Law student leads protests in Kenya

Socioeconomic unrest and youth protests are roiling Kenya, and President William Ruto seems unable to get a grip on the discontent. Freelance journalist Kimu Elolia told This American Life last week the story of Nairobi protest leader "Ospina," a 27-year-old law student.

I wrote in summer 2022 about the most recent Kenyan presidential election, shortly after I visited there. The election broke new ground in Kenya, as neither leading candidate was of Kikuyu ethnicity. Term limits had run on two-term, 10-year President Uhuru Kenyatta.

In 2022, I made a new friend at the Nairobi Giraffe Centre.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A friend in Kenya whose political commentary I trust rather favored the candidate who did not prevail in the 2022 election, Raila Odinga. Though a product of a dynastic political family with see-sawing past fortunes, my friend saw Odinga, who is of Luo ethnicity, as the best prospect to combat corruption, which my friend saw as Kenya's top political problem.

Odinga lost to William Ruto, whose wary-smile-inducing "Every Hustle Counts"-themed billboards were ubiquitous in my travels in Kenya. Like incumbent Kenyatta, Ruto, of Kalenjin ethnicity, had a history of corruption charges in the International Criminal Court—dismissed—though Kenyatta endorsed Odinga. Ruto nevertheless rode to victory on strong promises of economic prosperity, which spoke to a powerful current of economic discontent in Kenya, especially among youth.

In May, Ruto had a high-profile visit with President Biden at the White House. Bilateral discussion covered climate, human rights, and most importantly, to Kenyans, economics. In the latter vein, the White House pledged to help Kenya work out a "financial architecture" that will ease an economy that Kenyans see as shackled by onerous debts and expectations in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Protest in Kenya in June.
Capital FM Kenya CC BY 3.0

The White House summit did not pacify the masses. In June, Ruto pushed a tax hike through Parliament, and violence erupted. Youth protestors laid siege to Parliament and burned part of the building. They demanded Ruto's resignation, which was not forthcoming. (Read more from The AP. I found the worrying events in Kenya profoundly under-reported in U.S. media, while ample time was spent dissecting our surreal horse race.)

The protests are dragging on, and the rule of law remains under severe threat in East Africa's largest economy. The government is disregarding human rights norms, outlawing dissent, even the waving of the national flag (N.Y. Times). Dozens of protesters have been arrested; human rights groups further allege state-sponsored abductions and torture.

Last week, freelance journalist and producer Kimu Elolia, formerly with The Intercept, told This American Life the story of Nairobi protest leader "Ospina," a 27-year-old law student. Elolia told TAL's Ira Glass that Kenyans tire of seeing political leaders such as Ruto riding in private jets and sporting Rolexes, while ordinary people are asked to shoulder more and more economic burdens. Ospina has been more involved than his mother cares for.

As law faculty and students, including me, return to classes this week and next in the United States, we might be thankful that onerous reading assignments and research expectations (or in my case, strategic planning) will be our most daunting challenges. We ought not take for granted that we enjoy the rule of law—if we can keep it.

The moving segment is "Mom Thinks He Doth Protest Too Much," in Swim Towards the Shark, This American Life (Aug. 9, 2024).

'Gripping' Ugandan documentary makes Oscar cut

Uganda has its first ever Oscar-nominated film, a documentary about political persecution and daring resistance to the Museveni regime.

Bobi Wine: The People's President tells the story of musician Bobi Wine's transition from pop culture to political activist running for the presidency of Uganda against entrenched incumbent Yoweri Museveni. En route, Wine is arrested many times, brutally beaten, and effectively exiled from his homeland.

Here is the trailer.

For On the Media, Brooke Gladstone has a compelling interview with Wine himself and director Moses Bwayo.

In following Bobi Wine for the film, the film crew was itself in peril. If behind the scenes was as breathtaking as Bwayo described, I can't imagine how unnerving the end product must be. Wine briefly spoke on OTM of his torture by Ugandan authorities, and it's not easy to hear, before he himself stopped and said he could not talk it about it more.

It happens that my all-time favorite documentary to date is Call Me Kuchu (2012), which deals with the detestable persecution of the LGBTQ community in Uganda. Call Me Kuchu is hard to watch, but I come away from it every time thinking it should be required viewing for humanity: a lesson in immorality, the horror that results when the great commandment of Matthew 22:39 is disregarded. 

I note that it's not clear Wine himself, for all his persecution, quite gets the takeaway on the LGBTQ question. But he might have come around, and he's probably right that the Museveni regime leverages past transgressions against him.

Anyway, I am keen to see Bobi Wine, which is streaming in the United States on Hulu and Disney+, where the film is touted as "gripping." Fortunately, the film can be seen in Africa and even has been screened in Uganda. Wine told OTM that National Geographic has made the film available for streaming throughout the continent.

Shockingly, Wine told OTM that he is intent on returning to Uganda. Much as I would like to see change for Uganda—I've traveled there, and it's a magnificent country—I hope Wine takes to heart the lesson of Alexei Navalny and well considers his timing.

UPDATE, Mar. 4: I've since seen the film. Two thumbs up, and prayer for Uganda.

Western myopia marginalizes war in Sudan, Ecuador

My prayers, especially over the recent holidays, have admittedly felt cliché, if not comical, being dominated by desire for "world peace."

In case Ricky Gervais is right and prayer works like a democratic election (jk; it doesn't), I've focused on the conflicts of the world that my otherwise-trusted David Muir & co., reporting on Israel and Ukraine, seem quick to forget: Sudan and Ecuador.

I've written previously about Sudan (Apr. 2023, Sept. 2023). The New York Times in December reported a death toll in excess of 10,000 and displaced persons rounding 6 million. My friend from Khartoum remains safe abroad, but it looks increasingly like there will be nothing to come home to. I just read in Christianity Today that hospitals have been targeted and destroyed by the warring generals in the unscrupulous scorched-earth struggle.

