Beautés à Dakar

Surprise request to leave Goma for a bit and come out to Dakar for a week of meetings. Amazing food, beautiful people, a new city to discover--who could resist?

[Senegal's original flag from late 1950s]

After satisfying a song that's been on the brain for days (classic Brimful of Asha, or the hilarious short version), I hit the streets and have been exploring and eating non-stop since arriving last Saturday. Delighted to run into an old friend I studied with in Germany eight years ago here in the hotel. Nothing more dreamlike than hearing your name called in a country where you know no one, turning around and finding the beaming face of a long lost friend.

Yves and I were together in Abidjan the eve of the 1999 coup that ticked off Ivory Coast's descent into civil war; he was carjacked on the way to pick me up at the airport. What a planet.

Hopefully I'll get some sightseeing in before I leave, between the meetings, the email and the reports to write. There's always Ile de Gorée, Africa's most poignant monument to human slavery, in stark contrast to the Statue of Liberty, a very different maritime marker of [voluntary] human migration.

Back in Goma next Tuesday to learn what is going on with CNDP (Nkunda hasn't been heard from or seen in almost a month) and whether our efforts to keep political negotiations alive will be successful. Not sure that can be claimed at this point.

At least I'll have these memories of Dakar to keep me going!

[Funny the way earworms love a void... the new one is 'Bros'.... or better yet Carrots -- amazing beats!]

DRC: 200 hundred ceasefire violations since January

And civilians continue to die in far greater numbers than before the Goma Agreement was reached six months ago. A serious lack of political will on all sides is undermining the agreement.

A new Human Rights Watch communique begins:

"On January 23, 2008, after weeks of talks, the Congolese government signed a peace agreement in Goma, North Kivu, with 22 armed groups committing all parties to an immediate ceasefire, disengagement of forces from frontline positions, and to abide by international human rights law. Following the signing, the Congolese government set up a peace program, called the Amani Program, to coordinate peace efforts in eastern Congo. Yet the government and international donors have provided limited funds to carry out that work.

The agreement failed to halt the fighting. United Nations officials have documented some 200 ceasefire violations since January 23, the majority between the forces of renegade general Laurent Nkunda’s National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) and a loose coalition of combatants from the Mai Mai Mongol, the Coalition of Congolese Patriotic Resistance (PARECO), and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Rwandan armed group whose leaders participated in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. The FDLR was not a party to the Goma agreement.

Human Rights Watch also found credible evidence that soldiers from the Congolese national army were supporting the PARECO, Mai Mai Mongol, and FDLR coalition, questioning the government’s commitment to the peace process."

Read the rest here. For victim testimonies, see here.

DRC: Peace Deal Unraveling

I'm currently in Goma supporting the international effort to uphold the Programme Amani, a rather free-wheeling effort to bring over 20 militia groups in the region to an agreement on disarmament, demobilization and absorption into the national army. The ceasefire responsible for this optimistic state of affairs has been broken repeatedly, however.

A primary concern is the lack of 'sticks' (vs carrots) for Laurent Nkunda, the most powerful group. His military advantage over the national army has been demonstrated several times, to much embarrassment in Kinshasa. His strong hand in these negotiations is not diminished by the threat of an ICC indictment; rather he knows he could turn the entire east upside down if things don't go his way. Without a convincing stick to wave in his face, the negotiators' hand is weak.

The other oncoming train in this particular tunnel is the prospect of a national army massively inflated by former rebels, when the Ministry of Defense can barely clothe, train, equip let alone pay its own forces. So a bigger, more dysfunctional national army is a good thing for Congolese civilians? Not sure where that strategy was rubber stamped, but there you go.

Coverage of the Amani process itself can be found here (Radio Okapi)

And the following report by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting describes the fragmentation of peace process itself. It is certainly accurate from my view on the ground, but does not exclude the possibility of resuscitation, which we are currently busy with.

'A ceasefire signed by more than 20 militia groups earlier this year is being broken repeatedly.'

The fragile peace that has restored some calm in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC, is in danger of collapsing, say key militia groups.

“They attacked our positions. It is now war,” said Sendugu Museveni, the former president and now chief negotiator for PARECO, one of the major ethnic Hutu groups to sign a ceasefire in January.

A peace deal was signed in the Goma, the capital of the North Kivu Province, by more than 20 militias operating in the region. Museveni accused the forces of Tutsi militia General Laurent Nkunda of repeated violations of the ceasefire and of sabotaging the peace process by backing out of the talks last week, as it has done several times before.“This is the last chance,” said Museveni. “We are very tired of responding to the capriciousness of the Tutsis who do whatever they want …. We will not agree to be dominated all the time by the Tutsis.” Read the rest here.

Coup d'etat: the unguided missile from within

Mr. Bottom Billion, Paul Collier, published an insightful op-ed last week lamenting the current politically-correct mindset that sees powerful, rich nations only bullying weaker, poorer ones. Yet the planet's major disaster states are ruled by isolated autocrats who are omnipotent on their own turf: Mugabe in Zimbabwe, General Than Shwe in Burma. These leaders are far more powerful than any Western head of state; there is nothing weak about them.

Efforts to help the citizens of these countries are blocked by such leaders and their cronies, for whom their people are 'better dead than fed'. The only effective change agent in such situations are the national armies, with their capacity for a coup d'etat. Coups are historically common in such instances, but are like 'unguided missiles', Collier explains, because their outcomes are unpredictable. How then to help make coups 'smarter'?

His answer: "Rather than trying to freeze coups out of the international system, we should try to provide them with a guidance system. In contexts such as Zimbabwe and Burma, coups should be encouraged because they are likely to lead to improved governance. (It's hard to imagine things getting much worse.) The question then becomes how to provide encouragement for some potentially helpful coups while staying within the bounds of proper international conduct."

