Tuesday 29 November 2011

Conflict incentives in Central Africa

Last week I attended a seminar arranged by NAI and  FOI  as a part of the Lecture Series on African Security . Invited for this particular seminar was the well-known researcher Koen Vlassenroot who was talking about the Ugandan People’s Defence Force (UPDF) and its hunt for LRA in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

One of the main subjects was how during its intervention in DRC the UPDF, contrary to common believes, became an integral part of Ugandas governance regime rather than weakening the center of power in Kampala. High ranking politicians in Rwanda and Uganda were allegedly involved in the illegal exploitation of natural resources and the continuation of conflict in the DRC although they did not control every aspect of their troops’ behaviour.

Theories on shadow military networks and military entrepreneurs is not really one of my areas of expertise but for a better understanding of how these kind of illegal shadow networks, involving states, mafias, private armies, ‘businessmen’ and assorted state elites from both within and outside Africa, contribute to a clandestine regionalism in the Central African region have a look at this article by Ian Taylor. Another interesting piece on military commercialism and how entrepreneurial considerations serve as a key component of foreign military deployment is Christian Dietrich's publication . A bit of a side track but these concepts and theories are very interesting and highly topical for the region.

The second part of the seminar focused on the LRA in DRC. The question whether LRA still has a political agenda was lifted and some people commented that the picture given of LRA often is too simplistic. The group still has a political agenda and although Kony would be killed or arrested the grievances of the Acholi population in Northern Uganda will remain unresolved. One of the conclusions of the seminar was that we still should talk about LRA as a group with a political agenda. This is to a certain extent confirmed by the LRA statement reproduced in  Sudan Tribune  end of October, although it is impossible to determine if it is a tactical move from LRA as they try to align with other anti-american movements in the global south.  

Splitting into small units could be a strategic choice and not a sign of an internal division within the movement. It seems like Kony still has some leverage and reserachers present at the seminar had met with abductees who  witnessed that Kony ordered LRA to gather in CAR for a “Christmas Party” this year. This is worrying taking into consideration how the LRA massacred people during Christmas in 2008 in areas of Haut-Uele district of northern Congo and in southern Sudan. Another abductee who managed to escape said that the LRA keeps a low profile due to the elections in the DRC. Based on this LRA is clearly not a ghost organisation but still very much alive even though it can sometimes be difficult to determine whether attacks have been conducted by them or any of the other numerous armed groups operating in the same area. No one knows how many they are, I’ve heard numbers between 100 and 1000 from my sources but around 400 seems to be the average estimation.  

One of the objectives of the report I am writing is to try to understand the motivations and incentives that drive LRA. This means that I need to be careful not to just reproduce some of the clichés about the movement. In one of the chapters of, ‘The Lord's Resistance Army: myth and reality’ edited by Allen Tim & Vlassenroot Koen one of the author criticizes the stereotypes that are often evoked in descriptions of LRA. I will do my best to avoid that but in war information is always biased which makes it very hard to do a good analysis. However that type of challenge is one you have to learn to deal with in peace and conflict studies no matter how hard it is... 

There are so  many different conflict incentives and here I have highlighted just a few of them. I believe that we often tend to try to reduce conflict incentives to either economic, or political, or social but in reality there is always a mix of these factors that are at play. Let's not forget that when we try to analyse the causes of conflict. Reality is so complex that science often fails to grasp it by reducing it to variables and numbers although it might be necessary to be able to understand anything at all. 

Tuesday 15 November 2011

LRA Crisis Tracker

This website gives updated information on LRA activities with the aim to turn the world's attention to the atrocities and crimes committed against civilians by this armed movement

Monday 14 November 2011

The Lord's Resistance Army in CAR

I have been back in Sweden for a little more than a week now. Although it is nice to be back I really miss Bangui. Sweden is freezing.

As it turns out I'll spend the coming nine weeks writing a report about the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) hence I'll take a little pause from SSR but not from CAR as LRA is operating on the territory.

The US recently decided to send 100 military advisers  to support the countries in the region in their fight against the LRA. Furthermore the US is equipping the Forces Armées Centrafricaine (FACA) with uniforms and other necessities to fight this armed group that is known for its brutality and atrocities in CAR and elsewhere.

