If you’re in NYC on Tuesday, March 6th please come join The Voice Project, our friends at Charity Connector, DTJ and some great folks at 121 Fulton Street for a little suaré…and let’s talk a little peace, music and radio. Hope to see you there!
RSVP here: http://voiceproject.eventbrite.com/
Source: McClatchy
Emmanuel Daba was abducted by guerrillas from the Ugandan rebel group Lord’s Resistance Army on March 6, 2008 from the town of Obo, Central African Republic. He says he was forced to kill many civilians until he escaped a year later. | Alan Boswell/MCT
OBO, Central African Republic — On the edge of this quiet town in the isolated forests of central Africa sits one of America’s newest military outposts, a base made of grass surrounded by razor wire. Outside, a baby chimpanzee plays on a green rope, and three local policemen lounge in a pickup truck. Inside, up to 30 U.S. special forces plot the demise of one of the world’s most elusive and sadistic rebels.
The U.S. troops arrived two months ago and by most accounts have yet to undertake any military actions. But their mere presence has transformed this tattered out-of-the-way enclave of Congolese refugees, Ugandan soldiers and traumatized local residents into an upbeat cluster of newfound hope.
At night, energized locals bang homemade 8-foot-long xylophones and straddle voluminous bass drums, crooning new tunes to celebrate their good luck. “The Americans are here/Our saviors are here/Let’s dance” goes one such song.
“Americans are favored by God wherever they are in the world,” said Bassiri Moke, a local chief. “We asked God to save us and the Americans came. We hope we won’t have to die like before.”
The American deployment here forms the core of a new plan constructed in Washington to end the violent cross-border marauding of Ugandan rebel Joseph Kony and his band of 200 hundred or so fighters known as the Lord’s Resistance Army. Masters of survival, they slink through thick equatorial forests and brush-littered plains in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, preying on the civilian population for food and new conscripts, killing and abducting as they go. Thousands have died in their wake.
That the U.S. has joined the hunt for a group that horrifies millions of Americans but poses no direct threat to the United States is testament to the influence of human rights campaigners, who, together with evangelical Christians, lobbied Congress to pass a law requiring renewed U.S. efforts against the LRA. The Obama administration responded by dispatching 100 special operations troops to help find Kony.
Most of the U.S. troops are based near the Ugandan capital, Kampala. But this outpost in Obo — a town of 15,000 in the far-eastern obscurity of the Central African Republic, an impoverished former French colony of 4 million people — is the true heart of the effort. Kony and his core followers are believed to be living off the surrounding forests, always on the run.
Expectations among those who live in the rebels’ vicious shadow are sky high.
“Kony will die now that the Americans have come,” bellowed Longbango Jean-Claude, a 38-year-old Congolese refugee who had three family members killed and three more abducted by the LRA in 2009. “Don’t put him in prison like a child. Just kill him.”
The area where Kony operates gives new meaning to “middle of nowhere.” A sequestered and ungoverned land with few roads, the area lies near the intersection of three of the world’s most failed states and one of the remotest points on the continent.
There is little here of international economic interest, though the land itself is so fertile that even refugees have no problem growing their own food. There are vast mineral deposits in eastern Congo, and the U.S. government recently has changed sanctions laws to open South Sudan’s oil industry to U.S. companies. But those are hardly factors in hunting down Kony.
The most direct U.S. interest may in fact be tighter cooperation with the Ugandan military, which also has become a channel for U.S. efforts in Somalia, where Uganda shoulders the fight against Islamist rebels with links to al Qaida.
A McClatchy correspondent, joined by a writer and a photographer from Time magazine, were the first journalists to visit the site of the new American deployment. The U.S. military’s Africa command, known as Africom, was informed of the visit in advance but said the mission was not ready to accommodate journalists.
Twice in emails, a spokesman for the military said there was no U.S. base in Obo and that U.S. troops deployed here were staying at a Ugandan base. But the Ugandan base is at an abandoned church on one side of town, while the newly constructed outpost where the Americans stay is near a police station on the opposite side. Locals say the American compound has its own helicopter pad.
When reporters approached the American outpost, two close-cropped white heads poked briefly above the wall. One yelled, “You are not allowed in here.” A white pickup truck carrying what appeared to be four Americans pulled up to the compound as the reporters were preparing to leave.
Not long ago, life here slogged away as it had for centuries. But in early 2008, as peace talks over South Sudan collapsed, Kony’s men, who had been operating largely within the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo, began venturing further north and west.
On March 6, 2008, they struck here.
