Transcript 0:00 [intro music] Welcome to Trendlines, a podcast on global affairs brought to you by World Politics Review. My name is Peter Duri. 0:13 We have a very interesting interview with Simone Schlindwein on the electoral politics in the DR Congo lined up, but first, I'm joined, as always, by WPR's Judah Grunstein for this week's briefing on world affairs. 0:27 So Judah, what stories crossed your desk this, this week? We started off the week with another great briefing on Cuba by William LeoGrande, who is a regular contributor to WPR. 0:40 And in this one, he discusses the impact of Venezuela's economic collapse, which David Smiley discussed in the podcast two weeks ago on Cuba. 0:52 Uh, Cuba has become very dependent on Venezuelan largesse in the form of subsidized oil shipments, uh, in particular, which allowed Cuba to both power its economy cheaply, but also resell the subsidized oil at higher prices for hard currency. 1:11 Uh, now C- Venezuela has been forced to cut back on those shipments because of its own economic turmoil, uh, so shipments have dropped by about 20% this year. 1:23 And as a result, Cuba has been forced to cut back on its energy consumption, uh, with an impact on its e- economic growth, which has dropped from 4% in 2015 to 1% this year project- projected. 1:38 Uh, the, the fear in Cuba is a repeat of the so-called special period that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, uh, uh, a period which was to the Cuban people what the Great Depression was to a generation of Americans. 1:53 And Bill explains why the Cuban economy is less vulnerable today to that kind of shock than it was then, uh, but points to the actual real danger for Cuba and Raúl Castro, who has about two years left in his term as president, namely that the economic downturn will cause the government to stall or rein in the economic reforms it needs to implement in order to update its economy. 2:21 Um, there's, there's already frustration among Cubans over the lack of clear benefits from the reforms so far. 2:28 So a- as Bill explains, the Cuban government really has a ch- has to choose right now between, uh, implementing the reforms and risking further social disruption from the changes they require, or else slowing down the reforms because of the economic downturn and risking further frustration from an impatient Cuban people. 2:50 So, uh, a very insightful and, uh, th- thorough briefing, uh, one that we've come to expect from, from Bill, who's, uh, who's just a clear writer and a very insightful and informative, uh, analyst. 3:03 Yeah, and it's, it's very interesting to see how these, uh, stories are interconnected, um, that, that he, that, that we discuss here on the podcast. 3:11 So, um, y- you had the Venezuela story two weeks ago, and obviously all these, all, all... even though some of these stories are m- more focused on internal politics, they have, uh, deep, uh, international ramifications. 3:26 And another one that we ran this week is a similar example on, uh, the situation in Lebanon, uh, in the aftermath of a recent, uh, terrorist attack. 3:37 Yes, that was a briefing by Samia Kulab, and this article is, is a very interesting follow-up on the interview I did last week for the podcast with Nicholas Blanford on, on the role of Hezbollah in Syria's civil war and the effects on His- on Hezbollah and also Lebanese politics. 3:54 And she, she looks at a su- at a, at a series of suicide bombings on June 27th, um, which took place in a, in a predominantly Christian community in Lebanon on near, close to the Syrian border. And, uh, 4:10 th- this, this, this, these attacks are a bit of a new kind of animal in the sense that, um, it, it, they hit a, they targeted a community that wasn't involved in the civil war, um, in Syria in any way directly. 4:28 Uh, while the Lebanese population has come to expect attacks by Islamist groups, uh, like, uh, the Syrian Al-Qaeda affiliate or the Islamic State a- against Hezbollah, um, it, th- these were, uh, some of the first attacks, uh, target- targeting, uh, the Lebanese population more broadly. 4:49 And as a result, uh, there has been a, a shift of, of the public opinion against the millions of Syrian refugees who are currently in Lebanon. 4:59 There are 1.1 million, uh, refugees officially registered, but, um, estimates assume that there are far more Syrians in Lebanon who are, uh, not officially registered, uh, with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. 5:15 And, uh, so these refugees are, pose an obvious security challenge because there are around 3,000, uh, refugee camps in Lebanon, uh, many of which are informal and have no, uh, official organization whatsoever. 5:31 And, uh, the security forces of Lebanon, um, especially after these, these latest attacks, rely primarily on profiling and denunciations from within the refugee community to weed out extremists and terrorists. 5:46 But of course, these, these methods are error-prone, and human rights organizations have decried their tendency to, uh, to include, uh, innocents in, in, in, in sweeps that happen after these kinds of incidents. 