Bad cops, mean streets – The Sunday Tribune – Voice of America – RTE
December 13th, 2009
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/africa/west/decapua-sierra-leone-kids-7dec09-78673062.html
http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/1213/worldreport.html
FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE – “The police stop us all the time. Sometimes they try to take money from us, sometimes they threaten to arrest us. But the usual trick is to check our handbags. They plant some drugs, then tell us to come with them to the station. The only way to get out is have sex with the policeman, otherwise we go to jail.”
Just 20 years old, Maryama* has lived on the ramshackle streets of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, for eight years.
*Zainab at her stall in Freetown's eastern districts. With GOALs help, she is now off the streets and running her own business. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Her father died when she was 10 – possibly from HIV-AIDS, although nobody knows for sure – leaving her mother unable to bring up their three children. This was at the height of Sierra Leone’s civil war, infamous for anti-government rebels who hacked off arms and hands to deter civilians from voting in elections.
Government-allied militias believed that their magic rendered them invisible and invulnerable in battle against the rebels who funded their war with “blood diamonds” smuggled out of the country and sold on at profit. The mainstream diamond industry and its customers turned a blind eye to the suffering caused by the fighting.
Now the country is peaceful and the diamond trade better regulated. The 2007 elections saw an orderly transfer of control to the winning party, and the economy is growing at around 5% a year. War seems a distant memory, brought to mind only by the sight of war amputees on Freetown’s bustling streets. Their arm (and sometimes leg) stumps are a physical testament to what was a notoriously vicious war, fought at close quarters with AK-47s and sharp blades. Around 50,000 people were killed, mostly non-combatants.
Starting in 1992, the fighting devastated much of the country. It ended only after British military intervention in 2000, which earned Tony Blair an honorary chieftaincy from the Freetown government. Despite a wealth of natural resources, the average per capita annual income in Sierra Leone is only US$240 per person.
Despite a wealth of natural resouces - not only diamonds – but bauxite and large untapped iron ore reserves, which are stoking Chinese interest, the country ranks at or near the bottom of most global indexes of poverty and corruption.
These rankings are not mere abstractions. Behind them lies a harsh and sordid reality. Poverty is part of the reason why young women like Maryama end up on the streets, and corruption makes their life even more miserable. (more…)
For Now, Peace in Sierra Leone – ISN
December 11th, 2009
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=110478
Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war is a receding memory, but corruption and poverty need addressing to avoid any relapse
By Simon Roughneen in Freetown for ISN Security Watch
The civil war in Sierra Leone was one of the most violent anywhere in the late 20th century. A death toll of around
Market near Marbella slum, Freetown (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
50,000 did not tell the full story of a conflict where much of the fighting was carried out at close quarters.
Rebels were funded by diamond exports and supported by Liberian warlord-later-president Charles Taylor – who is now standing trial in The Hague at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Machetes were used to lop off hands and arms as a deterrent against voting; child soldiers were forced to kill family members; women were abducted and raped; cannibalism was a war ritual among some combatants; and foreign mercenaries dotted the land.
Then-president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah declared the war officially over in 2002, after the British Army intervened in 2000 to end eight years of carnage in its former colony. At one stage, despite being only around the same size as Ireland, the country hosted the world’s largest UN peacekeeping mission, with 18,000 blue berets in place.
Today, the country is at peace. A 2007 election saw a peaceful transfer of power from Kabbah’s Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) to the party that was in power back when the war started – the All Peoples Congress (APC), led by Ernest Bai Koroma.
The president was in London recently, where he was joined by former UK prime minister Tony Blair in touting the resource-rich West African state as an investment location. Blair was made an honorary paramount chief by Freetown in acknowledgement of the UK’s intervention, which was decisive in ending the war. (more…)
Somaliland – the pull of terror – ISN
November 11th, 2008
Somaliland flag (ISN)
Recent terror attacks in the self-styled independent Somaliland could be designed to destabilize the secessionist region, dragging it into Somalia’s brutal quagmire, Simon Roughneen writes for ISN Security Watch.
Somaliland is not Somalia. Ever since Somalia fell apart in the early 1990s that has been the message hammered out by Hargeisa’s would-be officials, who would be officially officials if Somaliland was ever officially recognized.
The latter has not yet happened, despite Somaliland’s relative stability and nascent democracy – casting the rest of what was Somalia more clearly as the wanton haven for pirates, warlords, terrorists and chronic suffering that it is – with over 3 million people homeless due to fighting, and aid workers a constant target for murder and kidnap.
Somaliland has a working political system, government institutions and its own currency. 
(more…)
Congo – Ghosts of Liberation – ISN
November 7th, 2008
Ghosts of liberation
Genocide’s legacy looms in the eastern Congo as renewed fighting sparks diplomatic grandstanding, Simon Roughneen writes for ISN Security Watch.
Reacting to renewed fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), British Prime Minister Gordon Brown proclaimed last weekend: “We must not allow Congo to become another Rwanda.”
Foreign Minister David Millband joined his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, in eastern DRC in a show of diplomatic concern, with talk of EU troops coming to back up an overwhelmed UN force.
(more…)
Darfur: Is Qatar’s Peace Process Stillborn – IslamOnline
October 29th, 2008
Fighters from the Minni Minawi faction of the Sudanese Liberation Army who signed the Darfur Peace agreement, take part in a military exercise during UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador actress Mia Farrow's visit, at Galap camp, north of Darfur. (Reuters' photo).
