Kony 2012: why listen to me?

The video Kony 2012 has been a mega-hit on YouTube, with 21 million hits. It is also deeply, deeply problematic for anyone engaged in international development. You don't have to have me tell you why, though. First, here is the video:



Next, here is an excellent response from Rosebell Kagumire in Uganda.



Chris Webb has very usefully transcribed what Kagumire said: "I viewed it this morning and the first 5 minutes told me this was another effort by a good white American guy trying to save my people. In this story Ugandans are just mere watchers as Kony kills our children. In this story not much can an African do. It is the same old sensationalization of African stories and simplification of our problems to tell the western world using even his son that they should save Africa. How? by giving us money.

It’s a narrative that many of us of the continent who work in the media always look at in disbelief but such videos are easy to enter the hearts of an ignorant Western audience who do not question the narrative.

The film is void of any means like peace efforts that have gone on and it simplifies the war to Joseph Kony — a mad evil man. This war was bigger than Joseph Kony and those who will end it won’t be Americans. It’s a complex war that requires African governments of Uganda, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic to work together to pacify the region. And when I heard him say that Uganda is in central Africa despite [him] having visited here I almost stopped watching.

All in all it’s a very imperialistic film trying to touch sentiments of those who can ‘save’ Africa i.e. Hollywood and the West.

I am glad for social media that we are able to watch this kind of work and we react. This kind of condescending attitude towards Africa and its problems shouldn’t be given space in the 21st century."

As I said, why listen to me?

Postscript: the arrest of Jason Russell, a co-founder of Invisible Children, on 16 March 2012 will, I hope, bring this sorry affair to a close.

A life on hold

Omar is a 17 year old Somali living in a refugee camp in Tunisia.

A short film by Nick Francis and Marc Silver.

Freedom for Palestine

A week ago I transited through Johannesburg -- my first time in South Africa. I found it quite ironic that I arrived in O.R. Tambo International Airport -- I am sure that I was the only person on the plane that had actually met Oliver Tambo, as the African National Congress headquarters in London during the apartheid years was just down the street from where I was living.

South Africa in the 1980s. Palestine in the 2010s. Different time, same struggle.



Thanks to David McNally for directing me to this.

Twenty-two years later, we still believe the Tiananmen myth

This is an excellent post on the myths and realities around the Tiananmen events of 20 years ago.

Brian's blog

The death of Osama bin Laden

An excellent personal reflection by Richard Jackson on the meaning of the death of Osama bin Laden, published in The Hindu, India's best newspaper.

The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : The death of Osama bin Laden: it's a pity …

My thanks to Sharada to forwarding it on to me.

message to the US – blame the wars, not China

An excellent post from my former colleague, Paul Kellogg, on the sources of US financial instability.

PolEconAnalysis: Message to the U.S. – Blame the Wars, not China: "There is a growing chorus of voices in the media and the academy singling out the actions of the Chinese state as central to the dilemmas of..."

The Maoist insurgency in India

From Jairus Banaji, this is a typically astute and erudite analysis of the Maoist insurgency in central India, written partly in response to Arundhati Roy's “Walking With The Comrades”. It is, in my view, essential reading for those interested in India, but also in anti-capitalist political forces and factors more generally.

The Maoist insurgency in India: End of the road for Indian Stalinism?

the moment of truth in Afghanistan?

This morning saw the biggest leak of classified military files since the Pentagon Papers. In The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel, the true extent of the failed military 'strategy' in Afghanistan became apparent. Unreported incidents that have led to the deaths of many hundreds of civilians; 'black' units with instructions to kill or capture Afghan insurgents without any recourse to any kind of judicial process; the increasing use of Reaper drones to hunt and kill by remote control from Nevada; the acquisition by the insurgents of surface-to-air missiles.

Emerging from documents leaked by a 22 year old military intelligence analyst named Bradley Manning, who is now in prison facing court martial, the 'collateral damage' of the conflict has never been starker: French troops strafing a bus full of children in 2008; a US patrol machine-gunning a bus; Polish soldiers mortaring a village wedding party, apparently in reprisal for a previous attack, which constitutes a war crime--in all, the files document 144 unreported incidents. For example: British forces are identified as being involved in 21 unreported incidents resulting in at least 26 deaths; at least 16 children were killed or wounded. This is a brutal war against the Afghan population; no wonder the insurgents are growing stronger by the week. War crimes tend to do that.

