Sudan Apologizes for Shooting at UN

KHARTOUM, Jan 10, (AP) - Sudan acknowledged Thursday that its troops shot at a United Nations convoy in Darfur, reversing an initial denial, but it in part blamed the peacekeepers saying they should have notified Khartoum of their movements. The Sudanese government has demanded that the joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force give it prior notification for all its movements and not move at night, conditions the United Nations has rejected. U.N. officials have accused Khartoum of trying to limit the abilities of the force or hold up its full deployment with a series of bureaucratic obstacles, including such conditions. The attack Monday night in West Darfur damaged an armored personnel carrier, destroyed a fuel tanker truck and severely injured a Sudanese driver. The U.N. has lodged a complaint with Khartoum and said "the government of Sudan has to provide unequivocal guarantees that there will be no recurrence of such activities by its forces."

Sudan's military spokesman and its ambassador to the United Nations initially denied the army had opened fire. But the military retracted the statements Thursday, saying the shoot-out did take place. It apologized for the error, which it said occurred because the U.N. force, known as UNAMID, had not given forward notice it was sending a convoy through this volatile zone of western Darfur near the border with Chad. "The Western Sudan military command has provided an apology to the representative of UNAMID in the region and that the apology was accepted, in recognition of the dual mistake committed," the state-run SUNA news agency said. Sudan's Defense Minister Abdel-Rahim Mohamed Hussein told the independent daily Al-Sahafa the army first fired warning shots at the U.N. convoy. "Those shots were ignored and that's when the soldiers opened fire, wounding the driver and damaging a troop carrier and a truck," Hussein said.

The U.N. mission began on Jan. 1 and now stands at around 9,000 peacekeepers. It is supposed to grow to 26,000 and aims at finally deploying a robust force to stop the chaos. More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur and 2.5 million have fled to refugee camps since 2003 when ethnic African rebels took arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, accusing it of discrimination. Sudan denies multiple allegations of war crimes in the region.
by MOHAMED OSMAN
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Fighting in Congo Rekindles Ethnic Hatreds

MUSHAKE Congo, Jan 10th. (NY Times) — Andre Simwerayi looked on with satisfaction as the army blasted rockets over a verdant hillside, pummeling what officers said were the positions of forces loyal to a renegade Congolese Tutsi general. "If the bombs don’t do the job, we are ready with machetes to finish it ourselves,” said Mr. Simwerayi, 31, a street tough standing nearby in a tattered trench coat. "We must crush the inyenzi,” he spat, using a word made notorious by the genocide against Tutsi in neighboring Rwando more than a decade ago. It means cockroaches. The recent clashes in eastern Congo between the army and the troops of the dissident general have exacted a grievous toll on a region ravaged by a decade of war. Around 400,000 people have been forced to flee their homes, thousands of women have been raped and hundreds of children have been press-ganged into militias, the United Nations says, raising alarm among diplomats the world over.

But the fighting is also rekindling the kind of ethnic hatred that previously dragged this region into the most deadly conflict since World War II. It began with the Rwandan genocide, in which Hutu extremists killed 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu in 1994. Many of the genocide’s perpetrators fled into Congo, igniting regional conflicts that were fueled by the plunder of Congo’s minerals, lasted for nearly a decade and killed, by some estimates, as many as four million people through violence, disease and hunger. Now a new wave of anti-Tutsi sentiment is sweeping Congo, driven by deep anger over the renegade Tutsi general. Many see his rebellion as a proxy for Rwanda, to the east, whose army occupied vast parts of Congo during the most devastating chapter of the regional war and plundered millions of dollars’ worth of minerals from the country, according to many analysts, diplomats and human rights workers. The current battle is in many ways a throwback to the earliest and most difficult questions at the heart of the Congo war, and also a reflection of longstanding hostilities toward Tutsi, who are widely viewed here as being more Rwandan than Congolese. Many Congolese Tutsi see themselves as members of an especially vulnerable minority, one that has already suffered through genocide and whose position in Congo has always been precarious. But many other Congolese see Tutsi, many of whom have been in Congo for generations, as foreign interlopers with outsize economic and political influence.

At the center of this latest rebellion is the renegade general, Laurent Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi with longstanding ties to the Tutsi-led Rwandan government. He has refused to integrate his men into Congo’s national army, as the other militias that fought in the sprawling civil war have done, arguing that Tutsi face unique perils that require his special protection. “Our enemies have the ideology of genocide,” General Nkunda said in December at his hide-out in lush eastern Congo. “We are fearing they will continue their genocide in Congo.” Like many of Congo’s historical figures, General Nkunda, a tall, rail-thin 40-year-old with angular features, has developed a cult of personality. He has a penchant for flamboyant accessories: in a recent interview he cradled a black cane topped by a silver eagle’s head. Other times he has worn a button that says “Rebels for Christ.” He likes to refer to himself in the third person. “Is Nkunda the problem?” he demanded. “Why? How can Nkunda be to blame? I am only trying to protect my people.” General Nkunda said Congo’s small Tutsi minority was vulnerable to attack by militias, particularly the remnants of the Hutu extremist forces that carried out the genocide in Rwanda. Many of the extremists still roam the jungles of eastern Congo, and he has demanded that this militia be disbanded and that Tutsi refugees who fled into Rwanda be allowed to return.

Many Congolese Tutsi share his fears. “We are always seen as outsiders, but we are Congolese,” said Sanvura Birida, who lives with her four children in a camp for displaced people in territory controlled by General Nkunda. “The government does not protect us.” But that feeling of vulnerability does not always mean people are being personally victimized. “In response to the cumulative deaths of fewer than 20 Tutsi over the past two years, Nkunda has launched offensives that have killed over 100 persons and displaced hundreds of thousands,” said a report published in October by the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that seeks to prevent or resolve deadly conflicts. “While Nkunda has defended the Tutsi minority in North Kivu, he has become a potential danger to the community’s security as a whole.” Representatives of his militia and others involved in recent fighting were expected to participate in a peace conference called by the government and originally scheduled to begin Jan. 6. It has been delayed by logistical problems, according to Reuters.

In many ways, Congo’s Tutsi are a people apart, an unusual minority with influence but also problems beyond its size. These differences are reflected in a unique way of life. When the Congolese Army routed General Nkunda’s forces in one of the strategic towns they occupied in a recent, ultimately failed push, the army celebrated with stiff pulls of rotgut whiskey. But when General Nkunda’s men routed the army with a much smaller force a few days later, they toasted their victory with cups of milk from the most prized of Tutsi possessions, dairy cows. This reputation for sobriety and determination helps explain why Tutsi have been so successful in business, according to Tutsi community leaders in Goma, the regional capital. “When we were investing and working, the Congolese were listening to music and playing football,” said Modeste Makabuza Ngoga, a Tutsi who is one of Goma’s richest men, with investments in transportation, telecommunications, tin ore and the gasoline trade, among other things. “Are we to be blamed for that?”

But the history of the region tells a different story. Before the elections of 2006, the area was controlled by a Rwandan-backed rebel group turned political party, the Congolese Rally for Democracy. It helped Mr. Makabuza Ngoga and other Tutsi build fortunes through patronage of the state government and special deals to buy valuable agricultural land, according to analysts and Western diplomats in the region. Wealth also helps fuel the Tutsi sense of vulnerability. A power-sharing agreement that ended the war in 2003 enabled a party dominated by a handful of Tutsi to essentially control one quarter of the country, which is the size of Western Europe, and thus considerable wealth. But in the election, the first democratic vote in Congo in more than four decades, only one Tutsi from this region was elected to the National Assembly. Some of Goma’s wealthy Tutsi feel so unsafe that they sleep in Gisenyi, a town just inside the Rwandan border, a fact that reinforces the common perception that Congolese Tutsi are more Rwandan than Congolese. Rwanda’s history is a powerful touchstone for Congo’s Tutsi. Similar disparities — a small group controlling considerable wealth and influence, amid a powerful sense of grievance from the majority — helped create the conditions that led to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Like many African ethnic groups, the Tutsi were divided in the 19th century among the European colonies; in the case of the Tutsi, those areas became Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. In each of these places, they have at times been co-opted and cultivated as a favored elite by those in power.

