From: Tsegai Emmanuel (emmanuelt40@gmail.com)
Date: Thu May 13 2010 - 18:18:17 EDT
How Much Does Washington Care About African Democracy?
<http://www.truthout.org/how-much-does-washington-care-about-african-democracy59478>
Thursday 06 May 2010
by: Kevin Funk and Steven Fake | *The Los Angeles
Times*<http://www.truthout.org/latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-0507-fake-20100506,0,3201858.story>
*The U.S. government's rhetoric on atrocities in Africa doesn't match its
long record of supporting authoritarian regimes.
*
After five days of voting, the withdrawal of virtually all of the opposition
presidential candidates and countless accusations of ballot tampering, voter
intimidation and worse, Sudan's flawed elections drew to an unceremonial
conclusion last month, while doing little to advance democracy in Africa.
Indicted war criminal Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir has maintained his grip on
the presidency with 68% of the national vote, and the Sudan People's
Liberation Movement will do the same in the south after obtaining 93% of
votes in that region.
For their part, despite pro forma criticisms of electoral irregularities,
outside powers appear largely content to play along. In his April 28 Times
Op-Ed article<http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/28/opinion/la-oe-carter-20100428-13>,
former President Jimmy Carter hailed Sudan's election as, despite flaws, an
important step to peace for the country. Glib comments such as U.S. special
envoy Scott Gration's eyebrow-raising assertion that Sudan's elections would
be "as free and fair as possible" raise an important and oft-obscured
question: What is Washington actually looking to accomplish in Africa's
largest nation?
Tellingly, relations between the U.S. and Sudan have typically been less
bitter than frequently reported. Even as the Darfur conflict peaked,
Washington was actively collaborating with Sudanese officials and groups
directly implicated in the violence and developed a close
intelligence-sharing relationship with Sudan's notorious security agency.
Then-Sudanese intelligence chief Salah Abdallah Gosh — against whom the U.N.
recommended instituting sanctions — was flown to Washington for meetings
with U.S. government officials on a CIA jet in 2005.
However, since Khartoum's defiant tendencies and China's well-cemented
position in Sudan's booming oil industry make a full Washington-Khartoum
rapprochement unlikely, the U.S. has turned to cultivating its budding
alliance with oil-rich and increasingly oppressive south Sudan, expected to
be an independent nation after a 2011 referendum on its status.
And while the dust settles on postelection Sudan, several regional U.S.
allies are gearing up for their own supposed exercises in democracy.
On Sudan's eastern border, U.S. stalwart Ethiopia has been preparing for
late May elections by "waging a coordinated and sustained attack on
political opponents, journalists and rights activists," in the unminced
words<http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/03/24/ethiopia-repression-rising-ahead-may-elections>of
Human Rights Watch (HRW).
As documented, the ruling party has been using its "near-total control" of
the state apparatus to "systematically punish … opposition supporters" and
"severely restrict the activities of civil society and the media."
As HRW comments with some understatement, "Ethiopia is heavily dependent on
foreign assistance, which accounts for approximately one-third of all
government expenditures." However, "The country's principal foreign donors —
the World Bank, United States, United Kingdom and European Union — have been
very timid in their criticisms of Ethiopia's deteriorating human rights
situation."
One could also mention Ethiopia's past service to the U.S. in invading
Somalia to decimate a nascent, relatively functional government in 2006 as
part of the ever-invoked "war on terror," thus ensuring the latter country's
continued descent into chaos.
Elsewhere, in central Africa, the U.S.-allied government of Paul Kagame in
Rwanda is gearing up for its own elections by "doing everything it can to
silence independent voices," according to
HRW<http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/04/23/rwanda-allow-human-rights-watch-work>
.
"We've seen a real crackdown on critics," according to Georgette Gagnon,
HRW's Africa director, including "increasing threats, attacks and
harassment" against opposition parties. Tellingly, the Economist noted that
while Kagame "vigorously pursues his admirers in Western democracies, he
allows less political space and press freedom at home than Robert Mugabe
does in Zimbabwe."
That Kagame also won his second term in office in 2003 with a highly
suspicious 95.1% of the vote, and has continued a long-standing Rwandan
policy of ravaging the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, speaks
volumes about Washington's commitment to human rights and democracy.
Finally, in Egypt, Sudan's neighbor to the north and the recipient of more
U.S. aid than any country in the world except Israel, president-for-life
Hosni Mubarak's nearly 30-year-reign continues unabated. Notably, the
announcement by the prominent dissident Mohamed ElBaradei that he would be
willing to contest Mubarak in 2011 in the normally rubber-stamp elections
has elicited few smiles in Washington.
Barack Obama is one in a long of line U.S. presidents who have proclaimed
their dedication to freedom for the world's people. Yet a simple review of
the facts makes it apparent that Sudanese President Bashir's open disdain
for democracy in the region is amply matched by Washington's.
*Kevin Funk and Steven Fake are the authors of "The Scramble for Africa:
Darfur – Intervention and the USA <http://scrambleforafrica.org/>" (Black
Rose Books, 2008). They maintain a Website with their commentary at
scrambleforafrica.org.*
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