The return to democracy in Thailand following the military overthrow of the populist prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in September 2006 has been messy. In the second half of 2008, the country's polity has been riven by a deepening political crisis which has pitted the government (now led by Somchai Wongsawat, and sympathetic to Thaksin) against much of Bangkok's middle-class and the country's traditional establishment and elite.
John Virgoe is southeast Asia project director at the International Crisis Group

A by-product of the turmoil in Bangkok itself has been that the bloody insurgency in Thailand's southernmost provinces is becoming a forgotten war. Thais, numbed by the repeated atrocities and in any case unsympathetic towards the grievances of Malay Muslims in the south of Thailand, have lost interest. Yet the conflict remains unabated.

The prime minister, paying his first official visit to the south on 28 October 2008, said that the situation had "improved". There may have been a temporary reduction in the number of attacks - an independent monitoring group recorded "only" twenty-seven deaths and twenty-seven injured in October, the lowest monthly casualty rate of 2008. But the long-term prognosis is not good. The political paralysis in Bangkok means that progress on the security front is not being followed up by efforts to address the root causes of the conflict, which ultimately lie in the Malay Muslims' rejection of attempts to assimilate them into the predominantly-Buddhist Thai state. Moreover, there are worrying signs of foreign jihadist groups taking an interest in the situation - something that could seriously complicate what until now has been a homegrown separatist insurgency.

An armed response

The conflict-zone is a sliver of land on the Malay peninsula, with a population of around 2 million. The discontent here has simmered since the 1902 annexation by Thailand (then known as Siam) of what had been the kingdom of Patani. The latest outbreak of an on/off separatist insurgency after this date started in 2004 and has already claimed 3,300 lives - a casualty-rate seven times that of the "troubles" in Northern Ireland (a place of similar size and population).

Among openDemocracy's articles on Thailand:

Sulak Sivaraksa, "Thailand: a return to the ideal?" (21 May 2002)

Ratchada Chitrada, "Krengjai" (7 October 2004)

Jan McGurk, "Bambi vs Godzilla in Thailand" (27 April 2005)

Jan McGurk, "Thailand's endemic insurgency" (28 November 2005)

Jan McGurk, "Thailand's rising tide" (27 February 2006)

Jan McGurk, "Thaksin Shinawatra: the end of the affair" (4 April 2006)

Jan McGurk, "Thailand's king and that democracy jazz" (12 June 2006)

Nick Cumming-Bruce, "Thailand: a coup for democracy?" (20 September 2006)

Nick Cumming-Bruce, "Thailand's high-stakes gamble" (9 October 2006)

Nick Cumming-Bruce, "Thailand's postponed democracy" (26 March 2007)

Robert Semeniuk, "A chronic emergency: on the Burma-Thailand border" (10 October 2007)

Tyrell Haberkorn, "Thailand's state of impunity" (3 June 2008)

Milton Osborne, "Preah Vihear: the Thai-Cambodia temple dispute" (25 August 2008)The Muslims of this region - ethnically, religiously and linguistically distinct from the majority Thai Buddhist population - have more in common with their cousins across the border in Malaysia (and indeed they lobbied for annexation by British Malaya following the second world war, when that country had returned to colonial rule). The community exists uneasily in a Thailand which has historically preferred to assimilate minorities rather than celebrate ethnic diversity. The scholar Duncan McCargo has observed that the "shared shibboleth ?Nation, Religion, King'", intended to bind Thais together as a nation, "failed to resonate in Patani".

Patani (or "Pattani") separatist propaganda emphasises the distinct identity and the glorious history of the region. Accounts of indoctrination activities in Islamic schools reveal extensive discussion of the history of Patani, with potential recruits motivated as well by pan-Malay sentiment, and the abusive behaviour of the Thai security forces.

Some of the Malay Muslims' main grievances, reflecting the importance of identity politics and resisting assimilation, centre on education and language policy. But schools have become major battlegrounds in more than a figurative sense: there have been numerous brutal murders of teachers, singled out as state agents who indoctrinate Thai-ness into Malay Muslim kids.

After the coup which ousted Thaksin Shinawatra in September 2006, the military-installed government announced its priorities were to bring about reconciliation in the country, and to resolve the conflict in the south. By the time it handed power back to a democratically elected government in February 2008, it was clear it had failed to achieve either goal. There were positive steps, such as an apology for past abuses in the south and some useful changes to security structures, but these were not followed up with actual measures to address Malay Muslim concerns. Indeed, the imposition of draconian security legislation has led to further abuses.

Moreover, the return of democracy did nothing to resolve Thailand's political polarisation. The December 2007 election saw a massive victory by the People Power Party (PPP), a proxy for Thaksin Shinawatra's Thai Rak Thai party, which was disbanded by a court ruling following the coup. But the forces which opposed Thaksin continue to plague the PPP. The first post-election prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, was disqualified from office by the courts for the surprising offence of accepting payment for hosting a TV cookery show. His neophyte successor, Somchai Wongsawat, faces a sea of troubles - in the courts and on the streets - which threaten his government's survival and divert attention from the stumbling economy as well as the conflict in the south.

The successive prime ministers, preoccupied with their political woes and needing to retain the backing of Thailand's powerful military, have been willing to let the army take the lead in the south. The army commander General Anupong Paochinda has pursued a vigorous approach which has involved reorganising the command structure, putting more boots on the ground and conducting "sweeping" operations to round up suspects. All this has led to a reduction in the number of attacks in 2008, though there have been more "spectacular" large-scale attacks, including an assault on a train in June 2008 which killed four people and halted all rail services for a week. But any improvement seems likely to prove temporary. In any case, any tactical advances have come at the price of increased human-rights abuses, and a policy of mass detentions which risks increasing resentment and radicalisation.

A policy vacuum

To the extent the insurgents are temporarily on the defensive, now would be a good time to take decisive steps to address the root causes of the conflict.  These include accountability for past and continuing human-rights abuses; language, cultural and education rights; and demands for more self-government. But the government seems unwilling or unable to focus on this agenda: unwilling because some may genuinely see the conflict as a purely military problem, unable because of the distraction of Bangkok politics. Since taking office, the current government has made no policy initiative on the south.

This policy vacuum is leading to dangerous freelancing. In July 2008, one retired general presented a supposed ceasefire announcement from self-proclaimed insurgent leaders on Thai TV, to general surprise; the real insurgents continued their attacks without a break. In September, there were claims of a breakthrough in peace talks hosted by Indonesian vice-president Jusuf Kalla; these turned out to be equally fictive when both the Thai government and the rebel groups denied taking part. It transpired that both the retired Thai general and Jusuf Kalla had been bamboozled into dealing with minor rebel figures. This sort of thing raises false hopes in the south, undermines the government's credibility and shows a lack of coherence in approaches to the region.

Another dangerous development is the increasing interest in the conflict being shown by jihadist groups in Malaysia and Indonesia. The insurgency is entirely self-grown, and there is no evidence that the southern insurgents have received any support from foreign jihadist groups. There is nothing in the curriculum of the insurgents' indoctrination classes to support the idea that they are part of a wider Islamist jihadi movement. On the contrary, the agenda appears exclusively localist, with little discussion of the suffering of Muslim brothers in Palestine or Chechnya of the kind that is a prominent part of jihadi discourse in Indonesia. The traditional and Sufi practices of members of the insurgency - such as the use of magic charms and oaths - would be anathema to the strict Salafists of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). Moreover, conversations with young recruits reveal strong antipathy to the Wahhabi brand of Islam to which JI adheres.

The ethno-nationalist nature of the insurgency is no cause for complacency, however.  Instead, it should be a reason to address the conflict quickly, while it is still amenable to a political approach. Justine Rosentall has argued that movements can morph, as lack of progress leads to frustrations and foreigners arrive to press their own agendas, as happened in Chechnya and is happening now in Algeria. This will not happen easily in the case of the Malay Muslim insurgency, with its localist focus. But it could happen if the government neglects the search for political solutions and frustrations mount.

A number of foreign jihadist websites are starting to give more attention to what they describe as the jihad in "Pattani Darussalam". Against the evidence, they claim that the struggle is a genuine Islamic one, not one "poisoned by nationalism". With religious conflicts in Indonesia - in the Moluccas and Poso - essentially at an end, southeast Asian radical groups are actively looking for new jihads to fight, raising the possibility that foreign jihadists will travel to the region. Indeed, two Malaysians were arrested there in June 2008 while attempting to steal a motorbike. They told the police that they had wanted to wage jihad and had been recruited and indoctrinated, one in Johor and one near Kuala Lumpur - both far from the Thai border. But there is no evidence that they had successfully linked up with local insurgents.

