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USA/Africa: Making Peace or Fueling War
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Mar 18, 2009 (090318)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
"Will de facto U.S. security policy toward the continent focus on
anti-terrorism and access to natural resources and prioritize
bilateral military relations with African countries? Or will the
United States give priority to enhancing multilateral capacity to
respond to Africa's own urgent security needs? If the first option
is taken, it will undermine rather than advance both U.S. and
African security." - Daniel Volman and William Minter, in new
special report from Foreign Policy in Focus on AFRICOM and
alternative policy frameworks.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts and an outline with
links for the report "Making Peace or Fueling War in Africa,"
released by Foreign Policy in Focus on March 13. The full 16-page
report is available at http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/5960 or
http://www.africafocus.org/editor/africom0903.php
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on U.S./Africa policy, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/country/usa-africa.php
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on peace and security issues,
visit http://www.africafocus.org/peaceexp.php
Also newly available from TransAfrica Forum is report on Inclusive Human Security: U.S.
National Security Policy, Africa, and the African Diaspora. For this report, in html or php, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/editor/taf0902.php
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++++++++
Making Peace or Fueling War in Africa
Daniel Volman and William Minter | March 13, 2009
Editor: Emira Woods and Emily Schwartz Greco
Foreign Policy in Focus
http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/5960
or
http://www.africafocus.org/editor/africom0903.php
[Excerpts and outline only. Click on the links above for the full
report in html or pdf, including graphics and links to sources, or
on the links below for specific sections of this special report for
Foreign Policy in Focus]
Daniel Volman is the director of the African Security Research
Project and a member of the board of directors of the Association
of Concerned Africa Scholars (http://concernedafricascholars.org).
William Minter is the editor of AfricaFocus Bulletin and co-editor
with Gail Hovey and Charles Cobb, Jr. of No Easy Victories: African
Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000
(Africa World Press, 2007) (http://www.noeasyvictories.org).
At the end of President Barack Obama's inauguration ceremony, civil
rights leader Rev. Joseph Lowery invoked the hope of a day "when
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be
beaten into tractors." No one expects such a utopian vision to
materialize any time soon. But both Obama and Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton have spoken eloquently of the need to emphasize
diplomacy over a narrow military agenda. In her confirmation
hearing, Clinton stressed the need for "smart power," perhaps
inadvertently echoing Obama's opposition to the invasion of Iraq as
a "dumb war." Even top U.S. military officials, such as chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, have warned against
overly militarizing U.S. foreign policy.
In practice, such a shift in emphasis is certain to be
inconsistent. At a global level, the most immediate challenge to
the credibility of change in foreign policy is Afghanistan, where
promised troop increases are given little chance of bringing
stability and the country risks becoming Obama's "Vietnam." Africa
policy is for the most part under the radar of public debate. But
it also poses a clear choice for the new administration. Will de
facto U.S. security policy toward the continent focus on
anti-terrorism and access to natural resources and prioritize
bilateral military relations with African countries? Or will the
United States give priority to enhancing multilateral capacity to
respond to Africa's own urgent security needs?
If the first option is taken, it will undermine rather than advance
both U.S. and African security. Taking the second option won't be
easy. There are no quick fixes. But U.S. security in fact requires
that policymakers take a broader view of Africa's security needs
and a multilateral approach to addressing them.
The need for immediate action to promote peace in Africa is clear.
While much of the continent is at peace, there are large areas of
great violence and insecurity, most prominently centered on Sudan,
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Somalia. These crises
require not only a continuing emphasis on diplomacy but also
resources for peacemaking and peacekeeping. And yet the Bush
administration has bequeathed the new president a new military
command for Africa (the United States Africa Command, known as
AFRICOM). Meanwhile, Washington has starved the United Nations and
other multilateral institutions of resources, even while entrusting
them with enormous peacekeeping responsibilities.
The government has presented AFRICOM as a cost-effective
institutional restructuring and a benign program for supporting
African governments in humanitarian as well as necessary security
operations. In fact, it represents the institutionalization and
increased funding for a model of bilateral military ties a replay
of the mistakes of the Cold War.