The question is high on the agenda as the African Union (AU) has also decided  to improve its efforts to fight this,  nowadays labeled terrorist group. France, which is the most influential foreign actor in CAR also urges the AU to coordinate their efforts in the fight against LRA.

This regional security threat is obviously highly relevant also in relation to SSR and in particular DDR which at least I believe is a prerequisite for succesful SSR. I am really happy that I have been given the opportunity to work with this for the coming weeks and I'll keep you updated on any progress.

For current updates from CAR in French and Sango listen to Radio Ndeke Luka  sending from Bangui. I do it daily and it makes me feel closer to the heart of Africa while staring out the window in the office as the sun sets at 4 p.m.

Wednesday 19 October 2011

Two weeks from now


Now it is less than two weeks left here in Bangui. Time goes by so fast, it is unbelievable. It feels like I just arrived but at the same time as if I have been here forever. Exactly two weeks from now I’ll be in Nairobi waiting for my flight to Amsterdam where I’ll get on the plane that will take me to a freezing cold, rainy Stockholm. 

I’ve tried to get an overview of the material I have so far to be able to identify who I should meet up with to fill the gaps during those last weeks. I must admit that I am not as motivated as in the beginning. I feel a bit tired now after weeks of intensive research, meeting so many different people, so many impressions. On my list there are about six people I would like to meet, this far I have met with about thirty, some of them both formally and informally. I also got quite a few documents that are interesting for my research to support some of the findings from the interviews, meetings and observations. 

I have to try to schedule the meetings for next week as I will be busy Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I have been given the occasion to participate as an observer at a seminar arranged by the Ministry of Public Security and the police with the support from BINUCA. The aim is to train and inform high ranking police officers on SSR matters. It will be three very interesting days and hopefully I’ll get to talk to some people there as well apart from observing the seminar as such. I am very grateful to the person who arranged this and for everything else he has done. Without him I would never have been able to conduct this study and meet with all those people. If you read this THANK YOU!

I have very ambiguous feelings about leaving Bangui, I really would love to stay longer. I adore this town Bangui la coquette, its people and everything about it. It is so natural. There is an atmosphere here that makes me feel free and relaxed in a fantastic way. At the same time Sweden is calling, with the winter coming, the exciting internship, friends and family awaiting me. I will definitely come back to Bangui however, there is no doubt about that.  

Tuesday 11 October 2011

1000 elite soldiers...


Yesterday I got an email forwarded to me from a person working at my university department. A girl on undergraduate level had some questions concerning the ongoing conflict(s) here. She is going to do an analysis of the conflict between CPJC and the government. The only problem with that is that the CPJC does not in fact fight the government but is trying to get control of the diamonds which has resulted in clashes between the afore mentioned and another rebel group, UFDR. For updated info have a look at Le Confident  and Jeune Afrique

This made me think about how easy it is to get things wrong. Rebels and armed groups often evoke the image of Che Guevara and other revolutionaries but here it is difficult to say that the armed groups have a political agenda. More often than not the objective of the rebellion is simply about personal interests. As soon as the leaders get what they want, be it a position in the administration, a car, a house or the possibility to be ambassador abroad they sign the peace agreement. This is ridiculous. I mean seriously, how do you negotiate with that? I think we should call these armed movements its right name, bandits that breed on the population and have no interest whatsoever to change anything. The political opposition suffers as there is no room to negotiate if you are not armed. For more information have a look at this article.


I talked to a person who said, “with 1000 elite soldiers we could wipe them out”. Probably yes. Then again, there is no interest in doing so. Instead the LRA, Chadian rebels, the Central African armed groups and bandits are free to do as they please as the government does not control more than 30% of the country. The people have to play the game, at the same time trying to please the illegal armed groups and the state security forces. As the French say, “c’est pas evident”. Often the people find themselves caught in the cross-fire, accused from both sides of being loyal to the enemy. 

On top of the political-military groups, bandits and foreign armed groups there are ethnic conflicts in the communities, clashes between pastoralists and farmers, self-defence forces... You name it. Try to do a conflict analysis of that...

Friday 7 October 2011

Central African Winter


In the last posts I have been given a rather dark picture of the situation here. Despite all the problems in this country its people are really something special. I just love the Central African sense of humour, how they mock me, each other and everything they can.