Read the whole piece here.

Carrots for the General

Pencils ready? Here's today’s five-second brain teaser: What incentives succeed in getting autocrats to relinquish power peacefully? The use of sticks and carrots to bring about reform is fertile fodder for political theory, yet in practice the tools of the trade are limited and primitive. Privation of goods or commerce is common in today’s climate; chest-thumping and bellicose posturing, another favorite, is practiced by the entire animal kingdom. Carrots, as opposed to sticks, work wonders with children but see little success between nations. Why is that?

In the case of Burma under General Than Shwe and his military junta, no carrots have been tried, to my knowledge. Sticks in many shapes and sizes have been brandished and swung, to little effect. Economic sanctions, asset freezes, arms embargos and travel bans are currently in effect by the US and EU. I posed the question to a Burmese dissident last week. He reflected a moment, then smiled and said, ‘A missile launch pad in Thailand, that’s all we need’. No sticks, no carrots, just elimination: everyman’s fantasy. Were regime change so easy!

Western policies designed to weaken the junta have been contradictory, perhaps even self-sabotaging. The State Department claims its trade sanctions have encouraged ASEAN countries to adopt a more critical stance on Burma; this is correlation, not causation. ASEAN countries continue their waffling course of ‘constructive engagement’, meaning: do business and look the other way. The US was alone in pursuing sanctions for over a decade until the ill-fated ‘Saffron Revolution’ last September, at which point the EU implemented similar measures.

Critics of these sanctions, embargoes and other disincentives highlight their feel-good, symbolic character—much like Bush’s declaration of genocide in Darfur being followed by cooperation with Khartoum on terrorist intelligence matters. As with Sudan, sanctions against Burma arguably strengthen the hand of ruling authorities by creating a scapegoat for their own internal policy failures and narrowing the opportunity for Burmese to expand their economic, social, and cultural contacts with reform-minded nations. The conservative CATO institute, for instance, makes a case for re-opening commercial relations with Burma, arguing that investment and trade brings technology, better working conditions, and increased exposure to democratic ideas.

Burmese pressure groups and international human rights agencies have lobbied the UN for Security Council action to target Burma’s gas and oil industries, the junta’s primary source of revenue. Such a vote was never tabled, as China and Russia would surely veto on the grounds of the principle of non-interference, their almighty sacred cow and miracle panacea for any vexing political crisis.

But for those nations who huff and puff and try to blow the junta house down--to what effect? Sanctions that fail to cut off all revenue streams to an offending party are ultimately a non sequitur. And wherever there is oil, there is always political wiggle-room. Extraction rights to Burma’s vast offshore oilfields were accorded to China in 2007, along with contracts to build an overland pipeline leading—where else?—to China.

Read the remainder of this piece I wrote for 3quarksdaily.com here.

'On the Rumba River '

On the Rumba River: a new French film on Congolese music and life on the world's second largest river, now a graveyard for abandoned barges and steamers.

Good review here. A snippet:

"The confrontation between environmental ugliness and sonic beauty is part of the point of Wendo's music, and eventually becomes a lynchpin of Sarasin's film as well. Immediately following the band's light, lively reunion show, Wendo - while dolefully gazing at a Congo river littered with decrepit, abandoned boats which symbolize the country's wholesale neglect - laments a country torn asunder by leaders and politicians more interested in enriching themselves than tending to their fellow citizens. It's a forceful juxtaposition of tight-knit community and unjust disregard, amplified by the absence of any superfluous or manipulative aesthetic embellishment. True, the director's refusal to provide basic details about some of his featured musicians, as well as the Congo's rocky past, can at times leave one wanting. But ultimately, On the Rumba River makes up for its lack of informational depth with stirring poignancy."

Ghost at the Humanitarian Banquet

David Rieff's weekend article in the NY Times Magazine, "Humanitarian Vanities," points out that the logical endpoint of much humanitarian advocacy--regarding the 'right to intervene' and more recently the 'responsibility to protect'--is ultimately nothing other than regime change. After all, if the famous 'root causes' are to be addressed, is that not through direct engagement with national authorities? Burma, Sudan, Zimbabwe--who has not dreamt of an end to suffering in these places?

Lasting solutions lie with the venal political class, folks, not aid agencies. And they must go, by any means necessary. Yet most aid agencies are averse to this language, Rieff points out, even though it is the logical conclusion of their interventionist ethos.

"After the Iraqi debacle, it is hardly surprising that we are hesitant to undertake interventions that may well involve regime change. And regime change — its moral legitimacy and political practicality — is the ghost at the banquet of humanitarian intervention. Use any euphemism you wish, but in the end these interventions have to be about regime change if they are to have any chance of accomplishing their stated goal."

I'm glad to see Rieff writing on these issues again; I've always appreciated and learned from his contrarian views. Here's a link to a critique I wrote of his 2002 book, A Bed for the Night, in the Parisian journal Multitudes.

Go Fast Turn Left!

The final scene of the 1968 Planet of the Apes (Rod Serling script, starring Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowall) is worth enduring the tortuous acting. It's a very different ending from the 2001 remake with Mark Wahlberg, and distinguishes the original Apes as true science fiction. Marky Mark's version is a generic action film.

Briefly: After his escape as a prisoner in an ape society on a distant planet, Heston discovers a damaged Statue of Liberty half-buried on a remote beach. He realizes that his inter-planetary voyage had in fact kept him on Earth all along. Humanity had destroyed its own civilization, paving the way for a Planet of the Apes.

I had a more mundane version of this vision recently: a post-petrol world where combustion engines were a memory and pedal-power had reclaimed the Earth. I like apes, but they didn't play a role in this particular fantasy.

