Africa Opens Its Heart to Earthquake Victims In Haiti  

 

Africa’s connection with Haiti is unprecedented, and retains “a special place in… (the) hearts and minds,” of all Africans, former South African president Thabo Mbeki recently penned. “This is because it has the indestructible distinction that 206 years ago, in 1804, it emerged as the very First Black Republic in the world.” 

 

And more than that, Mbeki who is being globally applauded for his work chairing the African Union High-Level Panel On Darfur (AUDP), expressed the sentiments of informed Africans everywhere, when he sited Haiti’s “extraordinary uprising which led to” Haitian independence and “could not but serve as an unequalled inspiration to those engaged in struggle to achieve their own liberation.”

 

The resulting debt of gratitude displayed by Africans may be unprecedented. Africans everywhere are getting involved in Haitian relief efforts, a direct response to the Island nations devastation brought on by the recent earthquake.

 

In Ethiopia, Chairperson of the African Union commission, Mr. Jean Ping, addressed the 14^th African Union Assembly in Addis Ababa calling for strong African solidarity with the people of Haiti. Already Mr. Ping disclosed, “a special account to collect funds from… African countries and free donors has been opened at the African Development Bank in order to ensure transparency in the channeling of the funds to the victims.”

 

But before the above, many African nations have already responded and sent their support and contributions including Botswana who pledged $1 million, and Ghana who donated $3 million and a quantity of relief items, including plastics, medications and cocoa products. Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria responded to the global appeal and launched a donation fund with $1 million. According to Governor Babatunde Fashola of the Lagos State region, “the fund will be lodged at the Skye Bank… for subsequent transmission to the ongoing aid program in Haiti” with individual State Executive Council members making personal contributions.

 

Not only is Africa sending money, the South African charity, Gift of the Givers sent their second rescue team. The SA team, according to press reports, “led by Durban University of Technology emergency rescue lecturer Sageshin Naguran and consisting of six advanced life support paramedics and four doctors, will join the first group in Port-au-Prince.

 

Then there is Rwanda, whose United States ambassador Stuart Symington called on the global community to join the Haitian relief effort.

 

“We have a choice,” he said. “We either will live in the shadow of this tragedy, or walk forward in the light of the heroism, the strength and the nobility both of the Haitian people and the world’s response.”

 

Also raising her voice during the same fundraiser for Haitian relief, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Dr Agness Binagwaho  thanking Partners of Health stated, “We will together restore this originally strong country of innovation, liberty and vision.” The amount raised at the fundraiser and a silent auction occurring simultaneously, at press time had yet to be calculated.

 

This is just a small taste of African relief efforts. All across Africa, government, church, business and civil society leaders are lending a helping hand to Haiti.

 

One coordinating body of African efforts in South Africa is the NEPAD Business Foundation and the African Women’s Foresight Network that have joined together and created what is being called the “Africa for Haiti Campaign.” The campaign has the support of church, business and civil society leaders including Mrs. Graca Machel and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

 

Showing a debt of gratitude for the international community supporting South Africa’s struggle against apartheid Archbishop Tutu said, “Today the people of Haiti, struck twice by the earthquake, are in a worse predicament than we were. As South Africans, we especially cannot but want to do our bit to alleviate the immense suffering of our sisters and brothers in Haiti. I welcome the initiative… It deserves our wholehearted and very generous support.”

 

But maybe the most creative initiative thus far came from President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal. While being interviewed on France Info radio he called for Africa to “make room” for the victims of Haiti’s earthquake, and for them to “restart” their lives on the continent of their forefathers. 

 

“The repeated calamities that befall Haiti prompt me to propose a radical solution – to take measures to create somewhere in Africa… the conditions for Haitians to return,” he said. This return according to the president’s spokesman Manadou Bamba Ndiaye will include “a roof and a patch of land, he told the radio station. “If they come in large numbers, (we) will give them a whole region.”

 

“Now the problem is,” said President Wade, “who will bear the cost.”

 

According to the former South African president Thabo Mbeki, that cost could be born by both France and the United States.

 

Currently in the works, “aided by U.S. and French lawyers,” Mbeki wrote, “the Haitian government is preparing a legal brief demanding nearly $22-billion in ‘restitution’ for what it regards as an act of gunboat diplomacy.”

 

Haitian history is both inspiring and tragic. During a “sustained military and political struggle” that ended with the birth of the Haitian republic but almost in the same instance a 122 year “reparations” payment to France and then the U.S.

 

France in 1825 demanded 150 million gold francs in exchange for recognizing the new republic. “The implicit alternative, wrote Mbeki, “was invasion and re-enslavement.”

 

So this debt initiated by the French and later purchased by the U.S. – calculated to be worth $20 billion - is owed the Haitian people. “Haiti,” Mbeki wrote, “wants its money back – with interest.” 

 

As poet and lyricist Oscar Brown Jr. sang: “I’ll buy my own swimming pool, just give me my 40 acres and a mule.”

 Jehron Muhammad  can be reached at: Africawatch53@gmail.com

 

Western Press Claims Africa Unworthy Of Hosting World Cup

 

 

Two commentaries concerning the killing of footballers in Cabinda (Angola), appearing back-to-back in Africa’s Business Daily and UK’s Guardian entitled:  “Attack exposes Western bias” and “Africa remains shrouded in myth” respectfully, reveals how the Western press paints with a broad brush; how historically bias rules; and how objective reporting is always left on the cutting room floor.

 

But let’s not stop there. Hollywood is also a carrier of this disease. Take for instance the recent sci-fi movie District 9. This film is about an alien colony reduced to South African Bantustan existence with Nigerians, who are the purveyors of the community’s corrupt and vicious underground black market, is a case in point. Then there is Blood Diamonds, with its transformative racist and depiction of black insurgents being beastlike in their willingness to shed the blood of their African brothers.

