A Kenyan Accord

By Cernig

It looks like the former UN Secretary general, Kofi Annan, has pulled of a diplomatic agreement between Kenya's rival political factions for a power sharing deal.

Annan offered no immediate details on the deal between President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, who both claim to have won the country's Dec. 27 presidential election. Local and international observers have said the results were manipulated, making it unclear who won.

"We have come to an understanding on the coalition government," Annan told reporters. He added: "All I can say is that we do have an agreement."

It's still to early to say this deal will halt the bloodshed and internal feuding which has plagued Kenya since the election, but it's a good sign. To end the feuding on a long-term basis, however, Kenya will have to address a gerrymandered and corrupt system where the two main tribes also happen to be the haves and have-nots.

Kenya Still Burning Despite Political Agreement

By Cernig

Kenya's troubles continue, despite an agreement between feuding politicians to end weeks of bloodshed.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan brokered a deal between Kenya's rival parties on Friday to take immediate steps to end post-election violence which has killed nearly 900 people and displaced more than a quarter of a million.

But the ethnic tensions in Kenya have taken on a momentum of their own, going beyond a standoff over President Mwai Kibaki's disputed December 27 re-election, and despite the politicians' pledges, the violence continued.

Flames soared over slum dwellings belonging to members of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe in the Rift Valley town of Kericho -- around 250 km (155 miles) northwest of the capital Nairobi -- where at least four people have died in fighting in recent days.

Residents dragged out mattresses, cupboards, suitcases and pots and pans, piling them onto carts.

"Let Annan do his bit but there's going to be no resolution. The clashes will continue," said one youth who gave his name as Lefty, manning a roadblock near Kericho where police opened fire to disperse protesters on Friday.

...Pressure on the two sides to reach a deal is intense, both from within Kenya and from the international community.

"Both parties now face a historic responsibility: choose dialogue or bear responsibility for a political and human catastrophe," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said.

Hmmm, national politicians from different sides willing to talk, even deal, but grassroots faction fighting having taken on a life of its own to the point where nothing the politicians say makes a difference. Now where have I heard that before?

If Kenya is really unlucky, by the time the violent militias start to run out of steam, divisions created by bloodshed will be so entrenched that the politicians will refuse to reconcile after all. I hope some breakthrough can be made before that occurs, for their sakes.

United States Of Africa - But Everyone Wants To Be D.C.

By Cernig

The Guardian today has a tongue-in-cheek look at a movement which will still take decades to come to fruition but which has the backing of over 40 member states...the idea of a unified government for Africa.

The United States of Africa. It's one of few concrete plans African leaders agreed on as they struggled with issues of peacekeeping and political disputes at this week's continental summit.

One problem is, so many countries want to be Washington, D.C.

African leaders have been pushing for a continental government for years. And the plan continued to garner widespread support from the 40-odd delegations at the African Union summit that ended Saturday in Ethiopia's capital.

Yet even countries facing disputed elections and conflict at home were loath to suggest they would be anything but a leader of the group - even given the lighthearted question of what U.S. state they most resemble. Their responses highlight pecking order positioning that could keep a federally unified continent from ever becoming a reality.

``Sudan is something like Washington, D.C.,'' said Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, Sudan's ambassador to the United Nations. ``Sudan is always a leader. So we want to have the White House of Africa, the Pentagon of Africa.''

Not so fast, Sudan.

Bamanga Tukur, a native of Nigeria and chairman of the AU's New Partnership for African Development, gave the honor to Ethiopia, the only African nation to have never been colonized.

``Ethiopia can be Washington,'' he said. As for his own, oil-rich nation, Tukur said: ``Nigeria can be Texas. Isn't that nice?''

But, Asked if Addis Ababa - the headquarters of the African Union - might someday become the African Beltway, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was similarly cagey.

``That's in the future,'' he said.

Any such future is far away. Everyone agrees that a unified African government could take decades, and would require many nations to make drastic improvements to governance, infrastructure, poverty and education.

But the stickiest issue is power, so most leaders advocate a slow approach that will let them cement their regional ties and position, analysts say. Others - notably, formerly isolationist Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade - have called for quicker integration, which might favor their more established governments.

