AP 17 July 2001 Africans Practice Peacekeeping DAKAR, Senegal A 4-year-old U.S. peacekeeping training program for Africans opened its first multinational exercise, setting up a mock peace mission on a fictional African island. Officers of West Africa's own, Nigerian-led peace force are acting as mock higher-ups in the drill, giving orders to about 65 officers in Senegal and 40 in Malawi who are linked across the continent by satellite. The Senegalese speak French, the Malawi officers, English - one of the complications meant to give ``a better concept of the challenges they would face when working with a multinational force,'' said U.S. reserve Col. Chris Gallivan of Dallas. The scenario has officers handling deployment in a fictional force under a U.N.-brokered peace, with all sides agreeing to the foreign forces' presence. The mock peace mission is the first multinational one since the Clinton administration started the African peacekeeping training in 1996 - prodded in part by the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, but still reluctant to commit U.S. soldiers directly in Africa. It also marks the first follow-up training of the program, known as the African Crisis Response Initiative. The future of the U.S. peacekeeping program is uncertain under President Bush . Secretary of State Colin Powell voiced support for limited training while visiting Africa in May, but drew hisses in South Africa when he spoke of African conflicts as ``fundamentally a problem for Africans.'' Britain and France also have commitments to peacekeeping training in Africa. Critics of the U.S. program question its results to date. Some say limited funding has handicapped the training and that Washington's reluctance to train peacekeepers in lethal force is unrealistic. Since its start, about 8,000 military members from Benin, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Malawi, Senegal, Kenya and Uganda have gone through the U.S. program. U.S.-trained participants have served under the United Nations or the West African force in conflicts in Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, the Central African Republic and Congo.

WP 3 July 2001 Pentagon Role in Africa May End Training Program Put Under Review By Douglas Farah, Page A16 BUNDASE TRAINING CAMP, Ghana -- U.S. Special Forces trainers strode up and down the firing line here one recent morning, barking instructions and encouragement as Ghanaian troops struggled to get a feel for the new American-supplied M-60 machine guns they will take with them to nearby Sierra Leone on a U.N. peacekeeping mission. Earlier in the morning, some of the 100 Americans from the 3rd Special Forces Group trained the Ghanaians on M-16 rifles. During the 10-week training program, the troops also will learn to use mortars and sophisticated communications equipment. "We are trying to make sure these people will operate under live fire," Lt. Col. Jay Glover said as he sat in the camp's U.S.-style mess tent built for the training. "If they can't, people will get killed when they turn around and go into combat." Glover and his team are part of Operation Focus Relief, the most visible and costly of the myriad programs the Pentagon has been conducting in 22 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. They include training elite battalions like this one for peacekeeping duties, readying other soldiers for disaster relief, AIDS prevention, and other smaller programs. But many of the programs, which together cost $130 million a year, may be short-lived. Most were initiated by former president Bill Clinton as a compromise between sending U.S. troops into war-torn African countries and doing nothing. They are now under review by the Bush administration, which is divided over what military commitments to make on this continent. The White House must assess whether the programs are "misguided, inadequately resourced or simply need more time to bear fruition," according to a working paper published last month co-written by Jendayi E. Frazer, director of African affairs at the National Security Council. Despite the programs, the paper said, "there was no noticeable change in any of Africa's wars." During a visit to Africa last month, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged that he disagrees with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over funding military missions here. The United States, Powell said, should remain committed to equipping and training African peacekeepers, but Rumsfeld "is always looking for opportunities to back off on some of the overseas commitments we have. It is just trying to find the right balance between getting too committed and not getting committed enough." So far, two 800-man Nigerian battalions have been trained, equipped and deployed to Sierra Leone under the $90 million Focus Relief program. The Ghanaian battalion, along with one from Senegal and three from Nigeria, are to be deployed by the end of the year. The program was rushed into existence last year after the rebel Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone took 500 U.N. peacekeepers hostage. With the U.N. operation in disarray and Britain, the former colonial power there, rushing in troops, Clinton was under pressure to do something to help fight a rebel force renowned for hacking off the arms and legs of women and children. He was unwilling to commit troops and opted instead to provide training and equipment for seven West African battalions to step into the breach. "Certainly the motivation was to get troops on the ground that were not U.S. troops," said a senior Pentagon official. According to U.N. sources and observers in Sierra Leone, the two Nigerian battalions are a marked improvement over other African forces deployed there, but have not yet faced any serious challenges in combat. A broader U.S. program is the $20 million-a-year African Crisis Response Initiative, started in 1996 to create a pan-African force for peacekeeping and disaster relief. U.S. Special Forces provide training, uniforms and communications equipment but no weapons. With State Department funding, the ACRI program has trained 8,000 troops since 1997, and plans to train a total of 12,000, U.S. officials said. It began when the Clinton administration feared Burundi would implode on the heels of the 1994 Rwanda genocide crisis. A U.S. official familiar with the program said it was initially "ill thought-out and rushed" through the policy-approval process. None of Africa's major armies took part, either because they declined or could not qualify because of rules that limited participation to countries with democratic governments. Nigeria was initially ineligible and later chose, along with South Africa, not to participate. Uganda, Ethiopia and Ivory Coast all joined but were suspended because of military coups, political unrest or involvement in wars. Only smaller countries such as Benin, Malawi, Mali and Ghana signed up. The NSC paper said that after spending more than $100 million on ACRI, "it is unclear what the United States has to show for its efforts." Other programs include a $10 million U.S. Navy program to combat the spread of AIDS in African armed forces, and the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, which brings regional military and civilian leaders together. In Guinea, the United States has supplied more than $1 million of communications equipment, spare parts and meals to its army. A multimillion-dollar aid package is under consideration, Pentagon officials said. Many African armed forces, faced with sharp budget cutbacks and the end of Cold War largess, welcome the U.S. training and the equipment that often goes with it. Ghana, participating in both Focus Relief and ACRI, is one of the most enthusiastic countries about the new military ties. In an interview, Defense Minister Kwame Addo-Kufuor said his troops received advanced equipment and "orientation toward democratic traditions and a better appreciation of the democratic way of life." About 300 of the 800 soldiers being trained here come from the 64th Battalion, known for its loyalty to former president Jerry Rawlings, who led two coups, governed the country for 20 years and is widely accused of using the unit to suppress dissent and violate human rights. Rawlings left office in January. None of the units trained in either Focus Relief or ACRI has been accused of human rights abuses. But human rights groups argue that training armies that have histories of brutality must include effective vetting of participants and have a strong focus on human rights and humanitarian law. Janet Fleischman, Africa director of Human Rights Watch, said human rights training and vetting are the "weakest link" in the Focus Relief program. "If done right, with strong human rights vetting, humanitarian law instruction and a clear mechanism for monitoring and accountability, this could be a new model," she said. "But we haven't seen if they are going to give sufficient emphasis to these fields to make it work." Lt. Col. Glover said troops he trains receive seven hours of human rights instruction, with additional training incorporated into other exercises. A senior Pentagon official said "all participating individuals are vetted for human rights violations." But in the cases of Nigeria and Ghana, where until recently the United States has had scant military contact, vetting is limited to checking the names of training candidates against lists of suspected rights abusers kept by the State Department, Defense Department or intelligence agencies. "We don't really know who these guys are or where they come from," acknowledged a U.S. official in the region. "We have very little to match the names against because we haven't worked with this army for decades."

Algeria

BBC  24 July 2001 Family massacred in Algeria -- Ninety people have been killed so far this month By North Africa correspondent David Bamford Suspected Islamist militants in Algeria have massacred three generations of the same family in an attack on a holiday camp to the west of the capital, Algiers. In one of the bloodiest months in the long-running insurgency campaign by the militants, the number of people killed since the start of July has reached 90. These latest killings took place near the seaside resort of Tipaza. According to reports, at about 0100 local time (0000 GMT) on Monday the electricity to the area was suddenly cut. The attackers then arrived in a convoy of vehicles and moved into the house of the Merabet family, which was apparently deliberately targeted. Killers took their time The grandmother, mother, teenagers and young children were all killed - seven people in all - in an operation in which the insurgents took their time. They did not leave until 0300 local time and help did not arrive until five hours later. The attackers may have been from the same group that on Saturday night killed another seven people in Ain Tagourait, a town just a few kilometres closer to Algiers. Whatever the case, the authorities in Algeria seem unable or unwilling to do what is necessary to bring about an end to the killings, in which about 1,300 people have died since the start of the year.

Botswana

BBC 19 July, 2001, 21:44 GMT 22:44 UK Losing battle for Kalahari Only several hundred remain on their ancestral lands By Rageh Omaar The modern world has barely touched the Kalahari desert, in the middle of Botswana. Nature, not man, governs the daily pattern of life. It is as bare, remote and harsh as life can get - and yet there is a natural, undisturbed order that gives this land its own sense of beauty. It's up to us, we will stay here even if they try to kill us. We know this land. We are as free as birds and we will live as we want Gakemothowasepe Molapong But yet people do live here, as they have done for nearly 30,000 years. This is home to the San people - or the Bushmen of the Kalahari. They have lived here as hunter-gatherers. Only several hundred remain on their ancestral lands. But now they face a battle to cling on to their way of life. The Botswanan Government is urging - some would say forcing - them to move. Huddled around fires outside their huts in the cold early morning the villagers told me about their plight. "It's up to us, we will stay here even if they try to kill us", said 28-year-old Gakemothowasepe Molapong. "We know this land. We are as free as birds and we will live as we want." It is a competition between the indigenous rights of the San people, and the economic interests of Botswana. The government says it wants to protect the wildlife, but many believe that they are motivated by the huge mineral wealth the Kalahari is believed to possess, including diamonds and possible uranium. And so, the government wants to relocate the San communities. Camps The Botswanan Government says that if they do move, they can provide them with a better life in relocation camps. The camps are located hundreds of miles away. It took six hours to drive to the main camp, New Xadi. The government wants to relocate Bush communities It has many things that people would recognise as being part of the modern world. Most people live in houses, there is electricity. In stark contrast to their villages in the desert, you can hear the sound of radios around the camp and you can see quite a few consumer goods. The government provides them with regular food parcels. But despite this, those who have moved are now living a life of dependency. There is little sense of belonging amongst those that are now living in the camp. Instead, people who used to be self-reliant now live on handouts. They sit all day with nothing to do. Alcoholism is rife. Tsamxegea Dumela told me: "We don't have any work. Every day we get up, and the only time we move is to keep in the sunlight. That's all. We have nothing else to do." Another way On a farm on the outskirts of the town of Ghanzi, three Bushwomen gather wild roots and fruit. They have been able to live here and freely preserve their culture. They share the land with Andrea Hardbattle. She speak their language, and considers these people as family. They don't want to move to these resettlement camps because they will feel totally lost. I think a lot of them will just die there Andrea Hardbattle Her father was a policeman from a small village near Hull, in England. He settled here in the 1900s. He met and married her mother, who was a Bushwoman. When she was young and her mother was unable to breastfeed her, Andrea was instead breastfed by Nxaniki who still lives with Andrea. Nxaniki is 70. I spoke to her as she sat under a thorn tree, cooking as her still fit 90-year-old mother, looked on quietly smoking her home-made pipe. I asked Nxaniki how life had changed for the San people over the years. She looked at me quizzically, and said she would not know as she was still a young woman. But she acknowledged that she was fortunate to be able to live all her life, on her own land. Andrea Hardbattle says the Bush people are slowly losing the ability to shape their own lives. Bush people have lived in this harsh environment for nearly 30,000 years "Probably they'll eventually have to move," she says, "but a lot of them, particularly the old, are making a stand. "They were born on their ancestral lands in the Kalahari and they want to die there. "They don't want to move to these resettlement camps because they will feel totally lost. I think a lot of them will just die there." Andrea Hardbattle says the San people are not fighting against modernisation, but they want the right to determine the pace of change and how they adapt their ancient culture to it. The San people of the Kalahari are determined to prevent their way of life from simply disappearing. But they know all too well that the desert itself is set to change forever, as the mineral wealth that lies within its dry soil is developed - and as more and more tourists are drawn to this region. In the face of this, they feel they are fighting a losing battle, but it is a battle they have to fight.

