Africa Archives
Two Articles Worth Reading
By Townie 76
In the current on-line edition of the New York Review of Books are two articles worth reading as they provide great insight into what is happening in Afghanistan and Africa. For those not familiar with the New York Review of Books, it is an intellectual journal where leading intellectuals present their thoughts on books about a common subject, or write extended essays. While much of what is written is typical of the Upper East Side, East Coast intellectual group-think, nevertheless some is worth reading as it offers a different perspective.
Combined Zimbabwean Armed Forces Mobilize, Capture 3 Boy Scout Leaders
By John
With everyone focused on the Israelis and their perfectly legal defensive action in Gaza, few have noticed the downward spiral in Zimbabwe -- which is on the verge of total collapse. Robert Mugabe, dictator for nearly 30 years, is starving his people into submission, and playing the old tried and true dictator card by blaming the Western powers for the nation's misfortune. In that vein, here's the latest crazy ass story from the dying Zimbabwean Republic --
Jan. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwean air force, military, police and intelligence officials raided a boy-scout camp and arrested three white farmers on charges of training insurgents, the Zimbabwe Independent said, citing people it didn’t identify.The adventure camp, known as Kudu Creek, was suspected of being used as a base to train bandits who plan to topple President Robert Mugabe, the Harare-based newspaper reported. The site provides outdoor activities and leadership training for schoolchildren, it said.
The raid was described by one observer as a full-scale military exercise, the Independent said.
If the situation out there wasn't so damn tragic, this would be hilarious. Mugabe deploys troops as if he's invading Poland -- all to capture three farmers running an effin' scouting camp (modern scouting traces its roots to the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe). Although, I read the Zimbabwean state propaganda rag's take on this, and they accused the famers of being members of the old Rhodesian Selous Scouts. Seeing that the Scouts, a special forces outfit numbering a mere 1300 men, accounted for almost 70% of Mugabe's casaulties during the Bush War, maybe the Zimbabwean armed forces were erring on the side of caution.
Africa: Security Challenges and Strategic Perspectives
By John
Money:
"Some of the world's lead experts on Africa are convening a symposium to discuss security issues on the continent at Maxwell Air Force Base on February 13th. Co-hosted by the Air Force research Institute, the AF's brand new strategic think tank which advises the AF Chief of Staff, and the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA), the day-long event promises to cover Somali piracy, militias in Congo, Hezbollah terrorists around the region and many other critical topics. It is open to the military and governmen, civilian academics, and interested others who request an invitation. For more, and to register, go to www.asmeascholars.org."
Both ASMEA and the USAF are particularly interested in soliciting military attendees, active duty, reserve, guard, doesn't matter. Seems like an easy -and fascinating- TDY if you do anything with small wars, irregular warfare, et al. Would love to have some of OPFOR's readers go and report, so if you don't get enough info at the embedded link, feel free to email me and I'll point you in the right direction.
Sounds Like a P.L.A.N.
By Lt Col P
A Red Chinese naval squadron is mounting out for the Gulf of Aden to add its weight to the fight against rampant piracy. I have little doubt that they are sending their varsity squad, and I don't think we should view this as a good thing.
The three vessels — two destroyers and a supply ship — may increase worries about growing Chinese military power. The mission will also challenge China's ability to cooperate [who says they're going to cooperate?] with other naval forces patrolling the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest sea lanes.
I think that the Western allies' lack of decisive operations against these barbarians has opened the door to the Chinese. After all, nature abhors a vaccuum. This is a tailor-made for the P.R.C. to step in, and do what the traditional naval powers have been unwilling or incapable of doing. If they can pull it off, this will greatly enhance their prestige on the international scene, and will provide significant justification for nations whose vessels have to ply those waters to view the Chinese as a benevolent power. All of that will be to our detriment.
Oh, and I do expect they'll have some growing pains with both tactics and sustainment. But don't you think for a minute that they won't learn their lessons, and prepare diligently for greater things to come.
Deploying ships to the Gulf of Aden marks a significant step in the evolution of China's navy, according to a report by Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based intelligence company. The mission will be complicated, offering vital on-the-job training in refueling, resupply and repairs far from home as well as patrolling for pirates, Stratfor said.
All of the foregoing will be to our detriment. We have only ourselves to blame.
Zimbabwe on the Verge of Collapse
By John
This is just sad. Not just sad, but tragic. Students of history weigh-in: is this the most drastic peacetime collapse of a nation-state ever recorded?
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Zimbabwe could collapse within months due to its political and economic crisis, South Africa's ruling party leader said on Monday, citing former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other prominent figures.African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma said a cholera epidemic that has killed around 300 people in Zimbabwe and sent hundreds more fleeing into South Africa highlighted the need for urgent action by Zimbabwe's political rivals.
The elephant in the room, one that the media generally refuses to acknowledge, is what Zimbabwe used to be: the first-world country of Rhodesia. Read the press and you get the impression that Zimbabwe is just another African failed state. It wasn't. Rhodesia, though tainted by the evils of apartheid, was a wonderfully prosperous little nation. As the white minority government watched post-colonial Africa collapse around them, they vowed to defend their borders against the endemic blights of warlords and Marxism (and -in the case of Robert Mugabe- a combination of the two).
White Rhodesians are often boxed into the same category as white supremacists from South Africa and the American South. That's highly inaccurate. Rhodesians despised "racialists" (their handle for 'racists') and never subscribed to the eugenical arguments -that the white man is inherently superior to the black man- of their neighbors to the south.
