One of Africa’s greatest plagues is instability. Strongmen stay in power
because if they resign, they face certain exile or execution. Groups rebel
against regimes because the strongmen won’t step aside. Political parties fear
giving up power because if they lose an election, their members lose their
livelihoods. Some outside interests fear a change in status quo, while others
foment it.
If situations can be stabilized, can Africa turn itself
around?
Not without a lot of help, U.S. and African government officials agree. That’s
where the Pentagon is coming in. Partnering with other federal agencies and
private companies and liaising with the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID); nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); Canadian, European,
and East Asian allies; and Africans themselves, the Defense Department is
standing up the United States Africa Command, known as AFRICOM.
A Partnership for Change
AFRICOM is a consortium of all U.S. military branches and
private defense and security contractors—firms like Northrop Grumman,
Blackwater Worldwide, DynCorp International, and MPRI. It’s meant to interface
with reliable offices and agencies—including military—in Africa’s hardest-hit
nations. Gen. William Ward is the new Combatant Commander.
AFRICOM originated in the private sector. Much of the
command’s conceptual framework, embracing defense, came from ideas propounded
in 2004 by two men: James Carafano and Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation
in Washington. There was, as well, a rough template dating to the previous
year. During 2003’s U.S. intervention in misery-plagued Liberia, Carafano and
Gardiner noted that African forces, “with a modicum of American support,” had
done “a credible job helping to end violence and restore political order.” This
was a real development. The two think-tankers fleshed out their ideas—embracing
military, diplomatic, and economic cooperation with Africa—and then spoke to
Department of Defense (DoD) chieftains. The feedback was positive.
The new, multiprong command is set to be much lighter in
manpower and more dynamic and flexible than the others. “By having one
command…focused on the entire continent,” AFRICOM transition team chief Rear
Adm. Robert Moeller told Congress, the military believes it can confront
Africa’s challenges “much more coherently” than before.
Stabilization Through Compassion
AFRICOM’s “primary focus” is not counterinsurgency or
counternarcotics. According to Moeller, it is “humanitarian assistance,
disaster relief, and crisis response missions.” That means large-scale
coordination with private global stability actors in the business and charity
sectors with planning input from African states.
Having a distinct command, Carafano and Gardiner add,
engenders “thoughtful, informed military advice, in-depth knowledge of the
region, and continuous planning and intelligence assessments.” It can also
increase the relevance of private businesses and NGOs that already know the
region and its people well.
Some observers voice concern over the Saudi Kingdom’s
funding of Wahhabi (fundamentalist Islam) schools. The Saudi government—which
the U.S. State Department calls a key ally in the war on terror—has pledged to
closely monitor the schools’ curricula.
U.S. interests were attacked in Algiers this year, and U.S.
embassies bombed in Kenya (2002 and 1998) and Tanzania (1998). Then there is
the concern with the growing role of the energy-hungry People’s Republic of
China, which buys influence in oil- and mineral-rich African countries and
props up the very regimes, as in Sudan, that are the causes of some of the
continent’s worst humanitarian crises.
A Troubled Continent
Until recently, Washington largely busied itself elsewhere.
Now, as the humanitarian (and so, strategic) crises in Africa deepen, there is
new awareness of the region’s importance, a new sense of urgency.
A key AFRICOM objective, according to a July report by the
Congressional Research Service (CRS), is to help create safe distribution
conditions for aid organizations and their destitute, starving charges. Such
work also entails creating or restoring war-wracked infrastructure and
accountable government. Training—and vetting—various military and police units
should help.
Until now, the record of various military peacekeeping
units in countering thievery, graft, and other corruption has been mixed.
Though well intentioned and generous, contributing nations (principally
Western) have found the financial and logistic hurdles hard to surmount.
Staying the course for decades at a time has proven almost impossible.
The Strategy of Stability
AFRICOM, the command’s spokespeople say, intends no massive
“deployments” in the conventional sense. Nor could it: the forces aren’t
available. Only about 600 people, mostly headquarters personnel, would be
involved in the initial stages when AFRICOM is fully stood up in late 2008, and
the Pentagon says numbers would remain low afterwards.
Rather, the new command is tasked with creating new
initiatives, developing new thinking, and advancing incentives for officials
from the senior government level to the smallest local components (i.e., tribal
chieftains or village elders). Here again is an immense role for private global
stability providers from the humanitarian relief, development, security, and
military support sectors.
