Conflict Minerals: Riddle Us This

Now that Kate's back in town, we're working on a longer joint post about our position on this whole OMG-DRC-Conflict-Minerals kerfuffle.

Until then, we have a question for our readers who believe that regulating Congolese minerals would be likely to have a positive impact on the conflict situation there:

How?

We're serious. We want to know what you think the mechanism for improvement would be. Because to us, this is sounding like so much underpants gnome logic. (Phase 1: Steal Underpants; Phase 2: ??; Phase 3: All Armed Groups Pack Up and Go Home.)

So, Cblatts, Jason, Team Enough, Nell Okie, and anyone else: we are genuinely interested in learning how you think this would play out. Please walk us through the steps we are missing between "restricting the market for minerals from the DRC" and "improvement in the lives of those affected by conflict in the Kivus."

(Those of you who think it is not a good idea can explain that too if you'd like. But we're not having as much trouble figuring that side out.)

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

WTF Friday, 7/30/10

• Found this list of dictator's favorite movies. Pretty entertaining but I wish they would elaborate on Kim Jong-Il's love for Barbara Streisand. Can't leave me hanging on that! Also: Stalin tried to kill John Wayne?!?

• In a case of art imitating life, Wyclef Jean may run for President of Haiti. The fact that he has never really consistently lived in Haiti may be a roadblock, but if he is able to run, he is apparently, like, the most popular person in the country. He should take caution, though. His cousin and former bandmate, Pras Michel, once threatened to "personally assassinate" former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide if he were to return to Haiti after stealing public funds. Clef would do well to keep his hands out of the cookie jar...

• Dmitry Medvedev has passed a law granting more power to the Federal Security Service, a successor to the KGB. Political analyst Yulia Latynina has stated that, "In case a drunken FSB officer is shooting at you - and there have been many such cases - you might end up getting jailed 15 days for merely trying to escape." It is unclear from the article how true this could be, but what is clear is that Vladimir Putin can pull off a mean Judo throw.

• And for your viewing pleasure, here's the terrifying music video for "Another Brick in the Wall (Hey Ayatollah, Leave Those Kids Alone)." I smell a hit.

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

Impress Your Friends and Outflank Your Enemies: The Wronging Rights Guide to the Conflict-Mineral Regulations in Section 1502 of HR 4173

As Kate notes, the recent passage of new legislation on "conflict minerals" from the DRC has prompted much discussion from the aid-blogosphere. Predictably, the reactions have been mixed. The Enough Project is thrilled, which is hardly surprising, given their extensive campaigning around the conflict-minerals issue. Jason Stearns offers more measured support. Laura Seay at Texas in Africa is not a fan. Chris Blattman, showing himself to be a ninja of skeptical ambivalence, has not just one but two posts in which he somehow manages to criticize nearly every aspect of the new regulations, yet still come out in favor of them overall.

Therefore, this seems like a good time for a quick analysis of what the new legislation actually says. So, without further ado, I present:

Impress Your Friends and Outflank Your Enemies: The Wronging Rights Guide to the Conflict-Mineral Regulations in Section 1502 of HR 4173.

1. Who has to follow the new law's requirements?

Not clear! The text of the bill amends Section 13 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (which is codified in 15 U.S.C. 78m, if you're interested in looking it up), by adding a new subsection (p) at the end. However, the new subsection (p) doesn't specify who is bound by its requirements. It seems to leave that up to the SEC's regulations, which haven't been issued yet.

You see, paragraph 1(A) of the new law directs the SEC to issue regulations requiring "any person described in paragraph 2" to comply with the new reporting requirements.

Easy, right? Just check paragraph 2! Well, except that paragraph 2 refers right back to paragraph 1(A). It defines "persons" as anyone (1) who is required to comply with the reporting requirements in paragraph 1(A); and (2) who manufactures a product that either (a) requires conflict minerals in order to function, or (b) requires conflict minerals as part of the manufacturing process.

So yeah, that's a little confusing. As far as I can tell, this allows the SEC significant discretion to decide who must comply with the reporting requirements, as long as the category is limited to manufacturers of "products." (Another term that isn't defined yet! Isn't law fun?)

(The Enough Project and the Washington Post appear to be under the impression that the law applies only to publicly traded companies, but I can't figure out where they're getting that idea from. I emailed Enough's Laura Heaton, though, and will update this section if I get more information.)

2. What does the new law require people to do?

The new law's requirements fall into two basic categories. The first category imposes new disclosure and auditing responsibilities on private citizens and corporations who manufacture products using "conflict minerals." The second category orders the State Department to get to work on a "strategy and map to address the linkages between conflict minerals and armed groups." Much as I love maps, I'll focus on the first category in this analysis, because it's the one that's most relevant to the debate over the regulation of conflict minerals.

For the sake of clarity, I'll begin with a few things the new law does not do. It does not outlaw conflict minerals, from the DRC or elsewhere. It does not create any new crimes. It does not apply to any person or corporation that's outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. (For the moment, it's unclear who it actually does apply to, as will be discussed further below.) It does not specify any new penalties or punishments.

So what does the new law require? Well, for the next nine months, nothing. The law directs the SEC to develop a new set of regulations on the disclosure of "conflict minerals" used in the manufacture of products. Those new regulations aren't due until 270 days after the law was enacted, so for now, a lot remains unclear.

