War and corruption in the Congo

The future for Africa does look bright except for a couple of trouble spots. One of the most troubling is the Republic of Congo. War has plagued the nation for many years, and there is some suspicion that neighboring countries are contributing to the fighting.

Also creating trouble in Congo is the terribly corrupt government that is supported by western aid money.

A couple of stories today help explain what is going on in the Congo. First, we look at how western aid has failed the country, then a story on how corruption has kept the population of Congo hungry.

For the western aid angle, we turn to the Guardian and this commentary by Richard Dowden.

The knee-jerk reaction of Britain and other western countries is therefore to give Congo aid. And the only way of spending 0.7% of our GDP on aid is to give it to governments. But has Congo got a government? In 1997 the remnants of the Mobutu regime were pushed out by the armies of Rwanda and Uganda. They replaced him with Laurent Kabila, a former revolutionary and cafe owner, living in exile. When he rejected the Rwandans' tutelage, they had him murdered and replaced him with his son, Joseph.

To legitimise Joseph Kabila the aid donors paid for and organised two elections, each costing more than a billion dollars. In 2011 that came out of a national budget of £4.6 billion ($7.3 billion). The elections satisfied the western political need to give Kabila international legitimacy so he could now receive aid. But the elections in Congo divided rather than united. The losers saw them as fraudulent.

After the election supporters were rewarded, opponents shunned but they live in different parts of the country so a small war broke out. At the very moment when the country needed to come together, the western solution deepened the divisions. It also handed total political and economic power to a greedy elite incapable of constructing a viable state – even, as one Congolese academic said, in their own narrow interests.

What has wrecked the Congo is not lack of aid. It is politics. Aid has probably made things worse by offering development which may never be delivered. There is no state capable of delivering it. If ever there was a case for a country to be under a UN mandate, it is Congo. The United Nations' current half-baked, ill-thought-out mandate was cruelly exposed last week as UN troops stood back to allow rebels to take the city of Goma in eastern Congo.

But there was a second, even more catastrophic contradiction in western policy. After the Rwandan genocide, western governments, ridden with guilt, supported the incoming Rwandan regime, a rebel group led by the charismatic Paul Kagame. He now runs a capable state – perhaps too capable. Rwanda is a tightly controlled dictatorship, with almost no press or political freedom. But it uses aid well, it is not stolen. A succession of British aid ministers from Clare Short to Andrew Mitchell see Kagame as the saviour of Africa. They gave him money – currently £83m a year, knowing it will be spent on education, health and other good things.

Next, a story on how corruption within the Congo government is causing inflation and hunger from IRIN. 

The Republic of Congo, which imports over US$240 million worth of food a year, has seen sharply rising staple food and fuel prices since the beginning of 2012, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and a local consumer rights body.

A 25-litre tin of vegetable oil which sold in January 2012 for the equivalent of $32, is now going for $50, while less than 5kg of cassava has gone up from $1 to $2.6, according to Dieudonné Moussala, chairman of the Consumer Rights Association.

He also said the price of a litre of kerosene had risen from 70 US cents to $2.6 on the black market in the same period.

"I now buy a kilo of meat from the slaughterhouse for 3,500 CFA francs [$7], whereas it used to cost less than 2,000 [$4],” Carine Moutombo, 32, a mother of three, told IRIN.

"It is difficult to get by and eat one’s fill. The cooking money is no longer enough," said Moutombo.

"All the prices of imported frozen products have increased because of corruption in the supply chain [from entry at the port of Pointe-Noire to small retailers]," said Moussala.

"There are too many unofficial taxes and too many checkpoints in the supply chain. Retailers and other importers are corrupt at all levels. In the end, they pass on any losses to poor consumers - hence the surge in commodity prices," said Moussala.

"While we have not found the solution to all the problems [related to imports]… We still have a long way to go. That is why our country’s struggle against food insecurity is key in terms of public policy," said Minister of Agriculture and Livestock Rigobert Maboundou in April. According to him the Congo is a "food-deficit country".

To limit imports and ensure food security, Congo launched in 2010 a US$26 million project to build "new agricultural villages". With this project, "we have halved the import bill for eggs. We produced 6.6 million eggs in 2011, while imports are estimated at 13 million eggs per year," said Maboundou.

In 2011, Congo also leased 180,000 hectares of arable land to a group of South African farmers who have managed to plant 1,200 hectares of maize.

