Texting rebels

by | Aug 25, 2008


From BBC Focus on Africa, via the excellent Chris Blattman:

Each morning the 36-year-old powers up a small United Nations radio transmitter and starts broadcasting from his mountain shack. His antenna points directly at the rebels in the bush. They know him by his call name “Mike India”.

…every so often, he reads out his phone number. Between the hours of 1am and 4am — when mobile minutes are free — his phone is deluged. Some rebels want to know where to demobilise, others rant about Paul Kagame, the current Rwandan president and former Tutsi rebel leader. Some just want Mike India to play different music.

These conversations are particularly extraordinary because neither the United States nor the United Kingdom- key Rwandan allies – have any official dialogue with the Hutu rebel groups (something diplomats from both countries complain about in private). Mike India not only talks to the rebels, he exchanges texts with them.

Author

  • Alex Evans is founder of Larger Us, which explores how we can use psychology to reduce political tribalism and polarisation, a senior fellow at New York University, and author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren’t Enough? (Penguin, 2017). He is a former Campaign Director of the 50 million member global citizen’s movement Avaaz, special adviser to two UK Cabinet Ministers, climate expert in the UN Secretary-General’s office, and was Research Director for the Business Commission on Sustainable Development. Alex lives with his wife and two children in Yorkshire.


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