No time to lose

A separatist movement with a political agenda is potentially susceptible to political solutions. Those solutions may not be easily achievable and are complicated in the case of southern Thailand by the absence of an identifiable, above-ground political leadership with whom the Thai state might negotiate. But there are nonetheless political measures which could be taken unilaterally by the government, such as granting official status to the Malay language and ensuring accountability for human-rights abuses by the military. Such measures, coupled with effective security actions (which do not further radicalise the population as do, for example, mass detentions), could help deradicalise the bulk of the population and reduce support for the insurgency. By contrast, an Islamist jihad requires an entirely different mix of policy measures, and is less susceptible to a final settlement.

It may seem unrealistic to argue that the Thai government should undertake a serious policy initiative on the south at a time when it is locked in deep political conflict in Bangkok. But unfortunately, waiting for an end to Bangkok's political crisis may mean waiting a very long time. The south cannot afford to wait.

President Evo Morales of Bolivia is now able to prepare for a referendum in January 2009 on the country's new constitution, following a historic deal with the centre-right congressional opposition on 21 October 2008 which enabled the document to win acceptance. To secure this agreement involved the president making significant concessions. But it is not yet clear if this flexibility will end the sort of political confrontation that led to widespread violence as recently as September (see Carin Zissis, "Bolivia Bridges Political Divide", AS/CoA, 21 October 2008).

John Crabtree is a research associate at Oxford University's Centre for Latin American Studies. He is (on Bolivia) author of Patterns of Protest: Politics and Social Movements in Bolivia (Latin America Bureau, 2005) and co-editor of Unresolved Tensions: Bolivia Past and Present (Pittsburgh University Press, 2008); and (on Peru) author of Peru under Garcia: Opportunity Lost (Macmillan, 1992) and Fujimori's Peru (ILAS, 1998), and editor of Making Institutions Work in Peru: Democracy, Development and Inequality since 1980(Institute for the Study of the Americas, London University / Brookings Institution Press, 2006)

Among John Crabtree's articles on Bolivia in openDemocracy:

"Evo Morales's challenge" (25 January 2006)

"Bolivia: the battle for two-thirds" (18 September 2006)

"Latin American democracy: time to experiment" (30 April 2007)

"Bolivia: a tale of two (or rather three) cities" (18 September 2007)

"Bolivia's controversial constitution" (10 December 2007)

"Santa Cruz's referendum, Bolivia's choice" (30 April 2008)

"Bolivia's democratic tides" (1 July 2008)

"Bolivia's political ferment: revolution and recall" (13 August 2008)

The significance of what happened in Bolivia's congress is that it creates the prospect that - after two and a half years of political wrangling - Bolivia's new constitution will see the light of day. The amended text formed the basis of the 21 October agreement between the government and most opposition members; in turn this allowed a law to be passed which prescribed the holding of a referendum to ratify the document. The vote will take place on 25 January 2009. The constitution will almost certainly be approved; if so, fresh presidential and congressional elections will be held in December 2009 - with Evo Morales likely to win a further term in office.

The deal was struck amid the arrival in La Paz of thousands of government supporters who, determined to see the referendum law approved, had marched towards the capital. Many had walked for days across the inhospitable Altiplano. Morales, who is always eager to associate himself with his country's social movements, joined their ranks as they entered the city. The congress voted to accept the compromise deal on its own, but the presence of mineworkers - who let off dynamite in the square outside the legislative building - may have sharpened its members' resolve. 

A power conceded

A number of concessions was the price that the president had to pay to win the necessary two-thirds majority in congress. All in all, more than 140 articles of the original draft constitution - agreed upon by the ruling Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) and its allies in December 2007 in the city of Oruro - were changed. Some of the changes were minor, but at least half were substantive (see "Bolivia's controversial constitution", 10 December 2007). 

In particular, they involved meeting the opposition half-way on the issue of departmental autonomy, the most overt area of disagreement since the opposition decided to boycott the constituent assembly last December. Four of Bolivia's nine departments - all in the lowland media luna ("half-moon") rejected the draft constitution as it stood, and proceeded to issue what they called "statutes of autonomy". These were de facto declarations of quasi-independence, subsequently approved in unofficial referenda in the four departments concerned (Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni and Pando). The campaign for autonomy reached a climax in a spate of violent confrontations in Santa Cruz and elsewhere in September 2008; for months it has seemed set to tear the country apart (see "Santa Cruz's referendum, Bolivia's choice", 30 April 2008).

But in order to secure a deal, concessions on autonomy were not enough: Evo Morales had to take three further steps. First, he agreed not to make limits on agricultural landholding in eastern Bolivia retroactive. A parallel referendum will now be held (on 25 January) on this issue; but even if voters agree to impose a 5,000-hectare limit on landed estates, existing landowners - many of whom have landholdings far in excess of the limit - will not be affected.  They will just have to show that the land they hold is not idle and fulfils a "social" and "economic" purpose.

Second, Morales agreed to limit his ability to stand again as president to a single five-year term. Under the existing 1967 constitution, a Bolivian president cannot succeed himself. This prohibition was lifted in the original draft of the new constitution, allowing Morales the possibility of running for two further terms. This opened the possibility of him staying in office until 2019.  The compromise arrangement secures the president's agreement not to stay beyond 2014 (assuming he is re-elected in 2009). 

Third, the government has accepted that any changes to the new constitution must have the support of at least two-thirds of congress, not just a simple majority as stipulated in the Oruro document. This would make it harder for the MAS - if re-elected next year - to then change the constitution once again, for instance lifting the bar on re-election beyond 2014. By the same token, however, it makes it harder for opposition parties to amend the new constitution. 

A president strengthened

The deal between Evo Morales and the opposition is, in many respects, a significant victory for the president. A majority of the articles agreed upon in the original draft constitution stands; a source of major political friction between the government and its opponents is removed. In addition, Morales has managed to engineer a division in the opposition separating its more moderate members in congress from its more extreme leaders in the departments of the east. Indeed, members of the civic committees in the media luna feel badly let down by their putative political representatives. 

The period leading up to the agreement was significant in shaping this outcome, as the balance of power between Morales and the main opposition leaders shifted in three significant ways. 

First, in a "recall referendum" in August 2008, more than two-thirds of the electorate voted for Morales to stay in office. This degree of support took even his supporters by surprise. It greatly exceeded his margin of victory (54%) - itself a historic landslide - in the presidential election of December 2005. Even in large parts of the media luna the majority of people voted for Morales, thus exploding the myth that support for the government and opposition was somehow evenly split between east and west. Those voting against Morales were mainly residents of urban areas in the media luna.

Also in openDemocracy on Bolivian politics and social struggles:

Nick Buxton, "Bolivia in revolt" (8 June 2005)

Nick Buxton, "Revolutionary times in Bolivia?" (16 December 2005)

Justin Vogler, "Bolivia nears the precipice" (17 September 2006)
Second, the violence that shook Bolivia in September - including the seizure and ransacking of government offices, the blocking of highways, attacks on gas installations (crucial for exports), and the killing of many government supporters in the remote northern department of Pando - helped shift the position of some previously outspoken opposition leaders. The scale of the crisis made an accommodation, principally with the Podemos grouping, easier to negotiate. A good deal of the violence was actually perpetrated by youth groups associated with the departmental "civic committees" (see Justin Vogler, "Bolivia nears the precipice", 17 September 2008).

Third, the threat to democracy in Bolivia and its integrity as a country obliged external actors to get involved. The Unasur grouping of South American presidents, meeting in Chile in September, pledged its full support to Morales. It offered its services - alongside those of the Organisation of American States (OAS), the United Nations, and the European Union - to help broker an agreement that would restore calm. These pledges in fact played an important part behind the scenes in helping stage a process of dialogue between the government, the opposition local prefects and the civic committees. Seldom has a Bolivian president - especially one who only weeks before had expelled the United States ambassador for allegedly helping foment the unrest - received such a clear show of international support. 

A path sighted

Now, with the constitution agreed, Evo Morales can anticipate a clear "yes" vote in the 25 January 2009 referendum; a victory that would be a springboard to his probable re-election as president in December next year. He will also be hoping that this time, his margin of victory is sufficient to clinch an absolute majority for the Movimiento al Socialismo in both houses of congress. Until now, the opposition majority in the senate has enabled Podemos and its allies to block key items on the government's legislative agenda. 

But the road ahead may not be quite as straightforward as this suggests; the political polarisation between the government and its most bitter critics in the dissident civic committees will not simply disappear. 

