The Mail & Guardian article reports that Eritrea on Thursday called for the speedy withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia, where they have been deployed to protect the country’s fledgling government. Eritrea warned that Ethiopia’s continued stay risked provoking a regional conflict.

I’ve posted other items on Somalia, including last month a response from the Union of Islamic Courts in Somalia addressing fears of extremism in the country. The UIC have stated that they do not want to impose a Taliban-style state, but rather want Somali citizen to decide on the type of representation they want.

Hopefully, without contradicting anything I’ve written in the past, I will attempt to give a play-by-play account of the different players in Somalia:

The Warlords:After 15 years of an absent government in Somalia when Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991, the warlords divided the capital Mogadishu and the southern part of the country into fiefdoms. They then united to form the Anti-Terrorism Alliance to tackle the Islamists, who they accused of sheltering foreign al-Qaeda militants.

The Union of Islamic Courts:The Islamists have denied the allegations of the warlords and the US. They claim they are not a political movement, but are in Mogadishu as a grassroots movement to establish law and order in a city without any judicial system. Because they have attempted to restore order in the capital and its surrounding areas, after so many years of looting, plundering, Killing and kidnapping by the warlords, they’ve received popular support from the Somali people.

The US:Bush’s administration was accused by the new Somali government and the Islamists of backing the warlords recently defeated by the Islamists. The US has denied these reports. But according to eyewitnesses, the US did secretly back an alliance of warlords earlier this year when they tried to defeat the Islamic militia and capture three suspected al-Qaida members who were allegedly hiding out within the group. The warlords were defeated, and the United States now supports the government.  Bush has said he will make sure Somalia does not become a safe haven for al-Qaeda.  He probably doesn’t want it to become an Islamic state either.

The Somali Government: Established two years ago with the support of the UN to help Somalia emerge from many years of lawlessness and have a central authority, the administration under Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi, also includes some former warlords. So far it has failed to establish any authority beyond the town Baidoa.

Bin Laden & Al-Qaeda:There have been reports of foreign fighters fighting alongside the Islamists. Supposedly, Bin Laden himself (via video tape) has urged Somalis to support the militants and warned other nations not to send troops there.

Ethiopia:A key-ally of the US in East Africa, Ethiopia has sent troops into Somalia to help stabilize the new government which controls just one town–Baidoa–some 250 km north of Mogadishu. Prime Minister Ghedi previously accused Ethiopia of supporting the Warlord Alliance, before they were defeated.

Eritrea: According to the UN, Eritrea has reportedly backed the Islamic courts to counteract Ethiopia’s growing influence in Somalia. Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a war from 1998-2000 over a strip of land that is their common border. Both countries deny being involved in Somalia, despite eyewitness accounts.

A UN committee monitoring the arms embargo on Somalia has names Ethiopia, Eritrea and Yemen as supporting the different factions. A fourth country which wasn’t names is believed to be the US under the guise of expanding its war on terrorism.

InterPress Service News Agency has a news story  on Oxfam’s new report. It states that humanitarian assistance to Africa increased from $946 million (US) in 1997 to just over $3 billion (US) in 2003. Nonetheless, there have been food crises during the past few months in the Sahel region, Southern Africa, and Horn of Africa.

According to the report, donors doubt the ability of United Nations agencies to administer aid effectively. This constitutes one of the reasons for insufficient or late funding of U.N. appeals. Nonetheless, Oxfam believes a one billion dollar commitment by donors to the U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund is key to “quicker and more equitable assistance.”

The news story doesn’t state why Oxfam believes a billion dollar commitment to the UN Emergency Fund would be key to more equitable assistance. Is donor money in this central fund distributed to international NGOs and not UN agencies? Second–wouldn’t Oxfam or other NGOs experience the same difficulties in administering aid as UNDP, FAO or UNICEF? Better yet, how do international NGOs administer funds marked for emergency assistance differently than UN agencies?

The report also highlights a disproportionate emphasis on in-kind food-aid donations:

“Although food aid can play an important role in emergencies and save lives, it should not be viewed as the inevitable default response to food insecurity, particularly where poverty is the main cause of hunger.  Other innovative solutions — such as cash transfers, food vouchers or cash-for-work programmes — may be more appropriate.” 

