Only Politics

Kevin Rudd can do no wrong. Many people have begun to believe this. Three months into the job as Prime Minister of Australia, his popularity is soaring at 70%. He has come as a breath of fresh air for Australians, who had felt bored during the long John Howard years. His cabinet includes a lesbian and a former rock star. The country is rejoicing at this openness and freshness.

Rudd’s decision to sign the Kyoto protocol has gone well with his countrymen. They had felt ashamed at Howard’s stubborn refusal to do so, as Australia was the only other country besides the US who was dragging feet on the matter. Rudd’s apology to Aborigines has made the community feel better and part of the country. The non-Aborigine Australians too have welcomed the apology. It has made them feel free of the guilt that they had received as inheritance.

Legend says that he had survived 638 US sponsored assassination attempts. Exploding cigars, poisoned food and infected diving suit could not put a break to his 49-years regime that saw nine US presidents. However, finally to the relief of the mighty Americans, Fidel Castro owing to his failing health has finally decided to step down as the President and Commander-in-Chief of Cuba. In an open letter to the people of Cuba, Castro has announced his retirement decision. Now what remains to be seen is whether USA’s Cuban policy will change but with not much time left for President George Bush to remain in power it is left to his Republican or Democrat successor to decide on any change in its foreign policy, if any.

Freedom always starts with a struggle and begets violence and non conformance by the oppressors. This is a true case of the newly independent Kosovo, which has recently liberated itself from Serbian dominance. The country, which is still in its nascent stages of being a republic has already started experiencing the wrath of other countries who are not willing to ordain the status of ‘freedom’ on Kosovo.

Although the country has received a strong backing and support from international organizations like NATO that includes the United States of America and European Union, attacks from the countries which border Kosovo, especially Serbia, have started to demonstrate its opposition through acts of violence. Official checkpoints of Kosovo which border Serbia had been torched and Serbian civilians had carried out processions in view to show their disapproval for the newly formed country.

In 1923, when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk overthrew the Khalifa to establish secular rule, a new Turkey was born. Overthrowing all its previous allegations as the ‘sick man of Europe’, secular turkey was different from what it was under six hundred years of Ottoman Turk rule. However, elements of reform did not reach every citizen of Turkey and modern day Turkey was dichotomized into two distinct classes – the secular educated largely urban upper class with European lifestyle and the religious, illiterate or semiliterate, largely rural impoverished class with an Islamic lifestyle.

In the initial decades of secular rule, the secular upper class carried an indifferent, if not a somewhat contemptuous attitude against the devout Muslims. It was not long that the religious Turks, the underclass of the Turkish society realized that to save themselves from poverty and gain political and social influence the only solution lay in achieving ‘secular’ education apart from religious education. With the passage of time, religious Turks have become educated with better financial standing and are occupying the urban space with the secular Turks.

Poverty is not necessarily the main cause of a high level of infant mortality rate, rather than a disproportionate income distribution leads to a high rate of death of infants and children. This conclusion could be safely drawn from the recent findings by the aid agency ‘Save the Children’. According to the agency’s report, despite of rise in per-capita income, the countries with the highest child-mortality rate are Angola, Sierra Leone, Niger, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Nigeria, South Africa and Cameroon. On the other hand, developing countries with low child-mortality rate are Nepal, Yemen, Malawi, Indonesia, Tanzania, Bangladesh, Egypt, Madagascar, Philippines and China.

Poor health systems in these developing countries, especially in Africa, are killing millions of newborn babies, young children and women in childbirth. According to WHO, a baby born in Sierra Leone is three and a half times more likely to die before its fifth birthday than a child born in India is, and more than a hundred times more likely to die than a child born in Iceland or Singapore is. Throughout the world the child mortality is higher in males than in females with a few exceptions. In China, India, Nepal and Pakistan the mortality in girls are greater than in boys. These disparities arise out of preferential treatments of boys in family health care and nutrition.

Kosovo, a long disputed region of Southeastern Europe has finally declared independence after a tumultuous period of violence and bloodshed. Kosovo was earlier recognized as an integral part of Serbia under the name of Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, but what comes as a result of inter-ethnic clashes and the marked conflict with Serbia and the stipulated administration of the United Nations since 1999, is that Kosovo has unilaterally emerged as an independent nation which now calls itself as the Republic of Kosovo.

This independent status of Kosovo is to be backed and supported by the international community, with the likes of European Union and even the United States, but Serbia and Russia have very vehemently opposed and annulled this declarative independence. Earlier also Kosovo had declared independence in 1990 but this was very limited and reached only Albania who was the sole country to recognize it.

Outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a scathing attack against the West in his last press conference before he steps down from his office next month. The President has strongly hinted that he is very much willing to remain in frontline Russian politics as the Prime Minister. The way the Russian strongman presented himself to the journalists in Moscow provided the strongest indication yet that President Putin would be a powerful Prime Minister and it won’t be just a ceremonial and symbolic post under him.

Coming back to his menacing attacks against the West, the former KGB officer has undoubtedly made it a point that Moscow would be more than willing to return to the Cold War days showcasing Russian political, economical and military might around the world. In the modern era of international diplomacy and rivalry, hardly anyone expects a Presidential speech should be so crude and menacing but that was exactly what President Putin addressed his western rivals with. He told western observers who refused to monitor the upcoming elections that they should ‘rather teach their own wives how to cook cabbage soup’. He went on with lambasting remarks when he referred to British newspaper stories criticising his alleged multi-billion pound fortune as ‘detritus excavated from someone’s nostril and smeared across bits of paper.

Chad, a landlocked country in Africa seems to be particularly influenced by marked violence from regions like Darfur. The black rebels in the country have led to a hostile bid against the President of Chad, Idriss Deby who is facing rebellious attacks and violence over his administration and governance. The President has finally declared an emergency which will be in effect for 15 days.

Chad is very explicitly divided into groups which are belligerent in turning over Deby’s government and are indulging in unceasing attempts to overthrow him. All this insurgency started in 2006 when these armed rebels stormed into Chad’s territories but were ultimately repelled by Chadian army who has a strong backing of the French as it supplies logistics and intelligence support. The Battle of N’Djamena in which the rebel forces entered Chad’s capital has sparked off the emergency measures taken by the President.

The pivot for this rebellion, as anticipated by President Deby is Sudan who supports these causes. But now the emergency has come as an impeccable attempt on part of the Chadian government to monitor the operations of these rebels as well as civilians in the country’s territories. With a diligent eye on public and private press as well as transport and house searches, the President does not want to leave any table unturned to cope up with these attacks.

President Deby, who has won three consecutive Presidential elections in the country since 1990, is seriously facing authority and power sustenance issues. A land marked by violence on all sides seems to be facing testing times with the emergency now being declared. Lets see how far this challenge of rebels is going to exist.

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Zimbabwe’s former Finance Minster Simba Makoni has thrown a new challenge to President Robert Mugabe by declaring himself as an independent presidential candidate. This is a significant defection from the ruling Zanu-PF party which expelled Mr. Makoni from the party this week. Although the former Finance Minister has made it clear that he was not against his President Mugabe but urged Zanu-PF party members to follow him for the sake of the people of Zimbabwe and start a process of reconciliation to take the poverty-ridden country forward.

Mr. Makoni described his country as a sad nation full of fear. He said, “[It is] a polarised nation in deep stress and one characterised by disease and extreme poverty.” The question is how effective would be Simba Makoni in giving President Mugabe a run for his money although international analysts are predicting an unfair elections with Mugabe pulling all the strings for a sixth term. The situation is very difficult in Zimbabwe with secret media stories from the highly restrictive country reporting of Mugabe secret police excesses against opposition and anti-Mugabe supporters making the upcoming March 29 election an uneven playing field.

We are very much aware of the hostilities and human suffering that are deeply connected with conflicts across the African continent. Yet the situation is far worse than what we see, read and feel sitting thousands of miles away from the conflict zones. UNICEF has warned that rape and sexual violence in some of the conflicts of Africa have taken the form of an epidemic leaving a profound effect on the lives of children and women in the war-ravaged regions.

While sexual violence is common in war-zones, women and children are now being raped in displacement camps, during aid distribution and even after conflicts have ended making it a priority for the international community to look into the matter closely and work towards an end to these evil acts. Although there is an increased recognition of the gendered nature of the conflicts in Africa within the international community, a lot of work has to be done to address the invisibility of women and young children from the conflict zones. African human rights activists have noted that rape is a common form in African conflicts to unleash fear among rival communities. But what has concerned UNICEF is the fact how rape cases doubled within days of the Kenyan political violence which makes the organisation believe that sexual violences have taken the form of epidemic in violent areas of different parts of Africa. The UN agency described the problem as an epidemic because the use of rape as a weapon is spreading from armies and militias to civilians in conflicts and civil wars.