Hope is not a plan

South Africa has been spraying residences with DDT in an attempt to prevent malaria.

South Africa had stopped using DDT in 1996. Until then the total number of malaria cases was below 10,000 and there were seldom more than 30 deaths per year.

But in 2000, the country saw malaria cases skyrocket to 65,000 and 458 people were killed.

They had only 89 deaths last year.

The BBC story

The fight against mosquitos and malaria represents a fairly basic struggle between first-world donors and third-world recipients. Donors dislike DDT in general and indoor spraying in particular, but it is by far the most effective way to prevent malaria (more information in this BBC story).

In many ways, it speaks to the general issue of the developing versus developed worlds -- the developed world was able to freely pollute and make mistakes on its way up, then forces the developing world not to do these "bad things" as they try to prosper. Given that we provide few effective alternatives to the "bad" methods and minimal funding for developing new ones, it is no surprise that the developing world resents us.

When malaria comes by to bully Africa, we tell them "fighting is bad" but then don't stop the bully.

Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe, went on a tirade against the US and UK at a conference of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.

The BBC story

His message, beyond comparing Blair and Bush to Hitler and Mussolini, was that first-world food subsidies kill third-world farming.

This is a straw man, however. Lack of foreign markets is the not problem with farming in Zimbabwe. Mugabe's land redistribution program has so damaged farming in Zimbabwe that it can no longer support the needs of the country. There is no excess to export, market or no. He has destroyed the agricultural base of his country and is now trying to deflect blame.

In their paper titled An Energy-Saving Development Initiative Increases Birth Rate and Childhood Malnutrition in Rural Ethiopia, Gibson and Mace report on an unintended consequence of a rural development initiative.

They looked at several areas in Ethiopia where an arduous daily hike for water, taking up to three hours, was replaced with a local tap, cutting water-gathering time down to fifteen minutes. They found that though overall village health improved in terms of mortality, women's health did not increase notably -- suggesting that the energy saved due to the addition of a local tap system was redirected into the increased birth rate they observed.

On top of this, child malnutrition rates increased after the addition of the taps. As the authors point out, the labor savings yielded an increased birthrate but there was no concomitant increase in resources for these children. Thus, it's vitally important to combine measures to increase maternal health with measures to control population growth, or else you're just generating a different problem.

A coalition of Somali warlords calling itself the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) has been fighting with Islamic militia followers of Abukar Omar Adan for two days, following a dispute over land ownership in Mogadishu. The violence has progressed from gunfire to mortars.

The Islamic militia represents the Islamic Courts in Mogadishu, which the ARPCT's members accuse of ties to Islamic extremism and Al Qaeda.

The BBC story
The Al Jazeera story

As reported in this BBC article, Nigeria is set to pay off a substantial portion of its international debt:

Nigeria agreed to pay the Paris Club, $12.4bn (£8.2bn) in exchange for the remainder of its $30bn official debts being written off.

The country still owes about $5bn to other creditors, but clearing that Paris Club debt is a substantial step on the way to being debt free. Nigeria has been assisted in its debt relief plans by rising oil prices, despite continuing attacks on delta oil facilities by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).

With only a third of the food resources they'd need to feed the displaced population of the Darfur region in Sudan, the UN World Food Program is going to half rations (1,000 Calories) for everyone, settling for a target of malnutrition in hopes of avoiding starvation as Sudan enters the pre-harvest "hunger season" from July to September.

The IRIN story
The BBC story

South Sudan will not see ration cuts, as people there are already on three quarters or half rations.

Surprisingly, the U.S. is not falling down terribly badly on food aid to Sudan (as much as we have been walking too carefully around the genocide that continues there). Of the $746 million food bill for Sudan, the U.S. has covered $188 million, or 25%. The entire EU plans to donate $60 million (8%) for the year with the exception of the U.K., which on its own is going to give $88 million (12%).

As in the 2004 tsunami, the U.K. leads the way in aid proportional to size.

The larger chunk of the Sudan Liberation Army, led by Minni Arcua Minnawi, has agreed to sign a peace agreement with the government of Sudan. Details of the agreement include (taken from the BBC story):

• Pro-government Janjaweed militia to be disarmed
• Rebel fighters to be incorporated into army
• One-off transfer of $300m to Darfur
• $200m a year for the region thereafter
• Compensation for those forced to flee their homes
• Regional government, if approved in a vote

The smaller SLA faction, led by Abd al-Wahid Muhammad al-Nur, and another rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement, both refused to sign.

This is a major step if the government of Sudan, which has enabled and allowed the genocidal actions of the Janjaweed, will actually make good on disarming these groups.

The BBC report indicates that the conflict so far has led to 200,000 deaths and displacement of another million people.

The BBC story
The Al Jazeera story

Ethiopia has moved another 2,000 troops into Somalia to join 2,000 it already had deployed in the area. This is in response to movement by Islamist militias from Mogadishu toward Baidoa, the current seat of the provisional government of Somalia.

Berhan Hailu, the Ethiopian minister of information, told Reuters in Addis Ababa: "We will use all means at our disposal to crush the Islamist group if they attempt to attack Baidoa, the seat of the transitional federal government."

The Ethiopian government is apparently willing to have an Islamist Mogadishu, but not an Islamist Somalia.

The al Jazeera story

In response to the reported movement of Ethiopian troops into Somalia to prevent Islamist access to the provisional government in Baidoa, the Islamists have threatened to wage holy war against Ethiopia unless it pulls out. There are also reports that Eritrea has been aiding the Union of Islamic Courts, perhaps pointing to a proxy war in Somalia. As with most proxy wars, it's almost certainly a bad idea for at least one participant. Although it may be in Ethiopia's interest to keep their provisional allies in power, it almost certainly isn't in Eritrea's interest to have an Islamist government take over all of Somalia -- unless that government becomes very well behaved after the fact.

I don't know enough about the UIC and other groups to gauge whether that is likely.

The BBC story

Former Rwandan ambassador to France Jacques Bihozagara has accused French peacekeepers of complicity during the 1994 genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda.

