russia and Ukraine to end soon. As for most of their history, Ukrainians can do little more than wait for a realignment of international affairs that is more favourable to them. That happened in 1991. It may be a long while before it happens again.

Ask soccer fans which team they want to see play before they die and many will say Brazil. In their yellow shirts and blue shorts, Brazil has earned the reputation of playing attractive soccer more consistently than anyone else. When Brazilians dubbed soccer “o jogo bonito,” the beautiful game, it wasn’t just an aspiration.

Brazil also wins. The team’s reward for making football more about art than science has been more World Cup trophies than any other nation and the highest winning percentage of any national team.

How did Brazil get so good? Some say it’s because poor Brazilians playing on the street learn how to stay on their feet and control the ball better than those who grow up playing on grass. But you could make the same argument for many other countries—poverty is unfortunately not unique to Brazil.

Brazil is not great at soccer because of any special, natural endowment. Brazil became the best in the world because Brazilians made the game central to their understanding of what made their country special. Every nation wants something they can take pride in. For Brazil, that was soccer. And they decided on that long before they won their first World Cup.

The British invented the modern game of soccer and took it to Brazil in the 1890’s. Before long, there were several teams in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro made up of European immigrants. Locals watched, then took up the game. They formed their own teams because most of them weren’t welcome at the all-white European clubs.

Brazilians celebrated when a collection of their best players beat a visiting English side in 1914. They celebrated again when their team won the South American championship in 1919.

The winning goal in that final was scored by a player with African heritage, or an Afro-Brazilian—Arthur Friedenreich. He was only allowed to play on white teams because of his German father. Racism was common in Brazilian soccer—Friedenreich made sure he was never photographed with his black mother and slicked down his curly hair before every game. However, as white Brazilians discovered that winning games fed their national pride they were willing to overlook their prejudices. Racist abuse of Afro-Brazilian players in Argentina in 1920 and at the World Cup in fascist Italy in 1934 encouraged Brazilians to see soccer as a unifying force in their society—even if racism remained a persistent temptation. One of Brazil’s early black stars, Leônidas, invented the bicycle kick, but even he had to deal with people rushing the pitch during one game and chanting, “Lynch him!”

In the 1930’s, three men further cemented soccer at the core of Brazil’s national identity. The first was the country’s authoritarian president, Getúlio Vargas. He didn’t like soccer, but he made use of it to unify people and reduce social tensions.

The second was Gilberto Freyre, an academic whose writings placed soccer at the heart of what it meant to be Brazilian. For him, soccer was the perfect reflection of his multi-racial country, where all races had to work together to win. He celebrated the black contribution to Brazilian soccer, arguing that the fluid, creative way Brazilians played was a result of their African roots, and contrasting this to the rigid, unimaginative style of European teams.

The third man was a journalist, Mario Filho. He was the first to write about soccer in the enthusiastic tones that fans used when they spoke about the sport.

The idea that blacks are naturally more creative or athletic than whites attracted critics in Brazil, and rightly so. But the ideas that soccer made Brazil special and that Brazilians made soccer special now had the support not just of fans, but of leading figures in politics, academia, and journalism. This popular-elite combination created a stable foundation for the connection between soccer and Brazil’s national identity.

With that foundation in place, Brazilians became good at soccer in large part because the prestige attached to the game ensured that every year millions of youngsters would juggle a ball and dream of representing their country.

Success also helped. Brazil won the World Cup three times in quick succession—1958, 1962, and 1970. That their best player, Pelé, was Afro-Brazilian, solidified the idea that racial diversity was central to the team’s success. Brazil won the cup again in 1994 and 2002.

When the team loses, the nation mourns. The 7-1 defeat by Germany on home soil in the 2014 World Cup semi-final was especially hard to stomach. Yet Brazil continues to win more games than it loses—69% in the World Cup—and to produce players with skills that make the rest of the world smile. They are not the only country to do so. But nowhere else is soccer so central to a country’s self-understanding and self-belief.

Which is the strangest looking country in the world? Contenders include the United States (think of Alaska and Hawaii), Papua New Guinea (shouldn’t it have the whole island?), Gambia (what’s it like to be entirely surrounded by another country?), and the United Kingdom (what’s with Northern Ireland?). The winner, however, might be Malaysia. It looks like a piece of fruit sliced in two, its two halves separated by 650 kilometers of water. Neither part covers all the relevant geography—the western half shares the peninsula with Thailand and Singapore, while the eastern half covers only a quarter of the island of Borneo. Nor does this unusual arrangement have the weight of history behind it—Malaysia in its current form dates back only to the 1960’s.