 

An interesting segue is the Clint Eastwood movie Invictus. The film stars Morgan Freeman, who is also its producer. The film tells the story of Mandela using the country’s 99 percent white Rugby team to unify South Africa’s racial diversity, but more than that, to allay the fear of whites, who as Morgan’s Mandela explains - control the economy.     

 

This in itself is okay; I’m not one to tell Mr. Freeman what aspect of South Africa’s past to bring to light. But the film, like the ad-hoc media created spokesman for black Africa, Manchester City’s Emmanuel Adebayo’s celebrity being used to validate a biased position, and the selling of a theme where films about blacks only work with a white protagonist, or at least a strong white presence, says it all.

 

Soon after the recent Cambinda attack in Angola, where members of Togo’s football team were killed, a microphone was thrust into the face of footballer Adebayo, and European validation for what ails Africa all of a sudden had an African face.

 

According to the Op-Ed in Business Daily, after being savaged in the not to distant past by the British media for “taunting” an opposing teams fans following his “rather disreputable celebration of a goal against his former club,” Adebayo then becomes “the most sought-after face for remarks after the shooting,” wrote Professor George Ogala. And while he may have condemned the attack, he “overreached” his bounds arguing – as though Cabinda represented the entire continent - “Africa must do something about its image considering it was about to host the World Cup,” he said.  And if these comments weren’t bad enough, Adebayo’s words took on ominous propositions becoming media gospel, as they received attribution from London to Paris and were broadcast on radio stations across Europe. The footballer in effect had become the “legitimizing voice,” wrote Ogala, the media monster needed to satisfy its appetite for negative African depiction, and to say to the world, our worst fears concerning a South African hosted World Cup had finally been realized.     

 

And then there was the always-objective BBC broadcasting its Cabinda report - of course interspersed with Adebayo quotes - outside of Soccer City in Soweto, South Africa. Had the ghost of the BBC being once prevented from reporting in Zimbabwe been given new life? Had the media giant not been issued a visa so it could report from the 2010 African Cup of Nations in Angola? Had the Angolan government simply said, “No comment”, and then failed to provide the BBC with a political analyst familiar with Cabiinda?

 

According to the William Gumede’s commentary published in the British Guardian, by the western press portrayal of “the attack by separatists in Angola on the Togolese football team as if it happened in South Africa is typical of prejudice against the continent. Stereotyping,” he wrote, “of Africa, its problems and solutions, has devastating consequences.” 

 

And check this out: If the Cabinda killing hadn’t occurred, “the African Nations Cup would have been” a mere “footnote in most reports,” wrote Gumede.

 

To contextualize the above, one has to remember football, said the BBC’ voice of African Sport Farayi Mungazi, “is after all that rare thing, a chance to genuinely compete with the rest of the world.” In Mungazi’s January 8^th report on the history of African football, a Nigerian explains football in his country is described as “the third religion after Christianity and Islam.” A South African describes it as “a way of life – a rallying point for a whole nation.”

 

In addition, football has served African leaders including Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah, who used it as an “essential tool in projecting Pan African identity.” And then there is the revisiting of the great Brazilian footballer Pele having said, Africa would win the World Cup by 2000 being given new impetus in 2010, after the world game arrived in South Africa.

 

African passion for the sport led to the establishment of the African Cup of Nations in 1957 in Sudan, and is now a source of much African pride and inspiration - where Africans, after elimination, compete against each other, similarly the way the NBA competes during playoffs. 

 

The sad story discussed in Mungazi’s report, is there isn’t a source where you can go to access Africa’s contribution to the world’s number one sport. And as Gumede wrote, “Africa is still often only in the news because of war, as a development ‘burden’ or as a humanitarian crisis. The western media too often see the whole continent of Africa as one country rife with corruption ‘tribal’ conflicts, natural and humanitarian disasters.” 

 

But to taint the continent as not worthy of the World Cup because of an isolated incident “is just wrong”, said the authors Ivory Coast born brother-in-law Edja Kouassi. “Politics entering sports is not unprecedented.”

 

Kouassa who works in Pennsylvania as a chemist and has a passion for sports said, you could go back to Jesse Owens overcoming Hitler’s master race objective, or the staying out of the “Basque Separatist area during the playing of the European Cup in Spain,” or how America boycotted the Olympics in Moscow and the Soviets returning the favor when the Olympics were held in Los Angeles. And then, he said, there was the fact that the UK would never hold a sporting event in Northern Ireland “while the British were in conflict with the IRA.”  

 

Picking up the argument Ogala wrote, “that conflict in Kosovo did not mean Germany was unsafe to host the last World Cup,” or the Chinese relationship with Sudan did not lead to European or American boycotting the recent Olympics held in Beijing.

 

The west should be reminded of its not so pristine history, and take  the tree out of its own eyes, before revealing the splinters in others. And Africa for its part should get busy recording how football has given the continent a competitive spirit, a sense of hope and aspiration, or be left to the Clint Eastwoods and Morgan Freemans of the world to tell its story.  

 

Jehron Muhammad can be reached at: Africawatch53@gmail.com

 

 

 Africa in 2009 Sets Stage For 2010 & Beyond

“Anticipation” and “making you wait,” popular themes in American TV product placement could also be used to describe events unfolding on the African continent. 

Whether it was the International Criminal Courts indictment of Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir in March 2009; the election of Jacob Zuma to South Africa’s top political office; the discovery of oil off Ghana’s coast; Dambisa Moya’s book “Dead Aid” or former South African President Thabo Mbeki’s African Union High-Level Panel On Darfur report and its comprehensive assessment on what plagues Darfur/Sudan, this year was an historic one. (Oh yeah, and did I fail to mention former Liberian President Charles Taylor’s trial currently happening in The Hague, and Rwandan president Paul Kagame and that countries Phoenix Bird rise?) 

There was also Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi’s assumption of the chair of the African Union and almost immediately pushing for a United States of Africa. That was only outdone by his October speech at the United Nations, where he called for ending the veto stranglehold permanent members of the Security Council have on the world body.

