Obama urges Africa to follow spirit of Nelson Mandela

U.S. President Barack Obama prodded the government of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi on Monday to work with the opposition and do more to enact democratic reforms, saying U.S. aid to the North African nation was based on such criteria.
Obama, speaking at a news conference in Tanzania, said the United States, which gives Egypt $1.3 billion a year in military aid plus other support, was concerned about the violence and urged all sides to work towards a peaceful solution.
As Obama spoke, the head of Egypt’s armed forces, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, gave politicians 48 hours to answer demands made by the Egyptian people in mass rallies, or have the military present its own “road map for the future”.
“We’re all concerned about what’s happening in Egypt,” Obama said. “There is more work to be done to create the conditions in which everybody feels that their voices are heard and that the government is responsive and truly representative.”
Asked about U.S. aid to Egypt, Obama said it included regular assistance and some support now being held up and requiring approval from U.S. Congress. He did not give details.
“But the way we make decisions about assistance to Egypt is based on ‘are they in fact following the rule of law and democratic procedures?’,” he said, speaking on the last stop of his three-nation tour of Africa.
“We don’t make those decisions just by counting the number of heads in a protest march but we do make decisions based on whether or not a government is listening to the opposition, maintaining a free press, maintaining freedom of assembly, not using violence or intimidation, conducting fair and free elections,” he said.
“We press the Egyptian government very hard on those issues.”

Nelson Mandela’s condition gets better

The office of the South African president says Nelson Mandela’s health improved overnight, and his condition remains critical but is now stable.
President Jacob Zuma’s office said in a statement Thursday that he received the update from the medical team that is treating the 94-year-old anti-apartheid leader at a Pretoria hospital.
Zuma, who visited Mandela on Thursday, said in the statement that the former president is “much better” than when Zuma visited him on the previous night.
His office says it is disturbed by what it calls rumors about Mandela’s health. Unconfirmed reports and speculation about Mandela have been swirling on social media and other forums.