Embrace your inner redneck

Sound advice, perhaps. Not for me though, at least in this lifetime. My inner redneck will have to wait—I’m still recovering from my past life as Pavlov’s dog. But last weekend I had the opportunity to embrace that inner redneck in my first close encounter with the apotheosis of modern redneckdom--NASCAR. This was the Southside Speedway in Richmond Virginia, one of the sport's earliest professional tracks, in use since 1959. NASCAR fans hail Southside as ‘the toughest short track in the south’, and I quickly learned why.

Thing is, I wasn't there for the roaring engines or burning rubber. I came for a day of bicycle racing. These were track bikes primarily but a couple of road bike races were also scheduled. I arrived late and over-caffeinated to find the speedway grounds completely empty except for a hundred or so cyclists in the circle inside the track. Most were either preparing to race or recovering. I had not missed my start time, and ran over to get registered.

Under a gray sky and spots of rain, the place had the mournful feel of a fair ground or circus site after the festivities had ended, the cheers and laughter now gone, the animals and rides long departed. Here too, on the ground were crushed candy wrappers, gluey traces of melted sno-cones, tufts of cotton candy stuck to matted patches of grass where crowds had stood and cheered.

But absent any NASCAR fans and the roar of the spectacle itself, the quiet speedway also had the distinct feel of anachronism, of future-past. I gazed out at the empty bleachers and imagined the speedway as a relic of an extinct civilization, a NASCAR ruin in a post-petrol world.

'I can't control my fingers, I can't control my brain'

Founded by a band of track bike racers without a local velodrome, the Sprint Club (think 'Fight Club') created its own race series called Go Fast Turn Left, in deference to Richmond's long history of stock car racing at Southside, where many GFTL races are organized.

The Sprint Club ethos is a direct descendant of old school punk rock's DIY spirit. That means, in no particular order: (1) Appropriating a found environment, making it one’s own, at the expense of appropriate norms and behavior that belong to that environment; (2) In spectacle or performance, participation trumps consumption. Passive, polite observation is replaced by direct participation, eliminating the distance between spirit and seer, artist and viewer; 3) The ‘do it yourself’ mentality is self-explanatory--there are no experts, only students and practitioners, and all are welcome.

After getting my race number and quickly inhaling assorted carbs and sugars, I steered out onto the ragged tarmac to warm up with the other racers. A banked, tight oval track, Southside is only a third of a mile long. My group would race for 25 laps. From the previous night’s NASCAR event, there were fist-sized chunks of black rubber from exploded car tires, random nuts, bolts and metal fragments scattered everywhere. The racing surface itself was gritty, pock-marked and scarred from crashes and the elements.

Ass on fire

I didn't win the race or even come close, but I learned a few things. First, cycling is a cruel muse. Glorious bouts of smoking and drinking never got in the way of my marathon running, years back. Marathons permitted me the dubious luxury of being a hedonist and a masochist at the same time--usually such joys cannot coexist. But competitive cycling is different than long distance running. Marathons require stamina and effort sustained over hours, as does cycling. Unlike marathons, however, cycling involves regular spikes of acceleration, troughs of radical energy depletion and periods of recovery within the course of a single race.

My fantasy of riding on a post-petrol, futuristic ruin of a NASCAR track was shared, I learned, with other riders, some of whom complemented me on my 'sweet ride' before the race (have a look, it really is an amazing bike). These were the same guys who slammed into me as the peloton whistled forward at a bruising 31 mph. 'Keeping the rubber side down' was more challenging than I thought. At one point, I heard a crash behind me, but rubbernecking was not an option.

Competitive cycling is a contact sport, I also discovered, with lots of intimidating banter between riders. Kind of like a mosh pit, I thought and smiled, as I managed to keep pace with the breakaway pack for much of the race. Surely I would finish in the top five, I thought. But with two laps to go, my legs turned to lead and a handful of leading riders pulled away from me. I hadn't the strength to stay with them, or even maintain a spot in their slipstream. I crossed the finish line and thought, 'Time to kill my inner Marlboro Man'. Alas, it appears my inseparable companions hedonism and masochism will finally be parting ways.

'Shove the money out the door' ....

... and into some local politicians' coffers.

In 2006 I evaluated the $200m DDR program funded by the World Bank and referred to in the WSJ article below. I found a rotting corpse. To my surprise, the people who hired the evaluation at the Bank were not receptive to my findings, and promptly sat on the report for a year. In the end, they released an anodyne 20pp version of my 150pp report. Talk about deliberate obfuscation -- I've never seen it so shamelessly flaunted.

Read the Wall Street Journal article on the Bank's new anti-corruption efforts...
Bits and pieces here: "On April 21, the bank released the findings of a corruption probe into a $100 million "demobilization and reintegration" scheme in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which uncovered "sufficient evidence to substantiate allegations of fraud, corruption and disallowed expenses." The very next day, April 22, the bank announced that it had approved an additional $50 million grant for – drumroll, please – the same "demobilization and reintegration" scheme in the Democratic Republic of Congo. [...]

There has also been no change to the shove-the-money-out-the-door mentality that lies at the root of the bank's endemic corruption problems. When the bank first initiated the Congo project in 2004, it had just been burned by a similar demobilization project in Cambodia, where by its own later admission it showed "a lack of realism," a "need for greater political awareness," and a "lack of understanding."

Yet none of these lessons were so much as mentioned in the bank's internal project proposal for the Congo. That proposal contains page after page of written promises of external financial and technical auditing, competitive bidding and other anticorruption bells and whistles. None of it seems to have made much of a difference in preventing the scheme from sliding into the same morass that is the frequent endpoint of World Bank projects."

Carbon Footprints in the Rift Valley

Somewhere down in this amazing valley, around Lake Naivasha, Chris and I had a wonderful day's ride...

Waterbuck and wildebeest in the background, also zebra and giraffes...

