Re: Bush in Africa, Emphasizes Successes Over Conflicts

Please find below an article regarding President Bush’s visit to the African continent from The New York Times. In doing so please note that while the Bush administration continues to encourage the world of Africa’s importance to the United States this is only the second time in his presidency that he has decided to visit this continent. Ironically Mr.Bush decided not to address the stressful situation in Kenya (where over 1,000 have died) or Dafur (where over 200,000 have died and has already been declared a genocide). In his emphasis on success President Bush must realize that the funding that his administration gives to the African nation will not improve the continent until they address the instability as a whole. It is not surprising that Sudanese run into Chad when there is fighting in Sudan. Unfortunately unlike America, Africa does not have the luxury of closing our borders to the neighboring countries in their battle for democracy. In an effort to rebuild his legacy President Bush will always be remembered first for his self sustained Iraqi war, and second for the destruction of the American economy, and finally for his standing by and watching the “genocide” of Sudan.

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — Opening a six-day tour of Africa, President Bush on Saturday defended his decision not to visit violence-stricken nations like Kenya and Sudan, saying he wanted to focus on his programs to fight AIDS and malaria instead. “This is a large place with a lot of nations, and, no question, everything is not perfect,” Mr. Bush said during a brief visit to Benin before arriving Saturday evening here in the capital of Tanzania. “On the other hand, there’s a lot of great success stories, and the United States is pleased to be involved with those success stories.”The stop in Benin made Mr. Bush the first American president to visit that tiny West African nation. It was on his itinerary because it represents the kind of success Mr. Bush wants to highlight — how American aid has helped improve water, schools, infrastructure and health care in some of the world’s poorest nations. In 2006, Benin signed a five-year, $307 million agreement with the Millennium Challenge Corporation, created by Mr. Bush to help nations that embrace democracy and free markets and commit to fighting corruption. Benin also benefits from America’s antimalaria programs, as well as an education initiative that provides money to train teachers, build schools and buy textbooks.So it was no surprise that Benin’s president, Thomas Yayi Boni, had high praise for Mr. Bush when the two appeared together for a short news conference at the airport in Cotonou, the country’s economic capital. Vowing that “everything that would stain democracy will be suppressed” under his leadership, he said Mr. Bush’s visit was an important symbol.The White House is hoping that the Africa trip will remind not only Africans, but also Americans, that Mr. Bush has done more during his presidency than fight a controversial war with Iraq. Dar es Salaam was festooned with billboards bearing Mr. Bush’s likeness, including one on the road from the airport to downtown that declared, “We Cherish Democracy,” and another outside his hotel, the Kempinski, that said, “Feel at Home.”Still, there were some undercurrents of resentment. Two thousand people protested here on Friday, before Mr. Bush arrived, waving signs that suggested he was a terrorist. And he cannot seem to avoid crisis elsewhere on the continent. Before he left Washington, Mr. Bush said he would send Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to Kenya, where post-election violence has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people since late December. But at Saturday’s news conference in Benin, he was asked why his administration was not taking a more active role, not only in Kenya but also in Darfur, where 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been chased from their homes in an ethnic conflict that Mr. Bush has called genocide.

He said he had “a tough decision to make early on” about whether to send troops into Darfur, but had decided against doing so in favor of allowing African Union and United Nations peacekeeping troops to intervene. He also said he intended to bring up Darfur during his visit to Rwanda, where he planned to thank that country’s president for sending in peacekeeping troops.

As to Kenya, Mr. Bush said Secretary Rice’s visit was “aimed at having a clear message that there be no violence and that there ought to be a power-sharing agreement.”

The former United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, has been in Kenya trying to negotiate a peace agreement. Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, told reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday that Mr. Annan appeared to be “making incremental progress.”

Mr. Hadley said that Ms. Rice, who is traveling with the president, would spend only a few hours in Kenya. He described the visit as an opportunity “to show the president’s concern — but also get on the ground and help support Kofi Annan and maybe move things forward a little further and a little faster.”

Chad: The Dead Heart of Africa Rebels

Chad’s president Idriss Deby Itno’s regime seems to have been scarred by the rebels this past week. Today he issued a statement asking the EU to deploy peacekeeping forces to help ease pressure from his men. In the aftermath of this attempted coup, Mr.Deby and the French were quick to ensure that the governance of Chad still remained within his grasp.

