The Security Council talks MINURCAT
Last week, the U.N. Security Council discussed the details of the extended mandate for the year-old UN Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad, also known as MINURCAT. In September, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon suggested doubling the number of MINURCAT troops to address increased banditry threats, but many troop- contributing countries were wary of expanding a mission that has to date failed to fulfill its mandate to deal with the humanitarian threat posed by armed groups on Chad’s borders with Sudan’s troubled Darfur region and the northeastern part of the Central African Republic. At the MINURCAT discussion last week, the ...
Bagosora Behind Bars
With human rights crises raging in Sudan, eastern Congo, Somalia, and Zimbabwe, red letter days in the world of international justice can be few and far between. That’s why it’s worth taking a moment to note the conviction of Col. Theoneste Bagosora, one of the masterminds of the Rwandan genocide, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Bagosora, as the highest ranking official in Rwanda’s defense ministry during the genocide, organized and trained the interahamwe militias that carried out most of the killing, oversaw the targeted killing of moderate politicians and opposition leaders, ...
A Congressional Push for Peace in Darfur
Last week several members of Congress sent a bipartisan message to President-elect Obama saying that genocide in Darfur must remain a priority. The Congressmen had recently traveled to the Darfur and commended the future president for his continuing commitment in addressing the crisis that plagues the region. Still, they urged him to press on as president by taking effective steps to bring a real end to the violence that has raged for over six years, despite growing international support. The Congressmen laid out several recommendations in detail including:Reinvorgating the currently broken peace process;Ensuring continued humanitarian access;Providing more effective security for ...
African Solutions?
As the conflict in Zimbabwe worsens, with Mugabe’s police beating nurses and doctors who dared to protest a dangerous cholera epidemic and their own abysmal working conditions, the international outcry has come from predictable quarters. British PM Gordon Brown has called on Mugabe to resign (video here), U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice has said it is “well past time” for Mugabe to go, and the Washington Post editorial board has also called on Mugabe to step down. But now it is time for more Africans to speak up, and they could make the critical difference. South Africa’s diffidence in ...
Other Leaks in the Boat
The media continues to be infatuated with the pirates operating off the coast of Somalia. The swashbuckling Somalis have gotten a lot of media attention, and in terms of media bandwidth, the pirates have gotten much more coverage than the intense violence in eastern Congo and Darfur. To be fair, when you hijack oil tankers and cargo ships full of Ukrainian tanks, it is big news and the stories almost write themselves. But two interesting points have gotten lost among the Pirates of the Caribbean analogies. First, it now seems clear that the Europeans and the U.S. are far more ...
Educate yourself—and your friends and family—about the crisis in Congo
Congo’s conflict remains the world’s deadliest since World War II. Trying to understand what is going on in eastern Congo isn’t always easy, but some excellent resources have emerged as the crisis has dramatically worsened in the past several months: The Economist recently posted an impressive “videographic” on their website. It is an easily digestible, five-minute history lesson that “maps the war in Congo over the past fifteen years” (no small feat). Check out the International Crisis Group’s new multimedia presentation, “Congo Re-erupts,” which features a video interview as well as a conflict timeline, background and a “who’s who” of ...
Predator Drone No Substitute for Diplomacy
Watching from afar as Robert Mugabe drives Zimbabwe from political crisis into economic meltdown into mass cholera epidemic is maddening. So I’m somewhat sympathetic to Richard Cohen’s desire to depose Mugabe by way of Predator drone. But we need to get past the idea that forcibly changing the personalities in charge of nasty regimes is the be-all and end-all of crisis management. As much as some may enjoy the thought of Mugabe receiving his pink slip via airmail, a more realistic approach would be to do some hard thinking about how to mobilize the diplomatic will among regional governments not ...
The Bad Neighborhood Effect
A very interesting map produced by the State Department. The map visually makes the same case that we have long argued: most of Africa’s major conflicts span more than a single border, requiring a more comprehensive diplomatic approach if we hope to solve genocide and war crimes on the continent. In too many regions of Africa, states continue to sponsor proxy militias as a means to undercut their neighbors, fueling a terrible cycle of violence and reprisals. It is no accident that most of the areas where crimes against humanity are most intense are in border areas. This includes the ...
Welcome
Welcome to the Enough Project’s redesigned web site. We at Enough have put a lot of work into the redesign, and we hope you find the new site easier on the eye, more informative, and smoother to navigate. I am also proud to announce our new blog, Enough Said. We will be active bloggers, and we welcome both your comments and insights, and want to make Enough Said a vibrant forum for people talking about some of the most important international issues of the day. One of the key goals of our redesign was to make the site more interactive ...
