AFRICA COMMAND

A Historic Opportunity for Enhanced Engagement

—If Done Right

Testimony before the United States House of Representatives

Committee on Foreign Affairs

Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health

August 2, 2007

By Dr. J. Peter Pham

Director

The Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs

James Madison University

I am honored by the invitation to appear today before the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health and am grateful for the opportunity to add my voice to those of my distinguished colleagues on a subject which I have studied, written about, and advocated on behalf of, for a number of years: a United States Department of Defense regional unified combatant command for Africa that offers the potential for sustained engagement of a region where America has very real strategic interests.

Setting the Context of the New Engagement

I beg the Subcommittee’s indulgence to observe that we as a nation have indeed all come a very long way in recent years in our perceptions of Africa—some of us perhaps more than others. With the anniversary on March 6 of this year of the independence of Ghana, we also mark the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the wave of national sovereignty that swept across Sub-Saharan Africa in the wake of the Second World War. At that time, however, no part of the region was included in any U.S. military command’s Area of Responsibility (AOR) except for several North African countries which five years earlier had been tacked onto the U.S. European Command (EUCOM). The rest of the continent was left unaccounted for the rest of the decade until 1960 when, following then-Vice President Richard Nixon’s extensive tour of the continent, President Dwight D. Eisenhower put then-Atlantic Command (LANTCOM) in charge of security planning for Sub-Saharan Africa just as he had previously created the Africa Bureau within the State Department to coordinate diplomatic initiatives. Two years later, President John F. Kennedy transferred Sub-Saharan Africa into the Strike Command (STRICOM) AOR. From that time until the present, responsibility for defense planning affecting the continent has shifted a number of times as administrations came and went and geopolitical perceptions evolved over the course of the Cold War and its aftermath.

Just three years ago, when writing on the subject of a possible regional command for Africa, I was still being counseled by one editor to make sure that I couched the whole proposal as a hypothetical in the conditional tense.[1] And going back a little farther to 2000, I can recall that a number of Africa’s friends—some of whom are in this room today—were quite disappointed when a certain Republican presidential candidate responded negatively to a question from PBS’s Jim Lehrer about whether Africa fit into his definition of the strategic interests of the United States: “At some point in time the president’s got to clearly define what the national strategic interests are, and while Africa may be important, it doesn’t fit into the national strategic interests, as far as I can see them.”[2]

Yet almost seven years to the day later, on February 6, 2007, President George W. Bush announced the establishment of a U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), directing the Department of Defense to stand it up by October 2008 and entrusting the new structure with the mission to “enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa and promote our common goals of development, health, education, democracy, and economic growth in Africa” by strengthening bilateral and multilateral security cooperation with African states and creating new opportunities to bolster their capabilities.[3]

I rehearse this history in order to lend some perspective to just how extraordinary the decision to set up AFRICOM as America’s sixth regional command really is. As former Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations Princeton N. Lyman, who previously served as U.S. ambassador to South Africa and to Nigeria, has observed, the apparent strategic neglect of Africa nonetheless sadly reflects “what [has] in fact been the approach of both Democratic and Republican administrations for decades.”[4] Historically, with the exception of Cold War period when concerns about Soviet attempts to secure a foothold on the continent drove U.S. policy, America generally perceived Africa as secondary to its foreign policy and other strategic objectives. Thus, more often than not, American perspectives on Africa were framed almost exclusively in terms of preoccupation over the humanitarian consequences of poverty, war, and natural disaster. Alas, as noble as these moral impulses have been, they lacked the “staying power” needed to sustain a long-term commitment. Rightfully, many of our African friends viewed us as well-meaning, but unreliable.

I would argue, however, that three factors have providentially come together which cumulatively have the potential to significantly alter the course of the relationship between the United States and the African continent as a whole as well as with its individual sovereign states. First, in the wake of 9/11, analysts and policymakers have shifted to a more strategic view of Africa in terms of U.S. national interests. Second, independent of our interests and actions, Africans themselves have increasingly expressed the desire and, more importantly, demonstrated the political will, to tackle the continent’s myriad challenges of disease, poverty, ethnic tension, religious extremism, bad governance, lack of security, etc., although they still need outside assistance. Third, we have come to recognize a commonality between our strategic interests and the interests of Africans in enhanced security, stability, and development.

Recognizing Our Strategic Interests

Broadly conceived, there are three major areas in which Africa’s significance for America—or at least the public recognition thereof—has been amplified in recent years. The first is Africa’s role in the “Global War on Terror” and the potential of the poorly governed spaces of the continent to provide facilitating environments, recruits, and eventual targets for Islamist terrorists who threaten Western interests in general and those of the United States in particular—and, in some regions like the Horn of Africa and Sahel, this has already become reality. The second important consideration is Africa’s abundant natural resources, particularly those in its burgeoning energy sector. The third area of interest remains the humanitarian concern for the devastating toll which conflict, poverty, and disease, especially HIV/AIDS, continue to exact in Africa.