Burundi

AP 23 July 2001  Burundian President Named to Lead By JOCELYNE SAMBIRA, Associated Press Writer BUJUMBURA, Burundi (AP) - Hours after surviving a coup attempt by Tutsi soldiers, President Pierre Buyoya sealed a power-sharing deal with Hutu politicians Monday designed to end Burundi's eight-year civil war. The soldiers mutinied against the deal before midnight Sunday, setting off a battle with assault rifles and grenades that could be heard in the capital, Bujumbura. The mutineers fled with army chief of staff Gen. Libere Hicuburundi as a hostage, pursued by loyalist troops. They were intercepted near the central town of Ngozi, and Hicuburundi was freed, according to a driver of a vehicle seized by the mutineers. The driver was reached by mobile telephone and spoke on condition of anonymity. Army spokesman Col. Augustin Nzadamtema said the mutinous soldiers surrendered peacefully and that 11 junior officers were arrested. The soldiers were to be escorted to their barracks, he said. Two of the at least 72 young Tutsis who tried to overthrow Buyoya were killed, Defense Minister Gen. Cyrille Ndayirukiye said. The Bujumbura area commander, Col. Fabien Ndayishimye, and his bodyguard were injured in the fighting. As loyalist soldiers put down the coup, Buyoya wrapped up negotiations at a regional summit in Arusha, Tanzania, that made him the leader of a new, transitional government. Under the plan, Buyoya, a Tutsi, will lead Burundi's government for 18 months, with Domitien Ndayizeye, a Hutu, as vice president. A Hutu will be president for the next 18 months, with a Tutsi as his deputy, after which elections are supposed to be held. The agreement, known as the Arusha accords, was signed last August but had not been implemented because the 19 political parties and interest groups could not agree on who should lead the transitional government. The accord calls for an ethnically balanced army and legislature, as well as the protection of politicians should they return from exile. Although in the minority, Tutsis have effectively ruled Burundi for all but four months since independence in 1962. The civil war began when Tutsi paratroopers assassinated Burundi's first democratically elected president, a Hutu, in 1993. Hutu rebels took up arms and more than 200,000 people have been killed. Buyoya, who twice seized power through coups, told reporters the situation in Burundi was ``perfectly under control'' and the transitional government could be in place ``even before November.'' ``We are in a framework of a reforming process and when you are reforming, such kinds of events can happen,'' Buyoya said. ``Maybe there will be another (coup) attempt, but it will fail also.'' Buyoya returned to Burundi on Monday night, where he congratulated senior military officers for putting down the coup. Many Tutsis fear a Hutu government would carry out a genocide similar to the 1994 massacres in Rwanda. More than 500,000 Tutsis were killed then by an extremist Hutu government. The soldiers apparently mutinied because of these fears. ``These mutineers are against the Arusha peace accords and do not know the necessity of the accords,'' Ndayirukiye said. He said military commanders had been alerted to the coup a few hours in advance and had beefed up security at the airport, radio stations and other key installations. Joseph Nyezimana, leader of a hard-line Tutsi party, said the coup attempt demonstrated Buyoya's weakness. ``The coup (attempt) was carried out to show that there is no military support for Buyoya,'' Nyezimana said in Arusha. Asked when there could be peace in Burundi, South African President Nelson Mandela, who mediated the deal, said, ``let's not speculate ... we are dealing with the problems of today.''

Central African Republic

IRIN 21 July 2001 Thousands of Central African Republic (CAR) residents trying to reach relatives who fled the country after the failed coup in May have been turned back by the military as they tried to cross the Ubangui River border to the DRC, AFP reported on Thursday. Before the announcement of the closure of the 1,000 km long border on Tuesday, people from the CAR capital Bangui had been crossing the river daily to Zongo in the DRC to where tens of thousands had fled. Bangui residents had been taking food to relatives, mainly from the southern Yakoma tribe, the ethnic group of former military ruler Andre Kolingba, whom CAR authorities blame for the coup bid. According to AFP, refugees fear reprisals by the CAR army, despite assurances from President Ange-Felix Patasse's government that no such action will be taken.

ICRC News 01/29 - 26 July 2001  Central African Republic: ICRC phases out emergency aid for displaced The ICRC is currently concluding its first emergency aid programme for 10,000 displaced persons near the capital, Bangui. The supplies distributed comprised plastic sheeting, kitchen utensils, blankets and soap. The coup attempt in Bangui at the end of May forced thousands to flee the areas where the worst fighting occurred. Many took refuge in the suburb of Ouango and the villages of M'boko and Sandimba, to the east of the capital. Some of the aid went to about 5,000 people who had already returned to their homes, only to find them looted, burned or destroyed.

DR Congo

BBC 14 July, 2001  Ugandan army arrests 'witch-hunters' The Ugandan army says it has arrested 70 people across the border, in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, suspected of hacking to death more than 300 people. The army maintains a strong presence in the area, in support of a rebel movement opposed to the government in Kinshasa. An army spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Phinehas Katirima, told the BBC the suspected killers were armed bandits known as Ninjas. He said they had been robbing and murdering people under the pretext that they were witches.

Guardian (UK) 31 July 2001 A people persecuted by killers on all sides of a bloody war 'They came many times. They killed civilians, not soldiers...' The full horror of an African tragedy starts to unfold Chris McGreal in Kongolo, Katanga, The suffering of Albert Tambwe and his family is almost unbearable. Twenty of his relatives - including two of his children - were murdered or died of disease during the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and some of the women in his family were raped. Mr Tambwe, his wife and young child are emaciated from malnutrition and disease. "My village is Lemba. It is not large but many people died there. I do not know how many because I do not know who died and who ran away but I do know that I helped to bury a lot of people besides my own relatives," he said. Visits to Kongolo, Manono, Kalemie and other parts of rebel-held Congo reveal that Mr Tambwe's experience is all too common in a region awash with armed groups. They range from the Rwandan and Ugandan armies and their Congolese rebel allies to the interahamwe Hutu militia responsible for the Rwandan genocide seven years ago, Mayi-Mayi traditional warriors and Burundian insurgents. In Kongolo, where Mr Tambwe and his remaining family have sought shelter, malnourished children barely cling to life as their parents tell of atrocities at the hands of the Mayi-Mayi. Two-thirds of the residents of Manono - home town of the assassinated Congolese president, Laurent Kabila - fled intense fighting and bombing by the Zimbabwean military that destroyed many buildings. Families tramped hundreds of miles through bush in search of safety. Thousands remain unaccounted for. In Kalemie, three-quarters of children born during the war are dead before their second birthday. In January, the British medical agency, Merlin, recorded two-and-a-half times more deaths than births in the relatively peaceful district of Kalemie - an alarmingly high figure. The ordeal for Mr Tambwe's family began a little more than two years ago as Congolese government troops fought against the rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) and Rwandan forces for control of his village. "When the RCD and Rwandans came to Lemba, the government soldiers attacked. Many people were killed. I don't know how many because we ran into the bush. When we came back, people were dead or missing," he said. The Rwandans wrested control of Lemba from the government and moved on with the front line. The villagers settled back into their homes and thought their ordeal was over. It was just beginning. Civilians killed Over the following two years, the Mayi-Mayi repeatedly attacked Lemba in search of food, women and whatever they could loot. "The Mayi-Mayi came to trouble us. They were not killing soldiers, they were killing civilians. Others were bitterly beaten. Then they looted the houses. The Mayi-Mayi came many times, and every time they killed people. They burnt houses before they left," said Mr Tambwe. As Mr Tambwe recounted the attacks, his wife, Kia Suybakene, lay wrapped in a dirty cloth on a bare concrete floor hardly able to move. Her skin was drawn tight over her sunken face - her cheeks sucked deep into her mouth, her eyes bulging. If her eyes had not moved, she might have been mistaken for a corpse. Her husband said she was suffering a mix of disease and malnutrition. But at the mention of the looting of the food Mrs Suybakene stirred and briefly managed to hold herself upright. "They took all our food; maize, groundnuts, chicken, goats, pigs. If you did not give it to them they killed you. They said you were giving the food to their enemies instead, so they ate everything and we had nothing," she said. Then she slumped back next to her immobile four-year old son, Leopold. The Mayi-Mayi cordoned off a part of Lemba. There were only two circumstances in which the villagers were permitted near, and neither of them was welcome. When the Mayi-Mayi decided to kill someone, the victim was dragged to the lair and butchered. Other villagers were then ordered to bury the corpse. Stories circulated in Lemba that the militiamen were eating body parts after the burial parties noticed that the corpses were mutilated and organs removed. "The Mayi-Mayi were eating flesh. They cut up the bodies, they took part and they ate it. We could see they had been cut open and pieces removed," Mr Tambwe said. Certainly, some of the Mayi-Mayi took to wearing severed hands around their necks, a practise reminiscent of the Belgian colonial practice of amputating hands as punishment. The killings were only part of the suffering. With the plunder of the village food supply, and the dangers of venturing into the fields to plant new crops, malnutrition set in. With hunger came disease. Two of Mr Tambwe's five children died. He does not know of what but said they became sick because they did not have enough to eat. Lemba is in the southern province of Katanga. The region is so fertile that in times of peace it fed the capital, Kinshasa, thousands of miles away. But the front line runs across Katanga and the war cut people off from their fields, leaving them to starve and become vulnerable to disease. The World Food Programme estimates that it will need to feed 1.3m Congolese this year. And then there was the systematic rape of Lemba's women. "If they arrive and you are with your wife in the house, they take your wife by force," Mr Tambwe said. "She becomes theirs. If you want to object to the idea, they kill you. If you have young daughters who are not married, who have never known a man, they were taking them by force." Rape appears to have been widespread across eastern Congo during the fighting, and all sides have been accused. But the most notorious case of mass rape to emerge so far is in the town of Shabunda, deep into rebel-held territory. Shabunda was occupied by Rwandan troops but attacked and besieged by the interahamwe in June 2000. As the town grew increasingly short of food, women ventured into fields on the outskirts in search of cassava for their families. The unlucky ones were abducted by the interahamwe as sex slaves. People in Shabunda were not certain what happened to the women until the Rwandans and RCD launched an offensive earlier this year that drove the interahamwe beyond the town. As the Hutu militiamen fled, they left behind 2,000 women who had been systematically raped. When the women returned to Shabunda, there was initially silence and shame. But because it was widely known that they had been raped, some of the victims spoke publicly of their plight. Some had children by their attackers. Others discovered that their husbands wanted no more to do with them. In a few cases, the women had been raped in front of their families before being abducted. But it is not solely the irregular Hutu extremist forces and the Mayi-Mayi that have persecuted the civilian population. In Katanga, the Rwandan army systematically looted several towns, including Kongolo and Kalemie, after capturing them from the Kinshasa government. The Rwandans have also hunted down Hutus deemed guilty of genocide. The UN has accused the RCD of carrying out massacres claiming thousands of lives in more than a dozen towns, including one incident in which 15 women were buried alive after being tortured. The rebels are accused of rape, looting and a scorched earth policy in other areas. Mulawa Ngoy and her five children were burnt out of their home in Kateya village by the Congolese rebels. "When the war came, it was suddenly. We saw some troops coming and we ran away. We lived in the bush, drank muddy water, were bitten by mosquitoes. We did not get enough food. Then we went back to our village," she said. "The RCD came a second time, and this time they burned out village, all the houses. We ran away again, and when we got back we found some corpses. It was very difficult because they had been there some days and they were smelling badly. The RCD forced us to bury the corpses." Crops destroyed Mrs Ngoy says that at least four other villages near her own - Kaombo, Loni, Kisaka and Kisampi - were torched and their crops destroyed by the RCD, presumably to deny shelter and other assistance to its enemies. But the result was that thousands of people were left exposed in the bush with little to eat, their children growing sick. Aid workers are themselves targets at times. Six International Red Cross staff were murdered near Bunia, in north-eastern Congo, in April. The identity of the culprits remains unclear. Ultimately, many Congolese blame Rwanda for their misery. Rwandan troops are widely unpopular in the east, even among the Congolese rebels they support, and held responsible for creating the war that has caused so much misery. Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, denies his government has blood on its hands. "Why is it Rwanda that has blood on its hands? Why is it not the international community? If we are talking about people dying in the Congo, it is not Rwanda's creation. Congo's problems are all over Congo. They are not only in eastern Congo. People focus on eastern Congo because they want to bring out Rwanda as the culprit. But all of Congo has problems, serious problems, emanating from a long history," he said. But while many Congolese want rid of the Rwandan army, they also fear its departure. They worry that they will be even more vulnerable to the Mayi-Mayi and interahamwe. And they are not at all certain that the Kinshasa government's forces will not retaliate against people in the east of the country for a perceived collaboration with the rebels and invaders. "I liked the future better under Mobutu," said Mr Tambwe. "Mobutu did not know we existed so we were not afraid of him. Now we have to be afraid of too many people when all we want is live in our homes and eat." Principal military groups in eastern Congo: Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) Main rebel organisation in the southern part of rebel-held Congo. Heavily reliant on support from the Rwandan military which has done much of the fighting Rwandan and Ugandan armies Invaded what was then Zaire in 1996 and spearheaded the overthrow of Mobutu Sese Seko. Reinvaded in August 1998 after a rift with Mobutu's successor, Laurent Kabila. Although initially allies, the two armies have clashed and are now hostile to each other Interahamwe The Hutu extremist militia that led the genocide of about 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 in alliance with the then Rwandan army. Backed and trained by the government in Kinshasa Mayi-Mayi Traditional warriors in eastern Congo who believe that magical charms can ward off weapons. The Mayi-Mayi have switched sides several times and largely prey on the civilian population Kinshasa government forces Joseph Kabila's army is heavily reliant on support from the Zimbabwe military and on its backing for the interahamwe to pursue the war against the rebel-held east.

