The World's Most Complicated Conflict Gets Murkier as Kagame Looks for an Excuse

 I’ve spent the better part of the last four days working in Gulu, a town that feels refreshingly removed from the current conflict in neighboring DR Congo, despite the legacies of the LRA insurgency having long ago spilled across the borders. When I left on Friday there was a hope that Museveni and Kagme, Uganda and Rwanda’s respective autocrats who have been accused by the United Nations of supporting M23 in Eastern DR Congo, would provide an opportunity for the rebels to leave their strategic stronghold in Goma. Indeed, along with other less influential but perhaps more impartial leaders involved with the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, a deadline to vacate Goma was set for midnight on Monday.

Since I’ve returned from Gulu, the murky realities of the current DR Congo crisis have expanded and more actors have reportedly become involved. M23, a rebel group comprised of Tutsi Congolese fighters with logistical and material backing provided by Rwanda (allegedly, of course), have refused to leave Goma until their demands have been met. Among these demands are a release of all political prisoners, dissolution of the electoral commission enacted by DR Congo’s President Kabila, and the withdraw of the FDLR from their current positions throughout the region. None of these demands will be easily met, even if they were agreed upon, which is unlikely. This morning, Rwanda accused FDLR troops of entering its country from positions in Eastern DR Congo and attacking numerous villages before being chased away by Rwanda’s army, the RDF. FDLR’s spokesman has refuted the accusation and at present there are no independent reports.

The thing that scares me the most in high tension, pre-conflict situations (I use this to reference a direct military confrontation between Rwanda and DR Congo, as one could easily argue that Rwanda’s support of M23 is tantamount to cross-border warfare) is the emergence of an excuse. Last week reports emerged that the Congolese military, the FARDC, shelled positions along its border with Rwanda, although there was no escalation of conflict from Kigali. Then again, there didn’t need to be with M23 sleeping comfortably across the border. This time I’m not so sure Kagame will allow FARDC incursions into his territory, if there even were cross-border raids by the Hutu rebels. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s used FARDC activities as an excuse for wider conflict escalation.

The conflict in DR Congo is easily one of the most, if not the most, complicated, devastating and under-reported conflicts in the world. The size, scope and duration of the conflict are hard to wrap your head around at the most elementary of levels. Take into consideration Belgian colonialism, the Cold War involvement of the United States and Belgium in Patrice Lumumba’s assassination, the sheer amount of state and non-state actors involved since 1996 as well as their roles and ambitions in the conflict (if they have any at all besides general anarchy), the implications of conflict on mineral and resource trading, and the devastating human toll of the conflict, and you still barely scratch the surface.

And here we go again, as it seems. 

As of present, the FARDC’s spokesperson has stated that M23’s refusal to leave Goma is an act of war, and they will respond in kind. I highly doubt the FARDC - an incredibly inept fighting force that suffered one of its most embarrassing defeats when a rebel group less than a year old took Goma without firing a shot – will launch an incursion into Goma, especially given the amount of soldiers and policemen who have defected to M23 since they took Goma. The situation is so fluid, however, that from time I finish writing this to the time I’ve finished posting it, everything could change.

Hopefully, Kagame doesn’t have his excuse yet, or at least doesn’t use it. 

The Gaza Narrative

Over at Al Jazeera, Belen Fernandez has written an opinion piece falling in line with most of what Al Jazerra produces on the Israel/Palestine debate: The seemingly one-sided aggression carried out by the state of Israel on the defenseless occupied territories, in this case Gaza. Her piece, “Terror in Gaza”, follows a narrative that has been read all too often, mentioning the inordinate amount of casualties inflicted on Palestinians in comparison to Israelis and indiscriminate fire that is currently bombarding the small, blocked off enclave of Gaza. Her outcry is justified, there is no denying that. What is unjustified, however, is the singular narrative she presents, as any first-time reader into the conflict would be hard pressed to find any fault pointed at militant factions within Gaza.

Jeffery Goldberg has recently pointed out this media bias in favor of the occupied territories, although he does a good job of pointing some of the blame at Israel for that one-sided story. The brutal occupation of Palestine, the “security” wall, settler violence, West Bank expansion, the prison-like conditions imposed on Gaza, and the heavy handed responses to generally failed terrorist acts lead many people to view Palestinians as the marginalized underdog. And they are, but that’s not the entire story.

What is so often overlooked by supporters of Palestine (and I am one of them, although that support comes from a hope for future peace of an oppressed people, not from an anti-Israeli standpoint) is the ugly side to Palestinian self-defense or retaliation efforts, most notably in violent forms taken on by radical Islamist organizations. The romantic term, “Existence is resistance, and resistance is not terrorism” is plastered on pro-Palestinian t-shirts and bumper stickers, but its logic is painfully short-sighted: Resistance can and many times has taken on the form of terrorism. The Anti-Defamation League has a long list of terrorist actions carried out by Hamas against the citizens of Israel, and these are just major episodes. Regular rocket attacks aimed at Israeli population centers carried out by Hamas and more militant groups such as Islamic Jihad rarely hit their targets, but that isn’t the point. The point is that innocent Israelis living in range of Qassam fire - and as recently seen, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem can now be reached with Fajr-5 rockets – live in constant fear and danger. For as many rockets that fail to hit their mark, it only takes one successful hit to end a life.

