Africa and UN Population Fund’s Self-Evident Prediction

The UN Population Fund’s report, which was just released yesterday may sound newsy particularly with the prediction that a stupendous proportion—3.3 billion people—of the world’s growing population will, for the first time live in cities and towns by next year. As is often the case with such reports that are ritually-authored by renowned academic-experts—yesterday’s was written by Canadian sociologist and demographer, George Martine—and released by major international outfits, the aspects of its contents that will eventually make news may not reflect the more dire issues and challenges that it may contain.

For anyone who may be conversant with Africa, every city on the continent is already immersed in the blights of unplanned and unchecked urban growth. Are you talking about infrastructural decay and its manifestations by way of crime, pollution, etc. and the threats that they pose to people who reside in them, cities in South Africa and Nigeria will equally come to mind. Although, the differences in the dire condition of cities in South Africa and Nigeria are still in terms of day and night, they still threaten the existence of people who live in them all the same. The decay evident in South Africa’s downtown Johannesburg for instance ought to catch the attention of the ruling African National Congress, ANC for the particular reason that the victims are still poor blacks whose situation hasn’t improved in meaningful terms in the post-apartheid era.

However, hopes cannot be lost in the case of South Africa for the reason that, in spite of the ANC’s sluggish bearings in the expectations by many that it should rise up to the challenges of delivering the dividends of victory in the anti-apartheid struggle to the victims, indeed all South Africans, most of the elements and ingredients required to meet such challenges in a democratic society are already in place in South Africa. Such elements and ingredients include an ever-expanding democratic culture, which seems to show the capacity to hold political leaders to the obligation to conduct public business with responsiveness. One is talking about popular participation in the direction of the affairs of society.

Much to the contrary, Nigerian cities are in an endless precariousness altogether. The prospects of achieving the sort of democratic culture already in existent in South Africa in Nigeria are increasingly disappearing by the day. The increasing decay evident in every Nigerian city is reflective of the degeneration and decay that plagues Nigeria’s politics and the conduct of public affairs in Nigeria. In Nigeria, everyone’s obsession is the proceeds from the sale of the hydrocarbons being drilled with unparalleled recklessness in the Niger delta. Typically, impunity, and high-handedness in their worst varieties constitute the norms that characterize the conduct of public affairs in Nigeria. Corruption and the attendant cynicism that result manifest in such huge proportions that seem like they will nullify the chances of turning things around towards a healthy path in the conduct of public affairs in the Nigerian society.

The scare therefore is that for an indefinite period, every Nigerian city will continue to epitomize the worst indices cited in the just-released report by the UN Population Fund—lack of water and sanitation, terrible housing, etc.—that threaten “the environmental quality of the city” and those that dwell in it!

A New President at the World Bank

As Mr. Robert Zoellick who US President George W. Bush nominated to replace Mr. Paul Wolfowitz whose embattled tenure as president at the World Bank provoked a power situation that paralyzed Bank mission steps into his new position this week, there is every need for observers of the Bank to raise a crucial and pertinent question. That question is: How much does the Bush White House, its appointees, and all those who associate themselves with the ideologically-driven mission that Mr. Bush and his administration subscribe to understand about the post-Cold War World?

The logic inherent in that question is that the ideologically-steeped neoconservative elements who influence US foreign policy in the Bush administration seem to be fixated on just their understanding that the end of the Cold War led to the emergence of the US as the lone super-power. They are so obsessed with this reality to the degree that it tends to dictate not just their perception of global events, but also the actions that the embark on to shape world affairs as well as their reactions global events including the response of other global actors to US foreign policy. They strongly believe that the most important, if not the only change that matters is the emergence of the US as a lone super-power, which therefore implies that everyone else must subscribe to America’s prescriptions on world affairs. But the truth is that the rest of the world, which includes European states and significant proportions of Europe’s masses are averse to that obsession.

That not withstanding, the Bush White House is still driven by that obsession which guides every foreign policy initiative it takes. The result hasn’t been a resounding success in each and every case. Paul Wolfowitz’s presidency at the World Bank failed particularly because of his personification of that obsession. Mr. Zoellick will succeed at the Bank as president if he extricates himself from that obsession. Going by the broadside he threw at Venezuela two weeks ago during his pre-tenure tour of Africa, Europe, and Latin America, the concern that it might be difficult for him to do that is real. It is clearly evident that apart from the frosty relationships between Venezuela and the US, Mr. Zoellick might not be that happy with Venezuela’s determination to bring its oil sector firmly under state control. The two global oil giants—ConoccoPhilips and ExxonMobil—that are about to be locked out of Venezuela’s oil sector following their refusal to accept a new regime which gives majority control to Venezuela are US-based. Their assets in Venezuela run into $3.5b and $800m respectively. What Mr. Zoellick may have forgotten before he threw his broadside is that the rest of the world including Europeans may not share his perceptions. Proof of that can be found in the fact that the defiance expressed by ConoccoPhilips and ExxonMobil couldn’t deter other European oil giants—Chevron, BP, and Total—from falling in line. Mr. Zoellick must realize that US lone super-power status not withstanding, the world is still a diverse arena. He may not immerse himself into Mr. Wolfowitz's problem at the Bank, but the potentials for other problems are still out there.

When Peacekeepers Become Targets

The car bomb explosion Sunday that killed six UN peacekeepers from Spain and Columbia in southern Lebanon is bad omen for the possibilities of achieving durable peace and stability in Lebanon. Lebanon is a highly fractured country. In deed, Lebanon is a living example of what could happen to a country and society that have been tied into the nexus of a highly destabilized Mideast. On yet another count, targeting peacekeepers with this kind of violence will negatively affect future UN deployments in parts of the world where their deployment will be critical for saving the vulnerable from annihilation through state-sponsored violence.

It’s both sad and unconscionable that all stakeholders in the Mideast have handled their involvement in the sub-region’s politics and affairs in manners that negate their proclaimed intentions to achieve durable peace between the contending parties in the age-old crisis that bedevils the sub-region. There’s no doubt that each of these stakeholders that include the countless local Mideast-based factions, the US, the EU, France, the Russians, Israel, and several Mideast states understand that the crisis which manifests in different parts of the sub-region derives mostly from the Palestinian-Israel problem in the main. The other underlying issue in the Mideast crisis is the quest by particularly the US to realize the sort of resolution of the Palestinian-Israel problem that will guarantee indefinite upper hand for the US in the affairs of a region that retains the most known quantities of hydro-carbon-based sources of energy.

It is unfortunate that the determination by the US to realize that desire and not the quest for durable peace in the Mideast is actually what drives its Mideast policy, which tends to exacerbate rather than resolve the crisis year after year. Talking specifically about Lebanon, there is no doubt that the perennial instability that reigns in that country can directly be linked to the determination of groups and factions in the region to resist what they see as US grand design to dominate their affairs and resources. The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri is a concomitant outcome of that perception. Granted that the assassination is unconscionable and that the perpetrators ought to be brought to justice, the determined push by the Bush White House to establish a UN tribunal charged with the responsibility to get that process underway right now is ill-advised. It is ill-advised in the sense that the situation in the entire Mideast is highly charged by current US policy. So much that the tribunal which was recently approved by the Security Council may not even take off at all even as its existence gives anti-US vested interests all over the region another cause to muddy Lebanon’s politics even further.

Mideast factions that perceive the UN as an agency through which the US pushes its Mideast policy are now targeting UN peacekeepers to dislodge UN presence in Lebanon. Their ultimate aim no doubt is to frustrate the possibility of the Hariri tribunal ever taking off. Of what use will the tribunal be if it does not take off at all? Even if it does take off, of what use will it be if it stokes rather than stems instability in Lebanon? Peacekeeping is one of the few tools that the UN can still use to save vulnerable societies from state-sponsored violence in a highly turbulent world.