This isn’t to say there’s no logic to Malaysia. It unifies many of the Malay people, a distinct ethnic group that has lived on the Malayan peninsula and the neighbouring islands of Borneo and Sumatra for centuries. But millions of Malays live in Indonesia, and hundreds of thousands in Thailand. So how did Malaysia get the borders it has today? The answer lies in how its people interacted with European traders and states.

Before the Europeans came, a series of empires dominated this part of Southeast Asia. The two most important were the Majaphit Empire and the Melaka Sultanate. The area was prosperous for two main reasons. First, its forests and shorelines produced goods that people wanted in places like China and the Middle East, including aromatic woods and resins, tin and gold, oysters and cowrie shells.

Second, the western coast of the Malayan peninsula had the perfect weather for trade. It was the place where the region’s monsoon winds shifted, making its ports ideal for merchants plying the seas between China and India.

None of this was lost on the Europeans who began to arrive in the 1500’s. In 1511, the Portuguese captured Melaka, the most important port in the region, and used it as a base for their trade in Asia.

It would be the British, however, who would leave the deepest mark on the region. They had gained the upper hand by the mid-1700’s and were the dominant power on the Malayan peninsula for the next two centuries.

British influence took a variety of forms. They established colonies in some Malayan kingdoms and signed treaties with others. They did the same on the western shores of the neighbouring island of Borneo. By 1900, Britain controlled all the territory that makes up Malaysia.

There was one more vital ingredient in the pre-history of modern Malaysia: immigrants. The economic dynamism of the region had attracted people for centuries, the majority coming from India and China. Most worked as labourers. Some became successful entrepreneurs. Their communities would play a key role in the formation of today’s Malaysia of two halves, as we will see.

During the Second World War, Japan overpowered British forces on the Malayan peninsula, the island of Singapore (which sits at the end of the peninsula), and western Borneo. When the defeated Japanese left in 1945, the locals were upset that the British felt entitled to return. But return they did, because Malayan rubber and tin exports were valuable for Britain’s economy.

Opposition to the British was split between Malayan nationalists, who opposed rights for Chinese and Indian communities, and the Communist party, which was popular among the Chinese. A Communist guerilla movement fought the British for more than a decade after the war. But the lack of a united opposition made it easier for Britain to hold on to Malaya. (In Vietnam, by contrast Communism and nationalism fused and the French colonizers were soon overwhelmed and pushed out.)

Peninsular Malaya won its independence from Britain in 1957; Singapore, which was predominantly Chinese, in 1959. Western Borneo remained under British control. But the birth of modern, united Malaysia was just around the corner.

In the early 1960’s, the Malayan state on the peninsula and Singapore were discussing a possible merger. Singapore was eager, but the Malayans worried that incorporating Singapore would increase the number of Chinese in their state and threaten the political dominance of the Malays.

The ruler of Malaya had a solution: invite the Malayan states of Sarawak and North Borneo to join, too. That would ensure the continued dominance of the Malay people in the new state. Britain agreed and so did Singapore. And so, in 1963 Malaysia was born.

Two years later, the leader of the Malays forced Singapore out. Singapore’s prime minister cried when he announced the news on television. In retrospect, the ejection was a key moment in the creation of Sinagpore’s thriving economy. And it gave Malaysia the borders it still has today.

Malaysia is one of dozens of countries whose borders were shaped decisively by European imperialism. Unlike many of them, it is comprised of one major ethnic group. But that often leads to racism and discrimination against minorities. Fear of ethnic Chinese and Indians is still strong. Politicians pander to the Malay majority, handing out benefits to Malays in education, housing, and employment. Many talented Chinese and Indians have left.

Malay identity was essential for the formation of Malaysia. Now, however, it acts as a brake on the country’s prosperity. There’s little prospect that this will change.

For years, Audi advertisements have used the slogan “Vorsprung durch Technik.” Only a fraction of the millions who have read or heard the words know what they mean (“Progress through technology,” is the answer). The ad campaign works because people associate German design and manufacturing with quality, precision, and technical brilliance. Whether it’s Carl Zeiss lenses, BMW motorcycles, Bosch dishwashers, or Lamy pens, people buy German with the expectation of excellence.

