Sunday news: here's your sign edition

Ah, Sunday, that joyous day when we celebrate all that is special to us.  When we relax in a hammock sipping lemonade.  When the air temperature is hot enough to melt the skin off a tomato.  Here's how we shall mark this splendid occasion.  

• Health insurance companies:  the root of all that is evil.  And I should know, my mother works for one.
• Oil companies:  the back-up plan for the root of all that is evil.  Are we noticing the #capitalismfail yet?
• The U.S. Senate:  where evil goes to lay its eggs.  And, ya know, starve people in the name of grandstanding.
• The United States continues to pretend that the government of Somalia exists in some meaningful way, and that poorly trained and equipped peacekeepers can help this imaginary government.  Meanwhile, people suffer.  Perhaps it's time to end the ruse, no?
• DC was struck by a minor earthquake on Friday, and will continue to write news articles about it for at least two weeks.  Panic?  What panic?
• And, finally, Hillary Clinton:  "the godmother of 21st-century statecraft."  Orly?

 There you have it, kids. 

Quick take: social conservatism in South Africa

Sean Jacobs over at Africa is a Country links to this piece on social conservatism in South Africa and how it threatens the nation's uber-liberal constitution.  Well worth a once over.  One can pretty easily see how similar trends could affect the implementation of rights guaranteed by a slightly less all-inclusive document, like the U.S. constitution. 

A positive direction for foreign policy?

It looks as though the State Department is gonna look into the state of LGBT rights in Africa.  This is an important step, and it's essential that international human rights law and norms be abided by.  However, I think it's also important that State not move so fast in this area (not likely, really) so that the United States ends up appearing hypocritical.  As I commented at Africa is a Country the other day, the poor and working class experience for LGBT South Africans -- the only country on the continent with progressive laws related to LGBT rights -- isn't necessarily dissimilar from the poor and working class experience for LGBT Americans, and the United States, frankly, has fewer legal protections for LGBT folks than South Africa does.  Thus while I welcome holding other nations accountable for their disregard of human rights, it's concurrently equally important that the same level of accountability be required at home. 

Hilarity alert: The Real World -- African Autocrats

A curious script for a reality TV show if I've ever seen one.

Hat tip: Scarlett Lion.

Transitional justice in Zimbabwe?

So apparently some folks at the Institute for Security Studies have proposed that Zimbabwe go through a transitional justice process. I've yet to read the full report in detail, but it seems to me that this isn't the best idea in the current situation. Yes, I grant that the crimes committed under both the Rhodesian and Mugabe regimes need to be investigated and those responsible held accountable. Yet at the same time, Mugabe is still in power, so clearly 20 years are off the investigatory table. Plus, a big long unburying of Rhodesia era atrocities would be just what Mugabe needs to convince people he's still relevant.

This reminds me of Uganda's attempt at running a reconciliation commission back in the 1980s. The process got stalled when it had the audacity to question anything done by people acting under current president Museveni, either as a revolutionary leader or head of state. Eventually, the thing was shut down years after its reporting deadline, and not much resulted from the process. With lessons like this, it's probably best for Zimbabwe to wait until it isn't under the fist of one repressive regime seeking justice for another.

Remind me why Somaliland doesn't get formal recognition

I continue to be entirely baffled by the whole planet's complete refusal to recognize Somaliland as an independent state. As I recall, there were some rumblings that the Pentagon would like to go that way sometime last year, but nothing seems to have come of it. Anyway, today we have two news stories that nicely contrast Somaliland and the officially recognized Somalia.

Exhibit A: There is currently a food and monetary crisis in Somaliland, as in much of the world. The national government has convened a high-level task force to produce an action plan, and has conducted a study of the depth of the problem with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. What we have here is a functioning government, seeking to take care of its responsibilities while having virtually no resources.

Exhibit B: The fractious Transitional Federal Government of Somalia (in its latest iteration) has once again signed a peace agreement with a rebel faction (notice the word faction), which has led to the extension of the UN backed AMISOM peacekeeping force (one in a succession). By my count, this is peace agreement #1,907,685.3, or some such since my pre-pubescent years.

All I'm saying is that maybe, maybe, it might make sense to officially help out the folks who seem to have their shit together, instead of being hampered by some antiquated notion of a sovereign state that ceased to effectively function nearly two decades ago.

