Texas in Africa

What's Wrong with Dodd-Frank 1502?

2012-01-05T15:05:00.002-06:00

I have a new working paper up at the Center for Global Development. It's entitled, "What's Wrong with Dodd-Frank 1502? Conflict Minerals, Civilian Livelihoods, and the Unintended Consequences of Western Advocacy." You can read the paper here.

The central argument of the paper is that Dodd-Frank 1502, while based in well-intentioned efforts to improve the situation in the Congo, has caused more problems that it has solved, and is unlikely to improve the security situation in eastern Congo when the SEC rules are released and implemented. This is because there is no evidence that supply chain traceability mechanisms actually get fighters to stop fighting, particularly in a very weak state. Moreover, as we are already seeing, smuggling tends to increase and civilian miners are put out of work. In the paper, I delve into an analysis of why the advocacy community chose to focus on conflict minerals and why that focus was misguided. I also suggest steps for a way forward that would both help to improve transparency in the mineral trade while arguing that violence is a separate problem with a separate solution.

I welcome your comments and questions on the paper. Thanks to the folks at the Center for Global Development for publishing it. All errors are, of course, my own.

quick notes on the GoE report

2011-12-30T15:37:00.003-06:00

The UN Group of Experts on the DRC released their 2011 final report today. It's available in English here and in French here. Here are the highlights (or, really, lowlights):

The ADF-NALU is much more active after a period of dormancy. The GOE report contains detailed information about their activities, including an uptick in assassinations of those perceived to be FARDC collaborators. The ADF is financing its activities by taxing chainsaw use for the timber trade and is getting money from foreign jihadis. And they're recruiting in Burundi.
The Lord's Resistance Army has largely decamped to the Central African Republic.
The FDLR is beset with internal disputes over leadership. They've also expanded their revenue-generating activities to the cannabis trade.
FDLR ex-combatants told the Group that the FDLR receives about 95% of its weapons via the FARDC, often in exchange for bush meat, minerals, or cannabis.
While there has been some reduction in the conflict mineral trade, mineral smuggling from DRC to Rwanda has greatly increased over the past year, largely in response to the unintended consequences of Dodd-Frank Section 1502. See Jonny Hogg and Graham Holliday's excellent analysis here.
The CNDP maintains its parallel command structures within the FARDC. They also maintain a parallel police force with PARECO in Masisi under the control of Bosco Ntaganda.
The Group found clear evidence of Ntaganda having planned to force local populations to vote for his favored CNDP political candidates for office in the November elections.
The de facto ban on Congolese mineral sales has had relatively little effect on the gold trade thus far as gold is easier to move outside of due diligence channels. This has caused many artisanal miners to switch from mining the 3T's to mining gold.
Armed groups are still very much involved in the mineral trade in eastern DRC.

holiday greetings, texas-style

2011-12-24T11:26:00.001-06:00

Merry Christmas, y'all!

DRC election results: quick reax

2011-12-09T14:56:00.005-06:00

As expected, today's announcement of provisional election results by CENI (the Congo's independent national electoral commission) showed Joseph Kabila winning with 48% of the vote. Etienne Tshisekedi was the runner-up with 32% of the vote. Tshisekedi almost immediately rejected the results, declaring himself president from today forward. There are reports of celebrations in Lubumbashi and Goma, while civilians are hearing gunfire in Mbuji-Mayi and Kinshasa. Some members of the Diaspora are calling for violent uprising while others are pushing for peaceful resistance. Reuters is reporting that Congo-Brazzaville has readied a refugee camp in case Kinois start to flee violence in large numbers, but that doesn't seem to be happening just yet.

A few quick thoughts on what the provisional results tell us:

Full results with precinct-by-precinct data are available here. A quick perusal shows some serious anomalies (eg, 34% of Beni-territoire voters went for Tshisekedi? Goma-ville went heavily for Kamerhe (which is expected), but Nyiragongo (directly to the north) went heavily for Kabila, which seems really odd.). There seems to be no data for Ituri or Dungu available just yet.
We don't have precinct-level data from 2006 so it's impossible to do a statistical comparison, which would allow (albeit in limited fashion) a means of checking for fraud.
We will, however, be able to compare these results with those released by the Tshisekedi campaign and with those of other observers. As Jason Stearns notes, however, coverage of the polls by civil society actors and party observers was limited. The Catholic Church only had representatives in 24% of polling stations and the campaigns only covered 50-60% of stations each. While there may be a full set of verified, signed counts from each polling station countrywide, it will take a lot of time to compile that data. Given the delay in the announcement of results, there's not much time to do so before the December 17 deadline for constitutional court challenges.
The Carter Center has yet to release its fraud report. That's what I'm waiting for before doing any kind of comprehensive analysis. While it's obvious that there was fraud in the voting process, what's not yet clear is whether that fraud was systematic, planned, and only carried out by one party.
Almost nobody in Congo wants to be ruled by somebody named Mobutu. The deceased dictator's son Mobutu Nganza garnered only 1.57% of the vote.
Mbusa Nyamwisi garnered about 300,000 votes, mostly in his home region of far north North Kivu. This means he did significantly better than he did in 2006, when he got just under 100,000 votes.
Turnout was 58.81% of registered voters, which could be a reflection of a couple of factors. First, many Congolese are a bit disillusioned with democracy and have not seen benefits from voting in a regime, so many may have decided to stay home - especially when a day voting means a day of lost work and lost income. Second, the chaos of the electoral process in which many could not find their names on the rolls and were not assisted in doing so by CENI plus the failure to deliver ballots on time kept many, many who wanted to vote from being able to do so.
While the results will be difficult for many analysts to take seriously given Kabila's unpopularity in the country, it's important to remember that the vast majority of Congolese voters are still new to participatory democracy. Many may have been susceptible to subtle forms of manipulation. Openly distributing cash and gifts is standard practice in most DRC campaigns, and it's possible that many thousands of voters could have been convinced to cast their vote based on the gift of a t-shirt or $5.

It's currently just after 10pm in Kinshasa; I expect we'll see mass demonstrations in Kinshasa, Mbuji-Mayi, and/or Kananga over the weekend or early next week. What will happen with those, only time will tell.

UPDATE: Changed date for deadline for constitutional challenges to December 17 - previous typographical error said January 17.

elsewhere...

2011-12-03T20:38:00.001-06:00

I'm now contributing occasional op-eds on DRC politics at Al Jazeera English. My first piece - on what comes next in DRC - is up there now. Many thanks to the editors at Al Jazeera for this opportunity!

today's analysis

2011-11-29T12:38:00.002-06:00

I have a piece on the DRC elections up at The Atlantic today - click on over to read.

the start of DRC elections

2011-11-28T11:23:00.002-06:00

This piece is cross-posted at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's Preventing Genocide blog, where I'll be posting on threats to civilians over the next few weeks. Click on over for more thoughts from other DRC analysts.

Congolese voters go to the polls to choose legislative and presidential leaders for the second time on Monday, November 28. As several analysts have noted, the risk of election-related violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo is significant. The month-long campaign period has already resulted in serious violence, with up to ten dead in Kinshasa over the weekend and several protests being met with violent responses from the police and military. Some Congo-watchers believe violence will be short-term, sporadic, and limited to urban zones, while others fear violence could spread rapidly. Are these fears well-founded?

Congolese citizens already live under some of the worst humanitarian conditions in the world. Their country ranks dead last on this year's UNDP Human Development Index, which measures quality-of-life indicators like income, health, and education levels. One in five Congolese infants die before their fifth birthday, more than one in ten infants die in childbirth, and life expectancy for both men and women is less than fifty years. Simply being born Congolese puts a citizen at high risk of dying an untimely death from preventable causes.

These appalling statistics result from a combination of factors, including poor governance, lack of access to employment and financial resources, and the lingering effects of state collapse and of the country's wars. As such, elections are a key marker in Congo's progress towards rebuilding the state, re-establishing governance, and improving the lives of its civilians over the long-term.

The same elections that are necessary to continue D.R. Congo's transition to democracy also pose risks, however, and the potential for post-electoral violence may cause even more problems in the short, medium, and long runs. At issue is the fact that the country is deeply divided in its support for the eleven presidential candidates, including incumbent President Joesph Kabila. Kabila, who came to power after his father's assassination in 2001 and was democratically elected in 2006, is deeply unpopular, particularly in the western Congo, which includes the capital Kinshasa. There, support is divided among ten opposition candidates, the most prominent of whom are the UDPS party's Etienne Tshisekedi and Vital Kamerhe, who hails from the east. Tshisekedi, who stood up to Mobutu and, at 78 is the oldest of the candidates, sees himself as the rightful heir to Congo's presidency. He enjoys strong support in Kinshasa as well as in the Kasai provinces, which are home to the ethnic group from which Tshisekedi hails, the Luba.

Kabila won in 2006 with strong support from the eastern Congo, where voters speak his Kiswahili language and from where his family hails. This year, however, eastern Congolese voters are disillusioned with Kabila's rule. They have not seen as many benefits from Kabila's 2006 promises of increased stability and better infrastructure, and many voters there will not support him at the polls. Because Kabila knows his re-election is at risk, his supporters in Parliament changed the Constitution earlier this year to allow the president to win with a simple plurality of the vote rather than a majority, which means that no candidate has to attain fifty percent plus one of the vote. Rather, whoever gets the most votes will win.

Why might this result in violence? First, few in Kinshasa believe that Kabila can win fairly. Those voters are probably wrong; Kabila is likely to legitimately win 30-35% of the vote nationwide, but almost all of his support will come from outside of Kinshasa. Reality often matters less than perception, however, and the perception in Kinshasa will be that if Kabila wins the election, he must have stolen it. Given that outcome, Kinois voters are likely to take to the streets demanding that Kabila step down, and they will likely be met with a violent response from Kabila's presidential guard.

More potential for violence exists in the reaction of authorities and civilians to perceptions of irregularities and fraud in the voting process. Already, reports are coming in of hundreds of thousands of names being missing from voter rolls and rumors are flying that ballot papers have been pre-marked and that pens at the polling stations are filled with erasable ink. A number of polling stations had not received ballots as of Sunday night, meaning that voters in those regions will be completely disenfranchised. If Congolese civilians do not feel that their votes are cast and counted in an ethical and fair manner, some may take to the streets in protest.

The other potential for violence comes much later. As Chatham House's Ben Shepherd notes, local and provincial elections are scheduled in 2012 and 2013, and these may provoke significantly more violence in more places as voters express their frustrations about the country's lack of progress.

Is violence inevitable in the Congo this week or in the weeks to come? Not necessarily. The country enjoys a distinct advantage over 2006 in that none of the major presidential candidates still maintain private armies, as was the case with Jean-Pierre Bemba's MLC militia last time around. But politics in the country are still not settled on the basis of the rule of law, corruption is still rampant, and few feel that the electoral process reflects their wishes for the country's future. These factors do not bode well for a peaceful electoral process.

==========

This blog post is part of a series done in conjunction with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum looking at the risks to civilians in the period surrounding Congo's national elections. The views expressed are my own. For more information, please visit: http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/congo/

DRC elections: what to watch

2011-11-27T11:41:00.002-06:00

Against all odds and amid pre-election violence that has killed several Kinois in the last two days and widespread reports that not all polling stations have ballots and other election materials, CENI (the Congolese electoral commission) has decided to go ahead with Monday's scheduled elections. Speaking in Kinshasa on Sunday evening, CENI head Daniel Ngoy Malunda (who also serves as President Joseph Kabila's personal pastor) said that his agency is 99% ready and that the elections will happen as scheduled. Never mind that the remaining 1% could mean that 600 or so polling stations lack the materials necessary to carry out an election.

No one knows what is going to happen in this election; there were no scientific polls conducted and the exceptionally loud voices of much of the Congolese Diaspora (most of which is very pro-Tshisekedi) are making public opinion seem more skewed to the UDPS than it probably actually is. Jason Stearns (who is observing the election in Bukavu) has a helpful province-by-province breakdown of likely voting patterns, but as he notes, results will depend heavily on turnout and are too close to call at this point. A few things to watch for as results come in:

Violence - As many as 10 are dead in Kinshasa, which is heavily opposed to Kabila and has a significant pro-Tshisekedi voting bloc. If violence happens Monday or in the days after the election, it will likely start in Kinshasa.
Tshisekedi's reaction - Tshisekedi was blocked from entering Kinshasa for several hours Saturday and was not allowed to hold a final campaign rally Sunday (the governor of Kinshasa banned all political rallies amid rising violence on Saturday). Tshisekedi has continued with strong rhetoric, and there's no telling what he might call for if there are significant irregularities or the perception thereof on Monday. Tshisekedi is almost openly daring the government to arrest him (he has, among other comments, called on his supporters to "terrorize" the government and declared himself president in recent weeks). Tshisekedi believes he has the victory and that the public is on his side; if he doesn't get a victory in this election, he and his supporters are unlikely to accept the results as legitimate.
The East - Kiswahili-speaking easterners were Kabila's main base of support in 2006, where he made extensive promises about improving the security situation and rebuilding infrastructure. While there is no question that both of these areas have improved somewhat in the last five years, Kabila can no longer count on voters there to have his back. DRC voters, especially in urban areas, are savvier this time around, and few are willing to take promises at face value anymore. As one Goma voter told Melanie Gouby, “We had no idea how to decide who to vote for during the 2006 elections. ...This time we know better. I won’t vote for someone because I was given a t-shirt, I want someone who will build the road, not just talk about it.” Such comments do not bode well for Kabila, whose campaign depends largely on promises of patronage.
Irregularities - Already, there are reports that several hundred thousand registered voters names do not appear on the rolls in Ituri and Idjwi. There are almost certainly also polling stations that have not yet received ballots. How CENI reacts when these reports arise - and whether voters feel their voices were heard - will be key determinants of whether protests happen and whether such protests turn violent.

today's post

2011-11-02T12:22:00.001-05:00

I have a post up at the Peace Dividend Trust blog today. It's an interview with a Congolese leader who helps young adults start small businesses. Click on over and check it out.

catching up

2011-10-26T09:06:00.003-05:00

So. Things have been busy, both in Africa and here at TiA HQ. First there was the Great Lakes Policy Forum on advocacy and the DRC, then President Obama up and sent American forces to Uganda to fight the LRA, the SEC had a round table on conflict minerals, and, just to keep things interesting, Kenya invaded Somalia. A few brief thoughts on each:

Conflict Minerals: The GLPF was very interesting, and, like the SEC round table, revealed that there are wide gulfs in ideas from advocates, Congolese citizens, the Congolese Diaspora, and industry as to what needs to happen moving forward with the implementation of Dodd-Frank section 1502. I particularly appreciated Search for Common Ground's efforts to bring together these diverse perspectives in closed sessions on the afternoons of the GLPF conference. However, there is a huge amount of disagreement on things like a timeline for implementation, what to do about the huge number of now-unemployed miners (which Congolese civil society leaders familiar with the artisanal mining sector estimate to be in the 1-2 million range), and what the rules should be for issues as varied as recycled materials, gold, and companies that have tens of thousands of suppliers.
The LRA. I'm with Wronging Rights on this one; it passes the Love Actually Test and isn't likely to do harm. Contrary to what many Ugandans and others in the region think, the commitment of 100 Special Forces troops in an advisory capacity to track down a really bad guy is not a front for getting Uganda's oil. (Those contracts are almost certainly already for sale to the highest bidder.) Despite divisions within the LRA ranks, this is one of the few instances in which taking out the leader of a movement will largely destroy the organization. It poses a minimal risk to US forces and has the potential to do a lot of good. That said, I think it will still be very difficult to get Joseph Kony, and we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that elite American troops will ultimately be able to get him. Kony has a number of tactical advantages and he knows the terrain incredibly well. Satellite surveillance, drones, and the like won't work as he often tends to hang out in areas with triple-canopy tree coverage. It won't be easy, but I don't think this will hurt.
Kenya/Somalia. It was bound to happen sooner or later, what with the increasingly intolerable massive security threat just over the border. But Kenya's decision to invade in support of Somalia's TFG was somewhat surprising, to put it mildly. But it makes sense; somebody had to take decisive action in Somalia, and with the boots-on-the-ground support they're getting from Ethiopia and the US/French air support (nobody really knows), it might succeed in wiping out a good bit of al Shabaab. That won't lead to a functioning state in Somalia, but it might open the door to thinking about alternative forms of governance for the territory. Plus, a war might have seemed like a useful way to distract Kenyan voters from the government and opposition's ICC problem. However, if terrorist attacks keep happening in Nairobi, there's no telling how Kenyans will react at the ballot box next year. For now, most are scared and hoping for peace.

this week in atlanta

2011-10-12T09:29:00.000-05:00

Morehouse College

Presents

A Discussion on Global Development

Dr. Raj Shah, Administrator,

US Agency for International Development

Bank of America Auditorium

The Executive Conference Center

Morehouse College

Friday, October 14, 2011

1:30 p.m.

Open to the public.

a note from APSA

2011-10-10T18:54:00.000-05:00

This may be of interest to those of you who are political scientists studying Africa:

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

Workshop Leaders for the 2012 APSA Africa Workshops

Deadline: 5:00 PM ET, November 11, 2011

The American Political Science Association (APSA) is pleased to announce a call for applications from U.S.‐based APSA members interested in organizing a team of leaders for a two to three‐week political science workshop scheduled to take place in Africa in the summer of 2012.

Background

Supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the 2012 workshop is part of an ongoing multi‐year effort to organize annual residential political science workshops in Africa, This is a major component of APSA’s efforts to facilitate the development of applied research networks linking U.S.-based scholars with colleagues overseas and to support political science communities outside the United States, (previous workshops were held in Senegal, Ghana, Tanzania and Kenya). More information about the workshops can be found at the project web site, www.apsanet.org/africaworkshops.

Each workshop is led by a team of two U.S.‐based and two Africa‐based scholars and is aimed at bringing together up to 20 junior scholars residing in Africa along with 4 U.S.‐based advanced graduate students.

The goals of the workshops are to: (1) enhance the capacities and resources for theoretical or empirical scholarship by political scientists in Africa; (2) explore a compelling intellectual theme underpinning basic research in political science; (3) provide a forum for connecting participants with recent developments in the field; and (4) support their ongoing research. The working language of the 2012 workshop will be English.

The proposal must explain the scope of the professional ties between the prospective U.S. and Africa‐based workshop leaders; preference will be given to teams demonstrating substantial previous research collaboration. Workshop leaders will serve as academic directors of the project who will be responsible for all substantive content.

A modest honorarium will be provided and related expenses (meals, transportation, lodging, incidentals) will be covered. Workshop administration and logistics will be led by APSA staff in conjunction with the local partners in Africa that will be determined through close consultation with the selected team of workshop leaders.

For 2012 APSA is not specifying a local partner in advance and will expect applicants to explain and justify where and with which organization they would like to collaborate to implement the workshop. Local partner organizations will be expected to work closely with APSA on all related administrative and logistical tasks and so should be recommended carefully with an eye toward their institutional capacity and ability to support a successful residential workshop. Partners should exhibit close linkages to local institutions of higher education and research communities. Applicants are strongly encouraged to recommend local partner organizations only if they have existing relationships or know them well.

American Political Science Association

Applications

Each workshop proposal should be submitted jointly by two U.S‐.based APSA members who are interested in co‐leading the summer 2012 workshop. Applications should be in three sections:

I. Workshop Theme Proposal (1‐2 pages)

The workshop theme proposal should provide a coherent intellectual foundation from which the substance of the workshop will flow and bind together the syllabus and readings. Any research or substantive theme in political science is welcome, but topics of broad theoretical and methodological interest that reach beyond a specific national, regional, or policy focus are preferred. The theme proposal should address how the theme and methodological questions to be raised will achieve workshop goals and incorporate new developments in the field and literature.

II. Substantive Leadership of the Workshop (3‐5 pages)

In this section, applicants must provide detailed information on the following:

• Naming the two Africa‐based workshop leaders.

• A specific division of labor among the workshop leaders. For example, if different workshop leaders are to assume responsibility for a particular sections, why? How does that arrangement fit with the overall workshop progression and theme?

• Expectations of participant workloads—including anticipated amounts of reading and other work.

• A commitment to the collective intellectual leadership of the workshop—including devoting sufficient time for:

o comprehensively reviewing all participant applications

o attending weeks of the workshop in residence

o consulting regularly with APSA staff from selection through the end of the workshop

o communicating with applicants in the run‐up to the workshop as needed

o mentoring of participants after the workshop

• Specification of, and justification for, a workshop location and local partner organization

o Rationale for workshop location

o Overview of recommended local partner organization and relevant background

o Specification of institutional capacity of recommended local partner organization to host, support, and organize residential workshop for 30 participants—including facilities, staff, and technology

o Explanation of existing ties to and knowledge of local partner organization

III. Supplementary Information (no page limit)

This section of the application should provide:

• Recent CVs for all proposed workshop leaders.

• A discussion of any relevant experience in organizing workshops.

Application Timeline and Information

Applications should be submitted electronically to APSA in Word format, 12‐point font, double spaced (except for Section III, Supplementary Information, which can be single spaced) and with 1‐inch margins. Send applications to africaworkshops@apsanet.org by 5:00 PM Eastern Time on November 11, 2011. Selections will be announced in December 2011.

