Members of the Islamic Group Movement pray during a rally in support of Libyans revolting against Muammar Qaddafi, at the Al Shaheed Mosque in Khartoum on March 3. (Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters)
As world focuses on Libya, more than 100 killed in Sudan border town
A series of attacks that began Sunday in Abyei, Sudan’s hottest north-south flashpoint border town, have left more than 100 dead, again raising the prospect of a less-than-amicable breakup of Africa’s largest country when South Sudan officially secedes this July.
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Sudan confirmed Thursday that approximately 300 women and children had fled the disputed, oil-rich border town of Abyei since Wednesday night. These residents headed south toward safety, fearing further militia attacks like one on Wednesday some 10 miles north of Abyei that killed more than 30 pro-southern police and Ngok Dinka men who took up arms to defend the village of Maker Abyior.
The Wednesday attack came on the heels of a series of attacks earlier in the week on villages north of the town of Abyei. The spokesman of the southern Sudanese army said Wednesday that more than 70 people were killed in these attacks.
The UN mission said that their staff in Abyei witnessed a mass burial on Wednesday night of 33 fighters from the attacks, many of them wearing police uniforms.
The latest violence is not an unfamiliar experience for the people of Abyei, nor is it surprising. The unresolved fate of this contested border region – which has been the subject of high-level political negotiations, protracted international court hearings, and intense global interest – has stoked tensions on the ground between the two groups that are forced to share and coexist on land that they both consider to be their own.
Arab herders vs. non-Arab farmers
While the Arab cattle-herding Misseriya believe they should be allowed to graze uninterrupted through this fertile and oil-producing land, the “resident,” non-Arab Ngok Dinka people – many of whom traditionally have been farmers – fear their land will be usurped if their territory does not join the southern half of Sudan when it declares independence in July.
This week’s attacks underscore how the Abyei issue has been used as a lightning rod for political leaders in both the northern Sudanese capital of Khartoum South Sudan's capital, Juba.
Both governments are keen to attribute blame for the violence to the other. And with the long history of Abyei being used as a proxy during the two north-south civil wars that have ravaged the country since independence in 1956, it is likely that Khartoum and Juba will continue their finger-pointing instead of reaching an agreement on the future status of the region.
The top government official in Abyei insists that the well-armed forces that attacked Maker Abyior on Wednesday were not merely Misseriya herders backed by Khartoum.
“These are not militias, these are Sudanese Armed Forces,” says Deng Arop Kuol, referring to the northern military. “These are government forces."
The UN mission has not yet visited the site of all the clashes this week, and the southern allegations of northern military involvement in the attacks have not been independently verified.
“It's hardly a surprise that tensions are mounting, and that violence is ongoing,” says Claire McEvoy of the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, a research group that studies conflict in Sudan.
“Indeed, we can expect more if the issue is not resolved in a just manner,” she added, noting that the denial of the right of the people of Abyei to determine their future in a referendum is “likely to lead to continued conflict in the area.”
No vote on Abyei
The 2005 north-south peace deal promised Abyei its own referendum that was to be held simultaneously with South Sudan’s independence vote. This referendum was not held because of disputes between the south’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the Khartoum-based National Congress Party.
On the eve of the south’s independence vote in early January, clashes erupted in several of the same villages that experienced violence this week. As with the latest round of fighting, the uncertain future of the people of Abyei seemed linked to the January violence.
The bloodshed in Abyei comes as the leaders of north and south are participating in high-level talks on a host of issues related to post-July relations between north and south.
On the table this week in the Ethiopian town of Debre Zeit are wealth-sharing arrangements – namely how Sudan’s oil sector will be managed after southern secession – and resolution of the impasse over demarcation of the country’s disputed, 1,300-mile north-south border, which includes Abyei and will form the sovereign dividing line before the two regions after the south separates.
Insiders to the talks speculated before they got underway on Tuesday that these negotiations will be key to determining if and how relations between the two sides have changed since the South's landslide vote to secede was announced on Feb. 7.
Security forces loyal to strongman president Laurent Gbagbo stand guard on a main thoroughfare adjacent to the United Nations headquarters after firing to disperse women protesting for a peaceful solution to the nation's ongoing political crisis, in the Attecoube neighborhood of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on Thursday, March 3. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP)
In Ivory Coast, Gbagbo cranks propaganda machine into full gear
Three months into the presidential standoff in Ivory Coast and the propaganda machine is in full swing, as is clear from this message, one of many now broadcast daily on state television:
"France..." (cue photo of Nicolas Sarkozy)
"...and the UN," (cut to shot of peacekeepers)
"...are allied with the rebels and have declared war on Ivory Coast," (que video of rebel soldiers shooting)
"...murdering innocent Ivorians..." (show graphic images of mangled dead bodies)
"Now is the time to protect our country." (play video of angry youths manning a barricade, armed with machetes)
I've always been intrigued by propaganda: old British World War II posters, American public information films from the cold war. But this year, in Ivory Coast, where the propaganda is diffused by the sitting president who refuses to leave power three months after losing an election, I'll never see it the same way again.