That trend began with Mobuto Sese Seko, Congo’s longtime ruler, after independence and later included Laurent D. Kabila, who became president after rebelling in 1996 with backing from Rwanda and Uganda. These alliances allowed Tutsi to dominate the economy and political life of much of North Kivu Province here, with its tin mines, rich pastureland and transportation links to the Great Lakes region of Central Africa. Large parts of the province’s best farming and grazing land is controlled by a handful of Tutsi owners, according to analysts and human rights workers. But at times allies of the Tutsi have turned on them, sometimes savagely. In 1983, facing pressure from other ethnic groups in the region, Mr. Mobutu revoked citizenship for residents who could not trace their roots in Congo to 1885, effectively turning thousands of Tutsi and Hutu into stateless people. A decade later, ethnic violence exploded in North Kivu. As many as 10,000 people were killed, and 250,000 Hutu and Tutsi fled. Until the Rwandan genocide in 1994, Congolese Hutu and Tutsi coexisted relatively peacefully and in many ways faced the same kinds of persecution from other ethnic groups that considered them outsiders. But when the Hutu perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide flooded into Congo, tensions rose between Congolese Hutu and Tutsi as well. These Hutu extremists made common cause with the Mobutu government. When Mr. Mobutu fell in 1997, Mr. Kabila took power, and an unknown number of Rwandan Hutu refugees were killed. Mr. Kabila broke with his Rwandan allies, who in 1998 sponsored another rebellion, this time led by Congolese Tutsi. Mr. Kabila joined forces with the Hutus behind the genocide, igniting a second civil war in Congo. Joseph Dunia Ruyenzi, a human rights activist in Goma, said that despite this history, Tutsi must put their trust in the fledgling democracy of Congo. “All Congolese must see themselves as Congolese first, and as having a stake in peace and prosperity,” he said. “Our only option is to be in this together.”
by Lydia Polgreen
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U.N. Official Fears For Darfur Force

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 10th. (LA Times) - The U.N. peacekeeping chief told the Security Council on Wednesday that a Sudanese attack this week on U.N.-led troops reinforces concerns that the force may be unable to protect itself or civilians in Darfur. The violence, along with foot-dragging by the Sudanese government and the lack of necessary helicopters and equipment, may doom the peacekeeping effort, Jean-Marie Guehenno told the council. "Without decisive progress on each of those three issues, we will indeed face dire consequences for the international efforts to help the Sudanese bring peace and stability to Darfur," Guehenno said.

On Monday night, an armed force in Darfur attacked a peacekeeping supply convoy of more than 20 vehicles marked with the United Nations logo. Guehenno said that the area commander for the Sudanese military confirmed responsibility for the attack shortly afterward by telephone. On Wednesday, however, Sudanese officials in the capital, Khartoum, and New York denied responsibility and said rebels backed by neighboring Chad had orchestrated the attack to put the government under pressure. "They were not the government," said U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem. "The rebels did that. No doubt about it." The attack was only the most immediate problem facing the new peacekeeping mission. The African Union forces switched their berets from AU green to U.N. blue on Dec. 31, signaling the beginning of a joint peacekeeping operation by the two organizations that ultimately is expected to include 27,000 personnel. So far, about 9,000 troops and police are in place to protect civilians threatened by conflict in an area larger than California. But Guehenno lamented that continued obstacles put up by Sudan make many countries reluctant to offer personnel and equipment.

The government has rejected non-African soldiers and said it won't allow a team of Scandinavian engineers to help build roads and airstrips, further delaying deployment. Khartoum still has not consented to night flights, supplied land and water for bases in some areas or provided visas, Guehenno said. The government insists that African personnel wear green berets and non-Africans wear blue to differentiate them, a demand the U.N. has ignored, saying it goes against the original agreement as well as the U.N. charter. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir after the attack, and the pair will meet in two weeks at an African Union summit in Ethiopia to iron out remaining technical and political obstacles to the force's deployment. Guehenno told the Security Council in December that it might be better to not deploy a U.N. force at all than to deploy one that was too vulnerable, recalling tragedies involving overwhelmed peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

But the people of Darfur have little choice, with more than 300,000 people newly displaced in 2007 and malnutrition rates rising, despite the decrease in attacks on civilians by government-backed militias that earlier in the decade drove more than 2 million people from their homes. Aid workers are also at risk, with 13 killed and 147 abducted last year. Rebels continue to clash with government soldiers and militias, as well as with other rebel groups, over wealth, power and land. Peace talks have made little headway in stopping the 4-year-old conflict. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Zalmay Khalilzad, said the Bush administration considers the continuing conflict in Darfur to be "very important" and a challenge "to the credibility of the international community, the credibility of the U.N., the credibility of the Security Council. But we're not where we need to be," he said. "We need to take stock and see what adjustment needs to be made."
by Maggie Farley
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Kenyan Foes Agree to Meet on Vote Unrest

NAIROBI, Jan 8th. (Toronto Star) –Kenya's feuding political leaders stepped back from the brink yesterday, bowing to pressure for face-to-face negotiations as officials reassessed higher the severity of a week of bloody clashes that followed the release of disputed election results. As many as 500 people died in the spasms of ethnic and political violence that now have ebbed in all but three remote parts of Kenya, according to a new government tally released yesterday. Opposition sources said the numbers could be nearer to 1,000. President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, whose Orange Democratic Movement says the Dec. 27 election was stolen, are expected to meet as early as tomorrow for talks with African Union chair John Kufour, the president of Ghana. Calling the agreement for outside mediation "a major, major breakthrough," Odinga cancelled nationwide rallies planned for today, easing fears of renewed violence.

While the deadliest attacks have subsided, sporadic clashes continue in remote rural areas mostly west of the capital, many pitting Odinga's Luo and allied factions against Kibaki's Kikuyu, the largest of Kenya's mosaic of 42 tribes. The rival political camps have traded accusations that grassroots party provocateurs are behind much of the violence. "Mr. Kibaki must bear responsibility for the deaths we are seeing in our country today" because of blatant "rigging" of the elections, Odinga told Sky News. Government officials, meanwhile, said officials were investigating reports of "premeditated murder" involving opposition operatives suspected of orchestrating attacks on people who were forewarned they would pay if they voted for Kibaki. An official in neighbouring Uganda told The Associated Press yesterday 30 fleeing Kenyans were thrown into the border river Saturday by Kenyan attackers, and were presumed drowned. Two Ugandan truck drivers carrying the group said they were stopped at a roadblock mounted by vigilantes who identified the refugees as Kikuyus and threw them into the deep, swift-flowing Kipkaren River, said Himbaza Hashaka, a Ugandan border official. The drivers said none survived.

The pressure to bring the two sides together was led by U.S. envoy Jendayi Frazer, who yesterday confirmed the election was rigged in her first public comments after three days of intense behind-the-scenes diplomacy. "Yes there was rigging," said Frazer, who declined to name which side took greater advantage. "I mean there were problems in the vote-counting process ... both the parties could have rigged." Frazer pointedly criticized Kenya's independent electoral commission, which after days of delay finally confirmed Kibaki's re-election, only to admit later it had been subjected to political pressure to award the victory. The collapse of confidence in the commission, which won praise for its independence in past votes, has prompted opposition leaders to insist that any recount or repeat election must include international oversight. Adding to the chaos, the Law Society of Kenya, accused electoral officials of "ineptitude," called Kibaki's swearing-in "null and void," and urged a fresh vote.

