Two grim stories are continuing to develop in Central Africa.
In Rwanda, just a couple of days after Paul Kagame’s practically pre-ordained re-election a grenade went off in Kigali, wounding a score of people. It is not yet known if the attack is connected to the election, which observers noted was free of violence, though the die was already cast before the election for there to be little challenge to Kagame. Rwanda is often seen as a post-genocide success story, but of course in that narrative the genocide was so grim that any relatively peaceful outcome was bound to look affirming. But Rwanda is no Shangri-La and its seemingly placid surface has been roiled with increasing disturbances of late.
Meanwhile in Uganda (Update: or, more accurately, as reader Alix points out, across the region) the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army has been engaging in coercive recruiting, abducting hundreds of children and adults in a forced conscription campaign that has been playing out over the last year-and-a-half. Women are abducted and used as sex slaves and/or as servants. Human Rights Watch has called on African governments and the US to step up efforts to protect civilians and to bring the LRA leaders to justice, though these are things easier said than done.
