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Uganda. A Circus, the Art of Redemption.

The slums of Katwe have seen the birth of a new circus where the jugglers, acrobats, fire-eaters and dancers are the youngsters themselves of the shanty town. They have become so skilled that they have been asked to perform even outside the continent of Africa. For many of them it has become a profession.

The youngest is a boy of nine. When school is over he rushes home, removes his school uniform, changes into his shorts and goes to do his daily training of three or four hours a day, every day: bends, somersaults, juggling and various acrobatic routines, both alone and with his team mates. This unusual team consists of 150 boys and girls called: The Acrobatics Circus Troupe of Katwe. Katwe is in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. Katwe is not just an ordinary place and neither are these boys and girls just ordinary boys and girls.

Katwe is a slum, believed to be the biggest in the city and, as in all such places, living conditions are harsh: poverty, the lack of basic services, social marginalisation, low school attendance rates and a high percentage of underage mothers. Out of a population of nine thousand people, a high proportion are children; of those of working age, at least 75% are either unemployed or eke out a living day by day (the area has the highest crime rate of the capital). But there is plenty of energy, determination and creativity. It is no accident that Katwe in Luganda, the local language, means ‘intelligent’.
At the time of independence in 1962, this district – it had not yet become a slum – was known for the skills of the craftsmen working there, experts in repairing electrical domestic appliances, televisions or cars. With the passage of time, the area became a place of refuge – an improvised home – for people without hope, with no work and even fewer prospects for the future.

Every time there is an outbreak of protests or signs of a revolt, it is to this place that the forces of law and order come; here the police search for arms and those responsible for the crimes committed in the city. And it is here that low-cost drugs are circulated. As a matter of fact, all one has to do is to wander through the shanty houses to see people, in broad daylight, chewing qat, ‘the drug of the poor’, called mira in the local language.

 Building a future
This is also the place where scores of young people are using their creativity to carve out a future for themselves. The idea of starting a circus was the brain-child of Richard Walusimbi. Orphaned at the age of seven when his parents died of AIDS, he first lived on the streets but went to school and even to university, thanks to the help given him by people who believed in him. Nevertheless, he continued to live in the slum and one day he decided to try and put to good use all that energy and natural talent he observed every day in the young people of the community. That is how the circus came into being with its jugglers, acrobats, fire-eaters and dancers.
To their natural talent they added discipline and study. Techniques were learned from downloaded YouTube videos and from books either borrowed or donated. The team gradually became well known and invitations to perform at demonstrations and events were frequent, as well as opportunities to train with experts such as the celebrated Zurcaroh Acrobatic Group, directed by the Brazilian choreographer Peterson da Cruz Hora.

They were invited to festivals in Uganda, Benin, Ivory Coast and South Africa. Many of these young people have been to China, working for some months in circus structures or amusement parks. Under the terms of their contract they are given board and lodging, one day off per week and four hundred dollars per month. They save their money and, on their return home, start an activity or continue their schooling. It is inevitable that this experience of working abroad, so far from home, should cause some unease. “Not everyone is friendly towards us; they think we still live in trees and some refuse even to shake our hands”, one of the jugglers of the group tells us. “This does not bother me. We meet many other young people from Brazil or from Europe engaged in the same work as ourselves. While we are together we share everything including techniques and ideas to improve our performances”, he adds.

Combating poverty
The common aim of the founders of the circus is to combat poverty and give these young people an opportunity to carve out a future for themselves with their own hands using their own talents.
Whenever these young people gather to practice in the large space between the huts of mud walls and iron sheets, small groups of spectators gather to watch. There is always a youngster or two who approach the leaders asking to join the group. “Ever since I joined the circus – recounts Marion, 18 – I always knew I would succeed. I pay my own school fees and after school I am always busy training. If I did not have my art and the possibility of exercising it, I should be just like other girls with nothing better to look forward to than ‘those’ girls have”. She is alluding to the fact that, if a girl from a slum fails to find work as a waitress, she will end up as a prostitute. She is well aware of it. This circus has substituted an uncertain future with one of hope and the confusion of a life without a goal with discipline and daily commitment.

Most importantly, it is because they see results that these young people forge ahead. When one of their companions leaves, they greet them with joy at their success, knowing that their turn may come soon. Here everybody knows the story of Phiona Mutesi, a chess expert who grew up right there in Katwe shanty town. The Disney company made a film, ‘The Queen of Katwe’, based on her life. Phiona is an example that continues to fuel the imagination of children who grow up deprived, in the shadow of the iron sheets and among the stench of open drains. A few years ago, Oxford University published the results of a study showing how groups of students who, a month before the exams had watched a film about the chess champion received better marks than those who had watched a ‘placebo film’ on the life of children with supernatural powers. What does this show? That the positive example of one who succeeded, despite difficult conditions, stimulates self-confidence and self-esteem. This is what the young people of Katwe are doing: creating positive examples for their companions and the whole community. And this is a community that has developed respect and confidence in these young people of whom they are so very proud.

Antonella Sinopoli

Robert Mugabe. Which Legacy?

Robert Mugabe is the sort of figure that always caused discomfort. He was a permanent revolutionary, becoming, in time, the despotic ruler who frittered away revolutionary gain. He played multiple roles in international political consciousness.

As Zimbabwe’s strongman, he was demonised and lionised in equal measure for a good deal of his time in power. His role from the 1990s – Mugabe, the West’s all-too-convenient bogeyman and hobgoblin – tended to outweigh other considerations. In the end, even his supporters had to concede that he had outstayed his welcome, another African leader gone to seed.

In 2008, Mahmood Mamdani noted the generally held view in publications ranging from The Economist to The Guardian that Mugabe the Thug reigned. Yes, he had helped in laying waste to the economy, refusing to share power with a more vocal and present opposition, and created an internal crisis with his land distribution policy. But this did little to explain his longevity, his recipe of partial coercion and consent, the teacher-visionary and the bribing mob leader. “In any case, the preoccupation with his character does little to illuminate the socio-historical issues involved.”

The obsession with character is found in both the literature and the popular culture depicting Mugabe. The stock story is this: he taught in Ghana in 1963, a key figure in the nationalist movement split in what was then Rhodesia, becoming Secretary-General of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). The Shona dominated ZANU was formed from the original Ndebele ethnic minority-dominated Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU).

Prison followed in 1964; Mugabe fled to Mozambique in 1974 though not before a spell of imprisonment at the hands of Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda (his escape was probably engineered by Zambians); by 1977, he had assumed control of the organisation, though Mozambique’s President Samora Machel never quite trusted him, taking a leaf out of Kaunda’s book in detailing the mischief-maker, albeit briefly.
Military victory was sought against the Smith regime in what was then white-controlled Rhodesia, and it was with some reluctance that Mugabe found himself a signatory to the British-sponsored settlement in 1979, by Lord Carrington, Kaunda, the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Shridath Ramphal, and, ironically enough, white apartheid South Africa.

On becoming leader, he was deliciously accommodating in his rhetoric, despite having entertained the prospect of confiscating land owned by whites a la Marx-Lenin and wishing to hold white leaders to account in war crimes trials. In his national address in 1980, he spoke of the bonds of amity; he wished for bygones to be bygones. “If you were my enemy, you are now my friend. If you hated me, you cannot avoid the love that binds me to you and you to me.”

Initially, Mugabe the progressive shone through: healthcare and education programs were expanded; literacy rates and living standards rose; white farmers were reassured that mobs would not be knocking on their doors. Whites were included in a mixed cabinet; heads reappointed in the army, the police, and the Central Intelligence Organisation. But he had his eye on dealing with rivals.

In 1983, former members of ZAPU’s military outfit attacked targets in Matabeleland. The result was uncompromisingly bloody: anywhere upwards of 20,000 civilians killed; many more tortured, maimed, tormented. In four years, ZAPU had been defeated, absorbed into the ZANU-PF structure. The extinguishment of such rivalry paved the way for a Mugabe presidency and near-absolute rule.

By the 1990s, economic conditions were biting. Real wages fell; the International Monetary Fund demanded domestic readjustments to the economy. Economic stagnation kept company with increasingly repressive policies against journalists, students, and opponents. Calculatingly, Mugabe propitiated war veterans by awarding them generous pensions in 1997. Then came the next threat: the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Morgan Tsvangirai.