A too familiar storyline

Yesterday's IRIN article, "Homophobia fuelling the spread of HIV," outlines an eerily familiar course of events surrounding HIV transmission rates among African men who have sex with men (MSM).

To be blunt, the situation sounds remarkably like that in the United States in the 1980s, right down to the criminalization of gay sex part. You have governments that don't act (though admittedly most African states lack the public health resources the U.S. had even 20 years ago), politicians who don't care, and a small but fierce group of activists trying hard to make a dent in the problem.

In short, the story was tragic in this country then (and still is), and the same is true in Africa and elsewhere. It's times like these when the international development community could probably make some significant impacts, but seems disinterested. Somebody prove me wrong. Please.

U.S. Africa policy quick takes

This is what happens when you do nothing for far too long.

This is the kind of thing we should be doing when things goes wrong (give that man a medal).

And this is what we end up doing because we lack sufficient credibility to do anything else.

I think that's all pretty self explanatory.

Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

The spiraling situation in Zimbabwe is of course a gross violation of virtually every tenet of democracy, but the rhetoric surrounding the whole affair may be even more frustrating for the casual observer like me. Just today, EU leaders lectured a SADC meeting about the need to do something to bring Mugabe into line and accept defeat. Yet for all the high-flying rhetoric about how somebody should do something, nobody seems to know 1) who should do said something, and 2) what that something might be. The West seems fairly certain that the SADC countries and/or the African Union as a whole should do the ambiguous thing, but haven't really said what the thing is. Meanwhile, the whole thing does have whiffs of colonialism floating about. The West says to the Africans "jump!" and then get annoyed when they don't respond with "how high?"

Basically, Mugabe, and more importantly, the security apparatus that supports him, are going to have to be engaged -- perhaps even threatened -- over the consequences of perpetuating their electoral farce. Rather than passing the buck as to who should act in some ambiguous way, some other nation needs to step up to the plate. South Africa is the logical choice here, but clearly that's not going to happen. Meanwhile, continuing declarations to the effect of "this is someone else's problem" doesn't do anyone in Zimbabwe any good.

Intestinal fortitude, anyone?

Did you ever notice...

How American media/attention spans (and to a lesser extent, the Western world more generally), can only focus on one African conflict at a time? After the holidays we had all Kenya all the time, with an occasional burst of news from the DRC when things in Kenya were looking calm. Now that there's been an uprising in Chad, Kenya has disappeared. Meanwhile, some blogs I follow have been practically pleading for people to consistently pay attention to things in places like Sudan, Uganda, and Somalia.

And, of course, there's always the bit about there never being any coverage at all of good news from Africa, but that's a book (several already written, in fact), in itself.

I'm probably roughly 400 years late to this particular parade. And it isn't necessarily something I haven't observed before. Just sayin'...

Meanwhile, today's piece in the Times magazine on Bernard Kouchner was a fascinating read. Check it out. It sheds some light on a few things.

Kenya: land of 1,000 explanations

As many of you are aware, there's been a bit of turmoil in Kenya since they had some elections that smelled fishy. While apparently most of the violence has calmed down, the situation is apparently still quite tense. But why did things go so bad, so fast, in the first place? I don't have an answer to that question, but I'll gladly point you towards several people who do:

• Joel Barkan says it's basically a question of competing ethnic groups.
• Colin Kahl follows down that path and adds agricultural land scarcity into the mix.
• Stephanie Hanson goes a different route and suggests that the increasingly young Kenyan population is tired cronyism among the older political elite.
• Also in the "it's politics more than ethnicity" camp are Steven Fish and Matthew Kroenig, who argue that the weak national parliament is to blame.
  
• Finally, Aidan Hartley posits that a superficial process of democratization is to blame.
  

This looks like an especially tricky multiple choice test, doesn't it? Lacking any deep base of knowledge about Kenya, its people and its politics, I'm inclined to believe all of these people are right to some degree -- if for no other reason than that taken individually, their explanations are too simplistic to stand on their own.

However, one can piece these varying explanations into a framework that will probably start to sound familiar. The colonial power established a system of governance that favored a particular group(s) over others. With their hands on the levers of economic and political power, this favored group took advantage of more than its fair share of the country's resources. Realizing that this power was so lucrative, those in charge derailed any sort of democratic process for the sake of their own wealth. With checks on executive power effectively eliminated, the economy is plundered until change is demanded from below. Seeking to provide only enough "change" to keep the masses at bay, the elite "opens up" the political process. However, when real electoral competition sneaks in the back door, suddenly the openness ends and the population -- now bigger and younger than it was when this system first came into shape -- becomes quite disgruntled, and so here we are today.