President Obama’s address via Egypt to the Muslim world and critique of African leaders’ behavior while in Ghana might have received more fanfare than Gadhafi’s call for Africa to have a permanent seat on the Security Council, but that Gadhafi idea is gaining momentum.

For policy initiatives, one cannot discount Obama, whose “carrot and stick” policy approach directed at Sudan and his Special Envoy to Africa’s largest country Scott Gration, were significant changes. Gration has been given the responsibility of pushing the new approach—to the chagrin of some American advocacy groups—as part of efforts to make Sudan’s upcoming 2010 elections possible.

But how can you mention 2009 and not include China, the 800-pound gorilla on the African continent? That would be a mistake. China has not only shown a significant interest in African oil, but also displayed little let up in its push for African minerals—including the July signing of a $3.6 billion copper agreement with Zambia.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is working on at least 60 financial deals with Africa’s “biggest bank by assets,” Standard Bank, in which it recently bought a 20 percent stake for $5.6 billion.

In contrast, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2009 seven African country tour, beginning in Kenya revealed a U.S. Bureau of African Affairs in disarray while the Defense Department’s U.S. African Command, or AFRICOM, gained influence. 

If Clinton, during her tour, was concerned about China, she didn’t let on. Instead while in Angola, she chose to play down any U.S. concerns about Beijing. “I am not looking at what anyone else does in Angola,” she said. “I am looking at what the U.S. can do to further … deepen our relationship and provide assistance and support for the changes the Angolan government is undertaking.”

In June AP reported, “Angola surpassed Nigeria as Africa’s largest petroleum producer and overtook Saudi Arabia as China’s leading source of crude oil.”  

To act as though U.S. economic and foreign policy interest hasn’t been affected by China’s incursion in Africa is suspect. In fact, the “reality” of the situation is sinking in, stated Martyn Davies of the Johannesburg-based regional investment consultancy Frontier Advisory. The U.S. and European economic crisis “is accelerating the geo-economic shift of Africa towards Asia, centered largely around China,” he said.

When citing trade with Africa, according to Africa’s Business Daily, U.S. officials “are keen” to “trumpet a 28 percent jump in 2008 in trade with sub-Saharan Africa to $104 billion, even if the increase is attributable mainly to the high price of oil, which accounts for more than 80 percent of U.S. imports from Africa.”

And though Clinton’s trip would “help train gynecologists, supply rape victims with video cameras to document violence and dispatch military engineers to help train Congolese police officers to crack down on rapists,” a report released by the State Department’s Inspector General suggested other than quick fixes, the African Affairs bureau was lacking.

The bureau suffered from “significant morale, performance, or leadership issues,” according to Acting Inspector General Harold W. Geisel. “They were doing a good job of fighting fires … but it was too much time being spent on the crisis of the moment and not enough time being spent on our strategy.”

“There is no bureau that is more difficult to staff overseas then AF,” the report added.

The problems, the IG said, were perceptions concerning the poor quality of life abroad and “insufficient hardship or danger pay.” The bottom line is positions in “Africa often remain vacant or are filled with candidates without the necessary experiences,” the report noted.

Also, embassy platforms were collapsing as the result of weighty “new programs and staffing without corresponding resources to provide the services required,” the report said.

Add Africom and another thorny issue is raised. The relationship between personnel from embassies and the Department of Defense’s relatively new command for Africa has been antagonistic, said Foreign Policy. Embassy staff “receive little instruction as to how they should integrate and work with Africom officials,” the journal reported.

Limited resources may be enough to generate low morale in any organization, but when the State Department budgets stand next to military allocations, there is no comparison.

According to Geisel, “the military deals in resources the State Department can only dream about.”

In one instance, “a military information support team (the military equivalent to an embassy’s public affairs staff) was funded with $600,000 for their campaign in Somalia while the SD had to make do with a mere $30,000,” reported Foreign Policy. 

While the State Department struggles to maintain a sense of relevancy, flying under the radar is corporate and global government investment in Africa, more commonly called land grabs, “strongly reminiscent” of the continent’s colonial past. The most “scandalous case,” according to Inter Press Service, was U.S. investment banker Philippe Heilberg, who closed a deal with Paulino Matip, a warlord in South Sudan, to lease 4,000 square kilometers. “He (Matip) is one of the profiteers of a dubious 2005 peace agreement,” reported IPS, “after which he became deputy commander of the army in the autonomous southern region.”

Heilberg a former employee of the insurance giant American International Group (AIG), is the CEO of the New York-based investment fund Jarch Capital. He is reported to have said several African states are likely to break apart in the coming years and his political and legal risks “will be amply rewarded.” Let’s hope that this thief and his compensation will soon depart.

On matters of stability in Africa, the award for where the continent could benefit goes to Mbeki’s new lease on life for Sudan. After being defrocked by the ANC, he has brought hope to Sudan’s Darfur region and his work in progress might help bring stability for all of the country. His call for  an African solution and "stakeholder" engagement and uprooting the colonial roots of the conflict while moving for a political resolution offered hope, especially when he outlined the strategy in a speech before the UN Security Council. Though much of Africa’s advancement is still unfolding, the African Union’s strength is increasing and African peacekeepers are principle reason for stability gained in Darfur, suggesting African solutions do work. Africa has showed it could speak largely with a single voice when leaders joined the African Union’s call to disregard the ICC’s insistence that Sudanese President Bashir be arrested.

Meanwhile Ghana believes it can learn from Nigeria’s oil nightmare and not allow newfound oil wealth to become an albatross around her neck as President Paul Kagame of Rwanda becomes one of The Financial Times 50 most influential individuals. According to the much respected financial daily, with Kagame at the helm, "in barely 15 years, the country has transformed from a failed state to one of the fastest growing economies on the (African) continent."    

And if failing to learn the lessons of history and being doomed to repeat them has been Africa’s norm, Dambisa Moya’s book “Dead Aid” spells out how attempts by outsiders always seem to do more damage than good.  What Africa needs is to break free of foreign assistance, according to the Zambian native. Dependency means no incentive to grow past your next handout, she argues. 

