Under the Sun of Kimia II

Four different military operations are being pursued on Congolese soil today. The largest, the UN peacekeeping operation, is a patchwork of contingents from around the world, very few of whom are francophone. Most of the UN’s troop contributing nations are developing countries themselves. Their armies are poorly trained and equipped, and are hungry for the cash injection of a UN contract. The result is a purely symbolic peacekeeping force, where actual deterrence (protection of civilians) is hoped for but rarely demonstrated. Several UN contingents--Moroccans, Pakistanis and Indians among others--have been investigated for sexual abuse, arms and mineral trafficking. Like the country's national army and police, foreign troops under the UN banner are largely above the law.

Supported by Congo’s national army (FARDC), Uganda is pursuing remnants of the Lord’s Resistance Army who've adopted Orientale Province as their base arrière. The LRA continue their attacks and abductions of civilians, having been reduced to survival mode. In October, Angola ‘invaded’ the Bas Congo province, sparking a diplomatic row, to liberate the Cabinda enclave from long-standing rebel control. If successful, these operations will create a more peaceful neighborhood. Routing rebel forces on neighboring terrain is the only way to end years of mutual suspicion and accusations of ‘supporting the enemy’. Most Congolese pay little attention to these operations, or the civilian abuses they entail. One reads security conditions like weather patterns, and adapts accordingly.

Prominent in the public eye is Operation Kimia II, underway in the Kivus. After years of pressure from the Congolese government, the UN joined forces with the FARDC and Rwandan troops to capture, kill or route FDLR forces involved in the 1994 Rwandan genocide that have since disappeared into South Kivu’s remote western forests. Ostensibly a counter-terrorism operation, Operation Kimia II is producing mixed results. Local populations have lived for years under FDLR control, subject to a parallel administration widely reported as preferable to the Congolese administration. An absence of forced displaced from FDLR areas over the years attests to pacific relations between FDLR masters and local populations.

But as Kimia II advances into occupied territory, FDLR retaliations are frequent and civilians pay dearly. Recent travels into these areas have been fascinating, and infuriating. Typical of FARDC behavior around the country, soldiers assume control of local taxation structures (roads, markets), local mining operations, and pocket the money. Civilian authorities are shunted aside; local populations ignored or abused for having ‘cohabited with the enemy’. Congolese security culture retains the old Mobutu model: bapopulation baza bilanga ya bino (the population is your revenue source), dark sunglasses, macho pomp and hushed secrecy are de rigueur. No appreciation for classic counter-insurgency approaches, or the need to win the support and trust of civilians. Moreover, there seems a deliberate absence of planning for the transfer of power to civilian authorities, or a return to rule of law. Under FDLR, farmers farmed and miners mined in a climate of moderate prosperity. Now ‘liberated’ by Congolese forces, locals are subject to battering, forced labor, illegal taxation, rape and displacement. The gap between the objectives and methods of Kimia II could not be greater.

The premise of reconstituting eastern Congo by routing rebel forces and their parallel administrations, allowing the country’s civilian authorities to resume basic services and restore rule of law, is a farce. Under Kimia II there is no evidence that Congolese authorities, military or civilian, want or are able to provide those services. Even the modest first steps on Congo's long road towards modern statehood have yet be taken.

May our Gods be angry: Celestial politics in Bas Congo

Unlike in Latin America, where liberation theology was once an influential force, Christians in Africa rarely confront political oppression. On the surface, African Christian institutions claim not to meddle in affairs of the State. These days, ‘conversion of the heathens’ is passé, as Christianity is now a widespread and entrenched belief system. Churches of all denominations offer manifold development initiatives in education, health and agriculture. In many countries where the State has limited reach into rural areas, churches represent the sole link to the outside world for isolated communities.