Moke was the town mayor at the time. There was a huge funeral party. He warned everyone not to stay out late. He went to bed at 8 p.m.
“They didn’t listen,” he said. Around 2 a.m., the music suddenly stopped. The villagers realized they were surrounded. “They took them all,” Moke recalled.
About half of the abductees were released after a few days, but 30 or so others remained. Boys and young men became LRA fighters; girls and young women, “wives.”
Most have since escaped and found their way back, scarred with searing images of brutality and cruelty.
When asked how he is adjusting to life after a year in the hands of the LRA, the eyes of one abductee darkened.
“The images are always flashing in front of my eyes. It’s like I’m projecting my own movies,” said Emmanuel Daba, who was turned by the LRA into a soldier before he fled in South Sudan. “I doubt I can ever escape it.”
Officials in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, say that this country was the weakest link in the Uganda-led regional effort to finish off the guerrilla group. Kony and his men have not set foot in Uganda for years. Most of the attacks take place in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan is also seriously affected, but each of those countries have United Nations peacekeeping operations and somewhat functional, if ill-disciplined, national armies.
The Central African Republic, however, has a weak army with a spare presence here. When small groups of Central African Republic troops started arriving in some of the more rural areas in 2008, some teenagers had never seen a soldier before.
Now, they see American special forces drive around in white Toyota Hilux pickups and jogging for fitness along the edge of town.
What exactly the Americans have in mind is unclear.
There are differing opinions among officials about whether killing or capturing Kony would be enough to end his movement, which originated in the marginalized Acholi tribe of northern Uganda and offers an ideology that is a cult-like mish-mash of Christianity and traditional mysticism, held together by the force of Kony’s charismatic and cruel leadership. Kony and two of his top lieutenants have been charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court and would theoretically face trial if captured alive.
The U.S. says it is here to provide logistical support, bolster intelligence sharing and improve the coordination among the four nations’ armies now fighting the LRA.
“Our intent is to supplement host nation military efforts with advice and assistance that maximizes the flow of information to, and synchronizes the activities of, host nation units in the field,” said Maj. James Scott Rawlinson, a spokesman for U.S. special operations forces in Africa. “The end state for this mission is to enable local forces to be able to render the LRA ineffective.”
Although local residents are impatiently expecting a major new military operation soon, they say they have seen little American activity, and the troops themselves keep a low profile. Obo’s acting mayor said he hasn’t met any of the U.S. troops. The one identifiable U.S. project is the construction of a bigger broadcast tower for the local radio station.
Rawlinson did not directly respond to a question about whether U.S. personnel would join the Ugandan military on patrols, but he said that it is the African militaries that “have the responsibility of specifically countering the threat.”
Ledio Cakaj, a researcher who has interviewed 200 former LRA fighters, women, and abductees over the past several years, is openly skeptical that the U.S. involvement will make any difference in a battle that has gone on for decades.
“The so-called military solution has not worked for over 25 years,” he said, noting that the LRA is far more organized and rational than it is often portrayed in Western media. “It is not practically possible to kill them all.”
Locals in Obo have had their hopes raised before. When Ugandan troops arrived in 2009, they were warmly welcomed as protectors. But more than two years later, with Kony still at large and the Ugandan strategy for finding him opaque, that good will has evaporated. Locals say Ugandan soldiers sometimes rampage through town drunk, abusing civilians, and they accuse them of running business schemes instead of finding Kony.
For the time being, the U.S. presence seems to have straightened out their allies’ behavior, and once again the people of Obo feel their liberation is near. How long the status quo can remain before that elation craters is impossible to know. Locals seem to anticipate Kony only has a few months, if not weeks, remaining.
Until then, life remains a daily struggle.
In mid-January, Mbolifue Dieudonne and his brother, Danambutigo James, carried peanuts and clothes toward South Sudan for sale. They crossed four rivers, climbed a mountain, and then they saw them: five reeking dreadlocked men, armed with AK-47s.
They dropped their goods and ran for it, but James was captured. He was marched a mile and a half and stripped of his clothes. “We will kill you,” said a man on his right. But the commander, to his left, released him.
Just like that, he was free. Once again, the tormentors from another land had left him empty-handed. And once again, he had no explanation for the shadowy force that has turned his life upside down in a conflict he still doesn’t understand.
“I don’t know why they let me go,” he said. “I’m still terrified.”
(Boswell is a McClatchy special correspondent.)
Source: The Washington Post
[excerpt] Col. Joseph Balikkudembe said women and children have died from hunger while in the custody of the LRA, though he did not provide any death tolls. He said that pregnant women and children under 10 were suffering the most.
