Posts

Battle Horn: So Much for Africa’s “New Leaders.”

/in /by

When President Clinton took his historic twelve-day tour of Africa last year, he singled out tiny Eritrea and its larger neighbor Ethiopia as beacons of hope for the beleaguered continent. In Clinton’s mind — and in the minds of others in the West like Oxfam International and the World Bank — Eritrea’s president, Isaias Afwerki, and Ethiopia’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi, represented a new breed of African statesmen. Intolerant of corruption and committed to free-market reforms, Isaias and Meles were considered to be among the likely leaders of an African renaissance. But now, President Clinton, the two men — heralded less than a year after this renaissance and their impoverished countries — are at war.

The war on Africa’s Horn may be the most dramatic and bloodiest chapter in the rapid disintegration of an alliance among a group of African leaders — commonly referred to as the “new leaders” — that once held much promise. In 1996, Isaias and Meles, along with Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame (who, like Isaias and Meles, are former Marxist guerrillas), formed a bloc that was engaged in joint military campaigns from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Uganda — with the help of $20 million in nonlethal aid from the United States — were all backing rebels in Sudan against that country’s radical Islamist government. Further south, Rwanda, Uganda, and Eritrea — and, later, Angola –joined forces in Zaire to help Laurent Kabila overthrow the corrupt postcolonial despot Mobutu Sese Seko.

But, not long after Kabila seized power in May 1997, renaming Zaire the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the bloc of “new leaders” began to splinter. Rwanda and Uganda fell out with Kabila as he became more independent of his former patrons. By July 1998, the same countries that had helped bring down Mobutu began fighting again in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They and other states are still waging war in Central Africa — only now Uganda and Rwanda are battling Angola, among other states.

It is the Horn War, though, that most concerns Western observers. Ever since May and June 1998, when Eritrea and Ethiopia launched artillery attacks and air strikes against each other in a dispute over their 620-mile-long border, the United States has been working feverishly to head off a full-fledged conflict between the two countries. At first, the United States had some success, brokering a cease-fire. But attempts to secure a more lasting peace bogged down, and, on February 6, after months of escalating tensions, a full-scale war broke out. While Ethiopia’s economy is eight times greater than Eritrea’s, and its population is 17 times the size, the smaller country’s stronger nationalist identity should make this fight a protracted one — one of potentially epic proportions. “It could become the biggest war ever in sub-Saharan Africa,” frets one senior Defense Department official, “or at least since the [South African] Boer War” at the turn of the century.

Eritrea and Ethiopia are among Africa’s poorest nations, and the irony of their war is that, ostensibly at least, both sides are fighting over nothing. The main flashpoint is a border region of hardscrabble terrain called Badame, which translates in the local language as “empty.” After Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia in 1993, their common border was never clearly delineated. In recent years, many former Ethiopian guerrillas have moved into the Badame region to farm small plots of land, displacing Eritrean farmers who were already working the same plots. Finally, in July 1997, after a few heated but still bloodless incidents between the ex-guerrillas and the peasants, Isaias and Meles agreed to form a joint commission to draw the boundary.

But, before an agreement could be reached, local Ethiopian authorities took matters into their own hands. Last May, Ethiopian militia in the Badame region began a new wave of expulsions of Eritrean peasants. When an Eritrean Army unit sought out the local militia to negotiate on behalf of the newly displaced Eritrean peasants, the Ethiopian militia opened fire, leaving three Eritrean officers and one soldier dead. Eritrea responded to the incident by deploying troops in the Badame region and then, on May 12, by seizing even more territory there and at two other areas along the border to the east. Eritrean officials privately admit that, for tactical reasons, some of the ground they then occupied went beyond the country’s admittedly fuzzy borders and actually included Ethiopian terrain.

The Ethiopians retaliated by bombing Eritrea’s airport. But, more than 20 minutes after that attack, one Eritrean plane bombed an Ethiopian school, killing 44 people and wounding 135 others, most of them children. Even after Eritrea and Ethiopia agreed to a cease-fire last June, both countries scrambled to buy artillery, armored vehicles, jet fighters, and other arms (Today, Eritrea still has fewer jets than Ethiopia and no helicopter gunships). Ethiopia also escalated tensions by deporting more than 52,000 people of Eritrean descent.

Of course, this is not literally a war over nothing. The conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia has also been fueled by clashing economic interests. In November 1997, Eritrea issued its own currency, the nakfa, after having used the Ethiopian birr for four years. While Eritrean officials wanted Ethiopia to accept the nakfa in a one-to-one exchange rate with the birr, Ethiopian officials instead demanded that Eritrea pay for all its goods in hard currency, which both sides lacked. Soon, trucks loaded with goods backed up on both sides of the border, while ships waited to unload their cargo at Assab, one of two Eritrean ports on the Red Sea.

The Assab port is another source of contention between the two countries. Although Assab has long been administratively part of Eritrea, dating back to when Eritrea was an Italian colony, the port is linked by paved road to Addis Ababa and has traditionally served as Ethiopia’s only port (Eritrea’s other port is Massawa, which is connected by paved road with its capital, Asmara). In 1993, as part of Eritrea’s peaceful secession from Ethiopia, Meles made Ethiopia a landlocked nation when he relinquished Assab to his Eritrean comrades as part of his promise to restore to Eritrea the territories it enjoyed when it was an Italian colony. And, while Ethiopian diplomats today say they make no claims on Assab, Eritrean officials contend that the entire border war may merely be a ploy by Ethiopia to retake the port — which, until Ethiopia began boycotting it last May, generated 18 percent of Eritrea’s total revenues from the fees and duties leveled on Ethiopian goods.

