To the jungles of the Gorilla

To the jungles of the Gorilla

As I leave for Africa to guide the Cleveland Zoo to see mountain gorillas, it’s worth repeating what a wonderful success story this is.

When EWT sent its first tourist into Rwanda’s Parcs de volcans in 1979, there were less than 320 mountain gorillas, a dangerously low number. At the time scientists had determined that if the population dipped below 280, it was likely the genetic diversity would not be great enough to sustain a long-term population.

There had been a lot of good science already completed back then, by such people as George Schaller and a bevy of Japanese researchers.

Dian Fossey was not a good researcher. Neither was she a good person. She was a media creation who in the end completed no good science and probably set the science of primates on a reverse track.

There’s no question that her media celebrity, though, helped the cause. Maybe even jump-started it.

But for the truth about early mountain gorilla science and the mountain gorilla program that began in earnest in the 1980s and which saved these great beasts, read In the Kingdom of Gorillas: The Quest to Save Rwanda’s Mountain Gorillas by husband/wife researchers Bill Weber and Amy Vedder. Bill and Amy were technically Dian’s first assistants, but as you will learn from reading their popular book, Dian needed almost more medical attention than the gorillas.

The gorilla project essentially begun by Bill and Amy is what saved these grand beasts. Today there are more than 750, despite a series of wars and natural disasters. It is a healthy, robust albeit still endangered population.

What happened?

Basically the business of tourism saved the gorillas. Today every visitor (and there are 56 daily in Rwanda and up to 42 daily in Uganda) pays $500 for an hour with habituated mountain gorilla families.

The enormous revenue this generated was transparently used first to help the gorillas and their habitat, and then, to help the human populations surrounding the habitats which for centuries had been understandably hostile to the animals.

This seed mountain generated more money. Money from research institutes, tangential organizations and even direct from governments.

The model of the mountain gorilla project is one of the most successful in the tourism/conservation arena…

Next week I’ll be blogging from Uganda and then Rwanda as a group of 12 others joins Cleveland Zoo Director, Steve Taylor, and myself as we explore the jungles for these grand beasts and some of their equally interesting cousins.

I hope you’ll follow us!

The Dominoes Reach Somalia

The Dominoes Reach Somalia

Guns from the UK, Guns from America, and bodies from Africa.
Tuesday Congress gave President Obama additional emergency funding for the war in Afghanistan. But the real new news is that America and Britain are beginning a new war in Somalia.

This was a week where terror succeeded. It began with the Al-Shabaab (Al-Qaeda) bombings in Kampala, which like 9/11 are intended to provoke. Terrorists know they are militarily inferior, but if they can provoke the militarily superior to come to them, they can win.

Nine-Eleven did just that. It provoked the U.S. in a multi-trillion dollar response that hasn’t ended yet, and judging from Obama’s increasingly hawkish ways, won’t end at all soon.

The powers of the world just don’t get it: no matter how powerful you may be, you can’t beat the joker on his own turf.

By diverting resources away from eliminating poverty, or malaria, or child soldiers… despicable culture centers like fiendish jihadism flourish. These weirdos survive on misery. But we can’t try to end poverty, or malaria or child soldiers… because the resources that would be used are being used instead to buy guns.

So the bad guys at whom the guns are pointed and who want the poor to stay poor so that they can be elevated as the poor’s protectors, win.

It’s weirdly impractical, but if we’d just schedule regular drops of thousands of dollar bills over Helmand Province or Basra, rather than delivering guns to shoot one another, there’d be no terrorism left. And it’d probably cost a lot less.

And this enigmatic neurotic dynamic of World Powers has infected every single American administration, Republican or Democrat, since my birth.

And what I worry about, now, is Africa.

Africa has been mostly immune from this aberration of modernism, because only lately has its resources become so important. Yes Zambia had copper, and yes, South Africa had diamonds and gold, and yes Nigeria has oil, but not enough, or too deep, or too cheap, or too hard to get at.

But gold is five times the value it was ten years ago. Oil extraction technology is way superior to what it was before, and the thirst for oil especially from China and the U.S. is unbelievable. Copper is an old element. But Coltan is desperately needed by every cell phone and it’s in The Congo and Rwanda.

So enter Africa into the Modern Age: Prepare for battle.

So America called on the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to beef up its troops last week to fight Al-Shabaab in Somali. The OAU asked America for guns. We’re giving them big time.

Yesterday, Kenya’s security chief, George Saitoti, asked its mother colonizer Britain for “support” in fighting al-Shabaab.

Britain’s new conservative Minister of African Affairs, Henry Bellingham, said he was “delighted” to help.

“Al-Shabaab is a threat to all other countries including the UK (United Kingdom)”, Bellingham said, raising his China teacup to new heights.

Since I was born in 1948 just after World War II, the U.S. has spent more money on wars than any other single service for me or my fellow citizens, if you dare call “war” a service.

Korea, Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Granada, Panama, Nicaragua, the Balkans, Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan and that doesn’t count the “Cold War” expense of nuclear armaments or troops and bases in Europe.

Now, it seems, add Somalia.

We Won! Power to YOU!

We Won! Power to YOU!

The Dodd-Frank Act is our victory!
Guess what? We won an important battle: The Wall Street reform act signed by President Obama this week regulates U.S. corporations using Coltan from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)!

Reread my blog of May 10, “Evaporize Goma!”

There I discussed several of the great horrors of Africa : war, corruption, child soldiers and resource theft. All embodied in one main mineral, Coltan, used by electronic companies and principally to power PlayStation3.

The largest source of Coltan in the world is in the DRC, a lawless, governmentless jungle controlled by warlords who are becoming billionaires by selling Coltan to companies like Sony and Intel.

In a little noticed provision of The Dodd-Frank Act, the commission which must now be created for consumer protection is charged with drawing up rules that will prevent any U.S. corporation from buying any minerals from the DRC unless it can specifically prove that its payments are not being used for …

… war, corruption, child soldiers and resource theft.

Which… is impossible. Every dime paid for minerals that come out of the DRC goes to warlords.

We won. An important, obscure battle that few people noticed but which has such an incredible impact on Africans, particularly children, has finally been won by the power of U.S. capitalist law.

The law regulates “specific minerals obtained from sources in the Democratic Republic of Congo and bordering countries, which include “columbite-tantalite (coltan), cassiterite, gold, wolfamite, or their derivatives” and certain other minerals.”