Specifically, the claim is that French peacekeeping troops created escape routes for genocidal militia troops to flee to the Democratic Republic of Congo and allowed militias to enter the "safe" UN protected zone to continue killing Tutsis.

This issue of French military involvement is currently under investigation in a French military court, but Bihozagara complains that the government of France has not apprehended genocide suspects still living in France.

The BBC story

Following charges that French troops facilitated and even took part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie plans to declassify 105 documents that will be given to a magistrate investigating these claims. There's no indication yet about what's in the documents, or whether Alliot-Marie expects them to vindicate French military claims of noninvolvement in the genocide, validate the Rwandan claims, or otherwise.

The BBC story

After being approached by one Michael Hart Jones, actor Richard E. Grant alerted the BBC show Newsnight to Jones's AIDS-medication scam. Jones, ostensibly fronting for Commercial African Resources and Development (CARD), was looking for money for an "AIDS cure" based on goat serum.

This is not unlike the old practice of implanting goat glands into men to cure impotence. That didn't work, either.

Assuming Jones, who along with CARD has already been implicated in a money laundering scheme in Sierra Leone, actually believes in his product, there are still problems.

As the article notes, the claim that goats were injected with HIV to generate antibodies, then those antibodies cured the disease, runs straight up against the fact that this method using antibodies hasn't worked. As a bonus, if you really did inject someone with goat antibodies, they'd also have to deal with their body mounting an immune response against those antibodies (being, after all, from a goat).

However, let's say we're flatly empirical, and imagine something is different this time. The specific claim made:

We posed as investors and secretly filmed him as he claimed that CARD had used it to save the lives of dozens of soldiers in Tanzania in 2001 "they were stretchered in virtually dead - as far as I was concerned they were dead". After the miracle cure "in two weeks they were up and about and back on track".

No. If you are near-death from AIDS, you have nearly no helper T cells, you probably have AIDS-related dementia and your body is wracked by one or more diseases. Even if the virus goes away instantly (like magic), your immune system would take time to recover enough to even start addressing whatever diseases you have, and the dementia is a done deal -- that's damage that's not growing back.

For a host of reasons, ranging from desperation through a desire for a "home grown" answer (that doesn't come with the expense of Western medications), Africa is especially susceptible to lies like this. It's unpleasant to watch them coming from users like Hart Jones appears to be.

The BBC story

Following the loss of several towns to rebels from the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity, the government of the Central African Republic asked the French (former colonial rulers of the area) for assistance. The French government offered logistical support to the army of the CAR. In this case, "logistical support" apparently translates into "air strikes," as French aircraft hit rebels near the town of Birao.

From the BBC story:

Under bilateral accords, France's military provides logistical and intelligence support to some of its former colonies in Africa.

The UFDR rebels say they are fighting against corruption and mismanagement under President Francois Bozize, who seized power in a 2003 coup.

The IRIN story
The BBC story

Faced with pandemic HIV/AIDS in Africa, it's easy for a lot of people, especially Americans, to take a moralistic stance and assume that everyone "over there" is just being promiscuous. "If we could just teach them abstinence..."

Of course, the truth is everyone already gets the concept of abstinence. Your kids who are off hooking up when you think they're at the mall get it. The you who hooked up without your parents knowing (and about whom you've conveniently forgotten now that you are a parent) gets it.

As it happens, that's probably not so much the problem in Africa. In fact, it's almost certainly not, since a recent survey of 59 countries by researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine showed that Westerners are far more likely to have multiple partners than Africans.

In a study in this week's issue of Science magazine, Abu-Raddad et al have modeled the effects of a known interaction between malaria and HIV and determined that each makes the other one much worse. During episodes of malarial fever, HIV viral loads spike by almost ten-fold, and it's been previously shown that the chance of spreading the infection directly relates to this viral load. HIV, in turn, beats the immune system down and makes one more susceptible to infections such as malaria. Abu-Raddad et al modeled this outcome and showed that, in the Kisumu district of Kenya (population 200,000), this HIV-malaria interaction has probably, since 1980, led to an additional 8,500 HIV cases and a whopping additional 980,000 malaria cases.

You can read the Science article here, and the BBC overview article here.

Intuitively, it makes sense that conditions that lead to immune cell proliferation would increase HIV viral load. Given that, the researchers are now looking for additional interactions between HIV and other endemic Africa diseases (of which there are quite a few).

So, it's not promiscuity. Instead, the spread of HIV in Africa has likely been powered by co-infection, inadequate detection, gender imbalances in power, inadequate education, and out-and-out lies such as those propagated by Michael Hart Jones and South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.

The situation in Somalia remains on edge, as the de facto government, the Islamic Courts Union in Mogadishu, presses for Ethiopia to withdraw its troops from the area, and continues active battling with troops supporting the official government.

In the past month, the UN has voted for an American-backed measure that would authorize mobilization of peacekeeping forces from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development and the African Union, as well as lifting of an arms embargo so that the official government of Somalia can re-arm itself.

In the meantime, Islamic Courts troops are trying, not always successfully, to fight their way toward the interim government in Baidoa.

Now the Union has given Ethiopia an ultimatum, saying that Ethiopian troops must leave Somalia within a week, or be attacked.

The US and the UK are considering enforcing a no-fly zone over the Darfur area in Sudan, if UN forces are not allowed to deploy in that area.

How much this matters depends on how much air support is helping the genocide, and how much force people on the ground can muster to defend themselves.

As far as the former goes, I was able to find Human Rights Watch reports detailing helicopter attacks on aid camps in 2002 and active Janjaweed camps as of 2004, many of which included facilities to support aircraft. Sudanwatch points to Reuters reports indicating use of gunships against civilians as late as 2005.