5:59 Samia really, uh, does a, does a good job of, of portraying these increasing tensions between the refugee population and the host communities, and also describes how, uh, local politics in Lebanon, which has been ex- incredibly welcoming to, to, uh, Syrian refugees so far, uh, is shifting, uh, to, uh, to favor, um, the eviction of camps and, and the inc- and, and their, the increasing attacks against refugees residing in Lebanon. 6:27 It's a, it's a very alarming development, uh, especially when you consider more broadly across the Middle East how many people are displaced, whether internally within countries or internationally across borders. 6:43 And we also see similar issues at play in terms of, uh, refugees and migrants who have reached Europe. 6:52 Uh, it's a time right now where for very obvious reasons, because of the security issues, uh, that the terrorist groups are exploiting and using, uh, to, uh, to provoke this kind of reaction, at the same time, the, the, it's a very alarming mix of a sort of closing of the borders, uh, even mental borders, this, uh, at a time when there are so many people who are displaced outside of their own borders. 7:25 So, uh, definitely a, a, a valuable, a valuable briefing, a, in, in a country that is right next door to what's going on in Syria. And, uh, then you had a very interesting piece on Pakistan, if I remember correctly. Yes. 7:40 A briefing by Arif Rafiq, uh, which I, I kind of thought of as a, as we were editing it, as the tale of two Sharifs, uh, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Pakistan's very popular army chief, General Raheel Sharif. 7:56 And Arif, uh, Rafiq, the author, discusses the rumors swirling around in Pakistan these days of an imminent coup by the military, and, um, it, it bears noting that this is Nawaz's, Nawaz Sharif's third term as prime minister. 8:13 The first time he was essentially forced out of office by the military, and his second term ended in 1999 with a military coup. 8:22 Uh, at the same time, this, this time in office seemed to be different with Nawaz Sharif reaching a sort of modus vivendi, a peaceful if, uh, wary division of labor, whereby he focused on domestic politics and the economy and the military handled security, domestic security of course, and also strategic foreign relations with, uh, Afghanistan, India, and China, for instance. 8:49 Um, the, the results over the course of Nawaz Sharif's time in office have actually been relatively positive, both in economic terms and on the security front, al- although there's obviously still great progress to be made on both. 9:04 Um, still there have been tensions, uh, with the military, notably over Nawaz Sharif's prosecution, uh, of Pervez Musharraf, who was the general who actually overthrew him in the 1999 coup. 9:18 Um, Arif, uh, explains how two new developments though have, have thrown things off balance in this, uh, this sort of delicate, uh, modus vivendi. Uh, the first being a corruption scandal, uh, 9:34 from Nawaz Sharif's family being implicated in the Panama Papers offshore accounts leaks, and the second being Nawaz Sharif's health problems, which forced him to leave the country for medical treatment. 9:47 So combined with rumors that, uh, General Raheel Sharif might seek to extend his term as army chief be- beyond November, it makes for a volatile situation at a time when, uh, Pakistan had really seemed to achieve a level of political and ec- economic stability with which it is rarely associated, and certainly not in, in the past decade. 10:11 So, um, Arif looks at, uh, the implications and what, what's really at stake, uh, behind all the maneuvering. Very interesting. Thanks for joining me again this week. Thank you. 10:23 [Instrumental music] In 2011, the Democratic Republic of Congo held its first ever, at least somewhat democratic election for president. 10:35 President Joseph Kabila's term runs out this year, and after having served two terms already, he is now required to step down by the Constitution, but so far he has shown no inclination to do so. On the contrary. 10:50 Simone Schlindwein, a freelance journalist based in Uganda and perhaps the best informed analyst regarding Congolese politics I know, is joining us now to provide a closer look at the fallout from Congo's political crisis and what it might lead to. 11:03 [Instrumental music] I'm Simone Schlindwein, and I'm working as a correspondent in the Great Lakes region in Africa. Congo is one of the largest countries in Africa. 11:16 It lies literally in the heart of it, and it's literally dominated by its da- dense jungle, which is in the heart, in the center of the country, meaning as a, as a country, it, Congo is having a society, a population society on the periphery of that huge jungle, which makes it very, like, it's a very fundamental problem of infrastructure, communication, logistic, and everything else which becomes political in a way in the end, and economical in the end. 11:46 Very difficult to manage that country in itself. 