ZIMBABWE CRISIS

Profile: Robert Mugabe
Robert Mugabe, long-time leader of Zimbabwe, was hailed as a hero during his country's liberation from the UK, but has since maintained power in controversial elections and garnered international criticism for how he is running the African nation.
Mugabe "was quite popular for a long time, and he also was very popular among Western leaders who, for the longest time, saw Zimbabwe as an example of what could happen with a well-led government," explained Craig Timberg, the outgoing Washington Post bureau chief for southern Africa, in a NewsHour Insider Forum. The country did well with its agriculture-based economy during Mugabe's first two decades in power, from 1980 to 2000. But "over the past decade, you've seen Mugabe become more ruthless, you've seen the economy deteriorate, you've seen political repression, in all its forms, spread," Timberg said. "And now, he is incredibly unpopular." Mugabe was born on Feb. 21, 1924, in Matibiri village in Southern Rhodesia -- now known as Zimbabwe -- one of four boys. He studied at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa, graduated in 1951 and went on to earn six more degrees through distance learning, some during his time as a political prisoner. He was a teacher in Zambia and Ghana before turning to politics. He returned to Southern Rhodesia and in 1960 joined the National Democratic Party, which later became the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union. When the Zimbabwe African National Union was formed in 1963, he left ZAPU and joined the rival party. In 1964, he was arrested for wanting to replace white minority rule with a one-party Marxist regime, and spent 11 years in a prison in Salisbury, now known as Zimbabwe's capital Harare. While still in prison in 1974, he was elected to lead ZANU, and assumed control a year later. Under international pressure to end white minority rule in the country, moderate leaders signed an agreement in 1978 that paved the way to a power-sharing government. But Mugabe and the leader of the ZAPU, Joshua Nkomo, refused to participate in subsequent elections, which were not recognized internationally. Eventually, all parties agreed to hold talks on a new constitution for a new Republic of Zimbabwe with elections in 1980. Mugabe became the country's first prime minister. He worked to build a tenuous coalition with his ZAPU rivals and the white minority. But trouble brewed when he fired Nkomo from his cabinet in 1983. A peace accord was reached in 1987, and ZAPU merged into the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), and Mugabe named Nkomo vice president. In 1987, the prime minister seat was abolished, and Mugabe assumed the role of president. He was re-elected in 1990 and 1996, and again in 2002, when there were claims of vote-rigging and intimidation. Mugabe's policies became increasingly controversial, including a costly intervention in the Second Congo War (1998-2003), the expropriation of white-owned farms, and the printing of hundreds of trillions of Zimbabwean dollars, which sparked hyperinflation in the country. In March 2008, President Mugabe's ruling party, the ZANU-PF, lost the parliament and it appeared he lost the presidency to Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition party the Movement for Democratic Change. The government delayed releasing the vote tally for weeks. In May, the electoral commission said Tsvangirai had won but not by enough to avoid a run-off, which was set for June. During the ensuing campaign, supporters of Tsvangirai were beaten, arrested and killed, and he eventually dropped out of the race. Mugabe then won the run-off with 85 percent of the vote. Weeks of tense negotiations aimed at ending the political crisis led to a power-sharing agreement in which Mugabe would remain president and Tsvangirai would become prime minister. Formation of a unity government, however, stalled as the country's economic troubles worsened affecting the already weak education and health systems. Food and oil shortages and massive internal displacement exacerbated the lack of access to clean water for much of the population, triggering a cholera outbreak that killed more than 700 people by December 2008, according to U.N. estimates. In recent months, a growing number of foreign leaders, including President Bush, have called on Mugabe to resign. But the Zimbabwean leader said the cholera outbreak was under control and maintained that Western leaders were exploiting the situation to try to remove him from his post. "He's in his own parallel reality," said J. Anthony Holmes, Cyrus Vance fellow in diplomatic studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Basically, it doesn't compute that so many people are suffering so badly, are so mal-nourished and starving, that are dying of cholera." According to Holmes, Mugabe blames U.S. and British sanctions for the deteriorating conditions and therefore doesn't feel any compelling need to deal with the situation, and he is willing to hold out for carte blanche in terms of distributing aid, so it will be up to the international aid community to give up some of its preferred controls. ---- Compiled from wire reports and other media sources

DARFUR CRISIS

Darfur Crisis Escalating, U.S. Envoy Says
The United States urged African nations Thursday to offer troops for a joint U.N.-African Union force in Darfur as nongovernmental groups have threatened to leave because of escalating violence. Andrew Natsios, the U.S. envoy to Darfur, discusses the ongoing crisis.