As I am convinced that to be able to do good research you have to understand the context I have been trying to meet as many people as possible, from as different backgrounds as possible. As for the international community here it is quite easy in the sense that we are not that many and it is easy to get to know people. When it comes to finding Central African friends I also have been quite successful, mainly thanks to my rather unconventional way of going out, get lost and then saved by people.

One night I went out with the guy who drove me home when the Medicins Sans Frontières abandoned me which I wrote about earlier. We went to a concert which was just crazy fun where this great band consisting of five men and two dancers (not sure whether or not to include the dancers in the band) performed. Performed is the right word. One of the singers was a man in his fifties dressed in a linen suit and a hat, one guy had some kind of weird tights and a top and a third one was seriously wearing a fur (!) doing the US gangsta thing. Love it. The crowd consisting of me and some sixty Central Africans was dancing like crazy as well. Normally I love to dance and consider myself being quite good at it but here I feel stiff like a dead man trying to do Michael Jackson moves. So I only dance when I am drunk here, very Swedish indeed.

After that we continued to sing karaoke. I don’t know if you have heard about “Norwegian karaoke” but it is done in the following way: you listen to music, preferably in your headphones and then you sing out loud. Hopefully you know the lyrics but if not, just do it anyway. The Central African way to sing karaoke is as follows: bring a band to a bar, preferably quite bad with untuned instruments, allow anyone who still can stand to get up on stage and sing along with whatever song the band plays, with whatever lyrics that person might deem suitable. I must admit that both the Norwegian and the Central African ways are much more amusing than conventional karaoke. 

After karaoke it was time to do the nightclubs so the guy and I went to the one where they mainly play Congolese music. Suddenly he was gone, had disappeared. As I am married and have no interest in anything else than going out and have a good time I assume he found someone who did and left. So 4 am I find myself abandoned once again, yet for another reason. No luck here. However, thanks to that I found a good friend. A Central African girl saw me and invited me to join her company. We ended up in “les quartiers”, the hoods so to say, having chicken and local beer. What a cliché, but a nice one. She is really fantastic. Saturday I joined her and her family (70 people) at her mom’s house. We ate, drank and laughed. So life here isn’t all bad.

What I do feel however is that the Central African people deserve so much better, I mean seriously, there is not even one proper road in the capital, power cuts are getting worse every day, no water, no health care, the security forces harassing the population arbitrarily. Apparently the government turned down offers from both the Chinese and the French to build a new power plant. The government wanted the money to do it themselves. One can ask why.  The Chinese and the French said no. 

The people here are abandoned by its own government and we don’t do a damn thing about it, we are accomplice. You can really feel the frustration in the air. One day the people will have had enough. The rainy season is almost over now, the temperature falling, they say it is the winter that is coming. Let it come a Central African spring...

Tuesday 4 October 2011

Un trou noir du cul du monde


Haven’t been writing for quite a long time. I have been sick, busy and culturally exhausted. Bangui is a very odd place. I still like it a lot but it exhausts me now and then. 

As for work I do progress, I try to focus on different aspects that have affected the SSR process here with the intention to illuminate how come there has been so little progress. Although I haven’t done any proper analysis my first impression is that there are so many problems I don’t really know where to start. The cooperation between the donors is bad, there are several ongoing projects that do enter in the SSR sphere but yet they are not a part of the formal process, secondly there is no political will whatsoever. During the last weeks some of the donors together with national actors have tried to re-launch the process but it is blocked on highest political level. Thirdly, the question of local ownership is quite interesting in a context where there is such low capacity. Who to work with? One thing is sure though, the local actors (apart from the elite in Bangui) have been completely left out. Civil society has only been included to legitimize the process etc.
Furthermore, the amount of money that “disappears” is chocking. As some people from the international community have put it: “not a single project here works”. Well....

Another aspect that I think can explain the lack of effects from the SSR process is the almost complete lack of interest from the international actors here. In other places at least there is a genuine engagement, here you hear comments like, “we just try to keep the country from falling into complete anarchy and somalisation”. I love that engagement, to just keep the people from drowning, supporting leaders that don’t give a damn about the population and actually feed the corrupt system. If only the taxpayers in Europe would know. Millions of Euros have disappeared and when Brussels or the capitals are informed no one listens and there is no change. We just continue. I seriously think that the international presence here only makes things worse. It is not always the national actors that make disappear the money but equally some of the well known institutions of the international community. 

