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Are We Doing Enough For Africa?
This thread should be open up to the West in general, but in light of President Bush's recent multi-state trip to the continent, there has been a lot of debate about the role that the United States plays in Africa and the degree of success that we have achieved there. Common sentiments seem to be that through initiatives like PEPFAR and working more closely with democratically-elected governments in Liberia and Nigeria we are effecting some good in terms of stability and development... however... a lot of experts disagree.
I have a lot of thoughts in a lot of different directions, so for now I'll offer three disparate view points and see where people want to take the conversation.
From the International Crisis Group:
| quote: | "Bush in Africa: A Continent Adrift",
Donald Steinberg in YaleGlobal Online
18 February 2008
YaleGlobal Online
Internal weakness exacerbated by mistaken international approach has destabilized Africa
The long-awaited Africa visit by President Bush may disappoint many, as the president steers clear of the continent’s problem areas. But this should not come as a surprise. The modernizing African nations that Washington once counted on as “regional anchors” to serve as engines of growth and sources of stability have themselves emerged as destabilizers.
In 1995 as the president’s special assistant for Africa, I argued that the two dominant prisms through which the US had long viewed the continent – Cold War competition for client states and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa – had been shattered, and we could adopt a clearer vision for the continent. I suggested Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and Kenya as anchors for the promotion of democracy, good governance, poverty reduction, military demobilization, debt relief and improvements in health, education and other social indicators.
With large populations, vibrant economies, democratizing regimes, and internal stability, these countries could serve as entrepots, sources of energy and transport infrastructures, channels of trade and investment, sources of negotiators and peacekeeping forces, models of proper behavior, and havens for refugees.
In light of recent developments, it’s no surprise that the crisis-averse president is not visiting any of these countries.
? In Nigeria, the promise of civilian rule after General Sani Abacha’s death has given way to instability caused by another flawed election, unrest and inequality in the oil-rich Delta region, rampant corruption and a lingering legacy of ethnic division.
? The hopeful outlook for Côte d’Ivoire after Félix Houphouët-Boigny yielded to growing north/south and ethnic tensions, erupting into civil war that required international mediation and thousands of foreign peacekeepers.
? Zimbabwe’s successful transition from Ian Smith’s racist regime is a distant memory as the current regime has essentially declared war against its own population, spreading millions of refugees throughout Southern Africa.
? Ethiopia and its brothers in Eritrea, having thrown off the yoke of Mengistu Haile Mariam, turned on one another in a senseless and brutal boundary war and engaging in destabilizing proxy wars throughout the Horn of Africa, engulfing most notably Somalia in its fire.
? And now Kenya, seemingly the most stable of the regional anchors, is engulfed in a post-electoral dispute that has unleashed latent ethnic, class and regional divides.
Havens of regional stability have themselves become destabilizers. While internal factors largely caused these misfortunes, the international community, including the US, deserves blame as well.
A serious miscalculation has been to focus on African leaders as supposed agents of change rather than promoting political and economic reform. While outwardly rejecting the “Big Men” era in Africa, the US in particular stood behind leaders we believed were the forbearers of an African Renaissance. The period of infatuation differs from country to country, but applies to past visions of Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Bédié in Côte d’Ivoire, Meles in Ethiopia, Obasanjo in Nigeria and Kibaki in Kenya. We persuaded ourselves that they were reformers whose interest in democracy, transparency, social transformation and equality mirrored our own.
Subsequently, President Bush made the “war on terror” our dominant foreign policy theme after September 11, 2001, which harmed American engagement in Africa in two ways:
First, it diverted attention, financial resources and military engagement from the continent and toward other priorities, especially the war in Iraq. While paying welcome attention to fighting HIV/AIDS and expanding trade with Africa, the Bush administration responded tepidly or not at all to the evisceration of democracy, good governance and social services in these anchors.
Second, Bush generally supported existing leaders who were smart enough to proclaim themselves “allies” in the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorists – similar to the professions of anti-Communism that emanated from cynical African leaders during the Cold War – often through military aid that strengthened repressive regimes. The US has supported so-called anti-terrorist campaigns, such as the ill-advised Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006-2007, no matter the consequences for regional stability, refugee flows and humanitarian impact.
These considerations weigh heavily in Kenya, where American support for President Mwai Kibaki blinded the US to impending tragedy. The announcement last December that Kibaki won the presidential elections plunged the country into unprecedented political, security and humanitarian crisis. Six weeks later, protest riots, repression by security forces and revenge killings have caused more than 1000 deaths and displaced 300,000 or more people. Beyond the loss of life, Kenya’s economy had lost about $1.5 billion by early February. The country remains tense and volatile.
