The South African Institute of International Affairs
Educate Inform Facilitate
A New US Command Paradigm and the
Challenges of Engagement
in Africa
in the 21st Century
Written testimony
submitted to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Africa and
Global Health in the hearing ‘Africa Command: Opportunity for Enhanced
Engagement or the Militarization of US-Africa Relations?’
2 August 2007 *
2pm * 2172 Rayburn House
Office Building
Kurt Shillinger
Research Fellow and
Project Head: Security and Terrorism in Africa
South African
Institute of International Affairs
I want to start by thanking Chairman Payne for inviting my
Institute to participate in this hearing, and also to acknowedge Congresswoman
Woolsey, who represents my native district in California.
The invitation to appear before the Subcommittee on Africa
and Global Health about African perceptions of the new US Africa Command called
to mind a brief conversation I had with a young woman in Kenya 20 years ago. In 1984 a severe
drought devastated East Africa, causing one of
the worst humanitarian crises in living memory anywhere in the world. In
response the United States
provided massive quantities of food aid, both directly through the US Agency
for International Development and indirectly through nongovernmental and
multilateral organisations. Three years later, sitting on the verandah
overlooking her family corn fields in a small village on the western slopes of
the Rift Valley, the woman recounted what it was like to live through that
drought. And then she asked: ‘But when we were starving, why did you send us
cattle feed?’
At the time that question struck me as a rather ungrateful
one. After all, US
humanitarian assistance helped prevent the starvation of millions of people.
But with the benefit of many more years of study and exposure to diverse
African societies and – perhaps more importantly – a more reflexive view of the
United States gained from living abroad – I find lessons from that encounter
that are apposite to our discussion of Africom today. The staple food of Kenya, as in many African countries, is ugali (sudza in Zimbabwe;
pap in South Africa), a moist savory cake
made from white maize meal. The woman assumed that white maize was a universal
preference and was surprised to learn that Americans favour sweet yellow corn. She
thought we had meant to treat
Africans like livestock. Africom seeks to boost African security and
development capacity through strategic partnerships. How might it do this
without engendering resentment or suspicion – the manifestations of which today
could be far worse and farther reaching than bruised dignity.
This paper rests on the premise that Africom is a smart and
overdue reform. Rationalising the Pentagon’s response structure in Africa into
one dedicated command will bring bureaucratic efficiency, military coherence
and synchronicity with Africa’s new and
evolving security architecture. It also reflects an elevated view of the
geo-strategic importance of the continent not as a chessboard for proxy wars
between external powers but as a region with its own intrinsic value and
aspirations. The attempt to unite security, development and governance
strategies also underscores the important interrelationship of these three
braided strands. Without security, sustained development and growth in Africa will always remain elusive.
Even so, Africom arises within the context of new African
security priorities, emerging ‘South-South’ economic and security partnerships,
and widespread and deeply felt antipathies about Washington’s post-9/11 global posture. The initiative
is predicated on risk assumptions that are contestable and interests that are
not shared. Critical questions arise: Do Africans want this? Do African
governments want this? What is the appropriate balance between security and
development initiatives in Africa, and could the militarisation of development
– or, more accurately, the perceived militarisation of development – in Africa accelerate processes of radicalisation and political
instability? As succinctly as possible, I will attempt to consider these
assumptions and questions within the prevailing African milieu.
Outlook and
aspirations
The transformation of the Organisation of African Unity into
the African Union at the start of this century signaled an important shift in Africa’s political, diplomatic and security orientation.
Democratisation, good governance, regional integration and collective stability
have replaced liberation and non-interference as the accepted norms and common
goals. Although most African states are far from realising these in practice,
no state on the continent can avoid going through at least the pretense of
electoral processes and peer review. More and more states are enacting
anti-corruption legislation, and increasingly, African states are taking the
lead in mediating conflicts intra- and inter-state conflicts. These efforts are
nascent and fragile. There has been more emphasis on building the architecture
of peace, security and development at the regional and continental level than
on adhering to the many protocols and pledges made at so many ceremonious
summits among heads of state. Nonetheless, there has been an undeniable
paradigm shift in Africa. The conversation has
changed, and increasingly so has the practice.