Concerns about Terrorism. There is no denying that U.S. security policy, both currently and for the foreseeable future will be heavily influenced by the “Global War on Terrorism,” the “Long War,” or whatever the designation du jour for the fight against the threat of transnational Islamist terrorism happens to be. The 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States of America rightly acknowledged that “weak states…can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states. Poverty does not make poor people into terrorists and murderers. Yet poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels within their borders.”[5] With the possible exception of the Greater Middle East, nowhere is this analysis truer than Africa where, as the document went on to acknowledge, regional conflicts arising from a variety of causes, including poor governance, external aggression, competing claims, internal revolt, and ethnic and religious tensions all “lead to the same ends: failed states, humanitarian disasters, and ungoverned areas that can become safe havens for terrorists.”[6]

While the terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda on the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998, and on an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, and, simultaneously, on an Israeli commercial airliner in 2002 have underscored the deadly reality of the terrorist threat in Africa, perhaps the most eloquent reminder of the particular vulnerability of the continent to terrorism comes from the terrorists themselves. In June 2006, a new online magazine for actual and aspiring global jihadis and their supporters, Sada al-Jihad (“Echo of Jihad”), which took the place of Sawt al-Jihad (“Voice of Jihad”) as the publication of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia after Saudi authorities finally came around to shutting down the presses of latter, featured an article by one Abu Azzam al-Ansari entitled “Al-Qaeda is Moving to Africa.”[7] Abu Azzam was remarkably frank:

There is no doubt that al-Qaeda and the holy warriors appreciate the significance of the African regions for the military campaigns against the Crusaders. Many people sense that this continent has not yet found its proper and expected role and the next stages of the conflict will see Africa as the battlefield.

With a rather commendable analytical rigor surprisingly free from ideological rancor, Abu Azzam then proceeded to enumerate and evaluate what he perceived to be significant advantages to al-Qaeda shifting terrorist operations to Africa, including: the fact that jihadi doctrines have already been spread within the Muslim communities of many African countries; the political and military weakness of African governments; the wide availability of weapons; the geographical position of Africa vis-à-vis international trade routs; the proximity to old conflicts against “Jews and Crusaders” in the Middle East as well as new ones like Darfur, where the author almost gleefully welcomed the possibility of Western intervention; the poverty of Africa which “will enable the holy warriors to provide some finance and welfare, thus, posting there some of their influential operatives”; the technical and scientific skills that potential African recruits would bring to the jihadi cause; the presence of large Muslim communities, including ones already embroiled conflict with Christians or adherents of traditional African religions; the links to Europe through North Africa “which facilitates the move from there to carry out attacks”; and the fact that Africa has a wealth of natural resources, including hydrocarbons and other raw materials, which are “very useful for the holy warriors in the intermediate and long term.” Abu Azzam concluded his assessment on an ominous note:

In general, this continent has an immense significance. Whoever looks at Africa can see that it does not enjoy the interest, efforts, and activity it deserves in the war against the Crusaders. This is a continent with many potential advantages and exploiting this potential will greatly advance the jihad. It will promote achieving the expected targets of Jihad. Africa is a fertile soil for the advance of jihad and the jihadi cause.

It would be a mistake to dismiss Abu Azzam’s analysis as devoid of operational effect. Shortly before the publication of the article, an Islamist movement whose leaders included a number of figures linked to al-Qaeda, the Islamic Courts Union, seized control of the sometime Somali capital of Mogadishu and subsequently overran most of the former state which—with the exception of the northern Republic of Somaliland where the inhabitants have tried to reassert the sovereignty they possessed before joining Somalia in a disastrous union and have, by and large, succeeded[8]—has been without an effective government since 1991.[9] While forceful intervention by neighboring Ethiopia in late December 2006 dislodged the Islamists, Somalia’s internationally-recognized but utterly ineffective “Transitional Federal Government” has yet to assert itself in the face of a growing insurgency which has adopted the same non-conventional tactics that foreign jihadis and Sunni Arab insurgents have used to great effect in Iraq.[10] Considerable evidence has emerged of links between the Somali Islamists and fugitive al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, not least of which was the capture and subsequent transfer last June to the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay of Abdullahi Sudi Arale, who was apparently dispatched from Pakistan to Somalia in September 2006 and who, according to a Pentagon statement, “played a significant role in the reemergence” of the militants after their initial rout.[11]

Another Al-Qaeda “franchise” has sought to reignite conflict in Algeria and spread it to the Sahel, the critical boundary region where Sub-Saharan Africa meets North Africa and where vast empty spaces and highly permeable borders are readily exploitable by local and international militants alike both as a base for recruitment and training and as a conduit for the movement of personnel and materiel. Last year members of the Algerian Islamist terrorist group Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (usually known by its French acronym GSPC) formally pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and began identifying themselves in communiqués as “Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb.” The link to al-Qaeda was confirmed by bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri who, in the “commemorative video” the terrorist network issued on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, declared: “Our mujahid Sheikh and the Lion of Islam, Osama bin Laden,...has instructed me to give the good news to Muslims in general and my mujahidīn brothers everywhere that the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat has joined al-Qaeda organization.”[12] The Egyptian terrorist hailed the “blessed union” between the GSPC and al-Qaeda, pledging that it would “be a source of chagrin, frustration and sadness for the apostates [of the regime in Algeria], the treacherous sons of [former colonial power] France,” and urging the group to become “a bone in the throat of the American and French crusaders” in the region and beyond. Last April, al-Qaeda’s new affiliate claimed credit for a pair of bomb blasts—one close to the prime minister's office, the other near a police station—that rocked Algiers, killing two dozen people and wounding more than a hundred, shattering the calm that the Algerian capital had enjoyed since the conclusion of the civil war of the 1990s which claimed at least 150,000 lives.[13]

Perhaps most menacing over the long term, however, is an increasingly apparent willingness on the part of transnational Islamist terror networks to not only exploit the grievances which might be nursed by some African Muslim communities, but also to reach out to non-Muslim militants to make common cause against their mutual enemies. While there is no shortage of violent non-Muslim groups in Sub-Saharan Africa, the region has long been plagued by a number of indigenous Islamist groups like the Eritrean Islamic Jihad, the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) in Ethiopia, and the Allied Democratic Forces/National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (ADF/NALU).[14] More recently, evidence has emerged that outside forces have been providing these groups with strategic guidance, tactical assistance, and operational planning. For example, the ONLF has been battling successive Ethiopian governments for years with the goal of splitting the ethnic Somali region from the country. However, it was only within the last year that the group acquired from somewhere the wherewithal to mount the most spectacular attack within Ethiopia since the fall of the Derg dictatorship in 1991.[15]