Richard Norton-Taylor, writing in The Guardian, said this:

'The logs...provide unprecedented insight,...painting a picture...of brutality, cynicism, fear, panic, false alarms and the killing of a large number of civilians -- many more than of foreign troops or insurgents -- by all sides in the conflict. And, inevitably, "friendly fire". It is a story of deep-seated corruption by senior members of the Afghan police, of black operations by coalition special forces engaged in assassinations of dubious legality, of spies, and of unmanned but armed drones controlled by "pilots", including private contractors, sitting in front of computers thousands of miles away.'

Every citizen concerned about this war should read these files, and decide for themselves:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/jul/26/afghanistan-war-logs-wikileaks

I have little doubt that these files will make an enormous contribution towards government leaders finally coming to say what the world has said for a long time: that this war is not only unwinnable, but quite fundamentally unjust.

a history of modern Sudan

An excellent piece of reportage to place this week's elections in Sudan in context has been produced by The Economist. Sudan is far too often thought of these days in the context of Darfur. Yet Sudan's history of conflict goes back 4 decades, and has seen at least 2 million deaths in addition to the 300000 dead in Darfur. More than 9 million Sudanese rely on food aid; and in the south of the country, an area twice the size of Italy, there are only 50 km of tarmac roads. We need to pay more attention to Africa's biggest country.

a short, recent history of Congo

More from The Economist's excellent videographics: in 5 minutes anyone can understand why the world's worst war since World War II in the Congo is ultimately about the control of resources for our cellphones.

who is the enemy?

If this testimony impressed you, as it does me, learn more by visiting the website of Iraq Veterans Against the War: www.ivaw.org

living with landmines

37000 won't work

Earlier this week US President Barack Obama announced, after a long and often heated debate within the US administration, that an additional 30000 US troops would be sent to Afghanistan by the summer of 2010. This morning in Brussels NATO foreign ministers were able to agree that an additional 7000 soldiers would be sent to supplement US and NATO forces already operating in the country. So, by next summer 140000 foreign soldiers will be fighting in Afghanistan. The plan is that the military surge will create the conditions for a transition to an improved security situation, which can then be reinforced by a civilian surge that takes advantage of improved security to kick-start development efforts in the country, particularly in agriculture, creating the preconditions by which the US can begin to exit the country in July 2011.

This plan will not work. The mission in Afghanistan will end in failure, for a very straightforward reason: from the beginning the US and its allies have profoundly misunderstood the nature of Afghan civil society.

Following the September 11 attacks the US overthrew the Taliban government that had been harbouring Osama bin Laden; but they did not do this on their own. They supported the Northern Alliance, a grouping of former Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara mujahideen fighters, which retook the major cities of Afghanistan from the Taliban, including Kabul. The factions of the Northern Alliance then sought to strongly control Afghan politics by facilitating the establishment of a government notionally led by a Pakhtun, Hamid Karzai, but dominated by elements of the Northern Alliance. It is this alignment that to this day controls the rudimentary state that exists in parts of urban Afghanistan; it is this group that rigged the last presidential election so that Karzai, who allows them to act with impunity, could remain in office. They control this restricted state in order to further one objective, and that is lining their pockets. Afghanistan in December 2009 is little more than a corrupt narco-state run by the warlords and criminals that used to control the Northern Alliance.

In supporting a corrupt and anti-democratic government the US and its allies have alienated the dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan: the Pakhtuns. Granted, it was the Pakhtuns that formed the militant base of the Taliban, and it is the Pakhtun that form the base of the current insurgency. But it was also the Pakhtuns that militantly opposed the Taliban in its very heartland: the prolonged history of radical Pakhtun nationalism demonstrates some of the deeply anti-authoritarian tendencies within Pakhtun civil society, tendencies that Mullah Omar unsuccessfully tried to stamp out during the years of Taliban rule.

