HE IS COMING

Published on 10th April

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran will arrive in Accra  on April 16, 2013 for what is described as a state visit.

The Iranian leader is currently the head of the non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and his visit is expected to focus attention on development issues in the third world.

President Ahmadinejad is a strong advocate of a new and fair international economic order and has always been opposed to the hegemony of the so-called big powers.

He is also a strong supporter of the struggles of the people of Palestine for national independence and against racist exploitation.

 Throughout his presidency, President Ahmadinejad has worked diligently for the unity of the peoples of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

In this effort he has emphasized the imperative of religious tolerance and for people of different faith to work together to banish poverty and ignorance.

Iran has expanded its friendship and co-operation with Ghana in the fields of education, health and agriculture.

It sponsored the establishment of the Islamic University in Accra and has also built the Iran clinic which is providing medical services to the needy irrespective of their religious or ideological orientation.

 Iran is also working with Ghana’s  Ministry of Agriculture to promote healthy practices in crop cultivation. 

Whiles in the country, President Ahmadinejad is expected to hold talks with President John Dramani Mahama and address a mass public meeting at the Islamic University.

 A number of protocols on future co-operation would also be concluded to the mutual benefit of the two countries.

President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana

 Details of these protocols have not been made public yet but insiders say they would cover areas such as trade, Industry, Agriculture,  Health and Education.

The biggest hindrance to cooperation with Iran has been the unjustifiable sanctions imposed on the country by the United States of America and its allies.

The sanctions have made it impossible for third world continues to benefit substantially from the achievements of Iran.

Iran has achieved the technological feat which enables her to manufacture all the equipments she needs for agriculture. She manufactures her own aircrafts and ships and she is producing different types of vehicles. She also produces more than 90 per cent of the weapons needed for national defense and heathcare delivery.

The West claims that the sanctions have been imposed to stop Iran from producing nuclear weapons. The truth however is that there is no evidence to support this claim.

Indeed Iran has said repeatedly that she has no intention of producing nuclear weapons especially as the production of such weapons will be an affront to the teachings of Islam.

Western hypocrisy is laid bare when one considers the fact that Israel has publicly declared that it has nuclear weapons. Israel has also refused to sign on to nuclear non-proliferation treaties to which Iran is a signatory.

One my ask, why has the West not imposed sanctions on Israel which openly flaunts its racist polices and threatens to attack its neibours?

The answer is clear. The West considers Iran as a threat not because of her capacity to make nuclear weapons but because the success of the Islamic Republic shows the rest of the world that it is possible to break free of the tentacles of imperialism and still make progress.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was born on October 28 1956 and is the sixth and current President of Iran. He is the political leader of the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran, a coalition of conservative political groups in the country.

 He is an engineer and started off as a teacher from a humble home. He was born near Garmsar in the village of Aradan in the Semnan Province.

His father, Ahmed was an iron worker, grocer, barber, blacksmith and a shia who taught the Onran His mother, Khanom was a Siyanda. 

 

President Ahmadinejad was Mayor of Tehran and is credited with the improvement of the traffic system in the city.

In 2005, Ahmadinejad won the presidential election by 62 per cent in the run-off poll against Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. 

EDITORIAL

POLICE PROMOTIONS

The new police administration has a lot to do to boost morale in the service and maximize the security of citizens.

The government appears to have done its part by substantially increasing the pay of police officers and providing much needed equipment including vehicles.

Currently, many police officers who have improved their academic qualification have still not been promoted.

Some of these police officers remain as corporals and sergeants even though they have obtained university education.

The excuse that some of them undertook their courses privately is not acceptable.

In our view the police administration ought to do the right thing by ensuring that all those who qualify for promotion are upgraded .

Police personnel have a right to promotion and they cannot and should not be denied this right.

 The Insight urges the police administration to act promptly on these promotions.

POLISARIO

SFG Convenor Kyeretwie Opoku

The Socialist Forum of Ghana (SFG) will observe the 40th  anniversary of POLISARIO, he national Liberation movement of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) today.

The event comes on at the Freedom Centre, Kokomlemle, Accra at 6.00pm.

The Ambassador of the SADR will be the special Guest of honour and Ambassadors from progressive countries have been invited to participate.

All Nkrumaists and progressives have also been invited to take part in the event.

It will feature the showing of a short documentary on the situation in Western Sahara, Africa’s last colony and a talk by the Ambassador of the SADR.

Those expected to participate in the event include, Mr Akoto Ampaw, a lawyer, Professor Kwame Karikari,  of the Media Foundation for West Africa  and Comrade Kyeretwie Opoku , convener of the Socialist Forum of Ghana .

The POLISARIO is currently struggling against Moroccan colonial occupation.

WESTERN SAHARA OCCUPIED AFRICAN RE-COLONISED

 

Map of Western Sahara before Moroccan Occupation

Malainin Lakhal argues that it is ‘a subject that should concern all Africans, and all actors who know that Africa can never rise up as a Union or as a future power unless it jointly struggles for its freedom from poverty, ignorance, re-colonisation, foreign exploitation, internal rivalry, and lack of communication between all its peoples and elite.’

