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By Eve Donegan, Sales & Marketing Assistant

Gérard Prunier is off exploring Southern Sudan but fear not, we have excerpted from Africa’s World War to feed your Africa fix while he is gone. Below, is a piece about the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Somehow life went on in Rwanda at the beginning of 1995. Amid the ruins. With the killings and the “disappearances.” With the government of national unity staggering on, hoping to provide a modicum of leadership in this broken society. The Rwandese had coined an expression for what so many people felt: imitima yarakomeretse, “the disease of the wounded hearts.”

The economy was in shambles; of the $598 million in bilateral aid pledged in January at the Rwanda Roundtable Conference in Geneva, only $94.5 million had been disbursed by June. Of that money, $26 million had to be used to pay arrears on the former government’s debt. The perception gap between the international community and what was happening in Rwanda was enormous. The international community talked about national reconciliation and refugee repatriation, but suspicion was pervasive. Gutunga agatoki (showing with the finger) denunciations were commonplace: survivors denouncing killers, actual killers denouncing others to escape punishment, bystanders denouncing innocents to get their land or their house. Women survivors tried to band together to help each other, but even then, some Hutu widows might be refused access to the support groups because of ethnic guilt by association, and Hutu orphans in orphanages would be roughed up by Tutsi kids as “children of interahamwe.” Some transport had restarted and the electricity supply was slowly becoming less erratic. Very few schools had reopened. The January 1995 public debate between Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu and Vice President Paul Kagame had not settled the matter of the violence, which everybody knew about but which the UN remained blind to.

This violence eventually led to the Kibeho massacre of April 1995 and to the unraveling of the national unity government. The process leading to the massacre is worth describing in detail because it offers on a small scale all the characteristics of what was eventually to take place in Zaire eighteen months later: non treatment of the consequences of the genocide, well-meaning but politically blind humanitarianism, Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) resolve to “solve the problem” by force, stunned impotence of the international community in the face of violence, and, finally, a hypocritical denial that anything much had happened.

By Gérard Prunier

On May 2nd a force of over 1,000 Chadian rebels mounted on a bevy of Toyota battle wagons and left western Darfur to try to overthrow Chad’s government. This was the third time an overthrow attempt was made, the previous occasions being April 2007 and February 2008. Both previous attacks had been close, but ended in defeat. Similar to the previous two episodes, the recent invasion had the support of the Sudanese government, but since President Omar Hassan el-Bashir now stands accused of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court in The Hague and needs the critical support of the African Union, one can wonder what would cause him to launch into such a dangerous adventure.

The answer is simple: counter-insurgency. This takes us back to the early days of the Darfur quasi-genocide. President Idriss Déby Itno of Chad is a member of the Bidayat, a tribe closely related to the Zaghawa. The Zaghawa live on both sides of the Chad-Sudan border and the Sudanese Zaghawa are one of main tribes fighting the Khartoum regime. President Déby who gained power in December 1990 with the help of that very same Khartoum regime, refused at first to help his fellow tribesmen on the other side of the border. On the contrary, he even tried to help the Khartoum government. This did not sit very well with “his” Zaghawa who made up the core group of the Chadian armed forces. In May 2005 he was faced by a military revolt of his men. Déby was given the choice of either switching sides or being overthrown. This offer was not one to be easily refused and within months the mostly Zaghawa based Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) led by Khalil Ibrahim had Déby’s support.

This, of course, angered Omar el-Bashir and the Khartoum government started to recruit some disaffected elements from Chad to train and arm. Eighteen months later, they launched the first attack on N’Djamena, the capital of Chad. In reprisal President Déby armed the JEM and asked for its help against the rebels. In February 2008 JEM fighters joined the Chadian army to push back the rebels who had attacked N’Djamena, turning the whole conflict into an intra-Zaghawa war since members of the same tribe (but from different clans) were on both sides of the firing line. Three months later it was payback time and Khalil Ibrahim crossed the vast semi-desertic expanse of the Kordofan province to attack Khartoum itself. This attack too failed. Since the ICC indictment, the Sudanese regime feels embattled and fears that Déby, possibly with French and/or US support, might rearm Khalil Ibrahim and launch him again on the assault.

Given this very real danger, el-Bashir and his entourage have decided that the JEM guns are more dangerous than the possible disapproval of the African Union. In any case, the Union is so supine in the Sudanese case that it is likely to look the other way and accept Khartoum’s unconvincing denial of any complicity in the Chadian invasion.

The question remains, will the men in Khartoum manage to defeat Idriss Déby? This is not certain at all. Since last February, Déby, who is an unpopular but formidable warlord in his own right, has fortified his capital, bought heavy tanks and three Russian Sukhoi fighter-bombers. He has also recruited foreign mercenaries from as far as Mexico and the Ukraine. The Sudanese intelligence is aware of his military preparedness and they are at present trying to trigger a palace coup, which would have a greater chance of success than a frontal military assault. After all, there are still Zaghawa on both sides…

Eve Donegan, Sales & Marketing Assistant

While regular blogger, Gérard Prunier is off exploring Africa, I have rounded up a quick update on the Somali Pirates.

- Abduwali Abdukadir Muse is currently being tried in New York under a federal law that has not been used in decades. The law would require Muse to fulfill a mandatory life sentence in prison. Muse was the only survivor of the three men who boarded the American cargo ship, Maersk Alabama, off the coast of Africa on April 8th. The pirates held the ship’s captain hostage causing an international uproar.

