Does Uranium Mining Increase Civil Conflict Risk? Evidence from a Spatiotemporal Analysis of Africa from 1945 to 2010

We employ a two‐tier spatiotemporal analysis to investigate whether uranium operations cause armed conflict in Africa. The macrolevel analysis suggests that – compared to the baseline conflict risk – uranium ventures increase the risk of intrastate conflict by 10 percent. However, we find ethnic exclusion to be a much better predictor of armed conflict than uranium. The microlevel analysis reveals that uranium‐spurred conflicts are spatiotemporally feasible in four countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Namibia, Niger and South Africa. We find strong evidence in the case of Niger, and partial evidence in the case of the DRC. Namibia and South Africa do not yield substantial evidence of uranium‐ induced conflicts. We conclude that uranium may theoretically be a conflictinducing resource, but to the present day empirical evidence has been sparse as most countries are still in the exploration phase. Considering that the coming years will see 25 African countries transition from uranium explorers into producers, we strongly suggest that our analysis be revisited in the coming years. Read more

South Sudan Refugee Camp Under Water: Alarming Mortality Rates Indicate Worsening Crisis

Preliminary studies reveal mortality rates nearly double the emergency threshold in a refugee camp in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State, currently home to a quarter of the roughly 120,000 refugees who have fled Sudan’s Blue Nile State since late last year. The death rates were derived from rapid epidemiological surveys carried out in the Jamam refugee camp in Maban County prior to the onset of heavy seasonal rains that have flooded the camp and gravely expanded the risk of illness for the already weakened refugees. All agencies involved in the relief effort, led by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, must find better options for the people living in Jamam camp, one of three refugee camps in the area. Failure to do so will almost certainly lead to more misery and deaths. Read more

South Sudan: World's Youngest Country Yet to Embark on Road to Civil Liberties

The product of a visit to the South Sudanese capital of Juba from 9 to 15 May, it says that the divorce with Khartoum is not entirely consummated and that independence has brought no significant improvement in media freedom. It looks at the media war being waged by the two Sudans and highlights the impact of the ubiquitous, heavy-handed security forces. It also highlights a growing tendency of journalists to censor themselves, and stresses the need for laws regulating the media.

Ranked 111th out of 179 countries in the 2011-2012 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, South Sudan is currently at a crossroads, the report argues.

“South Sudan is not currently prey to concerted and systematic harassment of its media. But there has been a disturbing accumulation of incidents and isolated acts of repression or intimidation that end up undermining the climate in which journalists and media operate,” Reporters Without Borders said.

In its conclusions, the report urges the authorities to severely punish anyone violating freedom of information and to stop using nationalistic arguments to pressure the media. It urges the military and security apparatus to put a stop to acts of brutality towards journalists. And it urges the National Legislative Assembly to quickly adopt the three media laws that were submitted by the government.

Reporters Without Borders also encourages the international community to condition aid to South Sudan on respect for fundamental freedoms, especially freedom of information, and encourages NGOs to support the development of South Sudan’s media and training of journalists. And finally, it calls on South Sudan’s journalists to adhere to professional ethics and resist pressure to censor themselves. Read more

Eritrean tyranny fuels mass exit

Saturday, 30 June 2012 05:43 Don Connel

Dan Connell   

Draconian military conscription rules in Eritrea mean children as young as 12 can be forced into duty. Dan Connell reports.

Binyam Zaid (22) was an unwilling conscript in the Eritrean army when he was caught trying to flee the country and jailed for 18 months at the Halhal military prison. On May 24 he was released in an amnesty that marked Eritrea’s 21st birthday and sent back to his unit.

Three days later he walked into the bush to relieve himself and never turned back.

Tigiste Beyene (35) was pregnant with her second child when she was sent to a desert prison in northern Eritrea for attending a banned Pentecostal prayer meeting. Upon release she was given 10 months to renounce her faith and pressed to do so by the local Eritrean Orthodox priest who had turned her in and by her family, who had to guarantee the state 50 000 nakfa (R28 000) to get her out. Four months later, she paid a smuggler 30 000 nakfa [R17 000] to take her to Ethiopia.

“The dark side of my life was not the year in prison, but the time I spent at home with my family,” she said as she sat on the dirt floor of her cramped 3m-by-5m mud-brick house. “It was a torment.”

Said Ibrahim (21), orphaned and blind, made a living as a singer in Adi Quala bars when a member of the security police claimed one of his songs had “political” content and detained him at the Adi Abieto prison. After a month he was released but stripped of his monthly disability payments for two years when he declined to identify the lyricist.