The agency cites the case of seed fairs in Zimbabwe, where farmers have been given vouchers to purchase seeds. This has provided them with the option of buying seeds for crops that are hardier than others, giving farmers a better chance of reaping a harvest under difficult conditions. 

This is a good point–but with the inflation rate in Zimbabwe at 1200% we have to look at the country’s economic policies in relation to ending hunger. Even if a farmer has good crops as a result of these seed fairs–how can he ever sell his produce at price that’s fair or competitive if food prices in Zimbabwe have gone up ten-fold?

The Oxfam report makes recommendations for tackling the root causes of hunger, such as  increasing long-term investment in the development of rural areas to a minimum of 10 percent of government spending. This target was set for African states by the African Union.

Chris Rowan wrote a good piece on the blog Harowo earlier this month on the food crises in Africa. He cites statements from Justice Africa and International Food Policy Research Institute saying that poor governance is a major issue in many African countries, and one that has serious repercussions for long-term food security.

“No African country has ever refused to go to war (many of them unjust ones) because the IMF/World Bank, Western NGO’s or the so-called donors say there is no money. It is only when it comes to feeding our peoples, educating our children, building roads and hospitals, creating jobs and looking after the welfare of our peoples that our governments plead lack of resources, ” said Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem the director of Justice Africa. 

Getting back to the Oxfam report. It also makes other recommendations for dealing with the causes of hunger.  This includes calls for greater African and international efforts in support of peace, an end to the dumping of subsidised agricultural exports by the developed world that undercuts sales of local produce, and increased funding for HIV/AIDS programmes.

With elections in DR Congo less than a week away, UNICEF issued a report yesterday stating 1,200 people are killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) every day because of violence, disease or malnutrition.

The report, Child Alert: DRC, also states that more children under age five die each year in the African country than in China – a country with 23 times the population. It draws attention to the to the appalling fact that the total countrywide death toll every six months is similar to that for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed more than 230,000 people in 12 countries.

This analogy is similar to the one made in the blog My Heart’s in Accra on how Western coverage is disproportionate to the Middle East conflict’s causalities in relation to Africa.

Nonetheless, UNICEF UK Ambassador for Humanitarian Emergencies Martin Bell, who wrote the report, said Sunday’s landmark elections could be a turning point.

“It is easy to be overwhelmed by what has happened in DRC because of the sheer scale of it. But we owe it to the children to give them the future they deserve and these elections may be the opportunity of their lifetime,”  said Bell.

However, several groups are planning to boycott the elections because they think the incumbent president Joseph Kabila (favored to win) has amassed resources to support his election and used intimidation as a political tool. BBC reported that the Roman Catholic Church said they would not recognise the results of the polls unless concerns about vote-rigging were addressed.

UNICEF says that around four million people have been killed in the almost decade-long conflict in the DRC, making it the world’s deadliest, humanitarian crisis, but despite the scale of the suffering it has not received the media attention it deserves.

The BBC ran a story yesterday as well on the UNICEF report which include information on the organization calling for DRC’s leaders to make children’s rights a top priority after the elections.

Islamic leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed addressed the rally that forces loyal to the Islamic courts were ready and would be allowed to fight Ethiopians when appropriate. In May, it was reported that the US government was sending funds to Ethiopia under the guise of their supporting the ‘war on terror’ but Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was funding paramilitary troops to undermine the creation of an Islamist government

“We are talking to the international community to avoid serious bloodshed and we are urging the Ethiopians to withdraw from Somalia. Patience has its own limitations,” Agence France Presse quoted him saying.

Talks held in Sudan between the UIC and the transitional government – which correspondents say has little authority outside Baidoa – have been suspended. Ethiopian troops have amassed at Somalia’s central town, Wajid and in the government’s Baidoa base. Ethiopia and the transitional government have refused to confirm Ethiopian troops are on Somali soil. Ethiopia, a long-term ally of President Abdullahi Yusuf, has warned the Islamic courts not to make any further military advance on Baidoa.

In Baidoa, prominent warlord Mohamed Qanyare has re-emerged more than one month after the Islamic courts ousted him and his militia from Mogadishu following weeks of bitter fighting.  He has offered his support to the transitional government.  The BBC reported that Qanyare is a strong political rival of President Yusuf, and distrusts Ethiopia. IRIN News  ran a story last week on militia movements in Baidoa.

