Karzai's desperate moves

It should come as no surprise that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been engaged in supposedly "secret" talks with the Taliban, as reported in today's New York Times.

A survivor, Karzai is desperately trying to save himself, his friends, and his family. And, I doubt that US intelligence was not aware of Karzai's actions. What's fascinating, however, is that Karzai's actions are newsworthy.

As the article points out, these behind-the-scenes talks have produced nothing. One of the reasons that they've been fruitless is that Karzai and the US have had no luck in finding anyone of any substance who truly represents the Taliban's seemingly untouchable leader, Mullah Omar.

But that too, should not come as a surprise. As I wrote in Above the Din of War, one of the Taliban's best games has been to pose impostors as their inside men, people who supposedly have direct access to Mullah Omar.

The funniest one was when US and British intelligence services sent a mission into Pakistan to pick up a man who was said to be a Taliban insider. The man was handed a bag of $100s and whisked into a series of high level meetings with US and Afghan officials.

Though this man did little more than grunt and nod, he was touted as a breakthrough. In the end, however, it was revealed that this man was little more than a Pakistani shopkeeper. His story is the Pakistani version of Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure.

The Taliban is still laughing over that one. But there's more. Take, for instance, the death of the former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, the man who Karzai appointed to head up his Peace Council.

After a couple of years of trying, the Taliban sent an envoy to meet with Rabbani, who was kind enough to let the man stay at his home while he was away from Kabul. When Rabbani returned and met with the man, the envoy detonated a bomb hidden in his turban, killing himself and Rabbani.

Hmmm. Could there be a message here?

Then there was the time when Karzai killed talks that the US State Department had arranged with the Taliban in Qatar. In one of the few instances where I have agreed with him, Karzai said no because the Taliban had essentially set up what amounted to an embassy-in-exile in Qatar. The Taliban wanted to conduct talks posing as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Karzai refused.

So, why would Karzai continue to reach out to the Taliban after all of this?

As I've written in earlier posts, Karzai has lost touch with reality. He lives exclusively inside the confines of his fortified palace, yet is able to see the writing on the wall. The Taliban's grip is growing stronger each and every day. It is only a matter of time before their strangle hold on Afghanistan is once again complete.

Karzai knows that when the Taliban takes over again, his life and that of his extended family and associates is over. What can be confiscated of his will be taken by the Taliban. If he escapes alive, he'll be lucky. In an effort to forestall this inevitability, Karzai has reached out to the Taliban.

As the Times points out, this may help explain why Karzai has refused to sign the agreement that would put the US forces inside Afghanistan for another decade. It would also explain why he has so steadfastly insisted on releasing dozens of Taliban prisoners the US has kept locked up in Baghram.

By delaying the signing and ranting against the US, Karzai has foolishly tried to curry favor with the Taliban. Sorry. It won't work.

The good, the bad, the ugly

This past week, Norah Anek, the 86-year-old mother of Joseph Kony, the leader of the militia-cult Lord's Resistance Army, passed away. She was buried not far from where she gave birth to Kony in the town of Adek, about an hour's drive southeast of Gulu in northern Uganda.

According to the nurse who was present at her death, "Moments before dying she said, 'Tell Joseph Kony to make peace.'"

She earlier had said that Kony's problem, the thing that drives him, was that he is possesed by evil spirits.

One can only hope that she was able to find some peace, having been saddled with the unenviable fame of having given birth to perhaps one the world's most notorious and deadly cult leaders.

Norah Anek's explanation for her son's behavior, possession by spirits, contains a nugget of wisdom that apparently cannot be grasped by those who continue to think and advocate appeasement as a way to deal with Kony and his vicious militia.

The latest of these statements surfaced on November 6, titled, "Elements of a New Strategy to Disarm the LRA," written by François Grignon, Africa Program Director of the International Crisis Group.

While I agree with much of what Grignon proposes, it reflects an approach to solving the Kony problem based on weakness rather than strength. It fundamentally seeks to appease and reward evil, rather than eliminate it.

