DRC-Rwanda crisis

 This is taken from The Conversation.

‘In the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),South African, Burundian and Tanzanian troops are fighting against the Rwandan army, which has deployed in support of the rebellion by the March 23 Movement, or M23.

Soldiers from South Africa and Burundi, as well as from the United Nations peacekeeping mission, have recently suffered casualties. In the crossfire, civilians have fled: seven million Congolese are now displaced due to this and multiple other crises in the DRC.

Diplomats are concerned: the conflict in the eastern DRC was the subject of a special meeting at the United Nations Security Council on 20 February 2024 and a mini-summiton the sidelines of the African Union annual meeting of heads of state on 16 February.

Rwanda, which has denied backing M23,says the Rwandan rebel group – Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) – which includes combatants who participated in the 1994 genocide, has been fully integrated into the Congolese army. It also claims that the Congolese government is engaged in “massive combat operations” aimed at expelling Congolese Tutsi civilians.

The Congolese government has mounted a campaign against Rwanda. In December, while he campaigned for re-election, President Félix Tshisekedi compared his Rwandan counterpart to Adolf Hitler and accused him of expansionist aims.

In January, the Burundian president Évariste Ndayishimiye closed his border with Rwanda and accused the country of backing rebels against him. He stopped just short of calling for Kagame’s ouster.

We have been working on the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for around 20 years. This wave of violence resembles previous ones, but is also different. At the root of the M23 conflict are countries such as Rwanda and Uganda, intent on projecting power and influence into the eastern DRC, while the Congolese government seems incapable and often unwilling to stabilise its own territory. Donors and United Nations peacekeepers provide humanitarian aid, but do little to transform these dynamics.

Resolving this crisis will require less hypocrisy from foreign donors, the end of Rwandan aggression, and a more accountable Congolese government. But the hopes of a grand bargain are far off, for now. The current peace processes – a ‘Nairobi process’ for domestic negotiations and a ‘Luanda process’ for regional talks – are dead or on life support.

The upcoming elections in Rwanda (July 2024) and the US (November 2024) will likely not help cool heads or focus minds. But it is clear that ending the violence will require a new approach, one that places the lives of innocent Congolese civilians at its centre.

During the early days of his presidency, Tshisekedi’s army collaborated intensely with the Rwandan army, allowing troops to conduct operations against the FDLR on Congolese territory in 2019 and 2020. In late 2019, his government even recommended dropping charges against the M23 commanders, then in exile.

Less than three years after winning power, however, Tshisekedi changed his approach, breaking his coalition with his predecessor, Joseph Kabila, and moving to cement his position in power. He declared a state of siege in two eastern provinces, shuffled generals around in the army, and sidelined key securocrats. He also shifted gears in his regional relations.

By mid-2021, Tshisekedi had begun to privilege relations with Uganda, then a bitter rival of Rwanda. Notably, Tshisekedi gave permission to the Ugandan army to deploy somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 troops to hunt down Allied Democratic Forces rebels, an Islamist Ugandan rebellion based in the eastern DRC. Shortly after that, he did the same for the Burundian army, which had its sights on RED-Tabara, rebels based in the DRC seeking to overthrow the government of Ndayishimiye.

Rwanda suddenly felt isolated, even vulnerable, surrounded by hostile neighbours. According to United Nations investigators, it probably resumed throwing its weight behind the M23 in November 2021. It is above all these regional tensions, coupled with its goal of maintaining influence in the Congo, that pushed it to move.

Since then, the regional fault lines have shifted. Rwanda has patched up relations with Uganda, and the East African Community intervention force – Kenyan, South Sudanese, Burundian and Ugandan troops – that deployed in 2022 to help quell the violence was asked to leave just a year later. This is because their hosts saw them as dragging their feet, if not complicit with the M23. Tshisekedi, who came into office seeing east African countries as allies, has now turned southwards.

Military changes in eastern DRC

Beginning in late 2023, a new force from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) began deploying troops from South Africa, Tanzania and Malawi to take the fight to the M23, alongside the Burundian army.

Already, these forces have begun to take casualties. Two South African soldiers were killed on 14 February by a mortar strike; two others were injured when their helicopter took fire. Some sources indicate that Burundian soldiers have taken heavy losses.

The rising degree of military sophistication also raises eyebrows. The US government has accused Rwanda of deploying surface-to-air missiles, UN officials have reported armed drones striking their bases, while Tanzania has sent Soviet-era BM-21 Grad rocket launchers. The DRC has bought nine Chinese CH-4 combat drones (three of which have reportedly been shot down already).

Meanwhile, the Congolese army has partnered with private security contractors as well as with an array of local militia, collectively dubbed Wazalendo (patriots), who are poorly trained and disciplined. There are credible reports from late 2023 that, as in the previous year, they are also partnering with the Rwandan FDLR rebels.

And yet, the Congolese government has been unable to make much headway. In early February, M23 forces surrounded the lakeside town of Sake, just 30km west of the provincial capital Goma. This most recent push has displaced another 135,000 people toward Goma; there are around half a  million displaced people around the town now.

Unlike the previous M23 crisis, influential foreign actors have sent mixed signals. At the UN Security Council on 20 February, the US and France called on Rwanda to withdraw their troops from the DRC. The US has gone the furthest of all of Rwanda’s donors, sanctioning a Rwandan general, suspending all military aid, and attempting to broker a ceasefire in December 2023.

And yet, the US remains, by far, the largest donor to Rwanda, which receives the equivalent of around a third of its budget in aid. Other countries have pushed much less or not at all. While the M23 rebellion was going on, the 

British Commonwealth held its big biannual meeting in Kigali in 2022 and the UK struck a controversial asylum deal with Rwanda.

The EU gave US$22 million to support the deployment of the Rwanda Defence Force in Mozambique. On 19 February, the EU announced a deal to boost mineral exports from Rwanda.

This last piece of news caused an uproar in the DRC, touching on the popular belief that minerals are the root of the crisis. While the causes of the violence are far more complex than that, they have a point: the largest export tfrom Uganda (56% in 2021), Rwanda (23%), and Burundi (29%) in recent years has been gold, almost all of which is smuggled to their countries from the DRC.

In the long term, the DRC government will need to undertake a host of reforms to quell these cycles of conflict. They include reforming the Congolese army, a new demobilisation programme for armed groups, an economic development programme that would allow Congolese to benefit from their resources, a plan for communal reconciliation, and an end to discrimination against Kinyarwanda speakers. But none of that can happen as long as Congo’s neighbours continue to destabilise it.’

https://theconversation.com/drc-rwanda-crisis-whats-needed-to-prevent-a-regional-war-224345

Promoted by The Socialist party of Great Britain, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UN

Another Suez Crisis

 The Suez Canal was completed in 1869. It cut the journey distance from Britain to the Arabian sea by five thousand five hundred miles. 

To paraphrase the People’s Front of Judea, what has capitalism ever done for us?,  it has fulfilled its historic function to lead to the means for a socialist system of society to replace it. Whilst of being of benefit to Capitalism through the cutting of shipping costs and the time that commodities could be transported from A to B there is some benefit to the working class who prior to the canal, had much longer more dangerous journeys.

It is easy to see why the global capitalist class is so intent on protecting this trade route but its resorting to bombing those it holds responsible doesn’t appear to have had the desired effect.

It’s reported that, ‘Revenues generated by Egypt’s Suez Canal saw a 40% year-on-year decline in the first eleven days of 2024, canal authority head Osama Rabie said.

Ship traffic through the maritime artery connecting the Mediterranean and the Red Sea dropped 30% between January 1 and January 11 compared to the same period a year prior, the official noted.

According to Rabie, the number of ships that have moved through the Suez Canal fell to 544 in the first eleven days of the current year compared to 777 in the equivalent period of 2023.