Their apartheid, for better or for worse, was based on the theory of limited democracy as developed by our own American founding fathers and the early British parliament. Rhodesians believed that to have a functional democracy, one first must have a vested interest in the government -whether that be through land ownership or financial holdings. That their system inherently (and severely) favored whites over blacks was a tangential consequence, a price that Rhodesians believed had to be paid to insulate their highly functional society against the chaos and genocide sweeping the rest of Africa.
This wasn't a new concept, really. It's been around since the time of Plato, who warned that mob rule inherent in the exercise of unchecked democracy would ultimately lead to tyrrany. That's highlighted in the old joke which describes pure democracy as two wolves and a sheep sitting down and voting on what's for dinner.
It's useful to remember that universal suffrage is still a relatively new phenomena. Ian Smith, Rhodesian Prime Minister from 1964-1979, always stated that the Rhodesian approach to black majority rule would be "evolutionary not revolutionary," in that their stated goal would be to slowly assimiliate Rhodesians blacks into the government through a combination of a strong economy and matching educational system. Of course Smith also famously said that he did not "believe in majority rule, not in a thousand years," so I'm often left wondering what his true intentions were.
Regardless, a measured and moderate solution to the "Rhodesia problem" was finally reached in 1978-79, where Rhodesia dropped their property and financial restrictions on the vote and opened the polls to blacks. A moderate black Prime Minister, Bishop Abel Muzorewa, was elected in a free and fair election in which a large majority of Rhodesian blacks voted. The trade-off was that Rhodesian whites would retain control of key institutions like the army and police (though both were dominated by blacks). That government was widely rejected and lasted a mere six months, as the mob-rule of world opinion demanded that Robert Mugabe's violent Marxo-terror group Zanu be allowed to participate in the electoral process. Mugabe, who claimed that he would resume the war against Zimbabwe-Rhodesia if he lost, won the 1980 election through massive voter intimidation and violence.
The rest, they say, is history.
UItimately the Rhodesians' worst nightmare, that their 'jewel of Africa' would become another Uganda or Zambia, was fully realized. Robert Mugabe, acting as all petty marxist dictators do, has single-handedly dismantled every aspect of the Rhodesian infrastructure that existed in 1980. Now Zimbabwe is one of the poorest nations on earth, and is danger of becoming not another Uganda or Zambia, but another Somalia.
It used to be that you could visit Rhodesia and see the ruins of Zimbabwe. Now it's the other way around.
Soldiers, UN retreat as rebels advance in Congo
By Charlie
What a headline by Michelle Faul, Associated Press Writer!
KILIMANYOKA, Congo — Rebels advanced toward Congo's eastern provincial capital of 600,000 people Tuesday, sending tens of thousands of terrified civilians into a makeshift shelter as Congolese troops and U.N. tanks retreated.
...
In Kibati, a few miles from the front line, young men lobbed rocks Tuesday at three U.N. tanks also heading away from the battlefield. The U.N. has 17,000 U.N. peacekeepers in Congo -- the biggest mission in the world."What are they doing? They are supposed to protect us," said Jean-Paul Maombi, a 31-year-old nurse from Kibumba.
Indeed, Jean-Paul Maombi, "What are they doing?" Indeed...
"Let's try America"
By John
Fascinating article from the Raleigh News & Observer on the situation in Zimbabwe. I don't want to call it a "deteriorating" situation, because -honestly- I don't think it's possible for matters to get much worse out there. I love the way the N&O chronicled the Herbsts' quest to rediscover the economic (and personal) freedoms that afforded them so much success in Rhodesia.
I am, however, left wondering how many times communism has to fail before people realize it's a shitty idea?
They start over after all is lost in Africa
In Africa, Herbst worked a 13,000-acre farm, part of which had been in his family for generations. He grew paprika that was exported to Spain, ran a successful safari business, raised cattle and employed more than 150 people during the busy harvest seasons.That life ended in 2002 when men armed with automatic weapons evicted the Herbst family from its farm. In a land redistribution campaign overseen by President Robert Mugabe, political loyalists seized thousands of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe and turned them over to impoverished blacks.
The seizures wrecked the country's agricultural infrastructure, leading to extensive food shortages and stratospheric inflation. The United Nations estimates that 1 million people have lost their livelihoods and homes as a result of the redistribution.
Herbst and his wife, Helen, are among them.
It gets much, much worse. Read the whole thing, if you can stand it.
Reminds me of reader RL's quote from the comment section on this post:
..let us reflect on the words of President Samora Machel of Mozambique and President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania to Robert Mugabe, at the moment of independence, in 1980:"You have the jewel of Africa in your hands," they said. "Now look after it."
Hotel Tango - Hot Air
I didn't know it was open...
By Charlie
Islamists threaten to shut down Mogadishu airport
Breaking from the post-apocalyptic "nation" of Somalia:
MOGADISHU, Sept 14 (Reuters) - Somali Islamists have threatened to stop planes using Mogadishu's main airport as part of an escalating insurgency rocking the Horn of Africa nation.The hardline Islamist group Al Shabaab, which is fighting the Somali government and its Ethiopian military backers, said it would stop planes from landing after midnight on Tuesday.
"We banned all planes from Mogadishu after confirming that American spies, the African Union, Ethiopians and the infidel government troops use the airport,"said a statement in Somali on www.kataaib.net, one of several sites used by the militants.
Yes.. the fabled US/AU/Ethiopian alliance seeking to re-invade Somalia. Based on this statement, It looks like the only war being fought (and lost) in Somalia is the war on drugs...
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.
Read More »
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.
Read More »