Despite objecting to previous initiatives to get a UN peacekeeping force in to the western Sudan region, Qatar has set itself as the latest honest broker attempting to mediate a solution to the Darfur conflict, but some may see it as another move to sidestep the International Criminal Court.
When Sudan’s President Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir was accused last July by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of 10 charges: three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder, odds were long that the erstwhile coup leader would ever face trial.
Odds were shorter, of course, that the willful and wily Al-Bashir, now a somewhat Janus-faced US ally in the “war on terror,” would pull some stunt to undermine the ICC warrant. His latest gambit – the apparent arrest of Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, commonly known as Ali Kushayb, a prominent Janjaweed commander – is as transparently hollow in its sincerity, as it is adolescent in its audacity. At the same time, it could prove a factor, among many others, in ensuring Sudan’s President does not join Head of State counterparts Charles Taylor and Slobodan Milosevic in facing international justice.
Khartoum has appointed special prosecutor for Darfur crimes, and announced that it will try Kushayb, who, like Al-Bashir, is wanted by the ICC.
Diplomatic Back-Channeling
Nice work if you can get it. This move comes after three months of diplomatic back- channeling, with the National Islamic Front (NIF)/National Congress Party (NCP) leadership in Khartoum assiduously- cultivating (more…)
Zimbabwe: credit where credit’s due – ISN
September 17th, 2008
Morgan Tsvangirai campaign poster - Zimbabwe's April 2008 election
Zimbabweans face economic turmoil, putting the western market crisis into sharp relief, while a new unity government deal seems a ploy to put aid money into ZANU-PF coffers, Simon Roughneen writes for ISN Security Watch.
Perhaps he was thinking of Joshua Nkomo – Robert Mugabe’s former liberation-ally later political rival who joined ZANU-PF in a coalition government in the 1980s – only to see some 20,000 of his supporters killed, as Mugabe ensured his then-rival posed no real challenge here to his hegemony.
Maybe he has a pension plan in a western bank, and was sweating over the Lehman Brothers collapse, which was simultaneously reverberating around the world’s stock markets as he sat impassively after making an impassioned plea to the world’s donors:
‘We need to unlock our doors to aid [...] we need medicine, food and doctors back in our country.’ (more…)
Charging of al-Bashir may provoke backlash – The Irish Times
July 15th, 2008
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/0715/1215940932576.html
Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir
OPINION: The International Criminal Court may lay genocide charges against President Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese dictator, but he’s unlikely ever to stand trial, writes Simon Roughneen .
‘Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.” The words of former US president Dwight Eisenhower may offer some long-term solace for those caught up in Sudan’s regionalised wars, but yesterday’s landmark charging of Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, with 10 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC) may scupper any chance of bringing peace to the wider region.
Or so goes the argument. The “peace and justice” template has become a “peace versus justice” dichotomy, as immediate-term political realities prompt less idealistic observers to question the efficacy of courts and tribunals intervening in real-time conflicts.
To illustrate, in Uganda, ICC proceedings against senior figures in the millenarian-psychopathic Lord’s Resistance Army are regarded as hindering the faltering peace process, after two decades of cult-driven rape, abduction and murder. Meanwhile, the ICC trial of Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese militia boss accused of recruiting child soldiers, has stalled amid disputes over evidence being withheld from the defence.
Sudan might prove different, however. Not only are the charges more significant – including genocide – politically speaking, there is scant peace left for the ICC to destabilise. (more…)
Narcotic use, drought rob babies of food – The Washington Times
July 13th, 2008
Khat plantation outside Dire Dawa, June 08 (Simon Roughneen)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/13/narcotic-use-drought-rob-babies-of-food/
DIRE DAWA, Ethiopia | When drought and food shortages hit, it is the very young who suffer first, and most.
Weighing only 10 pounds, Ayaan is among nearly 100,000 Ethiopian children whose lives are at risk.
Just four days before her first birthday, she is lighter than an average 3-month-old baby.
A clinic at Kersi, about 15 miles outside Ethiopia’s second city Dire Dawa, has seen an increasing number of such cases in recent weeks, as have locations across the south and west of the country.
Much of the land is used to grow the cash-crop narcotic known as khat.
In more than a dozen villages outside the city, this reporter witnessed groups of mainly young men, but also some women, getting high in the shade on the chewed leaves. Khat is an appetite suppressant, and local culture means that children often eat only after adults. (more…)
Despite food shortages, Ethiopia to grow biofuel crops – The Irish Examiner
July 7th, 2008
Despite hunger, Ethiopia’s growing economy looks to biofuel crops to cut energy costs
- Simon Roughneen, Dire Dawa, eastern Ethiopia
When drought and food shortages hit, it is the very young who suffer first, and most. Weighing only 4.5 kg, Ayaan is among the almost 100,000 children whose lives are at risk across Ethiopia. Just four days before her first birthday, she weighs no more than an average 3 month old baby. This clinic, about 15 miles outside Ethiopia’s second city Dire Dawa, is seeing an increasing amount of such cases over recent weeks. (more…)
Young Ethiopians malnourished – RTÉ World Report
July 5th, 2008
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0705/worldreport.html
