Everyone was indeed surprised by this morning's news of the seemingly commendable arrest of Congolese General Laurent Nkunda by the Rwandan army, but my inherent streak of pessimism toward Congo-related developments has me worrying that some folks are being too sanguine about the potential positive consequences of this tricky maneuver. Sure, one destabilizing factor (and an increasingly power-hungry one, at that) is gone, and if Nkunda's soldiers do in fact intend to join the Congolese army, as has been reported, then that is, ostensibly, a good sign. However -- and there is always a however -- another potentially destabilizing factor (Rwanda's army, which has a, shall we say, historical penchant for invading and destabilizing Congo) has firmly made its presence felt. And then, there's always the fact that, as the Enough Project's Colin Thomas-Jensen points out in this worthwhile analysis, an indicted war criminal has currently replaced Nkunda as the head of the rebel army. Colin makes the important -- but underemphasized -- reminder that this is not necessarily a good thing for Congolese civilians.
According to one narrative, the arrest of Nkunda is a sign of progress: growing cooperation between the Congolese and Rwandan governments, a step toward consolidating the Congolese state after the 2006 (somewhat) free and fair elections, and the elimination of two rebel groups (Nkunda's CNDP and the FDLR, the Hutu militias whose long-sought-for dissolution was what attracted Rwanda to this bargain). According to another, I see Rwandan forces invading Congo (again), without telegraphing any concrete plan for how to eliminate the FDLR nuisance; a Congolese president who has thus far been pretty successful at getting his political rivals sent to The Hague or arrested by a neighboring army (granted, these are no martyrs); and, generally, a large number of people with guns and not too much accountability.
One sign of the shadiness of the operation, which Colin alludes to but not too many seemed to have picked up, is the bizarre turnaround of the UN peacekeeping mission in the country, MONUC. MONUC has never had the upper hand in eastern Congo, caught between protecting civilians and supporting the notoriously civilian-abusing Congolese army, but recent developments leave it in an even more awkward position on the sidelines. On Wednesday, the mission's head felt it necessary to clarify that MONUC was not involved in the joint Congolese-Rwandan operation to wipe out the FDLR. The next day, it called for a role -- protecting civilians, not in anti-FDLR operations -- in the operation. The exclusion of MONUC, the world's largest peacekeeping mission, from this supposedly coordinated effort does not, I would wager, bode well for either civilian protection or a concerted attempt to secure peace in Congo.
Plus, Nkunda's pet goat is, for all we know, still on the loose.
One consequence of having Susan Rice serve as United States ambassador to the UN is that the cool Obama foreign policy advisers that supported him in the primaries will congregate at the UN. It's suddenly the place to be!
President Obama will lift the Global Gag Rule today. Amen! See yesterday's post for more on why international family planning assistance is critical to global health and development.
UPDATE It's official! Plus, President Obama has restored US funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Tim Wirth says, “UNFPA is the world’s leader in advocating for universal access to reproductive health services. It is very clear that working with UNFPA will save women’s lives and help reduce the need for recourse to abortion. For example, the $34 million withheld by the Bush Administration in one year alone, could have helped UNFPA prevent 2 million unintended pregnancies, 800,000 abortions, 4,700 mothers’ deaths, and more than 77,000 infant and child deaths.
“Working in more than 150 countries, UNFPA is on the front lines of reducing poverty, ensuring that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect. Approximately 180 industrialized and developing countries, including all the countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, contribute to UNFPA. The United States was the only country to withhold funding for political reasons.”
Like I said, elections have consequences.
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.
Unfortunately, this is no joke. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the caterpillars -- the suspects are African armyworms -- are inching across norther Liberia in numbers so vast they can only be described as "hordes." They are infecting precious food and water supplies, destroying the environment, and endangering health. Worse, they may spread into neighboring West African countries, igniting a kind of regional catastrophe not seen since (albeit very different from) Liberian warlord Charles Taylor enmeshed the region in war. With no solution yet apparent, the crisis calls to mind some sort of twisted horror movie.
The caterpillars, two to three centimetres in length and described by villagers as "black, creeping and hairy," are advancing in the tens of millions, devouring all plants and food crops in their path and in some cases overrunning homes and buildings.I think folks in the Netherlands, then, would rightly object if I suggest sending the worms to join Taylor in The Hague. (image from flickr user tanyacameron under a Creative Commons license)
Over at The Cable, the always-well-informed Laura Rozen reports that a shakeup in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee may spell bad news for those (like us) urging passage of important international treaties.