The conflict in Western Sahara seems to gain more and more visibility and importance in the regional and international geopolitics this last decade, despite the great lack of media coverage and academic analysis of its different facts, aspects, possible consequences and perspectives. It is thanks to some brilliant academics, jurists, human rights defenders, activists and journalists, both foreign and Saharawi that the question of Western Sahara has remained impossible to ignore whenever the debate tackles the future of North Africa, the Maghreb Union, the North-South and South-South interrelations and influence.

 This clear-cut and easily identified conflict is about decolonisation in terms of international law. It is brought to the spotlight by the contributors in this Pambazuka special issue on Western Sahara. They have proven each in his or her own way how the Western Sahara conflict is made complicated by the opposite positions held by the two parties to the conflict, Polisario and Morocco. The former wants decolonisation and self-determination, the latter wants territorial expansion by military means. But also by the conflicting geo-political agendas of the regional actors and the super power nations who have their own agendas and strategic goals, not only regarding their position on Western Sahara, but also their vision of the future of all North Africa, African Union and the Middle East.

  

THE LAST COLONY OF AFRICA MUST BE FREE

 The objective of this second special issue on the conflict of Western Sahara is not the result of a simple opportunity to cover one of the hottest conflicts on the modern political arena. It is rather a well thought-out and carefully discussed step towards communicating to readers some of the international legal facts, political theory debates, and on-the-ground realities relating to the last colony in Africa. It is thus a subject that should concern all Africans, and all actors who know that Africa can never rise up as a Union or as a future power unless it jointly struggles for its freedom from poverty, ignorance, re-colonisation, foreign exploitation, internal rivalry, and lack of communication between all its peoples and elite. Africa needs to build its model for the future on the basis of a conscious awareness about the huge potential it has, and above all its human resources.

Western Sahara President Mohammed AbdelAziz

This second special issue presents new aspects and discussions of the conflict in Western Sahara. It cannot of course cover everything, but it offers a lot of interesting questions, ideas and facts to those who would like to know better what is at stake in the region. What is at stake is that the international legal order seems to be so easily violated and purposely manipulated by certain international actors, especially Morocco. Morocco could not continue its illegal occupation of Western Sahara and defy more than 100 United Nations resolutions unless it had a mysterious green light from Uncle Paris, and an even more mysterious complicity from other countries such as the US. But above all a criminal and immoral support from multinationals and international trade that does not care about the violation of the Saharawi people's right over their own natural resources. Readers can read this history of the Western Sahara conflict in the article submitted by Aluat Hamudi, a Saharawi Master’s student. 

EXAMINING COMPLEX ISSUES

So what is at stake is momentous. Are Africans aware of it? This is another question. But what is certain is that the persistence of the occupation of Western Sahara, the violations of Saharawi people's political, economic, social and cultural Rights, the exploitative plundering of their natural resources and the persistent pressures exercised directly or indirectly over them during the last 40 years is only maintaining a very dangerous situation that can explode at any time, especially in a region that is far from stable. Dr Jacob Mundy contributes again by writing about the security issues across the Sahara-Sahel region, as part of a wider debate about Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara also a factor of regional instability. Dr Sidi Omar, a Saharawi colleague writes of the involvement of the African Union in the Western Sahara story, and of the factors that should rather convince the parties to reach a peaceful and fair solution so as to make this region one of the main assets of the Maghreb and African Union.

 The articles collected in this edition cover many issues but our main theme focuses on the legal issues of the conflict and the status of Morocco in Western Sahara. The article by Pedro Pinto Leite and Jeffrey J. Smith offers a new insight in their detailed examination that questions technical legal theory on self-determination processes and the United Nations. Katlyn Thomas has provided us with her October 2012 Testimony to the Special Political and Decolonisation Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, alongside which we also provide the web link to the United Nations Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York June 2012 full report on the legal issues involved and the principle of self-determination. 

Western Sahara Resource Watch provides an update on an imminent vote in the European Union regarding the importance of protecting Western Sahara’s natural resources, another key issue in the persistence of illegal occupation. It was thus impossible to prepare this second issue without a special focus on this key topic of the Moroccan and European illegal exploitation of the natural resources of this territory, but also a chance to listen to the stories that Saharawi activists and fishermen on the ground, such as Khalil Asmar and Mohammed El Baykam, sent us. 

 The Saharawi women and the unique experience of the Saharawi refugees in the process of the efforts of nation-state building is another aspect that is seldom discussed. The few studies on this subject were almost all done by wonderful women from many countries who were able to visit these camps and see first-hand how they function, such as Dr Alice Wilson’s introduction to the Saharawi direct democracy experiment based on her PhD research, and Sonia Rossetti’s PhD research on Saharawi women’s involvement in state building. 

Joining them are four Saharawi women, Fatimetu, Senia, Asria and Agaila, all students and who illuminate the thoughts and experiences of being refugee youth caught up in exile from their homeland. We hope this serves to show how the Saharawi woman is a pillar in the building of the modern experience of Saharawi society.