The Comité Pro-Santa Cruz, which is by far the most powerful of the civic organisations in eastern Bolivia, has already indicated its dissatisfaction with the agreement between the government and the main opposition parties. Indeed, most of Santa Cruz's Podemos congressmen voted against the law enabling the referendum to go ahead, an act of defiance against the party leadership of former president Jorge Quiroga. The local leaders in Santa Cruz say they will rally their supporters for a "no" vote in the January referendum. The civic leaders in Sucre are equally bitter, since their demands that their city be restored to its historical role as full capital of Bolivia were blatantly ignored in the agreement. 

There are at least two main issues on which these civic committees can continue to harry the government and frustrate its agenda. Perhaps the more important will be defining what departmental autonomy is actually going to mean in practice, and especially how rents from extractive industries (chiefly natural gas) are going to be divided up between the central government, the departmental authorities, municipalities and indigenous organisations; the third and fourth of these are now supposed also to enjoy rights of autonomy. The civic groups in Santa Cruz and Tarija, in particular, will continue to demand a bigger share of the proceeds of gas exports. The prefects of the media luna, now to be known as governors, also demonstrated the extent of their own support in the August recall referendum by winning margins not dissimilar to those of Morales (see "Bolivia's democratic tides", 2 July 2008)

The land issue, too, will continue to be a cause of disaffection. The concession made by the government on limiting the retroactive effects of agrarian reform will take some of the sting out of this question, but conflicts over landholding will continue to be commonplace throughout the media luna. Landowners are often armed and prepared to defend their interests by force, and the government in La Paz is poorly placed to defend the interests of those who either demand access to land (landless peasants) or those who try to defend the lands against outsiders (such as indigenous groups).

So while the new constitution may now be legally enacted, battles are looming over how its provisions are finally applied.

At the same time, Bolivia is being affected by the worsening international economic climate, in particular the fall in commodity prices for hydrocarbons and minerals. This will reduce the president's ability to use these rents to fund social spending. It will also lead to increased levels of unemployment and poverty in this, south America's poorest country. Evo Morales's opponents will seek to capitalise on this if a "yes" victory in the January 2009 referendum leads to fresh presidential elections in December. Bolivia seems set for another epic political year.

Even international civil servants not given tothe expression of overtly political sentiments can find themselves moved by adisplay of public and democratic affirmation. Such was the case around midnighton 4 November 2008, when I found myself in a gathering crowd outside the WhiteHouse - a crowd that was wildly celebrating the imminent election of BarackObama as the next president of the United States.

Vidar Helgesen is Secretary-General of theInternational Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (InternationalIDEA)

This is the opening contribution of aninternational debate on democracy support co-hosted by International IDEA and openDemocracy

There was something both familiar andextraordinary about the experience. For here in Washington, DC - where I had takenpart in a US election programme organised by the non-aligned International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) - I was observing scenes that I would expectto see after first-time elections in new democracies, not in one of the oldestof them.

At the same time, I could not help reflecting that thesecelebrations were in support of a president-elect with strong bonds to twocountries - Kenya and Indonesia - whose recent democratisation experiences alsoincluded exuberant popular mobilisation on the streets. The distance betweenJakarta, Nairobi and Washington seemed to fall away in a moment. The firstAfrican-American was being elected as United States president - and thefirst truly global citizen. 

Indeed, the connections between the remarkableelection in the US and events in the rest of the world go further. For theUS electoral process as it has unfolded over the last two years holds promise ofrenewal in a long-standing democracy - and of a kind that addresses the same challenges that face democracies across the globe. Amongthem are:

* how to manage diversity

* how to ensure inclusion of all groups insociety and in the political process

* how to encourage and mobilise participationby citizens

* how to promote political choices andoutcomes that are both responsible in themselves and responsive to citizens'key needs and demands.

The InternationalInstitute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) is an intergovernmental organisation that supports sustainable democracy worldwide. Its objective is to strengthen democractic objectives and processes. International IDEA - based in Stockholm, with offices in Latin America, Africa and Asia - acts as a catalyst for democracy building by sharing comparative knowledge, developing policy, and responding to national requests for assistance in democratic reform.  democracy issues. It works together with policy-makers, donor governments, UN organisations and agencies, regional organisations and others engaged in the field of democracy building.                      
InternationalIDEA's notable areas of expertise are:electoral processes, political parties, democracy and gender, and democracyassessment.

Read more about InternationalIDEA

There was in addition a particular factor inthe US election, one uppermost in the minds of many voters: the need to repairtheir country's image abroad following years of excesses committed in the nameof democracy promotion.

A United States election with a globalresonance and impact, which raises issues shared by democratic countrieseverywhere, and which took place in the context of unprecedented questioning ofhow democracy has been and should be supported - I can think of no more acutelyrelevant backdrop to the debate that the International Institute for Democracyand Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) and openDemocracyare launching.

A global challenge

International support for democracy has hadits ups and downs in recent history. After the end of the cold war it wasconsecrated as a lofty and legitimate goal of the international community, andfor a decade and more it surfed on the high tide of what appeared to be anemerging global pro-democracy consensus. Today, however, the picture is a gooddeal more complex. In a number of important respects the nascent pro-democracyconsensus is overshadowed by doubts - doubts that themselves mirror thechallenges faced by current democratisation processes.

This makes the current moment a propitious onefor all those involved in democracy support - international organisations,development cooperation agencies, donor governments, NGOs, scholars,pro-democracy activists, and engaged citizens - to assess itscondition. It is even more timely in view of the fact that 2009 will be a yearof anniversaries: thirty years since the beginning of the "third wave" ofdemocratisations in Latin America, twenty years since the fall of the Berlinwall, fifteen since the end of apartheid in South Africa, ten since the startof the Reformasi (democratic reform)in Indonesia. 

The commemoration of these great events, in a context where there are many causes for concern in the contemporarydemocracy landscape, is a unique moment for a broad dialogue that can take stockof the successes and failures of democracy support, and gauge the many challenges ahead. 

From the perspective of International IDEA, the dialogue's main objective should be to identifyoptions that can be both shared and applied in responding to the needs of allthose who continue to pursue democracy out of a conviction that it constitutesan essential goal for their societies and countries. In doing this, however,the aim is not to seek universally applicable recipes - since there is alreadyample evidence that such recipes simply do not exist.  

Indeed, the current global developments with regard todemocracy's advance - or retreat - seem uncertain, and to elude the clearidentification of trends. Yet it can be said that democracy continues to be equatedwith freedom and equality, and as such to be sought by people around theworld. It remains a strong driving force of political change on allcontinents. 

In Latin America today all countries (with one exception) are ruled by a democratically-elected government. A number of elections wereheld in 2007-08, most of them (Mexico apart) without significant hitches,and another series of important polls will take place in 2009-11. In Asia, democracy hasmade a critical breakthrough in Nepal and the Maldives, and has taken root in Indonesia. In Africa, it hasbeen making headway in several countries such as Sierra Leone, Burundiand Liberia; and on the  continent as a whole - following the adoption ofthe African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance in January 2007 - democracyis also on the way to becoming a key component of the regional-cooperation framework. 

At the same time, in these and other parts ofthe world, democracy is experiencing a series of significant, yet highlydiverse, challenges. In some countries such as Myanmar (Burma) and Zimbabwedemocratic aspirations are engaged in a grim struggle with authoritarian rulerswho appear bent on resisting determined, and hitherto peaceful, popular demandsfor change. In some countries democracy is faltering under the pressure ofpopulism, and in others it appears to be yielding to the siren calls ofnationalist sentiment and nostalgia.

There is too a proliferation oftroubled democracies (or as some scholars name them, "hybrid regimes" or"democracies with adjectives" - "managed", "non-inclusive", "sovereign","oligarchic" and the like). China's rising star is of global significance here too,suggesting as it does the possibility of achieving prosperity without the messyentanglements of democracy. It should not be forgotten in this regard that 2009 marks another potent anniversary: twenty years since the Tiananmen "incident" in Beijing. 

A broader impact

These varying experiences, considered in the context of alonger timespan, suggest the unavoidable lesson that democracy is imperfect,vulnerable and ultimately reversible everywhere. In some countries of theglobal north where democracy is considered to be well-established,  ithas not to date been able significantly to reduce gender inequality, or to eradicateracism, xenophobia and similar undemocratic social behaviours. And in both thenorth and the global south, a major discrepancy persists between the high valueattributed to the idea of democracy and palpable popular distrust in democraticinstitutions such as political parties and parliaments; all too often these institutions areseen as alienated from the people, lacking inclusiveness and representativeness(most conspicuously with regard to gender), and as ineffective andunresponsive. 