The alienation of progressive Pakhtuns was then reinforced by 'collateral damage': according to Human Rights Watch the numbers of non-combatant deaths over the past 8 years in Afghanistan has been 65000, of whom the vast majority have been Pakhtun; only 2000 insurgents have been killed. So the 'mission' in Afghanistan has since 2001 become progressively little more than an all-out one-sided assault on the Pakhtun by forces aligned with an illegitimate government dominated by druglords and criminals. It is little wonder that this has generated resistance amongst the Pakhtun; resistance that the West terms Taliban but which is in fact a far more complex manifestation of Afghan realities.

The Pakhtuns have never accepted occupation, and they never will. The international mission in Afghanistan will fail because it is in support of a regime that does not enjoy legitimacy in the eyes of the very population in whose name it is supposed to rule.

the contradictions of hope

Last week there was near euphoria around the world when Barack Obama was inaugurated as 44th President of the United States. I must confess that I spent most of the day glued to the television, watching a remarkable event unfold: one of those moments when you had to be there, at least watching, as when 9/11 occurred, Nelson Mandela walked free, the Berlin Wall came down, or Nixon stepped into the helicopter to leave the White House for the last time.

Obama has been extremely active in his first 6 days in office, and has already done some remarkable things. There was widespread press coverage of Barack Obama signing a Presidential order on 22 January 2009 mandating that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba be closed. In the same order it was decreed that all detainess held by the US would be covered by the Geneva Conventions. Less well noted were the fact that in the same order Obama ordered the closure of the Central Intelligence Agency's network of secret prisons, and that the CIA had been banned from using interrogation methods that are not contained in the US army field manual. At last, water boarding will come to an end as the official policy of the US government.

I don't expect the CIA or the US military not to resort to torture, or rendition; but if they do, at least now they can be held, to some degree, accountable. That is a positive return to a previous status quo--and after 8 years of Bush, a positive return to a status quo appears fresh and new.

Most remarkable of all, from an international development perspective, was a Presidential order that once more allows US aid agencies to deal with global groups that advocate family planning, like Marie Stopes and the International Planned Parenthood Federation. George W. Bush had imposed a moratorium on dealing with these groups within days of taking office; there can be little doubt that lifting the moratorium will save the lives of thousands of women throughout the developing world. This move reinforces the emphasis on development made by Hillary Clinton when she first addressed State Department staff last week--she is going to try and have development activities that lie under the control of the Defence department moved to State, where they clearly belong.

Cynics might decry these immediate--and fairly politically easy--changes under the new US President. I don't. These former US policies were an afront to the American people, served to galzanize opposition to the United States around the world, violated international law, and violated the rights of women. It was important that these wrongs be righted.

Nonetheless, it is still necessary to confront these changes against a more mundane and messy reality. On 23 January a US missle strike in North Wazirstan, Pakistan killed at least 21 people, including 3 children. These were the first such strikes--there were 30 in 2008--under President Obama, and as such must have received the direct approval of the President. On 24 January a US military raid in Aghanistan killed 22, including 2 women and 3 children--although the US military, with no observers on the ground, claimed that all the dead were militants. It is likely that a raid of this sort, in a civilian area of Afghanistan, was also explicitly authorized by President Obama. Thus, with the hopes that Obama has raised comes the contradictions of continuity. Such contradictions, however, are inevitable, as Barack Obama cannot and will not transform the US political economy. His role is to manage it better: and as such, President Obama will do much that will disappoint.

voices from Gaza

From the Financial Times of 23 January 2009:

'Sabah Abu Halema lies on her bed in Gaza's Shifa hospital, her arms and legs covered in once-white bandages and her hands covered in brown scabs.'

'Mrs Abu Halema is a victim of white phosphorous burns after being caught in a bombing early in the 22-day Israeli assault on Gaza...'

'Mrs Abu Halema and her family were eating lunch during the second week of the conflict when three bombs hit her house. Her husband and four of their nine children were killed.'

'"You should tell everyone about these scandalous acts by the Israelis', she told the Financial Times yesterday.'

From the Financial Times on the day of Barack Obama's inauguration, 20 January 2009:

'When an Israeli airstrike destroyed the Imad Akl mosque in the Jabaliya area of Gaza City that night, it also took his house.'

