African Perspectives on US Policy Toward the Continent
It is a privilege to chair the 2007 Current Issues Council plenary session at the fiftieth anniversary annual meeting of the African Studies Association (ASA).
Thanks to the ASA Board of Directors for making possible this opportunity for a frank and open discussion of US policy toward Africa. For many of us at this session, the ASA has been an intellectual home and venue where friendships are formed and deepened. Assembled here are different constituencies and generations of Africanists. I represent a generation that has participated in ASA annual meetings for decades. For me, the first one was the turbulent meeting in Montreal in 1969.1
Special thanks, too, to the ASA Current Issues Council, especially its chair, Elizabeth (Betsy) Schmidt, and US Ambassador Dane Smith. A new member of this council, I was asked to help organize a plenary session on US policy toward Africa. I replied that inasmuch as the ASA had vetted this topic year in and year out, why do it over again? Better not to rehearse the same kind of performance. I proposed instead ‘African Perspectives on US Policy toward the Continent.’ After all, sober evaluation can provide feedback and perhaps correct Washington's course.
We were on. I invited colleagues whom I had known for a very long time to come aboard. Unfortunately, George Obiozor, Nigeria's ambassador to the United States, also a professor who earned a Ph.D. in political science at Columbia University, was recalled to Nigeria shortly before our plenary and is unable to be present. The other speakers are: Akwe Amosu, a senior policy analyst at the Open Society Institute in Washington, DC; Mahmood Mamdani, a professor at Columbia University, founding director of the Centre for Basic Research in Kampala, and a former president of CODESRIA; Mvuselelo Ngcoya, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of International Service at American University, Washington, DC, and recipient of degrees in political science and African studies from the University of South Africa; and Abdi Samatar, a professor of geography and global studies at the University of Minnesota as well as a public intellectual who provides media commentary on African affairs and the diaspora. The respondent to these perspectives, Cindy Courville, is US ambassador to the African Union. She served as special assistant to the president of the United States and as senior director of African Affairs in the National Security Council, having earned a Ph.D. at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver, and having taught at colleges in the United States.
As moderator, my role is to be moderate. Nonetheless, although I write about democracy, I do not practice it at plenary sessions and will show my authoritarian streak in enforcing a time limit on speakers who undoubtedly have a lot to say about US policy. Next, I want to pose critical issues for consideration. Here is what I hope to learn about from my colleagues:
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Although the flashpoints of conflict in Africa have changed since the founding of the ASA 50 years ago, to what extent has US policy toward the continent really shifted? The narratives today differ from the ones constructed during the Cold War, but are the structural forces and US policy objectives actually departures from the business of the Cold War? Is the historical footprint heavier than it ought to be?
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To what degree is knowledge about Africa implicated in the exercise of US power? Which knowledge set? And whose? In trying to understand generative forces on the continent, whom do policymakers in Washington talk to and draw on?
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Is current US policy, especially in its identification of friends and enemies, Selves and Others, directed by the Bush administra-tion's stance on terrorism?
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In light of the aforementioned considerations, what correctives in US policy are in order?
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Although big, powerful structures constrain policymakers, there are also opportunities and policy space: a mix of limitations and possibilities. The call for action and engagement with globalizing forces opens the questions, On what terms? And whose terms?
Dangerous Times for Africa
Akwe Amosu
These are dangerous times for Africa. Competition between the US and emergent powers like China is being played out around African resources and strategic zones. Most African countries' governance structures are inadequate to cope with either the resulting rocketing incomes or hegemons' demands. Further, the pursuit by the US and its allies of the highly ideological ‘war on terror’ alienates African adherents of Islam, thus polarising societies, and undermines the rule of law and human rights. Both these factors are causing US policy makers to prioritise security with the consequence that autocratic forces on the continent are being strengthened.