"The Congo imports almost half of the essential commodities it needs. You need to know this to understand current soaring prices. Imported products contain imported inflation,” André Kamba, chief of staff at the Ministry of Trade and Supply, told IRIN.

450,000 people yet to return to the Ivory Coast

It happens over and over again in an armed conflict, the people are quick to leave but slow to return. The displaced people often go on living as refugees for years and years. They begin to grow dependent on aid groups because they can't establish their own livelihood in a different country.

OXFAM tells us that 450,000 people still remain refugees after the Ivory Coast conflict from earlier this year. With the story no longer in the international headlines, the aid groups are running out of food and water to provide for them.

From Reuters Alert Net, we read the latest assessment of the Ivory Coast refugees.

Although some half a million Ivorians have returned to their homes since the end of the conflict in April, 450,000 Ivorians remain displaced inside and outside the country -- the world's top cocoa grower -- according to a report by aid agencies Oxfam, the Danish Refugee Council and Care.

The International Rescue Committee said on Wednesday some of the displaced were sheltering in communities within Ivory Coast while others were in camps in neighbouring Liberia.

"Six months on, the majority of the 170,000 Ivorians who fled to Liberia are reluctant to go back due to persisting insecurity in parts of western Ivory Coast and concerns about targeted attacks by ethnic or political rivals. They remain in precarious conditions in camps and communities," the IRC said in a statement.

Ivory Coast's five-month post-election crisis ended when former president Laurent Gbagbo, who tried to cling on to power despite losing an election in November, was ousted by forces loyal to current President Alassane Ouattara.

Catastrophe in the Congo; of American making

One obscure provision in the US Wall Street market bailout law has had a big impact on theRepublic of Congo economy. A Sunday op-ed piece in the New York Times says that the provision has harmed the fortunes of the most vulnerable in the Congo.

The author of the op-ed is David Aronson, a freelance writer who blogs at Congo Resources. Aronson says that one part of the Frank-Dodd act of 2010 has hurt small miners in the DRC. Companies now must make sure that minerals they buy for computers and cell phones don't benefit the warlords of the Congo. The law has had an unintended effect of stopping mining operations in the Congo. Many poor laborers depended on their mining jobs for a small income.

From the New York Times piece, Aronson traveled to the Congo to illustrate the harmful effects of the law.

Unfortunately, the Dodd-Frank law has had unintended and devastating consequences, as I saw firsthand on a trip to eastern Congo this summer. The law has brought about a de facto embargo on the minerals mined in the region, including tin, tungsten and the tantalum that is essential for making cellphones.

The smelting companies that used to buy from eastern Congo have stopped. No one wants to be tarred with financing African warlords — especially the glamorous high-tech firms like Apple and Intel that are often the ultimate buyers of these minerals. It’s easier to sidestep Congo than to sort out the complexities of Congolese politics — especially when minerals are readily available from other, safer countries.

For locals, however, the law has been a catastrophe. In South Kivu Province, I heard from scores of artisanal miners and small-scale purchasers, who used to make a few dollars a day digging ore out of mountainsides with hand tools. Paltry as it may seem, this income was a lifeline for people in a region that was devastated by 32 years of misrule under the kleptocracy of Mobutu Sese Seko (when the country was known as Zaire) and that is now just beginning to emerge from over a decade of brutal war and internal strife.

The pastor at one church told me that women were giving birth at home because they couldn’t afford the $20 or so for the maternity clinic. Children are dropping out of school because parents can’t pay the fees. Remote mining towns are virtually cut off from the outside world because the planes that once provisioned them no longer land. Most worrying, a crop disease periodically decimates the region’s staple, cassava. Villagers who relied on their mining income to buy food when harvests failed are beginning to go hungry.

Meanwhile, the law is benefiting some of the very people it was meant to single out. The chief beneficiary is Gen. Bosco Ntaganda, who is nicknamed The Terminator and is sought by the International Criminal Court. Ostensibly a member of the Congolese Army, he is in fact a freelance killer with his own ethnic Tutsi militia, which provides “security” to traders smuggling minerals across the border to neighboring Rwanda.

Somali children suffer famine now, but suffer war always

Children are facing death in Somalia now because of the famine gripping the country. Amnesty International reminds us today that  danger is not new for those children. In the war that continuously wages in the country, children are often recruited to fight on the front-lines.

From Reuters Alert Net, writer Katie Nguyen relays the statement from Amnesty.

