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Crilly on Africa: Peace Processes, Prognostications, and Pints

Journalist Rob Crilly’s African Safari blog is becoming a must-bookmark for his combination of first-rate reporting and acerbic wit. Visit for the on-the-ground perspective on the LRA’s activities in northeast Congo, stay for the hilarious predictions about Africa in 2009 (my favorite: Somali pirates buy Djibouti, launch bid for 2020 Olympics) and the useful field guide to the continent’s malt beverages. One qualm: Crilly does not do nearly enough justice to Liberia’s infamous Club lager; a public health specialist once told me he was convinced this beer causes malaria ...

Top humanitarian crises will not cease without political solutions

The humanitarian relief organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders) recently released their annual list of “Top Ten Humanitarian Crises of 2008.” MSF said that many aid organizations are finding it increasingly difficult to help the world’s most vulnerable people due to heightened security risks in “hazardous and threatening environments.” Making the list were the acute humanitarian situations in Somalia, eastern Congo, Sudan, places where aid workers have come under direct attack or faced significant obstacles in delivering relief supplies to ailing populations amidst ongoing violence. MSF also noted: With the release of this list, we ...

More on MSF

In addition to Maggie’s blog above, there is another important point about the MSF “Top Ten” list of humanitarian crises. MSF first compiled this list in in reaction to the underreported famine in southern Sudan. Sadly, ten years later, Sudan is still on the list, now primarily for the situation in Darfur. This underscores the point that most of the profound humanitarian tragedies on the MSF list are distinctly man-made crises, and the situation in Sudan will not substantially improve until the international community deals with the governance problems that lie at the heart of Sudan’s repeated troubles. You can ...

The price of Iraq

Secretary of State Condi Rice was on NBC’s Meet the Press with David Gregory and was asked about Darfur in a fascinating exchange. QUESTION: “Why didn’t we act unilaterally?” SECRETARY RICE: Well, because acting unilaterally in an Arab country – or in a Muslim country that is that complex, that far away, really did not seem to be an option. The President considered it. He thought about it. He thought about what we could do unilaterally. But in fact, instead, we’ve tried to mobilize the international community and international opinion. And frankly, given that just a couple of years ago ...

The Year of the Gorilla

The Year of the Gorilla
On December 1, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) announced the launch of the “Year of the Gorilla.” About a third of the world’s last 700 mountain gorillas live in war-torn eastern Congo. As the New York Times’ Jeffrey Gettleman recently wrote, the plight of Congo’s gorillas is “just the latest crisis within a crisis. The gorillas of Congo happen to live in one of the most contested, blood-soaked pieces of turf in one of the most contested, blood-soaked corners of Africa.” It is certainly a worthy goal to increase international efforts to protect an endangered species. However, some of ...

Slavery in Darfur

Slavery in Darfur
The Darfur Consortium published an alarming report this week documenting the systematic abduction of Darfuri civilians by Janjaweed militias and the Sudanese Armed Forces throughout the Darfur conflict. The report indicates that since 2003, hundreds, possibly thousands, of Darfuris from non-Arabic speaking ethnic groups such as the Fur, Massaleit and Zaghawa, were abducted for the purposes of serving as sex slaves and laborers to the Janjaweed and other Sudanese government-backed militias. One Darfuri woman who was abducted and managed to escape described what happened to her and other women abducted from a displaced camp in 2005: They used us like ...

Those Savvy Chadian Rebels

Those Savvy Chadian Rebels
Former Chadian Defense Minister turned rebel chief Mahamat Nouri announced this week that a coalition of five rebel groups have agreed to a program to establish an “independent judiciary and elections within 18 months” if they succeed in toppling Chadian President Idriss Déby’s government. High-level rebel diplomacy over the past two months between a plethora of rebel factions resulted in the signing of this agreement, which is premised on the rebels’ goal of forceful regime change in Ndjamena. Rebels usually don’t announce their coups in advance, but this is business as usual in Chad, where three coup attempts in the ...

Crisis in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe’s downward spiral continues. The United Nations estimated on Friday that the death toll from the cholera epidemic has reached 1,123, with suspected cases now at 20,896. The New York Times reported today on a recent U.N. survey reported that “7 in 10 people had eaten either nothing or only a single meal the day before.” In November, the U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP) was forced to cut rations to more than four million people in Zimbabwe after receiving “no response” from the international community to aid in feeding the suffering Zimbabwean population (in part because of President Mugabe’s long ...

Cholera Map

Cholera Map
Change.org’s Humanitarian Relief blogger Michael Kleinman has a good USAID map of cholera-affected areas in Zimbabwe, and another map can be found here ...

Trading away conflict in eastern Congo?

Trading away conflict in eastern Congo?
In a New York Times opinion piece former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman J. Cohen proposes a solution to the economic dimension of the conflict in eastern Congo: a common market that would allow Congo’s neighbors to continue to profit from the trade in its natural resources, but with tax revenues accruing to the Congolese government. It’s a promising thought, but in the midst of ever-heightening regional tensions, would President Kabila of Congo or President Kagame of Rwanda really sign on to something like this? Oh wait, they sort of already did. In 2006, 11 regional heads ...