As diplomatic efforts continued, Nairobi shops and businesses reopened yesterday, bringing traffic gridlock back to the capital for the time since the crisis began. "This is the first sale I have made since Christmas," said shop clerk Elizabeth Otieno, 23, as she packaged a pair of pants for a Kenyan customer. "If we don't sell we don't eat. People are still worried. But it helps to see business coming back." Tourism, which together with the tea and coffee industries is Kenya's biggest earner, has been clobbered by the fallout with mass cancellations upwards of 60 per cent, according to government officials.
by Mitch Potter
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Kenyan City Is Gripped by Violence

KISUMU, Kenya Jan 6th. - Kisumu, on Lake Victoria, is Kenya’s third-largest city. Dozens of stores have been looted, torched and smashed by rioters and then picked clean by an army of glue-sniffing street children searching for whatever was left. The scorched Ukwala supermarket looks as if a bomb blew up inside it. The gates of Zamana Electronic are mangled. People here say this is just the beginning. “We will never surrender!” yelled a man who attended a rally for opposition leaders on Saturday. “We want guns, guns!” another man added. While much of Kenya is trying to get back to normal after a week of post-election violence that has claimed more than 300 lives nationwide, Kisumu, Kenya’s third-largest city, is still quivering with anger. Few places have been so thoroughly gutted by the turbulence as here.

With Kenya’s leaders still at an impasse despite the efforts of Jendayi E. Frazer, the American assistant secretary of state for Africa who met with both sides on Saturday, it looks as if the tensions will linger dangerously for some time. Kisumu is the stronghold of Raila Odinga, the opposition leader who said he had been cheated out of the presidency, and the town’s main street is named after his father, a local hero. The people here followed the election so closely that they remember the precise hour last weekend, on Saturday, when the vote count suddenly changed, and Mwai Kibaki, Kenya’s president, went from trailing badly to winning with a suspiciously thin margin of victory. The town exploded, and a furious mob stormed up Oginga Odinga street. The biggest businesses are now in ashes. Fuel, food and cellphone credit are in short supply. And around 2,000 people from Mr. Kibaki’s tribe, the Kikuyu, are camped out at the police station, trying to escape a wave of revenge killings. “If I stay here, I’ll be lynched,” said Waweru Mburu, a Kikuyu, as he nervously waited outside a supermarket, one of the two open in this town of half a million people. His wife had been waiting for hours, trying to buy milk.

Trucks carrying Kikuyu and evacuees from another tribe, the Kisii, many of whom supported Mr. Kibaki, are jeered at as they pull out of town. Those doing the jeering are mostly Luo, like Mr. Odinga, who live here in great numbers. “Traitors!” some Luo shouted on Saturday as a truck passed. People on both sides said the tensions would not ease as long as Kenya’s political leaders refused to even speak to each other, which has been the situation since the election on Dec. 27. On Saturday, Mr. Kibaki indicated that he was ready to form “a government of national unity.” Mr. Odinga did not reject that outright but said he would not entertain any offers until the two sides sat down in the presence of foreign mediators. The government initially rebuffed outside help, but seems to have relented slightly and sent a diplomat to Ghana to discuss a role for the African Union, according to Reuters. Ms. Frazer met separately with Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga and urged them to work together to solve the crisis, which has dented Kenya’s image as one of the most stable countries in Africa and could cause permanent economic damage if peace is not restored soon.

It seems that momentum is growing toward negotiations. “There is slow progress being made,” said Salim Lone, a spokesman for Mr. Odinga. Kenyans are waiting. Some areas, like the capital, have quieted down considerably. In the Rift Valley, the area most torn by violence, fewer killings have been reported in the past few days, but tens of thousands of people are displaced and in need of food. In Kisumu, the killings have stopped, for the most part. But the banks are running out of money, few stores are open and the looting continues. There is some opportunism to all this. The rage that swept through town was selective, striking at electronics shops, cellphone kiosks and shoe stores but leaving the drapery dealer alone. On Saturday, Monica Awino tiptoed through the shattered interior of a Bata footwear store. Glass was everywhere. She used to work here and now is out of a job at the best time of year. No after-Christmas or back-to-school sales for her. “I’m angry at everybody,” she said. Up the street, Bernard Ndede, a high school English teacher, watched street children carefully sift through inches of rubble on the floor of a charred supermarket, as if they were urban archaeologists. He said he did not approve of the looting, but he understood the anger. “People woke up so early that day to vote for change,” he said, referring to election day and the millions of people who voted for Mr. Odinga. “They felt robbed.” For some, the disappointment was lethal. On Saturday, Albert Ojonyo, an insurance agent, went to the city morgue to pick up the body of his brother, Daniel. More than 40 people were killed here in election-related violence. Many bodies have not been identified and wait in a sweltering room under strips of red cloth with their feet poking out. Mr. Ojonyo said his brother, who was 27, had been shot in the head, most likely by police officers trying to quell the rioters. “Daniel felt very strongly about these elections,” he said. “Afterward, he was a very bitter boy.”
By Jeffrey Gettlemane
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The World's Most Dangerous Place

Nothing else has worked: it is time for Pakistan to try democracy
Jan 3rd 2008, Economist - The war against Islamist extremism and the terrorism it spawns is being fought on many fronts. But it may well be in Pakistan that it is won or lost. It is not only that the country's lawless frontier lands provide a refuge for al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and that its jihad academies train suicide-bombers with global reach. Pakistan is also itself the world's second most populous Muslim nation, with a proud tradition of tolerance and moderation, now under threat from the extremists on its fringes. Until recently, the risk that Pakistan might be prey to Islamic fundamentalism of the sort its Taliban protégés enforced in Afghanistan until 2001 seemed laughable. It is still far-fetched. But after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, twice prime minister, nobody is laughing. This, after all, is a country that now has the bomb Miss Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, craved so passionately as prime minister in the 1970s.

There are many other reasons why the murder of Miss Bhutto (and some 20 other people unlucky enough to be near her) makes Pakistan seem a frightening place. That terrorists could strike in Rawalpindi, headquarters of the Pakistani army, despite having advertised threats against Miss Bhutto, and despite the slaughter of some 150 people in Karachi on the day she returned from exile last October, suggests no one is safe. If, as many in Pakistan believe, the security services were themselves complicit, that is perhaps even scarier. It would make it even harder to deal with the country's many other fissures: the sectarian divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims; the ethnic tensions between Punjabis, Sindhis, Pushtuns and “mohajir” immigrants from India; the insurgency in Baluchistan; and the spread of the “Pakistani Taliban” out of the border tribal areas into the heartlands. Miss Bhutto's murder has left her Pakistan People's Party (PPP), the country's biggest, at risk of disintegration. It is now in the hands of her unpopular widower, Asif Ali Zardari, and her 19-year-old son, Bilawal, who by rights should be punting and partying with his classmates at Oxford, not risking his neck in politics. The election whose campaign killed Miss Bhutto was due on January 8th, but the Election Commission has delayed it by six weeks. The PPP will reap a big sympathy vote. But bereft of Miss Bhutto, the party—and the country—look desperately short of leaders of national stature. Other Bhutto clan-members are already sniping at her successors. The other big mainstream party, led by her rival Nawaz Sharif, another two-time prime minister, is also in disarray. Both parties have been weakened by their leaders' exiles, as well as by persecution at the hands of President Pervez Musharraf's military dictatorship. In truth, both Miss Bhutto and Mr Sharif were lousy prime ministers. But at least they had some semblance of a popular mandate. The systematic debilitation of their parties benefits the army, which has entrenched itself in the economic as well as the political system. But it also helps the Islamist parties—backed, as they are, by an army which has sometimes found them more congenial partners than the more popular mainstream parties. The unpopularity of the Musharraf regime, hostility towards America, and resentment at a war in neighbouring Afghanistan that many in Pakistan see as directed at both Islam and their ethnic-Pushtun kin, have also helped the Islamists.

