Elizabeth Dickinson's blog

Via Mideast Wire, here's a translation of what the Sudan People's Liberation Movement ambassador to Washington, Akec Khoc, told the Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat about Gration:

Q: “How do you see the current American-Sudanese relations?

A: “For more than ten years, i.e. during the term of the administration of President Clinton then the administration of George Bush, the relationship has been very tense. And there have been many differences and clashes. But of course and thanks to the efforts of General Gration and after president Barack Obama has declared his new Sudan policy, it has became clear that the relationship developed greatly. We are very optimistic. For many years now, the relationship has not improved that much and it is not the best relation. But things are on the right track."

Q: "But many American NGOs are criticizing Obama's policies towards Sudan?"

A: "In the United States as in other countries, there are some parties that want our relations with Washington to deteriorate and wish to give a negative image of Sudan around the world, not only in regard to the Darfur issue but also in other cases. They think that Sudan is an easy target. But we in Sudan will always welcome anyone who wants to work with us peacefully and away from any media commotion. And now under Obama who has decided to open up to everybody and deal with many countries among which is Sudan, I sincerely hope that his efforts will be successful."

Update: This post has been updated to reflect a correction. A wise commenter has pointed out that our Arabic transcript was incomplete. The ambassador, Akec Khoc (not John Akweg) is a member of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) -- not the Khartoum government. We regret the error and thank our commentor for pointing this out! 

ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP/Getty Images

If you are like most people who heard Afghan President Hamid Karzai's re-inauguration speech, you are wondering about a few choice words:

Here I would like to invite all presidential candidates, especially my brother Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and my brother Dr. Ashraf Ghani, who is present here, to make joint efforts for fulfilling serious national duties and for a united, proud and developed Afghanistan."

Wait, is he making overtures to the opposition? Would Abdullah and Ghani go for it? 

Well, for Ghani's part at least, the answers seems a near-certain no. Speaking as part of a joint FP and Oxfam America event today by Skype at the Newseum, Dr. Ghani responded to queries about Karzai's mention.

What does it mean? That Karzai is interested in having "my name," said Ghani, but "not my ideas." He went on to say that he had "strict conditions" for entering the government, and was "not inclined" to join "unless those conditions are met." 

So, looks like the powering-sharing option is still out. But alas, that should come as no surprise. 

The world is less safe for aid workers, access to needy communities in conflict is on the decline, and aid is increasingly tied to military or other strategic objectives. These are among the gloomy conclusions of Development Assistance Research Associates (DARA), an aid watchdog, as it releases its 2009 Humanitarian Responsiveness Index today.

The index is meant to hold donor countries accountable for their responses to the world's various crises. So in addition to the rankings (the United States takes the 14th slot with Norway and Sweden in 1st and 2nd place), the index looks at trends in the business of getting help to those who need it.

This year, DARA's executive director, Silvia Hidalgo, told me that the news is not very good. "This is one of the highest on record for humanitarian workers killed," she said. Asked why, Hidalgo cited security situations in such countries as Somalia and Afghanistan. "[But] it's not only a problem of security but also countries saying that [their] sovereignty is being questioned." In Sudan, for example, the government in Khartoum responded to an International Criminal Court indictment of its president by ousting international NGOs. Hidalgo cited Sri Lanka, where refugees in the Tamil regions of the country were cut off from aid, as another example of governments getting in the way.

DARA's finding also come with a message for the U.S. administration and its strategy review on Afghanistan: demiliterize aid. During the group's field research, 53 percent of survey respondents told DARA that they believed that U.S. assistance came with political or military motives -- 20 percentage points higher than the donor average for the same question.

Before I write anything about Zimbabwe, I should put my biases out there: as my colleagues at FP can attest, I think Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is pretty great. In fact, after interviewing and meeting him, I am convinced he could be Zimbabwe's "Mandela."

But from the beginning we've also known that Mugabe is no De Klerk. And two pieces of news coming out of Zimbabwe make this point both more clear and alarming than ever. The first has to do with Zimbabwe's diamond mines. Earlier this summer, the Kimberly Process -- a procedure established after the diamond-funded wars of the 1990s to prevent 'blood diamonds' from hitting the market -- recommended that Zimbabwe be suspended for failure to meet minimum standards.

What does "failure to comply" mean exactly? Well, as Global Witness, an NGO that monitors resource conflict, put it:

[C]ontrols over the diamond sector have been nonexistent and communities in and around the diamond fields have borne the brunt of a series of brutal measures to restore state control over the area. The authorities have failed to stop the military from carrying out abuses and profiting from the illicit trade in diamonds, effectively condoning - and perhaps even encouraging - the looting and attendant violence against civilians."

Sounds serious, right? Nope, the Kimberly Process decided today. Zimbabwe just needs some time to fix thing. Ahem, Mr. Mugabe, when might be convenient?

