It is both fascinating and horrifying to overhear a bad argument between two old friends. The drama is compelling but you shudder at the pain of each wounding criticism.

I doubt Kai Eide, the U.N.’s top man in Afghanistan, will be holidaying again with his former deputy, Peter Galbraith, after a lacerating row between them over electoral fraud. Once the best of friends, the two have fallen out spectacularly over what should have been done to prevent the ballot stuffing, vote rigging and intrigue that Western powers now publicly admit badly marred the August 20 poll in Afghanistan. Were the stakes not so high, the fight could be brushed off as the consequence of clashing egos and the vagaries of human nature. But the dispute has cast doubt on whether any outcome of the vote can be considered legitimate. A second round may still happen, depending on a recount of suspect votes likely to conclude in a few days. On current trends President Hamid Karzai will emerge the winner, but will look like spoiled goods in the eyes of many in the Obama administration. Obama needs a credible political partner in Kabul to help him sell to Americans the cost in blood and treasure of whatever approach he eventually decides to take on continuing the counter-insurgency fight in Afghanistan.

Galbraith had been making the public running in the argument, charging that his efforts to prevent fraud were blocked and that he was muzzled by Eide, a veteran Norwegian diplomat. When he refused to keep quiet, says Galbraith, he was sacked. Eide’s actions or inactions have helped give the Taliban its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting Western forces, Galbraith has told anyone who would listen, including the op-ed pages of major American newspapers.

When Eide finally bit back in public he lined up a silent chorus of Western ambassadors to sit on a podium beside him in Kabul to demonstrate the solid support of ‘the international community.’ (The British, French and U.S. ambassadors seated beside Eide did not take questions, despite one being tossed deliberately at Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. envoy). The mild-mannered Norwegian roused himself into indignant righteousness and, without ever mentioning Galbraith by name, fought back against the charges of having winked at massive fraud by agents of Karzai and castigated his former deputy for discourteously breaching confidences.

From my chair in the room it seemed Eide was most hurt by what he said was Galbraith’s use against him of remarks made while the former US diplomat was a guest in his house for over two months. “My view is that private discussions around the dinner table should remain private.”

The allegations “have been an attack on my integrity,” said Eide. “It’s not dignifed, not fair and not true,” he said, adding in a resigned finale, “but that’s the way it is.”

While watching the Eide/Galbraith friendship dissolve in such a public train wreck I wondered how Afghans were reacting to the squabble. I’m back in Kabul after a year’s absence. The distance, alienation and distrust between Afghans and their foreign helpmates that I saw last October, and which the Taliban promotes, sustains and thrives upon, has not much eased and will not have been helped by this undignified row.

Ban Ki-moon isn’t having a good year for public relations. Halfway through a five-year term as U.N. secretary-general, he’s been hit with a wave of negative assessments by the Financial Times, The Economist, London Times, Foreign Policy and other media organizations. In a March 2009 editorial entitled “Whereabouts Unknown,” the Times said Ban was “virtually inaudible” on pressing issues of international security and “ineffectual” on climate change, the one issue that Ban claims he has made the biggest difference on. The Economist gave him a mixed report card, assigning him two out of 10 points for his management skills while praising him on climate change (eight out of 10 points).
    
This week, Norway’s Aftenposten newspaper made an unpleasant situation much worse. It published a confidential memo assessing Ban’s 2-1/2 years in office from Oslo’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Mona Juul, to the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. Juul’s report is scathing — and it comes from a representative of one of the world’s body’s top financial contributors. She says the former South Korean foreign minister suffers from a “lack of charisma” and has “constant temper tantrums” in his offices on the 38th floor of the United Nations building in midtown Manhattan.
    
She describes Ban as a “powerless observer” during the fighting in Sri Lanka earlier this year when thousands of civilians were killed as government forces ended a 25-year civil war against Tamil Tiger rebels, trapping them on a narrow strip of coast in the country’s northeast. In Darfur, Somalia, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Congo, she wrote, Ban’s “passive and not very committed appeals seem to fall on deaf ears.” She says that his recent trip to Myanmar was a failure and that some people in Washington refer to Ban as a “one-term” secretary-general.
    