- On Sunday, 11 Somali Pirates were captured by a French naval vessel when they mistook the ship for a commercial vessel. The pirates were captured in three small boats off the coast of Somalia. Rockets and guns were found aboard the ships. At this point it is unclear what the European Union plans to do about the capture, but it is clear that the Somali Pirate attacks have disrupted United Nation aid and led some companies to consider routing cargo between Europe and Asia a different way.

Check back next Tuesday for more Notes from Africa!

By Gérard Prunier

The recent hijacking of a US ship by Somali pirates off the coast of Kenya is a perfect example of the bizarre relationship the world entertains with Africa. First, where the hell is it? Most people hardly know. Then, why are these people bothering us? Could we not simply blow them off the water? Third, why are they targeting the US, it seems vaguely reminiscent of the post 9/11 syndrome. Fourth, why should we even bother? At this point, readers who are a bit conversant with the situation will point out that the Maersk ship which got hijacked was bringing relief food for Kenya, now in the thralls of a punishing famine brought by drought (and to some extent, by civil strife). There goes another groan. They have to hit us when we are just trying to help them. Yet, most people miss the point: the pirates are Somali and the victims of famine are Kenyans.

Okay, Africa is not in very good shape. But it might be a good idea to try to understand why. Oh, not simply those vast questions of colonialism, economic backwardness, the usefulness (or lack thereof) of aid and the impact of the world economic crisis. No, that is a bit too big. Could we not be a bit more simple and specific? Simply look at one situation at a time?

Take Somalia. For reasons having to do with its clanic social structure, Somalia has been unable to muster a working government for the past eighteen years. The main victims of that situation are, of course, the Somali themselves, who in many ways have caused their own misery. Many Somali are now starving and some of the younger ones, bold and born into a world where they have known nothing but civil war, have taken to the seas to survive. During the past ten years the rich world has: a.) dumped thousands of tons of toxic waste along Somalia’s unguarded coastline, and b.) taken hundreds of millions of dollars of fish from it’s unpatrolled national waters. It was not very nice but as long as the Somali took it lying down, everybody was happy with ignoring it. Now, they are coming out like hornets from a nest and bothering the ships laden with rich cargo that are sailing past their coast. As long as those ships were Saudi oil tankers, French yachts, or Yemeni tugboats, the anger was moderate. But a US cargo ship! God forbid!

The last interaction the US had with Somalia was three years ago when the CIA brought together a bunch of criminal warlords into a bogus political alliance in the hope that those warlords could crush the growing Islamist movement in Somalia. The gamble failed and gave the Islamists a popularity they never had before. As a result, they took power (some kind of power, anyway) and the US backed an Ethiopian military intervention in Somalia which only heightened the civil strife. Now the Ethiopians have left, but the situation is more confusing than ever and the popularity of the US is not high. Are the pirates connected with the Islamists? Not really. They exchange some services and swap information, but the pirates don’t like the kind of religious Puritanism the Islamists pride themselves in. Do they kill people? Not if they can avoid it. They are in business. They have lost more men to the high seas and to the virtuous international guardians of law and order than they have killed. Would they do something else if they had the opportunity? Most likely. Could they? Don’t be joking!

Okay, Somalia is sick and its misery is oozing out. But what we hate is not the sickness but rather its unpleasant consequences. Of course they are not of our own making; but we both tolerated them for a long time and even made them worse through perfect stupidity. Well the chickens – or perhaps in this case, the sea gulls – have come home to roost. A commentator recently said that the shipping that has fallen victim to the pirates is one quarter of one percent of all that goes through the Bab-el-Mandeb. Any thought on discussing the massive rise in insurance costs and how justified it is?

By Gérard Prunier

During the years of civil war in Sudan, both the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) and the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) considered the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), then closely allied to the communist Derg, to be an enemy.

After Mengistu’s regime had been overthrown, both the EPLF and the EPRDF guerrilla movements, which had ascended to power with Khartoum’s help, realized that their Sudanese ally was not so friendly. Yet there was a modicum of difference in their experience with Khartoum’s hostility: in the case of Eritrea it was plain and open, Khartoum supported the Eritrea Jihad armed movement and Eritrea’s President, Issayas Afeworki quickly invited the SPLA into Eritrea to retaliate against Sudan.

In the case of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, although duly suspicious of Khartoum’s policies, he nevertheless tried to keep a more or less neutral stance towards the Sudan’s Muslim Brothers’regime. Zenawi fought against Sudanese military encroachments when they took place - mostly through helping the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) rebels. He even launched Operation Black Fox deep into Sudan in 1994, but later expelled the SPLA from Ethiopia in 1999. Why? Because by then the relationship between Asmara, Eritrea and Khartoum had turned 180° due to the Ethio-Eritrean War of 1998-2000.

With the war, Issayas stopped supporting the SPLA and decided to woo Khartoum. As a result, Meles let the former guerrillas come back to Addis-Ababa after they “regularized” their diplomatic status by signing the so-called “Consolidated Peace Agreement” (CPA) with the northern government in January 2005. Yet Meles kept an even balance between politeness to the North and friendship with the South. Not so in the course followed by Asmara, which progressed deeper and deeper with Khartoum as its own quarrel with the US grew. Things became worse with the support given by the Eritreans to the radical Islamist Shebab then fighting the Ethiopian Army in Somalia.