Ikengacomments supports the vow by Major-General Claudio Graziano, the Spaniard who is also the commander of the 13,000 UNFIL contingent in Lebanon that the peacekeepers will remain, we must add that no party, not even the US should let itself get to the point where its policies will expose UN peacekeepers to the sort of violence which makes it difficult to deploy peacekeepers anywhere in the future. Israel’s war with Hezbollah last summer was ill-timed, and ill-advised. Not only that it was a disaster for Israel, it led to the deployment of UN peacekeepers that are now being targeted in Lebanon by an unknown group or groups with car bombs. Vulnerable societies should not be exposed to the annihilation that will result if the UN is unable to muster peacekeepers because of the wilful actions that fit the ones taken last summer in Lebanon by the Hezbollah and Israel, and the one the US took when it pressed for the Hariri tribunal.


Al-Qaida Cashing in On the Mess in Palestine
Al-Qaida's call in a video posted on the web today through it's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri for Muslims all over the world to rush support and supplies to Hamas in Gaza vindicates our consistent argument that US policy in the Mideast will rather complicate an already complex mess. Even if Hamas comes out to decline al-Zawahri's call as unsolicited, the bad blood has already been transfused. Accusations and counter-accusations will ensue and every stakeholder would discern whatever it likes from the scenario and proceed to act on the basis of that to justify its actions. The crisis will escalate endlessly, more violence will ensure and countless lives will continue to be lost, needlessly. Some interests will be served by all that though, but the cause of peace in Palestine will not be part of those.

Marx, Violent Crime, and South Africa’s Future

An earlier version of this piece was written for Business Day last year. This slightly modified version is published herein to highlight the inherent folly in the reluctance of Mr. Thabo Mbeki's government to address and help resolve the continuing crisis in neighboring Zimbabwe where Mr. Robert Mugabe's mis-governance has steadily run the economy into the dust. Recent reports indicate that the huge flow of economic refugees from Zimbabwe into South Africa is provoking a hostile back-lash from South Africans.

Notwithstanding that he lived and died more than a hundred years ago, and that the former Soviet Union, which represented the first human society that implemented the socio-political ideology that he formulated with his benefactor Frederick Engels, aspects of Karl Marx’s thoughts remain quite relevant even today. One such thought is his prediction that economic systems or modes of production lay foundations for those that succeed them. We must recall that he was most particular about that in his predictions that capitalism would lay the infrastructures in the science and technology realms that socialism would inherit once it dawns under the auspices a workers’ vanguard Party. No where is that prediction most applicable today than in post-apartheid Republic of South Africa. In spite of all of the evils that it represented, as an ideology, apartheid provided its architects, advocates, and supporters with the basis for the unprecedented exploitation and management of African labor in a manner never seen before on the continent in the twentieth century. Like all other modes of production before it, apartheid crumbled at the very time when it couldn’t cope with its inherent contradictions and the crisis they unleashed in South Africa, which rocked and threatened international capital quite tremendously. That was to the degree that compelled the various stakeholders in South Africa and elsewhere to reconsider their quiescent support and collaboration with apartheid. As they say, the rest is history, but today apartheid is no more in South Africa. Only the most cynic who visits South Africa today would ignore to acknowledge that the extensive fixed capital—extensive road network, efficient power and portable water systems, educational, healthcare—and others that were embedded in South Africa under apartheid remain the attraction for the stupendous capital from abroad which fuels South Africa’s continuing economic transformation. These are in spite of the truism that the quality of life of Africans was extensively marginalized by apartheid and all that it represented while apartheid and the state that practiced it lasted.

Around this immediate point revolves the problem that represents the most serious threat to South Africa’s future as a multi-racial and democratic society. That threat is represented by violent crimes. Hardly does a week pass without screaming front-page headlines in all manner of South African newspapers about one violent crime or the other that took place in parts of the country. The more eye-catching are the violent crimes that involve the death of police officers and other security agents. The one of Monday, July 17 last year that claimed the life of 37-year old officer Lesley Mashaba in Kliptown is typical for the reason that it knocks at the heart of economic and politically-driven immigration from within Africa, which is one of the issues that this piece addresses. Officer Mashaba, a fifteen-year veteran of the force in Gautang province was allegedly killed in a shot-out that involved suspects who are Mozambican nationals. He is one of the 51 officers killed in South Africa’s eight provinces, including Gauteng between January 1 and June 30 last year. Gauteng, which was described by the Johannesburg Star as “the deadliest province for police officers to work” claims 23 of the 51 off and on-duty police officers who have lost their lives to violent crime during the period. Gautang province includes Johannesburg, the vibrant commercial nerve centre of the South African sub-region which attracts economic migrants from across the continent.

In Durban during the next week in July last year, delegates to the International Sociological Association, ISA sixteenth World Congress of Sociology who came into town to be hosted by their South African colleagues for their body’s four yearly gathering were literally made ‘prisoners’ in their hotel rooms after five of them fell victim to muggings. The experiences of the delegates to the ISA Congress are hardly isolated by any means.

In the same month of July last year, an official world alert on crime in South Africa was issued by major industrialized West European and North American countries—Australia included—to their nationals who travel to South Africa as tourists and cautioned them that the former is unsafe for holidays. The alert is hardly frivolous. It came on the heels of a survey of clients’ travel insurance claims by Norwich Union, a United Kingdom-based insurance company. Norwich Union’s survey revealed that more than travelers to other countries, travelers to South Africa were the most likely to be victims of a range of crimes that include violent robberies and the loss of luggage and other belongings. Johannesburg’s Berea and Hillbrow inner city enclaves, KwaZulu-Natal’s central Durban, beachfronts, Zululand, and Northern KwaZulu-Natal, the Table Mountain in Cape Town, and virtually all the country’s isolated picnic points and beaches were indicated as likely places where violent and serious crimes reign.

Some analysts and even South African public servants have been quick to simply lay the blame for the problem on apartheid. Some others have preferred to merely spin it away in ways that minimize the dangers that it represents for South Africa’s future as a vibrant economy and new democracy. Such dangers are too real for ANC, the South Africa Communist Party, SACP; the Coalition of South Africa’s Trade Unions, COSATU; and other stakeholders in the current multiracial dispensation not to appreciate them. Violent crimes in South Africa derive from two principal sources; internal and external. On the internal front: Apartheid’s uneven development of South Africa, its peoples and economy is indeed responsible for creating the internal situation in which those South Africans who were left behind in the impoverished homelands and townships from where they can now migrate to the cities and other places without restriction where they embrace crime to survive. The external sources are the surrounding countries in the sub-region and the rest of sub-Sahara Africa where political instability, bad governance and gross mismanagement of all sorts wreck havoc on economies and drive able-bodied individuals out to South Africa where they seek economic refuge, and in most cases succumb to lives of crime.

The current emphasis on law enforcement by South Africa’s policy makers at all levels of government is the equivalent of band aid, which will not stem the trend of violent crimes in the country to any meaningful degree. The bold measures must come by way of a package that must alongside law and immigration enforcement, include on the one hand, initiatives that would extend the dividends of multi-racial democracy to impoverished areas of South Africa, on yet the other hand, others that will help to restore or bring about political stability, good governance, and sound economic management to those African countries that export economic refugees in droves to South Africa.