He pointed out that the period of cargo transportation has increased by at least two weeks while costs for the delivery of goods and insurance were also growing.

“The Cape of Good Hope is not a valid and safe route for ships to cross at this time, especially in light of bad weather and the long duration of the crossing,” the official said, adding that navigating around the African continent adds up to 15 days compared to passing through the Suez Canal.The canal is a major source of foreign currency for Egypt. In recent years, the country’s government has been trying hard to increase revenues generated by allowing commercial vessels through it. The route was expanded in 2015, with further enlargement underway.

In June, Egypt's Suez Canal posted an all-time high annual revenue of $9.4 billion in the fiscal year 2022-2023, up from $7 billion recorded a year earlier. 

Back then, 25,887 ships carrying 1.5 billion tons of cargo passed through the route, marking the highest amount on record.

However, at the end of last year, cargo traffic through one of the world’s vital trade arteries dropped 28% due to the attacks carried out by Yemen-based Houthis against commercial ships in the Red Sea. The assaults became more frequent after the rebels instituted a de facto blockade through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.   They have been attacking vessels thought to be linked to Israel in what they say is a show of solidarity with the Palestinians following the escalation of hostilities in Gaza.’

Sudan. 'Humanitarian nightmare' happening

 

Whilst the world is focused on the horrors in the major conflagrations presently taking place in the world which are affecting thousands of innocent children and adults, there are other ongoing frightful events taking place.

‘The armed conflict in Sudan between the military and rival paramilitary groups has killed up to 9,000 people and forced over 5.6 million others to flee their homes in the past six months, the UN said on 15 October.

“Half a year of war has plunged Sudan into one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history,” Martin Griffiths, UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said in a statement, adding that “25 million people are in need of aid.”

Intense fighting broke out in the African nation’s capital, Khartoum, on April 15 after months of tensions between Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) chief General Abdel-Fattah Burhan and the commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

The fighting has spread to other parts of the Sahel nation, including the already conflict-torn western Darfur region, where Governor Khamis Abdullah Abakar was assassinated in mid-June for allegedly accusing the RSF of genocide.

According to Griffiths, “civilians – particularly in Khartoum, Darfur, and Kordofan – have known no respite from bloodshed and terror for the past six months.”

“Horrific reports of rape and sexual violence continue to emerge, and clashes are increasingly taking place along ethnic lines, particularly in Darfur,” the UN humanitarian chief added.

Last month, the UN and the World Health Organization said that repeated attacks on hospitals and medical teams in Sudan had worsened disease outbreaks and fatalities.

They claimed that between mid-May and September, more than 1,200 children under the age of five died in refugee camps in Sudan’s White Nile state as a result of a lethal combination of a suspected measles outbreak and severe malnutrition. Health facilities have been overwhelmed due to a lack of staff, life-saving medicines, and critical equipment, the UN and WHO added.

On Sunday, Griffiths said at least 45 aid workers had been killed or detained since the conflict began, and that “almost all of them are national staff.”

The UN has urged Sudan’s warring factions to comply with international humanitarian law and to protect civilians, allow aid, and recommit to dialogue to end the conflict.

In August, RSF chief Dagalo expressed a desire to reach a long-term ceasefire agreement with Burhan as part of a strategy to end the conflict and build a “new Sudan.” The RSF proposal was rejected by the army chief, who stated that he would not “make deals with traitors.”’

Also see article in the Guardian 3 October.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/oct/03/sudan-conflict-like-planning-for-the-apocalypse-say-aid-workers

Is anyone seriously giving any thought to the question, won’t someone think of the children? Children all across the world are increasingly victims of conflicts and the capitalist system. How much longer are we all prepared to let that continue?

As the writer of the Socialist Standard article (below) articulates, this is insanity and ‘The real trouble for the people of the Sudan is the profit system, and the only future which can hold anything worth while for them—and for everyone else—is Socialism all over the world.’’

Children's deaths in the Sudan

‘More than 1,200 children under the age of five died in refugee camps in war-torn Sudan between mid-May and September as a result of a lethal combination of a suspected measles outbreak and severe malnutrition, the United Nations and the World Health Organization have said.

The deaths occurred in Sudan’s White Nile state, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and WHO said in a joint statement reiterating their concern about the “worsening” health situation in the African country as a result of fighting between rival army groups since April.

Over 3,100 suspected cases of measles and high malnutrition, as well as more than 500 suspected cases of cholera, have been reported in other parts of the country, according to the UNHCR teams.

Health facilities are overwhelmed because of shortages of staff, life-saving medicines, and critical equipment, the organizations said, adding that repeated attacks on hospitals and medical teams have exacerbated service delivery challenges, worsening disease outbreaks and fatalities.

“…dozens of children are dying every day – a result of this devastating conflict and a lack of global attention. We can prevent more deaths, but need money for the response, access to those in need, and above all, an end to the fighting,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said local health workers, with assistance from the WHO and its partners, are making every effort under “very difficult conditions” to prevent more fatalities and the escalation of outbreaks.

“They desperately need the support of the international community to prevent further deaths and the spread of outbreaks. We call on donors to be generous and on the warring parties to protect health workers and access to health for all those who need it,” Tedros insisted.

The conflict that erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on April 15 has killed more than 7,000 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

Last month, (August) aid agency Save the Children reported that at least 498 children in the North African country, including two dozen babies at a state orphanage, had died as a result of food shortages and the closure of nutrition centres caused by fighting.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva on Tuesday, the UN children’s agency (UNICEF) spokesman James Elder estimated that thousands of newborns will die across the war-torn country by the end of the year.

“Every month 55,000 children require treatment for the most lethal form of malnutrition, and yet in Khartoum less than one in 50 nutrition centres is functional,” Elder was quoted by AFP as saying.’

The Future of the Sudan

‘Commentary on the recent coup d'état in the Sudan has been curiously limited. It is true that the seizure of power in mid-November by a military council was accomplished in unspectacular bloodless fashion; nevertheless, the overthrow of a government in so close proximity to the centre of recent world troubles ought, one thinks, to have made bigger news. Even the serious informational papers had not much to say. The Observer provided only 26 column-inches about it in two issues and the Manchester Guardian, though it gave most of all, did so largely in reference to the northern cotton market.

The reason is not hard to see. Events are quickly told, but the commentary on them must depend chiefly on their consequences—and the consequences of the Sudan happening are not yet apparent. The new government is politically unrevealed so far, and what fresh relationship may arise between the Sudan and the western world is still unknown. General Abboud may take the stage as a second Nasser to be hissed for a foxy schemer from the galleries of the west, or contrariwise as the golden-haired lad bearing freedom’s banner. For that, we must wait and see.

What is much more to the point is to ask what has happened and why. Briefly to go over recent events, the coup was announced on November 17th. The coalition government of Abdullah Khalil was known to be on its way out. Its two factors, the People’s Democratic Party and the Umma party, were in disagreement over the Sudan’s relations with Egypt: mainly, it is said, over fresh Egyptian plans for the Aswan High Dam made in the light of the proferred Russian loan. The new régime, in which General Abboud holds supreme power, announced itself as working “in the interest of no party or group” but aiming at “the elimination of incompetence and corruption among politicians in general,” with a hint about knowing the way to good terms with Egypt (Manchester Guardian, 18th November, 1958).

This has come in the face not only of Egyptian pressure, however, but also of economic troubles. The Sudan is a cotton-producing country. Eighty per cent of its exports are of cotton (largely to Lancashire), and the present condition of the world’s cotton markets has meant a huge unsaleable surplus, stated by the Observer correspondent in Khartoum to include 48.000 tons left over from 1957. Under the Anglo-Egyptian regime big sums were invested in irrigation projects and plans for government-assisted peasant production to develop the cotton yield, so that the Sudan is dependent always on world prices for its staple crop. Before the war the Sudanese people were considered better-off than the natives of most other colonized parts of Africa; now the country’s economy is in a critical phase without much prospect of improvement.