For force on the ground...here the situation diverges from our other no-fly-zone experience, Iraq. Whereas the Kurds were able to build up a ground force that could effectively stand off the regular Iraqi army, I don't see where the civilian population in Darfur is going to find arms of any kind, such that it can put up an effective defense against the combined efforts of the Janjaweed and the government of Sudan. Without that, a no-fly zone just slows the killing, rather than stopping it.

al Jazeera article

There was some discussion last week of enforcing a no-fly zone over Darfur. One factor in deciding whether this is worthwhile is whether or not aircraft are in use in the area; Sudanwatch and Human Rights Watch certainly think they are.

Rebel forces in Darfur definitely assert there are, as they claim to have shot down two helicopters. Naturally, the government contests this:

In a separate statement, Esam el-Din Hajj, a Darfur rebel official, said his fighters had shot down two army helicopters during the clashes.

An army spokesman confirmed heavy fighting with the National Redemption Front (NRF), but denied that the attack on the village or that any aircraft had been shot down.

He said: "We did not use any helicopters or planes during the clashes so of course they could not shoot them down.

Given prior evidence of aircraft actually being under the control of the Janjaweed militias, the army spokesman here may be working a bit of verbal deflection: We did not use any helicopters or planes (but the Janjaweed might...)

It seems like two recently downed helicopters could potentially provide good, physical evidence of the use of aircraft in the area. I wonder if AU or UN forces will get a chance to look at them.

About a thousand miles to the east, Ethiopia has recently admitted that it does have military forces operating in Somalia, including aircraft. The UN estimates Ethiopia has 8,000 troops in Somalia, while "military experts" cited by CNN estimate 15-20,000 troops. Notably, Eritrea is estimated to have 2,000 troops supported the Islamic Courts Union.

As fighters from the Islamic Courts retreat in the face of the Ethiopian military, an action they've called "a military tactic...a kind of military retreat," they're calling for help:

Following their defeat in Baladweyne, leaders of the Islamic Courts called on Ethiopian soldiers to withdraw.

Sheikh Mohamed Ibrahim Bilal, a senior Islamic Courts commander, said: "We call on the international community to act soon about this violation."

They're not getting any help from the AU, however:

Patrick Mazimhaka, the deputy chairman of the AU's Commission, told the BBC the African Union would not criticise Ethiopia as it had "given us ample warning that it feels threatened by the UIC".

Mr Mazimhaka said the international community had a responsibility to support the transitional government.

Ethiophia has hit the airport in Mogadishu; will they be content with preventing the loss of the transitional government's last stronghold in Baidoa, or will they try to clear Mogadishu as well? Based on the American experience, that seems like a bad plan -- however, unlike us, the Ethiopians might be able to call on a revitalized Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism for help.

Update: The AP says that the combined Somali-Ethiopian force is moving on Mogadishu. Also:

Francois Lonseny Fall, the top U.N. envoy to Somalia, also said 35,000 Somalis had crossed into neighboring Kenya to escape the fighting, which forced the U.N. to suspend aid delivery to two million Somalis.

al Jazeera article
BBC article

Ethiopia has answered the question of what they're going to do with Mogadishu. They're besieging it.

"We are not going to fight for Mogadishu, to avoid civilian casualties. Our troops will surround Mogadishu until they [the Islamists] surrender," Ambassador Abdikarin Farah told reporters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Ethiopian forces earlier pushed Islamic Courts forces out of Jowhar and Balad, something local residents cheered.

Amidst all this, the AU has rescinded its support for Ethiopia in Somalia.

In a hastily convened session, the African Union demanded all foreign players, including Ethiopia, immediately withdraw their forces from Somalia.

"We appeal for urgent support for the transitional government and the withdrawal of all troops and foreign elements," AU chairman Alpha Omar Konare said in a statement.

What changed their mind?

I don't see Mogadishu falling quickly, especially if, as they've claimed, Islamic Courts forces are intentionally withdrawing into the city. If the Ethiopian military can actually lay in an effective siege, then civilians inside the city will suffer, regardless (although they could offer a civilian exit amnesty, similar to the approach the Marines took with Fallujah).

CNN article

Well, that went much faster than I expected. Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) forces ditched Mogadishu in advance of the arrival of the combined Somali-Ethiopian force, departing south for Kismayo. They're saying it's too early to call this a loss, hinting at an Iraq-style insurgency. But if they were planning to make a stand, the place was probably Mogadishu.

One former Islamic courts fighter said: "We have been defeated. I have removed my uniform. Most of my comrades have also changed into civilian clothes."

Yesterday, a Somali reporter in Mogadishu said that the Islamist hold in Mogadishu was already slipping, with many clansmen who'd signed on with the top power now signing off again, reclaiming territory for themselves. The UIC evacuation of Mogadishu has borne this out, with both the BBC and al Jazeera reporting that various clans are quickly reasserting control over different parts of the city.

The big worry now is not about an ever-more unlikely Islamist insurgency, but about a return to "business as usual" with warring clans fighting continuously in the capital city. The UN reports that this is already happening:

The fighting began in the morning in the Yaqshiid district of north Mogadishu, after militia tried to loot an arms storage warehouse, reported Hassan Mahamud Ahmed, editor of the San'aa newspaper in Mogadishu.

"Each clan is now trying to rearm and repossess weapons taken from them by the courts, in anticipation of the return of the warlords," he said.

al Jazeera article
BBC article
CNN article
IRIN article

As Council of Islamic Courts militia members retreat to their final defensive position at Ras Kamboni in Southernmost Somalia, Ayman al-Zawahri of al Qaeda urged the Islamic Courts militia members to mount an all-out defense, without realizing that they're already doing so:

"I speak to you today as the crusader Ethiopian invasion forces violate the soil of the beloved Muslim Somalia," Ayman al-Zawahri said in the audiotape. Ethiopia has a large Christian population.

"Launch ambushes, land mines, raids and suicidal combats until you consume them as the lions and eat their prey," al-Zawahri added.

Calling out the Ethiopians as crusaders is quite a stretch.

The militias are simply not in a position to mount the kind of concerted insurgency seen in Iraq. Iraq was rife with explosives dumps leftover from Hussein's reign (and not properly secured by the US). It also has a huge population of disaffected young men who've spent years without work and without proper recovery of their country. Somalia, in contrast, is a land of small arms -- and a lot of the body of the Courts' forces left with theirs when Ethiopia moved in. The people who are left simply lack the resources to successfully do anything that al-Zawahri has called for -- although they certainly could initiate quite a few suicidal combats.

