Absence due to extensive travel schedule

THIS BLOG WILL BE "ABSENT" UP TO 21 MAY.

PUBLICATION WILL RESUME ON 22 MAY.

Thanks. 

Mali needs a much longer political transition

There will be a second donor conference for Mali on 15 May in Brussels. I am afraid it will be another game of smoke and mirrors. Promises, promises, and further promises. The first one, at the end of January in Addis Ababa produced over 450 million dollars of pledges but little –only about a quarter of that amount –has effectively been made available. The humanitarian needs are far from being met. Food vulnerability is widespread in the North. Money for the reform of the armed forces and the security sector has not materialised. The dialogue and reconciliation process is not supported. Public administration is starved of funds and paralysed 

And I am also afraid there will additional pressure on the Transitional Government to move faster on the preparations for the July elections –presidential and legislative –when everybody knows that elections at this early stage are not a solution. The transition phase requires a much longer period of time. 

Italian politics: some good news

Seen from where I sit, the new Italian government looks good. It has a broad basis, its outlook is modern and it seems to be able to have a strong voice in the affairs of Europe. One should be a little optimistic about its future performance and also about its contribution to balancing power within the EU.

I am also convinced the markets will react positively to the composition of this cabinet. 

Brussels lunches and dinners

Brussels is a lobbyists’ paradise. I am told there are close to 30,000 living around the European institutions and other entities. One can imagine how many invitations for lunch and dinner the big shots in the EU Commission, Council, Parliament, and elsewhere get every week…One should also imagine the flow of gifts and favours that is taking place on a daily basis…

It is also a spies’ heaven. Nobody knows exactly how many they are. The head of the Belgian secret service talks about many hundreds but who knows? In any case, their presence means plenty of lunch and dinner invitations too. That’s the most classical way of getting information.

It is also said the city houses the largest press corps in the world. It is true that the number of journos  has decreased during the last few years, because of the crisis and its impact on the resources made available to the media. But it is still a large number, close to a thousand people accredited with the EU alone. That is also a lot of invitations for a good meal…At least, as far as the largest papers and TV stations are concerned, because the scribblers from smaller outfits are more interested in being invited that anything else. They are always looking for a free meal…

Taking all this into account, maybe I should envisage opening a classy restaurant in the international district of Brussels. I am sure it is good business…

A divided country

For reasons of work planning, I had decided that the family’s weekly grocery shopping should take place this morning. Consequently, I drove to my local supermarket, a big place just a mile from home.

My first surprise was to see the car parking pretty empty. Then, I walked to the shop only to find out that it was closed. There was a strike across the board in Brussels and in the French-speaking part of the country, I was told. Attendants working for large commercial stores were among those heavily engaged in the labour action.

Well, a plan is a plan. So, I decided to drive for about seven or eight miles along the same road out of the capital city and do my shopping in the Flemish region. In a supermarket of the same chain the one next to my place belongs to. And I did. In that part of the country what had been called a national strike was a non-event. 

Mali and a divided UN

Albert Gerard "Bert" Koenders has been the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General (SRSG) in Cote d’Ivoire since August 2011. He is now being shifted from Abidjan to Bamako to lead the new peacekeeping mission in Mali ( MINUSMA). He is very new to peacekeeping and to the African realities, as he spent his time in Dutch politics and as Development Co-operation Minister.

And he has a major job ahead of him. Which will be further complicated because there is a very serious rivalry between two UN departments regarding the Malian agenda: the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) believes that the political transition should be the priority objective, whilst DPKO, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations is going to take the lead and push for the military operations and internal security to be at the forefront.

Interesting, isn't it? 

Mali is not moving in the right direction

Mali’s internal situation continues to be very fragile. The key international partners of this country need to coordinate better among themselves and agree on a common strategy in support of the stabilization process and the political transition.  This is a matter of great urgency.

It is also a matter of great concern to see that a country that has played an important role in the history of West Africa and has also been able to produce a large number of fine minds is today politically fragmented. No leader has emerged. Without a clairvoyant leader as a counterpart the external friends of Mali will not be able to succeed. It would be a mistake to forget this evidence.   

Ransom payments

A few years ago, when I was based in N’Djamena, I visited the Waza National Park, in Northern Cameroon on three different occasions.

The Park is located in a desolated corner of Central Africa. The main road between N’Djamena and Waza is a very strange place. You feel desperately isolated over there. It is a Cameroonian road that has seen better days. If you stop your car and walk to the right hand shoulder of the road you are in Nigerian territory. If go off road to the left you soon hit the Chadian border. On both sides you meet from time to time a few villages where life is tough and as arid as the land. And at certain times of the year, you come across the nomad people known as Mbororo, a subgroup of cattle-herders linked to the Fulani ethnic group. Actually, it is much easier to see their cows in the Waza National Park than wild animals.  

It is not a place for mass tourism.

This was the place however where a French family was kidnapped a couple of months ago. The parents and their children, plus another male relative, had been on a visit to the park. They were then taken by force across the border into Nigeria. At the time the media said they had been hijacked by the terrorist group Boko Haram. Maybe, maybe not, as there are other armed bandits in the region.

The fact of the matter is that the family was released without a fight and in very unclear circumstances a couple of days ago. The French government, including the President himself, were very much at the forefront of this liberation and made sure the media coverage was as good as it gets. And they were quick to deny that ransom money had been paid.

I want to believe so. I also know that up to very recently the French authorities used to pay – and deny it – for the French nationals that had been kidnapped in Africa to be set free. That was a very wrong approach to the problem. That was the best way to encourage the bandits expand the business and to look for more victims.

But is it a better approach to put a lot of political pressure on the governments of Cameroon and Nigeria for them to make a nice gesture and open the prison gates to a good number of incarcerated people who happen to be connected to the kidnappers? 

When the image spirals out of control...

Two friends of mine are travelling to Greece tomorrow for a week away from our grey skies. They bought a package holiday, the well-known “all inclusive deal”. Yesterday, when collecting the vouchers, they realised that the 5-star hotel they had picked is closed for lack of guests, then the alternative option is also closed; only the third choice is indeed available. They then realised that Greece has somehow disappeared from the holiday map of Northern Europe. For now, at least, I should say, and particularly for the high end segment of the tourism market.

This is no good news for Greece.

Uprooted and lost as a young man

In Western Europe, there are thousands of young men like the one that has been captured in Boston or his dead brother.

They are the children of immigrant families that came from afar. Most of those families just ran away from poverty. But many others have left behind violent conflict experiences, be it in the Middle East, in South Asia or in Africa. Or maybe closer by, in the Balkans or the Caucasus. Their sons – it’s indeed a boy’s problem – might have been born in Europe and raised in a peaceful and democratic context but some of them feel uprooted and excluded. They end up by aligning themselves with those who express extremist views about the West. For some, the war in Syria has been an opportunity to join what they believe to be a Cause. Others have been elsewhere, including in Pakistan. These fronts have made them harder and more willing to take action. As such, they represent a major security challenge to the Western European societies. And the experience has shown that this is a challenge that is difficult to match.