A Western Saharan Refugee Camp

VIOLATING THE RIGHTS OF A PEOPLE

The phenomenon of the massive and systematic violations of human rights in Western Sahara is another major aspect treated in this issue. It is a phenomenon because it is strikingly obvious that the Moroccan authorities of occupation are blatantly violating all internationally recognized rights, freedoms and liberties in this colony, while the international community seems to be wilfully turning a blind eye on this fact.

All international human rights organizations, without a single exception, including the UN High Office of Human rights in addition to governments, parliaments, political parties, trade unions and civil society actors, have been denouncing the many human rights violations committed against Saharawi civilians in the occupied zones of Western Sahara. 

Konstantina Isidoros has provided a summary about the 17 February 2013 news of the Moroccan military tribunal of 25 Saharawi human rights activists and provides readers with links to the world-wide campaign groups who have spoken against the military sentencing of civilians. 

 Yet in the 40 years since Morocco’s illegal invasion of Western Sahara, the UN Security Council seems to be unable to adopt a simple resolution to mandate the UN peacekeeping mission (MINURSO) in the territory to monitor and protect Saharawi civilians from the Moroccan oppression and humiliation. 

MINURSO is in fact the only UN peacekeeping mission in the world without a Human Rights component and this is ‘thanks’ to the French refusal in the UN Security Council to allow such a decision to be taken. Both the UK based Western Sahara Campaign and Vivian Solana (also a PhD researcher) share their updates with us on this imminent renewal of the MINURSO mandate, and Salah Mohammed provides an insight of what happened when Christopher Ross, the UN special envoy, came for the first time to El Aaiun in Western Sahara in early November 2012.

  

THE CULTURAL DIMENSION TO STRUGGLE

 Another astonishing factor that can help readers, as Africans, to link with the Saharawi people and self-determination struggle is the history of Saharawi culture, which is ethnically a mixture of Arabs, Berbers and Africans. So too is Saharawi music deeply rooted in both African and Arab-Berber traditions. 

A Saharawi Woman and two children

 We are grateful to Danielle Smith and Violeta Ruano from the UK based arts and human rights charity, Sandblast, for providing us with the visual colour, culture and music of the Saharawi, which we weave through this very international law-themed second issue. 

Danielle’s article illuminates how Sandblast has set up a music project in the refugee camps and Violeta shares her PhD research on Saharawi music’s role in our independence struggle. In contrast, Saharawi journalist and activist, Said Zeroual and RuGaibi Abdullah Mohammed Sheikh, have written how Saharawi under Moroccan military occupation feel about the theft of their culture and history, which is another important issue about our cultural heritage.

 Finally, this Pambazuka second issue on Western Sahara offers valuable information about new books and films on our as yet un-decolonised African nation. Anthony Pazzanita, a long-time Western Sahara observer and current editor of the ‘Historical Dictionary of Western Sahara’, joins us again by sharing his forthcoming book review of ‘Western Sahara: The Refugee Nation’ by Pablo San Martín, another academic researcher who lived in the refugee camps. 

Throughout the special issue, we have posted links to the a range of films and documentaries from which readers can further discover how the Saharawi are trying to use the tools of non-violent protests and freedom of speech to continue to resist the occupier, despite facing enormous pressures, oppression and violence.

Nigeria: A Declining Regional Power?

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan

 By Lord Aikins Adusei

Undoubtedly Nigeria is the only regional power in West Africa. Its economy of US$337.9 billion (2010 estimate) is the biggest in West Africa and second in Africa after South Africa. 

Her more than 150 million people, over 36 billion barrels of untapped crude oil and huge deposit of natural gas estimated to be about 120 trillion cubic feet (tcf) or about 3% of the world's total make Nigeria a key strategic economic power. 

With a defense budget of about US$2.2 billion (348 billion naira-2011 budget) and a total active manpower of more than 80,000 soldiers, Nigeria's military is not only the biggest and best funded in West Africa but also the most powerful in the sub-region.

In the 1990s, the country's pivotal role in ending the brutal and bloody civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone that killed hundreds of thousands of people won her approbation regionally and beyond.

A declining regional power?

However, many who have watched Nigeria since the late-1990s are feeling uneasy about her declining status. The 2012 Mo Ibrahim Index of good governance ranked the country 13 out of 15 best governed countries in West Africa and 43 out of 52 in Africa. In the West African sub-region, only Guinea Bissau and Ivory Coast have the worst governance situation than Nigeria. In the last six years, the annual Failed States Index jointly published by the Fund for Peace and the Foreign Policy magazine has consistently named Nigeria among the top 20 most failed states on the planet alongside Somalia, DR Congo, Sudan, Chad, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Haiti, Yemen, Iraq, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Pakistan. Bad governance, poverty, insecurity and underdevelopment continue to inflict serious damages on the country's forward march.

Map of Nigeria

In the ongoing war in Mali, Nigeria has been missing in action. Although President Goodluck Jonathan pledged the largest troop numbers as part of the ECOWAS multinational force, Nigeria could not mobilize its military capabilities and assets or that of ECOWAS' countries to lead the assault against Tuareg and Al Qaeda fighters. France, a regional great power (not a global power) sitting thousands of kilometers in Europe demonstrated that it is still a force when it comes to African affairs. In less than 30 days, French forces succeeded not only in halting the militants' advance to Bamako but successfully pushed them out of the cities and towns they had occupied for nearly a year.