Ugali in Kigali

I feel like the Cookie Monster when I’m in this part of Africa – can’t get enough ugali. Doesn’t help that I’m a vacuum cleaner by nature, generally eating anything within reach of my arms or legs. My big orifice welcomes anything remotely edible, except manioc ugali (foufou); I like the maize version.

Took the bus back from Bukavu via Cyangugu to Kigali yesterday. Stunning countryside, and we passed many towns where I worked in 1994: Gikongoro, Kibeho, Butare, and lots of small villages. Back then Butare was a ghost town, littered with bodies, no civilians in sight, and occupied only by the RPF. Between Gikongoro and Butare was ‘the line’—basically an international border where RPF control stopped and that of the French military began.

On the French side, all the way to Cyangugu and the Ruzizi River where Congo starts, were Hutu IDPs: some certainly guilty of genocide, some not. But all of them were running for their lives. Anyway, there was no way to tell who was guilty, and culpability was not a priority issue then. The main thing on everyone’s mind was to prevent a second (revenge) genocide.

It took a while to figure it out, but my cramped minivan yesterday was filled with Banyamulenge (Tutsis of Rwandan extraction born or raised in Congo). Politics was the primary discussion point, and lots of laughter about life in general. In today’s ethnically charged climate, Banyamulenge are no longer welcome in Congo. Many felt forced to immigrate to Rwanda, a country they don’t consider home, and that does not accept them. Many never learned to speak Kinyarwandan, as pressure to assimilate in Congo meant speaking Swahili and French. Unwelcome in Congo, in Rwanda they must assimilate again, this time to a society conrolled by Tutsis from Uganda—English and Kinyarwandan speakers.

JG, a friend here, was born and raised in Bukavu to a Tutsi refugee father and a Congolese (Shi) mother. In his final years of study towards priesthood at Bukavu’s prestigious seminary, his mentors and colleagues turned on him. Because he was half-Tutsi, he had to leave. With no English or Kinyarwandan, he came to Kigali and found the professional ranks occupied entirely by Tutsis who’d followed the RPF from Uganda. Along with the Hutu majority here, JG is essentially excluded from participating in the bright and prosperous Kigali of today.

Over ugali and beer yesterday, JG and I recalled the French expulsion from Rwanda in late 2006. For a government that brooks no dissent, no opposition politics and barely a peep from civil society, it was logical that they eject a threatening foreign presence: recall the Kagame indictments issued by a French court (and more recently by a Spanish court). However consistent the logic of this regime—brook no dissent—it is a recipe for open hostility, sooner or later.

JG wants a country where ‘all Rwandans are one’; his NGO works with former prisoners (ex-genocidaires Hutu) to reintegrate into society. Very brave, but essential if the timebomb is to be diffused. JG's work is a drop in the ocean, unfortunately. And as long as the government treats everyone except the Ugandan Tutsi community as potential traitors, the supposed center will not hold.

Congo Planet

The Earth trembles on this Bukavu morning. Nothing shattering; these are mild but sustained tremblings. Gerry’s white brick bungalow is marked with diagonal cracks and fissures left by previous earthquakes. It’s an old colonial structure, humble and solid, from the 1930s or 40s. But the last serious earthquake knocked his chimney off, and now his high-pitched roof leaks. When such heavy quakes hit Bukavu, newer constructions crumble, landslides destroy roads and whole areas find themselves completely cut off from the outside world until road repairs are completed.

In Congo, that wait can last for years, as the state does nothing. It undertakes no repairs, provides no services—emergency or otherwise—to people affected by conflict or natural disaster. How a country’s government can get away for so long with such criminal negligence is befuddling to outside observers; even insiders get lost in the maze of causality behind dysfunction and crisis on so colossal a scale.

Update on the plane crash in Goma: Congo’s Transport Minister is blaming the tragedy on the volcanic eruption in 2002, whose lava consumed part of the runway, shortening its length. No repairs were ever undertaken to return the strip to its former length; landings and take-offs simply became that much more treacherous. The minister did not stop with the volcano. He also blamed the crash on the war, which effectively ended in 2004, although conflict continues in the eastern provinces. Neither he nor any other Congolese politician ever mentions the absence of an official regulatory body as a probable cause. Yes, aviation is a regulated industry, in the interest of public safety. Does anyone in this government know what such a regulatory body would look like, or how to run one?

Congo continues to sink at free-fall velocity. No vital signs are apparent since elections in late 2006. Popular hopes and expectations were perhaps too high, now people are waking up to their worst fears: plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Some Lega masks from South Kivu, about 60 years old. Exquisite up close.

South Kivu Rising

Overnight shelling in downtown Bujumbura last week by FNL; attacks on the Rwandan genocide memorial and commemorative activities in Kigali the week before. Is there a link? Re-read the Hutu Ten Commandments, in case they’ve slipped your mind.

Hutu Power is once again raising its fist across the region. For the uninitiated, Pouvoir Hutu is the local species of genocidal ideology that unleashed the 1994 Rwandan genocide. It is also largely responsible for both Eastern Congo’s ongoing mess and Burundi’s failure to consolidate peace, some two years after a formal peace agreement and national presidential elections. Besides ongoing battles between the FDLR/Interhamwe, Laurent Nkunda’s troops and the Congolese national army, the last major assault on Tutsi civilians was the Gatumba massacre in August 2005.

The ideology covers the region; its supply lines and popular support base criss-cross Rwanda, Burundi, Congo and Tanzania. Eastern Congo’s unruly wilderness provides excellent camouflage for extremist Hutu groups of Rwandan or Burundian extraction. Their rear bases are reportedly concentrated in the deep south of South Kivu. If Kagame and Kabila are able to find common cause on confronting this problem, it will likely see renewed conflict in South Kivu. Kagame has already stated that if Kabila gets no results, the Rwandan army will invade to deal with the problem. If that happens, we can expect the resurgence of a regional war.