However, the gist of the new law is that although nothing has been outlawed, an awful lot of things are about to become much more expensive, complicated, and difficult. Congress did specify certain things that the SEC's new regulations must include, so I'll explain those for now.

a. Initial Disclosure
First, all "persons" covered by the law must submit an annual report disclosing whether they used conflict minerals that originated in the DRC, or in an adjoining country, to manufacture any of their products.

(The definitions of "person," "conflict minerals," and "adjoining country" are discussed more below. If you just can't wait to get there, feel free to scroll down and check them out now, and I'll wait for you up here. Otherwise, in a nutshell, "conflict minerals" are coltan, cassiterite, gold, wolframite, or their derivatives; an "adjoining country" is one that shares a border with the DRC; and "person" is not yet fully defined, but will be some subset of manufacturers who use conflict minerals in their products.)

Manufacturers who can be certain that their conflict minerals didn't come from that region are done: no more duties under the new law. They also get to pass go, and collect $200. Lucky bastards.

However, if the manufacturers use minerals that are from that region of Africa, or whose source is unclear, then the new law imposes some significant new investigation and disclosure requirements on them.

b. Audit Requirements
First, the manufacturer must conduct an "independent private sector audit" of the minerals' origin and chain of custody, and certify the audit's results. The audit must meet standards to be set through the coordination of three different federal agencies: the Comptroller General of the United States, the SEC, and the Secretary of State. If the audit is found to be unreliable, then the manufacturer will be in violation of the disclosure requirements, and the person who certified it might also be in very hot water personally with the SEC.

This audit requirement has the potential to be hugely burdensome, because those kinds of audits tend to be very expensive and time-consuming. It's not hard to see why. Not only is there limited information about conflict areas available, it's also inherently difficult to tell where minerals have come from, especially if they have already been processed. In combination, those factors mean that investigating minerals' sources and supply chains won't be easy. It's true that "difficult" is not "impossible," but it is usually "expensive." Especially because the most important pieces of information here are the ones that will be the hardest to obtain: where the minerals were mined, who mined them, and what relationship the miner had with the region's "armed groups."

Providing this kind of information will be difficult for artisanal miners (excellent euphemism alert!) and other small suppliers who are only involved at one stage of the supply chain. So, this seems likely to push minerals from the DRC and its environs further into black and gray markets. (Which is definitely great, because when I think of "markets in which illegal armed groups are unlikely to thrive," "black ones" come top of the list.) Conversely, because a manufacturer can avoid the costly audit requirement entirely if it's sure that none of its minerals came from the DRC or its neighbors, I would expect this provision to be a huge boost to large corporations that control mines in other regions of the world and handle their own processing and trading, because they will be able to charge more money for the regulatory safety they offer.

c. Reporting Requirements
After the auditing's done, the manufacturer has to compile a report that describes in detail (1) the audit and its results, (2) any other due diligence measures that it undertook in order to document the origin and supply chain of the conflict minerals it used, and (3) any products it manufactures that are not "DRC conflict free." The report has to be submitted to the SEC, and made publicly available on the manufacturer's website.

Products are only "DRC conflict free" if they don't contain any minerals that "directly or indirectly finance or benefit armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or an adjoining country." Needless to say, that definition is really, really broad. The distinction between "finance" and "benefit" suggests that an "indirect benefit" would not have to be financial in nature, leaving the options for what would qualify wide open. And "armed groups" include any groups from the DRC or its adjoining countries that have been identified as human rights abusers in the State Department's country reports on human rights - and as of now, that definition doesn't carve out exceptions for national armies or UN peacekeepers. (More on that definition below.)

This places the burden on the manufacturer to prove a negative: that the minerals at issue didn't benefit any armed group, even indirectly. Otherwise, for each non-DRC-conflict-free product, the manufacturer must report "the facilities used to process the conflict minerals, the country of origin of the conflict minerals, and the efforts to determine the mine or location of origin with the greatest possible specificity." Once again: very difficult information to get, even more difficult information to trust. Complying with this requirement will be expensive.

The other due diligence requirements, beyond the audit, won't be clear until the SEC issues its new regulations. However, the text of the law suggests that they won't be mere formalities. The statute specifies that relying on due diligence processes that have been "previously determined by the Commissioner [of the SEC] to be unreliable," is not enough to constitute compliance with the new law.

3. Some Definitions! We Love Definitions!

1. "Conflict Minerals": the new law defines "conflict minerals" as either (A) coltan, cassiterite, gold, wolframite, or their derivatives; or (B) any other mineral or its derivatives that the Secretary of State later determines to be "financing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or an adjoining country."
   
   This is interesting for two reasons. First, the definition isn't limited to minerals that actually come from the DRC or an adjoining country. So, for instance, gold is now a conflict mineral, no matter where it's from, or when it was mined. I can understand the reasons for using such a broad definition -if gold from the DRC is interchangeable with gold that was mined 500 years ago, then it's worth paying attention to the overall market. However, this means that the regulatory burden of the new law will potentially fall on a very broad group of businesses, not just the gadget manufacturers that have been the focus of the media campaign for this new law.
   
   Second, the Secretary of State can add minerals to the list if they're financing conflict in an "adjoining country," but not in the rest of the world. So, minerals that fuel conflict elsewhere aren't "conflict minerals." Hear that, petroleum?
   
   
2. "Adjoining Country": The new law defines "adjoining country" as "a country that shares an internationally recognized border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo." (It's not clear to me why they didn't just list those countries specifically. Perhaps that option was rejected as an unwarranted leap of faith that those borders would remain stable over the next few years?)
   
