Justice for all

The LRA - from the Enough Project

While the deadly Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) may have left Uganda for good, the notorious rebel army hasn’t stopped wreaking havoc in the region. Ugandan President Museveni recently said at a press conference in Kampala that Joseph Kony, leader of the LRA, may now be in southern Darfur. Kony has been fleeing ever since he refused to sign a peace deal with Kampala. About a month ago, after he was forced out of the DRC, he fled to the Central African Republic. And now, he’s in Darfur.

Part of the problem, certainly, is the ICC arrest warrant for Kony and other top LRA commanders. Many now believe that one of the reasons Kony hasn’t yet signed a peace treaty with Kampala is because he’s attempting to evade the ICC arrest warrant. Moreover, Kony is refusing to agree to a peace deal because he hopes the ICC will drop his warrant. However, there really is no evidence that the ICC is obstructing peace in the country, despite a strong debate over the issue. Kony has long avoided peace agreements - he is likely simply using the ICC as an excuse to continue doing what he originally intended to do. There is no evidence, really, that Kony wants peace.

Another complication is that the LRA may be receiving assistance and support from Khartoum; the LRA has received such support in the past, and the Sudanese government clearly has a track record of using militia groups to cause chaos and target civilian populations. It’s certainly possible, but there is no concrete evidence as of yet that this is taking place.

Now, it seems that both al-Bashir and Kony, who are both wanted by the ICC, have joined together. What could this mean? Quite simply: further chaos, instability, and perhaps even violence. Darfur doesn’t need any further instability, especially with the upcoming elections and referendum.

The Obama administration needs to devise a strong response to this negative development. The reality is that today in central Africa, all the conflicts are inextricably linked. This recent news is testament to the trend of the regionalization of conflict. Rwanda, Sudan, the DRC, and the CAR are all involved in the regional conflict today. When rebel leaders and perpetrators of mass atrocity in one region are allowed to go free, the problem burgeons into a regional conflict with more and more actors involved. Perpetrators will increasingly begin to band together in the face of common threats, resulting in continued insecurity throughout the region. That’s why institutions like the ICC are so important in stopping these deadly regional conflicts. But the ICC lacks any enforcement power, and so countries like the US have to step in to help the ICC enforce its arrest warrants.

If this increasingly interconnected regional conflict continues to be ignored, peace may not be a possibility for the Great Lakes region.

When I read Akhila’s e-mail about the possible opportunity to do a guest post about Being the Change, the first thing that came to mind was Palestine. I am a political blogger and a political individual, I will spare you all a fiery one-sided rant about who should be in the dock at The Hague and instead focus on why I think people need to wake up to this conflict.

I am constantly surprised when people are confronted with the question of Israel and Palestine, their responses to it and the utter changes that come across people’s faces when the conflict is given mention. People that are normally well-educated, socially and politically motivated and not in the least bit apathetic suddenly descend into a blathering mess of umms, errs and ‘why can’t they all just get along’-type cliches. The misconceptions about this conflict are staggering. People somehow imagine something like the flawed cartoon above, two crazed peoples butting heads until oblivion. The idea that this conflict exists because Jews and Muslims have always hated each other, or because the land has been hotly contested for thousands of years or because there must be something in the water make about as much sense as ‘they hate our freedom’ being touted as the reason for 9/11. Ie. not much at all.

In reality, the conflict’s roots can be traced to no earlier than the late 19th century, when the Zionist movement began and immigration of European Jews to what was then Ottoman-controlled Palestine gathered pace, and the modern phase began when the State of Israel was declared in 1948. The conflict has always been one over land, over national self-determination and over political power. The religious element was only injected later to whip up support on both sides. Whatever Qur’anic verses you may have heard lambasting Jews specifically, for example, are shady at best, and have only been seriously invoked recently. And while anti-semitism has long been a scourge globally, specifically anti-semitic political movements, such as al-Qaeda, and political figures, such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are recent additions that have come about in reaction to the political situation.

