From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Wed Jan 14 2009 - 16:47:25 EST
http://www.enoughproject.org/publications/obama-africa-and-peace
Obama, Africa, and Peace
By Africa Policy Experts John Norris and John Prendergast
Jan 13, 2009
Reframing the Overall Approach to U.S. Relations with Africa
The Obama administration has an opportunity to fundamentally remake U.S.
relations with Africa during its tenure, and a cornerstone of that
effort needs to be a much greater emphasis on the most cost-effective
element of our foreign policy tools: peacemaking. An investment in
ending some of the world's deadliest, most destructive, and costliest
wars would yield great results in those countries and the positive
repercussions from such engagement would rebound across the continent.
As the first president of the United States with immediate African
roots, President Obama not only has an important reservoir of goodwill
on the continent, he also has the ability to move beyond the tendentious
"North-South" debate between developed and less developed countries that
has made more transformational policies difficult to attain. Efforts by
the dying generation of Africa's strong men who believe they should rule
for life, such as Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, to portray
President Obama as a former colonial master will have little resonance
in Africa or elsewhere. President Obama will represent a fresh start,
but the problems facing Africa and how best to address them will be no
less acute.
Equally important, an Obama administration can also leave behind the
"for-us-or-against-us" strategies of the Bush administration that tended
to ignore the worst behavior of "allies" while demonizing every action
of those who were deemed "enemies." The Bush approach was in many ways a
return to a Cold War calculus and approach to relations with the
continent that did little to ameliorate the fundamental forces driving
conflict on the continent or to improve the overall capacity of states
to address such tensions. To be fair, the Bush administration did make a
considerable investment in HIV/AIDS prevention in Africa through the
President's Emergency Plan for AIDS relief, or PEPFAR, and also deeply
engaged in pursuit of an eventual peace deal between the Sudanese
government and southern-based rebels. The Obama administration will need
a much more nuanced approach, and it will need to work more closely with
both governments and civil society on the continent to shape a shared
agenda.
Given its thinly veiled hostility toward most forms of multilateral
institution building, the Bush administration also placed limited
emphasis on these issues in the context of Africa, despite a glaring
need for Africa's regional institutions to improve their capability and
effectiveness. The Bush administration's low regard for the United
Nations in general also largely precluded the Security Council from
playing an effective role in addressing Africa's multiple crises.
It is essential that the new administration invest significantly in
peacemaking and take a smarter, more comprehensive approach to this
peacemaking. However, it is vital that these investments in peacekeeping
are accompanied by long- term investments in development, crisis
prevention, and in shaping African regional institutions that are built
around shared values. Too often, membership in African regional
organizations has simply been a matter of geography-with democracies and
autocracies lumped together. Yet, it is impossible to imagine effective
regional institutions in Africa that lack a shared commitment to certain
essential values, including democratic government, the responsibility to
protect their own populations, and relatively open trade. Indeed,
regional organizations in Europe and Latin America have only become more
effective when certain membership criteria were added on top of
geographic considerations.
The African Union in particular, has a wildly mixed record in this
regard. As an organization, it has been far too willing to practice
lowest common denominator policies, such as its relative tolerance of
the Sudan regime's massive human rights abuses in Darfur. Similarly,
both the African Union and the Southern African Development Community
have struggled to come to terms with President Robert Mugabe's ruinous
rule in Zimbabwe. Yet, the recent decision by the African Union to
suspend Guinea's membership unless the military officers who conducted
the coup in that country restore "constitutional rule" is exactly the
kind of behavior a regional organization should be demanding. This also
suggests that with the right kind of long-term support from the United
States the mantra of "African solutions to African problems" could move
beyond empty rhetoric. This will require two important developments:
African regional institutions need to become increasingly responsive to
the needs of African citizens and not just the prerogatives of African
heads of state.\
The broader international community must recognize that war crimes,
crimes against humanity, and genocide are not "African problems." They
are international problems that demand international solutions.
Reshaping the overall approach to Africa will also demand that the Obama
administration face some hard choices. Development resources are
increasingly dominated by spending on HIV/AIDS. While responding to the
HIV/AIDS pandemic is a crucial priority, if U.S. development assistance
becomes skewed too far in this direction, it will become very difficult
to make long- term investments in state-building, the rule of law, basic
education, and economic growth-the elements that are fundamental to
changing Africa's course over the long haul.