How did Germany come to be so good at manufacturing? Why is it often so much better than neighbouring countries such as France and Italy? The story starts in the 1700s, when Germany wasn’t even a unified state—it was a patchwork of many different kingdoms. However, developments were taking place in one of these states, Prussia, that would help create the Germany we know today.

It started with a religious revival. In the Prussian city of Halle, people frustrated with the spiritual sluggishness of the Lutheran church formed a new group known as the Pietists. They were earnest in their faith, and took seriously Jesus’ command to care for orphans. Before long, they were looking after hundreds. The Pietists wanted these children to know God through the Bible and to be useful to society. So they set up schools and technical colleges, which with their rigid timetables became the basis for the educational systems we know today. The Pietists also founded a publishing house, a brewery, and a pharmaceutical company that supplied all of central and eastern Europe. The result was that Prussia became one of the most educated and entrepreneurial places in Europe—vital foundations for Germany’s later industrial success.

The German Enlightenment gave education a further boost a century later. Prussia became one of the first states to make education compulsory for all children. Science became more popular as people read the exploits of Prussian explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Humboldt’s brother, Wilhelm, opened a new university in Berlin. Meanwhile, the Prussian king passed a series of reforms that made the state bureaucracy one of the most efficient in Europe.

All this meant that Prussia was ideally placed to become the world’s second great industrial power. Great Britain got there first, but Prussia was close behind. Indeed, it helped that Prussia started after Britain. They could see what the British had done and then do it better. For example, Prussian mines used more machinery and were more productive than British ones. And while Britain’s manufacturers rested on their laurels, their Prussian counterparts were establishing new industries. British scientists made many of the key early discoveries in chemicals and engineering, but it was German firms such as BASF, Bayer, Siemens, Bosh, and AEG that did most to develop and profit from these new technologies. Germans also pioneered new industries: for example, the world’s first car was built by Daimler and Benz. By the late 1800’s, German engineering was rapidly gaining the reputation it enjoys today.

In 1871, Prussia united with the other German states to form Germany. More people, more coal, and more iron helped to make the new country the world’s industrial leader. By 1914, Germany was producing twice as much coal and steel as Britain. Its second biggest coalfield produced more coal than all of France.

This German manufacturing miracle in the 1800s was followed by a second one in the 1900s. Manufacturing dwindled in former industrial powerhouses such as Britain and the United States, but Germany retained its factories and its technical skill. 19% of jobs in Germany are still in manufacturing, twice the percentage in Britain and the US. And most people would rather drive a BMW than a Buick.

Losing two wars is part of the explanation for this second miracle. After the First World War, the victors prohibited Germany from having an air force. All the aeronautical firms and engineers had to move to different industries: BMW stopped making aircraft engines and started on motorcycles and cars. After British and American bombers had destroyed hundreds of factories during the Second World War, Germany built new and better ones. Britain and America also took billions of dollars’ worth of intellectual property, which spurred innovation among German manufacturers. By contrast, victorious powers such as Britain were prone to be complacent.

Defeat in the war helps explain another characteristic of modern Germany that has proved decisive for its industry, namely the willingness of its workers to accept modest wages. In France and Britain, striking for higher pay was the norm, and as earnings rose business decided to move production elsewhere. By contrast, factory workers in Germany accepted lower wages, which they saw as necessary for keeping their jobs. Why Germans were more moderate in their demands is not clear—some have pointed to a national culture that honours responsibility over entitlement and risk. But it’s likely that the humiliation of losing the two world wars has helped entrench that way of seeing the world.

Low wage bills have meant more money to invest in research and development, which has helped German firms keep their technological edge. This is true both in large firms such as Volkswagen and Bayer and the smaller family firms, or Mittelstand, that make everything from music stands to medical devices.

Germany also benefits from its history as a collection of smaller states. There is no German equivalent of London, with its oversized place in Britain’s economy. Many German cities have enormous local pride. Most people go to the university closest to their home. The result is a country where education and skill, and therefore successful industries, are spread widely.

And centuries after the Pietists in Halle, Germany continues to excel in education. There are schools for those who wish to study science and the humanities, but there are also excellent institutions that provide technical training. Germany has a culture of apprenticeship that results in a highly skilled workforce. The government invests in people—while US companies laid off workers after the financial crash of 2008, many German companies were able to send them on government funded training schemes. They then brought their employees back when the economy recovered.