In February 2000, a national vote on a redesigned draft constitution, the progeny of ZANU-PF, proposed British compensation for land; absent that, white farms would be seized without due compensation. Its defeat by a narrow margin saw Mugabe step up his campaign, featuring farm occupations and the sponsorship of veterans to assist in invasions of farms owned by white farmers. Mugabe was returning to an old platform.

The prevailing psycho-portraiture for such behaviour is never consistent. One variant finds its culprit in a decision Mugabe made in 1996. Secretary Grace Marufu, 41 years Mugabe’s junior, became his wife, considered within certain circles a less than worthy replacement for Sally, who died in 1992. Wilf Mbanga, editor of The Zimbabwean newspaper spared no punches, seeing in Marufu a lever pulling, power-hungry creature akin to Lady Macbeth. “He changed the moment Sally died, when he married a young gold-digger.”

His former home affairs minister, Dumiso Dabengwa, pinpointed a different year when the great compromiser and negotiator changed: 2000. There are no gold-digging suggestions, merely political manipulations filtered with a bit of paranoia. “He held compromising material over several of his colleagues and they knew they would face criminal charges if they opposed him.”

Overwhelmingly, the narrative is of the great hope that failed, the rebel who trips. This echo of the good man gone bad is detectable in celluloid, with the fictional state of Matobo in The Interpreter, featuring as its political backdrop a bookish schoolteacher who defeated a white-minority regime but fouled up matters by turning into a tyrant.
“The CIA-backed film,” suggested the then acting Minister for Information and Publicity, Chen Chimutengwende, “showed that Zimbabwe’s enemies did not rest.”

Mugabe was every bit the contradiction of the colonial-postcolonial figure, supported one day as the romantic revolutionary to be praised, reviled as the authoritarian figure to condemn, the next. The revolutionary to be feted was a motif that continued through the 1980s, despite signs that the hero was getting particularly bloodthirsty. A string of honours were bestowed like floral tributes to a conquering warrior: an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Massachusetts in 1984, despite the butchering of the Ndebele; an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh (subsequently revoked in July 2007); a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in 1994.

Accounts such as Martin Meredith’s Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe, point to the aphrodisiac of power, violence as currency, the cultivated links with the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Laurent Kabila, and the creation of a crony state. The DRC connection softened the blows of international sanctions, at least to some extent, keeping rural voters in clover and the security forces content. Such arrangements, involving a juggling of loot and measuring out the spoils, is rarely indefinite.

The narrative of the power-mad creature runs through as a counter to the liberal thesis that Mugabe started with promise, and went sour. This would have been tantamount to suggesting that Lenin insisted on changing the world through even-tempered tea ceremonies and soft-voiced mediation, only to endorse revolutionary violence at a later date. James Kirchick, oft fascinated by the wiles of demagoguery, saw the strains of brutality early: Mugabe’s time in prison, as with other revolutionaries, led to a certain pupillage with power, a sense of its necessity. Degrees in law and economics were earned via correspondence from the University of London, a way to pass carceral time for subversive actions against the white Smith regime in 1964. All that time, he nursed Marxist-Leninist dreams.

As leader of the movement to oust the white regime, Mugabe was not sparing with his use of violence. In this, he differed from the founder of the ZANU, Ndabaningi Sithole, who renounced terrorism and subversion after his 1969 sentence for incitement. Nor was he averse to internal suppression: his cadres had to be trustworthy in the cause.

Over time, the distance between Mugabe the ruler, and the Zimbabwean citizenry, grew. International sanctions, applied with much callousness, bit. Hyperinflation set in. The state was left bankrupt.
Food shortages in 2004 did not sway him. “We are not hungry,” Mugabe told Sky News. “Why foist this food upon us? We don’t want to be choked. We have enough.”

In November 2017, a coup by senior military personnel was launched in terms that seemed almost polite, a sort of dinner party seizure. Mugabe was placed under house arrest; his ZANU-PF party had decided that the time had come. The risk of Marufu coming to power was becoming all too real, though this femme fatale rationale can only be pushed so far. There were celebrations in the streets. Thirty-seven years prior, there were similar calls of jubilation for the new leader. Left with his medical ailments, Mugabe died at Gleneagles Hospital, Singapore on 6 September at the age of 95, farewelled by his successor President Emmerson Mnangagwa as “an icon of liberation, a pan Africanist who dedicated his life to the emancipation of his people.” The muse of history can be atrociously fickle.

Binoy Kampmark

Photo: A bust of former President Robert Mugabe sits between model crocodiles, on a wall at his official residence in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare. Ben Curtis/AP

World Mission Sunday. “Mission is part of our identity as Christians”.

This year World Mission Sunday will be celebrated on 20 October. Under the theme “Baptized and Sent: The Church of Christ on Mission in the World.” A synthesis of his message.

In his message, Pope Francis writes: “For the month of October 2019, I have asked that the whole Church revive her missionary awareness and commitment as we commemorate the centenary of the Apostolic Letter Maximum Illud of Pope Benedict XV (30 November 1919). Its farsighted and prophetic vision of the apostolate has made me realize once again the importance of renewing the Church’s missionary commitment and giving fresh evangelical impulse to her work of preaching and bringing to the world the salvation of Jesus Christ, who died and rose again…Celebrating this month will help us first to rediscover the missionary dimension of our faith in Jesus Christ, a faith graciously bestowed on us in baptism. Our filial relationship with God is not something simply private, but always in relation to the Church”.

“ The Church is on mission in the world –  the Pope continues – . Faith in Jesus Christ enables us to see all things in their proper perspective, as we view the world with God’s own eyes and heart. Hope opens us up to the eternal horizons of the divine life that we share. Charity, of which we have a foretaste in the sacraments and in fraternal love, impels us to go forth to the ends of the earth. A Church that presses forward to the farthest frontiers requires a constant and ongoing missionary conversion… This missionary mandate touches us personally: I am a mission, always; you are a mission, always; every baptized man and woman is a mission… Each of us is a mission to the world, for each of us is the fruit of God’s love”.

Pope Francis points out: “This mission is part of our identity as Christians; it makes us responsible for enabling all men and women to realize their vocation to be adoptive children of the Father, to recognize their personal dignity and to appreciate the intrinsic worth of every human life, from conception until natural death. Today’s rampant secularism, when it becomes an aggressive cultural rejection of God’s active fatherhood in our history, is an obstacle to authentic human fraternity, which finds expression in reciprocal respect for the life of each person. Without the God of Jesus Christ, every difference is reduced to a baneful threat, making impossible any real fraternal acceptance and fruitful unity within the human race”.
“The universality of the salvation offered by God in Jesus Christ led Benedict XV to call for an end to all forms of nationalism and ethnocentrism, or the merging of the preaching of the Gospel with the economic and military interests of the colonial powers. In his Apostolic Letter Maximum Illud, the Pope noted that the Church’s universal mission requires setting aside exclusivist ideas of membership in one’s own country and ethnic group. The opening of the culture and the community to the salvific newness of Jesus Christ requires leaving behind every kind of undue ethnic and ecclesial introversion”.

“Today too, the Church needs men and women who, by virtue of their baptism, respond generously to the call to leave behind home, family, country, language and local Church, and to be sent forth to the nations, to a world not yet transformed by the sacraments of Jesus Christ and his holy Church. By proclaiming God’s word, bearing witness to the Gospel and celebrating the life of the Spirit, they summon to conversion, baptize and offer Christian salvation, with respect for the freedom of each person and in dialogue with the cultures and religions of the peoples to whom they are sent. The missio ad gentes, which is always necessary for the Church, thus contributes in a fundamental way to the process of ongoing conversion in all Christians. Faith in the Easter event of Jesus; the ecclesial mission received in baptism; the geographic and cultural detachment from oneself and one’s own home; the need for salvation from sin and liberation from personal and social evil: all these demand the mission that reaches to the very ends of the earth”.