So, ironically, America's support for Mr Musharraf, justified as necessary to combat extremism next door, has fostered extremism at home. Similarly, in the 1980s America backed General Zia ul Haq, a dictator and Islamic fundamentalist, as his intelligence services sponsored the mujahideen who eventually toppled the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan. In the process, they helped create what Miss Bhutto called a “Frankenstein's monster”—of jihadist groups with sympathisers in the army and intelligence services. The clubbable, whisky-quaffing, poodle-cuddling Mr Musharraf is no fundamentalist. But the monster still stalks his security forces. Yet Pakistan's plight is not yet hopeless. Two things could still help arrest its slide into anarchy, improbable though both now seem. The first is a credible investigation into Miss Bhutto's murder and the security-service lapses (or connivance) that allowed it to happen. Mr Musharraf's willingness to let a couple of British policemen help the inquiry is unlikely to produce this. Every time a bomb goes off in Pakistan, people believe that one of the country's own spooks lit the fuse. Until there has been a convincing purge of the military-intelligence apparatus, Pakistan will never know true stability.

Second, there could be a fair election. This would expose the weakness of the Islamist parties. In the last general election in 2002, they won just one-tenth of the votes, despite outrageous rigging that favoured them. Even if they fared somewhat better this time, they would still, in the most populous provinces, Sindh and Punjab, be trounced by the mainstream parties. An elected government with popular support would be better placed to work with the moderate, secular, professional tendency in the army to tackle extremism and bring Pakistan's poor the economic development they need. Sadly, there seems little hope that the security forces will abandon the habit of a lifetime and allow truly fair elections. The delay in the voting—opposed by both main opposition parties—has been seen as part of its plan to rig the results. The violence that has scarred the country since Miss Bhutto's assassination may intensify. The army may be tempted to impose another state of emergency; or it may cling on to ensure that the election produces the result it wants—a weak and pliable coalition of the PPP and Mr Musharraf's loyalists.

For too long, Mr Musharraf has been allowed to pay lip-service to democratic forms, while the United States has winked at his blatant disdain for the substance. The justification has been the pre-eminent importance of “stability” in the world's most dangerous place. It is time to impress upon him and the generals still propping him up that democracy is not the alternative to stability. It is Pakistan's onlyhope.
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A Very African Coup

Kenya's president steals an election, showing utter contempt for democracy and his people

Jan 3rd The Economist - The mayhem that killed hundreds of people following Kenya's election on December 27th completes a depressing cycle of democratic abuses in Africa's biggest countries. Nigeria held its own mockery of an election last April. Scores were killed and observers pronounced it the most fraudulent poll they had ever witnessed. Congo held a more or less peaceful election in October 2006, since when the main opposition leader has been hounded into exile. And the year before that, flawed elections in Ethiopia resulted in the deaths of 199 protesters. Needless to say, the incumbents all won. So it is easy to be angry, as well as gloomy, about African leaders' continual betrayal of the democratic values they say they hold so dear. And all the more so in the case of Kenya, which has a strong tradition of holding elections, a vibrant political culture, a relatively free press and a sophisticated economy. Given all these advantages, as we wrote before the election, Kenya had an opportunity to “set an example” to Africa and hold free and fair elections. But the country blew it.

Or, more precisely, the political elite blew it. A small cabal of politicians almost certainly stole the result by fraud. In the parliamentary vote, President Mwai Kibaki's ruling party was routed. Yet in the presidential vote Mr Kibaki emerged victorious at the last moment and had himself sworn in only a few minutes later, forestalling pleas from all sides—even from the head of the election commission he himself had appointed—for a pause to investigate mounting claims of malpractice. The report of the European observers was unusually strong in its condemnation of the count. As in Nigeria, Kenyans queued quietly to exercise their right to vote, reflecting the enormous appetite for democracy that exists on a continent that was until recently dominated by dictators and “big men”. But for democracy to survive, it is not enough to hold elections. Politicians must accept that they may have to give up office, and thus all the opportunities for self-enrichment that come their way. It is no coincidence that the most corrupt politicians are also those who cling most desperately to power—as in Kenya and Nigeria.

In stealing the election, Mr Kibaki has also invited a dangerous backlash against his Kikuyu tribe, the country's largest. Tense tribal divisions have long threatened to widen as the minority groups, including opposition leader Raila Odinga's Luo, have come to feel marginalised by the concentration of power in Kikuyu hands. If the current violence does evolve into something worse, perhaps even civil war, Mr Kibaki and his henchmen will bear much of the blame. Initially, America, which sees Kenya as a front-line ally in a war against Islamist militias in neighbouring Somalia, made the mistake of endorsing the president's re-election. Now Britain, America and the African Union are urging Mr Odinga and Mr Kibaki to talk in an effort to stop the bloodletting. That lets Mr Kibaki off the hook far too easily. All the violence should certainly be condemned, but most of the diplomatic pressure should be exerted on Mr Kibaki's supposed new government to annul the results and organise a recount—or a new vote. If Mr Kibaki will not do this, the rest of the world should suspend direct aid to his regime and impose a travel ban on his officials. That is the least the wretched people of Kenya have a right to expect from their friends abroad.
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Rich Nations Attacked for Failing Congo

Jan. 2nd. (Financial Times) - The head of the United Nations refugee agency has accused the rich world of failing to respond adequately to the humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, even as its multinationals “systematically loot” the country of its resources. In an interview with the FT shortly after his return from the DRC, António Guterres, UN high commissioner for refugees, said western assistance came nowhere near meeting people’s needs in a vast country where continuing instability and widespread poverty had created one of the worst humanitarian situations in the world. Mr Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister, attributed this neglect in part to the fact that, unlike Iraq, Afghanistan or even Somalia, misery in the DRC involved no perceived threat to western governments. “Even if we face a humanitarian disaster, as in North Kivu where there has been a dramatic increase in violence, nobody in the outside world feels threatened and so the international community is not really paying attention to DRC.”

Aid groups say 3m-4m people in the DRC, a country with a population of about 60m, have died in recent years as a result of conflict, poverty and disease. While most of the country is now stable – the civil war ended in 2003 and UN-supervised elections were held in 2006 – 400,000 people have been uprooted in the past 12 months by a resurgence of violence in the eastern province of North Kivu. The UN estimates that 800,000 people have been displaced in North Kivu, which has also seen violence against women, including rape and mutilation, reach terrifying proportions. Although international agencies and donor governments are providing some assistance, and the UN has mounted its biggest-ever force of some 16,500 peacekeepers, this is small in comparison with needs, Mr Guterres says. He points to the sheer size of the DRC – about four times that of France – and the high cost of operating there, given a lack of infrastructure that requires everything to be transported by aircraft.

Failure to improve living conditions would put at risk the democratic process and could threaten regional stability, he warned. “One of the most frustrating things is to see a country in which you had [successful] elections but then you have to say to people: nothing can be improved in the next few months, even in the next few years, in infrastructure, in water, in sanitation, in health, in education, in jobs. And so the population starts to ask itself whether democracy has any value. “Think about the amount of resources that have been taken out of this country. Lots of companies operate in DRC, taking out its resources, in many circumstances, without a minimum respect for any rules. The international community has systematically looted DRC and we should not forget that.”
By Frances Williams in Geneva
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Kenyan Riot Police Turn Back Rallying Protesters

NAIROBI, Jan 4th. (NY Times) — Nairobi degenerated into violence again on Thursday, as riot police used tear gas, batons and water cannons to push back thousands of opposition supporters who poured into the streets to answer a call for a million-person rally that had been banned by the government. But later in the day, Kenya’s attorney general broke ranks with the president and insisted on an independent investigation into disputed election results, an indication of the growing divide within Kenya’s government about how to resolve a crisis that has ignited chaos and ethnic fighting across the country, killing more than 300 people. Starting at about 10 a.m., protesters burned tires, smashed windows and clashed with police across Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. Some demonstrators showed restraint, yelling to the rowdier members in their ranks, “Drop your stones!” Others tore through the slums, witnesses said, raping women and attacking people with machetes. The body of one young man who had been hacked to death lay in a muddy alleyway. His face was covered with plastic bags and his shoes had been stolen.