Where democratictransitions are underway, there are constant reminders of how complex and often turbulent andpotentially violent are these eminently political processes. This is especially the case when they occur in deeply divided societiesand when they are intertwined with nation-building or state-building projects. In the globalsouth, democratisation alone has not - and obviously could not - bring aboutthe elimination of poverty, exclusion and disease. 

International democracy assistance is alsofacing its own particular challenges. The post-9/11 fallout is still present,often implying difficult trade-offs between security and democracy concerns.Democracy-assistance initiatives continue to be regarded by many as being compromised by double standards - a view reinforced not least by international responses tothe Palestinian Authority elections in January 2006.

The tensions surrounding these intiatives are reflected in polarisation in many internationalforums, notably the United Nations, where development and democracy-buildingcontinue to be viewed as competing, if not opposed, agendas. Nevertheless,there are also important consensus-building achievements to note. Among thesestands a reconfirmed commitment to implementation of the Paris agenda onaid-effectiveness, which among other things proposes an enhanced role forparliaments in the oversight of development aid. 

Democratisation processes, which by definitioninvolve ever broader segments of society, and are in fact the outcome ofpolitical competition and struggle, are affected by every major social issue orthreat. The impact of major global phenomena such as HIV/Aids, mass-migrationmovements and climate change on democracy is still to be assessed. The same canbe said about the impact of the evolving multipolar geopolitical landscapeand the reviving discourse of "zones of influence" that attends this process. China'semerging role in the global landscape is a vital trend here, and certainly merits a separate discussion. 

A space to learn

More recently, the global financial crisis andimpending economic recession call for fresh assessments of the roles andresponsibilities of the state, and a reopening of the debate on the appropriatebalance between "public" and "private". What is clear is that current seismicshifts in the world economy will need to be factored in by national andinternational democracy-building actors when assessing their futurestrategies. 

In an environment characterised by high levelsof uncertainty and volatility, distrust, polarisation and the meltdown ofglobal frameworks of economic governance, democracy-building efforts cannot andshould not remain static and conditioned by old assumptions. Rather, they areincreasingly in need of fresh questioning and testing.

We have learned manylessons so far. We know a lot, for example, about the importance ofdomestically-driven and nationally-owned democratisation processes. We knowthat assistance to democratic reform needs to be holistic, long-term andcarefully contextualised. But we still have a lot to learn about how to makedemocracy support more effective in responding to the needs of everyday citizens- those, in other words, who are the driving force and ultimate beneficiariesof change in each and every region and country. 

I am confident that the debate around theseand other issues of democracy-building will find a fertile ground in theInternational IDEA-openDemocracydebate, and that its results will be to the benefit of all those whopursue democracy as a vital necessity for their societies and their countries.

The Georgia-Russia war of 8-12 August 2008 has left a host of issues unresolved. The future of the contested territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia,  the resettlement of the expelled and displaced, the fate of Georgia's aspiration to join Nato, and the ambitions of an emboldened Russia are just a few. The bitter fallout of a vicious conflict means that it will be some time before the longer-term impact of the war in these and other areas will become clear.

Donald Rayfield is emeritus professor of Russian in the School of Modern Languages, Queen Mary College, University of London.

Among his books is Stalin and his Hangmen (Random House, 2005).

He is editor-in-chief of the Comprehensive Georgian-English Dictionary (Garnett Press, 2006), a work of 1,440,000 entries and nearly 1,800 pages in two volumes

Also by Donald Rayfield in openDemocracy:

"Georgia and Russia: with you, without you" (3 October 2006)

"Russia vs Georgia: a war of perceptions" (24 August 2007)

"The Georgia-Russia conflict: lost territory, found nation" (13 August 2008

It is far too early to talk of a return to normality, even were such a notion to apply to the Georgia-Russia relationship and the pre-war political situation in the region. A cautious return to diplomatic dialogue - from the European Union-Russia summit in Nice on 14 November (which emerged with a proposal for a new "security architecture" in Europe) to the resumption of talks between Moscow and Tbilisi in Geneva on 18 November - may at least offer some signals about the prospects for movement on the core tensions that the war revealed.

But in order for more substantial progress to be possible, the outstanding questions surrounding the August conflict itself - how it began, who is to blame, and what are the implications of answers to these questions - must also be faced. These continue to be matters of intense dispute, in an atmosphere overlain by politically-driven public-relations campaigns on all sides. What follows is an assessment based on current knowledge about the circumstances of the war and its possible consequences, which builds on earlier contributions in openDemocracy (see, for example, "Russia vs Georgia: a war of perceptions" [24 August 2007], and "The Georgia-Russia conflict: lost territory, found nation" [13 August 2008]).

A chain of responsibility 

It is famously said that truth is the first casualty of war. In this case, however - thanks to the careful work and independent research of journalists and other observers - it can also be the first to recover from its injuries. 

Seven points can be made about the circumstances of the war:

The first is that the full-scale attack by Georgian forces on South Ossetia's capital Tskhinvali on the night of 7-8 August 2008 - involving indiscriminate artillery-fire from Grad rockets - was not provoked by any Ossetian forces' shelling of Georgian villages in the enclave. A number of sources - including three observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), of whom only one was from the former Soviet Union, and two experienced British military observers in the area at the time - report that there was no immediate provocation that would justify the Georgian escalation of what had hitherto been a low-key conflict. This conclusion is supported too by the evidence of a number of Georgian inhabitants of South Ossetia, and has been reinforced by the findings of the journalist Tim Whewell in meticulous reports featured on the BBC World Service and other outlets.

Moreover, reports of Russian forces making their way through the Roki tunnel into South Ossetia on 7 August (rather than 8 August) are not backed up by any satellite or other confirmed intelligence. The conclusion must be that blame for the death of over 100 Ossetian civilians and Russian "peacekeepers" in the Georgian assault belongs to Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and his military commanders; and Saakashvili, even if he has convinced himself of the truth of his version of events, needs to be confronted with the disparities between his allegations and the verifiable facts.

The second point is that it would however be quite wrong to follow Russia's president and prime minister, Dmitri Medvedev and Vladimir Putin (and their western acolytes such as Silvio Berlusconi) in blaming Saakashvili, his army and their United States advisers for initiating the war.

Among openDemocracy's recent articles on Georgian politics, including the war with Russia in August 2008:

Robert Parsons, "Georgia, Abkhazia, Russia: the war option" (13 May 2008)

Thomas de Waal, "The Russia-Georgia tinderbox" (16 May 2008)

Alexander Rondeli, "Georgia's search for itself" (8 July 2008)

Thomas de Waal, "South Ossetia: the avoidable tragedy" (11 August 2008)

Ghia Nodia, "The war for Georgia: Russia, the west, the future" (12 August 2008)

Neal Ascherson, "After the war: recognising reality in Abkhazia and Georgia" (15 August 2008)

George Hewitt, "Abkhazia and South Ossetia: heart of conflict, key to solution" (18 August 2008)

Ivan Krastev, "Russia and the Georgia war: the great-power trap" (19 August 2008)

Paul Rogers, "Russia and Iran: crisis of the west, rise of the rest" (21 August 2008)

Ghia Nodia, "Russian war and Georgian democracy" (22 August 2008)

Robert Parsons, "Georgia after war: the political landscape" (26 August 2008)

Mary Kaldor, "Sovereignty, status and the humanitarian perspective" (26 August 2008)

Vicken Cheterian, "Georgia's forgotten legacy" (3 September 2008)

Martin Shaw, "After the Georgia war: the challenge to citizen action" (22 September 2008)

Katinka Barysch, "Europe and the Georgia-Russia conflict" (30 September 2008)

Robert Parsons, "Georgia: the politics of recovery" (24 October 2008)

Plus: openDemocracy's Russia section reports, debates and blogs the Georgia war.True, Russian forces may have taken no special action on or just before 7-8 August to justify the Georgian army's attack on Tskhinvali. But Russian forces were clearly prepared for and expecting such a conflict: their armies were in place in North Ossetia, their battleships were ready to reach Georgian ports within a day or two; the Ossetians, whose government and armed forces are effectively controlled by Russians, had for several weeks escalated the usual petty violence of kidnappings, shootings, blockades and banditry to a point where the death-rate among Georgian police was more than worrying. Saakashvili's attack, if it can be justified at all, can be called a pre-emptive strike.

