In a Foreign Policy feature, Jeffrey Gettleman describes the kind of roving banditry practiced by the LRA and in Eastern Congo as "Africa's un-Wars."

What we are seeing is the decline of the classic African liberation movement and the proliferation of something else -- something wilder, messier, more violent, and harder to wrap our heads around. If you'd like to call this war, fine. But what is spreading across Africa like a viral pandemic is actually just opportunistic, heavily armed banditry. My job as the New York Times' East Africa bureau chief is to cover news and feature stories in 12 countries. But most of my time is spent immersed in these un-wars. (Emphasis mine)

His piece is well worth a read. but I wonder if it's actually true that these conflicts "are spreading across Africa like a viral pandemic." The opposite seems to be the case. In fact, they seem fairly contained to the Niger Delta, the Congo borderlands of north-eastern Congo, and a few places in the greater Horn of Africa (Sudan, Somalia). Also, to the extent that the resource-fueled conflicts in western Africa a decade ago can be considered part of this trend, the number these conflicts appears to be in decline.  Sierra Leone and Liberia, for example, no longer face big threats from roving, rootless militias.   

I don't mean to minimize the brutality and human suffering caused by these groups. (And Gettelman does a good job explaining why it is so hard to reach a political compromise with them.)   It just strikes me that calling this a "viral pandemic" is a bit hyperbolic.     

Image: flickr user hmvh

On October 26, 1971, California Governor Ronald Reagan phoned President Nixon to offer some foreign policy advice: get the United States out of the United Nations. The day before, you see, the General Assembly had voted to give mainland China (The People’s Republic of China) the Chinese “seat” at the UN. This was held previously by United States’ anti-communist ally, Taiwan.

The US Ambassador the UN at the time, one George H.W. Bush, tried to rally support against the General Assembly vote. He was unsuccessful, in part because the Nixon administration was simultaneously was preparing a rapprochment with the PRC.  (Nixon would visit China six months later.) Reagan, of course, would have had no way of knowing this so he called up Nixon to vent. 

The audio of that conversation is now available.  What is so striking to me is the extent to which it parallels contemporary debates about the UN.  One side sticks to emotional pleas and sloganeering to argue that the United States should withdraw from the UN. The other side offers coolly rational explanations about why sticking it out at the United Nations serves American security interests.

Reagan was clearly pursued by the former. He called the UN “morally bankrupt” and argued that pulling out of the UN would make for good domestic politics ahead of the 1972 elections. Reagan was so dedicated to this idea that he even said he would unsign a Gubernatorial proclamation for “UN Week.”

Nixon saw the bigger picture. To a certain extent he tried to placate Reagan (who, by then, was a rising star), but suggested that the United Nations was still an important entity to advance American foreign policy interests. In particular, he cited India-Pakistan. Said Nixon:

“Let me give some thought to the whole thing. It’s a tough one, as you are aware. We got some fish to fry on India-Pakistan --- we are trying to avoid a war there, and the UN may have to play some damn role there, because we don’t want to get involved in that miserable place."

The audio of this exchange, which I discovered via Dave Noon, is well worth 12 minutes of your time.

Relatedly, Gallup has been gauging Americans' opinion about the United Nations since the early 1950s.  You can see that the UN's favoribility ratings remained fairly steady until a slump during the Reagan years. It then peaked when his VP and former UN Ambassador became president in 1988. Americans' perception of the UN, it would seem, can be influenced by the tone set by the president. 

H/t to Attackerman and Rick Pearlstein for the title. 

The Forward is the oldest American Jewish periodical.  From about the turn of the 19th century to the mid 1980s it published exclusively in Yiddish. Today it has seperate Yiddish and English editions, though circulation of the English edition dwarfs the Yiddishkite. 

The point is, it's got major street-cred among American Jews.  Natutally, I was very pleased to see this commentary about the United Nations from Jack Rosen, Chairman of the Council of World Jewry, found in the pages of The Forward:

For many Americans, and most Israelis, the words “United Nations” conjure up an image of an albatross at best, and a vulture at worst. Anti-Israel agendas, advanced by Islamic nations, routinely dominate the General Assembly and the U.N. human rights entities. Without the American veto, Israel would long ago have been the target of hostile binding resolutions in the Security Council.

 Yet, for all this, we must resist the temptation to give up on the U.N.

 The recent catastrophe in Haiti showcased one of the U.N.’s most indispensable roles. U.N. agencies form the backbone of the aid effort there. From Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and special envoy Bill Clinton on down, U.N. officials coordinated fundraising and diplomacy so that nearly four million people have received food assistance and 350,000 have received shelter.

[snip]

Holocaust commemoration and education, mandated by a U.N. General Assembly resolution, would have withered on the vine without persistent follow-through by the same bureaucrats we often malign as “the U.N.” When Ahmadinejad was opening a worldwide convention of Holocaust deniers three years ago, the General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning Holocaust denial.

Read the whole thing.

The New York Times gets his hands on a UN memo that is sharply critical of the World Food Programs operations in Somalia.  The report, which will be presented to the Security Council next week, accuses the WFP aid of channeling its food aid through a host of seemingly nefarious actors:

“Some humanitarian resources, notably food aid, have been diverted to military uses,” the report said. “A handful of Somali contractors for aid agencies have formed a cartel and become important power brokers — some of whom channel their profits, or the aid itself, directly to armed opposition groups.”

There are two important points to make. The World Food Program see's itself as stridently a-political.  Their goal is simply to deliver food to hungry people, regardless of their political affiliation.  Also -- and this is crucial--if hungry people happen to live in areas controlled by bad guys, the WFP considers it their humanitarian duty to reach these people anyway.   In Somalia, this means that the WFP has figured out ways to deliver aid to much of al-Shabaab controlled territory in southern Somalia. (That is, until last month, when al Shabaab  kicked out the WFP). 

Second, the WFP's a-politicalness puts them sharply at odds with other UN actors in Somalia. The UN, for example, has a political mission in Somalia, known as UNPOS, which has a mandate to support the very week Somali federal government.  One way to help strengthen the government is to channel aid through it. For the WFP, though, the main concern is to expediently deliver aid to needy populations.  This means that some WFP shipments sometimes go to ports that may be under the control of political forces opposed to the federal government, rather than the Port of Mogadishu which is nominally under government control.  You can see how this might create some friction between humanitarians and those focused on the political development of Somalia.

The provision of humanitarian aid in a place like Somalia raises complicated political and moral questions. On the one hand, the international community is heavily invested in creating a strong Somali federal government that is capable of providing for its people; after decades of intervention, the international community rightly considers this to be its only responsible and viable "exit strategy." On the other hand, a strong and functioning Somali federal government seems to be a long way off.  In the meantime, is it morally justified to cut off aid to needy populations just because they happen to live in places controlled by forces opposed to the federal government? 

I don't think there is an easy answer (or even a "right" answer) to this connundrum. For its part, the United States declared a few weeks ago that it was withdrawing its support for the WFP in Somalia because of the very concerns raised in this report.   Other donors and friends of Somalia may choose differently. 

The bottom line is any place where you have dual humanitarian and political goals (read: Afghanistan) you are going to run into these questions. It's just important to remember that solutions are not exactly cut and dry. 

Image: Flickr user Peter Caiser/WFP