In addition to shelter, recruits, and opportunities to terrorists, terrorist groups have also profited from the weak governance capacities of African states not only to raise money by soliciting sympathizers, but also to trade in gemstones and other natural resources either as a means to launder and make money as al-Qaeda did with Sierra Leonean “conflict diamonds” through the good offices of then Liberian president Charles Taylor. Former Washington Post correspondent Douglas Farah, for example, has reported on how al-Qaeda procured somewhere between $30 million and $50 millions worth of diamonds through this channel in the month before the September 11 attacks, while I have documented how documented how Hezbollah has used the extensive Lebanese Shī‘a communities in places like Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea to make money in an illicit market estimated by the United Nations to worth between $170 million and $370 million.[16]

Energy and Maritime Security. In his 2006 State of the Union address, President Bush called for the United States to “replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025” and to “make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.”[17] According to the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration, America has already advanced significantly in its effort to wean itself from dependency on hydrocarbons originating in the volatile Persian Gulf, thanks in large measure to the abundant energy resources of Africa. This past March, Nigeria edged past Saudi Arabia to become America’s third largest supplier, delivering 41,717,000 barrels of oil that month compared to the desert kingdom’s 38,557,000. When one adds Angola’s 22,542,000 barrels to the former figure, the two African states alone now supply more of America’s energy needs than Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates combined.[18] This milestone is all the more remarkable when one considers that the campaign of bombings and kidnappings carried out over the course of the last two years by the relatively small Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), a militant group fighting the Nigerian government over the oil-rich Delta region’s underdevelopment, environmental degradation, and political marginalization, has had the cumulative affect of cutting Nigeria's total oil production by almost one-third.[19]

This natural wealth makes Africa an inviting target for the attentions of the People’s Republic of China, whose dynamic economy, averaging 9 percent growth per annum over the last two decades, has an almost insatiable thirst for oil as well as a need for other natural resources to sustain it. China is currently importing approximately 2.6 million barrels of crude per day, about half of its consumption; more than 765,000 of those barrels—roughly a third of its imports—come from African sources, especially Sudan, Angola, and Congo (Brazzaville). Is it any wonder, then, that apart from the Central Eurasian region on its own northwestern frontier, perhaps no other foreign region rivals Africa as the object of Beijing’s sustained strategic interest in recent years. Last year the Chinese regime published the first ever official white paper elaborating the bases of its policy toward Africa. This year, ahead of his twelve-day, eight-nation tour of Africa—the third such journey since he took office in 2003—Chinese President Hu Jintao announced a three-year, $3 billion program in preferential loans and expanded aid for Africa. These funds come on top of the $3 billion in loans and $2 billion in export credits that Hu announced in October 2006 at the opening of the historic Beijing summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) which brought nearly fifty African heads of state and ministers to the Chinese capital. Intentionally or not, many analysts expect that Africa—especially the states along its oil-rich western coastline—will increasingly becoming a theatre for strategic competition between the United States and its only real near-peer competitor on the global stage, China, as both countries seek to expand their influence and secure access to resources.[20] In connection with this, an additional security worry is China’s increasing arms exports to Africa, especially as weapons are flowing to despotic regimes and fueling simmering conflicts even as they diminish further what little leverage Western governments and international organization—to say nothing of African ones—have with recalcitrant regimes.[21]

Yet for all its global importance as well as strategic significance for U.S. national interests, Africa’s waters—especially the Gulf of Guinea, the Gulf of Aden and other waters off Somalia, and the “Swahili Coast” of East Africa—seen comparatively few resources poured into maritime security, a deficit which only worsens when one considers the scale of the area in question and the magnitude of the challenges faced. Depending on how one chooses to define the Gulf of Guinea region, the nearly 3,500 miles of coastline running in an arc from West Africa to Angola, for example, are highly susceptible to piracy, criminal enterprises, and poaching—in addition to the security challenge presented by the oil production facilities, both onshore and offshore, and the transport of the natural resources thus derived.[22]

The International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships Report covering the first quarter of 2007, for instance, noted that while the number of reported attacks declined significantly compared to just one year before, the figure for incidents off the coast of Nigeria doubled.[23] At the same time, the Gulf of Guinea’s oil-producing states have long been a plagued by “illegal bunkering,” the tapping of pipelines for oil which is eventually loaded on to tankers which sell the crude to refineries elsewhere at a considerable profit. This highly-organized and far-reaching activity—at one point, two Nigerian admirals were court-martialed for their involvement in one infamous 2004 incident involving the disappearance of a tanker with 11,000 barrels of oil—has grown increasingly deadly as energy prices surge upwards and the criminal syndicates involved have acquired ever more sophisticated arms. There is also an increasing drug trade through the subregion: Nigeria is the transshipment point for approximately one-third of the heroin seized by authorities in the United States and more than half of the cocaine seized by South African officials, while European law enforcement officials report that poorly-scrutinized West Africa has become the major conduit for drugs shipped to their countries by Latin American cartels.[24]