“The providential coincidence of this centenary year with the celebration of the Special Synod on the Churches in the Amazon allows me to emphaze how the mission entrusted to us by Jesus with the gift of his Spirit is also timely and necessary for those lands and their peoples. A renewed Pentecost opens wide the doors of the Church, in order that no culture remain closed in on itself and no people cut off from the universal communion of the faith. No one ought to remain closed in self-absorption, in the self-referentiality of his or her own ethnic and religious affiliation. The Easter event of Jesus breaks through the narrow limits of worlds, religions and cultures, calling them to grow in respect for the dignity of men and women, and towards a deeper conversion to the truth of the Risen Lord who gives authentic life to all “.

Pope Francis concludes: “Here I am reminded of the words of Pope Benedict XVI at the beginning of the meeting of Latin American Bishops at Aparecida, Brazil, in 2007. I would like to repeat these words and make them my own: Yet what did the acceptance of the Christian faith mean for the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean? For them, it meant knowing and welcoming Christ, the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it, in their rich religious traditions. Christ is the Saviour for whom they were silently longing. It also meant that they received, in the waters of Baptism, the divine life that made them children of God by adoption; moreover, they received the Holy Spirit who came to make their cultures fruitful, purifying them and developing the numerous seeds that the incarnate Word had planted in them, thereby guiding them along the paths of the Gospel… The Word of God, in becoming flesh in Jesus Christ, also became history and culture. The utopia of going back to breathe life into the pre-Columbian religions, separating them from Christ and from the universal Church, would not be a step forward: indeed, it would be a step back. In reality, it would be a retreat towards a stage in history anchored in the past” (Address at the Inaugural Session, 13 May 2007: Insegnamenti III, 1 [2007], 855-856).”

Pope Francis: “Our young people are our foremost mission”.

In his fourth apostolic journey to the African continent, visiting Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritius Pope Francis said to young people: “keep dreaming and moving forward”.

In Mozambique, Pope Francis encouraged young people of different faiths to not give up in the face of their country’s challenges, but to confront them with joy and hope. “How do you make your dreams come true? How do you help to solve your country’s problems? My words to you are these. Do not let yourselves be robbed of joy. Keep singing and expressing yourselves in fidelity to all the goodness that you have learned from your traditions. Let no one rob you of your joy!”,

He continued: “Dream together, as you are doing today. Dream with others, never against others. Keep dreaming the way you dreamed: all together and without barriers.”
Pope Francis indicated Mozambique’s greatest sports icons, Eusébio da Silva and Maria Mutola, as an inspiration to young people not to give up fighting for their dreams. He said: “I know most of you are enthused about football. I remember a great player from these lands who learned not to give up: Eusébio da Silva, the Black Panther. He began his athletic career in this city. The severe economic hardships of his family and the premature death of his father did not prevent him from dreaming; his passion for football made him persevere, keep dreaming and moving forward. He managed to score seventy-seven goals for Maxaquene! Despite having plenty of reasons to give up.”

Talking to the youth in the Maxaquene Sports Pavillion, the Holy Father continued: “His dream and his desire to play kept him going, but equally important was finding someone to play with. You know that in a team not everyone is the same; they don’t all do the same things or think the same way. Each player has his own gifts. We can see and appreciate this even in this meeting of ours. We come from different traditions and we may even speak different languages, but this has not stopped us from being here together as a group.”

Maria Mutola was a woman who did not give up fighting for her dreams, “you have before your eyes that beautiful testimony given by Mutola, who learned to persevere, to keep trying, even though she did not attain the goal of a gold medal in her first three Olympic Games. Then, on her fourth attempt, this 800-metre athlete won the gold medal at the Sydney Olympics.”
“Her efforts did not make her self-absorbed; her nine world titles did not let her forget her people, her roots: she continued to look out for the needy children of Mozambique. We see how sport teaches us to persevere in our dreams!” Pope Francis said.
Finally the Pope concluded: “Together, you are the beating heart of this people and all of you have a fundamental role to play in one great creative project: to write a new page of history, a page full of hope, peace and reconciliation.”

The next day, at a prayer vigil in Antananarivo, capital of Madagascar, Pope Francis told a crowd of young people that “Jesus has called you and has entrusted a mission to you. Through you, the future is coming to Madagascar and to the Church.”
Pope Francis said he thinks of every young person as a seeker: “Each person shows it differently, but deep down all of you are looking for the happiness that no one will be able to take from us.” The pope responded to two testimonies he heard from young adults in the course of the vigil. One was from a 27-year-old man named Rova Sitraka Ranarison.
Pope Francis commented on the story of the young man, who had recounted that he had for a long time felt a desire to visit prisoners, so he had begun to help a priest’s prison ministry, and eventually became more and more involved, adopting it as his “personal mission.”

“You realized that your life is a mission. This search, born of faith, helps make the world in which we live a better place, more in accord with the Gospel,” Pope Francis told Rova. He also noted the transformation the young man experienced, remarking that it “changed your way of seeing and judging people. It made you a fairer and more sensitive person.”Rova, the Pope said, learned to see people as the Lord sees people. “He does not call us by our sins, our errors, our faults, our limits, but by our name; each of us is precious in his eyes.” Pope Francis also pointed to the testimony of a 21-year-old woman, Vavy Elyssa Nekendraza, who he said made this point well: that “it is impossible to be a missionary disciple all by ourselves.” An encounter with Jesus as individuals and as a community is essential, he said.
“Certainly, we can accomplish great things on our own, but together we can dream of and undertake things undreamt of! Vavy put it nicely: we are invited to find the face of Jesus in the face of others.”

During his eight hours in Mauritius — making his visit a day trip from Madagascar — Pope Francis urged the local church and government to make greater efforts to listen to and involve the island’s young people in every aspect of life. “This is not always easy. It means learning to acknowledge the presence of the young and to make room for them,” he said.  Pope Francis noted, though, how unemployment still is a problem particularly for young adults, which “not only creates uncertainty about the future, but also prevents them from believing that they play a significant part in your shared future.”

Cardinal Maurice Piat of Port Louis has written about the island’s “vocations crisis,” which Pope Francis tied to the question of economic prosperity and attention to the young.
“When we hear the threatening prognosis that ‘our numbers are decreasing,’ we should be concerned not so much with the decline of this or that mode of consecration in the church, but with the lack of men and women who wish to experience happiness on the paths of holiness,” the Pope said. “Young people need to be seen and encouraged by priests and religious who give witness to the joy of a life dedicated totally to serving God and one’s brothers and sisters”.

At Mass, Pope Francis urged Catholics to avoid worldly securities, to increase their zeal for evangelization, and to invite the young to be an active part of the Church. Talking about Blessed Jacques-Désiré Laval who was a French missionary priest and member of the Spiritan order, the Pope said:  “Through his missionary outreach and his love, Father Laval gave to the Mauritian Church a new youth, a new life, that today we are asked to carry forward. ”

“We need to foster this missionary momentum,” he added, “because it can happen that, as the Church of Christ, we can yield to the temptation to lose our enthusiasm for evangelization by taking refuge in worldly securities that slowly but surely not only affect the mission but actually hamper it and prevent it from drawing people together.”
Finally the Pope stated emphatically: “Our young people are our foremost mission! We must invite them to find their happiness in Jesus; not by speaking to them in an aloof or distant way, but by learning how to make room for them, ‘learning their language,’ listening to their stories, spending time with them and making them feel that they too are blessed by God.” (C.C.)

 

 

Advocating For Intelligent And Sustainable Earnings.

There is no consistent and successful advocacy but the one founded in strong credibility. Credibility is the quality or power of inspiring belief; it can refer to a person, a corporation, an activity or a report.

Credibility gives legitimacy of speaking or acting on behalf or support of a plan, an idea, a project, or even a political, social, or economic action. It implies that the advocacy promoter – whether a person or organization – is known and respected by the policy makers or stakeholders involved in the issue, has relevant information or expertise on the issues. So far the advocacy promoter is perceived as objective and trustworthy, and not politically and economically biased.

Is the head of nearly 200 U.S. companies credible when he says “they are committing to a move away from the idea that the main purpose of a company is to maximize shareholder value, marking a break with a long-held conviction”, the group has been promoting “that companies’ primary purposes are to reward shareholders”?