As France's hi-tech rafale fighter jets and helicopter gunships bombed and drove the militants out of their hideouts in northern Mali, Malian women and children in Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu in appreciation of the French effort began singing praises to France, describing French soldiers as agents of God and mocking Nigeria, and other ECOWAS states for their ineffective leadership and dithering. On January 27 this year, Yayi Boni, Africa Union chairman and president of Benin Republic, indicted the Africa Union, his own leadership and that of Nigeria, the regional power. He praised France for her timely leadership role and military intervention, saying this is what "we should have done a long time ago to defend a member country."

Nigeria's poor show in the ongoing crisis in Mali is nothing new. During the 2011 post-election violence in Ivory Coast which saw another intervention by France, Nigeria's leadership was conspicuously missing. Though Nigeria supported military action against Gbagbo, it could not translate the rhetoric into effective action.

In the Gulf of Guinea for example, West Africa criminal gangs, Asia and South American drug cartels, European and Asian fishing and chemical companies and Al Qaeda backed militants are slowly turning the region into a haven for international narcotics and human trafficking, weapons proliferation, terrorism, maritime piracy, cyber fraud, illegal fishing, dumping ground for industrial waste, and other transnational criminal activities. Nigeria's ostrich approach to these problems has been uncharacteristic of a regional power.

In fact many of the pirates' attacks against oil tankers and cargo ships have emanated from within Nigeria itself. Last month, January 16, 2013, pirates seized a Nigerian-owned cargo ship in Abidjan and successfully carried away the 5000 tons of oil it was carrying worth $5 million. On Sunday (February, 3, 2013) a French-owned tanker was seized in the same Abidjan area by Nigeria pirates. Commenting on the seizure of ships in Abidjan, Noel Choong who heads the Piracy Reporting office of the Malaysian based International Maritime Bureau noted that: It appears that the Nigerian pirates are spreading. All of these vessels were tankers carrying gas oil. They are all taken back to Nigeria to siphon off the oil, and then the crews are freed. According to Timothy Walker of the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, South Africa, in 2011 a total of 49 pirates' attacks were recorded in the Gulf of Guinea. This increased to 58 in 2012. The increase in piracy in the Gulf of Guinea is indicative of how the internal security challenges in Nigeria are undermining regional security and stability which in turn is providing the criminals with ammunitions to expend.

In northern Nigeria, more than 1500 people have died since the uprising by the Boko Haram terror group began in 2009. In fact, a large part of northern Nigeria is technically under the control of Boko Haram and Ansaru which continue to terrorize citizens and foreign workers with impunity. In the middle belt and in the Niger Delta region, armed robbers, kidnapers, hostage-takers, oil smugglers, communal, ethnic and tribal conflict and tension continue to make life difficult for millions of people and businesses. The December 2012 kidnapping of the mother of Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the February 2013 kidnapping of seven foreigners working for a Lebanese firm in addition to seven French citizens kidnapped in Cameroon and brought to Nigeria indicate how Nigeria's internal security challenges are undermining its status as a regional bulwark and how its weakness and fragility is affecting the security of her neighbors.

The use of smart weapons by France and its victory over the rebels illustrate the need for Nigeria to have the weapons that will enable her to achieve air superiority and establish herself as West Africa's true naval power. The 2012 publication of Nigeria's military assets by the Military Technology journal offers a glimpse as to why the armed forces have not been able to bring stability to the country and the region.

 It shows that Nigeria’s Navy does not have a single submarine to beef up its coastal defenses and police the crime infested waters of West Africa. The authors observed that many ships are in very poor conditions due to lack of maintenance. They further add that for the air force, the serviceability of most of the aircraft is very low, and many airpanes are stored in non-flyable conditions while others have been effectively abandoned due to lack of maintenance. The non-serviceability of most of the country's planes partly underscores why Nigeria cannot project power in the region and explains why Germany and Britain had to step in to volunteer to transport ECOWAS forces to Mali.

Among the global power elite, policy-makers and scholars, Nigeria's decline is a worrying problem. This is because in a rough neighborhood and conflict ridden environment like that of West Africa, there is always the need for a regional power to maintain stability. But with Nigeria's inability to maintain security and stability both at home and in the region and with no viable candidate in the region to replace her, the future stability, security, peace and development of Nigeria and the region is in doubt. In fact Robert D. Kaplan's prediction of a coming anarchy in the region may not be far from reality.

Consequences of the decline

Due to Nigeria's inability to solve its internal problems or provide leadership in the sub region, the political and economic integration of ECOWAS as a regional block has stalled. This becomes clearer when ECOWAS is compared with other regional groupings such as ASEAN, SADC, and the EU, and the key role individual regional powers are playing in them. For example, the SADC region is considered the most progressive region in Africa courtesy of South Africa. South Africa is frequently cited as a rising power with substantial growing economic, political, diplomatic and military power.