The violence shattered Kenya’s reputation as a haven of stability. Images of Kisumu city center burned to the ground, Nairobi and Mombasa slums on fire, and a church with 30 people inside torched by vigilantes in the Rift Valley illustrated the fragility of the national fabric. Beneath the surface of Kibaki’s pro-Western, anti-terrorist rhetoric is the reality of a country with a gaping disparity between the rich and the poor, where land distribution is lopsided, where politics have been turned ethnic, and where the wounds created by Daniel Arap Moi’s divide-and-rule policies during the 1990s remain open. Although calm has partially returned, this political battle could easily spiral into renewed large-scale violence, which already took a dangerous ethnic turn. Reports of militia mobilizing and arming on both sides have been confirmed.
Kenya long accepted refugees from neighboring conflicts in Somalia and Ethiopia; provided transport links for Uganda, Rwanda, eastern Congo and southern Sudan; hosted regional peace talks; and served as a conduit for investment throughout the Horn of Africa. Now it cannot now perform these tasks. In effect, the doctor has become the patient.
Immediate goals for the mediation team led by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan are to end the violence, address the humanitarian crisis, resettle displaced persons, and resolve the electoral crisis. But stopping there would represent another attempt at a quick-fix solution that would repeat the mistakes of the past in the regional anchors.
A legitimately elected government should remain the goal, along with fundamental institutional and economic reforms and an internationally monitored transitional justice and disarmament process to help heal the wounds of two decades of inter-ethnic violence and prevent its resumption.
The international mediation should pursue a settlement that includes, among others steps, the launching of an internationally supported review of electoral procedures to ensure that fraud does not recur and that the Kenyan judiciary can adjudicate disputes; a transition period to restore democratic governance, including a power-sharing deal among parties and constitutional reform; an agreement on transition policies with respect to economic reforms, resettlement of the displaced and settlement of land grievances; establishment of an independent commission to address ethnic violence, ensure accountability for crimes committed in the post-election violence, and guarantee security for all ethnic groups; and establishment of a process to disarm and dismantle party-supported militias.
These steps to create responsive and transparent government, address tragic social inequalities, and mend class, ethnic and regional divisions are essentially the same measures required in the other so-called African anchors. Clear-minded international attention to these challenges – supported by appropriate incentives, sanctions and support – can ensure that these regional anchors not only secure themselves, but buoy the efforts to revitalize Africa.
Donald Steinberg is deputy president for policy at International Crisis Group. He previously served as President Clinton’s special assistant for African Affairs and American ambassador to Angola.
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu |
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=5303&l=1
From the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS):
| quote: | President Bush’s Africa Trip
Stephen Morrison
February 19, 2008
President Bush’s five-country Africa tour reminds us that presidential travel to Africa has become a new norm, following President Clinton’s visits (in 1998 and 2000) and President Bush’s 2003 trip. It brings to our attention just how much U.S. engagement in Africa has expanded over the past seven-plus years and asks us to ponder what has been gained, what leverage does the United States truly possess, and what more can and should be done to strengthen the U.S. approach to Africa.
When President Bush entered office in 2001, there were low expectations that Africa would merit much if any attention. This month’s tour, near the end of President Bush’s tenure in the White House, highlights four signature policy initiatives that have had significant impact in Africa, changed the pattern of U.S. foreign assistance delivered to the continent, and generally enjoyed broad bipartisan support among Americans. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) will have expended over $18.8 billion by the end of September, at the close of its first five year phase, will have put close to 2 million persons on life-sustaining therapies. Some 65 to 70 percent of resources and persons reached are in Africa. The President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), a three-year $1.2 billion program centered in Africa, has brought dramatic gains in several focal countries; in 1997, U.S. malaria programs in Africa were $1 million per year. This year it will be $338 million. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), an experiment in forging five year compacts with reasonably well-governed states, the majority in Africa, has substantial programs in 11 Africa countries, accounting for 65
percent of the over $5.5 billion committed worldwide. Liberia, the fourth priority focus of the president’s trip, involved U.S. military support to a regional intervention in 2003, followed by support to a UN peace operation, an electoral transition, and ongoing efforts at postwar reconstruction, including U.S.-led reform of the security sector.
