Category Archives: Arsenal Pulse

Brief thoughts and mini-analyses on stories in the news.

A Rwandan Genocide legacy (continued)

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Recently, I wrote a lengthy post on the repressive legacy of the post-genocide government of Rwanda. The New York Times has continued their investigation (which prompted my original post), and there’s a new article today: “For Rwandan Students, Ethnic Tensions Lurk.” Much of my earlier post discussed how the Rwandan Patriotic Front (the Tutsi rebels who replaced the radical Hutu government) has been shielded from many criticisms of their actions during, preceding, and following the genocide by the simple fact that they were the only armed force in the world that acted to stop the genocide. Victors write the history, and liberators get even better treatment because of their heroic actions. But the RPF-led government of Rwanda continues to use that as an excuse to cover up their own abuses, as the article explains:

According to the law, once a student is convicted of genocide ideology, the student can face jail time and will not be readmitted to school, a policy that has students keeping their opinions to themselves.

The ban on genocide ideology also encompasses accusations that the Tutsi rebels killed civilians in 1994, despite the finding by a United Nations research team that the rebels killed up to 45,000 people. A mention of those killings can land a jail term. The genocide, the law says, was committed only against the Tutsis.

The official narrative, students say, amounts to a kind of denial of history. Or as Denise Kajeniri, a 21-year-old Tutsi economics student, describes it, “pretend and move on.”

 
I raise this not to minimize the horrors committed by their Hutu genocidaire opponents (see my other post for more on that), but because it is important that we confront all the facts — not just those that make one side play the pure villains and the other side the untainted heroes. The world does not divide evenly like that. Just as the United States has been slow to confront the abuses and crimes it committed during the liberation of Europe and the Pacific in World War II, this process will take time in Rwanda. But it is a necessary step if they are to have real reconciliation and healing.

This article originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.

Nigeria’s president is dead

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This is not altogether unexpected, as he had been in very poor health for some time now, but Nigeria’s President Umaru Yar’adua has passed away, an aide confirmed to the BBC. President Yar’adua had returned two months ago after a lengthy and mysterious health trip to Saudi Arabia, but Acting President Goodluck Jonathan (the Vice President) remained at the helm, as he has been since February. Yar’adua’s death should help resolve the lingering constitutional questions that threatened to destabilize the political scene in the oil-rich west African nation that contains about 15% of the continent’s entire population. President Yar’adua had been in Saudi Arabia for about 90 days, refusing to meet with or speak to officials, before the Nigerian government agreed to transfer power formally to Vice President Jonathan. By the time he returned to Nigeria to live out his final days, he had been out of the country and unaccounted for, for approximately three months.

Yar’adua’s death also seals the amazing storybook rise of Mr. Jonathan, which I summarized in February, when he was made Acting President:

He’s a zoologist and a hydrobiologist, who was an environmental minister briefly and fortuitously became governor after being chosen as a lieutenant governor in his state under a corrupt governor who resigned; then he was unexpectedly chosen as running mate by the outgoing president orchestrating the 2007 PDP ticket that won, and now he’s suddenly President.

 
UPDATE @ 10:27 PM: The NY Times has posted their summary of the Yar’adua presidency. Mixed reviews but some positive (small) steps toward governmental reform, basically.

This post originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.

Nigerien junta preserves Chinese alliance

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It’s about time to do a follow-up post on my informal series of posts on the February military coup in Niger, and along comes a NY Times article on the matter. The Chinese had been underwriting the (previous) Tandja government, according to detractors, and the article says the Chinese made a “smooth” switch to the new regime, which is led by military officers who insist they are cleaning up government in Niger and have pledged elections in the (unspecified) near future. With basically the only significant export being uranium – Niger has some of the world’s largest deposits – the coup government recognized quickly that they needed to maintain the Chinese alliance to prevent collapse and chaos. Add to that the Western pre-coup sanctions that remain in effect until the elections, there was no other option.

China, reportedly, had been supplying the increasingly dictatorial regime with hydroelectricity installations and resource extraction sites that could eventually improve the country’s economy but in the short-term served to bolster the President Tandja. Shortly after the coup, Chinese projects and operations in Niger returned to normal. Tandja remains under arrest.

No word yet on whether China will put up the $132.9 million adequate food to head off an impending hunger crisis, as reported by the United Nations’ news service. Seems unlikely.

This post originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.

The traveling exile of a deposed president

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They should seriously consider remaking “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” with this guy, if things progress at the current rate:

The deposed president of Kyrgyzstan, who was ousted following bloody antigovernment riots this month, is being harbored now in Belarus, that country’s president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, said Tuesday, though authorities in Kyrgyzstan said they would press for his extradition.

Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the former president of Kyrgyzstan, resigned last week and left Kyrgyzstan for neighboring Kazakhstan in a deal brokered by the presidents of the United States, Russia and Kazakhstan. The deal was meant to shore up Kyrgyzstan’s provisional government and halt further violence in the strategically important Central Asian nation, which hosts an American military base crucial for supplying troops and equipment for the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

Where will he go next? Dubai seems to be a popular location for exiled world leaders these days…

Oh, and a related fun fact I just learned by brushing up on the TV show I referenced above: the whole first season was taped right before the 1991 breakup of the USSR (which included all three of the countries named above), and by the time the series premiered many of the locations cited and all the maps used had become totally inaccurate. A few other countries also broke up over the next few seasons.