Cote d'Ivoire

AP 23 July 2001 U.N. Probes Ivory Coast Massacre  A U.N. inquiry has found Ivory Coast's paramilitary police responsible for the massacre of some 60 young men during turmoil in October that broke out as the president took office. Eight officers are scheduled to go on trial in Abidjan on Tuesday for their alleged involvement in the killings. The bodies of about 60 young men were found in a field on the outskirts of Abidjan days after President Laurent Gbagbo was swept to power in a popular uprising after chaotic elections. Most had been shot in the head. Followers of opposition leader Alassane Dramane Ouattara say the victims were members of his Rally of the Republicans party and that the killings were politically motivated. In February, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan established a commission of inquiry to look into the events surrounding the elections. In a 65-page report released Friday, the three-member commission wrote that the gendarmes bear responsibility for the massacre and that the military bears the same responsibility in the deaths of civilians during demonstrations in the days following the election. The commission, led by U.N. Ambassador Colin Granderson of Trinidad, concluded that members of the security forces, in particular the gendarmes, used excessive force and committed human rights violations during the demonstrations. The commission, which spent two months in Ivory Coast, called on the government to increase efforts to prosecute authorities involved in wrongdoing and improve human rights training for security forces. International rights groups have sharply criticized Ivorian authorities for the slowness of their investigation into the killings. The EU and other donors that have cut off aid to Ivory Coast, have said a full resumption of aid will depend on improvement in the country's political and human rights.

AP 27 July 2001 Survivor Details W. Africa Massacre  His body scarred by automatic weapon fire, one of two known survivors of an October massacre blamed on Ivory Coast security forces came forward Friday with an account of a roundup that claimed at least 57 lives, most of young men or boys. Whipped, tortured and sprayed with bullets at a paramilitary camp, the victims were taken to a field on the outskirts of Abidjan, forced to lay out the bodies of those already dead, sit among the corpses — and wait to die, the young man told reporters. ```This is your last day,''' he quoted paramilitary police as telling them before opening fire. Human rights groups brought the 20-year-old survivor — age 19 at the time of the killings — before reporters Friday. He spoke only on condition neither his name nor location be given. His account provided some of the most detailed allegations of the Oct. 26 [2000] massacre, which came amid days of political and ethnic violence following tumultuous presidential elections in Ivory Coast. Once a center of stability and prosperity in West Africa, Ivory Coast saw international aid cut off after its first-ever military coup, in December 1999. The European Union and others have made clear they'll resume full aid only if Ivory Coast's elected government makes reforms — particularly, bringing culprits in the October massacre to justice. Military trials of eight paramilitary police officers charged in the massacre opened this month in a military camp. Witnesses and families of the slain men have told The Associated Press they have received threats from paramilitary police warning them not to testify. The 20-year-old who spoke to reporters Friday said he is too afraid to take the stand. Some paramilitary officers have threatened a new revolt over their colleagues' prosecution — saying the killings were ordered by unspecified higher-ups. Paramilitary police supported the current Ppresident Laurent Gbagbo, who came to power in the tumult after the elections. But there has been no serious suggestion Gbagbo was involved in the massacre of the 57, and he denies responsibility. The massacre — targeting the Muslim ethnic Dioula minority — came the day after the presidential elections, which the then-military junta leader tried and failed to rig in his own favor. Gbagbo declared himself president in the chaos, while supporters of rival opposition leader Alassane Dramane Ouattara took to the streets to demand new elections. Paramilitary police broke up the marches with tear gas, ran down the fleeing marchers, and surrounded them, said the young man, one of those caught. The opposition supporters were taken to a paramilitary camp, stripped, beaten with belts and clubs, then doused with buckets of pepper-laced water that burned their wounds, the young man said. Without warning, two officers ordered all the men to lie on the ground and say their prayers, the survivor said. ``You Dioulas, we will show you that you have taken advantage of our hospitality,'' one officer told the terrified prisoners. He opened fire. The young man, whose left arm was ripped open by bullets, fell down and pretended to be dead. ``One kid was crying. He begged them not to shoot him saying he was still in school,'' the survivor said Friday. ``They didn't listen.'' At dark, survivors were told to gather the dead in three police vehicles. Officers took the prisoners to a deserted, grassy patch of road in Yopougon, a crowded neighborhood on the outskirts of Abidjan. When the firing started again, no one made a sound, the man said. He survived both rounds of firing because the bullets hit only one arm and the back of one leg, and because — both times — the bodies of other prisoners shielded his. Feigning death, he listened to the last breaths of dying men. ``I remember at one point one of the officers said: 'There's one here still alive.' And I thought they meant me,'' he told reporters. Officers considered, and rejected, pouring gasoline over the bodies and burning them. Later, the young man said he heard another man stir, then call out. Hearts racing, the two walked cautiously out of the clearing and in the direction of town, he said. Human rights groups have identified the other survivor as Brahima Toure, who led a group of victims' families in filing a human-rights complaint against Ivory Coast officials last month in Belgium. Human rights groups estimate 175 people died in the violence surrounding the election. In a report last week, a U.N. commission held paramilitary police responsible for the massacre in the field.

BBC 31 July, 2001  In Ivory Coast, the trial has resumed of eight gendarmes in connection with the massacre of fifty-seven people during political violence that followed presidential elections last year. The first hearing was adjourned last week after defence lawyers argued over the legality of the trial by a tribunal. The case arose after a mass grave with bullet-ridden bodies of men thought to be supporters of the opposition leader Alassan Ouattara was discovered in October. Mr Ouattara was barred from contesting the elections on the grounds that he was not fully Ivorian. A United Nations inquiry into the massacres said the role of gendarmes seemed indisputable.