The final irony of the war is that, if these two countries cannot coexist peacefully under the leadership of Isaias and Meles, it’s doubtful that they ever will. Both Isaias and Meles are members of the Tigrinya ethnic group and speak the Tigrinya language — the only language common to both countries. The two men, and the respective guerrilla movements that now run each state, struggled together to depose the Soviet-backed regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam. Two years later, in 1993, Meles and Isaias agreed to Eritrea’s secession from Ethiopia. Until blood was first drawn last May, Meles and Isaias long addressed each other, in letters and face-to-face meetings, as “comrade.”

Indeed, Meles had been far more sympathetic to Eritrea than most other Ethiopians. While Isaias is genuinely popular across Eritrea, Meles is not well-liked in Ethiopia. Many Ethiopians, particularly members of the Amhara and Oromo ethnic groups, despise Meles, whose Tigrinyan ethnic group is a distinct minority in Ethiopia. Warns one Ethiopian diplomat: Eritrea will “never find an Ethiopian government as friendly to them as the present government.” If Meles falls, things could actually get worse between the two countries.

But it’s hard to imagine anything much worse than the trench warfare that now rages on Africa’s Horn. While many are tempted to compare the hostilities to other African conflicts, the Horn War is more reminiscent of the Iran-Iraq War or World War I. The likelihood of carnage and exhaustion of resources serves only to sap the hope that both Isaias and Meles once brought to the Horn. Not long ago, Africa’s new leaders promised new beginnings. But all they do now is wage wars. Their beacons faded surprisingly fast.

Frank Smyth is coauthor of “Africa’s New Bloc,” published in the March/April 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs.

Silent Struggle

/in /by

Original article can be found here.

Last week’s missile attack against Sudan also struck Americans like a bolt from the blue. Who knew where Sudan was on the map, let alone that it was a bitter enemy of the U.S.? Actually, the strikes were the culmination of a long struggle within the Clinton administration about how to deal with that nation’s radical regime.

Part of the problem is that the National Islamic Front (NIF), which took over Sudan in a 1989 coup, is insecure about its hold on power. To bolster its position, the NIF has tried to expand Islam regionally, backing radical Islamist (and even fundamentalist Christian) groups against most of its neighbors. At the same time, the NIF has collaborated with Osama Bin Ladin to provide sanctuary as well as training to radical Islamist groups operating worldwide.

In 1993, the Clinton administration put Sudan on the list of nations that sponsor terrorism. Since then, though, officials have quarreled over how much more they should do. Career State Department officials, led by Undersecretary of State Thomas R. Pickering, have argued that dialogue and diplomacy are the best way to change the NIF. But political appointees, led by Assistant Secretary of State Susan E. Rice (formerly with the National Security Council), have countered that the NIF will only respond to force.

Even before the East Africa bombings, the administration was moving toward Rice’s line. After Sudan had expelled Bin Ladin in May 1996, in response to Saudi and American pressure, Pickering argued that it was time to re-open the American Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan (The embassy had been closed since February 1996 because of terrorism fears). But NSC officials, including Rice, thought it should stay shut. In September 1997, while Rice was on maternity leave, Pickering tried what one diplomat calls a “squeeze play.” Without White House authorization, Pickering told his subordinates to leak to the press that the administration would soon reopen the embassy. But a week later, after the news had been reported in both The Washington Post and The New York Times, Rice’s allies at the NSC got the announcement over-ruled. “Albright called Pickering and told him to call the reporters back,” recounts another seventh-floor official.

So the U.S. mission to Sudan remained in Nairobi — bin Laden’s eventual target. And it soon became the site of the largest CIA station in East Africa — a station that coordinates a sophisticated eavesdropping network aimed at Sudan with the cooperation of bordering countries like Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Uganda, which form a coalition of frontline states against the NIF.

The United States’ goal has not merely been to gather information. For at least two years, the Clinton administration has been trying to undermine, if not overthrow, the NIF regime. ‘We want to compel change in how Sudan is governed,” one White House adviser told me in May. Toward that end, the adviser added, last year, the administration promised the anti-NIF states $20 million in nonlethal aid. According to a high level participant, the administration recently sent an interagency team to Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda to explore “humanitarian, development, political, diplomatic, military, and intelligence options.”

The United States’ interest in undermining the NIF is due to more than the regime’s support of Bin Ladin. One of the NIF’s closest foreign allies has been Iraq. According to a former Sudanese army captain who defected to rebel forces, up to 60 Iraqi military specialists rotate through Sudan every six months.

Why is this significant? The ex-captain said some of the Iraqis were involved in some kind of munitions development at the Military Industries Corporation in Khartoum. And Sudanese opposition leaders have long claimed Iraq was helping Sudan develop chemical weapons at installations in Khartoum. They further charge that Sudan has stored chemical weapons for Iraq at a military complex south of Khartoum.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials say soil samples collected outside the pharmaceutical factory targeted in the strike contained traces of a chemical that is an ingredient of VX nerve agent and lacks any known industrial application. Furthermore, The New York Times reported that Iraq bought medicines from the factory and that, according to U.S. officials, one of the leaders of Iraq’s chemical weapons program had close ties to senior Sudanese officials there. Finally, non-American officials told the Times that Iraqi technicians frequently visited another, more heavily guarded factory in Khartoum also suspected of producing chemical weapons.

Of course, these are still allegations. Some of the Sudanese opposition’s other claims — like the story that Iraqis who hijacked a plane to London in 1996 were involved in the chemical weapons program — are clearly preposterous; the hijackers were draft-dodgers. Nor is the evidence cited by U.S. officials necessarily irrefutable. For instance, a British engineer who, until 1996, worked as a manager at the factory targeted in the strike recently told the London Observer that the factory “just does not lend itself to the manufacture of chemical weapons.”