The administration will also need to take a hard look at continued
agricultural subsidies in the United States. These subsidies continue to
drain federal funds at a time when there are unprecedented budget
pressures, while simultaneously making it harder for many African states
to compete in one of the few areas where they enjoy a comparative
advantage. Cutting these subsidies would benefit Americans in three
ways: They would pay fewer tax dollars to support unneeded subsidies;
they would enjoy the fruits of greater competition as consumers; and,
over time, they would need to invest fewer dollars in development and
humanitarian relief as Africa has the chance to achieve greater
prosperity The same can be said for European agricultural subsidies.
While it may sound strange to tie the issue of agricultural subsidies
back to the questions of war and peace on the continent, it is essential
to do so. For too long, U.S. efforts in development, economic
development, trade, humanitarian relief, and diplomacy on the continent
have been poorly connected threads, and all of these efforts have
collectively suffered as a result.
A Focus on peacemaking
Sudan, Somalia, Congo, Chad, and northern Uganda are part of a region of
east and central Africa that is battered by chronic conflict, with
millions dead and even more displaced over the last couple decades. It
is the deadliest zone of conflict in the world since World War II. Congo
and Sudan alone account for nearly 8 million deaths due to the legacy of
war in the past two decades.
As part of its fundamental rethink of Africa policy, the Obama
administration will need to shift U.S. policy from simply managing the
symptoms of Africa's biggest wars-in the form of billions of dollars in
humanitarian aid and peace observation missions that are often unable to
effectively protect civilians-to ending these conflicts. The existing
model of conflict resolution in Africa has focused on one conflict at a
time, treating Africa's wars as if they occur in isolation. Extreme
examples of this include dealing with Sudan's north-south war while
setting the issue of Darfur and eastern Sudan to the side; focusing on
the situation in Somalia without effectively addressing the standoff
between Ethiopia and Eritrea that fuels the conflict; and negotiating in
northern Uganda without involving or sanctioning Sudan's ruling party,
which has long supported the Lord's Resistance Army as a proxy force.
Most of Africa's wars are complex and regional in nature, and they
cannot be addressed by a bureaucratic process that encourages
stove-piping rather than coordination and synthesis.
The new administration needs to make an investment in competent,
sustained conflict resolution, backed by focused leverage that
transforms the logic of regional combatants from war to peace.
Enhancing U.S. capacities for peace
The basic elements of an enhanced peacemaking strategy would include
the following:
a) Diplomatic capacity: Additional diplomatic slots should be
assigned and staffed in embassies throughout East and Central Africa
with the primary emphasis of these positions on support for various
peace processes in the region. Country teams in each embassy would work
closely with Washington and with existing regional efforts to step up
support for peace efforts. U.S. diplomats would meet quarterly in the
region to coordinate peacemaking strategies, strategize, and share
information. Country and issue experts would be hired and shared
regionally to support the ongoing and new peace processes with a focus
on making them more effective. In general, the U.S. embassies on the
continent are not only grossly understaffed, but are badly lacking
country and issue experts with specific peace-building experience.
b) Inter-Agency task force: A senior official from the State
Department or National Security Council should oversee and coordinate a
Task Force that helps shape the diplomatic strategy in each of the
conflicts of East and Central Africa: Sudan, Congo, Somalia, Chad,
Ethiopia-Eritrea, Central African Republic, and the Lord's Resistance
Army threat. The situation in Zimbabwe would also likely be included in
this group. The Task Force can ensure the sharing of resources,
personnel, and intelligence across the region to guarantee maximum
coordination and provide strategic direction to multilateral efforts on
each of the processes. Additional country and issue experts should be
contracted to support the work of the task force and to purposefully
think outside the box of existing approaches. Staff should also be
placed in New York and Brussels to support enhanced diplomacy within the
U.N. Security Council and European Union.
c) Special envoys: When appropriate, the president should appoint
special envoys to add gravitas to peace efforts for specific conflicts.
