Giles Foden

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Priti Patel with the mayor of Kigali, Pudence Rubingisa, left, visiting premises allocated for refugees in Rwanda on 14 April 2022. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

MundoÁfricaEuropa, ,

It’s easy to fall prey to misconceptions about Rwanda. I’ve done so myself while writing about the small country – about twice the size of Yorkshire – to which we are dispatching our “migrant problem”. With flights to Kigali imminent, and the president, Paul Kagame, proposing alleged UK-based “génocidaires” be extradited to face trial, I wonder if we really understand what we’re getting into.

Faults in Priti Patel’s policy should not need rehearsing. Yet so great is western ignorance and amnesia about Rwanda (and the wider Great Lakes region of Africa) that the arguments against require reinforcement. For there has, since the genocide, been a “blank ahistoricism” about the country, as the Rwanda expert Michela Wrong has put it.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional,

At a burger restaurant, the body of a man and woman lie in a final embrace. As Kenyan soldiers launch their assault, pop music is still playing from loudspeakers.

The grisly consequences of an attack by al-Shabaab on Nairobi's Westgate shopping centre are still unfolding. As individual families mourn, Kenya is once again counting the cost of its point position as a regional bulwark against militant Islam. The country has been here before: in 1998 al-Qaida bombed the US embassy in the Kenyan capital; and in 2002 a terror attack against an Israeli-owned passenger aircraft and hotel took place in the coastal city of Mombasa.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica

In 2001, I was in a bar in Kigoma, on the Tanzanian side of Lake Tanganyika. As I sipped my beer, I could hear the clipped tones of a South African speaking into a radio transceiver. He was ordering supplies for the United Nations peacekeeping mission known as Monuc, then operating out of Kalemie on the lake's Congolese side. At the time, Monuc's blue berets were just about managing to keep a lid on things in eastern Congo, but already the strain was showing.

Earlier that year Congolese president Laurent Kabila was shot by his bodyguard. He was replaced by his son Joseph, largely as a result of pressure brought to bear by Robert Mugabe.…  Seguir leyendo »