“I went back to my village and reflected on it,” he said over tea at an open-air café in the Adi Harush camp, set up in 2010 when the Eritrean refugee camp Mai Aini reached capacity. It is already nearing its limit of 20 000, according to United Nations officials. “If the system could do this to a blind orphan, something was very wrong.”

After appealing to his neighbours for help, two boys, aged 10 and 11, helped him to sneak over the border to Ethiopia and asked for asylum with him.

Tense border
The newcomers join more than 65000 Eritreans in five camps along the tense border, whose disputed location was the spark that set off a fierce fight between the two countries from 1998 to 2000 and remains a source of heightened tension.

Most refugees tell similar stories of run-ins with the authorities in this once promising new nation, which has turned into one of the most efficient tyrannies on the continent over the past decade.

What distinguishes the influx here, as in Sudan on Eritrea’s western flank, is that most are young men who, like Binyam, are trying to break free of Eritrea’s national service, which they describe as a system of state-run indentured servitude that ties them up for 10 years or more, often as low-skilled workers in government departments or state- and party-owned businesses for which they are paid a pittance.

Launched in 1995, the programme initially demanded 18 months of military training and work on national reconstruction. Some grumbled at the time, but most saw this as a legitimate obligation of citizenship after a 30-year war for independence from Ethiopia that had left the territory devastated.

Even now, many escapees say they support the concept, just not the length of service, which has been extended further by requiring secondary school students to take their final year of school at a military base to prevent them from escaping. Students who drop out before that, or who fail to achieve passing grades, can be conscripted as young as 12.

Crisis seizing the country
The huge outflow of draft-age men it has triggered has become a major factor in the crisis seizing the country today. Its intensely secretive leadership shows signs of unravelling for the first time since a brutal crackdown on dissent in 2001 that followed Eritrea’s defeat in the last round of the border war.

Former soldiers say that most Eritrean Defence Force units are now operating at 25% of capacity or lower and the overall strength of the army, often estimated by outsiders at 250 000 to 300 000, may actually be less than 80 000.

Perhaps to compensate, Eritrea’s unelected president – former liberation front commander Isaias Afwerki – has ordered all able-bodied men not in the uniformed military to join village and neighbourhood militias and is issuing AK-47 assault rifles to them. He also ordered a shake-up in the defence force command structure, diminishing the authority of General Filipos Weldeyohannes, his favourite for the past five years, and elevating General Tekali “Manjus” Kiflai. It is  something he does periodically with top generals and political appointees to prevent anyone from accumulating a base of support.

Taken against the backdrop of recent Ethiopian incursions along the disputed border – none answered by the Eritreans – these moves could signal the possibility of renewed head-to-head conflict, a threat Afwerki frequently invokes to justify his continuing crackdown on public debate. However, they may also indicate that the embattled leader, who has steadfastly refused to implement a Constitution ratified more than a decade ago and has never permitted national elections, is circling the wagons to protect himself from internal challenges.

His abrupt disappearance from public view for most of April – an unprecedented absence for a man whose daily comings and goings are the centrepiece of coverage in the state-run media – set off a wave of speculation among exiles that he was either incapacitated or dead. Although he reappeared in May, reports that a cabal of second-tier officials is meeting to plot a transition continue to circulate.

Irritant
But, although Eritrea appears obsessed with Ethiopia, the reverse no longer seems to be the case. “Eritrea is an irritant, not a strategic enemy,” said Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

“Our strategic enemies are poverty and backwardness,” he said in a two-hour interview on the subject of Ethiopia’s economic and social transformation. “We have seen poverty at its worst,” he said. “Nothing is more dehumanising.”

A former guerrilla commander himself, who came to power at the same time as Afwerki when the rebel armies they commanded routed the regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, Zenawi insisted that he would step down at the end of his term in 2015. But he wants to wind down the conflict with Eritrea first, stabilising relations and reaching a service agreement to access Eritrea’s Red Sea ports similar to the pacts Ethiopia has with Djibouti, Somaliland, Kenya and Sudan.

“I would like Eritrea to be at peace with itself so it can be at peace with us and we can all benefit from common prosperity,” he said. “But I am not choosy how it happens.”

The decade-long standoff between the two countries, which  played out in a web of proxy wars across the region, none of which reached the point of a direct confrontation, took a turn for the worse in 2010 when Ethiopia charged Eritrea with a bomb plot intended to disrupt an African Union summit in Addis Ababa.