Still, Iraq and Sudan are clearly up to something. Just consider the Sudanese foreign minister’s first reaction to the U.S. strikes: he flew to Baghdad. ”

A New Game: The Clinton Administration on Africa

/in /by

The Clinton administration has focused American attention on sub-Saharan Africa like no other administration before it. Last December, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright visited Africa. This spring, President Bill Clinton went there as well. Besides being the longest overseas trip of his presidency, it was the most extensive visit to black Africa of any sitting U.S. president. Many private groups are also now paying unprecedented attention to Africa. A new day in U.S.-Africa relations may have already dawned.

The administration’s strategic objectives are clear, according to one White House advisor, who, like most officials who granted interviews here, asked not to be identified by name: “How can we bring Africa into both the global economy and the global political structure as an effective player?” The advisor adds, “Nobody ever asked that before.” [1]

Until this decade, Africa was seen through a Cold War lens. Many African states that once received substantial U.S. aid, such as Zaire, Somalia, Sudan, and Liberia, have since imploded. Each has generated crises to which the United States in one way or another has been compelled to respond.

Tactically, however, the Clinton administration could not be more divided. At the heart of the debate on Africa is a dilemma that, though reminiscent of the Cold War, transcends it. How can the United States protect its national interests and preserve its principles at the same time? Today, the definition of what it means to be democratic involves more than simply being anticommunist; human rights — entirely absent from Africa policy considerations during most of the Cold War — are now integral to the discussion. Moreover, it seems to be no easy matter to define the national interest with respect to Africa.

The discussion over Africa is unprecedented. Concepts like left and right no longer apply. Many former “liberal” allies now oppose each other over how to best advance democracy and economic growth. The Congressional Black Caucus is similarly split, while, in Africa itself, former Marxists and free-marketeers are finding common ground. Back home, some groups enjoy extraordinary influence. They include several newly formed African American-led organizations, such as the National Summit on Africa and the Constituency for Africa, that seek to build bridges between the two continents, even though their own board members fundamentally disagree among themselves over such basic issues as trade legislation. They also include more established humanitarian groups, which, though they too have the ear of the White House, now disagree with each other over the best way to promote human rights in Africa.

The American business community, on the other hand, is united in its view that market capitalism is the key to solving Africa’s problems. As more African countries embrace market principles, U.S. investors see Africa as a promising frontier, one where returns on investments have so far averaged, as President Clinton noted on his trip, an impressive 35 percent. “It’s true,” says David H. Miller, Executive Director of the Corporate Council on Africa. “It’s high risk, but with high return.”

While some human rights groups lobby for unilateral sanctions against the military dictatorship in Nigeria, for example, companies like Mobil firmly oppose them. “Sanctions are just killing us,” says Miller, referring to the unilateral U.S. sanctions recently imposed on Sudan. “Do they achieve our political goals?” He thinks not.

Complicating the scene, different groups have focused their efforts on different regions. American businesses are looking to maintain their trade relations with Nigeria and Sudan, while U.S. human rights groups have homed in recently on the former Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Governments “are the most malleable when they are the most needy,” explains Holly J. Burkhalter of Physicians for Human Rights: “We’ve got to work where we can make a difference.” She adds that there have been more killings recently in the Congo than in Nigeria. Of course, the backdrop to violence in Congo and elsewhere in Central Africa remains Rwanda’s 1994 genocide — a seminal event that has the entire international community still wringing its hands.

All these groups lobby Susan E. Rice, 33, the Clinton administration’s new assistant secretary of state for Africa. Before moving to Foggy Bottom, Rice oversaw the administration’s Africa policy from the National Security Council (NSC). At her going away party last fall, one of the NSC’s deputy national security advisers, Nancy Soderberg, 40, gave Rice an unexpected gift. It was a Zulu shield and spear. The joke? Rice might need them to fend off resentful career foreign service officers at her new job.

Rice, following a series of internecine battles, some of which she has won, is now the main architect of U.S. policy toward sub-Saharan Africa. By all accounts, she is one of the most capable people in Washington, though she faces a rocky slope. “We have economic interests. But we also have to stand for something,” she says about Africa.

Her most serious challenges at the moment are Congo, Nigeria, and Sudan. The latter is led by a military-backed Islamist regime that has sponsored terrorism against many of its neighbors. Nigeria is led by a military regime that, in addition to being endemically corrupt, has viciously repressed its own people. And Congo is led by a former guerrilla leader who, besides imprisoning political opponents, journalists, and others, is implicated (along with Rwanda’s leadership) in the massacre of thousands of civilians.

Divided Counsel

At issue is whether to engage these regimes in the hope of moving them toward moderation, or to try to isolate them to achieve the same goal. Here Rice and others, including some administration officials, are at odds. Thomas R. Pickering, 67, the State Department’s new under secretary for political affairs and one of the most seasoned and respected diplomats at Foggy Bottom, has pushed for more interaction between Washington and Khartoum. Rice, instead, is ratcheting up pressure on the regime in Sudan. Jesse L. Jackson, 56, President Clinton’s new special envoy for the promotion of democracy in Africa, favors greater engagement with Nigeria. Rice, on the other hand, leans toward isolating the regime in Lagos. The debate within the administration over Congo is far less divisive, as Rice and most other U.S. officials wish to stay engaged. But outside the U.S. government, human rights groups are demanding punitive measures against the Kabila regime.

Of course, the outcome of the Africa policy dialogue will be settled at least as much in Africa as in the United States. Much of the Clinton administration’s new approach toward the continent hinges upon progress being made by Afticans themselves. Rice is optimistic about a new generation of independent, nationalist-minded leaders, like Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki, Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, who have recently come of age.[2] Other U.S. officials, however, are far less sanguine. “We’ve seen people like them before. There’s nothing new about them,” says one old Africa hand at Foggy Bottom. “What is new is that neither we nor the Soviets put them there.” Indeed it is a brand new game.

A New, Post-Cold War Plan?