Of course, this is an overly simplistic model too, and one completely lacking in situational context. But it does try to take into account a deeper historical perspective than often gets tossed around the punditocracy. In short, if you're looking for the root of any given conflict, and don't dig any more than thirty years deep, you're going to come up short. Here too, we see how academic biases to certain points of view color the analysis provided.

But this is also a common problem one finds in conflict resolution generally. There are often seventeen or so correct answers to one problem. In Kenya, the key to resolving this crisis will be to figure out which roots to address, and when.

A completely speculative list of global things that may or may not occur in 2008

Method? Who needs it! In spite of my absurdly sporadic posting of late, I'm still alive and even still reading the news. And since it's now a new year, I've decided to motivate myself by making off the wall predictions about what I think will or will not happen in 2008. Bear with me, especially since these are in no particular order.

• The topsy-turvy politico-military balance in Pakistan will likely get topsy-turvier before it gets better. Some people, however, have at least agreed that Benazir Bhutto's son is "cute."
  
• In spite of the establishment of UNAMID today, nothing much will change in Darfur, because the P5 are hypocrites.
• Olympics in Beijing! How many aspiring athletes will choke on smog? My guess is at least 10. Nonetheless, you will see a gold medal worthy PR operation all damn year.
  
• The United States may or may not recognize Somaliland. I hope they do. No point in continuing to punish those that can actually govern a piece of land because those that cannot would be cranky.
• Also in the United States, "U.S. Americans" will make excellent use of our maps and elect one of 16-odd people as president. This person, regardless of party, will most likely be an idiot, but slightly less so than the current incumbent.
  
• Hugo Chavez will engage in dirty tricks to hold onto power. This may or may not backfire.
• Things will get messy in Nigeria should a review panel determine that Yar'Adua's election to the presidency was illegitimate. Then again, the review panel may suddenly end up with fancy cars and houses just before they make their ruling, which might change their minds.
  
• Dirty politics is also likely in South Africa, as Zuma and Mbeki try to sway the ANC.
• Finally, will there ever be durable peace eastern Congo? Probably not this year.

I'm fairly certain I've missed a bunch of things here. Feel free to add to the list in the comments. I'll probably track these events as the year progresses, and if I'm lucky, will actually remember to write about them.

Paix.

I'm here, but distracted

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, kids. I'm busy finishing my final project so I can graduate and move onto a new life completely lacking in promise or fulfillment. :) This endeavor will take me a few more days to complete (at least in draft form).

In the meantime, there are two fun things in the world you should pay attention to:

First, we have the elections going on in Nigeria. Now if these go well, and aren't totally rigged, all will be good. If, however, these go badly, and are totally rigged, shit will probably go down. And that means lots of things, including higher gas prices for the American driving public. So far, so shaky.

Second, we have elections going on in France this weekend. It'll be curious to see who emerges for the second round of voting next month. The Post ably pointed out this morning how France continues to play a major role in the world, but how the French feel their nation is in steep decline.

Entertain yourself with these fun events. I'm gonna get back to frantically writing now. The woman riding a Segway up and down Harvard Street, though, is a distraction. I'll be back after Tuesday.

A weekend of bad Africa policy

Yesterday we got the lovely news that there may be a major food crisis for impoverished Zambians unless aid groups get a swift infusion of cash to buy food, which is, admittedly, available. However, the money for such a move is most readily available from the U.S. (or Europe), but U.S. law insists that food aid be purchased in America, not local producers. In spite of shockingly reasonable and appropriate Bush administration proposals to change the law, at least for dire circumstances like this one, Congress under both parties refuses to do so. Their rationale is that the bottom would fall out of corporate America's support for international aid, because they would no longer get rich off it, and we all know the general population doesn't care.

So there's that.

