Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Laker's Visit

My good friend David Laker, who I met and got to know on my two trips to Uganda, came and visited this past weekend from Minnesota. He's from Gulu and is studying Comparative Education at the University of Minnesota. He came down to speak at Viseo Dei on Sunday. Maybe the podcast will be up soon. It was an incredible weekend. I was thus inspired to make a video with some of Laker's pictures.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Going to South Africa

Or at least it looks that way at the moment. The Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program just proposed an exchange for me outside of Johannesburg, South Africa for the calendar year of 2010. The proposal is not final yet, as both parties and schools have to finalize the agreement, but the chances of me going to South Africa are very high at the moment.

Unlike most traditional calendar exchanges, the South African exchange is on their school system's year round schedule. This is a huge plus for my travel possibilities throughout the region. 11 weeks in school followed by 3 weeks vacation. I believe this will give me three 3 week vacations while I'm there. I've already got my heart set on Cape Town for at least one of these trips. I've also got my heart set on traveling via motorcycle. The area around Sasolburg is full of endless weekend trips that I plan on taking full advantage of.

It's only March, and if all goes well, I'll still be here till January. I am very excited nonetheless. I'm going to begin my South African reading list though, starting with Nelson Mandela's autobiography. If I ever make it through that, I'll take your other suggestions. I'm also going to download some more Hugh Masekela and get more more SA in the Ipod as well. Wow Africa!

Friday, March 6, 2009

Can the ICC save Darfur?

In my humble opinion, the answer to this question is simply, no.

On Wednesday, the ICC issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese president al-Bashir. The warrant included charges of war crimes and acts against humanity, but did not specifically charge Bashir with genocide. This is the first warrant for a head of state issued by the ICC since it's creation in 2002.

al-Bashir dances after the announcement of the warrant for his arrest

I'm slightly surprised to see the enthusiasm over the indictment. George Clooney was very supportive of this action as were most of my friends who are interested in Sudan. It only makes sense to support such an action. Clearly al-Bashir is directly responsible for supporting the Janjaweed tribes responsible for all the death and rape in Darfur over the last 5 years. Over 300,000 people have died and the Western world is struggling to find any notion of a solution. Concerned citizens write letters to Congress, and Clooney even made it to the White House just last week, all with the message of "Please do something to save Darfur." Finally, after years of deliberation, a case was brought before the ICC and warrant was handed down for the arrest of Sudan's president. Justice.

Well, it's only been a few days and we are already seeing several predictable problems emerging. The most obvious being that it will be impossible to capture Bashir. The UN peacekeeping force already said they would not do the job, and I'm not sure who else the ICC could send. To go into Khartoum and arrest the guy would require a large scale military operation resulting in thousands of casualties, with a limited possibility of success. It'll never happen. But just for the sake of argument, let's say they were actually able to capture Bashir. Would that help Sudan? The citizens of Khartoum are now becoming more anti-West as each day passes. The removal of their president would cause such a stir that the next president would likely be much more radical than Bashir. Bashir is very popular amongst the Arab majority of Sudan, and you can't just rob a country of their president without a significant backlash from his supporters. This might in fact be the worse scenario for Darfur.

There are so many similarities here to our intervention in Iraq. How popular was the Iraq war on the eve of the invasion? How many people did we have to kill in order to capture Sadam? Now that Sadam is gone, how has that improved Iraq? After years in Iraq, if we were to leave today, there would likely be a Sunni genocide. This is certainly not progress, and removing Sadam, oddly enough, might have been the worst thing we ever did in Iraq. Let's not forget that the product of "The Great War" was WWII, a much larger catastrophe. Our hard nosed solutions more often escalate conflicts than resolve them.

The simple truth is that the ICC will not be able to capture Bashir. In retaliation to the warrant, al-Bashir has already removed 13 aid organizations from Darfur; Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders being the two most notable groups. My guess is that Bashir is attempting to remove as much of the Western World from Darfur as possible in order to achieve what he has already been charged with. If things were bad before, I'm deathly afraid that it could get much worse.

So without justice, how do we find peace? I firmly believe that the answer lies in the freedom of the press. The overwhelming majority of people who suffer from human rights violations live in countries who deny freedom of speech. Only when lines of communication are opened can equality be attained. Oddly enough, I thought al-Bashir was slowly (albeit, very slowly) sliding in this direction. News and aid organizations were allowed into Darfur, the South was finally getting a voice in government, and Bashir was open to meeting with just about anybody (he met with Franklin Graham just the other day). I'm not implying that Sudan was freeing itself from censorship, but it was opening up to the outside world more and more. The power of the open media is a powerful deterrent to those who burn down villages and rape women. People only commit these atrocities when they know they are not being watched. Instead of demanding justice, what the West needs to demand is openness. That is the pathway to lasting peace.

Unfortunately, what is left of Darfur is a group of people without modern weaponry, without media, and without the aid of doctors, waiting to defend themselves against radical militias who wish to destroy them completely. My prayers go out to them, and I truly hope that the ICC is right and that I am the one who is wrong.

Other opinions: Franklin Graham, Mohamed Ahmed al-Nur, Desmond Tutu

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Intended Consequences

One of the difficulties I have with blogging is that my world often shifts back and forth between a set of polar opposite thoughts and philosophies. Unfortunately, this does not make for good writing. I much prefer the world of Jim Rome where the primary objective is, "have a take, don't suck." For me, sometimes it's tough to take a side.

Recently I came across the Intended Consequences project; my latest conundrum. Intended Consequences is a book and now a gallery exhibit portraying Rwandan women who were raped during the genocide of 1994. It's a series of portraits of mother and child, captioned with a description of the rape and often the mother's feelings toward the child. The dilemma for me is in determining whether this project is a sincere attempt to better the lives of women and children in Rwanda, or an exploitative project designed to bulk up a short list of aide organizations at the expense of these children.

The issue of sex crimes is very sensitive especially when children are involved. Typically it is unethical for journalists to photograph victims of sexual violence or even describe in much detail these types of crimes. There is certainly a 3rd world, African aspect of this situation that somehow makes it acceptable to do this sort of thing with these children in Rwanda. Let's not forget that these are just young children, who are well documented in this project as being unwanted and unloved. Does it make sense for a mother quoted as saying, "I don't love this child," to give proper consent for that same child? Wronging Rights has a great "take" for the argument that this project is not looking out for the best interest of these children.

But it is always my instinct to side with projects like this. Maybe it's just my bleeding heart, but I live for stuff like this. I'm in North Carolina right now, what do I know about rape victims in Rwanda unless somebody does something like this. There are reports that similar systematic rape is currently taking place in Darfur. What are we doing to stop this? The truth is that rape is quite common whenever a military force invades an enemy territory. The only way to fight this fact is to bring the issue to the front of conversation. It must have been a devastating blow to the moral of our US troops in Vietnam when images of child rape victims were published in the media, but I have to believe that this type of exposure now serves as an effective deterrent for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. If anyone is doing something to prevent large scale rape, it has to be Jonathan Trogovnik, the creator or Intended Consequences.

But above all, there is something about this whole project that is very raw. I almost wish that the intent of the book and the gallery wasn't to raise money for any kind of cause, but just to shed light on this issue. These are such beautiful women and children, stained with an incredibly horrific past. I want to hear them. America gave Rwanda a large collective cold shoulder back in 1994, and the worst thing we could do now is have similar attitude once again. I'm not entirely comfortable with Intended Consequences, but I am infinitely more uncomfortable turning my back on a group of people unhappy about their circumstances.