				JEFFREY BROWN: Four years after the killing began, the Darfur region of Sudan remains violent and unsettled, and the killing continues. In all, hundreds of thousands have died, and more than 2.5 million are refugees. In 2004, the Bush administration first labeled the crisis a genocide. A 2006 peace deal came and went. Plans to mobilize a UN peacekeeping force have stalled. The government-supported Janjaweed militias have continued their marauding, and rebel factions fight one another. Last September, President Bush appointed Andrew Natsios as his special envoy to Sudan. He previously served as USAID administrator. He is a professor at Georgetown University and joins us now. Welcome to you. ANDREW NATSIOS, U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan: Thank you. JEFFREY BROWN: Let me start with this situation on the ground. Earlier this week, you were quoted as fearing a "potential new bloodbath," strong language. What do you see happening? ANDREW NATSIOS: Well, the Janjaweed militia, which are the allies of the Sudanese government -- they're the Arab militias, they live in Sudan, in Darfur -- are reported to have been asked last October to empty the camps, the displaced camps. JEFFREY BROWN: Where the refugees live. ANDREW NATSIOS: Where the refugees, the displaced people are, who fled the massacres in 2003 and '04. It has not happened yet. I believe that the diplomacy of the United States and the international community has restrained that from happening. There are elements in the Sudanese government that want a negotiated peace, but there are other elements that think a military solution is the only way out. And we're trying to convince them a military solution just means more people are going to get killed, and there will be no end to this conflict. And so our view is there needs to be an immediate negotiation and a cease-fire on the rebel side and on the government's side. JEFFREY BROWN: Well, so to what extent is the government at this point either fomenting or allowing the killing to continue? ANDREW NATSIOS: Well, they're doing some of the killing. The Sudanese military and the Janjaweed burned down a hundred villages -- I think it was in November -- in the Zaghawa area, because they had a major move against Zaghawa rebels. There are three rebel movements, three tribes that are the base for the rebellion. One is the Fur tribe. The other is the Zaghawa and the Masalit. And so when they attack the rebels, they also attack villages they come from, and that's one of the problems. JEFFREY BROWN: Is it your belief and is it still U.S. policy that genocide is occurring in Sudan? ANDREW NATSIOS: Because of the nature of the rebellion, the attacks of the Sudanese government have been against the tribes fomenting the rebellion, and they have been massacring people from a particular ethic group. And that is the definition of genocide, when you're killing noncombatants. They're not just directing this against the rebels themselves. The nature of the conflict has changed. Most people lived in villages prior to the war. And most of those people, who are African, who are at risk from those tribes, are now in displaced camps. The displaced camps have not been attacked. I mean, one has, a little one, four months ago. But in a broad base, they have not launched massive attacks to disperse the camps. And I'm worried -- I have been worried since I took over that there are people who would like to do that. So I think the big risk now is people being enclosed in areas -- that's where you can have massacres, people enclosed in areas, in these camps, are being targeted. It hasn't happened yet. And I warned the Sudanese government, President Bush has warned them, and so has Secretary Rice. And so far it's held. JEFFREY BROWN: Now, you just used the word "warning." Now in November, you said at a State Department briefing, "January 1st, we either see a change or we go to Plan B." Now, what is Plan B exactly? And why has it not been implemented? ANDREW NATSIOS: When I made those comments, we had -- the Security Council of the United Nations has passed Resolution 1706, which is a resolution calling for a UN peacekeeping operation in Darfur. The Sudanese government completely rejected it, said there will never be one blue helmet in Darfur under any circumstances ever, we'll go to war before it will happen. And President Bashir made very, very aggressive remarks on that in September. Since then, Kofi Annan has had a meeting of the Africans, the Europeans, the United States. The Chinese were there, and Arab states were there. And they fashioned a compromise called the Addas Compromise of early November. And that was affirmed by the African Union in Abuja a month later. And that is now the operative plan. In December, the Sudanese said, "We still aren't going to allow any blue helmets. You can do all the compromises you want to, but we're not going to do the blue helmets in Darfur." I made an agreement with President Bashir in December that, if we at the UN affirmed the compromise achieved, Addas, we would try to change the policy of his government on blue helmets, and he did. And in mid-January, the Sudanese government allowed a very small number -- I think it was 65 -- blue helmets for the first time into Darfur. So we made progress. We've made some halting bits of progress. But we are dissatisfied with that, and we've told the Sudanese we can't keep making these little steps. We need to break through. And, most importantly, not just have blue helmets in Darfur, in a hybrid peacekeeping operation between the African Union and the UN, which is what the compromise achieved in Addas was, what we need now is a negotiated peace between the rebels and the government. Without a negotiated