Then today we get the joyous news that the U.S. allowed the Ethiopians to buy military equipment from North Korea, after sanctions against such purchases had been put in place at U.S. insistence. Granted, few countries still produce parts that are compatible with old Soviet tanks, and those that do are probably also vile human rights violators, but, still. This revelation makes the whole War on Terror thing seem even more like the Cold War. In this case, alleged terrorists in Somalia were our enemy, and the Ethiopians didn't like them either, so Ethiopia is our friend and we should give them the leverage to do whatever they need to fight terror. Even if that means violating the very sanctions we wrote. Meanwhile, State Department lackies are gingerly suggesting that Ethiopia find a new supplier, which they've been doing for over a year.

And what caps it all off? Assistant Secretary of State (and official useless mouthpiece) Jendayi Frazer went to Somalia to express support for the recently beleaguered Somali government. She made no mention of the revelation that Somali, Ethiopian, and perhaps also African Union forces committed war crimes during last week's campaign against Islamic Courts loyalists (or, perhaps more precisely, anti-government fighters resisting perceived clan favoritism). I'm pretty sure open messages of support for weak governments by the United States will only make said governments weaker, given the super popularity of the U.S. at present.

Peace deal for Cote d'Ivoire?

Color me skeptical, but I'm not quite sure of Cote d'Ivoire's new peace agreement. The main parts of the settlement were agreed in early March, and over the weekend another agreement was signed that would make Guillaume Soro, head of the rebel group Forces Nouvelles (FN), prime minister within five weeks.

While it is satisfying that Ivoiran president Laurent Gbabgo has seemingly fulfilled his promise to unilaterally seek a peace deal, without United Nations or African Union mediation, I'm still not sure of what all has gone on behind the scenes. You see, the negotiator for this current deal was the president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore. What does that matter? Compaore has been implicated in financing (or at least conducting transactions for) and equipping rebel movements under Foday Sankoh and Charles Taylor in Sierra Leone and Liberia, respectively. Thus I just don't really trust his peacemaking overtures.

Furthermore, Cote d'Ivoire is two years overdue for presidential elections, which have served to continue Gbabgo's rule. While the UN Security Council basically installed a powerful prime minister last year, Gbabgo has remained and loves to give reasons for why elections can't occur (ok, so yeah, the country is divided into two parts, but surely something could have been worked out). Both FN and government leaders have also violated a series of peace agreements within the past three years.

So now they're setting up shop together to prepare for these long awaited elections? I think something shady is going on here, but I can't quite put my finger on it quite yet. I guess time will tell.

From the office of unqualified hacks

Ladies and gentlemen, Rev. Franklin Graham is going to save Darfur.

Now isn't that nice?

Here's the deal. Billy Graham's significantly dumber son is going to get Omar Bashir to stop slaughtering people by encouraging policy types to be nice to the dictator. Then, to top it all off, Rev. Graham is going to build or rehabilitate hundreds of churches in Sudan, through his aid group, which is of course funded by USAID.

Not bad for a man who thinks Islam is a religion of hate, intolerance and violent proselytizing. Then again, Graham the Younger's doctrine of Christianity seems to meet those criteria pretty well. Perhaps these two have more in common than they first thought back in 2003.

What's the rationale for this bold and daring plan? Why, it's the fact that Bashir signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement with the SPLM/A in Southern Sudan back in 2005. That apparently means that he's a reasonable man who's willing to compromise (though not reasonable enough to meet with Bill Frist, Graham's travel companion). Never mind the fact that the civil war in Southern Sudan raged for some twenty years before it was ended, or that there is some evidence that Bashir is undermining the agreement.

Thanks for the hard work, Brother Franklin! The rest of us will change course right away, by sending Bashir some lovely Valentine's cards, complete with those little heart candies with the cute messages.

Briefly on Darfur

I'm concerned that things still appear to be getting worse in Darfur, and that the international community is still ham-strung over what to do. While New Mexico Governor (and now presidential candidate worth looking at) Bill Richardson managed to get the Khartoum government to accept a ceasefire (of uncertain date or timing) acting only as a representative of U.S. NGOs, official diplomacy seems to be going nowhere, while the military and humanitarian situation continues to decline, to put it mildly.

In his most recent post to his controversial blog, Jan Pronk, who served as UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sudan until the end of the year, provided rather disturbing information regarding the state of UN-Sudan relations, the recalcitrance of the UN Security Council and Secretariat, as well as an update on the lack of diplomatic initiatives by great power nations. It's worth a read, but it is far from uplifting.

