Quote Originally Posted by Jedburgh View Post
I don't believe this is the type of "strengthening" of the border region that you were implying, but they are attempting to address part of the situation:
Hi Jedburgh,

Actually, that's part of it. Kenya has been getting progressively destablized by trying to deal with too many refugees and having porous borders. Some of the camps in Kenya and Uganda make the Black Hole of Calcutta look like DisneyLand, so, if we are going to think seriously about a GCOIN, then part of that has to be in terms of turning these sink holes into something that at least offers some hope and can be used as a staging ground for them to recapture the areas they have been thrown out of.

I think this is especially important in that particular region, since the main groups that we could be allying with, the Samale, the southern Sudanese, the people of Darfur, are getting the snot kicked out of them. How well will anyone believe promises of Western governments if we don't help them?

Yes, reconstruction is a part of all this, but, as the old adage goes "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime." I don't really think that making the refugee camps into lovely places is the answer (I've got more than a few problems with the UN). I do, however, think that the refugee camps need to be shifted from the loss column into the win column. Let's take a page from the old insurgentcy manuals...

Marc