   
3. "Armed Groups": Somewhat confusingly, not all armed groups are "armed groups" for the purposes of the new law. Rather, to qualify, a group must (a) be an "armed group," and (b) be identified as "perpetrators of serious human rights abuses" in the State Department's annual human rights report on the DRC or any "adjoining country." A couple of potential issues here.
   
   The first is that there's no carve-out for government or UN forces. As noted in the latest State Dept. report, the FARDC has been responsible for significant human rights abuses. However, including them in the definition of "armed group" means that no minerals can be labeled "DRC conflict free" unless they did not indirectly finance the army, which presumably includes legitimate taxes collected by the government in Kinshasa. Is it just me, or is that not actually a great way to encourage or strengthen legitimate governmental capacity?
   
   Second, under this definition, if a group isn't specifically mentioned in one of the State Dept. reports, it doesn't count for the purposes of the conflict-minerals law. It's unclear how this would work for groups like the Mai-Mai, who are often discussed in the State Dept. reports as if they are one category of armed actor, but are actually disparate local militias that may or may not be connected to each other, or to other rebel organizations. So, is just being labeled a Mai-Mai militia group enough to be considered an "armed group" under this definition? Or must the State Dept. report reference a specific militia by name in order to count?

I hope this is helpful to y'all. I'm one sleepy blogger now, but if I have time tomorrow, I'll try to post about my reactions to the arguments that Laura et al. have raised.

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

Point/Counterpoint: "Conflict Minerals Law Will Have No Effect in Eastern DRC" vs "Conflict Minerals Law Will Have Little to No Effect in Eastern DRC"

The Christian Science Monitor's excellent Africa Monitor page currently has posts up from Jason Stearns and Laura Seay on the U.S.'s recently passed conflict minerals legislation.

The CSM post-naming elves (creators of my personal favorite: "Why Somalia would make Afghanistan seem like Mr. Rogers' neighborhood for US troops") have titled these posts:

"Why recent US 'conflict mineral' legislation is a good thing for Africa" (Stearns)

"Why recent US 'conflict minerals' legislation may not help in eastern Congo" (Seay)

It's like a little debate, see?

Except as I see it, the difference between Stearns's and Seay's positions is not where the action on this issue is. Neither of them agrees with the central premise of the conflict minerals campaign, which assumes that competition over control of minerals is a primary driver of the conflict. One of them thinks the legislation might have some marginal positive effect despite being epiphenomenal to the sources of conflict and the other believes it probably won't. Frankly, there's not a lot of daylight between these viewpoints. (Hence the post title homage to the Onion's classic post-9/11 Point/Counterpoint: "We Must Retaliate with Blind Rage" vs. "We Must Retaliate with Measured, Focused Rage.")

The more interesting debate here is the division between the advocacy community, led by Enough, and the expert community. As far as I can tell, Enough has not yet managed to get a single serious researcher of the eastern DRC to sign on to their analysis of the conflict. (Would anyone like to dispute this? I am willing to lower the bar to anybody who has spent more than six weeks straight in the Kivus.)

Stay tuned for Amanda's analysis of the legislation itself...

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WTF Friday, 7/23/2010

• Hezbollah has opened a "Museum for Resistance Tourism" to provide guests with "war porn and propaganda." "A sunken terrace titled 'The Abyss' holds the debris of Israeli tanks and equipment, arranged around what is meant to be a tombstone." Sounds like fun for the whole family (Hat tip to Kate!).

• Speaking of terrorist groups, Mother Jones points out that Hamas has not only paid for the right to be considered an accredited business by the Better Business Bureau, but has received an "excellent rating." Now, if this were based on their ability to terrorize, that would be one thing, but they are listed as a group "providing educational services to troubled youth." This doesn't even pass as a euphemism. Smh...

• Thanks to Joshua for turning our attention to this great headline. In Joshua's words, "So...either they meant to beat the official and missed or they just meant to give his wife flowers and ended up beating her?"
  

• Lastly, the BBC has a collection of some of the best Bishop Desmond Tutu quotes from over the years. Here are some of the choicest cuts, in my opinion:

1. "Resentment and anger are bad for your blood pressure and your digestion"

2. "[Mugabe's] almost a caricature of all the things people think black African leaders do. He seems to be wanting to make a cartoon of himself"

3. "One time I was in San Francisco when a lady rushed up, very warmly greeted me, and said, 'Hello Archbishop Mandela.' Sort of getting two for the price of one"

4. "His [Nelson Mandela's] sartorial taste is the pits!"

5. "A kid asked me a few years ago, 'What do you do to get the [Nobel Peace Prize]?' I said, "It's very easy, you just need three things - you must have an easy name, like Tutu for example, you must have a large nose and you must have sexy legs."

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

WTF Friday, 7/16/2010

• I would have to imagine that many people's perception of child soldiers will change after this NYT article. It reports on the U.S.-funded Somali government's use of child soldiers. This is telling: "When asked how the American government could guarantee that American money was not being used to arm children, one of the officials said, 'I don’t have a good answer for that.'" Also I have to give a wtf to Obama for his response to questioning regarding America's place alongside Somalia as the only countries not to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child: “It is embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land." That's just rude, really.