However, while many enjoy the goods Germany makes, Germans are growing frustrated by how little money they make. Most rent their houses in a country which is one of the most unequal in the world. There is evidence that the golden age of German manufacturing is coming to an end—already, only three of Mercedes’s thirteen plants are in Germany. At least we can hope that Germany continues to excel in the design and engineering that have given us so many beautiful and functional products.

When people imagine Kenya, most think of safari parks filled with lions, leopards, and wildebeest. That may change, however, if Kenya continues to be the scene of sickening terror attacks. Tourist numbers are already down. People are worried that the lions won’t be the only predators they encounter on their trip.

In the past decade, terrorists have killed hundreds in Kenya. The two worst attacks were those on the Westgate shopping mall in 2013 (67 dead) and on Garissa University in 2015 (148 dead).

Most of the attacks have been claimed by Al-Shabaab, an Islamic group based in the neighbouring country of Somalia. Al-Shabaab is committed to waging war in God’s name until it turns East Africa into an Islamic state. In Somalia, this has meant vying for power in the country’s lengthy civil war. In Kenya, Al-Shabaab’s method has been a series of terror attacks on the civilian population.

The main reason why the terror group’s leaders dislike Kenya is simple. In 2011, when Al-Shabaab controlled Somalia’s capital and looked poised to dominate the country’s future, Kenya dispatched its army to remove them.

But there’s more to Al-Shabaab’s terrorism than resentment. That can be seen in whom they target. At Westgate, they killed people shopping at an upscale mall. At Garissa University, they spared the Muslim students and shot Christians. In Nairobi in 2019, militants attacked a hotel and office complex frequented by foreigners.

Al-Shabaab fighters believe that God wants victory over Western materialism and Christianity. They attack churches to dissuade people from going. They attack foreigners and their businesses to make them to go home. They also oppose Western influence in the Middle East, expressing anger at the American decision to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

To fully understand Al-Shabaab, however, one needs to ask why thousands of young men are joining the movement—in Kenya as well as Somalia. Part of the reason is that they agree with Al-Shabaab’s rejection of Christianity, greed, and the West. But they are also frustrated by a lack of other opportunities. Education and good jobs are hard to come by in Somalia, which has been a failed state for decades. In Kenya, youth unemployment stands at 25%, and is worse for those who do not come from one of the country’s dominant ethnic groups. That includes Somalis, who make up 6% of Kenya’s population. Some have fled from war and famine in Somalia and live in refugee camps—ideal recruiting ground for Al-Shabaab. Even those who aren’t in camps live in the underdeveloped north of Kenya. These Somalis feel so alienated that when travelling to the capital, Nairobi, they say that they are “going to Kenya.”

This is not just an issue for Somali immigrants. Kenyan politics has long been dominated by a few ethnic groups who have run the country for the benefit of their own people at the expense of everyone else. That’s similar to what the British did when they ran their colony in Kenya. Kenyans suffer because their leaders haven’t found a better way to govern.

The only winners from the terrorist attacks are the leaders of Al-Shabaab. The killings scare away tourists and investors, damaging the economy and perpetuating the poverty that pushes young men towards the terrorists’ training camps. Kenya’s government is having to spend more on security and intelligence in an attempt to neutralize the threat. But more money needs to go into education and job creation, which are better long-term solutions to the problem of human predators in East Africa.

Curiosity is a good quality, but what about when it is prompted by violence? Such is often the case with ethnic and religious divisions. It would be nice if people were intrinsically interested in the difference between Catholics and Protestants or Hutus and Tutsis, but most aren’t. It sometimes take a tragedy to make people curious.

Sadly, that’s the case for the divide between Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims. The cycle of violence between them has been going on for more than a thousand years. Millions have died. Sunni on Shia and Shia on Sunni terrorism and territorial wars plague the Middle East. What caused this bitter divide?

On the face of it, not much. Sunni and Shia Muslims have almost identical beliefs about God and how to please him. Thus there are countless examples of peaceful co-existence throughout history. But there are differences, and they led to horrific violence early on.

When the prophet Muhammad died in 632, Muslims faced a critical decision. Who would replace their founding prophet? Abu Bakr, a long-time companion of Muhammad, seized the opportunity, taking the title of caliph, or successor to the prophet. However, members of Muhammad’s family were preparing his body for burial and therefore weren’t present at the decisive meetings. They cried foul. They believed that Muhammad’s successor should be a blood relative of the prophet, such as Ali, his grandson and son-in-law. Muhammad’s family believed that Abu Bakr had stolen the leadership from Ali. They were outraged. Those who supported Ali’s claim became known as the Shia, meaning followers of Ali; everyone else was Sunni.

