Where Are they Now?

From the Washington Post, January 5, 2009:

But no one needs to read the tea leaves on one particular aspect of Obama's foreign policy: Obama, Clinton and Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. have all called for aggressive American action against humanitarian crises and genocide. Susan E. Rice, Obama's nominee for U.N. ambassador, has said that if a Rwanda-style genocide began again, she "would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required." Samantha Power, a leading proponent for an interventionist American policy in humanitarian crises, was a senior Obama adviser during the presidential campaign.

"Look empirically at the kind of people who will populate the decision-making positions in the new administration and compare them with the principals" in the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations, said John Prendergast, co-chairman of the Enough Project, an advocacy group that fights genocide. "What we will get, possibly for the first time in my life, is leadership from the top in these crises."

I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that Obama is a mainstream politician with little real interest in alleviating chronic, underpublicized humanitarian disasters in far-off lands. It's still early in his administration and I hope I'm wrong. But he's certainly not yet taken any meaningful action on any of Africa's multiple crises. Nor has he shown courage on other issues requiring moral leadership, such as gay rights, civil liberties, the Armenian genocide, and so on. I know: he's got a lot on his plate. No president since Roosevelt has come to office with so many urgent national and international problems to deal with. Still, I am starting to worry that he may turn out to be more like Clinton than Bush, who at least dedicated substantial sums to the AIDS catastrophe.

"I Will Not Kill Myself Today"

An op-ed by Eve Ensler in today's Washington Post says that the UN's passage one year ago of Resolution 1820, which recognized rape as a weapon of war, has done nothing for the women of the DRC. Money quotes:

Over 12 years, in a regional economic war for resources, hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been raped and tortured, their bodies destroyed by unimaginable acts... Anneke Van Woudenberg of Human Rights Watch, just back from the front lines in both North and South Kivu, told me Monday that in nearly all the health centers, hospitals and rape counseling centers she visited, rape cases had doubled or tripled since January...
A few days ago, I sat in a dark shack with 30 survivors of rape. These women had fled their villages after being brutally terrorized and had randomly found each other. They banded together to form a grass-roots group called I Will Not Kill Myself Today. The women of eastern Congo are enduring their 12th year of sexual terrorism. The girl children born of rape are now being raped. What will it take for the United Nations to finally do something meaningful to stop the violence? The women are waiting.

Congo Still Home to World's Most Photogenic Disaster

Foreign Policy magazine features a photographic essay on the world's most fragile countries.

Query: Do these photographs serve a purpose any longer? Is anyone still moved by them? Or do they simply confirm the viewers' belief that such places are hopeless?

Photo Caption & Credit: The displaced children seen here, in a camp in eastern Congo, are among the 1 million displaced from North Kivu province alone.
LIONEL HEALING/AFP/Getty Images

Kimia II Assailed and Defended

From OCHA, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, comes a long post worth reading in its entirety on Kimia II, the joint DRC-Monuc operation to clean out ex-genocidaires in eastern Congo. Oxfam, ICG, and the Catholic Bishops oppose it. Oxfam argues that although “a solution is needed to halt appalling levels of human rights abuses committed by armed rebels, the answer cannot be action that knowingly increases levels of human suffering.” But Alan Doss defends Kimia, and says it must continue: “If we do nothing I think that there will never be lasting peace in the Kivus as long as one group or another remains out of the control of the state.”

Since the beginning of the year, some 800,000 people in the Kivus have fled their homes, even as rape and reprisal killings mount.

Le Phare reports that at the press conference releasing the report, OCHA representatives gave examples of recent violence committed by both sides in the war. The FDLR attacked the town of Mianda during the night of June 20-21, burned 121 homes and destroyed a health clinic. It's not known if they killed anyone, but several villagers drowned trying to escape. In Rutshuru, on the other hand, it is the Congolese army that is committing atrocities.

Relief workers worry because ongoing violence prevents them from operating in areas in Masisi and South Lubero, although refugees there are reputed to be in desperate need of food.

Maxine Waters Introduces Bill to Combat Vulture Funds

From Congo Global Action, I am alerted to this press release:

Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) introduced the Stop Very Unscrupulous Loan Transfers from Underprivileged countries to Rich, Exploitive Funds or “Stop VULTURE Funds” Act (H.R. 2932), legislation designed to protect impoverished countries from lawsuits by so-called vulture funds.

Congresswoman Waters said, “Over the past year, we have seen how the actions of a small number of unscrupulous and exploitative investors can hurt innocent people and cause economic chaos. We cannot allow the world’s poorest countries to be exploited by these bad actors.”

Vulture funds are private investment funds that buy up the debts of poor countries at reduced prices, usually for pennies on the dollar. They then sue these countries to recover the original value of the debts plus interest. Several poor countries that have received debt cancellation from the United States, other participating donor countries, and multilateral financial institutions have subsequently been sued by vulture funds.