• Following the World Cup, there have been rumors of the possibility of a return of xenophobic violence in South Africa. And even if there hadn't been, Jacob Zuma would scare everyone about it anyway: "Let us isolate all elements who may have sinister agendas, who may want to create havoc and sow pain and destruction in communities." What a wordsmith, right?

• Bashir's finally got the trifecta! The ICC earlier this week added a warrant for genocide to go along with a previous warrant of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Hope he thanks his mom in his acceptance speech. This is also the ICC's first warrant for genocide, so congrats to them, too. According to Elise Keppler, senior counsel with the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch, "President al-Bashir's stonewalling on the initial ICC warrant against him appears only more outrageous now that he's also being sought for genocide" Really? That's what appears outrageous? Not the fact that a second warrant was issued after the first one was followed only by Bashir "kicking out nearly half of Darfur’s humanitarian aid providers?" Ok whatever you say...

• And finally, FP reports on Beijing's lock-down policy for migrants. A banner reads, "Closing up the village benefits everyone." Really? Everyone? Guess I'll just have to continue with this trusting mood today...

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

Feedback Loops and Sucking Vortexes

I’ve been curious for a long time about whether and how the “all rape all the time” characterization of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo affects the situation on the ground there.

My concern is that the narrow focus on sexual violence as the defining feature of the conflict is both an input and an output of a cycle where:

1. Rape atrocity stories sell newspapers, drive blog traffic, etc.;
2. Journalists and other observers focus their reporting on sexual violence to draw audiences and paychecks;
3. Donors prefer to fund initiatives aimed at combating sexual violence because that’s the high profile issue in all the papers;
4. Organizations providing services in the field or research and advocacy target more of their programs towards sexual violence to attract donors;
5. Sources providing information to reporters and NGOs on the ground highlight the very real phenomenon of sexual violence rather than other, equally severe violations because they know that’s what everyone’s interested in. This information then gets used to justify the choices made at steps 2, 3, and 4.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

A recent SIDA working paper by Maria Eriksson Baaz and Maria Stern fills in another potential piece of this cycle. Its authors argue that:

“Focusing and continuing to channel resources to SGBV specifically—whether in terms of prevention, access to justice or services to survivors—contributes to rape allegations becoming increasingly entangled in survival strategies.”

Their conclusions arise out of interviews conducted with soldiers and with local organizations in the eastern DRC between 2006 and 2009. In their more recent interviews, they began encountering references to what they call “the commercialization of rape." They note two manifestations of this phenomenon: accusations of rape as an “income-earning strategy” (essentially, extortion) and allegations of rape for access to services and opportunities earmarked for survivors.

The Marias explain the second trend:

“The lack of basic health services and the lack of resources for women who have not been raped—plus the widespread poverty—have created a situation in which destitute women and girls who are not rape survivors sometimes present themselves as rape victims in order gain access to these opportunities.”

Leaving alone the issue of what the disproportionate focus on rape at the expense of other serious violations means for the victims who can't claim the status of rape survivor, I hope I'm not the only one worried about how this affects our ability to talk accurately about the scope and character of sexual violence in the region.

The entire report is well worth a read, as it discusses a number of other interesting and under-explored issues, including the sometimes perverse incentive structure of demobilization efforts.

Hattip to Patrick at Benetech for forwarding the report.

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

O RLY?

The bomb blasts in Kampala the other night blew out one of the main cables that brings us our Webbernetz, so I've had very limited access the last day or two. (Thankfully, I am fine, and my friends are all fine. The city is tense.) But I did manage to load the NYTimes op-ed by Dave Eggers and John Prendergast on southern Sudan just now.

I certainly agree with the message that the U.S. should remain engaged in the referendum process there. A couple of things caught my eye though:

"In the clear, simple and eminently enforceable peace agreement, South Sudan was granted three crucial things..."

Clear and simple, eh? The Comprehensive Peace Agreement is over 250 pages long, contains a 6 page list of abbreviations for the actors and documents it references, and comprises 6 separate protocols.

As for "eminently enforceable," well, the story of getting Khartoum to do things has been one of finding the right carrots, not applying threatening sticks. The "[w]e have no leverage" quote from Special Envoy Gration alludes to this fact. It's possible the U.S. will find the right set of incentives to convince the regime that holding the referendum is in its interests, but if not, it's not clear that any of the "threatened pressures" proposed by Eggers and Prendergast would be effective.

And then there's this:

"The peace in Sudan is one the United States 'owns.'"

No. Just no. This strikes me as indicative of a type of activism that, in an effort to spark and sustain American interest, overemphasizes U.S. relevance to the situation, and obscures the importance of local actors. (See, e.g., the recent LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act.) I'm not a fan.

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

If You're Smart, Surround Yourself With Smart People Who Disagree With You

(This is ancient news in internet-years, but I kept waiting for someone else to make this point when the story was actually making headlines, and as far as I could tell, no one did. So now I'm writing about it. If you think that General McChrystal's firing is insufficiently au courant blog fare, feel free to stop reading now.)

To recap, for anyone who has been in an internet-less cave this month: a couple of weeks ago, Rolling Stone published a profile of U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, who was then in charge of the U.S.'s military efforts in Afghanistan,, and there was some stuff in it that was way harsh, Tai. President Obama didn't like that - apparently it's cool to have disagreements, but not divisions - so McChrystal got fired. (Oh, and also there were a bunch of Russian spies living boring lives in American suburbs. That's not what this post is about, but if you've been in an internet-less cave, you probably missed the spyskies too.)