Urgent steps must be taken to extend the ‘built environment of facilities’—roads, airports, ports, cable networks, railways, pipelines, fibre-optic systems, electricity grids, water and sewage systems, housing, factories, offices, schools, and hospitals, and the like—to the homelands, townships, and other areas in South Africa where apartheid wouldn’t have them. The absence of such ‘built environment’ in the homelands, townships, etc. will sustain the age-old status-quo whereby capital ‘in all its physically mobile forms, continue to actually move over’ them and perpetuate their economic impoverishment, which will in turn perpetuate the flow of uneducated, and jobless individuals to where they must adopt crime to survive. Political stability in Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, etc. will translate to good governance and sound resources management all of which will dove-tail to less number of economic refugees into South Africa. Manageable numbers of internal and external migrants in South Africa is one of the logical solutions to its growing violent crimes rates. In that regard South Africa must step forward to assume its leadership role on the continent without equivocation. There’s no alternative to South Africa’s leaders going beyond the call of duty to compel and convince the leaders of countries that send economic refugees to South Africa to sit up and govern their countries and manage their economies well.

This is where all of the stakeholders in South Africa’s multi-racial democracy must step forward and take the bold initiative to secure their country’s future. Continuing to do otherwise translates to the sort of irresponsibility that Karl Marx once decried as sitting by and waiting for the roast pigeon of science and technology to fall into one’s mouth. It’s a choice that resonates all over most of the rest of Africa, which is at the root of the economic stagnation that prevails on the continent.

Pakistan's Dictator Buys Additional Insurance

It is sadly absurd that US analysts prefer to view the new nuclear reactor which Pakistan is building at the Khushab nuclear site, located 100 miles south, from its capital Islamabad solely in the context of the decades-old rivalry that exists between it and India. Granted that Pakistan is already a declared nuclear state, it does not require a sophisticated mindset to discern that the current upgrade in Pakistan’s nuclear capability although linked to the rivalry with India, has more to do with its dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s desire to make himself and his regime to remain relevant to US geopolitical calculations in that part of the world on the one hand. On yet the other hand, he wants to continue holding the US to ransom at this point in the War against Terrorism, WaT when his dictatorship is increasingly under a lot of pressure at home since he got rid of the chief justice a few months ago.

The dictator considers the recent nuclear pact that the US entered with India a slight given his cooperation in the WaT. The new nuclear endeavor is capable of producing enough weapons-grade plutonium for 50 additional bombs annually. He is intent on improving Pakistan’s nuclear bombs, no doubt. What will an impoverished country like Pakistan need so many nuclear bombs for?

The feeble request from the US earlier to Pakistan not to expand its nuclear capability is obviously being ignored, and the US is obviously unconcerned about Pakistan's quest for additional nuclear capability at a time when it blows hot and cold over Iran’s determination to acquire its own nuclear capability. The under laying logic that it is risky for the US to diminish support for the dictator might seem logical. This is in view of the claim that the US cannot afford to forsake the dictator for fear that if he goes, Pakistan might fall into the hands of Islamists. But the policy of standing firmly behind a dictator although completely in sync with the dictates of real politic, does not guarantee that the dictator will remain in power indefinitely. It’s at best a gamble that has high unraveling potentials.

The dictator is sufficiently savvy in his dealings with the US, which is why he keeps buying up additional insurance policy by adding to Pakistan’s nuclear capability. He seems to be succeeding. John Negroponte’s meeting with him last week is clear evidence of that. Only time will prove that even though the US may go along with dictator Musharraf for some distance, his dictatorship will most probably not have durable pay-offs to deliver to the US for the extensive aid and support it offers him and his regime.

A Summit that Might Be Called a Gang-Up

How much of the popular will do the traditionalist regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt, Qatar, U.A.E. represent in the Arab and Muslim world? This is a question which has not been explored by pollsters even though it craves their attention day after day. However, in spite of the absence of those descriptive statistics from polls that would throw some measure of definitive answers to the question, there are also several other objectives indicators that one might glean meaningful answers to the question from.

One such indicator is the refusal of all traditionalist Arab rulers and regimes to even make the least venture towards opening their holds on state power to any form of true democratic test. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak who makes the least seeming attempts in those regards counters his gestures with blatant rigging tactics all in the bid to retain absolute control over state power. Those traditionalist regimes are all scared stiff of popular participation in the affairs of their countries. There is therefore no doubt the alliance that these traditionalist rulers enjoy with the US is predicated on the protection they receive from the latter.

As these traditionalist rulers jockey and maneuver around these days fronting here and there on behalf of Washington to counter what the Bush administration calls rising Shiite influence in the Mideast, one wonders why not even one of them foresaw the possibility of an upsurge in Shiite influence stemming from the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US. Seymour Hersh’s investigative pieces in The New Yorker have severally exposed much of the support that Saudi Arabia’s rulers rendered the Bush administration from behind the scene in the invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq. It would be difficult to discern why the Saudi rulers rendered hidden support to Washington to invade and occupy Iraq.

These traditionalist rulers lack the credibility to successfully counter rising Shiite influence in the Arab and Muslim world. The masses of their people who do not see their regimes as legitimate will simply conclude that their efforts are gang-up on behalf of the US. This is one of the reasons that the announcement today of a summit Monday by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan with Israel in support of Mahmoud Abbas’ Unilateral Declaration of Independence, UDI in the West Bank is more likely to further complicate an already complicated situation. As unconscionable as the suicide bombings that Hamas has been known for are, wishing the organization away as an unknown stakeholder in Palestine is probably ill-advised. One does not know how the summit will advise Abbas to handle those Palestinians who support Hamas and mistrust Fatah. The latest poll placed the percentage of Hamas support amongst Palestinians at 37. It will be perilous to ignore this significant percentage of people.

Mr. Tony Blair’s Reward?

Although Mr. Tony Blair’s aides did dismiss it as untrue, but The Washington Post reported it as a done deal that US president, George W. Bush will soon announce his appointment of retiring British Prime Minister Tony Blair as his new special envoy in the Mideast with the responsibility to over-see governance and economic issues in Palestine. The appointment, which is reported to have been in the works since the past two months would take effect some time after Mr. Blair relinquishes his office at the end of the month.

If this appointment takes place, many will rightly interpret it as Mr. Bush’s reward to Mr. Blair for his unquestioning support and alliance to the US over the invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq. The appointment might not be worth more than finding something doing for Mr. Blair because the odds seem to be staked against any likelihood of his been effective in the position. Apart from the fact that the Mideast has profoundly been polluted by policies and actions that Mr. Blair himself was part of, last week’s violent factional face-off between Hamas and Fatah has muddied the Palestinian-Israeli crisis even more. The other thing is that the Bush administration, which doesn’t seem to be genuinely keen on fostering the much-needed atmosphere that could encourage sincere engagement between all the stakeholders in the crisis, will not cede the necessary leeway to Mr. Blair to function effectively as an envoy. It seems like crucial aspects of US Mideast policy will still be in the hands of Secretary of State, Ms. Condoleezza Rice.

We mustn’t forget that former World Bank president, Mr. James D. Wolfensohn, who held the position that Mr. Blair might assume resigned in frustration in January last year after only twelve months on the job when he couldn’t convince the Bush administration and others that withholding aid from the Hamas-run government was a bad idea.

There is little doubt that Mr. Mahmoud Abbas’ recently declared UDI in the occupied West Bank might have encouraged the leak about the decision to appoint Mr. Blair. Apart from portraying the US as being in the play, the announcement indeed the appointment whenever it is formally announced, wouldn’t amount to much. Mr. Blair lacks the credibility of an impartial envoy. This reward may not amount to much at all.