Ali did eventually become caliph. However, in 661, one of Ali’s opponents attacked him. He survived the initial sword blow but the poison on the blade killed Ali two days later.

The growing rift between the Shia Muslims and the Sunni majority became a chasm in 680 when Ali’s son Husayn was hacked to death by the armies of the caliph in Karbala, a city in modern Iraq. Muhammad’s family had lost the argument that they should be the leaders of the Muslim world.

Grief now gave a new complexion to the religion of the Shia. Those who mourned Husayn’s death honoured him as one who had given his life in the struggle against injustice and oppression. Their memorials of the martyrdoms of Ali and Husayn became annual reminders of their historic grievances against the Sunni. Eventually, the Shia would develop contrasting beliefs to Sunnis, especially on leadership—Shia believe that spiritual and political leadership belong together in a way that Sunnis don’t. But a distinct Shia identity emerged mainly from their veneration of the family of Ali and the ceremonies by which they remembered them.

The honour that Shia Muslims gave to their martyrs looks suspiciously like idolatry to Sunnis, who have always formed the majority of the Muslim community. This has spurred anti-Shia violence. In 1802, Al-Wahhab, a militant Sunni from modern-day Saudi Arabia, attacked the Shia shrines in Karbala. Saddam Hussein, who was Sunni, did the same thing in 1991. Events like these confirmed the Shia in their belief that they were oppressed.

The Iran-Iraq War, the civil wars in Syria and Yemen, instability in Iraq, the regional rivalry between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia—all can be explained largely by the historic animosity between these two strands of Islam. The roots of the disagreement go deep. Its fruit has been bitter.

That could change. The relationship between Protestant and Catholic Christians has been similarly violent but has improved greatly in the last several decades. There’s no reason why the same might not also be true for Sunni and Shia. They would be in the news less, and people would be much less curious about the differences between them. On this issue at least, it would be bliss if future generations were more ignorant.

The road from Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport to the capital, Taipei, looks like the sort of highway you would see anywhere else. However, in Taiwan, things are not always what they seem. Sections of this road double as runways. They aren’t normally used for planes, but they are ready in case Chinese missiles ever destroy the country’s conventional airstrips.

This isn’t the only example of stealth militarization in Taiwan. Cruise missiles stand ready in unmarked trucks. City neighbourhoods hide tanks. There is a hollowed-out mountain with room for on hundred fighter jets. The shoreline boasts an oil-filled pipeline ready to greet invaders with a wall of fire.

Taiwan has good reason to be nervous. China, its hulking neighbour, regularly states its intention to take over Taiwan. If China attacked, it would probably succeed. But Taiwan’s military preparations force China to think hard about just how many Chinese soldiers would die if they tried. Military experts call it a porcupine strategy. So far, it has proved very effective.

China’s claim to Taiwan rests on its control of the island between 1683 and 1895. Before 1683, Taiwan was ruled by its indigenous Malay and Polynesian population. After 1895, China lost the island to the Japanese, who held it until 1945. It was what happened after 1945 that sealed the hatred between Taiwan and the mainland.

When the Second World War ended that year and Japanese troops left China, the fighting didn’t stop. China was plunged into a civil war between Communists and the party that had ruled the country in the 1920’s and 1930’s: the Guomindang.

By 1949, the Guomindang were losing badly. The leadership moved crates full of art treasures and bullion across the water to Taiwan, then fled there themselves, along with one million soldiers. The Guomindang claimed that it was still the legitimate government of all China, and many countries, including the United States, supported their claim. Meanwhile, the victorious Communists under Mao Zedong asserted their right over Taiwan, and vowed to invade, occupy the island, unite China, and destroy their rivals.

Neither side has changed its position much since 1949. Taiwan has survived in part because of strong friends, notably the United States, which has consistently backed the government in Taipei. Thousands of Pentagon officials continue to visit Taiwan each year on military business. However, the US has also become more and more friendly to mainland China: its billion-plus consumers make it irresistible to American firms.

China continues to threaten Taiwan with invasion. They perform live-fire drills in the Taiwan strait. But business ties between the two countries are stronger than ever. Tens of thousands of Taiwanese companies operate in China, including Foxconn which makes iPhones in its factories there. War between the two countries is in no one’s interests.

