Kurt has an op-ed in this week’s European Voice, “Yielding to Serb Demands Won’t Make the EU Credible” [subscription req’d]. He argues that the EU goodies (in the form of a Stabilization and Association Agreement) showered on Belgrade ahead of parliamentary elections on May 11 may have been successful in securing a plurality of the vote for the nominally pro-European party of President Boris Tadic, but conveyed the message that Serbia need not make difficult sacrifices in order to join the EU.
The problem is that Tadic and his party clearly want EU membership on Serbia’s terms, not the EU’s. Tadic’s explicit position - inconvenient and not addressed in Brussels at all - is that Serbia wants to get into the EU to ensure that an independent Kosovo can never join, and once Serbia is in, it can reclaim Kosovo.
Had Tadic levelled with the Serbian people and told them EU membership meant facing the reality of Kosovo’s independence and the transfer of ‘heroes’ such as Ratko Mladic, the fugitive Bosnian Serb general, to the Inter-national Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the ‘referendum on Europe’ would have been real.
EU credibility is falling across the region as a result of its coddling of recalcitrant policies from Belgrade:
The EU’s unseemly fixation on getting Tadic re-elected also deepened the perception across the region that Serbia always comes first, whether it fulfils explicit conditions or not. Others, like fragile but neglected Bosnia and Herzegovina, or Macedonia, are treated as afterthoughts.
The mood music in European foreign ministries is weariness with the whole tiresome imbroglio. Brussels favours a tacit acceptance that Serbia has to be rewarded for choosing the “European path”, ie, its performance should be graded positively, whatever the reality. Tadic will lobby hard for this.
If the EU gives in, the outcome risks bearing little resemblance to a ‘European Serbia’. Rather, the Union will be further debased as a credible policy actor, so desperate for ‘progress’ that it willingly accepts a Potemkin version as the real thing.
Yesterday, on May 28, Azerbaijan celebrated the 90th anniversary of the establishment of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR). This day is celebrated in Azerbaijan every year since the restoration of independence in 1991. On May 28, 1918, Azerbaijan was proclaimed an independent state – the first democratic republic in the Muslim world. During its short existence, from May 1918 to April 1920, the first democratically elected Azerbaijani government worked on building independent and democratic state in Azerbaijan. It is noteworthy that ADR granted voting rights to women, earlier than many Western states, and it also functioned as a real multiparty democracy.
Nowadays, Azerbaijan is far from being even a fragile democracy – it is an authoritarian state under the strong presidential rule of Ilham Aliyev (who succeeded his father Geydar Aliyev in the rigged elections of 2003), where freedom of press and speech is seriously violated. In 2007, President Aliyev was identified as one of the “predators of press freedom” by Reporters without Borders. Presidential elections in this oil-rich state are scheduled for October 2008. And it already appears that oil is a trump of the incumbent president Ilham Aliyev in his bid for re-election. Ongoing severe repressions against opposition media and the scope of election fraud that can be expected during the ballot (judging from the previous elections in the country in 2003 and 2005) are likely to be forgiven for the strategic oil resources that Azerbaijan has, and for its foreign policy that is relatively independent from Russia and hence is very appreciated both by the USA and the EU.
The energy summit that was held in Kyiv on May 23 and attended by the presidents of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia and Poland, EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, top officials from Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania and from 30 other countries, the UN, OSCE, World Bank, and EBRD, is a good illustration of how Azerbaijan’s President secures his legitimacy in “advance”. Aliyev was courted at the summit as a head of the state which, in contrast to other summit participants, has rich energy resources, and therefore plays a leading role in the Krakow initiative on ensuring energy security launched by some of the participating states at the summit in Krakow on 11-12 May 2007. At this particular summit, Azerbaijan’s role was pivotal in planning an ambitious project to extend the existing Odessa-Brody pipeline through Poland to Gdansk on the Baltic, and to pump Azerbaijani and Kazakh oil from the Black Sea port of Odessa. According to Ukrainian president Yuschenko, “It is the most economical way to deliver Caspian oil to EU countries.”
