Via Enough Said, the United States has finally appointed a Special Envoy to Sudan, something that Obama had hinted would be a priority of his early presidency. The Envoy, whose name had remained curiously un-leaked as late as yesterday afternoon, will be Scott Gration, a former Air Force General and high-ranking member of Obama's national security team during the campaign. This accomplishes two goals for Obama: naming a Special Envoy, and finding a job for Scott Gration.
This is no give-a-supporter-an-ambassadorship-to-Ireland position, though (no offense to Ireland, of course, or, begrudgingly, to the Steelers). This post will be an extremely challenging one, forcing Gration to navigate between politics and humanitarianism, hawkishness and diplomacy, and between a country with a vocal domestic constituency to pressure Sudan and one with hardened leaders willing to literally starve their own population to death.
It is interesting that Obama tapped a military official to do this job, rather than a career diplomat, as was Gration's predecessor, Rich Williamson. This is not to say that Gration won't necessarily bring a diplomatic verve to the gig, only that he also must be looking at Darfur through a military/national security lens, as well. And as a testament of how important Sudan is to American foreign policy, not only in a moral sense, but in a fundamentally interest-based one, this is an appreciable development.
Here's Gration's speech before the Democratic National Convention last August, and here's an interesting snippet from a New Yorker article on American foreign policy, written last October by Nicholas Lemann:
"We’ve screwed up,” [Gration] told me. “We don’t really fix these things.” He mentioned the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, the Israel-Palestine dispute, and the tension between Russia and Georgia. “What I’d hope we learn from that is: ‘Yep, we’ve got to fix the basic issues here.’ ” He went on, “What doesn’t work, in Gration’s mind, is forcing a solution. Create an environment, give people the opportunity to air their differences, and see if they can come together. We don’t tell them what the solution is, but we do have an obligation—let’s get people in here, find out the needs, see if you can come up with a plan. Don’t try to freeze conflicts! [emphasis mine]"
Somehow, I don't think he has to worry about Sudan's conflicts freezing any time soon.
(image of Gration, November 2007, from flickr user Barack Obama under a Creative Commons license)
No, UN Dispatch has not been mugged (Brian's previous adventures notwithstanding). This particularly blunt advice came from a Somali woman at an all-day Somalia conference I attended here in Washington yesterday and is not nearly as craven, aggressive, and ungrateful -- at least in the case of Somalia -- as it may sound. Her point was simply that Somalia is certainly in need of foreign investment and assistance, but that international meddling in its domestic politics -- ahem, ahem, United States policy of the past 18 years -- is tremendously counterproductive, particularly now, when Somalia is finally showing some signs for optimism.
Her comments drew applause (and chuckles, of course), and were pretty much echoed by most of the experts and the Somalis in the audience. A Somalia-based NGO leader attested that a major problem for the international community's take on Somalia was its seeming "sense of ownership" of the country's problems. Longtime Horn of Africa scholar Ken Menkhaus affirmed this view, reminding that, while Somalia's state-building processes may not look like those that the World Bank and UN Development Program would typically prescribe, they still represent a possible avenue for a peaceful and stable state. “Foisting solutions" on Somalia, he added, will not accelerate -- and will likely only retard – the progress along this path.
In this light, there is little need for panic over a headline -- "Somali cabinet backs Sharia plan" -- that might instinctively inspire fear, or at least discomfort, in many U.S. lawmakers. To try to control Somalia's internal political maneuverings, just as its new government is getting off the ground, would be more detrimental, to both Somali and U.S. interests, than Sharia law possibly could be. In fact, this move, conducted without interference, will likely undercut support for extremists, something that heavy-handed foreign intervention (yes, including deploying UN peacekeepers) would almost certainly just inflame.
And on the "give us money" side, there's certainly a right way to infuse capital and a wrong (i.e. potentially hugely destabilizing) way. A right way would be to build on the substantial resources, both human and material, that Somalia, with its large coastline and war-weary but earnest population, could take advantage of. But, as a State Department representative gravely warned at the conference yesterday, the influx of literally millions of dollars of untraceable American dollar bills (hint: look for the shiny new Benjamins) from pirates' ransom decidedly falls into the potentially hugely destabilizing category.
UPDATE: Presumably most Somali-Americans who agree with this sentiment are going to go and do something like this.
Even coming from a UN official whose job was to investigate extrajudicial killings, this is harsh:
"I have received overwhelming testimony that there exists in Kenya a systematic, widespread and well-planned strategy to execute individuals, carried out by the police," he said of the alleged killing of some 500 suspected Mungiki members.
"Kenyan police are a law unto themselves. They kill often, with impunity," he said.
This was from the testimony of Philip Alston, the UN "rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions" reporting after a fact-finding mission on a problem that should come as a surprise to no one familiar with the shocking violence in the country after the elections of late 2007. The steady hum of killings has evidently continued, albeit on a smaller scale, and with much less media attention.
One of the problems of the otherwise laudable settlement that Kofi Annan brokered in early 2008 was that, instead of resolving much of Kenya's long-standing corruption, it simply tried to diffuse the problem by creating a bloated cabinet. The same offenders remain, therefore, and the incentives for patronage have perhaps only grown. A prime target of Alston's report was the Attorney General, a man named Amos Wako who has been in his position for 17 years and who prompted Alston to remark "Mr. Wako is the embodiment in Kenya of the phenomenon of impunity."