Rather than support the Ugandan special forces in their on-going search and destroy mission, Grignon suggests that, "The US should instead lead a coalition of the willing to provide... (regional governments with) ...the means and ability to restore state authority along their common borders, corner the LRA in progressively circumscribed areas of operation, and help Special Envoys of the UN and the region negotiate the disarmament of its commanders and combatants...."

(Why is it always the U.S. who is supposed to do the work? Why is it that the French are so quick to criticize the American "hyper-power" unless there is some fighting to be done? Why don't the Belgians and the French, who created the mess in Central Africa, clean it up rather than only helping themselves to the region's mineral wealth? What about the British, who controlled and occupied Sudan and South Sudan for a century or so? Where are they?)

As part of his solution, Grignon suggests that the Catholic aid group, Caritas, once again be enlisted to provide food and aid to those who are willing to abandon the LRA with their arms and abductees.

The concept is to entice the LRA, which has broken into five or six elements, into surrendering piecemeal, until Kony has no other choice but to sign a peace deal.
Grignon justifies this by saying, "Only two things have succeeded to contain Kony’s murderous campaigns in the past: food and talks."

This has already been tried and didn't work.

As I wrote in First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army, I was in Nabanga, South Sudan, in July 2006 when the first convoy of supplies was delivered to Kony and his LRA.

The gesture had doubtful merit even back then. Feed Kony as long as he stayed at the peace talks? It worked for a while, but it wasn't long before Kony and the LRA were back to killing, looting and abducting, even as food supplies were being delivered.

This aiding and abetting of an indicted war criminal, which was illegal, reached a depressing height in the spring of 2008 when Kony rounded up some 500 abductees from the Central African Republic, the DR Congo, and South Sudan. Yet, it continued.

It was done while Kony's opportunistic cheerleader, David Matsanga, proclaimed that Kony was going to sign the negotiated peace deal, which he did not, in April or May, and then again at the end of November.

The UN, meanwhile, was actively attempting to keep it all quiet because they were afraid that Kony would abandon the peace talks because of the logical outrage that would be generated. This was immoral.

The December 14 attack on Kony's camps in Garamba National Park failed, we all know.

It is clear that the LRA's capacity to intercept information about the pending attck, flee from it, and then go on an extended killing rampage had been enabled by the international community's "feed the lion" approach.

We should do something like that again?

When are we going to suck up our sagging guts, and do the right thing? No more appeasment. No more talk. Capture Kony and put him on trial at the International Criminal Court.

At least Uganda is trying and U.S. supports that actively. What is anyone else doing?

Kony, afterall, is an Africa problem, not one that needs to be dealt with by either the US or any European countries. Where are the leaders of the DR Congo and South Sudan? Why should the US have to call them up and hand them a pot of money so they will do their jobs?

Where are the African leaders who are so quick to condemn western nations who dole out aid with strings attached, such as insuring that aid money is spend for the purpose it was intended? Why do they shrink into the shadows when there is work to be done?

The citizens of the DRC and South Sudan are dying at the hands of the LRA. Why does the US or EU need to bribe these leaders into action?

Sudan, meanwhile, should further be held up to intense international ridicule if, as most suspect, it is once again aiding Kony, or elements of his army.

Certainly, the current process of Uganda chasing the LRA around the region is frustratingly slow and tedious. If any of the leaders of the affected nations had an ounce of integrity, they would already be in the chase. The sad reality is otherwise.

Forget more peace talks. Kony has more than humiliated the international community already with his lies, with his looting and killing.

Kony's mother had it right when she said her son was possessed. She knew, unlike some people, that we're not dealing with a rational person. Kony needs to be treated like the psychopathic killer that he is.

Maybe just once, finally, countries in the region (with EU and US support) can do the right thing: find and capture Kony, send him to The Hague, and end the madness.

See Grigin's posting at: http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=6381&l=1

Winds of change

Change promised by President Barack Obama is coming swiftly to Africa.