In addition to their vast hydrocarbon reserves, the waters of the Gulf of Guinea contain some of the richest fisheries in the world. Yet, according to a 2005 report commissioned by the British Department for International Development (DFID) and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), illegal, unreported, or unlicensed (IUU) fishing—often by large foreign commercial trawlers—cost countries in the Gulf of Guinea more than $375 million annually. In addition to the obvious economic impact of the loss of the value of the catches to the countries affected, IUU fishing also carries indirect costs in terms of losses to industries upstream and downstream from fishing itself—to say nothing of damage to the ecosystem.[25]

In response to these challenges, the United States 2005 National Strategy for Maritime Security declared that:

Assisting regional partners to maintain the maritime sovereignty of their territorial seas and internal waters is a longstanding objective of the United States and contributes directly to the partners’ economic development as well as their ability to combat unlawful or hostile exploitation by a variety of threats. For example, as a result of our active discussions with African partners, the United States is now appropriating funding for the implementation of border and coastal security initiatives along the lines of the former Africa Coastal Security (ACS) Program. Preventing unlawful or hostile exploitation of the maritime domain requires that nations collectively improve their capability to monitor activity throughout the domain, establish responsive decision-making architectures, enhance maritime interdiction capacity, develop effective policing protocols, and build intergovernmental cooperation. The United States, in cooperation with its allies, will lead an international effort to improve monitoring and enforcement capabilities through enhanced cooperation at the bilateral, regional, and global level.[26]

Humanitarian Challenges. While concern over terrorism and other potential security threats as well as the growing importance of Africa’s hydrocarbon and other natural resources has refocused America’s perspective on the continent in recent years, the humanitarian impulses that motivated policy for so long have not been lost. If anything, they have acquired a new importance as the United States reassesses and reconfigures its strategic engagement with Africa. Consider the following data points:

▪ Africa boasts the world’s fastest rate of population growth: by 2020, today’s more than 900 million Africans will number more than 1.2 billion—more than the combined populations of Europe and North America. Nor do these absolute numbers tell the whole story: by then, the median age of Europeans will be 45, while nearly half of the African population will be under the age of 15.

▪ The dynamic potential implicit in the demographic figures just cited is, however, constrained, by the economic and epidemiological data. The United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report 2006 determined that of the thirty-one countries found to have “low development,” twenty-nine were African states—more than half of the membership of the African Union.[27] While Sub-Saharan Africa is home to only 10 percent of the world’s population, nearly two-thirds of the people infected with HIV—24.7 million—are Sub-Saharan Africans, with an estimated 2.8 million becoming infected in 2006, more than any other region in the world.[28]

Thus while the 2003 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism correctly argued that terrorist organizations have little in common with the poor and destitute, it also acknowledged that terrorists can exploit these socio-economic conditions to their advantage. President Bush noted in his 2005 address on the occasion of the United Nations’ sixtieth anniversary:

We must defeat the terrorists on the battlefield, and we must also defeat them in the battle of ideas. We must change the conditions that allow terrorists to flourish and recruit, by spreading the hope of freedom to millions who’ve never known it. We must help raise up the failing states and stagnant societies that provide fertile ground for the terrorists. We must defend and extend a vision of human dignity, and opportunity, and prosperity—a vision far stronger than the dark appeal of resentment and murder. To spread a vision of hope, the United States is determined to help nations that are struggling with poverty.[29]

The administration, working with Congress, has consolidated the comprehensive trade and investment policy for Africa introduced by its predecessor in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) of 2000, which substantially lowered commercial barriers with the United States and allowed Sub-Saharan African countries to qualify for trade benefits. It has also made combating HIV/AIDS on the continent a priority with twelve of the fifteen focus countries in the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) being in Africa. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), established in 2004, promotes and supports innovative foreign aid strategies which benefit states that qualify under objective benchmarks for assistance from the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), a program which provides assistance for “compact agreements” to fund specific programs targeted at reducing poverty and stimulating economic growth as well as “threshold programs” to improve performance with an eye toward achieving “compact” status. Of the forty-one countries worldwide currently eligible for some MCA funding, either through the “Threshold Program” or “Compact Assistance,” twenty are in Africa.[30]

One of the key advantages of the MCC approach is the recognition that generous grants of development aid are for naught if the recipients lacked a democratic polity and basic capacity for good governance. It should be recalled that until the 1990s, African states which had largely been characterized by various genre of authoritarian rule. Until then, only two, Botswana and Mauritius, had a record of remaining democratic continuously since gaining their independence. During the same period, only one African leader, Aden Abdulle Osman of Somalia (1967), had ever peacefully relinquished his office following electoral defeat and only three had retired voluntarily: Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal (1980), Ahmadou Ahidjo of Cameroon (1982), and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania (1985)—and Ahidjo, apparently underwent a change of heart and subsequently tried (unsuccessfully) to shoot his way back into office a year later.[31] A decade later, virtually all sub-Saharan African states had at least tentatively opened their political systems to some form of competition and while shenanigans are still common—witness the poor organization and massive fraud in this year’s Nigerian presidential election which was widely criticized by local as well as American and European observers[32]—one-party autocracies like Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe are now the exception rather than the rule.[33] Part of the reason for this progress is the recognition by both Africans and international donors like the United States that, as Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has argued, “Developing and strengthening a democratic system is an essential component of the process of development.”[34]

Acknowledging Increased African Leadership

One of the most heartening developments in recent years has been the growing trend of Africans stepping up to provide leadership in addressing their continent’s problems, recognizing that they cannot afford to wait for the rest of world to rouse itself to respond to these pressing crises. Despite some painfully obvious failures—the ongoing crisis in Zimbabwe and the overall unwillingness or inability to confront President Robert Mugabe being perhaps the most blatant example—it would be churlish not to acknowledge the significant growth in indigenous capacity in conflict resolution and governance assurance at the national, subregional, and pan-African levels.