Chad, part of France’s African holdings until 1960, endured three decades of civil warfare as well as invasions by Libya before a semblance of peace was finally restored in 1990. The government eventually drafted a democratic constitution, and held flawed presidential elections in 1996 and 2001. In 1998, a rebellion broke out in northern Chad, which sporadically flares up despite several peace agreements between the government and the rebels. In 2005, new rebel groups emerged in western Sudan and have made probing attacks into eastern Chad, despite signing peace agreements in December 2006 and October 2007. Power remains in the hands of an ethnic minority. In June 2005, President Idriss DEBY held a referendum successfully removing constitutional term limits and won another controversial election in 2006. -CIA Fact Book

France was quick to take a stand against the rebels of its once colonized country and vowed to take measures ensuring Mr.Deby’s presidency.

“France will do what it has done before within the limits of international law and the rules that the president of the republic (Nicolas Sarkozy) has given the military for this operation,” Herve Morin, France’s defense minister, said during his arrival in Ndjamena.

However, this is not the first time rebels have tried to overthrow Mr.Deby from his palace. After all in 1990 it was he who overthrew the once French supported Hissène Habré from presidency. Let us not assume that Mr.Deby had Chad’s best interests at heart, especially after he modified the constitution in 2005 to remove the two-term limit of his presidency, and with Chad’s economy increasingly declining it is very likely that it will mirror the images of it’s neighboring countries and enemies Libya and Sudan.

On April 13, 2006 there was a coup attempt against Mr.Deby, in which he accused Sudan of supporting the insurgency. Chad however continues to back two armed groups, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), that are fighting the Sudan government forces and its proxies in Darfur. As for Libya’s part Colonel Gadaffi in 2006 brokered talks between the regimes, and made commitments not to back rebel groups against each other. These pledges were broken, and after the coup attempt President Déby broke off all diplomatic relations with Khartoum.

Kenya: Whose Side are You On? – Part 2

From the August 2003 issue of World Press Review (VOL. 50, No.8)

The Costs of Terrorism

Sleepless Nights in Kenya

William Karanja, World Press Review correspondent, Nairobi, Kenya, May 25, 2003

According to the Kenyan police, Saleh Nabhan bought the car used to blow up a Mombasa hotel on Nov. 28, 2002. Ten Kenyans, three Israelis, and three bombers were killed in the attack (Photo: AFP/Getty Images).

As George Bush and Tony Blair were celebrating their crushing of Saddam Hussein’s regime, people in Kenya and across East Africa were spending many sleepless nights. They knew only too well that terrorists were not going to take such a humiliating defeat lying down.

The word terrorism sends a cold chill down the spine of every Kenyan. We have been victims of terror twice—in 1998 when 213 people perished in the bombing of our U.S. Embassy and again in November last year when 16 people were killed by suicide bombers. “In the two occasions, Kenya paid dearly for finding itself in the crossfire between Britain, the U.S., and Israel on the one hand, and Iraq, Palestine, and other Arab states on the other,” wrote the Daily Nation on March 15. Of the 213 who died in 1998, only 12 were Am-ericans. By contrast, hundreds of Kenyans lost their lives and millions of shillings’ worth of property went up in smoke.

Kenya pursues a policy of friendship to all with the aim of attracting investment from the East and the West. The countries that invest in Kenya are expected to do everything possible to enable the country to develop the economic capacity to protect their property.

It therefore came as a complete surprise when, on March 14, London sent out an advisory telling all Britons to avoid visiting Kenya because, it said, the country was likely to be hit by terrorists. The advisory warned that extremist terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda could launch attacks, particularly on East African seaports such as Mombasa, at any time.

Needless to say, the first sector to feel the effect of this announcement was tourism. Kenya receives more than 500,000 tourists every year. The tourism sector generates Shs 24 billion (US$330 million), which is 8 percent of Kenya’s gross domestic product and 15 percent of the country’s foreign-exchange earnings. About 1 million tourists were expected this year. This will obviously not be realized. The travel warnings led hundreds of tourists to change their destinations from Kenya to other countries.