Rice, too, is new to the table. She is one of the most controversial people to reach the upper floors of the State Department in a while, though some of the criticism voiced about her privately says more about the institution and its culture than it does about Rice. “Why would I expect a 33-year-old black woman to know how to run a large bureaucracy,” asks one veteran diplomat. Female career foreign service officers of all ages, however, greatly admire the new assistant secretary. “She is prepared to take risks,” says one woman, her senior, who also holds a management position. “And, 80 to 90 percent of the people around the conference table are still white males.”

Rice is nothing like her predecessor, George E. Moose, 54. He is a career diplomat who, prior to taking over the Africa Bureau in 1993, was the diplomat-in-residence at Howard University. “George is from the old school,” says one of his peers. His approach to Africa was a holdover from the Cold War. After the Somalia debacle, which resulted in the deaths of U.S. marines and the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the region, his main objective was to keep Africa off the Clinton administration’s radar screen. During his tenure at the Africa Bureau, Moose traveled often to Europe, following a pattern that predated even the Cold War: U.S. Africa policy has long been coordinated as much with Western allies as with African leaders. And he much preferred brokering a consensus at the conference table to leading a discussion of the issues.

Not Rice. “It’s great to have strong intellectual leadership in an approach on Africa,” says one female colleague. Rice, a Stanford University alumna, is a former Rhodes Scholar with a Ph.D. from Oxford University. Within the U.S. diplomatic corps, she is the youngest African-American woman ever to rise so high. She is also a brazen political appointee with no patience for bureaucratic sloth. One colleague describes her as “aggressively youthful.” Rice toils daily in what she described in Essence magazine as “an overwhelmingly white-male environment.” Though she has already made enemies at most of the U.S. foreign policy agencies, even her most bitter critics concede that she is “whip-smart.”

Some complain that Rice often makes unrealistic demands upon her staff. “Sometimes we can’t run,” says one mid-level manager. “We have to walk to figure out how to get things done.” Rice herself concedes that she can be impatient. But, she adds, “I’m a straight shooter, and I expect people to be straight with me back.” Even one self-described “old white male” admits that Rice will listen to anyone and consider his or her position. In fact, her tendency “to think out-side the box” is what some career bureaucrats find threatening.

When Rice encounters resistance, she is also prone to bypass the formal chain of command. Though she technically reports to Pickering, Rice has the ear of Secretary of State Albright, who has been a close family friend since Rice was a little girl. Notes one veteran diplomat, “I’ve not seen an assistant secretary with this kind of juice.”

During the first Clinton administration, no one seemed sure what concrete interests the United States still had in Africa. Rice, however, working first from the White House in coordination with National Security Advisor Anthony Lake and then from Foggy Bottom, has identified three interests. The first is that Africa has immediate potential for U.S. investment and perhaps over the long term will become a serious market for U.S. goods. The second is that Africa is rife with transnational threats, namely terrorism, drug trafficking, and other forms of organized crime, that warrant prophylactic U.S. measures. And third, considering the frequency with which the United States has had to respond to recent humanitarian disasters, preemptive steps make sense.

Africa presented the Clinton administration with its first overseas crisis, when, in October 1993, American television viewers witnessed the spectacle of U.S. marines being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. Though the intervention in Somalia had been undertaken by the Bush administration, President-elect Clinton, among many others, supported it at the time. But the unexpected loss of American lives paralyzed the new administration. The televised scenes of bloody mayhem also reinforced American stereotypes about Africa’s “age-old tribal wars.” Later on, the writer Robert Kaplan gave intellectual credence to this theme in his article, “The Coming Anarchy,” which appeared in the February 1994 issue of Atlantic magazine.

The United States was disengaged from and apparently uninterested in Africa when, beginning in April 1994, genocide spread in Rwanda like fire in a greasy pan. Though it seemed to come from nowhere, it did not. Tutsi monarchs had dominated Rwanda for centuries until 1959, when, during the transition to independence, Hutu extremists seized power. Exiled Tutsis, after organizing for decades in neighboring Uganda, invaded Rwanda as a guerrilla force in 1990. A power-sharing agreement eventually produced a cease-fire between the Tutsi rebels and the Hutu government, which ended when the 1994 genocide began.

Historians and others still argue over whether the slaughter was ethnically or politically motivated. But none doubt that it was led by Hutu extremists who murdered at least 500,000 Tutsis, along with roughly 50,000 Hutu moderates.[3] The genocide was carried out with unprecedented speed — with machetes as well as automatic rifles, hand grenades, and other small arms — in just 89 days. In Rwanda, a country the size of Maryland with a population of 8 million, over 6,000 victims perished, on average, each day. [4]

At the time, Rice was director of international organizations and peacekeeping at the National Security Council. She wasn’t used to feeling impotent, and the anguish she felt during the genocide remains. “I will do everything in my power as a policymaker to make sure not to have to ever see that again, she recently told the Washington Post. “I don’t know if I’ll succeed, but I’ll go down fighting.” [5]

“The Initiative”

In the months after the genocide, Rice still refused to see Africa as hopeless. Instead, she decided to help Africans help themselves. By then, a limited, regional U.S. policy based on just such a perspective was already being implemented. The irony is that it had originated not with Rice or any other senior policymakers in Washington but with veteran Agency for International Development (AID) specialists like Gayle Smith, 41, working on the African Horn. Known as the Greater Horn of Africa Initiative, it grew out of the wreckage of Somalia. By 1994, AID administrator J. Brian Atwood was its leading advocate in Washington.

The initiative was revolutionary in concept. Instead of merely reacting to crises, the idea was to take concrete, preemptive measures, to work with local governments throughout the region to promote “food security” and “conflict resolution.” Providing food security means setting up the political, legal, and physical infrastructure to ensure safe and reliable delivery of relief supplies. Conflict resolution entails something more ambiguous. It involves promoting dialogue between hostile states and between warring factions, and working closely with like-minded African leaders who are also interested in trying to create a stable environment.