"As a child in Somalia, you risk death all the time: you can be killed, recruited and sent to the frontline, punished by al Shabaab because you are caught listening to music or 'wearing the wrong clothes', be forced to fend for yourself because you have lost your parents or even die because you don't have access to adequate medical care," Michelle Kagari, Amnesty's deputy director for Africa, said in a statement.

"This is a never-ending conflict where children are experiencing unimaginable horrors on a daily basis," she added. "They risk becoming a lost generation if the world continues to ignore the war crimes affecting so many of them."

Amnesty blamed both government forces and Islamist groups for recruiting child soldiers, a practice that has increased since fighting escalated in 2006.

Fear of recruitment was increasingly being cited by Somali refugees as a reason for fleeing the country, according to the report which is based on interviews with refugees in Kenya and Djibouti in 2009 and in Kenya in 2010 – before drought in Somalia reached emergency levels.

It said al Shabaab were sending children to recruit other children to its ranks, as well as luring them with promises of phones and money. The group were also using threats, raids on schools and abductions to bolster their numbers.

Children were also being trained to handle firearms, grenades and improvised explosive devices, Amnesty said.

Train attack targets Southern Sudanese returning home

An Arab militia group hailing from Northern Sudan attacked a train carrying southern Sudanese nationals. The people attacked were returning to Southern Sudan for the declaration of independence this July 9th. One person died in the latest battle that has flared up since the South voted to become independent earlier this year.

Northern Arab forces have been attacking the African Nubian tribe who live in along the new boarder of north and South Sudan.

From the BBC, we read more about the continued fighting in Sudan.

A UN spokeswoman said the train was attacked by Misseriya gunmen in South Kordofan state on Sunday, although this was denied by a Misseriya leader.

At least 70,000 people have fled recent fighting in South Kordofan, which borders South Sudan.

Tension has been rising ahead of the south's independence next month.

Another 100,000 people have been forced from their homes after fighting in the disputed town of Abyei, near South Kordofan.
...

"A train transport of southern Sudanese returnees going from Kosti to Wau was attacked by Misseriya militia," said UN spokeswoman Hua Jiang.

However, Misseriya leader Mohamed Omer al-Ansary said the attack had been carried out by rebels in the neighbouring region of Darfur, where a separate conflict broke out in 2003.

An ugly armed conflict in Sudan

We have focused so much on food security lately that some of the humanitarian crises have not had much space on this blog. A post from the Texas in Africa blog this morning reminded us that there is no greater crisis that in Sudan. Since the beginning of June, the mostly Arab northern Sudan government has targeted attacks against the African Nuba tribe. Half a million people have fled the fighting since it began and 3,000 people have disappeared.

From the Guardian, writer Julie Flint gives us this assessment of this truly ugly conflict.

The fighting has significantly increased the chances that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the civil war six years ago will collapse, reigniting a north-south war and ending all hopes of peaceful partition when oil-rich South Sudan formally declares itself independent on 9 July.

Many Nuba fought alongside the southern rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in the 22-year war. As black Africans within the Arabised north of Sudan, their hope was that the "New Sudan" promised by the SPLA would end their marginalisation and win respect for Nuba languages, religious observances and culture. The war that began in the 1980s in the Nuba region of South Kordofan was not just a footnote to the war in the south, it was a civil war in its own right, a deep-rooted indigenous rebellion that prompted a declaration of jihad by the Khartoum government in January 1992. Villages were burnt, livestock raided, food stores destroyed and hundreds of thousands of Nuba forced into "peace camps". But the Nuba were short-changed in the CPA. It denied them self-rule and, crucially, did not specify what would happen to the 30,000-strong Nuba rebel army enrolled in the SPLA.

On 5 June, as the Sudanese government army prepared to "control" – disarm – Nuba fighters, fighting erupted in South Kordofan's capital, Kadugli, and spread quickly across most of the region. The battle for Kadugli became a street-by-street war of attrition: Khartoum piled in brigades of regulars and irregulars, and the SPLA relentlessly mortared the army's divisional headquarters.

UN reports seen by the Observer state that "human rights abuses are commonplace and part of the strategy" in the new Nuba war. There are "door-to-door searches, presumably for SPLA elements"; "wide-scale exactions against unarmed civilians with specific targeting of African tribes"; looting of relief offices and warehouses; and "sightings of cattle-trucks with people sitting on their floors, with sentries guarding them".