Envoys would work closely with the enhanced regional and D.C.-based
capacities, and would be deployed when key messages need to be delivered
or support for negotiations is required. Special envoys are by no means
a magic bullet, and the effectiveness of many envoys in the past has
been undercut by simmering tensions with existing bureaucratic
structures and officials. This suggests that special envoys should only
be deployed when they are sufficiently senior to command respect within
the system and actually serve as a focal point for coordination and
effective policymaking. The relationship between any such special envoy
and the task force described above would need to be clearly articulated
before such a person was deployed.
d) Washington Meetings: When appropriate, the Obama administration
should host ministerial or working-level meetings in Washington with key
actors, including key diplomatic allies, to help jump-start stalled
peace processes or launch new ones. The ability of the United States to
bring warring parties to the negotiating table has been sadly
underutilized in recent years.
e) Clear top-level leadership: Senior-level officials in the
administration should run point for their departments and agencies to
ensure maximal coordination and rapid response. Cabinet officials should
clearly assign responsibility for leading on African conflict resolution
issues to a senior official within his or her department or agency, thus
minimizing confusion over responsibility. At times, these assigned
officials could take a more direct role in support of negotiations if
appropriate, and in close coordination with the Task Force described
above.
The three deadliest conflicts in Africa
Sudan, eastern Congo, and Somalia are the three deadliest conflicts on
the continent and deserve immediate attention and a new strategy. At the
same time, the administration will also need to develop new plans and a
new approach to dealing with the Lord's Resistance Army, relations
between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and the general situation in Zimbabwe.
Forthcoming Enough papers will address the Lord's Resistance Army and
Zimbabwe.
With regard to the three biggest conflicts on the African continent, we
offer the following recommendations:
1. Sudan
Nowhere else is a new approach to making peace more needed than in
Darfur and southern Sudan, where Enough has called for a concerted
"peace surge." There remains no comprehensive, internationally supported
initiative for making peace in Darfur, and no effective and high-level
strategy for implementing the existing peace deal for southern Sudan.
The Obama administration should focus on helping build an effective
peace process, maximally coordinating with China as the biggest investor
in Sudan, with Qatar and its fledgling efforts, and other key Arab
states that have economic leverage with the Khartoum regime and who do
not want to see their investments put at risk by a widening conflict in
Sudan.
The timing is auspicious. The International Criminal Court will likely
issue an indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir early in 2009,
and the United States will have an opportunity to quietly build an
effective coalition of countries that demands peace and justice for
Sudan in the form of a peace deal that addresses the root causes in
Darfur, the implementation of the north-south peace deal, steps to
ensure accountability, and a practical strategy to remove Bashir as
president.
Beyond support for the ICC indictments of Bashir and some of the rebel
leaders, leverage should be built through intensive work in the U.N.
Security Council to go after the assets of Sudan's ruling party
(particularly President Bashir, his family, and associates) and rebel
leaders who are undermining peace in Darfur. Other leverage-building
initiatives could include the initiation of NATO planning for a credible
no-fly zone with muscular follow-up actions in the event that the
Sudanese regime cuts off humanitarian aid access in response to the
imposition of the U.N. ban on offensive military flights. The effort to
fully staff the U.N. force in Darfur at 26,000 should be accompanied by
a shift in the U.N. forces mandate that would allow it to protect
civilians who want to go home to their villages of origin, which should
be the ultimate goal of our Darfur policy. In addition, the
administration should take a hard look at steps to increase pressure on
Port Sudan, a vital transportation link for Sudanese oil exports,
recognizing that this would require intensive diplomacy with China given
its impact on oil shipments.
Lastly, the administration will need to take a much more integrated look
at the problems spilling over the borders in Chad, the Central African
Republic, and western Sudan, recognizing that state weakness and
internal conflicts in both Chad and the CAR continue to make the Darfur
conflict more difficult to resolve.
2. Eastern Congo
Local, national, regional, and international factors continue to fuel
the deadly war in eastern Congo. At the local level, disputes over land
and citizenship contribute to considerable tensions. At the national
level, poor governance and fundamental insecurity have created a vacuum
in which numerous spoilers have considerable room to operate. At the
regional level, militias such as the Rwandan FDLR, the Ugandan Lord's
Resistance Army, and very bad relations between Kinshasa and Kigali have
created an environment of permanent instability and hostility. Lastly,
the international trade in minerals has created a self-financing
mechanism for militias and others hoping to continue to exploit violence
to their own gain. The Obama administration should focus on more
robustly supporting existing conflict resolution efforts led by former
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and former Tanzanian President
Benjamin Mkapa, and taking action to help end the atrocities being
committed against civilian populations. Priorities would include:
High-level support for a negotiated deal with the main rebel groups and
a practical road map for implementing this deal
Leadership in fostering and provision of technical support for a
multilateral military and sanctions strategy to deal with the FDLR and
CNDP
Political and intelligence support for the International Criminal
Court's investigations into war crimes in the Kivus
Real support for security sector reform and DDR strategies
An investigation into what must be done to end the predatory extraction
of "conflict minerals" in the East, the insatiable demand for which
traces back to the electronics industry in the United States, Asia, and
Europe.