Africa's ‘Thaw’ in the 1990s
The last time that Africa was the site of such intense external interest was during the Cold War. The Superpowers' contest froze and deferred political development in Africa entrenching autocracy. But as the world's two superpowers lost interest, a rising number of states became functional democracies. The birth and extraordinary growth of civil society was a major dividend; the emergence of citizen activists, professionals and others keen to organise themselves has galvanised African society and governance. The revamp and expansion of Pan African institutions and standards followed. The lesson of the 1990s is that African states and populations make progress when they are allowed to do so and get the right foreign support. However, in the few short years since September 2001, powerful foreign players have begun once again to view Africa's strategic and resource assets as justifying intensive engagement.
US Policy Goals
Formally stated, US policy seeks to strengthen and defend good governance and associated transparent and accountable institutions under the rule of law, free and fair election processes, robust civil society and independent media; it has sought to advance those goals in diverse locations from Zimbabwe to Sierra Leone. Significant funds have been made available to support NGOs in many countries promoting free and fair elections, inclusive policies and more effective justice. Development assistance for education and health, such as the anti-HIV programme, PEPFAR (The US President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief), have also grown greatly (albeit accompanied by pressure to conform to the Bush administration's ideological preferences). However where and when the US sees itself as being in competition with other powers, or is pursuing military and strategic objectives, these goals may take a back seat. This can be seen in two particular settings – in the competition for access to petroleum, and in the context of the ‘war on terror’.
Competition for Oil
The Gulf of Guinea is a critically important alternative zone from which the US intends to source some 25% of its needs by 2020. The need to secure oil supplies, particularly in the light of China's competing interest, causes Washington to avoid criticising or even acknowledging governance deficits and repression. Equatorial Guinea has long been associated with some of the worst human rights and corruption abuses in Africa. Yet in 2006 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice welcomed President Obiang to Washington telling him ‘You are a good friend.’ In other instances, US criticism of wholly rigged elections in Nigeria or Angola's serious governance failures and much delayed electoral process has been muted. Apparently the more strategic its oil supplies, the safer a country is from pressure.
Fighting the ‘Global War on Terror’
In framing the US response to the September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, the Bush administration has declared a ‘long war’ against the terrorists, in which both diplomacy and exceptional security imperatives must somehow co-exist. The results are contradictory. In Africa, prosecution of the ‘war on terror’ is fuelling the use of interstate violence to solve disputes, undermining sovereignty, eroding the rule of law and due process, and giving comfort to authoritarian regimes. It may also be creating enemies for the US where they did not previously exist. These trends are most evident in the Horn region. The US government has simultaneously pursued contradictory military and diplomatic policies in Somalia, and has reportedly attempted to pressure the Sudanese government on Darfur at the same time as seeking Khartoum's cooperation in intelligence gathering. Washington failed to make strong criticism of gross human rights abuse in Ethiopia while supporting Addis Ababa's invasion of Somalia; Kenyan and Somali citizens have been secretly rendered to Ethiopia for interrogation by US personnel. Perceptions of US anti-Islamic bias has in turn triggered intense indignation and anger among Muslims in the region.
Viewing Africa Through the Security Lens
The competition for oil and the prosecution of the War on Terror seem to be driving a third policy reflex – the ‘securitisation’ of Africa policy. This is most easily perceived in the framing of AFRICOM, the new US military command that will become fully operational in October 2008. There are practical reasons for creating the new unified command, but AFRICOM appears to be about much more than streamlining bureaucracy. The new Command will integrate into its hierarchy civilians from the State Department and USAID and will not only address security issues and military cooperation but help to establish human security and social stability, build investor confidence and promote development. It is not explained why such non-military objectives should be advanced through a military command. There is concern that US security interests will come to be ‘mainstreamed’ in all US Africa policy since AFRICOM will boast the most resources and the most clout of all government agencies focused on Africa.
Future Approaches
If policy is to be set on a better footing, the following points are key:
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The US' long term interests lie in supporting the development of open societies in Africa; it is counterproductive to allow short term security and resource interests to consolidate autocratic governments.
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The more loudly the US proclaims its commitment to democracy and human rights, the more potential there is for damage when its actions and alliances contradict that commitment. Washington should speak out firmly on poor practice and sustain a consistent position on key issues, even when its allies are the culprit.
