shameless self-promotion

I'll be at Duke University this Friday (4/19), speaking on conflict minerals in DRC at the Nicholas School of the Environment at 10am. Details are here. I'll also be speaking at a public event at Blacknall Memorial Presbyterian Church at 7pm that evening. Would love to meet anyone who'll be around!

Next Thursday (4/25), I'm speaking at my alma mater, the African Studies program at Yale University. Details for that are here.

big life news

(It's April Fool's Day, but this is not a joke.)

In the personal/professional life news category, I have some that's big: I'll be leaving Morehouse College at the end of this academic year to take a position as Assistant Professor of Government at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. The choice to leave Morehouse was not an easy one; I will miss our bright and curious students more than I can say.

Even so, I'm very excited about the opportunity to teach at Colby. The college has a strong emphasis on undergraduate research, attracts bright and ambitious students, and is pretty much the idyllic liberal arts college campus of my dreams. I'll be able to lead regular study abroad trips to east Africa to explore aid and development questions up close with students, and am looking forward to working in a major that has a reputation of being among the most challenging on campus.

Up next: moving to Maine and, inevitably, buying a Subaru. Thanks for sticking with me for the next stage of Texas in Africa: the Not in Texas or Africa Years.

'tis the season

It's SWEDOW bracket time! For those first-timers, this is an NCAA men's college basketball tournament bracket competition with prizes for the winner that are considered SWEDOW ("stuff we don't want,") a phrase coined by the inimitable Tales from the Hood. All you have to do to compete is fill out a bracket and join the SWEDOW 2013 group via the ESPN Tournament Challenge.

What can you win? Well, this year's prize pack includes (but is not limited to) a lilac bridesmaid's dress, Hanukkah socks, some BibleMan action hero DVDs, and a used Chipotle bag. If you have SWEDOW to add, email me ASAP so I can tell you where to send it. Get excited and enter now!

(Caveats: Whoever wins the bracket group gets the prizes, but I can't afford to ship them outside the US and Canada. In case someone outside the US & Canada wins, he/she gets bragging rights and the first player down the list from the winner who is in the US & Canada gets the SWEDOW. If the winner/prize winner doesn't claim his/her prizes after 7 days, I send it to the next person down the list until the SWEDOW is no longer my problem.)

drinking the Rwandan kool-aid

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and businessman and philanthropist Howard Buffett have a column in Foreign Policy this week titled, "Stand with Rwanda."  In the piece, they argue that aid cuts to Rwanda in the wake of the UN Group of Experts' revelations that Rwanda is actively supporting the human rights-abusing M23 rebel movement in the DRC should be restored. They ignore the "generally democratic governments don't like to give money to war-mongering states" aspect of this issue, instead focusing on the negative effects of the cuts for Rwanda's population and how indisputably effective aid has been in Rwanda.

Blair and Buffett also argue that the DRC's problems are more-or-less entirely rooted in the DRC's poor-to-barely-existant governance, fragile security, and weak state. They do so via some poorly researched/blatantly wrong claims. To wit:

Then there is the international presence: the largest and most expensive U.N. peacekeeping operation in the world with almost 14,000 troops. At a cost of $1.5 billion each year, Western governments are paying a huge sum of money to maintain a U.N. force that does not have the mandate to actually secure the region. The international community should instead focus its support on African-led solutions to security, ideally through an African Union-led security force similar to AMISOM in Somalia."

First, MONUSCO does not have "almost 14,000 troops," it has 17,090, as can easily be learned by searching Google for "MONUSCO troop strength," then choosing the first hit, the most recent UN "MONUSCO Facts and Figures" page. Aside from making an error resulting from poor fact checking, Blair and Buffett are also apparently unaware that the Security Council is likely about to greatly strengthen the MONUSCO mandate to do more to "actually secure the region" by increasing its capacity to fight rebels and to protect civilians. I've said it before and I'll say it again: DRC is not Somalia. The "AMISOM for Congo" idea Blair and Buffett and many other people who don't spend time in the DRC raise from time to time (as is the case with the "AMISOM for Mali" idea) is unlikely to work. In all the discussions of what to do about Congo, including discussions about a possible SADC or another neutral force, an African Union mission has never been considered as a viable possibility because it is not a viable possibility. Too many of the largest troop-contributing states to African Union missions - namely Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi - are entangled in the DRC crisis one way or another.

