April 2004: two big African decennials

For millions of people in southern and central Africa, April 1994 was a very momentous month; and the ten-year anniversary of it is coming up.
In Rwanda, at the beginning of the month, President Habyarimana’s plane was brought down, setting into train the long-planned, long-prepared horrors of the country’s anti-Tutsi genocide. During the thirteen weeks that followed, some 14% of the country’s entire population was wiped out: around 800,000-1,000,000 people killed. Eighty percent of the dead were Tutsis, the rest, Hutus who tried to shield them or otherwise to resist the hate-fueled bloodlust of the killers.
In South Africa, meanwhile, April 1994 was a month of hopes laced with great trepidation and tension as the country made the last preparations for its first-ever democratic election, scheduled for the end of the month. Everyone was wondering: Would the Inkatha Freedom Party participate, or would it try to make the country ungovernable and thereby force the postponement or cancellation of the election? And then, there was the threat of disruption from the White extremists, who also had good connections in the country’s security forces….
In South Africa, the negotiations over the terms on which the security forces would continue to provide security for the elections continued until the second or third day of the elections themselves… It came that close to not working out… In the end, the ANC and its allies had to commit to providing some form of amnesty for perpetrators of apartheid-era atrocities, in return for having the elections conducted under conditions of general (though not total) public security.

    A footnote: something similar may well also have to be negotiated with the US occupation forces in Iraq.

But back to my main story here…


I’m thinking, what do I want to do this April to mark these two, very important anniversaries– each of which, moreover, has a completely different content?
They are linked in one troubling and slightly gruesome way. Nearly all the accounts of how the genocide unfolded in Rwanda stress that in March and April 1994 the attention of the worldwide media and of analysts of African affairs in important western capitals was nearly all, at that time, focused further south, on the cliffhanging negotiations still underway in South Africa… Nobody was really paying sufficient attention to what was happening in Rwanda–either in the days immediately after the plane downing, or throughout those weeks before it, when preparations for the genocide were already clearly well underway.
One lesson some people in the international community took from that was that what was needed–for Rwanda, as for other countries in which there seem to be many preconditions present for a rapid escalation of inter-group violence–was some form of dedicated “early warning system”.
One attempt to provide such an early-warning system came with the creation of the “International Crisis Group”. The President and CEO of the ICG is former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, and the Chair of his Board is former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari. The ICG has established a solid track record of doing good, regular research reports on “crisis-prone” areas. Last fall, it started publishing a new “product”: a special, monthly watch list of countries that needed special attention.
this new ICG product, named “Crisiswatch” is clearly meant to have some predictive value. Oh, they are brave folks, over at ICG. They started publishing their “crisiswatch” lists back on September 1, 2003. Here’s what they were predicting back then:

    SEPTEMBER WATCHLIST
    Conflict Risk Alert
    Cote D’Ivoire Ethiopia/Eritrea, Israel/Occupied Territories, Iraq, Nepal, North Korea, Sudan.
    Conflict Resolution Opportunity
    Burundi, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan.

So how do we view those predictions now? One thing that was evident back on September 1, and is still evident today, is that four of those countries/issue areas there were listed on both sides of the prediction. Well hey, if that’s all there is to to the art of prediction, then maybe I could do it, too!
I guess the ICG folks got the message pretty rapidly. from “CrisisWatch No. 2”, published October 1, 2003 onwards, they haven’t double-sided themselves like that again. For what it’s worth, here’s the analogous “Watch List” for March 2004:

    Conflict Risk Alert
    Haiti, Sudan
    Conflict Resolution Opportunity
    Cyprus, Sudan

Anyway, the ICG website has lots of other interesting things on it. Their most recent report is on “Israel and its Arab Citizens”…
Another response to the demonstration, post-April 1994, of the need for “early warning systems” was the establishment, with help from the Swiss government, of Fondation Hirondelle, a foundation that tries to upgrade the indigenous media capabilities in at-risk countries and regions.
I have been particularly impressed by what I’ve seen of the work of Hirondelle-trained and -supported journalists in and around Rwanda. When I was in Arusha last spring, doing my field research on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, I got to know a couple of the Hirondelle journos covering the court. One of them, Gabi Gabiro, went back to Rwanda soon after to continue reporting for them from there.
He’s done some really excellent reporting there, focusing both on the reactions of Rwanda’s people to the work of the ICTR (which is conducted in neighboring Tanzania), and on the work of Rwanda’s own Genocide Courts and gacaca courts.
This February 18 report on the gacaca courts was particularly good. So was this one, about the experiences of some of the Tutsi women who (barely) survived horrendous gang-rapes during the genocide, and who subsequently contracted HIV/AIDS.
So maybe that’s the best thing I can do to commemorate the genocide: try to make some of the great reporting by Gabi Gabiro and his Hirondelle colleagues better known.
Why do we not see Hirondelle’s reports published in all the major newspapers around the world? I think April 1994 is the time we should try to make that happen.