In 1991, two allied nationalist guerrilla groups took over Ethiopia, ending years of civil war; this led, two years later, to the peaceful breakup of the country and the establishment of Eritrea as an independent nation. This gave impetus to the initiative, which is based on the idea of partnership instead of paternalism. Explains Carol Peasiev, AID’s acting assistant administrator for Africa, “We don’t want hegemony. We want harmony.” What this means in practice is that although UD is financing grass-roots empowerment groups in countries like Kenya, in Eritrea it is deferring to the wishes of the leadership not to back groups independent of government control. “We don’t see a need for [this policy] in Eritrea,” she says.

AID is now applying the same principles to other African states, including Uganda, Rwanda, and Congo, which also have new (relatively so in Uganda’s case) leaders. Critics charge that this approach only undermines pluralism and democratic development, but its defenders argue that positive political change can only take root over time. “You need to look at the evolution of democracy in terms of a movie, not still photographs,” says ex-national security advisor Lake, who is now a professor at Georgetown Universlty, “or, in other words, in dynamic and not static terms.”

Rice, who worked closely under Lake at the White House, shares this view. She also supports the Greater Horn of Africa Initiative. In fact, back in 1994 in response to the Rwandan genocide, Rice even built upon its concepts in developing another plan: the African Crisis Response Initiative. The idea, again, was to develop a regional capability to head off future hostilities. The objective, according to Vincent D. Kern II, deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs, is to help African countries develop a joint “military capability that would be able to rapidly assemble and deploy in order to prevent another descent into anarchy and the needless loss of life.” [6]

Critics, both inside and outside the Clinton administration, charge that neither initiative has made much progress so far. Rice concedes that both plans still have a long way to go. Nonetheless, they represent the aspirations of a new, post-Cold War vision.

To Engage or Pressure Khartoum?

New thinking, however, will not necessarily resolve new dilemmas. Whether to engage or to pressure the regime in Sudan is one. Sudan presented Rice with her first major bureaucratic test, even before she moved from the National Security Council to the State Department. She and a few other political appointees have been pitted against what sometimes seems like everyone else at Foggy Bottom. “Few people anywhere in this building share their approach,” says one career diplomat. Another official describes the wrangling, which began even before Rice came to Foggy Bottom, as a rare contest of “sheer power.”

One of Rice’s main allies is John Prendergast, 35, a Sudan expert at the NSC who has spent extensive time on the ground there behind rebel lines.[7] Both appointees have many Washington critics. “Susan and John are not diplomats,” says one official. “It is good when political appointees challenge conventional wisdom. It is nice, however, when they are informed by institutional expertise.”

At issue is not the nature of Sudan’s Islamist regime, which even Rice’s critics concede has sponsored terrorism. The debate has been over whether to try to cripple the regime by backing front-line states (which are arming Sudanese rebels) as Rice and Prendergast are doing, or to seek to moderate it through diplomacy, as Under Secretary Pickering and others would have preferred.

These others at one time included Barbara K. Bodine, 50, the State Department’s former director of East African affairs, April Glaspie, 56, her successor at the same post (better known for her controversial role as U.S. ambassador to Iraq in 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait), and Timothy Carney, 50, the former U.S. ambassador to Sudan. All are career diplomats. Like Pickering, they maintained that the threat posed by Sudan’s regime is greatly exaggerated. They also maintained that the regime could be neither effectively undermined nor overthrown, so they encouraged Sudanese opposition groups to try to negotiate a settlement to the country’s 15-year civil war. Pickering and his allies also actively searched for moderates within the Sudanese regime with whom they hoped to build relations.

The rival camps fought a decisive battle last September. Though the United States has maintained relations with the regime in Sudan, in February 1996 the administration closed the embassy in Khartoum for security reasons and moved its staff to Nairobi. The security problems have since abated, but Rice’s camp has nonetheless sought to keep the embassy shut in order to send a strong message of disapproval. Last September, while Rice was on maternity leave, Pickering and his allies made a move. Without White House authorization, Pickering told journalists — through an intermediary — that the administration would soon partly reopen the embassy in Khartoum. “It was an interesting squeeze play,” says one official sympathetic to Pickering. Within a week, however, Prendergast mustered the clout to get the announcement overruled. “Albright called Pickering and told him to call the reporters back,” says another senior official. “He was left with egg all over his face.”

In view of this skirmish, it is ironic that the impetus for a more hard-line approach toward Sudan came from neither Rice nor her allies but from Africans, in particular from Eritrean president Isaias Afwerki and the leaders of Sudan’s other front-line states. For years, Sudan’s Islamist regime has supported such rebel groups as Eritrea’s Islamic jihad, whose weapons of choice are anti-tank mines, with which they have blown up several packed civilian buses. Similarly, Sudan has backed the fanatical Christian Lord’s Resistance Army, which conducts a campaign of terror in northern Uganda against civilians and regularly press-gangs adolescent children. Sudan has also backed rebel groups in Ethiopia, and was behind the 1995 attempt on the life of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak during his visit to Addis Ababa.[8]

The National Islamic Front, led by Gen. Omar Bashir, seized power in Sudan in 1989. Even though only 70 percent of Sudan’s population is (Sunni) Muslim, and although the Muslims are concentrated mainly in the northern part of the country, the regime imposed Sharia (Muslim law) nationwide. Its closest foreign allies are those erstwhile adversaries, Iran and Iraq. Politically isolated in Africa, the Bashir regime has sought to expand the reach of Islamist forces in the region between the Sahara and the Horn. It has also allowed such groups as Algeria’s Islamic Salvation Front and the Palestinian-based Hamas, as well as Islamist veterans of the war in Afghanistan, to train on its soil.

