MapAid: The Competition for Hope

Notes from a hybrid business person & aid worker: Chapter 8

The Competition for Hope

‘Hope’ seems a soft word, but it is essential to the core of the human spirit, no matter what creed or colour and without doubt when it dies, peace dies too. 

A serious lack of hope gives agency to a small group of violently radicalised leaders, too often psychopaths, and in the presence of certain conditions, which include a lot of youth, and a lot of unemployment, gives them the cocktail and the agency to mount attacks against the neighbours, attacks for which there is absolutely no excuse.

The problem is a large number of unemployed male youth, not the neighbours.

But just as sad is if neighbours have either previously ignored what is happening next door, don’t understand what is happening next door, or are too traumatised by provocations to care what is happening next door, then as night follows day, trouble gets stored up next door.

The tragic events of October 7th 2023 are all too common across the world, and way beyond the scope of this article to begin to understand and interpret, except in the most general terms and even then, as a guide to “what happens next” after things that have inevitably got worse, can get no worse, and then somehow with huge efforts on all sides, have to get better because we have reached the bottom, of the bottom, of the bottom. It’s an exhausting predictable cycle that one day we hope the world will move on from.

Can I put it like this ? When General Petraeus and his soldiers in Iraq took Najaf on April 3rd 2003, after days of brutal urban warfare, he radioed his commander General William Wallace and said: “I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is we control Najaf. The bad news is we control Najaf.”

I come to this subject as a humanitarian aid worker and small capitalist, rather than as a journalist, a social scientist or even a soldier. The subject is one I’ve written about before in a short book also called “The Competition for Hope” on the subject of Afghanistan and Iraq, based on my involvement in post-conflict reconstruction in Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Nagorno Karabagh, Abkhazia, and the Congo.

There is an inevitable weariness that seems to align with these problems of neighbourhood violence, there is a pattern on repeat. This cocktail I mentioned simmers for a bit and then explodes because the group of older men acts as a detonator when they see a weak spot.

Well, blow us all over, in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics Labour Force Survey, the unemployment rate for youth graduates in the Gaza strip reached 73.9% compared to 28.6 % in the West Bank, in 2022. Are these figures for Gaza believable ? Well, yes, according to UNDP sources. And 60% of the population are under the age of 24 years old, also as a matter of public record. These figures can never excuse what happened earlier this month, but they do explain them with a sense of tired inevitability.

So yes, General Petraeus was right, even more right. Because after a war, you not only have sky-high unemployment but also a lot of young men, who are traumatised and weaponised.

Napoleon Bonaparte also knew something of all this, from long and hard experience, he once said: “A leader is a dealer in hope.”

But when the moment of peace comes, there is a golden hour, when anything seems possible. I’ve seen this phenomenon in several places, and it is at this moment, that top leaders often shake hands on public media, and there are a lot of congratulations all around. 

But unless the peace goes a long way further than everyone at the top “singing Kumbaya” and signing peace deals, and unless the youth in particular the male youth, get the overall sustainable job support they need, then everything will fall to bits, again. Why ? Because a new cadre of violent radical leaders simply will rise up, with a new name, to detonate the situation. 

At Henley Business School in 2014, I did my thesis on the key drivers that underpin sustainable job creation. There are at least eleven of these drivers. But the three key ones, the backbone if you like, are vocational education, start-up funding and business mentoring, and the rest are electrons spinning around this nucleus. If you get sustainable job creation right, and if you use geography and maps to help understand where to plant and grow small businesses so they actually serve local communities, and don't trip over each other, you will get sustainable peace. New businesses are like small plants, they need to have space to breathe and enough competition to stretch but not too much to stifle. In these conditions sure, any older violent men will grumble, but they will be neutered, and the jobs will have restored hope.

What worries me most at the moment is youth unemployment in Bosnia and Herzegovina which is at 33.47% (according to Macrotrends), with 25% of the population younger than 24 years (according to Datareportal). 

That’s one we have to watch next, in case any state or non-state actor is tempted to try and stir it up.

But it’s hopeless putting a sustainable job creation programme together unless and until three things are guaranteed. One is a collection of all weapons of war. The second is a draconian commitment to probity and fairness within the leadership of any programme. The third is enough heft, i.e. cash and political commitment, to reach everybody. 

Half-hearted efforts won’t cut it!!!

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