'Tahreir, 17, Ikram, 14, Samar, 12, Dina 7 and Jawaher, 4, were all killed when the mosque collapsed through their bedroom wall. Baraa, who was only 12 days old when the war began, was saved when the force of the explosion flipped her cot over and gave her shelter.'

'"Before, I used to count my children when we went out for family lunch or dinner, to make sure all 9 were there," says Mr (Anwar) Baalousha, 37. "Now I don't need to."'

'The airstrike has change Mr Baalousha's life in more than one way. "I'm ready to become a martyr now", he says dispassionately.'

'His brother, Nafez, chimes in: "The thing is, he wasn't political at all before the attack"'.'

From The Economist, 17 January 2009:

'"My brother was bleeding so much and right in front of my eyes, he died. My other brother Ismail, he also bled to death. My mum and my youngest brother, they are gone. Four brothers and my mother, dead. May God give them peace."'

1500 dead. 5000 wounded. Why?

Gaza's silent victims

The Israeli Defence Force's air and ground assault on Gaza has been disproportionately deadly on one group of Palestinians: children. It is not widely enough known that of the 1.5 million people that live in Gaza, half are children under the age of 15. In any military operation, then, it was inevitable that children would die. Since the assault began, of the 636 Palestinians that have been killed, at least 115 have been children, according to reports in the Financial Times.

The Israeli assault on Palestinian children is easily seen in the repeated bombing of schools, which has been roundly condemned around the world. The latest tragedy, in which 40 civilians, including children, were killed when a United Nations school was bombed, reminds the international community that despite repeated assertions by the Israeli Defence Forces that they seek to minimize civilian casulties the reality is that civilian populations, whether they be in private homes, schools, or medical facilities, are systematic targets, and this includes children.

Who can forget the murder--for that was what it was--of Rami Jamal al-Durra in September 2000? French television filmed the scene of the 12 year old huddled next to his father, hiding, as his father pleaded with the Israelis to stop shooting. In response, the Israelis shot at the father, wounding him, and killing Rami Jamal al-Durra. It is a scene that we have, unfortunately, had to witness again this month.

Prior to the assault, as a consequence of the Israeli blockade of the territory, some 50000 children were malnourished; as in Iraq in the 1990s, there can be no doubt that some children have died as a consequence of the conditions created by the blockade. To this horror must now be added the horror of the deaths of far too many wholly innocent children.

The irony of this assault on children is not lost on the Israeli leadership: as Ehud Barak, the defence minister who is directing the assault, once said when asked what he would do if he were a Palestinian facing the Israeli Defence Forces, 'I would join a terror organization'. In attacking Gaza's children, the Israelis are creating the conditions that perpetuate the cycle of violence that plagues the region.

Canada and nuclear proliferation

Over the course of the summer, there have been a number of major global stories with international development dimensions: but one in particular, with major ramifications for the future security of the planet, has been completely missed by the world's media, for reasons that both baffle and disappoint me.

On 2 August, the Saturday of what in Canada is a long weekend, The Globe and Mail's Campbell Clark reported that Canada will 'accommodate India's entry into the club of countries that can trade openly in nuclear fuel and technology'. If correct, Canada has, during the lull of a long weekend during the height of the summer, when no one pays attention to international news, effectively killed the most effective international treaty preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Opened for signature on 1 July 1968, the NPT was designed to halt the spread of nuclear weapons beyond those that acknowledged that they had such weapons at the time of the NPT's agreement. Initially proposed by Ireland, signatories to the NPT agreed that:

• if they are not in possession of nuclear weapons they will not acquire them;
• if they are in possession of nuclear weapons they will seek to eliminate them;
• the use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes was acceptable.
  

Currently, 190 states have signed the NPT, and only 4 significant countries have failed to sign: the nuclear-armed states of Israel, India and Pakistan, and the nuclear-capable state of North Korea.

Campbell Clark's report in The Globe stated that Canada was later this month going to agree to back an exemption being proposed by the United States for India at a meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an informal club of countries that trade in nuclear materials. The United Sates and the Indian government reached a contentious agreement to trade in nuclear materials a few years ago, and in order for the deal to proceed, the US and India must ratify it, but, crucially, the Nuclear Suppliers Group must exempt India from its restrictions on trade in nuclear technology and fuel such as uranium. Many believe that such an exemption, because of India's existing nuclear arms capabilities, has the potential to fuel a South Asian nuclear arms race with India's arch-rival, Pakistan.