AFRICOM’s proponents acknowledge the challenges inherent in
assisting the needy, hopeless millions. They expect “pontoon bridges,” so to
speak, to be erected linking the command with existing structures active in and
around the continent. These include the USAID, Peace Corps, International Red
Cross, United Nations Food for Peace, and dozens of other welfare
organizations, programs, and groups.
Safeguarding relief aid per se will be among the most
significant, if not largest, responsibilities. Geostrategic interest and
geopolitics also play a big role.
The Wages of Neglect
AFRICOM’s existence is a nod to the fact that the globe
remains a giant chessboard, with various powers seeking leverage, if not
dominance, of one kind or another. In early August, Theresa Whelan, deputy
assistant secretary of defense for African affairs, underscored the urgency of
countering fast-growing, aggressive American rivals like China. “The United
States,” she reminded members of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on
Africa and Global Health, “spends approximately $9 billion a year in Africa,
funding programs in such areas as health, development, trade promotion, and
good governance.” Conversely, “security-related programs receive only about
$250 million a year.”
This, say insiders, was a loud wake-up call for many
legislators, especially so because recent information suggests rising anti-U.S.
and terrorist activities in Tanzania, Sudan, and Kenya, and terrorist toeholds
being attempted elsewhere.
AFRICOM’s creation comes “not a moment too soon,” says J.
Peter Pham, a professor at James Madison University and columnist for
World
Defense Review. “Our enemies,” Pham recently warned, “have already decided
that Africa is the next front for their land and sea war of terror on America,
and our potential strategic rivals, like China, have also made of it a theater
of competition.… So the only question is whether America…will be farsighted
enough to invest in an adequate response, for which the time is now.”
Douglas Farah, a former
Washington Post bureau chief
in Africa, agrees. Asked if Washington’s approach to Africa over the past
decade or so had left it in limbo owing to benign neglect, Farah tells
Serviam,
“It’s been worse than limbo. I think ‘benign neglect’ is too kind.” Farah
mentions the Somalia and Rwanda genocide crises as emblems of America’s
“totally inadequate response.” Both genocidal affairs left U.S. government
officials feeling they lacked the capacity to grasp Africa’s manifold
problems—or weren’t up to tackling them. Many, according to Farah, simply wrote
off the continent.
The United States lacks its own eyes and ears in much of
the region. Farah says that two-thirds of CIA stations across Africa have
closed their doors or operate with a skeleton staff. His “optic,” Farah
explains, comes from his years “covering insurgency groups and nonstate armed
actors” in Africa and elsewhere. Farah documented “blood diamonds” in the 1990s
for the
Post and has co-authored
Merchant of Death, a new book
about a rapacious Russian arms dealer.
The veteran correspondent points out that in 1999–2001,
Liberia was particularly frightening; it had “Russian organized crime, Israeli
organized crime, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, South African organized crime, Ukrainian
organized crime—everyone was in there.” Such incubators for crime, drugs,
illicit arms dealing, and terrorism “are not in our interest,” Farah concludes
dryly.
A New Breed of PSCs
A big part of AFRICOM and the Pentagon’s “Total Force”
concept are the private contractors and NGOs. Many private security contractors
have military combat or special operations experience, and, with U.S.
government approval, have trained many African militaries through the years.
Employing contractors has been controversial. Critics refer
to them as “America’s mercenary army.” Farah voices some concerns, but says he
sees little problem if the contractors remain within “the command chain and
accountability chain.” Otherwise the situation would be akin to newspapers’
stringers—freelancers “you don’t know have screwed up” until later, after
damage has been done. Private security contractors under AFRICOM’s mandate are
to be responsible for training, convoy escort
a la Iraq, and other
functions. Farah expects that in many regards the contractors “are going to be
the
U.S. presence.”
Pham agrees: “AFRICOM is likely to get few personnel of its
own to deploy.”
Pham, Farah, and other analysts stress it’s too early to
know even the unclassified details: stationing and training modalities,
pilferage-halting strategies, rules of engagement, links with United Nations
“blue helmets,” aid group interface, and coordination with U.S. intelligence,
counterintelligence, and counterterrorism services.