The goal of the summit was to lessen the dependence of the EU on Russian energy resources. Taking into account that Kazakhstan (also a dictatorship and the future OSCE chair) is still indecisive and has intense cooperation with Russia, Azerbaijan is the crucial participant of the Krakow initiative. During Aliyev’s official visit to Ukraine on the eve of the summit, he was even awarded a state award of Ukraine “for his role in strengthening bilateral relations”. He is indeed considered a legitimate partner among this “energy club” of democratic states (most of them are also EU members), despite his brutal suppression of dissent at home. And, the most peculiar thing is that the next energy summit is scheduled for November this year in Baku – just next month after the presidential vote. It is very likely that, whatever happens, Aliyev’s victory would be recognized by his democratic allies in fighting for energy independence, including Ukraine and Georgia.
US President George Bush’s widely covered trip to the Middle East two weeks ago was underwhelming, especially given his administration’s declared desire for a Palestinian-Israeli peace deal before the end of his term in January. Such a deal, never a likely prospect given the administration’s policy of essentially giving Israel a free hand and its own rock-bottom credibility in the region, seems no more likely after the trip.
His May 15 speech commemorating the state’s 60th anniversary to Israel’s
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Knesset extolled the depth and warmth of the US relationship with Israel, and was replete with the Biblical imagery he clearly revels in employing. But he also conflated this with his “freedom agenda,” lauding Israel’s democratic governance, making the Zionist struggle to build the state of Israel after the Holocaust sound as if it were a people power uprising against oppressive rule. But the struggle of 1948 was not against oppression, but a very European nationalist effort to create a Jewish nation-state in a territory in which Jews still comprised a minority. Israel’s successful foundation was the Palestinian naqba – “the catastrophe” – dispossessing hundreds of thousands. It is much easier to base an alliance on “shared convictions rooted in moral clarity and unswayed by popularity polls or the shifting opinions of international elites” when the messier aspects of the foundation myth are not explored critically. These are far more openly discussed within Israel itself than in the US.
While Bush said that “free people should strive and sacrifice for peace,” he merely commended choices by previous Israeli leaders – without naming what those actually were, though the evacuation from Gaza was probably the implication. He certainly neglected to name the central “sacrifice” that Israel will surely need to make to ensure peace with the Palestinians: evacuation of settlements established in the West Bank since 1967, and some compromise on East Jerusalem. Only an American president can say such things with any credibility to Israel, precisely because the US is an unambiguous friend of Israel, as the wise American analyst Henry Siegman has repeatedly said. In his speech, Bush essentially gave Israel a blank check of American support, regardless of whether Israel’s policies are in American interests.
But not only did Bush avoid this underlying basic reality. He set up a straw man by stating there were people advocating breaking relations with Israel – a rather thin group given the undeniable pro-Israel consensus in the US. He then took the opportunity to accuse those who might consider talking to Hamas – a group which engages in terrorism through suicide bombing and rocket attacks, but which also enjoys broad enough legitimacy to have been elected in 2006 (in elections the US insisted upon) and which is now utterly dominant in Gaza – to be practicing “appeasement.” Many interpreted this to be a shot at Democratic candidate Barack Obama, despite the fact Obama never said he would talk with Hamas (but did say he would talk with Iranian President Ahmedinejad).
Needless to say, Bush’s speech in the Knesset didn’t get rave reviews in the Arab world, seizing on the fact he hardly mentioned the Palestinians, along with the fact that he lumped Iran, Hezbollah, Syria, Hamas, and al Qaeda into an amorphous bloc. In the Arab world, depending on where one is, their activities vary in perceived legitimacy. Hezbollah, while admired for its survival of the 2006 war against Israel that was designed to crush it, is also viewed with trepidation in much of the Sunni Arab world. Perhaps the most universally accepted is Hamas, given the prevalence afforded to “resistance” to Israeli occupation.