The press seems to have smelled blood in the water the second that the White House first got wind of the piece, the Monday before it came out. Every major news organization offered minute-by-minute updates on every scrap of rumor, innuendo, and third-party opinion they could lay their hands on, until they finally got to feast on the carcass of a career destroyed the way god intended: by a journalist. A freelancer, no less.

Somehow, though, all the wailing and gnashing of teeth seems to have overlooked something: essentially all of the juicy quotes from the article are not from McChrystal. Rather, they're quotes from largely-anonymous "aides" and "insiders." So, as best I can tell, McChrystal was relieved of command of our troops in Afghanistan because people who were not McChrystal said things about our civilian leadership that were considered out of bounds, and McChrystal was....nearby at the time?

Seriously, let's review the tape here. That infamous "Biden? Did you say: Bite Me?" quote was from a "top advisor." The contention that McChrystal thought that Obama looked "uncomfortable and intimidated" at their first meeting apparently came from "sources familiar with the meeting." It was an "advisor to McChrystal" who claimed that the meeting where Obama placed the general in charge of Afghanistan was a "10 minute photo op," in which "Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, who he was. Here's the guy who's going to run his fucking war, and he didn't seem very engaged. The boss was pretty disappointed." A paragraph claiming that "team McChrystal" likes to "talk shit about many of Obama's top people on the diplomatic side" also only quotes anonymous aides: one who calls Jim Jones a "clown" who "remains stuck in 1985," one who criticizes senators who swoop in for meet-and-criticize sessions with Karzai, then fly home again in time for the Sunday talk shows. (And, it should be noted, an "advisor" who says nice things about Hillary Clinton.)

I could go on. (For instance, it's an "advisor" who says that McChrystal is especially skeptical of Holbrooke, and refers to the diplomat as a "wounded animal.")

Of course, none of that would matter if what McChrystal said was really objectionable. So, was it? Judge for yourself: after the jump is a list of all of the quotes that Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings actually obtained from the general himself. Let me know what you think. Was there anything in those 11 statements that was a firing offense? Or are we holding McChrystal responsible for quotes that the reporter got from other, anonymous sources - who have not, as far as we know, been fired?

I think it's the latter. This article was skillfully written: many of the devastating soundbites are nestled up against less-damning but related quotes from McChrystal, giving the impression that he agreed with what had been said. And, because many of the anonymous quotes seem to have been from people who worked for him, some commentators seem to have assumed that McChrystal must have condoned an environment in which civilian leaders were disrespected. Maybe so. But should that be a firing offense?

I don't think so. I'm not comfortable with the idea that the tenure of the general responsible for running an entire war should hang by the slender thread of a bunch of third parties' anonymous comments. That strikes me as not only fundamentally unfair, but also easily manipulated. Worse, it will encourage leaders to censor their subordinates whenever possible, and limit their access to the media. I imagine every ambitious officer in the country right now is deciding how to put a moat between the press and anyone who knows anything about him.

Didn't President Obama ever watch Sports Night? "If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people. And if you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you." McChrystal seems to have taken that advice to heart - in the article, he listens to a platoon of soldiers who criticize him, to his face and in front of a reporter, and then responds to their comments with patience and respect. The President, however, should perhaps brush up on his Aaron Sorkin leadership principles. Firing McChrystal over the anonymous comments made by other people sends a message to the military (and the rest of Washington, for that matter) that surrounding yourself with smart people who disagree with you is now career suicide. That's a pretty decent way to ensure that ambitious people will now surround themselves with sycophantic hacks, instead. So, yay! Because that will surely have a really swell effect on our ability to find strong, creative solutions to the several problems currently facing this country.

What McChrystal Actually Said to the Rolling Stone Reporter:
(quotes in bold, explanatory text not in bold):

1. He asked how he got "screwed into" going to dinner with a French government minister, and says he'd "rather have his ass kicked by a room full of people" than attend, but that "unfortunately, no one in this room could do it."
2. He asked "What's the update on the Kandahar bombing?"
3. He said that when Obama took three months to decide on an Afghanistan strategy last fall, "I found that time painful. I was selling an unsellable position."
   
4. He imagined responding to an awkward question about Vice President Biden (who, a few months earlier, had publicly criticized the counterinsurgency strategy that McChrystal advocated) with "Are you asking about Vice President Biden? Who's that?"
   
5. During the course of a drunken night out at an Irish bar, he pointed to his carousing advisors and said "all these men, I'd die for them. And they'd die for me." Also, apparently he and his aides sang some sort of "Afghanistan song" that they had made up, which goes "Afghanistan!....Afghanistan!"
   