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Ivorian state television has always broadcast something vaguely resembling what we think of as news. It's normal in this country where standard operating procedure is to pay journalists to come to your event and report on it. And like many west African countries, TV knows who's paying the bills, so heaping praise on "His Excellence" Laurent Gbagbo is always a good bet.
But things took a nasty turn after the Nov. 28 election. State television lost what little subtlety it once had and transformed into the communications arm of Mr. Gbagbo's government, desperate to cling to power.
The announcement of election results by the president of the electoral commission, which handed victory to his opponent Alassane Ouattara, was not broadcast.
Instead, television aired an announcement from the Constitutional Council president saying that he and only he had the authority to proclaim results. He then went on to invalidate more than half a million votes from Mr. Ouattara's strongholds and overturned the results.
It couldn't have been a more transparent power grab.
Which is exactly why the United Nations is here. Peace deals signed in 2005 and 2007 charged the local peacekeeping mission with overseeing and certifying the election. After the Nov. 28 election, the mission received signed copies of poll-by-poll results – as did the political parties and the electoral commission – and drew its own tally.
Local UN head Choi Young-jin confirmed Ouattara's win and refuted the Constitutional Council's ruling. There were minimal reports of irregularities, he said, but they came from a different region than the Constitutional Council claimed. Yet even if these polling stations were eliminated, he said, it would not change the overall result of the election. The assessment fell in line with statements from the Carter Center, the European Union, and the African Union.
Needless to say, Mr. Choi's speech wasn't broadcast to the Ivorian people.
Rather, according to state TV, the UN is "interfering" in Ivorian affairs by "declaring" a winner.
"No one can tell us who won our election," screams notorious youth leader Charles Blé Goudé, a nightly presence on the news. "The Ivorian Constitution gives us a leader, and no one – not France, not the UN – can impose a president on us."
Nightly calls to attack UN convoys and prevent them from circulating have already led to the kidnapping of two UN staff by armed youth militias.
And as of Wednesday, all opposition newspapers suspended publication in protest of harassment, after the Gbagbo-controlled press regulation body fined them for their coverage of deadly police repression in pro-Ouattara neighborhoods.
And, perhaps worst of all in terms of providing any semblance of fair and balanced perspective, the two major international radio stations, BBC and Radio France Internationale (RFI), have mysteriously disappeared from the airwaves, leaving nothing but state television to stoke the fires of violence and xenophobia.
A Congolese miner holds a piece of casiterite ore, a kind of tin. Armed groups, including members of the Congolese army itself, control the trade in Congo's rich mineral resources, allowing them to keep themselves fed and armed. As a result, the West's insatiable desire for natural resources, helps to keep Congo's conflict brewing. (Scott Baldauf/Christian Science Monitor)
California leads US in taking a swing against Congo's conflict minerals
On the heels of US Congressional action to address Congo’s conflict minerals, California recently became the first state to consider legislation to regulate companies doing business in Congo. Last Friday, California Senate Majority leader Ellen Corbett introduced groundbreaking legislation that would require companies seeking procurement contracts with the state to comply with federal law to exercise due diligence on their supply chains to avoid supporting conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and the broader Great Lakes region of Africa.
Specifically, SB 861 requires companies that file a disclosure with the US Securities and Exchange Commission about the conflict minerals in their products, to meet federal standards. If adopted, the California legislation would deny companies procurement contracts with the State of California for failing to meet the requirements of the rules promulgated by the SEC.
Last July, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law. Section 1502 of the act requires companies that use minerals sourced from Congo or adjoining countries in their products to exercise due diligence on the origin and chain of custody of the minerals. The federal legislation requires companies to publicly report on efforts to ensure that their supply chain isn’t funding armed groups.
Both pieces of legislation aim to divert funds from the profiteers of war in the eastern Congo that have cost over five million lives. The mining of tungsten, tin, tantalum, (the 3Ts) and gold in the eastern region of Congo has long been funding armed groups and criminal networks within the army who often control mines and trade routes.