The growth and the varied outlooks of the Sudanese political parties have come partly through economic development and partly from the patterns set by the fifty-eight years of joint British and Egyptian rule which ended in 1956. The history of this companionate rule is in fact a series of quarrels over who should really rule a country which bordered the Suez canal and enclosed the upper Nile. The existence of pro-British and pro-Egyptian parties comes from this period, when each of the dual rulers tried to create its own body of support in the Sudan. The Umma is descended from the Mahdi’s followers who drove out Turco-Egyptian rule and is thus traditionally anti-Egyptian; the P.D.P., on the other hand, is an offshoot of the National Unity Party which has always seen advantage in alliance with Egypt.

As in all other colonial countries, a powerful vein of nationalism appeared with the vista of economic independence that the development schemes afforded. (It is an irony of imperialism that the leaders of nationalist movements are produced by the imperialists’ own needs for officials, technical assistants and the rest of the new “middle classes” which this stage of economic progress must turn out.) All the Sudanese parties, including the “Socialist” National Unity Party and the Anti-Imperialist Front (the Communists) are shot through with this strong desire for “national independence,” and the new military government lost no time in stating that it did not differ from them. The day after assuming power. General Abboud said his regime would “accept anything it considered in the interests of the country, but would reject anything which might harm its independence and sovereignty.”

The truth is, however, that the Sudan cannot be independent except in the nominal sense of not being any other nation’s colony. The change which has just taken place was forced by external conditions and happenings, and the policies of the Abboud government—even the vague ones which were immediately announced—are bound to be determined almost wholly from outside. The resuscitation of the limping Sudanese economy depends on, more than anything else at the present time, the government’s negotiations with Egypt and (a not-unconnected matter) its success in playing-off America and Russia to attract loans from either or both. On November 30th the Foreign Minister announced that “foreign capital without strings would be welcomed.” and that his government had already taken 15 million dollars' worth of foreign exchange from America (Manchester Guardian, 1st December. 1958).

The outstanding questions between Egypt and the Sudan are the Aswan Dam project and the frontiers. To the Egyptian government the Dam, with its promise of irrigation and electric power, is vital for maintaining the economy (with its already desperate population problem) and making the economy maintain the army. Now, with the promise of Russian aid. it appears within reach, but there must first be agreement with the government of Sudan. From Egypt’s point of view a compliant Sudan would be the answer; Mr. Khalil, indeed, alleged in London last September that there were forces working to this end within the Sudanese government. For the Sudan, on the other hand, agreement can only mean a share in the benefits of the Dam.

What of the Sudanese people? Here, when one asks this question, stands forth a remarkable example of the stupidity and cruelty of commercialism and nationalism. For the Sudanese people are desperately, pitifully poor. In nearly three years of “independence” they have been governed by the National Unity “Socialists,” a coalition, and now the military—and none has made a scrap of difference to their poverty. It is worth pointing out that the Egyptian people have had the same experience: they were poverty-stricken under fat Farouk, and are equally so under Nasser. What have the political pretensions of their government done for them?

Assuming, however, that the building of the new High Dam would lighten these peoples’ burdens, the approaches to it have been made entirely in terms of not those but the rulers’ interests. First, there has to be money—obvious enough, but in itself a condemnation of the entire modern world where the need is pressing, the materials and labour plentiful, yet the fulfilment must wait on the djinn of this idiotic Aladdin’s lamp. When it was offered to Egypt by the West, the offer was based and then foundered on considerations of political advantage in the cold war. Now it appears again from Russia, with similar considerations in view (while a team of “American aid experts ” descends on the Sudan).

Who, then, cares about the Sudanese people? It is not that this or the preceding governments, or the government of Egypt, is deliberately negligent; on the contrary, it would be to the rulers’ benefit to have the support of prosperous and satisfied populations. The Sudan, however, has been pulled into the whirlpool of Capitalist world politics. From a colony in the once-majestic scheme of British imperialism, developed to make its cotton contribution to British trade, it has become another nation forced to struggle for advantage in the pitiless dogfights of world markets and big politics.

The future of the Sudan is bound up in the future of the world. Economic development and political contact have opened the windows for this country on the amenities of modern civilization, hence the nationalism, the reformist politics, and the anxiety to benefit by “getting in” on the bigger powers’ calculated generosity. Ideally, the Sudanese people stand to gain in every way from contact and interchange—in a word, “progress.” But modern civilization is far from ideal. Whatever progress is made will be directed at furthering only the interests of the property-owners of the Sudan: the important thing to recognize about the Abboud regime is that, whatever is said about ending corruption and the rest, this is its prime aim. However good a proportion of the High Dam potentialities is obtained for the Sudan, the sad fact is that the Dam is really wanted as a source of power and profits for the commercial class.

There is no sanity in this. It is not only in the Sudan, but everywhere; this small flare-up illumines a little more of what is going on all over the world. Nationalism and the political game are impediments to genuine productive development, standing in the way of what could be done by man for man—but they are parts of the superstructure of Capitalist society, which limits human activity to what will yield the best profits. The real trouble for the people of the Sudan is the profit system, and the only future which can hold anything worth while for them—and for everyone else—is Socialism all over the world.’

Robert Barltrop

From the Socialist Standard January 1959

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/04/blog-post_36.html

'ARRESTING PUTIN WOULD BE RISKING WAR WITH SA AND RUSSIA, SAYS NTSHAVHENI'

 'Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said South Africa had no intention of arresting Russian President Vladimir Putin after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against him' Eyewitness News, 8 June).

Were any of SA's first three presidents put on trial for supporting another dictator, Mugabe of neighboring Zimbabwe?    Mbeki during his tenure promoted alternative remedies such as vinegar rather than antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) which saved the state’s funds at a cost of up to 365,000 lives. Some members of the 99 percent called for him to be tried for crimes against humanity.   Was he?   Sharpeville II took place on 16 August 2012. With 17 workers killed and 78 wounded by the police, the Marikana Miners’ Massacre was the most lethal use of force by South African security forces against other workers since 1976. Commissioner Phiyega said that the police had acted well within their legislative mandate. Ramaphosa and King Zuma share responsibility for this mass murder.   Were there ever plans to put them on trial?   In June 2015, while in South Africa for an African Union meeting,  the former dictator of Sudan (and one of 15 on the ICC's most wanted list), al-Bashir,  was prohibited from leaving while a court decided whether he should be handed over to the ICC for war crimes.  Was he? 

The answer to all the above is NO!   It is futile to punish such odious  individuals whilst ignoring the vicious conditions which made them possible. War criminals are not responsible for war, which is caused by the struggles between competing capitalist states  over markets and economic resources. War will only end with the abolition of capitalism. The dictators of yesterday, and the dictators and leaders of today, with their frightening military machines, only reflect the preparedness of their workers to ignore the bloodshed of all the conflicts before, during and after the war to end all wars and still to die for capitalism.

U.S. Special Operations Numbers Surge in Africa’s Shadow Wars

 Africa has seen the most dramatic growth in the deployment of America’s elite troops of any region of the globe over the past decade, according to newly released numbers.

 A report in the Intercept by Nick Turse highlights some proxy operations overseas by the US military as follows.

  In 2006, just 1% of commandos sent overseas were deployed in the U.S. Africa Command area of operations. In 2016, 17.26% of all U.S. Special Operations forces — Navy SEALs and Green Berets among them — deployed abroad were sent to Africa, according to data supplied to The Intercept by U.S. Special Operations Command. That total ranks second only to the Greater Middle East where the U.S. is waging war against enemies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

“In Africa, we are not the kinetic solution,” Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command Africa, told African Defense, a U.S. trade publication, early this fall. “We are not at war in Africa — but our African partners certainly are.”