“They wanted to transform Addis into Baghdad,” said Zenawi. “This made it impossible for us to ignore what they were doing.”

Pressure
Since then, Ethiopia has sought to increase the pressure on the Afwerki regime, first lobbying for sanctions at the United Nations and then launching a series of attacks on “hard targets” close to the border inside Eritrea, while simultaneously waging a hearts-and-minds campaign aimed at the Eritrean public.

Ethiopian media have toned down their once vitriolic coverage of Eritrea – or simply ignored it – and Eritreans deported from Ethiopia during the border war have been urged to return to reclaim seized assets. But the most dramatic shift was the announcement of an “open camps” policy permitting refugees to live anywhere in Ethiopia so long as they prove that they have the means to support themselves. More than 1000 Eritreans now attend Ethiopian universities, refugee officials say.

Ethiopia also hosts about 34 Eritrean opposition parties, a number that has refugees here scratching their heads in frustration and leads many to dismiss them as little more than a talk shop. During a week of interviews in three camps, the Addis Ababa-based parties were rarely mentioned.

“The only time we see them is when they want to recruit us,” said one refugee, who denounced the government in Asmara, but saw the squabbling opposition parties as cut from the same cloth.

Many here think that change, when it comes, will arise from within the country and that it may take time to sort itself out. One scenario is for a junta to take over that would include key figures from the three main power centres: the military, the national security forces and the ruling party, the ironically named People’s Front for Democracy and Justice, over which the defence minister, General Sebhat Ephrem, presides.

Inherently unstable
Such a coalition would be inherently unstable because it would comprise bitter rivals, all of whom aspire to step into Afwerki’s shoes, even though none has his charisma or commands a similar following among the rank and file.

What makes Ephrem attractive as a front man is that Afwerki has long treated him as a largely ceremonial figure and given him little actual power, so he is not seen as a threat by his more ambitious colleagues.

Ephrem is also popular with Western governments and carries a degree of credibility with the public for his prominent role in the liberation of the country, first as the head of civilian mobilisation and then as the military chief of staff in the final years of the war.

How long such an arrangement would last, though, is an open question.

Dan Connell, a lecturer in journalism and African studies at Simmons College, Boston, has covered events in Eritrea for more than 35 years (danconnell.net)
(Source: Mail & Guardian)
http://asmarino.com/articles/1459-eritrean-tyranny-fuels-mass-exit

Tribune de Genève Describes Eritrea as Mafia State

Last Updated on Thursday, 28 June 2012 22:32 Written by EPDP Information Office Thursday, 28 June 2012 22:15[source

Tribune de Genève Describes Eritrea as Mafia State

Tribune de Genève, a leading Swiss daily newspaper in French, in a full-page coverage described Eritreans as hostages at gun-point by “a regime of gangsters, a Mafia clan” that has turned a once promising new country into “a Mafia State”.
Writing on the June 28, 2012 issue of the newspaper, its journalist Bernard Bridel believed that the Eritrean president, Isaias Afworki, is “a warlord who runs a state as his guerrilla army”. He also extensively quotes a 248-page book published in French this year by Leonard Vincent, a journalist of the Reporters Without Boarders, who wrote that Eritrea is already  “an African version of North Korea”.
The writer of the reportage stated that Switzerland is hardening its refugee laws to deny asylum to military deserters, majority of those who come to Switzerland being Eritreans. But he added: “Eritreans are not migrant workers or economic refugees but fugitives running away from a prison at a nation-wide scale”. Journalist Bernard Bridel further stated that the Eritrean president and his regime force everyone to belong to the army and the party and that anyone who fails to obey is considered a deserter.
The forceful reportage of Tribune de Genève adds that “Eritrea is at war because its leaders wanted it to be at war”. It said this is their Maoist method of “conquest of power through the barrel of the gun and maintaining it through the gun”.
Besides facing torture and denial of freedoms like in any dictatorship, ordinary Eritreans who take risk to escape forced conscription are subjected to constant harassment of rounding up and capture (Giffa) to return to the army. The consequences are severe treatments under  the security apparatus.
The newspaper mentioned the sources of support for the Eritrean regime to include Iran, China, Qatar, extremist groups and the regime’s Mafiosi activities.
The writer believes that over 20% of Eritrea’s population of 5 million resides outside Eritrea, and that the Eritrean opposition organizations in the diaspora are bedeviled by the diversity that reflects the presence of nine ethnic groups, two religions and a history of two rival liberation movements of the armed struggle era.
The writer concluded that the only possible change of regime in Eritrea may come through an internal coup d’etat by the Eritrean regime’s army itself.