“The majority of the abductees are dying due to lack of food,” he told The Associated Press by email from the Central African Republic, where he is helping lead the manhunt for LRA fighters and their leader, Joseph Kony.
Balikkudembe said that Kony has ordered his men to stop raiding communities for food, apparently to avoid being detected.
“They are feeding on wild yams commonly known as abato,” he said. “The yams are scarce, and they (rebels) are always on the run.”
Read the full article here
by Shannon Maguire
Via: CIMA
Today is World Radio Day, which celebrates the importance of radio and its ability to facilitate access to information and promote freedom of expression. Recognizing the “transformational power of radio” at its 36th general conference last November, the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization chose to hold the observance on February 13, which marks the day when UN Radio was launched in 1946.
In Africa, radio is the mass medium of choice for 70 to 90 percent of the population, according to Mary Myers, the author of a CIMA report, Voices from Villages: Community Radio in the Developing World. As a low-cost, low-powered medium that is portable and does not require literacy, radio is especially suited to reach remote and marginalized communities, while providing a space for information sharing and promoting public debate. Radio informs and empowers local populations on education, economic, and public health initiatives. And it is an important player in emergency communication, disaster relief, and peace-building.
This is the case in war-ravaged northern Uganda, where radio is playing a critical role in helping stop Africa’s longest running conflict. The fighting began in the 1980s, when Yoweri Museveni, after toppling the regime of Tito Okello, sought to impose his authority on resistance groups loyal to Okello. Most resilient among them was the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), run by Joseph Kony, who made abducting children and forcing them to fight or become sexual slaves his chief weapon. Since 1986, the LRA has been responsible for more than 100,000 deaths, 66,000 abductions, and 2 million displaced people.
While some abductees and former soldiers have managed to escape, many hide in the bush, afraid to return home because of reprisals for the atrocities they were forced to commit. LRA commanders tell their soldiers that UN peacekeepers, as well as their own communities, will kill them for what they have done. In response, the Voice Project has made music its counter-weapon in the fighting.
The Voice Project started in 2008, working with widows, rape survivors, and former abductees who had banded together to support each other and those orphaned by the war. The survivors composed songs, called “dwog paco,” or “come home,” to let former soldiers know that they are forgiven and that it is safe to return. The Voice Project seeks to amplify these movements by working with the UN to build FM radio stations, produce content, and record family members and ex-combatants in their native Acholi to encourage former combatants to come home.
And it’s working.
In the past two years more than 100 soldiers have escaped or defected from the LRA. Many returnees claimed that the radio was the sole reason they decided to leave:
Since the first broadcast more than 100 years ago, radio has proven its power as a source for mobilizing social change. Even in the digital age, it remains the world’s most accessible and affordable communication tool. As we celebrate World Radio Day for the first time, see how far a voice can carry.
Learn more about The Voice Project here.
Learn more about the power of radio here.
Special thanks to CIMA intern Brittany Anicetti for her research help.
What you’ll remember if you think back to the first time you heard Whitney Houston, saw the confidence, the composure, the soul and the talent, was more than anything that you now knew, without question, exactly what a truly great artist looked and sounded like. You didn’t have to wait for the reviews, the opinions of others had no meaning, because you were seeing it with your own eyes. You were getting to watch a human being operating on a whole different level, and you felt lucky to have the chance to watch.
Elmo: You ever hear of Pele?
Louden Swain: Yeah, he’s a, a soccer player.
Elmo: A very famous soccer player.
[pause]
Elmo: I was in the room here one day… watchin’ the Mexican channel on TV. I don’t know nothin’ about Pele. I’m watchin’ what this guy can do with a ball and his feet. Next thing I know, he jumps in the air and flips into a somersault and kicks the ball in – upside down and backwards… the goddamn goalie never knew what the fuck hit him. Pele gets excited and he rips off his jersey and starts running around the stadium waving it around his head. Everybody’s screaming in Spanish. I’m here, sitting alone in my room, and I start crying.
[pause]
Elmo: That’s right, I start crying. Because another human being, a species that I happen to belong to, could kick a ball, and lift himself, and the rest of us sad-assed human beings, up to a better place to be, if only for a minute… let me tell ya, kid – it was pretty goddamned glorious.
[Dialog from Vision Quest]
The many who came after to copy her her vocal runs and inflections could never copy the soul of the artist, it is by definition something that can’t be copied. We lost the great one, we gained from her presence.