Egypt

 Al-Ahram Weekly Online 12 - 18 July 2001 Issue No.542 The force of law, not the law of force Why is Ariel Sharon not being tried for crimes against humanity? Nur Farahat* proposes a strategy  When formulating his theory on law, the German philosopher of law Ihering found inspiration in Heinrich von Kleist's Michael Kohlhass. The protagonist of this story was a simple peasant who owned a number of horses from which he earned a living. One day, a local squire happened along, spotted the horses and decided he wanted them. At first he offered to buy the horses but when the peasant proved reluctant the nobleman simply confiscated them. The distraught Kohlhass exhausted all avenues of litigation to get his horses back, or at least a fair price for them, but to no avail. What could a poor peasant expect when justice was so skewed in favor of the nobility? In the end, Kohlhass had only his gift of eloquence to fall back on and he used this to great effect in stirring a throng of downtrodden peasants to rise up against oppression, a revolt that developed into a revolution that succeeded in restoring to the peasants all their usurped rights. Far from condemning the intrepid peasant leader as a "terrorist" and the peasant uprising as "an act of violence" -- labels that have become common currency these days to describe peoples struggling for their rights -- the German philosopher of law found in von Kleist's novella a paradigm on which to construct his theory on the fight for law and the fight for right. Indeed, the philosopher borrowed some of the protagonist's maxims, among them "Law is the will of power. Law without power is a flame that cannot burn, a light that gives off no light;" and "Citizens must defend their law as soldiers defend the walls of their city." One wonders: are these notions still applicable to the relationship between law, revolution and power in the age of globalisation? To answer yes is to expose oneself to the accusation of promoting terrorism, the knee-jerk reaction of those Western intellectuals whose consciences are numb to the meaning of self-determination and the right of peoples under occupation to seek recourse to armed resistance. What I will do, however, is compare two contemporary cases to illustrate the double standards the global order has applied in implementing international codes of justice, an illustration from which we must conclude that the world today is in need of the idealism of von Kleist and the principles of Ihering. On 24 May 1999, the International War Crimes Tribunal read out the indictment against four Yugoslavian war criminals -- the first time in history officials have been arraigned on such charges while still in positions of power. The accused were Slobodan Milosevic (born in Serbia on 20 August 1941), president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and commander-in-chief of the Yugoslav army; Milan Miotnovic (born in Serbia in 1942), president of Serbia and member of the Supreme Defence Council; Nicolai Sanovic (born in Serbia in 1948), deputy prime minister of Yugoslavia; and Vlagko Stujilkovic (born in Serbia), Serbian minister of interior. From 1 January to the end of May 1999, the court said, these individuals had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity through murder, persecution and mass deportation for political reasons and based on ethnic and religious discrimination. The indictment against Milosevic and his codefendants was issued in a court established by a 1993 Security Council resolution invoking Chapter 7 of the UN Charter to call for the prosecution of individuals who have perpetrated crimes against international humanitarian law in the former Yugoslavia from 1991 onwards. The jurisdiction of that tribunal was explicitly restricted in terms of time and place. The charges brought against Milosevic did not state that he personally perpetrated crimes of war and crimes against humanity; rather, he was indicted on the basis of a principle adopted by the tribunal and recognised in national and international jurisprudence: that of the commander's direct responsibility for crimes committed under his orders. The charges brought against Milosevic also reflect two other established principles of international criminal law. The first is that there can be no immunity in the cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity, a principle brought to bear in other instances, most notably in the trial of Chilean dictator Pinochet, whose position as a state official, in the opinion of both the Spanish and British courts, did not entitle its occupant to immunity against criminal accountability for crimes of such magnitude. The second principle is that, while ad hoc international courts are competent to adjudicate on cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity that fall under their jurisdiction, the same is true of every signatory nation to the Geneva Convention of 1949, even if the accused committed the offenses outside the national boundaries. This principle is made explicit in Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War, which stipulates: "Each High Contracting Party shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts. It may also, if it prefers, and in accordance with the provisions of its own legislation, hand such persons over for trial to another High Contracting Party concerned, provided such High Contracting Party has made out a prima facie case." Now, have Israeli officials contravened international law, and specifically the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention, pertaining to the protection of civilian populations in areas under occupation? If indeed they have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity, what has been the stance of the international community towards these crimes and their perpetrators? If accused and convicted, will Israelis follow Milosevic and his cohorts, the war criminals in Rwanda and, before that, the defendants in the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials following World War II? To answer these questions, I will examine the case of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Not only Palestinian homes and fields are buried beneath the concrete jungle of Israeli settlements, highways and byways; the Fourth Geneva Convention lies there as well.  Born in 1928, Ariel Sharon was 14 when he joined the Haganah, the underground Zionist terrorist group whose paramilitary off-shoots destroyed Palestinian villages and murdered their inhabitants as part of a campaign to terrorise the local populace. In 1953, Sharon founded and led Unit 101, the objective of which was to drive Palestinians out of their native villages through acts of genocide. It was as commander of Unit 101 that Sharon committed his first documented war crime, when he ordered a raid on Al-Burayj refugee camp in Gaza in August 1953. According to the available sources, between 15 and 50 defenceless Palestinians were killed during this raid. In his report on this brutal attack, United Nations envoy Major- General Vagn Bennike wrote that Sharon's men threw bombs through the windows of huts in which the refugees were sleeping; as the victims fled, they were attacked by small arms and automatic weapons. It was also as commander of Unit 101 that Sharon committed his second atrocity, one that shook world public opinion at the time. The Qibya massacre, as it came to be known, took place shortly after the Burayj attack. On 14 October 1953, Sharon's forces invaded the small West Bank village of Qibya, blew up 45 homes and murdered 69 Palestinian civilians, at least half of them women and children. On 18 October the US secretary of state issued a statement in which he expressed the deepest sympathy for the families of those who lost their lives in the Qibya attack as well as the conviction that those responsible should be brought to account. Needless to say, those responsible, foremost among them Sharon, were not brought to account; nor were measures taken to prevent the recurrence of such tragedies. On the contrary; graver atrocities followed, in the absence of international humanitarian conscience or justice. In 1956, Sharon became commander of a paratroop brigade that took part in the tripartite invasion of Egypt. Forty years after this French- British-Israeli aggression against Egypt, information began to surface about one of the most repulsive acts of mass murder ever perpetrated by a military commander on the battlefield. Ariel Sharon is alleged to have committed this crime. His accusers are neither Arabs nor UN representatives but eyewitnesses from within the Israeli military establishment. Beneath the headline, "Israelis admit massacre" in the Daily Telegraph of 16 August 1995, Ohad Gozan, writing from Tel Aviv, reported: "Reports of how Israeli paratroopers killed about 270 Egyptian prisoners of war 40 years ago are straining relations between the two countries. Egypt has demanded an investigation into the alleged atrocities, which date back to Israel's involvement in the 1956 Anglo-French campaign to take the Suez Canal. The killings were revealed in a paper on the Sinai campaign commissioned by the army's military history division. They were described in graphic detail in newspaper and television interviews." In 1967, Sharon was appointed IDF Head of the Southern Command Staff. In August 1971, the forces under his command blew up 2,000 houses in Gaza; 12,000 Palestinians were made homeless. Hundreds of Palestinian youths were arbitrarily arrested and deported to Jordan and Lebanon, and 600 relatives of Palestinian freedom fighters were deported to Sinai. In the second half of 1971, 101 Palestinian resistance fighters were executed without trial. In 1982, as minister of defence in the government of Menachem Begin, Sharon masterminded the invasion of Lebanon. Israeli forces, acting on his orders, killed thousands of civilians and drove half a million more from their homes. By the end of July, the government of Lebanon announced a toll of 14,000 dead, 90 per cent of whom were unarmed civilians. The number of seriously wounded was double that figure (i.e. approximately 28,000). Shortly before the end of the invasion, Sharon colluded with the Lebanese Phalangist Party in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Israeli forces surrounded these refugee camps to prevent their inhabitants from fleeing, while the Lebanese militiamen inside tortured and executed some 2,000 Palestinians, raping the women before killing them. The massacre, reminiscent of the Nazi atrocities perpetrated during World War II, so appalled international public opinion that Israel was forced to form a commission of inquiry into the incident. As might have been expected, the Kahan Commission, so named because the chief magistrate of the Israeli Supreme Court headed it, issued a very watered- down condemnation of Sharon's involvement. The commission did not find him directly accountable for the massacre, despite considerable evidence of his responsibility. Rather, it found him guilty of not having foreseen that a massacre would occur. Remember, though, that the Kahan Commission only announced its conclusions. Annex B of its findings, which contains many details of the inquiry, has yet to be released to the public. Any impartial international investigation would have found Sharon guilty of genocide. Numerous international reports have documented the crimes committed by the Israeli army since 28 September 2000 in their attempt to crush an uprising triggered by Sharon personally through his highly provocative visit to Al-Aqsa Mosque, and by the Israeli troops' brutal repression of the protests that followed. The report submitted by UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Mary Robinson following her visit to the occupied territories several months ago is the most important such document. Following Sharon's election, the horrors perpetrated in the name of putting down the Intifada dramatically increased in scale. A report from the Palestinian Council for Peace and Justice reveals that by April 2001, Israelis had killed 492 Palestinians, of which 172 were under the age of 18, and wounded 231,740. Many of the victims were doctors and nurses killed on the job because the IDF randomly shells hospitals and ambulances. During the Intifada, 1,850 Palestinians have been detained, 41 schools have been closed down, 108 artesian wells and 3,802m of water pipes have been destroyed, some 1,000 heads of livestock have been killed, 280,000 olive and citrus trees have been uprooted, and approximately a million square metres of land in Gaza have been confiscated for settlement expansion and road construction to link the settlements. Israeli forces have also razed 400 homes, 30 mosques and 12 churches, and forcibly removed 4,000 families from their homes. Ariel Sharon is indisputably a dangerous war criminal and should be brought to justice, and every signatory to the Geneva Convention has the obligation to arrest him, should he enter its territory, and bring him to trial. That he is currently prime minister does not entitle him to immunity against prosecution for crimes of war and crimes against humanity. Why has Sharon not met the same fate as Milosevic, although Sharon's crimes continue? Why did the Security Council create an ad hoc war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and not for the Palestinian occupied territories? Is it because Arab blood is cheaper to spill than European blood, or because Israel's butchers are above the law? Was one element of the Milosevic trial a final settling of accounts with the former Eastern bloc? Are the Arabs simply too insignificant for the international community to ensure they obtain justice and the defence of their human rights? Although Mary Robinson considered international protection necessary for the Palestinian against what she determined were gross violations of their rights, and despite the resolutions adopted by the UN Commission on Human Rights, Israeli war criminals, and especially Ariel Sharon, remain at large, and the crimes they continue to perpetrate barely merit passing mention in the international media. The long arm of international justice, here, cannot be bothered to stretch out. The notion of an international war crimes tribunal dates back to the end of World War I. The Treaty of Versailles demanded that Wilhelm II be put on trial, an effort frustrated by Holland's refusal to hand over the deposed German emperor. The principle, however, was given concrete form following World War II in the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials of German and Japanese war criminals. If scholars have been correct in pointing out that these trials were manifestations of the justice the victors imposed upon the vanquished, they succeeded nevertheless in establishing a set of universal principles. Foremost among these is that war crimes and crimes against humanity are among the gravest crimes in international law; this properly overrides any domestic legal provisions or regulations that condone such acts or minimise their criminal nature. Secondly, they are crimes that cannot be subject to any statutory limitations; thirdly, the international community has both the right and the obligation to take all necessary measures towards the apprehension, prosecution and punishment of criminals of war. These principles have been set down and elaborated upon in a number of international human rights instruments, most notably the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948, the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. This legislation has also been accompanied by ongoing efforts to establish a permanent international criminal court, efforts that began in 1950 with the creation of a General Assembly committee charged with drafting the charter for such a tribunal, and which eventually bore fruit in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court of 1998. According to Article 1 of that statute, the tribunal is to serve as a permanent institution for trying individuals accused of committing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It further states that the ICC will be established formally after 60 countries have ratified its Rome Statute. Currently the statute has 139 signatories, but only 33 ratifications. Now, since recourse to the ICC is not currently available, could nations and groups concerned with promoting peace, justice and human rights obtain a UN resolution to establish an international war crime tribunal for Palestine such as that which was created for former Yugoslavia? One strongly suspects that any such efforts will be thwarted by the US veto, which was used recently merely to block the creation of a mechanism providing the Palestinians with international protection. Perhaps the only way to circumvent this is through the UN General Assembly, especially since the non-permanent members of the Security Council recently argued that the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal should have been established not by a Security Council but by a General Assembly resolution. A General Assembly resolution to create a war crimes tribunal for Palestine therefore seems like a distinct possibility. Also encouraging is the UN General Assembly resolution of 1950, known as the Resolution for the Federation for Peace, which grants the General Assembly the right to assume the Security Council's powers and take the necessary measures to safeguard international peace if the Security Council proves incapable of fulfilling this function because one of its permanent members is abusing its right to veto. In short, it is theoretically possible to bring Israeli war criminals such as Sharon to justice before an international tribunal. But to turn theory into practice will require sustained and concerted efforts at both the official and grassroots levels. Above all, it will be important to raise the issue of Israeli war crimes, with accompanying documentation, in all possible international forums, and it will be necessary to mount an intensive, carefully thought-out and sustained media campaign. Finally, all national, regional and international human rights groups will have to do their utmost to sensitise the international community, which appears to have succumbed to the logic of the law of power rather than the power of law. "Law is the will of power. Law without power is a flame that cannot burn, a light that gives off no light," said Michael Kohlhass. This maxim expresses the universal moral value of the stone in hand of the Palestinian child, who has taken on the burden of the world's idle conscience and heralds its redemption. Tomorrow the light of justice will prevail, for the stone in the Palestinian child's hand is not the stone of Sisyphus. * The writer is professor of the philosophy and history of law at Zaqaziq University and a former UN consultant on human rights in Central Asia.