I'm the last to rush to judgment with the r-word, but is there another explanation for seeming western indifference to this ongoing tragedy?

And then there's Ecuador, which in recent weeks also has entered a chaotic kind of civil war. It's a country dear to me for personal history there, but also of professional interest for fascinating and groundbreaking developments in constitutional law in recent years.

The Daniel Noboa Administration declared war on organized crime after drug lords were broken out of prison, almost certainly with the help of corrupt insiders. As Noboa cracked down, the country was besieged by retaliatory violence, especially in the Guayaquil Canton.

Efforts to remedy the desperate situation are closely related to the social and economic prosperity Ecuador experienced in recent decades. Ecotourism, again especially in Guayaquil, an access point for the Galápagos, had been an engine of economic and social development, precipitating recognition of rights of indigenous people and of nature with which the nation's courts were experimenting.

When I was last in Guayaquil about a dozen years ago, it was safe enough to walk around, for me, at least, by day. Security and the economy were on the upswing. On January 9, 2024, in contrast, the world was horrified to see armed terrorists, some of them teenagers, holding guns to the heads of journalists in a Guayaquil news station broadcasting live. My friend Ugo Stornaiolo Silva, an Ecuadorean lawyer living and working in Poland, reports that his family in Ecuador is safe, but the hatches are battened down. Domestic travel is out of the question.

Elected only in November 2023, Noboa promised to get a grip on drug trafficking and restore the rule of law. In a sense, then, the present violence is a promising sign of a much needed reckoning. Yet it remains to be seen whether the cause is winnable. Observers predict a bloody road ahead, or maybe worse if Noboa wavers in his resolve.

Ecuador's problem is part of the wider narrative of drug trafficking and human migration through Colombia and Central America, driven by the wealth, demand, and relative opportunities of the United States. America's backyard is declining into a mega-narco-state, while neither of our only choices of political party has demonstrated the will or ability to tackle the problem even in its domestic dimension.

Say what you will about China, the PRC recognizes that stability in its neighborhood is essential to the country's own national security. The means to the ends of course are problematic, exemplified by Nauru's recent change of alignment from Taiwan to China. But that matter again demonstrates the ascendancy of Chinese foreign policy over America's apparent appetite for isolationism.

Pray for world peace, as a spiritual matter. Know that it will only happen with American commitment, as a political matter.

*     *     *

As often happens in the course of the school year, my personal blogging in the fall semester had to yield to professional workload. I have been logging matters I'm eager to share and will endeavor to catch up in the coming months.

War rages in Sudan; lives lost top 14,000 in North Africa

The sad news just keeps coming from the African continent: this morning, heartbreaking images of Khartoum's Greater Nile Petroleum (GNP) Tower engulfed in flames (embed below from Al Arabiya English on X; left: my photo of the tower in 2020, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

I've written previously about Sudan: before civil war erupted, its promising economic prosperity and a friend's nascent tourism business. At last check, that friend at least was safe with family away from Khartoum.

Watch: Sudan’s iconic Greater Nile Petroleum tower in Khartoum is engulfed in flames as the war between rival forces enters sixth month. It is yet unclear what caused the fire through the tower.#Sudan #Khartoum

Read more: https://t.co/Kmbnzv4YI8 pic.twitter.com/iAt8x62fez

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) September 18, 2023

The location of the GNP Tower makes its loss all the more troubling. The tower sits on a small peninsula, jutting out into the confluence of the Blue Nile and White Nile Rivers. The peninsula is the site of office buildings for oil companies, banks, and the government's Ministry of Investment. Those aren't military targets. The area, which I walked through in 2020 (right: my photo from the water, at the river confluence, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), had been under the control of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF, which is fighting the Rapid Support Forces, RSF).

The two sides blame each other for starting the tower fire. Either way, extension of the destruction into this finance zone is yet another sign that little of Khartoum's civilian infrastructure will survive the war. Observers have said that the city will not be fit to remain the capital when the conflict ends. The SAF already has indicated its intention to relocate the government to Port Sudan, on the Red Sea. Accordingly, and alarmingly, the war is reaching out to both ends of the country.

Meanwhile, in North Africa, Libya and Morocco continue to cope with the devastation of natural disasters.

I've not been to Libya; ABC's Ian Pannell is there now. I have seen Morocco's scenic Ourika River valley, which is in the earthquake zone (N.Y. Times). Homes perched on hillsides and single-path footbridges suspended across the river ordinarily are what makes the area picturesque. But those conditions are not primed for earthquake resistance.

Here are some photos from the Ourika River valley in better times (all 2016, RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0; latter, me with travel mates from Mauritius).

My prayers are for all of the people suffering in these disaster zones.

Fighting shatters peace, rips at progress in Sudan

"Our tea lady" and me in Khartoum, November 2020.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

I'm saddened by the outbreak of conflict in Sudan, threatening to set the country back decades in development and economic opportunity.

As I wrote in 2020, Sudan was on a promising trajectory for peace and normalization of relations with the United States. The Trump Administration settled tort litigation over the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings; the attackers were alleged to have planned the operation from Sudan. And in December 2020, after a secular legal reform, Sudan was at last removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. The State Department instructed that U.S. businesses could again trade there, cautioning only that state-owned Sudanese companies ought be regarded warily, as corruption remained a problem.

I was in Sudan in November 2020, and the people bore a palpable optimism. Khartoum was littered with the worn and abandoned husks of American enterprises, such as KFC, and there was expectation that they would come back to life soon. One could imagine that the ruddy cola sold in glass bottles bearing Arabic script might give way to authentic Coca-Cola, for better and worse. From an eager local entrepreneur, I bought ground Sudanese coffee in haute paper packaging printed in anticipation of a new market for exports.