The story reported that the UIC, however, denied claims that it had moved its fighters from Buur Hakaba, 60 km north, closer to Baidoa.  Some fighters who had been seen in Buur Hakaba, he added, were locals who had gone to their homes – “not part of a UIC plan to attack”.

The Islamic courts have wrested control across southern Somalia in recent weeks from many of the warlords who divided up the country into rival fiefdoms following the overthrow of Siad Barre in 1991. They appear to be making considerable progress in imposing law and order in the capital. An imposition of Sharia law would come as a backlash of Somalia being a lawless country for the past 15 years.

For more in-depth analysis on the stalemate in Baidoa–other than what’s provided in the media, read this post on Harowo’s blog.  He writes that the takeover of a town neighboring Baidoa was an ICU probe of the extent of Ethiopia’s commitment to Somalia’s transitional government, rather than a planned attack on Baidoa aborted by the Ethiopians’ arrival.

I’ve excerpted a couple of paragraphs of the IRIN News to provide some historical content and also a thumbnail of the present situation:

• The legacy of Mobutu’s 32-year Western-backed rule extends beyond endemic corruption; to offset potential political opposition his rule was absolute, with the 1974 constitution granting him authority over the executive, legislature and judiciary branches of government. Furthermore, he maintained a system of patronage while maintaining the loyalty of the police and army, all of which required money. By 1990, the country was US $14 billion in debt. With the end of the cold war, Mobutu was no longer of any use to the US in its fight against Soviet influence in Africa, and his lines of credit were cut off.
• The present incumbent, Joseph Kabila, 35, who took over from his father, Laurent-Desire Kabila, who was assassinated in January 2001, is the favourite to win the presidential vote, which is being contested by 33 candidates. Another 9,000 politicians are vying for 500 parliamentary seats. However, security remains a problem, despite the presence of the largest UN peacekeeping mission in the world, comprising 17,000 troops, which will be backed up by 2,000 EU forces over the election period. In addition, 5,000 national and 500 international observers will oversee the polls.

Ethan Zuckerman has a great post on My Heart’s in Accra on how the Western media attention on the Middle East eclipses what’s been happening in Africa for the past ten years:

“In total, it’s likely that, over the past decade, at least forty times as many people have died directly or indirectly from violent conflict in central Africa as have died in the Middle East.”

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch issued a press release on Thursday stating that human rights abuses have continued in Katanga as the election date grows nearer. Human rights activists have collected testimonies, photographs and video to document the abuses committed by government soldiers and local defense forces during three years of violence in central Katanga. Hundreds have been killed and more than 150,000 have fled their homes from the zone of military operations that local residents refer to as the triangle of death.

“The electoral period will be lengthy and characterized by uncertainty before a new government takes power. During this time, justice cannot wait. Authorities must start holding abusers accountable if they want to discourage others from using similarly abusive tactics now and in the future. If President Kabila and other government ministers currently standing for elections are serious about a commitment to justice, they should not appoint suspected war criminals to high military ranks and they must bring to justice their own soldiers accused of such crimes. A national army staffed by war criminals is unlikely to provide any security to its citizens whether during elections or after,” said Alison Des Forges, senior Africa adviser at Human Rights Watch.  

Reporters Without Borders  stated that the last of the bloggers arrested in Egypt two months ago were released Thursday. 

Mohamed al-Sharqawi and Karim El-Shaer were arrested during a demonstration outside the Cairo press union on May 25th. They were held in Tora prison, where they were often harassed by fellow inmates and tortured. The Arabist blog printed an English translation of a letter sent from al-Sharqawi while in Tora prison which documents his abuse. Human Rights Watch  also issued a statement on Al-Sharqawi and fellow pro-democracy activists who were assaulted.

Six bloggers were arrested in May in a crackdown on pro-democracy activists who use the Internet to mobilize and communicate with other activists. Al-Sharqawi blogs at SpeaksFreely.