This game of strategic musical chairs took on a new turn when President Omar el-Bashir recently visited Asmara. Bashir was, of course, invited in open defiance of the March 4^th ICC indictment, both to score a point against the international community (read “the US”) and to cement Issayas’ ever growing involvement with the Muslim and Arab world. This confirmed and accelerated Addis-Ababa’s rapprochement with Southern Sudan. Already in February, Ethiopia announced that it had contracted a Chinese company to build a $25m highway between Gambela, Ethiopia and Akobo. What it had not announced was that it was also giving the Juba government discreet but growing military support. The relationship has now gone even deeper since the Ethiopian Prime Minister became an international advocate for the SPLA.

On March 31^stthe Presidential Affairs Minister of the Southern Sudan government (GoSS), Luka Biong Deng, asked Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to raise the issue of South Sudan’s fiscal crisis at the G20 Summitin London the following Thursday. Due to a drop in world oil prices, the GoSS, which gets 99% of its income from the oil money payments transferred by Khartoum, has practically gone bankrupt. So now in a new twist of fate Meles finds himself being an advocate for the SPLA he had once banned from Ethiopian territory, while Issayas Afeworqi embraces President Bashir against whom he used to support that selfsame SPLA.

Of course, the first underlying layer of logic remains, as ever, the Ethio-Eritrean mutual hostility. Forty-eight years after the beginning of the Eritrean war of independence, the knives are still drawn. And Sudan remains the third angle of the triangle, now cozying up to one of the players and then trying to stab him.

Among students of the Horn’s regional history, the prize money goes to those who can explain the underlying logic of the continuities buttressing these apparent contradictions. Any takers?

Eve Donegan, Sales & Marketing Assistant

While Gérard Prunier, author and blogger for Notes from Africa is away, I thought I would try to analyze the reaction to the indictment of Sudan’s President, Omar Hassan al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The indictment was one of the major topics at the annual summit meeting last week.

When the Arab leaders gathered for their annual summit meeting in Doha, Quatar, they had plenty of major topics to discuss, but they did find common ground on one issue. The group rallied together in support of Sudan’s President, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who was indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for charges war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges are based on the ICC’s belief that al-Bashir organized and led the killings in Darfur.

While the ICC has placed a warrant out for al-Bashir’s arrest, he was warmly welcomed to Quatar by the emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. The massive support of the Arab leaders is in sharp contrast to the opinion of the ICC, the West, and several human rights organizations. The leaders argue that by indicting al-Bashir, the ICC is compromising Sudan’s sovereignty and displaying a double standard in their treatment of Arabs. They believe that is unfair for al-Bashir to be punished after so many crimes went unpunished during Israel’s attack in Gaza.

While both sides maintain a strong stance on the situation, it makes one wonder what’s really going on. There has been speculation that the support of al-Bashir by Arab leaders is based on a sense of self-preservation rather than conviction. Some believe that the leaders support al-Bashir because they fear that his indictment may lead to the investigation of their less-than-perfect pasts.

The news surrounding the warrant for al-Bashir and its validity seems to based on plenty of speculation, but what is the truth? It seems it all comes down to the involvement of the West and the pull of power between the Arab leaders and outside involvement. The Arab nations feel that the ICC is blindly trying to control a situation they know little about, yet the ICC and it’s supporters believe they are working towards establishing order and peace. While only time will show who will win this power struggle, it is clearly an issue that will not be resolved easily.

Eve Donegan, Sales & Marketing Assistant

Since Africa’s past and present can be complicated, we thought it would help to have a quick overview of some of the groups and political figures in Sudan and Somalia . We have selected some key topics that Gérard Prunier often referenced in Notes from Africa, and have provided a quick rundown of what they are.

Sudan:
-  Justice and Equality Movement (JEM): JEM is a rebel group in Sudan that is involved in the Darfur conflict. Like other rebel groups, they strongly oppose the Sudanese government which is run by Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir. JEM is under the leadership of Khalil Ibrahim al-Wazir.

-  Khalil Ibrahim al-Wazir: Khalil Ibrahim is from the Kobe branch of the Zaghawa ethnic group. He started and currently leads JEM. Ibrahim has claimed credit for starting a government revolt in regard to the Darfur conflict.

-  International Criminal Court (ICC): The ICC is an independent institution, although they maintain close ties with the United Nations. They were established to control perpetrators of serious international crimes, such as genocide and war-related crimes.

-  President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir: Sudan’s leader, President al-Bashir, has been in power since 1989. This year Sudan will have their first democratic election in which current Vice President, Salva Kiir Mayardit, will challenge al-Bashir’s presidency. Mayardit is also the leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) .

Somalia:
-  African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM): AMISOM works in Somalia to stabilize the country as a whole. Their mission is to, “…create a safe and secure environment in preparation for the transition to the UN.”

-  Transitional Federal Government (TFG): The TFG was formed in 2004 and is one of several attempts to create a stable government in Somalia. The TFG is hoping to establish a democracy in Somalia with the planned democratic elections coming up this year.

-  President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed: Sheikh Sharif became president after Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed resigned in December of 2008. He has been called a “moderate” leader, and was the chairman of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC).

-  Union of Islamic Courts (UIC): After winning a battle for Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, the UIC controlled most of southern Somalia for six months. The group was made up of local Islamic courts that were created by businessmen to catch and punish their enemies.

Prunier brings these people, groups, history, and conflicts to life in his weekly blog. Keep reading on Tuesdays to find more Notes from Africa.