The trouble even spilled into the garden of the Serena Hotel, one of the fanciest in town. Guests in safari vests looked down from the balconies of their $400-a-night rooms and watched the turmoil below. Police officers in padded suits charged a scrum of demonstrators and shot their rifles in the air. As soon as the tear gas wafted up, the tourists ducked inside. “This country is going to burn!” a protester yelled. It has been a week since Kenyans went to the polls in the most contested elections in the country’s history, and the dispute over whether Mwai Kibaki, the president, honestly won the most votes continues to violently divide the nation. The government and opposition leaders continue to blame each other for the bloodshed, trading accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing. They have set such strict conditions on negotiating that nothing, including the entreaties of Western ambassadors, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the cries of their own people, has succeeded in getting them to talk to each other.

Kenya’s two biggest newspapers printed the identical banner headline on Thursday: “Save Our Beloved Country.” But a breakthrough may be in the works. Kenya’s attorney general, Amos Wako, said on Thursday afternoon that an independent body should investigate the disputed vote tabulations, which gave the president, at the eleventh hour of the counting process, a razor-thin margin of victory. Western officials and opposition leaders had been calling for such a probe. It is not clear if Mr. Kibaki will agree to this. A few hours after the attorney general spoke, the president reiterated at a news conference that he had won the elections fair and square and would not relinquish power. “I will personally lead this nation in healing,” he said. Alfred Mutua, the government’s top spokesman, said the attorney general was merely making a suggestion and that an independent investigation into election irregularities “was not necessarily going to happen.” “The president prefers the court system,” Mr. Mutua said, meaning the opposition could file a complaint in court, which most people here think is futile. But, he added, “the president has nothing to hide.”

Foreign diplomats have been meeting day and night to find a way to bring Mr. Kibaki and Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader who says he was cheated out of the presidency, to some sort of détente. Until last week, Kenya was one of the most promising countries on the continent, but the ethnic violence, fueled by political passions, is threatening to ruin that. The economy, one of the biggest in Africa, has ground to a halt. Roads are blocked. Shops are closed. Factories are idle. The currency, the Kenyan shilling, is taking a dive. The World Bank said on Thursday that the unrest threatens Kenya’s impressive recent gains in economic growth and poverty reduction, citing business leaders’ estimates that the country is losing some $30 million a day. And the ills here are hurting the entire region. Gas stations in Rwanda are now rationing fuel because their supply from Kenya has been cut. In Uganda, Sudan and Congo, displaced people are running low on food because United nations relief trucks cannot get past vigilante checkpoints. Production in places like Tanzania is slowing down because materials that come from Kenya have not arrived. “Kenya is the dynamo of this whole region,” said Harvey Rouse, a diplomat for the European Union.

Mr. Rouse spoke from a hill overlooking an enormous slum where police were battling protesters. The slum, named Kibera, has become the protesters’ stage. Every morning, the journalists take their spots on the hillside, the police line up at the mouth of a road leading from the shanties to the glass towers downtown and the protesters mass in the streets, screaming slogans, lighting fires and burning pictures of the president. On Thursday it was an effigy stuffed with greasy rags. Thursday was supposed to be the day that Mr. Odinga’s supporters rallied in downtown Nairobi at a place called Uhuru Park. But they never got close. Thousands of riot police fanned out at dawn and sealed off the main routes into the city. They refused to let any demonstrator pass. Some were clearly peaceful, like the hundreds of women carrying palm leaves and walking barefoot to town. They were chased away choking on tear gas and clawing at their eyes. Others’ intentions were so clear. One young protester crouched in the street with a green leaf, the sign of peace, in one hand and a rock in the other. “We have been patient long enough!” he yelled. It is indeed difficult to tell which way things are going here. In the past two days, there have been no big attacks, like the one on Tuesday in which up to 50 people hiding in a church were burned alive. But reports from the provinces indicate the killings are still going on. Much of the violence is ethnically based, with tribes that support the opposition, like the Luos, Masai and Kalenjin, hunting down Kikuyus, the tribe of the president. On Wednesday night, residents of a quiet town in the Rift Valley said that a mob of Masai killed four Kikuyu shopkeepers and looted their stores. The opposition says it will hold a rally on Friday and every day after that until the president steps down.
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
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Kenya 'Facing Humanitarian Disaster'

Nairobi, Wed. Jan 2nd. (Guardian) - Aid agencies today warned of a humanitarian disaster in Kenya amid claims of "ethnic cleansing" and increased international pressure on Kenyan leaders to end the post-election violence. The Kenya Red Cross said up to 100,000 people had so far been displaced. According to Kenya's Human Rights Commission, more than 300 have been killed. More than 5,000 people have fled to neighbouring Uganda, and several hundred people have fled to Tanzania. Abbas Gullet, the secretary general of the Kenya Red Cross, described the situation as "national disaster", adding: "A few hundred thousand will need assistance for some time."

Meanwhile, Kenya's disputed president, Mwai Kibaki, and his main rival, the opposition leader Raila Odinga, have come under mounting diplomatic pressure to reach a compromise to end the violence. In a joint statement, the foreign secretary, David Miliband, and his US counterpart, Condoleezza Rice, acknowledged the "irregularities" in the elections but called on both Kibaki and Odinga to negotiate. The head of the African Union, the Ghanaian president John Kufuor, is due to meet both leaders tomorrow in a mediation effort. His mission is being backed by Gordon Brown, who said he would do everything in his power to promote reconciliation. "The whole international community has been coming together to try to bring an end to violence in Kenya and I believe that there is a responsibility on the part of all opposition and government leaders in Kenya to call on their supporters to end the violence that's taking place," Brown said.

Brown has been in phone contact with Odinga and Kibaki, whose re-election on Sunday is widely seen to have been rigged. "Millions of people queued up in Kenya to cast their vote. They deserve a government that brings about stability and prosperity," Brown said. Yesterday Odinga rejected a plea by Brown to negotiate with Kibaki, saying he would only do so if Kibaki acknowledged that he had lost the election. He has urged his supporters to take part in a rally against the result tomorrow. Kibaki has invited all members of the newly elected parliament, which is dominated by his opponents, to a meeting to soothe tensions. Anger at the poll's result has stirred ethnic tensions. In the worst incident, up to 50 ethnic Kikuyus were burned alive as they sheltered in a church in the Rift Valley city of Eldoret.

Eyewitness reports of victims being hacked as they fled echoed those from the Rwandan genocide in 1994, in which more than 500,000 people were killed. Red Cross officials visiting the Moi University hospital, in Eldoret, reported seeing people who had suffered gunshot and arrow wounds. "The hospital is overwhelmed with the number of casualties," Gullet said. "One tribe is targeting another one in a fashion that can rightly be described as ethnic cleansing," an unnamed senior police official told the AFP news agency. Kibaki's government has accused Odinga's supporters of the violence, while Odinga accused the government of "genocide". The UN's humanitarian information service reported that 30 checkpoints had been set up between Burnt Forest and Eldoret by vigilantes.