Another Blunder Is Underway in Palestine

The US, Israel, the EU, indeed the international community are all co-joined once again to commit yet another blunder in Palestine. The notion that encouraging Palestinian Authority president, Mr. Mahmoud Abbas to embark on what amounts to a Unilateral Declaration of Independence, UDI from the Gaza Strip, which was over-ran by Hamas militants in last week’s factional violence will advance the course of resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is clear blunder if not worse. It compares to countless other blunders that all parties involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict committed in the past.

Mr. Abbas is playing along in this blunder oblivious of the near certainty that it will get the Palestinians, and even the Israelis nowhere. At the most Mr. Abbas and his clique will receive the monetary and other forms of aid that the US, Israel, and the EU have promised to steer their way. They will, as has often been the case, continue to cushion their posh lifestyle with all that aid even as the cause for Palestinian statehood suffers. Perhaps Mr. Abbas needs to be reminded of some hard facts: Himself and his organization, Fatah lost a popular election last November, and clearly couldn’t even hold their own in the violent face-off against Hamas last week. In a neighborhood where muscular tactics matter a lot in politics, their inability to hold their own and preference for relying on external support to remain in the game will certainly not win them much-needed credibility.

Without condoning neither the violence that gave Hamas total control of Gaza last week, nor its resort to certain unpalatable tactics, it will amount to sheer hypocrisy to absolve Abbas, and Fatah of blame over the confrontation with Hamas. Their willingness to lend themselves to geopolitical power play in the region to the point of continuously acting like the election that Hamas won was of no effect was partly responsible for provoking that violent face-off last week. The laughable thing in tha is that Fatah was routed in a face-off that it helped provoke.

It is unrealistic for Mr. Abbas and Fatah to continue to presume that they will find themselves relevant by not encouraging the sort of behavior that would wean Hamas off its hard-line tendencies without fracturing Palestinian unity. When he proclaims that his UDI has created the atmosphere to engage the Israelis in peace negotiation, Mr. Abbas is simply operating from denial. Peace with Israel is absolutely necessary, but his UDI cannot enable it. Peace with Israel cannot obtain in the absence of Palestinian unity. The emphasis on security for Israel as a pre-eminent necessary and sufficient condition for meaningful engagement in the peace process is bound to continuously chart the path of failure. Israel’s security is just one of the several other issues that are involved in the Palestinian-Israeli crisis. In order for any effort to solve the crisis to become meaningful, all of the issues—including economic, well-being for the Palestinian, the return issue, etc.—involved in the crisis ought to be addressed together. Isolating Hamas will not help matters in that regard at all. It will encourage it to remain stuck in bad behavior.

Piling support and aid on Mr. Abbas and Fatah to encourage their UDI will worsen a worsening situation even more.

Ethiopian Government’s Alleged Abuses in the Ogaden

In journalistic terms, the story in The New York Times today on claims made by the Ogadeni people that Ethiopian government troops routinely commit atrocities against civilians in the course of their pursuit of fighters that belong to the Ogaden National Liberation Front, ONLF against which it has been engaged in a separatist war since 1994 would qualify as news. This is in the sense that stories on this claim haven’t been international media staples, even though the rebellion has been underway for about thirteen years now. However, the news is true-to-type. This is in the sense that the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the one in neighboring Eritria headed by Isaias Afworki, ever since they ousted Mengistu Haile Miriam in 1991 seem to be in competition with themselves to see who will come tops in the repression of their citizens. Human Rights Watch, the European Parliament and even the US State Department have all implicated the Zenawi government in abuses.

The interesting thing is that at no time has either Afworki or Zenawi lost support for a long time from the US. During the Clinton presidency both individuals alongside Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, were show-cased as the epitome of new African leaders. Since the Bush White House began the War against Terrorism, WaT, Afworki and Zenawi have upped their competition against one another to be the favorite boy-supporters of US anti-terror efforts in the Horn of Africa. In return Washington looks the other way and ignores their repression of internal dissent. Only last year, Zenawi went out of his way to rig general elections to perpetuate himself in power, and went as far as unleashing his security forces on opposition protesters, many of whom were shot on the streets of Addis Ababa, the capital, when they protested. He is still holding unknown numbers of opposition elements in indefinite detention. He has been involved in a campaign against Al-Qaeda-backed Islamists in Somalia as US proxy. The ONLF has certainly played into Zenawi’s hands by killing Chinese oilmen alongside Ethiopian troops recently. If that act convinces the US to listen to Zenawi’s plea to declare the ONLF a terrorist organization, there might be no secrecy or denial again whenever his troops step up their alleged acts of brutality against Ogadeni civilians.

If Zenawi gets away with the allegation being made against him in Ogaden, it will be another affirmation that the Wat is indeed a ploy to let dictators in Asia, and Africa brutalize their people and get away with it so long as they lend themselves to the Wat.

Un-Making Obasanjo’s Evils

The onus to cleanse Nigerian society of all the evils that Olusegun Obasanjo inflicted on the land in the eight years he was in power has fallen on the judiciary. So far, it seems like the judiciary will summon the courage this time to redeem itself and give the polity another chance. The Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of Governor Peter Obi’s petition for the Court to imbue him with the legitimacy to finish his four-year term as governor, and the court ruling last week too, authorizing the release of the leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, who has been in indefinite detention by Obasanjo since 21 months ago, are indicators of that fact. The indefinite detention of Dokubo-Asari and the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra's, MASSOB Ralph Uwazurike indicated not only Obasanjo’s evil side, it also made a mockery of the rule of law, which was supposed to be the basis of civilian rule.

Mujahid Dokubo-Asari’s release is just the beginning. Uwazurike should be allowed to return home as well.

Discharging the obligation to cleanse Obasnajo’s evils will not be easy. It will take courage though. It will entail serving justice to all petitioners at the various election tribunals that were established to examine the massively rigged elections this April. All the allegations of corruption leveled against the governors who presided in some of the states in the country in the last eight years must be examined and looked into without fear or favor. The sale of public corporations, the allocation of oil blocks to friends and cronies of Mr. Obasanjo are the other areas that must be investigated and cleaned up. The other big task will be to attend to the recent suit brought by Chief Anthony Enahoro and others challenging the validity of the 1999 Constitution. It is an unparalleled fraud for the country to operate a constitution in the name of the people when there is no such document that was established on their mandate. The cleansing would not take people who are geniuses. It can be done.

False Antithesis in Palestine

For the Bush administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the factional violence between Hamas and Fatah may have been God-sent. This is in the sense that it has severed the links between Hamas, which both the US and Israel still call a terrorist organization, even though it won a democratic election and formed a government last year as a result, and Fatah, whose leader and Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas is seen by both as a negotiating partner.

The resultant split from that factional violence has given rise to two separate Palestinian territories in Gaza, where Hamas is in total control, and the West Bank, where Mahmoud Abbas has declared his readiness to establish a separate government, which will operate by decrees, after he announced the dissolution of the Hamas-led government yesterday. Buoyed by out-right declaration of support from both the US and Israel, Abbas issued a decree in which he annulled a law that required legislative approval before his appointment of a prime minister could stand as legitimate. Hamas has not wasted time to dismiss his actions and decrees as irrelevant.

The logic in Mr. Abbas’s moves is that both the US and Israel will open up to him with aid and other forms of support. To what extent will an Abbas-led factional Palestinian government be able to truly carry the majority of Palestinians and sympathizers of their cause in an engagement with Israel? The answer to this question cannot be a definitive Yes! In which case, the unfolding scenario is therefore irrelevant as far as the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis is concerned. If the desire on the part of the US, Israel, and even the EU is to suspend the crisis in the sort of precarious limbo that stokes anarchy, then the gamble that is unfolding by way of aid and support to Mr. Abbas and squeezing of Hamas is well-aimed. But if the intention is to enable a situation that would entail peace between the Palestinian antagonists, on the one hand, and between the Palestinians and Israel on yet the other hand, then, aiding Mr. Abbas and squeezing Hamas is false antithesis. All the squeezing that was directed at Hamas since it won the elections last year didn’t come to much. It didn’t seem to have weakened it at all. There has to be a better way of forging US policy amongst the Palestinians if at all the ultimate desire is to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli crisis.