South Africa is providing leadership, mobilizing, organizing and building coalitions on key regional issues with the countries in SADC. South Africa is counted among global elite groups such as G20, BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, and China) and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) with influence and power to reshape the current global development. Meanwhile Nigeria continues to find herself in the club of G77.

Nigeria's decline has also led to greater instability and insecurity in the sub region as can be seen in Ivory Coast, Mali, Guinea and a narco state of Guinea Bissau. A power vacuum has been created which is increasingly being filled by criminal gangs and hegemonic external powers notably France, the United States and Britain. As I write Mali's future is being decided in Brussels far away from Nigeria the regional power. If the power vacuum continues, it will have strategic consequences not only for Nigeria but also for the entire region.

Reviving Nigeria

What can be done to turn Nigeria around? First, the Nigerian state must recognize that its decline is self inflicted even if external forces and events have played a role in it. At the heart of the problem is the neo-patrimonial power system that serves only the interest of the few and which has led to what Patrick Chabal of Kings College-London has termed elite enrichment without development. The elite capture politics with its concomitant by-product of extreme poverty, inequality, conflict, terrorism, armed robbery, kidnapping, violence, cyber fraud and corruption ought to be dismantled.

How can such a system be dismantled? This could come in a form of a very broad comprehensive reform to be carried out in all the institutions and sectors of the state: from the security establishment, presidency, judiciary, legislature, civil service, to the private sector. The reform should aim at not only undoing the opportunistic manipulation, neo-patrimonial and vertical power structures that have been constructed by the political elite but also allowing for a more active role by the civil society and the marginalized citizens to ensure greater democratic accountability, good governance, human security, and inclusive development in the country.

Who will carry out the reform and how? With so many entrenched interests in the country, it is difficult to think about reform from the top. A reform engineered from the bottom up by the civil society cum the masses might be the only viable option available to kickstart the change badly needed to revitalize the country.

Nigeria's power holders need to realize that the country's position in the world is dependent on what it does first at home, second in West Africa and third in Africa. What it does at home ought to rescue it from the grips of the few home-grown oligarchs and external parasites that have since independence being milking it, paralyzing it and preventing it from strongly playing its role as a true regional power. Any delay in carrying out a reform will not only make the 'paper tiger' and 'sleeping giant' stories that have long been associated with the country a reality but will also make the nose-diving decline of the country very hard to reverse.

Source:Ocnus.net 2013

Even in death, Venezuelans still putting their faith in Hugo Chávez

Chavez lives in the heart of Venezuelans

The stalls along the Callejón de los Santeros are an emporium of religious knick-knacks, offering everything from votive candles and good-luck Buddhas to magic soaps that wash away curses.

But in recent weeks the most sought-after article in this bustling alleyway near the main Caracas market has been a small plaster figurine in a red paratrooper beret.

Since the death of Hugo Chavez on 5 March, statuettes of the late president have been selling out as soon as they arrive, according to one stallholder, Benito. "People are praying to him at their altars," he explains.

Though predominantly a Catholic country, Venezuela is also home to the "María Lionza" cult, a syncretic faith whose devotees believe that spirits of the dead can communicate through mediums. The spirits are grouped in pantheons – cortes – according to what they did in life: a medical court for doctors, a patriotic court for national heroes, and even a thug court for "reformed" criminals. All these saints can give advice or grant favours in return for prayers and offerings.

And many Venezuelans still grieving the loss of their comandante believe that Chávez has already taken his place among the venerated. "He gave himself to his people, body and soul. He would hug the ill, the elderly. He would help everyone and anyone. For him nothing was impossible, and that's what makes him a saint," says Mercedes Aquino, a nurse and maría lioncera.

In the 14 years of his rule Chávez made the wishes of countless Venezuelans come true, granting them houses, pensions and even restoring sight to the blind with a series of government-run social programmes, known as misiones.

 

Opposition activists criticised such schemes as unsustainable handouts or crude exercises in vote-buying. But to the destitute the misiones were nothing short of a miracle. Small wonder, then, that many should expect the miracles to continue after Chávez's death.

In 23 de Enero neighbourhood, a tiny chapel emblazoned with the words "Sánto Hugo Chávez" was recently built to honour the late president.

The wood and tin structure is fast becoming a site of pilgrimage for supporters still trying to come to grips with the loss of their leader. "Everything he did was good. We will always honour his teachings and his decision to name Maduro," says Elizabeth Torres, 48, the chapel's custodian.

Chávez's political heirs have helped spread the pseudo-religious aura around the president: on the first official day of campaigning for this month's election the interim president, Nicolás Maduro, said on Tuesday that Chávez had appeared to him in the form of a bird, and blessed his campaign. Previously, Maduro said Chávez may have posthumously influenced the election of the first Latin American pope, while Venezuela's ambassador to Italy told reporters he had held a "mental communication" with the late leader. Chávez has been dubbed "the Jesus of the poor" and the "second Bolívar" after the 19th-century independence hero Simón Bolívar, whose ideals are said to have inspired his political programme. Chávez supporters are campaigning to have him buried alongside Bolívar in the National Pantheon.