20 thoughts on “April 2004: two big African decennials”

  1. One thing that was evident back on September 1, and is still evident today, is that four of those countries/issue areas there were listed on both sides of the prediction.
    I don’t see why this is a problem; a conflict might very well pose a risk of spiraling out of control and also be tractable to timely resolution efforts. I’d certainly say that this was (and is) the case with respect to Eritrea/Ethiopia, where an uneasy truce could lead either to renewed border war or to a mediated settlement. With respect to Sudan, the ICG may also have been talking about two different conflicts; the Darfur war has been escalating at the same time that peace appears to be breaking out in the south.

  2. Jonathan– at the analytical level I think you’re entirely right. Indeed, the original meaning meaning of “crisis” in ancient Greek was that it was a “turning-point”, so the situation could go either way.
    On the other hand, I think ICG’s intention in starting “CrisisWatch” was to provide a quick ‘n’ handy kind of “News U Can Use” product that would be an instant crib sheet for policy people around the world. Kind of like a stock-market tip sheet. So if you’re a stock investor do you want to be told, “Well AmEx could go dramatically up this month– or it could go dramatically down!”
    I’m still not sure of the value of the whole CrisisWatch exercize, to be frank. What do you think?
    Having said that, I really love ICG’s more in-depth analytical reports, and I think they perform an incredibly valuable service. Once when someone asked me what ICG was I scratched my head and said, “Well it’s kind of as if all the good governments of the world– the Scandinavians, other Europeans, Canadians, and some good, caring Americans all got together and made their own public-domain INR [the State Dept’s Bureau of Intelligence & Research].” I think with the CrisisWatch product they’ve strayed from that a bit.

  3. Oops, I made a big blooper in the original post. I wrote, from “CrisisWatch No. 2”, published October 1, 2003 onwards, they haven’t double-sided themselves like that again. Then I immediately provide evidence that quite disproves that judgment.
    Sorry!
    At a broader level, I’m still trying to figure ways to get some Gabi’s writings and some of Hirondelle’s other reporting about Rwanda out to a wider audience in the US (or indeed, elsewhere).
    Anyone have any ideas?

  4. So if you’re a stock investor do you want to be told, “Well AmEx could go dramatically up this month– or it could go dramatically down!”
    Actually, if I were an investor, I’d consider the volatility of a stock pretty important. Likewise with conflict resolution (although the analogy is a real stretch). If I were a policymaker and I trusted the ICG’s analysis, I’d concentrate on the conflicts that were on both lists, because those are precisely the ones where timely effort might prevent imminent disaster.
    I’m still not sure of the value of the whole CrisisWatch exercize, to be frank. What do you think?
    I’m a bit dubious about it myself, as I am about any attempt to reduce geopolitical situations to soundbites. Policymakers responsible for the relevant conflicts would already know something about their background (at least I hope so), and the lists wouldn’t mean much to lay audiences without more detailed explanation.
    Interesting list of “good governments,” BTW. It somewhat overlaps with mine.
    At a broader level, I’m still trying to figure ways to get some Gabi’s writings and some of Hirondelle’s other reporting about Rwanda out to a wider audience in the US (or indeed, elsewhere).
    AllAfrica’s Rwanda feed picks up the Hirondelle coverage (which I agree is very good).

  5. Helena,
    Thanks for your interest in and support for ICG’s work. I’m the editor of CrisisWatch, and thought I’d add a couple of observations of my own to your discussion.
    CrisisWatch is obviously a different product from ICG’s usual in-depth reports. Its intended to reach a broader audience – particularly those who have an interest in conflict issues, but don’t neccesarily want to read our 100 or so reports in depth a year.
    The icons (arrows, bombs, doves) are intended to draw attention to noteworth developments. But there is more to CrisisWatch than the front page predictions. One advantage of a monthly report on conflicts around the world is that we can draw attention to deteriorating conflicts in a timely way that we can’t always do with our in depth reports. By way of example, CrisisWatch started warning of the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan, back in 1 November 2003 – at a time when much of the international community was unaware of the scale of the crisis. Similarly, CrisisWatch first started warning of the significant risk of conflict in Haiti on 1 January 2004, well before the government collapsed in late February.
    Finally, you may be interested to know that we have now created a database for CrisisWatch. The database contains the entries from all editions of CrisisWatch. Searches of the database can be carried out on specific countries or conflicts, or by keywords. For example, a search on Iraq will bring up all the entries for Iraq over the past 8 months, providing a quick snapshot of the conflict developments in that country. A keyword search on Charles Taylor will produce the various entries for Sierra Leone and Liberia which have mentioned him. The database can be found at the CrisisWatch page at our website http://www.crisisweb.org.
    Regards
    Nick
    Research Director
    International Crisis Group

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