We will see what President Zuma does on South Africa’s land question, which was bubbling up as we left 2009, given the West’s contention that President Robert Mugabe’s handling of land reform was the source of much of Zimbabwe’s woes.  With the world’s economic bust sending Whites back to South Africa and White farmers leaving to farm elsewhere on the continent for fear their ill gotten gain has finally caught up with them—what is a minerally rich and potentially agriculturally unequalled continent to do? First Africa’s most populous nation (Nigeria) needs to resolve its current political crises, remove an apparently incapacitated president (Umaru Yar’Adua), and support the late Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah’s vision of a United States of Africa.

 Jehron Muhammad can be reached at Africawatch53@gmail.com.

African Union High Level Panel on Darfur - A Blueprint For What Plagues Africa

 

 While my mind focuses on the billions of dollars the Obama administration and its so-called allies will have to somehow cough up to “secure” Afghanistan, I begin to wonder why the world community couldn’t apply the same math to the nearly two-year-old promise of the UN Security Council to supply the African Union/United Nations Hybrid operations in Darfur (UNAMID) with its request for helicopters to secure Darfur? 

 

In the recently released findings of the African Union High Level Panel On Darfur (AUPD) chaired by the former South African president Thabo Mbeki and commissioned by the African Union, I discover that the 24-helicopters promised nearly two years ago and lobbied for by then Senator Joe Biden have never seen the light of day. And this from an administration that accuses the Sudanese government of “genocide,” refuses to assist UNAMID in acquiring helicopters to secure the region. I guess Vice President Biden, who could be seen on morning news programs capitulating on his anti sending of more troops to Afghanistan position, must of been also required to forgo the security of Darfur. Contrary to public opinion, Darfur, according to the Mbeki report, has depended upon much of its support from the African Union – thus it seems only fitting that the AU’s home base country of Ethiopia is sending five much needed helicopters to patrol the vast area that Darfur encompasses.

 

To add insult to injury reported the Sudan Tribune, “Mbeki expressed disappointment with what he suggested to be a non-endorsement by the UN Security Council (UNSC) to the AUPD report with an implicit criticism” by Western Security Council members. 

 

“They’re (UNSC) extremely upset,” said Mbeki, “because we didn’t deliver a report stating that a bloody war was taking place. There is still a low-intensity war going on, since there has been no peace agreement yet. People who allege otherwise, are creating their own convenient and self-justifying reality,” he said at an address recently at the University of Pretoria’s Faculty of Law. 

 

Others see the 126-page report as a way to bypass the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) indictment of Sudan President Omar Al-Bashir.

 

News reports suggest that the timing of the formulation of the AUPD just weeks ahead of the ICC indictment against Bashir has fueled speculation of a kind of preemptive strike by the AU. On top of that, AUPD member and former Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Maher El Sayed remarks in support of Bashir didn’t help. 

 

“Incriminating the president is out of the question and fundamentally unacceptable” he said while being interviewed by the Egyptian based Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper.

 

“Our goal was to find a way out (for Bashir) from the dilemma of the ICC that sparked a great deal of controversy,” Maher said.

 

The AUPD chair was reported to be furious.  Mbeki’s response included a strongly worded letter protesting Maher’s remarks.

 

Sudanese political analyst Abdel-Wahab El-Effendi who traveled with the panel and Dr. Alex De Waal one of the panel’s advisors both corroborated the above with the later writing that people “should examine the record of Minister Maher’s participation in the activities of the Panel. I did not see him a single time in Darfur or Khartoum.” 

 

Richard Dicker, International Justice Program director at Human Rights Watch also weighed in suggesting that the AUPD’s call for “a hybrid court and national law reforms could potentially help,” and at the same time all but dismissingly warning that this could “not substitute the ICC’s cases.” This is actually a misrepresentation of the AUPD report. Seems misrepresentation of the AUPD is a common theme. Another distortion is in the Dec 7 edition of Voice of America saying Mbeki’s panel “issued a report endorsing the ICC’s work” when in fact the AUPD only mentions the courts limited capacity.

 

What the report actually states, and is confirmed by its chair, is that in order to facilitate the establishment of a hybrid court, the Government of Sudan “should take immediate steps to introduce legislation to allow legally qualified non-nationals to serve in the judiciary of Sudan.”

 

Concerning the ICC, Mbeki emphasized that it “is a court of last resort, which compliments the national judicial systems. It is also a court of limited capacity. This means that even when deploying its full resources (the ICC) can only deal with a few individuals out of any situation of which it is seized. It follows that where widespread crimes have been committed, the overwhelming majority of potential criminal cases must be dealt with by the national system.”

He went on to state the fact that, “This is simply a reflection of the functional limitations of the ICC. It is important that all stakeholders should realize this and therefore focus on the vital importance of strengthening national legal systems.”

But to prominence the ICC in the AUPD report – as many have done - and not give it a possible equal footing, along with the consideration of a creation of a Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission and the formation of a Hybrid Court, “as part of a broad agenda of items to be negotiated in a round table process of hammering out a Global Political Agreement,” as highlighted by De Waal of the Social Sciences Research Council is to bypass the mandate that generated the panels final report.   

According to the panel’s chair, Darfur is “a manifestation of a broader crisis affecting the whole of Sudan. This larger problem was described as the consequence of the development of colonial and post-colonial social-economic system in which a minority of the population, concentrated in and around Khartoum, maintained a stranglehold over political power and economic resources.”

As a result, the chair states in the reports preface that “the millions of Sudanese who reside” in the greater geography of the largest country in Africa “have been condemned to political disempowerment and domination, economic underdevelopment and marginalization.”

With the above as the backdrop the report says De Waal, first shifts “the center of political attention away from responding to immediate human rights violations and humanitarian concerns, to addressing the underlying political malaise in Sudan that gives rise to such violations.”