The Courts forces won't be leaving Ras Kamboni anytime soon, either. Kenya has sealed the land border, and American ships patrol the sea.

There's not a lot of sympathy in greater Africa, either. Uganda has already pleged 1,000 peacekeapers for the newly revised political terrain of Somalia.

CNN article

American gunships made two strikes against militants in Somalia, one on an island group, one on the southern mainland proper, targeting al-Qaeda operatives suspected of involvement in the 1998 attacks on our embassies.

Although CNN is relaying an unconfirmed local report of bystanders being killed in the attack, al Jazeera and the BBC are not echoing these concerns. The Somali interim government supports the right of the US to make attacks against those involved in the embassy bombings. I'm sure they're just glad to have the free air support.

These attacks were made possible by the combined interim government / Ethiopian army effort. One of the bad side effects of the kind of "last stand" the UIC has attempted to make in southern Somalia is that they can now be hit much more freely by airpower. When they were still in Mogadishu, we probably had no idea where they were -- and even if we found out, we were never going to go after a target in Mogadishu with an AC-130.

Italian Foreign minister Massimo d'Alema said Rome opposed "unilateral initiatives that could spark new tensions".

...but then, they were passing messages on to their Somali friends ahead of UN actions in 1993, so they already know what unilateral initiatives can do to a UN effort.

BBC article
al Jazeera article
CNN article

And treatable, too.

Nearly three thousand people have died of cholera in Angola since last February.

Cholera, bane of the developing world, is depressingly easy to treat. All you need is gatorade, time, and attention -- but naturally, these are all in short supply in a very poor country recovering from a civil war.

There have been 69,000 total cases, which can't be helping recovery in a country of only twelve million.

BBC article

In an interview with al Jazeera, Eritrean president Isaias Afewerki says that the Islamic Courts will be back in Somalia, and that Ethiopia has entered a quagmire.

Although the language is meant to evoke the French and American experiences in Vietnam, Somalia is fundamentally not the kind of quagmire Afewerki would make it out to be -- at least not for Ethiopia. His group of choice, the Courts Union, has limited support within the country. As we saw in December, relatively mild offensive pressure from the Ethiopians was enough to generate a clean break between the Union and its secular allies. Even though the political situation inside Somalia is an utter mess, trending toward a new dictatorship and a resurgence of warlords, that doesn't make it the kind of trap that we've seen in Vietnam and Iraq. Based on the evidence to date, Ethiopian forces could freely pull out within weeks -- as they've said they want to -- and monitor the situation inside the country. Courts Union remnants may go back in to try and reestablish power, but then Ethiopia can move once more, pushing them out. As long as the Ethiopian goal is "not the Union" instead of "establishing effective government" they can dance back and forth indefinitely, and Ethiopia wins.

al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Adow does suggest that the opportunistic American strikes into southern Somalia during the Courts' retreat has had a chilling effect on AU member nation enthusiasm for a peacekeeping mission:

He said that since a US attack in the southern tip of the country aimed at alleged al-Qaeda suspects, countries such as South Africa and Nigeria have become hesitant over getting involved in an AU force as any sending of troops could seen as endorsing the US-led war on terror.

Alternately, they might just realize that nothing good comes of a peacekeeping mission in Somalia.

al Jazeera article

Even as Zimbabwe's inflation hits an astonishing 1,600% annual rate, the 21 February Movement youth organization is asking people for contributions to foot the $1.2 million bill for a planned birthday party for Robert Mugabe.

Asked if this was appropriate under the circumstances, the youth secretary for Mugabe's Zanu-PF party said that the celebration day brought young people closer to the president:

"That day is a day where he will be closer to them, encouraging them to have good morals," he said in comments to the state-controlled Herald newspaper.

I'm not enough of a Mugabe scholar to comment on his morals or the degree to which they'll rub off on the young folks during a single-day celebration. However, good morals or no, Mugabe joins ranks with George Bush as having a desperate lack of judgment and an unwillingness to admit error. The failure of Zimbabwe's economy over the last decade is clearly a direct consequence of stripping experienced white farmers off the land and replacing them with inadequately trained black farmers -- and not a consequence of "foreign governments" punishing him for doing so.

The concept of returning majority farmland control to people of (immediate)* African descent was not inherently flawed, but yanking the people who knew how to work the land and replacing them with people who didn't was a bad idea -- but it was an idea Mugabe continued to push even after early indications that it wasn't working. He could, instead, have slowed the process, paid off the white farmers and instituted a training program for their replacements. Then the initial downturn would have been a hiccup and a warning, and Zimbabwe would not have gone from a surplus to a deficit (that sounds awfully familiar).

The ability to correct and reimplement a policy in mid-course is a virtue, not a flaw.

*I initially just had "of African descent," but that covers everyone in the entire world. Thus, "immediate."

Finances have long been a target of anti-terrorist efforts. We freeze bank accounts of terrorist groups and problem nations. We similarly prosecute domestic sources of funding for external terrorists.

Similarly, we've shown in Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent in Libya in the 80s, that attacking the host nation of a terrorist group can be a valid approach when you cannot otherwise reach that group.

Families of sailors killed in the suicide bombing of the USS Cole (in 2000, if you've forgotten) are combining these concepts to sue the government of Sudan for $105 million in damages. Their assertion is that Sudan facilitated the attac by providing material and diplomatic support for those who actually carried out the suicide bombing. Notably, the government of Sudan has not just blown the case off, and actually has lawyers in court contesting it. I was especially struck by this:

Sudan, which the US has listed as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1993, had sought unsuccessfully to dismiss the civil lawsuit on the grounds that too much time had passed between the bombing and the filing of the lawsuit in 2004.

