PEACE NEGOTIATIONS WATCH
Monday, August 9, 2004
(Volume III, Number 31)
PEACE NEGOTIATIONS WATCH
Monday, August 9, 2004
(Volume III, Number 31)
Contents:
Afghanistan
U.S. warplanes and Afghan troops kill up to 70 militants near Afghan-Pakistan border One of the bloodiest clashes since the fall of the Taliban.
Afghanistan's vote could trigger mayhem; The warlords' threat Failure to name defense minister as VP candidate could cost Karzai.
Nagorno-Karabakh holds municipal elections 85,000 residents were registered to vote in election.
Burundian parties sign 'historic' power-sharing deal Members of Tutsi minority balked at accord.
Regional summit on
Kabila Invites Moi to DRC Moi reportedly wants to improve economic development in region.
Amid spiraling tensions with breakaway regions, Georgian
Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia on war footing Almost nightly fighting between Georgian and South Ossetian troops.
Saakashvili in
How polls offer the prospect of peace in Aceh Economic growth limited in Aceh.
Security Council urges Ivory Coast's former warring parties to implement their peace deal Disarmament to begin by October 15.
Umbrella group of
To bring peace, focus on
Kosovo
ECOWAS tells Liberia rebels to elect leader once and for all Dissent within main rebel group could destabilize situation in
Donors balking at Liberian political games, UN warns Power struggles have caused reluctance for contributions.
New EU special representative to
Opposition renews protests against key decentralization law Law increases Albanian representation in Macedonian government.
Separatists block railway between Moldova and Trans-Dniester Separatist conflict in
Tens of thousands without electricity in former Soviet republic after separatists cut power 120,000 hit by power-outage in
War-displaced delay return as
Serb premier, Macedonian
Report:
Mediators unable to inaugurate parliament for war-torn Somalia IGAD had planned to inaugurate transitional government on August 9.
Sri Lanka's Marxists reverse position and back government on Tamil Tiger talks Marxists agree to be more flexible.
Tamil Tiger split claws at Sri Lanka peace process LTTE split may be holding back peace talks.
Khartoum to start disarming Darfur militias next week: police chief Washington agrees to keep pressure on Sudanese government.
U.S. Senate majority leader calls violence in Darfur a genocide Frist stops short of calling for armed intervention by Western powers.
Arabs say Sudanese government needs more time to resolve Darfur crisis Nigerian
U.S. warplanes and Afghan troops kill up to 70 militants near Afghan-Pakistan border
Stephen Graham, Associated Press, 8/3/04
In one of the bloodiest clashes since the fall of the Taliban, Afghan troops backed by U.S. warplanes killed as many as 70 militants in a daylong battle near the Pakistani border, military officials said Tuesday. An Afghan commander said government forces heard militant radio messages in Arabic and the Chechen language, suggesting al-Qaida fighters were involved. "We could hear the enemy," said Gen. Nawab, an Afghan commander who uses one name. "I'm sure there were foreigners involved." Only two Afghan soldiers were reported killed in the fighting, an indication of the militants' vulnerability to American air power.
The battle began at about 2 a.m. Monday, when dozens of militants armed with rockets, mortars and machine guns hit a border post in Khost province, a former al-Qaida stronghold 120 miles south of the capital, Kabul. The U.S. military said it sent a B-1 bomber, A-10 ground-attack aircraft and helicopter gunships and flew in Afghan reinforcements, eventually forcing the assailants to flee "in panic." U.S. spokesman Maj. Rick Peat said pilots reported seeing 40 to 50 bodies on the battlefield near the mountainous Pakistani border. Several wrecked vehicles were also spotted. Nawab put the rebel toll as high as 70, saying the militants had dragged away many dead and wounded as they retreated into Pakistan. Afghan forces recovered only 10 bodies, he said.
The U.S. military said one of more than 100 Afghan soldiers involved in the fighting was killed and three others were wounded. However, another Afghan commander, Khial Baz, said two of his men died. Peat said no U.S. ground troops were involved. The death toll appeared among the heaviest since the aerial poundings of Taliban troops by U.S. planes before the hard-line regime folded in late 2001, and confirms a surge in violence ahead of the October presidential elections. Assaults led by U.S. Marines in a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan in May and June killed more than 100 militants, commanders have said, but it was unclear how many fell in a single engagement.
"The coalition and Afghan security forces continue to reap outstanding results" against militants, a U.S. statement said, "refusing to allow them to gather enough strength to affect progress toward a democratic government in Afghanistan." Khost borders Pakistan's Waziristan tribal area, where officials in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, say hundreds of foreign fighters have found refuge among sympathetic Pashtun tribesmen, the same ethnic group from which the Taliban draws its main strength. Pakistani troops have mounted a string of operations to crush the militants, sparking battles that have left scores of dead this year. American officials said recently they had no firm fix on the whereabouts of al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, who could have found refuge in the area. Peat said it was unclear if the attack in Khost was a response to that increased pressure or to a spate of arrests of suspected al-Qaida members in Pakistan.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, militants opposed to President Hamid Karzai have targeted aid workers and government officials. At least 10 workers and guards helping prepare for the October elections have died so far this year. In the latest incident, a bomb hit a vehicle carrying a mayor and a judge in central Afghanistan on Sunday, missing the apparent targets but killing three of the judge's children. The children, aged 4 to 10, were in the back of the pickup truck when it was hit by a bomb attached to a bicycle in Logar province, local military commander Atiqullah Ludin said.
Afghanistan's vote could trigger mayhem; The warlords' threat
Barnett R. Rubin, The International Herald Tribune, 8/4/04
The decision by President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan to rebuff Defense Minister Muhammad Qasim Fahim by not naming him as one of two vice-presidential candidates has transformed the political landscape of Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the country may not be ready for this transformation, and the presidential elections may spark violence. Afghanistan faces this potential crisis because the Bush administration insisted on holding Afghan elections before those in the United States, while for two years it stalled any action to demobilize its warlord allies. When it belatedly announced plans to demobilize 40 percent of the warlords' militias before elections, it could not carry them out. Karzai made the best choice available under these circumstances. The political agreement underlying his government required that the president, an ethnic Pashtun, choose his first deputy from the political heirs of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the late Tajik commander from the Panjshir Valley, north of Kabul. Fahim, heir to the command of Massoud's military forces, has defied the requirement in the UN-sponsored Bonn agreement that he withdraw his forces from Kabul. He has led the Northern Alliance, which the United States armed against the Taliban, in resisting demobilization.
Most Afghans see Fahim as the country's chief warlord. Karzai knew that allying with Fahim would discredit him and the reform process. But he felt he could not make this choice without full U.S. support. Reluctant to abandon even so tainted an ally, the Bush administration delayed until the last minute. With difficulty, at the last minute Karzai convinced Ahmed Zia Massoud, Afghanistan's ambassador to Russia and a brother of the slain commander, to join his ticket. But the rebuff of Fahim led to a swift, long-anticipated response. Another major Panjshiri leader, Yunus Qanooni, now minister of education but formerly Massoud's chief organizer and logistician, declared his candidacy. Qanooni is supported by Fahim and the third major leader of the Panjshiri faction, Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.
Each major candidate named a multiethnic ticket, but the result is nonetheless an election with one major presidential candidate from each major ethnic group: Karzai, a Pashtun; Qanooni, a Tajik; General Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek and former communist militia leader; and Mohammad Mohaqiq, a Shiite religious leader and commander from the Hazara ethnic group. A poll by the International Republican Institute shows Karzai in the lead in all ethnic groups and regions. But such polls have no track record in Afghanistan by which to judge their accuracy. More important, Afghanistan is not yet a country where people can vote freely. In the same poll, Afghans named security as their top concern, and they identified the warlords -- whom Karzai has now rebuffed -- as the greatest threat. Hence Afghans are most vulnerable to intimidation and bribery from the very forces now allied against the president. The voting may reflect who controls military force and the money from the drug trade, not whom the Afghan people prefer.
But the pro-Karzai forces may also be tempted by trickery. Elections will also take place among Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran. Warlords in northern and western Afghanistan may deliver voters to Qanooni, but Pakistani Pashtuns may swell the Karzai column. The United Nations and the Afghan government have registered more than eight million voters in Afghanistan, and Afghans in Iran carry state-issued identity cards, but neither Afghans in Pakistan nor Pakistanis have consistent documentation. A senior Panjshiri asked in Kabul in May, "What will stop Pakistan from inventing 250,000 Pashtuns?"
This election will take place in a country that has never conducted a presidential election, where the Taliban are assassinating voters and electoral staff, and where there is no rule of law. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the votes on Oct. 9, the constitution requires a runoff. Since no one knows how long the first-round vote count will take, the second round will be held two weeks after the announcement of the first-round result. During the period immediately after Oct. 9 when the ballots are counted, there may be violent protests in a country where all major candidates control armed forces. The United States, NATO, the United Nations and the European Union need to deploy security forces and electoral monitors massively, despite security risks, to assure a minimally fair election in all three countries where it will be held. They have to tell all firmly to accept the outcome. And they have to make a credible commitment to stay in Afghanistan through the second election as well. Otherwise, it might look bad for President George W. Bush on Election Day. But the Afghan people will pay the real price.
Nagorno-Karabakh dismisses Council of Europe's warning
Associated Press, 8/6/04
The Nagorno-Karabakh enclave on Friday bristled at the Council of Europe's advice to refrain from holding local elections, saying it would run its own affairs. Walter Schwimmer, the secretary general of the 45-nation Council, has voiced regret that the enclave, that has broken off from Azerbaijan, would hold municipal elections set for Sunday. "One sided actions are counter-productive," Schwimmer said in a statement, adding that the status of Nagorno-Karabakh should should be decided through talks.
The Nagorno-Karabakh authorities responded Friday, saying that they need to have a full-fledged government. "We don't think that the international community and the European organizations in particular would be interested in the absense of authority in Nagorno-Karabakh," they said in a statement. Earlier this week, Nagorno-Karabakh launched a 10-day military exercise that drew angry criticism from Azerbaijan, which said the maneuvers could hamper the peace process. The Armenian Foreign Ministry returned the criticism Friday, saying that the "bellicose Azerbaijani statements" were fueling tensions. Armenian-backed forces won control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a largely ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, in a 1988-94 war that killed some 30,000 people and drove a million from their homes. Despite a cease-fire, the two countries continue to face off across a demilitarized zone, and shooting occasionally erupts. No final settlement has been reached, and the conflict continues to aggravate economic troubles and threaten unrest in Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Nagorno-Karabakh holds municipal elections
Associated Press, 8/8/04
The Nagorno-Karabakh enclave held local elections on Sunday, ignoring the Council of Europe's advice to call off the municipal balloting. "Free and fair elections are the only mechanism to form a legitimate government in Nagorno-Karabakh," said Sergei Davidian, chairman of the enclave's Central Election Commission. The 45-nation Council of Europe, however, had voiced regret over the elections in the enclave, which has broken off from Azerbaijan, with Secretary-General Walter Schwimmer saying "one-sided actions are counterproductive." More than 85,000 residents are registered to vote in Sunday's balloting to choose community leaders, members of the Council of Elders and also the mayor of the regional capital, Stepanakert. Preliminary results are expected Monday. Davidian said he was confident the election would proceed fairly, adding that international experts were closely following the results. Nagorno-Karabakh's Union of Journalists, citing the results of an earlier survey, predicted that 72 percent of registered voters would cast ballots. Armenian-backed forces won control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a largely ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, in a 1988-94 war that killed some 30,000 people and drove a million from their homes.