``Obviously, power politics are taking place throughout the continent,'' said Kenneth Mpyisi, director of the Institute for Security Studies, a think tank in Addis Ababa. ``We have various regional powers in different parts of the continent. ... They would obviously want to retain a certain amount of power in their sphere of influence.''

Personally, I think what's more likely to emerge is a supra-antional, rather than supernational, organisation. Think European Community style rather than U.S.A. style. But still, the very fact that this idea has momentum behind it despite the various powerplays and national differences means a lot for the African continent. It's a hope for the future at a time when much of Africa seems to need hope very much indeed.

It will be interesting to see which major powers back this coming transition wholeheartedly, which try to play it to their own advantage and which try to stop it dead in its tracks.

Kenya

By Cernig

I confess to knowing next to nothing about what's going on in Kenya right now but I plan on changing that, starting today. I'm going to be doing a lot of reading.

As the African Union's commission chairman said today, Kenya used to be "the hope of a continent" - a third world nation bootstrapping it's way to success. Now it's a mess, with over 850 dead and a de facto civil war after contested elections. The AU commission chairman told a summit of African leaders:

"If Kenya burns, there will be nothing for tomorrow...Today, if you look at Kenya you see violence on the streets. We are even talking about ethnic cleansing. We are even talking about genocide. We cannot sit here with our hands folded."

I know a fair bit about Iraq and Afghanistan because both the US and UK are militarily involved there. I follow events on Iran, Syria, North Korea, China, Russia and others because both nations are involved in negotiations or might get militarily involved there. But I'm embarrassed as hells that an African success story can turn into a failed state almost overnight and I don't know enough to comment. Time to rectify my mistake.

Update The IPS' archive of recent reports on Kenya's chaos seems a good place to start. Especially this "Kenya’s Problem Goes Beyond Ethnicity and Elections":

There is more to Kenya’s post-election violence than a bungled vote count and so-called tribal rivalries. As protests degenerate into organised ethnic violence in Rift Valley towns and countryside, the root-cause of the unrest lies elsewhere.

"We must tackle the fundamental issues underlying the disturbances -- like equitable distribution of resources -- or else we will be back here again after three or four years," former U.N. chief Kofi Annan told journalists in Nairobi’s Serena Hotel Sunday, after talking to survivors of the violence which has claimed over 1,000 lives and displaced some 250,000 people since the December election.

Though Annan’s mediation to initiate a structured dialogue between President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga is making progress -- Kibaki and Odinga shook one another’s hands last week and vowed to continue a dialogue to resolve the crisis -- the wave of violence has taken on its own dynamics.

Even if Kibaki, a Kikuyu, and Odinga, a Luo, were to make peace and reach a power-sharing deal down the line, the chronic economic and political root- causes of the tribal violence would not go away.

"Its characterisation as a tribal enmity is simplistic -- access to land, housing, and water are the real issues that appear in the guise of ethnicity and are triggered by political disputes," said a Danish aid worker who was part of an emergency assessment team in the Rift Valley. "There is an unmistakable class dimension to the turmoil in Kenyan society," the aid worker said, wishing to remain anonymous.

"Only one category of people had come out to protest against the electoral irregularities: the poorest of the poor, the jobless, and the landless. People from only one class are seen to be committing violence and registering resentment against poll cheating," says Millicent Ogutu, who works at a Nairobi-based media company.

In Nairobi, the only sites of trouble throughout the post-election spree of violence have been the slums of Kibera, Mathare, and other shantytowns. This pattern is visible also in other troubled regions, such as Kisumu in Odinga’s home province of Nyanza, and in the Rift Valley towns of Eldoret, Molo, Nakuru, and Naivasha.

It looks like Kenya's success was more akin to a swan's swmming - everything placid on the surface and a whole lot of undignified kicking going on underneath.

African Command Can't Find African Home

By Cernig

The US military's African command cannot find an African nation willing to host it, and will stay in Germany for the forseeable future. This story is flying under everyone's radar and yet I think it's one of the most clearcut examples yet of the damage the Bush presidency has done to America on the world stage.