What brought about this surprising shift? A multitude of factors: 9/11 fundamentally changed the U.S. foreign policy view of poverty, weak or failing states, and the threat of unchecked global infectious diseases. These were no longer strictly humanitarian considerations, but rather factors integral to global security. America’s religious conservatives rallied increasingly on humanitarian grounds for a more expansive U.S. approach to Africa, joined by new celebrity advocates
such as Bono and new powerful foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. U.S. hard interests—energy security, counterterror, competition with China—rose steadily and became more visible. At home, Africa occupied an unusual space politically, generally free of partisan rancor. A bipartisan consensus on doing more in Africa, strengthened during the Clinton era, endured into the Bush years, even as polarization worsened on multiple other fronts, borne of Iraq,
Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo.
Has this shift brought major rewards, in terms of support within Africa for the Bush administration and American interests? The results are fluid and mixed. President Bush does not have the same star power that President Clinton enjoyed in Africa. Many Africans have taken
offense at Bush administration policies in such areas as Iraq, the International Criminal Court, and the Kyoto treaty on climate change. Many openly question U.S. counterterrorism actions in Somalia, actively oppose placing a U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) presence on the continent, and have already begun to look past President Bush to the next administration. More positively, Africa’s opinion climate vis-à-vis the United States, as documented by the Pew Global Attitudes survey and other instruments, has held better that other regions, where opinion of the United States has deteriorated precipitously. Liberians, historically linked to the United States, have been enthusiastic toward President Bush, and we can expect during his visit to Monrovia public outpourings of support, though not likely on the scale of the half-million Ghanaians who gathered for President Clinton in 1998. And many African leaders still look to the United States to apply leadership in resolving conflicts in Africa, in Kenya and Sudan in particular.
President Bush was wise to dispatch Secretary Rice to Kenya on February 18 in support of former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan’s mediation efforts. He was wise also to highlight in his pre-trip Smithsonian speech the continued importance of attending to Sudan’s ongoing Darfur crisis, and earlier in the year to appoint Ambassador Richard Williamson as the new U.S. special envoy to Sudan.
But in Kenya and Sudan alike, the United States has significant untapped leverage. Additional sustained high-level engagement by the United States is essential if there is to be progress in each of these countries It is the United States, not the Chinese or the French or the British, who have the special status and power to press Khartoum and the government of Southern Sudan to move forward the terms of the Comprehensive Peace Accord of 2005 and avoid an utter breakdown: to
hold a census, pass a new electoral law, complete troop withdrawal agreements, and settle outstanding administration and security issues in the special Abyei zone. It is the United States more than other powers that is best positioned to see the steady deployment of the 26,000 strong AU/UN force into Darfur. For the United States to be effective in this regard, Ambassador Williamson has to be empowered to bargain: to bring to the table in discussions with Khartoum real carrots and real sticks, free of undue interference from campaigners and advocates with a narrow, single issue focus on punishing
Khartoum.
Kofi Annan’s mediation efforts are essential to a solution in Kenya—the parties cannot resolve this crisis on their own— and require an intensive, sustained effort over several months, followed by strong oversight and monitoring. Secretary Rice’s intervention is important in raising pressure for interim governing arrangements, a change of rhetoric, an audit of the December elections, and constitutional reforms. That visit now needs to be matched by the appointment of a
prominent American figure to work alongside Annan on a close, regular basis.
Stephen Morrison is director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions; accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in these publications should be understood to be solely those of the authors. |
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs...africa_trip.pdf
From The New Republic:
| quote: | The New Republic
Heart of Darkness by Joshua Kurlantzick
President Bush has been celebrated for his Africa policies by conservatives and liberals alike. Is that some kind of cruel joke?
Post Date Monday, February 25, 2008
With the nation's press corps consumed by the election and the economy shuddering, President Bush head to Africa this week. It was his latest in a series of efforts to claim some positive legacy for his presidency. On his five-nation trip, Bush mostly avoided Iraq, terrorism, and his other normal themes. Instead, he visited supposed success stories like Rwanda and Ghana and touted his administration's generous commitment to aiding these nations as loudly as he could. "I'm here to really confirm to the people of Benin and the people on the continent of Africa that the United States is committed to helping improve people's lives,'' Bush declared on his first stop. To showcase compassion in action, and highlight his administration's focus on HIV, Bush visited a hospital in Tanzania for a photo opportunity and then declared that his aid programs were "God's work."
