Tag: Africa
Mali matters
Global energy security depends on stability in North Africa, particularly Algeria. The Islamist take-over of the 2012 Tuareg coup in northern Mali directly affected these global interests, prompting French and concerted African intervention. The Center for National Policy discussion on Wednesday focused on the broad implications of Mali’s internal problems. Speakers were Alexis Arieff, Congressional Research Service; Stephanie Pezard, RAND; and Paul Sullivan, Georgetown University.
Security and politics
According to Stephanie Pezard, the French intervention in Mali runs three risks: radicalizing local populations, exacerbating ethnic tensions between the North and South, and triggering Islamist insurrections in the region. Although Mali does not pose a direct threat to the US, the Tuareg-Islamist insurgency poses several indirect threats.
The Tuareg rebellion stems from Tuareg political grievances the Malian government has failed to address since the 1960s. Long-term resolution of the issues would require internationals and the Malian government to understand Northern politics and to identify the most representative group with which to reach an agreement. Internationals should focus on reconciling the North and the South by encouraging the formation of a government more universally palatable than the one brought down in March 2012. Internationals should also encourage Bamako to deliver on its commitments to the North.
Mali poses indirect criminal and terrorist threats to US interests. In order to fund their activities, terrorist groups in the Sahel and North Africa increasingly engage in kidnappings and cocaine trafficking. Although the drugs are destined for European markets, the proceeds go toward funding terrorist activities elsewhere as well.
The economic opportunism of the Malian fighters provides internationals with an opportunity to reduce their appeal. Clan logic is a vanishing factor in enlistment of terrorists. Fighters follow the money and weapons, giving little weight to ethnic or religious affiliation. Terrorist offers of high salaries and subsidies for the fighters’ families motivate young men to join their ranks. Addressing the root issues by honoring government commitments to the North could alleviate conditions that make becoming a militant appealing.
Energy
A disruption of Algerian oil and gas flow to Europe would damage Algerian and European energy security, with repercussions for the global oil market. Algeria is the third largest natural gas provider to Europe, and in 2011 provided OECD Europe with 38.5% of its crude oil. Continued access to Algerian oil is crucial for Europe to climb out of its economic crisis. According to Georgetown professor Paul Sullivan, 12% of Italy’s liquid fuels, 9% of Spain’s, 13% of France’s, 7% of Brazil’s, and 5% of the Netherlands’ come from Algeria. Likewise, 10% of Turkey’s gas imports, 36% of Italy’s, and 32% of France’s come from Algeria. Still, the US ranks as the largest importer of Algerian oil, importing 500,000 b/d, or 4.5% of US supply.
Sullivan characterized the Islamist attack on the Ain Amenus oil field as a direct attack on the Algerian, European, and American governments and economies. Following the incident, gas pumped through a trans-Mediterranean pipeline connecting Algeria and Italy dropped by 10 million cubic meters a day.
Oil and gas provide 97% of Algeria’s export revenues, 60% of its government revenues, and 40% of GDP. Three quarters of the oil industry relies on two oil fields (Hasi Massaoud and Ourhoud). The intervention in Mali threatens to push militants into Algeria, whose destabilization would send Europe and the US reeling.
US Policy
Alexis Arieff argued that the use of counterterrorism as the lens through which the US formulates policy towards the region is inadequate for resolving the situation in Mali. Previously the US approach aimed to strengthen the security apparatus of weak Sahel states. The US lacked a strategic design with comprehensive inter-agency cooperation and effectiveness. US efforts to encourage Algerian leadership and multilateral cooperation on countering terrorism domestically and regionally suffered from distrust among the partner governments in the region.