Second, he highlights, the report “puts the Sudanese people back (where they belong) at the center of the process, which according to De Waal, has “already” been set in “motion.”  He says, “The challenge is to sustain and accelerate that process.”

That is already occurring.  Mbeki’s Panel has begun by injecting itself into Sudan’s first elections in 24 years.  According to the Dec. 4 edition of Voice of America (VOA) the Panel chair said, “There is an immediate objective in front of us, Sudan is going to have elections in April 2010, what we must do is to assist everybody involved in that to ensure they actually have democratic elections. Successful democratic elections,” he emphasized.

Saying in words that getting the people of Darfur to participate in upcoming elections is a work in progress, Mbeki is faced with the sizable challenge of “persuading the people of Darfur to participate, and have faith in the electoral process,” reports the VOA.

“It is important that the people of Darfur are involved in those elections, Mbeki said. “Otherwise you (have) this sense of exclusion and marginalization if the whole country goes to election to choose a president, a national parliament and so on, and the people of Darfur are not part of that process,” he said.

According to De Waal “any number of think tanks could have articulated” the AUPD’s argument “in making the case that there needs to be an inclusive political solution leading to democratization within an ‘all Sudan’ framework.” Where the Panels innovative approach differs says De Waal, and is not following the previous flawed “international engagements of this kind on Sudan (which) have operated through expert consultations in high-class hotels, with chiefly symbolic trips to the Darfur’s displace camps to shake hands and have photographs taken,” similar to the co-founder of the Center for American Progress’ Enough Project John Prendergast, and his much reported celebrity trips to that region.

Following those trips like his most recent appearance before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, he called for a delay in the upcoming elections and that the “Sanctions on the Sudanese government should be ratcheted up, including enforcement of the arms embargo, denial of debt relief, and greater support for further International Criminal Court investigations and indictments.”

Unlike Prendergast and his ilk’s pressure tactics to meet international obligations, Mbeki and the former Presidents of Nigeria and Burundi, Addusalami Abubakare and Pierre Buyoya respectively spent over three months on the ground mostly in Darfur conducting town hall meetings, and “well-prepared consultations in which” Darfurians systematically were able to speak about their “fears and hopes (for the future).” In tandem with the Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Consultation (DDDC), they not only enhanced this group’s role, but also gave stakeholders in Darfur immediate importance.

According to De Waal, “… in long meetings with refuges and displaced persons, tribal leaders, women, civil society activists, and nomads, all these groups… (were able to insist) they should be directly represented at future peace talks. They were not content for the armed movements to represent them-all felt that the rebel leaders had been a disappointment. The Panel reflects this unanimous demand with its round table formula for political negotiations.”

Contrast the above - that also included discussions with Pres. Bashir, the ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo and the U.S. special envoy to Sudan Scott Gration  - with the pressure tactics of the advocacy groups and the Obama administrations yet to be fully realized “carrot and stick” approach to Sudan.

In fact, that approach received a serious reprimand during the beginning of December talks on Capital Hill that included advocacy groups and Obama’s special envoy.

To give some background, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reported AllAfrica.com, in October spoke of a “classified annex” that included “incentives that would be on the table for Khartoum.”   

Gration speaking before members of Congress revealed, “There is no annex… I’m telling you that I’ve never seen one.”

Obama’s special envoy who has been repeatedly hammered by advocacy groups for his willingness to sit down and negotiate with the Sudanese received special attention during the Congressional hearings. “The big surprise was there is not a classified annex,” said Jerry Fowler, president of the Save Darfur Coalition. “And that suggests there is a big hole at the center of the administration’s strategy. They haven’t clearly articulated for themselves, international partners, Khartoum and other actors what the benchmarks are for progress.” 

Prendergast might be right in his call for a delay in elections, especially as Gration said if “violence” escalates “ahead of the votes” and “procedural disagreements” aren’t resolved. This could give impetus to the secession as an option call for Southern Sudan in the 2011 referendum. 

This heightens the relevancy of Mbeki’s AUPD and the AU, who’ve not only been accepted in Sudan as honest brokers, but have been in Darfur practically since day one of the conflict respectively.

And as De Waal points out since the AUPD’s “recommendations already have the broad support of the Darfurian population,” it makes sound and perfect sense for the world community to back up Mbeki’s proposal and for the Panel to broaden its focus. De Waal also says the “Sudan Government will protest,” but already, at least in concept, they have accepted the idea of a hybrid court. If the world community assisted by putting real meat on the bone of the AUPD who says this African solution for what troubles the continents largest country couldn’t also become the blueprint for what plagues Africa.

Jehron Muhammad can be reached at: Africawatch53@gmail.com 

 

Sudan: Southern Succession Or Destabilizing Africa

President Obama’s recently released Sudan strategy that attempts to be 'all things, to all people,' succeeds in America, and with its interest groups need for instant gratification. Unfortunately, it fails in addressing the instability that a divided Sudan would engender, and the destabilization of a region that continues to be a non-issue. 

 

Is this the process towards peace that Obama is trying to justify the Noble Peace Prize he recently received? Is he keeping a campaign promise and appeasing the Darfur advocacy groups? Or is he finally reigning in his special envoy to Sudan and beginning to recognize the clearance of the cloud that is Dafur is giving way to the monster being unearthed inside the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA)?

 

The Western press appears to be gearing for a secession of Southern and Northern Sudan regardless of the destabilizing effect such a divide would trigger. But as the West sees the succession as inevitable, earlier this month SPLM (Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement) chairman, who is also the first Vice President of Sudan and President of the semi-autonomous Southern Sudan Salva Kiir Mayardit, “urged delegates from over 20 political parties… to faithfully stand behind the implementation of the CPA, saying the CPA is no longer the Agreement signed between SPLM and the ruling NCP (National Congress Party), but rather the current constitution of the Sudan, being the only opportunity for lasting peace and stability in Sudan,” according to the GOSS (Government Of Southern Sudan) official website. 

