Category Archives: AFRICOM

Open Society Report–Uganda Not Prepared for Free Election; U.S. options?

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From AFP in the Daily Nation:

Uganda’s election panel has failed to establish conditions required to hold a free and fair vote less than five months before a scheduled general election, according to report seen by AFP Wednesday.

Intimidation of the opposition and media censorship both remain pervasive and the ruling party uses government structures for political purposes, says the report commissioned by Open Society Initiative for eastern Africa, a pro-democracy group linked to American billionaire George Soros.

OSIEA hired as lead author the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights defenders, Margaret Sekaggya, though the document is not a UN report.

“The electoral commission’s failure to address constant harassment, arrests and intimidation which political groups… are subjected to by police and Kiboko (stick wielding) squads has severely undermined its credibility,” the report says.

“The commission must also address the denial of freedom of expression and speech, especially the domination of broadcast media by the government and ruling party.”

The report states it is too late for Uganda to establish ground work for a free vote, which will likely be held in late February.

This obviously presents a difficult situation for U.S. policy makers. We are training Somali soldiers in Uganda in an environment of heightened tension following the World Cup bombings in Kampala, as well as training the Ugandan military and supporting their deployment in Somalia in the AMISOM mission.

If we know that the election is simply not going to be fully legitimate up front, what are our options? We could, for instance, support Museveni in the run up to the election on the theory that since he is going to stay in power anyway, it is better to help him make it look good to promote stability. And if violence breaks out, we can support nominal power sharing of some type to placate the opposition elites. We could bring open pressure now and try to broker some type of pre-election agreement to change the environment at least to some extent–or do something similar quietly. We could stay neutral and support the process as best we can without a specific agenda and maximize our position to contribute to problem-solving in the aftermath as honest brokers. Interesting choices.

U.S. AFRICOM Troops to Congo? To attack the LRA?

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Wired has a piece on their Danger Room blog suggesting “why the US should send troops (and spooks)” to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to pursue the Lords Resistance Army, on the theory that what is missing is military capability and we are the ones that have it:

Africom is not designed to mount Afghanistan-size wars. It’s all about brief, targeted intervention, influence and the Pentagon’s new favorite word, “partnership.” “Admittedly, this is an indirect and long-term approach,” Maj. Gen. William Garrett, then-commander of Africom’s land troops, told me earlier this year. Recently, U.S. Special Forces helped form a new “model” Congolese army battalion. And earlier this month in Kinshasa, Congo’s sprawling capital, a hundred U.S. Army doctors and medics teamed up with 250 Congolese personnel for a couple weeks of training. “The U.S. has determined it wants to be more involved in Africa,” explained Army Lt. Col. Todd Johnston, the exercise commander.

So why not get involved where it can really help? That’s what advocates of U.S. action in Congo are asking. After all, this is a mineral-rich country that takes millions and millions in foreign donations, mostly from America. So find the LRA, and kill or capture the chiefs before they make an already desperate country even worse.

But do it the Africom way. No massive troop deployment. No occupation. No drawn-out conflict. No headline news in the U.S. Just a few spooks, a few commandos, some airplanes and choppers and the permission of Congolese president Joseph Kabila. By American military standards, it wouldn’t take much. But it would make life a lot safer for millions of people in Central Africa — and might help reduce the cost to the world of keeping Congo on life support. Plus, it could show the way forward for a smarter, less expensive American way of war.

There are just two problems. First, the U.S. military has tried taking out the LRA before, albeit indirectly — and failed. Last year, Ugandan and U.N. forces acting on U.S.-provided intelligence launched an offensive aimed at taking out LRA leadership. But the rebels escaped … and killed hundreds of civilians as they hacked their way deeper into the forest.

Second, despite a growing body of legislation meant to define America’s role in Congo’s conflicts, at the moment there’s no clear U.S. policy regarding Congo and no prospect of one emerging anytime soon. The U.S. military might be the best solution to Congo’s LRA problem, but it’s a solution lacking one key component: political will.