The US faces the challenge of weighing the costs and benefits of direct versus indirect involvement in Mali. American officials disagree on the nature of the threat posed by the terrorist groups. Congressional restrictions make US military assistance to the Malian army difficult. At UN talks on Mali, the US and France have not seen eye to eye on Mali’s future. The US Administration wants the African-led International Support Mission for Mali (AFISMA) to be a fully UN funded peacekeeping mission, while implying the need for a French commitment to maintain troops on the ground as a rapid reaction force. The US role in Mali will hinge on evaluation of whether the violent extremists pose a serious threat to the US.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Africa’s drylands: dangers and opportunities
Hye Jung Han, one of my master’s students at SAIS, reports from a SAIS event last week. The speaker was Dr. Dennis Garrity, UN Convention to Combat Desertification Ambassador:
The Sahel region of West Africa faces worsening social, political, economic and food insecurities. With a population burgeoning to 1.8 billion people, at least twice as much food must be produced per year by 2050 to avoid widespread starvation. Food production per capita has been declining since the 1960s. Land degradation has become a serious problem, with declining soil fertility, escalating fertilizer prices and heightened risks of devastating droughts from climate change. The region suffers erratic and extreme rainfall and increasing temperatures that lead to higher crop stress. Smallholder food production, the economic mainstay of the region, is at serious risk.
Worsening food insecurity overlaps with low human development indices and extreme poverty. These structural vulnerabilities drive chronic political conflict in the region. Terrorism and political instability are centered on the African drylands. Mali has been the most recent iteration, with destabilizing spillover effects in Niger, Nigeria and Algeria. The combination of conflict and land degradation is leading to rapid disappearance of available lands for farming.
For Dr. Dennis Garrity, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Drylands Ambassador, part of the answer lies in EverGreen Agriculture, a form of intensive farming that integrates trees with annual crops to regenerate land on small-scale farms. Fertilizer trees such as faidherbia albida have been widely used by farmers for generations. This indigenous tree improves soil fertility and moisture conditions by buffering the microclimate, providing an effect not dissimilar to a greenhouse. It is highly compatible with food crops because it does not compete with them for light, nutrients or moisture, and its nitrogen-rich leaves are used as fodder for livestock.
By scaling up this indigenous farming practice and applying scientific, tree-based management, EverGreen Agriculture has yielded significant livelihood and environmental benefits. In Malawi, maize yields on farms with fertilizer trees are 2.5 times higher than on farms without them, increasing from 1.3 to 3.1 tons per hectare. Mali has seen increases in household and national food security, with the intercropping of faidherbia trees leading to the enhancement of millet, sorghum, and livestock fodder production. Agroforestry is proving itself one of the lowest cost, least risky, and most easily diffused agricultural practices that can be made accessible to small scale farmers.
National governments are deepening their support. The successful experiences of Zambia, Malawi, Niger, and Burkina Faso prompted the Ethiopian Prime Minister to promise the establishment of a billion fertilizer trees on smallholder farms at the UN Climate Change Conference at Durban in 2011, prompting the Prime Minister of Uganda to announce a larger program. Seventeen countries are currently engaged in EverGreen Agriculture, with national scaling-up programs supported by the African Union, World Bank, IFAD, GEF, FAO, UNEP, UNCCD and other regional and local organizations.
Agroforestry systems such as EverGreen Agriculture build more productive and drought-resilient farming systems, relying upon local knowledge, science and practice. Working to regreen the Sahelian landscape and combat desertification, EverGreen Agriculture can improve household and national food security, increase the resource pie and ameliorate some of the chronic drivers of conflict that continue to plague the region today.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Chad’s latest cycle of conflict
SAIS graduate student Nathalie Al Zyoud worked as the Executive Director of Caring Kaela, an International NGO that empowered Chadian Diaspora members to engage in the governance of their country to bring sustainable peace to Chad. Links to the agreements cited here can be found at here. Nathalie recounts:
Escalation of hostilities
Large scale violence in Chad follows a pattern of exclusion from power, rebellion and co-optation.
President Idriss Déby ousted President Hissein Habré in 1990, now on trial in Senegal for crimes against humanity. Déby belongs to the Zaghawa tribe, a mere 1% of Chad’s 200 ethnic groups. After his rise to power, Déby skillfully managed competing tribal dynamics by rotating key posts inside his government, maintaining the most lucrative positions in the hands of his Zaghawa tribesmen.
When the World Bank gave the green light in October 2000 to the construction of a Chad-Cameron pipeline, it opened up the prospect of vast revenues for a government with little track record of good governance and fiscal responsibility. Despite the safeguards put in place to ensure the responsible use of Chad’s oil revenues, the Déby government quickly began diverting funds to consolidate its grip on power. Funds were used to purchase large quantities of weapons. In 2005 President Déby changed the Constitution to maintain himself in power. This was the final straw for disgruntled family members, competing tribal leaders, and hungry business elites, who went into rebellion to renegotiate their slice of the pie.