Now military factions are fighting in the streets of Khartoum. Civilian sites, including hospitals and the airport, are under fire. Ordinary people, struggling with food insecurity and climate-change-related dust storms and flooding in the best of times, are caught in the middle.

My associates and I in Khartoum frequented "our tea lady," who ran a thriving street business near a hospital entrance. With unfailing cheer, she brewed tea and fried snacks over hot coals for healthcare workers and passersby. On the sidewalk, she carved out an unexpectedly welcoming space amid the chaos and grime of the city. In a makeshift circle of motley seating on plastic stools and buckets, people from different walks of life and all corners of the world paused, chattered, and laughed.

I hope our tea lady is safe.

'Sudanese Bubba' will show you Sudan

You might not even remember it, but for a short time in the fall of 2020, we thought the pandemic was over. We were just too cute.

Wrong as we were, I went to Sudan then. And there I met a spectacular person called Salma EL-Sheikh, who smoothed my way around the country.

Well Salma is doing her part to drag the world kicking and screaming out of the pandemic, and she now has her own tourism company, Sudanese Bubba. The name "comes from our Sudanese jewelry (Gamar Bubba), moon–shaped golden earring (Gamar Boba)," Salma explains. "Kind of earrings women used to wear at the ancient time, until this moment."

I receive absolutely nothing but a karmic re-balance when I tell you, Salma has my absolute and unqualified recommendation.

Local kids atop Jebel Barka (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 RJ Peltz-Steele)

Sudan is a stunning place. Its pyramids and ancient sites are magical. You will find yourself scrambling up and over remote dunes to see the next marvel with a feel of wild intimacy that is unknowable in well trampled tourist traps (I'm lookin' at you, Cairo).

Sudan likewise offers a fascinating ethnographic and political experience. Its pioneering efforts to mix Islamic and western law into a republican formula, and its fraught relationships with neighboring South Sudan and Ethiopia all amount to a nation that is very much a work in progress. 

For all the range of experience on offer, my fondest memory is sitting with friends and locals on crates in a Khartoum street at the serving station of "our tea lady."

Let Salma help to make your memories of Sudan!

Me and my mates on the road in Sudan (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 RJ Peltz-Steele)

 

Kenyan presidential election has Nairobi on edge

UPDATE, Aug. 19: William Ruto won the Kenya presidential election.  Read more at NPR, Aug. 15.

Kenya will vote for a new president next month in a general election laced with ethnic tensions, which has people in Nairobi on edge.

For two five-year terms, incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta has labored to convince Kenyans that his agenda has generated economic opportunity and quelled corruption. Most of that time he has been effective, at least at the convincing, as evidenced by approval ratings exceeding 70%. But those ratings have occasionally plunged upon allegations that shook the moral high ground.

Perhaps most damning, Kenyatta faced charges in the International Criminal Court alleging complicity in violence, including the burning to death of 28 people inside a church, related to a previous election cycle. In 2014, the court dismissed the indictment for insufficient evidence. Frustrated prosecutors alleged witness tampering and intimidation.

Now Kenyatta is term limited. His exit from power has broader significance because he represents a family dynasty that has maintained control of Kenyan politics since 1963 independence. A rivalry with the Odinga family has lent Kenyatta dominance a gloss of competition, and sometimes a run for its money. But perennial presidential challenger Raila Odinga has never quite made the grade, and the seesawing fortunes of the families come off to more numerous outsiders as oligarchic.

Threads of ethnic tension underlie the contest, too.  The Kenyatta family is part of Kenya's plurality ethnic group, the Kikuyu, a Bantu people constituting about a fifth of the population. Fairly or unfairly, Kenyatta is perceived as having allocated political power to aggrandize Kikuyu hegemony.

But neither of the two leading candidates for the presidency is Kikuyu. One candidate is the familiar Odinga, who hails from the Luo ethnic group, a Nilotic people, like the well known Maasai. Traveling in the Maasai Mara in June, anecdotally, I found people more prone than their Nairobi fellows to view the presidential race through an ethnic prism. Or maybe they were just more willing to say so.

Me with a Maasai mate in June
(C) Alison 2022, licensed exclusively to RJ Peltz-Steele

Though they are longtime rivals, Kenyatta has endorsed Odinga. Further lending support to the feel of oligarchy, the two share a history of occasional accusations of financial improprieties.  Odinga has chosen a Kikuyu running mate with a history similarly suggestive of insider status.

The other contender is the incumbent deputy president, William Ruto. Ruto, who belongs to the Kalenjin ethnic group, also a Nilotic people, was charged in The Hague over election violence, alongside Kenyatta, and saw his charges dismissed likewise in 2016. Ruto also chose a Kikuyu running mate; Martha "Iron Lady" Karua would be the nation's first female deputy president.

That both candidates chose Kikuyu running mates shows the priority of appealing to an ethnic plurality that might fear the loss of long familiar station. Odinga and Ruto have traded the lead in polls, but either way, it is overwhelmingly likely that the highest office in Kenya will, historically, slip out of Kikuyu hands.

With a history of violence following elections—besides the '07-08 turmoil that precipitated ICC investigation, Kenyatta's narrow reelection margin five years ago led to civil unrest and a dramatic court challenge—people in Nairobi are on edge.  I was repeatedly warned to stay away from any assembly that might even morph into a political rally. And I found some city dwellers flatly unwilling to venture out after dark.

All that said, I have to admit, what first caused me to take an interest in the Kenyan presidential election is none of the above. Rather, it was a Ruto billboard that I saw in many places around Nairobi. The billboard boasts the curious tagline, "EVERY HUSTLE MATTERS," or, sometimes, "EVERY HUSTLE COUNTS."

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 RJ Peltz-Steele

I laughed out loud when I first saw it. I asked a taxi driver what it meant, and he told me matter-of-factly that it meant Ruto promises plenty of jobs, "hustles," for people: important in an economy in which a person might derive income from many and various part-time gigs.