Blair and Buffet also write that, "(*Typo correction below.) There are a lot more than 30,000 Congolese Rwandaphones. Not to put too fine a point on it in places where statistics are unreliable at best, but estimates made by expert scholars Rene Lemarchand and Gerard Prunier put the population of South Kivu's Banyamulenge Rwandaphone population alone at somewhere between 50,000-80,000. Pinning an exact number on the North Kivu Rwandaphone population, known locally as Banyarwanda, is a bit tricker, but Prunier puts a pre-war estimate of the Banyarwanda population of North Kivu of about 1.12 million. There is little reason to believe that the Rwandaphone population of the Kivus is anywhere near as low as Blair and Buffett claim.
Finally, in the most perplexing claim of all, Blair and Buffett state that, 

At the same time, it should support proposals currently being agreed to through the International Conference for the Great Lakes Regionand the current peace negotiations underway between M23 and the DRC government in Kampala. Already, there are encouraging signs of progress. On Feb, 6, 2013, the government of DRC and M23 signed a preliminary agreement in which both parties accepted responsibility for the failure of an earlier peace agreement.

This defies reality. The Kampala talks have stalled over intractable issues and most of the major players have gone home. Getting the two sides to agree that the March 23, 2009 agreement failed to be implemented is the diplomatic equivalent of passing a resolution stating that the sky is blue.  The likelihood that any sustainable peace will come out of the Kampala talks is, to put it mildly,minuscule. No reasonable observer disputes the fact that the Congolese's state's many, many, many weaknesses are a major factor contributing to the proliferation of armed groups in the region. But likewise, no reasonable observer thinks that domestic politics and issues are the only causes of violence in the Congo. There is no question that Rwanda's involvement in Congo has caused far more violence and suffering than would have otherwise been present. There is also no question that the Congo will not be at peace until some viable form of effective domestic governance emerges. To claim otherwise is disingenuous.

Blair and Buffett also ignore the fact that having so much aid support frees up other resources for the Rwandan government to use in its military adventures in the Congo. Were Rwanda not wasting money on supporting the M23, Kigali would be able to fund many of the excellent development initiatives that were previously funded with aid dollars. I suspect they do not consider this idea in the piece because Blair and Buffett are both among the class of global development elites who are so impressed with Rwanda's very real development successes that they largely turn a blind eye to its abuses. The authors note that Rwanda has achieved these successes "all without the benefit of natural resource wealth or access to the sea," all the while ignoring that a significant portion of the Rwandan budget not funded by aid dollars comes from the illegal extraction, theft, and sale of Congolese minerals.

 Blair and Buffett are correct that solving the DRC's crises requires creative thinking and new approaches. (I would like to see more emphasis on grassroots peacebuilding at the community level, for example.) But ignoring Rwanda's role in the Kivus as a source of conflict will make the situation worse, not better. And continuing to fund a government that spends its own resources on rebels who rape women and conscript child soldiers is unconscionable for most taxpayers in donor states. It should be reprehensible to Blair and Buffett as well.

*Typo correction: I left out this quotation from the FP piece, "And the M23 and FDLR are just the most prominent of a host of militias and mini-militias operating in and around Kivu, where some 30,000 Congolese Rwandans currently reside."

shameless self-promotion

A few upcoming speaking engagements:

• 2/28: Tufts University, Fletcher School, World Peace Foundation: "Western Advocacy in Conflict: Do international public advocacy campaigns make an impact?" Panelists: Rony Brauman, David Rieff, Laura Seay, Amanda Taub - 12:30pm, Cabot C703
• 3/7: Cornell University, Institute for African Development seminar series: "Substituting for the State: the Role of Civil Society Organizations in Providing Health Care and Education in the DRC" - 2:30pm, G08 Uris Hall
• 3/28: Emory University, Institute of African Studies seminar series: "NGOs, Civil Society, and Authority in the Post-Conflict: Who’s in Charge?" - 4:15pm, Callaway S423
• 4/19 (tentative): Duke University, Nicholas School of the Environment: "Good Intentions, Unintended Consequences: Conflict Minerals & Policy Responses to the DRC Crisis" - location TBD
• 4/25: Yale University, Council on African Studies Brownbag Lunch Series: "Good Intentions, Unintended Consequences: Advocacy Narratives, Conflict Minerals, & Policy Responses to the DRC Crisis" - 12:15pm, Luce 203

realities of rape in war

The Simon Fraser University Human Security Report for 2011/12 is out. This year's edition focuses on sexual violence in war, and the findings are astonishing. Essentially, SFU found that the data shows much of the conventional wisdom on such issues as rape as a weapon of war, who is committing rape in wartime, and  negative effects on education is completely wrong. Among the report's findings:

• Conflicts in which extreme sexual violence is committed (think DRC) are exceptional outliers, not the norm.
• While reporting of sexual violence in wartime has increased, there is no evidence to support the oft-repeated-by-high-level-UN-officials claim that incidences of wartime sexual violence are increasing. 
• Strategic rape incidences, aka "rape as a weapon of war" are not increasing, either.
• Domestic (household & intimate partner) sexual violence is by far the most prevalent form of sexual and gender-based violence in wartime.
• Male victims and female perpetrators of rape in wartime may be greater than previously believed.
• That statistic that 3 in 4 Liberian women were victims of sexual violence during the country's war? No evidence whatsoever for the claim. The real rate of lifetime sexual violence in Liberia is more like 18% - exactly the same as the rate of SGBV in the United States - which means it's impossible that 75% of women were raped or otherwise sexually assaulted during the wars. 
• There is no evidence to support the UN claim that sexual violence committed against children in conflict-affected countries is increasing.
• Conflict doesn't have a net negative effect on educational outcomes.

These findings are obviously controversial and I have no doubt that they will inspire a lively debate. However, having read over the methodology and evidence presented in the report, it's hard to find grounds on which to dispute most of these claims. The evidence is solid.

Wisely, the SFU researchers use their findings to point to the importance of narrative creation and its role in policy development. As we have seen time and time again in DRC, when the narrative about a conflict and its nature is wrong, policies are often ineffective. In this case, policies based on repeated slogans and incorrect statistics means that too many aid dollars may be directed to victims who don't need that much help, while money is unavailable to assist those who do. All in all, this Human Security Report is a well-argued plea for policy to be evidence-based. We'd all do well to heed those warnings. 

child soldiers

It's October, which means it's time for the annual brouhaha over President Obama giving a partial waiver to the DRC for the sanctions that are required by US law to be imposed against countries that have child soldiers serving in their military forces. And, like clockwork, human rights advocates raised objections to this decision, arguing that the US should cut all assistance to DRC and to the other countries that received waivers, Libya, South Sudan, and Yemen. The partial waiver for DRC allows the US government to continue selling some arms to the DRC and to continue some military training programs in the country despite the fact that the FARDC clearly still has child soldiers within its ranks. Many have expressed outrage over the decision, which marks the third year in a row of waivers for some of the worst violators of international norms regarding the use of child soldiers.

I'm not in a position to comment on the use of child soldiers in Libya, South Sudan, or Yemen, nor do I know enough to know if the Obama administration has effectively leveraged its power to stop the use of child soldiers there, so my comments here are limited to the DRC. Here's the thing:  this is a situation in which all the policy options are bad. When you work in the DRC, you don't get to exist in the world of ideals. Choices always have to be made, and they aren't always pretty. The dilemma in the Congo is this: while everyone agrees that the use of child soldiers is a horrible, inexcusable human rights violation, it is far from clear that disengaging from the Congolese government on military issues will end those abuses.

