229 - Can 2024 Become a Year of Peace, with Human Suffering Reduced?
Israel, Ukraine, Africa, Human Rights
We are right to wish friends and acquaintances "happy new year," but 2024 has not begun well. Israel is still pounding the Gaza Strip despite (or because of) its inability to capture or kill Hamas' brutal commanders or close off all of Hamas' 250 miles of underground tunnels and fortifications. Hamas is even shooting missiles toward Tel Aviv. In Ukraine, the anti-Putin combat is faltering for want of support from the West. And in Africa turmoil is following chaos, endangering lives and human rights.
Israel/Gaza
The repulse of Hamas's murderers is not going well. Starvation and severe hunger afflict up to 2 million huddling collaterally damaged Gazans, with nowhere to flee. Israel also appears -- despite President Biden's entreaties -- to have no plan for governing and reconstructing Gaza after the war terminates. What we know, at this stage, is that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is determined to save his position at all costs despite a serious loss of legitimacy at home and abroad.
Biden has urged Netanyahu to calibrate, to be measured, to start attempting to win the information war, and to let humanitarian assistance flow into Gaza. He and his close advisors want Netanyahu to “maximize focus on high-value Hamas targets” only. But Netanyahu is instead insisting on catering to his extreme right-wing backers in a governing coalition that only controls 64 of 120 seats in the Knesset. Defections toward the left could send Netanyahu into oblivion and put him before the judges that are still considering his corruption case.
Both sides, and aid to Gazans, require a cease fire and a major release of hostages. But Hamas is insisting on a "permanent" truce, and the exchange of prisoners who Israel is reluctant to release. The Biden administration and Qatari negotiators may be able to resolve the deadlock shortly. But to do so, Netanyahu will need to edge away from his "all Judea and Samaria is ours" Mizrahi coalition partners. For him, that obvious break toward sanity and sensibility may be impossible. Netanyahu is largely cornered and cannot see a way out without somehow (probably now impossible) extirpating Hamas in Gaza.
Ukraine
Thanks to Republican maneuvering (think of the overlap with Israel's extreme right wing), Ukraine is running out of ammunition and morale as the war front suffers from the cuts of budgetary support and replenishments of materiel. Abandoning Ukraine in this way, even for a short period, is criminal, especially since opinion polling shows that a majority of Americans still want to support Ukraine's struggle against Putin. Only the Trumpers assert (madly) that Putin is a worthy leader.
Ukraine will soon go under if American and European funds and equipment cease to arrive. As we have said in this space over and over, Ukraine's battle for freedom and the rule of law is our battle and the battle of every part of the free world. Were Putin to triumph, even partially through a cease fire that left him in control of the Donbas and Crimea, the entire apparatus of post-World War II global order will have crumbled. What Ukraine -- under very adverse circumstances that include nightly barrages of Russian missiles and drones -- is doing is to protect the West (Europe, the U.S., Japan, even the Philippines) from tyranny and the pillages of dictatorially-minded despots like Putin and Xi Jinping (and Trump, Erdogan, el-Sisi, et al).
What Ukraine needs desperately at this stage are the F-16 aircraft that have been promised, and more longer-range artillery. With the F-16s, Ukraine might be able to gain greater control over the skies, destroy Russian missile and drone launching sites, neutralize Russian air power, and begin to pound Russian forces in occupied eastern Ukraine and Crimea. With very limited resources it has already done so in the Black Sea and across the border into parts of Russia proper. But Russia so far is too little threatened. Thus our supplies must resume and so should support from the European Union blocked by Hungary.
Africa
Africa has begun the year no more peacefully than has Gaza and Ukraine. President Felix Tshisekedi has been declared the winner (73 percent of the 18 million votes cast) in the Democratic Republic of Congo's December election, but observers were kept from a close surveillance of the balloting and Tshisekedi's opponents have cried foul. Equally significant, Tshisekedi has no plan, and perhaps no real desire, to help bring an end to the turmoil in his easternmost provinces. There conflict rages, the national army seems too hobbled by corruption to defend the realm, an East African force has been sent packing, and Tshisekedi has dismissed the relatively inept UN peacekeepers who have long attempted in desultory fashion to prevent M23 rebels from overrunning Goma town or to halt raids by the Islamist-inspired Allied Democratic Forces.
There is continued military rule across the Sahel and in Guinea and Gabon to worry about, plus Russia's growing involvement in those states and the Central African Republic. The Russians are also helping to fuel and profit from the major conflagration that is consuming Sudan. There, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemeti)'s Rapid Support Forces, backed by the Wagner Group and the United Arab Emirates, appear to be defeating the regular army of the Sudan, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Already 7 million Sudanese have been displaced, and 12,000 killed, since April. Every effort to bring about a cease fire has failed.
In addition to their internal wars, Africans are also making a concerted attack on the rights of LGBTQ citizens. President Evariste Ndayishimiye's latest outrageous attack urges Burundians to "stone" gay people. Already consensual same-sex intimacy is punished by a two-year prison sentence. “I think that if we find these kinds of people in Burundi, it is better to take them to a stadium and stone them,” Ndayishimiye said Friday. “That’s what they deserve.”
Burundi's president echoed Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni. The country over which Museveni has ruled since 1986 last year decided that those citizens who engaged in “aggravated homosexuality" should be put to death. The U. S. and the World Bank subsequently suspended Uganda's access to preferential trade tariffs and foreign aid. The U. S. also imposed visa restrictions on Ugandan officials.
Another five or six African countries announced efforts to curtail same sex relations. But why now? and why the animosity? These are questions without easy answers, especially since same sex relations are relatively common and ordinary in much of Africa. During my decades in Africa, I frequently saw villagers and city folk strolling hand-in-hand, with no one making a fuss. Museveni doesn't need an electoral appeal, and Ndayishimiye is an authoritarian. So there should be no rush to such an offensive judgment, putting literally thousands if not millions at risk throughout the continent.
US Policy
Washington must continue to steer Netanyahu as best it can. And in the next few days it must arrange some palliative compromise on the Mexican border to procure the votes to support Ukraine's needs. In Africa, taming the Sudanese lions is the most important priority. We can hardly intervene for fairness in the Congo. And, as for the terrible punishments in Burundi and beyond, we must at least take a strong public stand against such unfair persecution -- as we have begun to do in Uganda.