The United States added Sudan to its list of nations that support terrorism in 1993, making the country ineligible for any U.S. aid. In 1996, the U.N. Security Council imposed travel restrictions against Sudanese diplomats over Sudan’s failure to extradite suspects wanted for the attempt on President Mubarak’s life. Last year, the Clinton administration promised the front-line states of Uganda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea $20 million in nonlethal military aid, including uniforms and communications equipment — the largest U.S. military aid package to Africa since the Cold War. Last October, the Clinton administration expanded economic sanctions against Sudan during peace negotiations between the regime and opposition groups. Predictably, the talks failed.

Now the Clinton administration is upping the pressure on Khartoum. In April, it sent an interagency team to Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda to explore more “humanitarian, development, political, diplomatic, military and intelligence options” against Sudan, says one high-level participant. Though administration officials say they do not expect Sudanese opposition forces to defeat the government by means of force alone, they hope that, with sufficient external support, the opposition could cripple the regime enough to force it either to change or fall.

Is Nigeria’s Abacha Acceptable?

Nigeria is another source of intra-administration tension. As President Clinton adrnitted during his recent trip to Africa: “We’ve had some fairly heated debate [over Nigeria] among ourselves.” At issue is how to deal with Gen. Sani Abacha, who seized power in 1993. Now, after harassing, imprisoning, and executing members of the opposition, Abacha has scheduled elections for August 1, with himself running for president unopposed.

In March, shortly before President Clinton left Washington for Africa, Assistant Secretary Rice, in a speech at the Brookings Institution, stated what she thought was the administration’s policy. “Let me state clearly and unequivocally that an electoral victory by any military candidate in the forthcoming presidential election in Nigeria would be unacceptable,” she said. “Nigerians need and deserve a real transition to democracy and civilian rule, not another military regime dressed up in civilian clothes.” Rice also called Abacha’s regime “one of the worst abusers of human rights on the continent,” saying that it would be a “source of grave concern” if he did not hand over power to civilian rule.

However, at a joint news conference in Cape Town with South African president Nelson Mandela, President Clinton said something entirely different: “If [Abacha] stands for election, we hope he will stand as a civilian.” Administration officials, including Joseph Wilson, 49, the senior national security advisor for Africa, later tried to “spin” the controversy, suggesting that the two statements meant the same thing. But the fact is that Clinton gave Abacha “the green light to run as a civilian,” conceded a State Department official. This time Rice had egg on her face.

Who got to Clinton? Many people, it seems. One may have been Gilbert Chagouty, a Lebanese national whose family has lived in Nigeria for decades. Chagoury has extensive business interests in Nigeria and is close to General Abacha. He also has White House connections. According to The Washington Post, he was among 250 top Democratic National Committee donors who attended a dinner with President Clinton in 1996. Though as a foreigner he is prohibited by law from donating money directly to the Democratic Party, Chagoury, a few months before the dinner, had donated $460,000 to Vote Now 96, a nonprofit voter registration group that has come under scrutiny from Congressional investigators over its alleged connections to the Democratic Party.[9]

Of course, a host of other individuals and companies with market interests in Nigeria have also long lobbied the administration not to impose sanctions. One of their chief advocates is Jesse Jackson, who, though he has no government office and still works out of the private organization he founded, the National Rainbow Coalition, serves President Clinton as a special envoy. One White House aide who went along on Clinton’s trip to Africa says that Rice and Jackson exchanged heated words on Air Force One and elsewhere. Rice denies it. (Jackson did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.) Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who were also on board, entered into the discussion. One participant says the talks were “vibrant.”

Indeed, principles and interests clash in Nigeria. The country is second only to South Africa in sub-Saharan Africa as a site of U.S. direct foreign investment, with $978 million flowing into Nigeria last year. U.S. exports to Nigeria in 1997 totaled $814 million — again more than to any other country in sub-Saharan Africa except South Africa. And Nigeria surpasses all African countries as a source of U.S. imports. Last year, it exported oil, gas, and other commodities worth $6.3 billion to the United States.[10] It is the fifth largest foreign supplier of oil to the United States, even though overall it has only about 4.1 percent of the total U.S. market. (Mobil and Chevron are the main U.S. buyers.)

At the same time, Nigeria is among Africa’s most retrograde countries. The private group, Transparency International, lists it as Africa’s most corrupt nation. Its infrastructure has collapsed, and criminal syndicates are flourishing. The Abacha regime has neglected such basic needs as clean drinking water and electricity. Moreover, the regime has been linked to thousands of fraudulent scams that have targeted small businesses in the United States, and the country has become a major transshipment point for heroin and other illegal drugs that end up in Europe and the United States.

Abacha’s human rights record is deplorable. He has killed hundreds of political opponents and imprisoned thousands more, including many members of other ethnic groups. In 1995, he ordered the execution by hanging of eight activists of the Ogoni people in southeastern Nigeria, including Ken Saro-Wiwa, the award-winning writer, who had accused the government and oil companies together of destroying their homeland. More recently, Abacha has even attacked former allies. In April 1998, a military court sentenced six ex-military officers, including Abacha’s former right-hand man, Gen. Oladipyo Diya, to death by firing squad for allegedly plotting a coup.

“He is making a time bomb,” says Adotei Akwei of Amnesty International, who complains that Rice and other U.S. officials haven’t pressured Abacha enough. “It is almost as if they perceive of Nigeria as too big a challenge,” he adds. “And they may have already undercut themselves.”