A more trusted Kenyan source later told me, yes, Kenyan English does recognize the negative connotation of the word "hustle." And Ruto did indeed take some heat for his unusual choice of words in an election in which anti-corruption figures prominently.

Maybe in the end, the hustle will work for Ruto. After two terms of Uhuru Kenyatta leadership and a half-century of dynastic family control, Kenya struck me as mired in a state of development ill-befitting its reputation as an East Africa leader and below par relative to neighboring Uganda and Tanzania. Perhaps for voters, it's the economy, stupid.

Museveni still holds reins in Uganda after 35 years, rebuffs allegations of human rights abuses

At age 77, Yoweri Museveni maintains his grip on power in Uganda and yesterday rebuffed criticism by Human Rights Watch.

In 2016, I presented a work-in-progress research paper on history and human rights in Uganda at a regional law-and-society conference at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. I never published the paper; it's a project that I back-burnered and have yearned to return to. At that time, I was nervous about the presentation, because I had never actually been to Uganda; only read about it. There were academics from Uganda in the audience. I was relieved afterward when they said I got it right; I hoped they weren't just being nice.

The impression left on me by my research was that Uganda was, sadly, kind of a backward place. Museveni had, and has, held the presidency since 1986, not long after the Idi Amin regime collapsed. (If you haven't seen The Last King of Scotland (2006), watch it now.)  Museveni is one of those leaders who wins reelection by just too large a margin, and laws have to be changed to allow him to run again. One can't help but lament that Uganda's story is no more than a series of authoritarian regimes exploiting people and resources since the British brought the political entity into existence in the 19th century.

Selfie at a roadside fruit-and-veg stand in Fort Portal, Uganda
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 RJ Peltz-Steele

So winging into Entebbe in June, I expected to find in Uganda a bleak economic picture: a dilapidated infrastructure built on empty promises and crushed by poverty—maybe like the development-run-out-of-gas picture I found, literally, in Harare in 2020, just before the pandemic savaged what sanctions had not.

I was surprised, then, not to find that at all. To the contrary, there was ample evidence of economic prosperity in the tile-roofed residential and commercial buildings that filled the terraced hills between Entebbe and Kampala. I found a reasonably well outfitted capital in Kampala. The streets were no worse than the dirt-guttered throughways I had navigated in Nairobi. There were decent restaurants; I found a good gym. Subsequently, traveling in the countryside, sure, I saw plenty of poverty and subsistence living. But the picture was no more bleak than supposedly-more-faithfully democratic Kenya with its nearly triple the GDP.

Museveni overlooks street traffic in Kabale, in the Western Region of Uganda.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 RJ Peltz-Steele

Museveni-for-President posters are plastered everywhere, from the city to the villages. It's good to be king. But the gentle face that looks out from the posters harbors grim secrets.

What attracted me to research on Uganda in the first place was having learned of the terrifying plight of the LGBTQ population there. In the 2010s, Massachusetts pastor and one-time gubernatorial candidate Scott Lively traveled to Uganda to warn lawmakers of a homosexual menace—practically the same cabal that waged World War II against the world through the secretly homosexual leadership of the Nazi Party, as Lively had recounted in his 1995 book, The Pink Swastika. 

What influence Lively had on the Ugandan Parliament is as unknown as why he had any at all, but the Parliament subsequently enacted the infamous 2014 Anti-Homosexuality Act, which criminalized same-sex relations on pain of life imprisonment, thanks to late amendment, rather than the death penalty, as legislators had first proposed.

The law in Uganda was enjoined by the courts, but it was never the law that was really the problem. The mentality that the law represented justified a regime of brutal abuse and oppression of the gay community, including murder, whether at the hands of public authorities or while authorities stood idle. As a Christian, a Massachusetts scholar, and an Africaphile in comparative law, I was aghast at what Lively seemed to have wrought—though it must be said, for his part, that Lively never countenanced violence.

You can learn more about the matter from many sources, including what is probably my all-time number-one-favorite documentary film, Call Me Kuchu (2012); human rights activist Pepe Julian Onziema's part 1 and part 2 appearances on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (2014); and documents in the unsuccessful U.S. federal lawsuit, Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) v. Lively (1st Cir. 2018) (at the Center for Constitutional Rights, though don't misread CCR's rosy spin to misunderstand: Lively prevailed, just not as much as he wanted to).

This particular background certainly did nothing to raise my expectations for Uganda. Happily, though, I found in Uganda nothing like the senselessness I had read about. For the most part, I met happy, hard-working people. I found observance of faith, Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim, no different from other parts of East Africa. I saw nothing like a dogmatic mob stirred to feverish rage, like I had seen in a video of a Lively public appearance.

The fault is mine. I gave into stereotypes, because it was easy to generalize "backward" from Uganda's democratic deficit. But that deficit is the aftermath of colonialism, corruption, and the related ills that afflict so much of Africa, not an ailment of ordinary people. I failed to consider that generalizing from the crowd of believers in Lively's audience is about as fair to Uganda as assuming that the January 6 rioters, pictured relentlessly on TV, are representative of all Americans.

Museveni's and other political posters adorn a chai shop in a rural village of the Kabale District.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 RJ Peltz-Steele

Yesterday, according to the Uganda Monitor, at a Makerere University law school program on human rights accountability, Human Rights Watch CEO Kenneth Roth confronted Museveni with a report (this one, I assume) detailing unlawful detention and horrific physical abuses of civilians by Ugandan security forces. Roth described the president's dismissive response: "The President said Africa has lived through colonialism, it has lived through slavery, and it has lived through various exploitations by Europeans. He overthrew Idi Amin. Don't talk to him about human rights."

The HRW report doesn't even mention the LGBTQ community. It seems that official disregard for human rights is not so narrow a problem. Anyone who doesn't toe the line with the regime is at risk. 