Juul’s letter could hardly have come at a more inopportune time. Ban is planning to visit Norway in the coming weeks, where he intends to meet with government officials and visit the Arctic circle to see for himself the effects of global warming and the melting polar ice. Now U.N. officials fear reporters will be more interested in what he says about Juul’s memo than climate change.

So far Ban has not reacted to the letter. However, a Norwegian diplomat told Reuters that Ban’s press office had been instructed to hold off on confirming his visit to Norway shortly after the news of Juul’s memo began to spread.
    
Ban’s PR difficulties didn’t start this year. In March 2008, his chief of staff Vijay Nambiar sent a memo to U.N. employees explaining how to say his boss’s name. “Many world leaders, some of whom are well acquainted with the Secretary-General, still use his first name mistakenly as his surname and address him wrongly as Mr. Ki-moon or Mr. Moon,” Nambiar complained.
 
Then came Ban’s own speech to senior U.N. officials in Turin, Italy last year, in which he described how difficult it was to improve the working culture inside the United Nations. The secretary-general seemed to acknowledge that his internal management style had failed. “I tried to lead by example,” Ban said. “Nobody followed.”
    
Ban’s aides vehemently defend him, saying he’s being treated unfairly by the press. One senior U.N. official suggested privately that Ban could very well turn out to be “the greatest secretary-general ever.” They complain that people continue to compare him to his predecessor Kofi Annan, who was a very different U.N. chief and relied less on “quiet diplomacy” than Ban. Annan became a hero to many people around the world for standing up to the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Annan called the March 2003 invasion illegal. U.N. officials also complain bitterly about the indefatigable blogger Matthew Lee, whose website Inner City Press regularly accuses Ban and other U.N. officials of hypocrisy and failing to keep their promises to reform the United Nations and root out corruption. (Some U.N. officials accuse Lee of not always getting his facts right, but his blog has become unofficial required reading for U.N. staffers around the world.)
    
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, diplomats in New York say, is among those supporting a campaign against a second term for Ban. Juul’s memo said Helen Clark, New Zealand’s former prime minister and current head of the U.N. Development Program, “could quickly become a competitor for Ban’s second term.” But diplomats say they expect the United States, Britain and other major powers to reluctantly back a second term for Ban, if only because there appears to be no viable alternative whom Russia and China would support.
    
A recent article in the Times of London said the best U.N. chief in the organization’s 64-year history was not Swedish Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dag Hammarskjold but the Peruvian diplomat Javier Perez de Cuellar, who held the top U.N. post for 10 years until 1992. Nicknamed “mumbles” because he was so difficult to understand, Perez de Cuellar kept a low profile and, like Ban, preferred backroom diplomacy, not Annan’s bully pulpit. Among the Peruvian diplomat’s successes were managing the end of the Cold War, leading a long-delayed revival of U.N. peacekeeping and encouraging member states to back a U.S.-led military operation to drive Iraq’s invading forces out of Kuwait in 1991.
    
Will Ban’s preference for quiet diplomacy make him as good or better than Perez de Cuellar? That remains to be seen.

Although the U.N.’s racism conference in Geneva has been dominated by Middle East politics, Palestinian rights groups say Palestinians have effectively been silenced.On the one hand tough rules by the conference organisers prevented Palestinian NGOs from holding “side events”, they say. On the other hand Monday’s controversial speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, slamming Israel as a “totally racist government” founded “on the pretext of Jewish suffering”, has distracted attention from the issues that actually affect Palestinians.

  “One thing that we have noticed in this conference is that there has been a concerted effort to silence the voices of the Palestinian presence and raising the Palestinian issue,” said Wisam Ahmad of Al-Haq, a Ramallah-based advocacy group.

 Ahmad says that Ahmadinejad’s speech became the symbol of the conference, as intended by “those that wanted this conference to fail”.

 “We as Palestinians want to be heard and it is unfortunate that the press attributes the statements of the president of Iran to all of the Palestinian people,” he said.

Ingrid Jaradat, director of the Badil Resource Center in Bethlehem, agrees.