Rape and HIV as Weapons of War

While the history of wars and conflicts is replete with systematic incidents of sexual violence against vulnerable women, modern-day wars have witnessed large-scale indiscriminate deployment of rape as a “weapon” of war by combatants. In recent armed conflicts — such as in the former Yugoslavia, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone and Rwanda — the widespread use of rape as a tool of warfare has become a conspicuous phenomenon. Read more

a:FREE Bekele Gerba/Olbana Lelisa, Oromo Political Prisoners in Ethiopian Empire, and JUSTICE for the Assasa Massacre

Oromia-Ethiopi

June 9, 2012 at 4:17 pm · Gadaa.com

[source http://gadaa.com/oduu/14092/2012/06/09/oromia-ethiopia-free-bekele-gerba-and-olbana-lelisa-oromo-political-prisoners-in-the-ethiopian-empire/

On August 27, 2011, Oromo political leaders, Obbo Bekele Gerba and Obbo Olbana Lelisa, were thrown into prison by the TPLF regime, which has militarily occupied Oromiyaa since 1991.

Two of the estimated 20,000 Oromo nationalist political prisoners in the Ethiopian empire, Obbo Bekele Gerba was the deputy Chairman of the opposition Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM), and Obbo Olbana Lelisa a leader in the Oromo People’s Congress party (OPC) at the time of their arrests.
Obbo Bekele Gerba and Obbo Olbana Lelisa were thrown into prison after meeting with an Amnesty International delegation, which was also expelled from the Empire afterwards. Please read here about Amnesty International’s report about the two prisoners of consciousness. The Amnesty International delegation was in the country to collect information for its report, which was later published in Dec. 2011: “Dismantling Dissent – Intensified Crackdown in Ethiopia”
The two were then joined in October 2011 by another 100 Oromo political prisoners, including leaders and activists of the Oromo civic organization, the Macha-Tulama Self-Help Association (MTSHA), which was afterwards closed down for yet another round.
According to an October 12, 2011 report by the Macha-Tulama Association, USA, INC., a US-based civic organization with a similar name as the one currently banned in Oromiyaa:

Obbo Laggese Deti, former leader of MTSHA (Read the biography of Obbo Laggese Deti here)

“The Macha-Tulama high officials, Mr. Laggese Deti Dhaba, Mr. Mulugeta Riqitu and Sisay Sarbesa, are all held incommunicado at the Maikelawi Torture Center in Finfinnee as of today. Mr. Dhaba was the Secretary General of Macha-Tulama Self-help Association for the year 2002- 2003. Mr. Dhaba has also served as the Chairman of History and Culture Committee of the association. He is a cultural expert of Oromo society, and hence imprisoning and attacking him are tantamount to destroying the Oromo cultural resources and foundations. Similarly, his colleagues, who have been imprisoned with him, have deep interests in promoting hte Oromo history and culture. They are Mr. Mulugeta Rikitu, School Director and Board Member of MTSHA; and Mr. Sisay Serbesa, 3rd-Year student at the Addis Ababa [Finfinne] University.”
Following the banning of the Macha-Tulama Self-Help Association, the oldest independent Oromo civic organization with the objective of promoting Oromo history and culture, the Voice of Oromo Liberation (VOL-SBO) carried the following editorial:

Dangerous and Deadly Arms Trade

Hundreds of thousands of people are killed, injured, raped, repressed and forced to flee their homes every year as a result of the international arms trade. Families are torn apart. Livelihoods and lives are destroyed. Armed conflicts destroy social and economic infrastructure, breed corruption and divert public finances, denying the poor access to health care, water, food, shelter and education, increasing poverty and causing yet more deaths.

For decades there has been a global treaty on the import, export and transfer of dinosaur bones yet there is no global treaty to strictly control the deadly trade in conventional arms. Revolvers, rifles, machine guns, bullets, hand grenades, missiles, rockets, armoured vehicles and other weapons and arms can be traded between governments, arms dealers and armed groups with few restrictions. Unscrupulous governments allow almost unlimited amounts of arms to be supplied to those flagrantly violating human rights and destroying lives.

