A Paragraph's Thought on Prendergast

The New York Times Magazine published a glowing tribute to John Prendergast in its December 5, 2010, issue. Prendergast, the co-founder of the anti-genocide group Enough, is a fixture in DC discussions about African conflicts, particularly Sudan. Prendergast is both good-looking and facile enough to give the impression that he thinks he's starring in a movie about himself: Bwana saves Africa, Part 3276, as Howard French, a former Africa bureau chief for the Times, twitted after reading the article. Most people I know tend to roll their eyes at the mention of Prendergast's name; then again, most people I know don't shepherd Hollywood stars around Africa's hot spots or get invited to meetings at the White House. My hopes for the article rose in the second paragraph when the writer described Prendergast "rak[ing] his fingers through wavy gray hair that fell to the shoulders of his T-shirt." Why yes, I thought, that explains a lot. So I fired this letter off to the Times, which they were kind enough to publish. (I've made a few edits and restored a couple of cuts.)

Political activism often requires some simplification of the issues to garner public support. It's a long way from the several thousand pages of the IPCC Report on Climate Change to the bumper sticker that urges "Stop Global Warming." The question about Prendergast is whether his simplifications undermine the causes to which he is dedicated. I think they do. First, they under-state the scale of the interventions needed to effect change, even as they exaggerate US clout. Second, they under-state the complexity of the problems, which can lead him to champion proposals that will be ineffective or potentially counterproductive. Thus we have the "blood minerals" campaign, which seeks to implicate users of high-tech devices (that is, nearly all of us) in the tragedy of eastern Congo, but which won't begin to improve the situation on the ground; or the aggressive push for southern succession in Sudan, without a commensurate effort to prepare for the internecine conflicts that could harrow the new nation from within. Underlying these simplifications is a deeply American faith in our own capacity--for doing good, for getting things done--a faith that Hollywood has always been happy to indulge. I wish that Prendergast would focus more on the capacity of local people, many of whom are working at extraordinary personal risk to bring peace to their lands. The question shouldn't be, "What can we do to end the suffering in these countries?" but rather, "what can we do to help people within their societies overcome the enormous political and economic challenges they face?" The difference is all in where you place the emphasis.

The UN Mapping Report

This is what the UN Mapping report looks like when displayed in wordle form. Wordle is a program that allows you generate "word clouds" from the text you provide. The size of the words reflects their frequency.

The Report

One is reminded of Robert Conquest's suggested revision to the title of his book on Stalin's crimes.

What's Up with the ICG?

Why hasn't the International Crisis Group done anything on the DRC in nine months? Last update to their Congo crisis web page dates to June 2009, and their last report to July.

UPDATE: The day after I published this complaint, the ICG published a report on the Congo.

The Mbuti, Okapis, and Thou

Ed Rackley posts the first article of a promised two-part series on John and Therese Hart, conservationists who have lived and worked in remote northeastern Congo since the early 1970s. Their current project is to develop a new national park in eastern DRC, in the rainforest south of Kisangani. Their previous work led to the creation of the Okapi Faunal Reserve in 1993, now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Rackley's a good writer and this is a lovely piece. Rackley draws out an anology between the Harts and their subjects: "Their relationship to conservation in Congo resembles the ways their friends the Mbuti know the Ituri forest—as an instinctive medium, their most familiar element, even as it resists, threatens and sustains them."

This film of the Harts in the early 1990s shows how their achievement with the Okapi Reserve was the culmination of years of radio tracking and habitat mapping with the Mbuti. It's also a wonderful evocation of their lives together in a mud-walled house, raising three children who seem as fully at home in the forest as their innumerable Mbuti friends. It's hard to imagine a more enchanted childhood.

Thoughts on Kristof Reax

Nicholas Kristof published four op-eds on the DRC recently, to a mix of cheers and boos. Over at Congo Siasa, Jason Stearns wonders why Kristof is such a polarizing figure: "As far as I can tell, many working on advocacy in the US, especially those trying to mobilize grassroots support, are very enthusiastic about Kristof.... On the other hand, most of my colleagues and friends in the field can't seem to stand his simplistic approach towards the issues."