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The US should reverse the trend of using military approaches and institutions to deliver civilian objectives and restore the primary of diplomacy in relations with African governments.
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The post-Cold War history shows that buttressing serious African efforts to address African problems yields results. US aid should reinforce and strengthen such efforts rather than imposing external solutions and conditions. If conditionality is to be used, it should be in support of the local advocates of good practice, rather than to advance US interests.
The Great Continental Divide: US-Africa Relations
Mvuselelo Ngcoya
When Professor Mittelman asked me to participate on this panel I immediately said ‘yes’ as I was sure it was your run-of-the mill academic snoremposium. A week later, I received an email with more details. And, there was my name comfortably tugged between Professor Mamdani and Professor Samatar. I was sure this was a huge misunderstanding. For your sake, I hope Professor Mittelman did not make a mistake.
It would seem to me there is a great continental divide between US and African expectations of their complicated relationship. Contrary to some advocates of US policy toward Africa, I would argue that this gulf has been in existence since the first slave ship crossed the Atlantic in 1619. A recent report by the Congressional Research Service makes my case. Entitled ‘Africa Command: US Strategic Interests and the Role of the US Military in Africa’, it offers a pithy summary of US interest in Africa.
… US policymakers have noted Africa's growing strategic importance to US interests. Among those interests are Africa's role in the Global War on Terror and the potential threats posed by ungoverned spaces; the growing importance of Africa's natural resources, particularly energy resources; and ongoing concern for the continent's many humanitarian crises, armed conflicts, and more general challenges, such as the devastating effect of HIV/AIDS.
It is not that these issues are insignificant. It is the order that I find curious: 1) the so-called ‘war on terror’; 2) energy resources (also abbreviated OIL); 3) humanitarian crises; and 4) general challenges. General challenges? This arrangement of priorities, I submit, drives US policy toward Africa. Major policy decisions have ensued, key among which is the intensification of US military presence on the continent.
In early October 2007, a press release from the Pentagon announced that the US Africa Command ‘officially stood up today when the organization reached its initial operating capability to start functioning as the US military's newest regionally-focused headquarters.’ Now when an organization with an active staff of 1.4 million, and another 1 million or so part-timers, and a budget of over $480 billion expresses interest in your neighborhood you grin. But when you discover that the organization is the Pentagon your grin turns into fear.
Why this intensification of militarization of US presence in Africa? In addition to the so-called ‘war on terror’, oil is a major motivation. As early as the fall of 2002, none other than the last bastion of African interest, Britain's Economist magazine, charged that oil ‘is the only American interest in Africa’. Indeed, imports of African oil are projected to grow from their current 15% of the US total to 25% by 2015.
From an African perspective, what are the potential dangers of this intensified militarization of US-Africa relations? First, as the organization Africa Action has argued, it puts the limelight back on African militaries as the most important institution – especially on security (and that narrowly defined in military terms). Just the other day I was bragging to an American friend that I didn’t know the names of the military generals of South Africa, my home country. I might now have to look them up!
Second, it takes the limelight away from African intergovernmental security institutions. Small wonder, then, that the African Union peacekeeping force in Sudan, for example, is crippled by insufficient funding and equipment shortages. Third, AFRICOM, and I quote its official statement, ‘will also seek to incorporate partner nations and humanitarian organizations, from Africa and elsewhere, to work alongside the US staff on common approaches to shared interests.’ Soliciting African civil society organizations to do the bidding of the US alongside the US military will not enhance the effectiveness and image of civil society organizations on the continent.
Finally, and perhaps more importantly, the increased militarization of US-Africa relations re-enacts familiar Cold War arrangements wherein all issues were deemed secondary to so-called geostrategic concerns. In the same way that the Cold War sustained despotic regimes, I fear that the ‘war on terror’ will do the same. Authoritarian regimes will invent terrorists if it serves the purposes of power consolidation.
In the year when we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ghana's hard-won independence, it is fitting to end with the words of Kwame Nkrumah:
Africa has failed to make much headway on the road to purposeful development be cause her natural resources have not been employed for that end but have been used for the great development of the western world.