That statement stands in stark contrast to this year’s missions in Somalia where, for example, U.S. Special Operations forces assisted local commandos in killing several members of the militant group, al-Shabab and Libya, where they supported local fighters battling members of the Islamic State. These missions also speak to the exponential growth of special operations on the continent.

As recently as 2014, there were reportedly only about 700 U.S. commandos deployed in Africa on any given day. Today, according to Bolduc, “there are approximately 1,700 [Special Operations forces] and enablers deployed… at any given time. This team is active in 20 nations in support of seven major named operations.”

Using data provided by Special Operations Command and open source information, The Intercept found that U.S. special operators were actually deployed in at least 33 African nations, more than 60% of the 54 countries on the continent, in 2016.

Special Operations Forces deployments in 33 African countries in 2016.

“We’re supporting African military professionalization and capability-building efforts,” said Bolduc. “The [Special Operations forces] network helps create specific tailored training for partner nations to empower military and law enforcement to conduct operations against our mutual threats.”

The majority of African governments that hosted deployments of U.S. commandos in 2016 have seen their own security forces cited for human rights abuses by the U.S. State Department, including Algeria, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Tanzania, among others.

According to data provided to The Intercept by Special Operations Command, elite U.S. troops are also deployed to Sudan, one of three nations, along with Iran and Syria, cited by the U.S. as “state sponsors of terrorism.”

“U.S. [Special Operations forces] have occasionally met with U.S. State Dept. and interagency partners in Sudan to discuss the overall security situation in the region,” Africa Command spokesperson Chuck Prichard wrote in an email.

Special Operations Command spokesman Ken McGraw added, “Their visit had nothing to do with Sudan’s government or military.”

No Comrade of ours

Muhammad Siyad Barre had been from 1969 until this day in 1991, when fhe was forced to flee, the dictator of the Somali Democratic [sic} Republic.  He came to power with the assassination of Abdirashad Ali Shermarke by one of his own bodyguards. Shermarke's death led to an unopposed, bloodless coup d'état by the Somali Army commanded by one Major General Barre, who liked to be known as Comrade Siyad.   No Comrade of our class, he sought to blend the immiscible: the Qur'an and Somali nationalism with Marxism.   In reality, this led Somalia to develop state capitalism under Russia's sphere of influence.   His achievements were recognised three years later when presented with a gong: the Order of National Flag, First Class, of the Democratic [sic} People's Republic of Korea.   The relationship with Russia soured in 1978 as a result of Barre's pursuit of  Greater Somalia and the invasion of Ethiopia. Given Somalia's strategic position at the Horn of Africa, the USA became the main supplier of economic and military aid.   Literacy and nutrition improved with the development of capitalism, but Barre's priorities were military, to the extent that in 1985 they ate 65 per cent of the budget.   War abroad was soon followed by civil war.  Barre fled, first to Kenya and then Nigeria.   He died there in 1995 at the age of 75.  

The average life expectancy for men in Somalia is 45.   The ongoing civil war has resulted in 500,000+ deaths and more than 1,100,000 people being displaced.

Black death

The civil war in Nigeria officially ended on this day in 1970 following two and a half years of conflict and the death of  millions.     Socialists did not support either side, holding that the workers and peasant farmers had no interest at stake in the capitalist rivalries within Nigeria or in the sordid intervention of Russia, France, Britain and other capitalist powers.   Recent reports, such as that from Amnesty International in November last year stating that government forces had killed at least 150 pro-Biafran activists,  indicate that these rivalries remain and divert workers from expressing their class solidarity.  

Further reading: Nigeria,Biafra and oil.

Pawns in Abyssinia

The article below, which first appeared in the Socialist Standard of August 1935, has just recently been added to the Marxists Internet Archive.

It is evident that the Italian Government is determined, at whatever the cost in men and  money, to force big concessions from the independent State of Abyssinia, including, no doubt—if things go according to the Italian plans—the annexation of a large part of Abyssinian territory and the establishment of some form of close control over the remainder of the country. Why Mussolini's Government is prepared to go to war can be explained on the usual grounds. Notwithstanding the Fascist promise of a new economic system, Italian industry is carried on for profit in competition with the rest of the capitalist world, and Italy's lack of raw materials in her own territory or colonies places her capitalists at a disadvantage in the scramble for profit. Abyssinia is coveted because, among other attractions, it would provide a market for Italian goods and cheap supplies of raw cotton, which would free Italian capitalists from the need to import from America. The excuse is often used by the Great Powers when annexing the territories of native races that the backwardness of the latter is withholding from the civilised world much-needed sources of supply, without any advantage to the natives themselves. In the war to conquer Abyssinia that excuse cannot very well be used. Nobody can argue that the outside world is being hampered by scarcity of cotton. On the contrary, one of the outstanding features of the depression has been the vast over-production of cotton in many parts of the world, and the expensive official schemes for destroying and restricting cotton crops. In short, the motive which sends a gigantic military force into Abyssinia is not economic, in the sense of a genuine need of the human race, but is purely capitalistic, the lust for profit in a world divided into antagonistic capitalist-national groups. So, if Italy wins and further develops cotton-growing there, the next world economic crisis will very probably see the Italian Government restricting the production of that article, after sacrificing lives innumerable to make the development possible. Other attractions in Abyssinia are gold, rubber, copper, potash, and platinum.

Unrest in Italy

There are other reasons also. The early enthusiasm for Fascism began long ago to wear off, and there have recently been reports of strikes and demonstrations, including some against the threatened war. Poverty and unemployment for the workers are the order of the day under the Fascist flag, as under all others, and faced with discontent, Mussolini, like many a doomed dictator before him, is grasping at military glory as a means of regaining popular support. Naturally, he pretends otherwise, and claims that all but a tiny majority of the Italian population are behind him. Nevertheless, according to the Geneva correspondent of the Daily Telegraph (July 17th), he takes the precaution of imposing a much more drastic control of the frontier passes leading into Switzerland, with the two-fold object of preventing the escape of men who do not want to fight and of preventing the importation of anti-war and anti-Fascist propaganda leaflets and journals.

From a military point of view, while all the advantages of money and armaments are with the Italian forces, the deserts and mountainous country will be comparatively easy to defend, and the weather will be against the invaders. While opinion generally is that in time Abyssinia would be crushed, the task may prove so slow and costly that the Italian capitalists may well come to regard Mussolini as an expensive luxury. According to Mr. Vernon Bartlett (News-Chronicle, July 25th), "It is true—even though it be denied—that exactly a year ago important Army officers were alarmed to learn that Signor Mussolini contemplated an Abyssinian campaign .... They advised against it, a commission on the spot advised against it . . ."

The defeat of an Italian force by the Abyssinians at Adowa in 1896 led to the overthrow of the then Italian Premier, Crispi. Will history repeat itself ?

Something Rotten in the State of Abyssinia

Mussolini's appeals to the Italian workers to sacrifice their lives in a quarrel which does not concern them are paralleled by those of Emperor Haile Selassie. Although the country has made only small advances towards capitalist industrialism, and that only in limited areas, it has its evils no less than those of the capitalist Powers. Chattel slavery still exists, and is only slowly giving place to wage-slavery. There is desperate poverty on the one hand, face to face with the wealth and power of the ruling class on the other. It is true, as the Emperor says, that "throughout their history they have seldom met with foreigners who did not desire to possess themselves of Abyssinian territory, and to destroy their independence," but independence means no more to the subject class in Abyssinia than it does elsewhere. Moreover, much of the tribal territory held by Abyssinia was grabbed by the Emperor's predecessors, and is now held by force against the wishes of the local population. It is one of the ironies of the situation that just as Mussolini is afraid of discontented workers at his back, so the Emperor has to take extreme precautions that the arms he imports do not on the way fall into the hands of his own unwilling subjects, who would use them to revolt against him.