Regulation at the country level has failed to adapt to an increasingly globalized trade – components are sourced from across the world, and production and assembly take place in different countries. It’s time for all governments to commit to securing an international Arms Trade Treaty. Read more

Frozen Words: Memory and Sexual Violence Amongst Sudanese Refugee Women in Cairo

Comprehensive Peace Agreement [CPA] between the North and South. The peace process culminated in a referendum in January 2011, when the people of South Sudan voted overwhelmingly to secede from the North. Despite the CPA, South Sudanese refugees continued to apply for asylum in Egypt between 2006 and 2010 in more or less the same numbers as were recorded in earlier years. This paper is based on fieldwork conducted in Egypt with South Sudanese female refugees seeking educational, legal and psychosocial services at St. Andrew’s Refugee Services in downtown Cairo. The information presented in the paper derives from participant observation, interviews with single South Sudanese women and NGO service providers between August 2011 and February 2012. The author assisted in preparing refugee resettlement referrals to UNHCR throughout the research period and also undertook an analysis of relevant media articles, policy documents, internet blogs and literature produced by UNHCR and the Egyptian government between January 2004 and February 2012. Pseudonyms are provided for all women discussed in this work. Institutional Review Board approval from the University of South Florida was obtained prior to beginning fieldwork.    Read more

Somalia After the Ethiopian Withdrawal

After the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops in January 2009 and the almost inevitable total collapse of the so-called Transitional Federal Government, Somalia will once again be stateless, but probably in a much worse state than if nobody had tried to construct a state in the first place. In the brief, the confrontation between the impotent government and its opponents is analyzed, as are the roles of Ethiopia and other external actors, followed by a prediction of the future which may well be much less bleak than is often assumed. Read more

Opportunities and Pitfalls in the Migration-Development Nexus: Somaliland and Beyond

Against the background of increased human mobility over the last three decades, resurgent interest in the migration-development nexus has stimulated new lines of academic inquiry and pushed policy considerations in new directions. This paper outlines current discussions around the links between migration, development and conflict. It also considers the complex nature of ‘mixed flows’, the difficulties in distinguishing between forced/political and voluntary/economic migration, and the links to development from these various – and often overlapping – types of flows. The paper uses migration from Somalia/Somaliland as the main example. This case – like the cases of most other sending countries - is of course specific. Still lessons can be drawn that are useful in other contexts, and may provide a basis for constructive discussion of potential opportunities in the current migration and international cooperation regimes. Read more

Cutting Bread or Cutting Throats? – Findings from a New Database on Religion, Violence and Peace in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1990 to 2008

Abstract
Despite the religious diversity in sub‐Saharan Africa and the religious overtones in a number
of African conflicts, social science research has inadequately addressed the question of how
and to what extent religion matters for conflict in Africa. This paper presents an innovative
data inventory on religion and violent conflict in all sub‐Saharan countries for the period
1990–2008 that seeks to contribute to filling the gap. The data underscore that religion has to
be accounted for in conflict in Africa. Moreover, results show the multidimensionality (e.g.
armed conflicts with religious incompatibilities, several forms of non‐state religious violence)
and ambivalence (inter‐religious networks, religious peace initiatives) of religion vis‐à‐vis violence.
In 22 of the 48 sub‐Saharan countries, religion plays a substantial role in violence, and
six countries in particular—Chad, Congo‐Brazzaville, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Sudan and Uganda—
are heavily affected by different religious aspects of violence. Read more
Keywords: religion, sub‐Saharan Africa, violence, peace, conflict

: The recent trends in the West African sub-region display various contradictions. On the one hand, certain political and economic developments give reason for optimism. On the other hand, new and very serious threats have emerged over the last years which – if not addressed adequately – could undercut gains made and erode stability and security in the whole region. On the positive side, economic growth rates have been promising, and elections have become well established as the only legitimate way of changing the government. Despite remaining problems, as with the post-electoral developments in Côte d’Ivoire, no major conflicts have shattered the region in the recent past. The election-related experiences of Togo, Guinea, Liberia and Nigeria allow for cautious optimism. However, it has to be emphasized that elections are just the beginning of democratic processes and cannot replace institutional reforms, most notably in the security sector. Read more

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s grand conference will bring together many parties but no one is forecasting a breakthrough

