Stop Trying To 'Save' Africa

By Uzodinma Iweala
July 15, 2007

Last fall, shortly after I returned from Nigeria, I was accosted by a perky blond college student whose blue eyes seemed to match the "African" beads around her wrists.

"Save Darfur!" she shouted from behind a table covered with pamphlets urging students to TAKE ACTION NOW! STOP GENOCIDE IN DARFUR!

My aversion to college kids jumping onto fashionable social causes nearly caused me to walk on, but her next shout stopped me.

"Don't you want to help us save Africa?" she yelled.

It seems that these days, wracked by guilt at the humanitarian crisis it has created in the Middle East, the West has turned to Africa for redemption. Idealistic college students, celebrities such as Bob Geldof and politicians such as Tony Blair have all made bringing light to the dark continent their mission. They fly in for internships and fact-finding missions or to pick out children to adopt in much the same way my friends and I in New York take the subway to the pound to adopt stray dogs.

This is the West's new image of itself: a sexy, politically active generation whose preferred means of spreading the word are magazine spreads with celebrities pictured in the foreground, forlorn Africans in the back. Never mind that the stars sent to bring succor to the natives often are, willingly, as emaciated as those they want to help.

Perhaps most interesting is the language used to describe the Africa being saved. For example, the Keep a Child Alive/" I am African" ad campaign features portraits of primarily white, Western celebrities with painted "tribal markings" on their faces above "I AM AFRICAN" in bold letters. Below, smaller print says, "help us stop the dying."

Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent's corrupt leaders, warlords, "tribal" conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like "Can Bono Save Africa?" or "Will Brangelina Save Africa?" The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and "civilization."

There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority. My mood is dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs through a litany of African disasters before presenting a (usually) wealthy, white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has done for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college student speaks of villagers dancing because they were so grateful for her help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head -- because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West's prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.

Why do the media frequently refer to African countries as having been "granted independence from their colonial masters," as opposed to having fought and shed blood for their freedom? Why do Angelina Jolie and Bono receive overwhelming attention for their work in Africa while Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo, Africans both, are hardly ever mentioned? How is it that a former mid-level U.S. diplomat receives more attention for his cowboy antics in Sudan than do the numerous African Union countries that have sent food and troops and spent countless hours trying to negotiate a settlement among all parties in that crisis?

Two years ago I worked in a camp for internally displaced people in Nigeria, survivors of an uprising that killed about 1,000 people and displaced 200,000. True to form, the Western media reported on the violence but not on the humanitarian work the state and local governments -- without much international help -- did for the survivors. Social workers spent their time and in many cases their own salaries to care for their compatriots. These are the people saving Africa, and others like them across the continent get no credit for their work.

Last month the Group of Eight industrialized nations and a host of celebrities met in Germany to discuss, among other things, how to save Africa. Before the next such summit, I hope people will realize Africa doesn't want to be saved. Africa wants the world to acknowledge that through fair partnerships with other members of the global community, we ourselves are capable of unprecedented growth.

Uzodinma Iweala is the author of "Beasts of No Nation," a novel about child soldiers.
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Obama rhetoric on Sudan counterproductive for peace

Atheo News - July 16, 2009

President Obama has mimicked the Bush regime's characterization of the Darfur conflict as "genocide" following criticism from the American Jewish World Service (an organization which seems to have Sudan as an almost singular focus).

"When there’s a genocide in Darfur or terrorists in Somalia, these are not simply African problems — they are global security challenges, and they demand a global response" Obama said in his recent speech at the Ghanaian parliament.

Such labeling which is not mirrored by the U.N. will likely impede current peacemaking efforts between rival factions and reduces the influence that the U.S. has over Sudan outside of military means.

In an email response to pro-war activists Obama pledged to ensure tough sanctions:

"As President, I will build on America’s efforts that I previously championed in the Senate. I led in calling for the joint African Union/United Nations peacekeeping force now on the ground, and insisted on comprehensive sanctions against the Khartoum government. Going forward, my Administration will continue this work with unstinting resolve to end the genocide."

"In my discussions with other nations, I will work to ensure that tough sanctions on the Khartoum government continue as a part of a growing global effort involving our allies, interested countries, and other multilateral institutions."

Alex Meixner, director of policy and government relations for the Save Darfur Coalition expects a new policy on Sudan to be announced by the White House soon. The Obama Cabinet includes Susan Rice who germinated the U.S. military Africa Command (Africom) during the Clinton Administration. Rice is considered a Sudan "hawk" and has established a position at the very extreme end of the interventionist spectrum by describing the situation as "ongoing genocide".

