Friday, June 24, 2011

OPINION: Lessons to learn from Libyan conflict

It is not late to stop these bombs and save human lives

What’s happening in Libya should be a wakeup call for all Africans, the African governments and the African Union (AU).

There is so much to learn from the Libyan conflict. What is probably the most important lesson to learn is that foreign powers will always do whatever is possible to protect their interests, whether that means supporting and imposing a democratic government or a dictatorial regime.

The NATO intervention in Libya has absolutely nothing to do with promoting democracy and protecting civilians. You don’t promote democracy by using bombs and killing civilians, intentionally or not. You don’t promote democracy by fuelling a civil war and arming rebels to fight against the very government you’ve been friendly to until recently. Some wise man once said that in politics, there are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies.

If you want to know how true this is, do an online research on how Western leaders used to praise Muammar Gaddafi up to just a few weeks before they turned against him.

And you don’t promote democracy by supporting the very people who were key ministers and military leaders in what you now consider a dictatorial regime. What makes them clean now? It defeats logic to hear the way these people are now shouting against the very regime they were part of.

Are Western powers blind not to see that they are dealing with the same people? No, they aren’t blind. They know that these are the ideal people to impose as leaders because it will be easier to control them. When someone helps you to get what you know you don’t deserve, your loyalty goes to that person. Nobody helps you for nothing, at least in politics.

Now, let’s take a step backwards and see how the AU and African leaders have been treated since the Libyan conflict emerged.

The AU didn’t play any significant role in the drafting of the UN Resolution 1973. It was reported that the Resolution was drafted by the UK, France and Lebanon.

The AU was invited to the 19th March Paris meeting that preceded the NATO military intervention in Libya. But the fact that the AU didn’t attend the meeting and called for a mediation role in the crisis, didn’t stop the world powers from launching immediate attack on Libya.

That was a slap on the face of the AU and African leaders. The AU is the legitimate umbrella body of all African countries. A decision by foreign powers to attack any African country without approval and key involvement of the AU amounts to invasion of African land and in normal circumstances, should be faced with the AU military resistance.

Try to imagine what would happen if the AU drafted a resolution to intervene in a European country (choose any of the least democratic ones), without consulting the EU, then arm twisted the UN to make it a UN resolution, then the AU dispatched its military planes to bomb the European country in the name of protecting civilians from being massacred by their so-called dictator.

NATO’s decision to launch military intervention in Libya at a meeting without the AU delegation shows how little regard they have for African leaders and the AU. They basically proved that the voice of African leaders and the AU doesn’t count even on crucial issues within the continent.

It is a further proof that if you are no longer a darling of these powerful forces, you can’t be a leader in your own country even if that’s the wish of your people.

The AU should learn from this intervention to be quick to react to problems in the continent. The AU should not be invited to meetings to discuss African issues, it is the AU that should be inviting others to such meetings. Africans must not let others take a leading role in solving African problems. Africans must learn to defend their own interests.

It has been said so many times that nobody from outside will come to solve African problems because he is a Good Samaritan. Foreigners will only come to intervene to defend their own interests, whether those interests go against the interests of the local people or not.

It is disappointing to see the way the Western powers are undermining the efforts by the AU and African leaders to negotiate for a peaceful solution to the Libyan conflict. One wonders why they continue to ignore Gaddafi’s offer for a peacefully negotiated resolution to this conflict, and why whatever the AU says is continually ignored.

One also wonders why foreign powers have created a parallel government in Libya, and illegitimately created another centre of power in a different city from the country’s official capital.

This article doesn’t justify what Gaddafi is alleged to have done. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is investigating those allegations and will take proper action.

The crucial question at this stage is this: is destroying Libya the most effective way of addressing the Libyan crisis? The military intervention is not only killing civilians and creating hundreds of thousands of refugees, but it’s also destroying the country’s infrastructure. At the end of this military intervention Libya will need to be rebuilt a fresh.

It should not be forgotten that ethnic hatred that has been fuelled during this conflict will seriously affect any attempts to unite and reconcile Libyans in the future.