These are the “conflict minerals” of which Coltan is the leader.

And with the “force of law” we suddenly have all these marvelous U.S. corporations acting as if they never wanted to buy Coltan in the first place:

In June when passage looked likely sneaky guru Steve Jobs announced Apple would never buy Coltan from DRC warlords. (He didn’t say they never had and there is every indication they have.)

Yesterday, Michael J. Holston, executive vice president and general counsel for Hewlett-Packard, said, “We believe this provision will help … reduce the purchase and use of conflict minerals known to fund the ongoing armed conflict in the .. (DRC), and thus help reduce some of the factors that have contributed to the civil war there.”

Right, Michael. HP has intentionally avoided vetting its microprocessor suppliers before now.

So don’t let all this gibberish take away YOUR victory. It was individuals like you, who contacted your Congressmen, organized by a huge coalition of proactive African organizations worldwide. It was a peoples’ battle that overcame the World Transformer Corporation.

We won. And there’s even more. After the U.S., it’s U.K. corporations that are the biggest offenders in the area. Boosted by the new U.S. law, a powerful world advocacy group, Global Witness, announced it would now sue the new Conservative Government to follow the U.S. law!

Now all we have to do is monitor the victory. The commission has 270 days to promulgate the law. And after that, only a U.S. Presidential degree that the conflict in the Congo is over will terminate the law.

Visions of a President Bush insisting there is no climate change or threats of off-shore drilling sets the stage, now, for the new battlefield. But the big engagement is over. We won!

‘NO’ for Violence in Kenya

‘NO’ for Violence in Kenya

Criminal politicians and an old dictator support NO rallies in Kenya.
There’s going to be trouble in Kenya on August 4 and for a few days afterwards, but not as serious as in 2007. Continue on safari, but be vigilant.

A week from Wednesday Kenyans go to the polls for the first time since the violent election of December, 2007. This time they aren’t electing anyone. They’re deciding either YES or NO to a proposed new constitution.

But this time, unlike last time, modern Kenyans and their astute politicians are taking extraordinary preparations to keep peace.

A special commission has been set up by the government to monitor the country’s temperature in the run-up to the referendum.

The National Cohesion and Integration Commission has been active, independent and very useful. They’re also a little bit worried.

Commission member Alice Nderitu yesterday said that the “threat of violence is real.” But she hastened to add, “It’s tense but manageable.”

And this time the Kenyan government is buoyed by a Coalition of the World that includes the U.S., the UN and a beautifully created internal Kenyan coalition called “Uwaino.”

The phrase in Swahili used mostly in cooking roughly means blending together, or combining diverse components into something sweet and good.

But the main function of the new organization is to allow Kenyans from around the country to anonymously text any indications of election violence brewing.

Based on nearly 5,000 messages received this weekend, the coalition identified certain areas of the country where tempers are rising.

Those areas are in the west and north, pretty far away from Nairobi and not near any popular tourist areas.

Western and northwestern Kenya are analogous to America’s deep south. Divided ethnically from the rest of Kenya in a similar way that southerners felt disenfranchised from American power centers in the last century, western Kenyans are fearful that their rural, less worldly lifeways will be oppressed by the heavy hand of modern Kenya.

Less educated and less likely to enjoy the benefits of a modern Kenya, people living in places like Kisumu, Kericho up to Eldoret are being ginned up by old leaders like the former President Daniel arap Moi.

Moi, who barely escaped a national tribunal that was going to charge him with a multitude of crimes during his 21-year dictatorship, has been holding NO rallies and focusing on really very small parts of the new constitution that are hot button issues to a less educated electorate.

Abortion and roads, in particular. The new constitution explicitly allows abortion in cases where the mother’s health is in jeopardy (it goes no further; that will be up to subsequent legislatures). And the devolution of power reducing the new President’s powers means that a guy like Moi can’t come in and direct that all new road building be around his home town.

Like at home in America where the real issue (growing health care costs) get subverted by sound-bite absurdities (death panels), Moi is telling his constituents they won’t get any new roads and there will be none to travel to heaven, either.

Ah, democracy by sound-bite.

Uwiano has also identified causes as well. A number of text messages received last weekend identified a little known hate radio broadcast linked to two Members of Parliament, Kiema Kilonzo and Waweru Mburu, both of whom are likely to lose their jobs in a restructured electoral map under the new constitution.

Meanwhile, the government has hired an additional 15,000 national police (who aren’t always themselves the best peacemakers, by the way) and deployed them into areas expecting trouble.

And the U.S. has spent some serious diplomatic capital in this referendum. Vice President Joe Biden was in town last week promoting a “peaceful vote” and the very active U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger has if not crossed the line of neutrality come really close in supporting the YES campaign.

All polling shows the YES will take the day pretty easily. Even the powerful Christian church alliance, which had campaigned for a NO vote, this weekend started to break apart with some very respected clerics coming out full swing for YES.

And notably, the only political leaders supporting the NO vote are those who we now think were responsible for the last round of violence, and who are likely to be prosecuted by the World Court for those crimes. (Education Minister, William Ruto, leads the pack.)

These are powerful men back in their rural constituencies. The fact that Moi is even free is an indication of the power he still wields.

So I doubt this is going to go over as quietly as an election for a Chicago mayor. But I don’t think it will be very disruptive, either.

When Will We Ever Learn?

When Will We Ever Learn?

America in Africa...or...China in Africa?
The U.S. is finally realizing that Somali is the center of the world’s “War on Terror.” And so now we’re all ready to do exactly the wrong thing. Again.

I’ve written often — and spoken in public — about the growing power that Al-Shabaab has in Somalia. Al-Shabaab is Al-Qaeda in The Horn. Western preoccupation with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq has allowed them to spread and regroup into the Horn of Africa.

Al-Shabaab has been fighting along Kenya’s long northeastern border with Somalia for more than three years. Much of this has been hit-and-run, kidnapping and petty theft of food and military equipment, but more and more the gun battles with Kenyans begin to assume real engagement.

Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for Sunday’s bombings in Kampala. That seemed to do the trick: The U.S. has finally noticed.

First we heard from General William Ward who heads the U.S. Africa Command, that the U.S. would increase its military support to the TFG in Somalia. (Transitional Federal Government).

Then, a much more elaborate policy was detailed by the U.S.’ main diplomat in the region, Johnnie Carson.

I don’t like what I’m hearing.