Now they proclaim their commitment “to delivering value to customers, investing in employees in ways that go beyond financial compensation to include training and education to ensure their skills are kept up to date, and embracing diversity and inclusion, dignity and respect,” “dealing fairly and ethically with its supply chain, supporting the communities in which they operate.” Are these words a credible advocacy for a corporation’s social responsibility and human rights commitment? The future has the last word, but are the transparency and legitimacy there? Credibility requires integrity in personal or corporation behavior, and professional expertise.

Personal integrity is shown either in a way of living consistent with the values of advocacy carried on or in the transparency of all the interests involved in a specific advocacy action. While the senior management of UNRWA is proved guilty of having been engaged in “sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation, discrimination and other abuses of authority, for personal gain, to suppress legitimate dissent, and to otherwise achieve their personal objectives”, all the support and advocacy to Palestinian refugees suffers the backlash.

However, no advocacy is far or free from some type of interests – be these financial and material ones, or ideological, religious, humanistic or psychological ones. The wave of critics submerging the NGOs comes specifically from this last lacking transparency.  All NGOs have their own purpose, money sources, contracts and contacts involving a lot of interests. The inability of professing them openly and clearly lessens their credibility.

While stating explicitly the purpose of “generating long-term value for shareholders, who provide the capital companies need to invest and grow”, because “each of (our) stakeholders is essential,” opens the way to credibility. No corporation is credible when professing only humanitarian aims, but they are when questioning “the role the companies they run play in the broader economy” and arguing “for an end to the divisive politics that are failing to address a range of issues from income inequality to racial and gender issues, stagnant wages, lack of equal opportunity, immigration and health care.”

They are, while showing a more ethical and intelligent way of gaining profit, as preferring “to use capital to grow than to buy back stock,”  “investing for the future should come first.” Profit, yes, but intelligent and sustainable. As the JP Morgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said, “it was easy to boost earnings results in a quarter by doing stupid things that help in the short term but are bad in the long term.” Investing for the future “could spiral within a company, as loyal, well-meaning employees do what they can to help a company meets its earnings goal.” Credibility, legitimacy, transparency advocate for intelligent and sustainable earnings.

John Paul Pezzi, mccj
VIVAT International NGO
with consultative special status at UN

Music. Jain, Souldier of Soul.

At the famous Parc des Princes studio in Paris on 7 June of this year, during the opening of the Women’s World Football Championship, a young female singer with an exceptional voice caught the attention
of the public.

Jeanne Louise Galice — known as Jain in the world of music – has Malagasy ancestors but was born in Toulouse. She grew up in the Congo and then in the United Arab Emirates (her father worked for an oil company) and then returned to the multi-ethnic city of Paris in France.
Her first album, Zanaka, means ‘child’ in Malagasy, and the title is a tribute to her mother who is of Franco-Malagasy origin, was released in November 2015 with excellent results that brought her to the attention of the general public for its originality and variety of style (a mixture of African and Middle Eastern sounds).

‘Zanaka’, which include the singles ‘Come’ and ‘Makeba’, a demonstration of the various types of music that influenced her artistic formation, may be said to have been the root cause of her popularity; it was her album ‘Souldier’, released in August 2018 that marked a real breakthrough. Souldier is a play on words combining the word soul, (a name which identifies one of the galaxies of black music) and soldier.  This album showed how Jain’s personality, originality and talent for expression had grown, adding to the sounds of her debut album sounds from reggae, hip-hop, soul and fragments of electronic pop: “’Souldier’ was composed during a journey — she declared – while I was passing through different nations and cultures which had a decisive influence on me. I wanted to show something of myself: my aim was to explore those influences, both those of my youth and those of the present time. I am a great fan of Kendrick Lamar, of the soft sound of Tito Puente, the elegance of Fairouz and the melodies of Bob Marley: starting with the music I love, I have tried to create my own sound.
That is how ‘Souldier’ came to be, from trying to combine what I like with themes both modern and timeless”.

The result is an intriguing melting pot of sounds containing everything needed to identify an already promising career. The album cover is an expression of the essence of her approach: glowing joy, a desire for peace and universal brotherhood and love understood as the guiding star required to temper the unease of the present day. “We have to get it into our heads that love is always right, she sings in the title track on the theme of the massacre in Orlando in 2016. Yes, we have to be convinced that love is our strength”. Even though not all her songs express the joy of life and light, there is no doubt that Jain, through her music, expresses a positive and optimistic outlook on life, that of a young woman of her time, independent and headstrong, who uses the Internet and the social media but denounces their negativity; who hates nationalism and xenophobia but never ceases to hope that the gloomy darkness of today may be lightened, even through the cosmopolitan and transgenerational power of song.

On October 2018, ‘Oh Man’ was released as the album’s second single. A music video for the song was released on 21 December 2018. It was filmed at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, in Barcelona. On April 2019, she released the single ‘Gloria’. Rolling Stone Magazine described it as ‘an upbeat dance track that describes the perils of fame and promotes being true to one’s own creativity’. On 7 June 2019, Jain performed ‘Gloria’ as well as ‘Makeba’ and ‘Heads Up’ at the opening ceremony of the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Franz Coriasco

 

Middle East. Will Oil and Gas Save Lebanon?

A large oil and gas deposits off the Lebanese coast. Tensions with Israel. A massive immigration crisis, pending from the Syrian civil war.

On September 14, an U.S. Navy ship, in this case the destroyer, USS Ramage, docked in Lebanon’s capital Beirut. No American military vessel had performed such a maneuver since 1984 (when U.S. Marines abandoned Lebanon after intervening in the Lebanese civil war as part of the UN mandated Multinational Force). The docking was clearly intended to deliver a message, a rather ‘interventionist’ one aimed at demonstrating the White House’s support for ‘stability’ in the Middle East, as tensions between U.S. ally Israel and the Hezbollah movement increase. The United States is “committed to help the Lebanese people through this period of economic hardship, and to supporting the Lebanese institutions that defend Lebanese sovereignty,” said the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Elizabeth Richards.

US Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage

Yet, Richards ‘betrayed’ a rather overlooked motive behind Washington’s eager show of ‘friendship’ toward the Lebanese people. That motive is oil (and gas): “The security and stability in the East Mediterranean are of utmost importance to the United States and to Lebanon as well, and with regards to the issue of oil derivatives that concerns more than one state in the region, we hope that Lebanon joins in, as the issue of maritime security will soon acquire more importance.”
Indeed, by 2025, according to estimates, Lebanon could become the latest Middle Eastern country to produce oil and gas in commercial quantity. There’s evidence of large oil and gas deposits off the Lebanese coast. Surely, hydrocarbon production would add much needed color to Lebanon’s rather gloomy economic picture. But, it’s a double-edged sword, which has already contributed to worsening, an already tense, relationship with Israel – and possibly even with Syria (though, Iran has the political tools to intervene in the latter). The potential of oil production has, quite literally, extracted another rationale to intensify military tensions between Lebanon and Israel; because, Lebanon has never resolved maritime borders disputes with Israel. Italy’s ENI, France’s Total and Russia’s Novatek (in a 40-40-20 split) are the main investors in unlocking Lebanon’s offshore hydrocarbon wealth. To this effect, France’s President Emmanuel Macron visited Beirut, where his host Prime Minister Saad Hariri signed a letter of intent (and a EUR 400 million line of credit) for the purchase of weapons systems for the purpose of defending the soon to be developed Lebanese oil and gas deposits.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron, right, with Lebanon Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

The oil companies were aware of the potential for dispute when they began investing in the project. But, they did not calculate how far such disputes might reach. That outcome will only become clear, once the drilling is complete and the deposit’s production potential fully understood – and it might be that the more profitable prospects might be those closest to the Israeli border – or the border with Cyprus. Lebanon and Cyprus are both members of the United Nations Sea Convention, while Israel is not. Yet, Beirut and Nicosia are on good terms. And, despite the U.S. Ambassador’s reassuring words (cited above), it’s doubtful that Washington – particularly if Prime Minister Netanyahu manages to form a government coalition, which could be even more hardline than the present, and President Trump remains in office after the 2020 election – might be in a position to ‘offer Beirut a hand’ to solve the foreseeable clash with Israel.
There are international rules mandating how the extractions of oil and gas are to be divided in cases of border disputes,. But, there are also other international conventions concerning border, which Israel regularly violates with total impunity, starting with the construction and annexation of Jewish settlements (Netanyahu wants to annex the illegal settlements that stretch to the edge of the Jordan Valley, facing Jordan and proffered the plan as part of his electoral campaign). Ideally, the companies active in the extraction will divide the resources with the neighboring countries in quotas, but the risks of tensions rising into a bellicose frenzy remains high. For Lebanon, revenues from hydrocarbons represent a much-needed boost. It would allow the country to rely less on loans – and on aid from Iran, whose ability to provide it has suffered lately due to more debilitating sanctions.