And what about the trauma of living under bombs, the pain of losing loved ones, injuries sustained, families separated, refugees who drown and die in the Mediterranean Sea, jobs lost, schools and hospitals demolished, etc.

What was one of the most developed and rich countries in Africa is now completely destroyed and will have to start from scratch. And of course it will need the help of foreign powers to help it re-emerge, a process that will take several decades, and give those foreign powers unfettered control of Libya’s resources.

At this time when it appears that only bombs can solve the Libyan crisis, those isolated voices calling for a peaceful solution to this crisis should be listened to. This conflict can be solved peacefully according to the will of the Libyan people. Word is the most powerful weapon. There is no one in the world who cannot be negotiated with if you choose the right approach and involve the right people.

Several Libyan lives will continue to be lost each time a NATO bomb lands on Libyan soil. And more lives will be lost each time Gaddafi’s loyalists fight back. It is not too late to stop these bombs and save human lives in Libya.

By Stephen Ogongo Ongong’a

Mr Ongong’a is the editor of Africa News, Email: africanews@stranieriinitalia.it

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

DRC Protracted War in the African Nation Series

Local War of Global Interest

In August 2010 the UN published a report …which documented crimes committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) between the nineties and 2003, a period when the country was being devastated by two wars. The report sheds new light on a conflict that still persists and behind which enormous interests move. This document was discussed at a conference held in November 2010 at the University of Parma, Italy.

An explosive report, so controversial, that its publication was opposed to the bitter end. No, nothing to do with the Wikileaks revelations but only the honest work of some UN personnel who documented the horror into which the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) plunged between the mid-nineties and 2003, a period when the country was ravaged by two bloody wars forgotten by the media.
An act of neglect by the media that has also been the fate of this United Nations document, despite its devastating content. Or perhaps precisely because of them. A conference held in Parma in late November 2010 tried to pull back the veil of silence. The conference was organized by “Rete Pace per il Congo” (an organ linked to the missionaries who work in the war-torn African country) and the Department of Political and Social Studies at the University of Parma.

The gathering was introduced by the quite informal greeting of the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Roberto Greci, who mentioned the reason why the academic world had taken on the initiative: as “humanists,” he said, we cannot remain indifferent to the tragedies that are tormenting the world. After the Dean came Sister Teresina Caffi, a Xaverian working in eastern DRC. She summarized what happened in the country in those dark years, during which she explained, referring to a study by the International Rescue Committee, three million eight hundred thousand people died because of the war.

Blood-Stained Wealth

It all began on October 1, 1990, said Sister Teresina, when the then Head of the Ugandan Information Service, Paul Kagame, launched a rebellion to overthrow the government of Rwanda, a country considered strategic for gaining access to the wealth of the east of the DRC. A venture “supported and followed by the Anglophone powers eager to replace France in access” to the resources. Kagame relied on the thirst for revenge of the Tutsi whom the Rwandan regime, monopolized by the country's ethnic majority, the Hutu, had ousted from power. The war between government and anti-government supporters went ahead with various massacres until, in 1994, the ferocity reached its climax.

On April 6, the plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and of neighboring Burundi, returning from a meeting of negotiations, was shot down. Both presidents died in the incident. In response Hutu extremists massacred 800,000 people: mostly Tutsis, but also many Hutus. A genocide known to the world, but of which, Sister Teresina said, much remains to be clarified. The massacres lasted a hundred days that is until Kagame managed to seize power in Rwanda.

The Hutu, terrified by the idea of collective vengeance, fled en masse to the neighboring DRC where they crowded into refugee camps. But the camps were too close to Rwanda, as various humanitarian organizations made clear, and tension, instead of diminishing, grew. The new Rwandan regime, in fact, considered them a threat, and in October 1996, after yet another ultimatum, bombed them. It was the beginning of the first war: troops from Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda invaded the DRC. At their head was placed an old Congolese opponent of the oppressive government in Kinshasha, Laurent-Desire Kabila: in that way the “war could be called a war of liberation”, Sister Teresina commented. Although, the Xaverian sister added, with the progressive sickness of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, the Kinshasa government had opened a process of democratization heralding positive developments.