Contact Us: Send an email at africaworkshops@apsanet.org, or call Helena Saele at (202) 483‐2512 x112, if you have questions or would like more information about the workshops or application process.

today

2011-10-06T09:00:00.002-05:00

I'm live-tweeting from the Great Lakes Policy Forum this morning. You can follow here.

This week

2011-10-03T13:45:00.002-05:00

I'm in Washington this week for the Great Lakes Policy Forum's Stakeholders Conference on Advocacy in the Democratic Republic of Congo. You can register to attend here. The event is not for attribution, so while there will be a summary posted later, the only way to catch everything is to attend. Here's the updated list of speakers:

How the Story of Congo Gets Told
October 5th at 9:30 AM
Rome Building at SAIS

Opening Statement: Peter Lewis, Johns Hopkins, SAIS

Speakers:
Laura Seay, Morehouse College and Texas in Africa
Mvemba Dizolele, Stanford University
Kambale Musavuli, Friends of Congo

Advocacy and the Way Forward
October 6 at 9:30am
Kinney Auditorium, Nitze Building at SAIS

Opening Statement: Hamuli Kabarhuza Baudouin, National Coordinator, International Conference of the Great Lakes Region

Speakers:

Adotei Akwei, Amnesty International
Rick Goss, Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC)
Eric Kajemba, Observatoire Gouvernance et Paix (OGP)
John Prendergast, The Enough Project
Claudine Tsongo, Dynamique de Femmes Juristes

research job opportunity

2011-10-02T19:51:00.002-05:00

Candidate Search for Research Fellows

The Makerere Institute of Social Research in Kampala, Uganda, invites applications for four Research Fellow positions in the fields of Political Studies, Cultural Studies (including literature and anthropology), Political Economy, and History. All levels of experience and all areas of specialization will be considered. Applicants must have a well-defined research agenda and a strong commitment to teaching in a graduate programme. Research Fellows will be expected to pursue original research, publish consistently in international forums, teach two graduate seminars a year, and contribute to the institutional development of MISR as a premiere research institution in Africa. Applicants should have their Ph.D. by June, 2012 in an appropriate field.

Research Fellows will be appointed for a three-year term, with the possibility of renewal. The appointments will begin in 2012 contingent upon final budgetary approval. Salary is competitive. Interviews of selected candidates will be held at the African Studies Association conference in Washington, D.C., in November, 2011. Applications will begin to be considered October 31, 2011. The search will remain open until the positions are filled. Applicants should send a letter of application, C.V., writing sample or published work, and three letters of recommendation to the MISR Director, Mahmood Mamdani, at director@misr.mak.ac.ug and mm1124@columbia.edu. Please send application materials to both addresses.

Alternatively, applications can be mailed to:

Before December 1:
Mahmood Mamdani
606 West 122nd St
New York, NY 10027

After December 1:
Director
Makerere Institute of Social Research
Plot 1, Makerere Hill Road
P. O. Box 16022
Wandegeya, Kampala

For more information about the Makerere Institute of Social Research, please visit the website.

Q&A on coltan

2011-09-30T09:32:00.005-05:00

One of the most fascinating books I read this year is about one mineral: Coltan. Authored by Congo expert Michael Nest, the book is a comprehensive discussion of an extrodinarily complex issue. Nest does an admirable job of explaining what the commodity is, why it matters, and of dissecting the debates around coltan. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in conflict minerals or advocacy in general as it points to both successes and failures in the DRC-focused movement.

Nest was kind enough to take the time for a Q&A about Coltan:

TiA: What was the most surprising thing you learned in researching Coltan?

Nest: The enormous gulf in communication and understanding between activists and industry. Industry pays little attention to what activists say and are not very aware of academic debates about natural resources and conflict. Yet activists and these debates have an impact of the legislation and regulations that eventually affect them, such as the ‘conflict minerals’ clause in Washington’s recent Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Similarly, activists pay little attention to industry and are often dismissive and cynical about industry views. Yet, industry can be an excellent source of data about mining and of analysis of how the global resources sector works. When I was researching the book I felt like I was going back and forth between different worlds. Both sides could learn from listening to the other, and anyone who wants to understand the political economy of the minerals sector needs to read information from these sources.

TiA: In the book, you mention that the oft-repeated statistic about 80% of the world’s coltan supply being in Congo is incorrect. Can you give a brief summary as to why and how that incorrect statistic became so well-known?

Nest: That is a good question! I still scratch my head about how this figure, which I am positive is incorrect, has been so widely propagated. I think activists and others interested in the link between coltan and conflict do themselves a great disservice by repeating such statistics without questioning them or researching them. Inaccurate statistics can undermine an argument, even if it is motivated by a moral imperative. People in industry and government who might initially listen to what activists or journalists say often switch off when they hear statistics that are not supported by evidence.

As to how the statistic came about…I really do not know the origin of the figure, other than it was probably first produced in either a BBC or Agence France Presse news report from the late 1990s/early 2000s. Possibly the 80% refers to the amount of coltan on the spot market (ie, open market and not tied up in long-term contracts) coming from the DRC. This figure may have then been misinterpreted by others to refer to world reserves or world production. However, most writers about coltan appear unaware of the role of the spot market in the coltan trade, which makes me wonder whether this really was the origin of the figure. I’m guessing that the figure of 80% fitted in with journalists’ desire to dramatise what at first glance appears to be another story of Africans as victims: having a precious resource sought after by rich countries that will do anything to obtain it. The truth is more complicated and nuanced than this.

The DRC’s share of global tantalite production remains unclear. However, the figure is likely to be between 20-30% at the current time. Historically it is more likely to have been around 15-20%. In regards to reserves, there has been no comprehensive geological survey work in the DRC since the early 1990s as a result of war and instability. However, there is certainly no evidence that the DRC has 80% of the world’s reserves.

TiA: What led you to write a book about one specific mineral?

Nest: I was asked to write this book by Polity Press, which is bringing out a series of the geopolitics of six natural resources: oil, food, fish, water, timber and coltan. My previous book focused on the economic dimensions of the Congo War (1998-2003) and this is one reason they asked me to write about coltan.

Writing a book about a specific mineral, especially one linked to conflict and violence like coltan, is a challenge. Solutions to conflict and violence in the DR Congo and other countries where armed groups profit from natural resources, require integrated approaches that take into account all resource exploitation and all minerals. Isolating a commodity and analysing it out of its sectoral context can result in one losing track of its importance and significance relative to other commodities.

However, in order to develop both theories of natural resources and conflict and policy responses to such conflicts, it is analytically important to understand and be able to distinguish the political economy of individual commodities. Because there has been so little good analysis, yet so much debate, on the tantalite global supply chain, I thought it was important to lay out the facts for this particular mineral and not simply lump it together in an analysis of other ‘conflict minerals’. The editors at Polity Press were aware there was a market for such a book that focused on one specific mineral.

TiA: What’s your take on the advocacy efforts surrounding Congolese minerals, including the proposed SEC and OECD regulations? What have advocates, legislators, and regulators gotten right and what have they gotten wrong?

Nest: I think these efforts are well-intentioned, but not especially well-thought out. This means they may not achieve their desired goal of bringing peace to the DRC.

Gotten right:

Relentless activism by the Enough Project, Global Witness and others have raised the profile of the Congo War and increased governments’ and the public’s willingness to focus on it – a good thing.
The push by the SEC and OECD to increase transparency in the commodity chains that go into manufactured goods can also only be a good thing, as I think it is incumbent on us all to be aware of what we consume and where it comes from.
Placing the reporting burden onto global corporations – rather than poor governments or artisanal miners – is reasonable.

Gotten wrong:

Activist efforts fail to take into account the significant number of conflicts in DRC that are not related to resources, e.g., conflict over land (for agriculture, not minerals) or for local political control. Restricting the export of coltan and other ‘conflict minerals’ might reduce profits to armed groups, but it will not have any effect on groups fighting for other reasons.

The SEC regulations focus on minerals that have been handled by armed groups. The flaw in this is that the DRC army, which is one of the worst perpetrators of human rights abuses, extrajudicial killings and sexual violence, is not classified by the State Department as an ‘armed group’. Perversely, this means that tantalite that has passed through the DRC army’s hands could be imported into the US and legitimately labeled ‘conflict free’.

Activists in rich countries who advocate for consumer boycotts of products that cannot be 100% verified as being free of coltan from Congo assume that western consumers remain the most important in the world, and therefore have the power to change corporations’ sourcing practices. Markets in rich countries for electronic goods will remain important, but in terms of size they have been overtaken by developing country markets, e.g., there are more mobile phones in Africa than the US, and China has double the number of internet subscribers than the US. Activists of the future must work out how to engage with developing country consumers and corporations (especially metals processing and manufacturing firms from China), and get them to care about the origin of commodities.

Thanks to Michael Nest for taking the time to chat about Coltan. It's well worth your time to read.

in which prendergast and I are (maybe) going to debate

2011-09-20T15:32:00.003-05:00

I'll be a panelist at the next Great Lakes Policy Forum on October 5-6, which is a special two day conference on Advocacy in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As you'll see from the official announcement below, John Prendergast and I are scheduled to be on the same panel (pending his acceptance of the invitation), discussing who speaks for the Congolese along with Mvemba Dizolele and . If Prendergast doesn't come, we'll likely have someone else from the Enough Project in his place, which should make for an interesting discussion.

If you're in the DC area, I hope you'll be able to make it; both of the panels are going to be very provocative and fascinating. I'm particularly excited that the GLPF is able to include so many voices from Congolese civil society at this event. Register to attend here.

Advocacy in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Stakeholders Conference
October 5th and 6th, 2011
9:30-11:30 am

Day one: How the Story of Congo Gets Told
Rome Auditorium, Rome Building 1619 Massachusetts Ave
Panel Discussion: 9:30-11:30am

In the past several years, voices from the United States have dominated the conversation on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), creating a tension between the complex situations on the ground in the DRC and the simple messaging that works for advocacy movements in support of the DRC in the US. Additionally, there are questions about who is a legitimate voice in Washington, DC on the behalf of the Congolese. Financial and language barriers often prevent Congolese citizens from speaking on their own behalf in Washington, although members of the Diaspora, US based advocacy organizations, academics, and NGOs attempt to fill this void with their own expertise and opinions. Often these opinions do not fully convey the divergent and complicated feelings of the large and multifaceted population of the DRC. As the DRC is discussed in sound bites, a few dominant narratives emerge. How does the narrative of the Congo get told in Washington? Who gets to speak for Congo?

Speakers:
Laura Seay, Morehouse College and Texas in Africa
Mvemba Dizolele, Stanford University
John Prendergast, The Enough Project (invited)
Kambale Musavuli, Friends of Congo

Day two: Advocacy and the Way Forward
Kenny Auditorium, Nitze Building, 1740 Massachusetts Ave
Panel Discussion: 9:30-11:30am

The DRC presents a complex situation with as many angles as there are stakeholders. In the absence of Congolese voices, stories of the DRC are told by advocacy organizations, NGOs, academics, and the Diaspora. These stories cannot represent the whole, multifaceted reality on the ground, yet they are the basis on which policy makers must rely when deciding on priorities and legislation. Perspectives on the DRC, as they are seen in Washington have had numerous effects in the DRC, both good and bad. Controversial legislation on conflict minerals in Eastern Congo has been said to make living conditions for many people worse while others insist that it has improved the situation for most. The constant focus on rape as a weapon of war in Eastern Congo has dramatically increased services available to survivors but has perverted incentives and prevented women from receiving holistic care. The overall focus on the East has done a great deal to make the DRC into a policy priority, but ignored the failures of Congolese governance that are the root of many of the DRC’s problems. What is the way forward? How can advocacy organizations and all stakeholders work for the best outcomes and avoid unintended negative consequences? Should there be a “Do no harm” policy for advocates on behalf of the DRC?

Speakers:
Adotei Akwei, Amnesty International
Rick Goss, Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC)
Eric Kajemba, Observatoire Gouvernance et Paix (OGP)
Claudine Tsongo, Dynamique de Femmes Juristes

guest post: explaining Burundi

2011-09-19T20:03:00.002-05:00

Today I'm pleased to present a guest post from Cara Jones. Cara is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Florida. Cara is quickly becoming the U.S.-based expert on Burundi; she is one of a very few foreigners who speak Kirundi and has extensive experience in the region conducting research into the behavior of rebel groups and their transitions to governance. Cara weighs in on Sunday's massacre in Burundi:

As reported by the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and elsewhere, at least 36 people were killed in the bar Chez Les Amis Sunday night in Gatumba, Burundi. At around 20:00 local time, gunmen armed with guns, knives and other small arms came in dressed as policemen with the intention “to leave no survivors,” according to one witness. In the wake of the massacre, the largest in recent memory in Burundi, President Pierre Nkurunziza of the ruling CNDD-FDD (a former rebel group turned somewhat authoritarian state) has declared three days of national mourning. The bar’s owner and patrons are said to be CNDD-FDD supporters.

So who is behind the violence? The media and the government of Burundi point the finger, and perhaps rightly, at Agathon Rwasa and his rebel FNL, formerly Palipehutu. This is not the first time the FNL have been accused of committing violence in this undergoverned border town near the DRC. In 2004, 160+ were killed in massacres committed against Congolese Banyamulenge (ethnically considered Tutsi). It certainly seems that this is the handiwork of the group- there have been a number of attacks on bars and murders since elections broke down mid-cycle last year. The opposition parties, including the FNL, protested the results of the communal elections in late May 2010, withdrawing from the subsequent Presidential and parliamentary elections. I was there last year during elections, and, in my estimation, there were at least 60 grenade attacks during the election cycle and an average of 3-4 politically motivated murders a week throughout Burundi, even a year after the final vote.

The CNDD-FDD government sees Rwasa’s FNL (there are other factions, but they are less politically salient and/or violent) as the only real challengers to their regime. The FNL stayed out of negotiations to end the civil war far longer than CNDD-FDD. They remained an active rebel group until the last peace agreement was signed in 2009- although this was not without a four year period of back and forth: disarmament, demobilization, and then returning to violence. By 2010 though, most observers were hopeful that the FNL would participate peacefully in the upcoming election. The FNL in particular contested the May 2010 communal election results, because provinces (Bujumbura Rurale) and parts of Bujumbura (Kamenge and Kinama) that heavily favored FNL showed to be voting CNDD-FDD. Since then, violence has been constant between FNL and CNDD-FDD members, particularly in Bujumbura Rurale, although there has been notable violence in Bubanza and Cibitoke as of late, both provinces which border DRC.

It’s this proximity to Congo that some observers have picked on- the Huffington Post reporting that “Burundi Pub Massacre: Congo Gunmen Kill 36 in Bujumbura Bar “. Most regional observers would know that this headline is, to put it kindly, misleading. The FNL may have some bases in Congo. Like so many other rebels in the immediate region, they take advantage of porous borders, small arms markets, and ungoverned territories in North and South Kivu. But the perpetrators of the violence are, in my estimation, not Congolese. So who is directing the activities of the perpetrators of Sunday’s murders and others in Burundi? Interestingly enough Rwasa left Burundi in August 2010(because of ‘security threats’), with no sign of resurfacing. It has long been suggested by analysts in Burundi that he is in Eastern Congo, and the assumption is that he is calling the shots on these attacks from there.

Other scholars and analysts have also commented on this story- see Rene Lemarchand’s insightful commentary in the New York Times piece - and I tend to agree that the violence comes as result of CNDD-FDD and FNL tensions. But what will this mean for the future of Burundi? This is a serious increase in the intensity of conflict ongoing since the elections, which is worrisome for the fragile post-conflict and seriously poor nation. The CNDD-FDD could decide to crack down harder on suspected rebels and civilians associated with FNL and FNL strongholds, although to date political killings seem to take place at local and individual levels. And the FNL is not an incapable force- this massacre shows their particular capabilities. But it remains to be seen if they can truly threaten the CNDD-FDD regime and incite mass violence. Although the statement is incredibly trite, Burundians are incredibly tired of war and violence and probably unwilling to support a rebel movement unless the CNDD-FDD government ramps up the repression and the economy worsens. The ability to subsist remains much higher on the priority list- although Rene and others have pointed out that the level of unemployment could lead to increased banditry among youth. If Rwasa and FNL could provide material incentives to these youth for rebellion, there could be a viable threat.

If anything, the attacks raise the awareness level of the many internationals, non-governmentals and crisis prevention groups on the ground that ‘ntivyoroshe’- in Kirundi, it’s not easy going here- and we should be paying more attention to the ‘tit-for-tat’ between CNDD-FDD and FNL that no longer fits that categorization.

About the author: Cara Jones is a PhD candidate at the University of Florida. She studies rebel movements and their transitions in post-conflict governance in Burundi, Rwanda and DRC. She is currently writing her dissertation at the University of Rochester and can be reached here.

Into Darkest Austria

2011-09-19T14:31:00.001-05:00

HT: @stephanfaris

9.11

2011-09-11T04:20:00.001-05:00

Calm is the morn without a sound,
calm as to suit a calmer grief,
and only through the faded leaf
the chestnut pattering to the ground;

Calm and deep peace on this high wold,
and on these dews that drench the furze,
and all the silvery gossamers
that twinkle into green and gold;

Calm and still light on yon great plain
that sweeps with all its autumn bowers,
and crowded farms and lessening towers,
to mingle with the bounding main;

Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
these leaves that redden to the fall,
and in my heart, if calm at all,
if any calm, a calm despair;

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
and waves that sway themselves in rest,
and dead calm in that noble breast
which heaves but with the heaving deep.

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H., 11

shameless self-promotion

2011-09-07T17:15:00.003-05:00

Back in May, I got to wondering how the DRC was managing to pull off such massive, successful vaccination campaigns when most other public health initiatives (or, really, any kind of initiatives) there tend to be unsuccessful at best and disasters at worst. Luckily, the kind folks over at UNA-USA's The InterDependent were kind enough to give me space to explore this question. Click over to read what I learned and how we can apply these lessons to other challenging public health situation.

books you should read: Rebel Rulers

2011-09-01T00:15:00.001-05:00

With the NTC taking over in Libya, interest in how rebel movements govern is perhaps at an all-time high. Lucky for all of us, Vassar political scientist and my friend Zachariah Cherian Mampilly has a book on precisely this topic out today. Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life During War is a fascinating exploration of three rebel movements: Sri Lanka's LTTE (aka, the Tamil Tigers), South Sudan's SPLM/A, and DRC's Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD).

I cannot recommend Mampilly's book enough. If you are studying, thinking, and/or formulating policy about insurgency, governance, and state reconstruction, Rebel Rulers is a must-read. Mampilly did insane fieldwork behind rebel lines with all three of the movements during their wars. The book is an incredible work of comparative study and you're not going to find anyone better-informed on how rebels govern anywhere else.

Even better? You can get 20% discount for a limited time by buying the book at the Cornell University Press site. And, yes, there's a Kindle edition available for the e-book fans.

I had the opportunity to ask Zachariah a few questions about his book and its relevance for today's questions about Libya:

TiA: What was the most surprising thing you learned in researching Rebel Rulers ?

Mampilly: As an undergraduate in the late 90's, I was regularly confronted by works on the "collapse" or "failure" of the African state. By the time I arrived at UCLA for graduate school, Paul Collier's work had initiated a boom in scholarship on the criminality of insurgent organizations. The problem with both literatures was that they didn't conform to the reality of what I was witnessing on the ground but were more a fantasy of how the West perceives post-colonial countries, i.e. weak and corrupt governments overtaken by violent criminal warlords.

But on my first trips to to DR Congo, South Sudan, and Sri Lanka in the early 2000s, I was struck by the relative normalcy of towns under insurgent control. Despite the difficult conditions which ebbed and flowed with the rhythm of the conflict, civilians continually tried to return to something resembling their normal lives. Instead of looking to the state to provide support, they turned to a variety of non-state actors and networks to meet their basic needs, sometimes effectively. What I came to realize is that the Hobbesian assumption that only the state can stave off anarchy continues to underlie academic understandings of social and political order. But in many other societies, there are various sources of social order-- religious groups, traditional authorities, NGOs, corporations, armed groups, etc.-- that become especially relevant in times of war. Arguably, these should be the focus of our analysis (versus simply documenting the many ways in which post-colonial states fail to live up to their Western counterparts).

TiA: In the book, you note that rebel governments must consider the needs and positions of civilians as well as their group’s internal divisions and the role of transnational actors. In this respect, what makes one rebel movement more successful than another?

Mampilly: There is a complex interplay between the actions and capacity of rebel leaders and the realities of contemporary battlefields. We've swung from one model that interpreted everything through the ideological orientation of the leadership to a more recent focus on the economic, political and/or geographical conditions that seem to predetermine civil war outcomes. The reality is somewhere in between. Rebel leaders do face a number of constraints initiated by a variety of actors and circumstances beyond their control. But they also make consequential choices.

Take for example the LTTE under Prabhakharan. At several points during the conflict, he seemed to misread the degree the international situation had changed after 9/11 and how this had direct impacts on the viability of the insurgency. Due to restrictions on diaspora fundraising and limits on rebel mobility outside of Sri Lanka, the LTTE leader probably should have accepted an autonomy offer in the early 2000s that would have been celebrated by the Tamil community, especially in contrast to the bloodbath that ended the war (and the Tigers) in 2009. But these calculations can be extraordinarily complex to make, especially since as I describe in the book, rebel leaders are engaged in so many negotiations (violent and non-violent) with so many different actors each operating according to its own logic.