What I’m hearing is that the U.S. is going to step up its military aid while lecturing a weak and futile puppet Somali government that it “should do more” for its people.

Here are my excerpts from Carson’s interview with All Africa published, today:

“I think [military assistance] is the correct policy… We have provided [Uganda & Burundi soldiers in Somalia] with military equipment… We have supported the training of TFG forces…We have supported specialized training in dealing with improvised explosive devices and training for the protection of ports and airports… There is no question that the TFG has to do more than it’s done in the past….

“We have not done enough on Somalia, which, for far too long, has been the subject of benign neglect by the United States…Given the magnitude of the problems …now is the time for the international community to recognize that this problem will only get worse for all of us if we do not come together to find a solution.”

Military assistance is NOT the correct policy. Providing military equipment and training to Ugandan soldiers who are famous for raping and pillaging in The Congo is NOT the correct policy. The TFG is an useless entity. We should NOT support the TFG.

I like Johnnie Carson, and I more or less like the Obama administration’s overall foreign policy, but they seem stuck in American imperialism. It’s just so dastardly how good guys get corrupted by power. I wonder if we elected Mahatma Ghandi U.S. President if he would then start new wars that we’d lose.

My lifetime has been characterized by failed U.S. wars and failed U.S. policies that I see as contributing to if not outright causing world terrorism.

Military actions will not end terror.

Why can we not learn from history?

Here’s the answer: click here.

Bruton’s formula is not new. Learned men have been espousing active, nonmilitary engagement in troubled parts of the world for decades as the ONLY solution to the world’s instabilities. We just don’t seem to get it.

Military action by a foreign power cannot eradicate a local guerrilla force. Period.

Military support of puppet regimes put in power by outside foreign powers is a black hole. Period.

Puppet regimes don’t last. Period.

And the most salient point is that the cost of military action is dozens if not hundreds of times greater than nonmilitary assistance.

In today’s Africa China’s got it right and America’s got it wrong. China is spending billions on roads, resource development and city planning. The U.S. is, too, but many more billions on military.

China’s spending on African military? 0. Zip. Not a penny.

I don’t mean to frame this as a contest between China and America, I mean to point out that China’s got policy orientation right and is contributing to African development. And that America’s obsession with military will destroy African development.

We must end our roles as policeman, schoolmarm, parent and pastor for the rest of the world. We can perform a role as a benefactor, but no longer as a soldier.

When will we ever learn?

Not Enough Drops to Drink

Not Enough Drops to Drink

From World Heath Organization (WHO)
This week as summer rains pelted the Midwest major battles for single drops of water were raging in Africa.

We take so much for granted and nothing more necessary to almost every aspect of our lives than potable water. That may be one of Africa’s top problems, if not the single-most urgent need.

All of us who’ve traveled Africa love the picturesque image of a colorfully dressed African woman balancing an equally colorful bucket of water on her head. There must be a thousand million paintings and drawings of this image.

But it is an image we ought not covet. It’s an image of egregious want.

According to Unesco one billion people lack access to improved water supply, the vast majority in Africa. Less than a quarter of the households in Africa have piped water supplies, and only about an eighth of the households in Africa are linked to a sewage system.

This week two completely separate events – one an individual judicial action in Botswana and the other a continent-wide political fight in Uganda – underscore the difficulties Africa is facing obtaining water for its citizens.

At the OAU Conference currently being held in Kampala, Egypt and The Sudan are fighting an East African coalition of countries over use of the Nile.

Egypt could not survive without its hoarding of the waters of the Nile. It is otherwise a desert. Today, there is not a single drop of water entering the Mediterranean from what was once the great Nile outflow. It is dry. Dust. Egypt needs more. More for people’s daily needs and more for growing food.

Prior to giving independence to a number of countries earlier last century, the colonial master, Britain, forced its soon-to-be-freed colonies in East Africa to agree that Egypt and The Sudan would control the Nile.

That 1959 treaty is now coming under fire at the OAU. Uganda, which controls the outflow of the White Nile mostly from Lake Victoria, and Ethiopia, which controls the outflow of the Blue Nile mostly from Lake Tana, have indicated they will abrogate the treaty.

And Kenya and Tanzania, which control large portions of Lake Victoria, have indicated they may do so as well.

East Africa needs lots of water. At the height of the recent drought, more than 5 million Nairobi area residents went on water rationing that averaged running water only every other day. According to East Africa’s Flying Doctors 70% of all the hospital visits in East Africa are caused by contaminated water.

And East Africans point out that the massive Aswan Dam (which Britain opposed being built, but long after having any influence in the region) loses nearly a fifth of all the Nile’s water to evaporation.

The solution presented at the OAU conference by Egypt and The Sudan is terrifying. Egypt is offering to build a canal around the huge Nile wetland known as the Sudd in The Sudan, which would direct Lake Victoria Waters directly into the Nile basin.

This is a temporary solution that could increase the Nile’s output by nearly 50%. But it will drain the Sudd, Africa’s largest wetland. The long-term consequences are mind blowing. We all know the incredible, devastating impact that draining wetlands has on any environment.

But the question is: potable water, now, for people; or a wetland for the future? The East African countries seem ready to accept the Egyptian proposal.

And at the other end of the continent, this week a judge in Botswana ruled that indigenous Bushmen would not be allowed to drill boreholes in their reserve to obtain potable water.

The argument is that in the reserve, as in similar places in Africa (like the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania) the Bushmen have been given the right to pursue traditional life styles, but cannot modernize. Drilling a well is modernizing.

But modern Bushmen organizations are arguing that their life needs are paramount, and that denying water in a global climate changing world is a ruthless mandate, especially when Botswana’s meager water sources are being used by country clubs in Gaborone and diamond mines in the Kalahari, the Bushman’s traditional home.

Africa is replete with crises. But there seems none as urgent as this, yet with solutions as evanescent as an evaporating mist.

Church & African State

Church & African State

Kenyan John Cardinal Njue is leading a national boycott of taxes.
The conflict between church and state is an abrasive one in the U.S. as it is in Africa. But even as in Kenya when the church is on the right side, it doesn’t belong in the room.

The nearly three centuries of western religious involvement in Africa has had mixed success. There have definitely been periods where religious activism has helped Africa develop, but in the main I think it has had a negative net effect.

And today in Kenya, Christian activism threatens the finely tuned and arduously developed political movements that are otherwise directing Kenyan society down the right path.