Improving the situation in eastern Congo will demand some very tough
diplomacy, and a firm message from Washington that the administration
will not tolerate either the Government of Congo or Rwanda offering
direct support to militia groups on the ground. The use of these proxy
militias continues to be a cancer in the region.
3. Somalia
As Ethiopia withdraws from Somalia, there will be an opportunity to
create a more rational diplomatic and security strategy aimed at
isolating the hardline Islamist elements in the Shabaab militia. The
Obama administration should focus on buttressing and upgrading the
existing U.N.-led peace process (the Djibouti Process), while resisting
efforts to put in place a poorly thought out, poorly resourced, and
poorly staffed U.N. peacekeeping mission with a murky mandate.
Much more work will need to be done to build a genuine government of
national unity from the bottom up, with the objective of creating a real
power-sharing formula that includes key clan-based leaders, businessmen,
and moderate Islamists. A wider security strategy focused on building an
alliance of clan-based networks and functioning local governing
authorities from Somaliland, Puntland, and throughout the South would
further isolate hard-line elements within the Shabaab if it feeds into
the transitional governing authority and supports the provision of
security and social services, the two things Somalis most crave.
Targeted sanctions should be aimed at hard-line Islamists and
reactionary warlords who continue to undermine peace and the
construction of a legitimate government and the external actors that
support them.
Furthermore, a parallel diplomatic effort should be launched to deal
with the simmering Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict, including conclusive
border demarcation followed by internationally backed bilateral talks on
issues of mutual concern. The standoff between these two countries has
helped fuel conflict in Somalia over the past decade. The latest chapter
in their proxy competition has been particularly deadly and dangerous,
further destabilizing Somalia and bringing the two states closer to the
possibility of renewed interstate war, an outcome that would be
devastating for the Horn of Africa.
Changing the tone
The Obama administration could also do a great deal to change the tone
in how the U.S. government talks about Africa in public statements, at
the United Nations, and in its policy documents. Major opportunities
exist in East and Central Africa, and because expectations are so high
throughout Africa, President-elect Obama will have more space than usual
to help take the lead in forging a global commitment to end these crises
rather than to continue managing their symptoms.
The good news is that we know how to resolve complex conflicts. Working
closely with African peacemakers and peace advocates on the ground in
war zones throughout the continent, sustained and competent
international diplomacy contributed to the end of wars in Liberia,
Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Burundi, and southern Sudan. It helped
dismantle apartheid in South Africa and helped guide the birth of the
nation of Namibia.
Africa's remaining wars require outside-the-box thinking in this new era
of diminishing resources. The cheapest and most effective instrument we
have is vast American experience in peacemaking. The cost-effectiveness
of ending wars rather than continuing to manage their symptoms is
undeniable. It requires a decision by the incoming president that
containing the damage from the status quo is an untenable goal, which
must be replaced by a full-scale multilateral effort to resolve Africa's
multiple, interlocking wars. The costs of reassigning diplomats to these
war zones (real transformational diplomacy) and appointing a handful of
senior officials and envoys where appropriate are relatively negligible
when compared with the billions we will continue to spend on clean-up,
conflict containment, and counterterrorism in the context of the present
"conflict management" approach.
The Obama administration begins it work facing a host of deadly
conflicts in Africa and few easy solutions. Yet President Obama also has
a historic opportunity to fundamentally reshape relations between the
United States and the African continent in a way that will be truly
transformational. Many forces and voices within America's foreign policy
bureaucracy will suggest Africa is a problem and an opportunity better
left for another day; it will take genuine leadership from the top to
make clear that the future is now.
Author:
John Prendergast and John Norris