Uncertainty ahead of Congo vote – ISN
July 27th, 2006
Haunted by a violent and corrupt legacy, the Democratic Republic of Congo prepares for elections.
IDPs on the move in the Kivus (Photo: Bob Kitchen/The IRC)
By Simon Roughneen in Paris & Nairobi
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) will hold presidential and parliamentary elections on Sunday, 30 July, marking the vast country’s transition from corruption, tyranny and violent anarchy. However, the elections are being held amid grave political and strategic uncertainty. Fears pervade that Congo’s conflicts could re-erupt as a result of elections that are meant to underline a transition to stability and provide a seedbed for development.
The last democratic elections held in Africa’s second largest state took place in 1960 after Zaire, the DRC’s name between 1971 and 1997, gained its independence from Belgium. The victor, Patrice Lumumba, was later assassinated, and his short tem in office was marked by an attempted secession by the mineral-rich Katanga province and a UN peacekeeping intervention. Mobuto Sese Seko then ruled Zaire with a Western-financed iron fist, from 1964-1996.
Since Mobutu’s accession to power, the past 40 years have seen the systematic impoverishment and destruction of a vast and potentially wealthy country. Gross domestic product (GDP) was US$259 per capita at independence. It is now less than US$100. (more…)
Despite peace accord, Darfur lacks security -VoA
June 27th, 2006
listen to the interview courtesy of voanews.com
Security continues to worsen in Darfur despite a peace accord on May 5th. As a result, many people in need are not receiving humanitarian aid. From the town of Kutum, Simon Roughneen spoke to VOA English to Africa reporter Joe De Capua about the lack of security there.
“Security has always been pretty precarious in our part of Darfur as it is for most of the region. But since the signing of the Darfur peace agreement conditions have actually worsened on the ground. As you know, the peace agreement was just signed by one rebel faction. There were two. There are now three.” Two factions have refused to sign. (more…)
Refugees dream remains out of reach – Business Day/Opendemocracy
June 26th, 2006
http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-africa_democracy/darfur_peace_3677.jsp
at FATA BORNO CAMP IN NORTHERN DARFUR
Life in Darfur's camps is rudimentary. Cooking is done over a fire, but gathering firewood puts women at risk (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
HARIAN, a mother of five, smiles and chats as nutrition staff from the Dublin-based charity Goal wrap a measuring tape around 14-month-old Insaf’s arm. Harian takes the indicator cards entitling her family to supplementary feeding at the nearby clinic at the Fata Borno camp for conflict-displaced people in north Darfur. Insaf is underweight and the whole family is technically malnourished. This camp has been their home for two-and-a-half years.
On May 5 this year, the Darfur Peace Agreement was signed between the Sudanese government and one faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLA), led by Minni Minawi. That faction is militarily more potent than the rest of the SLA, but is itself splintering in the wake of the peace agreement. (more…)
Influence Anxiety: China in Africa – ISN
May 15th, 2006
By Simon Roughneen in Nairobi for ISN Security Watch (15/05/06)
Chinese investment in Africa, 2005 (risingpowers.foreignpolicyblogs.com)
“Business is business. We try to separate politics from business. Secondly I think the internal situation in the Sudan is an internal affair, and we are not in a position to impose upon them,” Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong said in an interview with the New York Times on 22 August 2005.
In the Mao era, China dealt with Africa as part of a show of solidarity with countries that shared some of China’s experience of Western oppression. However, these links were fostered in an ideologically charged time, when China sought to display affinity with other socialist countries and to demonstrate an almost nihilistic aversion to the institutions and norms of international relations. Although it joined the UN in 1971, any real alteration of China’s foreign policy did not come until the Deng-initiated reforms post-1979.
Even then reform was piecemeal and cautious, predicated on careful changes to China’s domestic political economy, which allowed for marketization of the economy while retaining a totalitarian state. According to Christopher Alden, senior lecturer in International Relations at the London School of Economics, in an article for YaleGlobal magazine, China’s foreign policy changed in 1993 when it shifted from being an oil exporter to being an oil importer. (more…)
Hard to believe your eyes: drought in Kenya and Ethiopia – OpenDemocracy
May 15th, 2006
http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-africa_democracy/drought_3542.jsp
Driving through northern Kenya’s drought-affected famine district as the midday sun lifts temperatures to over 40 degrees centigrade, pools of water shimmer in the distance, laying between dessicated trees and shrubs, with the mountains of Turkana peering through the haze.
Mirage in Turkana, northern Kenya (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
But these aren’t pools. There is no water here. By a cruel irony, this parched land taunts its thirsty and hungry people with distant images – mirages – of glistening oases in the distance. There hasn’t been rainfall since 2004, according to Akwari Nubukwi, an elder in the village of Kanigipur in the southern Turkana district. “We use the water from the riverbed, where we dig to find it. But it is just a little water, and even the goats and dogs drink from it”, he told me.
The locals who are now suffering without water, whose animals – their main food and livelihood source – are dying, know better to be caught out by the illusion of water. Akwari adds: “Many animals have died. We haven’t had rain for a year. People are losing their animals. We are hungry now.” (more…)
Cattle dying, people next? – HeraldAM
May 2nd, 2006
Leaning on his walking stick, Shamsidin Mohamed flicks his fingers up and down in turn, alternating between whispering and counting out loud in his native Somali.