Canada's change of stance is dramatic, because Canada has a long and troubled history of dealing with India on nuclear matters, going back to 1974, when Canadian technology acquired in the 1950s was used by India for a 'peaceful' nuclear explosion. In the aftermath of India's abuse of Canadian co-operation, Canada became an even more vocal supporter of the NPT, and Canada was traditionally viewed as being a proliferation hawk in the Nuclear Suppliers Group. However, this hostility now seems to have evaporated, with Foreign Minister David Emerson's commenting that 'you can't keep somebody in the penalty box forever'.

What Emerson fails to apparently appreciate is that to make India an exception to the NPT treaty will effectively kill it; why would any country abide by a nuclear technology control regime that exempts a non-signatory nuclear power from paying attention to the underlying principles of the regime? Or, to carry Emerson's analogy further, how sensible is it that if the team in the penalty box reaches agreement with another team in the division to ignore the rules of the game then the rules of the game have to be changed? Just as with the transformation of Canada's military from a peacekeeping to a war-fighting machine, which has been chronicled in this weblog, Canada's willingness to grant an exemption to India heralds a major transformation in the country's foreign policy, increasing its willingness to accommodate American foreign policy interests at the expense of its previous Pearsonian internationalism.

Canada in the world: what happened?

goodbye Rick Hillier

This weblog has been very quiet, for several months. The pressures of work have not allowed me to follow up several issues on which I have wanted to comment--the protests in Tibet, the elections in Zimbabwe, and the character of the World Bank and IMF, to name three. However, I have been roused out of my silence by the news yesterday that General Rick Hillier, Canada's Chief of Defence Staff since February 2005, is retiring.

Rick Hillier has been portrayed in the press as a straight-talking soldier concerned above all with the troops under his command, who has waged a struggle for the hearts and minds of Canadians to support the military while it undertakes its twice-extended mission in Khandahar. I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of Hillier's beliefs, but I do have reason to question them.

When Hillier became Chief of Defence Staff, Canada had 600 soldiers stationed in Kabul with NATO's International Security Assistance Force, known as ISAF. These soldiers were undertaking a fairly 'classic' Canadian international military operation: peacekeeping in the comparative safety of Kabul. Peacekeeping was what Canada's military, globally, was known for up until the appointment of Hillier. With that appointment, though, things changed.

As Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang convincingly demonstrate in their excellent The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar, it was Hillier who, in the wake of the Chretien government's opposition to the Iraq war and the Martin government's withdrawal from the United States' missile defence program, recognized an opportunity to placate the United States while at the same time fundamentally transforming Canada's military. That opportunity was the 'mission' in Kandahar, an infinitely more demanding assignment than Canada had undertaken in Kabul. The Martin government's agreement to send Canadian soldiers to Kandahar was basically Hillier's doing; those in the government had little idea about Afghanistan or Kandahar. They agreed because the 'mission' eased pressure on the United States military, both in Afghanistan but also in Iraq, and in so doing pleased those who had been unhappy with several foreign policy decisions that directly affected the United States.

It also did something else, however: Kandahar was and is a war zone. It is not a place where peacekeepers try to keep warring parties apart and maintain order. It is a place where order must be imposed through the use of force, because local warlords oppose the intervention in Afghanistan. As a result, Canadian forces have been heavily engaged, for the first time since the Korean War, in offensive military operations against opponents that the media dubs 'the Taliban' but whom, as Graeme Smith of The Globe and Mail has so ably demonstrated, are not the remnants of the former government of Afghanistan as rather an assortment of those opposed to Western military involvement in Kandahar. At best, the Pashtuns fighting the Canadians might be termed 'neo-Taliban'.