Eve Donegan, Sales & Marketing Assistant

While author and weekly blogger Gérard Prunier is off exploring Africa, we thought it would be fun for you to do the same. Here are some of the best Africa-focused blogs.

• -Ingrid Jones provides up to date information on several African and non-African countries in her “Watch” series. A few to check out are: Congo Watch, Sudan Watch, and Uganda Watch. Jones’ multiple blogs do a great job of providing news from around Africa.
• -For a mix of African news, U.S. politics, and the influence of China, visit Africabeat. This blog is written by Harvard grad student, Jennifer Brea.
• -The socially conscious and internationally focused My Heart is In Accra brings a broad range of topics to the table while focusing on Africa. This blog is great for readers who are interested in being socially and internationally aware.
• -To get the hard news on Africa, visit ConnectAfrica. The blog brings up to the minute news on Africa’s news and politics without bias.
• -Sociolingo’s Africaprovides comprehensive coverage of Africa. On the right side of the homepage you can find articles on Africa’s environment, economics, and technology, to name a few. The site also gives the viewer the option of looking at news from certain African countries. The site’s editor tries to focus on subjects and issues that are not covered by other Africa bloggers.
• -For a deeper look at Uganda, check out jackfruity. The blog focuses on Ugandan issues, with global topic updates sprinkled in.

Come back next Tuesday to read Prunier’s regular blog. In the meantime, have fun checking out other African blogs!

By Gérard Prunier

The indictment of Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir by the International Criminal Court on March 4th was an expected move. Beforehand commentators had tried to guess what kind of reaction could be triggered if the regime felt threatened by international action. The guesses ran from predicting an internal coup – Bashir’s associates would consider him a liability and dump him, to dire predictions of attacks against foreigners – embassies recommended that their personnel should be extra careful and not go out if they could avoid it, and by way of starting an impending attack by the Darfur Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)guerrilla group against Sudan’s capital, Khartoum.

In their considerable variety, all these predictions had one thing in common: they were grand. They required dramatic action and implied violent and desperate resolve. The whole paraphernalia of media Islamism – terrorists, fanatical crowds, rabble-rousing agitators – was supposed to be brought to the fore. The perpetrators were to be dangerous and the victims important. When the indictment was issued and the reaction duly took place, the reality was much less grand. It was much meaner and devoid of all the grandstanding which had taken place.

The Sudanese government decided to expel thirteen of the most important NGOs working in Darfur. Together they kept alive about 650,000 out of the 2.7 million internally displaces persons (IDP). How? By distributing food, supplying health care, and distributing fuel, fuel which is essential to run the pumps that bring the water from the wells that have been dug in the camps. One should try to imagine the incredibly cramped situation of the refugees who literally live on top of each other. Previously available water simply wouldn’t do. Wells were dug. Deep wells. Wells that required fuel for the pumps. Within two weeks the refugees will be desperately chasing any water, including dirty and contaminated water, because there won’t be anything else. Another crisis in addition to the reduced food rations and rapidly disappearing health care.

This was the cleverest and most cowardly way to re-start the genocide (which had been “on hold,” so to speak, for the past two years, with a regular but limited number of casualties). It was not started with noisy bullets and cruel looking Janjaweed riders, but silently, through disease and underfeeding.

Bashir and his henchmen knew that the world might not tolerate pictures of massacres, but people quietly dying under their tents are not much of a show.

Now some of the Janjaweed who feel a bit deprived of their usual benefits have taken to kidnapping three workers of Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) Belgium and are asking for a ransom. United Nations Secretary General Ban ki Moon reacted immediately by holding the Sudanese government responsible for the kidnapping. Once more, it was the humanitarian workers who were hit, in an attempt at stampeding them out of Darfur and causing as much suffering and destruction as possible among the IDP population.

Last month the Sudanese Army fought the guerillas in a series of pitched battles in Muhajiriyyah and on the slopes of Jebel Mara. This terror was roundly beaten. Starving civilians to death is definitely easier, even if it is the act of cowards.

Gérard Prunier is a widely acclaimed journalist as well as the Director of the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa. He has published over 120 articles and five books, including The Rwanda Crisis and Darfur: A 21st Century Genocide. His most recent book, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophefocuses on Congo, the Rwandan genocide, and events that led to the death of some four million people. Living in Ethiopia allows Prunier a unique view of the politics and current events of Central and Eastern Africa. Be sure to check back on Tuesdays to read more Notes From Africa.

By Gérard Prunier

The so-called, “Darfur peace talk” in Doha, Quatar on February 17th was even more ridiculous than the previous efforts at “building peace” in the desperate province of Western Sudan. The language of the final communiqué sounded like an Arab transliteration of a Henry James novel: they expressed their “high appreciation for His Highness the Emir of Qatar Khalifa al-Thani’s generous sponsorship of the peace process,” they “recognized the constructive support of neighboring countries,” they “accorded a strategic priority to peace,” they “accepted to take the necessary measures to create a favorable environment to help attain a lasting peace settlement,” and they promised “to commit themselves to continue serious discussions leading towards peace.”

The reader remains dumbfounded by the yawning abysses of what we call in Arabic, kalam faadi (empty talk). The whole reunion led to absolutely nothing but pious platitudes, while all hell broke loose between the very parties who were facing each other and discussing in Doha.