We also shouldn't underestimate the role of chance, personalities, and other seemingly random events that can have determinative impacts on civil war outcomes. Again to take the LTTE, most analysts agree that the military tide turned following the defection of his number 2, Colonel Karuna, along with almost half of the LTTE cadre. If you look back at what happened, Karuna wasn't initially inclined to leave the organization but wanted an audience with Prabhakharan to discuss what most would consider legitimate concerns about the structure of the insurgency. Instead of listening to the concerns of Karuna-- a war hero with deep credibility among cadre especially in the eastern part of the country-- Prabhakharan ordered him killed, directly leading to his defection to the government side.

TiA: In the case of the SPLM, a rebel movement spent the last six years transitioning into the government of an internationally-recognized state. Why was the SPLM successful in this effort while most rebel groups so often fail to achieve this goal? What dangers and difficulties is the South Sudanese government likely to face now that it is fully independent?

Mampilly: This is a question I often get when talking to activists from around the world, but especially Sri Lankan Tamils. Tamils and South Sudanese activists actually met many times during their respective peace talks during the early 2000s in Norway. Indeed, they have long studied and professed sympathy for each other's struggles and strategies. Both communities were facing similar crises (state oppression of a minority community never accepted as an equal part of the nation) and conditions on the ground (long standing insurgencies fighting conventional wars from territory under their control). If you had asked me or many others which insurgency seemed more likely to achieve its goals, based on the capacity of their militaries and those of the incumbents they were fighting, the LTTE seemed more likely to succeed. But we know what happened in both cases. From my perspective, the key difference was American patronage for the South Sudanese struggle which the Sri Lankan Tamils never had. Without it, I doubt the SPLA would be where it is today.

The challenges for the newly independent Government of South Sudan (GoSS) have much to do with the SPLA's governance performance during the war, which was lacking in many ways. Specifically, SPLA administrators working through a body known as the Civil Authority of New Sudan became heavily dependent on religious groups and international NGOs to provide services like education and health, and on traditional authorities to develop a system of justice and ensure social order. As a result, the South Sudanese population became accustomed to looking towards non-state actors to meet their daily needs. If you look at the actual governance performance of GoSS today you can see many of the same dynamics as leaders continue to focus on the admittedly challenging security situation while ignoring basic service provision. As I argue in the book, these patterns of governance can be sticky and will undermine the legitimacy and authority of a new government if not transformed systematically. Unfortunately, thus far, the SPLA has not proven up to the task.

One other thing to think about is what might have happened had the North African revolutions swept through a non-divided Sudan as they did in neighboring Egypt. It is at least possible that instead of two Sudans today, a unified Sudan might have succumbed to the pressures from protesters and begun a process of democratic reform. Ironically, this was more in tune with what the SPLA and its late leader, John Garang, had always called for.

TiA: What does your research tell us about likely outcomes for the success or failure of the NTC in Libya? Based on what we know today, do they strike you as more similar to the RCD-Goma, the SPLM, or the LTTE?

Mampilly: The National Transitional Council in Libya is a somewhat unique case in that it faced much more acute international pressure as a result of fighting a war in an oil rich economy, with NATO support, and against a dictator seemingly designed for cable news networks. Still, they faced many of the same challenges in ensuring a degree of social and political order in Benghazi and other towns that they controlled over the past six months. Reports from rebel held territory were initially discouraging, but over time, rebel leaders recognized the importance of projecting governance competence to the international community. Proving they could rule became an important component of their claim to be the authentic Libyan government and hence worthy of international recognition.

Of the three insurgencies that I studied, the NTC resembles both the RCD in Congo and the SPLA. It resembles the RCD in that the rebellion was initially ill-prepared for the tasks of governance. Like the RCD, the political wing of the NTC only came together after the fighting had already begun, a weakness the RCD was never able to overcome. In addition, both groups faced questions about who was really calling the shots-- the political leadership of the insurgencies or their foreign patrons. However, the NTC shares with the SPLA a close relationship with the Western powers which pressured both groups to improve their civilian governance performance in exchange for tangible rewards. In addition, it appears that as with South Sudan, the new Libyan leaders continue to look to the West for guidance which may bode well for their post-conflict transition.

At the same time, as with the SPLA, its important not to let our contempt for figures like Qaddafi and Sudan's Omar al Bashir to cloud our judgments of their challengers. Throughout its rule in South Sudan, the SPLA faced considerable pressure from both local and international activists concerned about their often brutal treatment of civilians. This was a good thing and led to important changes in its behavior. But following the outbreak of the conflict in Darfur, Western activists in particular were more concerned with demonizing Bashir than scrutinizing the anti-Bashir rebellions. Similarly, in Libya the NTC has not always treated denizens of their territory fairly, a fact often ignored by their advocates. For example, the NTC has continually faced accusations of collective punishment targeted against Black Libyans and sub-Saharan Africans who were falsely presumed to all be mercenaries in Qaddafi's employ. Even after taking power in Tripoli, accusations of black African being rounded up have continued. This partially explains why many sub-Saharan African countries and AU members have been reluctant to recognize the NTC as the sovereign government of Libya. Ultimately, while it did make strategic sense for the rebellion to align with the NATO powers to win the war, the former rebel rulers will need to reconnect with their own neighborhood, particularly south of the Sahara, if they are going to survive. Improving governance performance for all Libyans is a good place to start.

Thanks to Zachariah Mampilly for taking the time to chat with me about his new book, Rebel Rulers. Be sure to get your copy while it's on sale - it is a fascinating read!

now we are six

2011-08-29T08:57:00.002-05:00

Today marks six years of blogging at Texas in Africa. When I started this blog in August 2005 with the goal of keeping in touch with family and friends while conducting dissertation fieldwork in North Kivu, I never would have dreamed where it would end up. Today, Texas in Africa is a thriving community of smart people who bring a wide variety of perspectives to the discussion from points all over the world. For all of you, I am incredibly grateful.

You've probably noticed some changes around here in the last few months, particularly with respect to the pace of posting. As the pressures of the tenure track mount and my responsibilities as an assistant professor grow more significant, I've given up trying to post every day. Taking that pressure off of myself has helped incredibly, and I think the quality of posts has gone up as I've been more focused and truly interested in writing each one. This is a middle way between quitting blogging altogether and maintaining a now-impossible-for-me pace. Thanks for sticking with me.

Of course, there have been a lot of other exciting changes in the last couple of years as well; some of my posts are picked up by the CSM's Africa Monitor and the Guardian's Global Development blog. I'm also occasionally contributing to the Atlantic.com and in a few other places on occasion. Thank-you to the wonderful crop of editors who make me seem a far better writer than I am, and for the incredible opportunity to engage with even more people from around the world.

On a totally unrelated note, this weekend, I came across a big story here in Georgia, where a new law prohibits undocumented immigrants from attending the state's best public universities. These students, the vast majority of whom were brought to the US as small children, are excluded from the opportunities a high-quality public education can provide through no fault of their own. In response to this law, a group of University of Georgia professors have started an informal university that our state's best undocumented students can attend. They have an Amazon.com wishlist of textbooks and supplies to which anyone can donate, and the products are shipped directly to the school. I think this is a fantastic response to an unjust, discriminatory law. If you feel the same way, I hope you'll join me in purchasing a couple of books to help these students out. If you don't feel the same way, I encourage you to donate to a charity more in line with your views. Thanks for sticking around, and here's to another year of Texas in Africa.

this & that

2011-08-26T12:03:00.002-05:00

Where are Gaddafi's Revolutionary Nuns?
Anne-Marie Slaughter on whether the Libyan intervention was really an intervention and what intervention is, exactly.
Louisa Lombard on peacebuilding in the CAR
Kim Dionne has preliminary data from a study of Malawi's protests
Edward R. Carr dismantles an article on conflict and El Nino
Interesting infographic about energy in Africa
South Sudan's first GDP estimate, with a high Gini Coefficient.
Kenyan Higher Ed Minister William Ruto finally gets fired what with his alleged role in fomenting the 2007 election violence and all. Better late than never, I guess.
Ernest Bazanye has written an e-book. I haven't read it yet, but if it's anything like his blog, it's bound to be mighty entertaining.
The results of randomized research within political campaigns - involving Rick Perry.

shameless self-promotion

2011-08-18T09:34:00.003-05:00

African Security Review recently published a special issue on "The Meaning of MONUC," (gated) one year after the DRC peacekeeping mission became MONUSCO. The issue includes several excellent articles as well as a symposium on Severine Autesserre's The Trouble with the Congo featuring critiques by several DRC scholars, including yours truly. The issue is well worth a read if you have access to academic journals, with smart critiques by scholars who regularly spend time in the field and who understand the complexities of peacebuilding in eastern DRC.

links on conflict minerals

2011-08-11T14:31:00.002-05:00

Carol Gallo has a roundup of several recent stories and posts along with analysis of the effects of Dodd-Frank Section 1502.
Jason Stearns evaluates Aronson's op-ed.
Sasha Leshnev responds for Enough in the Huffington Post. I left comments there as "Laura_CentralAfrica" if you're interested.
Global Witness also defends the legislation and makes the case for rapid implementation.
Salil Tripathi defends the intentions of Dodd-Frank on the Poverty Matters blog at the Guardian.

One point most of Section 1502's defenders are making is that Dodd-Frank does not call for any boycott of Congolese minerals. This is true, but it is also true that it is highly unlikely that either the government boycott of last September or the EICC-driven boycott would have happened were it not for the legislation. An unintended consequence can be a direct consequence, and this is such a case.

There must be a better solution for now-unemployed Congolese miners that will enable them to support their families with meaningful employment over the long term. Starting a fund, as Leshnev suggests, will only create dependency and further impede long-term sustainable development in the region. The advocates who pushed for Section 1502 need to take responsibility for all the effects of their efforts, not just the intended ones.

this & that

2011-08-09T00:27:00.001-05:00

"Rape Reporting During War: Why the Numbers Don't Mean What You Think They Do" and analysis from Kate at Wronging Rights
How did Sierra Leone provide free health care to pregnant and lactating women and children under five?
Peacebuilding without Peace in the Central African Republic
"Taxation, Political Accountability, and Foreign Aid: Lessons from Somaliland"
Brett Keller is doing a fantastic job of evaluating the "Machine Gun Preacher" and his insane approach to "helping" in Sudan.

the Dodd-Frank catastrophe

2011-08-08T05:03:00.003-05:00

David Aronson in the New York Times, writing on the effects of Dodd-Frank in eastern DRC:

For locals, however, the law has been a catastrophe. In South Kivu Province, I heard from scores of artisanal miners and small-scale purchasers, who used to make a few dollars a day digging ore out of mountainsides with hand tools. Paltry as it may seem, this income was a lifeline for people in a region that was devastated by 32 years of misrule under the kleptocracy of Mobutu Sese Seko (when the country was known as Zaire) and that is now just beginning to emerge from over a decade of brutal war and internal strife.
The pastor at one church told me that women were giving birth at home because they couldn’t afford the $20 or so for the maternity clinic. Children are dropping out of school because parents can’t pay the fees. Remote mining towns are virtually cut off from the outside world because the planes that once provisioned them no longer land. Most worrying, a crop disease periodically decimates the region’s staple, cassava. Villagers who relied on their mining income to buy food when harvests failed are beginning to go hungry.

Aronson blogs at Congo Resources.

What's so frustrating for people like me is that it was clear to most Congo experts that Dodd-Frank wouldn't play out as designed, but no one listened to us. Everybody who really knows the region - who lived there before, during, and since the wars, who speak the languages, who know local communities - understood that initiatives rarely work as intended in a place as complicated as the DRC and foresaw exactly these sorts of problems. We were vocal about it. And we were ignored.

I have puzzled and debated with many knowledgeable observers for the last few years over how the Enough Project works and how some of the very smart people who work there could come to conclusions that are so off-base. The conclusion I've come to is that information that comes into that organization is almost always filtered through the lens of John Prendergast's initial opinions. Prendergast decided early on that the story in the Congo was one about fighting primarily driven by resource extraction, and any information that contradicted that story had to be made to fit the pre-determined narrative. I don't have any way of proving that this is true, but I think it's fair to say that this is the consensus opinion about how Enough works by people who closely observe the organization. Feel free to disagree in the comments if you'd like.

If true, that's a terrible way to do advocacy. What's even more frustrating is that members of Congress like Jim McDermott and their staffs seem to have taken Enough's word at face value, going so far as to let the advocacy organization choose most of the witnesses at hearings on the Dodd-Frank measure, which meant that any dissenting voices - Congolese or American - went mostly unheard.

That's a terrible way to develop legislation. I realize that members of Congressional staffs are extremely busy dealing with hundreds of issues every day and that it saves time to let an advocacy organization plan most of the details of a hearing on one obscure topic, but there need to be a wider variety of voices on questions involving Africa - or any topic, for that matter. At the very least, I think it's reasonable to expect that people testifying before Congress on DRC actually speak French and spend regular, extended periods of time there.

It is beyond frustrating to have watched this completely avoidable catastrophe unfold when it was so evident that Enough has misread the situation in DRC and that the legislators who listened to them were going to unintentionally create the disaster Aronson describes.

At this point, I don't know what we do to help the families whose lives have been destroyed by Dodd-Frank. But it's time to start that conversation, and to have another on how we can avoid making these mistakes in the future. The Congolese deserve better.

the DRC minerals mess

2011-08-04T18:13:00.004-05:00

Jason Stearns has a must-read interview with Congolese civil society leader and mining expert Eric Kajemba on the effects of the Dodd-Frank Act, Enough and Global Witness, and the de facto ban on Congolese minerals that has developed as a result of their efforts. Kajemba:

The motivation behind the law is very good - to impose transparency. But it the implementation has been the problem. We are not in a country with a functioning government, you cannot just assume that certification and due diligence can spring up overnight. Plus, there were efforts under way already by other actors to impose transparency; ironically, the Dodd-Frank law slowed these efforts down, as they were financed by the minerals trade

One of the most frightening effects of the Dodd-Frank legislation is the chaos that it has created in sectors of the economy not at all related to the conflict mineral trade. Kajemba:

But there have been other consequences as well, for example, with other aspects of the local economy. For example, in places like Shabunda, people relied on planes to bring them goods and merchandise - rice, sugar, and so on. Those same planes then left with minerals back to Bukavu. But now that the planes cannot transport minerals [due to the export ban and embargo] they don't fly there with goods any more. So the impact has been huge in many areas.

Aside from Congolese who now have no access to critical staples like rice and sugar, Dodd-Frank has also created a host of problems in DRC's legitimate mining sector - non-militarized mines in non-conflict areas. Mark Drajem, Jessie Hamilton, and Michael Kavanaugh write in Business Week:

Loch traveled with Katanga’s local mining minister to certify that tantalum from the mine that Motorola Solutions, a maker of communications equipment for governments and businesses, wants to purchase was in no way connected to the Congo’s armed conflict. Production at the mine had all but stopped, idling workers who dig for ore with hand tools. “This was a non-conflict mine in a non-conflict area, but it was being harmed by the U.S. legislation,” Loch says.

They further note that, "Congolese mineral exports are down 90 percent due to a new rule requiring U.S. companies to avoid indirectly financing rebel groups."

John Prendergast, The Enough Project, and Global Witness are directly responsible for this completely predictable havoc, as are the American legislators and industry personnel who took their testimony as gospel, let them write section 1502 of the legislation, and ignored dissenting voices in the debate over the minerals. We now have a situation in which the already tenuous economy of the eastern DRC is further deteriorating. Ordinary Congolese are suffering far more than the militias at whom this legislation was targeted. And I, for one, would like to know what the people who caused this problem are going to do about it.

helping with the famine

2011-08-02T11:14:00.003-05:00

Owen Barder has a great post on the seriousness of the famine in the Horn of Africa, which, by all accounts, will get much worse before it gets better, including a discussion of the political roots of the crisis. He also links to ways people in the UK and in the US can donate. Siena Antsis notes that Canadian citizens can have their donations matched by the Canadian government and provides details here.

We can all afford to skip a few meals out, a new outfit, or a month's worth of coffees in order to have the money to help out in this situation. I hope you'll choose to do so as well.

a recommendation for monday

2011-08-01T05:54:00.003-05:00

Do you follow the African Arguments blog? If not, you should subscribe. A joint project of the Royal African Society and the Social Science Resource Council, African Arguments has quickly become one of my go-to references for high-quality, in-depth analysis of African politics and economics. What I particularly like about the blog is that it features local voices - especially local journalists and academics - whenever possible. It also features analysis by foreign academics with years of experience in the countries about which they write.

I also like African Arguments because it runs features you won't see anywhere else on topics that are typically missed by the Western press. Here are a few recent favorites that emphasize that point. All are well worth your time:

An excellent backgrounder on Somalia's al-Shabaab.
A discussion of the political roots of the Somalia famine.
What African state hosts more foreign militaries than any other, including troops from the US, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, China, the EU, and Japan? If you didn't guess Djibouti, click on over to learn more about this under-studied country here.
What will Cameroon look like after Paul Biya?
A novel discussion of the potential effects of the Dodd-Frank Act's transparency requirements in Equatorial Guinea's oil sector.
Is Swaziland facing a political, economic, and well-being crisis?

this & that

2011-07-27T01:30:00.000-05:00

More Altitude has a must-read post on access and humanitarian aid in Somalia.
Gourevitch on Rwanda's cycling team.
Edward R. Carr on the difference between famine and drought - and why it matters.
How a group of Louisiana monks beat the local funeral racket.

today on congo

2011-07-26T00:06:00.000-05:00

If I could be anywhere other than where I am this morning, I'd be at Voices from the Congo: the Road Ahead. Hosted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the Eastern Congo Initiative at the USHMM (RSVP required), the event features a fantastic lineup of speakers on human rights and the upcoming elections in the DRC.

Not in DC or didn't get to RSVP in time? Never fear - the USHMM will be live-streaming the event on their website. It starts at 9:30am and lasts until noon.

on malawi

2011-07-25T00:03:00.002-05:00

Last week's 20 July protests in Malawi were met with a violent response from the country's police force, leading to 19 deaths and to President Bingu wa Mutharika to deploy the army to restore calm and openly threaten to "smoke out" the protest leaders if they continued. The horrible famine in the Horn of Africa and the tragic events in Norway have largely eclipsed this story, but it's one that needs telling in the international press in order to prevent more deaths and ensure that democracy remains strong in Malawi.

If you're looking for more resources to help tell this story, Global Voices' Steve Sharra wrote an excellent backgrounder that's available here. Malawian scholar Paul Zeleza provides excellent analysis of the politics behind the crisis here. Texas A&M political scientist and Malawi politics expert Kim Yi Dionne is keeping close tabs on events there; I highly recommend following her blog, Haba na Haba, especially the following posts:

A chronology of events on 20 July
A list of Twitter users and other sources of information on the protests
Resources from Malawi

On Friday, I was scheduled to be on the BBC's World Have Your Say 1pm show to discuss the famine in the Horn and piracy in Somalia. The topic was changed to the Malawi at the last minute, and given that it was 5:45 in the morning in Professor Dionne's time zone and therefore too early to call to get her to do it :), I did a quick read-up on the latest and jumped in on the show. You can listen to it here; it's worth listening to for the comments of Malawian journalists, protesters, and civil society leaders far more than for anything I had to add. It was a great treat to be on the show and I was so moved by the courage of the civil society leader and protester who spoke to the world about their country's troubles, thereby putting themselves at great risk.

let's not arm south sudan

2011-07-22T12:45:00.003-05:00

@laurenist has already said pretty much everything I have to say about Prendergast's latest idea for South Sudan: arming them with air defense systems. This sounds great until you remember that the South Sudanese air force isn't trained well enough to use air defense systems, the region is already super-saturated with arms, and, oh, yeah, arming the South might spook the North into going to war by creating a spiraling security dilemma. As Aly Verjee notes, "this is simply a bad idea."

David Sullivan, a smart guy who has unenviable task of defending Prendergast's ideas, argues that providing South Sudan with air defense systems is the least-bad of several bad options. I disagree, primarily because we do not have any guarantees about how the new South Sudan army will behave now that it is no longer a rebel movement. The population of South Sudan was united behind the idea of independence, but they are far from united in identifying with the SPLM and its army. As the euphoria of independence wears off and disappointments arise as unrealistic expectations go unmet, I fully expect to see healthy, democratic political fracturing in the new state. I hope that we will see more peaceful ways for South Sudanese to express disagreement; as Naomi Pendle notes, for the moment, there are no serious contenders. We are already seeing increased activity from the "renegade militias," which, as Jens Pederson notes, are challenging the SPLM government's credibility.

If we choose to provide these defense systems, we are taking sides not only with South Sudan, but also implicitly with one political party. What guarantees do we have that any kind of training we provide the South Sudanese military will not be used against the renegade militias, or against civilians perceived to support them? Yes, these are air defense systems we're talking about, but by providing them, we free up resources with which the Sudanese army can buy other weapons. I doubt they'll invest in rubber bullets.

Sullivan acknowledges that the training issue is a big one, and that even were we to provide air defense systems, that does nothing to help address these problems in the short term as it will take an extended period of time to properly train troops to use them. Could we not say the same of politics and diplomacy, which is far more likely to produce a lasting peace? The clear issues not resolved by the CPA - the status of the borders and of Abyei - are not going to be solved on the battlefield. It would be far preferable to focus our efforts and finances on hammering out a workable solution to the status of Abyei and the final demarcation of borders than to spend months or years on end training the South Sudan army in the use of weapons systems they may or may not need.