I loved Uganda. It disappointed only my foolish suspicion that it might be a place beyond redemption. No place is. Certainly no people are.

Ugandans deserve better.

Rwanda preens in Commonwealth spotlight, while genocide trauma, Congo conflict smolder just offstage

June 22, KIGALI—The usually biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, "CHOGM 2022," postponed from 2020, is under way in Kigali, Rwanda, marking both a sign of pandemic recovery and a possible Commonwealth pivot to reemphasize development.

The Commonwealth of Nations is an association of 54 states, ranging from island nations such as Dominica and Nauru to larger nations such as Australia, Canada, India, and South Africa. Constitutional origins in the British Empire, and, thus, shared history, language, and legal systems tie together almost all of the Commonwealth member states.

Notionally, the Commonwealth dates to the late 19th century; it was formalized in the early 20th century. The Commonwealth really took off functionally to fill the governance gaps left by decolonization and World War II in the mid-20th century. With the Crown as titular head, the Commonwealth mission today emphasizes rule of law, democratic governance, and human rights. Historical ambitions in the vein of common defense were largely displaced by Cold War realignments and the rise in power of the United States and NATO.

To sport fans, the Commonwealth might be best known for the quadrennial Commonwealth Games, to be hosted this summer by Birmingham, England. In contrast with the Olympics, the Games highlight sports that the United States has weakly or not embraced, such as cricket, netball, and rugby.

Commonwealth participation is not quite a multilateral treaty obligation, because membership is voluntary and terminable at will. Members can be suspended, but not expelled. In Africa, members such as Nigeria and Zimbabwe have had off and on-again relationships with the Commonwealth with waning and waxing commitments to human rights. Members such as Gambia and Maldives have left and rejoined the Commonwealth.

All photos by RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Rwanda's membership in the Commonwealth is an unusual case, adding to the significance of CHOGM 2022 taking place here. The precarious Kingdom of Rwanda was forcibly superseded by German colonization in 1884, then passed into Belgian hands from World War I until 1959. Revolution led to 1962 independence and cycles of tumult. The infamous 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which up to one million ethnic Tutsi were brutally slaughtered in about 100 days, was not a singular horror, rather a climactic installment in decades of violence, as power shifted among competing factions.

Rwanda's 2009 accession to the Commonwealth, the culmination of a six-year campaign, was therefore controversial. Varied factors motivated Rwanda to apply, despite its lack of constitutional ties to the British Empire. The Francophone country stood to gain global prestige and to strengthen foreign economic ties, both intercontinentally and with Anglophone neighbors in East Africa, as well as social development opportunities in youth, education, and sport. 

Rwanda also had a sour relationship with France over French support for the Hutu government responsible for the genocide. France played an active role in Rwanda after independence, politically and militarily, effectively treating the country as its own former colony, for better or worse. Rwandan membership in the Commonwealth therefore represented a deliberate rejection of Francophone heritage. In 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron apologized for France's role in precipitating and failing to stop the genocide, as well as subsequent resistance to investigation. Rwandan President Paul Kagame accepted the apology.

Both intergovernmental and nongovernmental human rights groups, including the Commonwealth's own investigators, found Rwanda wanting in the 20-aughts, its record on human rights still not up to snuff. They warned that Rwandan membership would degrade Commonwealth standards. Commonwealth purists objected to Rwandan membership for the country's lack of British colonial history. Rwanda looked to the example of Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony and Lusophone nation that had been admitted in 1995. In the 1990s and 20-aughts, Commonwealth members disagreed internally over whether to retain the requirement of "historic ties" to Britain. Mozambique had made a strong case upon its valuable support for Commonwealth opposition to South African apartheid. Expansionists prevailed again in 2009, and Rwanda won its membership.

In Africa, CHOGM, which has met since 1971 in Singapore, has been hosted by Zambia (1979), Zimbabwe (1991), South Africa (1999), Nigeria (2003), and Uganda (2007). Queen Elizabeth attended in Uganda, her first visit there since 1954, when Queen Elizabeth National Park took her name. The Prince of Wales is in Kigali now. So bringing CHOGM 2020/2022 to ostensibly Francophone Rwanda is a noteworthy achievement for the Kagame government.

But human rights groups have never abated in their discontent. Especially the recent abduction and imprisonment in Rwanda of "Hotel Rwanda" hero and human rights activist Paul Rusesabagina casts a shadow over CHOGM 2022 that the government would like delegates to ignore. I have written previously about the Rusesabagina matter and a related pending lawsuit in the United States by the Rusesabagina family.

My family and I arrived in Kigali last weekend to find a rush-hour traffic jam aggravated by road closures for CHOGM 2022. The formal CHOGM meeting of dignitaries happens Friday and Saturday, but delegates are here all week to do the real diplomatic work. The black, brown, and white faces of the Commonwealth circulate in the CBD, and plastic-encased CHOGM credentials dangle from lanyards. Heavily armed police and private security monitor every corner; the last thing Rwanda needs is a black-eye security breach. The CBD is plastered with posters in the vein of "Visit Rwanda" and "Invest in Rwanda," bearing images of the country's legendarily hills, green terrain, and exquisite fauna.

Last night I walked through a night-market showcase of life and culture in Rwanda (and in smaller sections, Uganda and Mozambique), from agricultural supplies and textiles to food and dance. Smiling representatives eagerly promoted their wares.  I succumbed to the hype and bought some green—literally and figuratively—cosmetic products for my wife, as well as some Rwandan coffee. (I'd already bought Rwanda and Musanze FC kits for myself.) I took a selfie in front of gigantic letters spelling "KIGALI."

