Sunday, 2 December 2012

A racist bastard called J. Peter Pham wants an M23-ruled ethnocratic state set up in North Kivu

(PHOTO: Dr. J. Peter Pham, Director of the Michael S. Ansari Africa

Center, Atlantic Council)



***



I got this very short impassioned and tearful email today sent from

Washington at 0:47 EST by the mother of my daughter Elikia:



"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/opinion/to-save-congo-let-it-fall-apart.html



How to fight this crap???"



The link was to the op-ed titled "To Save Congo, Let It Fall Apart," a

"crap" penned by one racist bastard, name of J. Peter Pham, and

published on the New York Times of November 30.



I call "racist bastard" any scholar from the US--there are only

American scholars or researchers influenced by this kind of

"sectarian" American scholarship to come up with this kind of

crap--regardless of race--who'd concoct the political theory of

splitting the Congo all the while denying any agency to the Congolese

people.



This absurd theory and the racist bastards peddling it rear their ugly

heads every time there's a crisis in the Congo.



Before J. Peter Pham, there was a tandem of racist bastards called

Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills who, in 2009, were advocating to

Secretary Hillary Clinton, in their crappy ForeignPolicy.com article,

the annihilation of the Congolese nation.



(See my post of October 11, 2009 on those two scholarly punks here:

alexengwete.blogspot.com/2009/10/two-racist-scholars-mercenaries-as.html?m=1)



And before Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills, I am told, there was the

unlikely racist bastard called Susan Rice, who, during her tenure as

Under Secretary for African Affairs in the Clinton administration, was

also pushing for the fractioning of the Congo into micro-states.



That's why I'm crossing my fingers these days for Sen. John McCain

who, I wish, will succeed in his crusade to block Susan Rice as

Secretary Clinton replacement.



This goes a long way to show that those racist bastards have a

vestigial genealogy of sorts.



These racist bastards are all prolific postmodern theorists of

so-called "failed states" with little grasp of the anthropological

realities on the ground.



A quick look at the pile of crap left by J. Peter Pham in his New York

Times op-ed shows that these racist bastards often take leave of their

senses when it comes to offering realistic solutions to the Congo.



J. Peter Pham advocates for instance "breaking up a chronically failed

state [DRC] into smaller organic units whose members share broad

agreement or at least have common interests in personal and community

security."



Well, this brings to mind, as I pointed out in my post of October 2009

referenced above, the "smaller organic units" the apartheid regime

developed in South Africa, the infamous so-called "Bantustans."



Maybe J. Peter Pham doesn't know that the DRC holds more than 400

ethnic groups--large and small--which, if his theory were to be

implemented, would yield more than 400 ethnic "organic units" or

ethnocratic "républiquettes" or the weest and weirdest republics of

the world!



Welcome to the pre-colonial villages-states of the Congo Basin so

well-researched by historian Jan Vansina!



I do hope J. Peter Pham has made provosions for their mutual

diplomatic recognition and their recognition by the United Nations or

is this genius dreaming of creating instead 400 tiny rogue states.



What's more, no one knows who would be doing the actual "breaking up"

on the ground. Maybe J. Peter Pham has in mind the "international

community" or the UN, with him as chief expert in "breaking up" a

nation?



In my October 2009 post denouncing Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills, I

pointed to another essential characteristic of these racist bastards,

including their latest avatar, J. Peter Pham: unrestrained, pernicious

hubris in the form of what anthropologist Johannes Fabian calls

"denial of coevalness" to the Congolese.



I concluded that 2009 post by making this observation:



"In his book Time and the Other, Fabian theorized that

anthropologists, if not careful, could be prone to 'a split of

temporalities,' imagining the primitive others as caught in temporal

limbo, denying them 'coevalness.' Our two scholars-mercenaries show

the same symptoms of this 'denial of coevalness.'



"Congolese are primitives. They can't be agents of their own history.

They don't count.



"They are dough we could knead at will. Let's carve out the Congo into

several tiny states, like the villages-states of yore. Let's fragment

the place into Bantustans! ...



"Underneath the thin veneer of the scholarship of these intellectual

mercenaries festers a virulent racism. Not unlike the racism of

Leopold II. A racism so metastasized that those suffering from it are

unaware of their condition…"



Let's turn back to J. Peter Pham, who goes on to write:



"Others have dismissed the M23 leaders as 'warlords.' But warlords,

even if they do not acquire power through democratic means, tend to

provide some sort of political framework, often based on kinship ties

or ethnic solidarity, that is seen as legitimate.



"They also tend to provide some basic

security — which is more than the

questionably legitimate Kabila

government in Kinshasa provides for

most Congolese."



If you still didn't take seriously my calling these scholars "racist

bastards," that's the moment in J. Peter Pham's text that racism bares

itself naked in all its frightening ugliness.



But if you still continue to hold this impostor as a trailblazer in

political science, I suggest you read the piece by New York Times

reporter Jeffrey Gettleman titled "Dire Scene in Congolese City as

Rebels Begin to Leave" published December 1.



The heart-rendering article is uncannily hyperlinked to the crap left

by J. Peter Pham.



(See: www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/world/africa/alarming-picture-as-rebels-prepare-to-leave-goma.html?ref=opinion)



Gettleman writes:



"Human rights groups said that the M23 rebels who captured Goma last

week were now going on an assassination campaign as they prepared to

leave, creating a vortex of crime and confusion."



Adding:



"Residents said that at least 10 people in Goma had been assassinated

in the past 10 days, with many more disappearances.



"After one magistrate was struck in the face with a machete and nearly

killed last week, United Nations peacekeepers evacuated more than 20

other magistrates.



" 'We've confirmed several cases of targeted killings by the M23 in

and around Goma,' said Ms. [Ida] Sawyer, the Human Rights Watch

researcher.



"She said the victims included 'those who refused to join the M23 or

act as informants, individuals deemed uncooperative during looting

incidents, and other suspected 'enemies.' "



Maybe J. Peter Pham was suggesting all along that North Kivu be set up

as an M23-ruled ethnocratic micro-state that would purge itself

through ethnic cleansing of the kind documented by Human Rights Watch.



Let's give J. Peter Pham some benefit of the doubt.



He might have been too busy adding yet one crappier essay to the more

than "300 [crappy] essays" he's been authoring over the years to take

notice of yet another Letter written by UN Group of Experts Steve

Hege that documents the direct military intervention of Rwanda in the

assault on Goma--thereby debunking J. Peter Pham's stupid theory of

M23 as an "organic unit" indigenous to North Kivu.



Quoting again from Jeffrey Gettleman's article:



"[A] new letter to a United Nations Security Council committee said

that the Rwandan Army had crossed the border into Congo and had helped

the fighters capture Goma in the first place.



"Rwandan troops 'openly entered into Goma through one of the two

official border crossings,' said the letter, which was written by

Steve Hege, the coordinator of a United Nations investigative panel,

and was leaked by a third party."



In other words, J. Peter Pham should stop bloviating about places and

people he doesn't know the first thing about.



***

PHOTO CREDITS: www.acus.org

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