6. Later, upon receiving an email on his blackberry from Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke, he groaned "Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke, I don't even want to open it."
7. When asked about a leaked classified cable sent by U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, which Hastings describes as a "brutal critique" of McChrystal's strategy, the general said "I like Karl, I've known him for years, but they'd never said anything like that to us before," that he felt "betrayed" by the leak, and "here's one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say 'I told you so.'"
8. Upon graduating from West Point, McChrystal recalls that he and his classmates "really felt like we were a peacetime generation." "There was the gulf war, but even that didn't feel like that big of a deal."
9. He goes to visit a platoon stationed outside Kandahar after one of their soldiers is killed, and has a 45-minute discussion with about 2 dozen of the platoon's surviving members. "I ask you what's going on in your world, and I think it's important for you all to understand the big picture as well." He continues, "How's the company doing? You guys feeling sorry for yourselves? Anybody? Anybody feel like you're losing?" A soldier pipes up to say that yes, some of the guys do feel that way. McChrystal nods, and responds "Strength is leading when you just don't want to lead. You're leading by example. That's what we do. Particularly when it's really, really hard, and it hurts inside."
10. He then spends 20 minutes describing counterinsurgency theory, diagramming the concepts and principles on a whiteboard. "We are knee-deep in the decisive year," he says, telling the troops that the Taliban doesn't have the initiative, "but I don't think we do, either." The soldiers seem skeptical, so McChrystal cracks a joke: "This is the philosophical part that works with think tanks, but it doesn't get the same reception from infantry companies."
11. McChrystal then takes comments from the soldiers, many of whom are angry and frustrated. They complain about "not being allowed to use lethal force, about watching insurgents they detain be freed for lack of evidence," and want to "be able to fight." The general listens, but tells them it's not that simple: "Winning hearts and minds in COIN is a coldblooded thing. The Russians killed 1 million Afghans, and that didn't work." When the soldier persists, claiming that their restraint is empowering the insurgency, McChrystal responds "I agree with you. IN this area, we've not made progress, probably. You have to show strength here, you have to use fire. What I'm telling you is, fire costs you. What do you want to do? You want to wipe the population out here and resettle it?" Another soldier complains about having to assume that "any insurgent who doesn't have a weapon" is a civilian. McChrystal says that's a necessary evil: "That's the way this game is. It's complex. I can't just decide: it's shirts and skins, and we'll kill all the shirts."
12. The soldiers remain unconvinced. Before leaving, McChrystal acknowledges the pain that the death of their comrade has caused them. "There's no way I can make that easier. No way I can pretend it won't hurt. No way I can tell you not to feel that . . . . I will tell you, you're doing a great job. Don't let the frustration get to you."
    
13. He acknowledges the complexity of the war he's fighting: "even Afghans are confused by Afghanistan."

So which of those statements is a sackable offense? Is it because he insulted the French?

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

WTF Friday, 7/9/10

• Wronging Rights reader Ari found this at an "anti-genocide and other egregious violations of human rights" fundraiser. Lol good spot, Ari!

• Rwanda to use 26m condoms by 2012." Congratulations? (Via AllAfrica. Thanks, Kate!)

• When people describe vuvuzelas, this is not the kind of "buzz" they are talking about. (It took me a long time to decide if I was actually going to publish that terrible pun on the Internet. Really just a minute but thats forever in "Internet time.")

• Bill Clinton has committed the next three years to "rebuilding" Haiti, prompting Esquire to call him for better or worse, the "CEO of the leaderless nation." I guess we can now add "CEO" to the list of outrageously patronizing descriptors that includes such mainstays as "savior" and "Bono."

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

Only 8 Shopping Days Left Until International Justice Day!

Just a friendly reminder that International Justice Day is fast approaching. If you haven't yet purchased a gift for that special ICC prosecutor in your life, well, time to get cracking.

Here are some suggestions:

1. A Bashir-catching net.


2. A sparkly headband for keeping the hair off his face while gazing pensively into the middle distance at Scheveningen beach. (It's hard to think deep thoughts about international justice in all that wind without proper headgear. Trust me, I've tried.)


3. A cocktail set for preparing rapetinis, official drink of "giving a voice to rape victims."


4. This t-shirt:

Happy shopping!

*Hattip to everyone in my department who sent me the link to that shirt. Thanks guys!

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

Women of Kireka

As some of you probably know, I'm based in Kampala for the summer. If you're around, or have tips about things I might want to go poke my nose into, please get in touch via the blog email address.

And speaking of poking my nose into things: Last weekend I went with Siena Anstis and TMS (Teddy) Ruge of Project Diaspora to visit the Women of Kireka, a jewelery-making business owned by a group of women living in the Acholi Quarters outside of Kampala (background here).

The situation in the Acholi Quarters is rough -tens of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the north inhabit slums on the side of a hill in Kireka. They support themselves by working in the local quarry (pictured at right), carving out rocks and crushing them into gravel. This is a grueling and dangerous line of work.

The quarry has been the subject of a number of press reports (see, e.g., Glenna Gordon's excellent reporting on Stephen Batte, the "Ugandan orphan with a web presence"). However, the attention has not yielded an improvement in the lot of the people living there. Their plight exemplifies a broader problem of urban IDPs being left out of official resettlement and humanitarian aid efforts. As this 2008 bulletin by the Refugee Law Project makes clear, while rural IDPs (those living in camps) are the target of significant assistance, urban IDPs' low visibility often means they "slip through the cracks."

Founded by Siena, and advised by Project Diaspora, the Women of Kireka project is an effort to provide a sustainable means for the women to support themselves and their children outside of the quarry. The women make beaded jewelry out of found paper, the partners help them with marketing and sales, and they use the proceeds to reinvest in the business and pay for their children's school fees. Below are some of their completed products. (Note: One of the women showed me how they make the beads - not an easy process!)

You might be thinking to yourself: "What a great idea! Why aren't there more projects like this?" There are a number of them, but, as Teddy explained, handouts are still the default because it's far more difficult to secure funding for an entrepreneurial enterprise than a charity. In other words, if you want to pay school fees for IDP children, great, register yourself an NGO and you shouldn't have too much trouble convincing donors to fund you. But if you want to help the mothers of those IDP children form a business that will enable them to pay their children's school fees themselves, well, good luck.

