Mack Reynolds: The Best Ye Breed

The commissioner said, “What I should have said was, ‘Are you basically pro-American or anti-Communist?’ ”

The international troubleshooter took him in. “I thought they meant the same thing.”

“Not necessarily.”

Paul Kosloff was getting tired of this routine. He said, “All right. I’ve been ordered to contact you secretly. What do you want me to do?”

“Stop a revolution.”

“That’s my specialty. That’s what you people have been having me do for… as long as I can remember. Why the buildup? Do I have to assassinate some present-day Trotsky or Mao, or what?”

“The revolution is to take place, or is taking place, in North Africa, all of North Africa, but we are particularly concerned with Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.”

Paul Kosloff stared at him before saying, “They’ve already got Marxist governments there. Perhaps not totally commie, but awfully close to it.”

“That’s what I’ve been building up to. The revolution we’re talking about is against the socialist-communist-anarchist, call them what you will, governments in North Africa. It would also involve the Sudan, which considers itself socialist, and Mauretania, also supposedly left wing. A certain El Hassan and his followers wish to overthrow them all, not to speak of the right-wing military dictatorships to the south.”

“Why not let him?” Paul Kosloff growled.

“His ultimate aim is to unite all of Africa north of the Congo.”

The troubleshooter pursed his lips in a silent whistle. “It’d be a neat trick to pull off but I still say, why not let him? If those first countries you named aren’t commie today, they will be tomorrow.”

“Because if we do, it’s one more nail in the coffin of our economy.”

Paul Kosloff waited in silence.

The other said impatiently, “I assume that you haven’t read a book published way back in the 1950s by Vance Packard, a muckraker of the time, entitled The Waste Makers . In it, he points out that although the population of America was but a small fraction of the world’s, the United States economy was using up some fifty percent of the Earth’s resources. He also pointed out that ten years before the United States had been the largest exporter of copper in the world, but was now the largest importer. His book was ignored and all efforts were continued to raise the gross national product year after year. One by one we lost self-sufficiency in almost every raw material we needed for our industry.”

“What’s all this got to do with it?” Kosloff said.

“We need North Africa’s oil, her nickel, copper, iron, chromium, phosphates. We need them badly. The area is comparatively untouched, so far as raw materials are concerned. Practically nothing save oil has been exploited to date. We have reached accomodation with the present regimes in these leftist nations and purchase almost everything they produce and have either sent in, or have made arrangements to send in, further development teams to begin the exploitation of still more of their resources.”

“Well, why couldn’t you do the same with this El Hassan?”

The other nodded, but said impatiently, “Because that’s one of the strongest planks in his revolutionary platform. He contends that the non-developed countries with raw materials, especially North Africa, are being robbed by the industrialized countries such as the United States of the Americas, Common Europe and Japan. He wishes to shove prices for raw materials sky high.”

“Can he do it?”

“If he wins his revolt, he probably can, and, if he does, so will the other nondeveloped countries. The Arab oil cartel was an early example of what can be done in that field. Eventually, it could mean collapse of the economies of the developed nations.”

“I see. Who is this mysterious El Hassan? I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of him.”

“You haven’t!” The other was surprised. “Where have you been these past few weeks? He’s come on the scene like a whirling dervish in a revolving door.”

Paul Kosloff took him in. “I’ve been back in the boondocks in South America, trying to track down a present-day Ché Guevara. It turned out that he was a myth and didn’t exist. There weren’t any papers in the area. But even if I’d been in one of the larger cities, I doubt if I would have heard about this El Hassan. Censorship is all but universal and one of the great taboos in running stories telling about revolutionary movements abroad. They don’t want to let the people know that revolutions are possible—anywhere.”

His superior leaned back. “Very well, El Hassan isn’t as mysterious as all that. We have a very complete dossier on him. In actuality, he’s an American.”

“An American!”

“That is correct. His name is Homer Crawford and he took his doctorate in sociology at the University of Michigan. He’s an American black who was given a position with the Sahara Division of the African Development Project of the Reunited Nations. He and his team, also largely American blacks, had the job of speeding up the modernization of North Africa. In their case, largely in the Western Sahara. Their task was to break down bottlenecks. Break down tribal lines. Talk the desert peoples into going to the new schools, taking jobs with the new irrigation projects, building the new dams, drilling the new oil wells, opening up the new mines, getting out from under their traditional religious taboos.”

“And?…”

“His team, thinking things weren’t going fast enough, got together with other organizations that were attempting to accomplish much the same thing. The Africa for Africans Association, a private, nonprofit outfit working out of New York; Great Britain’s African Department, though they largely work further south; the French Community’s African Affairs sector; and various others. All of these groups consist of members with African racial backgrounds, blacks who were born and educated abroad but have returned to the continent of their racial heritage to goose it forward into the modern world.”

Paul Kosloff said unhappily, “Sounds pretty damned praiseworthy to me.”

“Ummm,” the other looked down at a paper he had on the bed. “Unfortunately, Crawford and his close intimates evidently came to the conclusion that those people weren’t going to be goosed unless stronger measures were taken. Most of them are tribesmen with a ritual-taboo social system. At that stage of development, Crawford seemed to think, they needed a hero to follow, a charismic hero to lead them into the promised land and to ruthlessly break down all barriers that stood in the way. He modestly volunteered for the job.”

“And?…”

“His forces are sweeping North Africa. It would seem that the area was rotten-ripe for such a development. The old tribes and clans were going under with the coming of the new roads, the airlines, the new industries. What does a tribe of, say, Tuaghi—that’s plural of Tuareg—that formerly conducted caravans of camels across the Sahara, do when roads are pushed through their areas and trucks by the thousands start speeding over them? What do bands of former brigands do, in the face of the new weapons of the white man? What do clans of Tedas, who formerly herded goats, do, when the officials of the Sahara Afforestation Project buy up their animals and shoot them? Goats are the most destructive animals in the desert, so far as trees are concerned. They prefer the bark of young trees to grass. What do former Heratin serf farmers do, familiar only with their primitive agricultural methods, when the new solar-powered water wells go in and the oases are expanded a hundred fold, so that modern mechanized methods can be utilized?”

“So El Hassan is succeeding?”