"They take the young men," one official said. "Are they going to detain them and feed them and give them water for months? I don't think so."

Four days into the war, the United Nations Mission in Sudan (Unmis) warned in an internal report that a humanitarian crisis was already developing "of a magnitude that Unmis… is not sufficiently prepared to counter and the UN agencies are unprepared to deal with".

On Thursday the Nuba leader, Abdelaziz Adam al-Hilu, told African Union (AU) mediators frantically crafting a ceasefire agreement that more than 3,000 people have disappeared – either killed or their whereabouts unknown – "because they are Nuba or belong to the SPLA". He said 400,000-500,000 have been displaced, in a population of approximately 2.5 million, and more than 50 towns had been bombed.

Nailing the perpetrators of post-election violence in Nigeria

From IRIN, a story on seeking justice from the post-election violence in Nigeria.

Following post-election violence in which an estimated 800 people were killed and 65,000 displaced, according to Human Rights Watch, state prosecutors need to follow through on arrests to try perpetrators and seek justice, rather than initiating new commissions of inquiry that will go nowhere, say civil society and human rights groups.

“These crimes were state-level crimes - a federal-level inquiry is useless,” said Innocent Chukwuma, director of the Centre for Law Enforcement Education (CLEEN) in Lagos. According to Chukwuma, the governor of Bauchi State in the north recently announced that 600 people involved in violence there had been arrested. “If you have arrested this many, why set up an investigative panel - the next stage is to take them to court and try them,” he told IRIN.

Violence broke out in northern Nigeria on 17 April as election results emerged announcing incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan in the lead, causing supporters of opposition presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari, a northern Muslim from the Congress for Progressive Change, to protest. Protests degenerated into sectarian and ethnic riots in northern states.

The impetus for much of the violence was at least partly driven by widespread anger among northern youths who feel marginalized by their leaders, say analysts. “The ugly situations is a combination of poverty, loss of public confidence in elections… with the electorate feeling they would not get justice from election tribunals, and the inability of political leaders to manage communal and interfaith relations,” said Iheoma Obibi, director of NGO Alliance for Africa, and an accredited election observer.

Most of the victims were killed in three days of rioting in 12 northern states - Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Niger, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara.

Commissions of inquiry

President Jonathan has set up a 22-person commission of inquiry into the violence, but analysts remain sceptical it will lead to anything.

Numerous committees and commissions of inquiry set up by state and federal governments to investigate election-related killings over the past decade have resulted in few to no prosecutions, according to Human Rights Watch and other groups.

Some 300 people were killed after the 2007 elections, but only a few were tried, reports Human Rights Watch.

The government sets up commissions so that it can be seen to be doing something, CLEEN’s Chukwuma told Human Rights Watch. “Panels of inquiry have become a tunnel through which the government runs away from their responsibility to bring the culprits of violence to book”… ”Going to these panels buys the government time and when the problems drop from the headlines they go back to business as usual.”

By supplanting police investigations into the violence, these government panels risk doing more harm than good, Eric Guttschuss, researcher with Human Rights Watch, told IRIN.

Police accountability

A number of the deaths in Kaduna State were attributed to the police and military, according to Kaduna-based human rights group, the Civil Rights Congress.

In Kaduna’s capital, Zaria, residents alleged that on 19 April, soldiers and police stormed into homes rounding up young men suspected of taking part in the riots following tip-offs; shooting them, and dumping their bodies in hospital morgues. Sabiu Mohammed, a resident who was among volunteers who went around hospitals in the city, said they recovered 19 bodies in four hospitals.

Precedent indicates most of the police and military involved will not be charged, reports Human Rights Watch.

Of the 700 who died following Jos elections in 2008, military and police leaders were thought to have been involved in 133 cases of unlawful killing, but no one was prosecuted, said Guttschuss.

Police and military were again involved in extrajudicial killings, including public executions outside police headquarters, in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, in July 2009 during a crackdown on the supporters of radical religious group Boko Haram. Not a single police officer was prosecuted, said Guttschuss.

In the April 2011 violence, rights groups heard accounts of police and soldiers in Kaduna, Gombe and Bauchi states systematically beating people they had rounded up after the riots, according to Civil Rights Congress.

Security sector reform to improve accountability in the sector has been attempted by the government but it has been “half-hearted” and “episodic” said CLEEN's Chukwuma.