As the home of the majority of the nation’s technology firms, which use the 3Ts and gold in their products, California is a key player in the battle for conflict-free minerals. It is a hopeful sign that the state is leading the way and reinforcing the message the Dodd-Frank Act has sent to companies: that they must take responsibility for their products to ensure that they aren’t perpetuating war in Congo.
– Talia Samuelson blogs for the Enough Project at Enough Said.
In this June 30, 2010 file photo, the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo Joseph Kabila arrives for the yearly national parade in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Armed gunmen with machetes attacked Congo's presidential residence Sunday, and at least nine people were killed during nearly an hour of gunfire, a witness said. The president and his wife were not home at the time of the attack. (Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP)
Was there a coup attempt in the DRC this weekend?
Two groups of men armed with machetes and machine guns attacked the Kokolo military camp and the residence of President Joseph Kabila on early Sunday afternoon in Kinshasa. According to reports, at least six soldiers had been killed, including several in the Congolese army. Up to eight of the attackers have been captured, and two are currently being interrogated at a DEMIAP (military intelligence) camp in the capital. The situation in Kinshasa is now calm.
The minister of information is currently calling the incident a coup attempt. Was it? The situation is fluid and information is still coming in, but we know that the attackers were coordinated enough to pull off two simultaneous attacks, to enter into the presidential compound and to kill several guards. On the other hand, it was a pretty ramshackle group of soldiers: many of them were only armed with machetes – could there be a serious coup attempt carried out by people with a few guns and machetes?
It is too early to say for sure, but I doubt this was a coup attempt, which would have required the defection of a large part of the military command. At most, this was an assassination attempt against Joseph Kabila – I don't think several dozens soldiers could have taken over the state apparatus.
It does seem possible that this was an attempt on the president's life. Over the past week, there have been reports from people in the opposition and government that a small group of men has been organizing to launch an attack. A source within the national security service said that people and guns had been coming across the Congo river, including former members of Mobutu's army and of the Enyele militia.
A leading MLC member told me that his party had been contacted by state officials this week, who accused former soldiers in Jean-Pierre Bemba's bodyguard of preparing a rebellion in Kinshasa. When the MLC official I spoke with looked into it, it turned out that some youths and former MLC soldiers had indeed been organizing, buying machetes and plotting an attack, but that it was small group of perhaps 40 to 60 people and was allegedly unconnected to the MLC political leadership. According to this source, before the MLC could do anything about it, the attack was launched.
The whole thing does smack somewhat of amateurism. If there really was a high-level conspiracy to kill the president or to even take over the state, wouldn't it have been better organized? There are, expectedly, conjectures that this incident was staged in order to justify a crack-down on the opposition. After all, this is the second time in as many weeks after the attack on Lubumbashi's airport that a state installation has been attacked. The MLC official I spoke with said: "The security services told us that they had infiltrated this group and knew that it included ex-MLC soldiers. If this is true, why didn't they just shut this operation down before it got this far?"
But if it really was a fake attempt, would they have gone so far as to kill soldiers and attack Kabila's house?
In any case, more questions than answers for now.
– Jason Stearns blogs about the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Great Lakes region at Congo Siasa.
West Africa Rising: Why Guinea (yes, Guinea!) may be the region's surprise economic success story
• West Africa Rising is a weekly look at business, investment, and development trends.
People in power have long whispered shocking things about the Republic of Guinea: that the West African country's former dictator, Sekou Touré, buried tens of thousands of innocents in mass graves; or that his successor, Lansana Conté was trying to have a similar number tortured in jails; or Mr. Conté's successor, Dadis Camara, ordered had hundreds shot and scores of women raped in a stadium.
Yet the current whisper going around might be the most shocking statement ever made on Guinea: That this nation may have just become West Africa's quiet success story.
Hold that thought to a whisper. Guinea's 10 million people are tiptoeing through a fragile reconciliation process following last November's elections, the country's first full vote in 50 years.
But it's certainly safe to say that this once brutality-inured nation was supposed to be 2011's giant emergency, not its emerging giant. And nobody seems more pleasantly perplexed by that upswing than United Nations Special Representative to West Africa, Said Djinnit.
As Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon's point man in the region, Mr. Djinnit has more troubles than your average UN Special Representative. His region hosts more peacekeeping missions than any other corner of the planet, and the last time we spoke, Guinea, not Ivory Coast, was his biggest problem.
"When we last met," he told me via phone, yesterday, "there were signals in Guinea at the time that this country could easily slide into conflict."