I'm not clear why they're playing ball by even sending lawyers, but it may or may not be telling that they actually tried to get the case thrown out on a statute of limitations claim, as it were.

al Jazeera article

Things are not going well for Somali government and Ethiopian troops in Mogadishu. The most recent round of violence feels like a return to the failed American mission there, minus the extensive casualties dished out by our troops as they protected themselves over the course of a day.

There's a suggestion that this is a consequence of hit-and-run attacks by Islamic Unions partisans. Given the prior record in Mogadishu, it's hard to say whether it's likely to be that, or just a natural consequence of not having the firm hand of Islamic law in charge in the area. In short, is it intentional chaos or random chaos?

CNN article

Zimbabwe has been elected to head the UN's commission on Sustainable Economic Development. This position rotates between world regions on an annual basis, and this time around it was Africa's turn to vote. In a secret ballot, Zimbabwe won 26-21.

So, to clarify, Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe gave land to people who didn't know how to farm, where a country that used to export food now can't feed its people, and where inflation is a cool 1,700 %, is in charge of sustainable development.

Right.

Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the UN, Boniface Chidyausiku, said before the vote that his country was entitled to hold the chairmanship.

He said the real objection came down to Britain's criticism of Zimbabwe's controversial land reform programme.

If you say so, Mr. Chidyausiku.

Last week I was a little incredulous about the election of Zimbabwe to head the UN's commission on Sustainable Economic Development.

They're not really proving the naysayers wrong.

With two weeks to go in the planting season, only 10% of the country's wheat crop has been planted. Zimbabwe is similarly facing a big corn deficit this year, and is also coming up short on sugar. Households are being limited to four hours of power per day, so that capacity can be dedicated to irrigating the barely planted wheat fields.

March set a new high-water mark for inflation as it hit a monthly rate of 2,200% -- the highest in the world.

BBC article

This week brings some contrasting efforts to change the world, two happening in the courts, the third ending up in the courts.

In the Netherlands, relatives of people killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre are suing the Dutch government. While the Dutch governmental response is that all claims should be made against those who committed the massacre, the plaintiffs in this case argue that the Dutch government is at fault for refusing to provide air support for Dutch troops in Srebrenica. Certainly, it's true that people flocked to Srebrenica as a safe haven, only to find that is really wasn't. You can read more in this BBC article.

Elsewhere, the government of Nigeria, as well as the government of the Nigerian state of Kano, have filed suit against big pharma company Pfizer, claiming that it carried out improper trials for a meningitis drug, and in so doing caused deaths, as well as mental and physical problems. Pfizer holds that it did everything properly, and obtained "verbal consent" from parents of children who were involved. you can read more in this BBC article.

Finally, a plot to violently overthrow the government of Laos was busted up in California. Nine people, led by former Hmong general Vang Pao, were trying to buy weapons en masse to equip an insurgent effort in Laos, with the goal of taking out several government buildings. The Hmong, who you may never have heard of, are ethnic minorities in Laos who were backed and equipped by the CIA during our larger war in Southeast Asia. When we pulled out of the effort, we mostly abandoned the Hmong, although some have filtered over to the US, and others ended up lingering in refugee camps in Thailand for years. The BBC has an overview of the state of the Hmong in Laos here. You can read the full article on this abortive insurgency here.

AIDS has been devastating in Africa. Although HIV/AIDS is a problem elsewhere in the world, Africa is the only place that sees prevalence rates up in the double digits across multiple nations. So what, then, is the problem?

We know that there are still problems getting anti-HIV drugs to people, that other endemic diseases promote AIDS, and vice versa, and that there are quite a few treatment scams out there, despite our best efforts. We also know it's not about promiscuity, since Westerners are likely to have more partners.

Still, the question remains -- what's up? Did AIDS just get too strong a foothold in Africa, and now we're fighting back from a huge disadvantage?

John R. Talbott's thesis is that prostitution is the key to the AIDS problem in Africa. In this PLoS One article, he uses statistical analyses to support his hypothesis that African nations with high HIV/AIDS rates have high levels of infected prostitutes (that is, a large number of prostitutes, and a large percentage of those infected with HIV):

(CSWs are Commercial Sex Workers -- prostitutes)

The statistical analyses seem sound enough, and certainly this concept anecdotally fits with other reports I've read about 90% HIV infection prevalence in prostitutes who serve truck drivers in various parts of Africa.

You can read Talbott's pitch at his site, Africans Against AIDS. Read the PowerPoint for a bit more on his views. Although he equates HIV-infected prostitutes with drunk drivers, he quickly settles down into a rational, harm-reduction-based approach that seeks to punish enablers of prostitution (e.g. customers, pimps) and transition women from prostitution into subsidized jobs.

Talbott is a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, who has written books predicting various market crashes and pushing world democracy.

The open-access medical journal PLoS Medicine hits us on the international and the state level with two opinion and analysis pieces on the topic of disease and its prevention.

At the international level, Kouyate et al tell us about The Great Failure of Malaria Control in Africa, with a specific focus on the situation in Burkina Faso. As they remind us, the scope of malaria in Africa is epic, and its impact epicly terrible.

Malaria remains the most important parasitic disease affecting humans [1]. Every year, there are some 5 billion clinical episodes resembling malaria, some 600 million clinical malaria cases, and about 1 million malaria deaths [2]. The great majority of the malaria burden falls on the poor rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and most deaths occur in young children [1,2]. Malaria is considered a major barrier to the development of SSA [3].

In addition, treatment and prevention measures just aren't taking hold. Despite being tremendously effective in preventing malaria, insecticide-treated netting is still massively underutilized. In addition, treatment options for people suffering from malaria are limited. In the case of Burkina Faso, the country's entire health budget amounts to $9 per person per year. Consider that not just in light of whatever you had for lunch yesterday, but also based on the expected six fever or malaria episodes each child will suffer each year, and the $2 cost of treatment for each such episode (just to clarify, that's $12 of treatment each should should receive each year, on average...and that's just treatment, and not prevention, research, or any other function of health spending).

Drug-resistant forms of malaria are spreading, and knowledge about which drugs are now out of date, or may still work, has not been spreading to match.