Finally, there's the question of the long term. While we can consider Juba a reliable ally for now, we don't know what will happen in the future. If there's one lesson we can learn from US engagement in Africa over the past fifty years, it's that putting more weapons into a situation always backfires against us, and, more importantly, against innocent civilians in the region. South Sudan is a prime example of this problem; go to a weapons dealer and you'll find US and Soviet-made weapons shipped into Somalia and Ethiopia during the Ogaden War, or perhaps a Kalishnakov that's made its way from Angola where it was used to fight South Africans before playing a role in the Congo wars. Or you could check the tank dumps outside Asmara and Addis Ababa, where larger weaponry sit in their graves after terrorizing countless civilians. The problem with giving weapons to South Sudan is that we can't guarantee how those weapons will be used over the short or the long term.

If we cannot know that the weapons we provide 1) will be used properly; 2) will not be used against civilian targets, and 3) will not be used against our allies or us, what then are we to do? I'd suggest another less-than-ideal alternative: nothing, at least nothing militarily. Instead, we should focus our efforts on diplomacy and politics, recognizing that two countries that managed to separate peacefully have a mutual interest in having stable borders and not being at war with one another.

Photo: Screen capture from colbertnation.com See Bored in Post-Conflict for thoughts on Prendergast's Colbert Report appearance.

in which I run out of patience over conflict minerals

2011-07-17T21:08:00.004-05:00

From the Wall Street Journal's editorial page (gated), a piece on the unintended consequences of the Dodd-Frank conflict minerals provisions:

The highest price is being paid in central Africa, where millions of people, and 16% of the Congo's population, are dependent on small-time digging. By all accounts most of the money from central African mining goes to these artisanal miners. Soldiers and rebels do pocket some of the proceeds, and that's a depressing reality.
But mineral operations also provide the local population with centers of commerce, with cash to pay for supplies and workers and easily traded goods. As money from the mines becomes increasingly scarce, Congo's warlords have moved on to targeting the banana trade. Perhaps conflict-free bananas will be the next object of activist enthusiasm.
Meanwhile, the butchery continues, with recent reports of government troops raping more than 100 women and children over a three-day spree in the Congo's South Kivu region. If all the money from minerals dries up, these killers will not shy from even more atrocious means to fund their ambitions. As for Western policy makers, Section 1502 is a useful lesson in how well-meaning attempts to "do something" in Africa unintentionally harm the innocent without touching the guilty.

I'm not sure where the WSJ got the 16% figure on the percentage of Congolese who depend on the mineral trade (certainly that would include people working in the non-conflict-affected commercial mines in Katanga and it is less likely that they are being so strongly affected by the ban) or whether it is accurate, but certainly the editorial team's conclusion is correct. Because it is almost impossible to verify whether minerals sourced from the DRC or its neighbors are truly conflict-free, electronics companies now have a strong incentive to source minerals elsewhere, leaving Congolese miners unemployed. While the advocates behind this provision claim to have never intended to create a boycott on Congolese minerals, their poor understanding of the near-impossibility of creating a reliable tracing scheme in a place where almost every public official can be bribed (not to mention that they don't understand the real drivers of conflict) means that there is now in place a de facto boycott on minerals from the conflict zones.

Moreover, cutting off demand for Congolese minerals on international markets does absolutely nothing to stop violence against civilians and only makes life for many civilians worse by leaving them with no viable means of financially supporting themselves or their families.

This was a completely predicable result and one that speaks to the irresponsibility of advocates who identified a solution without first really understanding the problems the region faces. The only question in my mind is why smart lawmakers like Representative Jim McDermott and reputable companies like HP continue to take advice from advocates who have very limited experience in the eastern Congo, don't speak French, and push policies that reflect a poor understanding the dynamics of conflict in the region. By pursuing policies that leave formerly employed miners out of work, they have actually made life worse for Congolese who live in the mining regions while doing almost nothing to substantially help to improve the situation. And it is not at all clear what anyone is doing or will do to help them pick up the pieces.

on ethics and writing about rape

2011-07-12T15:39:00.003-05:00

Amanda has a nice post over at Wronging Rights analyzing the latest in the Mac McClelland saga, which involves allegations regarding the lack of informed consent from the woman whose rape she tweeted several months back and a bunch of she said/she said back-and-forth with Mother Jones editors (see the comments section in that article).

I have no way of knowing what actually happened in this particular situation, but I expect it involved a lot of confusion, both linguistic/translation-related and otherwise. From my point of view, the basic problem goes back to the question of whether someone who has very recently suffered serious trauma can ever be capable of giving informed consent. I can't imagine what it is like to be raped in a Haitian camp for the displaced, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be thinking straight had it just happened to me. Add to that the victim's possible unfamiliarity with what Twitter is or what it means to be written about in the international media - not to mention that saying "yes" to McClelland may well have meant an easier, cheaper, quicker ride to the hospital - and there's just a load of issues here.

So. A few thoughts for researchers and reporters dealing with victims of violent trauma. First, researchers, this is why we have IRB's. When your interview subjects are vulnerable and may not be capable of making a well-informed decision about speaking with you, it is your responsibility to think through the implications of their decision. You may need to decide not to use information EVEN IF IT IS GIVEN if you or your IRB suspect that using that information would further endanger or traumatize a subject. It may make your research more challenging to leave that evidence out, but your theory is not more important than another person's health and safety. And if it's a good theory, you should be able to find evidence elsewhere.

Second, as Chris Blattman points out, you should not be interviewing victims of violent trauma unless you are specifically trained to do so. Seriously:

This would be a mere annoyance for the people affected by war if it weren’t also potentially hazardous. No one should consider interviewing victims of rape and violence, former child soldiers, or other potentially traumatized populations without psychological expertise and the backing of an organization that can provide services for the neediest. People are hardy, and the risk of re-traumatizing someone small, but not zero.

If you go out and interview people without training and institutional backing, you risk making their lives worse. It's that simple.

Journalists play by different rules and don't have IRB's, but they do have editors, and in my view, those editors should be upholding the highest possible ethical standards when it comes to reporting on victims of violence. Again, just because a reporter gets juicy information doesn't mean it needs to be published. Jina Moore's thoughts on the original live-tweeting story are well worth re-reading here, as is a regular re-reading of the SPJ Code of Ethics - especially the section on minimizing harm and not using real names.

I think we can do better in the ways that we report on and research the effects of violence on vulnerable people. As Amanda points out, claiming to be "voices for the voiceless" is untenable in this day and age. People can speak for themselves, and, more importantly, can be trusted to determine when they don't want their stories publicly told. We owe it to anyone who has experienced trauma to let them make real decisions, in their own time and ways. And we can do better.

while we were out

2011-07-11T12:00:00.002-05:00

I've been on vacation. While I was out, South Sudan became independent (Oyee!), The Kristof wrote a mind-bogglingly stupid and stereotypical piece on his Africa trip, Andrea Bohnstedt shredded his analysis in a way it deserved to be ripped to pieces, controversy erupted over whether Mac McClelland really got informed consent from the raped woman whose experiences she live tweetedv (read the comments for part of the debate among people who are involved), and Elizabeth Allen published a smart piece on US-Ugandan relations.

A bunch of really cool people are gathering for a Tweetup in New York City this Wednesday evening, and you should join us.

Oh, and I saw the space shuttle Atlantis launch for the final time. It was incredible. See above.

guest post: Kate Morris of Falling Whistles

2011-06-24T00:00:00.002-05:00

Today I'm pleased to present a guest post from Kate Morris of Falling Whistles. Kate responds to my critique of her New York Post op-ed from last weekend:

Laura, first let me say that it’s a pleasure to hash this out on your digital turf. Thanks for the opportunity to respond.

I believe it’s significant that Sec. Clinton has been committed to funding SGBV treatment and prevention/rights education/legal access programs. Falling Whistles believes long term solutions in Congo will come from the Congolese people. This is why we partner with local leaders in the Kivus who are working toward solutions. But this isn’t enough. At the end of the day, aid money doesn’t fix the root causes of SGBV. This is why we also engage in advocacy and are pushing for more effective diplomacy from the US State Department.

Sec. Clinton may be funding good programs, but she is missing critical opportunities on the diplomacy front. I criticized her Congo policy because she is only using half of the tools in her arsenal. It will take painful reforms of the security sector, justice sector and electoral processes to address the governance problems that create the conditions for rampant SGBV. But governance reforms won’t happen in DRC without assertive external pressure and an empowered civil society. Thus far, the State Department doesn’t seem interested in the type of assertive diplomacy that’s required, especially during this election year.

This year, we’ve seen the State Department choose inaction when confronted with governance-related shenanigans in Kinshasa, precisely when the Great Lakes team should have exercised their budgetary and political leverage. For example, in January, President Kabila’s political party rammed through a sweeping set of constitutional amendments that were highly troubling. Presidential elections were reduced to a one-round vote (with no requirement that a winner secure a simple majority) and the independence of the judiciary and the provinces was curtailed. Under the current constitution, the president can fire governors at will. The State Department’s response to this power grab was muted, to say the least.

In general, the State Department’s work in Congo is characterized by competing agendas and habitual stovepiping. Even the Africa Bureau’s org chart is a mess, as David Sullivan explained recently, leaving Congo on the desks of 3 separate deputy assistant secretaries. An envoy isn't a silver bullet … but a simple rearranging of the deck chairs isn’t likely to fix the problem, either.

What an envoy could do is make substantial steps toward governance reform, and help ensure the legitimacy of this year’s elections. Records of U.S. envoys like Mitchell and Holbrooke suggest that there is plenty they can accomplish that lies beyond the scope of regional ambassadors, whose main function is to preserve good relations with the host country. Even Gration’s role in Sudan suggests that envoys make the difference between stalemate and forward motion. Although Darfur activists were disappointed by his lack of focus on the western region, and Gration’s unorthodox tactics got him into trouble stateside, it’s fair to credit his aggressive shuttle diplomacy with the successful secession referendum in the south earlier this year.

Given what’s at stake this election year, it’s important that Sec. Clinton takes the reigns to deliver a Great Lakes diplomacy team that has the guts to pursue long-overdue governance reforms. If she doesn’t, we’ll likely see shoddy elections in November, followed by unrest and continued state failure.

guest post: gender and sexual violence in the DRC

2011-06-23T00:12:00.002-05:00

Today I'm pleased to present a guest post from Serena Cruz and Rosan Smits, authors of a new policy brief on sexual violence in the DR Congo for the Clingendael Conflict Research Unit. They argue that effectiveness in the fight against SGBV in the Congo requires a better understanding of the gender dimensions of the problem:

Current efforts of the international community to combat rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are often not critically responsive to the gender needs of men and women in the larger society. As a result, this can put a strain on the effectiveness of internationally supported programs targeting sexual violence. While this provocative claim may ruffle a few feathers, support can be drawn from research in the DRC that spanned almost six months.

Reflecting on this period of research and what we anticipated to find, it is not surprising we came the conclusions we did. Although, the issue of sexual violence has rightly been on the international agenda for several years, this ongoing attention has disproportionately hyped rape as a stand-alone effect from the war in the DRC. Even before getting to the ground, our intuition about ‘hyping’ was front and center. That is, we were conscious that when hyping occurs there is often little room for nuanced responses to overarching issues. Often, the greater the hype the less chances there are to address complicated and frequently hidden or ignored sub-problems. In the case of our research, our assumptions were founded. Yet, documenting this process as well as sharing our frustrations does little to address the problem. Instead, we believe it behooves us to not only put forth our concerns, but to also share recommendations about how to overcome this particular instance of the ‘hype’ effect.

In an effort to create a nuanced understanding of the issues related to sexual violence in the DRC, we developed a policy brief which can be found at the Clingendael Conflict Research Unit website. However, in this space we want to highlight our main findings and recommendations, which we believe offer insights about how to strengthen programmatic responses to the issue of sexual violence in the DRC context.

Our overarching conclusion is that sexual violence in DRC is gendered. Not only is this violence gendered in how it is performed, but also in how it can be fought against. Prevailing over gender related violence means dismantling the ongoing tensions between men and women related to prescribed gender norms, roles, and identities. In doing so, it is possible to achieve a gendered environment whereby women and man are mutually co-empowered. For policies, which support programs on the ground, this means not only providing direct assistance to survivors of rape, but also concurrently supporting the development of beneficial gender norms, roles, and identities of men and women in a (post-)war DRC.

We believe our research shows that in order to improve effectiveness in combating rape, the international community should address gender-related root causes of sexual violence by accounting for the narrative that describes rape in Eastern DRC; programmatic implications that indirectly maintain competition among women and men; and the (lack of) sensitivity in the international debate around the issue of sexual violence in the DRC.

In making these claims it helps to understand that first, gender-based violence is not only war-inspired, but also community-centered. Therefore, it is necessary to advance beyond the ‘rape as a weapon of war’ narrative and promote a more complex understanding of the gender-dimensions of sexual violence. Central to this is the notion that men and women’s sense of power is deeply connected to how gender is understood and enacted. As a result, the primary focus on assisting victims of sexual violence and punishing perpetrators should be complemented with a programmatic goal to transform gender norms through co-empowerment strategies.

Second, this understanding will have programmatic implications. In short, all programmatic pillars for combating sexual violence in DRC need to be urgently reoriented to incorporate opportunities for men and women to address ongoing values underpinning men and women’s roles. This will have consequences for how medical and psycho-social support strategies are designed; how women and men’s empowerment efforts can be further developed; how justice sector reform can be linked to gender-transformative actions on an individual and community level; and finally, how security sector reform strategies can be made more effective in combating sexual violence.

Last but not least, international political and public awareness of the gendered dynamics around rape is woefully limited. As a result, the occurrence of rape in DRC is framed as a consequence of war. Well, the bad news is that, sadly, rape is not only war-related. In order to allow for a more nuanced and comprehensive response to the gender crisis in the DRC we all have homework to do. This means mobilizing critically so as to extend the current understanding of the complexities of violence to those in charge of decision-making at the capital level.

By doing so we are responding to the question of whether or not the problem of sexual violence should be prioritized in the future. Our answer is a resounding “Yes, absolutely!” As for how can this happen? We believe the public must pressure donor governments about how to qualitatively support men and women in the DRC who are actively engaging in transforming oppressive gender norms. While this first step is ripe for moans and groans, it sure beats another overly planned tear jerking visit to a rape center, as well as considering that the public might have seen enough rape survivors (re)victimized by cameras, slogans, and incomplete measures to address the issue of sexual violence in the DRC.

"where the police, roads, and navy are maintained by rational self-interest"

2011-06-22T19:18:00.001-05:00

Hillary Clinton and the limits of US influence in Congo

2011-06-22T10:20:00.001-05:00

Kate Morris of Falling Whistles published a very critical opinion piece in the New York Post over the weekend. In it, she argues that US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has broken her promises to Congolese women:

In 2009, on her first trip to Africa as the boss at State, Clinton was deeply affected by the severity of gender-based violence. Rape is often employed to humiliate and control populations in eastern Congo, the site of a deadly 16-year war involving armies of up to nine nations and another 30 rebel factions.

She left Congo in 2009 vowing to prioritize the plight of Congolese women -- but has since delivered next to nothing.

Morris goes on to argue that Clinton should show stronger support for the appointment of a special envoy for the DRC, a position she supported as a Senator and co-sponsor (with President Obama) of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act in 2005. She concludes:

Clinton has one of the few positions that allows her to act on that 2005 bill and put someone on the ground capable of doing something for Congo's women. Instead, she has chosen the road of false promises. Now, you'll know whom to thank when violence flares in Congo anew.

Falling Whistles, along with many other Congo advocacy groups, is particularly focused on this question of a special envoy right now. While most acknowledge that it will not solve all the country's problems overnight, there is widespread belief that having a point person to coordinate all US government activities relating to the DRC would be very helpful.

This seems pretty non-controversial to me, but it's also pretty clear from the signals the White House and State Department have sent that there will not be a special envoy appointed to the DRC this year.

What is unclear, however, is whether a special envoy would actually make much of a difference. One of the key points in Rebecca Hamilton's Fighting for Darfur is that activists in that situation spent a great deal of time working to get a special envoy appointed, but that their success in doing so did not translate into the solutions they had hoped to achieve. Ultimately, US influence over Sudan is limited, and the presence of a special envoy was not as influential as most activists had hoped. The earliest special envoys found it particularly difficult to coordinate the various agency initiatives and programs, not to mention the wide variety of opinions about what to prioritize regarding Sudan found within the US government.

I suspect the same is true in the DRC case. While the US has more leverage in Congo than it does in Sudan, and while better coordination among departments and agencies would be wonderful, ultimately, the Congo's problems have to be addressed by the Congolese. We can use pressure - especially as regards the portion of the DRC budget that we fund - but it is unclear whether such a message would be taken any more seriously if delivered by a special envoy than it would if delivered by the ambassador we already have in place. We have learned this lesson since 2005 when the original legislation was passed - and it's possible that both the President and the Secretary have modified their thinking since that time.

As for Morris' other arguments, I am not convinced that attacking Clinton's record on assistance to Congolese women - which is far stronger than that of any of her predecessors - is the most productive way to move this conversation forward. Contrary to Morris's claim, Clinton actually has delivered on almost all of the promises she made on her 2009 (although some of the dumber ideas seem to have been mercifully modified with that money was directed to more productive pursuits). As of April, the US now has a comprehensive strategy for addressing Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV). The State Department and USAID fund a huge range of programs aimed at addressing almost every aspect of the SGBV problem in Congo, from health care to education about women's rights to strengthening the legal system. These monies include the $17 million Secretary Clinton promised on her Goma visit. In a time when foreign aid budgets are being drastically cut across the board, Clinton and Congress did a good job in ensuring that this money stayed allocated to help the Congolese.

Is US policy toward the Congo as good as it could be, and are we giving enough to combat the country's problems? No. But it is unfair to blame Secretary Clinton "when violence flares in Congo anew," or to criticize her for not keeping her promises, particularly when she did what she said she would do. Moreover, the US only has so much influence in a country whose problems are largely driven by local conflict, corruption, and weak governance. Rather than being consumed by the desire for a special envoy to be appointed, advocates might be more productive in pushing for better use of US leverage over the DRC budget, more training and professionalization of the FARDC by AFRICOM, and strengthening the capacity of the Congolese legal system in all sectors, not just legal services for SGBV victims. In doing so, we will have a much better chance of reaching the goal that policy makers, activists, and scholars all share: stabilizing the Congo so that its people can live healthy and prosperous lives.

Kate Morris will be responding to my critique with a guest post here in the upcoming days. Watch this space!

your tax dollars at work

2011-06-21T15:09:00.002-05:00

I'm quoted in this Atlantic story by Armin Rosen, who found that the US government sponsored the visit of a Rwandan military official who is wanted on war crimes charges in Spain.

In late May, a handful of modestly sourced news accounts, few of them in English, reported that a Rwandan military official had been arrested in the United States, possibly even in Washington, DC, for alleged war crimes committed during the 1990s -- only to re-appear in his home country a few days later. The truth of what happened would turn out to be far more complicated and surprising. An investigation by TheAtlantic.com reveals that the Rwandan official, who is currently under international indictment for the suspected killing of Spanish non-government organization (NGO) employees in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, visited a U.S. military facility while on official business for the Rwandan government, and with the specific permission of the U.S. government. Though it's still unclear whether he was actually arrested or just briefly detained while entering the United States, the case exposes the complexity of a U.S.-Rwandan relationship in which human rights and strategic interests are coming into increasing conflict. It also underscores how little reach international law has within U.S. borders, at times compromising the possibility of bringing suspected war criminals to justice.

Rosen pulled off quite a feat of investigative journalism with this one; it's well worth your time to read.

Sudan past the brink

2011-06-20T11:57:00.003-05:00

The situation in Sudan is, to put it mildly, not good. While Khartoum and Juba came to an agreement on temporary status for Abyei earlier today (full text here), increasingly alarming reports from South Kordofan and its Nuba Mountains suggest that the situation will get much, much worse before it improves. UNOCHA's daily reports on the situation there suggest that a targeted campaign against the Nuba is being carried out. It is not an exaggeration to say that what is happening in Sudan today could eclipse the scale of the humanitarian tragedies in Syria, Yemen, and Libya.

Here is some of the best reporting and analysis I've seen on the situation in recent days. Please feel free to add other links and suggestions in the comments.

Julie Flint should be your go-to source on all things North-South Sudan. She knows the region incredibly well. Check out her analysis of the North's fight against the Nuba here.
The Pulitzer Center's Rebecca Hamilton presents an alarming photograph from South Kordofan. She also notes the importance of understanding this fighting from Khartoum's perspective, and that the North-South split has serious - and poorly understood - implications for Khartoum's legitimacy. Finally, Hamilton covers the horrifying situation that has unfolded in Abyei in recent weeks.
Need a solid backgrounder on the issues? IKV Pax Christi published an excellent and prescient report on the Nuba Mountains in January. Entitled "The Nuba Mountains: Central to Sudan's Stability," it is well worth the read.
As always, the SSRC/RAS blog Making Sense of Sudan is providing excellent updates, analysis, and perspectives. Naomi Pendle has "A Letter from Warrap State," Charlie Clements analyzes Abyei, and Ahmed Hassan has on-the-ground perspective from South Kordofan.