The third point is that the Georgian army had at least 130 American advisers who answer to the US authorities. It is difficult to believe that the move north from Tbilisi of the most heavily armed, motorised forces of the Georgian army went unnoticed by these Americans. Did they remonstrate; and if not, why not? Worse, did they, as Putin alleges, actively encourage the Georgians out of cynical curiosity to see how the Russians would respond - or out of even more cynical political calculation in seeking to boost John McCain's election chances? The answers to these questions will eventually leak out, whether from Tbilisi or from the Langley (Virginia) headquarters of the CIA.

The fourth point is that the Russian army could not have failed to repel the Georgian attack, even if it were to keep to its fiction of being merely a "peacekeeping" force. But it must be blamed for its actions in two areas:

* deliberately destroying Georgian infrastructure and severely damaging the economy by cutting the only east-west railway line and the only motorable east-west road, and bombing near enough the airport to deter commercial aircraft from landing at Tbilisi

* embarking on an orgy of looting and allowing Ossetian and Chechen "irregulars" (a more polite word than they deserve) to steal, rape, kill and drive out Georgian villagers from South Ossetia (see Tanya Lokshina, "A month after the war", 16 September 2008).

The background of Chechen hatred for Georgians (which reached its height in 1944 when Stalin used Georgian detachments of the NKVD to deport the entire Chechen nation to central Asia) makes it as as cruel a decision to use Chechen forces in South Ossetia as it was to let them fight with the Abkhaz against the Georgians in 1992.

The fifth point is that the Russians are guilty of the sheer hypocrisy of pretending to be neutral peacekeepers in the region, when since 1992-93 they have been seeking gradually to integrate both South Ossetia and Abkhazia into the Russian Federation by a variety of means: common currencies, introducing pension and healthcare rights, issuing Russian-citizenship passports to the inhabitants.

The Georgians may have been originally to blame for their cavalier treatment of Abkhaz and Ossetian nationalism in the 1989-92 period, but in later years have watched with increasing frustration at seeing their country dismembered while the outside world remained all but indifferent. This helps explain if not justify the crime of shelling Tskhinvali - a crime which gave the Russians the long-awaited pretext to "recognise" the breakaway territories' independence and thus effectively absorb them for good. In addition, the Russians lied even more brazenly than the Georgians in the first stages of the war, in proclaiming a "genocide" of Ossetians with as many as 2,000 victims, when the verifiable total is far less. 

The sixth point is that western politicians, particularly ambassadors and donors, failed in their duty to make clear to Mikheil Saakashvili - in terms that he could not pretend to misunderstand - that they would in no way support a "war of liberation" aimed at recovering the lost territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Any diplomat in Georgia soon realises that, regardless of reality and common sense, every Georgian politician has had to promise his electorate that they would meet next year in Sukhumi and Tskhinvali. The inevitable danger of such rhetoric is that at moments of despair, the irresponsible politician - whether Eduard Shevardnadze or Saakashvili himself - gambles on an attempt to turn it into reality. Georgia's economic resurgence since 2004 has depended on tranches of grants and investments which should have been absolutely conditional on conforming to basic ground-rules (see Vicken Cheterian, "Georgia's forgotten legacy", 3 September 2008). 

The seventh point is that some western politicians made culpable errors at the outset of the war by laying total blame on Russia for its outbreak, then compounded this by reversing Franklin D Roosevelt's advice and "talking hard while carrying a soft stick". They included the hapless John McCain, the leaders of the Baltic states, and two callow British politicians (foreign minister David Miliband and opposition leader David Cameron).

Cameron's threat to stop Russians shopping at Selfridges was clearly neutralised by a few phone- calls from west London stores, casinos, estate agents and schools who rely on the big spenders from Moscow; while Miliband's subsequent reticence is no doubt attributable to briefings on the complexities of the issues, and the political and economic price Britain would have to pay for taking a stand on principle against Russia's Machiavellian policies (see Katinka Barysch, "Europe and the Georgia-Russia conflict", 30 September 2008)

The post-war situation

The immediate consequences of the brief, nasty war are threefold.

The first is that of all the states involved, the overall situation has substantially changed only for Georgia (and to a degree the other states and regions of the south Caucasus). The damage to Tbilisi, economically and politically, is severe. Much of the destruction - of roads, installations and army bases, and the loss of housing by some 20,000 ethnic Georgians - can be compensated by the $4.55 pledged by the United States and European Union at a conference in Brussels on 22 October 2008. But the more definitive loss of the two territories (for even to the most nationalistic Georgian politician, they must now seem irrecoverable) is less easily quantifiable or repairable.

Indeed, the permanent alienation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia could appear to be salutary, like the amputation of gangrenous limbs, but for two factors (see George Hewitt, "Abkhazia and South Ossetia: heart of conflict, key to solution", 18 August 2008). One is that in both cases, regions inhabited by ethnic Georgians (or in the case of Abkhazia, Mingrelians, who consider themselves first cousins to Georgians) have now been cut off from Georgia. Since soon after the end of the Abkhazia war of 1992-93, the Mingrelians of the Gali region of southern Abkhazia have been able to cross over into Georgia with minimal formalities, obstructions or violence. Now, however, the Russians are controlling the new frontier and introducing very strict controls over the bridge over the Inguri river. Thus the Mingrelians are effectively faced with the choice of being imprisoned in Abkhazia as second-class citizens, or becoming homeless refugees in Georgia.

In similar fashion, two areas of South Ossetia (notably the town of Akhalgori) which were never either geographically or administratively accessible to Tskhinvali have now been taken over by Russian-Ossetian forces; their Georgian inhabitants are presented with the dilemma of being aliens in their own home or refugees among their own people.

The other factor - that Russia now controls the most vital areas of Georgia - makes the situation for its southern neighbour even worse. It is a mere hour's drive from the South Ossetian frontier to Tbilisi; Georgia's capital can be shelled from Akhalgori; at any moment eastern and western Georgia can be isolated, and a strategic railway, road and pipelines cut. Georgia's energy supplies, too, are now under threat. Throughout the Abkhaz-Georgian conflict the hydroelectric generators on the Inguri river were kept working by Georgians and Abkhaz for their mutual benefit. Now, however, Abkhazia can join the Russian electricity grid, and no longer has an interest in allowing Georgia its share of this major energy source.

Moreover, investment in the new railway from Tbilisi to Kars in Turkey (which would in principle allow trains to travel from Baku in Azerbaijan to London - with some technical changes at the Georgian-Turkish frontier) now looks very unattractive, given the railway's new vulnerability to attack. The same is true for the Baku-Poti (on the Black Sea) or Baku-Ceyhan (on the Mediterranean) pipelines. More and more oil importers will prefer to pay extra to use a pipeline through Russia to Novorossiisk on the Black Sea than risk transporting oil through an exposed route.

The building boom in Tbilisi and other Georgian cities, financed by foreign businesses hoping to ride on Georgian economic growth, is also facing a slowdown, if not a bust (even if the aid-pledges from the country's western backers will provide a temporary transfusion). Mikheil Saakashvili's hopes of reviving Georgian industry and agriculture - particularly viticulture, which has made enormous strides recently - are looking more deflated.

The war's second consequence is that it signals a transition from one era to another (see Ivan Krastev, "Russia and the Georgia war: the great-power trap", 19 August 2008). The post-cold-war period - marked at its outset by a George Bush presidency whose gratitude to Eduard Shevardnadze for helping to demolish the Soviet Union was expressed by exceptionally generous and uncritical support of Georgia, and at its end by a George W Bush presidency who showered the same support on Mikheil Saakashvili - has ended. The prospect now is of a far more sober period. There is no reason to suppose that Barack Obama will abandon Georgia, but every reason to suppose that he will attach more stringent conditions to United States backing for Georgia; and the country's roadmap towards Nato is unlikely to survive wider geopolitical considerations (see Aviel Roshwald, "Nato, the west and Russia: from peril to progress", 23 September 2008).

The third consequence, a matter of some small consolation to the Georgians, is that Russia has shown how ruthlessly it can act and with how little regard for its image in the rest of the world without winning it much of the way of diplomatic benefit. It has, for example, failed to get recognition for Abkhazian and South Ossetian statehood from anyone except Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua and a leader of Hamas, while alarming China and other states by the precedent it has set for cultivating and appropriating neighbouring countries' rebellious minorities. Russia has resumed the unhappy isolation of which Alexander III complained in the late 1880s when he declared Montenegro to be Russia's only friend in Europe. Even Armenia, its other friend in the Caucasus, has been badly affected by the war with Georgia, and is physically cut off from Russia for the foreseeable future by the closure of the Abkhaz-Georgian border.

