It is no longer possible to chin up in Zimbabwe. Not with the profusion of woes rending the country each passing day. Dozens are dying at the country’s public hospitals following a monthlong strike over pay by the few remaining doctors, inflation is fast approaching the 1,300 percent mark and political oppression has reached epidemic proportions. Formerly a major tobacco producer and breadbasket for southern Africa, Zimbabwe continues to hurtle down the tubes, producing an endless stream of sob stories. It rivals war-torn African countries in spewing out displaced people and refugees running away from the country’s socio-economic meltdown. A [...]
NAIROBI, Kenya — Six months of peace talks to end more than two decades of conflict in northern Uganda have been virtually for naught, and their progress is now being held up by a simple question of geography. Bellicose rhetoric from Sudan President Omar al-Bashir that the Lord’s Resistance Army would be expelled from the south of his own embattled nation “by the end of this month” has emboldened the shadowy rebellion to demand a new host — and mediator — for negotiations to end the war that has made night travellers of tens of thousands of children and displaced [...]
“Look, these people, they have no jobs, no food, no education, no future. I just figure that we have two things we can do. Help, or we can sit back and watch a country destroy itself on CNN.” –Sgt. Matt Eversmann in “Blackhawk Down.” Pity the poor Somalis, or the millions of them that have not yet found sanctuary in Europe, Canada or the United States. Recent events seem to have sucked them back into the cycle of violence and destruction that ruined the country in the 1990s, and made Somalia the poster-child for the concept of the failed state [...]