Shaping a new U.S. security policy toward Africa requires more than
just a modest tilt toward more active diplomacy. It also requires
questioning this inherited security framework, and shaping an
alternative framework that aligns U.S. and African security
interests within a broader perspective of inclusive human security.
In particular, it requires that the United States shift from a
primarily bilateral and increasingly military approach to one that
prioritizes joint action with both African and global partners.
AFRICOM in Theory and Practice
http://www.africafocus.org/editor/africom0903.php#practice
...
Pentagon spokespeople describe AFRICOM as a logical bureaucratic
restructuring that will ensure that Africa gets the attention it
deserves. They insist AFRICOM won't set the priorities for U.S.
policy toward Africa or increase Pentagon influence at the expense
of civilian agencies. Testifying before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee in August 2007, Whelan denied that AFRICOM was
being established "solely to fight terrorism, or to secure oil
resources, or to discourage China," countering: "This is not true."
But other statements by Whelan herself, by General William "Kip"
Ward, the four-star African-American general who commands AFRICOM,
and Vice-Admiral Robert Moeller, his military deputy, lay out
AFRICOM's priorities in more conventional terms. ... On February
19, 2008, Moeller told an AFRICOM conference that protecting "the
free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market"
was one of AFRICOM's "guiding principles," citing "oil disruption,"
"terrorism," and the "growing influence" of China as major
"challenges" to U.S. interests in Africa. Appearing before the
House Armed Services Committee on March 13, 2008, General Ward
echoed the same views and identified combating terrorism as
"AFRICOM's number one theater-wide goal." ...
In practice, AFRICOM, which became a fully independent combatant
command on October 1, 2008, with its headquarters in Stuttgart,
Germany, is built on the paradigm of U.S. military commands which
span the globe. Although AFRICOM features less "kinetic" (combat)
operations than the active wars falling under CENTCOM in Iraq and
Afghanistan, its goals and programs are more conventional than the
public relations image would imply. ...
The new strategic framework for Africa emphasizes, above all, the
threat of global terrorism and the risk posed by weak states,
"empty spaces," and countries with large Muslim populations as
vulnerable territories where terrorists may find safe haven and
political support. This framework is fundamentally flawed. ...
Counterinsurgency analysts such as Robert Berschinski and David
Kilcullen have warned that "aggregating" disparate local
insurgencies into an all-encompassing vision of global terrorism in
fact facilitates al-Qaeda's efforts to woo such groups.
Heavy-handed military action such as air strikes that kill
civilians and collaboration with counter-insurgency efforts by
incumbent regimes, far from diminishing the threat of terrorism,
helps it grow.
While AFRICOM may be new, there's already a track record for such
policies in programs now incorporated into AFRICOM. That record
shows little evidence that these policies contribute to U.S. or
African security. To the contrary, there are substantial
indications that they are in fact counterproductive, both
increasing insecurity in Africa and energizing potential threats to
U.S. interests.
Examining the Record: Somalia
http://www.africafocus.org/editor/africom0903.php#somalia
...
In short, Somalia provided a textbook case of the negative results
of "aggregating" local threats into an undifferentiated concept of
global terrorism. It has left the new Obama administration with
what Ken Menkhaus, a leading academic expert on Somalia, called "a
policy nightmare."
Examining the Record: The Sahel
http://www.africafocus.org/editor/africom0903.php#sahel
Less in the news, but also disturbing because of the wide range of
countries involved in both North and West Africa, is the U.S.
military involvement in the Sahara and Sahel region, now under
AFRICOM. Operation Enduring Freedom Trans Sahara (OEF-TS) provides
military support to the Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Partnership
(TSCTP) program, which comprises the United States and eleven
African countries: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia,
Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal. Its goals are
defined on the AFRICOM web site as "to assist traditionally
moderate Muslim governments and populations in the Trans-Sahara
region to combat the spread of extremist ideology and terrorism in
the region." ...
In his November 2007 paper on AFRICOM, cited above, Berschinski
noted that the United States and Algeria exaggerated the threat
from the small rebel group GSPC (Salafist Group for Preaching and
Combat), officially allied with al-Qaeda. A scary, if
geographically inappropriate, headline in Air Force Magazine in
November 2004 heralded the threat from a "Swamp of Terror in the
Sahara." The emphasis on counterinsurgency, Berschinski argues, has
disrupted traditional trade networks and allowed local governments
to neglect the need for finding negotiated solutions to concerns of
Tuareg areas and other neglected regions. ... The specifics of each
country differ, but the common reality is that the benefits of U.S.
collaboration with local militaries in building counterinsurgency
capacity haven't been demonstrated.