More than 5,000 people have fled to Uganda. "If you are not of the right ethnic group, it's no go," one Red Cross official was reported as saying. John Okello, a Nairobi doctor, said clinics around the city were running short of basic materials such as white gauze because so many people had been arriving for treatment suffering from machete wounds. Accounts of the fire at the church in Eldoret have continued to emerge. A mob of around 2,000 arrived at the building, George Karanja, whose family had sought refuge there, said. "The mattresses that people were sleeping on caught fire. There was a stampede, and people fell on one another," he said. The 37-year-old helped rescue at least 10 people from the flames, but added: "I could not manage to pull out my sister's son. He was screaming ... he died." First aid workers were stopped by vigilantes who challenged them to declare their ethnicity.

There are more than 40 tribes in Kenya. The largest, the Kikuyu, Kibaki's tribe, is accused of using its dominance of politics and business to the detriment of others. Odinga is from the Luo tribe, a smaller but still major tribe that claims it has been marginalised. While Kibaki and Odinga have support from across the tribal spectrum, those responsible for the violence see politics in strictly ethnic terms.
by Matthew Weaver and agencies
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"Neno likawa Mwili" "Kal Siga hone" "Y el verbo se hizo carne" "Le Verbe s'est fait chair" "And the Word became flesh" "La Parola si fece carne" "E a palavra foi feita carne" "A slowo cialem sie stalo" "aur shabda deh bana" "mikotoba wa Hito to nata" "sheng yan jiang cheng xue rou" Jn 1,14

May you and your loved ones have a truly joyous and peace filled Christmas.

Mozlink

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Zimbabwe issues $750,000 bills

HARARE Dec 20th (AP) — Zimbabwe's central bank unveiled new currency notes Thursday with denominations as high as 750,000 dollars as the government tries to ease chronic shortages of cash in a hyperinflationary economy. Official inflation is 8,000 per cent — the highest in the world — although independent estimates put it substantially higher. The International Monetary Fund forecast inflation would reach 100,000 per cent by the end of the year. The government is withdrawing all 200,000-dollar notes, currently the largest currency note, and will question those attempting to exchange them to root out “cash barons” who hoarded them for illegal deals, Gideon Gono, governor of the Reserve Bank, told the state broadcaster.

The 200,000-dollar note is expected to be phased out by Jan. 1. People exchanging large sums of 200,000 dollar notes will be asked to explain how they were acquired or face forfeiture and criminal charges. Lines that have formed daily this month outside banks and automated teller machines grew even longer Thursday after Mr. Gono said the central bank was pumping new 250,000, 500,000 and 750,000 Zimbabwe dollar bills into the economy ahead of the holidays. Lines have begun forming as early as 4 a.m. and banks are limiting withdrawals to 5-million Zimbabwe dollars per customer, about enough to buy a take out hamburger. There are acute shortages of food, gasoline and basic goods in Zimbabwe, now embroiled in its worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1980. Unemployment is around 80 per cent and political unrest is growing. Foreign investment, loans and development aid have dried up.

President Robert Mugabe, 83, who has ruled Zimbabwe for 27 years, blames the crisis on Western sanctions and rejects criticism that mismanagement caused the meltdown.
by ANGUS SHAW
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Christian Aid: 'Bali agreement is Deeply Flawed'

London Dec. 18th. (ICN) - Christian Aid has welcomed the last minute agreement at the Bali climate change conference that will enable negotiations to start on a new climate change agreement on a second phase of the Kyoto Protocol, which needs to be in place by 2012. But the agency said it is dismayed that crucial target figures for cutting carbon emissions in rich countries were removed from the final agreement. A reference to 25-40% cuts for industrialised countries by 2020 over 1990 levels was included in a draft agreement produced a week ago.

The range reflected recommendations made in a report this year by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said the cuts were essential to prevent global temperatures rising above two degrees. The cuts were also called for in a document agreed at an earlier meeting in Vienna of Kyoto Protocol signatories, including Britain.

In Bali, however, the inclusion of a specific range of targets - even non binding ones - was strongly resisted by the governments of the United States, Russia, Japan and Canada. Instead, today's agreement merely makes a footnote reference to the IPCC report. Nelson Muffuh, a senior Christian Aid climate change policy analyst, said: "For most of the conference, the US delegation in particular proved a major obstacle to progress. They appeared to operate a wrecking policy, as though determined to derail the whole process. "We must praise the heroism of some of the developing countries who are far less wealthy and far less responsible for the problem than the US and yet came here with a desire to see a deal agreed. It was their bravery in standing up to the US that no doubt played a part in its u-turn. "But the way ahead will be hard. The Bush administration has said throughout that it wants to see developing countries agree to cuts in carbon emissions. A number of emerging economies put creative, flexible plans on the table, but will have little incentive to negotiate further until the industrialised world agrees deeper cuts.

"Climate change is already having a devastating impact on the lives of some of the world's poorest communities through drought and flooding. The lack of clear targets in the roadmap leaves them exposed to further catastrophe." "Progress was made in Bali on the transfer of clean technology to poorer nations and the provision of additional money to help those most exposed to climate change adapt and defend themselves. A pledge was also made to protect forests in tropical countries. These developments, however, are eclipsed by the failure to introduce carbon cuts targets." "We were expecting a roadmap, and we've got one," said Mr Muffuh. "But it lacks signposts and there is no agreed destination."
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Help Zimbabwe Orphans Choir Reach Christmas Number One

London, Jesuit Communications Dec. 20th. - A unique recording of a traditional Shona lament and a Western Christmas carol is on the way to becoming year's Christmas Number One. The single - Makandifira/Silent Night - features a 30-strong Zimbabwean children's choir, all of them residents of Makumbi Children's Home and either orphaned by AIDS or HIV positive, singing with the London Oratory School Schola (choir). It is intended to raise both funds and public awareness of the plight of African children facing the devastating effects of that continent's HIV/AIDS crisis.

The project was the initiative of two of London's most respected music professionals - Lee Ward, Director of Music at the London Oratory School, and Chris Birkett, a music producer who has worked with international stars including Sinead O'Connor, Talking Heads and The Pogues. Lee and Chris travelled to Zimbabwe in mid-November to record the Zimbabwean choir, before returning to London to add the voices of the London boys at Angel Studios in Islington. The trip to record the choir in Zimbabwe was organised and part-financed by Jesuit Missions in London: the Makumbi orphanage was established by the Jesuits and currently cares for over 100 children from 0-18 years old. Many of the children have come to stay at the Home having been found abandoned by the side of the road, left there by grandparents or other members of their extended family no longer able to cope with the burden of caring for these young orphans.

The London Oratory School Schola's most recent recorded work can be heard on the soundtrack of the Christmas blockbuster movie The Golden Compass. The CD was launched at the World AIDS Day concert at Cadogan Hall, London, at which the Schola performed in a Requiem Concert for raising funds for AIDS charities. The CD is now on sale at Stg£5 (including P & P) from Jesuit Missions- click on the following link for more details see: http://www.jesuitmissions.org.uk/makumbi/index.htm You can use this link to hear the music and see the choirs recording the track. The single is also available to download on iTunes.
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UN Adopts Resolution for Moratorium on Death Penalty

NEW YORK - 20 Dec. (ICN News) - A moratorium on the death penalty was adopted yesterday by the United Nations General Assembly. The General Assembly said it considered the use of the death penalty "undermines human dignity" and said the moratorium "contributed to the enhancement and progressive development of human rights" adding that "that there is no conclusive evidence of the death penalty's deterrent value and that any miscarriage or failure of justice in the death penalty's implementation is irreversible and irreparable." It welcomed the increasing number of states around the world who are abolishing capital punishment and expressed deep concern for those who still carry out executions. It called for a progressive restriction of the use of the death penalty and and a reduction the number of offences for which it may be imposed. Appealing for more countries to abandon capital punishment, it requests the Secretary-General to report to the General Assembly at its sixty-third session on the implementation of the resolution;