South Ossetia's "independence" is a fiction: nobody believes that it will be anything but a dependency of Russia. The addition of 70,000 more Ossetians to Russia's Caucasian empire is already exacerbating an undeclared and unreported civil war now fermenting, if not raging, between Ingushetia and Ossetia. The Ingush, exiled like the Chechens in 1944, came back after the second world war to find many of their homes occupied by Ossetians; the tensions continued for decades after the war, and were intensified by Vladimir Putin's stupidity when (in 2002) he replaced the Ingush leader General Aushev with a KGB pawn, Murat Zyazikov. The latter was himself sacked by Dmitri Medvedev on 30 October 2008. This conflict will escalate.

Abkhazia, in contrast, may be considered a positive acquisition for Russia. It is probable that property prices will rise, to the joy of all the Russian officials and businessmen who have bought up empty villas and hotels on the Black Sea coast; and there is now cheap concrete and stone for the winter Olympics site planned for Sochi in 2014. The Abkhaz writer Fazil Iskander's novel Uncle Sandro from Chegem conveys better than any tract how the Abkhaz feel they can manipulate their Russian overlords skilfully enough to maintain de facto independence - a game which is much harder to win if the overlord is a fellow Caucasian, i.e. a Georgian. Even so, there are in Abkhaz ruling circles a number of nationalists who want genuine independence, which it is certain Putin and Medvedev have no intention of granting. Over the years it is thus likely that the Georgians will be consoled by the sight of some Abkhazians resisting Russian colonialism.

An exit from impasse

Georgia may have emerged the greater loser from the August 2008 war, but there is as yet no Georgian politician - even in opposition, far less in government - who has shown the intellect, character or set of ideas to persuade any significant force inside or outside the country to support him or her as a replacement for a tarnished Mikheil Saakashvili (see Robert Parsons, "Georgia: the politics of recovery", 23 October 2008)

Saakashvili is a mass of contradictions: a man of mendaciousness and violent impulsiveness, even lawlessness, whose flaws are compensated by his quick wits, understanding of how other politicians think, and determination to act on decisions, all leavened by the remnants of his original charisma. Dependent as he is on foreign support, with greater supervision and accountability he could still bring Georgia out of its present mess. The country is both small and under-resourced enough (depopulated by emigration, for example) to absorb its refugees; and, if finance is made available for structural changes, it could produce enough food, energy, services, and even manufactured products for prosperity. When it rebuilds its military forces it will have less reason to buy expensive weaponry for an aggressive war and can spend money more effectively on intelligence and equipment for interception and defence.

It is probably too late to salvage anything from the loss of the territories (see Neal Ascherson, "After the war: recognising reality in Abkhazia and Georgia", 15 August 2008). Here too however, a certain flexibility backed by strong advice might offer a way forward: if Georgia and its western allies offered a guarantee of non-interference and a recognition of a genuinely independent Abkhazia, free of Russian armed forces, some Abkhaz might still be tempted, even though most would be suspicious and continue to side with their Russian protectors.

A necessary political reorientation is, however, already taking place. What western powers have tried in vain to achieve - namely to persuade the three south Caucasian states that they have more interests in common than in conflict - may be achieved from another direction: Turkey. The Turks have skilfully managed to develop relations with Georgia without supporting the Georgian aim of reconquering Abkhazia, and financed part of Tbilisi's education system and economy.

It may even be that the railway linking Tbilisi to Kars will no longer be of strategic importance: for the rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia, marked by President Abdullah Gül's attendance at a football match in Yerevan in September 2008, may end with the opening of the border and the restoration of the Soviet-era railway from Kars to Yerevan (and thence to Tbilisi). For some time there have, in fact, been scheduled flights between Turkey and Armenia; buses regularly go from Yerevan to Istanbul via Georgia, and Armenians are given visas on the Turkish border. Turkey has the diplomatic skills to keep Azerbaijan assured of its fraternal support, particularly over the Nagorno-Karabakh question, and at the same time bring Armenia in out of the cold, weaning it from its dependence on Russia and Iran (see Fred Halliday, "Armenia's mixed messages", 15 October 2008).

If Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan agree to set aside some of their differences, recognise the benefits of cooperation and look for access to the west through Turkey (rather than Russia), then the net benefit to Georgia of the August 2008 war might even begin to exceed the net losses. If western politicians can take measure of the gap between their rhetoric and their capabilities when dealing with Russia - and either tone down the former or step up the latter - the overall outcome could in the end be more positive than seemed conceivable when the rockets started to rain down on Tskhinvali.

Since August 2008 the situation in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has grown progressively worse in ways that seem hard to understand. An overview of the events and processes that led to the resurgence of conflict, however, can explain what is happening and what kind of intervention can contribute to resolving it.

Gérard Prunier is research professor at the University of Paris. He is the author of The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (C Hurst, 1998), Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide (C Hurst, revised edition, 2007), and From Genocide to Continental War: The ?Congolese' Conflict and the Crisis of Contemporary Africa (C Hurst, 2006)

Also by Gérard Prunier in openDemocracy:

"Darfur's Sudan problem" (15 September 2006)

"The DR Congo's political opportunity" (14 March 2007)

"Chad, the CAR and Darfur: dynamics of conflict" (18 April 2007)

"Chad's tragedy" (7 September 2007)

"Sudan between war and peace" (1 November 2007)

"Khartoum's calculated fever" (5 December 2007)

"Kenya: roots of crisis" (7 January 2008)

"Chad: between Sudan's blitzkrieg and Darfur's war" (19 February 2008)

"Kenya: histories of hidden war" (29 February 2008)

"Sudan in a fix" (26 June 2008)

"Sudan's Omar al-Bashir: a useful war criminal" (15 October 2008)

The DR Congo, devastated by years of civil and foreign wars between 1996 and 2003, had managed to sign a peace agreement, disarm most of the combatants, navigate the dangers of a transition period (2003-06), and finally (in July-October 2006) hold successful democratic elections. But the eastern part of the country had never healed. Why?

The heart of the answer is that the eastern problem had existed before the war, was made worse by the war and was not addressed by the peace agreement. The eastern Congo is a dense ethnic mix where Banyarwanda (people of Rwandese ethnic origin) make up a large segment of the population, at least in North Kivu where they represent about 40% of the total (in South Kivu, the Rwandese-speaking Banyamulenge are only about 4%). The high population densities (reaching almost 300 people / square km around Goma) are an important factor in the development of strong tensions around landholding. These tensions were worsened by two factors:

* during the colonial era the Belgians brought thousands of Banyarwanda from Rwanda to work in the Kivus. But they were salaried workers on Belgian plantations and did not own land. When the Belgians left these people wound up as landless peasants since the local tribes (Bahunde, Banyanga, Banande) were not ready to make room for them

* after the 1960-65 civil war which followed the Belgians' departure, Joseph-Désiré Mobutu emerged as the state's authoritarian ruler. His personal secretary Barthélémy Bisengimana was a Rwandese Tutsi who favoured his fellow tribesmen and helped them acquire land illegally. Since the Banyamulenge in South Kivu had fought in the civil war on Mobutu's side, the Rwandophone population became globally identified with Mobutu, a political perception which increased tension with the generally anti-Mobutu eastern tribes.

Rwanda and DRC: context of conflict

By the early 1990s when Zaire (as it had been known since 1971, on Mobutu's orders) began to sink into a catastrophic economic crisis, the land tensions in the east escalated into a localised ethno-civil war. By 1992 there was full-scale fighting in North Kivu, particularly in Masisi, with thousands of casualties. Since neighbouring Rwanda had been in a state of civil war between Tutsi and Hutu since October 1990, local Congolese Banyarwanda crossed the border to enlist in the conflict. One of them was the future General Laurent Nkunda who joined the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), now in power in Kigali.

Then in June 1994, following the Rwandese genocide, hundreds of thousands of Rwandese Hutu peasants crossed the border in the other direction, fleeing the victorious RPF. They were led by soldiers and politicians of the defeated génocidaire regime who were hoping to get Mobutu's support to keep fighting the RPF. Their presence pushed the agrarian tensions to a pitch because they allied themselves with the anti-Tutsi camp in the local civil strife.