Safeguarding America’s Interests
The important thing was to “create the atmosphere”; to
embed, so to speak, the idea that Africa is a legitimate, vital American
interest. The rest, Pham and other AFRICOM champions suggest, will fall into
place.
With AFRICOM as inspiration, the dozen or so pro-U.S.
nations in Africa that are working to get their militaries up to speed will
succeed. They hope the African Union’s African Standby Force, with a little
help, can by 2015 boast of having 15,000–20,000 effective and professional
regional peacekeepers.
As with any large, new, expensive, inherently complex,
risky (and yes, dangerous) undertaking, there are doubters: “wait-and-see”
types and outright critics. Some resist change. Others are philosophically
opposed to private companies’ involvement. Some strategic thinkers worry that AFRICOM
will sap too many scarce resources, personnel, and funds from the ongoing
Global War on Terror.
Other AFRICOM skeptics, citing lethally flawed U.S.
military peacekeeping/humanitarian missions like Lebanon (1983) and Somalia
(1991), contend that food and medicine distribution schemes should be
government-to-government, civilian-entity-to-civilian-entity, and
civilian-entity-to-government undertakings.
Pham, who is closely attuned to Pentagon thinking, also
dismisses fears about a Vietnam-war style escalation. He tells
Serviam,
“No one is envisioning a major footprint.” Pham thinks it unlikely that many
more than the 1,500 combined joint task force personnel already stationed in or
near Djibouti would be involved—not counting, he meant, several hundred command
staffers, and maybe “a few hundred special forces scattered throughout the
continent doing training exercises.”
Pham said he would be “very surprised” by any serious
uptick in such numbers of “active-duty” personnel. One area where some think a
small detachment of AFRICOM troops could assist is Ghana, where former U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan plans a Peacekeeping Training Center. Notes Pham,
“[AFRICOM] is a work in progress.” The ultimate hope is that Africa can be
prepared to carry most of the load. Some have risen to the occasion. Four of
the top 10 contributors to U.N. peacekeeping, the CRS says, are African: Ghana,
Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa.
Oil Creates New Alliances
Energy is an important part of the calculus. Purchasing oil
concessions or mines is, indeed, complicated by civil strife, robbery, and
pipeline sabotage. Those disruptions inflict further damage on Africa’s
troubled economies and civil societies.
Though most Americans don’t recognize it, the nation has
grown much more reliant on West African oil sources than Middle Eastern ones.
Does this presage a shift from a volatile region to a frequently unstable one?
Pham says no. The mere lack of a stable U.S. naval presence in the Gulf of
Guinea should, he stressed, “drive a stake in the heart of the myth” that
America covets Africa’s oilfields. “Hard power [military] is our last resort;
soft power [diplomacy and training] is really our attraction.”
On the other hand, oil companies and governments of
oil-producing states like Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria have hired American
private companies, under State Department authority, to train their forces and
serve other security functions. All appear to agree that the arrangement has
worked to their mutual benefit.
The views of America’s European allies, Pham says, are
“generally positive” on AFRICOM, since many are “looking at realigning their
own commitments to Africa. So that rather than viewing [AFRICOM] as a threat as
they might have 20 years ago, many of them—even the French, who are looking at
scaling back—are looking at this as a complement… . As America steps up they
can step back a bit.”
In intelligence-sharing terms, Pham singled out as
“cooperative” Ethiopia and Kenya. “We certainly have a number of very reliable
other partners.” Unfortunately, the willingness to partner isn’t matched by
capabilities.
Applying the Unique Expertise of the Private Sector
Which is where the private sector comes in. A template
already exists in Iraq. Such personnel, many with combat or special operations
experience, help take pressure off deployed troops, freeing them for combat
operations. “A lot of what AFRICOM is doing can be easily contracted out, like
the GPOI [Global Peace Operators Initiative]—training and equipping about
75,000 African troops so they’re adequate,” says Pham. “It’s what Africa wants
for itself, which is to assume greater responsibility for regional
peacekeeping…and not wait for the outside world to intervene in their crises.”
Even AFRICOM’s most vocal champions caution not to expect
too much, too soon. Says Pham, “The major challenge is going to be back here at
home; that’s getting the resources. Because we’re looking at a long-term
project—an enterprise that isn’t heavy on ‘front-loaded deliverables.’ No one’s
going to be able to point to an immediate gain. This is investing really in
African nations’ capabilities to secure their own continent—which is in our
best interest.”