The “Palestinians” and their supposed Arab friends, as far as the conflict goes, are far from a monolithic entity. Within Palestine itself, there are two widely divergent and conflicting dominant political movements, of the Western/Israeli-supported Fatah (currently rather unpopular locally) that rules the West Bank and represents the Palestinian Authority, and the Western/Israeli-shunned Hamas that governs Gaza.

If I was to try to even barely sum up in dot points the main events of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the wider Arab-Israeli conflict which is inextricably linked, I would fill up pages and pages of Akhila’s precious web real estate and possibly bore many of you (it’s not something you could ever hope to understand in one sitting). We’re talking about a conflict that is roughly 150 years old, and yet entire university subjects are devoted to it as part of undergraduate degrees.

I am unashamedly pro-Palestinian in my personal stance. I do not see this is a two-sided issue. I see that there is a dominant military power and a group of state-less people with no nation and no clear avenue to self-determination. Israel keeps the West Bank under occupation, bisecting its land with checkpoints and ever-growing settlements, and making daily life and economy very difficult for the locals indeed. And while Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005 (a unilateral decision made for political considerations, not out of the goodness of their hearts, I assure you), it has turned the strip into an open-air prison, imposing a crippling land & sea blockade that keeps Gazans in abject poverty, lacking stable power, food and medication. I condemn Hamas’ constant rocket fire into Israel as deplorable, targeting civilians always is, but the population of Gaza did not deserve to lose 1400 of its number (mostly civilian) to a 3 week blitz known as Operation Cast Lead either. My opinion happens to be shared by several more prominent intellectuals than myself, and on Gaza specifically, has been confirmed by a recent UN fact-finding commission into the Gaza offensive which uncovered war crimes committed by both sides. Our hope is that one day the international community will see this for what it is: an apartheid comparable in scope to that of South Africa, not a namby-pamby two-sided game of ‘oh why don’t they just get along’

Well I had to rant a little… but what I truly encourage you to do is to educate yourselves on this conflict, starting form wikipedia, media, bloggers, intellectuals, wherever you’re comfy, and encompassing as many varied opinions as possible. If you need suggestions, feel free to hit me up via the avenues listed below in my bio.

Don’t get me wrong, I know the world has plenty of other problems. There’s Darfur, there’s Myanmar, there’s North Korea, there’s the Congo, there’s a whole lot of other places and people with issues incredibly deep and suffering that cannot be quantified or truly compared. But if you want to understand the widely disparate geographical area roughly termed the Middle East (the borders of which have never been agreed upon), from Morocco to Pakistan and further, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict holds the key.

Not only is this conflict one of the great moral questions of our time but without understanding this conflict, you will never understand the region, or its politics. And thus fail to understand a region that, apart from being an emerging market economically, polarises politicans, foreign policy wonks, pundits and intellectuals the world over. We saw the importance of the Middle East on 9/11 as we were glued in horror to our television screens, we saw it during the oil shocks and in global trade patterns, costly wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, and that’s just the last 20 years. The importance of this region in global politics today cannot be denied, and neither can the issue at its core: that of Israel and Palestine.

The Changemaker

Alex Lobov is a final year undergraduate student at the University of Melbourne in Australia, majoring in Spanish, Japanese and Accounting. Interested in literature, coffee, fashion, good food and beautiful things. Bored of the politics of his native Australia, he enjoys the never-a-dull-moment nature of Middle Eastern politics. After travelling throughout the region he still harks back to the cliched-but-fantastic shawarma & shisha of the Persian Gulf and beyond. Connect with him over at his blog dedicated to Middle Eastern Politics, The Zeitgeist Politics, his personal blog or his twitter @alexlobov.

Today, President Obama spoke to Africans in his speech to the Ghanaian Parliament. Before reading, I was kept in anticipation, exciting to hear the new vision of our President with regards to Africa. I was excited, especially, after the revelations in his Cairo speech - and I hoped that he would bring a fresh perspective to America’s foreign policy to Africa in his remarks.