The Venezuelan constitution says 25 years must pass before someone can be put in the pantheon, but Luisa Morales, the president of the supreme court, recently hinted Chávez could be fast-tracked. For that to happen the constitution would have to be amended. However, celestial laws are not as malleable: according to the María Lionza cosmogony, it takes at least 15 years for a spirit to fully transcend the material world.

 "Chávez is all the rage now," says Santiago Rondón, a medium who claims to hold frequent and lengthy chats with Bolívar, "but he still needs to pay his dues. You can't expect to enter that world ahead of time. That might be true here [on earth] where they can change the constitution, but not in heaven."

The strength of Chávez's personality – and the devotion of his supporters – may be enough to secure the late president a place in one of the spirit courts, says Rondon. Most probably Chávez – an ex-paratrooper – would join Bolívar in the patriotic court, whose members include prominent generals and heroes of the fight against Spain, he believes. 

But his presence may cause friction, Rondon warns. In 2010 Chávez ordered the exhumation of Bolívar's bones in the hope of confirming his theory that "the Liberator" was poisoned by Colombian oligarchs. DNA tests proved inconclusive, and most historians believe Bolívar died of tuberculosis.

Please, pardon President Jonathan

By Chido Onumah

Nigerians are justifiably outraged at the pardon of Diepreye Solomon Peter Alamieyeseigha, ex-governor of Bayelsa State. Alamieyeseigha was governor from May 1999 until December 2005, three months after he was detained in London on charges of money laundering. President Jonathan had served under Mr.  Alamieyeseigha as deputy governor. 

Instructively, in August 2005, a month before his arrest, Alamieyeseigha delivered a message, through his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, at a seminar in Abuja on “Winning the War against Corruption”. The self-styled Governor General of the Ijaw nation “commended government's stride with the establishment of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Code of Conduct Bureau, and urged the bodies not to ignore the private sector”. 

According to Alamieyeseigha who called for those with criminal records to be barred from elective office, “It is only in Nigeria where people who looted banks to a distress situation are allowed to use such loots to open their own banks or are given high political appointment". Alamieyeseigha’s paper titled: “Corruption Reduction Through Government Policies: The Bayelsa Experience”, highlighted “the various mechanism put in place by the state government to check corruption as it was inimical to national growth and development and as such, must be abhorred by all and sundry”.

By the time Alamieyeseigha was arrested a month later in London, it was reported that the Metropolitan Police found about £1m in cash in his London home and later a total of £1.8m in cash and bank accounts. Alamieyeseigha jumped bail in December 2005 from the United Kingdom by allegedly disguising himself as a woman. He had hoped to continue in office as governor.  Even though that hope did not materialise, it was a good judgement call. Remaining in the UK would have been calamitous. Today, we know why. 

Dipreye Solomon Alamieyeseigha

 On July 26, 2007, the fugitive governor pled guilty to six charges of making false declaration of assets and 23 charges of money laundering by his companies. He was sentenced to two years in prison. The following day, July 27, just hours after being taken to prison, he walked home a free man. In our convoluted justice system, the period he spent in detention had served to compensate for the prison sentence. 

Reuben Abati, then chair of the editorial board of The Guardian and now presidential town crier had this to say about Alamieyeseigha in a 2005 piece titled, “Alami should go: It's over”: “By running away from England under the cover of the night, away from the British judiciary which was probing him on charges of money laundering, by taking evasive action from the law and communicating with his feet, Alamiyeseigha, a man who until now was known and addressed as His Excellency, has shown himself to be a dishonourable fellow, unfit to rule, unfit to sit among men and women of honour and integrity, unfit to preach to the people that he leads about ideals and values...

“As for those persons who have been packaging Alami as a victim and who have been mouthing the asinine line: ‘If Ijaw man thief Ijaw money, wetin concern Tony Blair inside’, may the good Lord forgive them for they do not know what they are saying. All Ijaw must feel embarrassed for this is a difficult moment for them as a nation. They are being blackmailed emotionally to defend not a principled fighter, not a spirit of Ijawland, but an Ijaw leader who danced naked in a foreign land. The questions that would be asked are: what do Ijaws stand for? Where is the ancient and modern glory of the Ijaw nation? These are difficult questions. Alami must save his own people the embarrassment by stepping aside. Let him return to England and act like an honourable man”.

Eight years later, nothing has changed, except that an Ijaw man is now President and Commander-in-Chief. “His Excellency, the (former) executive fugitive of Bayelsa State”, as Abati once described Alamiyeseigha remains a “dishonourable fellow, unfit to rule, unfit to sit among men and women of honour and integrity, unfit to preach to the people that he leads about ideals and values”. What a difference eight years make. Today, thanks to his pardon, Alamiyeseigha is now “fit to rule, fit to sit among men and women of honour and integrity, fit to preach to the people that he leads about ideals and values”.

Astonishingly, it is now Abati’s job to repackage “Alami” as a victim and condemn those who accuse him of being an ex-convict and a danger to society. May the good Lord forgive all the idle Nigerians who are not only exhibiting “sophisticated ignorance”, but want to destroy an Ijaw man for pardoning another Ijaw man for stealing money belonging to Ijaws for they do not know what they are saying.

