Mugabe's Latest Ploy

Is Robert Mugabe immortal? Will he be in office forever? He has used everything from assassination to intimidation to bribery to stay in office. But, his latest maneuver may be his cleverest and most difficult to combat. A brief recap: Robert Mugabe has been the leader of Zimbabwe since 1980, first as Prime Minister then as President. Throughout the the 1970's and the 1980's, he was the leader of Zimbabwe's (then Rhodesia) struggle for majority rule. He was a hero not only in Zimbabwe, but throughout Africa. However, his policies of land "reform" and economic redistribution have driven the country from prosperity to destitution. Zimbabwe went from being the bread basket of Africa to a nation on the brink of starvation with an inflation rate which reached 231 million percent (!) in July. And yet he is still in power. In the elections last year, it looked as though Mugabe was finally out. His ZANU=PF party won 99 seats in House of Assembly and the opposition party of Morgan Tsvangirai, Movement for Democratic Change, won 100 seats plus the support of a smaller faction which controls the other ten seats. In addition, most people believe that Tsvangirai actually won the presidential election, but Mugabe insisted on a runoff election which Tsvangirai eventually withdrew from when a number of his supporters were tortured and murdered. A unity government was formed with Mugabe as president and Tsvangirai as Prime Minister and Tsvangirai's party in charge of the House of Assembly. Things looked hopeful...until now.

A government official from the MDC was arrested this week, accused of stealing a cellphone from an ally of President Robert Mugabe while sharing a lunch table with him at a political unity event. This may not sound serious, but if he is convicted, he will be ineligible to serve in the government. Five other members of the MDC have already been convicted of similar criminal charges and forced to leave Parliament, whittling Tsvangirai's majority in Parliament. In addition, 16 other Tsvangirai supporters are facing charges they deny. Meanwhile, none of Mugabe’s supporters, accused by human rights groups of waging a campaign of terror during last year’s election season, have been prosecuted. Uhm.....

So my question to you is this: When will Mugabe finally lose his control of Zimbabwe?

a) With the next election which Tsvangirai will obviously win
b) When other African leaders withdraw their support and remove him from office
c) Never. He will hold power by whatever means necessary until he dies
d) When there is finally a popular uprising against him which removes him through violence

Okay, everyone. Let's hear your prediction.

The Power of Sports

This post deals with two of my favorite topics - Nelson Mandela and sports. I strongly believe sports have the power to do more than just reflect what is happening in society. They can move and change society. This video comes compliments of Graham Johnston who saw it on the ESPY awards. It is very moving and well worth a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTuhCvVDHXQ

China One child Policy Update

A few Conflicts classes over the years have discussed the benefits and pitfalls (and sometimes the cruelty) of the one child policy in China. Now that the policy has been in effect for thirty years, China is seeing the expected benefits: population control, improved health care, rising standard of living, etc. However, the drawbacks have also begun to appear. The population is aging with fewer young people available to care for them. As the population ages, the work force is shrinking just as China is industrializing. As a result, some government officials are rethinking the policy. Shanghai officials are even encouraging couples to have a second child. Some of the encouragements are the same ones used to first implement the policy, such as financial incentives. Others are so primitive that they are sort of laughable, i.e. leaflets under doors. It will be interesting to see how this impacts couples who grew up with the one child policy. Each member of the couple is an only child, not only without siblings, but also without cousins. How will they take to the idea of a second child?

The article in The New York Times is at
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/world/asia/25shanghai.html?ref=world

What are your thoughts on the one child policy and/or this latest development?

Walter Cronkite and the Middle East

No doubt, you will be inundated with news about the death of Walter Cronkite. My advice is to watch it all, listen to it all. "Uncle Walter" held a rare place in the history of news. For my generation, he was the news. He was the one who told us President Kennedy had died. When he took off his dark glasses to wipe away tears, we knew how tragic this really was. As a kid, I could not imagine Walter Cronkite crying. He was so calm, so in charge, so authoritative. The other time he removed those famous glasses was when Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon. He took them off, rubbed his hands together and just said, "the moon." That was enough to convey the awe and wonder of it. You'll hear and see these stories and more, especially his famous coverage of the Vietnam War when he criticized U.S. policy there after a visit. LBJ is reported to have said, "If we've lost Walter Cronkite, we've lost middle America." The stories could go on and on. But, I think it is important for the purposes of this blog to mention the impact he had on the Middle East, not on reporting it but actually on the peace process.