On the ground, however, Bush's Africa record hardly looks divine, which might come as a shock to those, including Democrats, who feel as if Africa has been one of the few successes of the Bush presidency. In a column entitled "Bush, A Friend of Africa," New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote, "Mr. Bush has done much more for Africa than Bill Clinton ever did," citing Bush's new African aid programs. And there's no question that Bill Clinton's Africa legacy is weak. He intervened disastrously in Somalia and then did not intervene, also disastrously, during the genocide in Rwanda. But Clinton at least generally tried to promote democratic reform in Africa, building links to emerging democrats like South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, helping promote democratic change in strife-torn nations like Mozambique, and making good governance and political reform centerpieces of his Africa policy.
Consumed by the war on terror, Bush has taken a far different approach. Rather than supporting democratic institutions and criticizing a new generation of African authoritarians, the Bush administration has backed whatever African leader claims to be battling militant Islam. For example, the White House has developed a close relationship with Ethiopia's thuggish leader Meles Zenawi, supposedly an ally in the war on terror and a partner in battling militancy in neighboring Somalia. The administration has provided military aid to Ethiopia with virtually no conditions on the assistance. It has also offered advisers to support Ethiopia's invasion of neighboring Somalia, an invasion which only led to more chaos in that benighted nation. Meanwhile, in recent years Zenawi's government has overseen a massive crackdown on opposition activists and a brutal offensive in the country's Ogaden region; in 2005, after disputed elections, the Ethiopian government arrested over 30,000 of its own people.
As in Ethiopia, so too across the continent. In building a string of counterterrorism allies, the White House has strengthened its links with some of Africa's most brutal regimes, from Algeria to Chad.
At the same time, desperate to wean America off Middle Eastern oil, the administration has courted West African nations with substantial offshore deposits. A worthy goal, but only up to a point. The White House's welcome for Equatorial Guinea tyrant Teodoro Obiang, for one, casts shame on Bush's vow to spread a "freedom agenda" around the world. Though Obiang ranks among Parade magazine's list of the world's worst dictators-- he allegedly oversees prisons that are torture factories and has been accused (rather outlandishly) of eating his rivals--in 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice publicly hosted him at Foggy Bottom, saying, "You are a good friend."
Even on aid to Africa, Bush's claims do not stand up to scrutiny. The president has made foreign aid a priority of his administration, nearly tripling the overall budget for foreign assistance from where it stood in 2000. And many in his administration, like former speechwriter Michael Gerson, as well as aid advocates in Congress, like Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, have increased conservatives' interest in Africa. But the administration has spent much of the aid money on unilaterally created programs that neither learn from existing efforts nor respond effectively to Africans' real needs.
And it shows. One of the White House's major aid initiatives, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), has wasted much of its funds on scientifically questionable programs designed to please American religious conservatives. Though studies show that only a comprehensive approach, including condom distribution, sexual education, and antiretrovirals, could reduce HIV, the White House insisted that PEPFAR spend one-third of its behavioral prevention budget on programs that promote abstinence until marriage. It also refused to let PEPFAR money go for programs like needle exchanges and aggressive condom promotion. Recipient nations had to sign an American pledge vowing to oppose prostitution, even though prostitutes are major carriers of HIV in Africa, and signing the pledge could scare PEPFAR recipients out of helping sex workers. Virtually no other major multinational donor agreed with PEPFAR's strategy. Even the administration's own inspector general responsible for overseeing aid couldn't prove that its methods had worked. (As a footnote, Randall Tobias, the administration official responsible for overseeing AIDS programs, including the prostitution pledge, resigned after his number was discovered on the D.C. Madam's infamous call lists.)
The White House's other major new aid initiative hasn't proven to be much more effective. The Millenium Challenge Corporation, first launched in 2002, was supposed to be a new kind of aid program, one that selected recipient nations based upon a range of indicators that show their ability to govern well. But MCC has also suffered from going it alone. According to one study by the Center for Global Development, the leading Washington think-tank focusing on aid, although experience had shown that donors worked best when they coordinated their efforts in a country, "MCC tended to steer clear ... much to the dismay and frustration of other donors." With few staff and little organization, the MCC moved very slowly. In fiscal year 2007, according to another analysis by the Center for Global Development, the MCC only disbursed 6.8 percent of the money it was allocated. Worse, it clearly has drained funds from longtime, critical aid programs: In 2007 the administration slashed aid for extreme poverty programs, like child survival initiatives in Africa.