Haile Selassie's command over the kind of phrases to delude his subjects into fighting their masters' wars is hardly less than that of Mussolini himself: "He who dies for his country is a happy man"—" It is better to die free than live as slaves" (a little inappropriate perhaps in a country where there are many slaves)—"God will be your shield. United with God, our ramparts and our shields will face to-morrow's invader with confidence. . . . Your sovereign will be in your midst and will not hesitate to shed his blood for Ethiopia. If no peaceful solution is found, Ethiopia will struggle to the last man for existence."

The religious note will be better understood when it is remembered that the Abyssinian priesthood are said to own as much as one-third of the total land, and are immensely influential.

The Attitude of the Powers

Many of the other Governments have direct or indirect interest in the situation. The Abyssinian Government has for many years tried to insure itself against occupation by one Power by giving contracts and concessions to companies belonging to several different countries. America, France, Japan, England, Belgium, Germany and Egypt are among the countries with trading or other important interests. Owing, however, to the complications of the European situation—in particular, the aim of keeping Austria apart from Germany, for which Italy's aid is essential— England and France would no doubt not be much disturbed at the idea of an Italian conquest of part of Abyssinia, provided that their own interests were safeguarded, along with Egypt's interest in Lake Tana, from which the Nile flows. However, not only has America indicated hostility to any Italian conquest, but the Japanese Government has taken the same line, and is allowing influential Japanese organisations to work up an agitation against Italy for the proposed "violation of international law and justice." The Japanese Government, which used the same methods in Manchuria and is now using them in China proper, is horrified that Italy should do this in Abyssinia.

A factor which may cause misgivings in many capitals is that any Abyssinian success may cause increased unrest throughout all the colonies in Africa.

It is worth remembering that Sir Samuel Hoare, British Foreign Secretary, has laid it down that Italy has a right to "expand," i.e., to conquer the territory of other nations (Hansard, July 11th, col. 517).
It is also worth remembering that, in order to buy Italy off, the British Government offered to give away some British territory in Somaliland, without asking the local inhabitants or the population at home.

What the final outcome of the complex clash of interests in Abyssinia will be, it is impossible to foretell.

A Crusade to Stop Slavery

One argument which generally plays a prominent part in the wars of annexation waged by the European States against the coloured races— that the war is a Christianising war—cannot be urged here, because the Abyssinian ruling class are Christians and have, indeed, themselves played the game of Christianising the Mohammedans. Mussolini has had to content himself with another noble-sounding slogan. He is going to rid Abyssinia of slavery, and impose by force the very doubtful advantages of Italian capitalist civilisation. The Pecksniffian leader writer of The Times (July 15th), while chiding Mussolini for his "obstinacy," tells us of some of the evils existing in the ancient empire of Abyssinia, or Ethiopia: "It is known . . . that conditions of squalor and extreme crudeness exist among the greater part of their quarrelsome tribes, some of whom still retain the belief that a man is no man until he has killed his enemy." The Abyssinians might retort that if there were no squalor already, conquest by any of the Powers would soon introduce it in large measure. Are not the notorious slums of the Italian towns squalid? And has The Times never heard of Britain's army of paupers, and the shocking conditions of the depressed areas? As for the ferocity of the tribesmen, who is Mussolini to complain? Has he not for years bellowed of the glorious uplifting qualities of war?

The Labour-I.L.P. Attitude

With their incurable weakness for sentimental phrases, the I.L.P. and Labour Party have discovered here another "poor little Belgium" being attacked by a big Power, and want to take sides with the Abyssinian ruling class against the Italian. The I.L.P. New Leader (July 19th) wants the British workers to refuse to make or transport arms or munitions for Italy. Nothing is said of arms for Abyssinia, so, presumably, the I.L.P. has no objection to the making of war material for the ruling class of that country. The Labour Daily Herald is more explicit, and printed an article from their correspondent in Abyssinia (July 24th), containing the following : —

It seems as if all that remains for the Abyssinians to do now is to sharpen their spears, clean their rifles and hope that Europe will let them buy ammunition, so that it may be a fair fight (italics ours).

Could anything better illustrate the hopelessly non-Socialist attitude of the little gentlemen of the Daily Herald? Here is a war about to take place between the exploiting class in two countries, one of which is more developed industrially than the other, and the organ of the Labour Party hopes that the slaughter of workers about a question which is not worth the life of a single one of them, shall be conducted on a "fair" basis, the only possible result of which would be that the killing would be prolonged !

The Socialist attitude is quite unlike that taken up by the Labour Party and I.L.P. We do not take sides in ruling class quarrels. A story told of the Viennese during the battle of Sadowa is more in line with what should be the working class attitude. At that battle, which occurred in 1866, the Prussians and the Austrians were fighting out the issue which of the two ruling class groups should dominate the German States and Central Europe. It is said of the Viennese that, while the battle was in progress they went on dancing, "as if it did not matter which side won." They were right, and it would tax the ingenuity of all the assembled historians and apologists for war to show any tangible loss suffered by the mass of the Austrian population through the defeat.

The progress of the world, and the abolition of war can only come through Socialism. The duty of the working class is to press forward on that road, and not to be diverted by I.L.P.-Labour Party propaganda for this or that section of the ruling class.  
['H' - Edgar Hardcastle]


Human Rights Watch released a report yesterday titled Ethiopia: Year of Brutality, Restrictions which makes for grim reading.   Plus ça change

Climate Change Wars?

Growing desertification and violence in Nigeria is forcing thousands of Muslim herdsmen to move south, leading to clashes with Christian crop farmers. Residents and activists report that hundreds have been killed. Scarcity of fertile land and violence at the hands of Boko Haram jihadists in the north of Nigeria are driving thousands of people southwards, dividing the country down ethnic and religious lines.

Thousands of people from the roaming Fulani ethnic group are reported to have fled south this year, running up against Christian crop farmers, who accuse the Muslim herdsmen of violence against villagers. Fulani herdsmen have been accused of attacking the village of Nimbo in Nigeria's Biafra southeast state in April, opening fire on residents and torching a house. Fulani leaders say they are the victims, and that they have no choice but to migrate to seek new pastures and escape the violence of terrorist group Boko Haram.

Much of the fighting is understood to stem from conflict over resources such as land and water, which have become increasingly scarce in Africa's most populous nation. Clashes are reported to have intensified over the last few years. With temperatures soaring and drought increasing, many in Africa are losing their livelihoods. They are looking for other ways to survive.

Desertification is increasingly rendering large swathes of fertile land into desert. A report published in the Journal of Ecology and the Natural Environment says that more than 60 percent of the Nigeria's land is affected. The report cites climatic variation and the result of human activities - including deforestation, extensive cultivation and overgrazing - as causes. Other studies have established a link between climate change and conflict.