In fact, pulling out AFRICOM trainers - whose work in DRC largely focuses on professionalizing the FARDC national army (which, let's remember, is undisciplined to the point that they generally can't walk in straight lines during parades), including training soldiers to not violate the human rights of the civilians they ostensibly serve - would likely produce the opposite effect. AFRICOM's work in Congo is far from the sinister caricature some make it out to be; US soldiers in the mission spend most of their time teaching Congolese troops basic skills, like how to aim weapons at targets and actually hit them (as opposed to sporadically killing random civilians with uncontrolled gunfire. Longtime TiA readers will remember the delightful spring of 2007 when the Kinshasa fight between the FARDC and forces loyal to Jean-Pierre Bemba resulted in ordnance landing across the river in Brazzaville, 2 miles off-target.). In other words, American military training is badly needed in the Congolese army.

But does the government deserve this training, given its lack of movement toward protecting children from being coerced into military service? Perhaps not, but there are a few complicating factors. For one, pulling out of Congolese military affairs takes away an important leverage point for changing norms of behavior within the Congolese military forces. American military training in the DRC includes a focus on protecting human rights, with special emphasis on not raping civilians. And there is evidence that the US has effectively used this leverage to push the DRC government toward taking action on the child soldiers problem:

"Jo Becker, advocacy director for the children's rights division at Human Rights Watch, told The Cable that where the United States has used some pressure, such as in the DRC, where there was a partial cutoff of military aid last year, there was a positive effect. 'After years of foot-dragging, Congo is close to signing a U.N. action plan to end its use of child soldiers.'"

This is a positive step, and it likely would not have happened had the US not effectively leveraged its power to pressure the Congolese government to change through partnership within the system.

That said, no one should pretend that a UN action plan will end the use of child soldiers. The real problem with the FARDC is that it is not fully under the control of the authorities in Kinshasa. Some military units and brigades act as autonomous actors; they don't take orders from anyone and are not really part of a "national army" in any meaningful sense of the term. Even if Kabila commits to removing child soldiers from the ranks of the FARDC that he does control, this will not ultimately end the use of child soldiers by other leaders in the FARDC ranks, nor will he be able to meaningfully guarantee that children will not be recruited/forced to fight in the future. Until Congo's governance crisis is solved, the abuse of children through military service is likely to continue. This makes it even more important that American military engagement with the country remains active and involved through the smart leveraging of pressure rather than wholesale sanctions. It may not be ideal, but pragmatic incrementalism will work better than idealistic sanctions in these circumstances.

shameless self-promotion

I have several speaking engagements coming up this academic year:

• New York: October 12, 7pm - Congo in Harlem Week - Kony 2012: Lessons for Congo. Panelists include Amanda Taub & Kate Cronin-Furman of Wronging Rights, Milton Allimadi of Black Star News, Richard Mark Ochaka of Invisible Children, Michael Poffenberger of RESOLVE, Bukeni Waruzi of WITNESS, and yours truly. Moderator is Elliot Ross of Africa is a Country. In other words, it's gonna be a doozy of a debate. Venue: The New York Society for Ethical Culture (2 West 64th Street)
• Atlanta: October 29, 6pm - Spelman College Congo Week - panel discussion of issues in the DRC. Venue TBA.
• Austin: November 5, 11:30 am - Concordia University Texas - Keynote speaker for Service-Learning Week. I'll be speaking on the importance of doing no harm while doing good.  Venue: Concordia campus, Building A, Auditorium
• Atlanta: March 28, 4pm - Emory University Institute of African Studies seminar - Venue: ILA Detweiler Conference Room, S423 Callaway

what I've been up to

Oh, hey, blog friends, it's been awhile. Sorry about that - the new semester + finishing a book manuscript + visiting Taiwan (more on that later) = little time for blogging. But life is getting slightly less hectic now, so I should be back to a more regular schedule around here now.

Among the many things I've been doing lately is working on a new project for my African politics course. We're joining forces with the fantastic folks at Project Diaspora to help students connect with and learn from leaders in Africa and the African Diaspora through a variety of social media platforms. You can read all about what we're up to here.