Maybe Mugabe will have time to work out how to control his soldiers after he works out another boiling conflict -- this one within his own government. After months of threatening to do so, Prime Minister Tsvangirai finally pulled out of the unity government three weeks ago, saying that unresolved issues and a failure to compromise on Mugabe's part had made his job impossible. Now, after Tsvangirai's tour of regional capitals and a summit of the negotiation-monitoring Southern African Development Community (SADC), the unity government is back. But Mugabe and Tsvangirai have only 15 days to work out how they are going to solve the world of differences between them. 

This is very bad news, not least because asking Mugabe to compromise in 15 days is like asking Kim Jong-Il to forfeit his nukes by next Thursday. Impossible. 

In my opinion, with bias acknowledged, the only ones more disgraced than Mugabe in all this are the internationals who forced the unity government coalition in the first place, but who have failed to follow through. SADC has been spineless, even under its newer, supposedly more firm moderator, South African President Jacob Zuma. They've hardly nudged Mugabe toward compromise, let alone given him the push he very badly needs. And the Kimberly Process just rendered itself rather uncredible by letting Zimbabwe go free.

Photo: JEKESAI NJIKIZANA/AFP/Getty Images

Its supposed success signing deals with China aside, the junta in Guinea may well be falling apart. The coalition led by Moussa Dadis Camara that took over last fall is looking increasingly frayed -- its leadering increasingly unstable, and the situation increasingly volatile. (Watch out China -- if you were planning to invest, might be rough times.)

To be honest, the junta didn't get off to a bad start -- for a junta, that is. The soldiers were greeted with cheers back in December, when the military officers replaced a notoriously corrupt and patronistic President Lansana Conte. Junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara promised to hold elections -- and not to stand as candidate. The junta even made gestures toward cleaning up the state, including the arrest of high profile leaders thought to be involved in the international drug trade, a Congressional Research Service report issued at the end of September, explains. 

After months of muddling through, however, the junta took a turn from unpleasant to drastically worse on September 28, when opposition protestors were massacred in a stadium, in a pre-mediated way, Human Rights Watch claims this week. Those killed were protesting a change of heart by Dadis about elections -- he now says that he may well stand as candidate. Taken together, the election bid and the massacre have catalyzed the opposition in a way rarely seen in the small, West African state. There are about 91 or 92 political parties in the opposition, says an international NGO worker who cannot be named for security purposes. "Most political parties and civil society organizations are all working together" against the coup, she told me.

All the comes at a time when the junta itself is falling apart. Dadis comes across as crazy, drugged, or bi-polar in his interviews and TV spots. He has become increasingly fragile, observers say, as the pressures of patronage and a fractured junta coalition weigh on him. 

And fractured the junta certainly is. The group of 30 or so soldiers who came to power, with the backing of about 500 more, make up just a handful of the armies 20,000 forces. Within the high ranks, the most obvious split has emerged between Dadis and his defense minister, General Sekouba Konaté. The latter was an important figure in the military prior to the coup as is largely percieved as the biggest "threat" to Dadis's rule -- an impression codified by the fact that, since earlier this year, Dadis has refused to let his defense minister out of his sight for more than a few moments (they are pictured together above). When Konaté left the country several weeks ago to Morocco (the rumor mill claims he was sent to procure arms), many in Guinea wondered if he would be let back in to the country. His whereabouts now are unknown.

All this raises the scepter of civil war that Guinea has been fighting back literally for decades. During the wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia earlier this decade, Guinea's role was largely in taking collateral damage and refugees. But internal ethnic strife has always been both a real component of governance in Guinea, and an element of the society with the potential to be exploited for the worse. "You have a sporadic history of state-sponsored violence targeted at different ethnic groups thorughout Guinea's history," CRS researcher Alexis Arieff told me. "Now, you have a situation in which every self-identified group has a narrative of political exclusion, and there's some truth to all of those narratives." Instrumentalize the grievances, many fear, and Guinea will be headed for trouble.

Add to that one more ugly truth: "many observers will say that it is likely or at least possible that members of the [junta] and or business interests that support them are involved in the international drug trade," a business increasingly penetrating Western African shores. It's got the potential to truly criminalize the state -- though the junta has done a pretty good job of this already. 

Photo: SEYLLOU/AFP/Getty Images

Earlier this month, news surfaced that the military junta in Guinea had secured a $7 billion deal with a Chinese firm for mineral exploitation and other economic exchange. The news came at an odd time to say the least; just two weeks earlier, the junta presided over what can only be termed a massacre of the opposition, with over 150 protestors killed. As the international community threatened sanctions, Guinea's junta leaked the China deal to the press as if to say, 'we don't need you, world.' The investors were reported to be the China International Fund Ltd (CIFL), a Hong-Kong-based firm.

Yet many have doubted the veracity of the deal, given the timing, and the fact that $7 billion is almost twice Guinea's GDP. The Chinese Embassy in Guinea denied the project. And other skeptics cried fowl. "China has a reputation of ignoring a lot of things, but they do want to protect their investments," an international NGO worker told me when the deal was announced (she could not be identified for her safety in Guinea). "I know the Chinese ambassador and I think he would agree with me." 