In 1977, he was interviewing President Sadat of Egypt live and asked him if he would go to Israel (no Arab state recognized Israel at this point) to negotiate a settlement after the Yom Kippur War. Sadat said yes on live television - if he received and invitation. CBS news then got in touch with Prime Minister Begin of Israel and, once again on live television, asked if he would invite Sadat. Begin agreed that he would. It was remarkable. Evntually, it led to peace talks, Egypt's recogntion of Israel, the Camp David Accords and a Nobel Peace Prize for Sadat and Begin. I'm not saying Walter Cronkite brought this about, but certainly his prestige as a jounalist and the respect with which he was held helped facilitate the beginning of it. He describes it this way:

"But the openness of television offered a powerful incentive that secret diplomacy did not. The political consequences of a public failure improved the ultimate chances of diplomatic success, and statesmen willing to fail publicly are a courageous lot."

For Cronkite's version of how this all happened, check out the video or transcript on NPR.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6861044

Five Leaders Who Miss George Bush

Foreign Policy has an article on five foreign leaders who miss George Bush and prefer him to Obama. See how many you can guess before reading the article.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/07/08/5_leaders_who_miss_george_w_bush

No Sex - Update

Thanks to Ilana for this tip. Leymah Gboweehttp was on The Colbert Report last night. Here is the site:
www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/233532/july-14-2009/leymah-gbowee

If you are not familiar with her, she is the subject of the movie, Pray the Devil Back to Hell. This is a documentary about a group of women who organized to force the men of Liberia to end the civil war there. She started organizing women in her own Christian church and then they joined forces with Muslim women. They formed the Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET). They used things like a sex strike. That is probably where the women of Kenya got the idea, not from the Greek play, Lysistrata. They also barricaded the men who were in Ghana for peacetalks in the building where they were negotiating. When the negotiators sent guards out to remove the women, they threatened to strip naked in public which is considered very bad luck in many cultures of west Africa. A peace deal was made!

You can read Leymah's amazing story and how the film got made in Oprah's magazine. (Now that's a first for Conflicts class!)
http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200812_omag_liberia

Check out Colbert and the Oprah magazine. Colbert is in his usual rare form.

Where Iran and China Intersect

It has been interesting to watch Iran's reaction to what is happening to the Uighurs in western China. As far as I know, Iran has said absolutely nothing. Iran sees itself as the leader of the Islamic world and the defender of Muslims everywhere. And yet when China repressed the Muslim Uighurs and sent in the military, Iran was silent. Could it be that Iran was unable to criticize China because it was doing the same thing to protesters in Tehran? The other consideration is that Iran has strong political and commercial (and maybe even military) ties with China. A cleric in Lebanon wrote, "How could China suppress the Muslims so violently and seek good relations with Muslim countries and sometimes dominate their markets?" The same thing is true of Sudan. The government sponsors the genocide of Muslims in Darfur and then sells oil to China even as it oppresses its Muslim population. But, at least, Sudan never claimed to be the spokesperson for all Muslims.

African Updates

While I was thrilled to see the symbolism of Obama's visit to Ghana, I was disappointed that he did not spend more time there and that he did not mention Darfur. With wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nuclear issues in Iran and North Korea and our economic woes, I am afraid Africa will be relegated to the back burner as it was by former presidents. I hope not.

Two news items out of Africa caught my attention:

Ten women were flogged in public in Khartoum for wearing trousers. This was in keeping with Sharia law which is enforced in Islamic areas of Sudan. However, the women were from southern Sudan which is Christian and animist. Under the peace brokered betwween the north and the south which ended the 20 year civil war, southerners were not supposed to be subject to Sharia. This does not bode well for the rumblings of a resumption of that horrific conflict. If the civil war breaks out again between northern and southern Sudan, it will make Darfur look like a squabble.

The second item has to do with Uganda officials saying they would arrest President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and turn him over to the ICC if he enters their country. This is huge since earlier this month African leaders criticized the ICC for indicting him on crimes against humanity in Darfur and said that they would not extradite him. I don't know what made Uganda take this stance, but I think it is good for Africa if leaders stop protecting all other African leaders no matter what they do in a show of solidarity. How about a show of solidarity for the African people who are the vicitms of these leaders?

Blood Diamonds

Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia, took the stand in his war crimes trial in the Hague today. 91 witnesses have already testified against him including a man who had stumps where his hands used to be and a woman who was forced to carry a bag of severed heads including those of her own children. Taylor caused havoc and terror in neighboring Sierra Leone through the use of child soldiers (Ishmael Beah), terror, torture, mutilation and sexual slavery. It was not for any political gain nor was it an ethnic conflict. It was to get his hands on Sierra Leone's diamonds, later labeled "blood diamonds" for the cost and toll they took. He has been charged with 11 counts of specific war crimes. He is the second head of state and the first African head of state to be put on trial by an international court. I did not know if I would ever see it because it is so hard to tie the crimes directly back to him, but the prosecutors seem confident that they have sufficient evidence. I think it is a real victory for the victims and for international justice. I heard some of his testimony on NPR this morning. If you believe him, he was trying to be a peacemaker and was "too busy defending democrcay" to keep an eye on atrocities committed on his watch. He made it sound as though he should get the Nobel Peace Prize. This trial may set a precedent for autocrats who should be held responsible for what happens while they are running things. I hope Bashir is watching.

