Elizabeth Dickinson's blog

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.

This morning in Cape Town, South Africa the Mo Ibrahim Foundation released its annual index of governance in Africa. Using four categories -- safety and rule of law, participation and human rights, sustainable economic opportunity, and human development -- the winners were the usual suspects: Mauritius first, followed by Cape Verde, the Seychelles, and Botswana. As a region, Southern Africa came out tops, beating out the ambitious economic growth of Northern Africa. The equally predictable losers are Somalia, Chad, and Zimbabwe. Central Africa (home to the Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, and  Equatorial Guinea, among others) is the region that looks least desirable.

But what's more interesting than the total results are the contrasts within countries themselves. Just take Tunisia, a strong economic performer ranked 8th overall but 35th in human rights. Or Benin, a West African country that ranks 8th in terms of safety and security but 26th in human development. 

This survey strikes me as most useful for what it tells us about the diversity of a continent that is far too often viewed as uniform. North Africa seems to have figured out an economic model that is plowing ahead towards growth; participatory governance is more of a struggle. Meanwhile, West Africa is chronically underdeveloped in areas such as healthcare, education, and general quality of life; but it's generally free and fairly safe. East Africa is in the middle of most indicators. While certainly there are lessons to draw from the successes and failures of all these countries, applying the same prescriptions won't work as well. 

Check out the full rankings here.

The downside of sneaking back into your country after having been ousted from the presidency is that you can't make your timeslot at the General Assembly of the United Nations to plead your case. Well, at least you'd think not. But the Honduran delegation yesterday found a way to let Manuel Zelaya speak: hold him up to the mic via cell phone.

What's more interesting about this speech is not what Zelaya says -- which is not too much -- it's just how absurd this whole affair has gotten. Alarmingly absurd, in fact. With Zelaya back in town, many analysts believe that violence is inevitable. The de facto government certainly seemed to think so earlier this week when they clamped down on opposition radio stations and curtailed civil liberties. They've since rescinded the restrictions, perhaps realizing that they did more harm to international opinion than good back home. But they haven't let the Organization of American States' officials back in since they were kicked out yesterday.

Honduras is at a very volatile impasse. Trouble is, no one seems to know what exactly to do about it -- nor are they willing to take the risks associated with doing it. (Then again, none of the options -- intervention, mediation, sanctions -- look too promising either.)

In short, Zelaya better get comfortable in the Brazilian Embassy where he is hiding out. Because while he can still speak at the United Nations as head of state, it will be a while (if it comes at all) before he can do so back home.

Ask anyone who watches Sudan policy in Washington about the Obama administratin's special envoy to the country, J. Scott Gration, and one phrase will keep popping up: "He's wandered way off the reservation."

A scathing profile of Gration in the Washington Post today makes all too clear why. What's his strategy? "We've got to think about giving out cookies...Kids, countries -- they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.

Gration, a former Air Force Major General, has angered just about everyone he could have -- except the Sudanese government (their embassy raved about him when I visited earlier this year). Sudan watchers worry about Gration's engaging approach to Khartoum, getting cozy with a government whose president is indicted for war crimes in the International Criminal Court. Human rights activists think that Gration risks not just overseeing inertia in Darfur but sparking another round of combat. In trying to "unite" the rebels, they note, he has favored certain factions over others -- a dangerous recipe in a volatile cocktail of conflict. Aid workers on ground say he doesn't understand what is going on. And colleagues at the State Department say his office doesn't communicate with them, nor heed their  policy advice.

At best, he's a headache, they say.

Now, even Congress is concerned. "[I]n recent weeks, the leadership of South Sudan and Darfur have expressed serious concerns about Special Envoy Scott Gration's warm and incentive driven approach toward the ruling National Congress Part (NCP)," members of the House's Sudan Caucus wrote in a letter to President Obama. They add at the end: "It is...important that the Special Envoy's office coodinate and work closely with the State Department..."

Why is all this coming out now? This week will see a meeting among administration officials who will at last approve a long-awaited Sudan Policy Review. Gration's critics are hoping other officials can reign him in. Gration's team told a blogger round table that I attended earlier this month that everything had already been agreed upon, and this meeting was a mere formality. 

The Enough Project, Save Darfur Coalition, and Genocide Intervention Network offered a stark warning after the WaPo profile: “The quotes from Special Envoy Gration are deeply troubling. The time is well past for the President, Vice President and Secretary of State to exert much-needed leadership over U.S. diplomatic efforts with Sudan or face the prospect that Sudan will descend into much broader violence.”

Meanwhile, Gration is just back from Sudan, and off to Moscow soon.

Update: The White House says the Washington Post profile inaccurately reflects their policy toward Sudan. This post has also been updated to correctly reflect Gration's travel schedule.

Photo: PETER MARTELL/AFP/Getty Images