AGOA 2011 and the Young Africa Business Trust

2011-06-10T12:22:00.002-05:00

Today I'm pleased to present a guest post from Jessica Achberger. Jessica is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Texas at Austin. She is conducting dissertation field research in Zambia and had the opportunity to attend several events for the AGOA forum this week in Lusaka. Here, she tells us about the Young Africa Business Trust video forum:

Many of you who read this blog are aware that this week in Lusaka, Zambia marked the tenth annual African Growth and Opportunity Act Forum, and therefore I will not bore you with the details of AGOA or this forum in particular. Rather, I want to share with you a unique story of a group at the conference that will not be mentioned on BBC or written about in The New York Times, but nonetheless is doing very important work at the forum and beyond the conversations this week.

On Tuesday I had the privilege of attending the pre-AGOA video forum of the Young Africa Business Trust (YafBT) at the World Bank Zambia country offices, which was simultaneously held at offices in Nairobi, Kenya; Abuja, Nigeria, Johannesburg, South Africa; and Washington D.C, as well as being webcast to the rest of the world. The YafBT held this video conference in order to prepare for what was to be the first time that the youth of Africa were given a voice and a platform as a group in AGOA.

The YafBT is a relatively new group, born out of the November 2010 conference Strengthening Responsible Business and Governance in Africa held in Brussels, Belgium. At the conference, the Africa Responsible Business Network (AfRBN), among other international governmental and business associations, founded the YafBT. Both the YafBT and the AfRBN are networking platforms for African business professionals, focusing on the promotion of responsible business and governance, particularly job creation though sustainable economic development.

The meeting on Tuesday was engaging and fruitful, with all countries participating in developing the platform for the larger forum. I encourage you to check out the results of the conversations, and the continuing discussions, on their website. You are also encouraged to participate in the YafBT’s growth and vision, no matter what your age. As the Tanzanian coordinator Modesta Lilian Mahiga put it, “Anyone that says ‘I will’ rather than ‘I wish’ is a young person to us.”

And it is clear that the youth in African business are already hard at work across the continent. I met many young entrepreneurs with innovative business models and already evident success. Yet, as Zambian coordinator Humphrey Mulemba emphasized, one of the key components involves leveling the playing field for young business leaders though initiatives such as mentorship programs and the creation of industry specific support systems.

This year at AGOA the focus has been on the African Women Entrepreneurship Program, and it is clear that women are fully apart of the larger AGOA agenda with very fruitful results. What the YafBT is proving this year, and hopefully further in years to come, is that it is time for youth to get the same recognition in Africa. Over 70% of Africa is under 34 years of age and it is not only crucial but rather essential that this population is developed and given a voice in the international arena.

Thank you again to Texas in Africa for allowing me the chance to post on such a great forum for discussions on Africa.

elsewhere...

2011-06-01T13:20:00.000-05:00

I have a guest post up over on African Arguments' Making Sense of Sudan blog today. Would love to hear your thoughts!

this week

2011-05-31T12:20:00.002-05:00

I'm moderating this week's Great Lakes Policy Forum, Thursday morning at 9:30 at USIP. Here's the announcement:

2011 is a year of high stakes in the DRC. MONUSCO is due for renewal by the end of June and elections are due to be held before the end of the year. Meanwhile, a new report has documented sexual violence in the DRC is occurring at much higher rates than previously reported and is less concentrated in the Kivus and other conflict affected areas. With human security at such low levels and elections preparations so far behind, recent reports state that the Congo could face renewed political crisis. What are the underlying reasons for these problems and how should the United States and the international community respond to such high stakes in the DRC?

Speakers

Joshua Marks
Central Africa Program Officer, National Endowment for Democracy

Tia Palermo
Assistant Professor, Stony Brook University

These are fantastic speakers and it should be a great event - hope to see you there!

Is rape in the Congo a weapon of war?

2011-05-24T10:15:00.002-05:00

I have a new piece on rape in the Congo up over at the Atlantic. In the piece, I discuss new pieces of research that challenge some of the prevailing narratives about rape and war in the DRC.

Darfur & incomplete understanding

2011-05-19T00:00:00.001-05:00

This is the second in a series of posts for Fighting for Darfur author Rebecca Hamilton, who is working on a discussion guide for the book. Weight in with your answer below.

A mass movement approach to atrocity prevention must, by definition, bring in people who do not have a background with the history of the country for whose people they are being encouraged to advocate for. In Fighting for Darfur, advocacy movement leader, Sam Bell says “Looking back, I wish ‘2005 Sam’ had been more inquisitive about all of Sudan’s challenges, and not just the ones labeled ‘genocide’.” How did the lack of understanding about all of Sudan’s challenges impact the way the Darfur activists framed the crisis and the solutions they advocated for? How might this apply to other situations beyond Sudan that citizens are getting involved with?

let's meet!

2011-05-18T13:56:00.002-05:00

I'm going to be in DC and New York in the next couple of months and would love to meet Texas in Africa readers there. To that ends, we've organized two tweetups. Please RSVP at the links below so we know how many to expect

DC - Thursday, June 2, 6pm at Science Club DC. RSVP here.
New York - Wednesday, July 13, 6pm at Patrick Conway's Pub. RSVP here. Thanks to Ian Thorpe for organizing!

why rape?

2011-05-16T11:23:00.002-05:00

Howard French asks why we are more fascinated and moved to action by rape in the Congo than by the deaths of millions:

combatting sexual violence

2011-05-10T14:51:00.003-05:00

Two very interesting efforts to combat the sexual violence problem in the eastern DRC. One is public and military education efforts from Search for Common Ground, profiled in this short film:

Another effort worth mentioning is the Open Society Justice Initiative, which is one of the sponsors of a mobile court that tries sexual violence cases. Open Society Foundations just ran a fantastic series of posts about the court's work. These are not your usual cheerleading NGO press release posts; they chronicle the challenges and difficulties in pursuing justice for victims of sexual violence in all their gritty detail. They're well worth your time to read.

advocacy, policy, & misperceptions

2011-05-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

Bec Hamilton, author of the fantastic book on Darfur advocacy, Fighting for Darfur, is in the process of creating a discussion guide for those wanting to use her book in the classroom. To that end, she's asked several bloggers (including UN Dispatch's Mark Leon Goldberg, Tom Murphy of A View from the Cave, and me) to host discussions on these questions.

I got to choose the questions to ask here, so I picked ones that have to do with the relationship between advocacy, policy, and perceptions since that's always a popular topic on Texas in Africa. Bec would love to get your feedback, both on the questions themselves (Are they useful to think about? Are they clear?) and through answers to the questions. Keep in mind that these are designed to be used in a university-level classroom with students who may or may not have prior familiarity with the Darfur crisis.

Darfur activists spent years trying to build a domestic political cost into the calculations of U.S. officials responsible for acting on Darfur. In Congress this enabled them to secure significant amounts of funding for Darfur, but inside the administration perverse incentives sometimes came into play. In Fighting for Darfur, U.S. special envoy Andrew Natsios expresses his frustration that the narrative of the conflict presented by activists did not fit with events on the ground but he warns the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte, that trying to correct this misperceptions would be “politically dangerous.” What do you think of Natsios’ warning? To the extent Natsios was right, and advocates were out of touch with changes on the ground, what responsibility do policymakers have to correct those misperceptions? In a democratic system, how should they weigh that responsibility against any domestic political cost?

Can we help Bec out? What do you think? If you don't want to answer here, she's also collecting answers to this question on her blog here. You can view and answer all the questions discussed in the series here.

losing their livings

2011-05-05T12:51:00.002-05:00

Reuters' Jonny Hogg on the impact of the Dodd-Frank legislation:

"It will be more difficult to implement in areas where the security situation badly needs traceability, especially the Kivus," [Carter Center mining governance analyst Elisabeth] Caesens said.
...President Joseph Kabila's decision to ban mining for six months in the region was meant to tackle the problem but analysts say Congo's army has simply replaced the rebels.
Even if the nascent traceability programme can be rolled out, it doesn't go far enough in tackling the problems of Congo's dysfunctional artisanal mining sector, Caesens added.
"Just putting a tag on a bag doesn't solve all the other problems, such as living conditions or who gets access to the minerals and what political and power networks are at play."
PACT's Hayes says due to logistical and financial problems it remains unclear when the programme will be rolled out in the east and in the meantime some could attempt to channel 'conflict minerals' through Katanga's certified mines.
Some $10 million more in funding was needed, she said.
In the meantime, the de facto embargo had removed the only source of income for many people in the east already living with the conflict, Hayes said.
"Before they were scrapping a living through mining, now they can't even do that."

the unintended consequences of Congo advocacy

2011-04-28T15:53:00.003-05:00

When people who study the Congo for a living get together, one of the questions that inevitably arises has to do with how the conflict minerals narrative was created. Nobody disputes that minerals fuel part of the violence perpetrated by some of the armed groups operating in the eastern Congo. But we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how conflict minerals became THE story about the multilayered conflict.

I think it's fair to say that after a couple of UN reports on mining during the wars came out, this narrative was picked up on and strengthened by advocacy groups, in particular, the Enough Project and Global Witness, the latter of which spent most of the last decade researching mineral trafficking in the Congo and the former of which was at the forefront of efforts to get a rider on the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill passed that will eventually require American electronics companies to identify whether they are using DRC-sourced conflict minerals in their products. Enough's leaders believe that this legislation will play a significant role in reducing the use of conflict minerals from the DRC, which in turn will cut off a source of financing for Congolese armed groups, which in turn will lead to less violence in the region. While their latest advocacy materials acknowledge the need for more significant reform in other sectors, there's no question that the bulk of Enough's efforts have been focused on the mineral issue.

Most scholars of the DRC would agree that the mineral trade is one dimension of the conflict, but that it isn't the entire story, and most of us are very perplexed as to from where the idea that minerals are the central story originated. Why is Enough so committed to this one facet of the conflict when few, if any, regional experts believe that addressing the militarized mineral trade will stop the region's violence?

It seems I'm not the only one who is wondering why Enough pursued this path:

“We don’t understand why President Obama would want to cut off Congo’s minerals,” said Idrissa Assani, expressing a sentiment clearly shared by his fellow miners who sat together in the dark office of their mining cooperative. “It is the innocents who are vulnerable” and who will suffer most from “Obama’s law,” he said.
In the simple wooden structure with dirt floors, illuminated by late afternoon sunlight coming through the open door and through spaces in the paneling, Assani pulled out a pristine copy of “Obama’s law,” as the conflict minerals provision of the Dodd-Frank bill is locally known. People are already suffering from the “embargo” imposed by President Obama and expecting conditions to only get worse, he said.

Leafing through the pages of the legislation, Enough analyst Fidel Bafilemba noted to the French and Kiswahili speakers that nowhere in the U.S. bill is there any mention of an embargo or a ban on Congo minerals. Rather, the law calls for companies to conduct due diligence on minerals from Congo to ensure that armed groups and military units do not benefit from these resources. The group of miners was surprised, admitting that it has been difficult to understand the details of Obama’s law since none of them speak English and they’ve never seen a translated version of the bill.

The post goes on to point out that Kabila, not Obama, imposed the mining ban that affected mining operations in the Kivus and Maniema for about six months starting last September. Enough goes on to claim that people who understand the traceability system support it, though of course right now they can only provide a theoretical discussion of what it would be like.

This is an interesting situation. It is true that Enough never called for a ban on Congolese mineral exports. The Dodd-Frank rider contained exactly the provisions the organization wanted; I would not be at all surprised to learn that Enough staff were responsible for writing most of the provisions. These provisions stress the importance of traceability and companies knowing from which mines their minerals are sourced. In that sense, the mining ban is not Enough's fault.

But at the same time, there is no question that the Kabila government's suspension of mining operations was a direct response to Dodd-Frank. Neither is there any question that tens of thousands of miners and traders who make a living off of mining - some of it legitimate and non-militarized - in the Kivus and Maniema suffered horribly as their incomes dwindled to nothing. Nor is there any question that the mining ban actually led to increased militarization of some mines that were previously out of military control.

None of this was intended or foreseen by Enough or any advocates or legislators who pushed for the rider. But they nonetheless bear some responsibility for it having happened. It was their advocacy that led to the legislation's passage and that prompted the ban. There's no way around it. Unintended consequences happen. In this case, we likely haven't seen the end of them. As some knowledgeable observers believe, due to the incredible difficulty of actually verifying mineral supply chains in a place with as many smuggling routes, bribe-able officials, and weak institutions as the Kivus, there is a good chance that the legislation could lead to a de facto ban on Congolese mineral exports.

The keys to improving life in the Democratic Republic of Congo involve creating better governance, real security, stronger institutions, jobs, and a state that acts for the common good rather than the self-interest of its rulers. These are complex, elusive fixes that have little to do with the mineral trade and everything to do with governance. As an excellent new Crisis Group report on mineral supply chain regulation efforts concludes, "The control and regulate approaches are complementary, but face serious feasibility, reliability and security problems related to the more general problem of governance in eastern DRC."

Which brings us back to the question of why advocates pushed so hard for the conflict minerals focus in the first place. It was obvious to almost everyone who knows Congo that the mineral trade was not the place to start. Without the basic institutions of governance and security in place, attempting to regulate minerals is very unlikely to affect significant change. This was as clear five years ago as it is today. While I'm certain that advocates chose this path because of it is relatable (Everybody has a cell phone!) and the idea that consumer pressure can make a difference, it still doesn't make much sense to make it the centerpiece of advocacy efforts. Academic experts on the Congo, Congolese-Americans, and Congolese advocates have watched with frustration for years as Enough-chosen witnesses who have very little experience living and working in the DRC (some of whom don't speak French) testify before Congress that conflict minerals are the issue, and that addressing them will improve the lives of the Congolese. The chances that this is true are slim to none; armed groups in the Congo do not need money or weapons to perpetrate violence, and without access to money earned in the mineral trade, they are highly likely to prey even further on the population.

I was emailing back and forth with a friend about this issue this morning when he noted that it would be really nice to have a discussion involving NGO's and advocacy groups about "the extent to which stopping conflict minerals will stop conflict, and why it is they think so." I think this is a great idea. If Enough is as concerned about the unintended consequences of their advocacy efforts as they should be, it seems to me that they would want to explain why they chose this particular path, as well as discuss their efforts to mitigate suffering for people who are becoming unemployed because of the legislation's consequences. Moreover, it would give clear answers to their critics, and might even open the path to some collaboration in the future.

It's long past time that all the players in the Congo discussion sat down at one table to talk about the core assumptions of the the conflict, the advocacy movement, and what the Congo needs. It seems to me that the Great Lakes Policy Forum would be the ideal place to hold such a discussion, but if some other group wants to step up to host such an event, that would be great.

What do you think? Why did one narrative about the DRC conflict take precedence over the others? Would a dialogue between advocacy groups, Congolese citizens, and experts be useful or productive?

this & that

2011-04-28T15:04:00.002-05:00

A cool infographic on energy sources in Africa
A great piece on elections, violence, and citizenship in Africa.
If you like Luttwak's Coup d'Etat: a Practical Handbook, then you'll love the Dictator Chimp (HT: Africa is a Country)
A fascinating history of African print fabrics
Who are the most entertaining International Relations scholars?
The Rift Valley Institute now has a YouTube channel.
Zachariah Mampilly on the history of rebel governance.

real insights

2011-04-27T13:02:00.000-05:00

From the Chronicle of Philanthropy:

Mr. Affleck said he wanted to give money to local groups both to help people in the Congo directly but also to back up his advocacy work with real insights.
“We’ve all seen advocates who have a lot to say, but when I really drill down with them, I don’t have any kind of clear sense of where their opinions are coming from,” he said. “I wanted to have the integrity of doing that and I also wanted to make a tangible difference on the ground.”

I've written before about what I think Affleck's Eastern Congo Initiative is getting right. Add to that list the importance of getting beyond advocacy slogans to a perspective of what is actually going on at ground-level. Glad to see that Affleck is trying to learn directly from the Congolese.

the congo's complexity

2011-04-26T15:49:00.003-05:00

I'm not sure how much can be said about Jason Stearns' new book on the Congo wars, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, that hasn't already been said by far more prestigious reviewers than me (see those from The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post). But as someone who has read the bulk of what's been published on the conflict over the course of the last fifteen years, I can unequivocally say that this is the most accessible introduction to the country's multi-layered local conflict, civil war, and international wars out there. In short, if you want to understand the DRC wars, you need to read this book.

Stearns writes not as an academic (though he is currently studying for a PhD in political science), but rather as a journalist and storyteller. The story he tells is framed around real individuals who symbolize the various facets of the conflict - a Rwandan Hutu refugee, a Banyamulenge recruit to the AFDL, a former RCD politician. By weaving together their experiences and perspectives, Stearns manages to present an incredibly complex series of conflicts into a readable, compelling narrative.

It is in capturing the conflict's complexity that Stearns provides a great service to the reader. Longtime readers of this blog know my frustration with oversimplified narratives that reduce the Congo conflict to rape and minerals. Stearns resists the temptation to simplify anything, instead trusting that his readers, with guidance, can absorb complexity. (He doesn't get around to discussing minerals until chapter 19, in part because they had very little to do with the start of the wars.)

Stearns' central claim is that the Congolese wars - like wars everywhere - are at their heart political. He shows time and time again how calculations - Rwanda's decision to invade, Kabila's decision to expel Rwanda and Uganda - are the result of political processes and rational decision making. This provides an important counterweight to so many reductionist journalistic and advocacy accounts of the DRC situation (that almost always include references to the "heart of darkness") that chalk up violence there to ancient hatreds, wars about greed for minerals, and/or total chaos. As Stearns puts it:

All of these stories [about atrocities] are true.... These advocacy efforts have also, however, had unintended effects. They reinforce the impression that the Congo is filled with wanton savages, crazed by power and greed. This view, by focusing on the utter horror of the violence, distracts from the politics that gave rise to the conflict and from the reasons behind the bloodshed. If all we see is black men raping and killing in the most outlandish ways imaginable, we might find it hard to believe that there is any logic to this conflict. ...If we want to change the political dynamics in the country, we have above all to understand the conflict on its own terms.

Taking the Congo and its wars on its own terms is difficult. I think this is the heart of the disconnect - it's a lot easier to fit the conflict into patterns of understanding that make sense in Western terms than it is to deconstruct layer after layer of politics. But as we've watched effort after effort after effort at peace building fail, it's more and more clear that the DRC has to be taken on its own terms, with a clear recognition that incentives and politics matter.

the war profession

2011-04-21T20:03:00.002-05:00

I’ve never even heard of Misrata before, but for your whole life it was there on a map for you to find and ponder and finally go to. All of us in the profession—the war profession, for lack of a better name—know about that town. It’s there waiting for all of us. But you went to yours, and it claimed you.

That's Sebastian Junger in a heartbreaking remembrance of his friend Tim Hetherington.

this & that

2011-04-19T21:37:00.003-05:00

A guide to dining out in Bukavu.
Amazing photos of the Nyiragongo volcano outside Goma.
A think piece on AFRICOM after Libya.
The Mr. and Miss University of Liberia pageant.
Montana's attorney general will investigate the Central Asia Institute. (HT: @Saundra_S)
Watch Esther Duflo's lecture at the Center for Global Development from last week here.

tournament challenge winner

2011-04-11T18:21:00.002-05:00

Things have been a little busy around here and I almost forgot to post the winner of our NCAA Tournament Bracket Challenge. Then a package containing some miraculous SWEDOW from Cameron MacDonald showed up in the mail and I remembered. So, without further ado, the winner of the First Possibly Annual Aid Bloggers NCAA Tournament Bracket Challenge is University of South Carolina development geographer Ed Carr, who, despite having picked Kentucky to win it all, still beat out the rest of us with 780 points. Ed, you can email me if, I mean, when you want to claim your fabulous SWEDOW prizes, including a book of presidential doodles, some used ping pong balls, and an Ace of Base cassette single.

magic and war

2011-04-10T19:25:00.002-05:00

Reuters' Mark John:

For many of the combatants in Ivory Coast conflict, magic counts just as much as military might.
As rival forces of Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara pursued their battle for Abidjan on Sunday, a small group of pro-Ouattara soldiers went to the northern entry point of the port city intent on destroying a roughly cut block of stone on a pedestal.

"This is the stone erected when Laurent Gbagbo came to power, to put Abidjan under his spell," explained Lieutenant Daniel Dodo as soldiers took turn to bash away at the monument with a mallet.

"By knocking it down, we are liberating Abidjan," he said as a final blow of the mallet sent the stone block crashing to the ground.

From inside the pedestal, soldiers pulled out dirty rags of red cloth which Dodo said had been treated with a spell by a fetishist from the tiny Central African island state of Sao Tome.

"Red is symbolic, they say human blood is needed to give power to the amulet," said Dodo, who like many pro-Ouattara troops wear a black tee-shirt with the French words "battalion mystic" -- "mystical battalion" -- on the back.

No official comment was available on the origin or meaning of the stone monument, which had been almost hidden from view in the long grass between two lanes of the urban motorway going to central Abidjan.