Abdel-Muhiti was working as a producer with the New York radio station WBAI at the time of his detention. His attorney Jeff Fogel made the following statement on a WBAI press release:

“Even though he didn’t have lawful immigration status in the US for the last 35 years…Farouk never missed a protest. He was never in hiding even though he was ‘illegal.’ Yet it was his activism that got him arrested in April 2002. It was only once he started arranging for radio interviews with Palestinians in the West Bank and doing live on-air translations of those interviews on WBAI that he was actually arrested by the Absconder Task Force- a group that’s been basically responsible for solely arresting Muslim men of South Asian or Arab extraction.

The government knew from day one of his 718-day detention that they would not be able to deport him. They knew that his detention was illegal, that he was a man without a country- someone they could never deport from the US. Yet they held onto him far longer than the six months that the Supreme Court had said that they could presumptively hold on to detainees while trying to deport them to their home countries.”

The US government held Abdel-Muhti in a series of county and federal facilities for –in clear violation of his constitutional rights–and refused to release him until ordered by a federal district judge.

During his interrogation at 26 Federal Plaza, FBI and BICE officers tried to coerce him into giving names of people who had given aid to Palestinian organizations. When Abdel-Muhti refused, he was knocked to the floor and beaten by the agents. Farouk was not charged with terrorism or any crime. He was held on the basis of a 1995 deportation order. But partly because he was a stateless Palestinian, the BICE (INS) could not deport him.

Abdel-Muhti spent 250 days in solitary confinement. He suffered beatings and medical neglect by officials who consistently denied him his high blood pressure and thyroid medications. While incarcerated, Abdel-Muhti continued to advocate on behalf of other immigrants illegally detained. He staged a hunger strike to bring attention to the inhumane prison conditions in the US that the detainees were subjected to.

We remember Abdel-Muhti’s lifelong struggle for peace, social justice and the human rights of Palestinians, immigrants and workers everywhere, as we continue his work. 

We call for an end to the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, an end to the US-backed Israeli assault in Gaza & Lebanon; an end to extraordinary rendition, torture and illegal detention. We also call for the civil rights of those detained to be protected.

Hundreds of teachers, judges, religious leaders and doctors have been targeted for death, and thousands of people have fled, the report said. Evidence suggests militants also have begun to target homosexuals, the report said.

According to an article in the Washington Post, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, vowed is administration will do everything possible to tackle violence and foster reconciliation among Iraqis. His efforts to bridge the divisions among Iraq’s religious, ethnic and political groups rests on his national reconciliation initiative.

[This initiative is] “the only bridge and crossing point through which we can reach the safe shore that unites the sons of the Iraqi people, ends the violent situation, provides stability and puts an end to all discriminatory ideas, whether of sect, political party or race,” al-Maliki said.

A lot of rightwingers are posting that these numbers are completely off and the UN only wants to turn more Americans against the war efforts in Iraq (many Americans didn’t support the US occupation of Iraq before these numbers were released). I won’t bother tracking back to their stories, but conservative blogs say these civilian deaths are not ‘collateral damage’ and 90% of the reported 3,000 actually died from natural causes. They don’t say were they get that figure. 90%? So 2,700 Iraqis died naturally? Pretty weak argument. Hint: If you die a couple of days later because shrapnel tore the insides of your stomach–that’s still war related, not a natural cause.

Meanwhile, U.N. special representative for Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, told reporters “we hope there will be no civil war in Iraq, although the reality right now is that there is a very high degree of violence.”

***Saree Makdisi, a comparative literature professor at UCLA wrote an op-ed in today’s Los Angeles Times about Israel in Lebanon. I hope you are able to access it.

Mandela, who spent 27 years in jail (about a third of this life), said he never expected to live to be 88. One remarkable feature of Mandela both as an individual and leader of a Free South Africa was his quest for knowledge. Even the mental and emotional torture of 27 years on Robben Island was not a barrier for education. In his memoirs, “Long Walk to Freedom,”  Mandela wrote:

“As freedom fighters and political prisoners, we had an obligation to improve and strengthen ourselves, and study was one of the few opportunities to do so”.

This rings true today in Africa as its people mobilize and demand a knowledge-driven leadership where the country’s administrators are learned people who make sound decisions on economic and social policy issues while engaging civil society.

May he continue to lead us forward for the next 88 years.