Despite a cease-fire, Armenian-backed forces and Azerbaijani troops continue to face off across a demilitarized zone, and shooting occasionally erupts. On Sunday, Nagorno-Karabakh's Foreign Ministry announced that a 21-year-old Azerbaijan soldier, identified as Anat Samyedov, was detained on Friday during an alleged attempt to cross the border. Nagorno-Karabakh said it had informed the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe about the detention, adding that it was willing to return the soldier to Azerbaijan if it received such a request.
South Africa seeks to avoid 'vacuum' with new Burundi talks
Jean-Jacques Cornish, Agence France Presse, 8/3/04
South Africa is to host a new round of talks with Burundi leaders beginning Wednesday in a bid to hammer out an overall peace deal before the current transitional government ends its mandate in less than three months. Deputy President Jacob Zuma, who has been spearheading the peace effort in Burundi, said Tuesday that 31 parties had been invited to the talks, including the 19 signatories of the 2000 Arusha accord that launched the peace process in the central African country. More than 300,000 people have died in Burundi since rebels from Burundi's Hutu majority took up arms in 1993 against the Tutsi-led government and army. "We will meet on Wednesday and Thursday and agree on a document which we will take to the region," Zuma told reporters. "This matter has to come to an end because the Arusha process runs out at the end of October. Unless there is agreement, there will be a vacuum on November 1st," he said. Separately, the head of the UN mission in Burundi, Carolyn McAskie, was on her way to Pretoria to brief Zuma on her talks with the last active rebel group in Burundi, the National Liberation Forces.
Zuma has mediated talks in Pretoria and in Bujumbura over the past two months but the diplomatic push has thus far failed to produce an agreement on power-sharing and representation in parliament between Burundi's Tutsis and Hutus. The largest former rebel group to join in the power-sharing arrangement, the CNDD-FDD (Forces for the Defence of Democracy) group, will not be attending the talks in Pretoria as it is holding its party conference in Burundi. "That is quite okay because we know exactly where the CNDD-FDD stands," said Zuma. President Thabo Mbeki will also be taking part in the latest round, which will tackle the election calendar and Tutsi representation in the new post-election power-sharing arrangement. "We will agree over these two days on the elements of ending the process -- how to prepare for and conduct elections as the concluding act of Arusha and how to usher in the new dispensation," said Zuma. "The parties have to decide on how to get into democracy and close the transitional phase," he added.
A major bone of contention has been the allocation of seats in the first parliament between the two ethnic groups with the Tutsi Union for National Progress (UPRONA) party arguing that it should get the full 40 percent set aside for Tutsis. UPRONA maintains that Tutsis who have defected to Hutu-led parties should not be eligible for those seats. Last week, five parties representing Tutsis walked out of talks with Zuma in Bujumbura accusing him of not listening to their demands for representation in the new government. Setting a date for the elections is also shaping up as a major challenge as the Arusha accord provides for a constitutional referendum, local and parliamentary elections and later a presidential poll. South African officials admit this may prove to be impossible before October 31 and there has been discussion on setting up an independent election commission which would lay down a calendar for the series of votes. Fighting has stopped in 16 of Burundi's 17 provinces and only one rebel group remains active.
Burundian parties sign 'historic' power-sharing deal
Jean-Jacques Cornish, Agence France Presse, 8/6/04
A power-sharing deal aimed at paving the way to elections in Burundi was signed here Friday by a majority of leaders but politicians from the Tutsi minority balked at the accord. Twenty of the 30 parties represented at the talks brokered by Deputy President Jacob Zuma signed up to the document that will be discussed at an upcoming regional summit. They included the principle ex-rebel Hutu group in Burundi, the Forces for the Defense of Democracy. "This is a decision taken by the majority of parties and therefore a decision taken for the Burundian people," Zuma said after the parties signed the deal in his presence and that of South African President Thabo Mbeki.
"Some make history. Some write history. We are busy making history in Burundi," Zuma said. "In time to come, generations will read about what we did and how we took cardinal decisions." The leader of the main Tutsi party, the Union for National Progress (UNPRONA), Jean-Marie Manwangari, was among the 10 leaders who did not sign the deal. "None of our concerns were taken into account," Manwangari told AFP on his way to the airport to fly back to Bujumbura. The Tutsi leader said he planned to consult with his party members in Burundi to decide what to do next. More than 300,000 people have died in Burundi since rebels from the Hutu majority took up arms in 1993 against the Tutsi-led government and army.
The Arusha peace accord signed in 2000 set up a transitional government that is due to end its term on October 31, handing over power to a newly-elected president, parliament and local councils. A major bone of contention has been the allocation of seats in the first parliament between the two ethnic groups with UPRONA arguing that it should get the full 40 percent set aside for Tutsis. UPRONA maintains that Tutsis who have defected to Hutu-led parties should not be eligible for those seats. A copy of the pact obtained by AFP said that the council of ministers will be 60 percent Hutu and 40 percent Tutsi while parliament would follow the same make-up apart from three lawmakers from the Twa ethnic group.
Thirty percent of the seats are earmarked for Burundian women. The pact stipulated that the Senate would be 50 percent Hutu and 50 percent Tutsi with three Twa members. It said the president would name two vice-presidents representing the two main ethnic groups. South Africa's chief mediator on Burundi, Zuma made clear that the deal marked the end of the negotiation process and that leaders must now start preparing for elections. The pact "allows the parties in Burundi to begin the process of drawing up a constitution, electoral law, communal law and establishing an independent electoral commission," he said.
"That commission will say whether we are ready or not to hold an election... We will make a report to the regional summit headed by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, given that we have very little time left until the Arusha process runs out and we must have elections." Carolyn McAskie, the UN head of mission in Burundi, said the deal "is another important step on Burundi's long road to peace. There are many more steps to travel down the road." "Everyone knows the work we must do to organise elections. It is important that we keep together. We need to reconstruct our country together," said interim Burundian President Domitien Ndayizeye. Also absent from the list of signatories was the largest former rebel group to join in the power-sharing arrangement, the CNDD-FDD (Forces for the Defense of Democracy) group, which did not attend the talks in Pretoria. The National Liberation Forces of Agathon Rwasa has meanwhile rejected the entire peace process.
Regional summit on Burundi peace in Tanzania next week
Agence France Presse, 8/7/04
Regional African heads of states will gather next week in Tanzania's commercial capital Dar es Salaam to "ratify" a Burundi power-sharing agreement and reconfirm a timetable for elections, a Ugandan foreign ministry official said on Saturday. "A summit to run on August 11 and 12 has been called to ratify the agreement reached in Pretoria and to re-confirm the election process and the timetable," Foreign ministry permanent secretary Julius Onen told AFP. On Friday 20 Burundian political parties signed a power sharing deal brokered by South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma, although 10 other Tutsi minority parties balked at the deal and one rebel group is still fighting the government.
Uganda chairs a grouping of regional states overseeing efforts to reach a lasting peace in Burundi, where a civil war, which started in 1993 and has claimed the lives of more than 300,000 people. Heads of states from South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Zambia, Tanzania, and Burundi itself, have been invited to attend the summit due to start on Wednesday, Onen said. Officials from the United Nations, African Union and European Union are also expected to attend. "The heads of state are also going to receive a report from the UN special envoy to Burundi (Carolyn McAskie) on her recent meeting with FNL (National Liberation Forces) rebels," in Nairobi, Onen added.
The FNL, officially the armed wing of Hutu People's Liberation Party (PALIPEHUTU), the recalcitrant rebel group in the tiny country, is mainly active in Rural Bujumbura, the province that surrounds the capital. The Arusha peace accord signed in 2000 set up a transitional government in Burundi that is due to end its term on October 31, handing over power to a newly-elected parliament and local councils. Under the accord, general elections are due before the end of October and the regional heads of state reaffirmed this deadline at a summit held in Dar es Salaam in June. The power-sharing deal is going to be incorporated into the country's new constitution, which has to be finalised by from November 1, when the country is scheduled to begin its post-transition politics.
A major bone of contention in power-sharing has been the allocation of seats in the first parliament between the two ethnic groups with the Tutsi party, Union for National Progress, (UPRONA) arguing that it should get the full 40 percent set aside for Tutsis. UPRONA maintains that Tutsis who have defected to Hutu-led parties should not be eligible for those seats. A copy of the pact obtained by AFP said that the council of ministers will be 60 percent Hutu and 40 percent Tutsi while parliament would follow the same make-up apart from three lawmakers from the Twa ethnic group.
Thirty percent of the seats are earmarked for Burundian women. The pact stipulated that the Senate is to be evenly balanced between Hutus and Tutsis, with three Twa members. It said the president would name two vice-presidents representing the two main ethnic groups. Also absent from the list of signatories was the largest former rebel group to join in the power-sharing arrangement, the CNDD-FDD (Forces for the Defense of Democracy) group, which did not attend the talks in Pretoria. FNL has meanwhile rejected the entire peace process, which is aimed at putting to an end more than a decade of civil war that has been fueled by ethnic rivalries between its Tutsi minority and Hutu majority. The war was sparked by the assassination of first democratically elected Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, in October 1993.
Chechen presidential candidate says economic situation in republic remains difficultChechnya's Kremlin-backed presidential candidate on Sunday gave an unusually blunt report on life in the war-torn region, noting that unemployment is high, kidnappings abound and much of the federal money dedicated to restoring Chechnya has never arrived. "Unemployment and poor living conditions are forcing people to join criminal groups," said Alu Alkhanov, the overwhelming favorite to win the region's Aug. 29 presidential election, which critics say is little more than a carefully staged Kremlin show. "As long as social problems remain unsolved, complete stabilization will be impossible," Alkhanov told Russia's upper house of parliament, the Federation Council, according to the Interfax news agency.
Chechnya has been the battleground for two separatist wars since the breakup of the Soviet Union. The second war continues with small scale rebel attacks and Russian artillery fire reported daily. Buildings throughout the Chechen capital remain in ruins, jobs are scarce and organized crime is prevalent. Alkhanov said that unemployment stands at 75.9 percent in the republic, and he noted that of the 67 billion rubles (US$2.3 billion) allocated for Chechnya's restoration - only 10 billion (US$344 million) reached the republic, Interfax reported.
Chechnya is not a "black hole," he said, but rather "large federal resources ... are simply being mishandled," Interfax reported. Of the 88,000 applications made for cash compensation for destroyed housing, only 8,000 have been satisfied, Interfax cited Alkhanov as saying. Alkhanov also said that abductions continue to blight the region, noting that 96 cases were reported in the first six months of this year. The blame, he said, lies not only with rebel groups but also with law enforcement organizations. "These agencies seize people without any notification," Interfax quoted Alkhanov as saying. "Any Chechen can be kidnapped in his own home country."
