coupures 16 mai 2007 (eng)

Where anti-Arab prejudice and oil make the difference
The contrast in western attitudes to Darfur and Congo shows how illiberal our concept of intervention really is Roger HowardWednesday May 16, 2007The Guardian
In a remote corner of Africa, millions of civilians have been slaughtered in a conflict fuelled by an almost genocidal ferocity that has no end in sight. Victims have been targeted because of their ethnicity and entire ethnic groups destroyed - but the outside world has turned its back, doing little to save people from the wrath of the various government and rebel militias. You could be forgiven for thinking that this is a depiction of the Sudanese province of Darfur, racked by four years of bitter fighting. But it describes the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has received a fraction of the media attention devoted to Darfur.

The UN estimates that 3 million to 4 million Congolese have been killed, compared with the estimated 200,000 civilian deaths in Darfur. A peace deal agreed in December 2002 has never been adhered to, and atrocities have been particularly well documented in the province of Kivu - carried out by paramilitary organisations with strong governmental links. In the last month alone, thousands of civilians have been killed in heavy fighting between rebel and government forces vying for control of an area north of Goma, and the UN reckons that another 50,000 have been made refugees.
How curious, then, that so much more attention has been focused on Darfur than Congo. There are no pressure groups of any note that draw attention to the Congolese situation. In the media there is barely a word. The politicians are silent. Yet if ever there were a case for the outside world to intervene on humanitarian grounds alone - "liberal interventionism" - then surely this is it.
The key difference between the two situations lies in the racial and ethnic composition of the perceived victims and perpetrators. In Congo, black Africans are killing other black Africans in a way that is difficult for outsiders to identify with. The turmoil there can in that sense be regarded as a narrowly African affair.
In Darfur the fighting is portrayed as a war between black Africans, rightly or wrongly regarded as the victims, and "Arabs", widely regarded as the perpetrators of the killings. In practice these neat racial categories are highly indistinct, but it is through such a prism that the conflict is generally viewed.
It is not hard to imagine why some in the west have found this perception so alluring, for there are numerous people who want to portray "the Arabs" in these terms. In the United States and elsewhere those who have spearheaded the case for foreign intervention in Darfur are largely the people who regard the Arabs as the root cause of the Israel-Palestine dispute. From this viewpoint, the events in Darfur form just one part of a much wider picture of Arab malice and cruelty.
Nor is it any coincidence that the moral frenzy about intervention in Sudan has coincided with the growing military debacle in Iraq - for as allied casualties in Iraq have mounted, so has indignation about the situation in Darfur. It is always easier for a losing side to demonise an enemy than to blame itself for a glaring military defeat, and the Darfur situation therefore offers some people a certain sense of catharsis.
Humanitarian concern among policymakers in Washington is ultimately self-interested. The United States is willing to impose new sanctions on the Sudan government if the latter refuses to accept a United Nations peacekeeping force, but it is no coincidence that Sudan, unlike Congo, has oil - lots of it - and strong links with China, a country the US regards as a strategic rival in the struggle for Africa's natural resources; only last week Amnesty International reported that Beijing has illicitly supplied Khartoum with large quantities of arms.
Nor has the bloodshed in Congo ever struck the same powerful chord as recent events in Somalia, where a new round of bitter fighting has recently erupted. At the end of last year the US backed an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia to topple an Islamic regime that the White House perceived as a possible sponsor of anti-American "terrorists".
The contrasting perceptions of events in Congo and Sudan are ultimately both cause and effect of particular prejudices. Those who argue for liberal intervention, to impose "rights, freedom and democracy", ultimately speak only of their own interests. To view their role in such altruistic terms always leaves them open to well-founded accusations of double standards that damage the international standing of the intervening power and play into the hands of its enemies.
By seeing foreign conflicts through the prism of their own prejudices, interventionists also convince themselves that others see the world in the same terms. This allows them to obscure uncomfortable truths, such as the nationalist resentment that their interference can provoke. This was the case with the Washington hawks who once assured us that the Iraqi people would be "dancing on the rooftops" to welcome the US invasion force that would be bringing everyone "freedom".
Highly seductive though the rhetoric of liberal interventionism may be, it is always towards hubris and disaster that it leads its willing partners.