The
critical points here are questions of ownership, self-determination and
fairness. For the first time since the industrial revolution, Africa
is unshackled, no longer governed or exploited by foreign powers or racist
minorities. This condition, coupled with an acute awareness of past injustices,
is shaping not just Africa’s internal dynamics
but also its international engagement. It goes without saying that on continent
with 54 countries, collective characterisations are highly fraught. African
states do not rise and speak as one man. The political and international
aspirations of the southern Africa states,
most of which are ruled by former liberation movements, differ from those of
states farther north. Hegemonic rivalries among Angola,
South Africa and Nigeria fester.
Anglophone and francophone Africa have
different orientations. The notion of an ‘African bloc’ is more romantic than
real.
Nonetheless,
important commonalities obtain. African states generally share strong affinities
with entrenched struggles elsewhere in the world. They tend to identify, for
example, with the Palestinians and Iranians. They are highly aware of global
trade imbalances and strongly resent what they regard as Western control of
both the international security agenda. As South African President Thabo Mbeki
lamented in his speech at the opening of the UN General Assembly in 2004, the
most powerful states make ‘the
determination that terrorism and war constitute the central and principal
threat and challenge that human civilization faces…. What they will decide will
translate into a set of obligatory injunctions issued by this Organization [the
UN], which all member nations will have to accept and implement.’
It would be folly to underestimate the depth of this frustration. African
states and, more importantly, the peoples of Africa, share strong objections to
the US post-9/11 response, epitomised not just by the wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq but also what they regard as Western (US) bullying of states like Iran,
Cuba, Burma and Pakistan. Increasingly, the emerging middle powers in Africa
are looking laterally toward their ‘Southern’ or non-aligned counterparts (which
in some cases would include even states like Russia) for new economic and
security partnerships. This trend is unlikely to break. While Western states
remain vital trading partners and potential markets, India,
China, Brazil, Russia and lesser states hold
growing attraction for African states looking to find partners in everything
from pharmaceuticals to civilian nuclear technology.
Africom therefore enters an
environment of distrust, and also one in which African states are wary of the
domestic and international risks of appearing to be too closely attached to the
United States.
African
Military Readiness
Regional reform of African peace and
security structures began in earnest in the mid-1990s following South Africa’s transition to democracy. While such structures
existed prior to then, the current emphasis on coordinated security was only
kickstarted following South
Africa’s integration into both the South
African Development Community and the re-constitution of the OAU as the AU.
Since then, the regional economic communities and the African Union have
steadily built a security edifice consisting of protocols and mechanisms for
conflict resolution. These structures are new and, as the crises in Cotę d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo
and Darfur, Sudan, indicate, relatively weak.
The stubborness of these conflicts underscores two interrelated forms of
capacity limitation – military readiness and diplomatic experience. As Jenny
Brickhill notes, ‘The past decade has witnessed a major escalation in the
number of third-party interventions supporting negotiation processes, peace
support operations, and conflict and post-conflict recovery assistance in
Africa. On the one hand, this development reflects increasing intra-state
conflict on the continent; on the other, it reflects intensifying attention by
African and international governments and multilateral organisations to
addressing such conflict, and in particular to providing effective protection
to civilians during conflict. The results of these interventions are mixed but
on the whole poor, and currently Africa remains stirred up by emerging,
continuing or recurring clashes in which civilian populations continue to be
the major victims.’
In July 2005 at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland,
the world’s most powerful nations reinterated their support for the AU’s goal
of building its own peacekeeping forces. This remains a distant objective.
Africa retains the highest concentration of multilateral peacekeeping missions
– 14 in total – reflecting not only Africa’s
own capacity limitations but also the relative naivety of African security goals.
When African leaders first mooted the idea of an African stand-by force
comprising five brigade-size bases across the continent, they hoped it could be
achieved within five years. Foreign military specialists countered that
standing up such a force would take closer to 30. Little progress has been made
toward that goal.
The
assumption of linked insecurity
The ground, therefore, is fertile
for assistance.
Africom is predicated on an
assumption that instability in Africa poses direct threats to US security. This
is contestable. Somalia has
not emerged as the next Afghanistan,
a nursery for trans-national terrorism. No civil or interstate African war has
resulted in direct harm to the United
States. The collapse of Zimbabwe has resulted in floods of immigrants to
South Africa, not Florida. And whereas
terrorist elements linked to attacks in London
and Madrid have African connections, these
have been on a smaller scale than the domestic terror-related threats emerging
from within Britain, France or Spain. In the broader sense, yes, maritime
insecurity off the Horn of Africa and in the Gulf of Guinea; illegal
exploitation and African fisheries, timber, and minerals; human trafficking,
drug smuggling, and money laundering; and weak states are all ‘seams’ of insecurity.