Under the volcano

Arrived in Goma by road from Kigali yesterday; a surprisingly painless trip. Goma was flattened by volcanic lava in 2002. The area continues to experience minor eruptions and tremors, including massive methane releases toxic to humans and livestock. But it is a beautiful sight, the Nyiragongo volcano, particularly on a clear night when its lava dome lights up the sky. I have yet to climb it and peer inside; those that have claim it is a risky (not falling in but inhaling toxic fumes) yet amazing experience.

The volcano was the last thing on my mind as I approached the border, fearing I would have to negotiate my entry with drunken policemen and soldiers. Instead I found an efficient customs service manned by rational, non-threatening civil servants, as professional as on the Rwandan side of the border. Small signs of progress make big impressions, given the state to which the DRC has sunk over the years.

An hour later, I learned that a DC-9 from the primary national airline, Hewa Bora, crashed on take-off from the city airport. The fuselage spun into a residential/commercial area and exploded, claiming around 80 lives. DRC is well known as having the worst air safety record in the world. Locals have abandoned the former reference for commercial aviation, ‘air peut-etre’, in favor of the darker language of ‘cerceuils volants’, or flying coffins. See the BBC story here.

Still, I've managed to meet many local NGOs to discuss their work in hopes of connecting them to donors elsewhere. The primary constraint is capacity: very few are large enough to absorb much money, and all reauire direct supervision, regular training and institutional development. Despite a peace accord in 2004 and presidential elections in 2006, Eastern DRC is very much an emergency context, although limited development and recovery activities are underway. The national government is weak; the army provides no security and there are no public services or any basic infrastructure to speak of.

If I could change one thing about international assistance to Africa, it would be to drop the democracy and elections obsession. Security and infrastructure are the most basic conditions for progress. Democracy bakes no bread and stops no bullets in this part of the world.

For the next leg to Bukavu, I'm taking the boat!

A book through my fingers

Once in a while you stumble on a book that's been out for a while and ask, 'How could I have missed this?' Chris and Katy, my PRISM partners, have an excellent Africa library in Nairobi. I picked up a travelogue/investigation by Sven Lindqvist called 'Exterminate All the Brutes'--the reference being Conrad's Kurtz character in Heart of Darkness.

Out in Swedish since 1992 and in English since 1996, how did it slip by me? Old and lazy, I surmise. To make up for my failings, I've been trudging around with it for the last couple weeks, letting its thesis seep into my veins, like a slow-drip IV.

Lindqvist writes with a delectable dryness, like Kapuscinski (Guardian obit here), one of the few western writers on Africa I respect. Lindqvist also travels 'embedded', and his content is driven by his encounters and their always unpredictable unfoldings. A man infatuated with Fortuna is a kindred soul.

Unlike Kapuscinski, always meek before taxing geopolitical questions, Lindqvist is a gleeful slaughterer of sacred cows, an iconoclast and anti-ideologue par excellence. The thesis of this book is that the Nazi quest for Aryan supremacy and Lebensraum was at its core an application of the expansionist and racist principles of imperialism and colonialism that Europeans had long been applying to the Third World.

In this light, there is little exceptional about the Holocaust itself, given that its precursors were myriad. No one notices this historical continuity because the victims of European expansionism and subjugation were not Europeans, until Nazism--itself a culmination of certain trends in European thought and action over centuries. Is this so shocking a thesis? I think not.

Among the African countries I know well where large scale human massacres have occurred, I'm finding that debate in Rwanda over justice, reconciliation and root causes is relatively free of the usual blame game and denial of responsibility that goes on elsewhere. All are aware that colonialism did much to poison Hutu-Tutsi relations here, and post-independence relations with France have been dubious to say the least. France was forced to pull its diplomatic presence here in 2006.

But Rwandans are not blind to the fact that a homegrown logic was unleashed here: it was not imported or forced down anyone's throat by outsiders. What I've found so uncanny is that many here read the metamorphosis of mind that led to Hutu Power and the 'Intent to Destroy' (the name of Lindqvist's new book on the methods of genocide) that were unleashed in April 1994 in almost identical terms as Arendt's elucidation of the origins of totalitarianism.

A group I met today, Never Again Rwanda, made this case quite clearly, despite no one knowing Arendt or her work. Their efforts revolve around creating a 'culture of reason' in a country where a 'culture of silence' predominates, and automatic obedience before authority is expected and assumed. Critical thinking is rare, and not rewarded. NAR are trying to inculcate these values in schools and among local authorities.

Genocidal ideology is resurging, and eyewitnesses to the genocide who survived and can now testify are being targeted and killed. 'Survivor' and 'perpetrator' are the new categories for Tutsi and Hutu. Although everyone knows that ethnic hatred is an organizing principle to the violence and not its root cause (which is unequal wealth and power sharing), many remain susceptible to ethnic rhetoric. NAR is doing good work; we hope to find them more funding to expand their efforts on a national scale.

14 ans depuis...

This week is the national commemoration of the 1994 genocide here in Rwanda. Two Rwandan friends took me to the Kigali Memorial Center today, amongst thick crowds. A grenade had been tossed into the place the day before--perpetrators and survivors do not cohabit well, and anti-Tutsi 'genocide ideology' is still very much alive and well in the region.

The experience was heavy and I choked up, but emerged strangely grateful that I had been in the country for the immediate aftermath of the primary wave of killing. Today's visit also brought back a lot of memories from that period of my life that had faded or simply been repressed. I've always contextualized my time in Rwanda in 1994 as just another relief mission to a war-torn country, but I now realize that it was something else entirely.