Responding to the news, the Community of Saint'Egidio said: "This a milestone that marks a new and widely shared moral standard that will be always more difficult and embarrassing to ignore on an international level. It is a sign of an important change in world conscience, which increasingly deems death inflicted by a state unacceptable and a humiliation of fundamental human rights, the right to life. It is a fundamental contribution towards accelerating a process in which, since the 1990's ,over 50 nations have renounced the use of the death penalty."
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Frustration With Charities and U.N. in Congo

Jomba residents routed from their homes by fighting have taken refuge in a school 15 miles away in Rutshuru since mid-October. (Lynsey Addario for The New York Times)

GOMA, Congo Dec. 16th — Frustration at the United Nations peacekeeping force and the dozens of aid organizations working in North Kivu Province, in eastern Congo, is rising as violence increases, the number of displaced people here creeps toward one million and the pace of assistance lags, especially to those fleeing the fighting in the past few weeks. Many Congolese want the United Nations peacekeepers to intervene more forcefully and fight beside the Congolese Army against the rebel forces of Laurent Nkunda, a renegade general who refuses to merge his troops into the national armed forces. The fight against General Nkunda has pushed Congo to the brink of a new civil war, a year after the first elected government in four decades took office and four years after fighting officially ended. Congo’s army has proved unable to beat back the rebels, and the fighting in the past year has displaced 425,000 people. The United Nations force has a strong mandate in Congo to use force to protect civilians, and it has pledged to defend Goma and the camps around it from being overrun by rebels. It is also required to work with the Congolese Army to establish security, which has led to the expectation in a population weary from more than a decade of conflict that the United Nations force here, known by its acronym, Monuc, would help defeat the rebels. “Why is Monuc here, if not to fight these people who make us suffer?” said Mwenge Biroto, who fled the town of Sake on Tuesday. “Why don’t they help us get peace?”

Diplomats from several Western countries have also questioned why Monuc has not acted more forcefully to prevent civilians from having to flee in the first place, an issue that is likely to come up as diplomats gather here this weekend to discuss regional security. The force’s mandate is up for renewal in the Security Council this month. United Nations officials say that their role is to help Congo’s government, not take its place, and that protecting civilians is mainly the government’s responsibility. The United Nations has provided transportation for troop movements and some helicopter air support to the government’s unsuccessful efforts to remove General Nkunda. Congolese frustration with the United Nations force is more than matched by anger at its own military, which retreated in the face of rebel attacks last week. Brig. Gen. Indrajeet Narayan, the commander of the 4,500 peacekeeping troops deployed in North Kivu, said the force was not authorized to go any further unless it was under attack. “There is a lot of expectation” from civilians, General Narayan said. “They see our troops, they see our weaponry, so they expect this should be used. However the mandate clearly states that we have to protect the civilian population, that is foremost.”

The United Nations also has serious human rights concerns in working too closely with the Congolese military, which has struggled, largely unsuccessfully, to maintain discipline and morale. The army is mostly composed of former members of the old national army and militias who fought in the civil war. They have been retrained and redeployed, but problems have continued, and the army has been accused of many human rights violations, including murder and rape. Human rights organizations and aid workers say that the army sometimes collaborates with militias, like the Mai Mai. Last week, the 14th Brigade, which the rebels chased out of Mushake, harassed civilians and looted as it left, drawing censure from the United Nations. Many Congolese are also frustrated with aid organizations, many of which began to scale back emergency programs after last year’s election to focus more on long- and medium-term development, the brick-and-mortar projects, like schools, clinics and water systems, needed to rebuild a shattered country. They are struggling to keep up with the surge in demand for basic supplies, like food and shelter for the endless river of displaced people, and work amid the violence.

Hunger and disease, not bullets and bombs, have always been the primary killers in Congo, where some researchers estimate four million have died since the war began in 1996. People on the run often crowd in with relatives in provincial towns to avoid the refugee camps. But this practice can make them more vulnerable to disease — most camps have clean water and latrines. In Rutshuru, a large regional town, a cholera epidemic brings 50 people daily to a hospital run by Doctors without Borders. Cholera is a grim byproduct of displacement. When rural people flock to cities, they take cholera with them. In crowded and unsanitary conditions, it spreads like wildfire, said Augustin Augier, the hospital’s coordinator. “The violence and disease are completely connected,” Mr. Augier said. “We have never seen a cholera epidemic in Rutshuru; it is only as a result of the crisis.” The hospital set up a cholera ward, and a workshop to build cots. Speed is essential. Caught early, cholera is treatable — no medicine is needed, just copious infusions of intravenous fluids. But left untreated, it kills half of its victims, sometimes in a day.

Getting food to the displaced has been a problem. Security concerns and rutted, mud-choked roads have made it difficult to move supplies. “The vast majority of North Kivu’s people are farmers, so when they get displaced, food becomes an issue almost immediately,” said Aya Shneerson of the World Food Program. “A lot of times they really run with nothing.” Many are displaced multiple times, running from one village to another as the fighting moves, Ms. Shneerson said. Even when populations can return, they cannot farm because of roaming armed groups. Rebels and army soldiers alike, aid and human rights workers say, rape women who leave their villages to farm. Child malnutrition is rising, and displaced people are forced to flee with no food, leaving them dependent on handouts. In Minova, a town where dozens of ragged, exhausted families arrived last week seeking refuge, Cadre, a local aid organization, opened a spare building where it usually offers sewing classes as a shelter from the driving rain. “We really don’t have anything to offer them — no food, nothing to make shelter,” said Edouard Dunia, who leads Cadre. Eugenie Hasima sat on a hill nearby, trying to calm her daughter Ajira, 2, who screeched for food. “I have nothing to give her,” she said, breaking down in sobs as Ajira cried inconsolably. “She has not eaten since yesterday, and she spent all day walking. We are all just so hungry.”
By LYDIA POLGREEN
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Saudi King 'Pardons Rape Victim'

Saudi women are subject to strict sex segregation laws

The Saudi king has pardoned a female rape victim sentenced to jail and 200 lashes for being alone with a man raped in the same attack, reports say.

London Dec. 17th. (BBC) - The "Qatif girl" case caused an international outcry with widespread criticism of the Saudi justice system. The male and female victims were in a car together when they were abducted and raped by seven attackers, who were given jail sentences up to nine years. Press reports say King Abdullah's move did not mean the sentence was wrong. Quoted by the Jazirah newspaper, Justice Minister Abdullah al-Sheikh said the king had the right to issue pardons if it served the public interest. Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to mix with men who are not close family members.

The custodial sentence plus 200 lashes was imposed after the woman, who has not been named, appealed against an earlier sentence of 90 lashes. The Saudi king frequently pardons criminals at the Eid al-Adha festival which takes place this week, but correspondents say that is usually announced by the official press agency. The BBC's Heba Saleh says the king's decision to pardon the woman victim is already arousing controversy with some contributors to conservative websites, who say he has breached the rules of religion in order to appease critics in the West. The US had called the punishment "astonishing", although it refused to condemn the Saudi justice system. Human rights groups had been calling on King Abdullah, who has a reputation as a pro-Western reformer, to change it.