A year after President George W. Bush approved its creation, the new U.S. military command for Africa is finding its feet but has quietly dropped talk of basing itself on the African continent.

Largely carved out of U.S. European Command, based in Stuttgart, Germany, the new Africa Command (Africom) will stay there for now as its leaders try to switch the debate away from the controversial headquarters issue and on to the "added value" it aims to bring to Africa.

"In the near to mid-term, and for the foreseeable future, we're going to be here and from here we can do all the activities that we need to do with our African partners," Africom's deputy commander, Vice Admiral Robert Moeller, said in an interview on Monday in Stuttgart.

Where U.S. officials once spoke confidently of plans to base the command in Africa, shared between several countries, they now stress the multiple conditions that would need to be fulfilled.

"If it's in the desire and the interests of our African partners in that regard then we'll look for an opportunity to do that where it makes sense to do so, but only obviously where we're invited," Moeller said.

The caution stems from the unwelcoming reaction of several African nations, including regional powers South Africa and Nigeria, to the notion of Africom setting up on their patch.

Africom found itself having to justify its ambitious mission -- in Bush's words, to promote peace, security and "our common goals of development, health, education, democracy and economic growth in Africa" -- in the face of widespread opposition and scepticism.

Critics have suggested its real motives are thirst for oil -- West African producers are expected to supply a quarter of U.S. consumption by 2015 -- and the desire to counter growing Chinese influence on the continent.

African nations have more reason than most to be sceptical of major powers' intentions, to be sure, but what does it say that they're more afraid of American hegemony than of the terrorist menace?

Morocco - 6 Men Jailed Over Cross-Dressing Party

By Cernig

Hey Rudy G, don't go anywhere near Morocco:

A Moroccan appeal court on Tuesday upheld the convictions of six men jailed for homosexual acts after video images of a man dressed as a woman dancing at a party sparked street protests and a police investigation, lawyers said.

The six were arrested in late November after rumours spread that a party they had held in the northern town of Ksar el Kebir was really an illegal gay wedding.

The national press pounced on the story, and Islamist groups condemned what they saw as an attack on public morals and demanded an official investigation.

Hundreds of angry residents marched through Ksar el Kebir to demand "justice" and put pressure on the authorities to hand out harsh sentences.

The six men were found guilty and given jail sentences by a lower court last month. They had all pleaded not guilty.

The appeal court upheld a 10-month sentence against the party's alleged organiser, identified as F., for homosexuality and the illegal sale of alcohol, defence lawyer Mohamed Sebbar said.

The five others had their jail terms cut to between two and four months from between four and six months, he said. All six had pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Note there's no proof of the alleged "crimes" other than one guy in a frock.

Were this Iran, I find myself thinking, faux-outrage warmongers like Malkin would already be on this one like flies on horseapples. Iran has a truly shabby human rights record, it's true, and one that should be loudly condemned by the world, but what they do turns true protest at such a record into just more ammunition in the ongoing campaign to demonise that nation and pave the way for public acceptance of attacks.

But Morocco?

Morocco has been designated a major non-Nato US ally by President Bush, in recognition of the country's support in the US-led war on terror.
The category also includes Israel, Egypt, Kuwait, and pro-western Asian nations.

The designation is expected to make it easier for American companies to sell arms to Morocco.

The US is also expected to sign a free-trade agreement with Morocco later this month.

Ah well, that's different.

France Does Algerian Nuke Deal

By Cernig

I just thought it was interesting that France - which is saying the new NIE makes no difference to treatment of Iran - has today signed a nuclear deal with Algeria (and a deal for a big petrochem complex too). It's an axiom of European politics that the French only ever do what serves France - so what's in it for France if Iran keeps taking a beating from sanctions? This deal may give a hint.

(As an aside, Sarkozy has a more personal Algerian problem - his son is embroilled in a legal scandal involving a scooter. Police and three judges have apparently gone out of their way to make his life easier after he was accused of leaving the scene of an accident. And US conservatives wonder why little things like this, part of a pattern, might be taken as bigotry by the poor in the suburbs.)