To understand Alamieyeseigha’s pardon is to understand the character of the Nigerian state. There is no case to make for his pardon other than to say it is what the doctors ordered. And by doctors, I do not mean the type our First Lady and sundry public officers scurry to in foreign lands. I refer to the ubiquitous marabouts and native doctors that have become an essential part of governance in Nigeria. 

They are the ones goading President Jonathan and have convinced him that to secure a second term, he must of necessity pardon the Governor General of the Ijaw nation.  That is the only way he can secure the support of the Ijaws. Evidently, in Nigeria leadership is not about performance. What is uppermost now is that President Jonathan, the first president from the oily Niger Delta, has to, by any means necessary, complete his two terms of four years as the constitution stipulates.  

A friend has likened President Jonathan’s dilemma, if we can call it that, to that of a managing director of a failed company who wants to remain MD even when his company is in the red. He will do whatever he thinks will help him keep his job, including cooking the books and satisfying every interest, no matter how vile.  Of course, President Jonathan is also a victim of the Nigerian tragedy.   Alamieyeseigha was set free many years ago when we had a certain Umaru Yar’Adua as president. The pardon on March 12, 2013, was just the icing on the cake. 

 I don’t think those who pardoned Alamieyeseigha thought or imagined that the tag “ex-convict” would ever leave him. Who cares really? Are we not witnesses to a senator wining election while on trial? A few days after his pardon, there were feelers signaling that Alamieyeseigha will run for senate in 2015. He doesn’t need to do anything to emerge the next senator representing his district. Like that other exemplar of perfidy in Akwa Ibom State, all the governor of Bayelsa State, Seriake Dickson, needs to do at the behest of the president, is to remove the name of the winner and replace it with Alamieyeseigha’s, if necessary, for his great service to Ijawland.  

Alamieyeseigha will be in good company when he joins the senate in 2015. For me, that is the really troubling part of his pardon and why we must continue the quest to restructure Nigeria. Like Tafa Balogun, the rogue former Inspector General of Police, Alamieyeseigha will no doubt make a case for the return of his property “confiscated” by the state.  

Alamieyeseigha believes he is entitled to be a senator and much more; after all, not many in the “hallowed” chamber can boast of a superior résumé. Ours is a system that survives on cronyism. Alamieyeseigha may emerge as senate president if he so desires. He may even return to Bayelsa State someday to complete his second term as governor.

The structure of our country makes this unwholesome atmosphere possible. That is why President Jonathan deserves our pardon for his latest political blunder! 

 

Tell Me How This Starts

By Patrick M. Cronin

Map of the Korean Peninsula

The Korean Peninsula is on a knife's edge, one fateful step from war. While Koreans are accustomed to periodic spikes in tensions, the risk of renewed hostilities appears higher than at any time in the past 60 years, when American, North Korean, and Chinese generals signed an armistice agreement. Far more than 1 million people died in the Korean War, with at least that many troops and civilians injured over the course of the three-year campaign.

The exact leadership dynamics at play in Pyongyang remain mysterious, but the domestic survival of the Kim family dynasty appears to hinge on maintaining a credible nuclear and missile threat -- backed up by a local great power, China. To achieve the former, Kim Jong Un appears willing to risk the latter. His regime's unrelenting verbal threats are intended to rally domestic support, and its reckless brinksmanship is aimed at forcing the outside world to back down and back off. 

In the past days and weeks -- adding to the tension created by its recent nuclear and missile tests -- Pyongyang has severed a hotline with Seoul, renounced the 1953 armistice, conducted cyberattacks, and, against its own financial interests, closed down the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which is the only economic thread holding together relations with the South. 

There is no single red line that, when crossed, would trigger war, but the potential for miscalculation and escalation is high. North Korea has a penchant for causing international incidents -- in 2010 alone it used a mini-submarine to sink the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan and shelled South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island.

A North Korean soldier

 The brazen and unprovoked killing of military personnel and civilians shocked many South Koreans, some of whom faulted then-President Lee Myung Bak for a tepid response. The new president, Park Geun Hye (South Korea's "Iron Lady") is determined not to echo that weakness and has vowed a strong response to any direct provocation.

 Meanwhile, the United States, via the annual Foal Eagle and Key Resolve exercises, has many troops, ships, and planes on maneuvers in the region and, as an additional show of resolve, flew long-range B-2 stealth bombers from Missouri to Korea and dispatched F-22 fighter jets as well. 

The desire to show strength, the fear of looking weak, and the presence of tons of hardware provides more than enough tinder that a spark could start a peninsula-wide conflagration. An accident -- such as a straying missile, an incident at sea or in the air, a shooting near the Northern Limit Line or the Demilitarized Zone -- could trigger an action-reaction cycle that could spiral out of control if Pyongyang, running out of threats or low-level provocations, were to gamble on a more daring move. 