This piece no doubt provides "proof" to those who believe that Africa is a monolithic whole full of savages who kill each other over superstition and/or due to atavistic hatreds, but let's try to focus on substance. My next project is about identity in the Congo and its relationship to the wars, the nature of the state, and political behavior, so I've been thinking a lot about this lately. I've also been working on (and by "working on," I mean, "wrote ten pages a year and half ago and haven't looked at it since") an exploratory paper about what conceptions of African identity mean for the way we think about and study war. It touches on a lot of issues - the nature of communal identity as opposed to Western-style individual identity, the way that this matters in thinking about winners and losers in conflicts - including that of belief in supernatural forces as significant actors in politics, conflict, and society in general. What I'm trying to think through is what implications this has for the reasons conflicts start, the ways that they end, and how local and international actors may miss one anothers' points completely as a result of not understanding these differences. If two groups understand causality in completely different terms, what might that mean for getting things done?

What I'm explicitly trying to avoid in this research is the passing of value judgments vis-a-vis the question of scientific rationality vs. belief in supernatural forces. Because I honestly don't think that what is real is what actually matters here. It's all about perception. It doesn't matter whether a stone with a bunch of cursed red cloths inside really affects whatever will happen to Monsieur Gbagbo, whose days seem numbered by any standard. What might matter, however, is whether all or some of Ouattara's troops believe that taking out that stone is key to their victory. It could affect how they fight, their strategy, and what they are willing to sacrifice at the negotiating table. Likewise, the nature of communal identity, in which the "we" is far more important than the "me," means that concessions or defeat may not just be perceived as the defeat of M. Gbagbo - it's the defeat of all who share his identity. That might explain in part why concessions are harder to come by in this situation, as does the point that Gbagbo seems to genuinely believe that God doesn't want him to leave.

It's something to think about, and something I will be working on full time once my book manuscript is finished. Any thoughts or suggestions for reading that might help me along?

Cote d'Ivoire SMS update

2011-04-06T13:37:00.003-05:00

Kudos to the staff at Orange Cote d'Ivoire for this, just posted to their Facebook wall (translated from French):

Gestures of solidarity Orange Ivory Coast and Cote d'Ivoire Telecom
by Je suis Fan de Orange Côte d'Ivoire on Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 2:05pm

Orange Cote d'Ivoire Cote d'Ivoire Telecom offer:

1 / their mobile customers, a bonus of 2,000 francs CFA valid for 1 month for all calls to Orange numbers.

2 / clients fixed, 1 week of free communication for all their national calls to a landline number and another number to an Orange mobile

3 / clients Internet, free Internet access for 1 week.

By these acts of solidarity, Orange Côte d'Ivoire Côte d'Ivoire Telecom provide support to all their customers to help them stay connected with loved ones during this difficult time.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in to Orange and other Ivoirian telecom operators. Here's hoping Orange's competitors at Moov and MTN follow suit!

Carter Center Human Rights Forum liveblog

2011-04-05T07:30:00.001-05:00

Live from the Carter Center Human Rights Forum

a day without dignity:

2011-04-05T00:27:00.002-05:00

This post is a contribution to A Day Without Dignity, a counter-campaign to the A Day Without Shoes campaign designed to focus attention on the dignity of those in need and the need to focus our efforts on empowering the poor rather than providing handouts. You can read other posts about it here, and I encourage you to write, tweet, and talk to your Facebook friends about A Day Without Dignity as well.

Instead of focusing on the well-documented problems with donating goods-in-kind, undermining local industry, and disguising marketing as social good, I wanted to use this post to talk about an organization that I think gets most things right: Habitat for Humanity. In looking at this example, there's a lot to learn about acting locally, building relationships and understanding among people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and empowering people who want to volunteer in their own communities around the world. Full disclosure: I have been a Habitat volunteer since 1997, and I currently serve as a committee chair for a local Habitat affiliate. I am, in other words, slightly biased.

Habitat for Humanity is "A nonprofit, ecumenical Christian housing organization building simple, decent, affordable housing in partnership with people in need." Habitat builds houses in conjunction with families who could otherwise not afford homes, then sell those houses to the family with a no-interest loan that the families pay off over a standard mortgage term (typically 30 years). Here's why I think the Habitat model is a strong one:

It is local. Habitat International is there to provide guidance and support, but fundraising, planning, and construction all happen through local affiliates. This model avoids the "one-size-doesn't-fit-all" problem and allows local affiliates a great deal of flexibility. For example, our affiliate is located in metro Atlanta, where there is a huge foreclosure problem. Thanks to support from the county, we are able to purchase and renovate foreclosed homes. It improves neighborhoods, lessens the problem of empty housing and blight, and gets families into safe, secure, decent homes.
It's based on partnership. Once a family is selected for the program, they become partners with their local Habitat affiliate. This means that they have certain rights and responsibilities, one of which is to help build other people's houses and another of which is to help build their own. Habitat houses are not handouts - the families pay for their homes just like any other homeowner. Moreover, there is a lot of pride and dignity that comes from owning and living in a home that you put a lot of sweat into constructing or renovating.
It builds relationships. For many Habitat volunteers, building on the home site is the first time they have actually worked alongside poor people, doing exactly the same tasks without any kind of management hierarchy in place. It can be an incredibly eye-opening experience to hear a low-income individual talk about the struggles his family faces, or her desire for her kids to have a better life, and is a great way to bust stereotypes (eg, "Poor people are lazy.") and create real relationships.
It supports volunteers helping their own communities worldwide. There are Habitat affiliates all over the world, and affiliates build culturally-appropriate homes from locally-available materials, thus contributing to local economies and improving life for families worldwide. To support these efforts, for every home built in the US and other wealthy countries, the local affiliate donates to an international affiliate, thus ensuring that those affiliates will have adequate resources to continue to construct and sell homes.
It provides home ownership opportunities to those who lack access. Habitat families are carefully selected for the program. They have to be able to save money, pay a down payment, and prove that they earn enough in a steady job to afford a mortgage. Where Habitat is different from traditional banks, however, is in the fact that we offer no-interest, lower-cost mortgages. Because of donations and volunteers, families don't pay many labor costs for their homes - the cost is the land, the materials, and some specialized labor costs (electricians and the like). This means that Habitat can provide opportunities to people who are excluded from traditional home ownership paths. It's not just limited to the stereotypical working poor. In our area, we have many refugee families who scrimp and save and are thrilled to own their own homes after years of sacrifice and the suffering they endured in their home countries. Likewise, many of our partner families are practicing Muslims whose religious commitments require them to only take out no-interest loans. Habitat is a Christian organization, but is not a proselytizing one, and access to the program is open to people of all faiths or no faith at all. There aren't many other places around here that working poor Muslim families can get access to a fair, interest-free mortgage.

Is Habitat perfect? Absolutely not. But for the reasons outlined above, I think it's an organization that has developed a model that avoids many of the problems to which TOMS Shoes and other "Whites in Shining Armor" programs lead. By focusing on a partnership model, everyone becomes an equal contributor, giving dignity and pride to homeowners and volunteers alike. By maintaining a local focus with local decision making and promoting the local affiliate model worldwide, the organization avoids messing up local economies by flooding markets with unneeded materials. As the organization grows and learns from its mistakes, Habitat makes adjustments. I'm proud to be a part of it.

29 seats

2011-04-04T20:06:00.003-05:00

Reuters:

A United Nations plane crashed while trying to land at the airport serving Congo's capital, Kinshasa, on Monday, killing 32 people, U.N. officials said. One person aboard survived.

Among those killed:

The International Rescue Committee is profoundly saddened to confirm that Dr. Boubacar Toure, our senior reproductive health advisor in Congo, was among those who died in a United Nations plane crash today in Kinshasa.

Dr. Toure, 63 and a native of Guinea, was an internationally recognized leader in the maternal health field and was deeply committed to reversing high levels of maternal mortality in Congo and other countries where he has worked.

I join the IRC, the UN, and many other organizations in mourning the loss of colleagues, family members, and friends in this unspeakable tragedy. As someone who regularly waits, hopes, prays, and crosses fingers to get one of the precious seats on Congo's safest means of air travel, my thoughts are with all those UN and NGO personnel who, though deeply shaken and saddened, will wake up tomorrow and get on another flight, all for the sake of helping to improve the situation in the Congo.

something we can do for Cote d'Ivoire

2011-04-04T09:17:00.005-05:00

Like many of you, I've been feeling very helpless about the situation in Cote d'Ivoire. Then I saw @SenamBeheton's tweet:
This is a fantastic idea, and one where ordinary people around the world can get involved. Many Ivoirians, especially those in Abidjan, have been afraid to leave their homes for a few days now, and most shops in the city are closed, meaning that people can't buy top up cards for their mobile phones. Also, many Ivoirians haven't been able to work for several days, meaning that even if they could find top up cards, they wouldn't be able to afford them. Orange, MTN, and Moov could provide a huge public service (and get lots of positive publicity) by opening up their networks to allow free SMSing during this crisis. I would gladly donate to a fund to help cover the costs of doing so - and I bet I'm not the only one.

Here's information on how to contact the corporate offices of Orange, MTN, and Moov. I'm using corporate offices at the highest level because it may be hard to reach the offices in Cote d'Ivoire right now. If you have any other suggestions, please note them in the comments below.

Orange is part of France Telecom. Contact their Corporate Social Responsibility office by filling out the form here.
MTN Group is based in South Africa and only provides phone numbers and physical addresses. This is why Skype exists; spend the 20 cents and call them on +27 11 912 3000 or +27 11 912 4123.
Moov is based in the UAE and its operations are under the Etisalat trade name. Fill out their online feedback form here.

Here's some possible text for your email or phone conversation. Feel free to copy and paste as needed:

I am writing/calling to ask that [Company Name] provide free SMS services to customers in Cote d'Ivoire during the country's ongoing crisis. Due to violence in Abidjan and in rural areas, customers are unable to top up their mobile phone accounts and have lost touch with family members. They cannot share information about where violence is occurring, or reach out for help from the United Nations and humanitarian agencies. By providing free SMS services, [Company Name] would almost certainly save lives. Please take this opportunity to help the people of Cote d'Ivoire in their time of need.

Let's do this, guys. We can spread the word and bring pressure on these companies to provide this service. It won't stop the Ivoirian crisis, but it will provide a critical service for those who need it most.

UPDATE: A couple of commenters point out that SMS services have been turned off in Cote d'Ivoire for several weeks per Gbagbo's orders. I don't see any reason that the phone companies could not override that order, but perhaps I'm wrong. At any rate, asking for free airtime and for the companies to do all they can to get the SMS networks running is also worth our while.

Fighting for Darfur winner

2011-04-02T23:25:00.003-05:00

The winner of the Fighting for Darfur giveaway, chosen via a random number generator, was comment #8, Akhila. Congratulations and thanks to everyone who entered. Akhila, please shoot me an email with your mailing address and I'll get the book to you asap.

from abidjan

2011-04-01T18:41:00.003-05:00

Notes from a friend in Abidjan, hastily translated from French, so please forgive my errors. I had edited out identifying information for obvious reasons:

I don't know about if this will be technically a genocide, but an aspect that is being missed is that the pro-Gbagbo camp is not in control of anything right now. The armed forces on the street are FRCI and civilians they have armed and they are extracting revenge at an alarming rate. The FDS and Gbagbo forces that are armed are mostly contained and surrounded by ADO forces in one or two tiny parts of the city. The FRCI have been looting our district like mad and banging on our door regularly trying to get inside since this morning. They have a roadblock set up right outside our gate. They completely looted many of our neighbors and are burning houses to the ground in retaliation. Ouattara has no control over many of them anymore at all. There is no central command. A prison was opened yesterday morning and all the 5,000 prisoners freed and armed many who then took revenge on the population.

We saw them rushing into our neighbor's house yesterday, and then heard the wife screaming in agony for some time, their dog barking like mad. Then massive amounts of gunfire for several minutes. Then no other screams or barks since. We have tried to call them since, and there is no answer. We think they are dead. Similar happened at three other neighbors' houses. They are patrolling the streets and exacting revenge on any Bete or Lebanese they can find. We have seen bodies in the streets. Several execution style and can hear them laughing and taunting as they do so. A close friend of ours had to be evacuated from Zone 4 (heavily French area) this afternoon by the French. They were the last family left on their street. They told us yesterday that random thugs were waiting outside watching as the French were evacuating people, and then swooping in to loot the houses right after they left. Taking even floor tiles and wiring and roofing from the buildings and then burning what's left to the ground.

If it is to be a genocide here, I think it will now be from the FRCI side, as Ouattara has no control and many Dioula are angry and wanting revenge. The French and UN are basically saying they can't help a lot of people anymore. Many are dying right now. We have heard sustained gunfire since 5am yesterday morning. There have been obus incendiaries, RPGs and mortars heard as well fairly regularly. We also heard heavy bombing most of the day today from the downtown region, where they are attacking Gbagbo's palace.

Our water has been cut, and our power is intermittent. We have enough supplies for several months and are hiding out in a barricaded room in our house in darkness.

I hope that this insanity ends soon. It is absolute anarchy here right now.

And a few hours later:

Things are escalating rapidly. I think there will be revenge killings for a while. And if any pro-Gbagbo forces are able to muster any strength back -- they will try to return the revenge again. It is absolute slaughter and chaos here right now. I am hoping the worst is over-- at least I thought it would be this morning when I woke up-- but unless Ouattara somehow starts controlling the FRCI and his supporters-- I think it will continue for a while. And the way I see some of the Twittersphere egging the conflict on-- is worrisome. So much propaganda and cheering at the "democratization." SMS has been suspended (or at least ours is) so maybe this will stop some of the calls for violence, but cells are still working most of the time-- and almost everyone here has one-- so they can easily connect and find their opponents.

It is nearly 10:30pm right now, and we are under curfew-- and the firing has quieted down in the last hour or so. Still some sporadic. I just want to get information out there that things are getting real bad. Anyone on the streets is a target now. Anyone with visible lights or movement in their homes are a target. We have blanketed up all our windows and are hiding out in a room away from all outside walls now so no one can see us.

I know all Texas in Africa readers join me in hoping that cooler heads will prevail, that leaders and fighters at every level will exercise restraint, and that Cote d'Ivoire will soon be at peace once more. You can donate to support UNHCR efforts here and to the Red Cross here. If you can't give, spare a thought or say a prayer for peace.

UPDATE: Chris Blattman posts an alternative view, and notes the importance of not taking a single account as being an account of what the entire situation is actually like. I agree completely - from what I can gather, there's considerable variation in the amounts of violence and who is committing acts of violence in Abidjan and across the south and east of Cote d'Ivoire.

That said, the above information comes from a reliable individual, and I have no doubt that this is an accurate reflection of what he/she is aware of, in the place that he/she is sheltering. I'll add that it's also increasingly clear that both sides - the pro-Gbagbo and the pro-Ouattara camps - are and have been committing acts of violence. It's also evident that some perhaps less-political individuals are taking advantage of the situation as an opportunity to loot and otherwise reap chaos.

Fighting for Darfur: review & givewaway

2011-03-31T08:04:00.004-05:00

As bombs fall over Libya, the Security Council debates what actions to take (or not take) with regards to the civil war in Cote d'Ivoire, and those of us with the luxury of distance debate whether what will happen there might constitute genocide in technical terms (or not), I've spent the last few days reading Rebecca Hamilton's excellent new book, Fighting for Darfur.

Unlike the Cote d'Ivoire crisis, a large, international advocacy movement formed around the Darfur crisis, yet, at the end of the day, the movement was never able to achieve its primary goal of ensuring civilian protection in the region. Hamilton sets out to explain why. After the Rwandan genocide, most advocates, academics, and politicians believed that if a sustained, large, grassroots movement could be formed and maintained to pressure American officials to stop genocide and other crimes against humanity, then there wouldn't be any more Rwandas.

The advocates were wrong. Hamilton, herself a prominent player in the Darfur advocacy movement, provides an analysis as to why that is simultaneously an insider's view and a more detached, analytical take on the question. While highlighting the Darfur movement's successes (including the development of sustained pressure on the US government, a Security Council resolution, and the appointment of a series of special envoys for Sudan), she finds that several dynamics interfered in reaching the ultimate goal of civilian protection. For one, most advocates had difficulty understanding that both the situation in Southern Sudan and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the Darfur crisis had to be addressed simultaneously, difficult as this was. Says Sam Bell, a leader in the movement, "I think one of the biggest missing pieces for the movement initially was context, understanding the context."

This theme of a lack of contextual understanding pervades Hamilton's analysis. Advocates failed to understand that Sudan was not like Rwanda, that the situation in Sudan had evolved considerably by 2007-08, that their insistence on military action could - and did - have negative consequences for humanitarian operations serving Darfuris. But the biggest failure of understanding context came in understanding the role that the United States government could ultimately play in Darfur - or anywhere else in the world for that matter. Hamilton concludes that the advocates took years to finally understand that controlling the situation in Sudan is beyond the full reach of the United States government, the Chinese, or even the United Nations. Quite simply, we can't do everything.

It's a sobering realization, and not one that Hamilton reaches lightly. Fighting for Darfur is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in advocacy, diplomacy, Sudan, and/or grassroots activism. That said, I do have a couple of criticisms. First, the book is a bit uncritical of specific organizations, even while acknowledging the difficulties and constraints that several groups faced (eg, GI-Net was run by college students with little experience in any professional setting for its first few years of existence and thus faced difficulties figuring out how to direct the money it had raised). I understand why Hamilton could not do so - she is, in many instances, writing about her friends and colleagues - but for those interested in learning how to do advocacy better, it would have been nice to have some analysis of the groups' relative degrees of effectiveness. Why was one organization able to attract large numbers of donors and email list subscribers while others struggled? Why were there so many organizations under the Darfur advocacy umbrella to begin with? Would a more coordinated effort have been able to better inform grassroots activists as the situation evolved?

Second, while understanding that Hamilton needed to finish the book and get on with her life, I do wish that the publication had been delayed until after the results of this January's referendum. Hamilton spends a few paragraphs in the book's conclusion articulating the common-among-advocates view that the referendum might have evolved into violence, but of course that didn't happen. (To be sure, the question of what will happen in Abyei and other contested areas remains to be seen.) It would have been interesting to read reactions from those in the advocacy community who predicted - even assumed - that violence was inevitable and to hear them articulate what they thought made a difference. I suspect that the real answer to that question has a lot to do with Khartoum acting in its own self-interest and Scott Gration's insistence on engaging with Khartoum throughout the process, but those dynamics have not been particularly appreciated by Darfur advocates.

All in all, I found Fighting for Darfur to be a fantastic read. I highly recommend it if you are in the advocacy community or want to learn more about those who are. Have you read Fighting for Darfur or were you involved in the Darfur advocacy movement? What do you think?

As a special treat, I am pleased to be able to give away one copy of Fighting for Darfur to a lucky reader. All you have to do to win is leave a comment below before Saturday at 5pm EDT. I'll use a random integer generator to pick the winner, post it here, and the winner will have 48 hours to email me with your mailing address. If he/she doesn't do so in that time, I'll pick another winner.

N.B. I was provided with a complimentary review copy of Fighting for Darfur by the author, but was not compensated for this review, nor was I provided with talking points. All opinions contained in this post are mine alone.

UPDATE: The winner of the Fighting for Darfur giveaway, chosen via a random number generator, was comment #8, Akhila. Congratulations and thanks to everyone who entered. Akhila, please shoot me an email with your mailing address and I'll get the book to you asap.

tonight!

2011-03-29T14:18:00.003-05:00

Tonight on PBS Independent Lens there's a film about reconciliation and forgiveness in the DRC that looks fantastic:

In the late 1990s, Rose Mapendo lost her family and home to the violence that engulfed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). She managed to escape with nine of her ten children, and was eventually resettled in Arizona , where she became a prominent voice for reconciliation, as well as an advocate for other newly arrived immigrants. Over a decade later, she and the daughter who was left behind are reunited in the US , where they must learn to reconcile the past and embrace the future. PUSHING THE ELEPHANT is a joyful, hopeful, moving chronicle of the healing power of forgiveness.PUSHING THE ELEPHANT will be broadcast on Independent Lens on PBS, March 29. To see local listings, click here. To view the trailer for the film, click here.

Is Cote d'Ivoire headed to genocide?

2011-03-29T10:13:00.005-05:00

No. At least, I don't think so.

Senam Beheton has a very interesting post on possible parallels between Côte d'Ivoire today and Rwanda in 1994. He draws the parallels, then reaches the following conclusions:

All of the above, will occur if everything stays the same. While I am happy to see the FRCI’s successes, I would like the world to understand that we have been here before. Gbagbo is boxed in militarily and politically. He has no way out. He is literally a prisoner in Abidjan with nowhere to retreat in Ivory Coast and dwindling options outside of the country. He is an historian and knows what happened to Charles Taylor, Samuel Doe, Dadis Camara and the like. It is only a matter of time till forces loyal to Mr. Ouattara take control of the whole country. What happens between now and then is up to all of us. I don’t know what the trigger will be for UN and French Licorne forces currently in Ivory Coast. The UN and France were in Rwanda. Both were sorry for their reluctance to protect civilians. They will have a do-over. I hope they make the right decisions this time for humanity sake.

