Eastern Congo

Eve Ensler of V-Day is in Bukavu. She writes that Panzi Hospital was attacked and has been shut for a week because of the violence:

The morning after I arrived here, Panzi Hospital was attacked by a gang of bandits. The hospital staff were literally fighting off attackers with sticks. Ambulances and important transport vehicles were vandalized. Windows of the hospital were smashed. Many people were injured, patients and staff. I saw the bruised face of a woman who had made it to Panzi after being raped only to find the place that was meant to be secure, completely insecure. It is hard to tell what caused this outbreak of violence. There was a violent incident in the community which touched it off, but the province of South Kivu is essentially a state of violence.

The rest is here.

I visited Panzi Hospital in late 2007. Here’s the story  I did on the work there for PRI’s The World.

For lots more background see Paula Donovan’s writings and Stephen Lewis’s speeches at AIDS-Free World.

Petraeus and the Endgame

This month I am writing the radio scripts for a series on how wars end. In the introductory piece I touch on how what’s happened in Iraq makes us re-think “endings.”  It has also made me focus more on exactly what General David Petraeus has been up to. Two good new reads on that score–Steve Coll in this week’s New Yorker  and Linda Robinson’s book  Tell Me How This Ends. (The title comes from  Petraeus’s oft-quoted rhetorical question to Rick Atkinson early in the war.) Anyway, both good reads for those thinking about the way forward in Iraq. Check out also Katy Clark’s story on the ”Awakening Councils” and Lisa Mullins’s interview with NYT military correspondent Michael Gordon from PRI’s The World on Tuesday.