Senators George Voinovich (R-OH), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and David Vitter (R-LA) have dropped off the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, along with retired Sen. Chuck Hagel, while Roger Wicker (R-Miss) and Jim Risch (R-ID) have joined. "The Republican side, with the sole exception of Lugar, is now a very conservative group and could seek to frustrate international treaty ratification, e.g. Law of the Sea, Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)," a Hill staffer notes.This could be shaping up to a confrontation, as the committee's chairman, John Kerry, has already made clear his strong support for ratifying treaties like the Law of the Sea and the CTBT (and has also evinced a personal commitment to environmental issues, dispatching himself as the Senate's representative to last December's climate change talks in Poland, as well as the previous talks in Bali). Even with a few gadflies on the committee, though, a concerted push should be enough to get votes on ratification to the full Senate, where they've been before, but where, perhaps this time around, they'll fare better. My guess is that the new committee members on the right won't be too thrilled that climate emissary Al Gore is testifying next week on U.S. leadership in the fight against climate change.
One thing that President Barack Obama has not yet done is repeal the "Global Gag Rule" which prohibits NGOs that receive US federal funds from providing or counseling women on abortion. The Global Gag Rule (so-called because it prevents NGOs from even mentioning abortion) was imposed by executive order nearly as soon as former President George W. Bush took office, and people in the international health and women's rights community expect that President Obama will rescind the order in his first few days in office.
That would be a great start toward a new day in international reproductive health and family planning efforts but there is much more to be done. Official international family planning assistance is pitifully small--only about $450 million was allocated for it in FY 2008.
Today, five former directors of the Population and Reproductive Health Program of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) laid out a plan for how the new Obama administration can restore U.S. leadership in global family planning. Making the Case for U.S. International Family Planning Assistance argues for a 100% increase in USAID administered family planning programs to $1.2 billion in FY2010, rising gradually to $1.5 billion in FY 2014.
According to the report an investment of $100 million in Family Planning yields the following health impact:
*Contraceptive users added - 3.6 million *Unintended pregnancies avoided - 2.1 million *Abortions prevented - 825,000 *Infant deaths prevented - 70,000 *Maternal lives saved - 4,000It's time for President Obama to repeal the Global Gag Rule and show his commitment to global development by supporting international family planning.
I'm having a tough time shaking the image of Ban Ki Moon standing in front of the still smoldering headquarters of the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA). This is an agency that is responsible for feeding, schooling, and providing health care for several hundred thousand Palestinian refugees. Luckily, no one died when Israeli mortars hit the UNRWA warehouse, but a number of UN vehicles and relief items were destroyed. This is opposed to the shelling of a UN school that served as an emergency shelter which was struck by an Israeli bomb, killing 40 people. Even more troubling are reports that the rockets which struck the school included White Phosphorous mortars, which is a substance banned under international law from being used in populated areas.
Israel has stated that it purposefully targeted these UN buildings because Hamas militants were nearby. As I've said before, risking the lives of human shields just to get at the Hamas terrorists who are holding them hostage does not quite cut it. (Specifically, it seems to fall far short of satisfying the just war principal of double-effect.) True, Israel has "expressed regret" for the pain it has inflicted in Gazan civilians -- and this, to be sure, separates them from the terrorists they are seeking to defeat). Still, the the United Nations is not a legitimate military target. Period.
I just hope that Israel, with its functioning and capable judiciary, heeds the Secretary General's advice to "make those responsible people accountable."
Most probably not. But this opening graf from LA Times reporter Josh Meyer makes it seem like U.S. counter-terrorism officials were taking the threat -- one of "of limited specificity and uncertain credibility" -- seriously enough to prepare for the possibility.
The swearing-in of Barack Obama came off without a security-related hitch Tuesday, but underneath the calm veneer, federal authorities were intensively investigating a report that a group of Somalia-based militants wanted to launch some kind of inauguration-related attack.The group, evidently, was the infamous al-Shabaab, a splinter group of the Islamic militants currently en route to taking over Somalia. The rumored potential perpetrators may -- or may not -- also have had something to do with a naturalized, Minneapolis-based U.S. citizen who may or may not have blown himself up in Somalia this past October. At the end of his LA Times piece, Meyer admits the vagueness surrounding the threat.
The official said the threat did not specify Washington and could apply to inauguration-related festivities around the country, and that there was no indication that anyone connected with the threat has even tried to enter the United States.A rumored threat of something, happening somewhere in the country by individuals who have not even entered the country is probably not worthy of insinuating a possible terrorist attack on Obama's inauguration. But, it's a testament to the intense security of the inauguration that such a possibility was fully vetted -- and anyway, al-Shabaab will pose enough problems for the Obama Administration's Somalia policy even without concocting far-fetched Inauguration schemes. (image from flickr user Mrs. Gemstone, under a Creative Commons license)