The authors end by calling for a realistic approach to treatment of malaria in very poor African nations:

Unfortunately there is no ideal world. As sufficient funds for high coverage provision of ACT [artemisinin-based combination therapy -- the most medically effective approach, but also quite expensive] are currently not available, an appropriate interim solution would be to use a pragmatic combination of two affordable drugs. The obvious choice would be the combination of pyrimethamine–sulfadoxine and amodiaquine, which has been shown to be as effective as ACT in a number of SSA countries, including Burkina Faso [38–40].

However, after it became clear that Burkina Faso would not receive GFATM funds for the purchase of ACT, the NMCP of Burkina Faso asked the World Bank to use a portion of an existing US$12 million loan from the Global Strategy and Booster Program to purchase pyrimethamine–sulfadoxine and amodiaquine as an interim solution. This request was rejected with the argument that WHO recommends only ACT. As a result, chloroquine remains factually the first-line malaria treatment in Burkina Faso. These observations support the view that SSA countries continue to be victims of ignorance and lack of coordination between external donors and international organisations [41,42].

So, to summarize, Burkina Faso went to the world bank asking for money for the drugs it could afford, but the World Bank refused, being only willing to give money for the one treatment recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). Of course, the problem here is that $12 million worth of ACT wouldn't have done the job. The authors hope that international agencies will get their act together and stop making decisions that punish poor nations for being poor by refusing them any kind of medical assistance.

Moving from the international scene to the California scene, Grudzen and Kerndt ask if it's time to regulate the adult film industry. As they point out, the adult film industry is a multi-billion dollar industry ($9-13 billion, which if you have a good memory, is about a thousand times as much money as the entire country of Burkina Faso requested from the World Bank for malaria treatment), although it formally employs a fairly small pool of people -- 1,200-1,500 performers. Throughout this article, the authors focus on an estimated 200 production companies. These latter two values feel like underestimates.

Their big issue is with the fact that pornography was legalized by case law rather than by statute, and thus is not nearly as regulated as most other industries that involve bodily fluids (such as being an EMT, for example). The performers are typically required to engage in unprotected, often high-risk sex acts, with the expected consequences:

The current practice of periodic HIV and STD testing may detect some disease early, but often fails to prevent transmission. The most recent HIV outbreak occurred when three performers who had been compliant with monthly screening contracted HIV in April of 2004 [6]. At that time, a male performer who had tested HIV negative only three days earlier infected three of 14 female performers.

Other STDs are also highly prevalent in the industry. Among 825 performers screened in 2000–2001, 7.7% of females and 5.5% of males had chlamydia, and 2% overall had gonorrhea [7]. These rates are much higher than in patients visiting family planning clinics, where chlamydia and gonorrhea rates were 4.0% and 0.7%, respectively [8]. Some might argue that this program of STD testing keeps rates of HIV and other STDs lower than in other sex-related industries, and in fact, a recent study of prostitutes in San Francisco found 6.8% and 12.4% positivity rates for chlamydia and gonorrhea, higher than rates in the adult film industry [9].

Notably, as an isolated public health issue, this is unfortunate for the people involved, but really doesn't matter nearly as much as some others. But the authors point out that it isn't just the performers who are affected:

The portrayal of unsafe sex in adult films may also influence viewer behavior. In the same way that images of smoking in films romanticize tobacco use, viewers of these adult films may idealize unprotected sex [16]. The increasingly high-risk sexual behavior viewed by large audiences on television and the Internet could decrease condom use. Requiring condoms may influence viewers to see them as normative or even sexually appealing, and devalue unsafe sex. With the growing accessibility of adult film to mainstream America, portrayals of condom use onscreen could increase condom use among viewers, thereby promoting public health.

In contrast to heterosexual adult films, homosexual-targeted productions more consistently require condoms. Due to the large number of HIV-positive performers, there is no requirement for HIV testing and condom use is the norm. Despite the ubiquitous use of condoms, homosexual adult movies are popular and profitable for production companies. In fact, there is some evidence that homosexual male audiences would not tolerate movies with unsafe sex, likely due to their proximity to many with HIV in the homosexual community. Some homosexual audiences regard watching sex without condoms as “watching death on the screen” [16].

They then cite other models of partially or wholly regulated sex industries:

Legislators can look to Nevada for a model for the successful regulation of a legal sex-related industry. Since the institution of mandatory condoms in Nevada's brothels in 1988, not a single sex worker has contracted HIV [17]. Workers must be repeatedly tested for HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia to maintain a state health and work card. There are numerous other international models for condom enforcement in sex work, from Mexico City to Amsterdam. While there is no clear model for mandatory condom use in adult film, Brazil boasts an 80% condom usage rate in their adult films [18], while still maintaining a large share of the international market as the world's second largest adult film industry [18]. This suggests that condom use in adult films does not have to erode profitability.

It's worth adding that condom use is really important in the Brazilian industry, because of the HIV problem that appeared there before condom use became as prevalent as it is. Indeed, the most recent industry-wide HIV scare in the United States was spurred by American performers working in Brazil and contracting HIV.

Both articles ask us to take a practical, harm-reduction-oriented approach to a public health issue. In the case of the adult film industry, our touchiness about this topic keeps us from openly addressing the fact that we've set up a world where no one in my workplace can give me an aspirin, but a film company can mandate risky sex acts as a condition of employment. In the case of malaria, we are reminded that we shouldn't deny money for all but the "best" solutions, and should concentrate on enacting the "good" solutions that these nations can actually afford.

Al Jazeera reports in this article that machete prices in Nigeria have fallen from a pre-election high of $6 per machete to a post-election slump of $3 per machete. The fall in price is due to a fall in demand for armed thugs to coerce voters, which in turn has led to a fall in interest in machetes outside of their other use -- farming.

During his three decades in office, Mobutu Sese Seko stole quite a bit of money from his nation of Zaire, squirreling it away in Swiss bank accounts. Estimates of the money stolen place the amount in multiple billions of dollars, money that could really help former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) deal with any number of current problems. The DRC's government was hopeful that the Swiss government would repatriate something on the order of a billion dollars or so up until yesterday, when the Swiss announced that they'll be handing back $6.6 million instead.

