Category Archives: Commentary

All written commentary.

Ending Kabilaland

  By

Arsenal Bolt: Quick updates on the news stories we’re following.

Flag_of_the_Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo

This is the latest quick update in my series on multi-termism trends in Sub-Saharan Africa this year.

Can President Joseph Kabila, son of President Laurent Kabila, be persuaded to step down soon in DR Congo?

If tiny Burundi is turning into a nightmare, chronically unstable DR Congo risks returning to its apocalyptic horrors of the civil war years if President Joseph Kabila delays elections by several years to extend his term. By contrast:

If Kabila can be convinced to allow an orderly transition of power in the DRC, it will make clear that such an improbable feat can be done just about anywhere — in Burundi, in Rwanda, and across the river in Brazzaville.

 

Doomed to fail: The new Syria talks

  By

If you want to know why the Syria conflict can’t be ended by willpower or the snap of a fingers, this is a good analysis by Gareth Porter. The latest peace talks don’t include any significant armed combatant party in Syria – not any stripe of rebels, not the government, and certainly not ISIS. Practically speaking, on the side of the anti-regime forces, there is nobody that the rest of the world is comfortable negotiating with who could actually control any armed fighters if a deal was reached. The Syrian government (or even just the Army) doesn’t want to negotiate a deal either because they have no interest in signing a deal that brings al Qaeda/Nusra to power, and they are currently the primary non-ISIS opponent.

Flag of the Syrian government.

Flag of the Syrian government.

Mapping indigenous lands

  By

World Resources Institute and a dozen other groups have launched a collaborative mapping project to document indigenous lands all over the globe. Incredibly exciting!

…up to 65 percent of the world’s land is held by Indigenous Peoples and communities, yet only 10 percent is legally recognized as belonging to them. The rest, held under customary tenure arrangements, is largely unmapped, not formally demarcated, and therefore invisible to the world. Starting today, anyone can view the detailed coordinates and borders of indigenous and community lands around the world using LandMark (www.landmarkmap.org), the first online, interactive global platform to map collectively held lands.

 

Burkina Faso presidential campaign kicks off after transition

  By

Just over a year after a street uprising and military coup ousted the longtime regime of President Blaise Compaoré — and less than two months after a short-lived, violent coup attempt against the transitional government — Burkina Faso is heading to the polls for what it hopes will be its first free presidential election after decades of strongman and military rule. It has been a bumpy ride to get to this point.

Despite a ban on ruling party candidates, France24 reports that:

Seven of the 14 candidates played important roles in the fallen regime, without backing Compaore to the end.

 
Sort of inevitable when there is single-party/one-man rule for decades. Anyone who goes into public service ends up working for the regime at some point. And here they are:

Roch Marc Christian Kabore and Zephirin Diabre, considered the frontrunners, are both former government ministers.

Kabore worked with Compaore for 26 years, serving as prime minister and then speaker of the National Assembly. He also ran the CDP for more than a decade, but quit the party in disgrace 10 months before Compaore was ousted.

Diabre, an economist, long opted for an international career, but also served at home as minister of the economy and finance. He also joined the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) with support from Compaore.

 
burkina-faso-map

When is a solution to end a war not a solution for the peace?

  By

The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, aka Dayton Accords, were preliminarily signed on November 21, 1995 in Ohio. With that accord reaching its 20th anniversary — and Bosnia continuing to be wildly dysfunctional and notoriously stagnant, albeit not openly at war with itself — it’s time to reflect on how the solution reached to end the war did not do much beyond that.

“The Dayton Accords at 20: Why Bosnia’s Government Is So Dysfunctional” – The Atlantic

Dayton created a byzantine governance system that constitutionally entrenched, rather than resolved, the divisions that emerged from the war. Bosnia was divided into two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska. Bosnia was further split into 10 cantons, and the contested city of Brčko was given special district status, while the state presidency rotates between the representatives of the three constituent peoples—Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs. With a population of 3.8 million people, Bosnia has three presidents, 13 prime ministers and as many governments, more than 180 ministers, and over 700 members of parliament. The outcome is an ungovernable mess. Two years after the 2013 census was completed, the results haven’t yet been announced, because Bosnia and Republika Srpska each carried out its own census, with different methodologies.
[…]
This doubling-up of everything can seem comic. But the system entrenched by Dayton has done serious damage to Bosnia’s development. “The political caste uses Dayton to stay in power,” explained Nermina Mujagić, a political-science professor at Sarajevo University. “Dayton is a convenient scapegoat to justify why nothing is being done to address the plunder of the state’s assets and pervasive corruption.”