The danger is that China’s government may one day fan the flames of anti-Taiwan nationalism to a point where it can no longer control it. The temptation to do so will increase when China’s hitherto bulletproof economy falters, as it surely will. Nicholas II, the leader of Russia before the First World War, did something similar and then found that popular pressure pushed him into war against his better judgement. More recently, Vladimir Putin has used foreign adventures to maintain his popularity as Russian living standards have stagnated. China’s leaders may one day think of doing the same.

They will, however, think twice. Taiwan’s defenses are formidable.  Popular opinion is fickle and in China it might turn against the government once Taiwanese missiles hit targets on the mainland and Chinese sailors burn to death on torpedoed boats. Considerations like this provide hope that the porcupine will survive for a long while yet.

If you visit russianrailways.com, you can buy a ticket from Moscow to Vladivostok. It’s a journey of almost 6,000 miles that takes you across eight time zones all the way to the Pacific Ocean in seven days.

Russia is much larger than any other country. The next three biggest—Canada, the USA, and China—are less than 60% its size. How did it get so big?

Russia hasn’t always been so large. It began back in the 800’s as a small kingdom centred on Kiev (the capital of modern Ukraine), and stayed small for the next seven hundred years. For much of that period, they were ruled by the Mongols.

Eventually, the Russians defeated the Mongols. But then they had a problem. As they gazed East from their new capital in Moscow, there were no natural borders between them and China. The lands in between, known as the steppe, were flat and hard—perfect for warriors on horseback like the Mongols, but a nightmare to defend. It was a conquer or be-conquered world. Thus Russia’s leaders, or tsars, began a series of wars against its neighbours that put them in control of most of the steppe lands of Asia by 1700.

Russia also conquered Siberia, the frozen northern lands of Asia. Here, the initiative belonged not to the tsars but to hunters and merchants drawn by ermine, bear, and mink. The furs that protected these animals against the cold fetched high prices in European capitals. The people who lived in Siberia weren’t Russian and didn’t speak Russian, but they were weak and thus easy prey. As Russia swallowed Siberia, however, the country changed. It became a multi-ethnic empire—with enormous consequences for Russia to the present day.

Next, Russia expanded West, absorbing Ukraine, Belarus, and much of Poland. Then they went South, across the Caucasus mountains to take the ancient kingdoms of Armenia and Georgia. They finished by conquering Central Asia, which they grabbed because they worried that the British would if they didn’t get there first.

By 1900, Russia had an empire of more than 8 million square miles. There were dozens of major ethnic groups, with their own languages, and many different religions, too. In fact, it was very much like the British and French empires of the day, but with the big difference that the Russian empire was a single territory. Like the British and the French, however, the Russians took advantage of their subject peoples and territory. The sheer diversity of their domains made it hard to build a democracy. Rather, the Russians held their people in line with force or the threat of force—which is how it works in most empires.

This didn’t change much when the Russia of the tsars gave way to the Communist Soviet Union in the 20th century. In theory, the different nationalities had equal rights in the new country—fifteen of them became the republics that made up the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). But the government in Moscow became more ruthless in its exploitation of the natural resources scattered throughout its vast domain. Prisoners cut timber and mined gold in the frozen tundra, women picked cotton in Central Asia, while state companies pumped oil from under the Caspian Sea and Siberia. Russia became richer and stronger—a superpower and scientific leader. But it did so at the expense of its people, who lived in fear of being sent to a labour camp, or worse.

When Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union in the 1980’s, decided to end the state violence, it proved impossible to hold the country together without it. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. The fifteen republics became independent countries. Russia was one of them—by the far the largest but 2 million square miles smaller than the Soviet Union (an area equivalent to the USA minus its 10 largest states).

In theory, Russia could become much smaller. It could let go of the areas that aren’t historically Russian, just as Britain and France gave up their empires in Africa and Asia. But there’s no way Russia’s leadership will let that happen. The country’s vast size allows it to touch Europe, the Middle East, China, and the Pacific and has always been a central part of its claim to be a top ranking nation. Siberia, with its massive oil and gas reserves, is the source of most of the country’s wealth. That makes the Russian people richer than they would be otherwise.

Russia is unlikely to become a democracy. The government has to do enough to keep the people quiet and hopefully content. But the country is still an empire, whose leaders are willing to limit freedom so they can exploit their country’s wealth for their own benefit.