Africa Archives
Militarization of foreign Aid?
By Charlie
AFRICOM’s troubles continue:
Stephanie Hanson from the Council on Foreign Relations interviews General William Ward, Commander, U.S. Africa Command and asks the following (very interesting) question:
In your posture statement to Congress in March, you discuss your strategic approach as one of "active security." Can you explain that idea and how you see it being executed in specific missions by Africom?When I talked about "active security," as I mentioned in my posture statement, it's really a reflection of the day-to-day activities that go on that reflect our engagement with the nations of Africa where we have established policies that says, "There will be a military to military relationship with these organizations and nations." You are probably familiar with the term "phase zero." Phase-zero operations are those activities that you conduct in an environment where there's not conflict.
That is an interesting way of framing a strategy, perpetually in Phase 0 of an operation. The prospect of setting up a continent-wide stability and support operation seems a bit overwhelming, especially as many nations have been reluctant to serve as the host for AFRICOM HQ, which is currently in Stuttgart, Germany (which makes more sense than it would seem, as AFRICOM is being cleaved off of EUCOM).
Tom Barnett writes that AFRICOM HQ should be somewhere near Arlington:
As expected. No desire to favor any one of the five regions, as the CJTF-HOA gets franchised to the other four. Better to keep it out of Africa, and best--as I argue--to put it in Northern VA to highlight and enable it's "3D" approach of synergistically blending defense, diplomacy and development.
OK, but could we not enable a synergistic blending of defense, diplomacy and development from Morocco, CJTF-HOA, Kenya, or Ethiopia? I’m a big believer of connecting leaders to the terrain they are responsible for, and standing in the way of that will inherently create command-level issues. If the whole purpose of AFRICOM is a shaping operation, if we shape from the AO we operate in, it would be preferable to shaping it from inside the Beltway.
AFRICOM halts HQ plan; will phase in staff
By Charlie
Remember this plan - to split EUCOM, PACOM, and CENTCOM responsibility for Africa into a new COCOM? It has hit some snags recently, but it seems to be proceeding at pace, despite challenges:
STUTTGART, Germany — The U.S. Africa Command has shelved plans to build a new headquarters on the African continent in favor of placing staff there as needs arise.The new command already uses 13 Offices of Defense Cooperation at U.S. embassies in African capitals. It plans to open 11 more over the next four years.
The command will also take over the Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa, a 2,000-person base in Djibouti on Africa’s east coast.
AFRICOM had planned to select a site on the continent for a headquarters by Oct. 1, when it is to assume control of ongoing U.S. military missions there. The command last summer also favored building about six regional offices throughout the vast, 53-nation continent.
I find it tough to believe that an HQ cannot be established on the continent itself -Africa is a big place, and it does have countries friendly to the US. Until it finds a home:
The command is headquartered at Kelley Barracks in Stuttgart. Much of its personnel and duties are being inherited from the U.S. European Command, headquartered 10 miles to the east at Patch Barracks.
The World's Tiniest War
By Charlie
...Is about to start in the Comoros Islands!
MORONI, Comoros (AFP) — African Union troops will arrive Monday in the Comoros before launching a military offensive against the island of Anjouan and its rebellious leader, the government of the Indian Ocean nation said.Anjouan leader Mohamed Bacar is at loggerheads with Comoros' President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi after he held local elections last year against the orders of the government and the AU.
"In the next 24 hours, we will see soldiers and military equipment arrive at our airports," government spokesman Abdourahim Said Bakar told AFP.
It seems to me that these types of low-level, persistent conflicts that occur within states are becoming more frequent, yet less reported on in the media. According to Globalsecurity: "During World War I, civilians made up fewer than 5 percent of all casualties. Today, 75 percent or more of those killed or wounded in wars are non-combatants." Although we are cut off from it in the US, conflict continues on the edges of the map, and we should all remain cognizant of the reality of the world we live in.
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Possible Change in US Policy on Somalia?
By Charlie
Over at the Tank, J. Peter Pham writes:
I argue that “among the many others which could be adduced, there are five compelling reasons for the United States to abandon the bankrupt, State Department-driven policy of preferring self-appointed ‘leaders’ of a failed construct [the so-called ‘Transitional Federal Government’ of Somalia] to an effective government of a real country,” Somaliland:
Pham points out some good reasons to drop our pretenses over the "state" of "Somalia" In Africa, the lines that are on maps are really notional, and the maps that we use continually misrepresent what the actual situation on the ground is. Anyone who is familiar with the battle of Mogadishu, and the circumstances leading up to it, understands that the entity we have called Somalia really never existed. Resetting our policy to reflect who is actually in charge, and what that area looks like, makes sense.
Again, AFRICOM has a big job to do, and the first may be to draft a map of what Africa really looks like.
Joke below the fold.
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