 

“The CPA provides us with a golden opportunity to heal the wounds, address the grievances of the past and start building a New Sudan based on citizenship, respect of people’s basic rights, equality, freedom and justice for all,” the former general affirmed.

 

Unlike movies, golden opportunities rarely have sequels, and if the historically “dangerous divisions” that have plagued Sudan and prevented the peace process from going forward are not adhered to; the only theater may be the one of war, the only consequence will make the strife that has been Darfur appear insignificant.

 

 In 2007, while sitting in the courtyard outside my hotel room in Khartoum, this author was warned of the very dangerous divisions within the SPLM.

 

During an exclusive interview with Dr. Wani Tombe, CEO of the political daily, Advocate Newspaper, that is distributed in North and South Sudan warned, if the South succeeds “there will be a civil war,” and not just a war between the North and South.  Dr. Tombe, who is from the southern-region in Juba suggested, “there is going to be a very bloody civil war between the Southern Sudanese themselves.”

 

And then in what could be called reading future events, including Obama’s new policy on sanctions, and at the same time showing his chagrin he said, “imposing sanctions”(he was actually referencing Bush) on Sudan “exempting the Southern Sudan is internationally unworkable.” He went on to suggest that this historically is the Western method of divide and conquer.  Dr. Tombe, who is Christian continued, “We find it very difficult, because it is trying to pit us against one another. We don’t want that kind of role that Washington wants to play in our country. If it wants to support succession in Southern Sudan it must come out very openly that it is supporting succession. It cannot do things, which contribute to the fragmentation of this country, and at the same time they tell us that they are for (a) united Sudan, because their actions actually do not indicate that kind of intention,” he said. 

 

Though the jury is out on whether destabilization is an intention, one thing for sure the possibility is not an agenda item.  This view is shared by Sudan analyst with the Social Science Research Council Alex de Waal, who recently blogged that “the referendum on self-determination in southern Sudan, which if indications of southern opinion are reliable, will lead to a decisive vote for secession. With all the attention on ‘CPA implementation’ – which consists of safely getting to the point of the referendum – there has been far too little attention to what happens afterwards.”  According to the Washington Post, “If that deal – brokered by the Bush administration in 2005 – collapses, officials and analysts (including de Waal) say, then hope will be lost for a solution to Darfur.”

 

Several years ago in Khartoum while addressing the National Assembly (NA), the former Sudanese ambassador to the U.S. who is a member of the NA, Mahdi Ibrahim Muhammad said, the U.S. and English governments “external involvement” in his country’s affairs is a major “source of difficulties.”

 

According to Muhammad, “Western press reports that oversimplify Sudan’s problem as good guys verses bad guys, without looking at its history of foreign interventions and viewing Sudan as a microcosm of Africa, are problematic,” said the former ambassador, during a two-hour session that included legislators from all parts of Sudan. “Such reporting fails to take into account the complexity faced by the government in Sudan and other governments in Africa,” he said.

 

He then explained how integral Sudan is to the region and the importance of maintaining and stabilizing that portion of Africa. Sudan is the largest country on the continent, and is neighbor to nine nations with shared ethnic groups and open borders. It has over 400 dialects and 573 ethnic groups practicing Islam, Christianity and African animist religions. “It is an enormous responsibility on any government to be able to deal with such a country with such diversity,” stressed Ambassador Muhammad.

 

For Obama not to take into consideration the ramifications of the destabilization of the region is a major flaw in his new policy.

 

What is a special envoy to do? 

 

U.S. special envoy to Sudan, Major General Scott Gration has been like a man with only a year to live. More than anyone in the Obama administration he has logged more “Sudan miles” and has probably the largest imprint on Obama’s Sudan policy.

 

The energetic Gration whose first language was Ki-Swahili was born in Illinois, but raised with his parents who became missionaries in what is now Conga in the early 1950s before being forced to flee a decade later and settling in Kenya. He later moved back to the U.S. where he received a degree in mechanical engineering at Rutgers and then enlisted in the Air Force, where he served with distinction, flying nearly 300 missions over Iraq and then commanded a unit in Saudi Arabia.  According to reports, aides said that he was a “Republican, but that he bonded with Mr. Obama” in 2006, when they traveled together across Africa, beginning at Robben Island off the Cape of South Africa.     

 

According to various reports, although he never held elected office or served as a diplomat, Gration gave credibility to an Obama candidacy that had no military experience.

 

And then on July 30th, during his testimony before Sen. John Kerry’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he shakes up Washington, including U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, and ruffles the feathers of the Darfur advocacy groups. According to EIR, after “declaring there was no ongoing genocide in Darfur, he identified for the committee that it was entirely for political reasons that Sudan has been kept on the list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1993, emphasizing that there was no evidence from the U.S. intelligence community to support such a claim.”

 

Gration has since back tracked (“but the cat is out of the bag,” as one U.S. policy critic wrote) and the new “carrot and stick approach” concerning Sudan that takes into account the general’s willingness to negotiate with Sudan, and Rice’s more hawkish position, that includes the implementation of sanctions approach appears to be the result. 

 

Not only that, but in the most recent Economist, in a piece entitled: “The generals have got it right”, the commander of the UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur (UNAMID), Gen. Martin Luther Agwai explained that during the last three years, the nature of the fighting (in Darfur) has dramatically changed (for the better).” The piece takes pains - without quoting the general - to say that Agwai in no way suggested the end of the war in Darfur.

 

What on August 26 the Nigerian general actually said, and the Economist should be ashamed for its apparent unwillingness to quote him is, “As of today, I would not say there is a war going on in Darfur… What you have is security issues more now. Banditry, … people trying to resolve issues over water and land at the local level. But real war as such – I think we are over that. Agwai, who just finished his tour of duty, insists that “the real problem is political.” 

 

The real problem again that too few are actually willing to discuss, as the cloud that is Darfur dissipates, is a policy that would allow the breaking up of a nation birthed from former British colonial masters and shaped by the afterbirth they left behind.