Naturally, the government of the DRC is a little disappointed. The Swiss government insists that's all the embezzled money they have on hand. Did the dictator somehow spend the other $990 million while he was still alive?

Unfortunately for the government of the DRC, they're going to have very, very little leverage over the Swiss.

BBC article

Researchers from Boston University's Center for Remote Sensing have used satellite-based radar imaging to find a massive underground lake in the northern Darfur region in Sudan. This lake, about the size of Lake Erie, ranks as the tenth largest in the world and could potentially drastically alter the political situation in Darfur by suddenly removing water as a limited resource.

The discovery is "very significant", Hafiz Muhamad from the lobby group Justice Africa told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

He also said that it has long been known there was water in the area but the government had not paid for it to be exploited.

Around a thousand wells will be drilled in the region.

Assuming this does induce peace in Darfur, the important follow-up question will be "How long does it take the inhabitants of Darfur to drain Lake Erie?"

BBC article

Islamist insurgents attacked a military base and a police station in Mogadishu yesterday, leading to a two-hour gun battle. This kind of violence has been ongoing since Ethiopian troops drove the Islamic Courts Union out of power and re-instituted the nominal official government of Somalia.

More than 1,000 clan representatives from all over the fractious Horn of Africa country have been gathered in the restive capital since July 15 for a reconciliation conference sponsored by the interim government.

The meeting is being boycotted by the government's main Islamist foes, who are planning their own meeting in the Eritrean capital Asmara next month.

Notice that location for the alternative meeting. Once again, it looks suspiciously like Somalia is at least partially serving as a proxy battleground between Ethiopia and Eritrea -- not that Somalia needed the help to be a complete mess.

BBC article
al Jazeera

In their paper titled Marburg Virus Infection Detected in a Common African Bat, Towner et al describe an extensive evaluation of bats collected in Gabon and Republic of Congo that turned up Marburg virus infection in a common fruit bat, Rousettus aegyptiacus.

Marburg virus, like its cousin Ebola, causes incredibly deadly outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever in both human and ape populations. Given their near-absolute lethality, it's a given that these killers don't just reside in the human and ape populations and then "go nuts" every so often. This research by Towner et al finally points the way toward understanding the natural reservoir for hemorrhagic fevers in Africa. In so doing, it may also point the way toward mitigating future epidemics or even wholly preventing them in the first place.

And, as befits the inherently dual-use nature of all pathogen research, it also tells you where to go if you want to collect some Marburg virus and can't convince USAMRIID to give you any.

Showing its renowned flair for sustainable economic development, the government of Zimbabwe has decided to deal with that country's disastrous runaway inflation by simply hacking a thousand off the end of its currency.

Again. This will be "Sunrise Two", following in the wake of last year's amazingly successful "Sunrise" revaluation, during which three zeros were hacked off the end of Zimbabwe's currency. One can expect yet another successful revaluation sometime in 2008, and so on, as long as Mugabe remains in power.

The legislature of Zimbabwe is right behind Mugabe in driving the economy of Zimbabwe relentlessly forward. Just last week they approved a bill allowing Zimbabweans a majority stake in foreign-owned firms. If foreign companies are worried that this means they may lose their investments and businesses in Zimbabwe...well, yeah, you're about to:

...Mugabe told supporters his government would seize defiant businesses over high prices.

Mugabe says some businesses have raised prices without justification, alleging it was part of a Western plot to destabilise the country and ultimately unseat him.

"We don't want to be chasing each other. We will have to seize the companies," Mugabe said.

Mugabe's move earlier this year to stop inflation by simply freezing the prices of key commodities has led to stores simply refusing to stock things like bread and milk. Shucks.

Gideon Gono, stuck with the unenviable job of running the Bank of Zimbabwe, cautioned Mugabe and friends to tread carefully:

"As monetary authorities we fully support the noble objective of empowering the majority of the Zimbabweans through the introduction of enabling statutes that expand wider involvement for the people in the mainstream economy," Gono said.

"Noble as this objective is, our well considered advice to legislators and the government in general is that a fine balance should be struck between the objectives of indigenisation and the need to attract foreign investment."

This might be translated as, "We're already starving to death because you 'redistributed' the farms to unskilled indigenous workers. Could you maybe hold off on annihilating what's left of any external participation in our economy?"

I'm afraid Mr. Gono drew the very, very short straw.

Zimbabwe, previously reeling under an over 2,000% inflation rate is now stuck reeling under an undetermined inflation rate instead. As we're told by the unfortunate Moffat Nyoni of Zimbabwe's Central Statistical Office, there simply aren't enough basic staples such as bread, sugar, and meat on store shelves in Zimbabwe to even calculate inflation.

Maize meal, bread, meat, cooking oil, sugar and other basic goods used to measure inflation largely disappeared from shops after Robert Mugabe's government ordered prices to be slashed.

Manufacturers have said they cannot afford to sell goods at below the cost of producing them.

The last measured rate, from September, was an abysmal 8,000%, but current unofficial estimates that look to the black market for evidence suggest inflation may hit a staggering 100,000% by the end of the year. Even the proposed Sunrise 2 revaluing of Zimbabwe's currency won't be nearly enough to deal with that degree of inflation. With basic goods unavailable, the tourist trade fleeing the country's borders, and a wrecked farming system, it's unclear if Zimbabwe will ever recover as long as Mugabe is in charge.

There's been no word, yet, on whether they'll be going ahead with Mugabe's million-dollar birthday party early next year or not. Of course, with no actual food or fuel on which to spend their money, the people of Zimbabwe are now especially free to contribute to support the event.

BBC article

The government of Morocco has asked the UN to intervene to prevent the Polisario movement from meeting to declare a resumption of war with Morocco.

Confused?

You wouldn't be, if you lived in Western Sahara.

