Most Popular War and Peace Posts
Sri Lanka: Doc Editor Chooses Cinematic Open, Misrepresenting Story
Published November 22, 2009 @ 04:59AM PT
Vanguard has a documentary segment out about Sri Lanka with correspondent Mariana van Zeller. Wow, it packs a punch, but at the same time the documentary reminded me of how influential, and potentially story-changing, film editing can be.
In this case, the documentary as a whole provides important insight and context. There is some incredibly frightening footage and some very important reporting. However, at the same time the editor chose to frontload the documentary with the counter-terror government point of view, saving the critical and Tamil minority points of view until the end.
The result is that it clobbers you over the head, as the government representatives do in the first interviews, with reasons why the Tamil political force may be a set of bloodthirsty terrorists. If one stops there, one would feel that the Tamil resistance is no different than Al Qaeda. Indeed, there is a scene right off where a woman, presumably a Tamil Tiger rebel, walks into a civilian office and then blows up, but...
Hey, Russian Media, there is No "Number War" in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Published November 22, 2009 @ 03:59AM PT
The producers of Russian state television's English language channel belong to that especially loathsome group of people who exploit inaccurate and exaggerated war dead numbers. Some backstory. I was in DC for a few days last week, and accompanied my war correspondent friend David, recently returned from Afghanistan, to an afternoon of interviews at the Russia Today (RT) Washington studio. While David prepared for his live interview, I sat in the waiting room, watching RT on a large plasma screen television. A talkshow host named Al Gurnov was gleefully grilling a Dutch diplomat for answers to ridiculous hypotheticals, like what effect a single European army would have on the transatlantic relationship. I chuckled, but lost interest after a few minutes. Until I heard "Bosnia and Herzegovina." That caught my attention, as did the ominous headline: The Number War.
Uganda Pursues Rebels Across Africa, Racks up Frequent Flier Miles
Published November 22, 2009 @ 12:59AM PT
Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army rebel group has been clocking in the miles. In fact, it has not only drawn fire for seeking refuge from Uganda in neighboring Southern Sudan, Congo DR, and the Central African Republic. It has also encouraged the Ugandan government special forces to pursue and fight them in those neighboring regions. What could be next?
The LRA led by Joseph Kony is an incredibly complex insurgency, so it's not always helpful to simply lay them at the doorstep of the International Criminal Court nor to encourage Uganda's special forces to track them down all over the world. Feeding on very real and popular criticisms of the Ugandan government of President Yoweri Museveni, perverting those accusations, and them in a number of cases kidnapping kids and adults to force them into the fight, the extremist LRA leadership has persisted longer and in more theatres of war than most other rebel groups. This is not your average mom and pop insurgency outfit. The leaders are criminally insane, while the ranks are filled with people who have very few choices.
Uganda's Museveni government consolidated power amid an improving economy for the south in the 1990s. However, people in the north and west felt that they were being discriminated against. As the Museveni government indirectly supported Ugandan and Rwandan Tutsis in re-taking Rwanda from the Hutu Interhamwe after the genocide there, Acholis and others in the north felt they were neglected or left unprotected amid a growing rebellion. When the Museveni government decided to conquer the LRA once and for all, the LRA moved into Southern Sudan and Congo DR. When the Southern Sudanese pushed the LRA out, the group then moved into the eastern part of the Central African Republic. With enough troubles of their own, the CAR and Congo DR governments consented for Uganda to pursue and fight the rebels on their territory. Adding to the confusion, many debate whether it is best for Uganda to "defeat" the rebels, for the ICC to arrest and prosecute the leaders abroad, or for some hybrid solution...
'Girl': Is the New MSF Video Good Social Advertising?
Published November 20, 2009 @ 12:03PM PT
Back in August, the humanitarian and international development blogosphere slogged it out over a controversial video from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) UK. The video, titled 'Boy,' featured a stark image of a small, clay house in an unnamed warzone, with audio of a child's pained screams. It never aired. MSF deliberately released the video online to provoke responses. And provoke it did, from overwhelmed sadness, to outrage, to furious accusations of sensationalism and exploitation, to passionate defenses of MSF's endorsement of the video --and, in the case of one blogger roundtable discussion, all of those reactions.
MSF communications head Avril Benoit handled the deluge with the skill of a true social media pro. She engaged her critics, and even linked to them.