In a speech to an international audience at the World Economic Forum Middle East in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt three days later, Bush made a clear call for democratic governance in the Middle East. It was hard to disagree with much of the speech. Calling on Middle Eastern governments to invest in developing human capital through education, redressing the gross imbalances noted in the Arab Development Report (link) was a good example, and Bush’s offer to assist in improving educational standards should be applauded, as should his highlighting of the role of women in society. He also highlighted the universal appeal of freedom of speech in Lebanon, Iran and Egypt. He called for “vigorous political parties allowed to engage in free and lively debate…(and) the establishment of civic institutions that ensure an election’s legitimacy and hold leaders accountable. And true democracy requires competitive elections in which opposition candidates are allowed to campaign without fear and intimidation.” This last point was a clear swipe at Egypt in particular, which practices a transparently false charade of democracy. In the best single quote from the speech, Bush told those assembled that “Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail.” He then called on the governments of the Middle East to release their prisoners of conscience and allow open political debate in their societies, including liberalization to allow free media and civil society to function. These are messages that Middle Eastern autocracies need to hear.
Unfortunately, Bush seems to have a tin ear for the perception of the US in the Middle East, or he places so much faith in his own sense of “moral clarity” that he thinks other views are irrelevant. He harked back to the Cold War in saying that “terrorist organizations and their state sponsors” are “on the wrong side in a great ideological struggle – and every nation committed to freedom and progress in the Middle East must stand together to defeat them.” This approach, as with the whole “global war on terror” relies on a simplistic analysis, and forces perverse contortions to stick to the ideological script. For example, as Bush was in the Middle East, the Israelis confirmed they were engaging in talks with Syria, brokered by Turkey, regarding the Golan Heights. An unnamed Bush administration official called the talks a “slap in the face” by Israel. Never mind Israel’s interest in coming to terms with a neighbor that could still inflict heavy damage in open conflict. In Bush’s mind, it is more important that Israel stand firm against the Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah-Hamas Axis of Evil II.
Also at the same time, Lebanon was teetering on the brink of a renewed civil war between the coalition government of Fouad Siniora and opposition militias, most importantly Hezbollah. The US-backed Israeli war in summer 2006 against Hezbollah not only devastated Lebanon, but it also discredited Siniora’s government, strengthened Hezbollah, and put another nail in the coffin of American credibility as a purveyor of democracy in the Middle East, as Eric and I wrote at the time. Arab League/Qatari negotiations led to a settlement in Lebanon last week, changing the political landscape considerably, to the detriment of the March 14 movement which fomented the “Cedar Revolution” in 2005 after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Incompetent, blindly ideological (“moral clarity”) statecraft by the US has paradoxically strengthened both Hezbollah and Hamas, and lost opportunities to show it means what it says on freedoms – for example closing Guantanamo and accepting election results in the few cases of real elections.
While Iran and Syria each support Hezbollah and Hamas, both movements have massive domestic constituencies that have to be part of any equation to achieve Bush’s goals of freedom and peace. In the US presidential election campaign, this fact has been sidestepped by all the remaining candidates. Not long ago, Republican candidate John McCain was very sensible: “They’re the government; sooner or later we’re going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things they not only espouse but practice, so…but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.” He might have added that the Fatah of Yassir Arafat and his successors was legendary for its corruption, and this was a major motive for its electoral defeat. Yet in promotional literature, the McCain campaign asserted that Hamas was rooting for a victory by Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama. Obama, to allay fears that he might be “soft on Israel,” made a speech in Boca Raton, Florida to a predominantly Jewish and pro-Israel audience to burnish his pro-Israel bona fides, repudiating the idea of talking to Hamas, which he had never previously espoused. The dynamics of national electoral politics typically leads to greater hawkishness regarding Israel. Bush’s Knesset speech is the pacesetter of this particular bipartisan brand of unconditional devotion to Israel.