In early February violent fighting had broken out in Muhajiriya, in South Darfur. This was followed by the bombardment of Thabit on the 18th and a battle in Sheriya, just west of Al-Fashir on the 19th. Finally there were carpet bombings of various locations in the west of Jebel Mara in Central Darfur. The government congratulated itself on a “new development in the peace process,” and The Justice and Equality Movement(JEM) guerrillas declared on February 23rd that “the signing of the Doha Agreement, February 17th 2009, was certainly a step forward along the road for peace in Darfur.” Then, on February 24th, upon learning about the probable indictment of President Omar el-Bashir by the International Criminal Court (ICC) next March 4th, JEM guerrilla chief Khalil Ibrahim announced that “now the war will intensify.” Did I hear anyone mention the word duplicity?

So, what was Doha apart from an alcohol-free cocktail party? It was:

• A failed attempt by Khalil Ibrahim to free his brother who had been captured by the Khartoum Army after the failure of the JEM raid on Omdurman last May. Khalil’s brother was also his Chief-of-Staff and his main weapons procurement officer. Many other prisoners were to be exchanged (JEM , which had had the upper hand, has captured a lot of government Army officers in Darfur).
• It was also a bid by JEM for center stage. Their desire to be recognized as the main, or perhaps even the sole, interlocutor of the international community among the Darfur guerrillas.
• It was a signal to Muhamar al-Gaddafi, the new “King” of the African Union, that JEM and Khalil were the main players in Darfur.
• It was also a discreet forum in which to try to negotiate the freedom of Hassan al-Turabi, Khalil’s old political mentor who was arrested last month and is now in dangerous detention in Port Sudan (Turabi is 72, he has high blood pressure and Port Sudan is one of the hottest spots on earth. His place of detention is not air-conditioned).

In other words, Doha’s cocktail party was only an episode in the ongoing conflict in Darfur and logically just opened into more violence. As Khalil said, now that the peace talks are over, “the war will intensify.”

By Gérard Prunier

The January 30th election that named the moderate Islamist leader, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed to the presidency of the Somalia Transitional Federal Government (TFG), was an opportunity that should not be overlooked. Why? Because Somalia has been without a functioning government since the fall of Mohamed Siad Barre eighteen years ago.

Since then, the international community has organized no less than fourteen “conferences of national reconciliation,” each supposed to give birth to a new government. Meanwhile, the radical Islamist movement has kept growing and in 2006 the CIA sponsored a gruesome alliance of warlords to eliminate them from the picture. Not only did the CIA fail, but they caused the public to support the Islamists (who had only a limited following so far), leading to the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) taking power in Mogadiscio. The UIC was a mixture of good (law, order, fighting piracy and contraband) and bad (religious intolerance and Puritanism). But for the first time in years, it enabled the population to breathe a bit more freely and violence diminished drastically. There were various trends within the UIC, including one of ultra-nationalism, which was of course very anti-Ethiopian.

This mixture of aggressive nationalism and radical Islamic tendencies acted like the proverbial red flag waved under the nose of the bull. In December 2006, the Ethiopian Army made a dash for Mogadiscio and occupied the capital. Sheikh Sharif, who had been the leader of the moderate wing of the UIC joined his colleagues in their common exile in Asmara, Eritrea (Eritrea, as usual, was happy to accommodate anything inimical to the enemy Ethiopian regime) and became one of the activists of the anti-Ethiopian resistance.

Sheikh Sharif quickly parted ways with the radicals led by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys. Like Sheikh Aweys, Sheikh Sharif belonged to the Hawiye clan which was spearheading the war against the Ethiopians. Sheikh Sharif believed that a workable authority had to include a broader political and clanic spectrum. He left Eritrea and started negotiating with the Ethiopia-backed TFG president, Yusuf Abdullahi. Yusuf, a cranky veteran of opposition politics in Somalia (he had led a coup against Siad Barre back in 1978) had a questionable and violent past. Regardless, he had been picked by both the international community and Addis-Ababa to head the TFG back in 2004. Yusuf refused to deal honestly with the opening he was being offered and his refusal to see beyond the narrow clanic circle of his Majerteen supporters led to his eventual downfall. He quarreled with his own Prime Minister and even his Ethiopian sponsors finally got tired of him.

There were sixteen candidates for Yusuf’s succession at the Djibouti meeting on January 30th and the fact that Sheikh Sharif was picked is symptomatic. For starters, he is the man who had been kicked out of Mogadiscio by the Ethiopian Army and described by the Americans as an “extremist.” To be honest, some of his associates are extremists, but many others are simply nationalists who are tired of disorder, warlordism, and foreign intervention. He represents the average Somali population, even if some of his views are not very palatable for Westerners. In the present circumstances Sheikh Sharif is capable of federating many different trends and can stand up to the al-Qaida linked real radicals (of the al-Shebab movement); it is something a pro-western leader could not do.

Now the international community is sponsoring a force of about 3,000 foreign soldiers (Ugandans and Burundians) sent by the African Union under the name of African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). The soldiers are supposed to “stabilize” the situation. Yet, on February 2nd these soldiers acted panicked, under-trained, isolated, and lost. They opened fire on a crowd of civilians after being targeted by an al-Shebab terrorist attack. AMISOM killed thirty-nine people and wounded twice that number. The UN representative, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, quickly denied the massacre and even compared the Somali journalists who had reported it to the Rwandese genocidaire Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines. It was an atrociously unfair comparison, as the Somali journalists have paid an inordinately high price for keeping the freedom of information alive in such terrible circumstances. Many have died in the line of duty.

