44 Middle East & Africa The EconomistNovember 16th 2019
21sistance by wooing Blue and White’s
leader, Benny Gantz, a former army chief.
He brought him into recent discussions
over Gaza, with a view towards appointing
him defence minister.
A newcomer to politics, Mr Gantz seems
tired of the incessant campaigning and
manoeuvring of the past year. He is ru-
moured to be softening. He could accept an
arrangement whereby he joins a Netanya-
hu-led coalition in return for a promise
from the prime minister that he would sus-pend himself if he is indeed indicted.
Mr Gantz would have to convince his
colleagues, most of whom appear set
against the idea. They are running out of
choices. Blue and White could try to form a
minority government supported by Arab-
Israeli parties, which would not actually
join the coalition. But the Gaza operation
has made that harder. In tweets and
speeches before and after the assassina-
tion, Mr Netanyahu accused Arab-Israeli
politicians, who oppose military action inGaza, of supporting Palestinian “war
crimes”—and warned Mr Gantz against co-
operating with them.
The deadline for forming a government
is December 11th. If no candidate succeeds
by then, Israel will be plunged into its third
election campaign in a year. Mr Netanyahu
would remain as caretaker prime minister.
Polling suggests that another vote is un-
likely to make it any easier to form a gov-
ernment. Reaching a deal with Hamas
looks simple by comparison. 7F
or monthsGeneral Khalifa Haftar,
Libya’s most powerful warlord, has
besieged Tripoli, struggling to wrest
control of the capital from the un-backed
“government of national accord” (gna).
More than 1,000 people have been killed.
Mr Haftar is aided by Emirati and Egyp-
tian air strikes. But the lines hardly
move. A little-known group of Salafists
(ultra-conservative Muslims) called the
Madkhalists may yet tip the balance.
Under orders from their leader, an
octogenarian Saudi preacher named
Rabee al-Madkhali, the Madkhalists
outside the capital have joined Mr Haf-
tar’s ranks, while those inside encourage
fighters to give up. “Put down your weap-
ons, go home, pray and read the Koran,”
says Fahmy Naas, a follower in Tripoli.
War is fitna(strife or sedition), he insists.
The Madkhalists make up less than
10% of Libya’s people. Those with guns
number between 8,000 and 25,000. The
gna’s commanders blame the group for
undermining morale. They say Mad-
khalists in Tripoli are in regular contact
with their brethren on Mr Haftar’s side
and constitute a fifth column. “If Haftar
breaks into the capital, the Madkhalists
will bring their supporters cheering onto
the streets,” says an official in Tripoli.
Madkhalism took root in Libya under
Muammar Qaddafi. Unlike Libya’s other
Islamists, the Madkhalists shunned the
Arab spring of 2011, when Libyans top-
pled the old dictator. Their support then
shifted to Mr Haftar on the basis of gha-
laba, the principle that God makes the
rightful leader win. The wali al-amr, or
rightful leader, Mr Madkhali insists, is
wali al-aqwa, the strongest one.
The Madkhalists make strange bed-
fellows of Mr Haftar, who claims to be
fighting Islamist terror. In Libya’s east,
which he rules, they have been handed
control of the religious-affairs ministry.
From their pulpits they order womenindoors and stage book burnings.
They have also stoked sectarian ten-
sion by destroying the shrines of Sufi
mystics and declaring Ibadism, the sect
of Libya’s Berber minority, heretical.
Their henchmen have beheaded defiant
sheikhs and killed confidants of Libya’s
grand mufti, who supports the gna.
But the Madkhalists earned the grati-
tude of many Libyans by restoring order
to neighbourhoods after the collapse of
Qaddafi’s regime. Many young men have
been drawn to their simple politics. Mr
Madkhali tells followers to show un-
flinching obedience to the wali al-amr.
Saudi Arabia is suspected of financing
the Madkhalists, who helped Mr Haftar
defeat Islamist fighters in Benghazi and
turf Islamic State out of Derna, farther
east. In Tripoli the Madkhalists man the
Special Deterrence Force, or rada, which
controls the airport. They have mostly
stayed out of the fight with Mr Haftar.
Some fear the Madkhalists might turn
into something like al-Qaeda. “You can’t
use people and guarantee that they won’t
go off-track,” says a Salafist politician in
Egypt. “People are not machines.”The Sala-fifth column
Libya’s warTRIPOLI
The rise of an obscure religious group may lead to the fall of TripoliS
quint at thegrasslands of northern
Mozambique and they look a bit like the
cerrado, a savannah in central Brazil. Could
they be transformed by intensive farming,
just as the thickets of the cerradohave given
way to fields of soya that transformed Bra-
zil from a food importer to one of the
world’s great breadbaskets? That was the
thought behind Prosavana, a programme
bringing Brazilian and Japanese expertise
to Mozambique. Initiated in 2009, it aimed
to lift agricultural production across an
area of 107,000 square kilometres, roughly
the size of Bulgaria.
Politicians heralded Prosavana as a
landmark example of “South-South” co-
operation. Few farming projects in Africa
could match its ambition. It painted a fu-
ture of which many agronomists on the
continent dream: productive and commer-
cially astute smallholder farmers and large
plantations exporting to the world. Yet it
became a study in hubris, and an illustra-
tion of why top-down schemes so often fall
short of expectations.
Some 60% of people in sub-Saharan Af-
rica earn a living from their fields. Most of
them do not use improved seeds or fertil-
iser. A typical farm in Kenya or Uganda pro-
duces about one-third as much maize per
hectare as one in China, and about one-
sixth as much as an American one. Africa
also has much of the world’s remaining un-
cultivated land. Stories of untapped poten-
tial are drawing commercial farming to the
continent. Some agri-businesses cultivate
vast holdings of their own. Others enter ar-
rangements to buy cash crops from locals.
They often run into opposition, not least
over land. Many quietly retreat.
Prosavana encountered similar suspi-
cion. A decade on there is nothing to show
for it except a small research lab and a few
model farms. In a field outside Ribaue, aNAMPULA
Why one of Africa’s most ambitious
farming projects has failed to thriveSeeds of oppositionStony ground