In a very worthwhile article published last week, Atlantic correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg made the point that this uncritical and
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unconditional backing is bad for Israel itself. A vocal constituency in the US, not only Jewish groups but also Christian fundamentalists, press Israeli governments to be more inflexible than their own constituents want them to be – a typical diaspora syndrome seen also in the Balkans and Northern Ireland. In the article, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert noted that this inflexibility on issues like East Jerusalem and settlements (many populated by Americans) made it ever more difficult to achieve a Palestinian state, which he and many other Israeli leaders believe essential to preserve a Jewish majority Israel. “Once, men like (former Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon and Olmert saw the settlers as the vanguards of Zionism; today, the settlements are seen as the forerunner of a binational state. In other words, as the end of Israel as a Jewish majority democracy.” Olmert’s greatest fear is of apartheid-era international isolation of Israel, which he thinks is possible if the Palestinians shift from an “Algeria-style campaign” to a “South Africa-style campaign.” Goldberg notes that the expression of Barack Obama on the issue of settlements – “not helpful” – was tame in comparison to this critique by the Israeli prime minister.
Reasonable people can differ on whether Olmert’s nightmare scenario would really be a nightmare. But no other country could claim it imperative to maintain a demographic majority without verbal brickbats coming its way. One could imagine the response to an American or French presidential candidate who argued that it was essential to maintain a white majority. That’s the preserve of the Pat Buchanans, David Dukes, and Jean-Marie Le Pens. A Jewish homeland need not necessitate a Jewish state.
The separation wall has gutted the Palestinian economy; it is hard to see how it could function without open trade and travel with Israel, with which it was tightly integrated. Israel will ultimately face a growing internal demographic imbalance, with a winnowing of Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union and a growing Arab Israeli population. My personal view is that a common state for Palestinians and Israelis is the logical end goal and most likely to deliver security for all involved. But given the dire conditions of today, it is hard to see how to get there from here. What is a safe bet is that there will probably not be any forward movement toward any mutually acceptable solution so long as Bush remains president.
Guinea may have moved closer to civil conflict on Tuesday, when President Lansana Conté dismissed Prime Minister Lansana Kouyaté, replacing him with one of his loyalists, Ahmed Tidiane Souaré. Kouyaté was a consensus pick for the post following large-scale demonstrations against Conté’s regime in early 2007. As Kurt and I wrote at the time in the International Herald Tribune, the labor unions who led the protests in the face of violent repression received scant support from the international community. The crackdown by Conté’s forces killed around 130. The deal that ended the challenge to his rule left Conté in charge of the army and police. Worse, Kouyaté quickly alienated the very civil society that was responsible for bringing him to power, and little changed for average Guineans who still struggle in poverty - made all the worse by rising global fuel and food prices.
Meanwhile, even after last year’s stark danger sign, it is far from apparent that the international community has given much thought at all to Conté’s succession. Reports persist that the octogenarian Conté, now in his 24th year as Guinea’s dictator, is frail. Representatives of various power centers continue to circle, vying to succeed him. (Kouyaté was one official widely viewed as angling to take over the presidency.)
Within the Mano River Union (MRU), there has been real democratic progress in Liberia since the 2006 inauguration of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Sierra Leone, too, seems finally to be making halting progress in overcoming the burdens of corruption and mal-governance. Even the newest member of the MRU, Côte d’Ivoire, is stabilizing. Guinea was deeply involved in the Sierra Leonean and Liberian wars and an outbreak of violence now could cause significant disruption across this part of West Africa, where the United Nations, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Britain, France and United States have made such heavy investments in peacekeeping and nation-building.
Even if another short-term solution is found to ease the tension again bubbling up in Guinea, the international community should fully engage civil society and the various ethnic and elite factions with regard to Conté’s eventual succession. Bringing that discussion into an open, transparent process in which all Guineans have a voice - perhaps through agreement on a constitutional assembly - is the best hope for Guinea’s democratic development. Such assemblies are not unknown in West Africa, having proved successful in Mali and Benin. Assisting Guineans on the difficult path to democratic governance now offers the best hope of turning the country’s significant natural resource wealth into desperately needed development, and is vital to the consolidation of peace across the MRU.