 

So according to Columbia professor Dr. Mahmood Mandani’s book Saviors and Survivors, the CPA is drawn from the “southern Sudan elite” desire to not “remain beholden to the northern elite at the center,” who the British at least left with infrastructure and resources, and the south they left with none.

 

So a “power sharing with wealth sharing, whose terms would be guaranteed by the big powers internationally” is created, and – at least initially – “both leaderships decided against any internal reform, including a process of democratization,” wrote Mamdani.      

 

So enter Save Darfur and John Prendergast’s Darfur advocacy group Enough, who according to Darfur researcher Bec Hamilton have given a “positive but cautious” response to Obama’s new Sudan policy. Hamilton writes this “verify then trust” approach is what Gration has been saying from the beginning.  He also supports Gration receiving the necessary support from Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, and the resources necessary for the new policies implementation.

 

Gration appears to be an honest broker, but pressure sometimes makes you do strange things. Obama obviously among other things choose Gration for his knowledge and love of Africa, lets hope the presidents African side takes Gration’s commitment to heart, and the continents future to resolution. 

 

At posting time, Save Darfur and Enough had not responded to an interview request.

 

Jehron can be reached at: africawatch53@gmail.com

 

Africom: President Obama’s Bush Inheritance.

 

Among the many things the Obama administration has inherited from Bush II is an unwieldy colonialist-lite intervention mechanism, masquerading as a protectionist-like called Africom. The fact that the Noble Peace Prize winner known for his candor and willingness to discuss complex issues has never ever even mentioned this behemoth is telling.

 

Africom the answer, according to the four part series, “Africom or Africon?: A Reorganization Of The U.S. Command Structure & Another Military Imposition,” by The Real News Network, opening salvo that this unwieldy, without State Department input, contingency plan, “… is (now) the frontline for dealing with any threat to the USA,” says it all.  Diplomacy, at least in Africa, has been benched, and the same forces are alive and well in Michael Moore’s new movie, “Capitalism A Love Story,” have taken their show on the road.

 

Did I mention the devastating effects of mixing crude oil with the world’s water supply?  Well what about Vice President Dick Cheney and Africa? Hold that point.

 

Africom overseen by General William (Kip) Ward, the Army’s highest-ranking African-American, is the sixth U.S. geographic combatant command.  Prior to Africom, the Pentagon’s presence in Africa involved three geographic commands.  Created in February of 2007 and launched in October of 2008 and headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany because it couldn’t find a home base in Africa to protect U.S. interest abroad, this mechanism has been “charged with supporting U.S. military partners in Africa.”

 

Sounds more like the premier of the sequel to Ollie North and the boys Central American insurgency. According to Colin Powell’s former chief of Staff during the Bush administration, Larry Wilkinson that might not be far from the truth. “You have an enormous constituency for war, you have an enormous constituency for the instruments for war,” he told “Africom or Africon?” host/narrator Ragel Omar.  Without skipping a beat, Wilkinson then raises the, “What constituency does the State Department have?” question before the career soldier drops a bunker buster saying: “To find a voice that equals or exceeds the voice of the Pentagon is virtually impossible. How do you put up $30 billion,” that Wilkinson suggest is State Department’s budget and calls, “chump change,” against “nearly a quart of a trillion dollars,” which he estimates is the Pentagon’s annual budget.”  Also, showing that he knows how to make politicians and special interest groups ‘lie down and roll over,’ Wilkinson goes on to say, “That kind of money interests every congressman, every senator, every military contractor, from Haliburton to Lockweed.”

 

And now a word from Africom’s sponsor:

 

According to the four-part series, when Bush came into office he had a series of meetings with oil executives. Wilkinson’s “educated surmise” suggests they discussed “ensuring American’s way of life,” and getting “our hands” on a “substantial” amount of oil to guarantee the continuance of the above.

 

Then 9/11 happened, “and added a new urgency to this debate.”  With U.S security fears at an all time high, suddenly Africa a continent “slipping off the radar,” becomes center stage.

 

So Vice President Cheney, the Pentagon, and his neo-conservative “cheerleaders” frame the war against terrorism as a war against Islam and jeopardize America’s Middle East oil supply.  They enlist the assistance of the conservative Heritage Foundation, with the focus on substantially increasing America’s access to African oil reserves in October of 2003.  This think-tank then produces a document entitled, “U.S. Military Assistance For Africa: A Better Solution.” 

  

The document specifies among other things a need to “coordinate security measures with African countries” at risk from terrorism, and suggesting the best way to bring this about is by creating “a dedicated military command for Africa.”  In addition, they were very clear as to why - “Africa,” according to the report, “has vast natural and mineral resource.” The document also states, “America should not be afraid to employ its forces decisively when vital national interest are threatened.”

 

I guess selective amnesia is when you forget you just went war with Iraq for control over the world’s second largest oil reserves.  I also guess always getting your way without consulting the recipients of your polices is how Africom was created. 

 

And to add insult to injury, “U.S. foreign policy led by warriors (don’t forget this is a Pentagon operation) essentially is a disastrous scenario,” according to Emina Woods of the Washington D.C. based Institute for Foreign Policy Studies.  “U.S. foreign policy,” she tells Omar, “led by warriors essentially is a disastrous scenario.  It's clear you can’t have warriors who are also diplomats, warriors who are also humanitarian.” She then stressed, “Those lines cannot be combined.” 

     

Obviously, Woods has never had her cake and eaten it too. She also wasn’t aware that maintaining the American way of life trumps all rational thinking.

 

Take for example the relationship that General Kip Ward’s command has developed with the Rwandan military.  In the series, Omar travels to Rwanda with the General.  While in the East African country, he interviews the Information Minister, Louise Mushlklwabo who states they are under “no allusion,” concerning U.S. presence in Rwanda.  She says for its part Rwanda receives training assistance for its military from Africom, the U.S. gets to be strategically located next to two unstable countries (Democratic Republic of Congo & Uganda), countries rich in mineral resources.  I guess that’s a far cry from the Clinton administration not giving a shigdigity when over a million or so Tutsis and their Hutu sympathizers were massacred in 1994.  Remember the U.S. battle cry - and confirmed by Shyaka Kanuma, editor of the Rwanda Focus - if there is no economic or strategic interest… and it rhymes with suck-em.  