The relatively dovish former Bush regime Sudan envoy and USAID chief Andrew Natsios is critical of the position that seems to be unfolding under the new regime:

"Some policymakers continue to call Darfur an ongoing “genocide,” but in fact, the conflict has descended into anarchy. “Darfur today is a conflict of all against all,” Rodolphe Adada, the joint African Union-United Nations special representative, told the U.N. Security Council in April. Between Jan. 1, 2008, and March 31, 2009, he found some 2,000 fatalities from violence, one third of them civilian. The death of some 700 innocent civilians over a 15-month period, while morally repugnant, is not genocide. It is a low-level insurgency. More civilians died in southern Sudan during the past six months than in Darfur over the past 15 months. Despite such facts and extensive U.N. Security Office reports showing that genocide is not an accurate description, President Obama continues to use that weighted term."

A U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) review of genocide claims found the estimates of high numbers of deaths related to the conflict to have methodology problems, relying on "too few data points extrapolated to an excessive degree". The three studies which generated the highest numbers of victims were determined to lack objectivity:

"Most experts rated the level of objectivity of the three estimates as low, particularly those by Drs. Coebergh and Reeves. The experts thought that the estimates were more characteristic of advocacy or journalistic material than objective analysis."

Explaining his estimates of victims to the GAO panel Coebergh described his study as a "political statement". Yet these are the figures which are routinely cited as fact by both intervention advocates and Western media reports.

Was the Iranian Election 'Rigged'?

By Robert Parry
September 21, 2009

It is conventional wisdom in the U.S. press corps that Iran’s June 12 presidential election was rigged, with the word “fraud” now sometimes appearing without the qualifier “alleged.” But a new poll of Iranians uncovered a different opinion, an overwhelming judgment that the election was legitimate.

WorldPublicOpinion.org used native Farsi speakers calling from outside Iran to interview 1,003 Iranians across the country between Aug. 27 and Sept. 10 and discovered that 81 percent said they considered Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be the legitimate president of Iran. Only 10 percent called him illegitimate, with eight percent offering no opinion.

Sixty-two percent said they had strong confidence in the election results, which showed Ahmadinejad winning by about a 2-to-1 margin, and another 21 percent said they had some confidence in the official vote count, for a total of 83 percent expressing favorable views on the election. By comparison, only 13 percent said they had little or no confidence in the results.

These 8-to-1 margins among Iranians, judging that the official election results correctly recorded Ahmadinejad’s victory, stand in marked contrast to the opinions of U.S. journalists who showed strong sympathy for the opposition street demonstrations that turned violent after the voting.

In recent weeks, some top American journalists even have started treating the allegations of voting fraud as a simple matter of fact, not of contention.

The Washington Post’s David Ignatius wrote in a Sept. 10 op-ed that “some analysts … argue that Ahmadinejad and the Guard were continuing an internal coup that began with the fraudulent manipulation of the June 12 election and the subsequent crackdown against Iranian protesters.”

Yet, the evidence of substantial election fraud has always been thin and many of the allegations that dominated the U.S. news coverage after the June 12 vote failed to stand up to serious scrutiny.

For instance, a prevalent complaint that Ahmadinejad’s claim of victory came too fast ignored the fact that rival candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi was out with a declaration of victory before any votes were counted. The partial results showing Ahmadinejad in the lead followed hours later.

Another claim was that Mousavi would have surely won his home Azeri district handily, rather than lose it outright to Ahmadinejad, but that argument collided with a pre-election poll sponsored by the New America Foundation which had shown Ahmadinejad with a 2-to-1 lead in that area.

Even if the election tightened in the final weeks – as some Mousavi supporters contend – Ahmadinejad’s lopsided lead in Mousavi’s home territory in May undercut the notion that Azeris would automatically back their favorite son. Some Iranian analysts have noted that Ahmadinejad poured government resources into that region, explaining his apparent popularity there.

The pre-election poll’s findings – described in a Washington Post op-ed by two of its administrators, Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty – also discovered that, contrary to widespread Western impressions, Iranian youth overwhelmingly favored Ahmadinejad, that the “18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.”

‘Death to the Potatoes!’

Generally speaking, Mousavi’s support was concentrated among the urban middle class and the well-educated while Ahmadinejad was more the candidate of the poor – of which there are many in Iran. They have benefited from government largesse in food and other programs, and they tend to listen to the conservative clerics in the mosques.