Alkhanov, Chechnya's former top police official, became a leading presidential candidate after receiving the backing of Ramzan Kadyrov, the powerful son of the late President Akhmad Kadyrov. Kadyrov was killed May 9 by a bomb at a stadium in the capital of Grozny. Ramzan Kadyrov's security forces have been blamed by human rights groups for carrying out some of the abductions, a charge he has denied. Alkhanov has repeatedly said that he will continue Kadyrov's policies. On Sunday, he said oil-rich Chechnya should be named a free economic zone until 2013 in a bid to restart its economy, shattered by all the years of fighting. "Chechnya must decide on its own how it should handle its natural and subsurface resources," Alkhanov said. Russian forces withdrew from Chechnya after a devastating 1994-96 war against separatists that left the region de facto independent, but returned in September 1999 after rebels raided a neighboring province and were blamed for a series of apartment-building bombings in Moscow and other cities.
Kabila Invites Moi to DRC
The East African Standard, via Africa News, 8/4/04
Former president Moi has received an invitation to visit the Democratic Republic of Congo. In a message that was delivered by a special advisor to DRC president Joseph Kabila, Prof Samba Kaputo, Moi was asked to visit that country at a time convenient to him. In a Press release, Moi's Press Secretary Lee Njiru said Kaputo visited the former Head of State yesterday at his Kabarnet Gardens Moi Foundation office, accompanied by the DRC ambassador to Kenya, Mr Tadumi On'Okoko. President Kabila also sent condolences on his behalf and the people of his country following the death Moi's wife, Lena. Moi agreed to the invitation at a date mutually convenient to Kabila.
The former Head of State said he had taken interest in the DRC since the days of the late Patrick Lumumba and was saddened by the continuous suffering of her people. He said he wished to see the Congolese people and those of the entire Great Lakes region take advantage of "their political independence" to advance economic development for the well-being of their people. Saying he supported Kabila's peace efforts, Moi observed that the Eastern part of DRC that speaks Swahili could facilitate trade with East Africa.
Democratic Republic of Congo Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the DR Congo Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law & Policy Group.
Amid flaring tensions in two breakaway regions, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili flew Wednesday to the United States, where Georgia's parliament speaker said he plans to meet with Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Saakashvili's visit came as tensions rise over his pledges to gain control over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which have been de facto independent since separatist wars in the early 1990s and have close ties with Russia. Georgian and separatist forces in South Ossetia have exchanged fire in recent days, sometimes heavily, and South Ossetian authorities accused Georgian forces of firing Wednesday on a Russian delegation led by Andrei Kokoshin, the head of the Russian parliament's committee in charge of relations with other ex-Soviet republics. South Ossetian government spokeswoman Irina Gagloyeva said the forces fired on the Russian delegation and on Sarabuk, an ethnic Ossetian town 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) south of the region's main city, Tskhinvali.
Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Kokoshin as saying that fire from machine guns, grenade launchers and mortars went over his convoy from a wooded area apparently controlled by Georgian forces, and that his delegation was then blockaded in a village for 40 minutes by armed men in civilian clothing who called themselves Georgian police. Kokoshin, who in televised comments blamed the incident on "extremist forces in (Georgia's capital) Tbilisi," said South Ossetian forces fired back after the barrage from the Georgian side. He said he was traveling in a vehicle with representatives of all three sides - Russian, Georgian and South Ossetian - in a joint force charged with keeping peace in the region.
Georgian officials denied involvement in the incident. The minister for conflict resolution, Georgy Khaindrava, said Georgian forces had not fired on the delegation and that the gunfire came from the Ossetian side. Interior Ministry spokesman Guram Donadze said South Ossetians fired at Kokoshin's vehicle "as a provocation." The Georgians and South Ossetians both say armed forces supporting the other side are illegally located in the region, and often accuse each other of seeking to spark armed conflict. The Russian Foreign Ministry said the shooting took place in an area where illegal Georgian forces are based. The ministry lodged a protest and demanded Georgian authorities investigate the "anti-Russian provocation," saying it is "necessary to stop those who are trying to drag Georgia into a new confrontation with far-reaching consequences." Russia has strong influence in South Ossetia and its relations with Georgia are strained. Most South Ossetians hold Russian passports, and the region's leaders want to join Russia. Meanwhile, tension rose over Abkhazia after a Georgian patrol boat fired at a civilian vessel off its coast Saturday; Georgian officials said the shots were fired after the boat failed to obey orders to stop for a check.
Saakashvili said Tuesday that he has ordered patrols to open fire on any boats violating Georgia's waters and he warned Russian tourists against traveling to Abkhazia's lush Black Sea coast. Abkhazian authorities have warned they could fire on Georgian ships. In televised comments on a plane during a trip to Kyrgyzstan, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Saakashvili's statement "smacks of piracy" and would only make dialogue more difficult. Saakashvili has repeatedly vowed to reunite his fractured country by bringing renegade provinces under central government control. Georgia is trying to decrease Russia's influence after decades of Soviet rule and has received military assistance from the United States.
Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia on war footing
Christian Lowe, Agence France Presse, 8/5/04
As he sips coffee at an outdoor cafe in the capital of the Georgian breakaway republic of South Ossetia, Roland Kelekshayev describes how he keeps an AK-47 automatic rifle in his home, oiled and ready for use. "If necessary, not just I but the whole of our people will stand up and fight," said the 32-year-old Ossetian. "Either we will exist as a nation or they will wipe us from the face of the earth." This tiny territory of 70,000 people nestling on the southern slopes of the Caucasus mountains is preparing for war. South Ossetia has enjoyed de facto independence from Georgia since fighting a separatist war in the early 1990s but in the past few weeks, the uneasy truce which followed that conflict has started to unravel.
Almost nightly, Georgian and South Ossetian troops exchange gunfire -- usually small arms, but sometimes mortar rounds. In the latest flare-up last week, several servicemen on both sides were reported to have been wounded after a night-long gun battle. When they are not shooting at each other, Georgian and South Ossetian forces -- with automatic weapons slung over their shoulders -- man roadblocks and unceremoniously arrest anyone who arouses suspicion. So far, no one has been killed. Both sides say they want a peaceful solution to the conflict. But in this tinderbox atmosphere, many fear that it is just a matter of time before full-scale hostilities break out.
"This is the prologue to a war which would make Chechnya look small," Znaur Gassiyev, speaker of South Ossetia's separatist parliament, said in Tskhinvali. If that does happen, the repercussions will reach far beyond this obscure corner of Europe. South Ossetia's separatists are backed -- tacitly at least -- by Russia while Georgia's receive military assistance from the United States and Britain. "Everyone will get dragged in," predicted the speaker. For Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili, his country's territorial integrity is at stake. The 36-year-old former New York lawyer has said he will not allow a separatist regime in the heart of Georgia: Tskhinvali lies just 85 kilometres (51 miles) by road from the capital, Tbilisi.
Besides, Saakashvili claims, South Ossetia is little more than a smuggling racket, making fat profits bringing in contraband from Russia. "People are telling us that the Georgian flag cannot be raised in the ... middle of Georgia," Saakashvili said recently. "We are ready to fight like mad for the restoration of our territorial integrity." But the way the people of South Ossetia see it, it is their survival as an ethnic group that is at stake. Saakashvili has offered them autonomy within Georgia if they abandon their separatist claims, but in Tskhinvali few trust his assurances. "They force Ossetians to change their names so that they look like Georgians and so that children do not know their Ossetian roots any more," said Kelekshayev.
Alyona, a soft-spoken civil servant, is another South Ossetian who says that, if necessary, she will take up arms against Georgia. Local people say that a female militia battalion, nicknamed the "Amazons," is being formed. "Yes, I would be prepared to join them," she said. She has never handled a weapon, she said, "but I would learn." On a tour of Tskhinvali's No. 5 junior school, she explains why. In the last war, the school's playground was turned into a burial ground because the town cemetery was being shelled by Georgian forces. Georgians were killed in the fighting too -- in all an estimated 2,000 people died on both sides -- but South Ossetia is so small that pretty much every family lost someone, she said. One marble tombstone commemorates a two-year-old boy killed in the cross-fire, another remembers two brothers, barely out of their teens, who were killed in action. "And after all this they want us to live with the Georgians?" she said as she picked her way between the gravestones.
Saakashvili in Washington; U.S. Should Help Georgia on South Ossetia
David J. Smith, The Washington Times, 8/6/04
Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili is in town seeking U.S. help to deal with the Russian-backed breakaway province of South Ossetia. He is counting on Washington because of its strong record of support for Georgian sovereignty. Mr. Saakashvili should go home with American backing for South Ossetia's peaceful return to Georgian administration under the rule of law that protects all citizens. A tad smaller than Rhode Island, with perhaps 70,000 remaining residents, South Ossetia lies on the south slope of the Caucasus Mountains, across from the Russian Autonomous Republic of North Ossetia. As the Soviet Union disintegrated in the early 1990s, ethnic violence drove Georgians and Ossetes alike from the region. South Ossetia emerged from a 1992 cease-fire as a de facto independent - but altogether unrecognized - statelet, little more than a smugglers' haven propped up by Russia.
The United States shares many of Georgia's interests in changing this situation. Stability in the Caucasus is vital to the East-West energy corridor, the opening of Central Asia and U.S. access to strategic points in a volatile part of the world. Georgia's continued modernization is key to Caucasus stability. But Georgia cannot build its democracy, strengthen the rule of law, develop its economy and move toward NATO and the European Union so long as it is rent by separatist conflicts. Moreover, because unrecognized separatist territories are havens for crime, drugs, guns and maybe terrorists, we should work to bring them under the laws of recognized states. This should be in Russia's interest, too, although Moscow does not appear to understand this. Instability in the South Caucasus could backfire on Russia, stoking the crisis it already has in the North Caucasus, which is centered in Chechnya and spreading.
No doubt with similar thoughts in mind, Mr. Saakashvili began in the late spring and early summer to force the issue by restoring aspects of Georgian governance to bits of the region, restarting bus and train service, paying back pensions and delivering humanitarian aid to beleaguered villages. But the ensuing weeks were also pocked by paramilitary skirmishes, roadblocks, Georgian interception of Russian arms disproportionate to legitimate peacekeeping missions (reportedly 160 helicopter-borne missiles) and South Ossetian hostage-taking. Meanwhile, Russian Cossacks and so-called volunteer fighters from Abkhazia and Transdniestria - Russian-backed separatist regions of Georgia and Moldova- transited Russia into South Ossetia and reportedly conducted military exercises with South Ossetian forces.
Then, the July 15 Intermediate Agreement dampened tension. Georgia agreed to withdraw some of its forces deployed to the region, and Russia agreed to see the Cossacks and other volunteers out. But that agreement will fail for two reasons. First, it does not establish any kind of check on traffic through the Roki Tunnel, the sole route into South Ossetia from Russia. Second, it leaves South Ossetian militias free to operate in the Java district, a critical area on the road between Roki and Tskhinvali, South Ossetia's capital. These omissions point straight to the underlying problem: Russia, lamenting lost empire and resenting Georgia's Western tilt, uses the diplomatic system to keep Georgia on edge.
The Intermediate Agreement was negotiated in the Joint Control Commission, established by the 1992 cease-fire, comprised of Georgia, Russia, North Ossetia and South Ossetia - a permanent three-to-one margin against Georgia. On the ground, 500 peacekeeping troops are permitted to each of the four sides. Russia controls its contingent as well as North Ossetia's, and a Russian colonel commands South Ossetia's military. Such arrangements ensure that nothing will change.