SOMALIA | BRITAIN No great expectations British Prime Minister David Cameron’s grand conference will bring together many parties but no one is forecasting a breakthrough After two decades of political mayhem, Somalis and more perspicacious foreign diplomats are intensely sceptical about high-level conferences. Many approach the London Conference on Somalia on 23 February with muted hopes of any political advance and say that its most important contribution will be to raise the profile of Somalia’s internal political and social crisis, plagued by intermittent conflict and chronic food shortage. British Prime Minister David Cameron and his Foreign Secretary William Hague have evidently succeeded on the promotion front. Thanks to the Foreign Office’s invitations to Arab countries, it is the first big Somalia meeting in which several Muslim states are seriously involved. The challenge to the London conference will be to go beyond the recent International Contact Group (ICG) on Somalia or the United Nations Security Council. Both those meetings endorsed policies decided elsewhere and seemed unable to assess why those policies are not working. Delegates in London could start the search for a strategy. Announced by Cameron in late November 2011, the London Conference was supposed to offer fresh thinking on Somalia’s current political dynamics. It promised to broaden the international representation in efforts to tackle Somalia’s crisis and to strengthen the role of the UN there. Central to that is Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG), veteran Tanzanian diplomat Augustine Philip Mahiga. Mahiga has held the fort in difficult times but is reticent about spelling out any vision of an eventual solution. He may take comfort from the support he receives from the East African Community but he is prisoner of a dysfunctional UN Political Office on Somalia. UNPOS suffers from internal inefficiencies and rivalries, we hear. The Deputy SRSG, Austrian diplomat Christian Manahl (who worked in Congo-Kinshasa and Sudan), attempted reform but was outmanoeuvred and recently recalled to UN headquarters in New York, says a diplomatic source. The UN Office is also obliged to pursue a political strategy that cannot survive the end of the transition period, when the writ of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) ends on 23 August. What happens after that should – but may not – be central to discussions in London. Neither UNPOS nor the SRSG have spelled out how the future institutions might work nor have they publicly identified the emerging leaders who could manage the political transition. The dual-track approach There seems to be a deep ambiguity about the ‘dual-track’ approach in Somalia. Pushed strongly by the United States, it involves recognising the so-called central authority of the TFG in Mogadishu but also showing a willingness to work with the local and regional entities in Somaliland and Puntland. Although the devolved authority of those two entities is widely accepted, UN officials have been slow to engage with them. It is diplomatically delicate: Somaliland is petitioning the UN for statehood but cannot get the African Union to recognise it, despite open support from South Africa and Ghana, and covert support from Ethiopia. Most critically, the UNPOS lacks a political strategy to confront the Haraka al Shabaab al Mujahideen and translate recent military advances into political gains. Nor has it got a clear policy toward the encroachment of Kenya’s and Ethiopia’s armies in Somalia. Neither Nairobi nor Addis Ababa saw fit to tell the UN that they were sending their armies into Somalia, and have no interest in coordinating their plans with the UN. The London Conference is not going to change any of that. The draft final communiqué, we understand, is nearly identical in substance to that of the ICG meeting in Djibouti on 5-6 February. The Conference appears to have been prompted by concern over the recent famine in Somalia and the Horn of Africa and by worry about the radicalisation of one of Somalia’s largest diaspora communities just before the Olympic Games in July. The Conference lacked the preparatory groundwork needed to generate a new direction for international policy on Somalia, say its diplomatic critics. As Africa Confidential went to press, the 53 delegations expected will discuss the future of Somalia up to August, with little idea of what is to happen afterwards. There is no strategy on how to confront Al Shabaab beyond the usual military and security policies. This includes a proposal to raise the number of troops in the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) to 17,000. Nothing has been said about the unhealthy polarisation between the West and the Muslim countries (Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates) which are being put forward as new sources of funding. They complain they are under pressure to endorse strategic priorities that favour Ethiopia and the USA. Although the preparatory meetings may not produce a groundbreaking conference, they did table important issues and obliged states to make their positions clear. The most striking example was the debate on Al Shabaab. Qatar, Turkey, the UAE and Scandinavian countries favoured engagement, and Britain and some other European countries looked interested. The USA, however, firmly opposed any further discussion of the idea, with strong backing from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD, where Ethiopia has great influence). As has happened before, Britain immediately