Turns out, what is likely the contract for the deal was posted online back in June, meaning that the deal has been in the works for years, not months or even days, as the Guinean announcement this month seemed to suggest. The contract, between the Guinean government and the CIFL, lays out conditions for the creation of a "Chinese-Guinean Development Organization" (my translation from French), which would oversee investments and development in the energy, water treatment, electricity, road, airline, habitat and aluminum mineral extraction sectors. The organization would be funded mostly by CIFL up front, to be reimbursed in part by the Guinean government when profits began to turn. The accord is dated June 12, 2009. 

Whether this is in fact the deal, it is being treated as such, says Congressional Research Service analyst Alexis Arieff, who recently wrote a report on the situation in Guinea. The details also align with the statements of Guinean ministers who have spoken about the contract to the press. 

Why does this matter? The implications are several fold: 

First, if the initial contract was indeed signed in June, it raises further questions about why the junta would announce it immediately after the September massacre. "[T]he opinion of the international community effects [Moussa Dadis Camara, the junta leader]," the international NGO worker told me. There are signs that the already mentally fragile junta leader was hit hard by the massive drop in international opinion that followed the events of September. 

Second, the agreement tells us something very interesting about China's investment in Africa, and the complex web of companies that are involved therein. The China International Fund Ltd is part of what the U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission recently termed the "88 Queensway Group," named for an address in Hong Kong at which numerous Chinese companies are registered. The group has also invested heavily in Angola and has unclear links to the Chinese state itself. "Although the 88 Queensway Group is portrayed to the public (and accepted publicly) as a private Hong Kong-based company with no government affiliation, some evidence suggests that several of the Group’s personnel are connected to the Ministry of Public Security or the Ministry of State Security," the July 10 report concludes. In other words, while "China" might not be investing in Guinea, companies related to government interests might be. 

Finally, there are still gaping holes in the story here about whether the contract will actually be acted upon, given the recent turn of violent events, and how funds would be dispersed. The Guinea government is completely broke; the small, resource-rich African country depends almost solely on Bauxite exports for its revenue. And for now, the junta is running on fumes. 

What is certain is that Guinea's October announcement of their big, whopping deal with China, is wishful thinking. Just how concrete their wishes are is anyone's best guess.

Photo: GEORGES GOBET/AFP/Getty Images

It's not a good sign when your leadership prize runs out of eligible candidates to honor after a whopping two years. Welcome to the Mo Ibrahim Foundation's Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, whose winner was meant to be announced in London today. 

This year the Prize Committee has considered some credible candidates. However, after in-depth review, the Prize Committee could not select a winner."

Yikes. It's been a rough year for African governance. A coup in Guinea led off the year last November, followed shortly by another unwelcome transition of power in Madagascar. Retiring heads of state this year included only Ghana's John Kufuor and South Africa's Kgalema Petrus Motlanthe, who served for under a year. All the other elections were marred by voting irregularities, repression, and/or the reinstatement of long-time rulers for whom 3rd term is not a dirty word.

The good news? The Mo Ibrahim Foundation was founded to make a statement about the need for more and better African Leadership -- and it has certainly done that this year.

SHAUN CURRY/AFP/Getty Images

If you've been following Nigeria for the past few weeks, you know that -- after years of foot-dragging -- the government finally pulled together an amnesty plan for fighters. You probably also heard that, just hours after the program began, rebel group Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta promised to renew attacks. What gives?

Just about everything is wrong with the amnesty deal that just took place, despite hooplah and praise to the contrary. In principle, offering fighters a way out of their violent profession is great. But context is everything.

First off, there was never a political settlement to the conflict in the Niger Delta -- a conflict that is primarily about the sharing of the country's massive oil wealth, the underdevelopment of the Niger Delta, and the environmental destruction that petrol has wraught on the communities therearound. None of those questions have disappeared. Thousands are still jobless; living standards for the masses are abominable; and no large-scale clean-up efforts have restored the environment to its past vibrance. There has been no political agreement on the rebels' demand that the Niger Delta recieve a greater percentage of the country's oil revenues. Nor has there been any effort to stem the local corruption that enriches local officials at the expense of pretty much everyone else. In short, if you were considering being a rebel, there are still a lot of reasons to do so.

But perhaps more alarming is the fact that the Nigerian government has just created juicy incentive to become a rebel. If this amnesty was anything like past attempts to co-opt top rebel leaders, a hefty paycheck came along with that promise of no prosecution. So what lesson has Abuja just taught MEND? If you become just frightening enough, you, too, can win a juicy deal from the government in Abuja to stop fighting.

I don't mean to be curt, and I hope Nigeria proves me wrong. But here's the picture I see: In a region where there is no economic opportunity for young men and women, joining a rebellion that pays well -- with the promise of a handsome retirement someday in Abuja -- is not just an option, it's the obvious choice. As one rebel once told me, a hungry man will fight for anything. And since the problems of the Niger Delta aren't getting any better, there's plenty (right or wrong) to fight for.