Filed under: africa | Tags: Chad, eastern Congo, Economist, Kenya, Mugabe, Museveni, Nigeria, Southern Sudan, UNHCR, Zimbabwe
“There are other questions too. Should IDPs stay in rural areas or be resettled in towns? Providing the right amount of assistance is tricky as well. Too much, and an African government risks turning camps into subsidised slums. Too little, and people die.”
The above quote is from this weeks Economist Newspaper. As I have argued before, I think that the move to come up with a framework to protect IDPs on the Continent is a charade. I don’t get how the likes of Mugabe (one of the chief displacers of people on the Continent) are supposed to be entrusted with protecting the same people. Having UNHCR do the job sounds good but is riddled with huge moral hazard problems – as illustrated by the above quote.
Meanwhile, this is the kind of life that many an African autocrat (and soon the effects of climate change) forces his fellow citizens to live.
Filed under: africa | Tags: Camara Moussa, guinea, Idris Deby, Jerry Rawlings, Museveni, Obiang Nguema, Samuel DOe, Yahya Jammeh, Yoweri Museveni
Macharia Gaitho, one of my favorite columnists at The Daily Nation captured my exact sentiments in his column today. I hope the American ambassador in Nairobi, and whoever it is that briefs Washington on matters Kenyan took note of this piece.
And in other news, Guinea has serious problems. The junior army officer who took over in a coup last year to “establish peace and democracy” has decided that he wants to hang on to power, inviting protests from Guineans not into such ideas. We’ve heard this story before, and we know how it ends.The Guineans should start reading on Samuel Doe, Jerry Rawlings, Idris Deby, Obiang, Museveni, Yahya Jammeh and the many others. Coups are the strongest predictor of future coups. A history of civil violence is also a strong predictor of future violence. Endemic poverty, an economy’s reliance on the export of commodities and weak to poor trade ties with the international community compound matters even more. The odds are stacked against the poor Guineans. They are in this for the long haul. And it sucks that the international community (including Sarkozy’s France) does not care about Guinea, as long as the generals keep exporting Bauxite.
Fun fact about Guinea: Guinea is a leading bauxite exporter, but most of its people live on less than $1 a day (courtesy of the BBC).
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Ilemi triangle, Lake Victoria, Migingo Island, Museveni, Uganda
Ugandan authorities have occupied an Island that might be on the Kenyan side of Lake Victoria. The Kenyan government has done nothing but ask for there to be talks on the status of the Island. Now, I am not a war-monger or anything but this is not the way to do things. The Kenyan Navy should be patrolling around the Island in a show of force even as the talks proceed. That President Museveni of Uganda has imperial ambitions is not a secret. He openly campaigns to be the first president of the to-be-formed East African Federation. This move on Migingo Island might be his idea of testing the waters to see how Kenya might respond to such moves.
I say we let the Ugandans know that even though we are not itching to go to war with them they cannot routinely occupy Kenyan territory without consequences – they have done this before in the north west of Kenya and even killed a few Kenyans with BOMBS! under the pretext of chasing cattle rustlers.
Migingo Island may be small, and even economically worthless but we should retain it nonetheless.
And speaking of disputed territories, when are we going to make it official that the Ilemi triangle is part of the Republic of Kenya? We have administered this part of south east Sudan forever and I think it is time we made it clear to the international community that it belongs to Kenya.
So Gen. Nkunda and his men have yet again captured an army base in the East of the DRC, further raising questions of the viability of this vast country as a united nation-state. The news reports did not come as a surprise. I have said again and again that Kabila seems unable to take it to Nkunda and his army and because of this I think that the DRC should be split up. Millions of people should not live forever in misery and at the mercy warring armies simply because of King Leopold’s greed several decades ago.
Kabila does not have complete control of the country and because of this the African Union and the UN should consider putting the Eastern part of the country in a trusteeship with the aim of granting them complete autonomy if they so choose in a referendum some time in the near future.
Time will not stand still to wait for Kabila, Nkunda, Museveni and Kagame to resolve their differences. As they, through their surrogates, squabble, millions of real people continue to die or be confined to lives as base as no human being should have to countenance in the 21st century. Addis Ababa and New York have buried their heads in the sand for too long over this matter. It is time to wake up and face the realities on the ground.