 “We all knew he was going to come, we all knew that the European governments were going to wait until they just hear the key word and then they will all stand up and leave the hall and then the press comes in, they all would write about what he said or did not say and everybody would forget what is really written in the documents and what the conference is really about,” she said.

  “From my point of view I do not think that this was helpful for the Palestinian people in general and not for our organisation.”

 Diplomatic manoeuvering in the run-up to the conference, known as Durban II, resulted in references to the Palestinian question being dropped from the draft declaration, in an effort to get all U.N. members to take part.

In the event the United States, Israel and half a dozen other countries decided to stay away. European states walked out of Ahmadinejad’s speech but most came back for the rest of the conference, which agreed a final declaration on Tuesday.

 That document “reaffirms” the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA) agreed in 2001, which does refer to Israel and the Palestine territories.

 It was that reaffirmation that prompted the United States to stay away this time. The U.S. and Israel walked out of the 2001 meeting following attempts, subsequently dropped, to equate Zionism with racism in the final document.

The 2001 meeting was marred by anti-Semitic demonstrations and activities by some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that led Jewish groups to warn that Durban II – the review meeting in Geneva – could be another “hatefest”.

 This time conference organisers put strict limits on what NGOs could organise on the sidelines of the meeting. Such side events had to deal with “thematic” questions such as the treatment of immigrants, not individual countries.

As a result Palestinian rights groups found their requests to hold events dealing with Palestine issues were rejected.

 (A pro-Israel group did manage to hold an event at the U.N. during the conference, apparently by circumventing the conference organisers and booking a room directly through the U.N. offices.)

Critics of the U.N. human rights process say it spends a disproportionate amount of time on the Israel/Palestine issue.

 For example, since its creation three years ago, the U.N. Human Rights Council has devoted five of its 10 special sessions to Israel and its alleged human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories and Lebanon. (One each examined the financial crisis, Congo, the food crisis, Myanmar and Darfur.)

 “The real victims of the hijacking of the human rights agenda to focus on Israel are not Israel. Israel is a strong country. It can defend itself, it has articulate spokespeople to defend it,” said civil rights activist and Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz.

 “While the people of Rwanda were being murdered the U.N. was debating Israel. While the people of Darfur were being murdered the U.N. was debating Israel. While the people of Cambodia were being murdered the U.N. was debating Israel,” he said.

And Palestinians acknowledge that they have little to show for all the diplomatic focus on their problems. Even though the 2001 document refers to the plight of the Palestinians under occupation, little has changed.

 “So far the Durban declaration and programme of action has not really succeeded to bring about any major change or improvement in the situation of the Palestinian people but in fact our situation has very much deteriorated since 2001,” said Jaradat.

A United Nations conference on racism is being boycotted by the United States and many of its allies.

They fear the meeting in Geneva will single out Israel for criticism. A previous racism conference in 2001 in Durban, South Africa, was marred by anti-Semitic street protests and attempts to pass a resolution equating Zionism with racism, prompting the United States and Israel to walk out.

The final declaration of that conference omitted that language and was hailed by Israel’s foreign ministry as a triumph.

Canada and Israel had long made it clear that they would not attend the follow-up conference in Geneva, known as Durban II.

Now, despite President Barack Obama’s policy of re-engaging with the rest of the world, the United States has decided to stay away too. So have Australia and Germany among others. Britain and France and current EU-president the Czech Republic are represented only by their ambassadors.

                                   The only head of state to attend is Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad,

who has called for Israel to be wiped from the map and cast doubt on the Nazi Holocaust, which is also commemorated by Jewish communities on Monday.

He used similar language again on Monday, denouncing Israel as a racist regime oppressing the Palestinians and founded “on the pretext of Jewish sufferings”, and accusing “Zionism” of penetrating mass media and financial systems in other countries to impose its domination worldwide.

Several advocacy organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, have said the United States and other Western countries should take part, arguing that their boycott constituted a blow against efforts to promote human rights.

Even in Israel, some people say that a boycott leaves the floor open to critics of the country.