In May 1997 the war ended and Laurent-Desire Kabila declared himself president. But the peace did not last long. After about a year, the new president, “also driven by popular pressure”, asked foreign troops to leave the country. In response, a second war broke out in August: “the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie” a rebel group which has its operational base in the eastern regions, rose against the government in Kinshasa. But, Sister Teresina said, it was a “screening rebellion” behind which lay Rwanda and Uganda yet again. Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Chad entered in support of Kabila. [to be continued].

Crimes against humanity

During the wars, which ended in 2003, unspeakable atrocities took place in the Congolese jungle. The UN experts made a kind of chart of the violence, ascertaining 617 slaughters, defined as “crimes against humanity” and “war crimes”. Emma Bonino, vice president of the Italian Senate, at the time of the war was commissioner of the European Union. Asked for her opinion, she tersely remarked: “To my knowledge, for the period in which I was an eyewitness, the UN report is very well done”. And she revealed that very strong pressure had been exerted to prevent its publication. In her speech she spoke of the start of the first war, recounting the shock at the bombing of the refugee camps, although the flag of the United Nations was flying over them. And she recalled an episode in which she was personally involved. It happened in the first phase of the war and the Rwandan government, fearing reactions to the invasion, had reassured the world that all the Hutu refugees had returned home, a total of 500,000 returning Hutus.

Information confirmed by the general commanding the UN multinational force stationed in the DRC. So all was well, everything normalized, so much so that the international force was dissolved. But questions arose from many quarters: at the beginning of hostilities there was talk of 1,200,000 refugees, while the returnees were only 500,000. It didn't add up. Doubts grew as disturbing news came from the missionaries in the DRC, who spoke of masses of fugitives on the move within the jungle. “We decided to check”, Bonino resumed. “So, after several searches, we found the Tingi-Tingi camp, 250,000 people crammed into an area four hundred kilometers from the border. Hundreds of thousands of refugees who simply did not exist for the world. They had done four hundred kilometers on foot. You can imagine their conditions ...

After that, she recalled, appeals and calls for action to stop the war multiplied, unfortunately in vain. She had the documents telling of those insistent appeals and showed them. “The fact is that, in the course of that first war, the international community was prepared to accept any wickedness just to end Mobutu's regime”, she explained. She also spoke of the effectiveness of the propaganda of the invasion forces, which capitalized on the genocide in Rwanda: the Rwandan Hutus were indiscriminately accused of those murders, a stigma which justified any atrocity against them. “But the perpetrators of the genocide were some tens of thousands ... The Hutu refugees in DRC were more than a million, most of whom women and children”, Bonino remarked.

During those years, the United Nations experts noted horrors without end: mass murder, brutal violence, people burned alive, cannibalism ... A series of crimes committed by the forces opposed to the Congolese government, but also (to a lesser extent, according to the UN report) by government forces. In particular the report focused on a “modus operandi” very much used by the forces of “liberation”: once arrived in a village, the weary civilians were asked to gather together for a food and clothing distribution. Then, when the intended victims (mainly Hutu of Rwandan origin) had been picked out, they were tied up before being killed with blunt instruments (mostly with hammers).

Sometimes in dozens, others in hundreds, including women and children. A similar selection was made at checkpoints, separating those who were to be repatriated to Rwanda from the others. Then, instead of Rwanda, those selected were killed and their bodies made to disappear in mass graves or thrown into rivers or latrines. Another ploy for identifying the prey was to allow the humanitarian organizations to enter the territories under the control of the forces of “liberation” to permit assistance to be given to the fugitives hiding in the jungle. Permission granted so that the relief workers took with them trusted persons to check on their operations. In reality, the latter then located the fugitives and passed the information to the executioners ... The UN report includes variations on the tragic theme set out above: women and children buried alive or killed by smashing their heads against walls or trees.