The War in Ethiopia (1978)

Another from our archives  From the March 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard The fighting now taking place in Ethiopia is a tragic testimony to the cynicism and ambition of the major capitalist powers, including Russia. The strategic plotting of the Russian ruling class has led to a situation where destitute African peasants, exhorted to sacrifice themselves for nationalist ends, use Russian-supplied weapons to murder each other. It is the policies of the governments of Somalia and Ethiopia, plus those of the superpowers, which explain how this has come to happen. In 1969 a military coup took place in Somalia, and Major-General Mohammed Barre became head of state. The new rulers claimed to be revolutionaries, and spoke loftily of establishing “Scientific Socialism”. The only legal political party is the so-called Somali Socialist Revolutionary Party, of which Barre is the Secretary-General. In fact, Barre’s government pursued a policy of as rapid as possible a development of capitalism in what was and remains a very backward country, with subsistence wages and almost no health service. The method was that of state capitalism, with the land and many companies being nationalized. Their revolutionary rhetoric did not however prevent them from accepting American financial aid, which was used to build a port at Kismayu in the south of the country. But the greatest support came from Russia, which supplied Somalia with weapons and helped to make the city of Berbera a well-equipped port and naval base which could be used by the Russian navy. Missile storage facilities were also built, again for Russian use —an ironic priority in a country without a single mile of railway track. It was clear that Russia was hoping to make Somalia into a Russian military base on the Indian Ocean, and a counter in Eastern Africa to Ethiopia, then ruled by Emperor Haile Selassie’s savage Christian dictatorship. Murderous Struggle Then in 1974 the Ethiopian army deposed Selassie. A murderous struggle for power among various political and military factions ensued, but again the new rulers, the Dergue, claimed to be revolutionary Marxists. In December of the same year, Ethiopia was officially declared to be a “Socialist” state. As in Somalia, the government actually pursued a policy of state capitalism, nationalizing the land and various branches of industry, as the quickest way to develop the forces of production. The Russians saw their chance again, and supplied arms to Ethiopia. As the Somali- supported separatist guerrilla war in the northern province of Eritrea (which was only fully incorporated into Ethiopia in 1962) spread and the separatists occupied large parts of Eritrea, Russian and Cuban advisors were sent to help the Ethiopian government. Meanwhile a Somali-backed revolt was taking place in Ogaden, in the western part of Ethiopia. For a while the Russians were able to back both sides in this way. But in November last year, the Somali government expelled their Russian “advisers”, and asked the Americans to supply more arms. The Russians thus lost access to the port facilities at Berbera, and are now defending the Ethiopian government against alleged Somali aggression. The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, as it is called, is just the kind of “national liberation movement” that the Russians have supported in some parts of the world — and fought in others — when it suited them to do so. In Eritrea, now, Russian planes and rockets are used against the guerrillas. Eritrea contains Ethiopia’s main Red Sea port, Massawa, a prize that would help compensate the Russians for the loss of Berbera. The Russians may have decided that Eritrea is not viable—or sufficiently useful to them—as an independent state, and so are concentrating their efforts on keeping Ethiopia intact and friendly to Moscow. The Dergue, the present military government of Ethiopia, operates with the usual brutality of a dictatorship. Since 1974 thousands of people have been imprisoned, and hundreds executed, for political activity hostile to the government. The Ethiopian air force’s tactics in Eritrea include the bombing of civilians in towns captured by the guerrillas. Peasants who refuse to be conscripted into the Ethiopian army are said to be killed in front of their families. Flour given by the Red Cross to relieve a famine in Ogaden has been commandeered by the army. The Dergue is no more than an old-fashioned military dictatorship. Reports that the Russians have been actually involved in the fighting on behalf of Ethiopia have not been independently confirmed. No doubt the Russians would prefer not to risk their own troops in pursuit of their ambitions, but to let the Ethiopians and Somalis shoot it out between themselves. Their economic policies show that the Somali and Ethiopian governments have a great deal in common, though both may have something to gain by invading the other. The ones with nothing to gain in any of this are the workers and peasants, the ones who do the actual fighting and dying. In order to defend their own military bases and gain control of strategic routes, the Russian ruling class are quite prepared to foster and support wars between other nations, where the real losers are the ordinary people concerned, who face death, hunger and homelessness in a cause not their own. Paul Bennett

The DRC - Who benefits from the chaos

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the least developed countries in the world. Yet it is also home to $24 trillion worth of untapped mineral reserves. In the eastern hills of the country, the "three Ts" - tantalum, tungsten and tin - are mined by hand, eventually making their way into electronic devices across the world.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) more than 5.4 million have killed since 1998, so coffins, are the one thing which people will spend their limited money. For the funeral undertakers, business is good. Prostitution is also a prosperous industry thanks to the war. With more than 30 armed groups in the region, there is a growing market of men seeking sex. But with little money, plenty of weapons and ample alcohol, the soldiers often rape and threaten the women.

War is another profitable activity, with many investors - both internally and externally. The United Nations, for example, sent 19,815 blue helmets to the country through its United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the DR Congo (MONUSCO), the second-largest mission in the world. For the home countries of those troops - Pakistan, India, Uruguay, Tanzania, South Africa and Malawi - the mission can be extremely profitable: the UN pays them four times the cost of the deployment.

Then there are the NGOs. More than 80 humanitarian organisations ply their trade in the DRC, as part of an arguably self-sustaining business. One NGO mission chief confessed: "I don't know what we're doing here. Our presence raises the price of food and rent, we stop people from moving on, from taking their own decisions and demanding their government take responsibility. We should have left Congo years ago."

Another booming the trafficking in blood minerals, for nothing serves this illicit trade better than a failed and unstable state that is incapable of collecting taxes and stopping neighbouring countries from looting its riches through strongman proxies.

 Rubaya in the province of Masisi is three hours' drive from Goma and the epicentre of the blood minerals war. Some tech lobbies, perhaps wishing to wash their hands of any responsibility for the exploitation of blood minerals, recently insisted that coltan is no longer used in the making of mobile phones, tablets, consoles or cameras, and that the mines were closing. But in truth, demand for the mineral is still much greater than its supply. Around 80 percent of the world's supply resides under Congolese soil. 5,000 miners, many of them children and teenagers, continue to toil in a state of quasi slavery in DRC, at first under the open sky and then, when there is no more of the mineral left on the surface, in deep tunnels where they eat, sleep and work from dawn until dusk, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Many work nearly nude, without helmets or protective gear, and some are even barefoot. Others wear fake Real Madrid or Barcelona shirts. The luckiest have wellington boots. The mines are particularly dangerous during the rainy season, when the damp earth can crumble, leaving miners at the mercy of carbonic gas or crushed inside underground caverns.

In North Kivu there are between 5,000 and 6,000 Congolese rebels spread among 30 armed groups. In addition to racial hatred, they are motivated by a desire to control the mineral resources - and will massacre entire villages in an effort to do so.

A dark web of large multinational companies, corrupt officials and unscrupulous states concealed by anonymous tax haven bank accounts participate in the ancient game of looting the DRC. The UN has denounced neighbouring countries such as Rwanda and Uganda for selling  minerals that are not theirs and for feeding armed groups in order to keep the trade alive. Meanwhile, the developed world receives its sacks of cassiterite, coltan, gold, diamonds, uranium, tungsten and manganese cheaply and promptly.

 Who then, other than the Congolese themselves, could want a conflict that sustains such a business to end?

From here

This mine is mine

Africa is home to a tenth of the planet’s oil, a third of its mineral reserves and produces two-thirds of its diamonds. Scholars have long suspected that its plentiful natural resources also breed instability and violence. Politicians and their cronies cannot resist skimming off some of the huge profits, the theory goes, which enrages those who are left out. Struggles over this wealth has played a part in many African troubles, from militias in the Democratic Republic of Congo to Sudanese civil wars. 

A new paper from four academics at Swiss universities gathered data for each year from 1997 to 2010, on the location of hundreds of mines and thousands of conflict events (including riots and violence against civilians) across Africa. Then they divided the continent into 10,000 cells measuring half a degree of latitude and half a degree of longitude (about 55 km squared at the equator). All of this allowed them to analyse the effect of changes in the world price of 15 minerals on the areas in which that commodity is produced. Over the period of the study, mineral prices more than doubled, thanks in particular to ravenous demand from China. Some commodities grew even more expensive: in 1997 an ounce of gold cost about $300, but by 2010 it was going for well over $1,000.

The research paper found that dearer minerals also led to fiercer competition over mines, with shockingly violent consequences. Had mineral prices remained at their levels from 1997, the paper calculates, over the subsequent 13 years the average African country would have seen 25% fewer violent events. Higher prices were responsible for 65% of the outbreaks that took place in South Africa. Even these results may be an underestimate, since the proceeds from mines in one area may have been used to fund conflicts in others.