It’s questionable, whether or not, hydrocarbons will stimulate the overall economy – with few exceptions, that has not been the experience among oil and gas producing countries – but, it will surely help in attracting more foreign investment. Moreover, there may be some reason for optimism. The oil States in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that have relied on oil production, especially Libya, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, have never managed to diversify their economies. In the cases of Libya and Saudi Arabia, the oil production and the related wealth, did not succeed ton producing more ‘liberal’ societies. Rather, in Lebanon – as in Tunisia and Syria and other non-hydrocarbon reliant MENA States– despite lower income, society has developed in more modern and diversified ways. In other words, there is the potential for hydrocarbons to act as a boost for overall development. Oil proceeds will reduce electricity generation costs, making companies more cost-efficient and, most of all, it will help average Lebanese cut their costs of living.
That said, Lebanon has had an oil and gas industry since the 1940’s, when it served as a center for the distribution of the rising Saudi oil production. Geopolitics interfered as the emergence of the State of Israel in 1948, the refugee crises, the various wars and international interventions put a stop to any plans. Efforts to explore potential oil and gas resources offshore started in the 1960’s and continued throughout the 1970’s, only to be limited by the available technology and, finally, by the civil war in 1982. A resumption of exploration took place in 2004. Once again, a war, the 2006 war with Israel, interrupted the efforts and discouraged new ones as internal confessional tensions appeared ready to explode into another longstanding internal war. The current efforts are the most serious, active and optimistic to date. But, they also hold the seeds of more regional struggle.

Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

Lebanon remains the victim of a massive immigration crisis, pending from the Syrian civil war – estimates suggest some 1.5 million Syrians have fled to Lebanon since 2011 – more recently, but lingering since the very beginning of the Lebanese State (founded in 1946) with the unresolved question of the Palestinian refugees. A budding oil and gas sector might make it easier to manage these situations from an economic perspective, but they will inevitably complicate the social aspects, creating more expectations among the Lebanese autochthonous population. And, given that the confessional socio-political arrangements continue (that is in general terms, Shiite, Christian, Sunni, Druze), the distribution of the eventual proceeds could exacerbate, rather than alleviate, tensions.
Lebanon has never cleared the debt (some 150% of GDP) accumulated during the 1975-1990 civil war, and the conditions for political instability remain. The war in Syria and tensions with Israel have kept the country in a critical situation.

Alessandro Bruno

 

Africa. The Jihadist Threat.

Jihadist groups are expanding in Africa beyond the Sahel, from the Horn to Central and Southern Africa. The Congolese President, Felix Tshisekedi, is calling for “a regional coalition against terrorism”.

On 19 August 2019, the Congolese President Tshisekedi urged fellow heads of state, at a Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Dar Es Salaam, to form “a regional coalition against terrorism” in order to fight the Islamist rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) who have been causing havoc in the Beni area of North Kivu since the 1990s. Tshisekedi proposed to set up a special brigade to that effect.

The Jihadist presence in Central Africa has become a reality. Two days after the murder of two Congolese soldiers at the Ugandan border by ADF rebels, on the 16 April 2019, the Islamic State claimed responsibility and later on for 15 more attacks. In April 2019, IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was seen in a video receiving reports on a new Islamic State “Wilayat” (province) in Central Africa. The list of attacks includes the kidnapping of 15 civilians near Oicha on 23 May and an attack on the Congolese army near Goma on 3 June in which 25 soldiers were injured or killed.  Between 2014 and 2018, over 2,000 people were killed in ADF attacks. ADF received funds from the Islamic State (IS) command in Kenya, says Matteo Puxton, a specialist of the military strategy of the IS. In addition, for several months, ADF fighters have been receiving propaganda material from the IS which has been found by Congolese military in places where the rebels have been hiding.

Analysts explain that ADF is only a local group which claimed allegiance to the Islamic State and had initially a different agenda: to unite the Ugandan Bakonjo and their Banande cousins of Congo into one single separatist state.  Yet, the involvement of elements from outside the region is also a fact. In 2014, UN experts reported indeed the presence of Arabic-speaking  instructors and fighters among the ADF which was born in 1995 from an alliance between the Sudanese-backed Ugandan Freedom Fighters Movement, an Islamic militia formed by members of the Tabligh sect founded in India in 1927 and insurgents from the National Liberation Army of Uganda (NALU) whose sanctuary is the Ruwenzori mountain area and whose common goal was to overthrow Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni.
Yet, ADF’s radicalization is a fairly recent phenomenon. The first symptom was the release in 2016 of a video by ADF combatants indicating that the group had adopted the Arabic name “Madinat Tawheed wal Muwahideen” (City of Monotheism and Monotheists) and featured a flag similar to those used by IS and Boko Haram. Its policy was imposed by the new leader of the group, a 49 year-old former imam at the Malakaz mosque of Kampala, Musa Seka Baluku, a Salafi Jihadist. According to UN experts, the current number of ADF fighters ranges between 400 and 500, including Burundians, Rwandans and Tanzanians.

Burundi is potentially the more exposed country, because of its participation in the anti-Jihadist war against Al Shabab rebels through the involvement of its troops inside the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). On 3 November 2014, the Burundian Minister of the Interior, Edouard Nduwimana already declared that the Jihadists had already infiltrated the country as shown by the arrest in neighbouring Tanzania of two young men who had been recruited by Islamist groups based in Sudan and Somalia.
The Central African Republic belongs to the list of 12 countries which are designated as targets in a video, broadcast in April 2019, of a conversation between Al Baghdadi and one of his deputies. It is only 800 km away from Boko Haram’s sanctuary in North-Eastern Nigeria and the authorities in Bangui fear that the Jihadist group may strike alliances with several rebel groups led by Muslims in the Northern part of the country such as Nouredine Adam’s  Popular Front for the Central African Revival (FPRC), Ali Darass’s Union for Peace in the Central African Republic ( UPC) or al-Khatim’s Patriotic Movement. The constant incursions into the Central African Republic of Bororo Fulani nomadic shepherds, heavily armed and increasingly indoctrinated by Jihadist propaganda, also poses a potential threat. Some of them are directly connected with the UPC, say Western intelligence sources.
But since 2017, the other main jihadist focus is on Mozambique.
And there is evidence of connections between the group which is operating in the Northern mainly Muslim Cabo Delgado province and the ADF group in the DRC.

In January 2019, the police did indeed arrest three Ugandans suspected to be connected to the attacks which have killed more than 250 people and are threatening government plans to exploit the huge oil and gas reserves of the area. One of the suspects told reporters that he was involved with Al-Shabaab in Uganda. In December 2018, local prosecutors in Maputo also unveiled charges against five foreign people whom they accused of leading jihadist attacks in the Cabo Delgado area: (two Ugandans, two Tanzanians and a South African)
The violence in Cabo Delgado has been attributed to a group known in Arabic as Ahlu Sunnah Wa-Jama (ASWJ) which attacked a convoy bringing material to the American oil and gas company Anadarko, forcing it to suspend the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant, to tap resources estimated to be worth $150 billion, alongside other companies such as Italy’s ENI and the China National Petroleum Company. ASWJ’s penetration of Mozambique was facilitated by the historical ties with neighbouring communities in Tanzania where jihadist presence traces back to 1998 and where al-Qaeda perpetrated the bombing of the US embassy. Tanzanian authorities claim to have arrested hundreds of individuals accused of setting up training camps in Mozambique, while Mozambican security forces arrested Tanzanian, Ugandan and Congolese suspects as well.