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In DRC, reporter suspended after airing dissident general’s interview
New York, May 15, 2007—The broadcast on public radio of an interview with dissident Congolese Gen. Laurent Nkunda led officials in the eastern border town of Goma to indefinitely suspend a reporter last week, according to the press freedom group Journaliste en Danger (JED) and local journalists. This month, CPJ named the DRC one of the world’s worst backsliders on press freedom.Michel Mutabesha Bakuza, a reporter with public broadcaster Radiotélévision Nationale Congolaise (RTNC), was indefinitely suspended on May 8 for allegedly “breaching the station’s editorial policy” after he aired Nkunda’s interview “without prior consent from the station’s management,” RTNC Goma Director Gabriel Lukeka told CPJ. In the interview, Nkunda criticized the government over the pace of the integration of his troops into the Congolese armed forces, according to international news reports. Lukeka denied the suspension was linked to the content of the interview and characterized the move as “purely administrative.” He threatened to extend the suspension to three months if the issue were more publicly discussed. The state-funded RTNC is the sole public broadcaster in the DRC. A 1996 media law prohibits public broadcasters from “being monopolized in favor of an opinion or an interest group,” according to CPJ research. “The suspension of Michel Mutabesha Bakuza contradicts authorities’ assertions that press freedom is respected, and it appears to contravene DRC’s own media law,” CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said. “We call on RTNC to immediately lift this suspension.”
In March, the co-hosts of a morning RTNC news show in Butembo, 825 miles (1,330 km) north of Goma, were briefly detained and ordered to censor their reporting over a broadcast critical of the local mayor, according to CPJ research.
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Angola to rehabilitate road connecting with DRC

The Angolan government has decided to rehabilitate the Cabassango-Zenze do Lucala Road leading to its northern neighboring country the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), an official said here on Tuesday.
Joaquim Sebastiao, general director of the National Roads Institute of Angola, told reporters that the 66-km-long road "will soon be connected with DRC when the rehabilitation project starts in June this year" in the northern Cabinda Province.
Sebastiao said the project will be completed in 19 months with an estimated investment of 49.5 million U.S. dollars.
"With this road, it will be possible to set up a future link with a SADC (Southern African Development Community) regional south-north corridor between Cape Town (South Africa) and Kinshasa (DRC capital), through the Angolan territory, across the Santa Clara (in Cunene Province) border and Mbanza Soso in the northern province of Zaire," he said.
The official assured that the road will have a high quality consistency to enable a comfortable trip for users.
When the 27-year civil war which claimed around one million people's lives and displaced four millions others was ended in 2002, infrastructures such as roads, power generation and water supply facilities in Angola were badly destroyed, dramatically slowing down the pace of economic growth in the southwestern African country.
Source: Xinhua
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DRC soldiers killed in clashes 16 May 2007
KINSHASA - Local militia allied to Rwandan Hutu rebels have killed four Congolese soldiers during clashes in a volatile eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a military official said.
"These four soldiers, killed on Friday and Saturday in clashes, are part of the former 81st brigade positioned at Ngungu," Delphin Kahimbi, the army’s second-in-command in Nord-Kivu province said.
Ngungu lies 40 kilometres west of Goma, Nord-Kivu’s main town.
The UN mission to the DRC (Monuc) meanwhile announced Tuesday that it was sending an extra 800 peacekeepers to Nord-Kivu amid a worsening humanitarian and security situation.
The reinforcement aims "principally to respond to the major challenge of protecting civilian populations," Sylvie van den Wildenberg, Monuc spokeswoman in Nord-Kivu told AFP.
Monuc is "very worried by movements of militias in the province" and "the increase in insecurity for civilian populations," she added.
Until January, members of the 81st brigade were loyal to renegade Congolese general Laurent Nkunda. They had been in Ngungu awaiting integration into the army, Kahimbi said, following a January accord with Kinshasa.
But tensions are high in Nord-Kivu where Nkunda has threatened to withdraw his troops from the DRC armed forces, sparking fears of renewed violence.
Nkunda, a Tutsi who fought Rwanda’s Hutu-led military during the 1994 genocide, broke ranks with the Congolese authorities after the 1998-2003 regional war.
He said he sought to protect ethnic Tutsis in the east from attacks by other population groups.
A warrant has been issued for his arrest for war crimes allegedly committed by his troops in 2004.
Since early 2007, five so-called mixed brigades, half of whose members are ex-Nkunda loyalists, have been deployed in Nord-Kivu, where they have led offensives against Rwandan Hutu rebels.