The Dalai Lama ended a lonely five-day visit to Berlin today, with Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul the only German government minister agreeing to meet with him. She reportedly did so against the wishes of Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. In explaining his snub of the Tibetan spiritual leader, Steinmeier offered up this gem of an explanation: “It takes a lot of courage not to meet with the Dalai Lama these days.”
The Burmese government’s failure to assist the victims of Cyclone Nargis, and worse - its outright obstruction of international relief efforts - are leading to mass death in the country. The specter of hundreds of thousands of victims slowly succumbing to starvation and preventable communicable disease has sparked debate over whether the international community should trigger the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) principle created at the UN World Summit in 2005 but to date never exercised. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has been the most vocal advocate. Ivo Daalder and Paul Stares recently put forth thoughtful arguments in support of the idea. Gareth Evans, the President of the International Crisis Group and a co-chair of the commission that crafted the principle,
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raises good questions about whether R2P even applies in the case of Burma.
In the United States, the prospect of intervention in Burma has triggered a backlash among opponents of the Iraq war wholly unrelated to the applicability of the R2P. They argue, among other things, that an invasion could cause the government to fall, resulting in a free-for-all among Burma’s many minority groups and factions. The United States and its allies, already tied down amid sectarian and ethnic strife in Iraq and Afghanistan, could find themselves bogged down in a third occupation - further stretching already overburdened militaries, and in the end - by unleashing unstoppable ethnic strife - perhaps doing more harm than good.
These are serious objections, and for proponents of intervention, certainly issues that would be horribly irresponsible to ignore, especially in light of the Iraq debacle. But some of the opponents of intervention in Burma only seem to be seeing the situation through the lens of Iraq, and to a lesser extent, Afghanistan. Their dismissal of the idea appears rooted in quite a large assumption: that any breach of Burma’s sovereignty means a full military invasion.
This is the latest in a string of debates over military intervention since the end of the Cold War that are distorted towards the lessons of the most recent experience. The Clinton administration did not intervene in Rwanda and was very late to intervene in Bosnia in large measure because of the perceived lessons of Somalia in 1993 (”post-Mogadishu syndrome”). Successful intervention and peacekeeping in Bosnia starting in 1995 certainly undercut domestic opposition to military intervention in Kosovo in 1999. In turn, that intervention’s success, despite deep flaws in the post-intervention phase, may have made it easier for the Bush administration to find support among Democrats for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. For some observers, the Iraq quagmire has now made any thought of intervention in Burma a non-starter.
Surely we can do better than this. Burma is neither Bosnia nor Somalia, nor Kosovo, nor Iraq. Burma is Burma, with unique factors of history, military, geography, and culture, and subject to a unique mix of factors in international diplomacy. The burdens of Iraq and Afghanistan do place constraints on what kind of action is conceivable, but should not stop the debate cold. With the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the balance, it is astoundingly flippant to merely suggest, as the usually thoughtful Josh Marshall has: “Why don’t we not invade any more countries for a while?”
For starters, it is far from clear that actions breaching Burmese sovereignty need amount to a full invasion. In Rwanda, jamming hate radio would have been one useful intervention absent the will to mount the full military campaign that should have been conducted. In Bosnia in 1995, belated air strikes against Bosnian Serb artillery around Sarajevo were sufficient to end shelling of the capital. In Burma, for example, if air drops or beach landings of humanitarian supplies made sense (a big if) without the junta’s assent, it’s hard to see how this could lead to an Iraq-like scenario, or demand so many resources as to make implementation of the plan impossible in light of force commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Those who argue for intervention in Burma have a grave duty to think through its effects, intended and unintended. I am neither an expert on Burma nor humanitarian relief, and do not feel qualified to advocate a specific course of action. My point is that those who unequivocally oppose any breach of the junta’s sovereignty also have a grave duty to think through the ramifications of inaction and should consider middle roads. Hundreds of thousands of people needlessly died in Rwanda and Bosnia because of political opposition to timely international military intervention. Much of that opposition was grounded in ignorance of those conflicts. In the present situation in Burma, the sovereignty of an illegitimate government should hardly be the highest priority. And with so many lives on the line, glib dismissal of any kind of intervention is unforgivable.