Obama Visit: Natural Resources Not Democracy

United States President Barack Obama began his second visit to Africa as president on Wednesday in Senegal. The visit will take him to South Africa and Tanzania.
Much has been said about this visit, particularly about the choice of countries where he will call. The most commonly advanced reason for Obama’s selection of these countries is that they have an established democratic tradition and good human rights record. The visit therefore is a reward for good behaviour, for toeing the Western line.
Few people believe this – not even the Americans. The actual reasons are much more America’s self-interest than a deserved reward for the virtuous. In any case, the three are not the most virtuous.
Corruption and intolerance are on the increase in South Africa under President Jacob Zuma. Bishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Laureate and freedom fighter has been so disillusioned in the governing African National Council (ANC) that he has vowed he will not vote for it again.
Tanzania has been the scene of political intolerance in the last ten years. It is well-known that the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) stole the last election from the opposition Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (CHADEMA) party and has since subjected the opposition to much harassment. The islands of Zanzibar and Pemba that formed a Union with Tanganyika to form the United Republic of Tanzania have been restive for some time and have been kept in the union by a combination of repression, vote fixing and other arm-twisting measures.
It will be recalled that a Tanzanian diplomat in the United States was convicted for physically abusing and refusing to pay his domestic help. The diplomat has since returned home and no payment to the woman who worked for him has been made despite a court ruling in her favour.
Cases of killing of albinos, allegedly for ritual purposes have never been resolved. Mistreatment of foreigners continues.
True, Senegal is on the mend after ten years of growing corruption under Abdoulaye Wade.
The reasons for Obama’s visit to these countries are therefore more than their democratic and human rights credentials. They are more materialistic and have a lot to do with America’s geopolitical interests.
This is why. President Obama is travelling with a huge entourage of business people (about 500) who are clearly more interested in cutting business deals than fostering the nebulous ideas of democracy. For US politicians and business community, Africa is increasingly strategically important in terms of natural resources and the fight against terrorism.
South Africa, where most of Obama’s business delegation will have keen interest is Africa’s most developed economy and has been a western investment destination for a very long time. Its mineral wealth is of strategic importance to western companies. The wider Southern African region, including Tanzania, has equally huge reserves of minerals, and now oil and gas as well, that the west desires.
But so does China. Indeed early this year China’s President Xi Jinping visited Tanzania and South Africa, obviously not for a friendly chat over a cup of tea, but for serious business. Obama is following suit, or as some commentators have said, playing catch up. The strategy is to check China’s growing trade and investment in Africa. His business entourage will no doubt be exchanging gifts with their African counterparts, but the real prize is what they can extract from Africa.
Tanzania has never been high on the list of US interests in Africa. Why now? It is because of the minerals, gas and oil that were recently discovered in the south of the country. It is about countering China’s growing business presence in the region. Forget about democracy and human rights. Those don’t make dollars for American businesses and they don’t get American presidents elected. Money does.
Stories about Obama snubbing Kenya and going to Tanzania instead because of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s legal issues with the ICC are nonsense. Kenya has the most developed international business, diplomatic and media infrastructure in the region and is so crucial to western interests that it cannot be ignored. And unless western leaders become dumb, Kenya will remain the most important ally in the region.
In the case of Senegal, American interests are largely to do with security. Senegal is largely a moderate, Muslim majority country in a region where extremism is growing. It borders the Maghreb and the Sahel, both areas where Al Qaeda linked groups freely operate. In this sense it is viewed as a useful point for countering the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and perhaps setting up a US military base for the west African and Maghreb regions.
In addition it is the most influential French-speaking country in West Africa.
Indeed, since the Clinton Administration, US governments have been cultivating a strong interest in Senegal. The United States views Senegal as a partner in the fight against transnational security threats, such as terrorism, drug trafficking and piracy.
Understandably Obama could not visit every country in Africa. But that does not mean that those he did not are in any way less democratic. It only confirms that American leaders show more interest in countries with immense natural resources or that guarantee their vital security interests regardless of their democratic or human rights record. That is why it is not surprising, although unnatural, that Obama should be visiting an East African country with a dismal record against corruption.
Obama is certainly going to make the usual noises about governance and human rights, but he will also have his chequebook ready. His business delegations most certainly will. That is the real purpose of the visit.

In Nigeria, ‘Killing People Without Asking Who They Are’

BOSSO, Niger — For the soldiers, the young men’s long, flowing robes — the traditional garb of Muslim West Africa — were enough to establish guilt, the refugees said.  

“As soon as they see you with clothing like this, they shoot,” said Abukar Ari, a Koranic teacher in a long robe who said he had fled across the border from Nigeria two weeks before. “They don’t ask any questions. I’ve seen them shoot people. Yes, I’ve seen them shoot.”

Other refugees in the registration lines of thousands who had fled Nigeria’s combat zone echoed these assertions, saying civilians were being killed there by soldiers unconcerned with the distinction between militants and innocents. Friends and neighbors were being shot, they said; young men were being rounded up at night; and citizens with the vertical ethnic scarring of the Kanuri, a group dominant in the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, were being taken away.

“They are killing people without asking who they are,” said Laminou Lawan, a student who said he had fled here 10 days before. “When they see young men in traditional robes, they shoot them on the spot. They catch many of the others and take them away, and we don’t hear from them again.”

Nearly three weeks ago, Nigeria launched what it depicted as an all-out land and air campaign to crush the Boko Haram insurgency, using thousands of troops, vehicles and even fighter jets and helicopter gunships just over the border from here, where Nigerian officials say the insurgents have their stronghold.

The Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, suggesting that he was fed up with the four-year uprising by Boko Haram, announced “extraordinary measures” in his country’s north and placed a large part of it under a state of emergency, ordering troops to “take all necessary action” to end an insurgency that he said was now threatening the country’s foundations.