The first attacks in Cabo Delgado occurred in October 2017. They targeted military barracks and police stations, killing five people. The situation became so serious that on the 2 May 2018, the parliament approved a special anti-terrorism law. Many of these attacks also targeted civilians including children who were decapitated or chopped up. The Maputo government has responded with the deployment of troops but failed so far to halt the violence. Moreover, security forces committed abuses against accused militants, including arbitrary detentions, poor treatment, and summary executions. Several mosques in the country have been closed as a reaction to the attacks, reports the NewYork based organization Human Rights Watch. However, such reaction might be counterproductive and backfire, like in Nigeria and Kenya where responses to similar threats with repressive tactics have only managed to fuel religious and ethnic tensions and provide pretexts for extremist recruiting.

François Misser

 

Towards the Synod. ‘Amazonising the Church’.

The defense of the environment and its peoples. New ministries for the Christian communities. The role of women. Ahead of the Pan-Amazon Synod to be held in Rome in October, we speak with Mons. Evaristo Pascoal Spengler, Bishop of Marajó.

“Some of the aspects that cannot be omitted during this synod: the prophetic and daring position of the Church on integral ecology, the model of occupation and the future of Amazonia, dialogue with the world of science, an agenda of coherent proposals to be presented to governments and the whole of society. A further important question regards the indigenous peoples and other traditional populations of Amazonia. The Church is already in solidarity and allied with their struggle but many do not yet have citizenship either in the Church or in society”, Mons. Evaristo Pascoal tells us.

Dom Evaristo Pascoal Spengler.

The sixty-year-old Brazilian bishop also sees as the internal themes of the Church: “A Church that is missionary, Samaritan, present, in solidarity and that walks with its people.
Today, the Church has the habit of visiting the most distant internal communities once a year. It looks like a ‘tourist Church’ rather than a Church walking with its people.
If the Eucharist is the summit of the Christian life, it is scandalous that the Church does not guarantee thousands of the faithful access to this sacrament”.
Mons. Evaristo Pascoal refers to the working document (Instrumentum Laboris) saying : “ The document opens the debate on a model of non-celibate ordained ministry. Again, the majority of the leaders of the communities in Amazonia are women, but almost always deprived of decision-making and ministries. The Instrumentum laboris calls for reflection on an official ministry for women. Will there be the possibility of a diaconal ministry for women? A Church with an Amazonian face, with indigenous and inculturated ministers, is a challenge that requires bravery in seeking new paths. Then, the training for ordained ministries and that of the laity must be more inculturated, more missionary and closer to the reality of the concrete life of the people”.

The bishop continues: “It is necessary to pass from a Church of indigenism to an indigenous Church that expresses faith in Jesus Christ through the cultural and religious categories of the indigenous peoples. What teachings can the universal Church receive from the spirituality and experience of the indigenous peoples?  The Church in Brazil has had an Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) for 45 years.
It has well served the indigenous cause and expresses a way of being of the Church, not preoccupied with itself, the liturgy, catechesis or other questions, but preoccupied with the great causes of indigenous peoples such as land, culture, health, education and rights. This is the sort of Church we may call indigenous.
If the Church has anything to offer the indigenous peoples, it must also receive something. Living together is always a dialogue. The indigenous peoples are many and it is not easy to generalise. For the sake of simplicity we may say that the indigenous people do not have ‘sanctuaries’ or a sacred space because all is sacred, everything is one great sanctuary. God is present in everything in such a way that there is no such thing as impious life and religious life. Their land is sacred, their history is sacred, their myths are sacred, life is sacred and also time. We can learn from the communities of the indigenous populations, from their sharing, their simplicity of life, their exercise of power, from their communal decision-making and their awareness of belonging to a people. But it is not only the Church that must learn; all society must learn from the indigenous populations, especially as regards the care of our common home”.

It is precisely with the point of view of the environment in mind that Mons. Evaristo says: “In Laudato Si’ the Pope affirms that all is connected: economy, free time, work, social life, spirituality. But all is connected also because the world is one great unit of life: land, air, forests, the sun, the rocks, the immense biodiversity, climate, the stars, the seas, human beings and God. Ecology, on the other hand, is connected to economy, politics, agriculture, engineering, urban life, health, food and spirituality. Everything is connected.  Integral ecology is the whole of ecology, undivided, which concerns the whole person and their relations with everything.
In Amazonia too, all is connected: the forest, the rivers, the soil, the rains, animals, insects and human populations. Today, two models that are different from and even opposed to each other, are being followed in relating to Amazonia, the result of two visions of the world. One is the predatory model. It includes deforestation, the extraction of minerals and oil, and the production of energy. It increases cattle-raising and monoculture which lead to deforestation (already 20% of the forest has been lost). It generates concentrated income, slave labour, sexual exploitation, people trafficking, the poisoning of the soil and the water, the reduction of rainfall (in deforested areas the dry season is getting longer by six days every ten years), the expulsion of people from the forest, the elimination of respect for the law, the deaths of leaders, environmentalists and pastoral agents. Some of the victims of this model: Chico Mendes, Sister Dorothy Stang, Father Josimo, Father Ezechiele Ramin and many others.

The other model is social-environmental–ecological. It values the conservation of the forest and biodiversity, the socialisation of the land and its resources, the redistribution of wealth, the conservation of the traditional populations and the placing of ‘the human being’ in the forest. It develops with a promising market of fruits, coconuts, cra’t products and pulp, medicinal plants, oils, nuts and ecotourism. This model has great potential; it coexists with the forest and interacts with it without destroying it”.
Since 2016, Mons. Evaristo Pascoal has been Bishop of the Prelature of Marajó, an archipelago of more than 2500 islands situated at the mouth of the Amazon River in the region of Pará. His experience in these few years at the service of the local Church has led him to reflect deeply on the meaning of a synodal Church. He says: “The synodal Church is one that seeks new answers to new problems because the old answers were useful for the old problems but they may not help to solve new ones. The synodal Church is an adult Church, mature and co-responsible for the decisions it takes, in which the Pope, being faithful to apostolic tradition, listens to the Church before taking decisions. The synodal Church is a collegial Church that takes decisions in common and respects the autonomy of every situation and organisation. The synodal Church is a Church in which those who exercise a ministry must encourage others, confirm them in the faith, and be the first to serve and to value everyone. The synodal Church is a Church in which all the baptised are responsible for the Church, not only those who are ordained, and in which our baptism makes us equal while services and ministries render us different but not superior.

The synod for Amazonia made us create new verbs or use verbs we did not know such as ‘synodising’ and ‘Amazonising’. ‘Synodising’ means being a Church with a permanent synodal spirit of dialogue, of listening, of constant searching for new paths of evangelisation; a Church that is faithful to the Kingdom and to the prophetic and missionary spirit of Jesus. ‘Amazonising’ means being guided by the spirit of Amazonia and its peoples. Some time ago there was talk of internationalising Amazonia, saying that it is far too important for the world for it to be governed by just a few countries.
Today we are discovering that we must not internationalise Amazonia but Amazonise the Church and the whole world”. (Dario Bossi)

 

Ethiopia. The moment of truth for reformist Abyi.

Abyi Ahmed Ali’s election in April 2018 raised considerable hopes in Ethiopia which he engaged steadfastly on the path of reforms. But as the first free elections are looming in 2020, many challenges need
to be addressed.

When he was elected, the new Prime Minister, Abyi Ahmed whose choice by the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democracy Front (EPRDF) in order to defuse the protests in his home Oromia state, sparked a strong wind of change inside Ethiopia and throughout the region. During the first months of his government, thousands of political prisoners were released, the state of siege was lifted and internet access was restored.

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed.

The wind of change has continued to blow during the entire year 2018. In October, Abyi promoted the election of the first female President of the country, 68 year old, Sahle-Work Zewde, a former representative of the UN Secretary General in Addis Ababa. He also announced the organisation in 2020 of free parliament elections.
On 24 August 2019, the existing parliament passed a new electoral bill which should allow fair competition between the EPRDF, which currently holds all seats in the parliament, and the opposition. The appointment as new head of the electoral board of another woman, Birtukan Mideksa, who comes from the opposition, provides guarantees about the transparency of the process. International partners including the European Union have expressed trust in the electoral process and pledged financial support.
Yet, the main question is whether elections can take place in the current climate of rising insecurity. Last June, the authorities reported a coup attempt in the Amhara region during which the army chief of staff, Gen. Seare Mekonnen , who comes from Tigray like the late Ethiopian president Meles Zenawi, and the regional President, Ambachew Mekonnen, were killed by Amhara nationalists. During the incidents, the state security boss, the Amhara General Asimenew Tsige was killed by Ethiopian government soldiers.