Mousavi seemed to acknowledge this point when he released his supposed proof of the rigged election, accusing Ahmadinejad of buying votes by providing food and higher wages for the poor. At some Mousavi rallies, his supporters reportedly would chant “death to the potatoes!” in a joking reference to Ahmadinejad’s food distributions.

Yet, while passing out food and raising pay levels may be a sign of “machine politics,” such tactics are not normally associated with election fraud.

The last real hope for definitive evidence proving Ahmadinejad’s victory was fraudulent may have passed when Mousavi rejected the possibility of a recount, either random or nationwide. Instead Mousavi insisted on an entirely new election.

Mousavi’s objection to a recount drew support from the New York Times’ top brass. “Even a full recount would be suspect,” the Times wrote in an editorial. “How could anyone be sure that the ballots were valid?”

But a key purpose of a recount is that it may unearth evidence of fraud, especially if ballot-box stuffing was done chaotically, amid panic over the incumbent falling short, or if the tallies were simply fabricated without ballots to support them, as some Western observers have speculated regarding Iran.

By spurning a partial or complete recount, Mousavi suggested that his real fear may have been that he genuinely lost the election and that his only hope for a better outcome was a new election, especially if some of Iran’s powerful clerics could be persuaded to tilt their allegiance toward him.

That interpretation is supported by other findings in the new WPO poll of Iranian attitudes. Of the 87 percent who said they voted, 55 percent said they voted for Ahmadinejad and only 14 percent said they voted for Mousavi.

Asked how they would vote if a new election were called, the breakdown was 49 percent for Ahmadinejad and 8 percent for Mousavi. Twenty-six percent declined to answer, causing WPO’s director Steven Kull to say that he thus discounted “these findings on voting preference [as] not a solid basis for estimating the actual vote.”

Nevertheless, the overall results from the WPO poll suggest that Ahmadinejad remains relatively popular compared to Mousavi.

US Media Disdain

In its press release on the new poll of Iranian attitudes, WPO also didn’t play up the findings about the disputed election, focusing more on Iran’s opinions regarding U.S. President Barack Obama and the prospects for improved relations with the United States.

The findings on Ahmadinejad’s legitimacy were at the end of the press release, possibly reflecting a concern that any data favorable to the Iranian president would draw the wrath of the major U.S. news media.

Indeed, for the past several months, the U.S. news media has shown little of its professed objectivity in its coverage of Iran’s election, an echo of the mainstream U.S. media’s failure to be evenhanded in its pre-invasion reporting on Iraq and its dictator Saddam Hussein.

Shortly after Iran's election in June, a “news analysis” coauthored by New York Times executive editor Bill Keller opened up with an old joke about Ahmadinejad looking into a mirror and saying “male lice to the right, female lice to the left,” a derogatory reference to his rise from the street and his conservative Islamic religious views.

The Times continued its pattern of taking sides on Saturday with a front-page article that three times referred to Ahmadinejad supposedly calling the World War II Holocaust that the Nazis inflicted on European Jews a “lie,” but never giving any context to the partial quote or noting that its meaning was somewhat ambiguous. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What Did Ahmadinejad Really Say?”]

While any insistence on journalistic professionalism in dealing with Ahmadinejad and Hussein are sure to prompt criticism about showing undeserved sympathy for such unsavory characters, the point is that journalists are supposed to set aside their personal feelings and let the American people make their own judgments based on balanced reporting, not slanted coverage.

A similar collapse of journalistic standards occurred in 2002 and 2003 with lopsided and inaccurate reporting about Iraq’s supposed WMD stockpiles. As the Washington Post’s editorial page editor Fred Hiatt later admitted, his editorials treated the existence of those stockpiles as fact, rather than a point in dispute.

“If you look at the editorials we write running up [to the war], we state as flat fact that he [Hussein] has weapons of mass destruction,” Hiatt said in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review. “If that’s not true, it would have been better not to say it.” [CJR, March/April 2004]

You don’t say!

Yes, it is a general principle of journalism that if something’s not true, it’s better not to say that it is, especially when your false statements contributed to an aggressive war that has killed more than 4,300 American soldiers and estimates of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. (Hiatt received no punishment for publishing his Iraq falsehoods and remains in that same job today.)

Now, Iran is in the sights of America’s top editors and a similar bias is in play.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com.

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Afghanistan: Back Door to War on Iran

By Stephen Sniegoski, September 7, 2009 - Excerpt

The major domestic supporters of an accelerated war in Afghanistan are the neoconservatives. As Ben Smith writes in a recent piece in “Politico” (Sept. 4, 2009), “Prominent conservative foreign policy thinkers and activists who backed the Iraq war are circulating a letter to President
Obama supporting his engagement in Afghanistan against criticism from left and right, and urging him to stay the course.”