This is such a touchy subject that I feel before explaining the previous statement, I need to highlight the good work that has been done by Christian activism.

Outstanding clerics like South Africa’s Desmond Tutu and Nigerian Cardinal Ekandem played sometimes pivotal roles in the peaceful developments of their societies. And during troubled times, such as Kenya’s 1990 street riots, the churches not only offered sanctuary but sanity to a disturbed society.

I don’t believe that Liberia could have survived as it did resulting in the promising situation found there today without a bevy of Christian religious leaders shoring up the little of sane society that was left after Charles Taylor was forced out.

But right now Christian activism is dangerously far too politicized in Africa, and Kenya provides the best example.

Kenya is holding a referendum for a new constitution in August. This is the end of a lengthy process of reconciliation between two warring political factions which caused the violence that followed the December, 2007, elections.

Those elections were so close, and certainly now proved so fraudulent (on both sides), that a clear winner couldn’t be determined. The slums of Nairobi erupted, and violence overtook much of the country. By the time the smoke settled more than 1300 people had been killed, and more than 150,000 displaced.

But credit to those in charge with serious help from Kofi Annan, Britain and America, the two factions formed a coalition government that works well, today. And part of the agreement required that a new constitution be adopted, which at its core would better regulate and adjudicate elections in the future.

That constitution will certainly pass. The process by which it was written was often tortuous but mostly transparent, and every segment of the Kenyan population contributed.

And now, the Christian church coalition opposes the constitution. And this is not just a tacit opposition, but an aggressive one. Every Sunday pulpit has a ranting cleric telling its parishioners to vote NO.

No matter that a NO vote will disintegrate Kenya. The church is opposed to a section – a small section in the constitution that allows for abortion in certain life-threatening situations. (And secondarily, it is opposed to the establishment of Mahdi courts, Islamic courts, for civil cases in Islamic areas, and when requested by all the litigants.)

Like the American right – which is openly and actively funding the church campaign against the constitution – there is little interest in the wider and much more profound issues like executive power and taxes. They cling to this one moral issue as paramount. Paramount to destruction.

And today, the church announced it would organize the country to not pay taxes, if the current legislature raises its salaries.

Now believe me, the move by the current legislature to raise salaries is patently wrong. The country like the rest of the world is in recession and piling up debt. The new constitution, if passed, will disallow legislatures to set their own salaries as they do, now.

And the current Finance Minister, who must approve by integration the bill in the legislature into his overall budget, appears dead set against doing so. In that regards, it’s a mute issue.

But the churches are ringing the church bells in opposition – what could be properly described as unnecessary opposition.

Church involvement in Kenya is not just irritating because of the positions taken. Recently, a coalition of more than 100 Christian organizations, the Micah Network, announced ”a strong statement that the church has no option but to be fully involved in making a difference to reduce carbon emissions and the impact of climate change on particularly the poor and disadvantaged” and “particularly to be lobbying governments to implement legislation to reduce carbon emissions.”
– (Summarized in a blog published by A Rocha Kenya on July 31.)

Wow. I totally agree. Well, I mean with the thing about climate change.

But NOT when it is framed as a Christian (religious) issue, as was elaborately done here. To embrace this methodology would suggest that unless something has a Christian stamp of approval, it’s not vetted enough, not sufficient to become public policy.

So it’s not just a matter of issue: abortion, on the one hand, or climate change, on the other. Christian organizations have every right to support or oppose public policy, but it is dangerous when that position includes “lobbying governments.”

Government is always acts of compromise. Religion is just the reverse. I’m hardly the first to suggest the two should be separated.

Victor & Still Champion

Victor & Still Champion

The victor and still champion, Paul Kagame, flanked by the two other candidates.
(Left) Kayumba Nyamwasa who is in exile. And (right) Victoire Ingabire who is in jail.
Rwanda’s national election occurs in 3 weeks. That has nothing to do with who will win.

President Paul Kagame, the leader of Rwanda for the last 16 years, and prior to that, the paramount general of the Tutsi led RPF army that stopped the 1994 genocide, is the winner and champion.

Kagame has imprisoned all his viable opponents. Members of his military – which are really the political and economic controllers of the country – who have dared to criticize him have either been demoted, exiled or killed. Newspapers have shut down or shut up.

This will not be a free election.

Frankly, I don’t know if there should be a free election. If there were, the Hutu-defined factions would win. The government would be in turmoil. Businessmen would flee the country. It would cause an extraordinarily awkward situation with regards to the brutal war going on in the eastern Congo (led by Rwandan exiled Hutu extremists).

And this tiny, currently peaceful country would go to pot.

Obviously no one knows this better than Kagame. Like so many African dictators before him, he has emerged over a good period of time as a leader who has painted himself into a box of eternity.

He has been essentially benevolent and fair. Particularly in the beginning few years after the genocide, he was remarkably tolerant and forgiving. He has adroitly danced on the world stage, criticizing his donors while getting more of their money (including the U.S.). And he has overseen a ravaged and poor country grow into one of Africa’s most successful economies.

Kagame’s life goal has been to reverse the powerful currents that separate his population into two factions that despise one another. Hutus call Tutsis “cockroaches.” Tutsis – now in firm control – are less derogatory about Hutus. Instead, they ignore them, hire them for slave wages and refuse to matriculate them up the political or business ladder.

So Kagame has suffered the biggest failure of his own stated goals: he has not brought together the warring factions that led to the genocide. If anything, he has presided over an increasing gap.

And as I’ve written before, deep down it is not an ethnic divide. And this incredibly unique and confusing aspect muddies the waters even more. Hutu and Tutsi speak the same language. They have intermarried for nearly a millennia. The physical differences of their ancestry are blurred at best.

But there was enough physical difference at the start of the colonial era, that the Belgians could attempt a differentiation, and that reenergized and refined the division that lasts until today. Still, it is less an ethnic divide than a typical political class divide. The rich and powerful against the poor and disenfranchised.

Were it simply ethnic, Kagame’s task would have been easier. But he entered the modern world like any leader, anywhere. It’s not only old scores that have to be settled, it’s .. Poverty.

So yes, Rwanda is safe, and yes, Rwanda is economically prosperous by African standards. But no, it’s not free.

Which is better?

Heaven or Uhuru?

Heaven or Uhuru?

This is not 83-year old George Solt.
It's Ake Lindstrom.
Some people thought he was headed to heaven. But George Solt, 83, made the summit of Kili and came down to tell the world, Wednesday!