Still, those who object to the conference can draw some paradoxical comfort from Ahmadinejad’s words. According to one conspiracy theory making the round of the Palais des Nations – the U.N.’s European headquarters where it is hosting the conference – the boycott, by allowing the spotlight to fall on Ahmadinejad, simply proves the point of the opponents: that the U.N.’s international diplomacy is flawed and its efforts to discuss human rights always end up in an attack on Israel.

The overthrow of Madagascar’s leader may have had nothing to do with events elsewhere in Africa, but after four violent changes of power within eight months the question is bound to arise as to whether the continent is returning to old ways.

Three years without coups between 2005 and last year had appeared to some, including foreign investors, to have indicated a fundamental change from the first turbulent decades after independence. This spate of violent overthrows could now be another reason for investors to tread more warily again, particularly as Africa feels the impact of the global financial crisis.

"Although I don't think these instances of instability in Africa are related to each other or part of a pattern, I think there's no doubt external constituents and businesspeople around the world will assume there is a pattern," said Tom Cargill, Africa Programme Coordinator at London thinktank Chatham House.

The fact that coup makers have succeeded without being forced to step down or even face major censure could also embolden those who might be tempted to take power in bigger countries, where falling growth is encouraging disaffection.

"Look at ... other African countries, so-called pivotal states: Nigeria is in a terrible state, so is Egypt, so is Kenya, all these so-called big countries," said Hussein Solomon, a political science professor at the University of Pretoria.

Although there can be a tendency to group very diverse African states together, the picture is far from uniform - Ghana's presidential election two months ago was one of Africa's closest, but avoided major violence, reassuring investors despite an acute fiscal crisis.

But social pressures are growing across Africa as a result of the world economic crisis.

The dramatic U-turn by rich countries as they bail out or buy up failing industries is also prompting a reassessment of the model sold to Africa by Western donors since the Cold War -- a combination of market capitalism and multiparty democracy.

Cargill said factors were both the financial crisis and the rise of one-party state China, an increasingly important source of investment and trade for Africa.

"I think in future the whole idea of the democratic capitalist system will be tested and questioned, and there will be some who take advantage of its being questioned for their own private ends to launch their own bids for power," he said.

That debate is already taking place at the African Union, whose rules ban unconstitutional seizures of power but whose chairman for the next year, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, opposes what he says are foreign democratic structures imposed on Africa.

The AU has told Madagascar that any seizure of power by unconstitutional means would be considered a coup d'etat, punishable by AU sanctions or suspension.

But that sits uneasily with Gaddafi's rebuke last week of Mauritania's first democratically elected leader, largely confined to his village after being deposed in a coup last year.

"He must accept the fact,” said Gaddafi, who seized power in 1969 “He is not the first head of state to be overthrown.”

Is Africa returning to the old ways or did it never really leave them behind? Will a reassessment of the financial model pushed by Western donors also mean a new look at the multiparty democracy?

Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has seen off other challenges in almost 20 years in power and there is no sign that he is going to give in to the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

Some supporters of the court's move hope it will eventually persuade Sudan's politicians to hand over their leader in a palace coup, end the festering conflict in Darfur and do more to repair relations with the West.

But many signs point in the other direction, turning Bashir further towards allies such as Russia and China as he strengthens his hold on power.

Some believe the court’s decision could worsen the fighting in Darfur because rebel movements will be emboldened and because Khartoum will feel that there is no longer any point in trying to pander to the West.

There are also concerns over what it could mean for the 2005 peace deal that ended the two-decade north-south war - although officials from the semi-autonomous south have been quick to say, in public at least, that they are standing behind Bashir.

While Bashir remains in power, the arrest warrant means the West has lost one of its strongest negotiating cards with Sudan -- the offer to normalise relations.

The new U.S. administration could still offer Sudan the carrot of removing the country from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. But early statements from President Barack Obama and his team suggest they plan a tougher stance on Sudan.

Some of the 30 African countries who signed the founding statute of the International Criminal Court may start reconsidering their involvement. Many states already feel the court's investigations to date have unfairly targeted the continent.