Of course, these “conservatives” actually are neoconservatives. Signatories of the pro-war letter include such prominent neocons as: McCain’s major foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann, “Commentary” editor John Podhoretz, Gary Schmitt, Iraq surge architect Fred Kagan, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, “Weekly Standard” editor Bill Kristol, former Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor, Eliot A. Cohen (who coined the term “World War IV”), Eric Edelman, John Hannah, and Joshua Muravchik. These neocons have been intimately involved in the neocon Middle East war agenda and are discussed in my book “The Transparent Cabal.”

In fact, neoocons have been supporting Obama on Afghanistan for some time. Neocon Max Boot wrote in late March in a “Commentary” blog: “The new Afghanistan policy that President Obama unveiled at the White House today was pretty much all that supporters of the war effort could have asked for, and probably pretty similar to what President McCain would have decided on.”

And Barron YoungSmith observed in a “New Republic” blog at the beginning of April:

“Kristol and Robert Kagan–the same duo who founded the Iraq War-boosting
Project For the New American Century–decided to create FPI [Foreign Policy
Initiative] in order to beat back what they perceive to be creeping
isolationism and domestic fecklessness (defined by them as military budget
cuts and troop drawdowns) in the face of existential threats. Ordinarily,
one would expect a group like this to oppose President Obama, but since he
unveiled his strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan last week, they have
become some of his biggest cheerleaders.”

Jacob Heilbrunn titled an article on this neocon support for Obama’s interventionist foreign policy, “The New Neocon Alliance with Obama.” (May 1, 2009)

One can ask why neocons have been so enthusiastic about Obama’s focus on Afghanistan since Afghanistan has not been one of their primary concerns. After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the neocons pushed for an immediate attack on Iraq rather than Afghanistan. Temporarily they lost this fight, but they were soon able to divert the US war from Afghanistan to Iraq. ( “The Transparent Cabal,” pp. 141-150)

Since the occupation of Iraq, the neocons have targeted Iran for attack. Iran is seen as Israel’s major enemy-even, allegedly, a threat to Israel’s very existence. So why do the neocons identify so strongly with Obama’s Afghanistan policy? Won’t that divert attention from the issue of Iran? I think there are fundamentally two reasons-one defensive and the other offensive-that explain the neocons support for an expanded war in Afghanistan, which they believe will facilitate their broader Middle Eastwar agenda.

If the US were to abandon a military solution in Afghanistan, it probably would, as an alternative, seek to bring about stability in that beleaguered country through diplomacy. To be effective, this would involve broadening Iran’s role in Afghanistan. If Iran were working to bring about stability in Afghanistan, it would be virtually impossible for the US to treat it as an enemy. American policy toward Iran thus would be decoupled from that of Israel. Moreover, abandonment of the war in Afghanistan could likely begin a chain reaction that would end American involvement in the entire Middle East/Central Asian region. This would mean that the US would abandon any effort to destroy Israel’s enemies. The neocons’ entire Middle East war
agenda would be completely undermined.

In an offensive manner, an accelerated war in Afghanistan could provide a back door to initiating war with Iran. As the American military became bogged down in a no-win war in Afghanistan, Iran could provide a convenient scapegoat. One can envision the neocons trumpeting allegations that American problems in Afghanistan are caused by covert Iranian support for the Taliban insurgents, and that the only way to an American victory in Afghanistan would be by eliminating the Taliban’s Iranian sponsors. Various intelligence reports citing evidence of Iranian weapons and advisors in Afghanistan would be highlighted in the media. The US government has, in
fact, already made these claims. General Petraeus, for example, has publicly claimed that Iran was supporting the Taliban. As it becomes more apparent that the American military is unable to pacify Afghanistan, US military commanders will have a vested interest in blaming their failure on the alleged involvement of the Iranians.

More than just providing a rationale for an attack on Iran, Afghanistan also can provide the physical opportunity to start a war. In pursuit of insurgents, American troops could enter Iranian border regions leading to incidents that could usher in all-out war. In short, it is quite
conceivable to see the United States going to war with Iran by way of Afghanistan. This would provide a back-door to war with Iran without any real consideration of the ramifications of such a war.

In short, the United States could be involved in a war with Iran without Obama actually intending to bring about such a conflagration. It would simply develop as a result of the expanded war in Afghanistan.

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