Briton George Solt hopes to be inscribed in the Guiness Book of World Records next year after the organization’s extensive verification process. But right now there’s no challenge to his own that he is the oldest man to have summited Mt. Kilimanjaro.

The climb was organized by a good friend and Tanzania’s most experienced and knowledgeable outfitter, Ake Lindstrom, owner/founder of Summits-Africa.

Ake himself belongs in the Guiness book. He was born in Kenya, raised on a sailboat in Khartoum, educated in Britain, plays rugby for the Tanzanian National Rugby league and races absurd looking vehicles in East Africa’s miserable road rallies.

And he has almost single-handedly raised the standards of treatment and pay for the previously maligned porters and occasional workers who are so essential to successful Kilimanjaro climbs.

Ake’s company said that Solt was accompanied by family including three grandchildren, and that the climb was two days longer than the normal Machame ascent. Solt organized the ascent in memory of his wife, who died last year.

My own son, Brad (Ake’s contemporary), was one of the youngest Americans to ascend Mt. Kenya, which is generally considered a more difficult climb though it is 2,000′ lower than Kili. We organize many Kili climbs year after year.

I don’t have current statistics in hand, but at its ‘peak’ the Tanzanian Tourist Board announced at a convention in London in 2007 that 25,000 people would attempt to summit Kili that year. Even if that is a slight exaggeration, it indicates that many more people try to climb Kili each year than any other known mountain.

For one thing it’s basically a walk, with only the last bit requiring any real scrambling. The challenge is the height (low oxygen content at 19,347′) and cold. A more recent challenge with global warming has been massive reductions in glaciers and avalanches.

Four weeks ago I was sitting at the Talkeenta (Alaska) Roadhouse restaurant for breakfast under a handwritten poster plastered on the wall lamenting the deaths of a variety of climbers who had tried to summit McKinley in the last several years.

There are about a dozen deaths on Kili each year, a fraction of the percentage of those who die trying mountains like McKinley.

The irony in climbing Kili is that more than half those who attempt it book the most difficult route: the Marangu 3-day up and 2-day down “Coca-Cola” path. The Tanzanian government has built dormitories to house the large numbers of people using this route. It’s the fastest and cheapest way to tackle the mountain, but also arguably the hardest.

A self-motivated climber can show up at the park gate, pay fees and hire a porter, and attempt the summit via Marangu for under $1000. But no matter his/her fitness, the chance of success doing it this way is hardly 50%.

Several years ago we booked a climb for four American Olympic hurdlers. Three of them didn’t make it.

The tough part for most people comes at around 12,000′. It has more to do with your body’s tolerance to less oxygen than its fitness, although that obviously helps. Many physiologies just can’t handle the altitude.

Ake’s company promotes much slower (and more beautiful) routes than the Coca-Cola Marangu. Perhaps the most popular one is Machame, which is a 5-day up, 2-day down trek. Ake’s staff and guides are all professionally trained. You get the right amount and types of food, oxygen is carried, and most important of all, you go slow.

Kudus for Solt, and great congratulations to Ake!

More Trouble for Uganda?

More Trouble for Uganda?

Police display the unexploded suicide vest found in Kampala.
Ugandan police gave indications, yesterday, that Al-Shabaab plans further bombings in Kampala next week during the OAU conference.

I imagine that several Heads of State who had planned to attend will not, now, or will greatly reduce their stay. In this regard, the Sunday bombings would have achieved their objectives, so further disruption wouldn’t be necessary. But:

Next week is not a time to visit Uganda. Wait until the conference is over July 28.

The OAU is the main body controlling the Somali peacekeeping forces in Mogadishu, and Uganda is the largest single contributor to that force. The OAU mission supports a weak Somali government being contested militarily by Al-Shabaab.

Ugandan police announced the arrest of Wasswa Nsubuga just outside the city yesterday and claim that he was carrying documents describing how to create 19 different types of bombs. He is an Ugandan who two years ago returned from Iraq where he had been working as a security guard. He currently works as a security guard in Kampala for a supermarket.

In his defense, and with credit to the police, Nsubuga explained to the press in a prepared statement that the documents he carried had been given him by his Iraq employer as a way of educating himself of the threats of terrorists.

But there were other Ugandan government actions that also suggested heightened concern as delegates to the OAU begin arriving, Saturday.

Police and military are visible everywhere from Entebbe to Kampala, brandishing large machine guns. Virtually every city hotel now has intense security, with under-body car checks made outside parking areas, and metal detectors being rushed to hotel entries.

Most of the larger shopping centers have also employed new, visible security measures.

But the most visible change has been at the airport at Entebbe. Check-in now takes about 4 hours, with multiple checks by Ugandan government officials followed by private security checks from the individual airlines.

My fingers are crossed for the Ugandans next week. On the one hand, the event now having occurred, it seems unlikely more could happen. But the clear and stated target was the African forces from the OAU now in Somalia, and their annual conference begins Saturday.

Uganda & Terrorism

Uganda & Terrorism

Uganda President Museveni at one of the bomb sites.
The suicide bombings in Kampala Sunday night are not an escalation, but a continuation of the terror the world has always suffered.

In the midst of this recent horror, it’s critical to realize that terrorism is a part of our ordinary lives. Americans have this subconscious absurd notion that there wasn’t terror before 9-11.

Yet we remember with grief and horror:

A generation ago when in one year, 1985, the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking and the hijacking of TWA in Cairo. Three years later, the Pan Am disaster over Lockerbie. 1995 was the horrible Oklahoma federal bombing by Timothy McVeigh, followed a year later by the tragic Olympic bombings on July 27 during the summer Olympics in Atlanta. Two years later the twin bombings of our embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam. All of these preceded 9/11. And, of course, it didn’t stop: then the Smiley-Face mailbox bomber on May 9, 2002.. On July 7, 2005, the infamous 7-7 city bombings in London when 52 people were killed during rush hour.

And this doesn’t even begin to list the IRA/British terrorism, the terrorism in the Balkans, Palestine, South Africa, the thousands killed in Argentina terror….

What’s the point in this list? This list of hurt and suffering?

There are wicked people out there, and always have been. But modern technology has empowered them in ways never experienced before our own life times. And this isn’t just the technology of weapons; the technology of faster communication is just as important.