Unfortunately, the same culture of corruption and impunity that has created the problem of Kenya's extrajudicial killings is likely to create resistance to implementing Alston's recommendations. The Kenyan government has predictably rejected the report, claiming that it violates the country's sovereign prerogatives. The stridency of Alston's testimony, though, has caused a stir, so he seems to be using his bully pulpit well.
(image of Kenyans protesting in Minnesota in January 2008, from flickr user Wa-J under a Creative Commons license)
Speaking of War Child, I see the BBC has an interview with Somali-born rapper K'Naan. Included in this song, "Somalia," is his perspective on the media's "commotion" over the piracy off Somalia's coast.
World attention on piracy off Somalia has diverted attention from the growing threat of attacks off west Africa, according to shipping experts.
The International Maritime Bureau says it knows of more than 100 pirate attacks off west Africa last year - yet only 40 were reported.
Oi. Maybe one of the only instances where "world attention" is focused more on Somalia than anywhere else.
Fresh off proposing -- to a chorus of mostly unenthusiastic "ummmms" from other African heads of state -- for the umpteenth time in his long career his dream of a "United States of Africa," the "Leader," Libya's president, the-former terrorist-organizer-turned-nuclear-weapon-renouncing-friend-of-the-United States (of America, that is), Isratine-brewer, and now chairperson of the African Union has set his sights a bit farther east.
Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi has said he would like a United States of Africa to include "Caribbean islands with African populations".
Col Gaddafi, speaking in Tripoli as the African Union's (AU) new chairman, said this could include Haiti, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.
Given Gaddafi's penchant for bestowing clever names on his fictional geopolitical creations, one can only assume that he would call this new entity the "United States of Afribbean."
A club for youth to exchange ideas on peace, to be established in all schools of secondary and above levels in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region, was launched this weekend, the African Union-United Nations joint peacekeeping operation there (UNAMID) said today.
Over 100 new members attended the opening of the first UNAMID Peace Club, sponsored by UNAMID’s Community Outreach Unit, at the Model Secondary School for Girls in El Fasher – the headquarters city for the mission.
While skeptics might characterize this step as "fluffy" -- and there's no expectation that a "peace club" will end the violence in Darfur -- the reality is that thousands of children have now grown up in sprawling displaced persons camps, relying on international humanitarian aid and unable to venture far out of the camps. And as the tumultuous case of the Kalma camp demonstrates, radicalism thrives where disillusioned and displaced young people have been clustered for years. So rather than nurse resentment, Darfuris now have an opportunity to talk about peace in an open way. It won't quell the very real dangers that a reconstituted Darfuri society will face, but at least it's a start.
And even though the club has been organized by UNAMID, it seems to me a little self-indulgent that the first meetings featured a quiz game "in which the students showed off their knowledge of UNAMID and its activities in Darfur."
(image from flickr user Samuel Stroube under a Creative Commons license)
After four months in the hands of Somali pirates, the Ukrainian ship full of tanks bound for KenyaSouth Sudan an as yet undetermined location has been released.
And it seems the recent slowdown in hijackings -- buoyed (no pun intended) by international resolve in increasing the fleet of pirate-watchers in the area -- has dampened the market for ransoms. While the pirates are still "counting the haul," the magic number seems to have been somewhere around $3.2 million (presumably in new $100 bills). This is far under their original $20 million asking price, and still substantially less than the $8 million "bargain" that they were holding out for. According to a pirate spokesman, the $3.2 million is just a little "something to cover our expenses" -- presumably, more than a few nights in a swanky hotel (as long as they can make it ashore, that is).
Meanwhile, Somalia roils, even as it enters a putatively "new era" (under a former president, that is, whom the Ethiopians who just left may have just returned happen to not particularly like very much.)
UPDATE: Beth Dickinson points out that, according to Ukraine's Kyiv Post, at least, the tanks are still headed to Kenya. We'll be watching the ports at Mombasa...
This is surprising news. Congolese Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda was apparently arrested by Rwandan troops on the Rwandan side of the DRC border yesterday. Jeffrey Gettleman has the story:
Gen. Laurent Nkunda, the fearsome Congolese rebel leader whose national ambitions and brutal tactics threatened to destabilize eastern Congo, was arrested Thursday night along the Congolese-Rwandan border, United Nations officials said on Friday.
According to the U.N. officials and statements made by the Congolese military, General Nkunda was trying to escape a joint Congolese-Rwandan military offensive that was intended to wipe out several rebel groups terrorizing eastern Congo.
He was captured at a small border town called Bunagana after trying to resist Rwandan troops. “He’s going to Kigali,” said Lt. Col. Jean-Paul Dietrich, a U.N. spokesman, referring to Rwanda’s capital.
[snip]
On Thursday evening, hundreds of Rwandan troops converged on Bunagana, one of General Nkunda’s mountain strongholds. Congolese officials said he refused to be arrested and crossed over into Rwanda, where he was surrounded and taken into custody, apparently without violence.
What makes this all the more surprising is that last month a no-nonsense Security Council "panel of experts" report showed that Nkunda was essentially a front for Rwandan business interests in Eastern Congo. Now, it seems Kigali has turned against him--and rightfully so. Nkunda is quite possibly responsible for war crimes in eastern Congo, including, most recently events surrounding the sacking of Kiwanja.
Yet another interesting wrinkle is that earlier this week, Rwandan forces were invited into Eastern Congo by the Congolese government to join in a common offensive against Hutu militias known as the FDLR. It would seem they had another target in mind...
France 24 reporter Arnaud Zajtman has more.