The Kenyan government, hoteliers, travel agents, tour firms, and the hundreds of thousands who depend on tourism reacted angrily. Although the minister in charge of Kenya’s internal security, Chris Murungaru, issued a statement telling prospective visitors that the government had “taken the necessary security steps to forestall any terrorist acts,” the damage had already been done.

The British government made things worse when, on May 16, it banned all flights to Kenya. It was quickly followed by the Israeli government, which prohibited its national carrier, El Al, from visiting Kenya and the entire East African region. The German government, too, urged its citizens not to visit the region and singled out Mombasa as an area of concern.

According to the statement issued by the British government, intelligence reports indicated that a terrorist attack in Kenya was imminent. Britons were also advised to avoid Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda. Apart from warning their citizens against visiting Kenya, the U.S. State Department authorized the voluntary departure of embassy personnel stationed in the country.

According to the minister for tourism, Raphael Tuju, “Losses have been incurred through reduced cash flow to hotels, which has in turn adversely affected employees’ wages. If the situation continues, many hotel workers will lose their jobs.” The minister, however, quickly added: “I would rather all flights were canceled, than lose lives to terrorists.”

Several international conferences due to be held in Nairobi were canceled. The largest was the International Press Institute’s 52nd annual congress, which would have been held June 1-4. The loss occasioned by cancellation of hotel bookings and other expenses runs into the billions of shillings.

A number of investors who had shown interest in Kenya as a result of the favorable environment created by the new government have suddenly developed cold feet as well.

The question on the minds of Kenyans is whether the moves by the British to ban flights and the United States to warn its citizens not to visit Kenya advance the war against terrorism—whether it creates a spirit of confidence and partnership. The general consensus is that the British and U.S. governments are keen only on the safety of their citizens and that the damage their actions may cause to Kenya is a matter that they do not regard as of any importance. Sunday Nation’s Mutuma Mathew summed it up: “We are pawns in a war which we are too weak to fight, powerless to battle the marshaled evil forces of Al-Qaeda, too feeble to chuck the embrace of the Americans and the West in general, whose vassals the fanatics consider us to be.”

The American government seems willing to help Kenya, offering to train a special anti-terrorist police unit of 500 officers and providing surveillance equipment at major airports. But Kenyans feel solving the current predicament will require changing policies in the Middle East. Until then, many innocent people may lose their lives for a cause that is not theirs.

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The Future of Blackness

Yesterday I had an emulation of the black race. Ironically I had finished reading a NY Times article about notorious rebel commander Joshua Milton Blahyi, who stated that he is responsible for the killings of 20,000 Liberians. I thought to myself here’s a man who terrorized his neighbors and classmates, elders and newborns. His practices were monstrous to be courteous and now he was a born again Christian. Is forgiveness in the eye of the beholder or victim?

”I could be electrocuted. I could be hanged. I could be given any other punishment,” the 37-year-old Blahyi said in a weekend interview following his truth commission appearance last week. ”But I think forgiveness and reconciliation is the right way to go.”I have been looking for an opportunity to tell the true story about my life — and every time I tell people my story, I feel relieved.”

Mr.Blahyi aka Gen. Butt Naked had a way of enticing fear in humans. Before sending his men to battle naked he would sacrifice an innocent child and divide the heart amongst his men to eat. Ironically Blahyi later said that it was during one of these battles that he emerged resurrected having received a message from God that he was in fact a slave of the Devil. He therefore realized that he was not the paladin he once thought he was and began recording his testaments as a dedication to God.

Reconciliation is a term that often comes out in the evening of war. Like its counterpart forgiveness it emerges when battles have been won and lost, when economies have been scarred, and families have disappeared. Often criticized as an endless cycle of reevaluation; it is sometimes the deja vu of war- the view points of the living and accounts of the dead. But, it is a selfish act of pity that one asks for forgiveness and reconciliation as a means of self acceptance.

It is true; the future of blackness lies in our ability to reconcile with each other. With most African countries stained by tribal conflicts and African Americans bitter at their stance in American society. It is time that we reexamine our history, but in doing so realize that in forgiving we shall never forget. With reconciliation comes relief. Relief does not arrive in society like air- free flowing and endless; it is a struggle of time often recomposed by the bitter memories of a lost one and picturesque flashes of their killers. That is what Blahyi should think of in his sermons; in the aftermath of war.