Nation-Building. News from the African continent which—when it is covered at all in Western media—often comes across as an endless cycle of material poverty and disease, resource competition, environmental degradation, civil conflict, religious fanaticism, and, in recent years, Islamist terrorism. Consequently it is refreshing to be able to report such signs of progress as emerge, often without—or even despite—outside intervention.

One such case is the peace agreement signed in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on March 4, 2007, by President Laurent Gbagbo of Côte d’Ivoire and Guillaume Soro, Secretary-General of the “Forces Nouvelles” (FN) rebels who had seized control of the northern part of the country followed a failed coup attempt nearly five years ago. While peace accords in African civil conflicts have a notoriously short shelf life, there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the Ouagadougou accord—and, should it hold, to derive some lessons from this experience applicable to other African conflicts.[35]

First, the peace agreement came out of direct negotiations between the two principal forces in the conflict, the government of the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire, led by President Gbagbo, which controlled the southern part of the country, and the FN rebels which, protected behind the ill-named “zone of confidence” carved across the middle of the country by the United Nations Operations in Côte d’Ivoire (ONUCI) and the independent French military intervention, the “Force Licorne,” controlled the northern regions. Thus, unlike the long list of stillborn peace initiatives—Linas-Marcoussis, Accra I, Accra II, Accra III, Pretoria I, and Pretoria II, to name just the six major ones—and the batch of UN Security Council resolutions, the Ouagadougou accord was not an outside imposition on the parties. In January, President Gbagbo requested that President Blaise Compaoré, the current chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), use his good offices to facilitate direct negotiations between the government and the rebels. As President Gbagbo noted in his March 9 address to the Ivorian nation, “conflicts in Africa can only be resolved through solutions found and proposed by Africans themselves.”

Second, the way forward was not found in the usual set piece international conferences which are little better than choreographed media circuses with little substance once the global luminaries who parachute in leave for the next stop on their itinerary. Instead the Ouagadougou accord came together out of painfully lengthy discussions in the Burkinabè capital between the representatives of the Ivorian government, led by President Gbagbo’s special assistant, Désiré Tagro, and the FN delegation led by Soro’s deputy, Louis-André Dacoury-Tabley. Hence, neither side can subsequently claim that outsiders imposed a deal upon them. As FN leader Soro underlined in an address on March 13 from the rebel capital of Bouaké, the direct dialogue “diminished the distrust of the Forces Nouvelles and allowed them to progressively engage in discussions…with all the time necessary.”

Third, unlike peace deals where, in order to get signatures on paper—the perennial triumph of process over substance!—mediators have purposely avoided tackling touchy subjects, the Ouagadougou accord went into considerable detail on the issues that, once the failed putsch had been turned into a full-fledged civil conflict, had become the most divisive: national identity (the FN claims to represent northerners who allege systematic discrimination and disenfranchisement, although the government argues that many of them are not legally Ivorian at all), the composition of the military (many of the original rebels in 2002 were soldiers whose units were about to be demobilized, while many FN commanders have been self-promoted in the ranks as the conflict evolved), political power sharing (other than President Gbagbo, elected by a plurality in contested elections in 2000, the composition of the government has been repeatedly reshuffled and manipulated, sometimes by troubling international diktat, these last few years), and the holding of elections (now two years overdue). The Ouagadougou agreement, as FN leader Soro noted is “a good political compromise which neither anoints a winner nor designates a loser.” It even has annexed to it a detailed timetable for implementing the terms of the deal.

Fourth, the Ouagadougou accord is forward looking. While promising an amnesty for crimes relating to national security during the conflict—and, commendably, excluding war crimes and crimes against humanity from the amnesty—the agreement points to way towards future progress with unambiguous benchmarks. In April, an integrated command center, which according to the terms of the deal is “to unify the forces of the combatants” in view of “setting up a new defense and security forces committed to the values of integrity and republican morality,” was set up on schedule with accord’s timetable. Subsequently, the institutional framework for monitoring progress which will include not only include the two principal forces, but also civilian leaders like Alassane Dramane Ouattara, who was excluded from the 2000 presidential ballot, and former president Henri Konan Bedié. Likewise in April, a new unity government was sworn in with Soro taking the place of Charles Konan Banny, the UN-installed prime minister. After that, the “zone of confidence” was dismantled, clearing the way for the gradual reunification of the country as public administration, including the registration of citizens, gets underway again. Simultaneously, combatants will be demobilized, disarmed, and reintegrated. The process will culminate with national elections, organized by Ivorians themselves, by the beginning of 2008. Just three days ago, President Gbagbo visited Bouaké, in the formerly rebel-held north, for the first time in five years to attend a “flame of peace” ceremony from which a torch will be borne to all nineteen regions of the country as a sign of national reconciliation. Together with Prime Minister Soro, the president set fire to pile of stockpiled weapons to signify the end of the conflict.

Is all this too good to be true? Perhaps. I have been around Africa enough to take a skeptical view of most promises. On the other hand, during a visit to Abidjan in January, I had the opportunity to sit down with the leadership of the National Institute of Statistics (INS), the body which has been charged with carrying out the citizen identification and voter registration exercises on behalf of the relevant authorities. On a purely technical level, INS is better prepared than almost any other analogous African body. The “direct data capture” units used are, in fact, more sophisticated (and secure) than the voter registration processes of most county clerks in the U.S. The question, therefore, is not one of technical feasibility, but rather one of political will. I am encouraged that President Gbagbo reiterated in his March national address the sentiments which he expressed as a hope at the time in a private meeting with me and two colleagues in January: “The international community has always had the initiative in the negotiations and [failed] peace agreements in Côte d’Ivoire. Now the discussions were initiated and undertaken by Ivorians themselves…We must take ownership of this agreement and make it successful, because any failure in implementation would be catastrophic since no other opportunity of negotiations will be offered to us. All other ways and means of recourse have been exhausted.”