Now, I know a lot about Rwanda, but I am by no means a Cote d'Ivoire expert, so take my opinions here with that grain of salt in mind. I think Beheton makes some very interesting points here, but am not sure that this will lead down the path to genocide, even if things continue to go horribly wrong. Which they will. The international community's refusal to take this crisis seriously or do anything about it beyond inadequately funding the response to the humanitarian crisis is appalling. Like Rwanda in 1994, this crisis is the result of a previous series of crises and longstanding tensions that were allowed to fester for decades with little attention from the outside world.

But I digress. In order to think more about this, I'd like to consider a few points of difference between the Rwanda situation and what's going on in Côte d'Ivoire today. This is not in any way to diminish the human suffering or seriousness of the Côte d'Ivoire crisis, but rather to help us think clearly about where this mess is headed:

Exiles aren't invading Côte d'Ivoire & northerners control territory. Both Rwanda and Côte d'Ivoire have significant ethnic cleavages (whether constructed by colonizers or based on religion), but Côte d'Ivoire is different from Rwanda in that the base of power for the northerners (almost all of whom back Ouattara) is in the country rather than outside in a neighboring country. Furthermore, the two sides in this conflict are much more segregated by location than were Tutsis and Hutus Rwanda. Northerners control their territory and have done so for about a decade. I think this makes a real difference in how the fighting will play out. In Rwanda, massacring Tutsis was relatively easy for the Hutu extremists because Tutsis lived next door. In Côte d'Ivoire, while there's certainly a high concentration of northerners in Abidjan and other urban centers, most northerners are in the north. Those who are not can at least try to flee to the north, whereas Tutsis in Rwanda had few options for escape.
Côte d'Ivoire is richer than Rwanda. The cocoa industry and Côte d'Ivoire's importance as a regional economic power means that a lot more people have an interest in seeing stability and a political solution to the problems there. France has pointedly taken a back seat to ECOWAS and the African Union through much of this crisis to avoid being seen as a neo-colonial power pulling the strings (which is exactly what Gbagbo wants France to do). But if things get really nasty, I think we'll see France become increasingly involved.
Ivoirité is not Hutu Power. Ivoirité is a nasty ideology that developed in Côte d'Ivoire in the mid-1990's as a means of excluding northern Muslims from the country's political space by labeling them as "foreigners." While it's true that Côte d'Ivoire does have a large foreign population (workers come from all over West Africa to provide labor for the cocoa plantations), Ivoirité was not really aimed at them; it was aimed at Ivoirian Muslims and involved an explicit political goal, namely, excluding Ouattara from running for president in 2000. While there are lots of nasty manifestations of the ideology, as far as I know, we have not yet seen the use of Ivoirité to justify mass slaughter of Ivoirian Muslims in the same way that Hutu Power ideology was used to justify the killing of Tutsis. There's a qualitative difference; Hutu Power was always about eliminating Tutsis from the face of the planet, whereas Ivoirité has been about more subtle forms of discrimination and exclusion. That may be changing as we speak, but I imagine it will take some time.

Cote d'Ivoire experts and interested observers, what do you think? Do I have this completely wrong? Is Côte d'Ivoire headed for genocide if action is not taken quickly?

UPDATE: Beheton has posted a very thoughtful reply here.

Emory post-doc in African Studies & Global Health

2011-03-28T09:18:00.001-05:00

This may be of interest to some readers:

Emory University announces a joint three year post-doctoral teaching fellowship in African Studies and the undergraduate program in Global Health, Culture and Society (GHCS). We are looking for young, innovative scholars and dynamic teachers who work at the intersection of various disciplines such as anthropology, economics, history, women’s studies and political science on topics generally related to health and development. Applicants should have received the Ph.D. within the past three years. Fellows will be located in Emory’s Institute of African Studies (IAS) with affiliations to GHCS and relevant departments. Fellows will offer four courses yearly, one at the graduate level, and will be expected to participate in the activities of IAS, GHCS and various university global health programs. Ability to teach an undergraduate interdisciplinary “Introduction to Global Health” course is desirable. Please submit a CV, a letter detailing research and teaching interests, including proposed courses, and three letters of recommendation, to Clifton Crais, Director, Institute of African Studies, Institute of Liberal Arts, 537 Kilgo Circle, S415 Callaway, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, or by email at ccrais@emory.edu. Review of applications will begin 1 April. Emory is an AA/EOE institution committed to diversity.

debating the Millennium Villages

2011-03-22T10:17:00.003-05:00

Sorry I've been off the radar for awhile. China jet lag is the worst jet lag I've ever had, and going to bed at 9pm is interfering with my blogging. Anyway, I wanted to draw your attention to this long-awaited event, happening today at 2pm Eastern time. From Center for Global Development Senior Fellow Michael Clemens:

Since the debate via blogs didn’t seem to be making much headway, Gabriel and I offered twice to hold a public discussion with MVP leaders, in October and December. Those invitations weren’t accepted. Philanthropy Action and AidWatch expressed dismay at the MVP’s lack of public engagement, and an online petition sprang up urging the MVP to engage us in a public discussion. The MVP’s home, Columbia University, is a world-class institution of critical and meritocratic thinking. I like Columbia, where more than one member of my family has served on the faculty. I wished that more people at the university had shown interest in fostering a public discussion.

Tomorrow, at last, a public discussion will be held, not at Columbia but across the Atlantic at Oxford University’s Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE). CSAE’s annual conference is now underway. At Tuesday’s plenary session Gabriel will present our paper, with John McArthur of the MVP as a discussant. I’m very grateful to Oxford for arranging this event.

That discussion is to be broadcast live on the Internet, Tuesday March 22nd, at 2:00pm Eastern US time (6:00pm UK time). It should be viewable at this link.

on RPF crimes & gacaca

2011-03-17T07:34:00.002-05:00

I think this failure to deal with RPF crimes is one of the biggest problems that the gacaca process has brought up. It’s not talked about a lot in the literature on gacaca, but the population discusses RPF crimes explicitly during many gacaca trials. You have an RPF government, which is obviously very worried about people talking about RPF crimes in open spaces. But, especially on the periphery of Rwanda, gacaca has created a space where the population regularly talks about RPF crimes in a very public and comprehensive way. This is quite revolutionary in terms of Rwandan politics. The problem is that as people have talked about these crimes openly, there has been an expectation or a hope that gacaca would also prosecute RPF crimes – and that hasn’t happened. A great deal of frustration has been borne out by this process. It means that, in the long term, gacaca hasn’t delivered even-handed justice. It has been very comprehensive in terms of dealing with genocide crimes but has, in a prosecutorial sense, not dealt with the other side of the equation. This is a running sore for the Hutu majority, and the legacy of it will be that much of the Hutu population will look back on gacaca and see it as one-sided justice. In my opinion, there is no doubt that this will harm the long-term cause of reconciliation.

That's from a fascinating three-part interview with Phil Clark of SOAS on Rwanda's gacaca court system and other transitional justice issues at Think Africa Press. Well worth a read. (HT: @kigaliwire)

friendly competition

2011-03-13T16:01:00.004-05:00

All right, interwebs friends, I've been thinking about doing this for years, but this time I finally got around to it. It's time for the NCAA basketball tournament and I think a friendly bracket competition is in order. I've created a group over at ESPN's Tournament Challenge called AidBloggers2011. All you have to do is create an account over there, join the group, and make your tournament picks before the first game on Thursday morning. A few caveats:

One entry per person.
Please register using your Twitter or blog handle if you have one so everyone knows who's playing.
Brackets lock before the first game tips off on Thursday.
You can't move another bracket from another group into this one after the first game tips off on Thursday.
Nothing locks and nothing counts with regards to the play-in game on Tuesday.

The winner will receive an awesome prize package of various SWEDOW items, including an Ace of Base cassette tape and a broken pedometer. If you have SWEDOW to contribute for the winning prize, shoot me an email and I'll let you know where to send it.

If you're not American and/or not obsessed with the NCAA tournament, I'd still encourage you to enter. The person who wins these pools is almost always someone who has no clue whatsoever about the teams and picks based on the team uniform colors.

this &that

2011-03-04T01:47:00.005-06:00

Ugandans' votes cost more than they used to.
A really helpful backgrounder on the dynamics of political collapse in Libya.
An excellent piece on Gadhafi's role in African politics by Howard French.
If you speak Portuguese, you can read what I think about the effects of Gadhafi's inevitable demise will have on other African states over at O Globo.
Can data predict revolutions? If so, watch Mongolia, Nigeria, and India.
Fox "News" covers union protests - in subtropical Wisconsin.
God bless Texas.
How to hire mercenaries.

new and exciting

2011-03-02T08:59:00.003-06:00

I am thrilled to now be occasionally contributing over at TheAtlantic.com. Head over there now to check out my first piece, "Who Tried to Kill Congo's President?"

my favorite day

2011-03-02T00:05:00.001-06:00

Happy Texas Independence Day, y'all.

shameless self-promotion

2011-03-01T06:48:00.002-06:00

I have several speaking engagements and conference presentations coming up in the next few weeks. Please stop by and say hello if you can make it!

March 9, time TBD at the Johns Hopkins SAIS Nanjing Center - "Roads, Rebels, & Land: What China's Role in the Democratic Republic of Congo Means for Development, Security, & Human Rights" (open only to members of the Center community)
March 18, 1pm at the McGill University Faculty of Law - "Violence, Land Rights, and Ethnicity in the Kivus: Five Million Deaths that Aren't a Genocide"
March 18-19 in Montreal - Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association. I am on a round table on legitimacy and sovereignty on Friday morning and chair a panel on Somali piracy on Saturday afternoon. Kudos to Sienna Anstis & colleagues for the flier design (above), which is one of the coolest I've ever seen.
April 1 in Chicago - Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. I'm presenting on an 8am (!) panel with, among others, the amazing @dadakim. The papers are about public services in Africa; mine is on measurement problems in the study of public goods in fragile states.

Hope to meet many of you soon!

this & that

2011-02-25T22:14:00.001-06:00

Afghans have a different understanding of "democracy" than most Westerners. And it really matters.
International color idioms in various languages.
A diary from Thursday's quickly-quelled Cameroon protests.
Oh, Invisible Children, why would you do this?
Why raising a baby calf in Kisangani is unrealistic (HT: Haba na Haba)
A short documentary on the Women of Kireka project in Uganda.
A beautiful reflection on Egypt's freedom day.
100,000 shirts drags on. Oh, World Vision. If you'd just admit it was a mistake and move on, we'd all be better off.

too much to keep up with

2011-02-22T13:27:00.003-06:00

So. The world's gone a little crazy. I can barely keep up with my Twitter feed, much less write coherent blog posts that aren't immediately out-of-date the minute I publish them. Here's a quick roundup and lots of links on several topics you may have missed in the melee:

I think Gadhafi's a goner regardless of how many more 90-minute rants he subjects us to. Here's an analysis by Geoffrey York of what the impact will be for Africa and the African Union (featuring a couple of quotes from me), a great infographic on Gadhafi's reach in Africa (excuse the inclusion of Tunisia in Libya), and a nice analysis of other flashpoints on the continent that could be ignited or exacerbated by Gadhafi's fall.
As far as I can tell, the African Union has yet to make any kind of statement on Gadhafi or Libya. Which makes sense considering how much of their budget he funds.
By the way, the AP Stylebook apparently spells it "Gadhafi," so that's what I'm trying to use.
Somali pirates killed four American hostages today, which prompted US military forces to kill two pirates and arrest thirteen others. This represents a significant shift; pirates have usually operated with the view that live hostages are worth more than dead ones. These killings appear to have happened in response to imminent US military action to rescue the hostages. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out.
In Cote d'Ivoire, Laurent Gbagbo appears to be taking advantage of the world's attention being focused elsewhere to perpetrate human rights abuses and killings against Ouattara supporters. At least six people were killed Monday in a violent crackdown against protesters.
In the DRC, Lt. Colonel Kibibi Mutware has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in directing the New Year's Day rapes in Fizi. This is significant not only because Mutware is facing justice for his crimes through the use of a unique mobile court, but also because 49 women came forward to testify against him. This extraordinarily brave and difficult act by these survivors made all the difference in securing Mutware's conviction. These women are to be commended at the highest levels, and I hope other victims will see from their example that speaking out helps to achieve justice. It is possible to end impunity in the DRC. Kudos to the American Bar Association, the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, and the Open Society Justice Initiative for funding the court's operations.
Mass protests were scheduled for today in Gabon, but I haven't found any information on them. If you have updates or info, please post links in the comments.

Photo: Screengrab from Al Jazeera English of what is apparently Gadhafi's courtyard sculpture. It certainly makes a statement, n'est pas?

why t-shirts are bad aid: the research

2011-02-16T12:17:00.002-06:00

As the World Vision/NFL 100,000 t-shirts controversy swells on (now with a post on Freakonomics!) , I thought it might be useful to talk about the research that shows why t-shirts is a matter of bad aid. If your eyes glaze over at the thought of JSTOR and academic journals, I can sum it up for you in one sentence: the evidence is solid that t-shirt donations are bad for local economies.

For those of you wanting to go a little more in depth, read on.

One of the best known and most-referenced articles on the subject is "Used-clothing Donations and Apparel Production in Africa" by Garth Frazer. There's a gated version of the article here. Frazer set out to explain why African economies haven't advanced beyond basic manufacturing. He concludes that one major factor prohibiting the development of major textile industries is used-clothing donations by consumers in industrialized countries. That is, if you box up your old t-shirts and take them to Goodwill, you may actually be inadvertently undermining the development of clothing production facilities in Africa. Why? Because with a huge supply of cheap apparel that is ready for sale, there's no need to build factories to produce more. These are not insignificant effects; Frazer finds that "Used-clothing imports are found to have a negative impact on apparel production inAfrica, explaining roughly 40% of the decline in production and 50% of the decline in employment over the period 1981–2000." In other words, clothing imports result in job loss for people who could probably otherwise lift themselves out of poverty.

Frazer is dealing with used clothing, of course, but there's little reason to think that new clothing would be any different, especially since World Vision will be distributing it for free. In fact, free clothing donations undermine the secondhand clothing markets that provide what employment does exist in the sector.

Daniel Slesnik tackles the problem of in-kind goods more generally in "Consumption and Poverty: How Effective are In-Kind Transfers?" (also gated). Slesnik does not study the developing world here, but rather looks at programs designed to tackle poverty in industrialized states. He finds that, in order to be effective at poverty alleviation, in-kind transfers have to be highly targeted and the valuation recipients place on the transfers. In other words, the recipients have to be getting appropriate aid that actually solves their problems, and they have to place as much or more value on the in-kind transfer as they would on cold hard cash.

How is this relevant for World Vision? Well, it suggests that any kind of in-kind donation that is not highly targeted and valued by recipients is a waste of effort, money, and resources. As Bill Westerly points out, this gets pretty messy when we take into account the cost of actually getting the shirts to the recipients. If $A isn't less than $B, then it's a big mistake.

These are just a couple of examples of the body of research that clearly shows the negative impact of clothing donations on developing economies. There's just no way World Vision can honestly claim that these facts are unknown or that the impact of a clothing donation is unclear.

(If you're really interested in this topic, I'd also recommend writing to Loomnie and begging him to let you read his excellent dissertation on the secondhand clothing trade in Nigeria. If you have other suggestions for research on the topic, please note them in the comments.)

a question World Vision needs to answer

2011-02-14T17:13:00.002-06:00

Eric R. at Wanderings poses what I think is one of the key questions World Vision needs to answer for its donors:

Not only this but World Vision is a Christian organization whose goal is ”to follow our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in working with the poor and oppressed to promote human transformation, seek justice and bear witness to the good news of the Kingdom of God.” Is supporting wasteful production, obscuring the value of these goods, and marketing harmful practices truly working to promote transformation? Would Christ be open to such tokenism at the expense of responsible, sustainable aid? When Christ talks about, if you have two shirts give one to the poor, does he mean literally?

on world vision

2011-02-13T13:29:00.004-06:00

I've thought long and hard about doing a post on the World Vision/NFL 100,000 t-shirts controversy. Quite frankly, I'm not sure what more there is to add to the discussion; Saundra has collected all the relevant posts here and they cover the major issues, which, as I see it are:

We know this is bad aid. We know that GIK gifts of items (like clothing) that are readily available in a country undermine local clothing markets, create dependence, and deprive poor people of work and the dignity work provides.
We know this is unnecessary aid. There aren't any places in the world where t-shirts are not available at a market price determined by the local economy and affordable to local consumers.
Both the NFL and World Vision get to claim benefits (the NFL for taxes, World Vision for its bottom line), look good in the public relations arena, and don't owe anyone an explanation of whether the t-shirts actually do anyone any good.
There is an opportunity cost associated with shipping 100,000 t-shirts to communities that don't need them and that have other serious development needs.

What makes this so frustrating, of course, is that World Vision knows all these things. Every one of them. I've heard from friends who work there this week. Some are defensive about the issue, others are pounding their heads against their cubicle/Land Rover walls. World Vision isn't 1 Million Shirts' Jason, who was trying international development work for the first time and showed a willingness to learn from his mistakes. They know better.

World Vision responded to many of these criticisms in a post late Friday. Their argument, as I understand it, is as follows:

We don't conduct these activities in isolation.
We only take targeted donations.
Our field offices want shirts.
We need the engagement of the American public.
Goods in Kind are not ipso facto bad aid.

I agree that all of the above propositions are true. There are lots of GIK that are quite good and necessary for sustainable development activities. Anti-retroviral drugs, technical items for constructing wells - any item that is not readily available in a developing country is a great donation that World Vision can and should use.

The problem lies not with the general idea of using GIK, but rather with this GIK. As we've discussed ad infinitum, ad nauseum, t-shirts are not in short supply anywhere. This is not even about undermining local manufacturers; WV has been very careful to note that they're handing out shirts in places that have textile manufacturers, but that's not the point. Someone in each of these areas sells clothing, and that someone will lose business as a result of WV's donation of these t-shirts. As an organization that claims to be in the business of sustainable development, WV is directly and clearly undermining its own goals, not to mention those of the donors who give in the expectation that their goods will contribute to poverty alleviation. There's no way around it.

As for the notion that local staff in WV request the goods, I find this to be an unconvincing argument. People want things that are not good for their communities all the time. Since the evidence on the negative impacts of t-shirt donations is so solid, why would World Vision not use this as an opportunity to educate local field staff about the issue?

There's another issue at stake here, and it's one that many aid workers are uncomfortable talking about: World Vision is a Christian organization. They market to Christians and fund many activities through a child sponsorship program that is marketed primarily through Protestant churches in the US. Their stated purpose:

World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice.

It says something sad about our society's materialism and greed that we can't wait a few days for the NFL to print up accurate t-shirts while not wasting money on printing ones it knows will not be sold. But it says something even sadder when an organization that purports to be engaged in poverty alleviation with a faith-based motive won't tell the NFL "no" when it is asked to do something that actually contributes to the causes of poverty and injustice. It matters if theology motivates your behavior, and that should be reflected in decisions the organization makes about GIK.

World Vision, I think you can do better.

let's do this!

2011-02-12T15:46:00.003-06:00

This is a little bit outside of what we normally do here at TIA, but when I heard that events are scheduled for Commedia dell' Arte Day on every continent except Africa, I really wanted to help. (Seriously. The scientists at the South Pole are even staging an event.) Commedia dell'Arte is one of the oldest forms of theater in the world; it inspired much of Shakespeare's writing (especially the comedies).

There are a lot of people who read this blog, and some of you have significant interests in the arts, connections to theater groups on the African continent, and the skills to make things happen. And it just so happens that the Faction of Fools Theatre Company, which sponsors the event, is run by one of the world's foremost Commedia dell'Arte experts who also happens to have been my high school classmate.

So what do you say, loyal blog readers? Can we make sure that Africa isn't left out of this unique global cultural event? Here's all the information from Faction of Fools. All of this info is also available in French if you need it; contact the FoF team for more info at the address below.

Where will you be on February 25, 2011? Do you want to organize a Commedia dell' Arte event IN YOUR OWN CITY as part of COMMEDIA DELL’ ARTE DAY?

This event could be a performance, a class, a workshop, a lecture, or anything you like...

On February 25, 2011, simultaneous celebrations and events will occur all around the world as theatre companies, performers, scholars, students, and audience members celebrate Commedia dell' Arte with shows, conferences, lectures, and workshops. This worldwide festival was proclaimed by SAT and organized by Faction of Fools Theatre Company in Washington, DC, using viral and grassroots tools, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. We want events in every country, including yours!

To find out more, join the Facebook group "Commedia dell' Arte Day" and visit the FAQ page.

Faction of Fools is helping theatre companies—large and small—to produce shows in the style of Commedia dell’ Arte using traditional Commedia character types and scenarios, which will be available for free distribution on the Faction of Fools website. In Turin, Santibriganti Teatro will host the flagship event. Similarly, companies around the world will be coordinating with Faction of Fools to present performances on all seven continents (including Antarctica!). The full list of participants will be publicized at the official website.

Did you know that Commedia dell’ Arte is not recognized as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage?

The United Nations’ cultural wing (UNESCO) has officially recognized various theatre traditions throughout the world, such as Japan’s Noh and Kabuki; however, the famous “stock characters” of Commedia dell’ Arte—Arlecchino (Harelquin), Pulcinella, Dottore (the Doctor), Pantalone (the Pantaloon), Scapin (Scapín), and Scaramuccia (Scarmouche)—have yet to be acknowledged.