For my part in the melee, I argued that MSF does emergency medical relief, so it is entirely appropriate for its ads to highlight that. MSF is not CARE, or even the International Rescue Committee. Even outside active conflict zones, MSF employees work with blood and guts and human goo all day, treating badly injured, ill, and malnourished people during what are surely among the most desperate moments of those patients’ lives. On the operating table, no one is empowered. And we're all made of the same breakable stuff. A campaign featuring nothing but resilient, empowered beneficiaries (such as CARE's widely-praised “I Am Powerful”) does not make sense in this context, while a disturbing one that shocks the viewer’s conscience does.
Take Action: Call on UN to Prevent Civilian Killings in Eastern Congo
Published November 20, 2009 @ 08:00AM PT
Our esteemed Humanitarian Relief (now War and Peace) blogger, Michael Kleinman, who's on break, introduced us to Oisteen Thorsen, a humanitarian campaigner with Oxfam. Led by Oxfam, one of the most respected and trusted names in the aid biz, partners are working to advise positive change to policy on Congo at the UN. Ten years of UN peacekeeping so far. Please see the video and sign the petition this week. Here's Oisteen's intro:
"...Oxfam with partners are currently running a petition calling on the UN Security Council to stop the killings of civilians in Eastern Congo by the UN-supported Congolese army operation Kimia II. We will be handing over the petition to the Security Council next week (Nov 24th) so this is the last push to get more people to sign on... http://apps.facebook.com/causes/petitions/306 or http://www.oxfam.org/en/emergencies/congo/stop-killing-in-congo. please also see this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3cJbJcd104."
[Photo: UN Peacekeepers on patrol in Congo DR, UN Photo.]
Alex de Waal is Wrong on Afghanistan
Published November 19, 2009 @ 10:27AM PT
In an essay for Prospect magazine (UK), Africa expert Alex de Waal offers his solution to Afghanistan's governance and security problems: more corruption.
"NATO has crippled Karzai’s ability to bargain properly," writes the contrarian researcher best known for his work on Sudan. "Foreign firepower and funds give him the strongest hand in the souk, but western demands to stamp out corruption and defeat the Taliban stop him playing his best cards."
It reads like sarcasm, but that is de Waal's actual thesis --the state-building project has failed because it has not involved enough payoffs to the country's various powerbrokers, and the remedy now is to help Hamid Karzai bribe his rivals, from opposition politicians to the Taliban, into passivity. De Waal argues that only money talks in failed states, and "a well-managed, inclusive patronage system is often the only way of running such countries." So, naturally, "it would be more cost-effective to ditch the extra troops and revert to funding patronage."
De Waal could not be more wrong.
Somalia's Judiciary Attacked but Not Defeated
Published November 18, 2009 @ 12:48PM PT
Gunmen killed Judge Sheikh Mohamad Abdi Aware outside of his mosque last week in Bossaso, a scorching Aden Gulf port on the northeastern coast of Somalia. Judge Aware, despite whatever debate he may have stoked in Somalia, devoted his life not only to the rule of law but to the pursuit of justice according to the sometimes conflicting state, Islamic, and Somali customary law systems in an incredibly volatile political environment.
Back in 2007, a group of local rights workers and I carried out the UN Rule of Law and Security Programme's first child justice survey across the entire north half of Somalia. What tears me up personally about Judge Aware's death is that I believe I met him and yet I cannot remember his face. There were so many times when the imagination became so obsessed with who the bad guys were that it was hard to really focus on the good guys. The painful truth here, which I believe illuminates why foreign interventions often stumble, is that once murdered the dead's lifetime of positive accomplishments, like those of Somalis as a whole, were forever obscured beneath the headline, "Shot dead." Aware accomplished and represented much more than an early death. Although this is a blog format, I believe this topic is so important and so often misunderstood that I'm compelled to write a personal editorial essay.
The rights team and I met with kids detained in the ridiculously hot and uncomfortable prison in Bossaso where the accused from the court where Aware served were remanded and punished. All prisoners, thieves, murderers, rapists, hijackers, those awaiting trial, and children either accused of crimes or simply homeless and troublesome slept on the same floor together. Rumors abounded of men abusing the teenagers. Three girls accused of chronic pickpocketing and a pregnant woman resided in the largely empty women's wing. It was deeply disturbing to listen to some of the detained plea for a new trial, or even a first trial. But looking closely, we found that the trouble was not always coming from poor leadership or ill-will; it was usually the incredible lack of qualified legal officials and funds...