The United States should do two things. First, we must tell Russia unequivocally to back off South Ossetia. Second, Washington should invite Moscow and Tbilisi to work with us to expand the role of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in South Ossetia. OSCE could establish an international checkpoint at the southern end of the Roki Tunnel, or at both ends, if Russia is willing. OSCE also could supervise internationalization and professionalization of a peacekeeping force with a mandate expanded to cover all of South Ossetia. If these tasks are accomplished, Georgia's elected president could work directly with the people of South Ossetia toward their return to Georgian administration, with safeguards for the rights and legitimate interests of all. Washington should welcome Mr. Saakashvili, listen and then act on South Ossetia.
How polls offer the prospect of peace in AcehThis is Indonesia's year of elections. Since early 2004, the world's largest Muslim country has been in the grip of one campaign or another, starting with the parliamentary and now the ongoing presidential elections. These elections are propelling Indonesia further toward full democracy. They are also opening the door to tackling key problems, including corruption and long-running, festering conflicts within the archipelago. One of the most intense and desperate conflicts is in the province of Aceh, in northern Sumatra, which has been consumed by a bloody separatist struggle since the 1970s. A year of martial law and security operations by the Indonesian military has succeeded in pushing the rebel Free Aceh Movement (GAM) away from the populated coastal areas into the mountains. But that push has also generated human rights abuses. What is urgently needed in Aceh is meaningful development, effective local government and the return of some form of dialogue between warring groups.
The European Union could play a significant role, having recently indicated its wish for closer ties with Indonesia. EU officials also specifically expressed interest in ending the emergency in Aceh. The most obvious role for the EU would be in post-conflict reconstruction, a role the Union has successfully played in conflicts around the world. Aceh's civilian infrastructure has all but collapsed over decades of conflict, mismanagement and corruption. The province is in dire need of schools, teachers and training facilities; its towns and villages are suffering from black-outs due to severe disruption of electricity supply. Skin infections such as scabies are common among children and typhoid and hepatitis are on the rise. Healthcare facilities are under- equipped and simple medications such as anti-malaria drugs are often hard to find.
High unemployment rates, meanwhile, have created a vicious circle: poor security and endemic corruption have eroded the local economy. As a result, investment has shrivelled and the consequent lack of economic growth has deprived young Acehnese of jobs, leading many to join the guerrilla movement. If this conflict is to be resolved, Aceh's economic problems need to be tackled with inward investment, job creation schemes and micro-credit facilities for farmers and small businessmen. Above all, the province needs effective and accountable local government. In all these areas, the EU has expertise and can help.
A number of EU states such as Spain and the UK have faced their own separatist challenges and have a wealth of experiences they can share. Northern Ireland, in particular, could serve as a model for new dialogue in Aceh. The Northern Ireland negotiations were a dialogue of the people - the people with people, the people with the government and the people with the paramilitaries. It was about what the average person in Northern Ireland wanted and about the future governance of Northern Ireland. Representatives were elected to the talks and anyone could stand for these elections, providing they gained a set number of signatures and supported the goal of a credible ceasefire. As a result, the negotiations were inclusive and the population had clear ownership of the process taking place on its doorstep.
In contrast, the people of Aceh remain disenfranchised. During a three-year peace process, negotiations were exclusive, bi-lateral, confined to the GAM rebel group and the Indonesian government. They were not even held in Aceh. Beyond security none of the Acehnese people's concerns were on the table. That is why Aceh needs a process similar to Northern Ireland's and why Indonesia's elections could provide the impetus for polls of another kind. It has often been argued that elected negotiators would not work in Aceh. This year's parliamentary and presidential elections show the opposite. In fact, elected negotiators would be ideal to break the zero-sum nature that characterised the previous talks and led to their breakdown in May last year. It would restore a voice to the Acehnese people who feel alienated from Jakarta and do not feel represented by either their own political elite or the GAM rebel movement. As Indonesia's presidential elections have so clearly demonstrated, democracy is a win-win solution for both the people and the state. It could similarly benefit the Aceh conflict resolution process.
Aceh Negotiation SimulationSecurity Council urges Ivory Coast's former warring parties to implement their peace deal
Associated Press, 8/5/04
The U.N. Security Council urged Ivory Coast's former warring parties on to implement last week's peace agreement "without delays or preconditions." The agreement recommits Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo and the rebels behind a 2002-2003 war to overthrow him to knitting the country back together. It sets new target dates for the resumption of a national unity administration and implementation of political reforms and a disarmament process.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and African leaders brokered the talks in Ghana's capital, Accra, after Ivory Coast's January 2003 peace deal all but broke down this year, threatening a nascent peace spreading across West Africa. A Security Council statement, read by council president Andrey Denisov of Russia on Thursday, welcomed the Accra agreement and noted "with satisfaction the spirit of dialogue and responsibility shown by president Gbagbo and each of the Ivorian parties." Rebel ministers have boycotted the Gbagbo-led power-sharing government and retreated to northern strongholds they captured after a failed September 2002 attempt to oust Gbagbo.
The Security Council urged the parties to uphold the peace agreements so elections can be held by the end of 2005. It also urged them to adhere strictly to the deadlines set for resolving the question of eligibility for president and starting the disarmament of former combatants. Gbagbo promised last week to finally hand greater powers to his prime minister, chosen by consensus with the rebels last year, and will turn to the crucial question of electoral eligibility by the end of September. A disarmament process to take weapons from the insurgents and government-allied paramilitary groups will begin by Oct. 15, according to Friday's communique. France has more than 4,000 peacekeeping troops in Ivory Coast and a U.N. force is gradually building up to 6,240 troops. Both help patrol buffer zones between north and south. Ivory Coast, the world's largest cocoa exporter, was considered a regional model of economic advancement and calm between its 1960 independence from France and its first coup in 1999, a violent outbreak that contributed to instability in the country.
Umbrella group of Kashmir separatists faces critical split in Indian Kashmir
Mujtaba Ali Ahmad, Associated Press, 8/3/04
Rival factions within Kashmir's key umbrella separatist group were on the verge of splitting the organization in a dispute that threatens the future of peace talks with the Indian government, a spokesman for the group said Tuesday. Six top Kashmiri leaders have given up their nine-month effort to bring two All Parties Hurriyat Conference factions together, mediator Mian Qayoom told reporters. The first casualty may be the resumption of dialogue with the Indian government to find a solution to the decades-old dispute over Kashmir. Qayoom blamed the "inflated egos of various leaders for the failure."
The Himalayan region has been divided between predominantly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan since the South Asian neighbors won independence from Britain in 1947. The hardline segment of All Parties Hurriyat Conference, headed by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, is demanding India's portion of Kashmir be merged with the territory controlled by Pakistan but has rejected dialogue with the Indian government. Another faction, headed by Abbas Ansari, is seeking independence for India's portion of the Himalayan enclave. It held three rounds of talks with the Indian government earlier this year, but the process stalled after Ansari resigned as chairman of the moderate All Parties Hurriyat Conference faction in June.
"Everyone wants to be the king. And this attitude is detrimental to achieving the right of self-determination from the occupiers," said Yasin Malik, leader of the pro-independence Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front. "Unity was a necessary prerequisite for Kashmir's freedom struggle and disunity could cause a civil war-like situation," he said in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir. Ordinary Kashmiris felt let down by the infighting among the Hurriyat leaders. "They are not bothered about us. Separatism is a way of making money and they are busy raking it in, not caring two hoots about us or our sacrifices," said Tariq Ahmad, a resident of Srinagar. Ahmad's father and brother were killed in crossfire during fighting between the Islamic insurgents and government forces.
More than a dozen rebel groups, many of them headed up by Pakistan-based guerrillas, have been fighting for Kashmir's independence or its merger with Pakistan since 1989. More than 65,000 people, mostly Muslim civilians, have been killed in the conflict. The split among Kashmiri leaders comes in the wake of renewed peace efforts between India and Pakistan, with dialogue resuming in January aimed at finding a solution to the Kashmir dispute, the cause of two of their three wars since independence.
To bring peace, focus on Kashmir's people
Mansoor Ijaz, The International Herald Tribune, 8/7/04
Few conflicts in the world arouse as many suspicions or passions as the dispute over Kashmir, which has brought India and Pakistan to war three times. Resolving the conflict, however, should remain primarily about saving Kashmir's people from the wrath of extremists. Larger regional goals -- diffusing a tangible nuclear threat or reinvigorating shattered economies and dysfunctional polities in Pakistan and Afghanistan -- will be achieved as a result. Kashmir's people are caught between Islamabad's military insecurity and the arrogance that leads New Delhi's civil authority to rule over a Muslim population against its will. Kashmiris have been given little say in determining their future, or even the present course of their daily lives. India and Pakistan need to make the Kashmiri people the centerpiece of efforts to settle the dispute, and to acknowledge their fundamental human right to determine their own destiny.
More than 60,000 civilians have been murdered and raped during two decades of Islamist insurgency and paramilitary counterattacks. Indian and Pakistani leaders have tried to start peace negotiations three times, only to fall back on the same old arguments -- as they did again in the most recently completed round of talks -- about whether Kashmir should top the agenda (Pakistan's hardened stance), or whether everything else that ails the India-Pakistan relationship should be put on the table first (India wants incremental progress on physical property issues like the Siachen Glacier before getting to the issue of Kashmir's people).
Such stubbornness, driven by suspicion and mistrust, cannot produce a viable framework for safeguarding the interests of Kashmir's people. President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India must bear this in mind during the round of negotiations that started this week. India's electoral transition this year forced a pause after what were perhaps the most promising signs of peace since partition in 1947. Musharraf and former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who boldly framed India's first meaningful effort at peace in 2000 in the name of insaniyat (humanity), had developed an earnest, if grudging, respect for each other.
Hyped-up intelligence assessments that were once the root cause of suspicion and wartime readiness had been replaced by unprecedented cooperation between New Delhi and Islamabad. India's intelligence chief, C. D. Sahay, went so far as to provide early warnings to his Pakistani counterpart, General Ehsan ul-Haq, about an assassination attempt against Musharraf by Islamist militants earlier this year. With India's shift to the left, its new leaders need to rekindle the spirit of trust and cooperation with Pakistan that was already prevailing at the political level and beginning to blossom at an intelligence level before the Congress Party took over. -- are increasing again. The framework for sustainable peace talks is straightforward. The centerpiece should be a meaningful effort over many years to empower Kashmiris, on both sides of the Line of Control, politically and economically so that any conciliatory political gestures by India or Pakistan would be seen as benefiting the very people they claim to want to represent.
This is particularly important for Pakistan because Musharraf could then tell his generals and jihadists that it was their steadfast support for the people of Kashmir that enabled them to negotiate a self-determined solution with New Delhi. Both antagonists could then slip out of the conflict, reputations intact, under the cover of Kashmiri self-rule. For its part, New Delhi should return to its doctrine of empowering people. Perhaps Indian-ruled Kashmiris would not be so desperate to leave India politically if they could reap the dividends of New Delhi's oft-stated support for their political and human rights. Transferring power transfers responsibility, which in turn builds the framework for good governance. India and Pakistan have a compelling moral responsibility to restore Kashmiris' livelihoods and culture. Agreements on issues such as how to demilitarize the world's highest and coldest battlefield at Siachen are admirable steps forward -- but not a substitute for putting Kashmir's embattled residents first in constructing a durable peace.