Messages transmitted and then acted upon by wicked destruction. This is a late 20th and 21st century phenomenon.

Americans may think they have suffered one of the most grievous of the attacks, but that could be because we just have more of the larger things to attack. The whole world suffers from terrorism.

And right now, Americans’ response is wrong.

You cannot fight terrorism with a military. It just won’t work. Britain’s arduous and troublesome approach to Northern Ireland seems to have worked, but it takes a patience Americans don’t seem to have, and a memory of history most of us were never taught.

And the Argentinian’s solution also seemed to work: and that took a generation. And the South African’s worked: and that took forgiveness.

The solutions to terrorism are patience, forgiveness, sensitivity to why the wicked have become wicked and attempts to remedy the social negligences from which terrorists arise.

That’s a long and tortuous path. But such a hazard if we just think we can resort to the gun.

Bombings in Kampala

Bombings in Kampala

More than 60 people were killed yesterday in two separate bomb attacks in Kampala, a signature Al-Qaeda attack. Curiously, the terrorist organization has not claimed responsibility.

I’ve increasingly written about Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda in Somalia, and their increasing power and influence in East Africa. With last week’s peaceful elections in the southern third of Somali known as Somaliland, the Al-Shabaab is consolidating its control of the north-western third outside Mogadishu. Ironically, violence in Somalia is slightly down.

But if the fighting for turf is subsidizing, the fighting for hearts and minds is only growing. The blasts in Kampala, at an Ethiopian bar and the Rugby Sports Club (both packed with guests watching the World Cup), carry all the characteristics of a terrorist organization trying to make a point.

Their point: get out of Somalia.

Uganda and Burundi are the only East African countries that have military forces in Somalia fighting Al-Shabaab. They are a part of a joint UN/African Union force that is doing poorly and has suffered numerous casualties for peace-keepers. The Uganda media is becoming increasingly hostile with the government’s war effort, there.

So all the pointers suggest a premeditated, coordinated attack by Al-Shabaab to get East African forces out of Mogadishu.

Why, then, have they not taken full responsibility?

(1) The nature of terrorism is such that Al-Shabaab may have planted agents in Uganda but without fully knowing their plans. They may simply be waiting for their own confirmation.

(2) The President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, is standing for re-election later this year. He has become increasingly authoritarian and has been imprisoning a number of opponents. The biggest attack was at the Rugby Club, frequented almost exclusively by educated and many dissident Ugandans. Regardless of who actually did it, will most certainly quiet to some extent Museveni’s public critics.

(3) Shortly the southern Sudan will be voting for independence from the Republic of Sudan, and the situation just north of Uganda is growing tense. Uganda has been an advocate for southern Sudanese independence. (Uganda President) Museveni has told the Republic of Sudan that if its president comes to Kampala next month for the Organization of African Unity (OAU) meeting, he’ll be arrested. (There is an international warrant on Omar al Bashir for war crimes in Darfur.) Sudan harbors Al-Shabaab.

The horror of what has happened suggests some absurdity in focusing on the perpetrators, but we have been fairly fortunate in the last several years in East Africa to not have suffered these incidents. With some clarity in the days ahead, we may have a clearer understanding if anything new is developing.

Right now, I don’t think so. The evidence is pointing to Al-Shabaab, specifically against Uganda for its soldiers in Somalia, a mission that because of its low international interest has attracted less international security. Thus, more easily accomplished.

The Mara: Tipping or Tentative?

The Mara: Tipping or Tentative?

Oops. There goes the migration!
A recent study in Kenya has sparked enormous confusion over the long-term future of its wildlife, particularly in the Mara. But a couple things do look certain. Don’t stay outside the reserves and don’t privatize national treasures.

I hate reporting a story like this, but it’s been growing in my conscience like mold on the wall. Time to disinfect.

“Scientific studies” in Kenya just don’t carry the weight of well-funded work elsewhere in Africa, particularly in the south.

Just a few months after rains returned to East Africa late last year, the Kenya Wildlife Service mounted an animal survey that began in Amboseli. KWS concluded that as much as 83% of Amboseli’s wildlife had been lost.

Click here to see the survey. Oops. Gone? It’s been removed. But aha! I saved the paper: click here.

All sorts of bigwig organizations participated in that paper, including some that are now criticizing it.

Evidence is growing that the survey was wrong. Not long after the survey suggested that most of Amboseli’s elephant and wildebeest had died, Cynthia Moss’ ATE
group reported that “most” of the elephant were returning, although with fewer juveniles. And only a few weeks ago, one of ATE’s researchers, J. Kioko, reported that “about 1000 wildebeest have arrived in the park.”

Now, this second damming report might be just as flawed.

The report was funded by the Africa-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and was published in the Journal of Zoology and essentially painted a catastrophic situation in Kenya’s Maasai Mara, claiming the reserve was on the brink of collapse.

The Mara Conservancy, one of the two authorities controlling the Maasai Mara, issued a stunning denial. The Conservancy called the report “false.”

The report put much of the blame on the explosion of Maasai homesteads in the “private” reserves that ring the Mara conservancies. Specifically, the report claimed there were only four homesteads in 1950 and that there are now 368. And in what I consider a gross indication of the report’s inaccuracy, it claimed there were 44 huts in 1950 and 2735 in 2003.

Homesteads, maybe, but huts are built and torn down weekly. The 1950 data wasn’t sourced, but had to come from colonial authorities, and native statistics in 1950 have been proved time and again to be grossly inaccurate.

Paula Kahumbu, Executive Director of Richard Leakey’s reputable Wildlife Direct organization, remarked as follows on one of the report’s huge claims of wildlife losses:

“For the life of me I cannot find the 95% decline in giraffe in any of the blocks – the greatest decline that I can find is in block 3 where numbers of giraffe decline from 37 to 12 individuals. That’s only a 67% decline.”

I’m not trained or blessed with enough time on my hands to wade through the competing reports to determine in any scientific fashion which are right and which are wrong.

But that’s not going to stop me from making a few conclusions that might help those of you interested in East Africa’s wildlife, or those who are considering traveling there.

First, why are things so confused? Isn’t science… science?

Yes to the second, but as the first, Kenya’s problem is unique; unique even to Tanzania, its nearest and most similar neighbor. The government of Kenya long ago divested itself of full control over a number of its wildlife reserves, including both Amboseli and the Maasai Mara, arguably the two most important ones.