I might have chosen one of the most extreme places when it comes to corruption and lack of progress. People here say that during the last two years the security has diminished, development has stalled and violation of human rights is on the increase. 

I think the donors need to sit down and ask themselves what the objective of the engagement are, they need to evaluate what their engagement has generated and do so with critical self-reflection. It is easy to say that the Central Africans are corrupt but what about us? We feed the corruption and many of the international organisations here are equally corrupt. Tragic. 

It is not all dark but it is a dark hole. Never ever land, never been land or just the dark side of the earth. The Central African Republic is “un trou noir du cul du monde”, forgotten lawless land and the people are suffering. It is a damn shame.

Monday 26 September 2011

Pictures

Some people have asked for pictures, the problem howver is that if you take pictures in Bangui there is a high risk that the military or police will confiscate your camera. Therefore I can only take pictures in places where the security forces are absent, which is rare.

Posted a picture from the Oubangui hotel, the internet connection here is quite good and it is quiet. On top of that the view is fantastic with the DRC a few hundred meters away with its green hills and foggy valleys. Beautiful sopt really.

Hopefully I'll get to take at least some pictures before I leave. We'll see.

Tonight I am having dinner with a representative from the French embassy, it will be very interesting to see their point of view on the SSR as France hasn't really been invovled in the process but still do engage in SSR activities bilaterally.

Friday 23 September 2011

Nightbird


I normally get up between 07h00 am and 08h00 and I think that is reasonably early. Apparently it is not so as people here constantly are mocking me about sleeping in the morning. The day before yesterday the fruit woman who comes here three times a week to sell fruit, had a good laugh when I said that I felt a bit sick and that’s why I had been sleeping in this last week. She was laughing loudly and said “oui, bien sûr...”. 

Ok, people here get up at 5h00 am but I don’t. I work best at night, my intellectual abilities are normally on top between 20h00 pm and midnight. Nothing strange about that is there. I would have to adapt if we didn’t have a generator for electricity where I live as there are blackouts all the time but we do. So I work at night, either at home or observing people at the nightclubs although that normally is limited to the weekends. I am apparently a very strange creature but I am quite used to people thinking that.

Yesterday I decided to go out for dinner as I was bored sitting at home, so I had an omelette and a beer at a restaurant really close to the apartment. After I walked a few hundred meters to a bar where there normally is lots of people, ex-pats and Central Africans to see if anyone I know or who might be good to get to know was there. The place was full of people so I thought I’d stand in the bar but the barman suggested I sit down at a table where a guy was sitting by himself so I did. Later his friends showed up, all working for Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF). We had a good time and one of the guys just didn’t stop telling me that I should go to Rwanda instead. I just had to go to Kigali, straight away. I tried to make him understand that I am not doing research on Rwanda but no success. Perhaps it is a sign, next year in Rwanda? 

It was already dark so I asked them if they could drop me off at home afterwards, it is some 500 meters to the apartment from there but not very wise to walk alone at night. They could but then the man in charge showed up. He said no as the insurance wouldn’t cover a person not working for MSF. Ridiculous. We are talking about 500 meters maximum but what to do. I could have walked next to the car for all that I care.  So I thought I’d take a taxi, one second later it started to pour down and there was thunder and lightning. People, goats and taxis disappeared and the road was totally empty. I was the only one left except for the bar woman so I chat with her for a while waiting for the rain to stop. Then one of her friends showed up and she asked him if he could drive me home, so he did but before that we did some club crawling down town. Nice but probably not that wise as I don’t really feel that well.  

Yesterday morning the girl I rent the room from drove me to the French embassy to see the doctor. As there is no health care to talk about in this country the embassy has its own clinic that is open to all Europeans and other Westerners but they are paying more. Got some proper antibiotics and other drugs and I already feel better. I really didn’t dare to tell her that I had medicated myself as she is quite a frightening French woman. She said I was silly who hadn’t come there straight away when I got sick. True that. Hope I’ll be fine in a few days.

As I wrote in the last post I there is some confusion about the focus of the study. I guess I will have to rename it as suggested by Skyttedoktoranden and look at the problems with reforming something that does not exist. I am not saying it is bad, wrong or anything just very difficult and to an ambitious programme might only lead to disappointment. I am meeting with a journalist and man from civil society later today I think it might be interesting. I definitely need to meet people who are not implicated in the SSR process as well to get a grip of the problems and obstacles.