Congresswoman Waters said, “The Stop VULTURE Funds Act would protect impoverished countries from the predatory practices of vulture funds and allow these countries to use their limited resources to meet the needs of their people.”

UPDATE: A similar bill has been introduced in Britain. Leading the cause is the British NGO Jubilee Debt.

It would be easier to throw oneself into fighting for these campaigns if one felt the money the vulture funds were after would really be going to feed babies and equip schools, rather than line pliticians' pockets.

Bleak Picture of Congolese Reconstruction

One year and one day from now will be the 50th anniversary of Congolese independence. No one celebrating the birth of the Congo then could have prophecied what a nightmare the first fifty years of independence would be.

Tragically, it's not at all clear that the next fifty years will be any better.

A new book published by the Belgian NGO 11.11.11 paints a bleak picture of current reconstruction efforts in the Congo. The military is incapable of bringing peace to the east, and its joint operations with Monuc have failed to produce results. The economy teeters on the edge of collapse; public finances are routinely mismanaged; the country's foreign reserves have dissipated. The collapse in world commodity prices has had a particularly disastrous impact. Yet the IMF refuses to release the Congo from loan commitments accumulated during the Mobutu years totalling $6.3 billion until it renegotiates key elements of its deal with China. That deal promised $9 billion worth of infrastructure projects in return for access to Congolese minerals. With both the West and China prepared to hunker down in a contest of will, the Congolese are caught in the middle.

Vulture funds circle, buying off Congolese debt at discount prices and then suing the government for its return, plus extortionate interest. FG Hemisphere, incorporated in Delaware, recently won a $105 million verdict in a South African court against SNEL, the Congolese electricity company.

Meanwhile, three quarters of Congolese people are malnourished and live on less than a dollar a day.

Update: It's not clear how to order the book online. It doesn't seem to be available for download or on Amazon.fr.

Congo Gangs Masquerade as LRA, Looting & Terrorizing Local Populations

Father Luigi, aka Kaka Luigi, reports that the Congolese army recently arrested seven Congolese in northeastern Congo who were pretending to be LRA. They were looting and terrorizing the local population. Uganda, Sudan and Congo waged a joint campaign in the border region from January to March without successfully neutralizing the LRA. Uganda estimates that some 500 LRA remain in the area, including the LRA's notorious leader, Joseph Kony.

The LRA went on a rampage in northeastern Congo in December 2008, after the Ugandan army launched a failed raid on the LRA headquarters in Uganda. About 1000 Congolese were killed on or around Christmas Day.

China Comes to Africa, on Chinese Terms

This article from the Wall Street Journal suggests that China's continuing investments in Africa may offset declining investment from the West, but that the Chinese often have their own way of running things:

In African countries where China has invested, many local people complain that the Chinese companies import everything -- including bottled water and toilet paper -- from home, bypassing the domestic economy. In mineral-rich countries such as Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, some Chinese companies have a reputation for exploiting workers. ...

In 2005, 46 Zambians were killed in an explosion at a copper mine owned by China's state metals conglomerate. A government inquiry showed the company had cut corners on safety and banned union organizing.

The Chinese company paid compensation to the victims' families and allowed a union to be formed. The following year, Chinese security guards at the mine opened fire on Zambian workers who were protesting the company's failure to improve working conditions and to deliver back pay promised in a new union deal.

Army Chief Defends Monuc

MONUC features an interview with the commander of MONUC Forces, General Babacar Gaye. Money quote:

The situation is a concern to all international actors who follow this crisis and that support this population. They are concerned first because these operations, as was feared, have created new population displacements, but especially because unfortunately these operations are accompanied by collateral damage that arise from the fact that some FARDC soldiers, who are, without doubt, insufficiently controlled and kept in line. The FARDC has realized this and I must say that there have been important efforts in that direction.
It is not enough to denounce the behavior of the FARDC, it is necessary that everybody contribute towards managing this problem. For MONUC, protection of civilians is not only in the hands of the soldiers, all substantive sections of the Mission participate. We have put in place Joint Protection Teams in which you will find humanitarian actors, child protection specialists, human rights and other sections. These teams serve as an interface between [MONUC] troops and the civil population. We have multiplied our deployments, within the limits of our capacity.

For a Fun Time

Colette Braeckman reports that a French theater director is reprising an Athol Fugard play, originally written during the apartheid era, with Rwandan and Congolese comedians in the roles originally meant for a white and black South African. The play, which sounds like a blast if you find your Beckett just a wee uplifting, features the two men imprisoned together on an island off the coast of Africa, who support each other not out of any hope of ever being released than out a a shared sense of dignity they derive from their memory of reading Sophocles' Antigone. The play is in Brussels at the Theatre de Poche until June 27, and will tour in several cities in Congo and Rwanda afterwards. Director is Roland Mahauden, with Ados Ndombasi and Diogène Ntarindwa.

I hope someone makes a documentary about the play's reception in Africa. It's always interesting to see how different cultures reflect on and draw meaning from each other.