Pawns in a regional conflict
The Chadian Armed Opposition Groups (CAOG) found safe haven in Sudan. They set up in Khartoum and became a tool in the hands of Sudanese President Omar al Bashir, who was happy to pay back his old friend Déby for sparking the conflict in Darfur. The rebels’ difficulties were evident early on. After sending countless youths to their deaths on April 13, 2006 in the first rebel raid on N’Djamena, rebel leader Mahamat Nour returned home for a promising position as Minister of Defense. Throughout the conflict, the CAOG were plagued by internal dissention, intrigues and splits. They were never able to develop a political platform around which to rebuild their country.
International support for the status quo
France, Chad’s colonial power, was happy maintaining the status quo and refused all negotiations with the armed opposition. The United States needed Chad’s cooperation to access Darfur and to continue its Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) in the region. Despite the use of child soldiers by the Government of Chad (GOC), the US maintained its military assistance to the country. In the midst of an open conflict, the EU was focused on election reforms and finalized the “August 13th Agreement” in 2007 between the GOC and its political opposition, confident that a transfer of power could be achieved through the ballot box. International consensus was achieved around the deployment of a UN peace-keeping force, MINURCAT (UNSC 1878, 2007), along the Chad-Sudan border, but without a political mandate.
Public rhetoric and peace on paper
Several peace processes were initiated without much success: the “Libreville initiative” led by late President Omar Bongo Ondimba of Gabon (September 2007) and the “Syrte Agreement” between the GOC and 4 major rebel groups, brokered by late-Colonel Muammar Gadaffi (October 2007). Each had limited results; each time a rebel leader would rally to the government, his second in command would take over the left over troops and reconstitute a rebel movement.
The final rebel raid on N’Djamena occurred on February 2, 2008. Three rebel groups united to advance unhindered to Chad’s capital. They called on President Déby to “negotiate or there will be war.” French authorities, a kind of parallel government in Chad, threw its support to Déby. Mercenaries and the Darfur Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) were flown in for additional support. On February 3, the CAOG were at the palace doors but bitter in-fighting raged inside their ranks. The rebel military advance crumbled as a divided leadership fought over the spoils before they had won the war. In an anti-climatic move, rebels retreated to plan the transition and were pushed back by government forces and their allies. President Déby reshuffled his government. The rebellion petered out.
Scrambling for control
In May 2008, the emboldened JEM launched an attack on Khartoum. This time the international community was mobilized. Caring for Kaela (CFK), an international nongovernmental organization (NGO), had built a collaborative advocacy network of NGOs from DC and NY to Europe and Chad to push for an inclusive dialogue between the Government and the armed opposition. The Chadian Diaspora obtained permission to assess the armed opposition’s willingness to negotiate.
The deployment of EUFOR, an EU bridging force, was accelerated. June 16 the USG urged the GOC to “open lines of communication with the opposition and help facilitate dialogue.” In September 2008, EUFOR transferred power to MINURCAT. The EU, fearful of losing control and threatened by the Diaspora’s efforts to engage the CAOG into a dialogue, initiated its own exploratory mission with the support of the USG and the Swiss. Nothing substantive came of their meetings with rebel groups, which were divided, opportunistic and lacked a coherent vision for a transition in Chad.
Shifting power dynamics
The international community turned its attention towards the two heads of state. Under the auspices of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (IOC), Qatar and Libya, a series of agreements were signed between the Government of Chad and Sudan to halt hostilities.* President Bashir found himself indicted by the International Criminal Court for Darfur war crimes in March 2009 and genocide in July 2010.
The USG pushed President Déby to exert pressure on Sudan. He quickly defeated a May 2009 attack by the Chadian rebels along the Chad-Sudan border. Again militarily victorious, an emboldened Déby enjoyed renewed international community political support. Khartoum and N’Djamena initiated a series of meetings in October 2009, culminating in a final agreement to normalize relations (January 2010). Déby once again reshuffled his government.
The end of a cycle of violence
The pressure built to coopt and reintegrate the rebels back into the government. The EU wanted to choreograph an election. Rebel leaders were promised government jobs. Foot soldiers were cantoned and disarmed. A program for disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) was discussed but never implemented. Given a few Chadian francs and a djallabia, soldiers were told to go home. They dissipated slowly. With Libya disintegrating, Central African Republic and Sudan still unstable and Boko Haram causing havoc in Nigeria, there was no shortage of work for armed men with fluid allegiances.