It’s a bit hard for me to understand how you can present an argument for sending US troops into the Congo, with the permission of President Joseph Kabila, to hunt down the LRA, without any serious discussion of the ramifications of this in relation to all of the other conflicts and issues in Eastern Congo involving foreign-supported militias, ethnic groups, etc. Or how you address the issues involving the fact that the LRA ranges across four different countries and originates in Uganda rather than the DRC. If you don’t cross borders, you fail and you have to stay indefinitely in the DRC to have any hope of keeping the LRA elsewhere–do you follow them into Sudan, for instance, based on permission from Joseph Kabila? Do we have US troops fighting in Uganda during the February elections?

Conceptually, I fully appreciate the impulse to act directly instead of just through training others to try to put a stop to the LRA–however, I just don’t buy this as a legitimate assessment. Part of the reason is that reading carefully, you see that what Axe is describing is not just  a lack of capability by the DRC, but also a lack of will. This makes the whole thing a bit disingenuous.

Robert Kaplan waxed poetic in the Atlantic back in 2007 at the inception of AFRICOM about the nature of the combatant command as a new “under one roof” State Department, USAID and military entity for “nation building”. Based on the GAO report issued in July on the status of AFRICOM (h/t Dr. Carl LeVan) any such ambitions are at an embryonic stage as AFRICOM has yet to formalize its own basic planning documents and at least at that time still had not really worked out how to handle the role of the Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa in Djibouti, which is the actual on-continent U.S. base. Likewise, AFRICOM as of July had only 29 people at headquarters from State and USAID and did not use any methodology to actually measure or evaluate its various programs in civil affairs, rule of law, etc., etc., which might or might not complement other things done by others from the U.S. government.

Does this piece in Wired represent the “tip of the spear” in the search for an alternative role for AFRICOM–more “rapid strike force” and less “nation building”?

When someone floats an idea and says “plus, it could show the way forward for a smarter, less expensive American way of war”, start by being afraid for your children and your wallet. And suggest that they may want to experiment on this in Afghanistan and/or Iraq first.

Democracy and Competing Objectives: “We need you to back us up”

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I also had a senior military officer, a general, say to me, “It really doesn’t help us when you all don’t come out and criticize sort of half-hearted democratic elections. You tell us ‘Democracy, Democracy’; then you accept when we don’t have fully up to a minimal level of standard, because you’ve got presumably some other competing objective there that mitigates against that, because otherwise we don’t understand the point of continuing to strive for that standard. We need you to back us up and to back up our societies.”

This was Kate Almquist, now Senior Fellow for Security and Development at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, at a Military Strategy Forum on AFRICOM at CSIS in July. Ms. Almquist was Assistant Director for Africa at USAID from May 2007 to 2009. She is speaking on a panel, relating her recent discussions with senior African military leaders at the Africa Center in response to a question about “competing objectives” regarding U.S. “strategic partners” including Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia, and “how do we know U.S. military support is not increasing autocratic tendencies and not decreasing democratic space?”

Since this event we’ve had a substandard election season in Rwanda–as well as the leak of a draft UN report using the term genocide in reference to Rwandan activity in the DRC. In Uganda, Museveni has announced formally that he is running for re-election, while continuing to refuse action to relinquish the unilateral appointment of the Electoral Commission. At the same time, Rwanda is threatening to pull its “peacekeeping” soldiers out of Darfur, and Uganda is offering an additional 10,000 soldiers to be “peacekeepers” in Somalia. The conundrums continue.

Here is a link to the audio and video from CSIS (also available on podcast). This discussion starts at 32:50 in the panel following General Ward’s speech.

Some optimistic observations on development and democracy, and some more aid-trade stories

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“A New Dawn for Africa” from Johnathan Dembleby in the Daily Telegraph.