The BBC’s South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head in a great analytical piece states there is no chance that the junta will allow an adequate aid effort in, comparing the opening of Indonesia’s Aceh and Pakistani Kashmir after natural disasters in 2004 and 2005 - both sensitive areas in coutries with strong military influence over governance. It is an interesting and depressing comparison.
His assessment appears correct, despite the best efforts of western diplomats on the ground like Britain’s Ambassador Mark Canning. “Some are getting in, some are not - we need the floodgates to open…It’s crucial that we get these humanitarian experts in, and that’s what we’re putting a lot of effort into at the moment.” The US charge d’ affaires in Rangoon, Shari Villarosa, called the humanitarian situation “increasingly horrendous,” with “a very real risk of disease outbreaks” so long as people lacked water, food, and sanitation in the delta region. She estimated that the death toll could rise to 100,000 if humanitarian access and aid did not dramatically increase immediately. The disease risk stems from dehydration, mosquito-borne diseases, and water-borne illnesses like cholera and dysentery.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has suggested that the UN Security Council adopt a resolution that assistance be flown into Burma without the junta’s authorization, but the UN’s humanitarian aid chief, John Holmes, dismissed this as “overly confrontational.” Holmes acknowledged access problems, but said the Burmese government was “reasonable and headed in the right direction.”
A UN satellite map of the cyclone’s devastation of the Irrawaddy delta can be seen here. And a NASA satellite photo shows the extent of the flooding in a before and after photo here.
The devastation to Burma’s Irrawaddy delta region from Cyclone Nargis is becoming clearer as some international correspondents have had a chance to tour the affected areas – Burma’s ricebowl. 22,000 people are reported dead, with more than 40,000 missing, and up to one million without shelter. The few international media traveling outside Rangoon have heard from those rendered homeless that they have received no assistance up to now.
Al Jazeera English has two correspondents in Burma who have not been identified for fear of government reprisal. In a report broadcast earlier today, one correspondent noted the conspicuous lack of government presence and aid. The army was seen clearing roads, but that was all. She reported seeing a hundred empty Burmese Army trucks on the road back to Rangoon from the low-lying areas she visited, none of which was laden with aid supplies. Residents of the delta region she interviewed noted they had received no warning on state radio of the impending cyclone. The town of Pyinkaya, which had 150,000 residents, “Assistance hasn’t reached them yet and they are dying - completely isolated,” according to Save the Children’s Andrew Kirkwood. CNN International’s Dan Rivers was also reporting from Bogolay in the affected area, touring a makeshift shelter where homeless and wounded persons had gathered – again with no government presence. The rations on hand would only last two days. Bodies of the dead were being carries to the river. Local officials noted they had not been given authorization to act by the central government. Shops that have reopened today generated unrest as desperate people pushed to get needed relief supplies.
International assistance has been offered, and some from neighboring India and Thailand has already arrived. UN and international Red Cross aid efforts were initiated yesterday. But the difficulty of getting the regime to allow humanitarian aid experts in to oversee aid logistics, as done in Indonesia after the Aceh tsunami, is retarding efforts to assist. Some humanitarian aid workers are on the ground assessing need and providing help, but visas have been denied to many more disaster relief experts who are on standby. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd appealed for humanitarian access: “Forget politics…Forget the military dictatorship. Let’s just get aid and assistance through to people who are suffering and dying as we speak, through a lack of support on the ground.” The regime is more concerned with restricting international presence in the country than in providing for the overwhelming popular need for help. France’s Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner (and founder of Medicins Sans Frontiers and Doctors of the World), noted that the lack of trust in the regime and access was hampering the world’s ability to assist - the junta insists on distribiting the aid themselves. Indonesia’s presidential spokesman, Dino Patti Djalal, asserted in a CNN interview that the scale of the disaster required external assistance on the ground, basing his assessment on the Aceh tsunami recovery effort.