Potential Threats
http://www.africafocus.org/editor/africom0903.php#threats
...
Of particular strategic importance for the future is Nigeria, where
U.S. military concerns of anti-terrorism and energy security
converge. As Nigeria specialists Paul Lubeck, Michael Watts, and
Ronnie Lipschutz outline in a 2007 policy study, the threat to
Nigeria from Islamic extremism is wildly exaggerated in statements
by U.S. military officials. In contrast, they note, "nobody doubts
the strategic significance of contemporary Nigeria for West Africa,
for the African continent as a whole, and for the oil-thirsty
American economy." But the solution to the growing insurgency in
the oil-rich Niger Delta isn't a buildup of U.S. naval forces and
support for counter-insurgency actions by the Nigerian military.
The priority is rather to resolve the problems of poverty,
environmental destruction, and to promote responsible use of the
country's oil wealth, particularly for the people of the
oil-producing regions.
...
The threats cited by U.S. officials to justify AFRICOM aren't
imaginary. Global terrorist networks do seek allies and recruits
throughout the African continent, with potential impact in the
Middle East, Europe, and even North America as well as in Africa.
In the Niger Delta, the production of oil has been repeatedly
interrupted by attacks by militants of the Movement for the
Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). More broadly, insecurity
creates a environment vulnerable to piracy and to the drug trade,
as well as to motivating potential recruits to extremist political
violence.
It doesn't follow, however, that such threats can be effectively
countered by increased U.S. military engagement, even if the direct
involvement of U.S. troops is minimized. The focus on building
counter-insurgency capacity for African governments with U.S.
assistance diverts attention from more fundamental issues of
conflict resolution. It also heightens the risks of increasing
conflict and concomitantly increasing hostility to the United
States.
Continuity or Change
http://www.africafocus.org/editor/africom0903.php#change
Will the Obama administration seriously reexamine the Africa policy
it has inherited from its predecessors? Or will continuity be the
watchword? The few indications we have so far, from campaign
statements and Obama's choice of top officials, point to
continuity. Yet the critical tests will be in practice, as African
crises force their way onto the agenda even while the
administration's energies are primarily focused on more prominent
domestic and international challenges.
Patterns from the Past
http://www.africafocus.org/editor/africom0903.php#past
...
On February 9, 2009, Acting Assistant Secretary of State Phil
Carter, speaking at the Pentagon's Africa Center for Strategic
Studies, opened his remarks with the claim that "the one foreign
policy success of the previous administration is Africa." He
outlined four priorities, beginning with "providing security
assistance programs" to African partners, followed by promoting
"democratic systems and practices," "sustainable and broad-based
market-led economic growth," and "health and social development."
Although he prefaced his list of priorities with a reference to
support for ending conflict in Africa and "African solutions to
African problems," it's telling that the description of the
security priority includes military capacity-building and AFRICOM
operations, but no mention at all of diplomacy.
Such indications do not give great confidence in any major shift in
security strategy. Nevertheless, there are also signals that U.S.
officials, including some in the military and intelligence
community, do recognize the need to give greater emphasis to
diplomacy and development. ...
Changing Priorities
http://www.africafocus.org/editor/africom0903.php#priorities
For Africa in particular, realities call for a different ordering
of priorities, recognizing the significance of less conventional
threats and the inadequacy of narrow military responses. In a
report released in February this year, TransAfrica Forum called for
a new policy framework based on "inclusive human security." Such a
framework would require fundamental shifts in thinking, stressing
multilateral cooperation over unilateral initiatives, a broad range
of threats than only those from violent enemies, and investment in
basic economic and social rights over blind trust in the market.
U.S. Africa policy based on such a framework would look very
different than that outlined by Assistant Secretary of State Carter
as the inheritance from the Bush administration, even if containing
many of the same elements. ...