Indeed, the young assistant secretary may have painted herself into a corner. Abacha, shortly after President Clinton’s trip, manipulated Nigeria’s electoral process to ensure that all five of its legally registered parties would nominate him as their sole candidate for president. Now no one can legitimately argue that the process is fair. That leaves Rice with no easy step. Human rights groups have long pressed the administration to impose an embargo against Nigerian oil exports. Though a unilateral embargo might provide leverage in the short term, over time Nigeria would likely find new buyers elsewhere. “That would only hurt us,” says the Corporate Council on Africa’s David Miller.

Another option would be to try to forge a multilateral oil embargo. While divisions within the European Community would likely prohibit this, an embargo involving the United States and the British-led Commonwealth nations seems more feasible, especially with the new Labour government in London. Some Clinton administration officials have considered this step. But few people inside or outside the administration are convinced (or worried) that they will follow through. Following the news that Abacha would be Nigeria’s only presidential candidate, Peter Bartlett, senior vice president at the Banque Nationale de Paris in London, told Reuters: “It doesn’t look like it’s good news for democracy, but I don’t think it will have much effect on the Nigerian market.”

Stopping Central Africa’s Cycle of Violence

The Clinton administration is far less divided over Congo. Most officials have sought to remain engaged with its new leader, Laurent Kabila, much to the dismay of some private human rights organizations, which seek to ostracize him for his continuing abuses. Other groups that might be expected to voice an opinion in the matter have had little to say. The State Department’s Human Rights Bureau, though it affects policy indirectly through its annual country reports, has had little influence on the discussion. (It rarely does in general.) Similarly, U.S. business groups have avoided this quarrel. Though the United States imported $282 million worth of oil, minerals, and other goods from Congo last year, American firms have few direct foreign investments in the country.

Foreign observers everywhere are watching to see how the situation in Congo develops. The revolt that erupted in November 1996 in what was then called Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) caught everyone off guard. The strength of the rebellion and the speed — seven months — with which it led to power took virtually all observers, including the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, by surprise. “We were caught with our pants down,” says one high-ranking State Department official. A Defense Department official says that prior to the revolt the CIA had only reported that “some trouble was brewing” in eastern Zaire and that “something was likely to happen” — no more than what was already being reported by humanitarian groups at the time.[11]

U.S. officials, contrary to claims by France and others, were also initially unaware of the depth of direct military involvement by Rwanda, Uganda, Eritrea, and other states in providing joint training arms, and funds for the effort. Though Rwanda’s leader, Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, had previously intimated to U.S. officials that he and others might launch a preemptive strike against Hutu genocidaires then holding other Hutu refugees hostage in eastern Zaire, few took him seriously at the time. “We under-estimated them,” says one old Africa hand. Independent military action on that scale by Africans is a phenomenon that has emerged only since the Cold War, even though the nationalism that has accompanied it may seem familiar.

A Thug for Decades

Laurent Kabila has wrapped himself in his flag, and presents himself as one of Africa’s promising new leaders. In fact, he’s been a thug for decades. Though he’s been involved in leftist guerrilla movements since the early 1960s, he never attracted any significant following. “Kabila has not set foot since time immemorial at the front,” wrote the Cuban Revolutionary, Che Guevara, in his Zaire diaries in 1965. “He allows the day to go by without worrying about anything other than political infighting and is too addicted to drink and women.”[12] Congo’s new leader has also been involved in ivory, diamond, and gold smuggling.

Few people had even heard of Kabila before the 1996 rebellion. Among those who had, including Foggy Bottom’s old Africa hands, many questioned both his capability and his motives. Other officials, including Rice, saw him as one of Africa’s promising new leaders. So did the secretary of state. During her December 1997 trip to Africa, Albright held a joint press conference with him in Kinshasa. But Kabila embarrassed her by railing against a local journalist who dared to ask about an imprisoned opposition leader.

It was only one warning post on a treacherous road. The initial optimism that accompanied the fall of Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaire’s longtime despot, whose reign gave rise to the term “predatory regime,” has since given way to melancholy and fear. Kabila has banned independent human rights groups, imprisoned Journalists, sent political opponents into internal exile, and executed others, including military officers suspected of mutiny. Voices from all quarters say that the Kabila regime is corrupt. Even his former allies in Rwanda, Uganda, and Eritrea have begun asking whether they should have recruited another Zairian to lead the operations in eastern Zaire.

Their collective objective in organizing rebel forces in this area was to rid it of the genocidaires who had regrouped there after carrying out Rwanda’s 1994 slaughter. In the beginning, few thought that the effort might eventually propel the Zairian rebel forces to national power. But from the start, Rwanda played a major role in directing the rebels and participated in the carnage that followed. Though the actual number of casualties is unknown, thousands were massacred in the months leading up to August 1997. Though Congolese and Rwandan officials have both claimed that most of those who perished were armed genocidaires who died fighting, witnesses and other evidence clearly suggest that among the dead were thousands of unarmed civilians, including women and children. And Kabila’s forces as well as Rwandan military officers are implicated in these attacks.[13]

Nevertheless, the Clinton administration is providing economic and military aid, including U.S. Army Special Forces trainers, to the Rwandan government and economic aid to Congo. Rice argues that this support is essential to ensure stability in the long term. Alison DesForges of Human Rights Watch is among those who oppose it. “Kabila was established [in power] at the enormous cost of noncombatant lives,” she says. Holly Burkhalter of Physicians for Human Rights agrees, “If you give them aid now, then you squander your leverage.”

Not everyone in the humanitarian community has been against providing him with aid. An unprecedented split between human rights groups and development organizations has emerged. “We care about human rights,” says Justin Forsyth of Oxfam International. “But we think you need to engage Kabila [and others] first in order to gain leverage.” He points out that the entire international community lost credibility in the region for its collective failure in 1994 to help stop Rwanda’s genocide. Afterward, many of the same groups — including his own, he adds — were responsible for supporting refugee camps that harbored genocidaires.