It is as yet unclear how the cyclone and the callous and incompetent reaction to it by the junta will erode the regime’s grip on the state. As of now, popular concerns are consumed by the existential. But the fact that the enormous military buildup of the Tatmadaw since the 1988 coup, including significant logistical capacity, has only been used for repression and not for civic emergencies, will surely not be forgotten. Nor will their footdragging in allowing outside help, which is costing countless lives. With the military leaders safely out of harm’s way in the new garrison capital Naypyidaw, their detachment from their people’s fate could hardly be more stark than it has proven in these days. In the longer term, the devastation of Burma’s agricultural heartland will necessitate greater external involvement in Burma.
The African Union is holding talks today in Tanzania to discuss the continuing post-election crisis in Zimbabwe. While the new AU Chair, Jean Ping, has met with President Robert Mugabe and the Zimbabwe Election Commission (ZEC) head, he has yet to meet with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).Last weekend, the ZEC finally released results from the presidential elections, held on March 29. The official tally gave Tsvangirai 47.9 percent of the vote, an edge of nearly five points over Mugabe’s 43.2 percent share. But the official version contradicts the MDC’s strongly held position, based on publicly posted vote tallies at polling stations, that Tsvangirai won the election outright with 50.3 percent of the vote. On Saturday, the MDC announced it was not planning to participate in a runoff with Mugabe, which has yet to be scheduled, as it would legitimize the theft of the election. Yet it appears now that the MDC will indeed participate in a runoff, though it will not announce that decision until a date is set. It is a risky choice either way. Mugabe from immediately after the election through today has worked to undercut MDC support by ordering attacks on presumed opposition supporters, intimidating the population to vote “the right way” in a runoff, as well as endeavoring to undercut the MDC’s advantage in the parliament by holding recounts in a number of constituencies. The MDC has calculated that Mugabe will ensure he “wins” a runoff, and that his violent post-election campaign, combined with the dire economic straits that Zimbabweans are in, will assist him in this. The fact that the opposition was unable to mobilize mass demonstrations in the aftermath of its proclaimed win must have played into this approach.Yet few countries have claimed that Tsvangirai has won outright. The US and UK called for Mugabe to step down before the official results were released. The MDC may well end up participating in the runoff, simply to stay in the game and to try and draw greater regional support for their cause, which might be hard to do should the party be portrayed by governments such as South Africa’s as unreasonable. The country’s neighbors already appear to have endorsed the idea of a runoff, calling on the government to guarantee security for it. Angola chairs the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and at a meeting last weekend, SADC called on Zimbabwe’s political parties to accept the official results and participate in the second round. SADC’s observers of the vote recount in 23 constituencies hailed the recount, and appeared to blame the opposition for the post-election unrest, as reported in Harare’s government-owned Herald. The MDC maintained its edge in the parliamentary vote, despite fears that the recount would flip the results to the ruling ZANU-PF. The date of a runoff is still not set, and according to Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga, the Zimbabwean Constitution allows it to be held from 21 days after the announcement of the official first round results to a year after. Mugabe appears to be running the clock, hoping the economic privation and violent intimidation will help ensure a victory.The intimidation of Zimbabwe’s civil society continues, with the Progressive Teachers’ Union claiming 133 of its members had been assaulted, and 1700 had fled attackers. A spokesman for the union noted said that teachers “were beaten with iron bars, some have had their legs and limbs and hands seriously injured…Quite a lot have been hit on the head and its quite tragic, it’s terrible.” The teachers were targeted for their work as polling station workers. The MDC claims 25 of its activists have been killed and over 2000 hospitalized. The ruling ZANU-PF party called on its supporters to be calm and “also urging the opposition to avoid violence and respect people’s lives.” In an epilogue to the story of the Chinese freighter, the An Yue Jiang, laden with arms and munitions destined for Zimbabwe, the ship ultimately turned back to China without unloading, after South African dockworkers refused to unload it, and other potential ports in Angola and Mozambique refused to let it dock. Reportedly, the shipment was paid for with eight tons of illegal ivory poached in Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, the East African newspaper of Nairobi, Kenya reports that African lawyers groups – the East African Law Society and the Law Society of the SADC are planning a to approach the International Criminal Court to request an investigation against China regarding the arms shipment. The groups also announced they would be pressing the AU and UN to be more assertive with Zimbabwe, citing the international community’s responsibility to protect. The action, as with the resistance by Durban’s dockworkers to unloading the arms shipment, show that Africa’s transnational civil society is becoming more organized and vocal against governments who place a greater premium on mutual support than the do on democracy, rule of law, and human rights.