Kashmir Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the Kashmir Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law & Policy Group.
Kosovo still suffering physical, psychological damage from March violence, U.N. report says
Barbara Borst, Associated Press, 8/3/04
Kosovo's outbreak of violence in March has left physical and psychological damage that still must be repaired, despite some progress, Secretary-General Kofi Annan wrote in a report made public on Tuesday. Annan's report to the Security Council, which is to discuss the matter on Thursday, noted progress in several areas, including the investigation and arrest of those who perpetrated the violence, but also highlighted problems. "The continuing lack of freedom of movement, precarious security conditions and lack of access to public services for Kosovo's minority groups have led to only minimal returns of those who fled during the violence in March," it said.
Kosovo has been run by the United Nations and NATO since a 1999 alliance air war against Yugoslavia (now called Serbia and Montenegro) ended a Serb crackdown on the province's ethnic Albanian separatists. About 10,000 people were killed then, mostly ethnic Albanians, the ethnic majority in Kosovo. In March, ethnic Albanian mobs attacked minority Serbs, burning down Serb houses and Orthodox churches in a wave of violence that claimed 19 lives and injured more than 900 people. The province remains tense, with some 100,000 ethnic Serbs living mostly in isolated enclaves and facing daily harassment by ethnic Albanian extremists.
Russia's U.N. ambassador Andrey Denisov, whose country holds the Security Council's rotating presidency for August, said Tuesday that the council's concern about Kosovo "is very high." The province, and the U.N. mission there, is "a very painful question ... but what we really need to do is to stop violence, to stop bloodshed," he added, speaking at a news conference. Annan's report said that "the March violence was a huge setback for the process, in that basic rights such as freedom of movement and security were fundamentally undermined."
It said no action has been taken on two priority issues: Kosovo's provisional self-government institutions have not investigated or punished authorities who contributed to the violence through public statements or actions, nor have those institutions publicly condemned news reports that contributed to the violence. Kosovo's Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi "has stated that the government will be unable to fulfill these actions," the secretary-general reported. Annan's report did, however, call the July 14 joint declaration between Kosovo Albanian and Kosovo Serb leaders on reconstructing homes and aiding the return of displaced persons "a significant development and an encouraging step." It noted that 2,400 people remain displaced.
In May, the European Union and many Security Council members sent a tough message to Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders following the worst violence in five years: Build a multi-ethnic democracy or the province's future political status won't be discussed. Last week, New York-based Human Rights Watch blamed the United Nations and NATO for failing "catastrophically" to protect the Serbs during the March rioting. The group accused NATO-led peacekeepers of failing to intervene to stop ethnic Albanian mobs from attacking Serbs.
Also last week, the Serbian government urged Kosovo's minority Serbs to boycott Oct. 23 parliamentary elections in the province because of the lack of security. A Serb boycott would deal a blow to international officials struggling to create a multiethnic society. Belgrade officials still play a decisive role in Kosovo Serb decision-making though they have had no control over Serbia's southern province since 1999. More than 200,000 Serbs and other minorities have fled Kosovo since the Serb defeat in 1999, according to U.N. estimates. International efforts to persuade them to return have produced few results.
Kosovo Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the Kosovo Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law & Policy Group.
ECOWAS tells Liberia rebels to elect leader once and for all
Agence France Presse, 8/3/04
West African officials called Tuesday for a convention to elect a leader for Liberia's main rebel group, aiming to quell rising dissent within their ranks that could destabilize the nascent peace in the war-torn state. "This will be a free, fair and democratic election that will determine who is to be the leader of (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy) LURD," Francis Blaine, the representative of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), told AFP. A leadership crisis within the motely rebel band that launched an uprising against then-president Charles Taylor in 1999 has hamstrung efforts to extend the Liberian central government into LURD territory for months.
The tussle has also manifested itself violently, which has produced unease within the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), mindful that much of LURD's territory remains volatile with its young fighters still in arms. Sekou Damateh Conneh has been chairman of LURD since it was formed in October 1997 in the wake of Taylor's election and remained so through the savage conflict that ended in August of last year with a peace pact and power-sharing agreement. But shortly after the pact was signed, Conneh's personal travails threatened his political career. His estranged wife Aisha, known popularly as the "Iron Lady" announced in November that she was taking over leadership of the rebel group, backed by a consortium of military officers known as the executive committee.
Both factions of LURD were represented at talks last week in the Ghanaian capital Accra aiming to restore relations not only within the rebel group, which at one point controlled two-thirds of the Atlantic coastal state, but also with the transitional government led by Gyude Bryant. "I cannot tell you that we recognize or we don't recognize this or that party, but I can say that both parties were invited to Accra," Blaine said. Supporters of the two factions clashed Monday night in Monrovia, causing an unknown number of injuries. LURD chief of staff General Oforie Diah said Tuesday that the street fight may have been provoked by followers of Aisha Conneh, who he claimed in remarks to local media has been pressuring him into staging a coup d'etat against Gyude Bryant. "It is Aisha Conneh and (parliamentary) speaker George Dweh who told me to stage a coup," Oforie told a reporter of the Liberian daily Analyst.
Donors balking at Liberian political games, UN warns
Agence France Presse, 8/5/04
The UN special envoy to Liberia has warned the government that political games and battles over power are irking donors, who are withholding much-needed funds to rebuild the war-battered west African state. "Donor countries say they can't put their money in chaotic places because they don't think the money will be used intelligently or effectively," Jacques Klein, the US diplomat at the head of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), told reporters Wednesday. Donors led by the United States in February pledged some 560 million dollars over two years for the reconstruction of Liberia after 14 years of brutal civil war.
Little of that money has been forthcoming, however, and virtually all of the humanitarian agencies offering assistance to the roughly three million war-weary Liberians are facing a funding shortfall -- sometimes by as much as half of their proposed budgets for the year. The World Food Programme said Wednesday it has received just 40 million of the 82 million dollars budgeted for its west Africa program, which also includes food aid for Guinea and Sierra Leone. The UN refugee agency UNHCR has expressed concerns that it will not have enough on hand for its repatriation program to serve an estimated 350,000 Liberians living around the region, which is expected to begin in October. Even funding for the much-vaunted disarmament and reintegration campaign for fighters from three warring factions, seen as a crucial element in restoring peace to Liberia, is falling well short, leaving disgruntled former fighters with small stipends and promises but little else to count on.
Transitional chairman Gyude Bryant, whose mandate is up in January 2006 when he is to be replaced by an elected president, has sought to corral the squabbling ministers in his power-sharing cabinet so their work can benefit the Liberian people. But diplomats and western officials operating in Liberia have corroborated allegations of corruption by Bryant's partisans leveled by politicians from the various fighting factions, each of which is represented in the transitional government. The leadership crisis within the main rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy has also compounded the government's instability. A military faction of LURD -- led by his estranged wife -- has since last November challenged Sekou Damate Conneh for the top spot in the motley rebel band that launched its insurrection against then-president Charles Taylor from Guinea in 1999. That challenge has spilled over into the streets, most recently in Monrovia on Monday where clashes lasted late into the night and had to be dispersed by UN peacekeepers. Klein said the fighting was reprehensible and served no purpose but to undermine international efforts to assist Liberia rise from its staggering unemployment, rebuild its battered infrastructure and restore its pride of place as Africa's oldest independent republic. "Each time people beat each other in the streets, the donors hold back their funds," he said.
New EU special representative to Macedonia takes post
Agence France Presse, 8/3/04
Swedish diplomat Michael Sahlin took up his post as the new European Union representative to Macedonia, officials said Tuesday. He replaced Danish diplomat Soren Jessen-Petersen, who had been named as chief of the UN mission in neighbouring Kosovo (UNMIK) in June. "The issues Macedonia and its citizens are facing today are crucial for the overall reform process required to ensure huge perspective and stability, as well as the important criteria towards the integration in the Euro-Atlantic structure," Sahlin said in a statement upon his arrival to this former Yugoslav republic.
On March 22, Skopje formally applied to join the European Union. Macedonia has joined NATO's Partnership for Peace programme and reached a stabilisation agreement with the EU, both considered key steps toward full membership in the organisations. Sahlin called on all sides in Macedonia to give support to the so-called Ohrid peace accord which in 2001 had ended more than seven months of conflict between independence-seeking Albanian minority and government forces.
"I am happy to be in Skopje and to support the final and very important stage of the Ohrid framework agreement implementation," said Sahlin, whose mandate would expire in February next year. In December, the EU launched a police mission in Macedonia targeting the new threat of organized crime as military peacekeeping operations end three years after the country's ethnic conflict. The mission, known as Proxima, replaces a short-lived EU military mission, the first of its kind, which was deployed in Macedonia last March following the end of NATO peacekeeping operations.
The NATO troops had moved into the country in 2001 after a seven-month conflict between ethnic Albanian rebels and government troops, which claimed up to 150 lives and nearly plunged Macedonia into a full-scale ethnic war. Proxima -- which consists of some 200 foreign and 150 Macedonian police officers -- is the bloc's second police mission in the Balkans after Bosnia, where NATO forces remain. It marks an important shift from military-style peacekeeping operations to police work designed to fight the growing menace of organised crime, as well as the development of the EU's security capabilities.
Opposition renews protests against key decentralization law
Konstantin Testorides, Associated Press, 8/4/04
Opponents of a key decentralization draft law that gives ethnic Albanians control over more than a dozen municipalities in Macedonia demonstrated Wednesday by driving hundreds of cars through the capital. Honking their horns and waving Macedonian flags, supporters of Macedonia's nationalist opposition parties demanded that the decentralization law - which is under debate at the Balkan republic's assembly - be revoked. Some of the protesters were stoned when they got out of their cars to moved garbage containers blocking access to a predominantly ethnic Albanian neighborhood of Skopje. Several suffered cuts and abrasions in the brief incident. Similar protests against the contentious proposal caused clashes earlier this month, raising fears of instability in Macedonia, which is still recovering from an ethnic conflict in 2001. The conflict, between Macedonian government troops and ethnic Albanian rebels, ended in a Western-brokered peace plan that granted more rights to the ethnic Albanians. The law to decentralize powers and give ethnic Albanians control in municipalities where they form the majority is a key provision of the peace plan. Ethnic Albanians make up about one fourth of Macedonia's population. They live mostly in the northwest of the country.
Many ethnic Macedonians fear that the decentralization law would split the country along ethnic lines. Nikola Gruevski, an opposition leader, fueled such fears during the protest Wednesday, calling on Macedonians to "rise against the ethnic division of the country." The debate in Macedonia's parliament is expected to last for weeks. The parliament on Tuesday postponed municipal elections for November so they would be held in line with the new legislation. The proposed changes are among conditions that Macedonia must fulfill if it aims to join the European Union and NATO, which demand strict adherence to the 2001 peace pact. Among other provisions, the draft law would extend the boundaries of the capital, Skopje, to include several ethnic Albanian villages. This would statistically increase the share of ethnic Albanians in the capital to 20 percent and officially make Skopje a bilingual city.