AMISOM soldiers have to go. They serve no military purpose, they antagonize the public by their violence, they are incapable of keeping any kind of order, and they gravely compromise the chances of success of the new president. After the massacre, the al-Shebab radicals denounced Sheikh Sharif as an ally of the Americans and the Ethiopians. Declaring him not fit to rule the country. The danger is that, once more, like in 2006, those Islamists with whom it would be possible to work with will find themselves marginalized and eliminated while Somalia would lose still another chance and sink again into a new maelstrom of violence.

Gérard Prunier is a widely acclaimed journalist as well as the Director of the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa. He has published over 120 articles and five books, including The Rwanda Crisis and Darfur: A 21st Century Genocide. His most recent book, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe focuses on Congo, the Rwandan genocide, and events that led to the death of some four million people. Living in Ethiopia allows Prunier a unique view of the politics and current events of Central and Eastern Africa. Be sure to check back on Tuesdays to read more Notes From Africa.

Eve Donegan, Sales and Marketing Assistant

Gérard Prunier is a widely acclaimed journalist as well as the Director of the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa. He has published over 120 articles and five books, including The Rwanda Crisis and Darfur: A 21st Century Genocide. His most recent book, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe focuses on Congo, the Rwandan genocide, and events that led to the death of some four million people. Living in Ethiopia allows Prunier a unique view of the politics and current events of Central and Eastern Africa. Below Prunier discusses the involvement of the Rwandan Patriotic Army in Congo.

On the morning of Tuesday January 20th, at the invitation of the Kinshasa government, a column of at least 2,000 soldiers from the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) crossed the border into the Congo towards Goma. This was the first time Rwandese forces had walked on Congolese soil since their evacuation at the end of the war in 2002. Why had they come?

The official purpose was to eliminate the continuing threat posed by the genocidaires remnants of the former Hutu Rwandese regime, the forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), which the Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC) had consistently failed to dislodge. A less visible purpose was to eliminate Congolese Tutsi rebel General Laurent Nkunda who had gotten too big for his breeches and was beginning to embarrass his (un)official sponsors in Kigali. The third – and unacknowledged – purpose was to redistribute the local wildcat mining interests.

Nkundahad fought with the anti-Kinshasa rebels during the 1998-2003 war. But then he had refused to integrate the new national army and claimed to lead a movement to “save the Congolese Tutsi from genocide.” Later, he created his own political movement, the Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP) with the avowed ambition to “liberate” the whole Congo. This began to place him in a rather ambiguous position vis-à-vis his sponsors in Rwanda who did not mind using him to keep a piece of the mining action in Kivu but who certainly did not want to upset the whole international game by attempting to overthrow a legally elected government.

Aware of the fact that Nkunda had only limited support in Kigali, the Kinshasa government attacked him in October of last year but got miserably trounced, given the sorry state of the FARDC. In fact, the whole military-political confrontation was being played out on a background of complex – and contradictory – mining operations. During the war the main source of illegal mining wealth was Columbium-Tantalite(“Coltan”) which had reached very high prices. After 2002-2003 Coltan prices plummeted down due to the massive development of Australian mines. Other minerals (Niobium, Tungsten, Nickel, and Gold) took the place of Coltan. The mines were fairly special: small, illegal, located in hard-to-access places, exploited with very low-tech means, and produced at a very low cost. Kigali agents and FDLR former genocidaires often worked together since FDLR was beyond the pale and the politically correct Tutsi were better able to commercialize the minerals. But this was not a very satisfying solution for the Rwandese regime which ended up sponsoring its enemies. Once it became obvious that the FDLR’s role as a pretext for intervention was getting obsolete, a direct deal between Rwanda’s President, Kagame and Congo’s President,Kabila seemed like a good idea. It would squeeze out both Nkunda (now arrested and replaced by his number two, Bosco Ntaganda) and the FDLR, which would lead to a more beneficial sharing of the mining interests and please the international community. But there was only one problem with this sweet scenario: the Rwandese Army is still hated in the Eastern Congo for the atrocities it committed there during the war. Inviting it in was a very delicate matter.

President Kabila thought he could go over the head of the public opinion, but this is not working very well: the public is incensed at seeing the Rwandese back in the Congo, especially since they were called in by the President they have elected (Kabila’s majority vote came mainly from the East). Extirpating the FDLR might not be as easy as the two Presidents thought. The Rwandese Army is not welcome locally and neither are the violent and undisciplined FARDC. The Rwandese intervention is likely to become another episode of the “post-war war,” not the end of it.

Eve Donegan, Sales and Marketing Assistant

Gérard Prunier is a widely acclaimed journalist as well as the Director of the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa. He has published over 120 articles and five books, including The Rwanda Crisis and Darfur. His most recent book, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe focuses on Congo, the Rwandan genocide, and events that led to the death of some four million people. Below is a brief look at the current movements of the Somalia pirates and a proposed alternate way of understanding these so-called “terrorists.”

This piece could be taken as being tongue-in cheek. In fact it should be thoughtfully considered, beyond its apparently provocative aspect.

Since the spectacular seajacking of a Ukrainian transport carrying thirty-three battle tanks heading for Southern Sudan last September 25th followed by the capture of a Saudi tanker carrying $100m of crude oil, the international community has been in a big huff about the notorious Somali pirates operating off the coast of Puntland. They have been called “terrorists” and are now chased by naval units from Germany, France, the United States, China, Australia, India, Russia, Japan, Great Britain, and even Iran. The highly respectable American Enterprise Institute, which in this case seems not to see the original quality of their business initiatives, has declared that “even if ridding Somalia of pirates would by no means solve the country’s problems, it is an absolute first step.” Seven Private Military Companies (PMCs) are on the ranks for the privilege of shooting them with the most advanced technology, including Blackwater of Iraq renown. An energetic blogger is calling for “shooting them on sight.” Their sin? Capturing about 110 ships in 2008 and making $150m in ransom money. The main loss was for the shipping companies, forced to pay higher insurance premiums. If we look more closely at the phenomenon, what do we see?