It's easy to say, but genocide is the most extreme human transgression. That thought needs a visceral connection somehow, otherwise it remains purely intellectual--subjective and forgettable. Today I grasped in my bones that there is nothing else at the bottom of the human psyche after all other trap doors have given way. Beyond madness, beyond reason, beyond fantasy, beyond brute physicality, genocide is the final cul-de-sac at the bottom of human consciousness.

There are several genocide memorials around the country; this one is both a museum and an unmarked cemetery with enormous mass graves in submerged cement containers. Name placks are fixed to an adjacent wall, somewhat like the Vietnam Memorial in Washington.

Survivor stories are playing on video screens positioned throughout the tour, which occurs largely underground. That of Valentine runs: "I lay down again among the dead bodies. It was three days after the killings, so the bodies stank. The Interahamwe would pass by without entering the room, and dogs would come to eat the bodies. I lived there for 43 days . . ." [read rest here]

Rwanda is recovering slowly; there is security and infrastructure, the two main ingredients for human prosperity in a post-conflict country. Latent tensions between Hutu and Tutsi are spreading, however, and many I've talked to are not optimistic about the prospect of peaceful cohabitation.

More on all this later...

Assault on dystopia

I'm spending this month visiting a clutch of countries in East Africa defined, in part, by their history of armed conflict and failed governance. This is a causal relation, not just collective misfortune: conflicts ignite and humanitarian crises ensue because of poor governance. Felonious states, murderous regimes and the eternal recurrence of la politique du ventre.

Somalia being the sole exception, the rest of this neighborhood is entering an 'early recovery' phase now that peace was bought on the cheap. That means no justice for victims; impunity greases all palms. Rebel leaders lay down arms in exchange for posts in the national army, government, or some other enticement. No sticks, just carrots--presto, it's donkey heaven. The international community who funds these charades can only pray the juice is worth the squeeze.

Lower on the rungs of power, paramilitary thugs and drooling militiamen get their reward too: a poorly run DDR program and the chance to return to village life without trial or sanction for all the bloodshed and rape in their wake. La politique du ventre started these wars; in turn it offers an incentive to end them. I recall Goethe saying that however complex man's psyche may seem, the 'circle of his states is soon run through'. Or in this case: 'me want you got', as they say in Sierra Leone.

So besides an Empedoclean dance of love and strife, what drives this dynamic of power and suffering, of 'grievance and greed'? I see a perfectly balanced Pavlovian equation stuck on infinite repeat: Oppression, rebellion, reward. Oppression rebellion, reward. Hunger for power starts wars as easily as it ends them. Keep justice and culpability out of any peace negotiation and the powerful can remain atop the dung heap for generations to come. Laundry detergent dreams for evermore! Even Pavlov's dogs could have smelled the rot of this seamlessly conditioned feedback loop--a mile high stench totally lost on the big brains at the UN Security Council.

But what about the African Union--are they not capable of some form of leverage, an anchor of reason in this ocean of impunity? Alas, the AU still worships the 'brotherhood of African leaders'. In practice this means Mugabe gets a winking tisk-tisk from Mbeki; Obasanjo offers exile to Charles Taylor. The AU says nothing, which is consent. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of ZANU-PF supporters continue believing the absurdity that to vote for Mugabe is their only hope against 'imminent British invasion'. A successful politics of the belly thus appears to confer mass hypnotic powers to the demagogue over the hoi polloi. If the AU ever awakes from its hypnotic state of genuflection, maybe it will stop facilitating the dingdongs at Africa's helm and roundly condemn them.

Taking Tiger Mountain

So who's taking tiger mountain by storm? Here comes a warm jest. Given the colossal scale of human suffering this madness entails, this post-conflict neighborhood is swarming with massive UN operations, hundreds of NGOs doing relief and development, philanthropists, human rights activists and do-gooders of every stripe. It's easy to dismiss the humanitarian circus as futile or naively quixotic; it is a most imperfect enterprise, full of disappointment and disillusion. Nor can it fix any of the political dysfunction and self-serving governance at the heart of Africa's problems. Still, I find hope in the humanitarian movement because it is the only full-fledged assault on dystopia going in this part of the world. Everyone else is either getting crushed under a boot, or donning boots to do some crushing.

I'm in Rwanda right now, and havent been here since 1994 just after the genocide. It offers a significant exception to my rant above. An amazing transformation of the country has occurred; it stands in complete opposition to its immediate neighbors, particularly DRC and Burundi. Under Kagame rule, it is not exactly a democratic place, and there is no independent media or much civil society to speak of. But security and the foundations for economic development are clearly here, and Rwanda has prospered as a result.

One thing I agree with Kagame on is his ambition to wean the country off of international charity as quickly as possible. I too want a world where there are only workers, no expatriate labor force or foreign donors at the top of the food chain in developing countries. International financial assistance to private and public sectors will be needed, but the vast machine of intermediary entities--international NGOs, UN agencies, the World Bank country offices--should disappear, the sooner the better. Direct support to indigenous efforts, providing human capital and capacity are sufficient, will get everyone off the ground and into the air. Hence my visit: our little initiative (called 'PRISM Partnerships') aims to connect local NGOs with financial backers elsewhere.

I'm surprised how many positive reactions I've gotten from people across the board: locals, internationals, cynics and dreamers. From the bottom of the well at night, one can only dream--not of utopia but of resistance strategies, of the infinite possibilities for effective assault on dystopia.

Back in Burundi

Listening to Boris, holed up in a sweatbox hotel I haven't set foot in since 1994, when we launched relief operations in SW Rwanda just after the genocide.

That was before Burundi's serious problems started, and it was considered the more stable of the two countries. Even in 1994, before the war commenced here in earnest, I recall our jeep breaking down in the center of Bujumbura in a torrent of flashfloods and rainfall. I got out to look under the hood for five minutes or so, then scrambled back into the dry interior to wait out the downpour. Looking around inside I realized that the lurky loiterers who'd materialized around the jeep had also managed to clean out everything inside it--while it was fully locked!