lost interest and the debate closed. Therefore, countries such as Qatar (which has been accused by UN investigators of covertly arming Al Shabaab via Eritrea) may be moving towards negotiation but in the absence of any international framework. The announcement of a conference in Istanbul in June to focus on development issues is a small consolation prize for interested Muslim governments. It risks being as irrelevant as the spring 2009 conference organised by the then SRSG, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah. Conferees were planning the reconstruction of Mogadishu in a five-star hotel in Istanbul as bloody war blazed in the Somali capital. As daily clashes demonstrate, security in Mogadishu and towns liberated from Al Shabaab may not improve enough to allow ambitious reconstruction. The timing is also problematic. Western states, led by the US and Britain, seem to be rerunning their policies of early 2007 when they celebrated the Ethiopian intervention and the return of the TFG to Mogadishu. Then, Western states were not inclined to consolidate the TFG’s return with the economic help which might have provided it with a sliver of legitimacy. If progress is to be made, the population needs to see quickly that economic benefits will follow any defeat of Al Shabaab. Complex institutional and political developments will not enthuse Somalis: after two decades of mayhem, they want financing for schools and clinics, as well as jobs. After Al Shabaab At the preparatory meetings for London, Amisom’s recent military successes were celebrated but European diplomats did not hide their concern that there was no credible plan to fill a political vacuum left by a defeated Al Shabaab. The expansion of Amisom may result in more targets for the enemy than in more security, as in Afghanistan. IGAD countries have already divided south-central Somalia into zones of influence with little consideration for history or Somali views: military planners do not factor in such niceties. Kenya will hold sway over Lower and Middle Juba, where the Ogaden clan is dominant, as it is in Kenyan Somali politics. Gedo is associated with Bay and Bakool and would constitute the best possible buffer zone for Ethiopia. Apart from Beled Weyne, which is currently allocated to Amisom’s Djiboutian contingent, the least warlike of them, the Central Region will not benefit from an increased Amisom presence. The proxy forces there get substantial support from Ethiopian and Western security services. Kenyan troops’ inability to take over Kismayo or even Afmadow, plus the many clashes in Beled Weyne, could encourage a fight-back by Al Shabaab. If it successfully takes on the Kenyan and Ethiopian forces, together with their local proxies, Al Shabaab could regain some of the popular support it has lost. As for the TFG, the sole option offered for discussion is a new constitution. In any other country, the presence of four foreign armies, an ongoing civil war and the lack of a legitimate government – many see the TFG as a gang of looters – would not be the best moment for a highly polarised population to discuss a constitution. The SRSG and UNPOS downplay such limitations. Yet the institutional framework limits interaction with any Somali actors apart from the TFG. The question of who will enforce this new dispensation is unresolved, too. By making the constitution the only option available, the international community risks becoming hostage, again, to a chaotic constitutional process that cannot succeed in such a short time. This will also offer new opportunities to Islamist militants. The London Conference will announce sanctions against spoilers intent on derailing the processes and corrupt officials. This is likely to fail and will trigger anger in Somalia, since the main targets are the more than 300 members of parliament who sacked the Speaker, Sharif Hasan Sheikh Adan, last December, although UNPOS still invites him to all international gatherings. For years, the international community has threatened to take action against corrupt TFG ministers and MPs. None have ever come before a court although many pay tens of thousands of US dollars into their bank accounts in Western countries (especially Britain and the US) and buy property. Some of the spoilers may not be Somali but regional states. While IGAD presented itself as unified in the preparatory meetings, beyond the 1964 mutual Defence Pact against any Somali aggression, Ethiopia and Kenya do not share the same view of solutions. Will other governments sanction Addis Ababa or Nairobi because they put their own clients in charge in their ‘liberated areas’ instead of genuinely local representatives? The Somaliland government is invited but will face bitter criticism if its delegates return with the usual set of pledges and counter-terrorist cooperation projects. Somalilanders and their backers in the UK, may resent that Galmudug (South Gaalkaayo) is ranked in protocol at the London Conference with Somaliland. In her excellent new book, Getting Somalia Wrong, BBC journalist Mary Harper points out that international conferences on Somalia ‘have produced a succession of weak transitional governments which have paid lip-service to federalism but have tended to be highly centralised. They lack popular legitimacy because Somalis tend to see them as entirely foreign creations.’ The London delegates will struggle to buck the trend. Copyright © Africa Confidential 2012 http://www.africa-confidential.com [http://www.africa-confidential.com/article/id/4340/No_great_expectations]