The boss of the call centre was born in Nairobi but left for the States to make his fortune. He became a big player in corporate America but now he is back home, running Kenya’s largest call centre, which has contracts with Britain and the United States as well as domestically. What brought him back? “I saw a chance to make serious money here. If they can do it in India, why not Kenya?” He abhors Africa’s “begging-bowl image” and the cronyism and corruption that bedevil his own country, but he is an optimist. “Of course we need better leadership but Kenya is full of entrepreneurs – that’s the way forward.”
. . . .
There are scores, hundreds, thousands of such examples. It is not yet a flood but it is more than a trickle as a steady stream of African émigrés return to make a better life for themselves and their families in their own countries. This “brain gain” does not yet balance the “brain drain” but it is a symptom that much of Africa is changing for the better. While the fundamental conditions for a thriving economy – the rule of law and transparency – are not yet deeply rooted in any African state, the foundations are at last being nurtured in many of them.
. . . .
Democracy is still a fragile flower but has started to bloom in many parts of the continent including Nigeria. Though instability is a constant predicament, tyrants and military dictators are now the exception not the rule. Freedom of expression, dramatically enhanced by Twitter and Facebook and the ubiquitous mobile phone, is proving exceptionally difficult to suppress except by the kind of brute force that only a tiny minority of African regimes are nowadays willing to exercise. Whether it is for these reasons or because they have been voting with their feet to confirm the latest New Scientist survey – which reports that regardless of their multiple tribulations, Nigeria is home to the happiest people on earth – some 10,000 Nigerians returned home last year. A similar flow is reported in many other countries.

None of this is to magic away the desperate circumstances that millions of Africans endure. Over the past 40 years, I have witnessed far too much hunger and too many deaths from disease, conflict and tyranny to be a Pangloss about this continent. The suffering is heart-breaking, the inequities are offensive, and the corruption is corrosive. My point is that these miseries are very far from being the whole story. The Africans I met on my 7,000-mile journey through nine countries resent the pitying and patronising attitudes that are so often adopted towards them by a Western world which – from their perspective – doles out aid with one hand while nicking the oil and minerals (by which the continent is blessed in super-abundance) with the other.

Again and again, at every level, people told me: “Don’t give us aid – trade with us fairly. Stop ripping us off.” Of course, most of them don’t mean that literally; they simply want a relationship with the rest of the world that is grounded in greater respect and understanding. Well-meaning sound bites like Tony Blair’s “Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world” inadvertently label as “victims” hundreds of millions of energetic and hard-working individuals who are resilient, inventive and enterprising – and who live in vibrant and peaceable communities that have much to teach our own dysfunctional societies.

On the aid front, “Dar rushes to spend $700M as U.S. official jets in”, from The East African. Worth noting that this $700M from the Millennium Challenge Corporation for Tanzania approaches twice the amount of the annual budget for AFRICOM. A BBC report asks five years after the Gleneagles Summit: “Did more African aid deliver fewer coups?”

And back on the entrepreneurial side, see “Trader in grasshopper delicacy hops to fortune” from the Standard.

Memorial Day

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I don’t want to let today go by without saying something in recognition of Memorial Day.  Our holiday honoring America’s war dead seemed for a time to be fading into more of a celebration of “the first day of summer” with less remembrance of sacrifices, but this year we seem to be a bit somber for a variety of reasons.

More than 1,000 Americans have died in the war in Afghanistan now, and for the first time since 2003 we have more soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen there in total than in Iraq, where we continue.  The campaign in Afghanistan is now America’s longest war–ever.   It started in the first year of the first George W. Bush administration and is now “Obama’s war” in his second year.  My son is in middle school–this war started when he was four years old.  I wonder if he will have to decide whether or not to go himself in just a few more years.