Kristof's first piece (here) details the prevalence of rape in eastern DRC and describes the horrific ordeal of a 9-year-old rape victim named Chance, whose parents were killed in front of her. The second (here) profiles Lisa Shannon, an American who established Run for Congo fundraisers after watching a show on Oprah about the war in Congo. The third (here) lauds the work of Denis Mukwenge, the doctor who runs a hospital in eastern DRC and operates on rape victims and other women who suffer from fistula damage. And the final piece (here) provides recommendations about what can be done to alleviate the suffering of the people and help resolve the conflict. Throughout the series, Kristof insists on the magnitude of the crisis and provides graphic details meant to illuminate what Congolese are enduring: the pregnant women sliced open by machete; the children who bear witness to unimaginable cruelties; and the coinage of words such as "auto-cannibalism" and "rerape." And he complains repeatedly that no humanitarian crisis has generated so little attention or such a pathetic international response: "That’s why I’m here," he says.

So what's not to like? Why should the few of us who care about DRC view Kristof as anything other than an ally with a much-needed megaphone, a well-placed friend in a cause that has been too often overlooked?

Stearns provides part of the answer: Kristof simplifies the war to the point of stereotype. As Stearns shows, it's not all that hard to describe what the fighting is about, but Kristof comes perilously close to resorting to Heart-of-Darkness stereotypes. The militias "rape, mutilate and kill with a savagery that is almost incomprehensible," Kristof says. "This is a pointless war, driven by by warlords, greed for minerals, ethnic tensions and complete impunity." Wronging Rights object that he gives us the names of the children who were raped, against internationally recognized proscriptions (and the Times' own guidelines); Texas in Africa takes issue with his claim that the crisis is under-reported; and a fieldworker in Bukavu objects to the notion that no one but Kristof is paying attention to the crisis: "What self-aggrandizing rubbish" he says.

I've disliked Kristof's Africa reporting for a while, so I'm not necessarily the most objective judge. For years, he has been one of Kagame's most uncritical admirers. (He does offer some muted criticism of Rwanda in this series.) He also gave a remarkably stunted justification a few years ago about his rationale for writing about Darfur rather than the Congo.

There is also the matter of tone. Like a number of other readers, I find it more than a little self-congratulatory. (I can't be the only one who finds it strange that on the very day the first article was published, Kristof That's-Why-I'm-Here-in-Kivu was already hobnobbing with the great and the good in Davos. Or that, according to his speakers' bureau, he charges $30,000 per speech, for an hour during which he offers a "compassionate glimpse" into global poverty and "gives voice to the voiceless.")

One reason I find his writing off-putting is that it's--well, bad. It's lazy and uninteresting. He describes the girl who was raped as having eyes "luminous with fear," and the hills of Kivu as "lovely, lush, and threatening"--which sounds like the tag line for a Joan Didion rewrite of the Sound of Music. The details he provides of the victims' ordeals seem gratuitous as well. They're meant to elicit pity, but they come off as lurid. For every reader who responds to these stories by writing a check, there are probably a hundred others who find in them a confirmation of their belief in the intractability of Africa's problems.

But for all my dislike of Kristof's writing, that's not, in the end, why I found myself objecting so strongly to this latest series. The problem is that there's a gap between what he insists the Congo requires from the world and what he appears to think it requires of him. If the Congo is the catastrophe he says it is, then he ought to respond in a way that's proportional to it. A week's visit, followed by a handful of columns, seems inadequate. The Congo is not a drive-by spectacle.

Kristof, like Hillary Clinton--who visited the region last summer--deserves credit for bringing some attention the problem. They are among the few who have the power to direct global attention to an issue who have actually bothered to pay the Congo any attention at all. But without meaningful action and follow through, these visits risk coming off as well-meaning at best, but at worst as emblematic of the very failures they condemn.