Just five months after an election that observers thought may blow up into civil war, he says, there are signals that Guinea could enter into prosperity, or something like it.
Its capital, Conakry, has an "excellent port" which could serve landlocked nations like Mali that are clamoring for new corridors to reach the sea.
The country has "huge potential" for hydro-electricity which it could export to neighboring states like Senegal, which are dealing with their own economy-crippling power outages, Djinnit added.
Plus, it has the world's largest supply of the aluminum ore bauxite, which could help pay for generations of public improvements.
"In my conversations with [President] Alpha Condé,I've found he is determined to make Guinea's mineral resources available both to his people and to the people of the region as a means of regional integration," Djinnit says. "Thanks to the sense of responsibility shown by its political leadership, today, Guinea is emerging as a source of stability [and is] improving its infrastructure."
It's the UN's job, of course, to lavish praise on nations that survive the usually turbulent transition to democracy.
But the UN isn't the only multi-national institution swiveling an eye toward Guinea.
Mobile phone carrier Sonatel said yesterday that its mobile phone subscriptions grew 33 percent in Guinea last year – as sure an indicator of rising wealth as any on this continent.
The telecom's Guinea branch reached nearly a million customers last year – and finally turned a profit.
"We are all very worried about the situation in Ivory Coast, but we should not forget the overall picture of West Africa," Djinnit says. "West Africa is clearly moving."
A Libyan militia member from the forces against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi guards three men who they suspect to be mercenaries from Chad, after detaining them at a roadbloack near Marj in eastern Libya on Feb. 27, 2011. (Kevin Frayer/AP)
Libya's mercenaries pose difficult issue to resolve
As anti-Qaddafi forces in Libya take control of different parts of the country, I think it is more accurate to call the events there a civil war, rather than simply “protests.” One contentious issue in this civil war is Qaddafi’s use of mercenaries from elsewhere in Africa. As the situation in Libya rapidly evolves, determining who the mercenaries are – and who is not a mercenary – has challenged both observers and the anti-Qaddafi forces. It seems clear that there are foreign mercenaries fighting in Libya, but it also appears that some innocent sub-Saharan African migrants have found themselves in danger over false charges. This post gives some background on the situation.
Historically, Qaddafi has long used mercenaries as advisers and soldiers. African poverty has created a substantial pool of potential mercenaries, and it is likely Qaddafi is now using some of these hired guns against his own people.
Foreign mercenaries are likely to be less squeamish about shooting at local people.
“They are likely to better trained – a small unit that can be relied upon. They might also have experience of fighting battles and therefore be more capable if push comes to shove,” [said author Adam Roberts].
The view was echoed by Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch. “It’s hard to get your own people to shoot your own people,” he said. “In this kind of situation, you can see why mercenaries would be an advantage because it’s easier to get foreigners to shoot at Libyans than to get Libyans to shoot at Libyans.”
Some of the foreign fighters in Libya also seem to come from groups that have long-standing political and financial ties to the Colonel. Qaddafi’s sustained and deep involvement in African politics, especially the affairs of neighboring countries like Sudan, Chad, and Niger, has included “funding and training many fighting groups and rebel organizations in West Africa and other places.” Qaddafi’s relationship with Chad is especially intense. These ties not only affected the trajectory of conflicts outside Libya, but also shaped the composition of Libya’s security forces:
Over the years, says [Thierry] Vircoulon [of International Crisis Group], Libya has welcomed many foreign fighters from Chad, Mali, Niger, and elsewhere to naturalize, and Qaddafi has set up special units entirely composed of foreign fighters.
Other rebels, who stand to suffer if Qaddafi falls, have been willing to join the fighting in Libya:
[Peter] Bouckaert [of Human Rights Watch] described the fighters from Chad as men “who were not mercenaries specifically recruited to defend Gadhafi but members of (a Chadian) rebel movement Gadhafi has been funding and training for many years who would lose that support if he fell.”
That gives us at least three categories of foreign fighters in Libya: foreigners who are part of the formal security forces, foreigners who are fighting for Qaddafi for political reasons, and foreigners who are killing Libyans primarily for money. Let’s add two more: those were coerced into fighting, and innocent persons accused of being mercenaries.
Regarding coercion, here is the account of one young Chadian:
“A man at the bus station in Sabha offered me a job and said I would get a free flight to Tripoli,” said Mohammed, a boy of about 16 who said he had arrived looking for work in the southern Libyan town only two weeks ago from Chad, where he had earned a living as a shepherd.
Instead of Tripoli, he was flown to an airport near the scruffy seaside town of Al-Bayda and had a gun thrust into his hands on the plane.