 

Obama said in his maiden July 2009 sub-Saharan African speech, “History is on the side of those brave Africans, not with those who use coups or change constitutions to stay in power.” Africa according to Obama, “doesn’t need strong, men, it needs strong institutions.” 

 

Maybe Africom didn’t get the memo.  Or maybe Obama is saying what people want to hear – you know talking loud and saying nothing.  With U.S. policy in Uganda backing the private army of President Yoweri Museveni, it stands to reason that in the U.S. strategic and economic interest always triumph over political discourse.  According to Dr. James Barya of Uganda’s Makerere University, the Ugandan Peoples Defense Force (UPDF) is an arm of the National Resistance Movement, which is Museveni’s political party. “It’s a partisan army… It is run only to protect the (current) regime.”

 

This reminds me of something Nation of Islam leader, Minister Louis Farrakhan once said. It had something to do with becoming president and the revealing of the un-glorious past and present secrets of U.S. foreign and domestic policy initiatives, and the fact that this is the president’s inheritance. What would you do if faced with such a behemoth?

 Jehron can be reached at: Africawatch53@gmail.com

 

While World Leaders Convene At The UN US Media Has Tizzy-fits Over Gaddafi

 

“Proportionality in the media seems to be lost. Responsibility for the impact of what is reported is not assumed. The overall shaping of attitudes of viewers and readers of the news is, at best, disregarded.” Make the story sizzle, get people going, making a splash, these are the apparent “goals.”

 

Though the above was included in the introduction of a study done on the negative media portrayal of Nation of Islam leader, the Hon. Min. Louis Farrakhan’s 1995 Million Man March by Dr. William E. Alberts, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s visit to New York is ‘open season’ for the same.

 

As Deborah Tannen says in her book, “The Argument Culture,” the culture of argument “limits our knowledge rather than expanding it,” and that “divisive issues has increased the alienation and driven us further apart.” If you don’t believe, check out the health care debate.

 

That the Western press is not attempting to actually discuss the reasons for Gaddafi’s apparent transformation from the “mad dog of the Middle East” to the darling business partner of European Union members and the USA is telling.

 

Right now Gaddafi is at the peak of his power. Not only does the current head of the African Union “for the first time in his 40 year reign” as leader of the Libyan Jamahiriya enjoy “diplomatic relations with all countries including the United States,” settled colonial disputes with Italy (witness the $5 billion reparations agreement that was signed), and become the darling of Western capitals apparently for relinquishing his questionable Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), according to assistant editor of the North African Journal Alexandro Bruno, this week he is scheduled for the first time to visit the U.S. and address the United Nations.

 

So how is all of the above possible, while at the same time Gaddafi is being vilified in the Western press?  Is the Western media like a dog looking for the next place to deposit its business?

 

According to Sunday’s New York Post, “A politically incorrect pooch delivered a stream of consciousness protest Saturday as Libyan officials rolled out the red carpet (at the Libyan Mission) for dictator Muammar Gaddafi.”  The story even included a photo of the shameless K-9.

 

Now check this shadigity out.  Obama refused to invite the head of the African Union to a luncheon for sub-Saharan African leaders and a “traditional” welcoming party for visiting heads of state because of the hero’s welcome Libyans gave the convicted Lockerbie bomber Al-Megrahi, not taking into consideration that many Libyans and some Lockerbie family members feel that Megrahi was wrongfully convicted. Also not considered was the fact that most Libyans saw Megrahi as worthy of receiving a hero’s return from his “wrongful” imprisonment.

 

On the other hand Bibi Netanyahu this week is given a sit down with the U.S. president even though the Israeli prime minister refused Obama’s request to stop the illegal building of settlements on Palestinian land, the greatest hindrance right now to peace deal negotiations with the Palestinians. And to add insult to injury, the graduate of Cheltenham High in Philadelphia sends Obama’s envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell home, with nothing more than a handshake and a smile.

 

Even though this week there’ll be many opportunities for Obama and Gaddafi to meet, the fact that so much ink has been wasted reporting on the effort to keep them apart suggests that the media is more interested in symbol and not substantive issues. 

 

And then there’s the foreign affairs analyst Nile Gardiner taking up space in the British Telegraph bitching about an upcoming meeting between Gordon Brown and Gaddafi.

 

What’s a prime minister to do Mr. Gardner? Gaddafi is not only the head of the African Union, his country currently holds the presidency of the UN General Assembly, and Libya is taking its turn as one of the 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council. On top of that – and this might be the crux of the matter - Libya has some of the best sulfur removed crude on the planet, coupled with this northern most African country being situated on the coast of the Mediterranean, accessing this “black gold” is as easy as we found watching the former republican majority leader Tom DeLay shaking his money maker this week on Dancing With the Stars difficult.

 

I don’t see British Petroleum complaining. It’s more like back room lobbying to get its politicians to figure out of the way to keep what they’re doing from ever seeing the light of day. Check out Foreign Policy’s “Don’t Be Crude” by Turki al-Faisal, who calls all of this energy independence talk while the West, like an animal in heat, searches the world, especially Africa, for its next oil ejaculation, “political posturing at its worst.”

 

 So to excoriate Gaddafi in the press while he does big business with the West is hypocritical. 

 

And while world leaders are convening at the UN the US media is having incessant tizzy-fits, over Gaddafis, apparent problems finding adequate accommodations as was done by Reuters, NPR, MSNBC - name your pick - for a tent being pitched by the Libyan leader’s people on suburban New York land owned by Donald Trump.  All I got to say is thank God for C-SPAN, BBC, The Amsterdam News, and The Final Call.

 

To contact Jehron go to: Africawatch53@gmail.com