Forgotten conflicts – Our silence is a shame to humanity

As you read this, there are more than 40 conflicts unfolding in countries around the world. Many of them don’t get the media or policy attention. Tales of war from places like Syria and Iraq are never far from the headlines but the toll of decades-long conflicts – from Colombia to the Ogaden, from Kashmir to Western Sahara – is just as devastating for the people who live there.

In South Kordofan journalists are banned by the Sudanese government from entering the rebel-held region, where civilians have taken to living in caves to survive the endless bombing. South Kordofan's death toll of 4,500 may seem insignificant compared with many other conflicts, but the rebels and the people of the Nuba Mountains fear Khartoum won't stop until they are all driven out. There are almost a 200,000 refugees and almost half a million are in need of immediate humanitarian aid.

Nagwa Konda, director of the Nuba Relief, Rehabilitation and Development Organisation (NRRDO) – a local NGO that struggles to cater for the desperate needs of the Nuba – said hope in her region was fading.  “There is a catastrophic humanitarian situation going on right now in the Nuba Mountains. Children in the Nuba Mountains are suffering from daily aerial bombardment, from hunger, dying from preventable diseases.” 

Omar al-Bashir and his Khartoum-based regime say they are fighting a rebellion in South Kordofan driven by vested interests and Western plotters that want to overthrow his government. The Nuba say they are fighting for their own survival. The Nuba, numbering between one and two million, are a collection of distinct peoples of black African origin who speak an array of different languages. Many are now Muslim, but there are Christian and animist Nuba too.  Along with a few Arab pastoralist tribes, they have the geographical misfortune of living on the fault line between Sudan’s largely Arab and Islamic north and its predominantly Christian, animist and black African south.  The origins of their oppression date back to the colonial era when the British segregated them, declaring the Nuba Mountains region a special “Closed District.” The Nuba were not allowed to stray northwards without a special permit and schooling was left up to missionaries. When Sudan emerged from British rule in 1956, the Nuba were already politically, economically and socially marginalised and lacked any educational system.

South Kordofan had been under the governorship since 2009 of Bashir’s trusted lieutenant Ahmed Haroun – like him indicted by the International Criminal Court for allegedly orchestrating atrocities in Darfur. By 2013, Bashir had deployed between 40,000 and 70,000 troops to South Kordofan. Local Arab tribes, the Misseriya, were coopted by Khartoum to fight their black African rivals. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) pulled out of South Kordofan in January after its clinic was bombed for a second time, leaving Doctor Tom Catena at the Mother of Mercy Hospital as the last surgeon in the Nuba Mountains, performing around 1,000 surgeries a year.

"You  want to ask me why I fight?” Thayr Urwa Hamdan Said, a new rebel recruit, exclaimed.  “After the separation of the South, Omar al-Bashir  said that Sudan is now an Islamic Arab country that would be governed by Islamic sharia laws. They have to recognise and bear in mind that there are other people living with them in this geographical area called Sudan. That is why if we do not overthrow this government we would be second-class citizens in our own country.”

Atrocities in nearby Liberia and Sierra Leone have stolen the regional headlines over the years, but the separatist struggle in Casamance is West Africa’s longest-running civil conflict. Three decades of on-and-off separatist conflict in Senegal's southern region of Casamance have killed thousands of people, displaced tens of thousands more, crippled the rural-based economy and turned large tracts of territory into no-go zones due to landmines. A ceasefire was declared last year by an important rebel leader, but even if it holds, grievances and resentment linger and underlying socio-economic problems threaten to consign another generation of Casamançais to living like second-class citizens in one of Africa's supposed beacons of democracy. The rebellion was born out of the resentment of the southern Diola people for Senegal’s dominant Wolof group in the decades following independence from France in 1960. The Diola, who represent only 3.7 percent of the population but 60 percent of people in the Ziguinchor region, have traditional beliefs that set them apart from other Senegalese groups. According to the Association for the Development of the District of Nysassia (APRAN), a local NGO that has been working to help the displaced return home, 78 villages in Lower Casamance were completely destroyed during the fighting and more than 150,000 people lost their homes. Thousands of civilians remain internally displaced by the conflict, including some 6,000 in Ziguinchor, and at least another 10,000 refugees are split between The Gambia or Guinea-Bissau, many still harbouring deep resentment for Senegalese authority. Demba Keita, secretary general of APRAN, told IRIN that many people want to return home but feel conditions are not right to allow them to do so.

“Their villages were wiped out and now they have no means for reconstruction," he said. "The state of Senegal does nothing to help them. We cannot convince donors to engage in reconstruction, because they feel the peace process does not move forward.”

For the most part, the separatist struggle in Casamance has been fought in a media vacuum. International attention has focused on other, more immediately troubling conflicts with bigger bombs, larger death tolls, and more terrible atrocities. Amnesty International, however, did draw attention to the extrajudicial killings, disappearances and flagrant human rights abuses in an influential February 1998 report.

“Hundreds of NGOs have worked for the development of Casamance. But if you drive through Casamance, you don’t see any development,” said Abdou Elinkine Diatta, who fought with Atika in the 1980s and 1990s before becoming a rebel spokesman. “Maybe it has helped develop Dakar. But there has been no development in Casamance."

Robert Piper, then UN humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel, admitted last year that the situation in Casamance presents a real “dilemma” for the international aid community.

“On the one hand, there are very real needs here, particularly food insecurity. On the other hand, we also need to recognise that this is a well-endowed part of Senegal that should not have a humanitarian operation.”

The Not So Great War

In the centenary year of the commencement of World War One much history is being remembered and re-told. Much is being ignored. A million people died in East Africa alone during the First World War. Many Africans fought in Europe, defending the interests of their colonial masters. Today, their sacrifice has been largely forgotten.

During the conflict, some 2 million people from across Africa were actively involved in the military confrontations, as soldiers or bearers, in Europe and in Africa. At the start of the war, some Africans volunteered to take part, encouraged by the prospect of a modest income. From 1915, the Europeans began conscripting thousands of African men. The French alone sent 450,000 African soldiers from their colonies in West and North Africa to fight against Germany on the frontline in Europe.

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, English and French troops prepared to seize the four German colonies in Africa (German East Africa, German South-West Africa, Togoland and Cameroon). Fighting was particularly brutal in German East Africa where German General Lettow-Vorbeck adopted a guerilla strategy, drawing more and more areas into the war. More than 200,000 bearers transported weapons, ammunition and food for the troops. The myth of the "faithful Askari" (the Swahili word for 'soldier') still exists today in German history books. In reality these men had been torn from their roots and were looked down on by local populations. Back home, they were missed in the fields. Harvests suffered or were plundered and destroyed by troops passing through to ensure there would be no food left for their pursuers.

The colonial administrative area of Dodoma in what is now Tanzania lost 20 percent of its population in 1917/18 gives some indication of the deprivation and misery. Historians estimate that a million people died in East Africa as a direct result of the war. The outbreak of Spanish flu, which spread rapidly among the weakened population shortly after the war ended, accounted for a further 50,000 to 80,000 deaths. "The war changed some regions to such an extent that they needed decades to recover, if indeed they did recover," sums up Jürgen Zimmerer, history professor at Hamburg University.

One reason why the “Great War” plays little or no role in the African view of history is the fact that it is generally seen as just one episode in the long history of colonial conquests and acts of brutality inflicted on the people of Africa. During the 75 years that Belgium ruled the Congo, up to ten million people died. 