Because of the MCC's poor results, Congress has grown less supportive of the program. In the most recent congressional appropriations cycle, Republican Senator Richard Lugar tried to write a provision that would give the MCC only half of its appropriated money upfront, because of skepticism that it wouldn't spend its whole allocation. In the long run, this skepticism might threaten Congress' broader support for African aid. God's work, indeed.
Joshua Kurlantzick is a Special Correspondent to The New Republic. |
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.h...01-134ee4c0437b
And lastly, from today's NYTimes:
| quote: | Op-Ed Columnist
A Genocide Foretold
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: February 28, 2008
JUBA, Sudan
The Sudanese government started the first genocide of the 21st century in Darfur, and now it seems to be preparing to start the second here among the thatch-roof huts of southern Sudan.
South Sudan is rich in oil, but its people are among the poorest in the world, far poorer than those in Darfur. Only 1 percent of girls here finish elementary school, meaning that a young woman is more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than to become literate. Leprosy and Ebola linger here. South Sudan is the size of Texas, yet it has only 10 miles of paved road and almost no electricity; just about the only running water here is the Nile River.
The poverty is mostly the result of the civil war between North and South Sudan that raged across the southern part of the country for two decades and cost 2 million lives. For many impoverished villagers, their only exposure to modern technology has been to endure bombings by the Sudanese Air Force. The war finally ended, thanks in part to strong American pressure, in 2005 with a landmark peace agreement — but that peace is now fraying.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is backing away from the peace agreement, and prodding Arab militias to revive the war with the South Sudan military forces. Small-scale armed clashes have broken out since late last year, and it looks increasingly likely that Darfur will become simply the prologue to a far bloodier conflict that engulfs all Sudan.
Even my presence here is a sign of the rising tensions and mistrust. The Sudanese government refuses me visas, but the authorities in the south let me enter from Kenya without a visa because they want the word to get out that war is again looming.
The authorities in disputed areas such as the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile State also welcomed me, rather than arresting me, even though those areas technically are on the northern side of the dividing line. Local officials in both areas warned that President Bashir and his radical Arab political party are preparing to revive the war against non-Arab groups in the south and center of the country.
“If things go on as they are now, war will break out,” said Sila Musa Kangi, the commissioner of Kormuk in Blue Nile. “And it can break out at any time.”
Although people speak of renewed “war,” the violence is more likely to resemble what happens in a stockyard. If it is like the last time, government-sponsored Arab militias will slaughter civilians so as to terrorize local populations and drive them far away from oil wells.
Under the 2005 deal that ended the war, Sudan is supposed to hold elections early next year, but President Bashir is unlikely to allow them because he almost surely would lose. Likewise, Mr. Bashir is unlikely to abide by his commitment to allow the south to hold a referendum in 2011 to decide whether to separate from Sudan because southerners would likely vote overwhelmingly for independence — and more than three-quarters of the country’s oil is in the south.
Already, the Sudanese government is backtracking on its commitments under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or C.P.A.: It still hasn’t withdrawn all of its troops from the south; it hasn’t accepted a boundary commission report for the oil-rich border area of Abyei; it keeps delaying a census needed for the elections; and it appears to be cheating the south of oil revenues. And the U.S. and other countries have acquiesced in all this.
“We say to the international community, ‘you midwifed the C.P.A., and then you left,’ ” said Rebecca Garang, the widow of the longtime southern leader, John Garang. “You must come back and check the baby.”
Those who focused on Sudan’s atrocities in Darfur, myself included, may have inadvertently removed the spotlight from South Sudan. Without easing the outrage over Darfur — where the bloodshed has been particularly appalling lately — we must broaden the focus to include the threat to the south.
One of the lessons of Darfur, Rwanda and Bosnia is that it is much easier to avert a genocide ahead of time than to put the pieces together afterward. So let’s not wait until gunshots are ringing out again all over the south.
There are steps that the U.S. can take to diminish the risk of a new war. We can work with the international community to raise the costs to President Bashir of defying his treaty obligations.
We can warn Sudan that if it starts a new war, we will supply anti-aircraft weapons to the south to make it harder for the north to resume bombing hospitals, churches and schools. We can also raise the possibility of protecting the south with a no-fly zone, which might be enough to deter Mr. Bashir from starting yet another genocide. |
Any thoughts? That opens up a whole lot of topics from HIV/AIDS prevention to conflict resolution/prevention efforts to international development topics.
What role should the West play in the future of Africa? What role should China?
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