Burma is reeling from the devastating tropical cyclone Nargis, which hit the south-central population centers of the country on Saturday, including the Irrawaddy delta and the former capital, Rangoon. At the time of writing, the estimated death toll is officially 10,000 with 3,000 missing, and seems sure to rise, as it has been doing throughout the day. Towns and villages on the coast were flattened by storm surge. Hundreds of thousands have been rendered homeless by the cyclone, and food shortages are pervasive. The affected area is home to roughly half the Burmese population. The BBC has a number of images of the devastation, including to Rangoon, a city of five million. The Democratic Voice of Burma, broadcasting from Oslo, also filed a report, which can be seen on YouTube, here.
Despite the pervasive security apparatus of the military dictatorship, cleanup efforts were led by Burmese citizens themselves. “Where are the soldiers and police? They were very quick and aggressive when there were protests in the streets last year,”a retired government worker complained to Reuters news agency. Former Swedish cabinet minister Jens Orback comments on the military, police, and even firemen’s conspicuous absence – and the work of Burmese civilians and monks in clearing debris. Though police and armed forces are now in evidence, they have been conspicuously late in arriving – and the extent of their efforts throughout the country is not clear. Aung Zaw of the newspaper The Irrawaddy, published from Chaing Mai, Thailand, reported that the military’s efforts were still piddling: “The soldiers are only helping people near the military facilities; downtown Rangoon is like a ghost town.”
Clearly external assistance is in order, but the Burmese generals are legendarily wary of external actors. The UN reports that the regime has agreed to accept aid, and a number of international agencies, like the World Food Program, and NGOs are already engaged. The international response is likely to be genrous, but the amount of access allowed bilateral donors remains to be seen. Many donors and governments who have made aid offers remain on hold. How the aid is delivered and through whom it is distributed could have important side effects. If citizens’ committees are the primary operators in the recovery effort, then they should receive and distribute international aid to the Burmese people.
The regime remains focused on its planned referendum on May 10 for a new constitution that will purportedly provide for a “disciplined democracy,” but will lock-in the powers of the ruling Tatmadaw (armed forces). The regime said that people were “eagerly looking forward to voting,” making humanitarian experts and others pointedly question the government’s priorities. Already a highly dubious proposition given the regime’s total control of media and repression of independent elements of society, it is a reflection of the generals’ detachment from their own people and the wider world that the vote will be afforded any legitmacy. Those working to turn out a “no” vote to the new constitution report that the level of fear is the biggest obstacle. It remains to be seen if the strength of the junta’s hold on the country has been dented by the cyclone and its anaemic response. The decision to go ahead with the referendum despite the displacement of a major proportion of the population is a risky bet. The 1990 elections, in which the regime assumed strong rural support to offset urban support for the opposition National League for Democracy, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, were a blowout for the generals which they surely are aiming to prevent this time around. They may even see the problems in Rangoon as a boon, assuming that the “no” vote might be stronger there. The calculus appears to be that the regime fears that the “no” has momentum, so the sooner the balloting, the better. But the inept response to the suffering of the general population can hardly aid the regime’s credibility, and may even loosen its grip.
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