Unsurprisingly, this incentive structure produces way more local NGOs than local businesses, a scenario that is ultimately not self-sustaining. To quote the mission statement of Teddy's organization: "Africa’s development can not continue to depend on international NGO programs and developmental aid, powered by global sympathy." Indeed.

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

Adventures in Copyediting

See if you can spot the problems in this caption, from an article in Der Spiegel:



I know I'll always remember where I was the day I heard about the 2004 Rwandan Suicide...

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

WTF Friday, 7/2/10

• President Goodluck Jonathan has suspended the Nigerian national team for two years due to their poor performance in the World Cup. You don't have to be a soccer fan to see the outrageous fallacy in this logic. FIFA is not happy about this interference.

• Three convicted rapists have been freed from a Vietnam prison after an acupuncturist claimed to have identified them as virgins due to red spots on the back of their ears. Damn this lady would have really ruined like 65 percent of CSI episodes. (Hat tip to Lisa!).

• In facial hair news, here's something I missed from last week. Somali insurgent group, Hizbul Islam, has ordered men to grow their beards and trim their mustaches, NOT the other way around. Finally someone is clamping down on this kind of tomfoolery.

• Lastly, in what is considered a very important trial in South Africa, former police chief, Jackie Selebi, has been convicted of corruption for providing favors to drug dealers in exchange for cash and designer clothing, including the unnecessarily specific "Hugo Boss knitwear." Barry Bearak, fashion buff posing as a "serious journalist."

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

Dr. Livingstone, I Presume?

BBC News reports that researchers from University of London have deciphered a previously illegible letter written by missionary David Livingstone in 1871. As far as I can tell, the research team used ghosts (spectral imaging technology) to analyze the letter, which was written in the torn out pages of a book while Livingstone was stuck in Bambarre, in modern-day DRC. In it, Livingstone criticizes the slave trade, saying:

If our statesmen stop the frightful waste of human life in this region and mitigate the vast amount of human woe that accompanies it they will do good on the large scale and cause joy in Heaven.

Word.

And, in honor of the Congo's 50th anniversary (which fell on Wednesday), here is some recommended reading:

• Resource Consulting Service's brand new report on the mineral trade, which is a great antidote to the recent resurgence of "blood cell phone" hysteria. If you've got some extra time, I also recommend the previous report "Beyond Conflict." (hattip Texas in Africa)


• Joe Bavier's article drawing parallels between current DRC leader Joseph Kabila and long-time dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. I'm officially awarding Joe three Lucky Charms red balloon marshmallows for writing a full three page article about the Congo on a subject other than rape, lions, or coltan. (hattip alert reader Lauren)


• Jason Stearns's post earlier this month at Congo Siasa on struggling to conceptualize the current era in Congolese politics.

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

WTF Friday, 6/25/10

• A female Nigerian student was tortured and beaten into a coma by four policemen in the Ekiti State of Nigeria for "having the effrontery to challenge them when conducting a stop and search." Sounds like a bit of an overreaction.

• From Slate: "Aimé was different when I returned to Goma for a new job with another aid agency after two months away...I now trusted Aimé more than I had before; he didn't act like a callow youth, but like a responsible young man. The sad beanie hat was gone, and his shirts were always tucked in." I think we finally found Africa's panacea. And wtf is a "sad beanie hat?"

• In a follow up to a post from a couple weeks ago, Saudi women are turning the tables on the fatwa that makes men their son if they feed them their breast milk. They are demanding the right to drive, and if they do not receive that right, they are threatening to breast feed their foreign drivers, thus allowing them to be alone with them under Islamic law and move freely in automobiles. No word on how the drivers feel about this. Also imagine hearing this quote out of context: "We will either be allowed to drive or breastfeed foreigners."

• Dutch authorities are thinking of sending out undercover police officers dressed as "decoy Jews" as a tactic to fight antisemitism in the country. The officers would wear yarmulkes and then...I dunno, try to get hate crimed?
  

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

WTF Friday, 6/18/2010

• Anyone who watched the Brazil-North Korea match already knows about these things, but they bear repeating. Kim Jong-Il has invented an invisible phone to communicate with the North Korean coach, and also paid Chinese people to pretend to be North Korean fans. Truly insane stuff.

• About 400,000 people, primarily ethnic Uzbek's, have fled their homes in Kyrgyzstan to avoid violence. There have also been many reports of sexual violence.
  

• Here is Phillip Wenger, Health Adviser for Concern Worldwide US, and contributing author at the Huffington Post: "My first impression is that Haiti seems, on the surface at least, similar to West Africa. There is such vibrancy here and resilience among the people -- but, just under the surface, there must also be a lot of pain and loss." Thank you for this vague and ultimately useless comparison.
  

• For the second year in a row, no one has been awarded the Mo Ibrahim prize. I'm beginning to suspect that this dude might have been hit by the recession and doesn't want to cough up $5m every year. Somebody tell me I'm wrong.