Certainly weak intelligence and security structures opened the space in Kenya and Tanzania
for the 1998 bombings of the US
embassies.
It is not a question of whether
these problems should be addressed, but how and by whom. Is a military command
the most appropriate vehicle? The Iraq War indicates the local and
international consequences of preemptive US military engagement, whereas the
Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) provide a potential model for the kind
of holistic approach envisioned for Africom. The critical element is local
buy-in. In building the case for Africom among African states, Washington is its own
predecessor, and its greatest obstacle is itself. Asked why Islam is spreading
in Africa, one prominent Muslim community leader in the South African city of Durban gave me a response
that is typical across the continent: ‘There is a spiritual vacuum in the West.
Here, you can thank George Bush for the rise of Islam. The Middle
East crises are bringing people from outside the West to Islam.
People want to identify with a just cause. They want to stand up to the bully.
At the level of the masses, South African Muslims would not want the South
African government to cooperate with the West in countering terrorism. That is
an emotive position. But at the level of responsible government, they would say
that countering terrorism is responsible.’
Security
and Development
Given the nature of suspicion and
the prevailing distrust of the United States,
it is unlikely that any amount of public relations work will fully quench
anti-imperialist concerns that Africom is fundamentally an attempt to erect a
bulwark in Africa against trans-national terrorism and China’s appetite for Africa’s
oil, minerals and timber. In the current climate, I would also argue that any
overt indications of synergy between military and developmental initiatives
will seriously undermine the credibility and acceptance of the latter,
particularly in those states with large Muslim populations.
That said, I also suspect that the
dust will settle. The proposed structure of Africom, consisting of four or five
relatively small bases with no force deployments means that these will be
largely invisible even in their host countries and societies. That bodes well
for viability of this approach. So, also, does the relative permanence of these
structures. Building capacity among African militaries and governments in
critical security sectors – border control, immigration, military readiness,
policing, coastal patrol, civilian authority – is a long-term project. In this
sense, Africom approximates an approach the Australians call ‘embedded
support’, which involves seconding Australian government officials, development
experts and legal authorities in relevant ministries of fragile or developing
states within the South Pacific region. Through sustained, behind-the-scenes
engagement, it may be possible for Africom to nurture professionalism in
African militaries and foster the civilian-military tradition essential to
democracies. The more strictly it keeps to the military lane, the more likely
Africom will be successful and accepted.
Security and development needs in Africa
both point to the same problem: the lack of strong, effective governance.
Without stability there is not growth. The important question, then, is how to
build effective institutions and entrench best practices in order to establish
a viable security framework internally. What forms of external engagement can
support this process? How can states be encouraged to adopt economic strategies
based on their comparative advantages that will enable them to realise the
fruits of globalisation? Is security a necessary precondition or should it take
a backseat to development? In examining the Pentagon’s two existing ‘holistic’
intiaitives in Africa – namely, the East
Africa Counter-terrorism Initiative and the Trans-Sahara Counter-terrorism
Initiative – these are arguably disproportionately military in nature primarily
because planning in the Department of Defense was far in advance of its
multiagency counterparts. For Africom to avoid this problem, coordination among
the relevant government departments must attain prior to the operational phase.
Conclusion
For more than 50 years, Western
developmental assistance to Africa was hampered
by insecurity. The end of the Cold War and apartheid in South Africa
laid the necessary pre-conditions for Africans to set their own integrated security
and development agenda. The 9/11 terrorist attacks in Washington
and New York,
meanwhile, precipitated a hard re-examination of international security
assumptions in the West. What should emerge from these trends is engagement
with Africa based on a convergence of
interests. Africom essentially represents a re-packaging of current US military partnership initiatives with Africa under a coherent organisational structure. The
skepticism it has raised among African states and societies indicates the need
for Washington
to reassure its prospective African partners that Africom acknowledges the lead
role of Africans themselves in determining their own security, development and
governance priorities. In the African context, this means at least a great an
emphasis on poverty alleviation as it does on military professionalsim. US
security assurances in Africa must therefore depend on quiet, sustained support
for Africa’s own prescribed agenda for
renewal.