President Déby requested the departure of MINURCAT, pledging to take full responsibility for the protection of civilians on his territory. The mission closed on December 31, 2010, in accordance with UNSC 1923 (2010). Elections are held on April 25, 2010. President Idriss Déby Itno was reelected.
*March 13th, 2008 OIC Summit “Dakar Agreement” between Chad and Sudan (facilitated by the Government of Senegal); May 3rd, 2009 “Doha Agreement” between the governments of Chad and Sudan (facilitated by the Governments of Qatar and Libya)
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Round 1 to the French
As the residents of Timbuktu and Gao celebrate their French liberation from Islamist extremists, it is tempting to think that things are now okay and we can go back to ignoring Mali. Nothing could be further from the truth. If Mali was a problem last week, it is still a problem this week too. What the French have done is to chase the extremists northwards, into even more forbidding terrain. They were not resoundingly defeated. If given the chance, there they will regroup.
Here’s your primer on the main jihadi players. Get ready for the pop quiz. None of them sound like people who will be giving up the cause anytime soon.
One key to what happens now are the Tuareg. Their National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (NMLA) precipitated the current difficulties with a rebellion last spring that chased the Malian army from the north, with cooperation from al Qaeda-linked Islamist extremists. But the Tuareg fell out with the Islamists. They will now presumably try to take advantage of the Islamist defeat at the hands of the French to reassert control over “Azawad” and continue their push for independence.
Will the French contest the Tuareg? They are more likely to try to get them on side. They will be relieved if the Tuareg oust the Islamists and hope thereafter to broker a deal between the Tuareg and the central government in Bamako. Will the Tuareg do in the Islamists? Hard to tell. It is not clear they can, even if they try. The jihadi betrayed them first time around, and proved a more formidable fighting force, but if independence is their objective the Tuareg cannot really expect to get it from the French, who support the government in Bamako. Nor from the trans-national jihadi.
Meanwhile, the African Union is pledging to solve Africa’s problems. With the French army retaking northern Mali and conflicts raging in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and elsewhere, that seems unlikely. But it is still worth considering the proposition of getting African forces more engaged than they have been so far in Mali. There is already UN Security Council authorization. The question is whether the Africans can get their act together to field a serious force, as they appear to have done in Somalia.
The French army seems to have won this round. Good for them, and for Malians who like music. But the war is unlikely to be over.
PS: Here’s a piece I participated in for Voice of America that tries to make similar points:
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Masterful
Secretary of State-designate John Kerry was masterful today in his Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing. It wasn’t so much the details of what he said, but the breadth and depth. This is a guy who really knows international affairs.
His prepared statement was notable for some high points: the emphasis on the importance of American economic health in determining the country’s role abroad, the clarity about preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons and the vigor of his defense of the State Department budget. I would also note that John Kerry regards USAID, whose functions he mentioned but not its name, as an integral part of the State Department.
Then Kerry showed a lot of agility in dealing with not only the questions but also a demonstrator, expressing respect for her cries to be heard. He defended Secretary of Defense-designate Hagel’s views on getting rid of nuclear weapons, which he said was an aspiration for a world different from the one we live in today. He described his own changed view of Syria’s President Asad, whom he now hopes to see go soon.
He showed his clear commitment to maintaining the high priority Secretary Clinton has given to gender issues. He was non-committal on the Keystone pipeline, deferring to the official process under way. He was gentle with the Russians, citing their cooperation on particular issues (other than Syria). He was supportive of American anti-corruption and human rights efforts abroad. He showed he knows what is going on in Sudan’s Blue Nile and South Kordofan provinces. He parried accusations about Benghazi.
Of course part of the reason for this masterful performance is the attitude of the questioners, who showed enormous respect for their long-standing colleague. Gone was the idiot questioning of yesterday’s hearing with Secretary of State Clinton on the Benghazi murders. There was little “gotcha.” Certainly had the President nominated Susan Rice, who is far more combative, the tone if not the substance of the hearing would have been different. In a week’s time the Hagel hearing may be far more contentious, even if Hagel himself comes close to matching Kerry in knowledge and equanimity.