11:49 And so because it's very la- um, huge and rich in resources, we also have a lot of dynamic economic players melanged into a political situation, which is, um, very intense and, uh, has a very kind of conflict, uh, war situation since many decades, like open war and halfway shimmery conflict in, in periodic, uh, phases. 12:14 [Instrumental music] Politics is a performance in Congo's capital, Kinshasa. The many who came to this opposition rally gave it their best. Opposition politicians called it. 12:28 They're campaigning for President Joseph Kabila to leave power in December at the end of his second term. They say he's trying to stay in office beyond the constitutional limit. 12:38 We need the international community to help us chase out President Kabila. We are angry here in our country. 12:47 The conflict changes because now there's elections or, like, election time, a period of election time coming up, but the period of, uh, the calendar of the election is not really set, um, s- to direct dates. 13:01 So we f- we are entering now a new phase of different political crisis which is different from the war which we have seen in the last few years. 13:10 We have in Congo every, uh, five years a term set up by the constitution which meant to be, uh, the parliament meant to be reelected as well as the president. 13:22 So these five years ending up November because the last election happened in 2011 November. Uh, but n- up to now there is no election date set. 13:33 Uh, even the preparation of all these elections in ter- terms of, in technical terms saying to come up with voters list, registration, adding new voters who became newly adults and what what, is, uh, delayed. 13:47 And somehow the government, now the justice minister explains this delay is not a problem, we will manage it maybe next year or maybe in two years. 13:56 But the problem is the, according to the constitution, the all, the elected president only has a t- term, maximum term of two, uh, two terms following each others, meaning after 10 years there must be a new president candidate coming up and a new, um, president being elected. 14:14 So he is ending now, according to the Constitution, his second term in the end of November and, uh, but there's no sign of him stepping down. 14:23 There's as well no alternative coming from that party of power which would replace him, seeming like a lot of the o- opposition candidates and opposition parties rallying now against the government saying, "Hey, you want to purposely delay this, uh, election for keeping, uh, clamping, clamping on power." 14:43 Kabila is just one of the presidents in the region who is clamping to this power. If you look to Burundi, the very tiny but neighboring country, that happened the same last year. 14:53 Uh, we have now Rwanda as well, tiny but neighboring country, um, with President Kagame now came up with a referendum saying, "Okay, maybe we change the constitution to the third term," because all of them have term limits, this literally the same copy-paste constitution. 15:09 So, uh, we had that in the same question in, in, in Congo-Brazzaville, the neighboring Cong- Congo. So this, uh, this is seems to be a tendency in this [laughs] region right now to, to clamp in power. 15:22 As well Kabila for, especially looking at him and his past and his reign and his power, how it developed in the last few decades, uh, in the last decade, was that he was a very weak president in the beginning. 15:35 He beca- he was the son of his father who, who conquered the country and was murdered and e- executed, so he ca- became the president and by accident. He was very young. He was not even 40 years. 15:48 So it, it was like he was a Daniel in a lion cage for a long time, not really being in charge and in control of that huge country. And now since, you can realize since a few years back now he understood the system. 16:02 He understood the game which is played. He understood, like, as a Daniel in the lion cage, he had figured out some strategies to play the lions against each other instead of turning it against him and stuff like that. 16:14 So you see that he's just entering the moment where he sees, "Now I can make something different, or I can establish my power and, uh, as well manifest it on the ground to l- leave behind a legacy." 16:26 And that is probably his personal motivation behind that, why it seems, like, so obvious that he's not stepping down after the second term. To stay in power we say, we see a lot of signs to, to indicate that analysis. 16:41 Uh, we, in the pres- pre, in the election c- calendar, there is, uh, not only presidential and legislative, uh, elections coming up now this year. 16:50 There was also a 20, uh, 13 meant to come, like, the government, uh, the governor election on the provincial basis. 16:57 And we have a municipal communal election which meant to b- happen years and decades back and was never happening. 