Gaddafi’s commanders told the ragbag army they had rounded up that rebels had taken over the eastern towns. The colonel would reward them if they killed protesters. If they refused, they would be shot themselves. The result was bloody mayhem.
Finally, we have innocent victims. Reports and speculation have indicated that in some cases anti-Qaddafi Libyans have turned on African migrants that did not participate in the fighting at all.
With mercenaries and suspected mercenaries coming from so many different backgrounds, and with chaos in Libya, what will happen to Africans accused of fighting for Qaddafi? Some, currently held in jails by anti-Qaddafi forces, are “nervously await[ing] their fate.” Others will die in battle, of course, or in lynchings. Still others may escape back across the border.
What will not happen to the mercenaries, apparently, is prosecution by the International Criminal Court.
The US insisted that the UN resolution [on Libya] was worded so that no one from an outside country that is not a member of the ICC could be prosecuted for their actions in Libya.
This means that mercenaries from countries such as Algeria, Ethiopia and Tunisia – which have all been named by rebel Libyan diplomats to the UN as being among the countries involved – would escape prosecution even if they were captured, because their nations are not members of the court.
The move was seen as an attempt to prevent a precedent that could see Americans prosecuted by the ICC for alleged crimes in other conflicts.
Toppling the Colonel is obviously the foremost goal for the anti-Qaddafi forces. But the problem of dealing with captured and accused mercenaries is one the rebels will have to solve if they take power – and, given the US’s stance on the issue, one they will have to deal with primarily at the domestic level. The issue of mercenaries will also affect the tone of Libya’s relations with other African countries in the post-Qaddafi era, if indeed that era comes.
– Alex Thurston is a PhD student studying Islam in Africa at Northwestern University and blogs at Sahel Blog.
Congolese soldiers in green uniforms board a police truck after receiving their sentences in a mass rape trail in the town of Baraka, Democratic Republic of Congo on Feb. 21. Ten of 11 accused solders were found guilty of crimes against humanity including Lt. Col. Mutuare Daniel Kibibi, top center in green, who was sentenced to twenty years in prison. (Pete Muller/AP)
In Africa, reporters face ethical questions when reporting on rape
But first, a quick news update: A Congolese colonel is going to jail for his sex crimes. It's the first such conviction – and about time. Two thousand people attended the verdict and sentencing, and 49 women had braved testifying against him in court, according to the BBC. I applaud you all.
If you're a regular reader, you've probably noticed by now that I write a lot about rape, in particular how journalists cover it. This surprises the me-of-five-years-ago. Then, I was in grad school with brilliant, fiery feminists who would have had a lot to say about this question if we'd ever had a class on it. I had virtually nothing to say about "that woman's issue," then... and sometimes felt like less of a woman (and certainly less of a feminist, if I even felt like that confusing f-word at all) because of my empty brain.
But in the intervening years, I've covered countries where you can't get away from rape -- or at least from its legacy. I spend a lot of time in post-conflict Africa, and in very nearly every country I've reported in, there's a local variation on the "rape as a weapon of war" story. I've found myself puzzling through awkward systems of journalism logic. In Sierra Leone, for a story about a new precedent in international humanitarian law, I talked for hours with women who were gang-raped, or once-raped, or raped by the same man with different objects, and any other variation you can imagine. I'd been told this topic was sensitive, even urged by well-meaning NGO folks not to ask about it. But as soon as I had the introduction out of my mouth -- "I'm a journalist writing about forced marriage during the war" – they interrupted me to start telling their stories. I was young, confused, overwhelmed, but slowly, I realized these were women who hadn't been heard before.
Meanwhile, my story was narrow. At some point in each interview – sometimes five minutes in, sometimes twenty, depending on the person and all kinds of verbals and non-verbals – I had to ask questions that subtly tried to uncover whether their stories were the ones I needed for my story. Were these women who fit the Special Court's new legalism "forced wives?" The precedent-setting case was all about how a forced marriage is a distinct crime, different from rape or sexual slavery, already defined (and sadly oft-used) in international law. I found myself thinking like a math teacher: All forced wives are raped, but not all rape victims are forced wives. It was an odd kind of consistency to have to maintain between the memories women wanted to share with me and the lens of the story. How do you tell a woman, "What you went through was horrible... but a different kind of horrible than I'm writing about?" (For the record, you don't. I think you just listen, as long as you can, and thank them.)