Cause for Hope in Nigeria

The ruling yesterday by Nigeria’s Supreme Court in Abuja in favor of Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State in his suit in which he prayed the Court to validate his demand to serve out a full four-year term as governor sequel to the validation of his 2003 election might be cause for hope that the country might be bracing up to correct some of the extensive wrongs that Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo inflicted during the last eight years. The Court’s decision is indeed courageous and significant. Moreso, in that it came so quickly on the heels of Mr. Obasnajo's return to his Ota Farm only a few weeks ago.

On both counts, the decision should provide a cue to particularly the various tribunals that are handling all the petitions that derived from the shameful elections that Mr. Obasanjo rigged in the most blatant manner to extend his rule albeit by proxy. If those tribunals show the necessary courage and deliver justice in each of those petitions brought before them, they would have restored the meaning of transition to all that went awry on Mr. Obasanjo’s deliberate watch. By so-doing, the stage will then be set for Nigeria to proceed on a sound democratic path, so to say. For that to happen, the meritorious petitions brought to challenge the installation of Mr. Obasanjo’s hand-picked successor, Mr. Umar Yar’Adua must produce a verdict that will nullify his claims to the presidency and order a fresh election to be conducted by a credibly electoral body, which will not be the INEC chaired by Mr. Maurice Iwu.

Mr. Peter Obi’s historic feat will be enhanced only by how well he positions himself as governor. He must exhibit unparalleled independence from Abuja in order to assert that the unitary power grab by Mr. Obasanjo is illegitimate and bad for good governance. He doesn’t even need to go cap in hand each month for the so-called allocation from Abuja. He could govern Anambra credibly by raising revenue from alternative sources within the state. His worthy victory in the Supreme Court has placed him on the worthy pedestal to redefine governance in Nigeria. One would hope that he wouldn’t squander the opportunity.

Anarchy Unfolds in Palestine

In a neighborhood, which has for a long time been associated with violence, the assassination death of a law maker in Lebanon, and the continuing high intensity warfare amongst the Palestinians that qualifies as a full-blown civil war are the sort of events that could be taken for granted. But any informed watcher of the Middle East should not but conclude that the pattern of violence this time in Palestine points to an unfolding anarchy that will seriously hurt any prospects for peace there and the neighborhood that it is part of in the long run.

The foundation of the unfolding anarchy in Palestine was laid after the election that gave Hamas victory last year. The refusal of Israel, the US, and even the Europeans to acknowledge the outcome of that election on the ground that Hamas refuses to renounce its non-acceptance of Israel’s existence, and the open declaration of support for Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas by the US, even though they lost the election, were gestures that gave wrong signals to Palestinians. Hardliners within Hamas may have been gratified by those gestures however. All the same, the crippling of the incipient Hamas-led government after aid and support from the US and Europeans was cut off, did not in any way compel Hamas to comply with the demand to recognize Israel. Instead, Hamas has forged ahead on its own terms. The latest step in that regard is its unfolding determination to militarily over-run and subdue Fatah to possibly pave way to consolidate its power in Gaza. There is no doubt that by so-doing, Hamas has throttled events to the degree in which Israel, Mr. Abbas, and the White House have been caught flat-footed in their own desire to steer the course of events in Palestine to reflect their desires. The truth therefore is that the quest by Israel and the US to shape the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli problem according to their subjective worldview may have suffered yet another big set back.

Perhaps, new efforts will now be scrambled together by the US and others who share that subjective worldview to achieve the kind of resolution of the crisis they crave all in the bid to rescue Fatah and Mr. Abbas. There is no doubt that such efforts will stoke the anarchy further, and deepen the factional divide between Hamas and Fatah. It is sad, but the truth is that the policies that led to the present scenario were avoidable. Such policies may have been informed by the belief that violence could coerce concession from the Palestinians, experience has shown that the crisis in the Middle East has been deepened by initiatives that were meant to lift it out of the doldrums towards a solution. The fact that the crisis end up each and all the time, not being resolved is cause for the parties concerned to step back and rethink. No one involved in the quest to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli problem has shown the necessary courage to step forward to assume the role of an impartial arbiter between the Palestinians and Israelis. Until that happens, the violence and blood shed will sadly continue.

Hurting America’s Bona Fide in the World

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US and the events that they provoked when the Bush White House embarked on several activities in the world may have over-shadowed the big blot that the outcome of the 2000 presidential election represents in the perception of the US by many in the world. But it is worthy of note to mention that many people the world over read cynical meanings from the 2000 presidential election on the grounds that it was rigged by the Republican party. I still recall a friend in Nigeria mockingly suggesting that the US could have been better off if the Republicans had approached Nigerians to teach them the ropes of how best to rig elections. Who would imagine that the US would be thought of as an importer of a primer on how best to rig elections! On their part, unsavory political actors in parts of Africa became comfortable with the assumption that they could rig elections in their respective countries and get away with any criticism from the US by simply turning the table at the US.

The continuing revelations about the incompetence of US Attorney General, Mr. Alberto Gonzalez don’t help matters at all in this regard on two counts: It has been established beyond doubt so far that he is incompetent, and his refusal to resign and President George W. Bush’s refusal to relieve him of his position have given the world further cause to presume that the US is not different from other societies where incompetence in public office don’t have consequences at all for individuals. The longer the mess drags on the more entrenched that notion becomes in the minds of people in different parts of the world. But the decision to halt the erosion in US credibility depends more on Mr. Gonzalez than his boss, the President. If he decides to resign, he would not only aid his country, he would also rehabilitate himself as an honorable individual.

Incomplete Diagnosis

Ms. Michelle Rhee, whose appointment as the new superintendent of the District of Columbia Public Schools system is slated to be announced today by Washington, DC Mayor Adrian M. Fenty may have gotten off on a rocky start before even she could begin her new job. Her diagnosis of the problem with the troubled DC Public School System is wrong. She strongly believes that only good teachers will make the difference in any school.

But I respectfully disagree with her. The problems facing the DC Public Schools System are several and multi-faceted. They range from the various broken dawn homes and families from which most of the children in DC public schools come to the faceless bureaucratic machinery that over-burdens what actually transpires in the schools right in the classrooms. A child who is not properly brought up to respect the authority of significant others and adults is not ready for the rigors of academics. That child will refuse to abide by all the rules that make schools what they are. When schools are not seen as institutions, teachers cannot perform as authority figures, and everything else will fall by the way side as a result.

The first problem with educating children in the DC Public Schools System derives from their homes. One is aware of the legacies of slavery, etc. that make it difficult for black people to be trustful of authority in the US. Such legacies have for a long time made it possible for teachers to take advantage of the system to prey on the children placed on their care. This is to the degree that teachers go out of their ways to place children on the path that will systematically lead them to self-destruction. In a normal world, teachers teach and nurture children under their care but nit destroy them. But parents must also be trustful of the teachers under whose care they place their children; else they will not be trustful of their judgment. Parents, even if they lack the ability to impart discipline on their children, must be willing to cede some authority to the teachers to hew off whatever rough edges that their children bring from home to school. Those rough edges are indeed, some of the factors that interfere with the teaching and learning processes, when they are brought into the classrooms and allowed to fester.