Separatists block railway between Moldova and Trans-Dniester
Corneliu Rusnac, Associated Press, 8/3/04
Authorities in the breakaway region of Trans-Dniester blocked one of two railway links to Moldova after economic sanctions were imposed by the former Soviet republic, an official said Tuesday. Militiamen late Monday put concrete blocks on the railway near the separatist-controlled city of Tighina and posted guards by the obstacles, said Ion Leahu, Moldova's representative on a multinational commission monitoring the increasingly tense situation between Moldova and Trans-Dniester. Moldovan railway authorities left for Trans-Dniester on Tuesday in an effort to persuade the separatists to unblock the line at Tighina, 45 kilometers (30 miles) east of the Moldovan capital, Chisinau. The railway is one of two connecting Moldova to Trans-Dniester, which is run by pro-Moscow separatists. Rail traffic in both directions was disrupted earlier this week amid mounting tensions over steps by Trans-Dniester to shut down Moldovan-language schools. On Sunday, separatists blocked a train heading to Moldova, and Moldovan authorities stopped several trains en route from Ukraine to Trans-Dniester.
Moldova imposed economic sanctions on Monday, refusing to issue export certificates for goods from Trans-Dniester. Because the self-declared republic is not recognized internationally, its goods need authorization from Moldovan authorities to be exported. Moldova, which fought a war with separatists in Trans-Dniester in 1992, withdrew from negotiations over a settlement with the enclave after authorities there forcibly closed two of its seven Moldovan-language schools. The closures were criticized as "linguistic cleansing" by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Separatist leader Igor Smirnov has threatened to take unspecified measures against Moldova. Trans-Dniester exported US$188.5 million (€157 million) of goods to 51 countries from Jan. 1 to July 23, official figures show. Moldova was part of Romania until it was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. It gained independence in 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed. Fears that Moldova would reunite with Romania led to a 1992 war between Moldovan government forces and separatists in Trans-Dniester. Some 1,500 people were killed in the fighting. The Russian Foreign Ministry urged both sides to solve the dispute peacefully. Russia "expects a positive answer from the leaders of Trans-Dniester and Moldova" to its suggestion that representatives of both sides meet with mediators in an effort to seek a way out of the "dangerous dead-end," the ministry said in a statement issued in Moscow. The statement came after Russian First Deputy Foreign Minister Valery Loshchinin met Tuesday in Moscow with the top diplomat from Trans-Dniester, Valery Litskai.
Tens of thousands without electricity in former Soviet republic after separatists cut power
Corneliu Rusnac, Associated Press, 8/6/04
Moldovan authorities scrambled Friday to restore power to tens of thousands after separatists in the disputed Trans-Dniester region stopped delivering electricity to this former Soviet republic. About 120,000 people in a dozen villages and towns in southern and central Moldova were hit by the outage that began Thursday, said Iustin Balan of the Moldovan Energy Ministry. Factories, bakeries and even summer camps for children were affected. The power cut was the latest blow in an escalating dispute between Moldova and the breakaway, pro-Russian enclave.
Long-simmering troubles flared last month when separatists closed Moldovan-language schools in Trans-Dniester, where most people speak Ukranian and Russian. Moldovan authorities retaliated by imposing economic sanctions on Trans-Dniester. Moldovan government officials said they were negotiating with the separatists to get the power switched back on. Though Moldova is able to make up for some of the power loss in the short term, it will eventually need to seek replacement energy - at a higher cost - from neighboring Romania and Ukraine, Molodovan officials said Thursday.
The Defense Ministry sent 12 generators to the hardest hit areas in central Moldova. Moldova was part of Romania until it was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. It gained independence in 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed. Fears that Moldova would reunite with Romania led to a 1992 war between Moldovan government forces and separatists in Trans-Dniester. Some 1,500 people were killed in the fighting. The Russian Foreign Ministry has urged both sides to solve the dispute peacefully. Moldova withdrew from negotiations over a lasting political settlement with the enclave after the school closures. The closures were criticized as "linguistic cleansing" by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Algeria says it wants no role in solving Western Sahara conflict
Hassane Meftahi, Associated Press, 8/4/04
Algeria's president insisted that his nation will not play an active role in resolving the Western Sahara conflict, rejecting an idea floated by Spain to ease a decades-old standoff over the Atlantic coastal territory. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika addressed a letter Tuesday to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, saying that any attempt to involve Algeria directly was merely a "stalling tactic" to direct away from the real issues. Morocco claims the Western Sahara as its own territory, while a rebel group there called the Polisario Front is pressing for independence.
Algeria insists it plays no real role in the crisis - though it offers diplomatic, military and logistical support to the Polisario Front. The conflict between Algeria and Morocco has stymied serious cooperation among North African nations. In the letter, Bouteflika said the only people involved in the crisis should be the "Saharawis and the occupying force, that is to say Morocco." "Algeria cannot and will not be a substitute for the Saharawi people in the determination of their future," he wrote. The conflict took a turn in June when former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III resigned as Annan's personal envoy for Western Sahara after failing for seven years to resolve the problem.
Baker had grown increasingly frustrated, initially in failing to arrange a referendum on the territory's future and most recently in getting Morocco to accept his latest peace plan. That plan would have given Western Sahara immediate self-government and required a referendum within five years to decide if the mineral-rich desert territory on Africa's Atlantic coast should be independent or part of Morocco. The Polisario rebels, who had been pressing for a referendum, accepted the plan last July. But Morocco continued to oppose the plan on grounds that it could end the country's sovereignty over the territory, and has instead offered the region autonomy.
Spain's new Socialist government, which took power in April, has said from the outset that it hopes to ease tense ties with its neighbor to the south, Morocco. To do that, it wants to play an active diplomacy role in resolving the conflict over Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony. Morocco annexed the territory following Spain's pullout in 1975, and Spain does not recognize the annexation. Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos went this week to Morocco to address the issue, while another top official went to see the Polisario at its base in Tindouf, in the Algerian desert. The Socialist government said it wants direct negotiations between Algiers and Rabat - the idea that Bouteflika rejected.
The talks appear to have been a failure, and Spain went back to square one by supporting the Baker plan. When Spain left Western Sahara in 1975, Morocco and Mauritania split it. Full-scale war broke out the following year, and Morocco took over the whole of Western Sahara after Mauritania pulled out in 1979. About 200,000 local Saharawi people fled into exile and still live in refugee camps in Algeria. The fighting, which pitted 15,000 Polisario guerrillas against Morocco's U.S.-equipped army, ended in 1991 with a U.N.-negotiated cease-fire that called for a referendum on the region's future. But U.N. efforts to arrange a vote have been frustrated by disputes over who should be allowed to vote.
War-displaced delay return as Philippines peace talks stall
Cecil Morella, Agence France Presse, 8/7/04
A bright blue tent city sits beside the municipal hall here, silent witness to a decades-old civil war that has plagued the Muslim half of the southern Philippines. Amirah Jaluddin and her three young children spend their days sitting outside a makeshift hut of planks and tarpaulin, 17 months after fighting between government forces and Moro rebels razed their house in nearby Pikit town. "There is still trouble out there," the young Muslim mother told AFP. Jaluddin's husband and the other menfolk make day visits of their farms in the sprawling Liguasan marshes in the center of Mindanao island, running through a gauntlet of military checkpoints, and return to the camp by sundown. Most of the 200,000 people who were displaced in heavy fighting have returned home and local officials have advised the rest it is safe to go, but about a hundred stragglers including the Jaluddin are sitting tight. Jaluddin said they feared being caught in the crossfire if hostilities renewed.
"They have been asked to return, but to my knowledge the dearth of economic opportunities in the area may also be deterring them," said Colonel Isagani Cachuela, the commander of an Army brigade in the area. The government launched the offensive in February 2003, leaving about 200 people dead amid allegations the 11,900-member Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) was sheltering kidnappers and terrorists in the village of Buliok near Pikit. While a ceasefire with the MILF took effect over all of Mindanao a year ago, the majority Roman Catholic Southeast Asian nation's largest Muslim guerrilla group has stayed out of the peace process after the death last year of its leader Salamat Hashim, a former government librarian of Pagalungan. MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said his group has asked the military to pull back their troops from Buliok in line with the terms of the July 2003 ceasefire. But Cachuela told AFP that "as a gesture of confidence" both parties had removed "all units operating in the area".
He said while there had been no clashes in the area in the past year, the security vacuum created by the military pullback might have unnerved some former residents. Pressure has been building on Manila amid mounting evidence Islamic militants allied to the Al-Qaeda network gained access to Mindanao training camps run by hardline MILF commanders opposed to peace talks. The United States withdrew a 30 million-dollar development aid offer for MILF areas last year due to lack of progress in the negotiations. Small groups of US Special Forces advisers deployed in Carmen town near here last month to train Filipino troops meet the threat posed by Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) militants accused of waging a deadly bombing campaign across Southeast Asia. The MILF earlier agreed to hold peace talks in Malaysia in April to discuss security, the rehabilitation of conflict areas and rebel demands for government recognition of the Muslim minority's ancestral domains. Kuala Lumpur sent a team of military observers to Mindanao to monitor the ceasefire. But the talks were later shelved until after the May presidential election, won by incumbent President Gloria Arroyo.
"The peace talks with the MILF will happen any time this month, probably the second week of August," Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita said last week. The MILF has a different timetable, according to its spokesman Kabalu. "We were advised by our counterparts in the (Philippine government) that by September we will resume the peace talks," he told local radio DXMS. Some officials and analysts believe the apparent foot-dragging suggests the MILF leadership has yet to rally behind new leader Murad Ebrahim, the former Salamat deputy.
"The MILF is not a homogeneous organization," said President Arroyo's national security adviser Norberto Gonzales. The new leader "will take time to really become a Hashim," he added, referring to the MILF's former leader. Former president Fidel Ramos, who signed a peace treaty with another Muslim rebel faction in Mindanao in 1996, said it is apparent the peace process has "stalled". "The important thing now is for the two panels to continue talking at the technical or the preparatory level for the meantime until the main (negotiators) talk again," he said. This was the only way economic development would arrive in the impoverished Muslim regions of the south and undercut one of the perceived causes of the rebellion, he added.
Serb premier, Macedonian president mend fences at independence celebration
Misha Savic, Associated Press, 8/2/04
Two Balkan neighbors mended fences Monday, with Serbia lifting a de-facto ban to allow Macedonia's president to visit the monastery where his nation was born. Entering the monastery grounds that had been informally off limits to officials from his republic for more than a decade, Macedonian President Branko Crvenkovski placed a wreath at the site where Macedonian communist officials met with their Serbian counterparts in 1944 to negotiate Macedonia's status as a republic in postwar communist Yugoslavia. The meeting was crucial to Macedonia's position as one of six republics in Yugoslavia, which eventually led to full independence for Macedonia and three other republics after the federation started dissolving in 1991.
"It was here 60 years ago that Macedonia finally got its statehood," Crvenkovski said at the ceremony, describing his country as "a result of great energy of many generations, the fruit of great efforts and sacrifice." He also pledged to bring his impoverished country closer to membership in the European Union and NATO. Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica also attended Monday's ceremony, in a sign of improving relations between the Balkan neighbors, Serbia's state television reported.