I’ll keep you updated. 

Tuesday 20 September 2011

Confusion


At this point I am a bit confused about the objective, or rather focus of the study. The more I get to know about the SSR process here the more confused I get. What is problematic is that although the process was launched in 2008 there has been very little progress after 2009. The external evaluation from October 2009 is quite good and gives a good insight of the state of play. Since then very little has happened so it is still valid. The process has been blocked during the last 20 months due to the elections and surrounding problems. This means that for me to get any added value doing interviews I need to slightly change focus. 

The initial idea was to look at how the SSR process has affected the state’s capacity to protect the population but as the process has not had that much effect at this early stage that idea has to be dropped. At this point the donors, mainly BINUCA (the UN integrated peace building office in CAR) which is the main international actor here with regards to SSR, are trying to re-launch the process together with their national counterparts. As the short-term objectives to a large extent have been reached it is now time to continue with the mid-term. Unfortunately it is only one sub-sector, democratic oversight, that has a strategy for the mid-term 2011-2013 and this is yet not approved on the political level. This is a really interesting period to be here as the actors involved are preparing to continue the process. Nevertheless I need to make it clear to myself what the focus of the study should be now.I am thinking perhaps to compare levels of violence in the different provinces but not sure yet.

One aspect that is quite interesting is that this is, as far as I know, the first time the SSR concept as a whole is used as a basis for a reform meaning that the approach is holistic and that several sectors are involved including not only the police and armed forces but also finance, judiciary as well as cross cutting issues like democratic control and corruption. It seems however like CAR might not be ready for these types of reforms. Several people I have been talking to who has lived here for many years are quite pessimistic about the prospects for the reforms. Firstly it is impossible to do everything at once and considering the fact that CAR is a country where the most basic services are not functioning, such as health care and primary education, it might be difficult to start in that end. Secondly, local ownership is complicated when the locals lack capacity, expertise and knowledge. Even high ranking people within the administration often lack education and write French poorly. 

The question is what local ownership actually means in this context. When civil society is this weak, the state has no control over more than half of the country and largely fails to provide the population with basic services one can wonder which locals should own the process? Some people I have talked to compare the CAR to an enterprise that has gone bankrupt and mean that the only way to get back on track would be to put the country under international UN administration for an initial period. This clearly goes against all ideas of local ownership. The SSR process in Bosnia-Herzegovina is an example of and externally controlled and implemented process and it is clear that this is not unproblematic although the context is very different from that here. Without being either pro or against I believe that there is some truth in this observation in the sense that the state and civil society have extremely low capacity. On the other hand it might be so that when the donors actually have a partnership with the national counterparts, rather than controlling the process themselves, this means that the reforms will take time which not always suits the time frame and expectations of the international community. 

Hence it might be interesting to use the CAR as an example where the holistic SSR approach has been turned into a practical reality and try to understand what difficulties arise when doing so in a fragile post-war state. Egnell and Halldén emphasise the importance of taking into account the state-society relations when designing and implementing SSR. In countries where the state does not function in the Weberian sense, where there is no common polity on elite level and civil society is weak SSR is extremely difficult to implement and if that is to be done the reforms have to not only be adapted to the realities on the ground but also to not be too overambitious as that increases the risk of failure. It might be a good idea to turn the focus of the study to these issues as CAR is an example of a country with extremely low levels of all three factors. 

The objective of the study would then be to understand the difficulties to use a holistic approach and also to put light on the role of the donors and what added value their presence actually has. The CAR is also interesting from the perspective of coordination among donors as it is to a large extent France’s “playground”, still after more than 50 years of independence. The French are obviously influential here and although they only to a limited extent have been involved in the SSR process as such they do engage in SSR activities and have been doing so for a long time. The fact that the intelligence services still are left out of the SSR process although it is one of the sub-sectors can to a large extent be explained by the French resistance. I am yet to meet with French officials and hopefully I’ll get to meet someone on Thursday. It will be interesting to see what they have to say about the subject.

