Another New York Times op-ed piece, “Dealing With the Devil in Darfur” by Julie Flint (IHT, June 17), warns of US support for Minni Arcua Minnawi, leader of the ethnic Zaghawa faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), who seems… Read moreDarfur: US “dealing with the Devil”
Talk about deja vu all over again. The US secretly backs a loose alliance of lawless warlords it had previously fought because they are now opposing an ultra-fundamentalist cleric-led militia with supposed links to al-Qaeda. The clerical militia has just… Read moreSomalia: Afghanistan redux?
Alan J. Kuperman, author of Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazard, Rebellion and Civil War, has a positively ghastly op-ed in the New York Times May 31, blaming the Darfur guerillas for sparking the genocide–as if they had taken up… Read moreDarfur: NY Times op-ed blames the victims
Revelations by Human Rights Watch May 26 that Darfur’s Janjaweed have overrun villages in Chad. The rapidly shifting alliances are dizzying here. On the face of it, this is simple: Chad’s government has backed the Darfur guerillas and this is… Read moreHRW: Janjaweed raid Chad
A front-page story in today’s New York Times paints an even more desperate picture of the deteriorating situation in Darfur than usual. Lydia Polgreen reports from Tina, a village that was overrun April 19 and the residents forced to flee… Read moreDarfur: rebel alliance splits
Nine bombs exploded across Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa May 12, killing four people and wounding dozens. (AP, May 13) The Oromi separatists deny involvement. But Ethiopia has no shortage of ethnic separatist struggles, as we have noted. And also no… Read moreRebels or government behind Ethiopia terror blasts?
We can already anticipate the blame-the-victim chorus that will be raised by the oil companies, Nigeria’s rulers and the global media. But when resource hyper-exploitation co-exists with dire poverty, such incidents are absolutely inevitable. From the Lagos Vanguard, May 13,… Read moreNigeria: 200 dead in pipeline blast
The April 30 march in Washington, organized by the Save Darfur Coalition, brought out some heroes of the left, like George Clooney, but also some that the hard left loves to hate, like Elie Wiesel and Samantha Power. While policy-makers… Read moreDarfur: glimmer of hope?
With Darfur in the headlines, if not the minds of our policymakers, it is generally forgotten that armed attacks, forced deportations and even slavery continue against Black African peoples throughout the Sahel. On Tuesday, May 9, at 7:30 PM, the… Read moreMauritanian anti-slavery activist to speak in NYC
We wonder how he feels to be briefly on the Reuters wire April 30? Eritrea’s last native Jew tends graves, remembers 58-year-old Sami Cohen has fond memories of friends, parents and families in the Horn of Africa. Now there’s little… Read moreEritrea’s Jews: down to one
From Newsday, April 23: LAGOS – A militant group that has been attacking Nigeria’s oil pipelines and helping to drive up world oil prices added a new tactic last week by detonating a car bomb in a major oil city… Read moreNiger Delta insurgents escalate tactics
Still hailing the cartoon protests as heroic anti-imperialism? From AP, Feb. 21: Christian and Muslim mobs rampaged through two Nigerian cities Tuesday, killing at least 24 people in violence that followed deadly protests against caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed during… Read moreNigeria: more religious violence