The point, then, is that Hillier has transformed the Canadian military from a peacekeeping force into a war-fighting machine. This has, no doubt, greatly increased the cohesion of the military themselves, and has also increased the recognition of the military amongst ordinary Canadians. It has, however, also led to the deaths of 82 Canadian soldiers and a significant reinforcement of opposition in Kandahar to the Canadian presence (many of whom are mistaken for American soldiers), which now totals 2500 soldiers. Most importantly, however, while the 'mission' has to terminate in 2011, Canada--and NATO--has no strategy in place to deal with the possibility that the country will remain largely hostile for the foreseeable future. This is a conflict that cannot be won militarily, as the history of Afghanistan shows, and will be difficult to win politically, given widespread views that the government of Hamid Karzai is not a national government but, at best, a weak Kabul government. Hillier has led Canada into what is, in essence, a no-win scenario; and for this, his tenure as Chief of Defence Staff will probably, over time, be viewed much more negatively than is currently the case.

revenge of the slums: the aftermath of the elections in Kenya

The events that have swept Kenya since the rigged re-election of President Mwai Kibaki on 27 December offer a deeply unsettling reminder of how the manipulation of identity, such as ethnicity, by dominant political elites can produce carnage on a mass scale. The international media has, in trying to interpret recent events, emphasized the ethnic dimensions of the conflict that has been ignited by the election by explaining the last 10 days in tribal terms—Kikuyu, Luo, and Kalenjin most especially, and indeed, these differences run deep. However, what has been missing in these accounts is the extent to which these differences have been and are politically constructed. The British, when they ruled Kenya, reinforced ethnic difference as a means of sustaining the power of the colonial state. After independence the elite that came to rule Kenya did the same, setting poor Kenyan against poor Kenyan by highlighting the ethnic ‘differences’ within the poor. This was particularly so in the Rift Valley region, where, as a result, there is a long-standing history of interethnic conflict; this was especially so under the regime of former President Daniel arap Moi, who used ethnic differences as a principal excuse to maintain a repressive state for many years.

The use of ethnicity as a means of politically organizing the subordinate, for the benefit of the ruling elite, and the use of repression as a means to sustain an elite privilege that is predicated upon the use of ethnicity, cannot however hide the fact that Kenya is a deeply stratified society. Class dynamics must be understood if the political economy of recent events are to be interpreted. Dominant political groups have used politics as a means of plundering the country, and thus enriching themselves, turning themselves into a indigenous ruling class. Kleptocracy runs deep in this elite. A principal exhibit: the Goldenberg scandal of the early 1990s, which witnessed, possibly, 10 % of the country’s GDP being extorted by members of the elite through questionable exports of gold and diamonds, a scam for which no member of the ruling class has ever been prosecuted. A second exhibit: the Anglo Leasing affair, in which government money was paid to companies that did not exist, or was paid to companies at dramatically over-inflated prices, diverting millions of dollars to shady businessmen who in turn passed on money to corrupt senior politicians. Repression and kleptocracy have been tolerated by the West, as Kenya has always been a key strategic ally in East Africa. Western indulgence, even during the last few years of Moi, when, in theory, the West was trying to clamp down on corrupt excesses, has allowed Kenyan political elites to turn a blind eye to the poverty, unemployment and landlessness that confronts a population of 38 million, half of which live on less than US$2 a day, and half of which are under 20. Kenya’s economy must create several hundred thousand jobs a year just to stand still, yet the capital-intensive export agriculture that supplies high-value fresh flowers and vegetables to Europe that is favoured by the government, and the import-intensive tourism industry that is favoured by Northern holidaymakers, do not produce those types of labour-intensive jobs.

No wonder the citizens of Kenya wanted change. They thought they were going to get it in 2002, when Kibaki was first elected, promising to fight corruption and produce hundreds of thousands of jobs. There was, amongst Kenyans, at the time a remarkable, rejuvenating sense of possibility. Instead, they got more of the same, as anti-graft campaigns were quickly dissipated, stalwarts of the Moi years quickly returned to positions of authority, and oppositional figures such as Raila Odinga were forced to quit.