peace, there's not going to be any end to this. JEFFREY BROWN: But why not apply more pressure in whatever this Plan B idea would be? You know there are critics, say of Darfur Campaign and others, who say the time to talk has passed. It's time for to us do more. And there's been reports about possible financial, economic sanctions. There are proposals to have a, oh, a no-fly zone implemented by NATO or the UN Why not do something stronger at this point? ANDREW NATSIOS: Well, the question is what you want them to do. In other words, you have to connect the sanctions and the aggressive measures we call Plan B with specific changes in their behavior. And that's what we're formulating now in an operational plan. We're connecting specific things we'd like to achieve with elements of Plan B. We've already actually implemented parts of level one of Plan B, done on a smaller scale, and the more aggressive measures we're going to connect to specific objectives and benchmarks later on. JEFFREY BROWN: Well, would certain things trigger further actions, like the kinds of things that you were talking about fearing, more action against the refugee camps? ANDREW NATSIOS: That's correct. JEFFREY BROWN: That would trigger... ANDREW NATSIOS: We told the Sudanese already, that if they attacked the camps, than we will go to Plan B, and we've made that very clear. It is policy of the U.S. government. I announced it last week in a hearing before the House International Relations Committee. And so we've made that very clear. We've also said, if there's a systemic effort to expel the NGOs and the UN aid agencies that are providing support to people in those camps, there's going to be a movement to Plan B by the United States government. We made that clear earlier. I think that's one reason of several why the Sudanese government has not done that. And so we want to make sure that it's very clear what we're expecting and what the consequence will be if we don't reach that. But, once again, the only way to resolve this so that the bloodletting is gone and that 2.5 million people can go back to their homes and renew their lives is a negotiated peace. And the Sudanese government took a step yesterday, which was very important to us. The first two meetings -- the rebels have divided into 12 different factions, and some of them are fighting each other. I met with them in August -- I'm sorry, I met with them in January in Chad, and I said you've got to unite. It's not for me or the U.S. government to say who your political leader needs to be, but you need to choose someone to negotiate with. JEFFREY BROWN: Let me ask you finally about the role of China here. President Hu Jintao was in Sudan not too long ago. There have been reports that the Chinese quietly, at least, have pushed the Sudanese government to take some action on Darfur. But then, at the same time, their public statements from the Chinese officials suggest, "That's not our role. We don't interfere with the Sudanese government." They have important clout there because of their economic ties. Are you satisfied with what they're doing there? Are they acting in a positive way? Or do you want to see more? ANDREW NATSIOS: Early in January, I went to Beijing, at President Bush and Secretary Rice's request. And I spent three days meeting with the Chinese leadership at the most senior level, and we discussed this. I told them what our objectives were, that we really don't want confrontation. We'd like a negotiated peace, but the Sudanese were not being cooperative. And they said that they took the same position. So we are told that President Hu delivered the message to President Bashir that he needs to move along in implementing the UN-A.U. deal agreed to in Addas and a negotiated settlement. The Chinese are not confrontational. They do not believe in interfering in the internal affairs of any country. And so their worldview is a little different than ours. I still think they can be helpful. We were disappointed because there were mixed messages, when President Hu announced the palace being loaned for the palace being built in Sudan. It kind of upset all of us here in the United States. It was sort of a mixed message. But I still think the Chinese can play an important and stabilizing role, because President Bashir is going to listen to President Hu in a way that he might not listen to the rest of us in the West. JEFFREY BROWN: All right. Andrew Natsios is the special envoy to Sudan. Thank you very much. ANDREW NATSIOS: Thank you very much.

CRISIS

Crisis of any form and kind is unpleasant element in our society especially at time like this when the world is seeking for absolute and relative peace in all regions,states and continent of the universe.it is with concurrence my readership that we have had a couple of summits and conferences all addressing the immediate need to slow down crisis and adopt more friendly approach while interacting at all levels of human relations.it is with lump sum efforts many transnational organizations have been established in pursuit of peace and concordance and by implication this is one of the biggest consensus towards marrying a moderate sentiments of understanding.crisis is an amorphous delineation that can take any shape provided the situation at hand cast a shadow of suspicion and predicament.without much undo let have a quick glance at the latest and the most thrilling incidents that have occurred for the past few days,weeks,months and decades.most of the crisis are more of human creation than sporadic as it well known by those who cherish reality in favor of utopianism.most of the crisis that we shall crossly examine are related to political,humanitarian,economical and social crisis.thank you.Mundiah dominique