Subregional Guarantors. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is perhaps the best example of a subregional willingness to lead and accept greater responsibility for addressing conflict in one’s neighborhood and has a highly evolved institutional framework for this engagement.

ECOWAS was established in 1975 with the mandate of promoting cooperation between the member states[36] and facilitating the integration of their economic, social, and cultural sectors in order to eventually form a monetary and economic union. This mandate was strengthened in the 1993 Treaty of Cotonou[37] which updated the regional body’s structure and operations in order to accelerate the process of economic integration and strengthen political ties. The commitment to political coordination was preceded by the adoption of two defense-related protocols, the “Protocol on Non-Aggression” of 1978 and the “Protocol Relating to Mutual Assistance of Defence” of 1981, as well as by the “Declaration of Political Principles”[38] by the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government in 1991. The defense protocols envisioned the organization’s member states intervening militarily, even within the borders of another member, in cases of armed conflict threatening the peace and security of the region. Alongside the right of “humanitarian intervention,” the principle of collective regional security was first invoked to justify ECOWAS’s 1990-1997 intervention in the Liberian civil war.[39] The Liberian intervention led to operations in Sierra Leone (1997-2000),[40] which included acting on the request of the then-Organization of African Unity to employ force to reverse a coup against President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah—an event that “marked the first time a regional organization requested intervention in a member state to end human suffering and promote democracy,” thus “authoriz[ing] another regional organization to employ force on its behalf.”[41] In the wake of the Liberian and Sierra Leonean interventions, the decision was made through another protocol to create a permanent structure for military cooperation through the establishment of the ‘Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security’ in 1999.[42] Subsequently, the regional body has been involved in peacekeeping operations in Guinea-Bissau (1999) and Côte d’Ivoire (ongoing since 2003).

It was with a view to addressing the root causes of the conflicts that had so vexed the region that the 25^th Conference of Heads of State and Government of ECOWAS, meeting in Dakar in December 2001, adopted the “Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance” supplementary to the “Mechanism” protocol.[43] This latest document acknowledges that, for all their historical diversity and differences both of colonial histories and post-independence development paths, the respective constitutions of the member states of the regional organization have arrived at a set of “constitutional convergence principles” shared by all, including: separation of powers; independence of the judiciary; “every accession to power must be made through free, fair and transparent elections”; “zero tolerance for power obtained or maintained by unconstitutional means”; “popular participation in decision-making, strict adherence to democratic principles and decentralization of power at all levels of governance”; freedom from ethnic, religious, regional or racial discrimination; and freedom of association and of the press (Article 1).

The Protocol also on to stipulates that “all elections shall be organized on the dates or at periods fixed by the Constitution or the electoral laws” and “no substantial modification shall be made to the electoral laws in the last six months before the election” without a broad consensus of the political actors (Article 2). The document goes on to specify the modalities for the administration of transparent elections within member states (Articles 3-10) and ECOWAS’s role in assisting with and monitoring the polls (Articles 11-18). Other thematic sections of the document deal with the role of military and security forces in democracies (Articles 19-24); poverty reduction and social dialogue (Articles 25-28); education, culture, and religion (Articles 29-31); the rule of law, human rights and good governance (Arts 32-39); and women, children, and youth (Arts 40-43). In the event that democratic governance suffers a reversal in a member state or there is a “massive violation of human rights” therein, “ECOWAS may impose sanctions on the State concerned,” including suspension of the offending member state from decision-making bodies and processes of the organization (Article 45).

While the Protocol does not legally enter into force until at least nine signatories ratify it (Article 49), this did not prevent ECOWAS from putting its principles into practice in early 2005 at which time only eight countries had ratified the agreement. On February 5, 2005, President Gnassingbé Eyadema of Togo, then African leader with the longest tenure in office, died unexpectedly after a heart attack. Two days later, the late president’s son, Fauré Gnassingbé, was installed as head of state by the military after Togo’s constitution was hastily amended to preclude the mandated succession of the National Assembly speaker to the interim presidency. The putschists even amended the document further to allow the 38-year-old son to remain in office until 2008, when the late father’s most recent term would have expired.

While concerted pressure from ECOWAS did not succeed in restoring the displaced parliamentary speaker, Ouattara Fambaré Natchaba, as interim head of state, Fauré Gnassingbé did relinquish the presidency on February 25 and to allow the constitutionally-mandated presidential poll—which he subsequently won as the candidate of the Rassemblement du Peuple Togolais—held on April 25. While the Togolese process was not perfect, that ECOWAS intervened as forcibly as it did and obtained, a respect for constitutional order constitutes remarkable progress that commends the Protocol as a model for supranational peer review and guarantees not only of security, but also of emergent democratic politics. Later this year, for example, Togo will hold legislative poll.

A particularly interesting manifestation of this ethic of co-responsibility in contained in the ECOWAS previously mentioned “Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security”—itself an elaborate framework encompassing the security sector and its relationship to peace in the region. In addition to the heads of state and government who, gathered together as the Mechanism’s “Authority,” constitute its highest decision making body (Article 6), and the “Mediation and Security Council,” comprised of nine member states, seven elected by the Authority as well as that body’s current and previous chairs (Article 8), the document provides for the establishment of a novel organ, the “Council of Elders” (Article 20).