Mr. Fenty must return to the voters, to parents in the City to ascertain the degree to which they are willing to rise to their responsibility as parents and as partners in the education of their children. Unless that happens, it is only going to be a matter of time before a burn-out sets in to erode the Mayor’s confidence in Ms. Rhee. That burn-out will affect her credibility, and things will begin to fall apart, as has often been the case. She will not be a miracle woman who will deliver what is not there. The problem with the DC Public Schools system must be fixed in the over all for it to functional well. Otherwise, Ms. Rhee’s appointment will be another musical chair, and as has been the case in the past, the cheers may not be there when she moves on.

The Bottom Line Remains Unchanged

Ever since the occupation of Iraq began, there is one central puzzle that has been left addressed even as the US continues to tinker with all manner of strategies aimed at achieving what President George W. Bush and members of his inner circle in the White House and in the other sections and arms of the US government call ‘victory’. That puzzle is: How much do Iraq’s diverse groups want continued US presence in their country? The invasion proper was rightly preceded by that puzzle, but the derivative response to it was fraught with extensive assumptions steeped in fantasy. That was why the architects of the invasion proclaimed that the Iraqis will receive US troops with flowers. Well, no flowers were seen when US troops entered Baghdad, or thereafter. But all the same, the occupation has continued in the absence of a valid resolution of that puzzle.

It seems that the need to resolve that puzzle has been lost in either the debate over continued US presence in Iraq, which was heralded by the mid-term election that brought the Democrats to a slim majority in Congress in November 2006, or over the White House’s over-zeal to plod on with the occupation like nothing has changed at all in the initial support for the war by most Americans. The decision to escalate the number of American troops in Iraq was made in spite of the non-resolution of that puzzle. So was the kite flown last week by Defense Secretary Robert Gates on the Bush administration’s desire to have troops in Iraq for an indefinite period of time.

The current decision to arm members of the Sunni religious sect to combat al-Qaeda is riding on the back of that vacuum as well. One is hard-pressed to believe that the same Sunni community whose leadership was routed and humiliated by Saddam Hussein’s ouster and execution, which was televised globally, would willing and truly stand behind the US in its occupation of Iraq. The decision to arm the Sunni is indicative of US desperation, because going by instances in the past when what was received from the US by the Iraq security forces was deployed against US troops by elements in them, there is no proof that the current arrangement to assist the Sunni will not turn out that way as well. The only litmus test that it would not back fire can be found in a change in the bottom line, i.e. the Sunni people must genuinely declare their acceptance of continued US presence in Iraq. It is only when they do that that the US can then begin to court them as allies. They haven't do that yet, and don't seem ready to do it at all.

The Government of Tanzania, the UAE Royal Family, and the Hadzabe Nationality

Africa’s contemporary reputation as a continent where impunity reigns is playing out once again, this time in Tanzania where the government of President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete is about to sacrifice the Hadzabe, an indigenous nationality that inhabits the country's Yaeda Valley for a few dollars more simply because they are vulnerable people. The Hadzabe, who still retain their simple hunting and gathering life style which they evolved over the past 50,000 years are being forced to vacate their homeland to make way for the United Arab Emirate, UAE royal family which has leased 2,500 square miles of their land from the Tanzania government for safari and other pleasures that its members feel that they must enjoy elsewhere other than their own land. Some members of the UAE royal family are not content with the chunk of the Hadzabe land they already have and share with other members of their family. They want some more of the Hadzabe land to themselves even at the expense of the indigenous owners who must be driven out to make room to accommodate their greed, simply because they have the money to pervert the Tanzania officials involved.

Elsewhere the Hadzabe would be a protected national treasure. But Tanzania prefers to force off their land, even though it is clear that driving them off their land and a life style that they have been used to will amount to driving them into extinction. It has already been established that the Hadzabe cannot cope with a sudden thrust into the so-called modern life style. Some of them who were carted to prison by the Tanzania government for simply raising their voice to disagree with the quest to force them out never returned alive.

The most unconscionable aspect of this episode of impunity is that the Tanzania government cared so less about the Hadzabe that it found absolutely no needs to consult or include them in the processes that made the deal with the money-bag UAE royal family. This petty act which could not have taken place in Tanzania while the late Julius Nyerere was alive and in office as president in Tanzania must not only be condemned by all decent people and groups the world over, but must also be stopped. Referring to an indigenous people who do not constitute a threat to the government as “backward” and primitive simply because their homeland has been sold for money is raw and uncivilized. There is no need recommending that the Hadzabe who number less than 2,000 should take their case to the courts in Tanzania because they will not get a fair hearing.

The Hadzabe situation is a perfect challenge to the civilized world. The UN and its relevant agencies must rise up to the challenge to save a vulnerable people from a government that lacks morality and decency. This case is the type that the International Court of Justice at The Hague was made for. Some justice-loving group or individuals must act on behalf of the Hadzabe and take the case to The Hague to help them secure some arrangement that will protect them and their culture from extinction by the government and the royal family in the UAE.

Stalling Tactics

There is yet another indication that Israel’s political establishment lacks the genuine intentions to seek and establish the credibility necessary for lasting peace with the Palestinians. It is not that it requires the services of a fortune teller for any ardent watcher of the Palestinian-Israeli problem to discern that Israel wants anything less than a resolution that hinges completely on its own terms, but the report today that Prime Minister Olmert’s government has made back channel overtures to negotiate with Syria with the aim of returning the Golan Heights is capable of creating the impression that there’s a lack of genuine desire for peace particularly because the same report disclosed that Israel’s overtures is aimed at isolating Iran.

That mindset which compels those who hold it in the Israeli political establishment and their international supporters to stop at nothing in the pursuit of whatever frustrates the possibility of solving the crisis falls within the realm of stalling tactics. The assassination of Yshak Rabin under a highly poisoned political atmosphere which was generated and stoked quiet openly by opponents of the Oslo Accords that he initialed with the late Yassir Arafat is yet another indication of the existence of the said mindset. Seeking and making peace with Syria with the aim of curbing Iran’s growing influence in the region will be the latest one. But the question that craves a serious consideration is: Is there really an alternative to a lasting resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis?

The harsh and truthful answer to that question is indeed, no! So far, nothing indicates that there will come a time when the prevalent circumstances in the Middle East would respond to the desires of the holders of this mindset. There is no denying that given America’s unflinching support, Israel will continue to enjoy the upper hand in the balance of military power in the region. But Israel’s military power has proven insufficient in curbing Palestinian resistance and all the destructive violence that characterize the use of military power to quash that resistance. Meanwhile, both sides have continued to bleed in every sense of the word. Nothing can be better than a lasting solution in this case. So far, the will for that is lacking in Israel’s political establishment and in the ranks of its supporters. The Palestinians do deserve their own share of the blame here, but one is convinced that Israel is the more powerful adversary in the conflict. However, that in and by itself places a good measure of the burden to credibly set the stage for genuine peace on Israel and its international supporters. Stalling tactics will not get even the most powerful party in this kind of protracted conflict far enough.

US Intelligence Establishment on Castro

One of his last public acts as US National Intelligence director before he re-deployed to the State Department was Mr. John Negroponte’s appearance before the US Senate Intelligence Committee. The only seeming bomb shell that he handed out during that session was his authoritative 'disclosure' that Cuba’s President Fidel Castro’s death was imminent, in fact, a few months away from then. Negroponte’s ‘disclosure’ came a little after Mr. Castro disappeared from the public because of the ailment, which he is still recuperating from.

