Bombing bridges, not building them

摘要

Anew frontier has been pencilled across Madagascar, a once-harmonious island in the Indian Ocean. If you try to drive up from Toamasina, the main port, to Antananarivo, the highland capital, you meet a roadblock at a bridge in Brickaville, where drunken soldiers, bored truck drivers and hundreds of porters congregate. Here, the country's main commercial highway is reduced to a narrow concrete path. Men totter over it in single file under sacks of cement, crates of tinned food and baskets of chickens. Others wade across the river, pushing barrels of smuggled petrol. Huddled out of the rain, traders sell rice, beer and tea. A militiaman threatens to shoot anyone too inquisitive about the crossing. Brickaville is becoming a border town, and a rough one at that.