Food stalls offered delights from East Africa, including Rwanda-based restauranteurs in foreign cuisines, such as Indian and Ivorian. An aside: The highlight of the showcase for me was Kigali-based "Now Now Rolex," which makes gourmet ethnic variations of the classic Ugandan street food. A rolex is an egg omelette rolled in chapati, usually with other ingredients, such as diced tomatoes and onions, added to the taste of the buyer. Typically for no more than a dollar or two, the wrap is cooked quickly in a hot skillet, crepe style, at a roadside cart or stall. The name "rolex" derives from "rolled eggs," but for its quick preparation also plays cheekily with the name of the watch brand. Now Now's gourmet options incorporate ingredients for variations such as French, Italian, and Mexican, still just $2 a pop; I had "the Rwandan," featuring minced beef. Oh, and a delectable vodka mule to wash it down.

Notwithstanding the festive atmosphere, the genocide is never far from mind in Rwanda. CHOGM 2022 takes place against the backdrop of Kwibuka 28, a three-month remembrance of the genocide sponsored by Rwanda and the African Union. With the theme "Remember-Unite-Renew," Kwibuka is recognized with its own gigantic letters at the Kigali Genocide Memorial. Newscasters on Rwandan TV (English-language for me) and videos at the cultural showcase readily recognize the genocide, but reiterate a forward-looking "never again" message. They refrain from revisiting gruesome atrocities and scarcely acknowledge the ongoing public health problem of post-traumatic stress.

Personally I've been skeptical of Rwanda's reconciliation with the genocide and purported triumph over ethnic conflict. The mantra one hears throughout Rwanda today is that "we are all Rwandan now," meaning ethnic differentiation is a thing of the past. But how does a people turn that page so quickly, even in the span of one generation? Nothing I learned about the genocide at the Kigali Memorial gave me solace. The way that nationalistic leaders and opportunistic, wanna-be warlords manipulated information and exploited mass media—sound familiar?—to turn ordinary people into torturers and murderers of their friends and neighbors; decades of violence and 100 days of carnage to rival the Holocaust; and then it all just evaporated, never to happen again? I noted that the impressive and truth-rendering Kigali Genocide Memorial, which houses the remains of a quarter million people and where Prince Charles laid a wreath today, was constructed in the 20-aughts by a UK NGO, not by the Rwandan government.

To President Kagame's credit, Rwanda looks and feels peaceful. I found only warm and welcoming people traveling in the country's lush northwest. I walked around Kigali day and night with a comfort level I've had in no other African capital (though I am not recommending being carefree here; I take precautions). Kagame brokered Commonwealth membership and landed CHOGM.

Kigali

At the same time, Kagame has been president since 2000. He was a leader of the domestic military force that ultimately quelled the genocide, and many say he has been running the country de facto since then. For perspective, that's since Bill Clinton was President of the United States.

In a recent book, journalist Michela Wrong unflinchingly painted Kagame as a wolf in sheep's clothing.  (I've read about the book, but not read the book.) She charged him with political assassination of a rival and dictatorial repression of dissent. According to descriptions of Wrong's portrayal, a "sinister" and "chilling" head of state lurks behind the rendering of peace and promise that the West is so eager to embrace.

"Hotel Rwanda" today: the Hotel des Mille Collines

Wrong's take squares with details alleged in the abduction of Rusesabagina. Assiduously avoiding return to Rwanda, Rusesabagina persistently criticized the Kagame regime and alleged failure to reconcile meaningfully with the genocide. The Rusesabagina family lawsuit alleged that a covert Rwandan intelligence officer lured Rusesabagina away from his Texas residence for a purported speaking engagement in Burundi, then orchestrated his abduction to Kigali from a Dubai layover. Rusesabagina's subsequent criminal prosecution in Rwanda on terrorism charges had every hallmark of a show trial. The Kagame administration denies involvement in the abduction and any impropriety in the prosecution.

I wonder whether Rwanda's enthusiastic embrace of Kwibuka, the annual genocide commemoration, represents genuine engagement with reconciliation or mere lip service to human rights platitudes that gratify western leaders and smooth the pathways of foreign investment. I haven't seen a single mention in Rwandan media of demands by human rights groups that Rusesabagina be released. Such as I've seen, discussion of human rights in Rwanda, besides recognition of the genocide as a historical event and cause for unified patriotism going forward, has been limited to the promotion of innovations in public health and sustainable agriculture.

Meanwhile, violence and unrest in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo casts another unwanted shadow over CHOGM 2022. Like Rwanda, the DRC (formerly Zaire) has convulsed with violence since its Belgian decolonization in the 1960s. Millions have died just since the 1990s. Since 2015, the eastern border region, which shares Lake Kivu and the Virunga mountain range with Rwanda, has been the site of a bloody confrontation, costing thousands of civilian lives. Supported by UN peacekeepers, the Congolese army has been locked in conflict with "M23" revolutionaries. Making matters worse, Kinshasa accuses Kigali of funding M23 in a bid to expand Rwandan territory. Rwanda denies involvement.

I know next to nothing about the political situation in the DRC, so my perceptions are informed only by experience on the Rwandan side of the border.  The establishment of a Tutsi government after the genocide propelled Congolese Tutsi into Rwanda, and nearly 2 million Hutu left Rwanda for the DRC. More than once in the Lake Kivu region, I met Congo-born 20-somethings—the average age in Rwanda is a remarkable 19—whose Rwandan families relocated there after the genocide, only to return later to Rwanda as refugees of war in the DRC. Though born to Rwandan families, the persons I met identified as Congolese and lamented that they could not go home.

I came close to the DRC border twice. The first time, in the Virungas, I had an escort of four soldiers with automatic weapons. Armed escorts are common in East African parks to protect tourists from wild animals (ideally to scare them with gunfire, not to shoot them). But this was more than animal deterrence. The soldiers acknowledged that Rwandan officials are worried about incursion from the DRC, especially while CHOGM is ongoing in Kigali.  I was encouraged not to linger at the summit of Mount Bisoke, whose crater lake straddles the border.  (I was not allowed to photograph soldiers or border posts.)