By the time he has finished, he tots-up 23 cattle dead out of a herd of 70. It is a catastrophic loss. These herders are dependent on their animals for food and income. No agriculture is possible in such a barren, rock-strewn, sun-dried place, more lunar than earthly in appearance.
“This is very dangerous here. Just a little rain, but no pasture for the animals. Most people can’t count the dead animals. We have to move many kilometres every day looking for pasture, water. The animals are weak, they die in the bush, sometimes people don’t know when and where
Emaciated cattle in southern Oromo region in drought-affected Ethiopia, clse to Kenyan border (Simon Roughneen)
The vital winter rains failed across southern Ethiopia, northern Kenya and much of Somalia, leaving Shamsidin and 8 million others in this vast desolate region balancing precariously between subsistence and destitution.
Here, with people utterly dependent on herding animals for food and income, destitution means potential starvation. With their skin stretched taut over protruding ribcages and calvicles, the cattle are emaciated, shuffling along with their heads bowed, as if lacking the strength to see where the herder is taking them. (more…)
‘No water, no rain – we can’t feed the animals’ – Village
April 26th, 2006
Simon Roughneen in Moyale, Kenya-Ethiopia border.
Livestock death is regarded as a precursor of famine (Photo: Simon Roughneen, southern Ethiopia)
At least five million people are chronically food-dependent in Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation. In the Somali and Oromo regions, failed rains mean failed water sources for animals and for people. Failed rains mean no pasture or foliage for the cattle, camels, donkeys and goats that people depend on for food and livelihoods.
Prices for animals plummet, meaning that sale prices cannot do much to help people purchase food and other essential items. As animals die, people are left vulnerable. Mohamed Yusuf, a herder moving his animals on the Moyale-Yabelo road in southern Ethiopia, said: “This is dangerous for us. No water, no rain. We can’t feed the animals. Twenty one of my cattle have died. I have no other source of income. And now I can’t sell any animals. The price is one-fifth of the real value before the drought.”
And although a little rain has fallen on the parched land, it is just that: a little. And the rains due for the next two months will likely be insufficient in any case. But the rain brings its own problems. A poisoned chalice poured from the sky, rain makes animals and people, already weakened from malnutrition, prone to diseases such as measles. And when rivers and lakes are watered again, malaria becomes a serious threat, and what is left of northern Kenya’s infrastructure has been threatened by flash floods.
In Somalia – a non-existent state is prey to warlords and gangsters, making delivery of aid difficult at best and downright dangerous at worst. And recent weeks has seen dozens killed in cattle-raiding in northern Kenya, as resources are depleted and the stakes are raised for men with guns.
And with pre-famine conditions rife in the drought-affected region, there is not much time left if another full-scale famine hits Ethiopia, and across the horn of Africa. (more…)
Drought intensifies in Horn of Africa – RTÉ Morning Ireland
April 5th, 2006
http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0405/morningireland.html
Severely-malnourished infant treated at clinic in eastern Ethiopia (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
“Our Goats are our Gardens” – Evening Herald
March 24th, 2006
LOKICHAR, KENYA – Ekiru Lotiayan walked for two days with his herd of 35 goats just to reach this dried-up river bed near Lokichar in northern Kenya’s Turkana district.
He points to a mountain on the horizon. “That is my home. My family wait there for me to come back”, he tells us.
We have been suffering with the hunger for many years. In Turkana, we have not had proper rains for two years. Our animals are dying. And we are suffering. We need our animals to live. We have no other way.”
6 months previously, this whole area was a freshwater lake. Now locals have dig down into the bed to find water (Photo: Simon Roughneen, northern Kenya, March 2006)
This part of northern Kenya is home to 600,000 people, out of an estimated 11 million people across eastern Africa that are affected by drought and food shortages. 3.5 million of those are in Kenya, east Africa’s wealthiest country. Elsewhere, 2.6 million Ethiopians and 1.7 million Somalis are vulnerable.
The area where north-eastern Kenya, southern Somalia, and Ethiopia share borders is especially badly affected. Lack of infrastructure, remoteness, marginalisation, and insecurity combine to not only undermine local people’s ability to deal with the harsh landscape and arid conditions, but hinder whatever aid effort can be mounted.
Ekiru’s goats scrimmage around a freshly-dug pit in the riverbed. After cutting 7 feet into the surface, the underground water welled up. Now a 10 foot X 7 foot pool of brown stagnant water is lapped-up avidly by the thirsty animals. (more…)
Even Camels Thirst Here – Irish Examiner
March 24th, 2006
On the road between Lodwar and Lokichar in northern Kenya’s Turkana district, we met a woman carrying 15 litres of water in a container balanced on her head.
She got the water she carries from a borehole further along the road. It is shared between around 100 families. And with the water table depleted, the water must be rationed. Moreover, the water she brings will be given to animals as well as her family. It will not go far.
It is an onerous task in any circumstances – but ordinarily Turkana women would not stop to rest while ferrying water even on the 7 mile roundtrip she is making.
Turkana women at Lodwar, northern Kenya, March 2006 (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
It is now evening, and Esther is tired, weakened by months of not having enough food, and as she says;
“We don’t know if we will have enough food, there is not enough water.”
Here, where people’s lives are inextricably bound to their animals, no water means no food.
She adds, “Our animals are dying and they are our food and our livelihood. Without them we are nothing”
With 5 rings around her neck in the Turkana style, Esther is – or was – deemed well-off by local standards. (more…)