Spokespersons from the police and military have repeatedly stressed they were just doing their job to keep the peace. Kaduna State governor spokesperson Reuben Buhari dismissed reports of police violence: “These accusations are without basis and are a deliberate attempt to smear the image of the security personnel who have done an excellent job of restoring and maintaining peace in the state,” he told IRIN.

To break the cycle of impunity, states and security sector leaders should put their own houses in order, rather than rely on politicized government-led investigations, Chukwuma told IRIN.

One precedent with evidence of success was an internal panel of inquiry set up by the deputy commissioner of police following the killing of traders in the capital, Abuja, in 2005. It identified individual police officers behind the killings and put them on trial; while the government paid compensation to the victims.

Such internal investigations are more likely to produce results than politicized, government-led investigations, he added.

Video: Children scarred by Libya conflict

From Al Jazeera, a video that shows how the armed conflict in Libya is affecting the country's children.

Video: Nigeria violence escalates

From Al Jazeera, a video on the escalating post-election violence in Nigeria and the humanitarian crisis it has caused.

Blemishes and blessings in the Nigerian elections

From IRIN, a story that has more details on the latest election in Nigeria and the violence that may still come from it.

Analysts say the initial round of parliamentary elections, which began on 9 April, have been more transparent than the country’s past three elections, which were marred by violence and irregularities, but nonetheless, evidence of candidates in some towns employing desperate measures, including vote-buying, has emerged.

According to Shehu Dalhatu, director of the Centre for Democratic Research and Training (CDRT) in the northern city of Kano, candidates for the 9 April legislative elections recruited agents who hung around a few metres from polling stations offering money for votes. In some cases candidates demanded Muslim voters swear on the Koran that they would not change their mind once in the polling booth.

Akibu Dalhatu of Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), a local group in Jigawa state that has been involved in election monitoring in Nigeria since 1999, told IRIN that when monitoring the polls: “I witnessed politicians [in villages in Jigawa] openly offering money to voters at polling stations to cast their votes in favour of their candidates and many voters took the money with the promise to vote for the politicians’ candidates.”

“Most of the voters approached were women who are mostly illiterate with no voter education and therefore more gullible to such offers,” he told IRIN.

Politicians also went door-to-door offering food, soap, clothes and money to potential voters, residents of the northern city of Kano told IRIN. “I was offered a wax fabric and 500 naira [US$3.3] which I collected, but I voted for the candidate of my choice,” Fatima Musa, a 35-year-old voter in Kano, told IRIN.

In previous elections, voters in northern Nigeria would often wear leaves on their heads to advertise that their vote was for sale, and would openly haggle with candidates’ representatives over the price.

The practice is evidence of disillusionment with the elections’ process. “After voting several times, and their electoral wishes have been flaunted through election rigging, many voters feel their votes do not count and will take money to vote,” TMG director Festus Okoye told IRIN. “Coupled with excruciating poverty and illiteracy, these voters would readily part with their votes for some paltry financial gain.”

Yahaya Badda, a 65-year-old farmer in the northern city of Sokoto, declared his vote was for sale.

“I have been voting since the 1960s during the first republic, but good leaders have deserted Nigeria since then, and now my vote is for sale... I’m ready to give my vote for 2,000 naira [$13] which is better than wasting my time in casting a vote that will not count.”

Nick Dazen, spokesman for Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, told IRIN: “We are aware that some people do sell their votes, but the electoral law doesn’t empower us to sanction [punish] such people. The best we can do is to appeal to their patriotic instinct not to exchange their votes for money and ensure they vote for the right candidate.”

More transparency

Despite irregularities in some cases, Nigerians are more engaged in this elections’ process than they have been in previous years, said Nasir Abbas, a civil society activist with the Civil Rights Congress in the northern city of Kaduna.

"Procedurally, [elections in Nigeria] used to be an affair of thuggery. Street vagabonds were put in charge of this [rigging and intimidation] and a lot of upper class citizens didn't go out to vote… [But] the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) has been unpopular [in recent years] so now a lot of people are voting… Elites, the downtrodden... people are determined to have an upright process,” said Abbas.

Civil society watchdog groups including the Abuja-based coalition known as the Elections Situation Room, say electoral reforms initiated under the leadership of respected elections commission chief Attahiru Jega have enabled greater transparency in the 2011 polls. International observer groups also praised the polls as the most credible since 1999.

One of the new regulations allows voters to remain at the polls after casting their ballots in order to observe the counting procedure, making it more difficult for fraudsters to manipulate the results. In other cases, observers have used SMS technology to report real-time on irregularities.