An Ethiopian man reads a newspaper with the pictures of Amhara state President Ambachew Mekonnen, killed in Bahir Dar, and of Army Chief of Staff Seare Mekonnen, who was shot by his bodyguard, on a street in Addis Ababa, June 24, 2019.

Further north, Tigray is close to a state of secession. According to the Paris-based Indian Ocean Newsletter, the regional capital, Mekele, is being ruled as an independent entity.
Ethnic conflicts in various parts of the country are undermining the cohesion of the state. One of the root causes is the frustration amongst members of other ethnic groups seeing that the Tigrayan minority which represents about 6% of the population boasts the best asphalted road and electricity networks.
Since 2018, these conflicts have increased by between one million to three million the number of internal displaced persons, excluding another million refugees, mainly from Eritrea. Within the ruling party, the Oromo who represent the largest ethnic group of the country with approximately 35% of the entire population, and the Amhara who are the second largest with 27%, are competing for influence.

Young men in the traditional attire of southern Ethiopia’s Sidama people.

In the Southern Ethiopia Regional State, members of the Sidama ethnic group which represents 4% of the national population are demanding the creation of a separate state, which would undermine the cohesion of Ethiopia’s ethnic federal state, say political analysts. The demand has led to clashes on 18 July last, between Sidama activists and the police, during which 25 people were killed.
Meanwhile at the border with Somalia, ex-Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels which temporarily gave up the armed struggle, continue to claim the right of self- determination for their region.
In light of these protests, the government still reverts to all its repression tactics. On 22 June 2019, an internet shutdown was imposed by the government, following the alleged attempted coup in the Amhara region. In the aftermath, at least two journalists were detained under the country’s repressive anti-terrorist law and over 200 people were arrested. On the diplomatic front, there is no doubt that under Abyi’s rule, Ethiopia’s relationship with its neighbours has completely changed. In July 2018, the first commercial flight between Addis and Asmara was inaugurated. On 9 July of that year, a peace agreement was signed between both capitals, ending two decades of conflict and the border was reopened on the 11 September.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (L) in Khartoum for talks with the Chief of the Sudanese Transitional Military Council, Lt. Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

Ethiopia also played an important role in the Sudanese transition which followed President Omar Al-Bashir’s fall.  Abyi Ahmed visited Khartoum and the leaders of the military of the Forces for Freedom and Change and appointed Ambassador Mahmoud Dirir as mediator. He was applauded on the 18 August 2019 at the ceremony of signature of the transition deal between the military junta and the leaders of the protest movement. Meanwhile, relationships with Kenya are casting a shadow on the regional map. Last August, fighting took place in the Somalian port of Kismayo between both armies which represent the pillars of the African Union peacekeeping mission AMISOM.  Further tension with Kenya is caused by Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) rebels from Ethiopia who have established a sanctuary in the Northern Kenya Marsabit county. In May 2019, some 500 militias of the Issa ethnic group, backed by Djibouti army officers, also attacked several villages on the Awash-Gawani road and dozens of people died in the incidents.  Another threat is posed by attempts from Somali jihadists to exploit ethnic tension in Ethiopia in retaliation for Addis Ababa’s involvement in the war against Al Shabab. In August 2019, Islamic State militants announced in a video that they would release propaganda in Amharic in order to recruit followers in Ethiopia.

There are also huge challenges ahead on the economic and environmental fronts. As observes the French political scientist, Roland Marchal from the Paris-based National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), over the last two decades, Ethiopia has had a vibrant 8-10% GDP growth but unfortunately, inequalities increased during the period which contributed to fuel revolts. Besides, the government has to face the considerable debt burden of seven parastatals in the airline, telecom, power, sugar, railways and shipping sectors amounting to 24 billion dollars including eleven billion owed to foreign countries, especially China. In order to cope with the challenge, the government plans to privatise these companies but such a measure could trigger retrenchments and provoke new waves of protests.

The challenge is probably exacerbated by the projected demographic increase: the current population of 100 million inhabitants is indeed expected to double by 2050. In such a difficult context, Ethiopia has to deal with the management of its water resources. A recent study by professors Meron Teferi Taye from Addis Ababa University and Ellen Dryer from Oxford University warns that the Awash basin which is home to the capital city and 17% of the national population will be hotter, drier and more water stressed. Water availability will continue to decrease progressively until at least the end of the century.
Therefore, both scientists recommend the development of climate resilient policies for allocating water, and planning for reduced water availability. The government has already engaged in a policy to create conditions to bring about increased rainfall and fight erosion. Last July, Ethiopians planted 350 million trees in a single day, as part of a national initiative to fight environmental degradation and climate change, which aims to grow 4 billion trees across the country.

François Misser

 

 

Which Kurdish populations?

There has never been a Kurdish State. But, there has been and still exists a Kurdish nation. The Kurds have occupied the mountains that extend from western Iran to eastern Turkey through Iraq and Syria for centuries.  because political boundaries have worked that way, and there is no Kurdish nation, as such, although they have occupied their mountains for at least a thousand years.

The Kurds were a thorn in the side of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The Kurds have also engaged in a war of independence, to form their own state, for well over forty years. If the American invasion of Iraq has facilitated Kurdish autonomy from Baghdad.
Many oil companies have been dealing exclusively with Erbil, the capital of what was Iraqi Kurdistan, now ever more effectively ruled by Masoud Barzani and his Kurdistan Regional Government.

Indeed, on paper, the Kurds still dream about a united or greater Kurdistan. But, there are many different visions of such a Kurdish entity, depending on the origin (i.e. Iraqi, Syrian, Turkish, Iranian etc.) Doubtless, it will be hard if not impossible for other actors to accept that the Kurdish dream come true. So, there is a real risk that the Kurds and their nationalist aspirations will be crushed by the interests of other actors which are deciding the fates of Syria and Iraq.
That said, there’s no question that part of the merit for releasing areas of northwestern Iraq from the yoke of ISIS and other islamists must go to the Kurdish militias. They will expect compensation for acting as the vanguard and supplying infantry against the self-proclaimed Caliphate. Of course, the Kurds received logistical, financial, military and political support from many powers. But, the United States and the Western countries provided the lion’s share of that aid. Without this backing, the Kurds would not have achieved their victories. Still, the Americans have had to confront the issue of Kurdish nationalism and objections to it when they invaded Iraq.

Therefore, while the Americans will likely agree to demands from Syrian Kurds for international recognition for a self-administered territorial status in northern Syria (Rojava). They will probably object to similar expectations from Iraqi Kurds. The latter will no doubt express their right to self-determination, namely to form a true independent state of Iraqi Kurdistan. The risk is that the war against ISIS could evolve into a new phase of war that could alter the political geography of the region, damaging the ‘peace’ that the West and Russia want to establish.
The Iraqi government has promptly opposed any action by the Kurds in the direction of independence, judged unconstitutional. For their part, Iraqi Kurds held a ‘non-binding’ referendum in September 2017. Over 93% of voters chose secession from Iraq.
Turkey has called the referendum a “fatal mistake” that would help make the region more unstable. In fact, Ankara fears that an independent Kurdish State (as opposed to the current autonomous region) of Kurdistan would urge Kurds within its own borders
to join it. The Saudis have seized the opportunity.

They have expressed support for the Iraqi Kurds’ independence referendum, securing a well-tested military ally in a region where it has had none so far. Such a move would most certainly prompt Tehran to oppose the independence of Kurdistan. This would be a rare case where Tehran and Washington agree, because Trump’s Special Envoy to the International Coalition Against the Islamic State, Brett McGurk, made it clear his government did not approve the referendum. The latter is torn between the Kurds and Iraqi government. The U.S. has made it clear that it much prefers a united and federal and stable Iraq to one that switches from fighting ISIS to Kurds.