The Belgrade government never seriously challenged Macedonia's statehood, but the Serbian Orthodox church, which runs the monastery, has expressed anger over Macedonia's split from "mother" Serbia and particularly by establishment of Macedonia's own Orthodox church, which it and other Orthodox Christian churches do not recognize. Last year, Serbian priests turned away a top Macedonian delegation from the monastery. This year's meeting of secular and religious leaders of Serbia and Macedonia came after the government put pressure on the Serbian church. In another sign of improved relations, the Serbian officials were expected later in the day to make a brief visit across the Macedonian border to attend ceremonies organized by Macedonian authorities for the country's Aug. 2 "Statehood Day."
Report: Belgrade considers allowing ex-officials to share state secrets at U.N. war crimes court
Associated Press, 8/8/04
Serbia Montenegro, seeking to improve cooperation with the U.N. war crimes court, is considering allowing select former officials to share classified information when they testify, a Serbian news agency reported Sunday. Minorities and Human Rights Minister Rasim Ljajic said his country's National Council for Cooperation with the Netherlands-based U.N. court would meet Wednesday to discuss removing legal barriers preventing former officials from discussing state secrets, the Belgrade-based Beta news agency said. "We shall once again send the message (to the U.N. court) that we want to continue and improve cooperation," Ljajic was quoted as saying. Ministry officials were not immediately available to confirm the report. Ljajic did not specify which officials would be cleared to speak at the U.N. court, where former President Slobodan Milosevic and many other Serbs are being tried for their roles in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Serbia-Montenegro, formerly known as Yugoslavia, faces increasing Western pressure to cooperate with the U.N. court or risk losing badly needed aid and financial support.
The main demand has been to extradite fugitive suspects, notably Bosnian Serb wartime commander Gen. Ratko Mladic. The government has denied Mladic is hiding here, but has offered other forms of cooperation, including giving U.N. prosecutors access to some sensitive state documents, as well as removing the legal obstacles for prominent civil servants to testify at the international court. Access to the state archives will also be considered when the council meets Wednesday, the report quoted Ljajic as saying. He added the panel will also look into demands by certain defendants, all Serbia-Montenegro citizens, for legal and financial aid for their defense at the Hague court. The assistance also includes covering expenses of occasional visits by suspects' relatives for occasional visits to the U.N. detention facility in the Netherlands.
Somalia will languish until its people own it; A free-for-all country
Nuruddin Farah, The New York Times, 8/3/04
On the day I needed to fly out of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, to get back home to Cape Town, my only choice was a Kenyan Fokker, normally used as a cargo plane, that was flying back to Nairobi with passengers. As we were being shown to our seats, the Kenyan captain told the passengers to hand over our passports. He said that he would hold them in the cabin until we landed in Kenya. I became angry when I asked the other passengers, who were all Somali-born, what passports they were traveling on. Two of them had Canadian nationality, three of them -- one a Somali-Swede, the remaining two Somali-Dutch -- had European Union passports. I asked the captain if he would have demanded the passports of non-Somalis from Canada, Sweden and the Netherlands taking a flight from Mogadishu.
"What precisely is your gripe?" he asked. I replied that I objected to handing over my passport to a Kenyan who had no authority over Somalis. Did he not know that we were still on Somali soil, not his country, but mine? Was he aware that Somalia was a country in its own right? He mumbled something about America, but I couldn't hear exactly what he said. He might have alluded to a post-Sept. 11 world in which Somalia was perceived as playing host to a terrorist network that resulted in the attack on a hotel full of Israeli tourists in Mombasa, Kenya. I don't recall him saying anything about September or Mombasa, but he acted nevertheless as though the mention of America alone in today's Somalia was sufficient to put the fear of God into its citizens.
When I requested that he speak up, the pilot informed me that he could deny me the right to fly on his aircraft. Then with his hand outstretched, he demanded that I decide whether I wished to travel or not. (Rumor had it that Kenyan pilots were required to keep a list of all passengers, including their nationalities, who were flying out of Mogadishu. Any passengers holding Somali passports or having Muslim-sounding names were to be reported to Kenyan authorities, working with the United States, who would then monitor their movements.)
I became aware as I considered my options that I was getting caught up in my emotions over the chaos that has enveloped Somalia since American forces left the country in 1993. This post-collapse was having a far-reaching effect on how Somalis were being treated in a world adjusting to Sept. 11. In the end, I realized that I had no choice but to accept my humbled condition within the rationale of terrorist paranoia. So I gave him my passport.
I struggled to control my temper for the two-and-a-half-hour flight to Nairobi, angry not at the pilot or, for that matter, the United States, but at my people. I wondered why we have allowed such indignities to be visited upon our nation -- and for so long. The answer is that we no longer own our country. Somalia, which lacks a functioning government, is a free-for-all country. Anyone may enter: No visas are necessary nor does anyone check passports. Nobody honors Somalia's airspace or its porous borders, especially not Ethiopia, whose military, every so often, occupies large chunks of Somalia on America's behalf on the pretext of hunting down Islamists -- and not even the African Union or the United Nations has ever bothered to reprimand Ethiopia for its behavior. Last year, there were reports that a group of United States soldiers, having received a nod of approval from a Somali warlord, went into Mogadishu and abducted a terrorist suspect from his sick bed.In Mogadishu, the consequences of Somalia's collapse were evident everywhere I went, beginning at the airports, which are controlled by warlords who demand "landing fees." Destitute Somalis, refugees from the countryside, were squatting in ruined buildings that once housed the offices of state utilities, the polytechnic schools and the Foreign Affairs Ministry. These refugees have no charitable groups to look after them -- because of the lawlessness, United Nations and nongovernmental organizations stay in Nairobi and travel in and out of Mogadishu during the day, leaving the city before dark.
Even more disturbing as an omen for Somalia's future is the lack of education available. The Somali tradition of secular education is extinct. The schooling that does exist is financed by Arabs, which means Arabic has replaced Somali in school curriculums. This is tragic, especially because writing in Somali was in its infancy when the state collapsed -- the standardization of the script having been adopted in 1972 -- and Somalia is the only African country with a population numbering in the millions that has one unifying language. This will no longer be the case if Arabic continues to be the medium of instruction in schools. Little of value has remained of Somalia's wealth. Its beaches have been rented out to entrepreneurs who dump nuclear waste there. Government property has been taken over by African and European countries because of nonpayment of taxes. Even Somalia's flagship airline has been confiscated for not settling its landing or takeoff fees. Somali children, destined to become prostitutes, are exchanged for a truckload of weapons, given to a warlord.
Can we Somalis be responsible if our country becomes a terrorist haven when we do not own it -- a Somalia where anyone can come and go without our authority? To own Somalia's problems and eventually its solutions, we must take possession of our country, everyone must return our property to us and all interference in our affairs must stop. But if our land remains someone else's playground and we continue to be victims of everyone else's machinations, then we won't make the necessary link between our post-collapse and America's post-Sept. 11.
Mediators unable to inaugurate parliament for war-torn Somalia
Agence France Presse, 8/5/04
Mediators in the Somali peace process were unable to inaugurate a transitional parliament for the war-torn Horn of Africa nation as planned but serious negotiations are underway, mediators and delegates said Thursday. Ministers from the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) had planned to inaugurate the new Somali transitional parliament on August 4, but the deadline came without an agreement in sight. Somali faction leader Abdulaziz Sheikh Yusuf said the mediators had not forseen "problems of sharing the seats on a clan basis."
"The ministers tried hard, but there are issues (that) needed to be resolved before putting deadlines," he said. Somalia's new transitional parliament will have 275 seats to be shared among five clans. Each of Somalia's four major clans -- the Darod, Digil-Mirifle, Dir and Hawiye -- will select 61 legislators for the transitional federal assembly, while the confederation of minority sub-clans will have 31 seats. Ministers from Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Sudan, which represented by its ambassador in Nairobi, have been busy since Wednesday to resolve the deadlock.
An IGAD official said the conflict should be resolved shortly but gave no specific details. The lawmakers will in turn select a new president for Somalia, which has been without a recognised government since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled in 1991. The Somalia peace talks started in Kenya in October 2002, with the signing of a ceasefire, which has often been violated. More than a dozen previous internationally-backed conferences have failed to restore peace and a form of central government, but few have brought in so many different players.
Sri Lanka's Marxists reverse position and back government on Tamil Tiger talks
Shimali Senanayake, Associated Press, 8/5/04
Sri Lanka's powerful Marxist party said Thursday it will back a government decision to discuss self-rule with Tamil rebels - an about face for the communists, who have opposed the idea aimed at reviving stalled peace talks. The Marxist People's Liberation Front, a member of the ruling alliance, was adamantly against any concessions to the rebels and last week threatened to withdraw crucial support for the government if the Tigers' self-rule proposal forms the basis for peace talks. However, Anura Dissanayake, minister of lands and a leading member of the Marxists, announced Thursday his party's abrupt policy shift.
"The Interim Self-governing Authority can be discussed with the view of a final settlement," Dissanayake told reporters, referring to the rebels' proposal for self-rule in Tamil-dominated areas of the island nation. He didn't give a reason for the Front's new stand, but it comes a day after President Chandrika Kumaratunga quit as leader of the alliance amid the deepening rift with the Marxists over how to proceed on peace talks with Tamil rebels. Last week, Jayantha Dhanapala, the government's top official handling the peace talks said the president is willing to discuss self-rule along with government proposals to set up an interim authority - a key demand of the rebels.
"The government is willing to be even more flexible ... in order to commence negotiations," said Cabinet spokesman Mangala Samaraweera on Thursday. He said the government was drafting a proposal for setting up an interim administration but declined to say when it would be completed. Meanwhile, Dissanayake urged the rebels to also show "flexibility." "This means not to kill political opponents and other rivals," he said, referring to recent killings and a suicide bomb blamed on the Tigers that have rocked Sri Lanka's fragile cease-fire.
The Tigers have in the past accused members of the ruling alliance of having conflicting views on the peace process. The rebels couldn't be immediately reached for comment. The rebels started fighting in 1983 to create a separate state for minority Tamils, accusing the majority Sinhalese of discrimination. A Norwegian-brokered truce in February 2002 halted the bloodshed but subsequent peace talks broke-down in April 2003 over rebel demands for wide autonomy. Efforts to bring both sides back to the negotiating table have failed so far.
Tamil Tiger split claws at Sri Lanka peace process
Amal Jayasinghe, Agence France Presse, 8/8/04
Sri Lanka's peace talks are officially held up due to differences over an agenda, but officials and diplomats involved in the process say the unprecedented split among the rebels could be the real reason. Peace broker Norway has described the escalation of violence following a schism in the Tamil Tiger movement as the most dangerous since a ceasefire went into effect in February 2002. Government and rebel officials say although they disagree on the sequence and content of the talks, the agenda is easier to sort out than the issue of a renegade commander who is said to receive covert help from the military.
Regional Tiger commander V. Muralitharan, better known as Karuna, led a split in March. Faced with an onlsaught by the rebel leadership five weeks later, he went underground after disbanding 5,000 to 6,000 fighters under him in the island's troubled eastern province. "The Tigers are now militarily weaker in the east after Karuna's split," a Western diplomat said. "They are not likely to come for talks until they re-establish total control over the area."
Tiger supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran turned up at a parade of his 'rocket-propelled grenade' unit in the rebel-held Wanni region Friday and spoke about his war-machine, the pro-rebel Tamilnet website reported. "The Liberation Tigers were the first to use rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers in the island," Tamilnet quoted Prabhakaran as saying. "Our RPG units were very successful in fighting enemy armour." Prabhakaran was seen wearing military fatigues and a customary cyanide capsule around his neck to commit suicide in case he falls into the hands of government forces.