Presidential race

However, Oladayo Olaide of the Open Society Institute in the capital, Abuja, said victories of opposition candidates in the country's commercial capital Lagos and in some areas of the "core North" could push the ruling PDP to "become more desperate, which could mean [the party] could come out with new tricks" on 16 April when the presidential elections take place.

It is not beyond the ruling party to employ "all manner of tricks” if politicians feel their power could be taken by voters casting ballots against them in the upcoming polls, said Olaide.

Given the simmering Muslim-Christian tensions in many Nigerian cities - including Kaduna in 2002, and more recently, Jos - a spike in conflict related to the outcome of the presidential vote is not out of the question, especially given that many citizens blame their own political leaders for prolonging the crisis in the Middle Belt region.

At least 70 people were killed in political violence in the run-up to the current elections, according to Human Rights Watch, while more than 14,800 have allegedly been killed in inter-communal, political and sectarian violence in the past 12 years.

On 16 April voters will choose between President Goodluck Jonathan from the southern Niger delta region, and his two main rivals, both from the Muslim north - Muhammadu Buhari and Nuhu Ribadu.

Video: Fear of further violence in Nigeria

From Al Jazeera, a video that brings us the latest on the political fueled violence in Nigeria.

Video: Thousands displaced by Ivorian violence

From Al Jazeera, a video about the continuing violence in Cote d'Ivoire.

Video: Gaddafi pushes back against rebels

From Al Jazeera, a video that brings us the latest details of the armed conflict in Libya.

Video: Gadhafi Forces Hit Central Libya Oil Facilities

From the Associated Press, a video about Gadhafi forces hitting a main oil pipeline in central Libya.

Civil war and humanitarian crisis... in Côte D'Ivoire

Another African country besides Libya is on the verge of civil war and humanitarian crisis.Over 200,000 people have fled Côte D'Ivoire to escape fighting over a disputed presidential election.

From the IPS, writer Fulgence Zamblé collects first person reports from a few of the refugees.

Where people have remained behind, they have been deprived of food by the closure of markets. Water and electricity supplies have been cut off and schools are effectively closed throughout the territory.

In the west of the country, according to international humanitarian organisations, around 65,000 Ivorian refugees have crossed the frontier and been registered in neighbouring Liberia in the last two weeks.

All of these are people fleeing the escalating violence and confrontation over the past two months between the two rival parties who claim victory in the presidential election of November 2010 in Côte d'Ivoire. Laurent Gbagbo was announced as the winner by the Constitutional council, while Ouattara was declared winner by the Independent Electoral Commission and is recognised as such by the international community.

"We have spent three sleepless nights because of fighting. It's impossible to find food," Adrienne Tohoua, 35-year-old mother of four told IPS. Tohoua abandoned her house in Abobo PK 18, a precarious precinct in the north of the capital, home to more than 50,000 residents.

"We left several people behind who didn't know where to go and they would have been exposed to the fighting. Mortar shells fell among the houses and would have spared no one," she said, tears in her eyes.

Three hundred refugees have taken shelter in the Saint-Ambroise de Cocody-Angré parish in the city's northeast. Some 500 others have already passed through, on their way to other locations. Every day, displaced people file along the road towards this religious site.

"I have come eight kilometres to reach here. I'm going to rest briefly before returning to the road to reach my older brother who is already sheltering 13 people at his house," explained Séraphin Téty, holding his sixty-year old father by the hand. "He suffers from hypertension, so we need to find a health centre so we can manage his condition."

Many of the displaced lack the financial means to pay to flee. "I have a little in the bank, but it's closed. I have to move part of my family to the village and I find myself unable to pay for it," said Marcellin Tanoh.

Ivory Coast on the edge of civil war

A military blunder in the Ivory Coast may push the country into civil war. During a peaceful protest, seven women were massacred when security forces randomly fired into the crowd.

From the Guardian, writers Pauline Bax and David Smith give us the latest details.

The women's demonstration became a scene of terror when security forces opened fire with machine guns in Abobo, a sprawling, impoverished suburb of the commercial capital, Abidjan, where some of the deadliest clashes have taken place during three months of crisis.

They were about to set off from a roundabout on a march to call on Laurent Gbagbo to step down as president. "Men in uniform drove up and started shooting randomly. Six women died on the spot," Idrissa Diarrassouba told Reuters. A seventh died in hospital. Many others were wounded.