• Starving young men in small fiberglass boats powered by outboard motors going hundreds of miles from shore on dangerous seas.
• They shoot but try not to kill. So far only one hostage has been shot out of hundreds of seamen taken.
• Many die, like the five man crew who drowned after getting the ransom for the Sirius Star tanker. They lost their lives and their money. One body was washed ashore with $153,000 in his pocket. His relatives put the money to dry. A hard way to keep your family alive.
• Yes, they build big houses, buy shiny cars and sweep beautiful girls off their feet. PMCs operatives who hope to shoot them have fairly similar career plans.
• Those who are captured go to jail, contrary to their militia fellow countrymen on land who murder, loot and rape civilians without any international interference.

Let’s be frank, those boys are no angels. But why focus so much on them? The reason is simple. They cost international business a lot of money, which is absolutely scandalous: Somalis are supposed to kill each other and not come out and tamper with shipping lanes and insurance rates. The Suez Canal Authority is losing millions because of these fellows. Why can’t they get themselves some Toyotas with rocket launchers and join the ranks of the Islamists? If they did, nobody would bother them. But then no more booze, beautiful girls or shiny cars. All they could do would be to pray to Allah and highjack a Red Cross truck, like true Somalis.

Eve Donegan, Sales and Marketing Assistant

Yesterday we posted an essay by Gérard Prunier, the author of Africa’s World War, on the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the effect it has had on the people of Central Africa. Below Prunier answers a few questions that we had regarding the current situation in Africa.

OUP: How has the involvement of the world increased or decreased in Africa since the initial conflict?

Gerard Prunier: I don’t think international involvement of a non-commercial nature in Africa has increased or diminished since the 14 nation war. Basically what you see towards Africa is humanitarian goodwill (of a slightly weepy nature) backed up by celebrity photo ops, journalistic disaster reporting (unfortunately justified), “Out of Africa” type of exotic reporting and diplomatic shuttle diplomacy on Darfur and assorted crisis spots. None of this results in very much action. Meanwhile the United States drinks up crude oil from the gulf of Guinea, India and China export cheap trinkets to the continent and in exchange (particularly China) chew up vast amount of natural resources and build cheap roads and sports stadiums. The Africans at first loved it. Non-imperialistic aid, they said. As the Chinese shoddily-built roads already show signs of wear and tear and as their stadiums and presidential palaces (another Beijing specialty) begin to look slightly out of place, they are beginning to have second thoughts.

OUP: How has the 2006 election in Congo affected the country?

Prunier: It has stabilized it internationally and tranquilized it internally. But an election is only an election. Phase Two of the Congolese recovery program has so far failed to get off the ground. Security Sector Reform never started (the Congolese Army is still basically a gaggle of thugs who are more dangerous for their own citizens than for the enemy they are supposed to fight), mining taxation is still touchingly obsolete, enabling foreign mining companies to work in the country for a song and a little developmental dance, the political class mostly talks but does not act very much, foreign donors have forgotten the country as it made less and less noise, the Eastern question is a continuation of the endless Rwandese civil war which has been going on with ups and downs for the last fifty years and the sleeping giant of Africa still basically sleeps.

OUP: What sort of future do you see for Central Africa?

Prunier: Only God knows. It will depend a lot on the capacity of the Congolese government to move from a secularized form of religious incantations to real action. Mobutu is dead but his ghost is still with us. One typical feature of Mobutism was the replacement of action by discourse. Once something had been said (preferably forcefully and with a lot of verbal emphasis) everybody was satisfied and had the impression that a serious action had been undertaken. This allowed everybody to relax with a feeling of accomplishment. In a way the last Congolese election was a typical post-Mobutist phenomenon. A very important and valid point was made. This led to a great feeling of satisfaction and a series of practical compromises and lucrative arrangements. The Congolese elite sat back, relaxed and enjoyed its new-found tranquility. Meanwhile the ordinary population saw very little result of this new blessed state of affairs. Beginning to rejoin reality might be a good idea.

OUP: Why do you think the Rwandan genocide and the following occurrences were typically ignored or belittled in comparison to other world catastrophes?

Prunier: I might beg to disagree on that point. For a catastrophe which had no impact on the international community, contrary to 9/11 for example, there was quite a bit of follow-up. The follow-up was in a way easy because it was painless for the international community. Just a little money (very little when one sees the costs of the war in Iraq or of the present financial crisis) and an embarrassed way of looking the other way when President Kagame rode roughshod over the Eastern Congo. Rwanda became a second little Israel, for the same reasons as the first one. Where were we when the people were getting killed? Since we simply had left the question hanging on the answering service, there was a slight feeling of unease when we saw the heaps of dead bodies. As a way of atoning for our sins, we asked somebody else to pay the price of our neglect. The Arabs made a lot of noise about this. But the Congolese had neither oil nor an aggressive universal religious creed. As a result they are still trying to deal with the consequences of our absent-mindedness.

OUP: As someone who resides in Ethiopia part-time, what is the attitude of the country towards the conflict-filled history of Central Africa?