The Tigers have been fighting for three decades to establish a separate homeland for the Tamil minority. A major bone of contention has been the rebels' proposal last year for self-rule until a final peace deal is in place. Norwegian envoys have shuttled between the rebels and the government to secure agreement on how to address the Tiger proposal to jumpstart the talks that have been held up since April 2003. President Chandrika Kumaratunga last week climbed down from her earlier refusal to discuss the Tiger proposal at risk of incurring the wrath of hardline nationalists in her shaky coalition government.
Her key ally, the Marxist JVP or People's Liberation Front, also softened its stand on the rebel proposal. But diplomats and officials involved in the peace process say the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is not likely to open negotiations with Kumaratunga's new government from a position of weakness. Norway's Deputy Foreign Minister Vidar Helgesen, on a failed mission last month to revive talks, warned Sri Lankans appeared to have taken peace for granted after the Oslo-brokered truce. More than 60,000 people have died in the island's ethnic conflict.
"The ceasefire agreement is not a peace agreement. It only means that the war has been frozen," Helgesen told reporters. "Today, a frozen war is melting at the edges. It is not a good situation." Helgesen said the security situation, particularly in the island's east, was not helpful to bridging the gap between the two sides. At least five people were killed in clashes linked to the LTTE's split last week in the east. Gunning down of rival rebels has almost become a routine. Tigers have accused the military intelligence of supporting Karuna in hit-and-run attacks against rebels affiliated with the northern-based leadership. Sri Lanka's head of the directorate of military intelligence, Brigadier Kapila Hendavitharan, sought early retirement last week, but it was not clear if the move was linked to alleged support to Karuna.
Sri Lanka Negotiation Simulation
Click here to access the Sri Lanka Negotiation Simulation prepared by the Public International Law & Policy Group.
Khartoum to start disarming Darfur militias next week: police chief
Hassen Zenati, Agence France Presse, 8/5/04
Khartoum is to start next week disarming the Arab militias accused of a reign of terror in the western Sudanese region of Darfur as demanded by the UN Security Council, a police chief said Thursday. On the diplomatic front, Sudan's government pressed ahead with "an open dialogue" with the United Nations and aid agencies to avert international sanctions, although Washington said it would keep up the pressure. "The security and judicial commissions are going to start work disarming the uncontrolled militias in Darfur next week," Brigadier General Jamal al-Hueres, police chief of North Darfur state, told the pro-government Sudan Media Centre.
The disarmament of the state-sponsored militias "will be carried out both on a voluntary basis and through searches carried out by the police," he added. Last Friday, the Security Council gave Khartoum 30 days to bring to heel the militias, especially the Janjaweed, or face possible sanctions. The rebel movements in resource-rich Darfur, a vast region the size of France, have laid down the same condition for a resumption of peace talks that were broken off last month. Information Minister Al-Zhawi Ibrahim Malik said Tuesday that under an accord struck with UN chief Kofi Annan last month the disarmament of militias would be "carried out simultaneously with the confinement to camp of the rebels under the supervision of an African force".
He warned the government would deal with "extreme severity with those who refused to hand over their weapons". According to government sources, the guerrillas who launched their revolt against Khartoum over the alleged neglect of their region in February 2003 number some 4,000 fighters, while Western estimates put the total at between 6,000 and 10,000. The United Nations is to send a team to Addis Ababa to help the African Union (AU) set up a peacekeeping force in war-ravaged Darfur, where more than one million people face imminent starvation, Annan said Wednesday.
The AU, meanwhile, said it may send a 2,000-strong peacekeeping force to protect observers monitoring a shaky ceasefire and the estimated one million displaced civilians returning to their homes. "Sudanese authorities have started an open dialogue with the UN to meet the demands of the international community on Darfur," an envoy of a European Union country posted here said, asking not to be named. The Sudanese minister of state for foreign affairs, Tigani Saleh Fadel, meanwhile, told AFP he was holding regular meetings with UN representatives in Khartoum "to evaluate the needs of Darfur" and thrash out problems. Several rounds have been held since the July 30 resolution, he said.
"We regretted the Security Council resolution, which we regard as unjust, but we will continue to work with the United Nations to implement the agreements" with Annan, he told AFP. "We want Mr Annan, in his coming report, to note the progress achieved." The UN secretary general, as a follow-up to the resolution, is due to submit a progress report to the 15-member body at the start of September on the situation in Darfur. US Secretary of State Colin Powell, in comments published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal, said that Sudan had yet to "take decisive steps to end the violence in Darfur".
"To date, the government of Sudan has removed many obstacles to humanitarian access, cooperated with the African Union ceasefire monitors, and agreed to participate in political talks," he wrote. "It has not, however, taken decisive steps to end the violence," he said. "International pressure will continue to increase until Khartoum moves decisively against the Janjaweed." But the authorities in Khartoum are seeking "a moving deadline" for implementation of the resolution, to take into account moves to end the humanitarian crisis, officials here said.
Such a scenario would "prevent sanctions, which are something which can only complicate the situation instead of resolving it", one official said. Humanitarian organisations operating in Sudan have already pointed to open and unrestricted access to the disaster zone since July, after a string of previous protests that they was being impeded by the authorities. In Egypt, an Arab League official said Thursday that Arab states were prepared to send observers as part of the planned AU force. Tanzania agreed Thursday to send 100 troops to Darfur. Arab foreign ministers are to hold an "urgent" meeting on the crisis in the Egyptian capital on Sunday.
U.S. Senate majority leader calls violence in Darfur a genocide
Karel Prinsloo, Associated Press, 8/6/04
A leading U.S. lawmaker called attacks on African farmers by Arab militiamen in Sudan's western Darfur region a genocide, and said that the threat of U.N. sanctions against Sudan was not enough to end the violence. As U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist toured camps in eastern Chad housing hundreds of thousands of people driven from Darfur, the African Union worked to boost the number of troops it plans to send to the region, asking Rwanda to up its contribution from about 150 soldiers to nearly 1,000.
Although Frist said he believes the threat of sanctions will not end the crisis in Darfur, he stopped short of calling for armed intervention by Western powers - a move the Sudanese government has threatened to resist with force. "The goal of today was to have firsthand experience" of the violence unleashed by the Arab militiamen known as Janjaweed, Frist told reporters Friday. He spent his time in the camp speaking with refugees and aid workers, afterward saying he would "probe what is the relationship between the Sudan government and the Janjaweed."
Frist, the senior Republican senator of the upper chamber of the U.S. Congress, said he planned to talk to other American lawmakers on how to stop the violence in Darfur. He did not elaborate. The European Union, the United States and humanitarian groups accuse the Sudanese government of backing the militias known as the Janjaweed with vehicles, helicopters and airplanes - a claim Khartoum denies. The violence in Darfur began in February 2003 when two rebel groups from the region's African tribes took up arms in struggle over land and resources with Arab countrymen. Pro-government militias drawn mostly from nomadic Arab tribes then began a brutal campaign to drive black African farming communities out of Darfur.
The United Nations estimates up to 30,000 people have been killed in Darfur, more than a million driven from their homes, and some 2.2 million left in urgent need of food and other aid. The U.N. Security Council on July 30 passed a resolution giving Sudan 30 days to curb the Janjaweed, or face possible diplomatic and economic penalties. The U.S. Congress has labeled the atrocities genocide, and Frist said Friday that American lawmakers did not believe the threat of U.N. sanctions against Sudan was enough to quell the violence. But a day earlier, the United Nations said Sudan had agreed to disarm the Janjaweed and other outlawed groups in Darfur. The agreement was reached Wednesday in Khartoum, U.N. spokeswoman Denise Cook said. The AU's request for more Rwandan troops follows a recent promise by the union to increase the size of its planned mission to Darfur and give the troops being sent a mandate to protect civilians, not just the union's unarmed 150-member monitoring mission.
The AU said July 5 that it would send 300 soldiers to Darfur to protect the monitors. But Wednesday it announced plans to increase the number of soldiers to 1,600-1,800. Aside from protecting civilians and monitors, the AU said its troops would also help speed the delivery of aid to displaced people and stop the rebels, Janjaweed and government from violating a largely ignored cease fire signed in April. "We have been requested to send an additional force of about 800 men," Rwandan Foreign Minister Charles Muligande told The Associated Press. "This will be in addition to the 155 soldiers that we had initially prepared for this mission." However, no date has been set for the troops' arrival in Darfur, as AU and Sudanese officials are still working out the exact mandate of the force, Muligande said in Rwanda's capital, Kigali.
Arabs say Sudanese government needs more time to resolve Darfur crisis
Nadia Abou El-Magd, Associated Press, 8/8/04
Arab countries said the Sudanese government needs more time to end the crisis in its troubled western Darfur region, where purportedly state-backed Arab militias are accused of killing thousands of African villagers. The 22-member Arab League, which held an emergency meeting Sunday on Darfur, also rejected "threats of military intervention in the region or imposing any sanctions on Sudan." Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo offered to host peace talks to resolve what has been called the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Obasanjo invited the Sudanese government and rebel negotiators to hold talks in Nigeria starting Aug. 23, a spokesman for the African Union said. Previous talks fell apart July 17 after rebels walked out, saying the Sudanese government had ignored existing peace agreements.
The 18-month conflict began when black African factions in Darfur rose up against the Sudanese government, claiming discrimination in the distribution of the large, arid region's scarce resources. Since then, Arab militias have gone on a rampage, destroying villages, killing and raping. As many as 30,000 people have been killed, and 1 million people have been forced to flee their homes. The U.S. Congress and some humanitarian groups have accused Sudan of genocide, and a July 30 U.N. resolution has threatened economic and diplomatic action against Sudan if it doesn't act within 30 days to rein in the militias, known as Janjaweed.
Amr Moussa, the Arab League secretary-general, said on Sunday the Security Council resolution is "a developing process, not a deadline." He also rejected accusations the government is guilty of genocide, adding that the point was agreed to by the African Union, Arab League and United Nations. No official at the talks mentioned the number of people killed in the crisis. Sudan denies backing the Janjaweed and was hoping Arab nations at Sunday's gathering would back it against international pressure. The Arab League also decided to provide financial, technical and logistical support to Sudan.
On Wednesday, the United Nations and Sudan signed a new agreement requiring the Arab-dominated Khartoum government to create safe areas in Darfur within 30 days so civilians can search for food and water and work their land without fear of attack. The "Plan of Action for Darfur" would halt all military operations by government forces, militias, and rebel groups in the safe areas. Under the agreement, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press on Sunday, the government will approach "militias over whom it has influence and instruct them to cease their activities forthwith and lay down their weapons."
Moussa said Arab countries in north Africa are willing to participate in a peacekeeping force to help calm the situation in Sudan's western region. The African Union plans to dispatch 1,600-1,800 soldiers to protect an unarmed 150-member monitoring mission. African Union Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare warned the Arab League of the grave situation in Darfur and accused Sudan of the "mismanagement and marginalization" of Darfur's indigenous population. But Mustafa Osman Ismail, the Sudanese foreign minister, said his government "has exerted all its efforts to contain the crisis peacefully." He also accused the rebels of trying to establish an independent state.
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