The general response when one comes to the defense of Israel is toward the obvious, with the illegal occupation or settler expansion generally taking the front foot. Next up is Israel’s response to terrorist actions, which are generally ruthless and inflict high civilian causalities. These responses are not misguided, and I am certainly no Israel apologist. I can only imagine that an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza, one that is looking increasingly likely, will result in a horrendous amount of civilian causalities, and the civil sector of Gaza will become more than crippled. Fernandez is of course correct when she cities a ratio of 400:1 Palestinian to Israeli deaths during Operation Cast Lead. This negligence, if it is to occur again, should be denounced, and those responsible within the IDF for raining down hell on the citizens of Gaza should face trial for war crimes.

What can’t be left out of the equation, however, is the fact that on a base level, Israel is responding to terrorist actions carried out against its citizens. Decrying the inordinate response by Israel is important, but using it as a justification for continued terrorist acts by Hamas is unacceptable. Regardless of who started the conflict (Robert Write attempts to shed light on this, although I find it to be a fruitless endeavor. Where do you start? A few weeks ago? 1967? 1948? Biblical times?), the reality is that many Israeli citizens, and to be fair their Palestinian counterparts, live in daily fear of attack. As long as radical elements in Gaza place symbolic but strategically negligible terrorist attacks ahead of the citizens that live within their small open air prison, Israeli reprisal attacks will continue unabated. This doesn’t excuse the bombardment of a dense, impoverished enclave, but it does force a narrative into which both Israelis and Palestinians are held accountable.

Fernandez ends her piece with the following:

“Israel's exclusive rights to the term "self-defence" and institutionalised habit of inverting logic have resulted in the construction of a narrative according to which the fatal bulldozing of American peace activists in Gaza and the murder in international waters of Gaza-bound humanitarian workers armed with construction tools, marbles and a metal pail are excused as defensive manoeuvers. 

Unfortunately, for the residents of Gaza who have been warned by IDF leaflets to "avoid being present in the vicinity of… terror organisations that pose a risk to your safety", this does not appear to be possible as long as the Palestinian territory exists in the vicinity of the state of Israel.”

While denouncing Israel’s constructs of history, she creates her own. It is unfortunate that the residents of Gaza have no choice but to pray that their livelihoods are not completely shattered within the coming days, weeks, and months. But her reductionist viewpoint, insinuating that the Israel will not stop its campaign of violence until Gaza ceases to exist, leaves out the narrative of Israeli citizens cowering in bomb shelters. Until light is shed equally amongst both frightened parties, the Gaza narrative will continue to be one-sided, but the citizens of both states will suffer.  

My Article in the Independent

If you care what everyday Ugandans think of the failed state argument in their country (I can't imagine you do unless you live here), the article I wrote in the Independent can be accessed here:
http://www.independent.co.ug/column/comment/6790-the-failed-state-argument-?format=pdf

The Election Turns Me Into a Pathetic Patriotic Ethnocentric

 I apologize (to myself more than anyone, really), but I’m going to break two of my cardinal rules for political and international writing: Nationalistic patriotic clichés, and “us” and “them” comparisons. They can be hard to avoid, especially as an American watching an election at 4am in Kampala. So if this brief essay comes off like an average Facebook status written by a wide-eyed Westerner just realizing that the local realities of his foreign friends are different than his own perception of events with international implications, it’s partially because that’s how I feel. That and the three hours of sleep make any sort of critical thought a tedious chore at best.

For the first cliché, I’m incredibly proud of the United States, for the first time in a long time. Some of that has to do with the fact that this was the first election I voted in – take that, pretentiously apathetic 20-year-old me! That said, the implications of this election were the greatest in a post-9/11 setting that still sees the populace finding its feet. Of course there has been room for only three elections since then, but a Romney success was a very terrifying prospect to me, on the international and also domestic and social fronts. Conservatives will cry foul on the economy, possibly rightly so, but the fear that I felt in the early hours of the morning, with Florida teetering precariously, was very real. I’m not an Obama supporter by any stretch, but a Romney administration and its novice foreign policy team facing a potential early showdown with Iran was an unsettling prospect; the erosion of rights for women, homosexuals, and every other category of non-WASP would have just been the unavoidable icing on the cake.

So, I’m proud the country voted the way it did. I’m proud of the marriage equality initiatives of Maryland and Maine, I’m proud of the way Romney accepted defeat (quite graciously, given the fact that his campaign team was so ignorantly confident they decided to only write a victory speech), and I’m proud of the way that President Obama acknowledged the difficult road ahead. There is a change of progress in the air as our generation makes greater inroads toward “the majority”, and this election showed that the Republican party is doomed if they can’t shift with the times. I’m sure they will, however, and I’m sure they’ll take the executive office in 2016. These things happen, but today was a day to celebrate the progress of equality.

On to the second writing faux pas: Watching this election with two Ugandan friends who both lived through the terrors of Obote and Amin, and the tumultuous and seemingly never ending Museveni regime, was a joy for me. Having a different perspective on the American political system was a great experience, as was sharing the joy of an Obama victory with a woman in her seventies. Margaret, the mother of my landlord, woke up around 6am to check in on the election, told me she couldn’t sleep out of anticipation, and settled into the living room – her living room; she was letting me watch the election in her house at an un-godly hour – soon after. She stayed glued to the television, with myself, her son and my three roommates, for another five hours, refusing to go to the market until she could watch Obama speak. All throughout Romney’s concession speech, she smiled and commented on how polite the whole affair was playing out; her son joked that if it was Uganda, there would be tear gas instead of miniature American flags held by dejected supporters.

This wasn’t their first American election by any stretch, but the practice of non-violent transfer of power hasn’t occurred in Uganda in 50 years.  It’s coming, whenever Museveni decides to step down, but after living through Hydra’s rule for so long, it’s easy to see their joy in the civility of the whole thing. I suppose I’m looking forward to the day when Ugandan politics trades voter intimidation for super-PACs, and I imagine they are too.