The justice ministry recently rejected what it saw as "foreign interference" in the case and insisted the ruling was legal and that the woman had confessed to having an affair with her fellow rape victim. Earlier, the woman - who is a Shia Muslim from the Qatif area - had reportedly said she met the man in order to retrieve a photograph of them together, having herself recently got married. She says two other men then entered the car and took them to a secluded area where others were waiting, and both she and her male companion were raped. The woman's companion was sentenced to 90 lashes. It is not known if his sentence was also lifted.
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U.S. Prevails on Climate Draft, Ban says

The U.N. chief asserts that the text emanating from the Bali summit won't include specific targets for lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

NUSA DUA, INDONESIA, Dec. 13th. LA Times-- As the United Nations climate conference here was drawing to its conclusion, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday acknowledged that the United States' goal of deleting specific emission reduction guidelines from a draft agreement had succeeded. "Realistically, it may be too ambitious if delegations would be expected to be able to agree on targets of greenhouse gas emission reductions" here in Bali, he told reporters. "Practically speaking, this will have to be negotiated down the road." The Bali meeting was convened to draw up a "road map" for negotiations on a new treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire in 2012. An early draft of the guidelines called for industrialized countries to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions 25% to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020, but the Bush administration has resisted the inclusion of any targets. Chief U.S. negotiator Harlan L. Watson reiterated that position Wednesday. "The reality in this business is that once numbers appear in the text, it prejudges the outcome and will tend to drive the negotiations in one direction," he said.

Another contentious section of the draft called for global emissions to peak in 10 to 15 years and be reduced to at least half of 2000 levels by 2050, proposed requirements that have been vigorously opposed by China and India. Both countries' emissions have more than doubled since 1990, and both want only voluntary standards for developing nations. "If we want to take a voluntary approach for 70% of the world's emissions, I think that is just a nonstarter, it doesn't work," said John Baird, Canada's environment minister. He argued that if wealthy countries were the only ones to accept emissions targets, pollution would simply be shifted to developing nations. "We can close a steel mill today in Canada. But if we just import the steel from China, what will we have accomplished? Absolutely nothing," he said. China's climate change ambassador, Yu Qingtai, said his country might eventually be willing to adopt caps, but only if it received major technology assistance from Western nations for developing cleaner energy processes. Such assistance has not been forthcoming, he added. Indian representatives also called for technical assistance and said their nation's economy was too immature and fragile for them to accept emission caps. "We are not ripe enough to make any binding commitments. We are a developing country," said N.N. Meena, junior environment minister.

Former Vice President Al Gore, who flew in to Bali on Wednesday after accepting his share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo this week for his contributions to the fight against global warming, said the United States was deliberately impeding progress here. "The position of the administration in the U.S. right now appears to be to try to block any progress in Bali. I hope that will change," he said. He did offer some optimism. "I know from experience," he said, "that when breakthroughs do occur, they usually happen in the last 48 hours."

Australia had a partial shift in its position Wednesday. The country has long argued against adopting the Kyoto treaty, which calls for 36 industrialized nations to reduce their emissions 5% below 1990 levels by 2012 -- in part because its emissions have grown by 26% since 1990. But on Wednesday, newly elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd presented ratification papers for the treaty to Ban, eliciting a long round of applause from the delegates. Australia's signature leaves the U.S. as the only major industrialized country not to have ratified the protocol. In his talk, Rudd chided the United States, whose emissions have risen more than 16% since 1990. "We expect all developed nations -- those within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol and those outside that framework -- to embrace comparable efforts in order to bring about the global outcomes the world now expects of us."
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Rape of Girl, 15, Exposes Abuses in Brazil Prison System

BRASÍLIA, NY Times Dec. 12th. — The police jail at Abaetetuba could not be torn down soon enough for Márcia Soares, a lawyer and federal human rights official here. To her, the jail has come to symbolize everything that is wrong with Brazil’s efforts to safeguard women and children from violence. It was at Abaetetuba, in the NE state of Para on the fringes of the Amazon, that a 15-year-old girl arrested on suspicion of petty theft was illegally placed among 34 male inmates in late October. For 26 days they treated her as their plaything, raping and torturing her repeatedly. Sometimes she traded sex for food; other times, she was simply raped, federal investigators here said. The police in the jail did more than turn their backs on the violence. They shaved her head with a knife to make her look more like a boy, investigators said, and now are blaming her for lying about her age.

The case is causing soul-searching here in Brazil’s capital, where federal officials have become increasingly concerned about the treatment of women and minors in the nation’s crowded prison system and the failure of judges throughout the country to prosecute cases of torture. Women make up only 5 percent of Brazil’s prison population, but the number is growing. States have not built enough jails and prisons with separate facilities for women, even though federal law requires such separation. A recent study commissioned by the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva showed that female prisoners were being illegally placed with men or transvestites in five Brazilian states and being subjected to torture and sexual abuse. Even as Brazil was raised in November to the United Nations highest human development category, its spotty human rights history and mixed record of punishing those guilty of abuses have been an Achilles’ heel internationally. A SWAT team operates in Rio de Janeiro to root out and kill drug traffickers with impunity. The police are rarely convicted under a 1997 law against torture, because of an “institutionalizing of torture” under Brazil’s military dictatorship and more than 300 years of slavery, said Paulo Vanucchi, Brazil’s human rights minister.

The case of the 15-year-old will be another test of justice in the largely lawless Amazon region. Two years ago, a Brazilian rancher ordered the killing of Dorothy Mae Stang, 73, an American-born nun and rain forest advocate. She was shot to death on a jungle road. The rancher, Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura, was sentenced to 30 years in prison. What has been particularly disheartening to federal human rights officials in the case of the 15-year-old girl is how many people had the chance to protect her. Ms. Soares, the lawyer, said the police, the judge and a public defender who had visited the jail all knew the teenager was in an all-male setting. “Several officials were aware of what was happening, and at worst they were complicit in it,” Ms. Soares said. “It’s a very serious situation.” Ana Júlia Carepa, the governor of Para, has been scrambling to clean up the mess since the situation became public late last month. Ms. Carepa pressed Raimundo Benassuly, the state police chief, to resign the day after he said publicly that the girl had lied about her age because she had a “mental deficiency.” The police have said that the girl had claimed she was 19, not 15, during several run-ins with the law. Ms. Soares said that officials, including the judge in the case, a woman, did not press the girl for documentation proving she was an adult, even though she is under five feet tall and weighs about 80 pounds. “When I first saw her I thought she was 12, not 15,” Ms. Soares said. For Ms. Carepa, the girl’s age is beside the point. “If she is 15, 20, 50, 80 years old or almost 100, it doesn’t matter,” she told journalists in Rio last month. “A woman cannot be in a cell with men.” Ms. Carepa said that the jail would be torn down and replaced with something that has facilities for women.

The judge who placed the girl in the all-male jail, Clarice Maria Andrade, is being investigated and could lose her job. Two others in her office are accused of altering a document to make it seem as if the judge had approved a transfer from the jail shortly after the police made the request, not 12 days later. Local officials were already familiar with the girl before she was arrested and placed in the Abaetetuba jail on Oct. 21. Growing up in a broken home, she had left school before and frequented an area known for child prostitution, Ms. Soares said. At the time of her arrest, she was shuttling among her parents’ homes and an uncle’s house, and no one seemed to keep careful tabs on her. During the 26 days, no relative came to the jail looking for her. Within her first two days in jail, a man raped her in the bathroom, the girl told investigators. Inmates rely on visiting relatives to bring food. With no such visits, extreme hunger soon overtook the girl and she began trading sex for food, investigators said. Other men, however, simply raped her when they wanted to, and tortured her for amusement, investigators said. Some placed crumpled papers between her toes as she slept and lighted them, Ms. Soares said, adding that the girl still had burn marks on her feet.

Residents heard the girl’s screams from the road, which is near the jail windows. Yet for weeks no one came to her rescue. It was only after an anonymous note reached the local child protection services agency that she was removed from the jail. In recent days, she and her family have been relocated under a federal witness protection program. The girl’s father complained of death threats from the police. He said they had tried to press him to say that the girl was 19 or 20. “It’s now up to us to protect her and help her to start a new life,” Ms. Soares said. “And we need to keep up the political pressure, so that justice has a chance.”
by Alexei Barrionuevo
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