Iran's Terrifying Facebook Police

This is stolen, uhm borrowed. from NPR. But it is really scary. I have been cheering how modern communication made the protests in Tehran possible. I never thought of it being a double edged sword.

NPR, July 13, 2009

"A scary anecdote from Iran. A trusted colleague - who is married to an Iranian-American and would thus prefer to stay anonymous - has told me of a very disturbing episode that happened to her friend, another Iranian-American, as she was flying to Iran last week. On passing through the immigration control at the airport in Tehran, she was asked by the officers if she has a Facebook account. When she said "no", the officers pulled up a laptop and searched for her name on Facebook. They found her account and noted down the names of her Facebook friends.

This is very disturbing. For once, it means that the Iranian authorities are paying very close attention to what's going on Facebook and Twitter (which, in my opinion, also explains why they decided not to take those web-sites down entirely - they are useful tools of intelligence gathering)."

North Korea Update.

Reports out of South Korea say that Kim Jong Il has pancreatic cancer. He has been seen in public only twice in the last year (reclusive even for him) and he looked terrible. This is scary because we have no idea what the power situation is. Perhaps his youngest son has real support and will assume power smoothly. Or perhaps, there will be a power struggle. Kim Jong Il is crazy, but the unknown is even scarier. As improbable as it may seem, there could be someone more unstable than the "Dear Leader." However, I doubt if there is anyone with a stranger hairdo. But, at the bottom of all this are the nukes. Who is in control affects all those poor oppressed North Koreans, but who controls the nukes can effect all of us.

Humanity in Western China

The Philadelphia Inquirer had a story today about the continuing unrest in the Xinjiang region of western China. But, they included an incident which happened during the funeral of a Han Chinese family (a man, his wife and his parents) who had been killed during the ethnic riots. Three Uighur neighbors of the victims came near, but were tentative about approaching. And then one of them "grasped the hand of a mourning sister, walked to the altar with her and wailed in sympathy." This touch of humanity amid the strife, deaths and government crackdown was a powerful reminder that people, away from politics, are good. I am so glad the paper put that incident in the larger story. Not all Han Chinese and Uighurs hate each other. They find themsleves in a situation which pits them against each other for use of land and other natural resources and the government encourages it. I believe that same statement can be applied to many of the ethnic conflicts which are going on today. Just grab your White-out and replace Han Chinese and Uighur with Israeli-Palestinian, Black Darfurians and Arab Darfurians, Hutus-Tutsis, and so many etc's.

Journalists in North Korea

Finally, someone is talking about Lisa Ling and Euna Lee publicly. Hillary Clinton mentioned them during a press conference today. If you don't know what happened to them, these two journalists for San Francisco based Current TV were arrested/captured near the North Korea border where they were investigating human trafficking. They had what passes for a trial in North Korea and were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. And, then there has been an eerie silence about their fates. Clinton originally characterized the charges as "baseless". Today, she said that the two journalists "have expressed great remorse" for their actions and that the U.S. was seeking "amnesty" for them. I am relieved that there seems to be something being done about them, but there are still so many disturbing aspects to this whole situation. First of all, what is the connection between their detention and North Korea's recent nuclear activity? Are they being held as a bargaining chip, which seems very possible? Secondly, what about the details of their capture? I do not believe they would have been so foolish as to have wandered across the border of North Korea. This leads me to suspect that the person who arranged the interview or the trafficker himself either lured them across the border or sold them to the North Korean border guards. This would at least provide some hope because it looks as though they really are being used as bargaining chips. Reportedly, North Korean authorities have said that the two women are not being held in a prison but in a "guest house in Pyongyang." However, the scariest thing about this whole situation is that we seem to have no idea about how stable North Korea's domestic politics are right now. After Kim Jong Il's stroke, no one seemed to know who was in charge. And, now it looks as though Kim Jong Il is trying to ensure the succession for his youngest son, Kim Jong Un ("Brilliant Comrade"). Being held prisoner in North Korea is bad news in the best of times (such as it is in North Korea), but to be held prisoner duirng a time of domestic upheaval and instability is even more difficult. Perhaps that is why Clinton is requesting amnesty even though that implies an admission of guilt. She may just want to get the two women out of there. Or, she may be trying to make sure their fates can not be tied to some nuclear negotiations.

Any thoughts?