The Italian cultural Associazione SAT is petitioning the nation of Italy and the United Nations (UNESCO) for official recognition of this famous and monumental theatre form, and Faction of Fools Theatre Company in Washington, DC, is helping to support their cause with this COMMEDIA DELL’ ARTE DAY. You can view the stirring and amusing appeal by famous Italian Maestros online.

To organize a Commedia dell’ Arte Day event in a theatre or classroom near you or to sign the petition for recognition of Commedia dell’ Arte as “World Cultural Heritage,” go to http://www.commediadellarteday.org/. You can also contact Faction of Fools through their website or Facebook group or email Artistic Director Matthew R. Wilson.

what's happening in Rwanda?

2011-02-09T09:14:00.003-06:00

I've been a bit incommunicado of late. Sorry about that, there are lots of looming deadlines in my future and preparing to be out of town on a tour du monde for an entire month is consuming most of my blogging time. Speaking of, if you're up for hanging out in Shanghai, Chengdu, Nanjing, Montreal, Miami, DC, or Chicago in March, let me know. I'll be giving public talks in Nanjing and Montreal and presenting at conferences in Montreal, Miami, and Chicago and would love to connect.

Anyway, my inbox is alarmingly empty of hate mail, so let's talk Great Lakes politics for a bit. In late January, we passed the two-year anniversary of renegade Congolese general Laurent Nkunda's arrest by the Rwandan government. Nkunda has been held under house arrest just outside Kigali since that time without charge or trial. As Rwandan Minister of Justice Tharcisse Karugarama told Kenya's Daily Nation, Nkunda's case isn't easy. Trying a case you don't want to try never is.

The main impediments to trying Nkunda have to do with issues over extradition to the DRC, including the fear that the DRC's amnesty law will allow Nkunda to walk free and the fact that Rwandan law prohibits extradition to states that use the death penalty, which the DRC does. Of course, the real place Nkunda should be tried is the ICC, and don't think for a minute that it wouldn't be possible for Rwanda to arrange a transfer of Nkunda directly into MONUSCO's hands, where he could be transferred to ICC custody with little fuss, thus avoiding the Congolese courts entirely. But that would mean a full trial of Nkunda in the public eye, which no one in Rwanda wants, because, as we've discussed before, Nkunda knows everybody's secrets and would have little to lose by exposing them.

Meanwhile, back in Goma, Nkunda's one-time-number-two/current leader of the CNDP/possible leader in the FARDC depending on whom you ask Bosco Ntaganda has been involved in some shenanigans of his own of late, most recently involving a Nigerian plane that arrived in Goma carrying several million dollars in cold hard cash, apparently to buy gold. From Ntaganda. You can't make this stuff up, although, as Jason notes, one has to wonder about the type of shady characters who think Goma is the place to buy gold. Everybody knows the gold goes through Butembo, Bunia, and Bukavu. Duh.

Ntaganda, by the way, is still avoiding an arrest warrant from the ICC, despite living quite openly in Goma and going about his everyday business of maintaining a parallel administrative structure for CNDP governance in Rutshuru territory and, apparently, trying to get away with multimillion dollar smuggling deals. I hear he can regularly be seen out and about enjoying Goma's finest dining establishments. So why won't anyone arrest Ntaganda?

Meanwhile, the Rwandan government has had no problem prosecuting cases against its political enemies. Four exiled Rwandan leaders, all former members of the RPF regime and trusted Kagame deputies including former army external intelligence head Patrick Karegeya and Lt Gen Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, were sentenced to 20 and 24 year prison terms in absentia by a Rwandan military court.

Finally, longtime friend/fawning admirer of Kagame Stephen Kinzer did an overnight about-face on his view of Kagame, calling him an authoritarian in a piece for the Guardian. As Jason notes, it's hard to overstate what an extreme change this is; I expect we won't be seeing any more fawning pieces about Kinzer like this one in the New Times anytime soon. Indeed, it appears the New Times has already turned on him.

On a brighter note, the Voice of America reports that the government of Rwanda has agreed to review some of its laws restricting press freedom, free speech rights, and political freedom after being criticized at the meeting of the UN Human Rights Council. This would be a welcome change if it actually happens; as it currently stands, the broadly-written genocide ideology law makes it possible for any critical speech directed against the government to be construed as promoting genocide. My hopes that such a review will have any significant effect are limited, however, especially seeing as a Rwandan court just sentenced two journalists who wrote pieces critical of Kagame prior to August's elections to 7 and 17 years in prison.

um...

2011-02-03T09:40:00.003-06:00

Sorry for the radio silence around here. Like many of you, I've been glued to Al Jazeera English at all waking hours and the blog is suffering from it. I'm going to give it a rest this week, but will be back on Monday with an analysis of what's been happening in Rwanda of late. In the meantime, this is for our friends in Egypt: السلطة الى الشع

this & that

2011-02-02T00:48:00.002-06:00

The Economist has a really strong piece putting the use of rape as a weapon of war into context. Summary: the Congolese didn't invent it and addressing the problem is really complicated. (Um, friends at the Economist, Bukavu's in South Kivu, not North Kivu.)
Louisa Lombard's excellent report on the CAR's recent elections.
Social scientists, Marc Bellemare has some fantastic handouts for students on linear regression and causality.
On corruption, development, and Nigeria.
Rebecca Hamilton on Abyei.
Two Lessons from Tunisia from the great Nick Van de Walle.

why cairo won't be tunis

2011-01-28T09:25:00.001-06:00

This is a guest post from Matt Buehler, PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. Matt is going to be a regular contributor on the blog with a focus on north Africa. Here are his thoughts on the unfolding crisis in Egypt:

Large protests are expected today in Cairo and other major Egyptian cities following Friday prayer. Former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and unsuccessful opposition presidential candidate, Mohammed ELBaradei, has returned to Cairo to lead the protests and call for President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation. A diverse array of organizations and ordinary citizens will join the protests including Egypt’s largest opposition political movement, the nonviolent Muslim Brotherhood. Despite the outpouring of public dissatisfaction, Egypt is unlikely to experience a “Jasmine Revolution.” Here’s why:

1) Egypt’s military is far less professionalized and depoliticized than Tunisia’s. Rachid Ammar, the Tunisian military’s commander, played an important role in the Jasmine Revolution by siding with the Tunisian people against Ben Ali and his republican guard. It would be unexpected for the Egyptian military, which remains close to the ruling National Democratic Party, to demonstrate such professionalism in civil-military relations.

2) In Egypt, the stakes are much higher for domestic interest groups (especially sectarian minorities). Certain sub-sections of Egyptian society, particularly Egypt’s 10-12% Coptic Christian population, rely on the Mubarak regime for protection and support. If the regime suddenly collapses, they fear the ethnic conflict that might emerge within the period of instability. Tunisia, by contrast, is homogenous in terms of the ethnic and sectarian composition of its population.

3) More than Tunisia, the Egyptian military has experience dealing with large public demonstrations. Beginning with the bread riots of the 1977, the Egyptian state has successfully dealt with large-scale protests in the Nile Delta in the 1990’s, 2003, and 2005. The bread riots, which lasted two full days and resulted in 800 deaths, forced the regime to turn back scheduled IMF and World Bank loan payments that were inflating food prices for ordinary Egyptians through subsidy reductions. Thus, the planned ‘day of rage’ in Cairo this Friday may, in short, drive the regime to make concessions and introduce limited reforms, but we should not expect to see a second Jasmine revolution accompanied by substantive regime change.

Here’s an interesting article on the importance of military professionalization in these recent uprisings.

APSA Africa Workshop 2011

2011-01-24T15:34:00.001-06:00

African political scientists and US-based grad students, take note:

Participant Applications Now Being Accepted for APSA’s Fourth Africa Workshop – Kenya 2011

The American Political Science Association (APSA) is accepting participant applications for its fourth Africa Workshop, entitled “Representation Reconsidered: Ethnic Politics and Africa’s Governance Institutions in Comparative Perspective.” It will take place July 23 to August 6, 2011 at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Nairobi.

The organizers, with a grant secured from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will cover all the costs of participation (travel, lodging, meals, daily stipend, and materials) for up to 23 qualified applicants (20 African, plus 3 based in the U.S.). Professional fluency in English is absolutely required. Because the workshop will have a strong cross-regional component, US-based PhD students with expertise in either Africa or Latin America are encouraged to apply.

The workshop leaders are Todd Eisenstadt (American University, USA), Carl LeVan (American University, USA), Josephine Ahikire (Makerere University, Uganda), and Karuti Kanyinga (Institute for Development Studies, Kenya).

Program announcements, the 2011 Application Form, and more information about the workshop themes can be found online at the APSA Africa Workshop website, www.apsanet.org/africaworkshops.

The application deadline is March 14, 2011.

Tunisia's jasmine revolution: surprises and non-surprises

2011-01-24T00:07:00.002-06:00

Today I'm pleased to present a guest post from Matt Buehler. Buehler is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Texas at Austin. Currently conducting field research in North Africa in 2010-2011 funded through a David L. Boren Graduate Fellowship, his dissertation examines coalition building between Islamist and secular political parties. Here, Matt explains several key aspects of Tunisia's recent Jasmine Revolution:

Countless newspaper articles and television programs have sought to explain Tunisia’s ongoing “Jasmine Revolution.” Nearly all accounts, whether emerging from French, English, or Arab news sources, described the events as unfolding rapidly and surprisingly. In this guest post for Texas in Africa, I hope to highlight a few surprising (and non-surprising) aspects of the popular uprising that these sources seem to have passed over.

The Jasmine Revolution occurred in a surprising place. Tunisia, according to standard socio-economic indicators, seems ostensibly far less revolution-prone than its regional neighbors. Tunisians are, in general, more educated and enjoy higher living conditions than other Arab North Africans. Tunisia has a nearly 80% literacy rate compared to 75% in Algeria, 65% in Egypt, and 55% in Morocco. According to the UN’s human development index, which ranks counties based on a basket of indicators such as material inequality, life expectancy, and years of education, Tunisia lies at ranking 81 compared to Algeria’s 84, Egypt’s 101, and Morocco’s 114. The fact, then, that a 26-year-old university graduate took the decision to self-immolate in protest of his generation’s dire economic prospects in Tunisia - rather than Algeria, Egypt, or Morocco – seems rather unexpected.

Tunisia, moreover, is a surprising place for a popular uprising given that it hasn’t experienced previous instances of violent revolution or colonial struggle, as its neighbors Egypt and Algeria. Ben Ali’s predecessor, Habib Bourguiba, successfully brought Tunisia to independence through gradual negotiations with the French, preserving the country’s good diplomatic relations with its colonizer that continue until today. With fewer examples of popular uprisings leading to regime change than elsewhere in North Africa, Tunisia seems like an unlikely country for one to produce this outcome.

In examining the political actors that have spearheaded the Jasmine Revolution, one can see a surprising alliance that crosses both ideological and institutional lines. While unemployed young men provided the muscle in protests that began in Sidi Bouzaid, spread to Tunis, and eventually forced Ben Ali’s exile, labor unions and professional military officers have emerged as important players in the uprising. The military, in effect, has chosen to side with the people against Ben Ali and his closest allies, the presidential guard. In recent days, even the national police force – which initially repressed the protests – has begun cooperating with civil society activists through its national syndicate. It remains undetermined, however, whether Islamist and communist political parties currently banned under the Tunisian constitution will be permitted to join the alliance and compete in future elections. In Morocco, such a strategy has contributed to greater political stability and could offer benefits for Tunisia.

Although Tunisia may be an unexpected place for a popular uprising, it came at a relatively unsurprising time in its political history. While Habib Bourguiba saw little use for political pluralism, few dispute that he genuinely sought to implement western-style reforms that made Tunisia one of the most secular, educated, and prosperous countries in the Arab world. Ben Ali, in contrast, had few accomplishments to speak of other than fixing elections, amassing private wealth through public funds, and changing the constitution to allow him to continue as president after the age of 75. After ruling for 23 years, and five successive presidential terms, Ben Ali had provoked the ire of ordinary and elite Tunisians alike. They were fed up and wanted change. We wait now to see, however, whether the Jasmine Revolution blossoms into a participatory democratic system or gets nipped in its bud.

For background on the revolution, see this very useful timeline from al Jazeera.

shameless self-promotion

2011-01-21T16:22:00.002-06:00

Nicholas Garrett and I have a piece out in the new issue of Accord's Cross-Border Peacebuilding Project entitled "Trade, Development, and Peacebuilding in the African Great Lakes: the Role of the Minerals Sector." We argue that the mineral sector in the eastern DRC can and must become part of the peace building and trade development process if the region is to experience increased stability.

It's available as a PDF here; you have to register, but access is free. Our piece starts on page 86. I'd love your comments if you have the chance to take a look.

so you want to be an aid worker...

2011-01-19T14:18:00.003-06:00

Update: As you can see above, there's apparently a copyright claim on this video. When I posted it, the video was freely available for embedding on YouTube. I'll post the link if it reappears.

naming, shaming, & measuring

2011-01-18T00:05:00.001-06:00

Just before the holidays, the Enough Project released its first rankings of electronics companies based on their "progress they are making toward conflict-free supply chains and a conflict-free mining sector in Congo." You can look at the quick guide to their rankings here or read the full report here.

As longtime readers of this blog know, I'm cynical about the effects that any effort to engage in supply chain monitoring in the DRC will have on the conflict there. This is because the conflicts there are not only about or fueled by the mineral trade and also because local institutions are not strong enough to prevent smuggling, mislabeling, and the many, many, many other ways of getting around a monitoring and tracing regime. I'm of the view that this exercise is mostly a waste of time and effort, but if companies want to do it, then so be it. The "name-and-shame" approach that Enough is using here is standard advocacy practice. Whether consumers will pay any attention remains to be seen.

What I'm interested in here, however, is the report's authors' methodology in determining whether a company is making a good-faith effort at tracing and ending the use of Congolese conflict minerals in their products. The report outlines 18 indicators they used to make this judgment:

1. Tracing: Has the company traced its suppliers of tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold
(3TG)? (four questions)
2. Auditing: Does the company have audits conducted of its suppliers of the 3TG
minerals to determine mine of origin and chain of custody? (six questions)
3. Certification: Has the company taken concrete steps to develop an international
certification regime for the 3TG minerals? (three questions)
4. Stakeholder engagement: Has the company had regular engagement with the NGO
coalition, led by Enough, on the conflict minerals issue? (two questions)
5. Support for legislation: Has the company supported the legislation on conflict
minerals? (three questions)

As you can see from the rankings, Enough believes it has sufficient information for most companies to answer all of the above questions. I'm curious, though, as to how they've verified that companies have undertaken these actions. It's virtually impossible to fully trace suppliers, determine mine of origin, and to determine the chain of custody for the 3T's and, in particular, gold in the eastern DRC. On what basis is Enough gauging these activities? As Jason Stearns points out, it's pretty easy under the newly-released draft SEC framework (the development of which was required by the Dodd-Frank legislation) for a company to engage in due diligence, find nothing, and yet still be using minerals the sale of which is funding violence. As he notes in another post, the lack of an oversight mechanism plus the secretive nature of mineral sales in the Kivus will make it very, very difficult for companies' auditors to actually verify what they claim to be verifying.

Then there's the issue of engagement with Enough, which I find a somewhat bizarre indicator for measuring this particular outcome. The insinuation here is that a company that doesn't go along with Enough's method and advocacy program must not be doing anything about this issue. For example, one of the questions (worth one point) in the survey is, "Has the company held regular communication with the Enough NGO coalition regarding conflict minerals (at least bi-monthly)?" Which means that if your company hasn't sent an email or talked to Enough and the coalition once every two months, you must not care about conflict minerals.

Is that really the case, though? It may be unlikely, but isn't it possible that a corporation could be pursuing efforts to avoid the use of conflict minerals outside of Enough's framework? Especially if, like many observers, they believe that this effort is unlikely to lead to lasting peace in the DRC? Likewise, I find the "supporting conflict minerals legislation" criteria dubious. The legislation on this issue wasn't necessarily worth supporting for the reasons I've outlined above. Does a corporation have to support that legislation in order to be a good corporate citizen?

The conflict minerals issue gave Enough the chance to score a major legislative victory, and it gives corporations a chance to make themselves look like good corporate citizens. This is true regardless of whether the approach mandated by the legislation actually produces measurable positive outcomes for the Congolese. (HP in particular has been very interested in appearing to be a leader on conflict minerals.) However, much of the criteria by which this commitment is measured seems to me to be fairly dubious. A corporation can lose up to nine points on the scale simply for not working with Enough or getting involved with the legislation. To an academic like me, the use of "working with Enough" as an indicator seems to be measuring something that has very little to do with the outcome they're seeking to measure, namely, progress towards the use of fewer conflict minerals in consumer electronics.

I'd be interested to hear from other advocacy folks as to the justification for using such measures as a matter of commitment, as well as whether this is standard practice.

intelligence is not enough

2011-01-17T00:09:00.004-06:00

"Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.

"The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

"We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living."

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "The Purpose of Education," an article written by King as an undergraduate in the Morehouse campus newspaper (1948)

(Photo: Statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the campus of Morehouse College: AP/Rick Feld on thegriot.com)

a chat with Alassane Ouattara

2011-01-13T17:44:00.004-06:00

Friday morning at 10am EST, the Center for Strategic and International Studies hosts a conversation with Alassane Ouattara, whom most international observers believe won Cote d'Ivoire's presidential election late last year. He'll be chatting with CSIS Africa Program Director Jennifer Cooke, Christopher Fomunyoh, Senior Associate and Regional Director for Central and West Africa at the National Democratic Institute, and Akwe Amousu, Director of African Advocacy for the Open Society Foundations.

Thanks to the folks at CSIS, I'm happy to present a live stream of this event here. Log on at 10 on Friday to watch below:

Update: If you missed the conversation this morning. you can listen to it here.

Update 2: You can also watch the chat here (HT: @viewfromthecave)

Sudan referendum: what to watch

2011-01-08T05:12:00.002-06:00

After decades of war, a five-year transition/peace process that at several points seemed destined for failure, and a year-long push, tomorrow, Southern Sudanese will at long last vote in a referendum on whether to secede from the North. The outcome of the referendum is a foregone conclusion; there's no question that the vast majority of Southern Sudanese will vote to go. The only surprise will be if the option to split garners less than 95% of the vote.

While John Prendergast, George Clooney, and other advocates who don't speak a word of Arabic have been raising fears about violence for months (and are now embarking on silly plans to take satellite images of areas in which they believe genocide is likely, despite the fact that you can't actually see that level of detail in satellite imagery), the likelihood that a genocide or war will break out immediately seems to me to be slim to none. As Stephen Chan notes in a discussion hosted by the Royal African Society, there are too many incentives for both sides to behave themselves - the oil needs to keep flowing for both sides to benefit, and the US and China aren't likely to put up with any shenanigans. Also, al-Bashir seems to be willing to let the secession happen, despite pointing out to al-Jazeera that the South is going to be a bit of a mess in its initial independence period.

As Rob Crilly points out, al-Bashir is right. My real worry for this situation is not that war will break out between north and south - even over Abyei, which I think will eventually be allowed to vote on its own status - but rather than tensions within the South will be played out in the context of an extremely fragile state. Southern Sudan will immediately become one of the world's poorest, weakest states - albeit one with oil - with a plethora of ethnic groups who don't see eye-to-eye on everything. That's rarely a recipe for stability. Add to that the resentment that may build up over the SPLM's domination of politics within the South and there could be real problems.

Then again, the South's many groups have had several years to learn to work together, and everyone has known what was coming for some time.

There are, as you might imagine, lots of resources on what's going on in Southern Sudan this weekend. Here are some of the best I've seen; please add others in the comments:

The Carter Center's monitoring team is blogging from the field. Here's a discussion of their efforts.
al-Jazeera's People and Power goes to South Sudan. This is really worth your time, especially for the fantastic discussion of the rights of Arabs in the South. (HT: Bored in Post-Conflict).
The Royal African Society has an outstanding set of answers to the question, "Sudan Referendum 2011: what next?" from a truly impressive list of contributors. (HT: Roving Bandit)
Maggie Fick's blog is a must-read for anyone following this topic.
Katrina Manson on voter intimidation of diaspora Southern Sudanese - only 64,000 of an estimated 500,000 eligible diaspora voters are registered.
Rob Crilly has a nice list of reading on the topic.
Former President Jimmy Carter is taking your questions about Sudan via The Kristof.

your tax dollars at work

2011-01-04T18:37:00.002-06:00

So, how 'bout that border fence along the US-Mexico border, built at an average cost to US taxpayers of $4 million/mile?

This film was made by my grad school classmate Roy Germano, who's a visiting assistant professor at the New School. Roy also made a documentary film, The Other Side of Immigration, which is conveniently available for viewing via Netflix.

it's the best time of the year

2010-12-21T00:08:00.001-06:00

It's the holiday season and I am taking a much-needed break from technology for the next couple of weeks. I'll be back in January with posts on the relationship between faith & aid workers, Enough's new naming-and-shaming conflict minerals report, southern Sudan's January 9 independence referendum, and, depending on how things play out, what may by then be a civil war in Cote d'Ivoire (and why decent people don't call it "Ivory Coast"). Warmest holiday wishes to you and yours, and thank-you for being part of the Texas in Africa community. See you in the new year!