The notes in which I collect pieces from different sources and reassemble I normally entitle ‘fragments’. Not this time. These are not fragments, but sounds and echoes.
Put aside the banal hot takes about chatGPT and listen: there is plenty else to hear. Crack crack. Things are breaking. Not unimportant things. Basic infrastructures and core services. States. And not in one or two places. Call it polycrisis, call it history, this is all happening now. An incomplete but indicative sample to follow.
Energy infrastructure in South Africa:
“I don’t think things are going to change for us; it’s not going to get better,” Ms. da Silva said.
“It’s institutional failure at every level,” said Ms. Burton. “They’re in a debt spiral, and they’re in a maintenance spiral.”
“They’re not here,” said Mehmet, a volunteer helping to organise the gendarmes who didn’t want to give his surname as he was criticising the government. “And even if they do come, they don’t know what they’re doing.”
“We were told to drop the old currency (notes) in the bank and that new one is coming,” she said. “But we don’t have the new currency and no old currency. Everything is just tough.”
“If someone were to tell me that I can have the money but I cannot make use of the money, I would not believe it,” she said, frustrated and downcast.
“The government failed us very well. They disappointed us,” she said.
Now, in 2023, the rubbish is back and has been for several years. Political stasis and corruption have consigned Beirut to another dark age. A future in which any Lebanese can reflect on bad memories from a time of safety seems unimaginable.
Uncollected rubbish is the most obvious, not to say noxious, manifestation of the crisis in a system that no longer functions. ‘If it no longer functions,’ said Charbel Nahas, head of the reformist movement Citizens in a State, ‘it no longer has legitimacy.’ Its illegitimacy hasn’t been sufficient to dislodge it, despite heavily repressed street protests and near universal contempt for the half-dozen or so leaders who sustain it.
Mr. Karamanlis, the transport minister, who choked up earlier in the day while talking to reporters at the site of the crash, said later that he was resigning “as the minimum expression of respect to the memory of those who were so unfairly lost” and that he was “assuming responsibility for the chronic ailments of the Greek state and the political system.”
Gang violence amidst state collapse in Haiti:
The daily lives of Brooklyn residents [a neighbourhood in Port-au-Prince] are similar to those of hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in areas under the control of heavily armed gangs. In addition to indiscriminate shootings, executions, and rapes, they are no longer able to meet basic needs such as access to clean water, education, and food. Their unsanitary environment has become unbearable. Cholera and other infectious diseases have re-emerged and/or are spreading rapidly throughout the capital.
Faced with this situation, the state authorities have not been able to provide an adequate response.
Social services provided by state officials are also virtually absent.
The Iraqi state ‘simultaneously provides everything and nothing’:
“The vast majority of senior officials use their positions in their institutions to enrich themselves, their families and grow their patronage networks,” says a former Iraqi government official, on condition of anonymity. “Iraq is not led by its best and brightest or even cleanest. It is governed by the mediocre and greedy.”
In 2023, many Iraqis’ lives are characterised by what is missing: the loved ones they have lost,… the lack of opportunity offered them by a dysfunctional government; the money wasted on kickbacks; and the hours of productivity lost to power cuts. The country’s young population still has so many reasons to want to live fuller lives. “They want to feel that they are human beings,” says Maryam, the women’s rights activist. “They don’t want to feel like they are constantly a slave to things—a slave to their bosses, to their families, to their surroundings, society, and its traditions and norms. It’s our most basic right and we feel as though we cannot breathe.”
Economic, political, security, energy, and environmental crises in Pakistan:
“There are three crises intersecting at the moment in Pakistan: an economic crisis, a political crisis, and a security crisis that has grown since the fall of Kabul,” said Younus, who described the situation as the “worst threat to Pakistan’s national cohesion since 1971” — the year Bangladesh fought for and won its independence from Pakistan.
“The electricity generation capacity of Pakistan is significantly dependent on the continued import of fuel,” said Yousuf Nazar, a Pakistani economic analyst and former banking executive. “You can imagine what would happen if we started to see power breakdowns and outages, or even shortages of fuel for transportation, at a time when the country is also dealing with 40 percent inflation.”
“There is tremendous uncertainty, as people don’t know whether Pakistan will simply just default on its foreign loans sometime this year,” Rafiq said. “There is heightened risk across the board, and every major indicator has taken a turn downward. It is hard to see a pathway to stability because the government’s legitimacy comes from its ability to handle the economy — and things are not going to get better in the foreseeable future.”
Listen carefully. There and here are not so far apart.