Project Diaspora founder TMS Ruge and I have been working hard to get this set up and we're excited about the project's potential, but it won't work if we don't have people from around the world participating. Please join us in an extended series of conversations about African politics, leadership, and the continent's future. We'll be hosting Twitter chats every Friday (starting Friday, September 21) at noon EST/5pm GMT/7pm East African time using the hashtag #projectdiaspora. Topics range from the role of technology to gender and sexuality to youth engagement and civil society. Please join in the conversation, challenge my students with your experiences and observations, and be part of a worldwide conversation. Hope to catch you there!

facts matter

Conrad Black has a new piece up over at the National Review. I'd encourage you not to give it anymore hits; the central argument of the piece is that colonization was the West's great gift to the world. Here is the money quote:

No one could seriously dispute that almost all of sub-Saharan Africa, all of North Africa except Morocco, all of the Middle East except Israel and Jordan and most of the oil-rich states, and the entire former British Indian Empire were better governed by Europeans. The Philippines and Cuba and, during the piping days of the U.S. Marines’ occupations (even if they were deployed at times by the United Fruit Company), Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic were all better off under the Americans.

Now, I could certainly dispute this claim, but this is Mr. Black's opinion and he's certainly entitled to it. What I'd like to dispute is the evidence he presents in support of his argument, specifically with respect to the part of the world that I know best, Africa's Great Lakes region: 

The Belgians were frequently inexcusably heavy-handed in the Congo, but they never generated the horrific casualties that have routinely occurred in the civil strife in that country in 50 years of independence, much less the approximately 1 million dead in a single month in the Rwandan massacres of the Tutsi in 1994.

That's quite a lot of factual errors for one, 52-word sentence. A few points:

1. The Belgians, um, inexcusable heavy-handedness actually amounted to an incredibly brutal forced labor regime under Leopold II's direct rule. We don't know how many people actually died under this period of terror - in which Congolese villagers were required to collect rubber for the colonial authorities, and had their hands chopped off if they didn't make their quotas. The best estimates are that it killed about 10 million people. Which, inconveniently for Mr. Black, adds up to more than the 6 million killed in Congo's most recent war and those killed in the post-independence violence. The Belgian regimes (and it's really more appropriate to speak of 2, the one under Leopold II that governed 1885-1908, and the Belgian government's regime from 1908-1960) were NOT better respecters of human rights than the regimes that have governed Congo since. Never mind the colonial regime's use of extrajudicial killings in the period leading up to independence...
2. That's not to say that post-independence Congo has ever been well-governed; it hasn't. But every knowledgeable explanation as to why makes it clear that the bad governance of the colonial period (see above). Did it not occur to Mr. Black that dictator Mobutu might have learned his governance skills and norms from the colonists? Because that's exactly what happened.
3. The 1994 Rwandan genocide lasted three months, not one. The best estimates are that it killed about 800,000 people. Not all the victims were Tutsi.
4. It is unlikely that the Rwandan genocide would have happened had it not been for Belgian colonization, because the Belgians were precisely the ones who crystallized what has previously been a feudal-style system of ethnic/class identity into the Tutsi/Hutu dynamic they used to divide and rule the territory. Prior to that, one could move between classes based on personal fortune.  The reason Hutu resentment of Tutsis was so high at independence was that the Belgians specifically favored the Tutsi over the Hutu, which meant that most Hutu were officially shut out from opportunities to gain a high school education, get good jobs, or advance economically in meaningful ways. This resentment against the Tutsi fermented for decades under the colonial regime and exploded at Rwanda's 1962 independence, when some Hutu chased much of their Tutsi ruling class out of the country and slaughtered those they could. We cannot properly understand the 1994 genocide without understanding this history of manufactured class conflict. And it was manufactured by the Belgian colonial regime.

There are a lot of other errors in this piece (eg, Darfur definitely didn't kill 1 million people, try closer to 300,000), but I don't have time to parse them all. @NRO, please fact-check before you run pieces like this again. Because if you're going to run  an unpopular and controversial argument, it probably should be supported with actual facts. Or perhaps there aren't any to support this nonsense.