These great tracks of national treasure were seconded to local authorities (Maasai county councils) who exacerbated the problem by privatizing their operations.

The federal Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) still has some authority in both areas, but the bulk of the authority, including reporting facts on a day-to-day basis, is left in private hands. Even anti-poaching patrols in the Mara are run privately, not by KWS.

And to make a terrible situation intolerable, in the last decade the Mara was divided into two separately operated reserves. One by the Narok County Council, and the other by a sister Maasai community, the Trans Mara County Council.

One of Kenya’s legendary safari guides, Allan Earnshaw, wrote recently for the East African Wild Life Society, “The root of the problem is the fact that whilst the Maasai Mara is called a National Reserve, it is in fact treated and run as a local asset by the two different local authorities.”

(Problem upon problem: I cannot link you to this article, because remarkably EAWLS does not publish anything digitally.)

But Earnshaw is right on. And it gets truly ridiculous, as is the case as I write at this moment, if you wish to visit the entire Mara (which isn’t very big, you could do it in a day), you have to pay two fees: two times $60, to cross the Serena bridge going from one half to the other.

Anti-poaching patrols and scientific study groups are similarly constricted.

Collection of tourists fees, scientific study oversight and anti-poaching are operated by private organizations, separately for the two halves of the Mara, but the building of tourist lodges is a federal decision.

So since 2005, “no fewer than 55 new camps and lodges have been built in the Mara.” In 1997, there were a mere 20 camps and lodges. Today, according to Earnshaw, “there are over 100 and counting – with a bed capacity for 4000 tourists.”

The confusion over the numbers of animals, and the numbers of tourist lodges, is because there is no single authority managing the Mara. Studies and revenue receipts contradict each other. Private companies, competing for business jobs, exaggerate their potential. There is no neutral authority overseeing all this.

This is a Ph.D study of mismanagement at the least. Can’t do that, now. But let me try to glean from this mess three simple conclusions:

The effect on the area’s wildlife by the last drought was not as bad as local “scientific” studies suggested.

It was still bad, but probably not worse than in previous droughts. And with time we’ll know this for sure, but even in this short period of time since the rains returned late last year, things look pretty good to me.

Second, game viewing is increasingly depressed outside the parks. If you want to see a lot of game, avoid the private reserves and stay inside the park.

(Necessary semantic clarification: The Maasai Mara is not a private reserve, it is composed of two separate (County Council) government reserves, but it is privately managed. But ringing the Mara as is the case with almost all parks in East Africa, are adjacent or near adjacent private lands with tourist lodges.)

&Beyond’s Klein’s Camp and the Grumeti Reserve camps outside the Serengeti are examples. Saruni, Sasaab, Elephant Watch Camp are others outside Samburu. Treetops and Kikoti outside Tarangire. Literally all the Bush ‘n Beyond camps, and Laikipia camps like Lewa Downs and Loisaba are outside parks.

This doesn’t mean they aren’t fabulous additions to a vacation with their own unique attractions. It just means if you aren’t close enough to a park to at least enter it during a day-trip, your game viewing will be depressed compared to being inside the park.

Third, privatizing management of national treasures like a wildlife park or national Park (as being considered in the U.S.) is nothing less than stupid.

It transforms good, neutral scientific studies into the components of a cost-effective business plan. It prostitutes moral authority with profit. The decline of American zoos, for instance, I place squarely on the fact that the vast majority were privatized in the 1980s and 1990s.

America, take note. Kenya’s greatest national treasure, if it is in peril, is because it was off-lifted into private hands.

Tanzanian Driver Strike Called Off

Tanzanian Driver Strike Called Off

EWT Kenyan driver/guides James, Puis & Bonface.
The planned strike this month by Tanzanian driver/guides has been called off. You didn’t know about it? Thank goodness!

I’m not one to oppose industrial action, almost anywhere. Workers of the World have taken a huge hit during my life time, while Managers of the World have grown fat on their sweat.

But I didn’t tell you about the planned strike of Tanzanian driver/guides – which was known since January – because I knew it wouldn’t happen. And if I had told you, it would have made things infinitely worse.

This was true of virtually everyone I knew who knew. So from the getgo, let me apologize for not telling you, but let’s just agree to put it in the category of not-wanting-to-contribute-to-an-economic-mess.

It’s a bitter/sweet story if ever there was one.

Had we all reported with gusto the planned strike, virtually every foreigner booked into Tanzania this season would have asked to book out of it (into Kenya, instead, for instance). We know the way travelers behave when an airline strike is announced.

And because of the terrible economic downturn that laid off more than half the steady, experienced driver/guide work force in 2008/2009, we all knew that if a strike were called, that there would have been no difficulty finding good replacements. Scabs are everywhere.

So… we all knew that if a strike were called, we could genuinely remark to our clients that it wouldn’t matter, or for all practical purposes, wouldn’t effect them.

While putting our good guys out of work… maybe, forever.

Tanzanian Driver/Guide Joyful
So… we all knew that had we reported a strike, the dismal state that good Tanzanian driver/guides find themselves in today, would have become horribly worse.

It was – unfortunately, bitter-sweetly – a hollow threat. And.. That’s really too bad.

An unofficial “union” of safari driver/guides in Tanzania claims to – and probably really does – represent around 3000 men. This is likely around half to 60% of the steady workforce. It’s hard to know for sure, because only a handful of those thousands are permanently employed.

An East African driver/guide is usually paid by the job, or by the month providing there are a minimum number of jobs, and this has especially been the case since the economic downturn. There is a great variance in salaries, but I think a good guess of an average amount is about $200/month.

That barely reaches what’s considered minimum wage in East Africa, but the fact is that driver/guides are among the richest employees in East Africa because of their tips. A driver/guide who works 20 days can easily earn another $400-800 per month. (A recommended tip is about $10/client/day, although Americans often tip much more and Europeans much less.)

A good, steadily working driver/guide can easily pull in $6000/year. An outstanding guy can make double that and usually the worst of them make $2500. Compare that to a starting employee at the front desk of a major hotel in a city who makes around $500/month. Or a senior marketing (10 years + ) sales person in tourism who mans a foreign trade booth and makes around $1200/month.

So … it’s a good job. AND it’s an essential job for tourism.

There is a change occurring, now, in East Africa which is sidelining driver/guides. Like southern Africa there is a definite trend away from hiring a vehicle to drive you from park to park, to flying from camp to camp. I definitely don’t prefer this because I think a visitor loses a lot when they don’t experience the countryside between the sanitized, westernized game park camps.