And there is no sign that Bashir will be arrested. Despite the call from the ICC for all countries to implement the warrant, he plans to go to an upcoming Arab summit in Qatar and intends to join future African summits. While Qatar has not signed up to the statute, if Bashir were to get away with visiting a country that has done so it might seriously challenge the court’s authority.

Was it right for the court to issue the warrant against Bashir? Will it improve the situation in Sudan or make it worse? Could it end up undermining the court? What do you think?

Earlier this month, Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo argued that Africa needs Western countries to cut long term aid that has brought dependency, distorted economies and fuelled bureaucracy and corruption. The comments on the blog posting suggested that many readers agreed. In a response, Savio Carvalho, Uganda country director for aid agency Oxfam GB, says that aid can help the continent escape poverty - if done in the right way:

In early January, I travelled to war-ravaged northern Uganda to a dusty village in Pobura and Kal parish in Kitgum District. We were there to see the completion of a 16km dirt road constructed by the community with support from Oxfam under an EU-funded programme.

The road is bringing benefits in the form of access to markets, education and health care. Some parents say their daughters feel safer walking to school on the road instead of through the bushes. Many families have used the wages earned from construction work to pay for school fees and medical treatment. This is the impact of aid.

Having lived and worked in east Africa, I have witnessed the positive effects of aid. But done badly, it can be very limiting and even has the potential to create more harm. To avoid this, it must be provided within an enabling environment in which it is used as a catalyst for change and not as an end in itself. Governments must show leadership through an accountable system.

For individuals, access to resources – including aid - is like an investment. Aid can build up poor people’s assets, support good governance and enhance skills and capacities to bring about transformation. But it can become a bane when it makes communities dependent, lazy and hopeless. Governments, aid agencies and the United Nations need to ensure the delivery of aid is well planned and coordinated, leading to higher self-reliance among poor communities.

Aid is also beneficial when trade is fair. There are several examples in Africa, like the case of coffee farmers in Uganda, where aid has been used effectively to improve the overall quality of the coffee seeds, thereby giving farmers better prices for their produce. When they have access to markets at home and abroad, they generate income which is ploughed back into increased output, better access to health and education, and overall improvement in the quality of their lives. To make this happen, developed countries need to stop procrastinating and put in place fair trade practices.

Aid works well if governments are accountable – in other words, when they are responsible and encourage active citizenship. On this continent, civil society is still weak and needs to be nourished. But stopping aid will not resolve frustrations about poor governance, which is partly a result of weak public scrutiny. Aid should be used to help fight corruption and promote accountability through active input from ordinary people.

As I have argued here, receiving aid is not just an act of charity. It should be understood as the right of poor communities to a life of dignity. As stated in international conventions, people have a right to good health, food, water and education. We all need to ensure the planet’s resources are equitably distributed. As Mahatma Gandhi said, you must be the change you want to see in the world.

So what do you think? Which argument is most convincing?

Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai became the new prime minister on Wednesday, sworn in by President Robert Mugabe -- his old political rival.

Tsvangirai vowed to rescue the stricken economy and called on the international community to help salvage the economy of Zimbabwe where unemployment is above 90 percent, prices double every day and half the 12 million population need food aid.

The new unity government will also have to grapple with a cholera epidemic that has killed nearly 3,500 people, the worst outbreak of the disease in Africa in 15 years. Millions of Zimbabweans who fled the country will be cautious about coming back until they see results.

Foreign investors and Western donors have made it clear money will come only when a new democratic government is formed and bold economic reforms are taken - such as reversing nationalisation policies.

What are the prospects for the unity government given the historic animosity between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, the shear scale of Zimbabwe's economic collapse and the ongoing detention of opposition activists?

Rwanda sent hundreds of its soldiers into eastern Congo on Tuesday in what the neighbours have described as a joint operation against Hutu rebels who have been at the heart of 15 years of conflict. Details are still somewhat sketchy, with Rwanda saying its soldiers are under Congolese command but Kinshasa saying Kigali’s men have come as observers.

Evidence on the ground suggests something more serious. United Nations peacekeepers and diplomats have said up to 2,000 Rwandan soldiers crossed into Congo. A Reuters reporter saw hundreds of heavily armed troops wearing Rwandan flag patches moving into Congo north of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province. The world’s largest U.N. peacekeeping mission is, for now, being kept out of the loop.