Certainly, I was inspired. But, I have to agree with Texas in Africa, who states:

The speech was not surprising and not particularly interesting in that it contained nothing new beyond the reflections of an American president who has a Kenyan father. Obama’s speech presented the same line that American leaders have been delivering to African states since the end of the Cold War: be democratic, stop being corrupt, embrace market capitalism, stop fighting with one another, and we’ll help you deal with disease.

Unfortunately, this is true. Obama spoke about things we all know by now about Africa; he focused on democracy, economic growth, public health, and conflict. But here’s the thing: most people know the challenges facing Africa right now. The media tells the American people over and over again about the HIV/AIDS epidemic, about the genocide in Darfur, about the lack of economic growth and business opportunities in Africa, about poverty, and about dictatorship. He talks about Zimbabwe, pirates in Somalia, Kenya and post-election violence, and South Africa. We’ve heard of these conflicts and problems a million times. What about countries he didn’t mention? There is the conflict in northern Uganda and DRC and CAR, the intervention of the ICC in various countries, and countless other countries with their own stories to tell. But, he doesn’t mention these. Perhaps it’s too much to mention in one speech, but I still think there is more to be said.

Obama didn’t do much to go beyond these common conceptions of Africa. There was nothing new in terms of US relations with African countries, and nothing much said about the new way forward. What is America going to do, other than provide foreign aid? Obama does allude to these facts - that the West is not wholly responsible for the problems in Africa although often blamed for drawing inappropriate colonial boundaries - that Africans must step up and take charge of their continent’s future - and that we will support innovation and technology for African farmers. This is good, but I wish there was a greater redefinition of America’s attitude towards African countries. There was not enough said about what we can do to help.

One thing I did like was his focus on corruption. Corruption, certainly, is a serious problem and I feel that Obama is right in acknowledging this. Corruption is an enormous problem that often isn’t emphasized by the international community. But the reality is this: according to the World Bank - a conservative estimate of bribes paid worldwide (including developed and developing countries) - the “cost of corruption” is essentially 1 trillion US dollars. Not a measly sum by any measures.

As a result, one of my favorite parts of the speech was when he emphasized good governance and rule of law - and the need to end corruption - from state heads and CEOs to the everyday police officer:

This is about more than just holding elections. It’s also about what happens between elections. Repression can take many forms, and too many nations, even those that have elections, are plagued by problems that condemn their people to poverty. No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves or if police — if police can be bought off by drug traffickers. No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top or the head of the Port Authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there. And now is the time for that style of governance to end.

This, I have to say, was truly inspring. Perhaps it’s especially because this summer, I’m working for an organization working to end torture and corruption by prison officials and police through appropriate training. It’s inspiring to me to see one component of our work - which I believe to be so important - to be pointed out by Obama. Along with just mentioning the cost of corruption, I hope Obama implements policies and supports initiatives working to stop this.

At the very least, I hope his speech touched thousands of Ghanaians and inspired people around the world. I hope it educated those who know less about the problems facing Africa. Though I’m not one to criticize, I do at the same time hope that our President will take more prompt action to change things and implement more concrete initatives to benefit the continent. What are your thoughts?

Recently I featured The Enough Project and the work they are doing to raise awareness of the war in Congo. Enough says that sexual violence in Eastern Congo is often intensified by wars over access to “conflict minerals,” - metals which end up being used in our cell phones and other electronic devices. The good thing about Enough is that they are putting Congo on the radar, highlighting a horrible conflict which is potentially worse than Darfur but simply doesn’t gain the level of attention it deserves from the media and international community. Most people do not know about Congo’s “invisible” war. They should.

However, is Enough oversimplifying the issues? The way they phrase it, your cell phones are driving a war in the Congo. Thus, by reducing your use of electronic goods containing these metals, you can help end the demand for “conflict metals” and thus cut off some of the armed forces’ income. You can help end the war! An easy action to take and to encourage others to take - right?