ISIS in Iraq

After wreaking havoc from northern Iraq to eastern Syria, taking over the cities of Mosul and Raqqa, ISIS is finally in trouble in both Iraq and Syria. Indeed, it is hard to extricate the fate of ISIS without discussing both Iraq and Syria. But, this analysis shall focus on the Group’s Iraq manifestation, for it marks the final stage of the war that G.W. Bush began. ISIS is an ideological-religious group, rooted in apocalyptic eschatology. Its actions were amplified by the conditions of the Iraq War and its inherent fragility, rooted in its very inception from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and the Sykes-Picot agreement. The Islamic State’s  demise is not on doubt.

The major concern o this latest chapter of the war is the future of Iraq after the Islamic State or the Caliphate that ISIS carved out of the lands that the Assyrians once ruled. ISIS will temporarily disband. Many of its fighters will have died fighting, some will be captured. But, if the Iraqi government fails to radically change the conditions that allowed fueled the ascent of ISIS, there will be new editions and chapters of the war in Iraq. And the Shiites who dominated Iraqi politics today should understand this better than most: the same marginalization that Sunni dominated governments adopted against Shiites, fueled the socio-economic conditions that enabled their radicalization.

Iraq’s Next War Could be Just Around the Corner

The next war in Iraq might take a different name; it might feature different combatants. Yet, its result will still be more war. Baghdad, ever torn by ethnic and religious conflicts, has still not recovered from the instability after the American (and ‘Coalition of the willing’) intervention in 2003 and the fall of Saddam Hussein. It won’t magically recover after ISIS. The Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds will contend what is left of Mesopotamia.  Saddam Hussein was hanged on December 30, 2006, when the country was already in the grip of al-Qaida terror and sectarian vendettas from which ISIS rose, thanks also to the strategic support of former Baathist military officers.

Mosul Showed the Failure of the Iraqi Peace on Live TV

Mosul represents the Islamic State’s blitzkrieg-like advance into northern Iraq in 2014. Mosul offered little resistance, because such were the grievances of local Sunnis with the elected Shiite dominated government and the sectarian political schemes it played, that ISIS was all but welcomed. ISIS even established basic order, from ordering vehicle traffic to restoring basic services.

The City of Mosul

The fact that ISIS’s conquest was televised, turned the takeover of Mosul into the kind of media event that established the Group’s reputation. Mosul, even more than Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State (in Syria) was a symbol of ‘prestige’, which inspired many volunteers from all over the world to join ISIS. It is in Mosul at the Hadbaa mosque that ISIS’ s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed the establishment of the Islamic State. It was an actual bona-fide Caliphate, which also distinguished it from al-Qaida, which would from then on be relegated to ISIS’s amateurish cousins. Mosul became the foundation of ISIS’s military and psychological warfare.
Yet, Mosul is mostly a symbol of weakness – the weakness of the Iraqi army and the corruption of the post-Saddam government. In June 2014, as ISIS advanced, the now largely Shiite dominated Iraqi army retreated, leaving the unarmed civilian population to their fate. ISIS killed unarmed civilians, which would deepen sectarian wounds. Now, the problem in Mosul remains largely political. While military forces that fought and defeated ISIS, the government’s political ability to truly establish the kind of control needed for political, social and physical reconstruction may not be as strong – even if Haider al-Abadi replaced the widely criticized Nouri al-Maliki (for excessive Shiite partisanship, ignoring the demands and rights of Sunnis) in 2014. Al-Abadi , in turn, was replaced by Adil Abdel-Mahdi, a former member of Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), an Iraqi Shiite Political Party.
As ISIS has subsided, the governments were unable to prevent revenge along sectarian/confessional lines. There are militias, parties or tribes everywhere. Some of these militias are Shiite. In Fallujah for example, Al-Hashd al-Shaabi (The Shiite dominated Popular Mobilization Forces) killed and tortured hundreds of Sunni men – using methods not unlike those of ISIS, just in a smaller scale, exerting violence against Sunni civilians and combatants alike, perpetuating sectarian divisions.
Then there is Iran. Its intentions are ambiguous in Iraq. Iran is not going to back down from its expansionistic tendency in post-Saddam Iraq. Iran sees itself as a protector of Shi’ite interests.
It wants to continue overseeing it. Not surprisingly, the anti-ISIS coalition included thousands of volunteers, who report to Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani, who took orders from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself.

Ultimately, the demise of ISIS could match the curse that Bush met after the American invasion. He declared ‘mission accomplished’. He won the war and lost the peace. Iraq over the past 39 years has witnessed the use of all weapons expect for nuclear. Mustard gas, white phosphorus bombs, depleted uranium shells deployed from aircraft and cruise missiles of various generations. But medieval style violence was also in abundance, enough to make Hulagu Khan, the Mongol leader, who laid siege to Baghdad in 1258, blush.  The 2003 war was but the preface to over a decade of hundreds of explosions: mortars, car bombs, suicide bombers, beheadings, rape in an orgy of f ethnic and sectarian cleansing. Iraq has been the pinnacle of barbarism and fanaticism. Million Iraqis have become refugees abroad or internally displaced. The irony is that it still has more oil resources than Saudi Arabia.
Alessandro Bruno

 

 

Music. Niger. Bombino, the rock in the desert.

He is considered one of the best living blues guitarists. He has succeeded in combining the nomadic culture with sounds that charm the largest international audiences.

His real name is Goumar Almoctar, but in the world of music he is called Bombino.  A Niger Tuareg, he was born in Agadez, in the heart of the Sahara, on 1 January 1980.  His childhood was not an easy one amid tribal tensions and unending coups in the state of Niger that forced him to emigrate with his family to Algeria and later to Libya. Here he worked as a shepherd for some time, passing the time learning to play his old guitar: this self-taught apprenticeship proved invaluable when, in the late nineties, he could finally return home. In the meantime, the ‘Desert Blues’ – a mixtures of ethnic sounds and Anglo-US rock music – had become second nature to him and he based his music on that of Jimi Hendrix and Mark Knopfler, then leader of  Dire Straits.

His debut album ‘Group Bombino’, issued in 2009, was followed by another recorded live in Agadez, but it was it was only with the next album, ‘Nomad’ (produced in  2013), that Almoctar succeeded in gaining the attention of serious critics due to his highly individual style and remarkable technique.
Soon afterwards he toured the United States, also arousing the interest of the European scene. His reputation grew with various collaborations, even with such leading figures as Keith Richards, Robert Plant, Stevie Wonder and endless invitations to the most famous festivals in the world. A few months ago, his fifth production was launched on the international market: the album ‘Deran’, recorded in Casablanca and followed by a new world tour.

Now the biggest star of Desert Blues, Bombino has unquestionably succeeded in combining his own nomadic culture with sounds capable of filling the largest western venues: his is a modern style that respects its own traditions and contains original sounds, without reducing them to mere exotic entertainment. It is from here that, besides rock and blues, other sorts of music emerge such as funk and reggae (the so-called Tuareggae, as some critics call it).
Bombino is undoubtedly a virtuoso rock guitarist (The  New York Times described him as ‘one of the best living guitarists’, but always used his talent to serve his inspiration, often strengthening it with reference to his own life experience, the history of his people and of a special ethnic group, ‘The Blue People’, as the Tuaregs are called. Further interest is added by his concern for the social problems of the times, especially those concerned with large-scale migrations and the conditions of refugees which he himself experienced.

In this sense, the excellent album ‘Deran’ represents a sort of home-coming, being recorded entirely in his mother tongue, Tamasheq. The title itself, which we may translate as ‘Best Wishes’, is meant to be a small sign of hope for North Africa which is afflicted by socio-political and humanitarian disasters of epic proportions and, at the same time, an act of love towards a culture that is the patrimony of all of humanity
On April 1, 2016 Bombino released “Azel” the album brings Bombino’s guitar playing to the forefront while staying true to his desert blues roots as he sings in his native language of Tamashek. In 2017 he release La Sombra and last year, his sixth studio album, Deran. It was received with wide-spread acclaim for both its musicality and its embracement of culture and heritage.

Franz Coriasco

 

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