He was saying this in 1965. Sadly, almost over half a century later, these words are just as apt. The continental divide widens.
Continuity in US Foreign Policy in Africa: Antithesis of Freedom & Democracy
Abdi Ismail Samatar
Bluntly, I do not foresee any meaningful and positive change in US policy towards Africa in the near future. Let me use recent events in Somalia and Ethiopia as a point of departure in this presentation. In the mid-1990s, the leader of the Ethiopian regime, Meles Zenawi, was considered one of a new generation of Africa leaders who were embarking on a new trajectory of governance and development. Consequently, the regime received substantial economic and military assistance from the US and EU. The most recent signal of this support is the $91 million which was granted to Ethiopia due to its ‘strategic importance’ to America.
America's and the European Union's stance towards the regime in Addis Ababa has been in contradiction to what the Ethiopian population by and large thinks of the TPLF-led government. The regime's near defeat in the parliamentary election of summer 2005 indicated the depth of the people's resentment of the regime, ignored by the US and EU.
Second, the Ethiopian occupation of Somalia, with America's unqualified support, demonstrates the latter coun-try's imperial dismissiveness and opportunism. For example, the Assistant Secretary of State, Dr. Jendayi Frazer, went to Baidoa in southern Somalia when the Ethiopian killing machine was massacring people in Mogadishu and forced 500,000 residents to flee the onslaught. She did not even mention the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe there in her press statement. More recently, she paid a quick visit to the Somali Region of Ethiopia to ‘look into’ the accusation that the regime in Addis was punishing the entire population of the region because of the fierce resistance mounted by some members of this community against the regime's tyrannical rule. Major humanitarian agencies such as the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, Human Rights Watch, and others such as the New York Times have all reported this punishment. Instead, the Assistant Secretary flew in and out and noted that ‘she did not encounter any serious violations of the population's rights by the government.’
I will come back to these, but let me first talk briefly about America's strategic policy towards Africa which the two instances represent; I will confine my remarks as this relates to the following matters: freedom, democracy & development; initiatives by the local population; and terror. There has been a long established understanding in politics that self-interest shapes foreign policy regardless of what the consequences are for the countries on the continent. As many scholars have shown, US policy towards Africa has been a by-product of America's global projects; that is, the cold war or the ‘war on terror’ has singularly determined America's policy towards Africa.
The Cold War & African Governance
Ethiopia: The majority of the population in Ethiopia were subjects rather than citizens of the imperial system, to use Mamdani's apt term. For instance, the Oromos, who constitute at least 40% of the population and whose land was rich in natural resources, were called Gala which was akin to being called nigger in America. Like many others, they were forbidden to celebrate their culture and were banned from ever uttering a word of their language in the presence of state authority. Despite such a subjugation of the population and absence of democratic practice, the US administrations (Democrats or Republicans) supported materially and militarily that regime until it collapsed in 1974. The imperial regime used famine as a weapon in the 1960s and the 1970s to kill off resistance to its fascistic rule. America shifted its alliance, after the demise of the imperial government, once it became clear that the Mengistu regime became a Soviet client, and adopted the military dictatorship in Somalia as its new client and supported the latter until it imploded in 1991.
These countries paid the heaviest price of America's wrong-headed policy, but they were by no means alone. Have things changed with the demise of the Soviet Union, the rise of a lone superpower in the era of terror wars? The blunt answer is no and I would add that things would have been the same even if September 11 did not happen, as matters would simply have taken another hue. Let us briefly look at how things looked like before 9/11.
The dominance of structural adjustment policies and a neo-liberal political agenda since the early 1980s meant that African countries were asked to give up their right to self-govern and submit to the demons of the Washington consensus.
This wholesale shift in the development regime destined that decision making got farther away from the population despite the fact that electoral politics were reintroduced to many countries which were previously governed by single party or military regimes. It is the height of irony that multiparty elections went hand in hand with political disenfranchisement of the population in terms of economic and social policy. Such a project was already in high gear when the events of September 11 ‘changed the world’. For Africans, the old order of policy-making remained and a new one was laid over it. The new one was to support the ‘war on terror’. This project had two implications for Africa.
