Canada got involved in numerous dubious African adventures, particularly throughout the 1990s. I was asked from on high how, exactly, and why, exactly, the Canadian Armed Forces kept getting volunteered for such duty. This piece was supposed to be the first chapter in a study to answer those questions but our involvement in Afghanistan accelerated in mid-2005 and my energies were directed there instead.
The unpopular notion that Soviet influence in certain African countries expressed through their media and education systems, particularly in terms of economic and social policies, had something to do with why some portions of Africa are as screwed up as they are forty years later was equally unpalatable to an African historical journal I submitted this to. So it went to CAJ.
Oh well. You can’t win ’em all.