But wait - maybe it’s not that simple. Recently I read an excellent article by Texas in Africa (amazing blog, by the way) which claims otherwise: there’s a lot more to this conflict, and framing it as a resource war is actually simply sensationalizing the issue to make it more attractive to the general public. Texas in Africa sums it up:

“Violence over access to resources is one dimension of the fighting there, but the roots of the conflict are much more about land tenure and citizenship questions than they are about who gets access to minerals like tin, caseterite, coltan, and gold. The fight over the minerals is an effect of these underlying crises; not the primary, or even tertiary cause of most of the fighting.”

So even if these campaigns successfully helped end or reduce the mineral trade, there is no guarantee that the war would end. Because it is fueled by other underlying factors, not just the fight over mineral resources. Fighting will likely continue, because there would still be widespread poverty and the complete lack of rule of law. The government in Congo is simply not capable of providing security for its citizens, and the failure of governance continues to be a problem. There is immense corruption. Rape and violence has become a way of life for some of these militia groups - all this is not going to end so easily.

Moreover, the campaign to end the mineral trade could actually have negative effects on the population in Congo. For example, suddenly closing the mines could end up laying off many families who are dependent on the income from working in the mining industry. Are there alternate programs available to provide employment for these workers? If not, this could actually be a harmful move despite the attempt to help.

The sad truth is this: people are more willing to do something about an issue if they feel like they are connected to the conflict in some way. This is similar to the push for divestment from Sudan - when the public feels responsible for or connected to a faraway war, they feel much more compelled to act. And if you try to present a complex situation as it is, the fact is the general public is just not going to listen. People won’t get involved unless they think they understand the issue and understand what they can do about it. And it has to be somewhat simple to understand. If you describe all the factors leading to the war in Congo, it’s just not “sexy” advocacy anymore. Talking about land rights and citizenship and corruption may not be as sexy as talking about your cell phones fueling a war, and so advocacy campaigns don’t discuss these issues. At the end of the day, oversimplification of the reality is all too common in human rights advocacy campaigns and through misinformation, can perhaps cause more harm than good.

This week, I want to highlight an amazing organization called The Enough Project for the great work they are doing. They are relatively well known, especially in the field of human rights, so you might have heard of them. Enough aims to end genocide and crimes against humanity. They work not only to stop atrocities that are currently occurring, but also aim to prevent future genocide through analysis, advocacy, and activism.

Enough conducts intensive field research in countries plagued by genocide and crimes against humanity, develops practical policies to address these crises, and shares sensible tools to help empower citizens and groups working for change. Our initial work has focused on grave challenges in a number of African countries: Sudan, eastern Congo, northern Uganda, Somalia, Chad and Zimbabwe.

One of their interesting recent campaigns is Come Clean 4 Congo, a video contest aiming to raise awareness about the link between our cell phones and the violence in Congo. In Eastern Congo, sexual violence is often intensified by wars over “conflict minerals,” - ores that produce tin, tungsten, and tantalum - metals that end up being used to build our electronic devices. Enough also has a Raise Hope for Congo campaign which provides lots of excellent information about the conflict and provides helpful tools for budding activists to take action. There’s so little awareness about what’s actually happening in Congo, so hopefully these campaigns will help put Congo on the radar.

One reason I chose Enough is because a couple of weeks ago, I talked about a common stereotype of Africa: the entire continent is often viewed as one huge country, and people often don’t have a good understanding of the situations occurring in different countries (myself included!). So the best thing you can do is educate yourself, and you can do so by checking out their Conflict Areas page which clearly describes the major conflicts taking place today in Africa. And after you’ve learned about the issues, Take Action and do something about it - whether it’s writing a letter to your representative, signing a petition, or educating your friends about the issues; however little you contribute, it’s important you do.

The Enough Project is doing excellent work raising awareness about important issues and conflicts that are often ignored by the mainstream media. I’d highly encourage you to at least explore their website and learn something new today.