Yes, I know this seems as too simplistic a suggestion. Rwanda has a stake in this because of the deposed Hutus in the region – Nkunda himself is a Tutsi claiming to be fighting to defend his ethnic kinsmen from these Hutus. Uganda is involved too, perhaps because of the minerals or just because of Museveni’s need to keep his army busy to avoid discontents at home. It is a complicated mess to put it mildly. But all these other facets of this conflict do not negate the fact that the DRC, a vast country that is the size of Western Europe, is too big to be governed by a weak government in Kinshasa. Kinshasa cannot project its power throughout the country. Period. No society, at least not in the modern political economy, can exist without government. The chaos in the East of the DRC are as much a result of Kinshasa’s ineptitude as they are of foreign meddling by Kagame and Museveni. I say divide the country, or give the East more autonomy and move one.
Filed under: Central Africa, Chad, Crises, News Analysis, Politics, africa | Tags: Chad, Idriss Deby, kabila, Kagame, meles zenawi, Museveni, Ndjamena
Idriss Deby, the president of Chad, is in deep trouble. Rebel forces are reported to have entered the capital, Ndjamena, and are marching to the presidential palace “surprisingly easily.” The rebels have been waging a war against the government of Mr. Idriss Deby for some years now and this time they managed to march into the capital and seem to be ready to topple the government.
Many had expected that the French army was going to step in to help Mr. Deby but it seems like the French are taking a wait-and-see position on this one. Mr. Deby accuses the government of Sudan of supporting the Chadian rebels. Sudan on the other hand accuses Chad of sponsoring the Darfuri rebels that have given Khartoum very bad press since 2000.
The African Union has condemned the attempted violent seizure of power but done nothing else. As the rebels marched towards the capital no country within the organisation offered any kind of support for Mr. Deby.
It is a bit surprising and disturbing at the same time that the government of Chad is being toppled so easily by a rebel movement. The march to the capital was well known and documented by the international media yet the government seemed to lack the capacity to take the fight to the rebels in the North East before they reached the capital. May be the government ought to be removed – because it has proven to be weak and unable to protect its people against these marauding desert rebels.
It is unclear what the rebels intend to do once they seize power. The success rate of such movements in forming governments is very low. Only Museveni, Kagame, Kabila, Zenawi and Charles Taylor have ever pulled this off before. All the other coups on the continent have been carried out by disgruntled government soldiers.
Meanwhile, as the men fight it out for power in this hot and dusty country, hundreds of thousands of people face crises on both sides of the Sudan-Chad border. The refugee camps are crowded, disease infested and unsafe. Aid workers have scaled down most of their operations due to the security situation leaving thousands without much hope for a better life.
Filed under: Crises, East Africa, Human Rights, News Analysis, Politics, The DRC, Uganda, World affairs, africa | Tags: lord's resistance army, Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti, Acholi, Mao, Museveni
It is almost certain that Vincent Otti, the second in command in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), is dead. Those in the know say that Otti was executed by Kony’s lieutenants in a place called Garamba some time in October. For those in the dark, the LRA is a rebel movement in Northern Uganda led by Joseph Kony. The movement has been waging a bloody rebellion against the Kampala government for over two decades now without much success. In the process it has emerged as one of the most brutal rebel groups in the world – Kony’s army is an unprofessional brood of thuggish child soldiers whose training process included numbing done by forcing them to rape and/or kill their own relatives. Over the years, Kony and his soldiers developed a habit of cutting off the lips of civilians that refused to be part of the rebellion thus sending tens of thousands of Ugandans to internally displaced people’s (IDP) camps.
It therefore came as a relief when Kampala decided to talk to the rebels after realizing that an outright military victory was not possible because of the extent to which the war has been civilianized. President Museveni even set a deadline, 31st January 2008, as the date by which the talks should be concluded. But things might actually turn for the worse in light of the new developments within the LRA.
Although Kampala has not acknowledged it, the death of Otti may slow down the talks. It is no secret that Otti was the brain behind the rebellion. Kony, the leader, is a rather superstitious man who sees himself as a spiritual medium and thinks that Uganda should be ruled according to the Ten Commandments of the Bible. He is more at ease around his illiterate and equally superstitious child soldiers and 60 odd wives than at the negotiating table. Otti on the other hand was a less creepy (but equally murderous) fellow who from the early stages of the talks emerged as the chief spokesman for the LRA – this may be the reason why Kony decided to liquidate him since it became clear who the more rational commander between the two was.
All in all, the people of Acholi, and indeed the whole of Uganda want this peace process to go on as planned. Museveni should not let this war drag on any further. Northern Ugandans have suffered enough. And just for good measure, Kony should be tried for war crimes, even if the Acholi forgive him – as they claim to be ready to do under their customary practices. He chose this path himself when he decided to cut off peoples’ lips, rape women, burn down villages and use children as soldiers, and all this to the same Acholi people whose rights he claims to be fighting for.