A Shift in Focus: Putting the Interests of Somali People First

Responsibility for this situation lies first and foremost in Somalia, where warring factions are accused of impeding and diverting aid flows, but the international community has also been at fault. Policies focused more on international security concerns than on the needs, interests and wishes of the Somali people have inadvertently fueled both the conflict and the humanitarian crisis. In February 2012, key governments and institutions from the region and the wider Islamic and Western world will meet in London to chart a way forward. They must seize this opportunity to refocus on the Somali people that past policies have failed, developing more coherent strategies to ensure that aid and protection reach those who need it and addressing the root causes of the protracted conflict and chronic vulnerability in the country Readmore

Report of the Secretary General: Conflict-Related Sexual Violence [A/66/657]

The report covers the period from December 2010 to November 2011 and includes: information on parties to conflict credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for acts of rape or other forms of sexual violence; highlights major outcomes of missions and political engagements undertaken by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict; and describes key initiatives taken by the UN to address conflict-related sexual violence. Read more

The Causes of Stability and Unrest in the Middle East and North Africa: An Analytic Survey

We have updated and greatly expanded our analysis of the metrics that can cause political instability and unrest in the Gulf and Middle East. The report focuses on underlying forces and causes at a time when political crisis -- and serious security issues -- dominate the region. These political dynamics and unrest are, however, only part of the story. The trends in demographics, economics, internal security and justice systems, governance, and social change show how much other factors affect both the region and individual nations, and will remain sources of violence and instability until they are dealt with. They show how basic data on the size of given economies, per capita incomes, populations, and population growth rates also contribute to instability. Finally, they illustrate the critical role of governance, social change, and justice systems in shaping and dealing with each nation’s problems. Read more

Sudan: No End to Violence in Darfur: Arms Supplies Continue Despite Ongoing Human Rights Violations

In the last twelve months, as other developments in Sudan overshadowed international attention on Darfur, the region has seen a new wave of fighting between armed opposition groups and government forces, including governmentbacked militias. The fighting has shifted during 2011 away from former epicentres of the war near the border with Chad and elsewhere, to eastern Darfur in particular. This has included targeted and ethnically motivated attacks on civilian settlements, and indiscriminate and disproportionate aerial bombings that have contributed to the displacement of an estimated 70,000 people from their homes and villages. This briefing describes some of these events; the types of arms in use by those responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law; and the suppliers of those arms to Sudan. These arms have in some cases been supplied to Sudan barely 12 months before their use in Darfur. Critically, this briefing shows that the governments whose exported military equipment have over the years turned up at the site of serious human rights violations in Darfur -- including Belarus, the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation -- continue to supply those kinds of equipment to Sudan on a regular basis. Read more

Violence, Identity Mobilization and the Reimagining of Biafra

The events leading to the Nigeria Civil War marked the triumph of force and violence over dialogue and negotiation as a means of conflict resolution. The success of the Nigerian state in imposing a military solution on the preceding political crisis, and then suppressing the ensuing Biafran rebellion, has had a lasting effect on state–society relations. As a result, the state has not refrained from using violence at the slightest provocation against competing and conflicting ethno-religious groups. The tendency of the state to exercise domination through the deployment of violence implies an ongoing crisis of state hegemony rather than a resolution of civil unrest. This article argues that state violence was more important than ethnic divisions in triggering the secessionist attempt of Biafra, and has continued to create rather than resolve ethnic divisions across the country. The emergence in post-Civil War Nigeria of regimes that perpetrated or permitted mass violence against restive social groups remains critical to understanding the contemporary rise of ethno-nationalist movements and waning allegiance to the Nigerian state, particularly among the Igbo. The aim of the article is to underscore the understated salience of state violence in the debates on identity and citizenship in multi-ethnic societies. Read more

Protection of Health Care in Armed and Civil Conflict: Opportunities for Breakthroughs

During recent uprisings in Bahrain, Syria, and Libya, security forces obstructed access to health facilities; harassed, arrested, and prosecuted medical personnel; and even assaulted patients within hospitals. In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where drug-related violence has escalated over the past three years, criminal organizations have killed and abducted health workers and interfered with patient care inside hospitals. As a result of the insecurity, doctors and nurses have fled, and 60 percent of the city’s clinics have closed, jeopardizing the health of individuals in a city of 1.5 million people. In some areas of the city there are no clinics left at all, and night and weekend services have been severely compromised. Assaults like these have long been part of the landscape of armed and civil conflict. They jeopardize the lives and well-being not only of those directly attacked but of others who may never be able to access the health care they need. Yet, for decades, a paucity of regular reporting on the frequency, dynamics, and impacts of these assaults; lack of attention to strategies to prevent attacks; and absence of accountability mechanisms for those who perpetrate assaults has allowed these assaults to continue with impunity. Read more