The Virunga volcanic range sits at the junction of the DRC, Rwanda, and Uganda.

I came close to the border as well in the lakeside town of Gisenyi. A Rwandan official invited me closer to the line than I cared to be. I could see where queues, asphalt road, and orderly buildings on the Rwandan side gave way to dirt road, a shantytown, and a colorful, chaotic, and predominantly pedestrian marketplace on the Congolese side.

As of this writing, CHOGM 2022 is progressing without incident, and Rwanda is availing of the opportunity to put its best foot forward in the world. Surely for the sake of everyone I've met here, I hope that Rwandan participation in the community of nations affords, for every Rwandan who wants it, opportunity for more than subsistence living.

However, for that to happen, Commonwealth delegates will have to see past colorful souvenirs, product pitches, and reconciliation rhetoric. Rwanda needs a plan for infrastructure, educational opportunity, and an improved standard of living for all its people. Rwanda does not need recolonization through the finance sector.

For an indulgent exploration of the contemporary aftermath of the Rwandan genocide and the precarious relationship with the DRC, I highly recommend the television series Black Earth Rising (2018), a co-production of Netflix and BBC Two, written and directed by Hugo Blick and starring Michaela Coel and John Goodman.  The story is fictional, but the riveting expression of social and political tensions is spot on. HT @ Jason Peura.

For a moving documentary on the plight of the gorillas in the Virunga mountains amid the chaos of war in the DRC, see the Oscar-nominated Virunga (2014), also available on Netflix.

Tort liability brakes U.S. policy shift on Sudan, marks crossroads of past, future where Africa meets Arabia

Street corner in the Arabian Market district of Khartoum
(RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

With economic sanctions exacting an intensified toll amid the pandemic and humanitarian crises fraying the peace at political borders, 40 million people in the East African Republic of Sudan may hope that long awaited normalization of relations with the United States will bolster stability and produce prosperity.  Meanwhile, in Washington, American tort claims have thrown a wrench into the diplomatic works.

Smaller Sudan after 2011 (LouisianaFan CC BY-SA 3.0)

Unending War

Before its 2011 division into north and south, Sudan was the largest country in Africa.  Its location is strategically important.  Sudan borders Libya and Egypt to the north, the lifeline of the Nile flowing into the latter.  The country's Red Sea coast positions Port Sudan opposite Jeddah and Mecca.  Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR) sit to the west, and Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east—where more than 40,000 Ethiopian refugees have fled conflict and now strain Sudan's thin resources.  Tumultuous northern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda, the latter yielding the Nile, lie in reach of South Sudan's capital, Juba, along with a disputed stretch of border with Kenya.

At last abandoning imperial ambition in 1953, the British left Sudan to the tempest of regime rise-and-fall that tragically characterized post-colonial power vacuum in Africa.  The country declared itself independent in 1956, but for a quarter century, no one form of government would stick.  An Islamic state brought about some political consistency in 1983, but plenty of ills, too: reigniting civil war between north and south, and paving the path of three decades' dictatorship and an abysmal human rights record under President Omar al-Bashir, from 1989 to 2019.

Part of embassy bombing memorial in Dar es Salaam

(RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Relations with the United States went from bad to worse after Sudan backed Iraq in the 1990-91 Gulf War.  Osama bin Laden took up residence in Khartoum for five years at that time.  He built a favorable reputation for philanthropy by building legitimate businesses and financing infrastructure projects, such as the main highway, named for him, linking Khartoum to Port Sudan.  In 1993, the United States listed Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism.  Under U.S. pressure, Sudan expelled bin Laden in 1996.  But Sudan was not spared blame when al-Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, killing 224 people, including 12 U.S. citizens, and injuring thousands.  U.S. retaliation included a cruise-missile strike against a Khartoum chemical plant—unfortunately and very likely a target accused erroneously of complicity in chemical weapons manufacture.

Ironically, the bin Laden-orchestrated terror attacks of September 11, 2001, set Sudan and the United States on a winding road of fits and starts toward reconciliation.  U.S. President George W. Bush recognized the need for American allies on the East African doorstep to the Middle East.  U.S. policy leveraged austere sanctions to incentivize Sudanese cooperation in counter-terrorism, and the Bashir regime was supportive.

Sudan needed help, too.  The civil war between the Islamic government in Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), started in 1983, had never ended.  The exhausting conflict, which ultimately cost more than 2 million civilian lives, was dragging into one of the longest civil wars in modern history—besides that it was really a sequel to the never-quite-resolved first Sudanese civil war of 1955 to 1972, another tragically typical consequence, in part, of arbitrary colonial political borders.  Multi-national diplomatic interventions helped at last to draw the war to a close in 2005.  The peace agreement led to the secession of South Sudan in 2011, a development that seemed promising at the time, but since has seen the two states teetering ceaselessly on the brink of combustion.

A spellbinding sampling of the human toll of the civil war can be found in Dave Eggers's What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2006).  Spanning events from 1983 to 2005, the book is an artfully novelized memoir of a real child refugee among Sudan's "lost boys."

In 2017, the Obama Administration further loosened sanctions on Sudan.  A coup in 2019 sent Bashir from office the same way he came in, and in 2020, Sudan reconstituted itself as a secular state.  Al-Bashir, 76, is now in prison for corruption.  Marking a significant policy reversal, the government has signaled that it might be willing to turn Bashir over to the International Criminal Court for prosecution in connection with the genocide in Darfur during the second civil war.  In October, the Trump administration moved to clear the way for U.S. businesses to reenter Sudan, bargaining the country's de-listing as a state sponsor of terrorism in exchange for Sudanese recognition of Israel.  The administration was accused of too-little-too-late effort to bolster its foreign policy portfolio in the run-up to the 2020 election, but, at this point, the end means more than the motive.