I am left with the feeling that while we are doing a better job recognizing and appreciating our men and women in the service, and honoring those who have given their lives, than at some times in the past, we are simply asking, and expecting, too much from them.  The effort in Afghanistan since late 2001 has really been more about nation building–the mission of taking out the Taliban was accomplished.  Likewise, in Iraq, the mission of taking Saddam Hussein out of power–what had not been done in 1991 that some were waiting out the Clinton years to pick back up on–was accomplished.  Since then, the real task has been building a substitute system.  These nation building tasks fall to the military because no one else knows what to do or is willing or has the resources.  In Iraq, the general in charge of the immediate post-Saddam effort was replaced by a civilian viceroy who eventually did a quick handoff to a not yet formed Iraqi government and left the military to pick up the pieces and carry on.

I pray for the success of the great projects of creating a new Afghanistan and a new Iraq, both for the men and women of these countries and for the men and women of the armed services (American and those from other countries) who have given so much to the effort–and especially for my old friend, a reservist, who is just now leaving his wife and young son to deploy to Iraq for a year.

It is in Africa that America has had very little military experience and has lost very few soldiers.  When I was in Kenya a survey came out noting that the United States was more popular in sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else in the world–including within the United States itself.  I think we have a good bit to lose by dumping our diplomacy and development efforts onto the shoulders of AFRICOM now–the military has already been tasked with too much by our civilian leadership in the past several years and is still stretched too thin.  If we need to do more in the areas of development and diplomacy, then we need to step up to the plate and do it–not make it one more assignment for the military.  It is an extraordinary thing to see the Secretary of Defense, and especially the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff actually lobbying Congress for funding for the State Department, including USAID.  This is where the responsibility should rest.

A Must Read on the U.S. Government in Africa: “Pack like its Arizona”

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There is so much that could be said in regard to a blog post I read and saved last week, but my policy on things related to the U.S. military is not to editorialize but to stay in “I report, you decide” [wink] mode.

If you are interested in understanding AFRICOM, and perhaps more generally the U.S. government in Africa, I think you really do owe it to yourself to just take a moment to read this post, “Pack Like its Arizona” , from AFRICOM public affairs.

High level U.S. Delegation carries requests to Museveni on fair elections and Iran sanctions

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Ambassador Johnnie Carson, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, was joined by the acting Assistant Secretary of State for International Security Affairs and Non-proliferation, and by General “Kip” Ward, AFRICOM Commander, in meeting Wednesday with Ugandan President Museveni. According to the Daily Monitor the U.S. was requesting that Museveni agree to reconstitute the Ugandan Electoral Commission ahead of next year’s election and support a U.S. draft resolution on Iran sanctions with Uganda’s current vote on the UN Security Council.

Museveni rejected the request regarding the Electoral Commission. Inter-Party Cooperation (“IPC”), the grouping of four opposition parties, has said that it will boycott next year’s elections if the composition of the Electoral Commission is not reconfigured. No word on the answer on the U.N. sanctions vote but it doesn’t sound positive.

On the electoral issues, The New Vision reports:

Museveni advised the delegation and other foreigners, who are approached by the “opportunistic” opposition members about Uganda’s problems to always, offer them a cup of coffee and send them back because Uganda has structures that can solve its problems.

On international issues:

Museveni challenged Americans to give him concrete evidence that the Iranians are developing nuclear weapons and that they have refused to comply with the regulations.

On Somalia, the President said there was need to take tougher action against the terrorists and ensure a roadmap towards elections so that the Somali people recover their sovereignty from the gunmen.

Discussing the Sudan issue, the Americans assured Museveni of their commitment to full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Carson said they were preparing for the eventual outcome of the referendum expected to take place in April next year.

Carson’s immediate predecessor at the Africa Bureau, Jendayi Frazer, is with the Whitaker Group, the lobbyists for the Museveni government in Washington.

GAO says U.S. Dept. of Defense needs to determine future of Horn of Africa Task Force; report highlights challenges regarding coordination and effectiveness of civil affairs/development work

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Government Accountability Office release.

The full 45 page report is here.