I got back out of the car and trudged ankle deep into the immobile, drenched crowd to see if any of our goods were visible in anyone's hands, carts or atop their heads. Everyone I passed had clearly witnessed the theft, and now either stared at the ground or averted my gaze when I stood before them. Some smiled and looked away. Clearly some sort of game was going on. No one offered any information, or even acknowledged me as I moved between them, rustling and poking among their belongings in search of my own. Their deliberate passivity and blatant complicity was infuriating in a way I'd never before experienced.

That was my second time in Burundi, and I've since worked here off and on at least 7 or 8 times over the years. And I've since had many more things stolen -- each time the takings dig deeper into my resources! So I'm familiar with the silence, the pretending-it-didn't-exist while still in full stare mode that Burundians indulge in so shamelessly at the expense of other people's troubles.

That jeep incident was the first time I'd been dealt a full dose of the well-known Burundian trait people here call 'solidarite negative': never disclose anything to betray a member of a group, even an accidental group (a crowd at a market), because your disclosure will be remembered and brutally avenged. A warm and fuzzy place indeed.

I got here today at noon and met immediately with an old Burundian friend and colleague to download recent political developments and hear where the country was heading. Little appears to have happened since my last visit in late 2006, except that the ruling political party has split, creating a dysfunctional breach.

More on this as my visit unfolds...

Mea culpa: Can it liberate?

And your silence is all to no avail; today the blinding sun of torture is at its zenith; it lights up the whole country. Under that merciless glare, there is not a laugh that does not ring false, not a face that is not painted to hide fear or anger, not a single action that does not betray our disgust, and our complicity.

-- Sartre, Preface to Fanon's The Wretched Of The Earth

In my recurring fantasy, Americans awake in toxic shock at an administration so far beyond the pale that each of us, asphyxiated and sputtering with rage, simultaneously grasps our complicity, our guilt by association. If nothing else appalls and shames us into action, passivity as complicity just might. In that Rorschach moment where silence and complicity meet, responsibility for national wrongs becomes ours, just as the parents of bullying, violent children know they too are to blame. Once the floodgates of popular rage are open, our leaders will remember to whom they are accountable.

Find the rest of this post on the absence of outrage in American culture over at 3 Quarks Daily.

Victor Bout arrested

The infamous Russian, known to anyone who's worked in African conflicts over the last twenty years, was arrested today in a sting operation by US DEA officials in Thailand. The so-called 'Merchant of Death', the subject of a book and movie ('Lord of War', with Nicolas Cage) supplied arms and military hardware to all sides of almost every major global conflict, including the Taliban in Afghanistan, and yet lived openly in a Moscow luxury high rise until his Thailand trip. His links to African blood diamonds and Al Qaeda financing have been the subject of much research, mostly by Doug Farah, formerly of the Washington Post.

Hopefully this will stop the US from hiring him as a subcontractor on its 'heavy lift' cargo operations, under KBR, Fedex and others. More on his liaisons with the very governments ostensibly seeking his arrest over the years on Doug Farah's blog here.

Here is Bout on an airfield in North Kivu in Eastern DRC during the war.

Franco, King of African Rumba

Africa has produced many musical giants. Some, like Fela Kuti and Cesaria Evora, achieve international renown; others influence a wide swathe of musicians but remain relatively unknown to a wider public. François Luambo Makiadi (6 July 1938 - 12 Oct. 1989), the Congolese bandleader and guitarist, is definitely in the latter category. Considered the father of the modern Congolese sound, he is a towering figure even in death, and certainly the greatest the DR Congo (formerly Zaire) has ever produced.

Read the rest of this story, with links to various Franco tracks and videos, over at 3QuarksDaily.

Bosana mayele ya bakoko te!

Surviving survival school

The novelty of the new year is only starting to dawn on me. Last year was amazing; ecstatic and sad in equal measure, like any satisfying novel or credible cosmology. This year started with an unexpected blast in the face: a week of wilderness survival training in southern Florida. Not of the 'me alone against nature' school, this approach emphasizes the acquisition of primitive/ancestral lifeskills over grin-and-bear-it privation and endurance. Its aims are far-reaching and total--providing one is ripe for conversion, the experience is nothing if not transformative. On the mundane, pragmatic level, its lessons will enable you to park you car and walk into Nature's green veil without a knife, food, water or clothing and 'live lavishly', or so the instructors like to repeat.

Read the rest of my article on the experience over at 3QD. The place is called Tom Brown's Tracker School, found here.

Some other good articles on the School and the man have appeared in Outside and the London Times.

The Ongoing Saga of South Sudan

Between northern Uganda and now Southern Sudan, heavily armed Nilotic pastoralists have been much on my plate these last two months. I wrote about Karamoja in November, a remote and volatile region of Uganda where life revolves around livestock, primarily the bovine variety. Tending and stealing cattle is how most Karamojong spend their time. I’m now in Southern Sudan where related Nilotic tribes live the same way, but in the context of a long civil war. Bullets fly and cattle reigns supreme.

Read the rest of this missive here.

Karamoja's Militant Pastoralism

Under colonial rule and since independence, the Ugandan state flag has rarely flown over Karamoja, the remote and semi-arid northeastern region bordering Kenya and Sudan. Armed violence was first documented there among resident pastoralist tribes in the early 1900s. Muskets and rifles gradually replaced spears, bows and arrows. Violence spiked to new levels when automatic weapons flooded the area after Idi Amin’s local armories were abandoned in his 1979 flight from power. At the same time a regional arms market encompassing seven local nations saw escalating armament and munitions stockpiling among Karamoja’s disparate clans.