The rebel militia has in turn increased its attacks on civilians.
"The army pursued these militia and their FDLR allies (Hutu-led Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) and continues to conduct operations in the region," Kahimbi said.
He attributed the Ngungu attack to another local militia. the Mai Mai. But a military observer in the region said "the situation is extremely confused and it is difficult to say who attacked first."
Both the Mai Mai and the FDLR are opposed to the deployment of ex-rebels loyal to Nkunda within the ’mixed’ brigades, arguing it gives the renegade general control of the region.
"The Ngungu attack could be an excuse for reinforcing the presence of Nkunda men in this region close to Sud-Kivu... to extend their zone of control," the observer said.
Nkunda’s party has said the mixing up of forces has failed and has accused the government of not taking responsibility for its troops.
Nord-Kivu, which has been the source of rebellions that have twice plunged the country into war, is again "on the edge of the abyss" and the situation is "explosive," said one Western military observer recently who had asked not to be named.
Sapa-AFP
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Congo-Kinshasa: A World Bank Delegation in Ituri to Bolster DDR Process

United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa)
15 May 2007Posted to the web 15 May 2007
Carmine Camerini
On Friday May 11 2007, a joint CONADER-World Bank delegation visited the Kwandroma transit site, 90 km north-east of Bunia in Ituri district, to assess the evolution of the disarmament process on the field.
Following the recent progress in the integration process of ex FNI militias of former Commander Peter Karim, now with the rank of Colonel in the FARDC, the MDRP partners (Multi Donors Reinstatement Programs) have just expressed interest in considering the possibility to resume the financing of demobilization and reinsertion phases.
After a series of meetings with different components of the Ituri Task Force, the delegation went to Kwandroma accompanied, among others, by General Mayala, FARDC Ituri Operations Commander, to meet 205 ex FNI presently under training in the transit site. They will be passing by the pre-brassage center of Rwampara (12 km south of Bunia) before flying to the brassage center of Lukusa, in Kisangani.
During the meeting with Colonel Peter Karim, the latter estimated about 1,000 the number of FNI militias still in the bush and affirmed that 280 among them are waiting to join the process. On the other hand, the delegation asked him to provide a list of FNI combatants and the weapons that are still in their possession.
As far as the issue of children in the armed forces is concerned, 1,571 have been disarmed and demobilized in the ranks of the FNI since July 2006. Similarly, 482 children have been disarmed and demobilized in the ranks of FRPI and 154 in the ranks of MRC since January 2007.
In total, more than 10,000 child soldiers have demobilized in Ituri since September 2004.
Hence, the 40% ratio of child soldiers in the Ituri armed groups, which is given as a reference figure, doesn't seem to fit with facts. In reality, the demobilization process shows that the rate is clearly higher. For example, concerning the FNI of Peter Karim, the official figures state 1,556 children demobilized out of the 2,357. This gives a percentage of about 66% of children recruited in their ranks. On the other hand, we can notice the impact of the Lubanga effect on the process insofar as children are now avoiding the disarmament points and heading off directly, by themselves, towards the different child protection partners' centers.
In addition, child protection partners in Ituri are currently facing a financial problem for their socioeconomic reinsertion programs. At present, children are identified and reunified with their families, while waiting for funds supervised by OCHA.
With regards to the fight against impunity, the Statute of Rome of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict clarify the legal framework. The Protocol ratified by the DRC strengthen this protection by raising to 18 years the minimum age for voluntary recruitment in the national armed forces (art.3) - it was 15 years in the Convention for the rights of Child - extending this legal obligation also to armed groups.
Therefore, the government has to "take all feasible measures to prevent such recruitment and use, including the adoption of legal measures necessary to prohibit and criminalize such practices."
With reference to the International Humanitarian Law, the DRC ratified the four Geneva Conventions and the two 1977 Optional Protocols as well as the Statute of Rome of the ICC. As to the latter, the recruitment of children of less than 15 years old in an international or internal armed conflict constitutes a war crime, and therefore imprescriptible, whether for the recruitment in the national armed forces or in the armed groups.
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Congo-Kinshasa: Violations of Human Rights Common - Arbour

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
15 May 2007Posted to the web 15 May 2007
Kinshasa
Serious human rights violations take place almost daily with total impunity in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), said the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, on a visit to the country this week.