Persistent Perseverance

In short order, Sudan has transformed from war-torn religious state, ruled by a dictator accused of crimes against humanity, to secular constitutional democracy, pivotal in Middle East peace and primed for western commercial investment.  In other words, Sudan might be in the midst of a remarkably rapid transition from paradigmatic problematic state to African success story.

View of Khartoum and the Nile from Corinthia observation level
(RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Long acquainted with the hardships of war and sanctions, the Sudanese have persevered, developing a resilient infrastructure and an enviable standard of living, especially relative to neighbors such as the CAR, the DRC, and Eritrea.  Sudanese teens wield smartphones in the dustiest of wayside villages.  Sudan has oil and refining capacity, though the division of natural resources between north and south remains a key cause of simmering contention.  The Khartoum skyline is dotted with structures infamously financed by deliberate defiance of sanctions.  Representative is the Corinthia Hotel: opened in 2008, the oval-shaped building is called "Gaddafi's egg," because Libya paid for its €80m construction.

Wayside fuel and rest area, Shendi-Atbara Road, Al Buqayr
(RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

At present, Sudan has one arm tied behind its back.  Trucks sit idle in fuel queues.  Western credit cards don't work; cash is king.  For better and worse, local products, mostly MENA-manufactured, substitute for the usual globalized glut of soda and snack options in the convenience stores, excepting the universe's inexplicably irreducible constant, Coca-Cola.

If sanctions go away, an energizing flow of auto parts, industrial equipment, transnational banking services, and development of telecommunication and physical infrastructure will irrigate Sudan's thirsty landscape.  The new constitutional government will be boosted to a threshold on prosperity unprecedented in the nation's history.  Already in June, the UK announced a £150m commitment to ease democratic transition and coronavirus impact by combating inflation and poverty.  Sudan unbound stands poised to achieve African development in a region that's long been starved of a win.

But There's a Hitch

Tort liability in U.S. courts is presently a sticking point in negotiations over normalization of U.S.-Sudanese relations and the entry of American enterprise in Sudan.  In 1996, Congress amended the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) to allow civil lawsuits against foreign state actors for support of terrorism.  Survivors and families of victims of the 1998 embassy bombings sued Sudan in 2001.  The lawsuits floundered in the 20-aughts amid confusion over what plaintiffs, defendants, and causes of action Congress intended to authorize.  In 2008, Congress clarified the law on those questions and revived the earlier suits.

Subsequently, plaintiffs, numbering more than 700, won an award in federal court of $10.2bn, including $4.3bn in punitive damages.  The D.C. Circuit struck the punitive damages, doubting that Congress intended to authorize punitive recovery retroactively.  In May 2020, in Opati v. Republic of Sudan, the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, vacating the striking of punitive damages and remanding for the lower courts to reconsider.  Litigation questions remain on remand.  The defense might yet challenge the constitutionality of the retroactive authorization of punitive damages, and it's not clear whether Congress intended foreign plaintiffs to be eligible for punitive awards.  Still, the massive compensatory award stands ripe for harvest.

Sen. Schumer in October (Senate Democrats CC BY 2.0)

All that litigation might, however, amount to naught if Congress acts again.  As a condition of the current agreement over sanctions and Israel, Sudan wants free of the Opati judgment.  In October, the State Department indicated willingness to negotiate immunity for Sudan against liability for past acts.  But that immunity would require another change of law, and Congress is not yet on board.

According to a report in Tuesday's New York Times, Sudan has offered a settlement of $335m, undoubtedly a more realistic number than multiple billions.  But Sudan has threatened to exit the agreement in whole if Congress doesn't authorize immunity by year's end.  Deadlocked legislators are trying to broker a compromise through a military spending bill in these first weeks of December.  To the displeasure of some in Congress, the working proposal would compensate U.S. citizens naturalized subsequently to the 1998 attacks less than those who were citizens at the time—working a de facto racial disparity.

Even if the 1998 claims can be resolved, a bigger hurdle looms in the prospect of blanket immunity-to-date for Sudan.  While Sudan did defend the embassy-bombing lawsuits on grounds of FSIA interpretation, it has not responded to the legal claims of, The Hill estimates, about 3,000 family members of September 11 victims who blame Sudan for bin Laden's five-year safe harbor there.  According to the New York Times story, those plaintiffs have the support of Senate leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to see that their claims are not extinguished.  It seems unlikely that a closely divided Congress would have any appetite to favor foreign tranquility over September 11 victims, no matter how much U.S. businesses are chomping at the bit to trade in Sudan.

Local heroes (with a smartphone) atop Jebel Barkal
(RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Last Week in Sudan

Here in the United States, if we hear about Sudan, it's likely to be in the context of civil war atrocities, the human rights abuses of the Bashir regime, or Middle East tensions.  Yet last week in Sudan, I saw little evidence of those worldly matters.  On the roads of Khartoum, in the markets, and in the countryside, I found only a gracious and warm people, a rich Nubian cultural tradition, and a stunning archaeological record of our shared human heritage.

Your interpid blogger at the Nuri Pyramids
(Steven Mueller CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Both of those views, the ugly and the beautiful, the grim and the genial, are Sudan.  We disregard the former at our hazard.  But to disregard the latter, we risk much more.

Sudan is the beating heart of the African continent.  Sudan will not forever be deterred by colonial legacy and the politics of aging superpowers.  However we manage to balance redress for past wrongs with a way forward, America will have to decide how to be a part of Sudan's future.  The only alternative will be to join the crumbling desert relics of Sudan's past. 

UPDATE, Dec. 13, 2020: See Conor Finnegan, Trump admin offered $700M to 9/11 victims to save Sudan deal, ABC News, Dec. 11, 2020.  UPDATE, Dec. 20, 2020: Sudan's Listing as Sponsor of Terrorism Ended by US, BBC, Dec. 14, 2020.