But it’s only half the story to say that African Christian institutions are above political interests and the establishment of a modern State. Throughout colonial occupation, the Church completed the political and economic triangle that comprised the massive social engineering project of colonialism. Here was a hearts and minds program that worked—colonial control encapsulated Maslow’s entire hierarchy of needs. From material conditions, social space and into the spiritual realm, colonialism repackaged the indigenous African experience and replaced each dimension with a foreign substitute. Little has changed since independence: neither the school curricula nor the political dispensations (despite elections, ‘Big Men’ reign in a colonial style). Formerly vibrant traditional belief systems are now subaltern and syncretistic, fusing in curious ways with imported Christian ideas.

Read the rest here.

Kinshasa in miniature

Stumbled on a wonderful slideshow of Kinshasa street scenes in miniature.

This view is of Boulevard 30 Juin in its former glory. Chinese road crews recently decimated all the trees and green medians to make way for a six-lane downtown thoroughfare.

From Afrikarabia.

Fighting for control in Somalia

Spontaneous and unstaged photos from Mog streets. 'War porn' you might say, but there is virtually no public record of the bowels of hell that is life in Somalia today. Only a few foreign aid workers and intrepid journalists see this madness firsthand. Piracy consumes almost all media coverage, and the plight of the average Somali is eclipsed entirely.

From the Boston Globe:

"While Somalia recently has been in the news for its notorious pirates, back on-shore the country continues to struggle through a years-long war that has intensified lately, and to seek some sort of functional unifying government. Back in January, the Transitional Federal Parliament of Somalia elected moderate Islamist Sharif Sheikh Ahmed as President. Ahmed has gained international backing in his efforts to bring an end to 18 years of civil conflict.

However, hard-line Islamist groups such as al Shabaab, Hezb al-Islamiya and others continue to reject the government and have been attacking its forces and civilians for years now, most of the fighting taking place in the capital city of Mogadishu. The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) provides over 3,000 troops to maintain security where it can. Since the start of this insurgency in December 2006, nearly 17,000 civilians have lost their lives." (32 photos total)

Werner Herzog: Man the measure of madness

Herzog explores the complexity of man/nature relations in dozens of films and documentaries; his antipathy towards romanticism and Cinema Verité is well known. To reject both fantasy and empiricism as story telling vehicles, where does that leave a director? Because it blurs fact and fiction, Herzog’s method of documentary cinema is rogue. To contrast his approach with Cinema Verité, in interviews he cites the Heideggerian concept of ‘ecstatic truth’ (remember ‘unconcealment’, fellow philosophers?). The work of the author lies in finding friction between the facts, enough to create light or 'illumination' according to Herzog.

What kind of illumination are we talking about? Behold the classic closing scene from Stroszek, the dancing chicken from Appalachia, a sequence that follows the protagonist ending his life on a vacated ski lift.

Read the rest of this post here.

‘All that is solid melts into air’: the music of Fricke and Scelsi

Haven't had time to write or think lately, but did manage to squeeze this out for my tribe over at 3quarksdaily.

The best thing about long-distance driving is the sonic qualities of the enclosed acoustic chamber that is the car itself. On a recent pre-dawn drive through the eastern lowlands of North Carolina, two recordings kept me present and transfixed. I knew the pieces well, but the striking commonalities of the two artists had never occurred to me. Their sounds and compositional forms differ dramatically, but both share a belief that music exists to reflect basic cosmological principles—from silence comes word, from tone rhythm, from decay renewal, etc. In different ways, their compositions deliver a direct experience of what each believes to be cosmological truths.

Named after the Mayan genesis myth, Popol Vuh is a German progressive (‘prog’) band best known for its soundtracks to Werner Herzog’s early films. Led by Florian Fricke, Popol Vuh flourished for over three decades, leaving a long and varied discography. Originally a classics scholar, Giacinto Scelsi was an Italian composer often associated with the minimalist movement, despite his music being packed with activity. Scelsi studied Berg and Schoenberg but later abandoned western compositional style in favor of powerful, occasionally violent, monotonal variations.

Read the rest of this meditation here.

Guess the dictator!

Think your dictator IQ is high?

Think again as you riddle me this one.



Answer here.