BBC 30 July, 2001 Egyptian court orders clashes retrial -- Egyptian Christians say they will demand compensation The Supreme Court in Egypt has ordered a retrial in the case of nearly 100 Muslims and Christians accused of being involved in bloody inter-religious clashes over a year ago. Twenty Christians and one Muslim were killed after violence broke out in the town of el-Kosheh, 440 kilometres (275 miles) south of Cairo, following a dispute between a Muslim and a Christian. Out of 96 people originally charged in connection with the worst sectarian fighting in Egypt for decades, only four - all Muslims - were jailed, although none for murder. Egyptian Coptic Christians say they are discriminated against in everyday life The initial verdict had angered Egypt's Coptic Christian community, who said it served as a green light for Muslims to kill them. The court did not say why it was reversing the earlier ruling. The decision was welcomed by the country's Christian leaders. "We think justice can now prevail," Coptic Christian Bishop Wissa told the Associated Press news agency. "There were killers and there were victims and we only want to know who was who," he added. Quarrel over money The violence broke out on 31 December, 1999, after a row over money between a shop-owner and a customer. Fighting spread to the nearby village of Dar el-Salam, where the Christians and Muslim were killed in a massacre on 2 January, 2000. We (Copts) think it restores trust in the Egyptian justice system and law Coptic lawyer Mamduh Nakhla Christian clerics say Egyptian police did nothing to prevent Muslim gangs who went on the rampage. The judge in the first trial, Mohammed Affifi, said it was not possible to identify which defendants had been responsible for which actions. He also accused three Coptic priests of failing to stop the quarrel which sparked the trouble. The BBC's Heba Saleh in Egypt says there is speculation Judge Affifi opted for a lenient verdict to avoid inflaming sectarian tensions. A Coptic lawyer involved in the case, Mamduh Nakhla, welcomed the decision to overrule the lower court's verdict. Mr Nakhla told the French news agency AFP: "We (Copts) think it restores trust in the Egyptian justice system and law...The retrial will give us an opportunity to submit new evidence against the accused. Also we can demand compensation."

Ethiopia

IRIN 21  July  2001  A court in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, has acquitted, for insufficient evidence, four of seven former officials charged with genocide, Ethiopian state radio, monitored by the BBC, reported on 13 July. The four had been charged with genocide and crimes against humanity allegedly committed while they were serving during the military dictatorship of Mengistu Hailemariam. Among those released by the Federal High Court are the former commander of the eastern command of the then provisional military government of Ethiopia, Maj-Gen Mulatu Negash, and Maj-Gen Embibel Ayele. The court also acquitted corporals Kefelegn Tadese and Sileshi Mengistu, who were tried in absentia. The court ordered one defendant, Mengesha Yibka, to submit his defence, because the prosecution had proved the charges levelled against him beyond doubt, said the radio.

Kenya

WP 8 July 2001 Small Arms' Global Reach Uproots Tribal Traditions By Karl Vick,  Page A01 KOLOWA, Kenya -- In the calculus of Africa's semi-arid and ever more violent grazing lands, there is no measuring the cost of a human life. But everything else is computed in cows. Guns, for instance. In 1967, when the rangy, proud Pokot herdsmen of northwest Kenya bought their very first rifles, the weapons were old and heavy Lee-Enfield Mark IV guns of World War I vintage and their price was heavier still: 60 cows apiece. By 1986, the price was down to 15 cows and the rifles were more likely much deadlier AK-47s. Today those automatic Kalashnikovs run only five head of cattle each. "Even four," said Joshua Yatta, a Pokot chief. So it comes as no surprise that, in a society that a generation ago relied on spears to beat back rivals who attacked with poisoned arrows, the assault rifle has become the weapon of choice. "The Pokot need guns," said Yatta, whose tribe once lost hundreds of square miles and thousands of cows to raiders who got guns first. All over the world, small, low-cost weapons are proliferating into private hands at an accelerating rate. In countries as diverse as Indonesia, Colombia, Macedonia, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Liberia, an infusion at the village level of light weapons known as "small arms" -- assault rifles and pistols, grenades and shoulder-fired rockets -- has altered life and death alike. On Monday, delegates from close to 180 countries will sit down at U.N. headquarters to try to begin negotiating the world's first international treaty to reduce illicit trade in small arms. A draft program of action would have the conference begin crafting a global system to identify and track lines of arms supplies and to restrict production and trade to companies authorized by states. The treaty is a favorite cause of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, a West African who has argued that the trademark weapons of the civil wars of recent times perpetuate "the cycle of violence by their mere presence." The world today has at least 550 million firearms, according to the Geneva-based research group Small Arms Survey. Most are controlled by national armed forces or legally owned by private citizens, many of them Americans. But the driving force behind the the U.N. conference is the estimated 1 million guns in the hands of insurgents and the huge numbers -- the survey doesn't attempt an estimate -- that are illegally owned by ordinary and often impoverished people like the Pokot. The guns are bought from the backs of trucks driven by faceless arms merchants or looted from the armories of disintegrating governments. Often they are wielded by children. UNICEF estimates that there are 300,000 child soldiers in various conflicts of the world; most often the victims of the fighting are not combatants but civilians. As military technology, small arms are hardly advanced killing machines. But their impact often goes far beyond their role in combat. ---When introduced into societies such as that of the Pokot, they can have a profound effect on how people govern, discipline and feed themselves. The weapons of death change the fabric of life. A visit to the Pokot community illustrates the point well enough: In the rocky northern reaches of the Great Rift Valley, even a warrior society has found occasion to wonder what all those guns are doing to the people they were supposed to save. Power, which from time immemorial in African society has accrued with age, suddenly comes from the barrel of a gun. Village elders who once mulled every crucial decision are today deferring to armed "youth elders," who are often governed by hot blood. And women who formerly fashioned songs that glorified the physical strength of a generation now sing about automatic weapons. "The gun culture has just completely undermined the principles of warfare here," said Sam Kona, a northwest Kenya native who works in conflict resolution for the British-based aid group Oxfam. "Somehow, the seat of authority has moved from the elders to the youths, and that has some very, very bad consequences for managing conflict." The worst of those consequences exploded at dawn on March 12, when several hundred young Pokot, many carrying AK-47s, mounted a raid on the Marakwet, their neighbors to the south and west. By the time the raiders retreated back to their side of the Kerio River, the valley had been dubbed The Valley of Death. Schools, houses and shops had been torched, and most of the 47 dead were women and children, traditionally spared by a culture forbidding attacks on noncombatants. "They did what isn't supposed to be done," said John Rutto, a young Pokot man, voicing an opinion widely expressed in Kolowa, a Pokot trading center. The raid prompted a spasm of introspection among the Pokot. Like other pastoral communities across East Africa, they have seen cattle-rustling slide from an occasionally violent but orderly tradition -- the raiders announcing their presence by drums and chants, never by ambush -- to something messier. "Guns are changing things," said David Kakuo, 23. "The major thing is, it breaks discipline. The young ones, they don't respect elders." "Guns created people who put away cowardice," said Jackson Kirop, also 23. "You also can end up using all your animals to buy a gun." If you don't have a weapon, said Rutto, "your grave is open." Among educated Pokot -- those who have been to school at all, unlike the youths who carried out the Kerio Valley raid -- opinion is divided on whether the "incident" was the nadir of a downward spiral of exceptionally nasty raiding, or a harbinger of something more sinister just getting started. But no one is really talking about giving up guns. After the Kerio Valley slaughter, the Kenyan government declared an amnesty period for turning in weapons, which after all are illegal in Kenya. The grand total surrendered: one. "It is not about saving a way of life," said Yatta, the local Pokot chief, of the pastoralist love affair with the rifle. "It is about saving our lives." Yatta, at 32, bridges the Pokot experience before and after firearms. He was born when boyhood was marked by graduating from herding stick, at age 6, to shooting bow and arrow at age 8, to receiving a spear in a ceremony that announced him as a man, at age 18. Even so, a Pokot man might not be allowed along on a raid until he was 30. All that began to change in the early 1970s, when the sound that Yatta's parents had warned him about -- the rip of gunshots that the Pokot verbalize as tool-tool -- sent him and his family into the bush at dawn. A fierce rival tribe from the north, the Turkana, were driving the Pokot ever-farther south. They were using guns they had been given decades earlier by Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II, who was fighting Italian invaders. In Kenya, British colonial overseers had long prevented the nomadic Turkana from using these weapons, brutally enforcing a ban on intertribal fighting that northern Kenyan communities remember today with nostalgia. After the country's independence in 1963, the Kenyan government managed less well, and by the time Yatta's family stopped running, the Turkana had chased the Pokot scores of miles. The running ended because the Pokot, in turn, upgraded their armory. The handful of World War I Lee-Enfields they had acquired in the 1960s were discarded in the 1970s for AK-47s. Ethiopia and Somalia were at war, and the light, hardy Kalashnikovs spilled into Kenya, which shares a border with each. Other AK-47s were brought down from neighboring Sudan, home of another long-running civil war. But the biggest haul came from Uganda, where the chaotic war to depose dictator Idi Amin opened an arms depot to the populace at large. The balance of terror eventually quieted the conflict with the Turkana in the 1980s. At that point, the Marakwet, the foes of the Pokot in the March violence, were not yet enemies. Herding communities generally raid other herders, and the Marakwet, settled in the relative lushness of the Kerio Valley, were essentially farmers. They lived peacefully beside the Pokot, trading and intermarrying, until a Marakwet shot a poisoned arrow into a Pokot during a drunken argument in 1991. The Pokot mounted an avenging raid, and in ensuing years there were sporadic skirmishes stoked by tribal politicians on both sides. "We have had several peace meetings with the Marakwets, but the only people who attend them are old people," Yatta complained. "The young just say, 'So you went to a meeting, what is the good of that?' " The Marakwets make the same complaints. Schools around Tot, the Marakwet town closest to the Pokot side, have recently seen something extraordinary in Africa: more female than male pupils. Young men have been dropping out to become moran, or warriors. Many in the once-peaceful community have even adopted the warrior-culture Pokot custom of wearing bead necklaces. A string of white beads means you have killed. As a local official recently drove by a meeting of Marakwet elders -- several dozen wizened figures, resplendent in colored beads, brass earrings and huge tin lip studs -- she dismissed a reconciliation effort with the Pokot as preliminary at best. "The person who is killing people is the boss, not us," said the official, Lydia Bailengo, a councilor in Tot. "We will have to consult with the youth elders to see if they will support the effort." The Marakwet have guns now, too. The story is that they got the first from a Pokot arms dealer, Domotepa Kamarkorot, who crossed the river in 1997 and sold a bundle of Kalashnikovs to his enemies, who then shot him dead with their new purchase. The incident provoked a fresh round of fighting. "It is strange," Yatta acknowledged. "He was a traitor to the Pokot. But the Pokot said, 'Why did you have to kill him?' " In its bitter illogic, the incident presaged the appalling March raid on the Kerio Valley. Its roots lay in last year's drought, which thinned the Pokot's elderly and sent the tribe's cattle from parched Pokot lands into the better-watered valley to graze. There, the cows were confiscated by Marakwet, who proceeded to do what no pastoralist tribe would think of doing: They slaughtered the hump-backed beasts by the hundreds. "Because we don't want to take care of cows for the Pokot to come and take them back, it is better for us to eat them," said Bailengo, the councilor. "You could go house to house to house and meet meat in every house." The Pokot were infuriated. By slaughtering the cows, the Marakwet had "broken the rules of this game," Yatta said. Young Pokot men picked up their guns and crossed the river to attack. By killing women and children, they too broke rules. Afterward, the Pokot raiders were nowhere to be found. The Pokot said they had gone to "cleanse themselves," smearing themselves with waste from a black goat and exiling themselves from their families for one month. The ritual is a solemn tradition that must follow taking a life. But Kona, the Turkana who now makes peace for Oxfam, said the cleansing ritual is seldom observed faithfully now that guns have made life so cheap. And as one elder recently told him, the trauma that goes unpurged remains to torment the killer, and keeps his guiding spirits out of balance. "They say a generation of mad people is growing," Kona said. "These people just kill and kill."