Later, in Rwanda, I interviewed a genocide survivor who told me about the weeks she spent hiding from the interahamwe, gangs of young genocidaires who did the brunt of the killing. She told me about how men beat her and those around her, killed her family, tore her clothes off and then cracked her own skull with a weapon, leaving her to die.
She didn't say what happened in between when they took her clothes and when they struck her. I had to decide whether to ask. I had a hunch -- mass rape was a tactic of genocide – and a hunch is what leads a journalist to ask questions. Also, journalists have to be loyal to the story they are telling, and to tell all of it, even the uncomfortable parts. When we sit down to interview trauma survivors, we know this is going to make them uncomfortable. That's why we do our best to explain why we're asking and give them the freedom to choose to say no. We have to trust that we explain our mission and its risks – and at some point, we also have to trust their consent.
But there are times when we also have to recognize that these stories belong first to someone else. I decided not to press. I was telling a story, yes, but it was her story, and this was one part of that story I felt I had no business asking for if she didn't want to give it to me. (There's a corollary to holding back, of course, which is that maybe someone needs help with the thing you don't ask... and so later I did ask her later, in a women-only room, if she has had access to the medical services and any medications she may need since the war. She said she had. The truth? I don't know, but I let it be. It was the truth she wanted me to have.)
And after all this morally fraught reporting comes the writing. I've come to understand, from talking to some reporters and editors and from analyzing others' work, that as a group, we journalists seem to think of writing as the easy part -- or at least the part that's not fraught. It's easy to forget that how we put that story in the world – what quotes we use, what details we choose, what medium we use, what we focus on and what we ignore in the arc of our story – is just as important as how we report it.
In fact, I think it's a big part of whether a piece of journalism can be considered ethical. And I think the fact that all kinds of readers from all kinds of backgrounds object when, say, the name of a nine-year-old Congolese is published in a national US newspaper suggests that readers also think how and what we write (or broadcast, or blog, or Tweet) is an important indicator of whether we are trustworthy, ethical journalists.
All of which is to say, here's "The Pornography Trap, or, How Not to Write About Rape (pdf)," my piece from the January/February issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. (It's still behind a paywall on their website, but I got permission to post the PDF.) It's a consideration of the ways in which writing –whether on the page, or for television or radio, or even on Twitter – telegraphs to readers the thing they most need to know when they're reading a trauma story: whether we reporters are trustworthy.
I'd love to hear what you think.
– Jina Moore is a freelance journalist based in Kigali, Rwanda, who blogs here.
Congolese soldiers in green uniforms board a police truck after receiving their sentences in a mass rape trail in the town of Baraka, Democratic Republic of Congo on Feb. 21. Ten of 11 accused solders were found guilty of crimes against humanity including Lt. Col. Mutuare Daniel Kibibi, top center in green, who was sentenced to twenty years in prison. (Pete Muller/AP)
In unprecedented decision, Congo sentences military officer for ordering rape
On Monday, a landmark verdict was handed down in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. For the first time in the nation’s history, a commanding officer was tried and sentenced for conflict-related sexual violence. Lt. Col. Kibibi Mutware was convicted on four counts of crimes against humanity in a mobile court held in the village of Baraka in the volatile eastern region.
According to the court’s findings, Col. Mutware ordered troops to attack the village of Fizi and to beat and rape civilians on New Year’s Day. Mutware was sentenced to no more than 20 years in prison, although he maintains his innocence.
Among the other 10 soldiers tried for the attack and subsequent mass rape, three of Mutware’s officers also received a 20-year sentence, five received less severe sentences, one officer was acquitted, and one – who is a minor – will be tried in juvenile court, reported the Associated Press’s Michelle Faul from Baraka.
After the attack by elements of the Congolese national army, or FARDC, doctors in Fizi reported treating 62 women for rape. Monday’s sentencing was a result of four days of agonizing testimony from 49 women who testified before a panel of judges. They described hellish beatings and sexual violence they endured; some testified that after the attack they hid in the nearby forest for three weeks. The women’s stories were later recounted in open court, but their identities were protected due to security concerns and social stigma associated with rape victims.
The UN Population Fund estimated that at least 8,000 women were raped in eastern Congo in 2009 – a startling statistic but one that likely underestimates the prevalence of rape. Sexual violence has become a systemic weapon of war used by soldiers and militia groups in the area to intimidate and punish civilians. Witnesses in the Fizi trial testified that the attacks were committed in retaliation for the death of a soldier who had been involved in a dispute with a local shop owner. The soldiers had attacked the village, going door-to-door beating and raping victims from 7 p.m. until 6 a.m. the next day.