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

Things I Liked Quite a Bit: War Don Don

If you're in New York this week, or DC next week, I highly recommend checking out War Don Don, a new documentary about former RUF leader Issa Sesay's trial in the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Director Rebecca Richman Cohen has a J.D. from Harvard law school, and she puts her legal knowledge to good use in this film. Rather than pushing a particular narrative, or view of the international justice system, War Don Don allows the individuals at the heart of the trial to speak for themselves. This leads to some unintentionally funny results at times - at one point prosecutor David Crane (who has since further distinguished himself by becoming an advisor to that ridiculous "to catch a war criminal" show) looks into the camera and says, in an ominous tone, that Sesay's trial was "the first time I looked into the eyes of a human being and realized that he had no soul." By contrast, defense attorney Wayne Jordash is prone to wistful sighs about how nice a guy Sesay is, and how he wishes that he weren't in prison so that they could hang out more.

Amidst the amusing soundbites, however, War Don Don manages to highlight some serious issues with the way the tribunal has administered justice. For instance, although both sides offered payments to witnesses to cover the costs associated with their testimony, the prosecution was able to pay far more than the defense, as well as to offer perks like resettlement in a wealthy country. More troubling still, Sesay receives little credit for his efforts at resolving the war: he was the RUF commander who presided over the disarmament process, a task which he undertook over the objections of much of the RUF's senior leadership. In a statement delivered to the court during the sentencing phase of his trial, Sesay pointed out that rebels who had refused to disarm were being courted by the UN, while he - who had actively participated in the peace process years earlier - was now in the dock.

To the film's credit, it doesn't feel forced to answer the questions it raises. War Don Don is a way to start a broader conversation about international justice, not to end one.

In sum: go, and take your interns with you! War Don Don is showing today at 2 PM and Wednesday the 16th at 4 PM here in New York, as part of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, and then on June 22nd and 26th in Silver Spring, as part of the AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Documentary Festival.

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

WTF Friday, 6/11/10

• Geert Wilders' "Freedom Party" triples its seats in Holland by running on the increasingly popular "hating Muslims" platform. FP cries Bradley effect.

• In weird and creepy news, Saudi Clerics have issued a Fatwa suggesting that men drink women's breast milk so they can be alone with them. Oh that doesn't make perfect sense to you? Well apparently, if a man does this, the man becomes a relative of the woman, and can therefore be alone with her in necessary situations such as at work, and they can both avoid lashings. I guess fewer lashings, no matter how discomforting the means, is a good thing. (Hat tip to someone named "Kate Cronin-Furman").

• This video left me in tears. Sad ones.

• In World Cup News, Mugabe has arrived at the party, Rajoelina, Konaté, and Djibo were not invited. That kinda has to sting a little bit. (Via All Africa).

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)

"A Compound WTF, Wrapped in Proto-Colonialism, Wrapped in Bacon"

Guys, a new bar has been set for reader emails. We have received a tip from alert reader Ashley* notifying us of the following post on furaffinity.net, an online community for furries and their friends:

Need some help with a cool idea.
Well me and a friend have come up with this crazy idea that we should get a ton of money together and buy a poor African country. Build up its infrastructure and medical care. Then let the nation prosper.

However we are not sure what nation to go with. So we have made a few points of intrest.

Must have a coast.
Not be totally aids ridden, by African standards.
Have some semblance of a national army.
Not totally jungle or totally desert.

Preferably former English colony with a substantial English speaking population.

So any ideas are welcome and encouraged!

It was posted by a 19 year old kid from Saskatchewan with a thing for crying playing wolf.** A few days later, he followed up with a list of countries that he thought might meet his exacting standards:

So I have a rough list that ill be chopping down. This is a list of most African countries that would fall close in line.
Only stipulation thus far is that there coastal.

In no particular order:

Mauritania; Madagascar; Liberia; Kenya; Guinea-Bissau; Ghana; Gambia; Gabon; Ethiopia; Eritrea; Djibouti; The Ivory Coast; The Republic of Congo; The Democratic Republic of Congo; Cameroon; Benin; Angola; Algeria; Nigeria; Namibia; Tanzania; Sierra Leone; Senegal

List of countries that I could take and build up. Any input would be wonderful!

Although one commenter responded to the first post by suggesting that this plan was "wildly unrealistic, wholly unethical, deeply racist, proto-colonial, and unbelievably insulting to people in any developing country, African or otherwise," most of the rest of the responses have been along the lines of "ooh, cool, man!" (And shockingly, no one has queried whether the DRC's whopping 23 miles of oceanfront real estate really qualify it as "coastal.")

We'll spare you the usual "Ow, my brain!" rant. We figure you're familiar with it by now. (And if not, feel free to construct your own from the following list of nouns, interjections, and adjectives: gah!, colonialism, stupid, lions, poverty, ignorance, rape, argh!, presumptuous, oil wealth, magenta.)

Instead, we'd just like to ask whether a little less "save them, white people, you're their only hope!" flavor in mainstream discourse on Africa could have prevented this tragedy. And maybe propose a new journalistic standard to our news-editor friends:

Perhaps next time you're polishing a story, you might ask yourself if your article would give a 19 year old kid, whose previous leadership experience consists of sitting in front of a computer wearing a set of bunny ears, the impression that the people of an entire continent are so abjectly helpless and miserable that they would prefer their country to be purchased and ruled by him and a few of his fluffy little friends.

Just a thought.

*We've re-purposed Ashley's email subject as a post title because it was awesome.

** With regard to whether or not the posts are just a joke, we think Ashley said it best in her initial email to us: "I don't know if it's a joke. Rephrased: it is clearly a joke, but it's unclear if it was meant as one." We agree - we wish it seemed like the kid wasn't serious, but, uh, it doesn't seem that way.

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)