Morocco

BBC 31 July 2001 Morocco considers Berber rights-  King Mohamed wants his country to be a beacon for human rights King Mohammed VI of Morocco has promised to set up a body to preserve the language and culture of the country's Berbers, who make up a majority of the population. In a speech to mark the second anniversary of his accession to the throne, the king said the body would work towards integrating the Berber language into the education system. Berber activists have been campaigning for their language, Tamazight, to be recognised as the country's official language. Reiterating his pledge two years ago to build of a modern democratic state, the king said the issue of identity was "crucial" and affected all Moroccans. Besides its role of reviving the Berber culture, the institute will be in charge of preparing and monitoring the integration of Tamazight into the educational system. King Mohamed VI The Moroccan constitution recognises only Arabic as the official language. This has effectively prevented many Berber children, who speak only Tamazight, from gaining an education. In June, Moroccan authorities stopped Berber activists from holding a meeting aimed at creating a united group to press for Berbers' rights. 'National treasure' Berbers, also known as Amazigh, lived in what is now Morocco before the Arab invasion in the seventh century. King Mohammed said he had decided to set up the Royal Institute for Amazigh Culture "to strengthen the pillars of our ancestral identity" bearing in mind "the need to give a new impulse to our Amazigh culture, which is a national treasure". The king said: "The institute will be in charge of preparing and monitoring the integration of Tamazight into the educational system, in conjunction with the other ministerial services." Berber activists welcomed the announcement. They pointed out, however, that in 1978 the Moroccan parliament approved the creation of a national institute for Berber studies, but the institute was never set up.
 

Nigeria

BBC 11 July, 2001 Court blow for southern Nigerian states By David Bamford in Lagos The Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government could go ahead with legal moves to stop 12 of the country's 36 states from seeking to keep the lion's share of revenues derived from their oil reserves. This issue goes to the very heart of a constitutional battle in Nigeria about whether power should remain in the hands of the central government. The states argue they produce 90% of the country's wealth, yet their populations live in poverty and underdevelopment. Under military rule, the oil producing states were obliged to hand over all of their revenue to the central government - a system which was frequently abused by corrupt military rulers. Residents of oil producing states puncture pipelines leading to deadly explosions With the return of civilian government two years ago, the oil states have been allowed to challenge the centralised system. But the federal government has countered, saying that if the state governments have their way, the rest of Nigeria would suffer and national unity would be undermined. Environmental damage Currently, the southern oil states are allowed to keep 13% of the revenue as compensation for environmental damage. Hundreds of oil workers have been taken hostage in disputes with local inhabitants But now the coastal populations say this formula is under threat from the central government's insistence that oil produced offshore should in future come under federal jurisdiction. Since the return of civilian rule, populations in both the north and the south of the country have become more militant in demanding their local rights. The federal government is anxious to prevent Nigeria moving towards the kind of open split that has in the past led to civil war.

ICRC 26 July 2001 Nigeria: Red Cross aids thousands of displaced people in central regions Over the past four weeks a series of intercommunal clashes in central and northern Nigeria has left many dead or wounded and forced an estimated 65,000 people to flee their homes in Nasarawa, Benue, Bauchi and Kaduna states. Working with the Nigerian Red Cross Society, since the beginning of July the ICRC has distributed relief supplies such as blankets, buckets, soap and mats to a total of 22,500 displaced people living in improvised camps. In Nasarawa state, fighting broke out between members of the Tiv and Hausa communities after the killing of a Hausa traditional ruler on 12 June. This prompted large sections of the population to seek refuge in the state capital Lafia, while many more fled to nearby Benue state. The Nasarawa branch of the Nigerian Red Cross responded rapidly, collecting the dead, evacuating the wounded to hospital and helping hospital staff to cope with the influx of casualties. The Nigerian Red Cross was also instrumental in setting up a camp for the displaced in Lafia, where Red Cross workers remain in charge of monitoring the situation and providing displaced families with assistance. Despite efforts deployed by the government, there is still a serious shortage of food for the displaced people, and the ICRC and the Nigerian Red Cross are currently organizing a food distribution for 2,000 of them in Lafia, due to take place during the last week of July. At the same time food distributions are being set up for some 15,000 displaced people in Bauchi, where fighting erupted between members of the Sayawa and Hausa/Fulani communities in the last week of June. In Kaduna, food will be distributed to the 1,000 displaced people currently taking refuge in various locations in Lere local government area after the communal clashes that erupted on the last day of June between members of the Christian and Muslim communities. In addition to food and other relief supplies, the Nigerian Red Cross is providing basic health care for the displaced.

Rwanda

BBC 8 July, 2001 A prominent Rwandan musician, Juvenal Masabo Nyangezi, has been jailed for six years for having associated with those who carried out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The French news agency, AFP, said that Mr Nyangezi, who gained fame in the 1990s for his songs about love, Rwanda's landscape and its contemporary culture, was found guilty of having joined a group of people who killed Tutsis in the Gikongoro commune. The prosecution, which had sought a life sentence, said it would appeal against the ruling.

IRIN 11 July 2001 Eleven people were sentenced to death for involvement in Rwanda's 1994 genocide by a court in Gikongoro, southwest Rwanda, the Hirondelle news agency reported. The group was part of a joint trial of 28 people from Kinyamakara commune who were charged with genocide and crimes against humanity. Four others were acquitted, seven were sentence to life imprisonment and six were given prison sentences of between six and 15 years. Of these, four pleaded guilty. Meanwhile, the court also ordered that the accused, Masabo Nyangezi, to be immediately released. He was sentenced to six years in jail but had already spent seven years in "preventive detention". Masabo was the director-general at the Rwandan environment and tourism ministry in 1994 and is well known to the Rwandan public as a singer-songwriter, Hirondelle added. He fled Kigali during the genocide and took refuge in his home commune of Kinyamakara, where he stayed until his arrest in August 1994. The court found him guilty of participating in an attack against a local family.

The East African (Nairobi) BOOK REVIEW July 23, 2001 Will 'Victor's Justice' Lead to Another Genocide? Paul Redfern. While much has been written on the 1994 Rwanda genocide, little is written on the willingness of so many formerly innocent people to participate in the slaughter. A new book by a Ugandan-born US academic says the current policy of Kigali with regard to the post-genocide era is unsustainable and could lead to another war. Mahmood Mamdani's book, When Victims Become Killers, is controversial in many aspects, not the least of which is his view that the original Rwandese Patriotic Front invasion of Rwanda was an outcome of President Yoweri Museveni wanting to "export" a political problem of his own. He also spends much time looking at the issue of the genocide which took place in 1994, arguing that the mass involvement of some many hundreds of thousands of the majority Hutu population was because they saw themselves as losing out in the struggle. Prof Mamdani says that while much written work on the 1994 genocide concentrates on the Hutu extremist leaders who encouraged the victim mentality by painting the RPF as Tutsi outsiders or even as settlers who would take away Hutu rights and power, little is written on the willingness of so many formerly innocent people to participate in the slaughter. "We may agree that genocidal violence cannot be understood as rational; yet, we need to understand it as thinkable," Mr Mamdani writes. "Rather than run away from it, we need to realise that it is the "popularity" of the genocide that is its uniquely troubling aspect. In its social aspect, Hutu-Tutsi violence in the Rwandan genocide invites comparison with Hindu-Muslim violence at the time of partition of colonial India. Neither can be explained as simply a state project." The author looks at both the history, geography and politics of Rwanda in examining the willing participation of so many hundreds of thousands of people in the genocide. Prof Mamdani argues that the majority Hutu population willingly accepted the argument that the Tutsi population was foreign and alien and that the killings were not therefore "ethnic" but "racial." Kigali is now trying to build a post-genocide society in a way that transcends ethnicity and does not talk about Rwandans as Hutu or Tutsi. But the author argues that such a policy, which he believes is similar to that adopted by Israel with regard to the Palestinians, is unworkable and is based on "victor's justice." Prof Mamdani accuses Kigali of trying "to build a post Zionist-type state on the ashes of the genocide." He argues that Rwanda is once again at a historic crossroads where its political leadership is faced by two clear options. "The first is a continuation of the civil war, as those defeated in the last round prepare for battle in the next; the second is its termination through a political reconciliation that rejects both victory and defeat and looks for a third and more viable possibility." The second policy, which the author terms "survivor's justice," would not be victor's justice, which he describes as "simply revenge masquerading as justice." The key issue, Mr Mamdani believes, is that ways must be found to marry the twin aims of reconciliation and justice. Doing this entails acknowledging victims, but not perpetrators, he argues. At present there are two conflicting strands in Rwandan society. The minority demand justice while the majority want democracy. "The two demands appear as irreconcilable, for the minority sees democracy as an agenda for completing the genocide and the majority sees justice as a self-serving mask for fortifying minority power. To break out of this logjam we need to link both political justice and political democracy to a reform of institutions of rule." But Rwanda or even the countries involved in the Great Lakes region cannot take on such a task alone, Mr Mandani argues. "To reform Rwanda will require a regional approach through a regional agenda that approaches the centre as firefighters would approach the heart of a raging fire, from the outside in. "If a regional reform of citizenship needs to be its first step, its second step may have to focus on Rwanda's spitting political image, Burundi. Precisely because Rwanda and Burundi read developments in each other's backyard as prophetic signs of their common fate, reform in Burundi can serve as a compelling example for Rwanda. For that reason if for no other, it is in Burundi that the regional and international community would be wise to invest physical resources alongside political guarantees to bring political reform." Prof Mamdani argues that without a reform of the power structure, "one that recognises both the importance of a majority in politics and the need for fearful minorities to participate in the exercise of power, there can be no sustained reconciliation between Hutu and Tutsi." A critical part of both regional and international involvement in trying to stabilise and normalise politics in Rwanda and Burundi will be a "drawn-out cooling off period" according to the author. He also believes that at some stage the people will have to begin by making one basic choice: between political union and political divorce. The latter, he argues, would be fraught with impractical difficulties on the nature of the states involved and the future of small minorities. Political union, he believes, could be on a grand scale involving the different communities across the Great Lakes region and this would address Rwanda's key dilemma - how to build a democracy that can incorporate a "guilty majority" alongside an aggrieved and fearful minority in a single political community. Critics such as Mamadou Diouf have described Mr Mamdani's book as "original and stimulating," but predicted it "will cause considerable controversy." Charles Tilly describes the work as "daring and wise" and adds that it has "clarified the struggles of the 1990s in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and the DRC as well as helping identify ways of preventing future bloodshed." Well known historian Michael Ignatieff said that the book was "very impressive" and was "an attempt to move beyond the cliches of horror towards a genuine understanding of the social dynamics which made horror possible." Title: When Victims Become Killers Author: Mahmood Mamdani Publisher: James Currey (UK),