 
And on the other hand, the dilemma remains: This is bad, but at least it stopped the horrific, genocidal fighting.

President Slobodan Milosevic of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, President Alija Izetbegovic of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and President Franjo Tudjman of the Republic of Croatia initial the Dayton Peace Accords at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Nov. 1-21, 1995. (Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force.)

President Slobodan Milosevic of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, President Alija Izetbegovic of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and President Franjo Tudjman of the Republic of Croatia initial the Dayton Peace Accords at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Nov. 21, 1995. (Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force.)

Justice for all, no matter the cost

  By

If any part of our governmental system should always be fully and generously funded, it is our judiciary, from bottom to top. Everyone accused of a crime, large or small, should have the right to access meaningful and prompt justice. That shouldn’t depend on their income or their geographic location.

gavel

The dismantling of the country’s public defender system to save money and coerce speedy pleas has made a mockery of the phrase “justice system.” It’s similarly disturbing to me when I hear about places across our country (and even in Massachusetts) where states are moving to “consolidate” their court systems, not for the sake of improving the justice system but for the sake of cutting costs. I believe nobody should be denied true justice and a fair procedure simply because they lack the funds for bail or for a qualified attorney or because they live far away from courts.

I also believe nobody should be rushed and badgered into pleading out on something they didn’t do simply because the courts and public defenders are overloaded. If our justice system is overloaded, we need to expand it and properly fund it. Yes that means hiring more people and buying or building more facilities. But a legitimate and fair justice system, with justice for all, doesn’t necessarily come cheap. Our judiciary should be the last place in government we make cuts or try to under-fund.

If you were in a position of being charged with a crime you didn’t commit and you didn’t have the resources for expensive attorneys, you know you wouldn’t want to be railroaded through a cash-strapped court system. So let’s make sure that doesn’t happen to anyone else, either — by funding our courts properly and ensuring they have the capacity to deliver true justice.

Burundi appears to be sliding into full-blown meltdown

  By

2015 Burundian Constitutional Crisis

Until recently, a major African ally of the United States and a purported model for other African nations. Now, a mass exodus from the capital, daily body dumps of assassinated figures, and a fracturing military.

burundi-map

“Burundians flee capital over fears of violence” – France24, November 6, 2015:

Thousands of residents have fled the Burundian capital of Bujumbura in recent days over fears of escalating violence as the United Nations warned there was a risk that the central African country could slip back into civil war.
[…]
Meanwhile, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) also drew attention to dangerous “hardline rhetoric” in Burundi, drawing parallels with the hate-filled climate that led to the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

 
United Nations statement, via AllAfrica.com, November 7, 2015:

The statement said the Secretary-General is alarmed that in recent weeks, the discovery of the bodies of civilian victims, many apparently summarily executed, has become a regular occurrence in several neighbourhoods of Bujumbura, where just today, Welly Nzitonda, the son of prominent Burundian human rights defender Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa was found dead following his arrest by the police in the morning.

Further, Mr. Ban in the statement also condemned public statements that appear to be aimed at inciting violence or hatred towards different groups in Burundian society.

“Inflammatory rhetoric is reprehensible and dangerous; it will only serve to aggravate the situation in the country. [The Secretary-General] calls for accountability for those who have engaged in publicly inciting violence,” the statement said.

 

The ethnically mixed military from the 2005 peace accords, even in the face of a renegade coup attempt in May, had largely been a lone rock of stability in the face of mounting ethno-political tensions earlier this year. Less than a month ago, reports emerged that that too looks increasingly precarious…

“Burundi: Cracks Widen Within Burundi’s Army,” IRIN, October 12:

A recent post on a Burundi news blog by Thierry Vircoulon of the International Crisis Group (ICG) said the [integrated military] was “dangerously close to rupture.”

IRIN’s interviews with more than a dozen people, including leading Burundian civilians, analysts and members of the military, indicate that a faction of former Hutu rebels has embarked on a campaign of harassing, abducting, detaining, and in some cases killing, members of the army’s old guard, as well as others perceived to oppose President Pierre Nkurunziza, himself a former rebel leader.

 
This October assessment marks a stark contrast with International Crisis Group’s prior assessment that institutional divisions designed in by the Arusha Accords of 2005 “could ironically help the army stay together.”

One wonders if it could, after all, go the way of South Sudan’s “unified” military which has now splintered back into rival ethnic groups from the former rebel factions before independence.

The United States suspended military cooperation and its major training program in Burundi back in July. In August, the president openly announced his intention to expand “patriotic” teenage death squads.