On Syria, Kerry advocated changing Bashar al Asad’s calculations, but he was unclear about the means to achieve that. He wants an orderly transition. The Russians appear willing, but differ on the timing and manner of Bashar’s departure. Kerry fears sectarian strife, implosion of the Syrian state and what they might mean for chemical weapons.
The Syrian opposition has not been ready to talk, Kerry said. In a sentence he struck–one of his few moments of hesitation in this long hearing–he started to say that we need to increase the ability of the opposition to do something unspecified. I’d sure like to know how that sentence was supposed to end: increase their ability to negotiate? increase their ability to strike the regime militarily? There’s a big difference. It sounded to me more like he wanted them to be more flexible on negotiations, but I’m not certain.
Kerry hit a lot of other subjects. On Afghanistan, he put his chips on a good April 2014 presidential election, which has to provide legitimacy to Karzai’s successor. Kerry wants “a metric” for stopping infiltration and attacks on Americans from Pakistani territory. He noted China is “all over” Africa (and America has to get into the game). Al Qaeda has dispersed at the urging of Osama bin Laden and is now a threat in the Arabian Peninsula and the Maghreb, where the solution is not only drone strikes but (unspecified) civilian efforts. We don’t like what Egyptian President Morsi says about Jews, but we need him to maintain the peace treaty with Israel. On Israel/Palestine, Kerry was cagey and refused to be drawn out, except to reiterate commitment to the two-state solution. The solution to climate change is energy policy, which will enable job growth. The “war on drugs” is ill-conceived. We need to do more on the demand side.
Here is the lengthy (four hours?) video of the hearing:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Damsel in distress
France has answered a call from Bamako to stop an Islamist insurgent move southward. Their quick march towards the capital of Mali against an army led by American-trained officers has
left observers struggling to distinguish between fact, spin, and falsehood.
I won’t be surprised if we discover that the story is more complicated than the narrative so far, which is more or less “damsel in distress” and runs along these lines: Northern Mali is already in the hands of Sunni extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda and responsible for destroying Sufi shrines and documents. They were intending to move south to take over the capital, which appealed to France for help. The Brits and Americans are said to be in supporting military roles.
Just who made the appeal, and who is really in power in Bamako, is not clear to me, and no one seems to be asking. Instead they are rushing to do something. The UN Security Council will reportedly meet today. It had already in December approved an ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) military mission of doubtful capabilities to retake the north, but assembling that and deploying it was going to take months. ECOWAS is said to be accelerating its effort.
These military moves may be absolutely necessary. Damsels do sometimes have to be rescued, even if they are not without blemish in precipitating their distress. Mali’s military has played a dubious role in bringing on this crisis. Still, stopping an extremist takeover of Mali sounds like a pretty good idea to me. It is certainly preferable to fighting entrenched extremists for years, as in Yemen.
But I have no confidence that the north can be retaken by purely military means or that Bamako can be held without dealing with whatever brought on this crisis. Mali has had a pretty good reputation for sustaining democratic processes, but clearly something went awry. A few French bombs are not going to set things straight, even if they do discourage the Islamists from moving south.
For those interested in the deeper issues, this event at USIP in December is a good place to start. Those who imagine that civilian instruments of foreign policy can be jettisoned with the withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, or that military means alone will solve the challenges we face, had better think again. These damsels will keep turning up where we least expect to find them. We don’t need to rescue them for their sake. What difference does it make if Malians elect their leaders or not?
We rescue governments, democratic or not, for our own sakes: fragile or collapsed states in the hands of extremists have a way of generating explosive packages on international flights, capturing tourists for ransom and investing heavily in the drug trade and human trafficking. These evils in Mali are far more likely to affect Europe in the near term than the United States, so it is a good thing that Europeans are taking the lead. But if they lead only with military means and ignore civilian requirements, whatever they do won’t last long or work well.
PS: @joshuafoust points out that @tweetsintheME (Andrew Lebovich) has elucidated at least some of the ethnic, religious and other background to the conflict. For some of the musical context, click here.
PPS: Jennifer Welsh reviews the legal basis for the French military intervention.
PPPS: The counter-narrative of enemy-producing Western intervention hasn’t taken long to emerge.
RSS - Posts