Contrary to Negroponte’s ‘disclosure’, Mr. Castro is still alive. The only thing that US intelligence got right was therefore the ailment, which up until recently kept Mr. Castro out of total circulation for 10 months in a row. Although Negroponte’s almost bogus disclosure didn’t make the media radar screen beyond the first few days, the truth remains that it doesn’t bode well for the credibility of the US intelligence establishment. This is especially in the light of the big intelligence failure over Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, WMD program. If the circumstances had warranted it, the intelligence from which Negroponte derived the logic of his ‘disclosure’ from was actionable enough to inform critical policy decisions by the White House. As Iraq burns, the need for US policy makers to trust but verify every manner of intelligence from the US intelligence establishment before it can be used to support or justify serious foreign policy decisions cannot be over-emphasized.

There is indeed a difference between wishing death on Mr. Castro and predicting on the basis of hard intelligence that he would die within a specific time period. Now that Mr. Castro has defied the prediction of his death by the newest intelligence clearing house established by the US government in the wake of the intelligence failure over Iraq, where then does it place the US intelligence establishment on credibility?

The Best News, Probably

China’s official announcement today by its State Council had taken new measures to re-invigorate the country’s over all food an drug safety monitoring standards is probably one of the best news on globalization this time around. What started with the importation of tainted pet food into the US from China not long ago had gradually grown to assume enormous proportions when there emerged other cases of tainted toothpaste from China that was alleged to have killed at least 100 people in Panama.

The global frenzy for cheap manufactures literally made China the first stop for international monopoly concerns that find China’s huge appetite for economic growth so luring that no one seemed to have risen to the challenge of ensuring that safety wasn’t sacrificed for quick profits. It is all so good that the Chinese government seemed to have risen quickly to the challenge of restoring global confidence in its safety food and drug structures. That process which began with the death sentence handed last week to Mr. Zheng Xiaoyu, who used to be the head of China’s Food and Drug Administration for taking bribe and over-looking strict adherence to regulation standards, has been extended to the administration of tighter safety standards as well as enforcement procedures at all levels of China's food and drug safety establishment. The new standards include aspects that would prevent errors as well as those that will track and investigate errors if and when they are detected.

The issues involved here are not political at all. They knock at the heart of what drives the world economic system even as it shows signs of terminal crisis. There’s hardly any doubt at all that China is part of if not the heartbeat of the world economy. The other time what emerged as slight quakes in China's stock market sent global waves that almost crashed major stock markets in the major and even minor financial centers in the world. What is needed this time from everyone concerned is cooperation with and support for the Chinese as they proceed with the task of restoring global confidence in their country's food and drug safety regime. Anything else will translate to the most counter-productive outcome that will probably drive the world economy to the lowest low in what Immanuel Wallerstein calls its terminal crisis.

Turkey’s Incursion Into Iraq

Reports today that Turkish troops chased Kurdish fighters into northern Iraq are worrisome but not unexpected. Turkey has never hidden its readiness to foil any attempts by Kurds on its side of the border to take advantage of the nominal independence status that Iraqi Kurdistan is enjoying to re-invigorate their fight for independence from Turkey.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ warning to Turkey last week for it not to invade northern Iraq may not have been in vain after all. Today’s reports indicate that Gates’ warning may not mean much to Turkey by way of deterrence. It doesn’t and may not constitute one. The reason being that Iraqi Kurds who are determined to assert their independence from Iraq someday soon will likely continue to extend a hand of support to their kinsmen across the border in Turkey. Kurdish desire for independence from the rest of Iraq and support for their kinsmen in Turkey will present the US with serious challenges that it may not be able to handle easily. The reasons being that on the one hand, the US cannot easily talk the Kurds in Iraq off their desire to assert their independence, and on yet the other hand, unless the Bush White House acts true to its established swashbuckling persona, sending US forces into northern Iraq and possibly into Turkey to neutralize the latter’s significant military presence will further complicate things for the US in the region. But only time will tell what will unfold in Iraq sequel to US invasion.

Not Without Europe

Even as the US wrangles with Russian President, Vladimir Putin over its projected missile defense system that will tie all of the NATO members, one unacknowledged piece of fact is at the heart of this latest element of US self-appointed role as an advocate and defender of democracy in the free world. That fact is that the Europe will always remain relevant to US foreign policy. For good or for bad, the US cannot afford to ignore Europe in its quest to sustain what Immanuel Wallerstein calls hegemony in the world.

The missile defense system will definitely re-validate US bona fide in Europe on NATO’s auspices. The great economic strides made by countries in the parts of Europe that former Defense Secretary, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld described as ‘old Europe’ when he became exasperated by their refusal to rubber stamp US invasion of Iraq during the post World War II years were partly responsible for deflating some of their allegiance to US world leadership. The collapse of Soviet Communism was the other variable that contributed to that deflation. In the absence of the threat that the Soviet Union posed, West Europeans don’t see the logic for them to play the second fiddle in their relationship with Washington. The call on the political leadership in most of Western Europe by Europe’s masses that the time for them to enable the enjoyment of the dividends of peace is intricately linked to the end of the Cold War. Even in the parts of what used to be in the Soviet Warsaw block, the missile defense system is being seen as a ploy by the US to cash in on the on-going War against Terror, WaT to rope the rest of Europe into a geo-strategic set-up that will re-invigorate Europe’s allegiance to the US. But it doe not seem that Europe's masses are very interested in being part of a muscular alliance with the US any more.

Although Iran is being positioned as Europe’s new common enemy in the current bid to win support for the missile, a re-invigorated US alliance with Europe will probably be more relevant for countering China’s growing reach in Africa and Asia from where it is poised to compete with the US for all manner of mineral and natural resources that it badly needs to sustain its stupendous economic growth. But US difficulties in convincing Europeans that China is a threat is deeply steeped in China’s refusal to let the US succeed in drawing it into Cold War-type enmity. China’s biggest concern at the moment centers on the realization of economic growth to sustain its huge population.

Even after the missile defense is put in place, the dividends that it will yield for the US might not be extensive and durable. It does not seem like the masses in Europe are enthusiastic about building alliance with the US on the basis of military defense. Europe’s masses seem to be more interested in rebuilding their alliance with the US only on a plank that emphasize world peace on an equal partnership.

Mr. Charles Taylor

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor who goes on trial in The Hague, Netherlands today for human rights abuses is a reminder of one of the problems with Africa. Mr. Taylor is accused of orchestrating a civil war particularly in nearby Sierra Leone by buying and receiving diamonds from warlords who he supplied weapons in exchange. The more serious aspect of that is that his warlord allies then went out of their ways to unleash unparalleled brutality on countless civilians who were deliberately mutilated in unspeakable ways.

The impunity and sadism that characterized Mr. Taylor’s reign in Liberia is peculiar to Africa. The continent is home to the likes of Mr. Taylor who feel at ease to trample on people that they claim to govern. That is why it has become almost a cliché in the international media that Mr. Taylor’s trail will be a long-awaited lesson for his likes on the continent. But the reality is that the cliché is more of an exaggeration than anything at all. If not for the mutilation that Mr. Taylor’s allies in Sierra Leone unleashed on innocent civilians, chances are that he could have gotten away with the impunity and sadism that characterized his rule of Liberia. Western leaders could have found justifications on the grounds of law and order to leave him alone. The state of affairs produced by such tolerance of governance which is sustained by impunity, sadism, and lack of responsiveness is one of the continent’s greatest undoing. The destitution and decay that societies in country and after country in Africa are consigned to by their so-called leaders is no less unconscionable than the acts that Mr. Taylor will begin to answer for in The Hague today.