This post originally appeared at Starboard Broadside.

Ugandans recruit ex-rebels to hunt rebels

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uganda-flagUganda’s government, armed and assisted by the United States with “millions of dollars of military support, namely, trucks, fuel and contracted airplanes,” is hunting down the transnational Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a cult-like group of marauding rebels that follows no borders and transfers their “resistance” to whatever government is currently least stable in central Africa. They originated in Uganda under the messianic Joseph Kony, but he’s taken them elsewhere at present (I think the southeast of the Central African Republic). With the Ugandan government back on its feet, the LRA has pretty much left the country for a few years to seek easier targets, but they’re still pillaging across the Congo, Sudan, the Central African Republic, and elsewhere, sometimes one or two countries away from Uganda’s border.

Now Uganda is on a mission to wipe them out or liberate its members (many of whom are child-soldiers and slaves), and they’ve hit upon the idea of recruiting former members to track the group across the jungles and swamps of central Africa, since they have the most experience following the LRA’s tricky trails. It’s somewhat of a controversial program, but it seems to be working.

Some American officials said that they had mixed feelings about the former rebels’ being involved, though they said that the decision was the Ugandans’ and that in this case, as one American officer put it, “these guys may be some of the best they got.”

The battlefield statistics seem to bear this out. In the past 18 months, American officials say, the Ugandan Army has killed or captured more than half of Mr. Kony’s men, including his finance and communications officers, as well as several other high-ranking commanders.

“And let’s be realistic,” added the American officer, who was not authorized to speak for attribution. “These ex-L.R.A. guys don’t have many skills, and it’s going to be hard for them to reintegrate.

“But one thing they are very good at,” the officer said, “is hunting human beings in the woods.”

 
Of course, the big question is what happens to these ex-rebels if the LRA is wiped out? Many were hired for this program because they lacked any marketable skills after leaving the LRA themselves, and this was something they were good at that paid well. Let’s hope the United States’ commitment doesn’t end with the elimination of the Lord’s Resistance Army, or else the destabilization problems will just re-appear under a new rebel group.

This post originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.

Bachmann wants to use nukes vs. a cyber attack

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Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) revved up a huge crowd in Minneapolis by saying the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty would limit American response options to a diverse range of threats… including preventing a nuclear retaliation against a cyber attack. Whoa there, cowboy! Steve Benen (The Washington Monthly):

To be sure, attacks on a country’s computer networks can be severely damaging. But even Bachmann, as confused as she is, has to realize that responding to a cyber attack with a nuclear bomb would be the most insane act in the history of humanity. Does she understand what a nuclear bomb does?

So to answer Bachmann’s question, no, the United States will not use a nuclear arsenal to respond to a cyber attack. That doesn’t mean we’d welcome a cyber attack; it doesn’t mean we’d let a cyber attack slide; it doesn’t mean our conventional weapons couldn’t serve as a sufficient deterrent.

 
It’s been said that the banning of above-ground nuclear weapons tests has been a major factor in an increasingly clueless American population on what power nukes really have. My entire generation and everyone after is post-Cold War, so we’re generally even more detached. The argument goes that without these tests to remind people visually of the awesome power of them, nuclear weapons become a dangerous abstraction. However, there are serious environmental and global health consequences to above-ground tests, which is partly why we don’t do them now.

But when elected officials like Bachmann start saying crazy stuff like this, I start to agree that America might benefit from one or two big, new tests just to jog the collective memory of the country.

Actual footage of Operation Castle Bravo:

You don’t screw around with nukes.

This post originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.

Opposition overthrows Kyrgyz government

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What initially looked like a massacre of opposition protests in Kyrgyzstan today quickly evolved into an apparently spontaneous (and violent) revolution. Protestors stormed and seized several key government buildings after police opened fire — they claim in self-defense — in the capital city, while other cities reported unrest. The ruling government appears to have collapsed suddenly. Here’s the account from Voice of America (the US government’s global propaganda media arm, so take with salt):

The political opposition in Kyrgyzstan says it has seized power, after a day of clashes in several cities that killed at least 40 people and wounded more than 400.

Opposition leaders said late Wednesday they were forming a provisional government with former Foreign Minister Roza Otunbayeva as its head. They said the current prime minister, Daniyar Usenov, had agreed to resign, but there has been no confirmation of the opposition’s claims.

The exact whereabouts of Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev are not known. Some opposition members say he has left the capital for the southern city of Osh, where he has a strong power base.

Sporadic gunfire continued overnight in the capital, Bishkek. Reuters news agency reports many buildings remain ablaze. Looters also reportedly ransacked a house belonging to Mr. Bakiev’s family.

Authorities confirmed 40 deaths, while the opposition says at least 100 people were killed.

 
This revolution somewhat mirrors the previous one in 2005 (the “Tulip Revolution”) that brought the ruling government to power. Since then, the country has been racked with sporadic violence from discontent under the new regime, which was seen as just as authoritarian and undemocratic and corrupt as its predecessor.

The Pentagon announced temporary closure of the controversial airbase in Kyrgyzstan, while they await the results of today’s unrest, which could result in a more anti-American government coming to power that would not be amenable to continued US presence.

This post originally appeared at Starboard Broadside.