It might calculate that a bold gesture would sow doubt and dissent in South Korea, drive a risk-averse United States to back down and restrain its eager ally, and hand China a fait accompli in which Beijing has no alternative to protecting its upstart neighbor. It might be very wrong. 

Let's say that the North decides to fire its new mobile KN-08 intermediate-range ballistic missile, capable of reaching U.S. bases in Guam. An X-band radar based in Japan detects the launch, cueing missile defenses aboard Japanese and U.S. ships. The U.S.S. Stetham, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer equipped with Aegis phased-array radars, fires its SM-3 missiles, which hit and shatter the KN-08 warhead as it begins its final descent. The successful intercept is immediately touted internationally as a victory, but, now desperate for tactical advantage that will allow it to preserve its nuclear and missile programs, the North Korean leadership orders an assault on South Korean patrol vessels and military fortifications built after the 2010 shelling incident.

The regime feels safe in striking out along the maritime boundary because the two sides have repeatedly skirmished in the area in the past 15 years. But President Park, determined to show backbone, dispatches on-alert F-15K fighter aircraft armed with AGM-84E SLAM-Expanded Response air-to-ground missiles to destroy the North Korean installations responsible for the latest assault. For good measure, they also bomb a North Korean mini-submarine pier as belated payback for the sinking of Cheonan. North Korean soldiers and military officers are killed in the attack.

A heavy North Korean missile on parade

Pyongyang vows a merciless response and launches a risky salvo of rockets into downtown Seoul, in hope of shocking the Blue House into seeking an immediate cessation of fighting. But far from ending the tit-for-tat attacks, North Korean actions have now triggered the Second Korean War. 

U.S. and ROK Combined Forces Command implements a pre-arranged plan -- perhaps using submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles and Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs dropped from a B-2 -- to eliminate North Korea's two major missile launch facilities: Tonghae in the northeast and Sohae in the northwest, both of which are fairly close to the Chinese border. North Korea responds with more rockets and Scud missiles, accompanied by North Korean Central News announcements suggesting that they could be armed with biological agents. 

China, seeking to restrain all sides, pours troops and materiel across the border to protect its interests and instigates a secret plan to replace Kim Jong Un with a senior general who understands the North's total dependence on its only ally. The resulting confusion leads to a belief that North Korea, and not just the Kim regime, is collapsing. Meanwhile, the United States quietly embarks on a secret mission to secure North Korea's nuclear weapons. 

Even now, however, the Second Korean War has only just begun because, as conflict breaks out, all participants expand their strategic goals. South Korea -- which initially had hoped only to force North Korea to calm down enough to re-enter negotiations on nuclear weapons, expanded inter-Korean economic ties, and human rights -- now believes North Korea is going to collapse and starts to implement an assertive reunification policy. The U.S. policy of deterrence and strategic patience has failed, so Washington decides to pursue active denuclearization and regime change. It joins with Seoul in planning postwar reconstruction in which the peninsula is reunified. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping

 China, which was slow to curb its ally's proliferation and never had a good handle on Kim Jong Un, seeks to ensure that the new leader of North Korea can restore stability. China also wants a new leader in Pyongyang to adopt a pro-China policy -- one which includes continued preferential access to North Korean mineral deposits for its state-owned enterprises. Russia supports China, and it is promised unfettered access to the warm-water port in the Rason Special Economic Zone in northeastern North Korea. 

It is easier to start a war than to stop one, but in the best case the Second Korean War might end with an international conference -- perhaps in Jakarta under the auspices of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations -- in which the United States and South Korea come to a modus vivendi with China and a greatly weakened North Korea over the country's future, addressing succession and confederation with the South,  as well as the verified destrcution of nuclear weapons. In the worst case...well, an awful lot more people would die.

The Korean War began in June 1950 as a result of a conscious policy choice on the part of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung. With the Chinese civil war successfully concluded and authoritarianism on the rise, Kim concluded the time was ripe to deliver a knock-out blow and bring a long Korean civil war to a similar conclusion. 

He spent 10 days amassing 900,000 soldiers near the 38th Parallel, and in the pre-dawn hours on June 25, he ordered the invasion of the South. Hiding in plain sight, the troops nonetheless surprised the Republic of Korea Army, because the presumption was that Kim would never launch a full-scale war that could embroil a war-weary region in another major conflagration.

The presumption, as we know now, was dead wrong. The United States mobilized a formidable international coalition under U.N. auspices and, together with the ROK Army, regrouped and launched their own counteroffensive. American leadership, too, was susceptible to overtly optimistic appraisals. 

By October, General Douglas MacArthur was so confident of rapid victory that he assured President Harry S Truman that the war would be over by Christmas. But the ferocity of inter-Korean tensions, mixed with Cold War superpower aims, assured the war slogged on until 1953. 

The war's renewal would be more likely to result from miscalculation than from deliberate choice. Kim Jong Un may not want war, but amid heightened tensions there are many ways one could start -- and it could well be that it is the United States that miscalculates. There is no sound empirical method for identifying the particular catalyst that would trigger war, but should war begin again in earnest, its intensity and its duration could prove a nasty surprise, as it did the first time. And the consequences could affect Northeast Asia for the rest of the century.