That this cabal would seek to rig the presidential elections is thus not surprising, although the blatant character of it has shocked many, not least of all me. As is clear, the outcome of the parliamentary elections was a disaster for the President. The President’s Party of National Unity, which includes remnants of Moi’s former Kenyan African National Union party, lost the vote, and half the President’s cabinet, including some very nasty people such as Nicholas Biwott, Moody Awori, and Gideon Moi, son of the former President, lost their seats. Kibaki and his entourage therefore put into play a long-standing plan to rig the Presidential election results by delaying the results from Central Province, a Kibaki stronghold. Kibaki was being trounced outside Central Province; therefore, the results in Central Province were altered, so that, in some instances, apparently greater than 98 % of the electorate voted in some precincts for the President, a ludicrous ploy that would have made Nicolae Ceausescu proud. As a result, Kibaki was declared the winner by 230000 votes by the tainted Kenyan electoral commission. When the result was announced, security forces sealed off central Nairobi, because the political class knew what the impact of the declaration would be; the President was hurriedly sworn into office. The electorate, robbed of the change that it sought, exploded, particularly in the slums of Kibera and Mathare outside Nairobi, pools of humanity that Mike Davis would recognize as ‘existential ground zeroes’ which, because of their desire for change, had the potential to become volatile in the wake of their political expression being thwarted.

Raila Odinga, the Orange Democratic Movement’s (ODM) candidate for president, and a long-standing opponent of the one-party rule of former President Moi, expected the vote to be rigged; indeed, the ODM engaged in some irregularities as well. Reliable accounts suggest that the ODM had a pre-existing plan to react to the announcement of a Kibaki victory by calling on a campaign of civil disobedience. Thus, on the ground, there has been some encouragement of young hoodlums rampaging through the streets of Kisumu, Mombassa, Eldoret and the Nairobi slums; the ODM is not innocent. Nonetheless, the assignation of blame must be laid at the door of Kibaki, who has robbed the Kenyan people of the change that they clearly indicated they wanted.

The venality of Kenya’s ruling and middle classes cannot be overemphasized. They do not have to see the sea of poverty in which they live. They are ferried by car from place to place, living behind fairly secure walls, where they can bemoan the rioting on the street outside, and ignore their own culpability in it. That culpability runs deep: they have materially benefited from the kleptocratic repressive state run by Moi and Kibaki, and they believe in their right to rule. Many hardliners in the elite will therefore argue that the reduction in repression under Kibaki was a mistake, and what is needed, to manage the ‘tribal tensions’ of Kenyan society, is a return to repression.

Indeed, what that repression would entail has already been witnessed in the past few days; the security services have been responsible for a significant share of the violence. What is not clear, however, is how ordinary Kenyans would respond. Previously, politically-motivated ethnic conflict occurred in rural areas removed from the capital. What is now different is that conflict has moved full-scale into the slums of Nairobi, where the frightening possibility of these politically-constructed identities fostering neighbour turning on neighbour is very real; in the absence of political accountability the poor have started to devour the poor. Accentuating the possibility of a deepening quagmire of conflict are the presence of young criminal gangs that have sought to use the troubles in the slums as an excuse to terrorize and loot, while at the same time trying to increase the control of slumlords over the impoverished population that lives there; many of these gangs, which draw from unemployed and disempowered youth, are linked to political parties. In this existential ground zero, 300 are dead, upwards of 250000 people are displaced, rape gangs stalk the countryside, and children are burnt alive in a place of sanctuary.

Cote d’Ivorie has tragically demonstrated that the myth of stability can quickly degenerate into civil war when the demons of ethnicity that have been used by the ruling elite turn on the political choices that have been made by that very elite. The flame has been lit, and while political leaders dither in the safety of their sanctuary it is only ordinary Kenyans who can put it out. One can only hope that that is what they do.

humanitarian intervention after Iraq

Readers of this weblog will know that I was deeply hostile to the invasion of Iraq, that I remain staunchly opposed to its conduct, and that I foresee that the eventual US defeat in Iraq will herald a reconfiguration of global forces on a scale not seen since the US defeat in Vietnam. However, it would be a mistake to equate my opposition to the war in Iraq with an opposition to militarily intervene in the affairs of another country. One of the outcomes of the disastrous US/UK intervention in Iraq has been that it has once again forced people such as myself, who are basically pacifists, to clearly elaborate when and where there is a need for military intervention by the international community.