Each year, the regional group’s executive secretary compiles a list of “eminent personalities”—who need not be Africans—who can “use their good offices and experience to play the role of mediators, conciliators and facilitators,” including the representatives of various stakeholder groups in society like women, traditional rulers, religious and political personalities. Once the list is approved by the Mediation and Security Council, these some of these “elders” may be called upon when needed to constitute a “council” to undertake such missions as might be assigned to them by the ECOWAS secretary-general. While the council held its inaugural meeting in 2001, it has not yet been employed to prevent or manage conflicts. However, even its existence, predicated on the use of the power of personal relationship and moral authority held by its individual members, is not only a recognition of these individuals, but also a shows the promise of adapting an approach to conflict resolution that builds on the traditional African respect for such “elder” figures. In fact, it might well be that, rather than awaiting the crisis to occur, there might also be cases where these “elders” could be employed in preventive diplomatic missions where the Mechanism’s early warning systems indicate developments that may lead to troubles.

African Union. The very fact that the African Union (AU) exists at all is itself an acknowledgement by African leaders that their countries needed a stronger institutional framework for common action than the old OAU. The AU’s Peace and Security Protocol of 2002[44] established a “Peace and Security Council” as the AU’s standing decision making body for the prevention, management, and resolution of conflicts and “a collective security and early-warning arrangement to facilitate timely and efficient response to conflict and crisis situations in Africa” (Article 2). To assist the Council in its work, especially in conflict prevention, a “Panel of the Wise” was constituted made up of “five highly respected African personalities from various segments of society who have made an outstanding contribution to the cause of peace, security and development on the continent” (Article 11). The members of this body are nominated by the chairperson of the Commission after consulting the AU member states and their appointments, for three year terms, are made by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government. While, once again, the Panel has yet to have the occasion to prove its mettle, its very existence represents a considerable shift from the jealous sovereignty of the Africa’s immediate post-independence period to a paradigm in which the promotion and maintenance of peace, security, and stability are responsibilities which transcend political boundaries.

The same dynamic transnational co-responsibility found in the ECOWAS Council of Elders and the AU Panel of the Wise is also present in the “New Partnership for Africa’s Development” (NEPAD) strategic framework which was formally adopted (originally as the “New Africa Initiative”) by the 37^th summit of the OAU in July 2001.[45] While noting that “the impoverishment of the African continent was accentuated primarily by the legacy of colonialism, the Cold War, [and] the workings of the international economic system,” the document also acknowledged the part played by “the inadequacies of and shortcomings in the policies pursued by many countries in the post-independence era” (para. 18). Consequently, with the increased democratization on the continent, NEPAD envisions greater African ownership of development since “the hopes of Africa’s peoples for a better life can no longer rest on the magnanimity of others” (para. 44).

NEPAD is governed by a Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee (HSGIC) which meets every four months and is composed twenty countries, to make for three representatives per AU region. The AU chair and the chair of the AU Commission are also ex ufficio members of the HSGIC. The HSGIC is tasked with “identifying strategic issues that need to be researched, planned and managed at the continental level; setting up mechanisms for reviewing progress in the achievement of mutually agreed targets and compliance with mutually agreed standards; and reviewing progress in the implementation of past decisions and taking appropriate steps to address problems and delays” (para. 201), reporting annually to the AU summit, NEPAD ultimate governing authority. It is assisted in its work by a Secretariat, based in Pretoria, South Africa (para. 199).

The first HSGIC meeting in October 2001, “agreed that African leaders should set up parameters for good governance to guide their activities at both the political and economic levels. In this regard, it decided that, at its next meeting, it would consider and adopt an appropriate peer review mechanism and a code of conduct.”[46] The next meeting, in March 2002, adopted the “African Peer Review Mechanism” (APRM) “as an instrument voluntarily acceded to by African members of the African Union for the purpose of self-monitoring” which “will foster the adoption of policies, standards and practices that will lead to political stability, high economic growth, sustainable development and accelerated regional integration of the African continent.”[47]

The APRM is a voluntary mechanism open to all member states of the AU who deposit a memorandum of understanding with the NEPAD Secretariat, based in Midrand, South Africa, pledging adherence to the NEPAD Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance[48] and undertaking to submit to and facilitate periodic peer reviews. Currently, twenty-five countries—almost half of the membership of the African Union—have signed on to the APRM.[49] Although there have been a number of technical and political difficulties with fully implementing the mechanism, the APRM stipulates that eighteen months after accession, a state party must submit to a “base review” with subsequent “periodic reviews” taking place every two to three years. States may also ask for a ‘requested review’ for their own reasons as well as be subjected to a ‘crisis review’ if signs of impending political or economic difficulties warrant.[50] In general, the review process begins with a “self-assessment” covering democracy and political governance, economic governance and management, corporate governance, and socio-economic development. The questions were formally adopted in February 2004 by the first meeting of the African Peer Review Forum of states who are party to the APRM.[51] The entire process is consultative, rather than punitive in nature.

While the committee of the heads of state is the final authority in the process, central to it is African Peer Review Panel of seven “eminent persons” of “high moral stature and demonstrated commitment to the ideals of Pan Africanism” who have “expertise in the areas of political governance, macro-economic management, public financial management and corporate governance.” Each country to be reviewed is assigned to one of these individuals, who considers and reviews reports, and, in consultation with his or her colleagues, makes recommendations to the APR Forum. The goal of this involved process is to arrive at a “Programme of Action” to be undertaken by the government that has been reviewed.

NEPAD/APRM and other nascent institutions like the Peace and Security Council of the African Union are works in progress and their intricate institutional structures seem rather confusing, even to their own architects. However, despite these handicaps, they represent significant advances in governance on the African continent, reflective of both a will to transcend the difficulties of the colonial and independence eras and to advance along mutually-supportive path to a better future.