The entire region of Western Sahara used to be Spanish Colonial territory. Heading into the twentieth century, locals in what is now Morocco, as well as other nearby areas, rebelled against Spanish control. By the fifties, the area of Western Sahara was in complete upheaval. In the mid-70s, Spain formally ceded control of the area - to Morocco and Mauritania.

As it happens, locals within the area weren't particularly keen on being a part of Morocco or Mauritania, either. From 1976 to 1979, the Polisario (short for Frente Popular de Liberacion de Saguia el Hamra y Rio de Oro), an indigenous rebel movement, fought Mauritania right out of the area. Morocco held on, however, fighting the Polisario to a standstill until 1991, when the UN brokered a ceasefire. This ceasefire has been monitored since then by MINURSO, the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara. MINURSO's mandate is to monitor the ceasefire, ensure Moroccan troop reductions, monitor Moroccan and Polisario troop locations, oversee prisoner exchanges, and organize a free and fair referendum on the topic of being independent or joining Morocco.

After sixteen years of war, it's been sixteen years of very, very slow progress toward the referendum.

So what's the most important issue in your world?

al Jazeera article

Late last year, unofficial estimates suggested that Zimbabwe would hit 100,000% inflation by the end of the year. Well, they did it. Zimbabwe's inflation rate has topped 100,000%, resulting in a nonsensical unofficial exchange rate of 25 million Zimbabwe dollars per American dollar, or about your body weight in Zimbabwe currency for $300-400.

More pressing are food concerns, as Zimbabwe has now become dependent on its neighbors for imports of all kinds of food, whereas at least year they had canned foods covered.

No word on whether Mugabe is going to go ahead with the Sunrise Two plan, although at this point his second sunrise will have to cut off more than a simple three digits from the currency to have any noticeable effect.

Zimbabwe remains the head of the UN's commission on Sustainable Economic Development. Committee chair Francis Nhema will be leading the next review session from May 5 to May 16 of this year, covering topics such as agriculture, rural development, land, drought, desertification, and Africa. Nhema is Zimbabwe's Minister of Environment and Tourism, with a background in marketing. One wonders if he is a devotee of Mugabe, or yet another person in Zimbabwe in the unpleasant position of sitting on a committee discussing agriculture and rural development while agriculture collapses in his own home country due to an utter lack of proper rural management.

al Jazeera article

Last October, the legislature of Zimbabwe pushed forward a bill requiring majority local (as in black locals, not just any citizen of Zimbabwe) ownership in all companies in the country. Last week, Robert Mugabe approved the final version of this measure, not coincidentally three weeks before the next round of presidential elections.

Under the legislation, every company must have at least 51% of their shares owned by black Zimbabweans.

The new law means some of the country's biggest businesses - such as the mining giant, Rio Tinto, and Barclays Bank - will have to find local partners.

Here's what the country's information minister, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu had to say about the measure:

"It is an historic economic empowerment bill that has been signed," Mr Ndlovu told the BBC.

"It is the first of its kind in the whole of Africa."

On the downside, there is deep concern that this law will actually drive away foreign investment, and that this may just be a cynical publicity stunt on the part of Mugabe and his supporters ahead of a contested election. Consider, once again, the words of Gideon Gono, head of the Bank of Zimbabwe:

"As monetary authorities we fully support the noble objective of empowering the majority of the Zimbabweans through the introduction of enabling statutes that expand wider involvement for the people in the mainstream economy," Gono said.

"Noble as this objective is, our well considered advice to legislators and the government in general is that a fine balance should be struck between the objectives of indigenisation and the need to attract foreign investment."

Mugabe is not one to listen to economic planners, though. Although we can't speak to what's actually happening in his mind, he clearly prefers to blame the outside world rather than consider that his own restructuring may have damaged his country's economic output beyond the hope of immediate recovery.

BBC article

Late last week, a Chinese cargo ship carrying arms bound for Zimbabwe left the port of Durban in South Africa following a legal decision preventing the offload of its cache of weapons.

South Africa's government had said it could not legally prevent the arms being transported through the country but the high court in Durban ruled that the cargo could not be moved overland, though it could be discharged in the port.

The ship contains three million rounds of ammunition for AK-47s, 1,500 rocket-propelled grenades and several thousand mortar rounds, according to South Africa's Mail and Guardian newspaper.

The South African state-owned arms company, (not to be confused with the Philippines company of the same name) agreed to transport the weapons overland across South Africa to Zimbabwe after several private companies demurred. The South African government said that it was in no position to interfere in commerce between two sovereign nations, as there are currently no arms embargoes against Zimbabwe. That said, a number of countries (and the entire EU) have banned arms shipments to Zimbabwe.

The Chinese government, not particularly concerned about what happens in Zimbabwe but very concerned about not letting people touch its internal dealings, replied with the title quote of this post when challenged on the issue of sending arms into such an unstable nation.

BBC article

The Chinese government is having trouble lately moving things from place to place. The An Yue Jiang, freshly rejected by the dockworkers of South Africa, was reportedly making its way along the African coast, looking for a port of entry. Angola, generally friendly with China, announced yesterday that it wouldn't let the weapons shipment unload for transit to Zimbabwe.

Filomeno Mendonca, director of the Institute of Angolan Ports, said preventive measures have been taken although the An Yue Jiang has not requested to dock.

"We have warned our ports that this ship does not have authorisation to enter in Angola and therefore will not be assisted in Angola," Mendonca told a local radio station.

The latest news, however, is that the PRC is going to recall the vessel, sending a significantly smaller arms shipment by air, instead. With this, the Chinese government is clearly making a point, although the point could be anything from "we will not be messed with" through "we honor our commitments" and ending in "don't interfere in the internal affairs of other countries."

al Jazeera article

The High Court in Cape Town, South Africa ruled this week against German Matthias Rath and American David Rasnick after a case was brought against them by Treatment Action Campaign and the South African Medical Association.

The short of it is that they are no longer allowed to conduct "clinical trials" of vitamin treatments for HIV among the desperate sick in South Africa.

"It is declared that the clinical trials conducted in South Africa are unlawful," Judge Dumisani Zondi said in his ruling.