Dragging just one out-of-control former leader to The Hague for a show trail will definitely not rid the continent of the others. Mr. Taylor’s trial is just an exception, which will not establish a pattern. One who bets that Mr. Taylor's trial will not be followed by even one more will not be wrong at all. The only measure more likely to put a stop to governance by impunity on the continent is one that empowers Africans to compel their political leaders to become responsive. That measure is still lacking for Africa. In most if not all cases, the heartless individuals that unleash reigns of impunity on their fellow Africans find supporters in the West. A politician or warlord who does not need to worry about international acceptance even when he achieves political power through illegitimate means will not bother to govern responsively. Africa’s post-colonial supra-national states are just conducive for abusive rule. The clamor for the restructure of those post-colonial supra-national states in parts of the continent will mark the beginning of that measure which will help establish responsive governance in Africa. The interesting thing about that is that without Western interference, Africans can and will accomplish the task of establishing the basis for responsive governance for themselves.

"Let Them Come. We Are Ready"

If there were any doubts at all about the motive of Fata al-Islam, the previously unknown Islamist jihadist group that has been embroiled in a siege inside a Palestinian refugee camp near the port city of Tripoli in Lebanon, with the Lebanese army since a fortnight ago, the declaration yesterday to the Associated Press today by Abu Hureira, who is also one of al-Islam’s leaders clears them all. Faced with imminent death in the hands of the Lebanese army, which has completely surrounded the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp where the group has holed itself in ever since the siege began, Mr. Hureira, a Lebanese whose real name is Shehab al-Qaddour, taunted the Lebanese army to “come. We are ready”. The group is clearly apocalyptic and its members are determined to martyr themselves to probably win following of some sort in the future, if not in the present in Lebanon and the larger Middle East.

This sort of die-hard determination for martyrdom is a dimension in the War Against Terror, WaT that must compel serious thought in the minds of policy makers who are involved in prosecuting the war. The world is not served well at all if pluralities of future Islamists are created whenever one or a group of them submits themselves to a gun battle to be killed by military forces anywhere in the world. This reality is the sort that makes the WaT an endless war. Wars are definitely not good, because they lead to the destruction of lives and property. The architects and prosecutors of the WaT can only be ignorant of this evident fact if they lack proper education. Else, they are guilty of deliberately exposing the world to an endless war when they could have achieved the same goal of dealing with the scourge of Islamist terror by other more pains-taking methods.

In the case of the on-going siege in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp, the best approach could have been to encircle Fatah al-Islam and wait them out for as long as it takes for them to surrender. That tactic could have taken some time and nerve for sure, but in a situation where the civilians in the camp are reluctant to accommodate al-Islam members, it would have been a matter of time before they surrender. Violence begets violence. In a region and neighborhood where violence has hardly solved any of the long-drawn conflicts that have broken out there in the past, the resort to violence each time when new ones break out is rather counter productive.

Given the hapless performance of the Lebanese army in the current engagement with Fata al-Islam, the Lebanese authorities who talk tough ought to know that they lack what it requires to actually claim the upper under in this kind of conflict. They might be heartened by the quick gift of weapons that they received from abroad these past two weeks since the fight with al-Islam broke out. However, it is one thing to receive quick military aid, it is still another for that military aid to be used in ways that achieve decisive outcomes. Such decisive outcomes would include in their case, getting rid of trouble-making militants once and for all, and securing lasting peace. If military aid is good only for achieving blood revenge alone, then it becomes counter-productive.

Iraq As South Korea

When it comes to Iraq it does not seem like the Bush White House will ever get tired of coming up with all sorts of ideas. But the sad thing about that is that none of those ideas has been effective in any sense of the word when it comes to achieving what can be called transparent success. A military undertaking that was started to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, WMD has steadily morphed into an occupation without end in an environment, which remains exceptionally hostile to the US.

The report today in The New York Times that the Bush White House has started to openly fly the kite for an indefinite US military presence in Iraq cannot surprise anyone at all. After all while Mr. Donald Rumsfeld was Defense Secretary there were several reports that the US was briskly building several permanent military bases in Iraq. The more interesting aspect of this kite is that US occupation of Iraq is being discussed in the context of US military presence in South Korea after the Korean war, and of course in Japan and Germany after World War II. Those who are doing this comparison cannot be ignorant of the stark differences between the situation of things in South Korea, Japan, and Germany and Iraq and the Middle East. For one, at no time was the credibility of the US and its values as a super power at odds with the Koreans, Japanese, and Germans as is the case today in Iraq and the Middle East. The closest comparison to the evident realities that obtain in Iraq as regards the desire by the Bush White House to maintain an indefinite military presence in Iraq is Lebanon at the time when former President Ronald Reagan sent the Marines there in the 1980s. There’s no need recounting how that mission tuned into a failed misadventure. But it’s worthy to mention albeit very briefly why it did: the US lacked the bona fide necessary for accomplishing such a mission in that region. Today, the credibility of the US in the region has deteriorated even more than what was the case in the 1980s.

Like the invasion of Iraq proper, indefinite US military presence in Iraq will be an endeavor that will not succeed beyond its implementation. So far, the only successful US endeavor in Iraq is the invasion itself, for the reason that it enabled de facto US military presence there. But a comprehensive balance sheet on Iraq will starkly show that everything else has been a woeful failure. It is one thing if the desire is to maintain an indefinite US military presence and call it a success in and by itself. It will be yet another thing to presume that such an undertaking will mirror US military presence in South Korea, Japan, and Germany. The cost of an indefinite US presence in Iraq will surpass the ordinary. It may not worth much at all. US policy makers must spend more time thinking about what they can do to repair the serious damage that the invasion of Iraq has done to its over all credibility in the Middle East, and less on fantastic desires that will further damage its already damaged credibility in the region. At this time the incendiary kite of an indefinite military presence in Iraq is one such damaging idea.

Not So, Mr. Chavez

One would rightly wonder what Venezuela’s President, Mr. Hugo Chavez expected by way of reactions from opponents, of his government and even fair-minded individuals at home, and of course governments abroad, over his government’s recent refusal to renew the broadcast license of Radio Caracas Television, or RCTV. That action forced RCTV off the air Sunday for what is meant to be for good, since a new government-owned public television began immediately to broadcast on RCTV’s channels. That act by Mr. Chavez and his government is typical of an over-kill and over-reach. Mr. Chavez should not be surprised at all that it is attracting the sort of immediate protest demonstrations in Venezuela by opponents of his government and condemnations abroad from groups and even governments. He doesn't need such at this point in time!

His declaration that the negative reaction over that act of over-reach and over-kill stems from "international rightist, extreme-rightist and fascist movements [who] are attacking Venezuela from everywhere - from Europe, the United States, Brasilia" is disingenuous and sad to say the least. One can concede that RCTV was an arch-supporter of the coup that claimed to have ousted him from power just briefly the other time. One can also agree that RCTV has been an ardent opponent of his government and its policies. But his expressed expectation that Venezuela should be devoid of voices of opposition would not augur well at all for his government and Venezuela. Irrespective of how he feels about his opponents, they are necessary evils that he must rely on for reality checks on his policies and governance. Considering his vast popularity amongst poor Venezuelans who out-number the owners and the audience of RCTV by far, Mr. Chavez has very little to worry about RCTV’s programming.

Forcing RCTV off the air this way has opened him and his government up for justified criticisms from not only known opponents of his government at home and abroad, it will also generate bad blood between sympathetic observers of his policies in the sub-region and elsewhere. It is not too late for him to correct the error he made by forcing RCTV off the air. He would earn some goodwill for himself and his government by allowing RCTV to return to the airwaves. In fact, by so-doing he might even give some people cause to start to view him as responsive. The time for him to correct that error of over-reach and over-kill is now.