Burundi Project Overview Reports Index "Get Moving Now to Prevent Genocide in Burundi" Comment by Gareth Evans Published in the International Herald Tribune 22 August 2001 When Nelson Mandela at last coaxed a political settlement out of the Tutsi and Hutu parties in Burundi last month, a collective sigh of relief reached all the way to New York. Wracked by conflict since 1993, Burundi is a country where an explosion of communal violence on the scale of the genocidal horror in next door Rwanda has long been feared. Now a major international mobilisation is needed, first to strengthen the credibility of the political transition beginning 1 November and second to help construct meaningful ceasefire negotiations with the armed Hutu rebel groups. The Security Council should immediately begin securing standby arrangements for the deployment of a peacekeeping monitoring force within 30 days of a cease-fire signing. And the country's donors, who have pledged but not yet delivered financial assistance, need to get their act together fast.

Macedonia Project Overview Reports Index "NATO Must Do More in Macedonia" Comment by Gareth Evans, published in the Wall Street Jounral, U.S. edition 22 August 2001 The peace agreement is signed, and within a few days, barring further hitches, 3,500 NATO troops will be on the ground to collect the ethnic Albanian rebels' weapons. But Maceodonia's messy problem has not gone away - it looks unnervingly like Bosnia in 1992. This piece argues that NATO's mission has to be recast. The force has to be strong enough, and stay around long enough, to see the Aug. 13 agreement through to parliamentary ratification and full implementation by both sides, with the conditions created in which displaced citizens can return home.

Southern Africa Project Overview Reports Index "Ground Zimbabwe's Jet-Setting Despots" Comment by Anna Husarska, published in the Washington Post 21 August 2001 The most closely watched foreign politician in Zimbabwe these days is not some high official in Africa or the former colonial power, Great Britain. It is Slobodan Milosevic, ex-president of Serbia, now awaiting trial by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Milosevic's fate gives hope to Zimbabweans that their own president, Robert Mugabe, will one day answer for his deeds -- that dictators can be overthrown without bloodshed and that civil society can prevail over a despot.

Macedonia Project Overview Reports Index "Doing Just Enough to Fail" Comment by ICG Board Member Mort Abramowitz and Heather Hurlburt, Deputy Director of ICG's Washington office, published in the Washington Post 17 August 2001 NATO can go into Macedonia under its present plan - a limited, 30-day mission to collect arms that combatants choose to hand over - hope for the best, and do just enough to fail. What it should do is deploy in larger numbers and aim to secure a dependable cease-fire, a tight closure of Macedonia's border with Kosovo and serious implementation of the political agreement by both sides. Acting now for the longer term will be difficult in the short term. But failure will have its own costs, and they will be far higher.

Macedonia Project Overview Reports Index "A Month in Macedonia Will Not Be Enough" Comment by ICG Board Member Wesley K. Clark, published in the New York Times 17 August 2001 If we have learned but one thing in the tragic breakup of the old Yugoslavia, it is the need to act early and robustly in a crisis. Sending 3,500 troops to Macedonia with a restricted mandate belies NATO's commitment to the Balkans. A mission so limited in scope and time risks failure in the decade-long effort to bring peace, stability and multi-ethnic democracy to the region.

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