There was no official comment but a military source confirmed the shooting. "It was a blunder that we regret," the source said, adding that security forces believe rebels sometimes hide among civilians. "It is unfortunate."

The UN says at least 365 people have died since November's election, nearly all supporters of Alassane Ouattara, the internationally recognised winner. The UN said, just after the shooting, that more than 26 people were killed in the past 24 hours in Abobo, where most people come from the country's north.

Multiple delegations of African leaders have come through Abidjan, but Gbagbo has rejected offers of amnesty and comfortable exile abroad if he leaves office.

The UN, other organisations and analysts warn that the country could return to civil war, as in 2002-3, which divided north and south. The International Crisis Group says war is imminent, with skirmishes in Abidjan and the west of the country between militias and army loyal to Gbagbo and the former insurgent New Forces, backing Outtara.

"You cannot predict what the outcome will be," said Issaka Souare, a senior researcher for the Africa conflict prevention programme at South Africa's Institute of Security Studies. "Civil war is not inevitable but it's very likely, depending on how the mediation process will go."

Outside military intervention may now be required, he added. That was first threatened in December by Ecowas, the west African regional bloc of 16 nations.

However, Adekeye Adebajo, the executive director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution at Cape Town University, warned: "You have a situation that could erupt into civil war. But it could also be a stalemate that continues, which makes Ouattara the big loser. The advantage Ivory Coast has over many other countries in this situation is the presence of 9,000 UN peacekeepers who could maintain the partition."

He added: "There will be more clashes but the soldiers from both sides have not shown much stomach for war since 2002. It would take something dramatic for that to change. They each have half now, so why risk losing it all? And would the UN and French peacekeepers step aside? They have an obligation to maintain order."

Médecins Sans Frontières is treating victims of fighting in Southern Sudan

Médecins Sans Frontières says thay are treating victims of violent clashes in Southern Sudan. The press release from MSF doesn't tell us who exactly is doing the battling. 33 people have been treated for wounds so far by MSF staff. We receive more details from the following press release.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is currently responding to a large influx of wounded patients as a result of clashes that began on February 9 in Upper Nile State, southern Sudan. In collaboration with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the country’s Ministry of Health, an MSF medical team admitted 33 wounded patients to the hospital in the town of Malakal on the morning of February 11. Six of those patients were in urgent need of surgery. A further 17 patients who have been evacuated, mainly from the towns of New Fangak and Pamzsherf where much of the fighting has been concentrated, have just been admitted to the hospital.

“We are mainly seeing patients with gunshot wounds, and many have significant abdominal and limb injuries,” said Tim Baerwaldt, head of mission for MSF in southern Sudan. “Among the patients who arrived this morning, we have treated one 11- year-old child and two women.”

Due to the fighting and insecurity, many areas have remained cut off; therefore, medical assistance has not been able to reach those in need. MSF is currently taking all steps to access every person who has been affected by these latest clashes. “MSF is extremely concerned for the wounded people who may not have received assistance,” Baerwaldt said. “It is imperative that immediate access to urgent lifesaving medical care is granted by the relevant authorities to both civilians and all parties to the conflict.”

To reinforce the medical team already present in Malakal, MSF has sent a surgeon and an anesthetist. Medical and surgical supplies from Lokichokkio in neighboring Kenya have also just been flown into Malakal. MSF is providing surgical and post-operative care in collaboration with the ICRC and the Ministry of Health. MSF teams are currently also responsible for triage and stabilization of the wounded patients.

This latest violence comes just days after fighting broke out in Malakal itself on February 3. Assisting the Ministry of Health surgical teams, MSF provided pre- and post-operative care for wounded patients and helped with triage and stabilization. There were 23 inpatients admitted to the hospital with trauma injuries between February 3 and 6, some critically injured and requiring surgical intervention. A further six wounded patients from clashes in Melut were admitted to the hospital in Malakal on February 7.

MSF has been providing emergency medical humanitarian assistance in Sudan since 1979. Currently, MSF runs 13 projects across seven states in the country, providing a range of services, including primary and secondary healthcare, nutritional support, reproductive healthcare, kala azar treatment, counseling services, surgery, pediatric and obstetric care, as well as responding to emergencies as they arise.

In Malakal, MSF’s work is focused on providing medical care for patients affected by the neglected tropical disease kala azar. Last year, teams treated 2,766 patients with the disease.