BBC 25 July, 2001 Interahamwe: A spent force? The army says it is winning its fight against the rebels By Helen Vesperini in north-east Rwanda Military commanders in Rwanda say they are winning the battle against rebels who have posed a constant threat since fleeing the genocide in 1994. When the latest round of rebel attacks in Rwanda began, the number of rebels based across the border in eastern Congo was believed to be about 30,000. Military commanders now reckon they have put nearly half of their fighters out of action. The Army for the Liberation of Rwanda rebels are split into two groups, Alir 1 and Alir 2. Both are formed from members of the former Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) and the Interahamwe militia. The fighters were behind the 1994 massacres Interahamwe - which translates as "those who work together" - are a mixture of the Hutu extremists who carried out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and boys who were recruited - often forcibly - by hard-liners in the camps in what was Eastern Zaire. "What I'm sure of is that we have really crippled Alir 1," said a senior Rwandan army commander. "They have been killed, captured or dispersed, dispersed beyond the capacity to regroup," he said. Fractured force He added that Rwandan forces capture between 15 and 20 of those dispersed daily, and they are never in military formations. The fighters are gradually being rounded up All that is left of Alir 1, he went on, are the units guarding the headquarters and it will be difficult to turn those men into a fighting force. The Rwandan Army reckons Alir 1 is the tougher of the two armies out to overthrow the government of President Paul Kagame. "They are the braver fighters anyway because they're the ones who stayed in Eastern Congo and they were further hardened by their attacks on Rwanda from 1997 to 1999," said a senior Rwandan military commander. The military capacity of Alir 2 will now depend largely on the attitude of the Kinshasa government. When the late president Laurent Kabila turned against his Rwandan backers, he hit on the idea of recruiting and supplying their arch enemy, the ex-Armed Forces of Rwanda (FAR) and the Interahamwe to fight alongside his forces. Big asset The highly-disciplined ex-FAR were a big asset to his own ill-disciplined troops. Both the former FAR troops and the hardcore Interahamwe were men with nothing to lose. Let them come ... we are ready for them Rwandan commander "If Kinshasa stops supporting them then they are finished as a force," said a Rwandan commander. Congolese rebel leaders say that the Kinshasa government foreign minister Leonard She Okitundu has admitted to giving financial support to the Interahamwe. Captured Interahamwe say they received arms air-dropped to sites in Eastern Congo by the Kinshasa government. Some arms they received directly, dropped in the countryside; others were attained through their allies, the Congolese tribal militia known as Mai-Mai, at airstrips in South Kivu province. However, although Alir 1 now seems to all intents and purposes harmless, Alir 2 has been making its way northwards to attack Rwanda. 'Let them come' "Let them come," said a senior Rwandan commander. The Rwandan army says it is ready for Interahamwe "We are ready for them ... the closer they come, the less time we spend looking for them and the easier it will be to kill them because they'll have walked a long way." Alir 2 is expected to attack either around the southern Rwandan town of Cyangugu or into southern Rwanda via neighbouring Burundi. The men of Alir 2 are those who fled the advance of Rwandan and Congolese troops in 1996. The bulk of them headed westwards, covering thousands of kilometres on foot or by boat to take shelter in Congo-Brazzaville or in Central African Republic. Many were then active in Katanga before heading northwards. Given the geography of Eastern Congo, it is also easy to imagine that even if Rwanda defeats Alir 2, some militia will just stay in the forests. In the words of Lieutenant Dauda Hakizimana, a member of the former Rwandan army captured a few days ago in Rwanda after several years living rough in the bush: "Congo is a big country with very many forests."

BBC 26 July, 2001 Widows Of Rwanda Unite Seven years ago the world’s worst genocide took place in Rwanda. In a space of just 100 days an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed. Rebuilding lives after such atrocities seemed impossible but, as Omnibus reports, many widows have found collective strength in a self-help organisation. Even for a country with a turbulent history, the scale and speed of the killing in Rwanda in 1994 left its people reeling. Families lived in fear. Wives had lost their husbands, children had been tortured and mothers raped. Most of the victims were from the minority Tutsi population, but many moderate Hutus lost their lives. Thousands upon thousands of women were widowed in just a few months and children witnessed a kind of horror that no one could dream was possible. Genocide Between April and June 1994, nearly one million people were killed in an attempt by Rwanda’s Hutu dominated government and its militia, the Interamhamwe (meaning those who attack together), to exterminate an entire population of Tutsis. Tension between the Hutu and Tutsi group had been building for years with sporadic violence and even massacres. The catalyst for the 1994 genocide was the death of the Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, when his plane was shot down on 6 April 1994. Exactly who was responsible for the death of the president – and with him the president of Burundi – was unclear, but the effect was instantaneous. Violence When the news of president Habyarimana’s death broke the Tutsi population knew that they would be blamed. Within hours a campaign of violence spread throughout the country and during the next three months thousands of Rwandans were tortured and murdered. Hilarie Mukamazimpaka, a Tutsi, recalls how she heard the news on the radio, and how she immediately tried to escape with her husband. She describes a violence that was to become commonplace throughout the country: ‘They made us get out of the car and lie on the ground for the whole day. At about five o clock they started to shoot people and cut them with machetes. I was lying there among the bodies – 200 of us. They shot my husband and cut his neck.’ Others also recall the monumental level of carnage and the impact that the slaughter had on the nation. Esther Muyowayo recalls the scenes in the country’s capital, Kigali: ‘The streets were full of bodies, the houses were destroyed, things were looted and all around in the street. In the middle of that people were half mad.’ ‘Those who have survived, hiding for three months and those who were wounded but had no treatment. [They] were not yet able to believe that they were alive. Rwanda was in complete hell.’ Help The scale of the destruction was awe-inspiring. After the killing, Rwanda was a nation comprised of thousands of traumatised women – many having lost their homes, cattle, crops as well as their families and their dignity. It was also a nation of orphans, many of whom now had to head their households. But from the ashes of this terrible destruction an extraordinary phoenix rose. Esther Muyowayo had lost her husband, children and most of her family in the genocide. Through talking to friends she realised that she was not alone in her feelings of fear and loss and so decided to set up a self-help group for the widows of the genocide. After many long days Muyowayo founded the Avega Agahoza organisation, which from humble origins soon gained support from the newly formed government of Tutsis, and is now on its way to becoming a major organisation. ‘For many women this is the first time in years that they have been able to talk about what has happened to them.’ Trauma counselling has unearthed horrific accounts of rape, of systematic plans to infect children with the HIV virus and of the pain and torture that many women experienced at the hands of men armed with machetes. Dealing with such large-scale devastation has meant that the organisation has to prioritise. Its primary concerns include much needed mutual support, health care and counselling. Avega was also at the forefront of the government-sponsored efforts to build new villages – made up entirely of widows. Rights As well as helping individuals, Avega has also had a political profile. Until recently widows had no rights of inheritance. But the organisation lobbied parliament, judges, journalists and anyone who could help until they achieved a historic victory. In November 1999 a law was passed allowing widows the rights to inherit land and their husband’s property. The moral support found amongst the widows at Avega is immeasurable and although the mental scars of the genocide are deep rooted, as Muyowayo explains such action serves to demonstrate how the widows are slowing regaining their self-esteem: ‘There is a big empowerment of women since the genocide. It is unfortunate that they had to pass through such tragic events to get there but at least they got there. In Rwanda it is now a fact that a woman can manage herself.’

AFP 30 July 2001 Inside the mastermind of genocide Kigali - Protais Zigiranyirazo stands accused by a UN court of having been one of the key planners of the orchestrated killing in Rwanda in 1994 of more than a half a million Tutsis and "moderate" Hutus. Widely known as Zed, Zigiranyirazo was arrested in Brussels on Thursday on the request of Carla del Ponte, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The suspect had been seeking refugee status in Belgium and had been kept in an asylum-seekers' detention facility at the capital's airport. His sister is the widow of late president Juvenal Habyarimana, whose death on April 6, 1994, set in motion a killing campaign that had been carefully planned for years. According to the ICTR indictment, Zed is charged with "extermination as a crime against humanity ... or alternatively, murder as a crime against humanity." The charge sheet explains he was a member of a powerful elite of Hutu politicians, businessmen and military officers, "a tight circle of extended family members and persons bound by inter-marriage ... popularly characterised as the 'Akazu', the small hut or court that surrounding the central power." It notes that between April 6, 1994 and July 17, 1994, "soldiers, Interahamwe militias and armed civilians targeted and attacked Rwanda's Tutsi population and persons perceived to be politically opposed" to Habyarimana's ruling party. "Protais Zigiranyirazo, among others, planned, prepared, or facilitated such killings by ordering, authorising or participating in various meetings or of regional and local administrative officials ... or by collaborating with such persons, to organise and arm the local population ... to exterminate the Tutsi," the indictment said. Also known as "Prince of the North", Zigiranyirazo was for a decade prefect of Ruhengeri province. He quit this post in 1989 to study in Canada, where he allegedly had investments, and from where he was expelled a few months later. During the genocide, Zigiranyirazo, according to the indictment, ordered soldiers manning some of the numerous roadblocks to kill Tutsis who were trying to flee to neighbouring Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo). He is also on a list of 2 989 people listed as "category one" genocide suspects - planners and organisers - released in April by the Rwandan government. "The Prince of the North had whoever he wanted killed or promoted," said Monday's edition of the government daily Imvaho newspaper. He has also been implicated in the murder of gorilla conservationist Dian Fossey, who was killed in northern Rwanda in 1985. In his book Murders in the Mist, British journalist Nicholas Gordon suggested Zed may have had a hand in the killing, which took place near Ruhengeri, because he controlled the trade in Rwanda's valuable mountain gorillas as well as in gold. A Belgian court on Monday gave the ICTR three months to confirm the charges against Zigiranyirazo and send an international arrest warrant. - AFP

Sierra Leone

The Progress (Freetown) EDITORIAL July 26, 2001 Is This the Right Time for War Crimes Prosecution? The Nuremberg trial of the German war criminals started few years after the Second World War itself ended. In our own case it is different. The UN and our local leaders wanted a swift and immediate trial. Why? We are forced to ask. For sure all those who bore the greatest atrocities in our crisis should face trial. But our fear is the timing of such trial. Since the approval of the SC by the UN the RUF have started their usually ranting as if they intended to pull out of the peace process. This press in not afraid of the RUF and their threat-although they succeeded in destroying more than 90% of country. But the fact is that the different warring factions still carry guns and are well armed and are capable of heaping some of the worst human right abuses one could imagine. In deed the recent report by the highly renowned American-based human rights watchdog group Human Rights Watch in which it was stated gross human rights abuses still continue under the direct supervision of the pro-government militia and the RUF must not be taken lightly. Can an immediate trial bring the war to an end this time round? Don't we face risking the expansion of the life span of the disarmament process merely by pronouncing a war crime tribunal at this stage? We just hope the UN alongside all its bureaucracies have done their home work properly this time round for we will not like to see a situation wherein the country slide by to an orgy of violence. Some say there is no time for the introduction of a war tribunal but will feel there is a time for the introduction of it. After all it means nothing when after trying a group of criminals then after sometime we are to find out that similar atrocities are being carried out either remnants of the same group or of an off shot or a different group. Thin about tit UN. Sierra Leonean needs peace though hastily but a perfect one.