"It is just one war among many," Zimmerer says. "Colonialism was so brutal that a number as large as one million does not attract the attention that it should - or would in a European context." Europe also takes this view and generally ignores the suffering of millions of Africans in the First World War. In Zimmerer's words, the war in Africa "is generally treated as just a minor skirmish in which hardly anyone was hurt."

http://www.dw.de/africa-and-the-first-world-war/a-17573462

Rape - Weapon of Mass Destuction

Rape, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, like many war-ravaged countries, is strategy, an implement to seize power – control, not only over entire communities and regions but, crucially, in this immense country, over the great mineral wealth. The trauma – physical, psychological – disables. And it is free. The cheapest weapon of mass destruction. It is no secret why and how this happens. Rape emblemises Congo's history – an area brutalised for 500 years by leaders and nations crazed with greed in a rush for natural resources: rubber, oil, diamonds, copper, uranium, cobalt and coltan. The last of these is used liberally in mobile phones, cameras, printers and laptops. First came the Portuguese, in the 1480s, enslaving and destablising as British ships arrived taking captives. In the late 19th century, as demand for rubber spiked, Belgium's King Leopold II claimed the country, ordering further gargantuan enslavements, commanding torture and murder on an unfathomable scale: more than 10 million died. By 1960, when independence was declared, the traumatised nation was ripped asunder, fractured, drained not only of minerals but of human resources: an insufficiently educated nation left to stagger on unaided. The former army officer and police sergeant Joseph-Desire Mobutu exploited the power vacuum, seized control and bled the resources further. When Rwanda invaded in 1996 (the First Congo War), helping other neighbouring countries topple Mobutu – who had been backed by Western governments – little improved. A year later, when the Second Congo War erupted, drawing in nine nations, the turmoil was anarchic, dozens of rival militia groups, rebels and army factions killing and enslaving to gain control of the mines – a dire cacophony of child soldiers and mass starvation, collapsing infrastructure and, all along, rape.

Dr Denis Mukwege tries to help all who arrive at Panzi Hospital, the clinic he set up 15 years ago in the hills above Bukavu, eastern Congo. After training in France to become a gynaecologist, he was hoping to devote his career to treating women in pregnancy and labour. Instead, the results of the Second Congo War arrived – wave after wave of rape victims, girls as young as two, women in their eighties. Entire villages of women come. Dr Mukwege specialises in repairing vaginal fistulas – holes created either between the vagina and rectum, or vagina and bladder – a common occurrence after violent rape. "Women who have been severely violated are completely destroyed – some we simply cannot cure," he says. "And unfortunately, these are often young girls aged 14, 15, 16, 17. They have to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of their lives." Without medical intervention, urine, blood and faeces trickle down, causing burns, infections, ulcerations, abscesses and dehydration. The smell from infections ensures everyone in the village knows what has happened. Many are shunned. Isolation engulfs. Fistulas can also lead to nerve damage called "foot drop" in which the lower limbs become paralysed. Women are left unable to walk.

Dr Mukwege treats 10 women a day in theatre. He has, in total, tended to more than 30,000 survivors. In what psychological state are patients when they arrive? "They are dehumanised," he says. "Most are shamed by what happened to them. Most are excluded from their own community. They feel life has no sense." He cites the plentiful research into the psychological trauma that survivors carry, often forever. By the time women are in Mukwege's care, the trauma has fanned out in all directions. "If a child has seen his mother being raped he will never be the same again," he says. "And if husbands stood by during attacks, unable to help their wife, it completely changes their relationship. This problem destroys families as a whole."

There is another important consequence, which, for Mukwege is a "time bomb": the babies. "They are often not loved when they arrive because they are the result of rape. People sometimes blame the children. Often families say, 'This is a horrible child; he does not belong to us.' We are raising a crisis." He continues  "There is one lady. She was raped and taken into the bush and kept as a slave for three years. She was also, as a result of the rapes, contaminated with Aids. When she came home she found that while she was gone all her family – her husband, father, mother and four children – were killed." The woman eventually returned to her village but with a baby, born from the innumerable rapes she endured. "It was very hard for her…" says Mukwege, his voice unsteady "to keep this child, to know, 'She is the child of the one who raped me, killed all my family and contaminated me with Aids'." He stops again, frowning, wincing. "How can all this happen in the life of someone?" Yet he carries on to say "Today she not only supports her child but also other patients living with Aids. She's really strong. She built her own house. She built her own business. She is a leader in her community."

In 2011, Mukwege compared the international reaction to that of Bosnia in the 1990s. "Since Bosnia was on Europe's doorstep, and Europe was ashamed, it didn't last so long," he said. "When it happens in Africa, people say, 'It's cultural. It's African. It's far away'." A year later, in an address at the UN he spoke of the "deafening silence and the lack of courage of the international community". Some see such silence as deliberate, in order that the coltan keeps coming. "The West has a responsibility because it knows how coltan is produced," says Mukwege. "They can get this without destroying women."

Dr Mukwege is the recipient of the Sakharov Prize For Freedom of Thought, the highest human-rights award bestowed by the European Parliament.

"This prize is not really for me," he says softly. "It belongs to the women who have been fighting for 15 years for their rights, for their dignity, for their freedom. But I am very happy this prize came now because the world does not understand what it means to be raped with extreme violence. We need to highlight what is going on in this region. It is a terrible disease, women destroyed in a way that denies their humanity."

He describes the "four pillars" of his approach. "We treat them medically – surgically; psychologically – the trauma; legally – to teach them their rights and help them go to court, if they want to," he says. "The fourth way is to support them economically so they can be strong and fight for their own rights."

Full story here

Warring Africa

This article on Africa’s many wars makes pessimistic unsettling reading when it predicts that they will probably continue through 2015.

South Sudan’s civil war is one year old and still going strong. Neither Salva Kiir nor his challenger Riek Machar have any incentive to stop fighting, at least not until the next rainy season makes military maneuvers impractical—five months from now.

In Sudan, the civil war in Darfur, has slipped from the headlines in recent years, but in fact it’s as bad as ever. The same goes for the genocidal campaign that the regime in Khartoum is perpetrating against the people of the Nuba Mountains. President Omar Al Bashir’s grip on power looks with major demonstrations challenging his rule in the capital. As now-former heads of states from Tunisia’s Ben Ali to Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaoré can attest, its hard hanging on to power indefinitely.

Central African Republic lost some of its media attention. Peacekeeping forces have regained a measure of control in parts of the country, although the caretaker government of Catherine Samba-Panza is still powerless. Rebels and militias still in control of much of the countryside—as well as parts of the capital—the country is looking at an uneasy stalemate.

 Nigeria’s Boko Haram insurgency has seen more people die in the conflict in 2014 than in any previous year despite the Nigerian government throwing more and more troops and money at the problem. The crisis is unlikely to ease any time soon. Boko Haram has fractured and evolved beyond the control of the political masterminds who nurtured its growth.

Al Qaeda-affiliated groups are still active in the Sahel, especially in northern Mali. While the conflict between secessionist Tuareg rebels and the Malian government likewise continues.

Meanwhile in Libya, there’s little doubt that the violence will continue between secular forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar and Islamist militias.

All these conflicts have one thing in common—they’re all well underway. But what new conflicts which may possibly emerge in 2015?

Many conflict-prone countries have important elections in 2015.

 Ivory Coast, where the last presidential election reignited a dormant civil war.

Togo has already seen huge demonstrations against the continued rule of long-time president Faure Gnassingbé, who is running for re-election in 2015. Togo could potentially go the way of Burkina Faso, where an attempt by Blaise Compaoré to abolish constitutional term limits led to his violent ousting.

But war may escalate in Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Cameroon, Egypt’s and Tunisia’s fight with domestic terrorist groups or the Western Sahara conflict in Morocco. Plus the situations in Somalia and northeastern Kenya. There exists a potential for war between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Somali piracy has been reduced to a shadow of its former glory in the face of a well-established international naval presence. Not a single large vessel was successfully captured off the Somali coast, although there were still regular attacks. The case is a bit different now in West Africa. Piracy is a growing problem along the continent’s western coast.

Lastly but not least, America’s war against terror and its use of drones attacks does little to calm explosive political situations.