That the international community has an obligation to intervene in cases of humanitarian catastrophes was brought home to me during the Balkan Wars. Raised on stories of World War II, and deeply doubting Gandhi's believe that non-violence could have defeated fascism, these wars I found deeply debilitating on a personal level: genocidal conflict was raging in Europe, once again, less than 2 days away by car, and yet there seemed to be nothing that could be done to either stop it or indeed contain its spread. I will never forget asking John Loxley in 1992 what he thought should be done; he was, as ever, extremely clear: 'I think Thatcher is right; we need to bomb the hell out of them'. At the time, I was opposed to international intervention in the Balkan Wars, and yet it is true that the wars continued, ferociously, until the US started dropping bombs on the Serbs. Once that happened, the Serbian government, the sponsor and orchestrator of the Balkan Wars, quickly embraced negotiation, and the Dayton Accords were the result.

Long before the invasion of Iraq the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, made a speech in Chicago in which he asked a question that is of critical importance in the early 21st century: what are 'the circumstances in which we should get actively involved in other people's conflicts'? He went on, correctly, to stress that 'acts of genocide can never be a purely internal matter'. I have believed this for a very long time indeed; it was the principal reason that I supported the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia that overthrew the Khmer Rouges. While the international community stood head to shoulder with a genocidal government that killed a third of its own population, the Vietnamese were totally ostracized for an act that saved, probably, hundreds of thousands of lives. Further back, when Milton Obote returned to power in Uganda following the ouster of Idi Amin, things started to go bad very quickly. I will never forget Tanzania intervening to overthrow Obote as a way of stopping a descent into what could have became a genocidal conflagration. I have clearly witnessed times when their is a need to citizens to support a military intervention by their government in the affairs of a sovereign state. Genocide is the starkest example; who does not want international forces in Darfur to stop the killing?

Elements within the international community have supported the need for humanitarian military intervention since the 1980s, when the then French President, Francois Mitterand, enunciated a concept that he labeled 'the right to intervene'. The problem was that this right was never codified or ratified internationally, and no one really knows when it does and does not apply.

It clearly did not apply, however, to Iraq, for many reasons. The military coup that brought the Baath Party to power in the first place was heavily promoted by the CIA. When Saddam Hussein seized control of the Baath Party there was nary a whimper from the West; indeed, when he invaded Iran in 1979 Hussein was seen to be the front line in halting the spread of the Islamic Republic, and he was rewarded by being heavily armed by the West to continue a war that he started, and which cost millions their lives. Just prior to his invasion of Kuwait he was still receiving senior Western politicians, including, for example, the then-British foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, who came bearing arms and ammunition for a dictator that had killed his own people as well as citizens of the West. Hussein was thus very much a creation of the West: it supported him, it armed him, and it allowed him to wage war against his own people without challenging his actions.

What changed after the invasion of Kuwait was that Hussein was quickly turned into an enemy. However, rather than punishing the regime, it was the people of Iraq who were punished by more than a decade of sanctions that probably killed upwards of half a million children. Little wonder, then, that the US and the UK face such hostility in Basra and Baghdad: first, the West supported a dictator that mercilessly killed his own people; then, we by-passed the dictator to kill his people ourselves. Then we get rid of the dictator and send the military in, with the result that hundreds of thousands more people lose their lives. The West has been deeply involved in the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Iraq. And we are still doing it...

No, the war in Iraq cannot be justified. However, this does not mean that the idea of the need for humanitarian military intervention is totally discredited. What is required is a clear mandate from the international community, in the form of clear approval from the United Nations (flawed as that institution might be); a clear mandate for the UN force going in; a political strategy to remove the genocidal regime that is in place; an economic strategy to sustain livelihoods torn asunder by conflict; and an exit strategy. It requires proper resourcing, and not the begging bowl mentality that facilitated the genocide in Rwanda and the carnage in the Congo.

Unfortunately, these conditions are unlikely to find much international support after the war in Iraq comes to its logical conclusion, which is a deepening of the ongoing civil war. One casualty of Bush's war has been a strengthening of a retreat into isolationism, particularly in the US but also in the UK; and such a retreat bodes ill for the millions of people who continue to live in fear of their government.