Africans were asked to support America in its war (whether they thought the war was legitimate or not). To their credit some African governments rejected such blanket endorsement which the Bush Administration sought while many others joined the terror course.
Many dictatorial regimes jumped onto ‘the war on terror’ bandwagon to take cover and conceal their illegitimacy. Consequently, America's fundamentalist ideology lent credence to these regimes and the latter got quite a bit of support for their loyalty rather than serving and being accountable to their people. Thus, the combination of a disenfranchising economic doctrine and the terror agenda which provides political cover to unlawful governments who demonize those who oppose their misrule have had disabling effecting on African democracy and development.
Further, on the political front, the regime spends more resources on security than even the old military regime did. Again, the US through its ‘strategic partnerships’ (see Volman in this issue) has rewarded the regime by training its forces and supporting it materially. I will never forget what one American senior officer told me after he came back from his tour of duty in the Horn: ‘the Ethiopian soldiers were fascist and Somalis in the region would not approach us when they were with us, but we had no problem mingling with the villagers when we were alone.’ America's support for the regime means diminution of civil rights and the survival of a regime of terror.
Somalia: The US paid little attention to the terror visited on the Somali people by warlords since 1995 and Somalia was not to be heard in America's halls of power since Blackhawk Down. But events in 1998 (the bombing of our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam) and certainly 9/11 changed all of this. First, the American security agencies covertly supported Somali warlords who were involved in snatch operations to hunt down suspected ‘terrorists’. It is ironic that those who have terrorized the Somali people have become our allies in the ‘war on terror’. Second, when the snatch operations failed to yield the desired results, the CIA began to fund the warlords to openly strike at what the former considered to be Islamic fundamentalist who were accused of providing refuge to three suspected terrorists. The CIA warlord strategy endangered many Islamic individuals who were managing local Sharia courts in Mogadishu. Further, the city's population was offended by the CIA/warlord agenda and this ultimately led to the birth of a popular movement led by Islamic leaders. Once the warlords were defeated in June 2007, Mogadishu became peaceful for the first time in 16 years. This Islamic-led movement swiftly spread into regions adjacent to Mogadishu and brought stability to the region. Although the vast majority of Somalis welcomed this peaceful development, the US government saw it as an ‘Islamic Terrorist’ menace and Ethiopia fed this paranoia by providing cocked-up intelligence that the Union of Islamic Courts was a terrorist front. The US immediate moved in and began to provide logistical and strategic support for the Ethiopian invasion. A few months after the courts came to power, the US, using African regimes as a front, sponsored the UN Security Council Resolution 1725 which prohibited Somalia's neighbours from sending troops to the country. Despite this resolution, the Ethiopian regime was given the green light to invade Somali and dislodge the courts. This took place in January 2007 and new militant national resistance was formed after Ethiopian troops illegally occupied the country. Violence has returned to the city and the country which has displaced nearly half a million residents. US officials continue to demonise the resistance as terrorists and spoilers and refuse to heed and respect the Somali people's wish for freedom and selfdetermination. Instead, the US continues to support the illegitimate TFG despite the fact that its own professional diplomats have described it as illegitimate, incompetent and corrupt. America's stand on this is akin to its old tradition of calling African freedom fighter ‘terrorists’.
Conclusion
These examples are part of a historical record which demonstrates that US policy towards Africa continues to be driven by self-interests, regardless of the period. This has meant support for dictatorships and disregard for the African people's wish for democracy and autonomy to set their own economic and social priorities. Such evidence testifies to the incontrovertible record which has ill-served the African people. Some commentators have noted that the increasing involvement of China in Africa affairs might provide a counterweight to America – a theoretical possibility although recent developments in Sudan and Ethiopia suggest caution.
All of this is to say that Africans can NOT count on some other country to ‘save’ them. It is clear that most of the countries on the continent are too small and weak to challenge global behemoths such as US, EU, and China. Nkrumah's call was spot on, and it is imperative, more than ever before, that regional economic and political blocks are the only ways out of the indignity of the past. Africa must develop its own hegemonic project.