17:05 The justice minister recently said in his interview in the national television of Congo that we have, like, a tradition of delaying elections. 17:16 Um, of course, if you interpretate that, uh, history of saying that's, we are kind of always doing that, it's normal, it's like we, it's a tradition of our country, of course you can justify that of, but you have, like, Congo has, uh, a constitution and the elections calendar. 17:34 And, um, uh, recently as we saw then the finally the, the effort, um, put in place by the, the National Election Commission to come up with the election on a provincial basis, the provincial governors, 17:49 uh, in the beginning of this year, uh, we saw first of all a total constitutional change of the, um, borderlines of these provinces, which flipped from, uh, 11 provinces into 26. 18:06 Um, all of that happened at finally the, uh, before the election, so the election in the end of the day, uh, the presidential party close to Kabila win the election almost all the provinces which they created new. 18:19 So there are pl- plays and tricks and games being played how to, to maneuver that, uh, man- around that election calendar. Charles Mwando Nsimba resigns from the DRC ruling coalition. 18:40 He is no longer the first vice president of the National Assembly. He is one of seven senior politicians who say they can't work with President Joseph Kabila. 18:50 They're forming their own party to stop Kabila from staying in power when his term ends. They say others from Kabila's inner circle plan to join them. 19:01 We have, like, in Congo, uh, in Kinshasa, in the, in the capital, like, a very dynamic circus of politics. It is so multidimensional, it's unbelievable. 19:12 If you look at the parliament or how many, there m- around 100 different parties in this parliament. So it's at a very, um, uh, like, the political game is very, uh, very much played in clusters. 19:27 Let's say there's a clusters op- opposing Kabila and a cl- clusters pro Kabila, like as a power cluster, but there is as well, uh, sometimes parties which are getting doubled, uh, and multiplied, and copy-pasted, and one is against and one pro Kabila. 19:44 So it's very d- uh, dynamic, this political game. 19:47 There are, uh, many different candidates from all different parties, but the major ones are the ones who are traditionally strong candidates and the new one which just came up new. 19:59 The traditionally ones are, um, Etienne Tshisekedi. He is the president of the UNDPS. The, he is, uh, like an 80-something-year-old old man, just came back from, uh, from Belgium where he was long in treatment. 20:16 His, his health is not okay. Um, so he's the traditional candidate. He is already a politician came, coming out of the Mobutu times, and Mobutu, um, opposing dictator Mobutu. 20:28 So he's a very old figurehead who has, uh, has a lot of, um, of, of pil- people following him in Kinshasa especially, and from, like, the middle class, people who want to do things differently. 20:41 There is another strong candidate, Vital Kamerhe, from the U- uh, UNC party, who's, like, a strong person from, from the east. He as well, like, rallied against Kabila several times. 20:53 So he, um, after now Tshisekedi becoming old, people now more supporting bec- seeing, uh, uh, Vital Kamerhe more stronger. These are the traditional ones. There is now a new opposition figure, a very shiny one coming up. 21:08 Um, he is, uh, Moise Katumbi. He's the former g- uh, governor of the province Katanga, which is now split. 21:16 But Katanga, the biggest province and as well the national resource rich, uh, province with the copper its main, uh, export product, gaining as well as, uh, a lot of export revenues, which makes it economically very, very important, this province, for the Congo. 21:33 Um, this former governor is as well very popular in, in the whole of count- of the country because he's the chief of the Congolese, um, football club, like the Bayern Munich of, uh, of Congo, uh, TP Mazembe. 21:47 And, uh, he beca- he is as well a very rich entrepreneur, um, in mining and, uh, copper explorations and ex- um, exportations, meaning he is a very influential, very experienced management skills, uh, person who is coming up as well financially independent as one of the major challenges to Ka- uh, to Kabila. 22:10 And that is how the Kabila regime as well treats him as one of the biggest enemies. 22:15 It's difficult to predict the Congo in, in an, in the end because there is so many different players playing a political game, as well the UN and the international community. 22:25 So it's always very, very challenging to predict anything in Congo. 22:29 So i- in the last few weeks, it was kind of a calm situation because both of the major opposition candidates were able to rally a lot of population around. 22:39 And when they're doing, um, campaign rallies, for example, because for them it's already campaign time, um, it's, uh, Tshisekedi and Katumbi who had been both in foreign countries. 