Arbour is scheduled to stay five days in the DRC, where she will meet the Congolese authorities as well as human rights activists, local and international non-governmental organisations, diplomats and the special representative of the UN Secretary-General, William Swing.
These discussions will focus on the fight against the culture of impunity and the implementation of the means to protect fundamental freedoms, and on the efforts towards reconciliation and reconstruction.
"Grave human rights violations occur almost every day in DRC as the perpetrators are encouraged by a climate of impunity that reigns virtually throughout this country," said Arbour.
She regarded the timing of her visit to Kinshasa as critical because "we have seen some advances ... towards stability - as witnessed with the recent elections - as well as a strong determination among the Congolese people to see the consolidation of a state of rights in a peaceful country".
However, there were still considerable obstacles on the way towards peace and the complete respect of human rights. Among these, Arbour pointed to human rights violations and the culture of impunity.
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Wolfowitz pleads to keep job at World Bank
by Veronica Smith 30 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AFP) -
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World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz on Tuesday begged the lender's board to let him keep his job, promising changes in his management style in the wake of a damaging favoritism scandal.
The board of executive directors was to continue deliberations on his fate Wednesday, after the United States reiterated its support for the embattled bank chief.
However, a White House spokesman entertained "all options," an opening interpreted by the US media as a sign of his imminent departure.
According to a hearing transcript released by his lawyer, Wolfowitz, 63, answered allegations he had put his "personal interests" above the rules, risking the very mission of the development lender.
The World Bank chief refuted point by point a scathing report by a bank investigatory panel published Monday concluding he had breached bank ethics rules in arranging a lucrative pay-and-promotion package and transfer to the State Department for his companion and fellow bank employee, Shaha Riza.
"I have said I am not without fault in the matter," Wolfowitz told the executive directors.
"I implore each of you to be fair in making your decision, because your decision will not only affect my life, it will affect how this institution is viewed in the United States and the world," he said.
The month-old scandal has riven the 185-country bank -- most European members are calling for Wolfowitz's resignation -- and threatens to undermine the bank's ability to fulfill its mission to combat poverty.
"I fear that the way this recent inquiry is handled has the potential to do greater long-term damage to the institution than the alleged underlying ethics issue that was, in point of fact, put to rest over a year ago," he said.
The former US deputy defense secretary, an architect of the
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Iraq war nominated to head the World Bank by
President George W. Bush's administration, acknowledged he had relied too much on advisers he had brought in with him when he became bank president in June 2005.
He pledged to change his management style "to regain the trust of the staff," whose association had called for his resignation after the scandal surfaced in the US media.
"If you want to have a discussion about my leadership, my management style and the policies I support, let's do it," he said. "That's fair. That's legitimate. But let's get past this conflict-of-interest matter."
Wolfowitz also reaffirmed that the salary increases and promotions he arranged for Riza were part of a "reasonable" agreement to resolve a "difficult set of circumstances" in the conflict of interest regarding his supervisory role in their relationship.
He asked the board to acknowledge that mistakes were made on all sides, including by the bank's ethics committee.
Shortly after Wolfowitz took the helm of the bank in June 2005, Riza, who worked as a bank communications specialist, was transferred to the State Department and received a generous pay increase while still on the bank's payroll.
"You still have the opportunity to avoid long-term damage by resolving this matter in a fair and equitable way that recognizes that we all tried to do the right thing, however imperfectly we went about it," he told the board.
"My conduct with respect to Ms. Riza's external placement does not justify taking any action against me or warrant a finding that you lack confidence in my leadership," he said, implying the board should not vote to remove him from office.
The White House earlier reiterated its support for Wolfowitz, but opened the door for whatever action the World Bank board might take.
"All options are on the table," spokesman Tony Snow said.
The New York Times, citing various unnamed government and World Bank officials, reported late Tuesday that the Bush administration was floating the idea of Wolfowitz resigning voluntarily if the bank board drops its drive to declare him unfit to remain in office.
The administration's approach was outlined in a telephone conference call between the Treasury Department and economic ministries in Japan, Canada and Europe, but "appeared to gain few immediate supporters," the newspaper said in its online edition.
"The staff now is basically in open revolt," a former World Bank employee said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"If the board would drop the charges and then he didn't go, the board would have an unmanageable situation."
The executive directors "would have to reach a private agreement that he is going to go," he added.