Finding Common Ground with Africans and with Ourselves

Given what I outlined earlier, it is not surprising that the most recent iteration of the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, a document which identified the international counterterrorism effort as the country’s top national security priority, affirmed that “Africa holds growing geo-strategic importance and is a high priority of this Administration.”[52] However, the 2006 National Security Strategy also, quite appropriately in my judgment, went out of its way to state that “our security depends on partnering with Africans.”

I have already noted the significant achievements of the current administration with regard to assistance toward Africa, including the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and the union of position of Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance with that of Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the person with the rank of Deputy Secretary of State. These initiatives build upon the foundation of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), originally signed in the previous administration, which has created some significant openings for some African countries.

However, given the looming nature of the terrorist threat as well as the newly-recognized geostrategic importance of Africa, it is not surprising that the U.S. military has also taken the lead in America’s new engagement across the continent.

To date, the largest commitment has been the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), a unit created by the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in late 2002 and based since May 2003 at a former French Foreign Legion outpost in Djibouti, Camp Lemonier. The approximately 1,500 personnel from each branch of the U.S. military, American civilian employees, and coalition forces, who make up CJTF-HOA have as their mission “detecting, disrupting and ultimately defeating transnational terrorist groups operating in the region” of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia, and Sudan (as well as Yemen across the Gulf of Aden).[53] CJTF-HOA pursues its objective of enhancing the long-term stability of its area of responsibility (AOR) by a combination of civil-military operations and supporting international governmental and non-governmental organizations, including advisors who have assisted the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS). The task force also undertakes more traditional military-to-military training and other collaborative efforts, including some which certainly enabled Ethiopian forces to launch their offensive against the Somali Islamists last year. In certain exceptional circumstances when actionable intelligence was available, the physical proximity of CJTF-HOA to the frontlines has enabled the U.S. to quickly and directly engage against high-value terrorist targets, as was the case last January when an Air Force AC-130 gunship launched a strike against what was described as “principal al-Qaeda leadership” in southern Somalia[54] or in June when the guided-missile destroyer USS Chafee shelled an al-Qaeda cell in the northern part of the country, killing six foreign terrorists.

At the same time CENTCOM was developing its Djibouti-based task force, the State Department launched a similar multilateral program, the Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI), a modest effort to provide border security and other counterterrorism assistance to Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger using personnel from U.S. Army Special Forces attached to the Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR) of the U.S. European Command (EUCOM). As a follow-up to PSI, the State Department-funded Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative (TSCTI) was launched in 2005 with support from the Department of Defense’s Operation Enduring Freedom-Trans Sahara (OEF-TS). TSCTI added Algeria, Nigeria, Morocco, Senegal, and Tunisia to the original four PSI countries. In addition to the Pentagon-led efforts, the Sahel countries have also received support from State Department programs—especially the Anti-Terrorism Assistance (ATA) program and the Terrorist Interdiction Program (TIP)—and other U.S. government agencies, including USAID and the Department of the Treasury.

These efforts in the Sahelian subregion have already borne fruit. For example, Amari Saïfi, a former Algerian army officer-turned-GSPC leader better known by his nom de guerre Abderrazak al-Para (“the paratrooper”) who was responsible for the daring 2003 kidnapping of thirty-two European tourists (they were ransomed for $6 million), was himself captured after an unprecedented chase involving personnel from seven countries who pursued him across the open deserts of Mali, Niger, and Chad (the hunt was directed by U.S. Navy P-3C Orion long range surveillance aircraft); Saïfi now serves a life sentence in far-less-open confines of an Algerian prison.[55]

While United States has historically deployed naval forces to Africa only to rescue stranded expatriates—Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry’s Cape Verde-based transatlantic slave trade-interdicting Africa Squadron in the 1840s being a notable exception— EUCOM’s naval component, U.S. Naval Forces Europe (NAVEUR), has taken the lead in maritime engagement in the Gulf of Guinea. In late 2005, the dock landing ship USS Gunston Hall and the catamaran HSV-2 Swift conducted five weeks of joint drills with forces from several West African nations, including Ghana, Guinea, and Senegal. In early 2006, the submarine tender USS Emory S. Land deployed to the region with some 1,400 sailors and Marines to boost maritime security and strengthen partnerships, calling on ports from Senegal to Angola. And last November, the Department of State and the Department of Defense co-sponsored a ministerial-level conference in Cotonou, Benin, on “Maritime Safety and Security in the Gulf of Guinea” which included representatives from eleven Gulf of Guinea countries as well as delegates from the U.S., Europe, Senegal, South Africa, the African Union, and regional and international organizations. This fall the USS Fort McHenry will be in the Gulf of Guinea on an extended six-month deployment as part of a multinational maritime-security-and-safety initiative that partners with West African countries to train teams from eleven African countries along to gulf, helping them to build their security capabilities, especially maritime domain awareness. NAVEUR’s commander, Admiral Henry G. “Harry” Ulrich III, has described the Fort McHenry’s mission, which he characterized as within “the spirit of AFRICOM and the initial operating capacity of AFRICOM,” as “the tipping point for us [which will] move this whole initiative of maritime safety and security ahead.”[56]

Targeted grants from the State Department’s International Military Education and Training (IMET) program have also been effective in building the capacities of America’s African partners. During the 2007 fiscal year alone, some 1,400 African military officers and personnel are expected to receive professional development at U.S. military schools and other training assistance at the cost of some $15.6 million.[57] On a significantly broader scale, the Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI), which in 2004