The change is in focus and approach: focus on finding a solution to festering problems and approaching the issues through collective action -- if possible.

Key areas are Sudan and Darfur.

This past week the State Department announced that U.S. special envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, will travel to China, Qatar, Britain and France to revive the sagging Darfur peace talks.

China clearly is a key to ending the nearly six-year war between the Khartoum government led by President Omar al-Bashir and the ethnic "African" majority of rebels fighting in Darfur.

Al-Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with Darfur, depends on the petro-dollars that flow into the country from China and other countries who buy Sudanese oil.

Getting China, which routinely turns a blind eye to Africa's turmoil as long as its investments turn profits, to help pressure Sudan to change its Darfur policy, would be a huge accomplishment. China has long denied responsiblity for arming or financing Sudan's role in the Darfur conflict.

But China is just the first stop.

Gration then meets with counterparts from Russia, Britain, France and the European Union in Doha, Qatar, which has been a broker of the Darfur peace talks.

He then travels to London to reconvene a Sudan diplomatic troika of the United States, Britain and Norway.

In London Gration sits down with the Contact Group on Sudan -- Canada, the European Union, France, Netherlands, Norway, Britain and the United States -- which is following up on the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

The agreement, as most know, ended 22 years of war between Sudan's north and south, the longest civil war in Africa that led to the deaths of around 2 million people and displaced millions more.

Critical to that deal was the sharing of oil revenues between Khartoum and South Sudan -- a source of conflict between the two entities.

Looming in the background of these talks are Sudanese national elections scheduled for February of next year and an independence referendum for South Sudan in 2011.

Whether either will happen is in doubt. Already the Khartoum government has pushed South Sudanese Dinka tribesmen out of the oil-rich Abyei region and is said to be behind ethnic clashes deeper in South Sudan which have killed at least 700 to 800 people in the past couple of months.

The Contact Group last met in Brussels in December. High on the agenda this time has to be what the international community can and will do to insure that the elections take place -- events that are critical to both peace in Sudan and stability in the region.

This will not be easy, and most likely will be resisted by al-Bashir and his National Congress Party in Khartoum which is loathe to let the south secede, just as they cling to the desire to remake Darfur into a pro-Khartoum ethnic "Arab" province.

A critical stop on the Gration tour will be his stop in Paris to meet not only with senior French officials, but with the leader of the Sudan Liberation Army, a rebel faction headed by Abdul Wahid Mohammed Nur, self-exiled in France.

As leader of one of the key rebel groups, Nur has refused to engage in peace talks with Sudan unless and until Sudan not only ceases hostilities in Darfur, but withdraws.

Considering the history of Darfur and the ICC charges against al-Bashir and two others in Sudan, a ranking cabinet minister and a janjaweed militia commander, the demands seem reasonable.

One of the major failures of peace talks for Darfur has been the fracturing of the rebels into some 20 groups. This has allowed Sudan to point fingers at the rebels as the primary impediment to peace and deflect blame from themselves.

Uniting or consolidating the rebels would be a major step forward. Gration will try to convince Nur to drop some of his demands and join the peace process.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly described the trip as an effort by the State Department to "align positions" in the international community on the Darfur peace process.

It is an interesting choice of words, but appropriate.

Although the peace mission in Darfur is technically under the 2007 United Nations and African Union joint peacekeeping force called UNAMID, it has languished under a lack of commitment from contributors and leadership, largely from the diplomatic ineptitude of the Bush administration.

Gration is attempting to provide that leadership.

The U.S., the region, and the world have nothing to lose and much to gain. If the international community and the rebels can show something of a united front on Darfur, it might get the begrudging agreement of the Sudanese government to reverse its decision to expel 13 humanitarian organizations from Darfur after the ICC warrants were issued against al-Bashir.

This would be good news for millions of Darfuris stranded by the forced abandonment of the aid groups.

But it also might lay the groundwork for serious efforts to end the six-year conflict that has claimed 300,000 lives and forced more than 2.2 million people to flee.