BBC 31 July, 2001, UN condemns 'callous' attack - UN will deploy in diamond areas in spite of 'blood chilling ' attack by Mark Doyle in Freetown The Commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone has described as callous an attack on civilians which took place recently in the diamond mining region in the east of the country. Lieutenant General Daniel Opande movingly told reporters on Tuesday that the massacre of at least nine civilians and possibly many more was one of the worst things he had seen in a long military career. Attacks on children have been an hallmark of rebels They were slaughtered like chickens, the general said, by a man he described as a renegade rebel commander, one Demba Marah. He is from an apparent splinter group from the main rebel Revolutionary United Front, which has signed a ceasefire which the UN says the main force is largely respecting. Six-month-old baby The Kenyan UN commander said the scenes in the village of Henekuma had chilled his blood when he saw the remains of a murdered six-month-old baby, other small children and old people. The UN saw nine bodies in the village, although some reports say the number of dead was much higher. The war in Sierra Leone has been brutal The assault on Henekuma appears to have been in revenge for earlier attacks on rebel positions by armed militia men opposed to the rebels. Reliable reports said militia men known as Kamajors or Donsos had attacked several villages, killing at least 45 civilians. Serious challenge The outbreak of fighting between the rebels and the militia men in the diamond mining areas is a serious challenge for the UN, which has its largest peacekeeping force in the world in Sierra Leone. The UN commander said it was apparent some splinter groups of rebels and militia men were not obeying the orders of their high commands, which were in favour of the ceasefire and UN-sponsored disarmament. General Opande said nevertheless the UN deployment would continue in the diamond areas. A force of several thousand Pakistanis is due to be in place there in the next few weeks.

Somalia

BBC 2 July, 2001 Crackdown signaled in Mogadishu Mogadishu is scarred by 10 years of fighting By Hassan Barise in Mogadishu A rare day of celebration took place in the capital, Mogadishu, on Sunday to mark the 41st anniversary of Somalia's independence. We will crush all the banditry in Mogadishu Prime Minister Ali Khalif Gallaydh It marks the first time that independence festivities have been held under the auspices of the transitional national government. A flag-raising ceremony was held in Mogadishu's main stadium and the city was lit up with colored lights, a sight not seen in the capital for the past 10 years. But the lights were mainly concentrated around the government houses and the streets leading to them, with most of the roads remaining as dark as before. At the ceremony, Prime Minister Ali Khalif Gallaydh spoke about the history of the day, but also the current issue of security. Operations Mr Gallaydh vowed that his government would soon be able to control the capital. The Somali president is struggling to impose his authority on the country "Major operations will start immediately after today," he said, sending his condolences to the families of two police officers killed three days ago. "I promise the noble cause in which these two men were killed will continue and we will crush all the banditry in Mogadishu," he said. The major part of the celebrations started at the former 21 October parade ground, which has been rehabilitated by the interim government in the past few days. Tens of thousands of people from all corners in the capital gathered to witness the parade attended by several thousand uniformed policemen and military. Several thousand students in their school uniforms marched before the ground and all 16 districts of Mogadishu sent their particular traditional dancers to perform. Ethiopia President Abdulkassim Salat Hassan spoke about foreign relations. He concentrated on Ethiopia with whom, until recently, the TNG has had a strained relationship. "We very much welcome the recent understanding between us and Ethiopia," he said. "Our differences should be over and the two neighboring peoples should respect each other and maintain a real collaboration," he said.

BBC, 14 July, 2001 Somalia clan fighting kills 20 War-ravaged Mogadishu is plagued by clan rivalry Heavily armed rival militia factions have clashed in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, killing at least 20 people, mainly civilians. Witnesses said fighters loyal to the warlord Musa Sudi Yalahow battled gunmen loyal to the interim government in the Sana area of the city. The fighting later subsided. A market in the district suffered heavy damage and stray rounds also hit a Koranic school, homes and restaurants, the witnesses said. Hundreds of people fled Sana as the fighting raged. The Somali president is struggling to impose his authority Five of the deaths occurred when an anti-tank round hit a bar in the city's Bakara market, Reuters news agency reported. The latest clashes followed the deployment of government troops in the area on Friday. A BBC correspondent in Somalia says Mr Yalahow was angered by the presence of the authorities' forces on what he regarded as Abgal clan territory, despite their having been invited by other clan elders. He denied shelling other areas of the city. He is one of a number of warlords opposed to the interim government, which was set up last year at a conference in Djibouti. Previous heavy intra-clan fighting has left at least 15 people dead and more than 40 injured. In an effort to maintain order, President Abdulkassim Salat Hassan's fledgling government set up a 2,000-strong police force in June - the first since former President Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled in 1991. But parts of Mogadishu remain in the hands of warlords opposed to the government.

Bay Centre for Conflict Prevention (Kismayo City) PRESS RELEASE 27 July 2001 Civilian Populations Suffer Atrocities, Ethnic Cleansing Kismayo City ­ Conflict Monitoring Officials of "Bay Centre for Conflict Prevention" have reported to the Centre's security team today that the forces of the Transitional Government and militiamen of warlords have launched attack against the forces of previous leader of Kismayo City. The militiamen in Kismayo City have caused untold hardships and atrocities among civilian populations in southern port town of Kismayo, Somalia. Since yesterday, the civilian people in Kismayo City are increasingly experiencing atrocities, brutal campaign of repression and ethnic cleansing by the forces of transitional government and of warlords in the city. According to reports, the Transitional Government has today delivered financial and military support to warlords and militiamen in the port City of Kismayo. Kismayo City of southern Somalia is occupied by the president of Transitional Government's sub-clan, Ayr clan, and alliances of Somali warlord Hussein Aideed which dispersed the previous administration of the city on 11th of June 1999. Somali transitional government is increasingly being diverted from its main core of establishment, namely reconciliation among people, peace and stability promotion, and creation of fair society in Somalia. The Transitional Government's supports to warlords in Kismayo City are mainly aimed at getting an access to Kismayo Port City, with a view to importing military equipment and fostering lucrative business of President's Ayr clan in charcoal and fishing trade in Kismayo City and its surrounding areas. The Port City of Kismayo is strategically important for the Transitional Government in order to get capture Bay and Bakol Regions which are now in the hand of RRA. The Transitional Government deliberately remained silence on feudal activities and human rights violation in Kismayo City. Systematically, Mogadishu business groups have deeply benefited from the establishment of Transitional government by printing money, carrying out business lobbying during official tours of government delegations outside the country, expelling, moving and financing the killing of original inhabitants of Kismayo City and ordering to take possession of every single thing in confiscated areas. The leadership of Transitional Government deliberately uses the overseas financial aid to only exacerbate and perpetuate atrocities in Kismayo City, with a view to extending its control in southern area, particularly capturing the Bay and Bakol Regions. Such approach will, in effect, allow warlords continue to exploit the nation's scarce resource together with their foreign business groups. So far, the Transitional Government did not take any measure against confiscated private properties in Mogadishu city. Certainly, the current ill- devised policies of the Transitional Government towards Somali people will not break the vicious circle of conflicts in the country but will encourage human rights violations. The Centre sends clear message to militiamen in Kismayo City and to the leadership of Transitional Government who are collectively committing crimes against humanity in Kismayo City of southern Somalia. Each of them is not immune from prosecution now or in the future. In the light of current situation, the BCCP urges the leadership of transitional government to desist from financing and morally supporting warlords and their militiamen in Kismayo City of Somalia, and to withdraw its militiamen from Kismayo City. The BCCP also urges the militiamen of President's sub-clan and warlord Aideed's alliance to respect the rights of civilian and desist from wilful targeting of civilian populations in Kismayo City. We call the leadership of Transitional Government to take prompt actions against Somali public and private properties confiscated in Mogadishu and its surroundings, which are persistently used for personal interests. The Centre has raised its concern and is closely continuing to monitor the situation in southern Somalia. Contact: Bay Centre for Conflict Prevention (BCCP) secretariat: baycentre@hotmail.com

BBC 27 July, 2001, Fighting has continued for a second day in south Somalia between forces loyal to the faction leader General Mohammed Morgan and the Juba Valley Alliance, which supports the transitional government in Mogadishu. At least 15 people are reported to have been killed in the battle for the port town of Kismaio. Friday's clashes were centred around the districts of Dinsor and Bu'aleh. It is not known who controls them. The battle is the latest in a series of clashes between supporters and opponents of the year-old transitional administration of President Abdulkassim Salat, which is trying to secure control over the whole country.

Sudan

BBC 23 July, 2001 New US warning on Sudan A senior American official has warned that parts of Sudan could soon face a crop failure comparable to the catastrophic drought of the 1980s, when 250,000 people died. The official, Andrew Natsios - speaking at the end of the first US visit of its kind to Sudan for 12 years - said that failed rains threatened famine in parts of the north, while government attacks on villages were creating hunger in the south. Mr Natsios told reporters in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, that if the crops failed this year, then there was the possibility of a catastrophe next year. He has been assessing the humanitarian situation in Sudan, which has been ravaged by 18 years of civil war between the government in the Islamic north, and rebels from the Christian and animist south.

BBC 28 July, 2001 Sudanese march for peace -Leading actors and comedians are taking part Thousands of people including large numbers of children are marching to Sudanese capital, Khartoum, in an effort to bring an end to the protracted civil war. We are appealing to all sides to stop the war in our country and achieve peace here, in the continent and in the whole world 12-year-old participant The peace march began at Wad Medani, about 150km (94 miles) from Khartoum with an estimated 1,000 participants, but within hours the numbers are reported to have swelled to about 25,000. "We are appealing to all sides to stop the war in our country and achieve peace here, in the continent and in the whole world," said Omar Awad el-Basha, a 12-year-old on the march. The two-day demonstration has been organised jointly by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Sudanese Movement for Children. Both organisations are particularly concerned about the humanitarian effects of the conflict on children. Co-ordination UNICEF spokesman Thomas Ekvall said one aim was to highlight that past efforts to co-ordinate aid programmes there had not been entirely successful. Many of the marchers are children "If we all work together in a coherent, co-ordinated, realistic fashion, we can all ensure that we can achieve these goals for the children," he told The Associated Press. The Sudanese President, Omar el-Bashir, is reported to be planning to address the marchers when they arrive in Khartoum later on Saturday. Rebels in the mostly Christian and animist southern Sudan have been fighting the central government in the Arab Muslim north for greater autonomy for the last 18 years. The conflict has claimed the lives of more than two million people, mostly through war-related famine.

Tanzania

Internews (Arusha) 26  June 2001 Witness Breaks Down During Testimony in 'Media Trial'  Mary Kimani, Arusha A prosecution witness in the so-called "Media Trial" today broke down as she narrated to judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) how Interahamwe militiamen almost killed her during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The Interahamwe were allied to the then ruling party, the Movement for the Republic for National Development (MRND). The witness -- identified only as "AEU" -- broke down as she described how she was forced to watch people being killed and dumped in a hole at a place called Kaburini in a commune nicknamed 'Rouge.' She said Hassan Ngeze, one of the defendants in the Media Trial, together with another man named Hassan Gatoki and several militiamen, extorted money from her to ensure her safety and that of her children. AEU is testifying against Ngeze, owner and former editor of an alleged extremist Rwandan newspaper, 'Kangura.' Ngeze is jointly tried with Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean Bosco Barayagwiza, both founding members of the Radio Television Libre Des Mille Collines (RTLM). All three have denied using their respective media to incite ethnic Hutu to kill ethnic Tutsi. Ngeze is additionally charged with personal involvement in the militia's massacre activities, including the murder of at least one person. AEU said prior to the genocide, Ngeze established a system through which people could be identified as Hutu or Tutsi, regardless of the ethnic community stated in their identity cards. Ng