Somalia fragmentation and piracy

One of the reasons why I believed that the US decision to support Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia to dispose the ICU regime in Mogadishu is my belief that the greatest threat to US interests is not identifiable, track able and potentially deterrable Islamic leaning regimes that had a limited but real monopoly of force within their regions. Instead it is systemic breakdown of authority and the de-legitimatizing of the concept of a monopoly on the use of force.

The Ethiopian invasion was able through a competent combined arms campaign defeat the very lightly armed and poorly trained ICU forces, and impose in Mogadishu the UN recognized Interim government. However this government was composed of the losing side of a long standing clan based fight in Mogadishu and the rest of Southern Somalia and has not been seen as especially legitimate especially after it has demonstrated an inability to maintain the same level of physical security in the capital that the ICU maintained. And now we have continued fragmentation and dispersion of power with a weak central government that is incapable of projecting its monopoly on force beyond its garrisons.

Somalian piracy is on the upswing again as no current land based power is able to exert its authority over the ports.

Somali pirates captured another foreign cargo vessel off Mogadishu port and seized its crew in the second attack since the weekend along one of the world's most dangerous waterways, a maritime official said on Tuesday.....

On Sunday, pirates hijacked a Japanese-owned chemical tanker off Somalia with 23 people on board. Four other boats -- a Comoros-registered cargo ship, two Tanzanian fishing vessels, and a ship from Taiwan -- are also being held by armed groups.

Without central government since 1991, Somalia's waters have become among the world's most perilous despite calls for international action to patrol them.

Piracy in and of itself is not a significant threat to global trade both because of the limited reach of the Somali pirates and the global policing mechanisms of the world's navies (Robert Farley at LGM has some interesting things to say here on USN force structure), but it is a sympton of general lawlessness and disconnection from global rule sets and norms that overwhelmingly benefit the United States. Furthermore piracy increases the costs of trade to a very poor region, which means far less trade, far higher probabilities of localized famines, and far more support for whichever groups have the social, and fiscal capital to deliver basic public goods and services. Disconnecting Somalia from the global network is only slightly smarter than disconnecting southern Afghanistan.

UPDATE For a good read on the current Ethiopian counterinsurgency 'success' that is unconstrained by us defeatocrats, go read Northman's Fury! [Sorry for only checking this out after I wrote the post :) ]

2,400 Miners Rescued In South Africa

By Cernig

I've not seen anything at all on the blogs about the story of 3,200 South African gold miners trapped 1.4 miles underground. It's certainly a dramatic story. A 36-hour rescue operation has successfully lifted all but 800 of the miners from underground - but 200 of the remaining trapped are women.

The incident has been a wake up call for South Africa's mining industry.

Both the company and the mining union said better safety standards were needed at the pit near Carletonville, southwest of Johannesburg. Company chairman Patrice Motsepe described the accident as a "wake up call to all of us".

Production at the mine was halted shortly after the accident.

Minister of Minerals and Energy Buyelwa Sonjica, who this week visited a mine operated by AngloGold Ashanti where four workers were killed in a rock fall, ordered the mine closed for six weeks.

"The mine must be closed until the shaft is repaired to give us certainty that the situation is safe," Sonjica told Reuters at the mine. "So, it will be closed for six weeks and we will monitor the kind of repair before it can reopen."

The miners were caught after an air pipe broke off and hurtled down the shaft, damaging steelwork and severing an electrical cable carrying power to the main lift, Briggs said.

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) blamed poor safety standards and Harmony's practice of mining 24 hours a day.

"We suspect negligence. Because of continuous operations there is no time to make adequate checks," NUM President Senzeni Zokwana told reporters.

Harmony dismissed the allegations of negligence although Motsepe said additional measures were needed to protect workers. "Our safety records both as a company and as a country leave much to be desired," he told reporters.

South African gold mines are the deepest in the world and unions have often criticised companies for not doing enough to ensure workers' safety.

Gold mine operations have come under scrutiny over the past few months after a series of accidents. Companies are mining ever deeper to reach remaining seams and reap the benefits of a sharply higher bullion price.

The absence of blogging on this seems a bit strange to me. Recent mine accidents in the U.S.A. have been very bloggable. Why isn't this story getting any coverage?