Prunier: Basically the Ethiopians do not care. They have never felt “African” and the only reason Haile Selassie had been able to create the OAU in 1963 is that his country had been the only one in Africa NOT to be colonized. Ethiopia is IN Africa but not OF Africa. Let us forget skin color. Skin color is irrelevant (and many Abyssinians are very light-skinned if one wants to get into that futile line of argument). But let us consider culture. Abyssinia, the old historical core of Ethiopia (i.e. pre 1890), pre-Menelik) is basically an offshoot of the Byzantine Empire, complete with Christian icons, a Monophysite Church, imperial intrigues and forms of writing, worshipping, cultivating, behaving and warring which have almost nothing to do with Africa. Between 1890 and 1900 Emperor Menelik conquered a slice of “real” Africa as a buffer zone against British and Italian imperial ambitions, that’s all. It did not “Africanize” Ethiopia. The average Ethiopian person is much more preoccupied with what goes on in Europe or the US than with what goes on in Angola, the Congo or Nigeria. The only African countries Ethiopia feels vitally implicated with are those of the Horn, of the “neighborhood” so to speak: Eritrea, Djibouti, the Sudan and Somalia. Perhaps a little bit Kenya and Uganda. Seen from Addis Ababa, Rwanda is as far as the moon.

OUP: How do you think the world’s understanding of Africa has changed since the genocide in Rwanda?

Prunier: I don’t think it has changed at all.

OUP: What other books should we read on this topic?

Prunier: In English there are only three: Jean-Pierre Chretien: The Great Lakes of Africa, Danielle de Lame: “A hill among one thousand” and that old classic by Rene Lemarchand:”Rwanda and Burundi” which was published by Praeger in 1970 but which is now out of print. There is a lot of other stuff but it’s all in French.

OUP: What do you read for fun?

Prunier: Milan Kundera, Tony Judt, David Lodge, Edmund Wilson, Nietzsche, Panait Istrati, Chateaubriand, Samuel Pepys, Nicolas Bouvier, Guy Debord, Valeri Grossman, Montaigne, Elmore Leonard, the Duke of Saint Simon, Karl Marx, Dostoievski, Tintin, Jared Diamond, Max Weber, Lord Chesterfield, Balzac, Andre Malraux, Philip Larkin, Witold Gombrowicz, V.S. Naipaul, Bakunin, Orlando Figes, Guillaume Apollinaire, Czeslaw Milocz, the list is endless, I am a very eclectic reader.

Eve Donegan, Sales and Marketing Assistant

Gérard Prunier is a widely acclaimed journalist as well as the Director of the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa. He has published over 120 articles and five books, including The Rwanda Crisis and Darfur. His most recent book, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe focuses on Congo, the Rwandan genocide, and events that led to the death of some four million people. In this original post, Prunier discusses the history of the Joseph Kony led Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the ongoing conflict that led to almost 200 deaths this Christmas.

The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) had its own way of celebrating Christmas: on December 25th it hacked an estimated 189 people to pieces in the Congolese town of Faradje, 80 km from the Sudanese border.
This homicidal explosion was a direct result of the combined attack by Congolese, Southern Sudanese, and Ugandan troops on the LRA stronghold in Garamba National Park in the DRC where the political-religious sect had been holed up for the past two years.

The LRA is made up of a semi-deranged leadership manipulating abducted illiterate children who have been brainwashed into committing atrocities. Indeed, its leader Joseph Kony has time and time again reneged on promises of turning up in Juba for peace talks with the Ugandan government, but the LRA’s murderous actions put it beyond the pale of civilized society. Beyond this moral judgment it remains for the social analyst to explain – not excuse – what is going on.

• Atrocious as it is, the LRA is the expression of the 23 year old alienation of the populations of Northern Uganda who have been punished beyond reason for the atrocities that they themselves visited upon the Southerners during the period of the Obote II and Okello governments (1980-1986). In spite of being preyed upon by the LRA vultures, the Northern Ugandan Acholi tribe still half supports it because it fights the Museveni regime.

• During its long history of fighting the Kampala government, the LRA has been aided and abetted by the Sudanese regime in Khartoum; not because it is Islamic (Kony’s confused “religion” is a hazy blend of Christianity, traditional cults, and messianic inventions), but because its is both a thorn in the side of Uganda and a problem for the potentially secessionist semi-autonomous government of Southern Sudan. Khartoum’s regime loves to mess things up towards the Great Lakes which it sees as an area of Islam’s future expansion.

• If we broaden our view even more, we can say that unfortunately the International Criminal Court which has indicted Kony and his officers for crimes against humanity (of which they are fully guilty) has cut off any avenue of negotiation with the cult leader who now prefers to die fighting than to end his days in prison in Europe.

• And last but not least, the LRA has acted as an evil magnet for all the social flotsam and jetsam resulting from years of war and insurgency in the whole region, from the Congo to Northern Uganda and from Southern Sudan to the Central African Republic. The LRA traffics in prohibited game animals, exploits various mines, and it gets money and weapons from Khartoum. Worse, it gives “employment” to disenfranchised young men (and even the girls it uses as servants and sex objects) who are left to fall through the supposed “safety net” of their inefficient governments and of a bewildered and slow-moving “international community.”

The tragic dimension of the LRA saga is a direct expression of the situation in Central Africa where neither guns nor diplomatic action seem to get anywhere. Given Kony’s messianic bend the best solution might be an exorcist.