Apart from thinking about different ways to continue with the work here I have been eating lots of good food. On Sunday I had an excellent dish of capitaine (fish) soaked in lemon sauce at a quite good restaurant that serves French style food. The day before on the other hand I had lunch with one of my contacts, he likes local places and brought me to a “someone’s backyard type of restaurant” where we had chicken and rice with Maggie sauce. Such a cliché but the food was really good and the big mama was sitting outside making it in the open air. Love it. 

The CARian (!) experience is exhausting, fantastic and sort of surreal. I guess TIA is an expression you can’t use too often, This Is Africa. It is. And hard core, I could have gone to Kenya or Ghana, something that would be have been easier to digest but here I am and although it is hard sometimes I love it. I do.


Sunday 18 September 2011

The bad side of Bangui


Tuesday after a weekend of madness I was quite exhausted. I started to feel weird, warm and I was sneezing like crazy. As I was sitting at the café writing the last blog post I really started to sweat. It took at bit longer than expected and suddenly it was dark. Nightfall always comes as a surprise. As I don’t like to walk alone in the pot-holed streets without any street lights when it is dark I had to take a taxi. I didn’t see any taxis coming so I crossed the street. On that side it is quite dark and the lights from the café don’t reach that spot. Apparently it is a corner full of thieves but that I didn’t know. 

I have this tiny little purse in which I keep my passport and some money, I normally carry it hanging in front of me. As I wasn’t feeling that well I didn’t realise it had slipped back. The purse also has a pocket which you can’t close, in that I had my phone. It is a really crappy old phone and I would probably only be happy to get rid of it so I am not that careful with it. So I was standing there trying to get a taxi without any luck. Suddenly this UN car pulls over, stops and reverses, the window opens and a man shouts to me “Watch your bag, there is a guy behind you trying to stick his greedy fingers in it”. Oh my. So I turned around and there was a smiling guy looking all innocent. The UN man asked me where I was going and then gave me a ride home during which he held a lecture on how NOT to get rid of all your stuff which basically went like this: “do not stand in dark corners with your bag open and phone visible for anyone to grab, hmmm quite obvious one would think. Silly me. Apparently he works with security for the UN personnel here so I assume that is why he saw what was about to happened.

The day after I felt even worse, I really caught a bad cold so I spent the day chilling out but also prepared the two interviews I had Thursday. The interviews actually went quite well although I was soaked in my own sweat which then froze as soon as I stepped into the offices, very efficient air condition. I really don’t like that, never use it as it always makes me sick. 

To cure myself I thought it was a good idea to have some whiskey with a French police man in the evening. He has been working with the SSR process quite a lot so I thought it was a great idea to combine work and pleasure. The idea was great but it didn’t cure my cold. 

This morning me and the girl I am renting the room from went to the market together with her boyfriend. It was great: colourful, crazy, busy, smelly and absolutely fabulous. I definitely need to go back and buy some fabrics to have some skirts and dresses made. Then I bought some antibiotics, hope it will help. I really don’t have time to be sick plus it is terribly boring and particularly annoying when you start to get “culturally exhausted” as my former boss put it. The fact that I am a woman is occasionally an advantage as it makes it easier to get in contact with people I need to meet with BUT with that comes all kinds of weird suggestions, expectations. It is quite exhausting to constantly have to balance in between, on the one hand you can’t snap those guys off as that would ruin your work, on the other hand you must not in any sense encourage them. I try to use the tactics of avoiding to answer directly, keep to small talk, smile and play stupid. Or play stupid is perhaps not the right way to say it. I am stupid thinking that people actually would treat me in a professional way as I am used to. 

There are several things that I would say are culturally exhausting but what annoys me the most is the attitude from some people (read men) from the international community. No respect whatsoever for any kind of work ethics as they buy prostitutes like a normal person buys bread. It is tragic to see. In particular the complete lack of shame. Here everything is ok and when your wife is not here you “obviously” have to “have fun”. Such people make me sick and even more so when they represent intergovernmental organisations and alike that are supposed to do something good or at least do no harm. It is a damn shame. It is definitely time for the donor organisations to do something about the code of conduct of their employees. I mean seriously, how credible is it when those people come talk about human rights, gender equality and justice during the day and in the night they bang a girl in front of everyone at one of the nightclubs paying her less than the price of one beer. I am not surprised but quite disgusted to see it happened so openly, no shame whatsoever. None. It is time to think about the added value of the international presence when this is the side effects.