Ethnic Violence in Western China

Last year when there were uprisings in Tibet, the world took up the cause. Olympic athletes debated whether to defy the Olympic ban on protests and apparel in support of the Tibetans. The Dalai Lama was in demand for public appearances and his presence galvanized support for the oppressed people of Tibet. Well, now it is happening again. The Uighurs of western China rioted over the weekend against their oppression by the majority Han Chinese. As in Tibet, the Han Chinese have been given incentives by the government to move into the Xinjiang region of west China. Over the weekend, ethnic tensions boiled over into violence and, according to the Chinese government, 156 people have died so far with hundreds more injured. As expected, the government blamed Uighur protesters and said the victims are Han Chinese. The few westerners on the scene tell a different story.
It will be interesting to see if this uprising generates the kind of sympathy which the Tibetans received. There are two big differences that I notice. First of all, the Uighurs are Muslims; they are a Turkic ethnic group. Several of them are in Guantanamo as accused or suspected terrorists. What will this do to western sympathy? The other difference is that Xinjiang is an oil rich desert land. I never understood why China was willing to risk interntional sanctions and disapproval to hold on to Tibet, other than natioanl pride. But, Xinjiang has oil! So, although the similarities to Tibet exist, the differences seem absolutely crucial.

For details, read the article in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/world/asia/07china.html?_r=1&ref=world

Robert McNamara

I just learned of the death of Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense and architect of the Vietnam War. He was the villain of my youth. After he left that position (or was fired. It is not exactly clear.), he spent much of his life analyzing all that the U.S. and he had done. Much of this is examined in an extraordinary documentary called "Fog of War". It is a powerful analysis of power and its use and misuse. At one point, he describes himself as a war criminal. He stated, “War is so complex it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.” I still find this hard to connect this statement to the man who was nothing less than a cheerleader as he sent so many soldiers off to war. Conflicts class went to see the film, and we had very different reactions to it. I still saw the villain of my youth and struggled with his struggle to repent and understand. I believe most of the students saw him as rather noble. I could be wrong, I would urge everyone to see the documentary if possible. At the very least, read today's NYT on Robert McNamara's life and death.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/us/07mcnamara.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Iran: The Blame Game

Well, it looks as though the Iranian ruling clerics have found someone to blame for the recent protests over the fraudulent presidential election. Since they can't blame the U.S. (the Great Satan), the finger is pointed at Britain. "The enemy made made an effort to poison the people" according to Ayatollah Ahmad Janotti, head of the Guardian Council. So the poor Iranians who had been working in the British embassy have become the scapegoats. They will be put on trial for these alleged crimes. It looks as though the EU will present a united front against Iran. They may recall all 27 ambassadors from Tehran. This is the part of the struggle we can follow. What is harder to follow is what is going on within the Guardian Council. Does Janotti's statement mean the moderate clerics have been silenced? A moderate cleric had been scheduled to give the sermon on Friday, but he was replaced by Janotti. And, Rafsanjani, the former president and main suppporter of the opposition, has not preached since May 22. The struggle behind the closed doors may be more important than the struggle which occurred in the streets. Janotti also proclaimed, "We have a global mission." Very scary.

There have been very mixed reviews on Obama's handling of this. Has he been right with his very muted reaction so that the protests can not be tied to the the U.S.? Has he been right to let the EU take the lead in the criticism? Some people think he should have come out strong and quickly against the violent crackdown on the protesters and the obvious fraud in the election.

Any thoughts?

War Crimes/Reconciliation

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Liberia released a report (which it retracted hours later) in which it recommended 52 people be publicly sanctioned for involvement in war crimes. Some names are not a surprise such as General Butt Naked. But, the report also cited President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female president of an African nation. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf! The report was withdrawn hours after its release so there is no explanation for now. But, I also wanted to add a word in defense of Joshua Milton Blayir (General Butt Naked). Although his crimes are despicable, he has really turned his life around and done much good as a pastor of former participants in the war especially former child soldiers. When does rehabilitation and reconcialiation become more important than punishment?

The news article is at http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-07-02-voa31.cfm

Sarah Palin

I tried to resist putting something on here about Sarah Palin's resignation from the governor's post in Alaska. I wanted to keep this for international issues. But, I'm weak; I can't resist. And, besides, she can see Russia from her home state! I listened to her explanation about why she is resigning, and I don't get it. As near as I can follow, she decided not to run for re-election in 2010, therefore she should resign now. Uh? If there is a logic there, I am missing it. And yet, Mary Matalin, the Republican strategist, declared the move "brilliant". What? If she is talking about it being a brilliant political move, then what does that say about politcs?

Nick on YouTube

He's everywhere. YouTube has site called Reporters' Corner where well known reporters give tips and advice about journalism. Our hero (!) gives tips on how to cover a global crisis with his usual humor, but anyone who reads his column will recognize the particular stories he uses as examples.
Any thoughts? Any smiles?

http://www.youtube.com/reporterscenter#play/favorites/2/SVVdH8n5470