So how about it, Nick? Can we count on you to report regularly on the Congo, to push and prod the world's leaders at Davos and elsewhere, to continue to educate yourself and stay abreast of the issues, to shame your employer into giving this conflict a higher profile, to become, even, something of a bore on the topic? After all, if you don't act like this catastrophe matters--I mean, really, really matters--how can you insist that anyone else should?

Not Yet Time to Eulogize Françafrique

Chris Smith, former chief Africa correspondent for Le Monde, writes about the not-quite demise of Françafrique in the latest London Review of Books. Françafrique is, of course, shorthand for the old boy network linking African and French leaders that ran for several decades under the tutelage of Jacques Foccart, France's minister for African Affairs under de Gaulle and subsequent French governments. It was cozy, patron-client sort of relationship: African leaders could count on France for military protection and support, and in return they gave privileged access to French companies operating in their country, kick backs and campaign contributions to successive French governments, and plush retirement funds to senior French officials.

Smith dates the quasi-death of Françafrique to some time in 1994:

Three events in 1994 adumbrated the end: the (unprecedented) devaluation of the CFA franc and with it the crumbling of the monetary wall around the Franco-African enclave economy; the genocide in Rwanda, which left blood on the hands of Africa’s gendarme (having failed to understand a country outside its historical zone of influence, France had thrown its weight behind ‘Hutu power’); and finally, the state funeral of the Ivorian president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the sub-Saharan godfather of Françafrique and an enthusiast of the ‘Franco-African state.’

Yet he's not convinced that the corpse is ready for burial:

Then why not issue the death certificate of Françafrique and turn the page? Because neither successive French presidents – from the Socialist Mitterrand to the post-Gaullist Sarkozy – nor francophone Africa’s heads of state, especially the remnants of the old guard, want to let go. Too much is at stake, namely the political survival of the heads of state and the status of French diplomacy. France remains a last resort for weak regimes under threat in Africa, while francophone Africa is still an echo chamber for France’s international pretensions.

It is a relationship the current president has proven surprisingly unwilling to end, says Smith:

Since he took office, Sarkozy has perpetuated France’s time-honoured tradition of parallel diplomacy in Africa. One set of advisers presides in public over the official business of l’Afrique de jour, while Robert Bourgi, in tandem with the Elysée chief of staff, Claude Guéant, is in charge of l’Afrique de nuit, where the lucrative, personalised politics that Sarkozy denounced during his presidential campaign continue to thrive.

Smith concludes: "For as long as there are footholds in the state apparatus, in France and in Africa, there will be réseaux (networks). To the surprise of many people, Sarkozy has given them a new lease of life."

Quote of the Day

The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights

J. Paul Getty

Which of these Stories Is from The Onion?

Here are three stories about the Congo. Try to figure out which one of them is fake:

The first is about the Congo's space program, and features an attempt to launch a rat into orbit.
The second discusses the Congolese government's effort to promote economic growth by arming young men with AK-47s.
The third is a touching evocation of the instinctive generosity of the Congolese people, and shows President Kabila giving a $2.5 million contribution to the Haiti relief effort, despite the agonizing poverty confronting his own citizens. The gesture is only somewhat undercut by the fact that the check is a fake: after all, it's the thought that counts.

Quote of the Day

Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, at the Holocaust Museum on December 12, 2009, answering a question about her 2006 call for greater sanctions on Sudan:

I spoke in my own personal view as a scholar at the Brookings Institution in September of 2006 that, if the government of Sudan continued to refuse to allow the deployment of the United Nations force or the U.N.-A.U. force, UNAMID, that it ought to face immediate consequences, including the threat of the use of force.

I believed that at the time, and I think that was a bold, but worthy position. We’re in a different place now.

Well, Rice is certainly in a different place. She never gets around to explaining why the Sudan is.

Compare this to what she said when she was first named US ambassador to the UN: "I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again [such as the Rwandan genocide], I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required."

I guess those flames don't look so inviting, from the perspective of someone in power.