Within the arena of traditional security issues, the United States
should minimize bilateral military involvement with Africa, which
risks sucking the U.S. into local conflicts, in favor of
multilateral diplomacy and peacekeeping, including paying U.S.
peacekeeping arrears at the UN. It should take care not to aid
repressive regimes or to prioritize military-to-military
relationships, in favor of dialogue not only with incumbent
governments but also civil society. In short, it should shift from
an emphasis on counter-insurgency and building Washington-centered
networks of influence with African military establishments to an
emphasis on U.S. participation in multilateral efforts to enhance
African security. ...
The United States does have resources, particularly logistical and
financial, that are relevant for peacekeeping operations, and has
the responsibility to make its fair contribution as a leading
member of the international community. But ensuring that these
actually contribute to peace requires a new framework, giving
priority to multilateral diplomacy and peacekeeping over bilateral
programs.
Elements of a New Security Framework
http://www.africafocus.org/editor/africom0903.php#framework
Moving to a new framework isn't a matter of finding new formulas to
replace the inherited emphasis on building counter-insurgency
capacity against terrorism and threats to natural resources.
There's no one prescription for those countries now facing violent
conflicts, much less for the wide range of issues faced by over 50
African countries. Africa's serious problems, moreover, will not be
solved from outside, either by the United States or by the
"international community."
Nevertheless, it's important to ensure that U.S. Africa policy does
no harm and that the United States makes a significant contribution
to diminishing the real security threats on the continent. Once one
recognizes that U.S. national security also depends on the human
security of Africans, some essential elements of such a framework
do become clear. To what extent they can be embodied into practice
will depend not only on the internal deliberations of the new
administration in Washington, but also on whether Africans working
for peace and justice on the continent can themselves chart new
directions and make their voices heard.
(1) Prioritize long-term inclusive human security.
...
(2) Pay Attention to Crises, but Avoid "One-Size Fits All"
Approaches.
...
The list of Africa's hottest crises is familiar: Sudan (including
but not limited to Darfur), Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, and Zimbabwe. Others fester as well, out of the spotlight of
the world's media: Chad, C“te d'Ivoire, and Uganda, to name only a
few. In each case, it's not only the countries and their immediate
neighbors that are involved. Other stakeholders, including regional
African organizations, the African Union, the United Nations, and
global powers such as the United States are called on to respond.
And the responses or failures to respond matter. But no
"one-size-fits-all" response can possibly make sense, and certainly
not the AFRICOM model focused on building counter-insurgency
capacity for Africa's armies.
...
But the time has long passed for anyone to take current African
heads of state as the only spokespeople for the continent, or to
focus hopes for change on replacing one leader with another.
Finding the best way forward in responding to crises or to Africa's
structural problems, must go beyond the top. Africa's resources for
change and for leadership are also found in civil society, among
respected retired leaders and other elders, and among professionals
working both in governments and in multilateral organizations,
including both diplomats and military professionals. The challenge
for U.S. policy is to engage actively and productively in
responding to crises, bringing U.S. resources to bear without
assuming that it is either possible or wise for the United States
to dominate.
(3) Build Institutional Capacity for Multilateral Peacemaking and
Peacekeeping.
In contrast to the emphasis on building bilateral U.S. military
ties with Africa, being institutionalized in AFRICOM, U.S. security
policy toward Africa should instead concentrate on building
institutional capacity within the United Nations, as well as
coordinating U.S. relationships with African regional institutions
with United Nations capacity-building programs. At the same time,
it should work to ensure that both U.S. and United Nations policies
and operations with respect to African crises are transparent and
open to review by legislative bodies and civil society groups in
Africa, in the United States, and in other countries that are
involved. ...
Despite the expectations for change, it is likely that shifts by
the Obama administration in security policy toward Africa will only
emerge piecemeal, if at all, after appointment of new mid-level
personnel and policy reviews reportedly under way in every agency.
The new president's popularity and the range of domestic and global
problems he faces are likely to give the administration a large
window of opportunity before disillusionment sets in. But events on
the ground will not allow indefinite delay. It will soon become
apparent, in Somalia, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
and perhaps in other crises not now predictable, to what extent
African hopes placed in President Obama will find answers in
changes that make a difference for Africa.
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with
a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.
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