Foreign soldiers in Congo are nothing new. Rwanda first invaded in 1996. A 1998-2003 war in Congo sucked in six neighbouring armies. But after years of diplomacy and billions of dollars spent on peacekeeping and Congo’s 2006 elections, analysts are frantically trying to work out what is going on.

The current joint operation stems from an agreement signed in December between Rwanda and Congo to cooperate more closely after weeks of heavy fighting in North Kivu province. Although the fighting was officially between Congolese government forces and Tutsi rebels, most analysts saw it as an escalation of a proxy war between Rwanda and Congo that has continued despite 2003 peace deals.

U.N. experts have accused Rwanda of supporting the Tutsi CNDP rebels, formed in 2004 out of previous Rwandan-backed movements that fought against the government in Kinshasa. As on many occasions in the past, Congo was, in turn, accused of arming and using Rwandan Hutu FDLR rebels to boost the effectiveness of its fragile and chaotic army.

The fighting underlined the weakness of President Joseph Kabila’s army, which looted and raped civilians as they fled the CNDP. But it also refocused attention on the Hutu rebels, many of whom crossed into Congo when they were routed after taking part in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis and have long since been used by both Rwandan and Congolese Tutsi forces as justification for military operations in the mineral-rich east.

Rwanda and Congo have frequently agreed to resolve the FDLR problem. With talk of normalising relations, does Tuesday’s intervention by the Rwandan army mark the first concrete step in new a new relationship between the two countries?

How will Kabila sell a Rwandan military intervention in Congo that is likely to be unpopular amongst many ordinary Congolese, who have long-accused Rwanda of entering their country to loot resources rather than remove rebel threats? How will a handful of Rwandans help Congo’s notoriously weak forces disarm the FDLR in 10-15 days after Kigali’s army failed to do the job during several years of occupation?

What is the international community’s role in all this? The U.N. has some 17,000 peacekeepers on the ground but they have largely been kept at a distance. What about the threat of reprisals on civilians? Over 600 people have been killed in recent weeks after another of Congo’s neighbours, Uganda, led an assault on its rebels in a another remote corner of the country.

Previous foreign occupations of Congo’s mineral-rich east have been justified by hunts for rebels. Is there a danger of history repeating itself?

The withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia has left a nation beset by conflict for nearly two decades at a crossroads.

Ethiopia invaded to oust Islamists from the capital, but insurgents still control much of southern Somalia and more hardline groups that worry Washington have flourished during the two-year intervention.

The United Nations is unlikely to send peacekeepers to replace the Ethiopians. Africa is struggling to send more troops to help the 3,500 soldiers from Uganda and Burundi protecting key sites in the capital.

Some analysts say sending an international force would be counterproductive anyway as it would simply replace the Ethiopians as the hated foreign invader and maintain support for the most militant insurgents.

But without more African peacekeepers deploying soon, it seems unlikely the small and largely ineffectual existing force will remain with a weak mandate to face attacks from insurgents.

While a power vacuum may result in even more violence, some Western diplomats in the region hope it will spur the feuding Islamist opposition groups to settle their differences and work towards forming a broad-based, inclusive government.

They also hope the departure of the Ethiopians will deflate the insurgency and marginalise hardline groups imposing a strict version of Islamic law traditionally shunned by many Somalis.

African diplomats pushing hard for some sort of political reconciliation say there are more and more signs of "war fatigue" among the various camps and clans.

They are consistently upbeat about Somalia's prospects, even more so since President Abdullahi Yusuf resigned, and are reaching out to some of the hardline Islamist groups.

Western opposition to some hue of Islamist administration in Somalia -- precisely what Ethiopia invaded to quash -- seems to be waning as diplomats take a more pragmatic approach to the political and military reality on the ground.

Is there any reason for optimism after 17 years of violence?

(Picture: Somali al-Shabaab insurgents arrive in capital Mogadishu, Decemcer 27, 2008. REUTERS/Omar Faruk)