A score performed with method and dedication, so much so that the United Nations experts speculated that a veritable genocide had been committed against the Rwandan Hutu refugees in the DRC. And they asked that a special court be set up to verify the truth of this hypothesis. Among the many crimes also the mass kidnapping of children to turn into soldiers or to subject to sexual violence. But the acts of pedophilia committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo did not make many headlines.

War and mobile phones

Mathilde Muhindo Mwamini, a former member of the DRC parliament, spoke at the Parma conference on the sexual violence that took place in those years and explained how it, carried out on a large scale and in a systematic way, had served as a weapon: the aim being to spread AIDS and erode the social fabric of the civilian population, since it resulted in the psychological disruption of family relationships. Also, since the domestic economy of Congolese society is based largely on women's work (particularly in the fields), the violence was also meant to undermine the subsistence of families.

A detailed report by Muhindo Mwamini showed that widespread impunity was a key factor in the perpetuation of such practices even today. Indeed, because at the Parma conference not only the past was spoken of, but the tragic present also. In fact the eastern region of Democratic Republic of Congo is far from pacified. Terror continues to rage even after the end of the war. On various occasions militias led by adventurers, with the support of the Rwandan regime (and others), have risen up against the Kinshasha government. The last major rebellion was that of Laurent Nkunda, leader of the CNDP (National Congress for the Defense of the People), who, after putting the region to fire and the sword, was arrested in January 2009 and imprisoned in Rwanda. Currently those who are spreading terror are armed groups known under various acronyms: the anti-Rwandan Hutu armed forces, former militiamen of the CNDP still in active service (a recent UN report states that Nkunda had not broken his ties with his old buddies and that he is pulling the strings from prison in Rwanda) and many others.

The various warlords are vying for pieces of territory, roads, mines, rivers, leading to continued violence against the civilian population. While the international community remains silent. Marco Deriu, a sociologist and lecturer in the Department of Political and Social Studies at the University of Parma, explained the enormous interests in this war in eastern DRC, one of the richest areas in the world: there are huge reserves of gold, diamonds, oil, cobalt, uranium, cassiterite, wolframite, copper, coffee and hard woods ... In detail there is: 17% of the world's production of rough diamonds, 34% of the world's cobalt, 10% of world production of copper, 4-5% of world production of tin and 60-80% of coltan resources. This latter mineral is used for electronic components, particularly for telecommunications and computers, but also for play stations, as Deriu remarked with tragic irony. The chaos of this continuous war still allows the looting of natural resources. More or less everybody is exploiting the situation: the warlords, the various dealers (local and international) in resources and weapons, up to the big multinational corporations that are buying precious minerals at bargain prices.

It is a conflict that feeds off itself, given that the profits are partially reinvested in fomenting warfare so as to increase business, in a crescendo of chaos organized by subtle minds. At the expense of the local populations who are driven out of mining areas or used as forced labor for the mines or to reinforce the ranks of the militias. The fate of women and girls, however, is that of sex slaves. It is difficult to break this network of concentric interests in a war that is both local and global. “But this UN report is a window of opportunity”, said Muhindo Mwamini in concluding her speech, “and at the same time, a testimony to the fact that, sooner or later, the truth comes to light”.

There were many Congolese at the conference, mostly young students. Some of them were there thanks to the Xaverians, with whom they have close and affectionate relations. They spoke out, asked questions, told of their experiences. They asked for justice and peace. And there was an amazing lack of bitterness in their words, despite everything that has happened and is happening in their country. They had smiling faces, bright eyes. And that is more than a window of hope.

NOTE: The chaos of this continuous war still allows the looting of natural resources. More or less everybody is exploiting the situation: the warlords, the various dealers (local and international) in resources and weapons, up to the big multinational corporations that are buying precious minerals at bargain prices. A conflict feeds off itself, given that the profits are partially reinvested in fomenting warfare to increase business.

By David Malacaria, This article was first published in the magazine called 30Days, a catholic Italian Magazine.