When we met with CJTF-HOA officials in October 2009, they estimated that, in addition to other tasks, about 60 percent of the task force’s activities focus on civil affairs projects. To conduct these quick, short-term projects, CJTF-HOA has established small civil affairs teams (for example, five or six personnel) who deploy to remote areas to engage the local communities and perform activities such as medical and veterinary care for local communities. While deployed, the teams generally nominate project proposals based on assessments they conduct as to what the communities need. The proposals are reviewed for approval by USAID, the embassy, CJTF-HOA, and AFRICOM prior to execution. During our October 2009 visit to the U.S. embassy in Ethiopia, we learned of several project proposals from civil affairs teams deployed in the country, ranging from under $10,000 to about $200,000—including the construction of a teaching farm, school renovations, training for local mechanics,

construction of an orphanage, and renovation of a bridge. None of the project proposals in Ethiopia had been approved at the time of our visit. CJTF-HOA officials told us that the project approval process can be lengthy, potentially lasting an entire year. This is generally longer than the tour rotations of some CJTF-HOA civil affairs team personnel.

. . . .

Furthermore, CJTF-HOA is coordinating with the Navy and coalition partners in CENTCOM’s Coalition Task Force 151, which conducts maritime security operations to protect shipping routes in the Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, Arabian Sea, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean. AFRICOM has also established a socio-cultural research and advisory team on a semipermanent basis at Camp Lemonnier. The team consists of one to five social scientists who conduct research and provide cultural advice to the command.

. . . .

Other CJTF-HOA proposed activities may not consider the full range of possible effects or may not be clearly aligned with AFRICOM’s mission. For example, Department of State and USAID officials we contacted at one U.S. embassy expressed concern that some of the activities that CJTF-HOA had previously proposed, such as building schools for the partner nation, did not appear to fit into a larger strategic framework, and said that they did not believe CJTF-HOA was monitoring its activities as needed to enable it to demonstrate a link between activities and mission. These officials told us that instead of leveraging long-term data to guide future activity planning, CJTF-HOA may be proposing activities without considering the full range of potential consequences. The embassy officials cited a past example where CJTF-HOA had proposed drilling a well without considering how its placement could cause conflict in clan relationships or affect pastoral routes. Officials at other embassies described similar problems with CJTF-HOA proposals. To mitigate such issues, U.S. embassies have steered CJTF-HOA toward contributing to projects identified by USAID, which are better aligned with embassy and U.S. foreign policy goals. Moreover, some CJTF-HOA activities appear to be sporadic, short-term events that may not promote sustained or long-term security engagement. Continue reading →

U.S. House Speaker Pelosi Visits AFRICOM Headquarters in Stuttgart

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U.S. Africa Command Home

The Speaker is no stranger to Africa.

“I met my husband at a course called the History of Africa South of the Sahara, and I have been studying Africa for decades,” Pelosi said in a brief interview.

“At long last the United States and the world is treating the continent, and individual countries, with the respect that they deserve,” she added.

At the conclusion of her U.S. AFRICOM engagement, Pelosi said that she was leaving confident “that General Ward and all of those working with him have a respectful attitude to the countries of Africa, want to work with them to develop solutions, and I have confidence that they will succeed.”

Once More into the Quicksand? Somali TFG Continues Drumbeats for New Western-supported Offensive; CFR Report calls for “Constructive Disengagement”

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Council on Foreign Relations report released today: “Somalia: A New Approach”. For a summary, start with the accompanying interview titled “Disengaging with Somalia” with the author, Bronwyn Bruton.

In the meantime, Simon Tisdale in The Guardian has asked “Is the Tide Turning in Somalia?–A new offensive against Islamist militias is a sign of hope for Somalia’s fragile western-backed government.

In today’s New York Times, Jeffrey Gettleman and Neil MacFarquhar report on a leaked Security Council report: “Somalia Food Aid Bypasses the Needy, UN Study Says”

Nairobi has been full of talk of a new offensive for weeks, with various editorials suggesting that the TFG could finally win with proper outside military support. See my previous post for comment on Bronwyn Bruton’s essay on the Quicksands of Somalia in Foreign Affairs.