The sentencing of Col. Mutware and his officers is a significant step toward ending impunity for sexual violence. In a statement issued today, the US State Department commended Kinshasa’s “swift” action in response to the January atrocities:
By taking such steps, the DRC government is strengthening the message to perpetrators of sexual violence that no one is immune from prosecution for this horrific crime. Accountability for sexual and gender based violence is a shared priority for our governments and is an essential component to ending impunity for violent crimes and bringing peace and stability to the eastern DRC.
Although close to 50 rape survivors testified in court, many others are presumed to have stayed silent for fear of being shunned by their husbands or communities, or out of concern that the military would retaliate. The total number of victims from the attack remains unknown.
The women who did testify will each receive $10,000 in compensation from the government – twice the amount given to victims in previous cases. Presiding Judge Col. Fredy Mukendi also ordered that additional damages must be paid to victims for “humiliation, degradation of their health, social stigmatization, risk of divorce, and possibility of HIV,” as the Associated Press reported.
Even after Monday’s sentencing, women in the affected communities believe that some attackers escaped justice. However, Mutware and the 10 men who stood trial were the only perpetrators identified after the Fizi attacks. “It is now imperative that the remaining perpetrators are found and brought to justice,” said Margot Wallström, the UN’s top official focused on sexual violence in conflict. “It is equally important that the victims of and witnesses to instances of sexual violence are protected, as well as their families.”
– Tracy Fehr blogs about for the Enough Project at Enough Said.
A Congolese miner holds a piece of casiterite ore, a kind of tin. Armed groups, including members of the Congolese army itself, control the trade in Congo's rich mineral resources, allowing them to keep themselves fed and armed. As a result, the West's insatiable desire for natural resources, helps to keep Congo's conflict brewing. (Scott Baldauf/Christian Science Monitor)
Congo is more than rape and minerals
Let me take a page from Binyavanga Wainaina's essay and blog my own two cents, a little bit less tongue-in-cheek, about how not to write about the Congo.
It's not all about rape and minerals. Yes, things are bad in the country, and by all means file stories about the conflict and the suffering. But focusing on the ghastly violence distracts from the politics that gave rise to the conflict. This comes at a cost: If all we see is black men raping and killing in the most outlandish ways imaginable, we might find it hard to believe that there is any logic to this conflict. We are returned to Joseph Conrad’s notion that the Congo takes you to the heart of darkness, an inscrutable and unimprovable mess. If we want to change the political dynamics in the country, we have above all to understand the conflict on its own terms. And those terms are not just rebels raping their way across the country to get their hands on conflict minerals.
Look for agents, not just victims. In print and on radio, the Congo sometimes descends into a kabuki theater of snot-nosed children/rape survivors oppressed by savage black soldiers. We need to get away from this. Some Congolese are unscrupulous and vicious, but they usually have reasons for what they do. If we can understand why officials rape (and it's not always just as a "weapon of war") and why they steal money (it's not just because they are greedy) we might get a bit better at calibrating solutions. Of course, it's much harder to interview a rapist or a gun-runner than their victims. But don't just shock us; make us understand. Otherwise we only have ourselves to blame when we react to a rape epidemic by just building hospitals and not trying to get at the root causes.
Be careful with ethnic descriptives. For a while, the CNDP was "an ethnic Tutsi rebellion." While the group was indeed led by Tutsi and backed by many in the Tutsi community, without further context, that description makes it seem like the reason for their rebellion was rooted in their ethnicity. Of course, it was, but it was not because part of their DNA sequence gave them a predilection for AK-47s, but because their ethnicity was historically entwined with land conflict and local power struggles since at least the 1930s.
Which brings me to the FDLR. Yes, they are almost all Hutu. And some of their leaders were involved in the 1994 genocide. But we really don't know how many were – a study done for the Rwandan Demobilization Commission in 2008 only had evidence of a handful of FDLR leaders' involvement in the genocide. And of the soldiers who return to Rwanda, very few have been found guilty in gacaca courts for crimes of genocide. Yes, anti-Tutsi diatribe is still prevalent among the FDLR, but the group has also included a few Tutsi officers in the past, and has collaborated with Tutsi groups such as the Banyamulenge in South Kivu and RPR in North Kivu. So be careful not to conflate them with genocidaires.
There are few unambiguous heroes and villains. Paul Kagame is not a saint, not is he Beelzebub. Joseph Kabila is not a Tutsi infiltrator, a Manchurian candidate, or a selfless patriot. They are both leaders acting within the constraints of their political systems, driven by a mix private and public motives. What exactly those constraints are and that mix is? That, my dear foreign blogger/activist/foreign correspondent, is the challenge to figure out.