Their eventual defeat in November 1996 when the RPF army invaded Zaire did not mark an end to the problems. The invaders also entered the fray, but this time in support of the Tutsi elements. Laurent Nkunda had come back with them and he quickly became one of the leaders of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD) , the "rebel" Congolese movement which was generally perceived as a puppet of the invading Rwandese army (in the 2006 presidential elections, its leader Azarias Ruberwa who was a candidate, got 2% of the vote). During the course of the second civil war (1998-2002), Nkunda and his men fought on the Rwandese side against the Congolese government. All sides committed atrocities as the conflict unfolded, but those committed by the RCD soldiers were particularly hated because they were committed as allies and auxiliaries of a foreign invading army.

The FDLR: a web of influence

Meanwhile a rump of the former Hutu armed refugee groups who had come in 1994 had managed to implant themselves in the area under the name Front Démocratique pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR). In theory they were the enemies of the invading Tutsi-dominated Rwandese army. But in practice it was much more complex:

* in order to finance themselves, they began mining some the non-ferrous metals North Kivu and South Kivu are replete with. But commercialisation was a problem. Some FDLR elements started to work with their RPF "enemies", selling them the columbium-tantalite, the gold or the niobium ore they were mining

* in addition, the RPF had recruited a good number of Hutu soldiers into its ranks, including former génocidaires who had been languishing in jail since 1994. Those started to deal with their FDLR "enemies".

Thus when Rwanda "evacuated" the Kivus in 2002 after the Sun City (South Africa) peace agreement, it maintained a strong presence in the region through demobilised soldiers, through local Tutsi (and even Hutu) who had become their commercial agents, through militiamen and local administrators who, being underpaid, were open to Rwandese financial blandishments. Rwandese businessmen kept exploiting the local mines with the help of locally-recruited artesanal creuseurs (diggers) and flying out the ore in small planes operating from illegal landing strips.

Also in openDemocracy about the DR Congo and the wider region:

Nicola Dahrendorf, "Mirror images in the Congo: sexual violence and conflict" (23 October 2005)

Caspar Henderson, "Rwanda, Sudan and beyond: lessons from Africa" (6 April 2004)

Tristan McConnell, "The Democratic Republic of Congo: living up to its name?" (27 July 2006)

Tristan McConnell, "DR Congo's dangerous run-off" (23 August 2006)

Andrew Wallis, "Rwandan rifts in La Francafrique" (14 December 2006)

David Mughnier, "North Kivu: how to end a war" (3 December 2007)

Gerard J DeGroot, "Rwanda: the colour of hope" (30 April 2008)

By then the problem was essentially politico-economic: how long could the unnatural FDLR/RPF de facto alliance centred on mining be kept while the political aims of the two partners were fundamentally opposed? In December 2004, The Rwandan president Paul Kagame's then special envoy for the Great Lakes, Richard Sezibera (Rwanda's health minister since 28 October 2008), declared to an interviewer from the International Crisis Group: "The FDLR no longer constitutes an immediate threat to our government but they are a security problem to people's lives, property and to our economic growth".

The FDLR, which still has a fighting strength of perhaps 6,000 men, is in a very ambiguous position because:

* through its genocidal image, it still retains the capacity to trigger strong reactions in Kigali

* at the same time, it has long worked as a partner of some business circles in Kigali

* locally, it is deeply implanted in the Kivus and it has become largely "congolised", including through marriages with local women

* it is still used, off and on, by anti-RPF elements in Kinshasa who continue to smart at the results of the 1998-2003 war - and to dream of making Rwanda pay for the approximately 3.8 million casualties it has caused in the Congo during those years

* nevertheless, the FDLR continues to behave with extreme violence locally, pillaging and raping at the slightest provocation. This is a deliberate move to keep their nuisance capacity visible and avoid being taken for granted by their Kinshasa "allies".

The Laurent Nkunda factor

All this helps explain why General Laurent Nkunda is perhaps the most dangerous segment of the armed groups in the east. To calling Nkunda "a rogue general" as the media does repeatedly is no help in understanding who or what he is. After 1998 he became one of the main RCD officers and he played a key role in the Kisangani massacre of 2002. He was charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, which caused him not to come to Kinshasa when he was appointed in the new army since he feared a trap.

In May-June 2004 he tried to take over Bukavu in a vain attempt to derail the transition to the elections. Then he laid low for a couple of years, still refusing to dissolve his Tutsi forces into the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC), the new "national" army. In November 2006 he rebelled again and attacked Goma, probably intending to hold it for ransom and to get some kind of pardon-cum-position for him and his men at the end of the adventure.

After losing about 300 of his fighters to the fire of the Pakistani battalion of the United Nations Mission in DR Congo (Monuc), he went to the negotiation table and accepted the integration of his men into the FARDC. But in a further switch, on 30 December 2006 he created the Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP), a political armed militia which he tried to present as a political tool to "clean up Congolese politics".

At first this did not represent much of a threat. But the problem grew when the Kinshasa government, far from capitalising on the success the July-October 2006 elections represented, seemed to go to sleep after that. For the past two years the Congolese government has looked like a beached whale, incapable of moving in spite of its bulk. This created an opportunity which Nkunda has exploited (see David Mugnier, "How to end a war", 3 December 2007).

Under the fold of his demagogic populist CNDP banner, he started to recruit all sorts of malcontents, mostly Tutsi of course but also Hutu Banyarwanda from Masisi and even a lot of flotsam and jetsam from various tribes who began to drift towards him as the pressure from Monuc and its demobilisation programmes from other regions liberated a lot of former fighters into military unemployment.

Nkunda went further, even across the borders, and started to recruit young unemployed Tutsi men in both Rwanda and Burundi, offering them spurious hopes of non-existent civilian jobs. Some of them deserted and surrendered to Monuc, but his movement grew. By his own account Nkunda now has around 12,000 men, probably an exaggerated figure. But his men are good, much better than the poorly-disciplined FARDC. The worst aspect of his manoeuvring is that he has kicked the FDLR back into action and reopened all the sores of the east - such as when they massacred a whole village in cold blood at Kanyola in South Kivu in May 2007, having accused the villagers of working with the CNDP.

Why do we see such zigzagging on Nkunda's part? Mostly because there is not a single coherent policy in Kigali to either support or disown him. It depends on the fluctuation of the political atmosphere there (see "The DR Congo's political opportunity", 14 March 2007). Since the well-organised electoral "victories" of the RPF (Paul Kagame got 96% of the vote in the 2003 presidential election and his party got forty-two of the fifty-three contested seats in the September 2008 parliamentary "election", with the "opposition" immediately deciding to support the government), there is no Hutu opposition worth the name. Just mentioning such a term is labeled "divisionism" and can get you twenty years in jail. So the political game is played among Tutsi. And the Tutsi do not agree on how to deal with the Congo in general and with Laurent Nkunda in particular.

Some, like President Kagame himself, want to put the past behind them, develop Rwanda along extremely modernistic lines and turn the country into the Singapore of Africa. But others do not believe in such a possibility and still see the Congo as a mineral mother-lode waiting to be exploiteddo not believe in such a possibility and still see the Congo as a mineral mother-lode waiting to be exploited; they include some of Kagame's closest associates such as the semi-exiled ambassador Kayumba Nyamwasa and army chief-of-staff James Kabarebe (one of the ten Rwandan officials indicted by a French arrest-warrant from 2006, which led to the arrest of Rwanda's head of protocol in Frankfurt on 9 November 2008).

A wider explosion?

The outcome of the United States presidential election on 4 November 2008 is an encouragement for the latter group. After all, it was the Africanists around Bill Clinton (who are now Barack Obama's men and women) who supported the Kigali invasion of the DR Congo while it was Republican secretary of state Colin Powell who brought it to a halt in 2001. Have the Democrats changed their views on the region or do they still believe in the fiction that Rwanda only intervenes in the Congo in order to keep the ugly génocidaires at bay? In any case the situation in the DRC is now more serious than it has been at any point since the signature of the 2002 peace agreement (see From Genocide to Continental War: The ?Congolese? Conflict and the Crisis of Contemporary Africa, C Hurst, 2008).

But does it actually mean the situation has returned to that of 1998, and the DR Congo is about to explode into another civil war? Probably not. Why? Because there are several fundamental differences:

* Rwanda, even if it is involved, is involved at a marginal and contradictory level .

