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

http://alexengwete.blogspot.ca/2012/12/a-racist-bastard-called-j-peter-pham.html?m=1

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) 

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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. 

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PHOTO CREDITS: www.acus.org