22:49 So in the last few days, they both came back. Tshisekedi came back last, on the weekend. 22:54 He was, um, uh, received by thousands of people on the airport, marching, uh, along into the city, along the, the big, huge, um, highway, and, uh, celebrating that he came back. 23:07 And Moise Katumbi was not allowed with his airplane coming from, from Europe. After he had been in treatment there, um, he was not allowed to en- to land in the country in the, on the airport. 23:18 And, uh, so even yesterday and then Sunday, there was huge rallies, now demonstration against Kabila, um, uh, demanding that they're going ahead with the election calendar. 23:30 Um, but in the end it was surprising because one of the worst scenarios, worst case scenarios could be in Congo, like the, the scenario of a second Burundi scenario, where last year many, many people had been shot as they w- were, rallied on the streets over several weeks and months, uh, against their president and against the potential third term election, 23:55 and had been, uh, they had, their, their administration and the government, uh, military and security organs clamped down on this protest quite, quite strongly. So this is, like, the worst case scenario. 24:07 But we saw in the recent times, after, uh, several warnings by the UN mission as well by international community towards the security organs in, in U- in Congo, uh, to say, "Don't, uh, don't run around with, uh, very, with live bullets and shoot down on protests." 24:26 There was a very sharp warning from the international community, and we saw that 2015, uh, already in the beginning January 2, 2015, as the first big rally and demonstration against the third term of Kabila happened. 24:40 There were f- 42 people shot dead on one day, and it was a very brutal clampdown. So that is everybody, uh, expected it. 24:48 But in the recent days and weeks, it was surprisingly calm, and the security organs tried to manage these protests not violently, es- at least not to escalate them. 25:03 The Democratic Republic of Congo is reeling from the effects of the fall in copper prices. Lubumbashi in particular has been the hardest hit, and several mines have been forced to downsize their workforce. 25:17 Since the slump of metal prices in twenty fifteen, the economy of the world's fifth largest copper producer has been greatly affected, including the lives of the mine workers. 25:32 What else is important right now to ana-- to make an analysis about the Congo in, uh, economic terms, because we so-- we always see Congo politically anyway are unstable, and it's very, very tricky to get this, uh, political cluster, uh, circus very, very stable because of there are so many actors, and so that this country is as well so large and so many interests. 25:56 But, uh, what we see right now is a economic downturn, like downfall, which is very, very dangerous because Congo is highly, uh, dependent on, on the prices of international commodity products, meaning if there's a copper price which goes down on the international world market, the copper pri-- uh, the copper revenues of exporting copper from Congo, it goes down drastically, meaning the whole economy is dependent on these export we- uh, prices. 26:25 And if there's a downfall on the in-international market, the, the revenues in Congo will be tricky to man-- uh, to get them in. 26:33 And the government can be having problems because it's depending on these revenues so much, having problems to pay not only their ministers and government, uh, officials, but as well their armies, the police, the border control, and lit-- all, literally all security organs trying to establish peace and security in this country. 26:55 And if the army is not paid and the soldiers are not paid for a long time, they can start a new rebellion, and that will be turning into a violent outbreak of, of war in, in the jungle again. 27:07 This is what spark is the politic, uh, which is risky right now as well in that whole political instabilitical, instability problem to say the economic crisis could literally put oil into the fire. 27:25 Many thanks to Simone for providing these insights. I also had the great pleasure of co-authoring an article with Simone on the subject, which you can find on worldpoliticsreview.com. 27:36 On the same excellent website, you can also sign up for the World Politics Review newsletter to always stay up to date with world affairs. 27:45 And if you prefer audio, I highly recommend subscribing to this podcast, which you can do on iTunes or the podcast app on your smartphone. Just search for Trendlines wherever fine podcasts are offered. 27:58 Trendlines is produced and edited by me, Peter Dury. 28:00 You can follow me and World Politics Review on Twitter, and you can find links to pieces covering the issues we talked about in the show notes on worldpoliticsreview.com. 28:10 Have a fantastic weekend and see you next week for a new episode of Trendlines. 28:15 [outro music]