Read the rest of this article over at 3 Quarks Daily.

This curious inscription was found on the door of a hut behind the local bishop's house in Kotido.

Karamoja's amazing bird life

I've been in Uganda's remote and arid Karamoja region for the last few weeks looking at abuses against children by local warriors and in the government's forcible disarmament program. A fascinating context, but the real attraction has been the bird life!

Clockwise: African Hoopoe, Go-away Bird, Secretary Bird, Lilac-breasted Roller, and the Crowned Crane, Uganda's national symbol. These arent my photos but I have seen all these during my visit, plus many others. Birds dont scatter from gunfire, it seems.

Independent Media in Sri Lanka

“These days, we have a saying among journalists,” a radio features reporter in Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province told me. “Don’t open your mouth—except to eat.” Disappearances and killings of journalists are on the increase. Diplomats and aid officials characterize the Lankan media as “one of the most closed in the world.” Little wonder that the country’s ongoing civil war rarely makes the international news wires. For those with a vested interest in waging war by any means, a carefully cultivated information blackout is key to sustaining the pugilistic Lebensraum.

Read the rest of this piece here.

The Reluctant Swami

Leaving Zimbabwe in 1991 for my first visit to India, I traveled directly to the Sivananda Vedanta Ashram in the wooded hills above Thiruvananthapuram, capital of Kerala.

Through a friend I knew the Ashram would be holding a five-week intensive training for aspiring yoga teachers, which I was not. I knew nothing of yoga besides its sequence of warm-up of postures, the so-called “sun salutation.” The training would force me to dive deeply into yoga, well over my head—exactly how I like learning experiences to be.

Read the rest of this post about the absurdities and rewards of seeking spiritual insight in a foreign place, at 3 Quarks Daily.

India Turns Sixty

Over at 3 Quarks Daily, find this travelogue account of the Indian subcontinent as it celebrates its sixtieth anniversary since independence.

Monrovia mural

For the rest of my article on current conditions in Liberia and the region, please click here.

Congolese Pygmies in a master/slave dynamic with local Bantu

I just returned from a trip to assess access to basic services (health, education, etc) of Congolese Pygmies in the province of Equateur. They are largely sedentary but have little access to their own land, and work as day laborers in the fields of the Bantu families who 'own' them. An article on the experience can be found here on 3 quarks daily.

Could France’s new odd couple—Sarkozy and Kouchner—spell the end of French privilege for Africa’s most venal?

In the 1960s, post-colonial Africa was the most hopeful place on the planet. Post-partum exuberance in Europe’s former colonies was infectious and abundant. Yet fate has not been kind to sub-Saharan Africa. From Namibia to Guinea to Somalia, the path of most sub-Saharan nations has traced an arc of intimate complicity with the predatory appetites of their former colonial masters. Nowhere has this neo-colonial continuation of anti-development and enrichment by and for the few been more evident than in France’s former colonies.

The nature of governance in these ex-colonies attests to the abiding power of the self-serving instinct and immediate gain, over and against the long-term goal of national progress. Such is the confounding irony of Africa’s entire post-colonial era in nations previously occupied by France, Britain, Portugal and Belgium alike: why is the colonial, predatory model of governance so faithfully re-enacted by ruling African elites? It’s as if all that negative conditioning only succeeded in instilling a predatory instinct in the new ruling class. Why are Mandela-style visions for collective prosperity not more common, given the shared experience of subjugation and occupation across the continent?

read the rest of this article, posted at 3quarksdaily, here.

Evaluating hurricane recovery in the US

Hurricane Katrina struck the New Orleans area early morning August 29, 2005. The storm surge breached the city's levees at multiple points, leaving 80 percent of the city submerged, tens of thousands of victims clinging to rooftops, and hundreds of thousands scattered to shelters around the country. Three weeks later, Hurricane Rita re-flooded much of the area.

As someone who works on disaster relief programs worldwide, I was invited to come for a month and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various projects in New Orleans and Biloxi, two centers of urban devastation. The experience thus far has been surprisingly positive and inspiring, an unexpected antidote to my entrenched cynicism regarding relief efforts in places like Darfur or Congo, where I typically work.

[...] I've pondered over some perhaps facile but nonetheless empirical truths about the dynamic of human response to extreme disasters.

Read the rest of this post at 3 Quarks Daily...

The ICC and the war in northern Uganda

'By today’s measures of geopolitical relevance, Uganda would seem an insignificant country. Its name may trigger a few neuron firings among those who’ve read Giles Foden’s The Last King of Scotland, or seen its recent film adaptation starring Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin.

Ugandans who’ve seen the film are less than delighted. Amin’s son allegedly complained to reporters, “He [Whitaker] doesn’t even look like my father.” More clueful viewers writing in local newspapers claim the film relies on the tired reference of African dysfunction to tell and sell a story to an international audience. Much agreed—although I appreciated the film’s portrayal of complicity with evil as a creeping, dimly conscious evolution, capable of crippling the purest intentions.'

Read more from my April article for 3 Quarks Daily on the war with the LRA and how the ICC indictments and the UN Security Council are affecting change here.

The ICC: ‘A giant without arms or legs’

'A gripping and maddening slow-motion spectacle, last week’s Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on the Situation in Afghanistan (available on C-Span), drifted predictably to Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan as senators and experts grappled over why Afghans, like Iraqis, could not ‘get it together after all we’ve done for them’. Another exasperated senator demanded, uncomprehending of why the hunt for Osama Bin Laden was still inconclusive: ‘Why not raise the price on Osama’s head by a million USD a week?’ It is currently valued at $25 million. Surely more millions would do the trick.'

Read more of a piece I wrote in early March 07 for 3 quarks daily on international justice for war crimes and the ICC experiment here.