300 Miles From Anywhere, Mauritania
• As Liberia’s lights come back on, former warlord and the man responsible for ruining that country, Charles Taylor, sits in the dock at the International Criminal Justice court in The Hague getting his due. There is a very informative blog on his trial giving hourly updates and detailed descriptions of witness testimony from the Hague, etc. The posts are really long, but the transcripts are an interesting window into just how crazy the African wars of the 1990s were.
Following up on Marzah’s [Zigzag's] testimony from yesterday, Griffiths asked him whether he had eaten many people. Marzah stated that when someone wants to kill you and your family, you kill and eat them for revenge.
He went on to say that Taylor had ordered him and other NPFL/RUF fighters to eat captured ECOMOG and white UN people, using them “as pork to eat”. He confirmed yesterday’s account of eating Superman’s heart, and said he, Benjamin Yeaten and the others had done so on Taylor’s orders. He explained in detail how victims were prepared for cooking after being killed, and cooked with salt and pepper. He said Taylor knew this.
Wow. What the hell do you say to that?
• The presidents of Chad and Sudan have signed yet another peace deal claiming both sides will disarm and drop support for the various militias they fund and arm to fight along each other’s borders. Deals between the two countries are a dime a dozen, so we’ll see if this one sticks. The janjaweed is blowing up Sudanese president Bashir’s spot as the ink dries:
In an interview with a British television company, Mohammed Hamdan, a Janjawid commander admitted for the first time that the weapons they used and the orders they followed had all come from the Sudanese government.
Hamdan said he had met al-Bashir in his home for orders to carry out campaigns in Darfur and that the government had given them cars and weapons.
The Sudanese government has yet to respond to the claims.
No shit. Really???
• Have you ever wondered where all of those guns in Darfur keeping flowing in from? Dan Pepper finds out by hanging with some total sketchballs in Sudan. Check out his website, there are some amazing photographs from Haiti, Burma, Africa, etc there.
We sped off again, careening along the Chad-Sudan border. I was sandwiched between a hulking driver and a young commander named Ibrahim, who played me video clips from Iranian arms companies on his new Nokia N70. Images of missiles, spy satellites, and drone aircraft flashed across the screen as Knight Rider-style theme music played.
On the truck’s dashboard were two plastic water bottles; six cassette tapes of Sudanese pop and religious music; two packets of stale cookies; a handful of toffees; three magazines of ammunition; a Beretta pistol; and a Glock pistol.
[...]
I picked it up, considered its cold, clean lines, turned the black metal and plastic over in my sweaty hands, racked its slide, and set it down. I memorized and then scribbled down its serial number: HAP850.
[...]
I spent three days in the camp, surreptitiously photographing and copying the serial numbers off of rifles, rpgs, and heavier artillery. Upon returning to Khartoum, I asked G how much it costs to supply a small rebel army: “A million dollars?” He laughed. “Less! Much, much less.”
I sent my photos and serial numbers to arms experts in Europe. The Beretta was traced to Iraq; the Glock was traced to a factory in Austria. The rest were traced to factories in China, including a grenade launcher that went into production in 2003, as the killing in Darfur flared. The UN forbids arms shipments to Darfur; however, there is no prohibition on selling weapons to the Sudanese government.
• The Washington Post owns Africa coverage in the US press these days I’d say. Craig Timberg has another positive story from West Africa on the rise of democracy and rule of law. They’ve been getting great personal stories too. Stephanie McCrummen is in Kenya’s “aptly named” Rift Valley:
Wambui stood in the sun, facing the details of her new life: a registration tent and a light blue meal card. A long line led to workers adding fresh names to a list already 16,000 long — mostly people from Kibaki’s Kikuyu ethnic group who had been chased from their homes in this western Rift Valley region and were now living in rows of white tents in a dusty field.
“I was expecting peace, but now I don’t see any peace,” said Wambui, 34, who is Kikuyu, adding that she had thought she would be safe once the agreement was signed. “When I heard people talk about that deal, I was very happy,” she said. “It doesn’t mean anything to me now.”
Kenya’s volatile Rift Valley is a landscape of uprooted lives these days. Bitterness lingers, along with an almost triumphant mood among the local people who have driven out Kikuyus they perceive as privileged and arrogant.
• The Ethiopian/Eritrean border is seeing sporadic violence, where a bomb on a bus killed at least seven people. Its dangerous to even go to school in South Africa, where more than a fifth of sexual assaults on South African children happen.
TAGS: A Milli, HBO, Iran, Iraq, kids, Music, Race, Sandwich, Video, war
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March 14th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Human, the other white meat.
Jeff, I always liked this photo of yours.
March 14th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Thanks Mac. Sounds like Superman got a bum rap!
March 14th, 2008 at 11:58 am
I heard there was a blizzard on the Nile last night?
March 14th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Ew, gross.