* in 1998, pro-Kigali elements controlled large segments of the Forces Armées Congolaises (FAC), the then Congolese national army. The initial onslaught was carried out through an internal rebellion of the armed forces. Not so today. Nkunda controls only an army of unofficial militiamen

* in 1998 the regime of Laurent-Désiré Kabila was very weak, hardly legitimate and did not have any serious international support. Today his son Joseph Kabila is strongly supported by the internal community after overseeing a flawed but clearly democratic election

* the Congolese economy was at the time in complete disarray while today it is only in poor shape, with possibilities of picking up

* President Kagame could count on the almost unlimited sympathy of the world which felt guilty for its neglect during the genocide. Not so today. His moral credibility has been seriously damaged by the horrors his troops committed in the DR Congo during 1998-2002 and his political standing is increasingly being questioned, both by legal action going back to the genocide period (reflected in the French indictment and Frankfurt arrest) and by his electoral "triumphs" (which are a throwback to the worst days of fake African political unanimity)

* the diplomatic context, reflected in the current visit to the region of the United Nations envoy (and Nigeria's former president) Olusegun Obasanjo, is more favourable to negotiation

* In 1998 there was no United Nations peacekeeping force in eastern DR Congo. If the international community decides to straighten out its act, Monuc could make the difference.

"Let Reagan be Reagan!"  That was the slogan of Ronald Reagan's conservative followers. They were afraid that their leader's sharp ideological thrust was being blunted by timidity and moderation. The shrewder among them were also aware that, while a president of the United States is very powerful, he is not omnipotent.Godfrey Hodgson was director of the Reuters' Foundation Programme at Oxford University, and before that the Observer's correspondent in the United States and foreign editor of the Independent.

His books include The World Turned Right Side Up: a history of the conservative ascendancy in America (Houghton Mifflin, 1996);

The Gentleman from New York: Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan(Houghton Mifflin, 2000);

More Equal Than Others: America from Nixon to the New Century (Princeton University Press, 2006)

A Great and Godly Adventure: The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving (PublicAffairs, 2007)

Among Godfrey Hodgson's openDemocracy articles on America's election year:

"The United States election: time for ?change'" (10 January 2008)

"America's change election: reality or mirage?" (11 February 2008)

"The lost election year" (15 May 2008)

"Barack Obama: at the crossroads of victory" (11 June 2008)\

"A game of two halves" (15 July 2008)

"Welcome to the party: American convention follies" (18 August 2008)

"America's foreign-policy election" (28 August 2008)

"America's economy election" (17 October 2008)

"Yes he can!" (6 November 2008)

Now, in the interval between Barack Obama's election and his inauguration, there is a deep yearning, in America and abroad, for Obama to be Obama.

Let him be the apostle of change he has always claimed to be. Let him sweep away the miasma of foreign and domestic disasters that persuaded so many Americans to vote for him. Let him end the war in Iraq, close Guantánamo and fire the torturers, but let him also end the growing inequality of American life.

Many would go further, and hope, too, that he will end the deregulation and the dismantling of the powers of government to protect the people that have led so directly to the economic crisis.

At the same time there is an awareness that Obama will not be able to do all that his supporters expect of him, or indeed all that he would like to do.

Even the strongest of presidents have complained of the limitations on presidential power. "Every president", said Lyndon B Johnson, "has to establish with the various sectors of the country what I would call ?the right to govern'". On another occasion he put it more bluntly. "The only power I've got is nuclear, and I can't use that!"

Franklin D Roosevelt, the most effective president in the last century, expressed his frustration with the bureaucracies who nominally served him. "To change anything in the N-a-a-v-y", he drawled, "is like punching a featherbed!".

So it seems timely to take a look at the specific constraints that will bind Obama so that he may not "be Obama", as so many want him to be.

The limits of power

There are obvious financial and economic constraints imposed by the economic crisis. Obama has said that the economy will be his first priority. Whatever strategy or mix of strategies he adopts to make the recession as shallow and as short-lived as possible, resources for bold initiatives are bound to be limited.

There are, too, the constraints imposed by his own personality. Barack Obama is an unusually complicated man. He is indeed in many ways a radical. He is also a conservative. Three values, in particular, that are massively important to him are at the heart of what has been historically the conservative personality.

He is a religious man: not a Muslim, as some in his family were, and as his enemies pretend, but a Christian, one who has chosen the Christian faith consciously and as a mature adult.

He is a patriot and an American exceptionalist. Like other great American radicals before him, from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, the motivation to which he constantly appeals is the idea that in America, more than elsewhere, higher standards of political and social morality must be observed. Good for him: at the same time he will not instinctively look for political ideas abroad.

As he shows in the charming affection he shows to his wife and his daughters, he has the strong sense of family that is natural to a man whose family, though loyal and affectionate, was in several respects dysfunctional.

So we should not expect him to be driven by an instinctive wish to overturn the applecart. He is sincere when he says he wants change. He will not want to try to change everything.

Like every politician, and especially every politician who has captured his party's nomination not as the beneficiary of a long-earned legitimacy but as an insurgent, Obama is constrained by the ideas and values of the immediate circle of his supporters and advisers. To be sure, because he has raised so much money in small amounts, often over the internet from hundreds of thousands of donors, he is not in hock to big business and special interests. But he has made friends and incurred obligations on his astonishingly brief rise to the top.

He will do much for African-Americans and also for Hispanic-Americans. But he is hardly their prisoner. In Illinois, the traditional "race men" neither liked nor trusted him. Even the Reverend Jesse Jackson, a more substantial figure than envious black members of  the Illinois legislature, was even recorded in a moment of un-Christian annoyance uttering an earthy insult directed against him.

More restricting, perhaps, are the feelings of a group that supported him less enthusiastically than African-Americans: working-class, or "blue-collar" voters. Obama will be under pressure to adopt at least some protectionist measures to calm the fears of industrial workers who have lost their jobs or are afraid of losing them to foreign competition.

One reason, among several, why he has been talking to Hillary Clinton about a job in his administration - perhaps as secretary of state - is to buckle to himself two groups she was more successful at reaching out to in the campaign than he was: blue-collar workers, and women.

One constraint on the power of every president, especially underestimated outside the United States, is the power of Congress. Obama's coat-tails, as they say, were quite long. Democrats will have a more substantial majority in  the House of Representatives than speaker Nancy Pelosi has been able to count on since the mid-term elections of 2006.

In the Senate, the new president will have fifty-seven or fifty-eight votes (depending whether the comedian Al Franken can win a seat in Minnesota that is still undecided). To apply the cloture rule and end debate, you need sixty votes. On many issues, Obama will be able to win the handful of Republican votes he needs to pass legislation he wants. But not on all.

Also in openDemocracy on the United States election:

openUSA has published daily commentary and analysis of the 2008 election - both from the United States itself and around the world - and links to the best campaign coverage

The current highlights include an email exchange between KA Dilday and Anthony Barnett on the meaning of Barack Obama's candidacy

Plus:

Sidney Blumenthal, "The strange death of Republican America" (4 November 2008)

Party loyalty and party organisation in the United States are not so mechanistic that a president, even one with an arithmetical majority in both houses of Congress, can count on getting what he wants. Here he will run into the most important constraints of all.

Between ideal and reality

There are issues where the will of the American people, especially as organised by long-established and  well-funded lobbies, sets rather tight limits on what a president can do. Two examples are healthcare reform and Israel.

Barack Obama is committed to reform of  the American healthcare system, and in particular of access to it. Poll data suggest that a large proportion of the American population wants reform. Hillary Clinton is if anything even more committed. Public opinion, however, shies away from a national healthcare system. Some kind of universal health insurance, with exceptions allowing those who are content with their existing health policies, is the most that could pass Congress (see Lawrence R Jacobs & James A Morone, "American sickness: diagnosis and cure", 16 October 2007).

The situation with regard to Israel is somewhat similar. A lot of prejudiced nonsense is written around the world about the "Jewish lobby" in American politics. A majority of American Jews vote the Democratic ticket, and Jews are at least as strongly represented on the left as on the neo-conservative right.

Still, over at least three decades, the American people have been persuaded that Israel is America's staunchest and even its most democratic ally (a questionable proposition, but one widely held in the United States). Jewish organisations, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), have worked very hard to raise money for congressmen's election campaigns and to keep them briefed on the Israeli view of middle-east politics.

As a consequence, while it will be a key goal for the Obama administration to make progress towards peace between Israel and the Palestinians, there are in practice quite strict constraints on how far or how fast it is likely to move (see John C Hulsman, "Memo to Obama: the middle east needs you", 9 November 2008).

This applies even more to America's relations with Iraq, Iran and Pakistan. Senator Obama came out early and clearly against the Iraq war. But he did so in part because he saw it as a foolish  distraction from what he has continued to insist was the more urgent and legitimate task of  fighting Islamist extremism in Afghanistan and in its last redoubt in the tribal areas of Pakistan. As a result, one of the first and most dangerous crises the Obama administration will face will be over Pakistan.

As a candidate, Obama