Restoring function to amputees of Sudan's civil war

From Al Jazeera, giving hope to amputees of the long civil war in Sudan.

Georgians could face a hungry winter

The war between Georgia and Russia displaced many people two years ago. Many of those forced out of their homes because of the war depended on food from the World Food Programme. Due to budget cuts, the WFP had to stop its food distributions for Georgia. Now the WFP is warning that the displaced people in Georgia will face a very hungry winter unless more money arrives or someone else steps in.

From this Eurasia.net post that we found at Transitions Online, writer Molly Corso tells us more about the food security situation in Georgia.

The “WFP is increasingly alarmed that the most vulnerable IDPs . . . will face a very bleak winter,” Huggins said in an e-mail interview with EurasiaNet.org. “Almost all IDPs live below the poverty line and more than 90 percent are dependent on external food aid.” Approximately 30,000 internally displaced persons from formerly Georgian-controlled strips of territory in breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia have been resettled in nearly 40 settlements since the 2008 war.

Seventy percent of that number received food aid from the WFP; the organization’s program was limited to IDP families who opted for government-provided housing. While many of these houses include small “kitchen gardens,” not all families have access to larger land plots that would allow them to earn money to supplement the 28-lari (about $13) per person monthly allowance they receive from the government. That means money for additional food runs scarce. Outside jobs are often not an option. Georgia faces a huge employment shortage; a problem compounded by the isolation of many IDP settlements from other communities.

Families who have not yet received an official IDP status – estimated by the government to represent one percent of all IDPs – have spent the past two years in even greater limbo, with little assistance from either donors or the government. In a 5 August report on Georgia’s IDPs, Amnesty International called on the government to do more to provide employment opportunities and better land for farming. The report argues that “there is no coherent state policy to tackle the general unemployment or unemployment among vulnerable groups such as the displaced.” The government, however, maintains that there is no risk of IDPs starving this winter without international food assistance.
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But for IDPs like Lamara Kokoela, a pensioner displaced from the village of Kekvi in South Ossetia, such investments are a distant dream. Drooping corn stalks, their green stems dried to a pale yellow by the hot sun, surround Kokoela’s tiny cottage in Tserovani, an IDP settlement about 30 minutes outside Tbilisi. Bad soil quality and a lack of rain have left her family with practically no way to earn money from their garden plot, Kokoela said. “We don’t even have money for diapers [for our 9-month old granddaughter],” she said. Along with a chorus of neighbors, Kokoela asked why the government does not give IDPs more assistance.

The possible upcoming war in Sudan

A couple of days ago we linked to a press release that said that Sudan was unprepared for an upcoming referendum on southern independence. A coalition of humanitarian and human rights organizations called from urgent action from heads of state.

Instead of preparing for independence, Sudan seems to be preparing for war. The Sudan government doesn't want the south to break away because most of the country's oil sits in the south. The UN Security Council could do something about Sudan in meetings today but it seems unlikely. The international community and the US government has not done enough to stand in the way of this possible war.

From his New York Times blog, writer Nicholas Kristof sheds more light on the Sudan predicament that lies in front of the UN security council.

The U.N. Security Council is expected to meet today to discuss African peace and security issues, including how to prevent mass atrocities there. Presumably the Security Council will again refuse to address seriously the most important African peace issue — the prospect of a new north-south war in Sudan in the coming months.

It is so frustrating to see what’s unfolding in Sudan these days. It looks like one of those old-time Westerns where two trains are steaming toward each other on the same track. You know it’s going to end badly — and yet it’s difficult to get attention until disaster happens.
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Now that the International Criminal Court has indicted Sudanese President Bashir for genocide, as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity, you might think that the Security Council would focus on avoiding such a war. But it has pretty much tried to avoid the subject. As for the Obama administration, it has refused to put serious pressure on Khartoum, and the policy seems to me to be failing. One measure of that is the recent crackdowns in northern Sudan on civil society there, perhaps a warm-up to the new war.

The Bush administration managed to get the CPA that brought the referendum and a respite from Sudanese war. If the Obama administration blows it so that war resumes, that will be a serious black mark for the White House. As a recent op-ed in the Times by Dave Eggers and John Prendergast noted correctly:

This is President Obama’s Rwanda moment, and it is unfolding now, in slow motion. It is not too late to prevent the coming war in Sudan, and protect the peace we helped build five short years ago.