And besides, East Africa lends itself to driving much better than southern Africa: the parks are much closer together than in southern Africa.

But the trend is there, in part because of the growing antipathy of foreign visitors with enough affluence to afford a Crater Lodge to driving over a pot-holed road next to open sewers. Nevertheless, this trend is not excessive. Driving in East Africa is here to stay as the main component of a safari for the foreseeable future.

Tanzanian Driver/Guide Winston
And the guys know it. They know that they are the reason a given trip is successful or not. There is a huge variance in how much these guys know : some are Ph.Ds, some are experts in plants others animals, some seem to know everything, almost all of them can fix a blown engine with a toothpick.

But their common denominator is an incredible affability that in a meaningful way introduces the foreigner to Africa. They become a traveling companion, not just a casual guide.

But this dynamic, strangely, has never included allowing the driver/guide into the same accommodation culture of their foreign guests.

The guest spends the whole day with the driver/guide, but after returned to the lodge for meals and overnight, they part ways. Driver/guides eat and sleep separately.

And only very recently have lodges and camps even agreed to be paid for driver/guides at the same rate as clients so that they can be with them in lodges and camps!

Yes! Isn’t that amazing? And this was true more often of the better lodges and camps than the more mainline ones. When we tried to enroll an East African driver/guide as a paid guest, we would simply be ignored. The invoice would be reduced, and only western names would be confirmed into the property’s tourist facilities.

That’s changing, but very, very slowly. This is racism at the core, both ideologically and geographically!

And to complicate matters, many driver/guides don’t want to sleep and eat with their clients. There’s two reasons for this:

First, it’s a relief to be extracted from a 24/7 job and given some down time with your buddies. But more importantly, they know the huge difference in costs. At &Beyond’s Crater Lodge in Tanzania, a retail guest pays $1065 per night while his driver/guide pays around $20.

And at Crater Lodge driver/guides get decent, clean accommodation and excellent meals for that $20. Understandably, if the cost of the safari increases by $1045 for that one night so that the driver/guide can have linen instead of paper napkins and two pillows instead of one, they would much rather get a bigger tip or be paid more. They need money for school fees for their kids, not chocolate mints on their turned-down pillows.

So, in fact, when I’ve tried to bring some of our own best driver/guides into the lodge experience, I’ve encountered huge resistance from them…. understandably. “Pay me more,” instead is the message.

So in a bitter-sweet way the separation of your most important safari component from you is now institutionalized in East Africa. So be it?

Well, not necessarily. Not when the accommodations are as horrible as some have become recently. There is a definite list in my head of the property companies who either never did provide decent accommodation, or that provided no maintenance to what existed before the economic downturn.

Some of the most egregious negligence is with mosquito netting. Those of us who live in East Africa don’t take malaria prophylaxis; over long periods it’s toxic. We rely on physical protection, like mosquito netting and bug spray.

Mosquito netting is about as durable as butter left out on a summer’s day. It easily gets holes, loses its tensile strength and opens up huge gaps. We travel with scotch tape and bug spray, usually, but sometimes the spray is very expensive and the holes too big.

Over the last few years, a number of property companies have been consolidating the bathrooms and showers available in the driver/guide dorm rooms. It isn’t that the existing 4 men/shower average changed – the buildings weren’t rebuilt – it’s just that when a shower or toilet broke, it wasn’t fixed.

As properties tried to manage the downturn, their food stores were one of the disposables that could be reduced. Driver/guides now seem to get the leftovers, rather than the meals planned specifically for them.

So it was no surprise in January that the “union” announced it would strike. And it was no surprise last week when the “union” announced it wouldn’t strike.

Has anything changed?

No.

EWT Tanzanian Driver/Guides Adam, Dixon and Tumaini.

The Left Way in East Africa

The Left Way in East Africa

Kenya's House Speaker Kenneth Marende with US Congressman David Price.
In a huge and welcome change from past American policy, eight U.S. Congressmen are in Kenya to promote democracy. “Change,” I said? Absolutely!

Until the Obama administration, America’s promoting democracy in the Third World was something akin to my own dear old-style Chicago politics. You tell them what to do, and if they don’t, you shoot.

My own grandfather, a “died in the wool” Chicago Republican, stopped voting after he had been told at the voting registration table for the Eisenhower election in 1954 that he was dead.

His named had been removed from the voter registration lists to the corner’s, (presumably in a wool suite in a sealed coffin. At least he lived another ten years.)

The Reagan era was an intensely ideological one, and it was during that time that a “democracy officer” was attached to every American embassy in the world. In East Africa the officer was intensely hated. He meddled in everything, often trumping senior embassy staff because of his unique title.

And rather than promoting democracy, this officer’s function was punitive. When he/she saw something in the country that was undemocratic, local officials were given a tongue lashing, then a lecture, and finally aid was withdrawn.

Not exactly the best way to promote an ideology, if you ask me.

And it wasn’t. There was a terrible backlash that led to young people in particular concluding that democracy wasn’t. Rioting by students in both Nairobi and Kampala were several times linked to anti-American sentiments about meddling in their country’s politics.

Authoritarian leaders like Uganda’s Museveni and Rwanda’s Kagame seemed to fair much better than the outspoken politicians of Kenya and Tanzania.

Well, thank goodness, Obama has changed that. There is still a democracy officer, but much demurred, and hopefully soon to be retired. And instead of some School Mum approach in high Chicago Style, we’re now treating the Third World with respect.

Eight Congressmen led by David Price (D-NC) are in Nairobi to encourage democracy, and specifically, to encourage debate on the upcoming constitutional referendum.

The delegation is the “House Democracy Partnership” newly reconfigured in January, 2009, to reflect the new approaches of the Obama Administration.

Rather than lecturing local officials, local officials are invited to the U.S. Congress to shadow their counterparts. The Kenyan Speaker of the House has already enjoyed this junket.

Rather than telling a country how to run an election (as we did in Kenya’s failed 2007 process), USAid funds neutral components of an election, such as the voter registration process. Or – in the current constitutional referendum – a publicity campaign that does little more than tell people when the election is.

Compare this to the Bush Administration’s failed efforts to effect the outcome of elections throughout East Africa with funds supporting the candidate they felt was “more democratic.”

This is definitely a softer approach. Some might argue it could backfire.

Like in Afghanistan?