I hate to disappoint you, but many local NGOs have some pretty serious governance problems; those aid-workers in their air conditioned vehicles are not always just in it to save the world (and when they are, it can be all the scarier). But some of these people have persevered despite all adversity. Figuring out who is who and what shade of gray their moral universe is colored can take some time. Take that time.
Challenge yourself. Write different stories. Who are the Chinese companies working in the Congo and what have their experiences been? Did you know that Congo was one of the first countries to experiment with mobile cash-transfers to pay for demobilized soldiers? Have you checked out the famous artist studios in Kinshasa of Cheri Samba or Roger Botembe? The country's tax revenues have doubled over the past several years - how does that square with its corrupt reputation? What are Dan Gertler's financial relations with the Israeli right-wing? The Kivus apparently produce 40 percent of the world supply of quinine – might be a story there.
It ain't easy. I know that most journalists writing on the Congo only have 300- 1,000 words or a few radio minutes to explain a mess of a conflict. I empathize. And many writers do a great job. But there are also few long, investigative pieces about the conflict that make it into print. That goes for both Congolese and foreign writers. I am convinced that there is a market for intelligent, well-crafted pieces that do not reduce Congolese to a good-guys-bad-guys morality play. So let's raise the bar.
– Jason Stearns is a Congo expert who blogs at Congo Siasa.
Puok Kai, 30, a Southern Sudanese prison officer, grimaces in pain as the dressing on his gunshot wound is changed in the Juba Teaching Hospital on Feb.15. Kai was wounded when southern rebel leader George Athor launched an attack on December 9-10. Southern leaders have accused Khartoum of backing Athor's rebellion and of supporting other militia activity in the south. (Maggie Fick/AP)
South Sudan's accusations of northern interference stoke tensions
It’s a gross understatement to say that Sudan’s North and South have a lot of details to sort out before July, when the oil-rich South breaks away and forms the world’s newest country. In recent news coverage in the aftermath of the south’s independence vote last month, there have been many references to the laundry list of crucial questions that must be addressed in negotiations between the south’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the National Congress Party in Khartoum. Borders, oil, debt, water, citizenship... suffice it to say, these talks won’t be easy and are likely to be fraught with at least some degree of contention and mistrust, despite the successful and peaceful referendum process concluded last month.
For this simple reason, the comments this week of the secretary-general of South Sudan's ruling party at two separate news conferences in Juba, the South's capital, are concerning. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Pagan Amum, who is also the South Sudan government’s Minster of Peace and Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) Implementation, pointed his rhetorical finger directly at Khartoum for their role in sponsoring several southern militia groups opposed to the southern leadership and the army.
"It is common knowledge that all the militia groups are receiving armaments and financing and support from circles within northern Sudan," Amum told reporters on Wednesday in Juba.
“This is a strategy to destabilize Southern Sudan, I’m sure this will fail, the people of Southern Sudan are so united as you’ve seen in the referendum,” he added, as if to counter the argument that an attack on a southern town by one of these militia leaders last week in volatile Jonglei state was completely unrelated to simmering tensions within the south.
I am not convinced on a couple counts. First, while the Khartoum government’s sponsorship of proxy militias in peripheral regions of Sudan is not without precedent – Darfur is a clear recent example – the South's government has failed to produce tangible or verifiable evidence of such illicit support, save a transport helicopter captured in murky circumstances last year in Upper Nile state. On Wednesday, Amum asserted that Khartoum had provided support to a former southern militia leader bringing arms into the South once again in the aftermath of the referendum, but apart from saying the men traveled with their guns and uniforms by road, he did not provide specifics.
Second, there are deeply rooted grievances within the South, among South Sudanese, that have not yet been addressed by the South's government. Due to the rampant presence of small arms throughout the South, these grievances are often dealt with violently (for more information on the armed insurrections that sprung up after last April’s disputed elections, see these Small Arms Survey documents).
But more importantly than my opinion on the credibility of Amum’s statements is the fact that such comments stoke tensions between north and south when cooperation is badly needed to pull off the south’s “final walk to freedom,” as South Sudanese like to call the historic process which will soon result in their government’s declaration of independence. Amum himself said at the Tuesday news conference here in Juba that peaceful relations between the North and South are necessary for the stability of both regions. I hope that members of his party are urging him to exercise more restraint in his comments moving forward in this sensitive period.
– Maggie Fick is a freelance journalist based in Juba, Sudan who blogs here.
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