Nigeria’s foreign partners, including the United States, which considers the country an important ally in the fight against Islamist militancy, have watched warily, with Secretary of State John Kerry pointedly warning the Nigerian military about what he called “credible allegations” that Nigerian forces had committed “gross human rights violations” in the period before the offensive began.

Last month, more than 200 people were killed in what local officials, residents and human rights groups say was a sweeping massacre by Nigerian forces in the nearby village of Baga, in northern Nigeria. Analysts have long questioned whether Nigeria’s heavy-handed counterinsurgency strategy, which has resulted in numerous civilian deaths since 2009, may be having the opposite effect of the one intended, increasing anger at the Nigerian state and driving new recruits to the militants.

But Mr. Kerry has not specifically raised the question of human rights abuses during the latest offensive, and for a good reason: it is difficult to get a clear idea of what is happening. Since its start, much of northern Nigeria has been under a communications blackout, as cellphone service has been cut, physical access has been limited and information restricted to a series of military communiqués. They have announced the “capture and destruction” of Boko Haram camps, the deaths of “high-profile” Boko Haram members and other “terrorists,” the “disarray” of militants, the discovery and destruction of weapons caches, and the “securing” of various towns and settlements in the north from Boko Haram.

Nigerian military spokesmen have been at pains to deny any misconduct against civilians during the campaign, trying to reassure the country’s allies by announcing that they were pleased soldiers were sticking to what they called “the rules of engagement.” A spokesman did not respond Friday to a request for comment on the refugees’ accounts.

But some of the refugees who have massed here in this remote border village at the far eastern edge of Niger — there are at least 5,000 of them, and possibly as many as 10,000 in the area, officials say — described the fighting in terms that varied widely from the military communiqués.

Their testimony is among the first independent accounts of the Nigerian military’s offensive, and they spoke of indiscriminate bombing and shooting, unexplained civilian deaths, nighttime roundups of young men by security forces. All spoke of a climate of terror that had pushed them, in the thousands, to flee for miles through the harsh and baking semidesert, sometimes on foot, to Niger. A few blamed Boko Haram — a shadowy, rarely glimpsed presence for most residents — for the violence. But the overwhelming majority blamed the military, saying they had fled their country because of it. 

They had come from multiple villages in Nigeria to one of the poorest nations on earth, overwhelming local officials. But at least here, they said, the soldiers of the Republic of Niger are drowsing under a giant tree at the border, not pointing their guns at the civilians who continue to cross it.

“The military just opens fire and kills people, and throws bombs and kills people, for no reason,” said Abubakar Ali, a shoe salesman waiting in one of the registration lines. “That is why you see these people here,” he said, pointing out at the crowd. “That is what is happening now in Nigeria.”

Others in the crowd said that friends and neighbors had been shot during the offensive. They could not always identify the source of the shooting, but they could easily identify the victims.

“I’ve seen the wounded; these are people I know,” said Muhammad Yacoubu, a farmer.

“The military are looking for Boko Haram, but if they don’t find them, they take revenge,” said Moustapha Ali, a shopkeeper.

Ousmane Boukari, a herdsman, said, “They bombed on Saturday, and they missed their targets; they’re just firing at random, they don’t even know where the Boko Haram are.”

Modu Goni, another refugee, said: “At night you hear the shooting, and in the morning you find the bodies, people from the village. When you see your friends dead, it’s scary.”

Others spoke of seizures of young men by security forces, a pattern already established in the insurgents’ stronghold city of Maiduguri, according to residents there.

“The soldiers took the young men away, at least 10 of them, at night; it’s at night that they make their raids,” said Sherrif Alhadji Abdu, another refugee. “They band their eyes, and take them away. They took away my friends.”

At the edge of this village, some of the refugees have erected crude reed shelters in the sand, or simply posted sticks in the ground and placed rags over them. Abou Boukar, a farmer, had just finished building a reed hut. Anything was better than staying in Nigeria, he said. Boko Haram had built a camp near his village. The next day, he saw a Nigerian air force plane flying overhead.

“This doesn’t look good,” he recalled saying to himself. And then he fled to Niger.