It seems that now more than ever, there needs to be greater activism and advocacy for effective and determined engagement to end this now three year old crisis. Otherwise, the cries of "never again" that followed Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda are proving themselves to be hollow promises. For information on what you can do, I recommend visiting the Save Darfur Coalition.

Somalia update

Remember how just a few hours ago I wrote calling for careful engagement with Somalia?

This is not what I meant.

A word on Somalia

I've been following the recent unrest in Somalia for a bit, even though I've been relatively silent on it. Honestly, I don't know whether Somalia is on the verge of a new era of stability and the gradual repair of a very broken country, or if this is just the start of another round of violence. If the former is the case, then we need a whole lot of international engagement fast. If the latter ends up being true, then increased engagement wouldn't hurt, and should probably be aimed at keeping violence to a minimum. There's talk of a new peacekeeping force, led by a sub-regional group (IGAD) with no previous experience in such missions. Who knows how that will turn out. Organizations' first ventures into peacekeeping have historically been failures. I think at this point I shall remain cautiously optimistic.

U.S. media coverage of the conflict, while surprisingly voluminous, has unfortunately been quite skewed, as was pointed out by a friend recently. The Washington Post tends to be overly focused on the supposed victory of U.S. policy against Islamist forces, while the New York Times seems just excessively optimistic. The situation on the ground, from what I can tell, is tenuous at best. Anyway, you can find my collection of these articles here, though I recommend you pursue other sources. I do, however, recommend this op-ed by a professor from the Naval War College (and its less biased towards the U.S. than you might think).

Apologies for lack of further analysis.

Oops, looks like I stepped out

A number of different things have piqued my interest of late, but unfortunately I'm a grad student. This means that every so often I have to write lots and lots of things in bursts of productivity that I'd honestly rather avoid. Anywho, I have decided to provide a roundup of sorts for your viewing pleasure (all 1.5 of you).

Africa conflict news

• The Central African Republic is destabilizing due in part to the ongoing conflict in Darfur, which has already spilled into Chad. CAR provides a lovely stomping ground for Sudan and Chad to fight each other by proxy on somebody else's land.
• Speaking of proxy wars, Ethiopia is gearing up to support the transitional Somali government against the Eritrean backed Islamic Courts.
  
• DR Congo is alleged to be on the path to recovery now that elections went peacefully and no new fighting erupted. This is a good thing.
• Sierra Leone may be destabilizing just a touch ahead of 2007 elections, which many expect to be rigged.
  
• Let's not forget about the upcoming Nigerian elections, which might just be scary.
• Ethiopia's former dictator found guilty of genocide, even though he's being sheltered by Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

UN news

• Kofi Annan has made his final major speech, in which he politely bitch slapped the United States, in his very polite Kofi Annan way. One can also find a brief version of his lessons learned in office via WaPo.
• Ban Ki-Moon has been sworn in as the new SG. Let's hope he'll have some teeth. Apparently his rise to the top of the planet somehow includes being fired from a top-level post in Korea after a major typo.
  
• John Bolton is out, nations (literally) rejoice.

Homo news

• NYT does an article on gay evangelicals that is sensationalized and written for the lowest common denominator in a way that queer related NYT articles always are. Said article features (and mischaracterizes) a friend of mine from NC.
• Mitt Romney has filed suit in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to compel the legislature to put gay marriage up to a public referendum. Apparently likes to lose political battles in as many ways as possible.
• Middle East is still not a fun place to be gay, reminds some observers of small towns in Tennessee or Utah.

Weird science

• New study financed by abstinence crazed Bush administration finds male circumcision reduces HIV rates. Same study apparently fails to examine whether or not condoms are used, assuming that those silly Africans didn't pay attention in the sex ed that accompanied their operation, or lack there of. Way to spread cultural imperialism to peoples' genitals. Surely there's not some better way to curb the spread of HIV?
  
• Nobody really knows what to do if a Democratic senator gets incapacitated. Some sort of cloning or stubborn refusal to die and thus vacate seat may be under consideration.
  

To spare you the repetition, I'll spare any mention of Vietraq and all the DC dribble going on around that issue. Consider yourselves lucky.

As a final note, I've made a couple of layout changes, and added a neat feature from LibraryThing that lets you see random books from my shelf, as though you actually cared. Also, this blog may now actually be read by at least 2 people. And that, friends, is better than nothing.