Rice maintains that the genocidaires still represent a serious threat. They are once again active inside Rwanda, where they have been carrying out attacks, including against civilian witnesses to the genocide. Genocidaires murdered 231 people the day before Secretary Albright and Assistant Secretary Rice arrived in Kigali last December. Rice was so outraged by the attack that she asked the Defense Department to consider ways, besides providing training, to help Rwanda fight back. Pentagon officials say Rice was even considering U.S. military intervention; Rice denies it. She remains determined, however, to back the government in Kigali against the genocidaires. Their ongoing attacks are “something about which we all need to be concerned,” she says.

At the same time, Rwanda and Congo are each still committing their own abuses. This April, Rwanda executed 22 alleged genocidaires by firing squad after hurried trials in which some of the accused had only hours to prepare a defense. That same month U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan finally withdrew a U.N. team from Congo that had been sent to investigate the 1997 killings in the eastern part of the country. After agreeing last year to allow the team to operate, Kabila had harassed investigators and intimidated witnesses, and the investigation went nowhere.

How to Stay in the Game?

Whether Assistant Secretary Rice succeeds in setting lasting parameters for U.S. Africa policy will depend upon effective action by players on both sides of the Atlantic. She brings vitality to the job at a time when Africa is undergoing dynamic change. Her active approach to problems resembles that of Africa’s new generation of leaders. But Rice is also young enough to make mistakes. “I’m not sure she knows when to compromise,” says one fan who is also a friend.

Having overcome her rivals, Rice now plays the administration’s Africa hand. Of course, says one official, if she plays the wrong cards, “we are going to wind up dealing ourselves out of the game.”

Notes:

1. All quotations are from interviews conducted by the author in April and May 1998. Back
2. I am relatively sympathetic toward these leaders. See Dan Connell and Frank Smyth, “Africa’s New Bloc,” Foreign Affairs 77 (March/April 1998), pp. 80-94. Back
3. The historian Alison DesForges of Human Rights Watch/Africa uses these figures. The histo- rian Gerard Prunier and the New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch use the figure of 800,000 killed. See Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide, 2d ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), and Philip Gourevitch, “The Genocide Fax,” New Yorker, May 11, 1998. Back
4. Frank Smyth, Arming Rwanda (New York: Human Rights Watch/Arms Project, January 1994). Back
5. Lonnae O’Neal Parker, “She’s on Top of the World,” Washington Post, March 30,1998. Back
6. Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Africa of the Committee on International Relations, October 1, 1997. Back
7. See John Prendergast, The Outcryfor Peace in the Sudan (Washington, D.C.: Centre for the Strategic Initiatives of Women, October 1996). Back
8. See Ted Dagne and Donald Deng, Sudan: Civil War, Terrorism, and U.S. Relations (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, April 3, 1997). Back
9. Charles R. Babcock and Susan Schmidt, “Voters Group Donor Got DNC Perk,” Washington Post, November 22, 1997. Back
10. G. Feldman, U.S.-African Trade Profile (Washington, D.C.: Office of Africa, International Trade Administration, U. S. Department of Commerce, March 1998). Back
11. See Sheldon Yett, Masisi, Down the Road from Goma: Ethnic Cleansing and Displacement in Eastern Zaire (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Committee for Refugees, June 1996). Back
12. Jorge G. Castaneda, “How Che Saw Kabila,” Newsweek, April 21, 1997. Back
13. Scott Campbell, What Kabila Is Hiding (New York: Human Rights Watch/Africa, October 1997). “

Africa’s New Block

/in /by

Coming of age

Sub-Saharan Africa is undergoing its most profound changes since the early years of independence. Forces that have long held sway over the region are now either waning or gone. For decades the United States, the Soviet Union, and France propped up dictators who served their interests — men like Ethiopia’s Mengistu Halle Mariam, Somalia’s Mohamed Siad Barre, Rwanda’s Juvenal Habyarimana, and the former Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko. The scaled-down presence of foreign powers has helped topple the regimes these men built. Other despots like Kenya’s Daniel arap Moi and Cameroon’s Paul Biya are also feeling unprecedented pressure for democratic change. Many were military officers who took advantage of the general disorder left by departing colonial forces to seize power. Once entrenched, each preached some form of nationalism, only to evolve cynical regimes which, in addition to being brutal, did little for their own people while shamelessly enriching their leaders’ inner circles. Now, with the clear exception of Nigeria, Africa’s postcolonial despotic order is finally breaking down.

But several new trends are evident. Since the departure of foreign powers, pre-colonial ethnic conflicts — exploited by local political forces — have reemerged with a vengeance. Although the divide between the Hutus and Tutsis dates back to at least the sixteenth century, Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, in which up to 800,000 people were slaughtered, was unprecedented. Ethnic and clan-based political identities are resurfacing elsewhere on the continent as well. In Nigeria they fuel a regionally based opposition movement to the central government, in Sudan an armed rebel group that threatens secession. And in places like Liberia and the Somali Republic, they have dissolved nations into anarchy.

Another rising trend is the propensity of African states to invade each other. Besides deploying combat forces, Rwanda helped plan, organize, and lead the rebel campaign that deposed Mobutu last year, turning Zaire into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Angola also marched against Mobutu and had a hand in Brazzaville’s more recent leadership struggle. Uganda, which has a history of backing military campaigns in the Great Lakes region, is now allied with Ethiopia and Eritrea in support of rebels in Sudan. Ethiopia is also backing forces in Somalia. Nigeria has deployed peacekeepers under dubious mandates in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Africans are increasingly taking matters into their own hands. A new generation of leaders backed by highly trained and disciplined armies is assuming power. The most assertive of these new leaders are former guerrilla commanders who developed their character and worldview as their movements defeated foreign-supported, postcolonial despots in drawn-out struggles. While highly nationalistic, these leaders were once students of Marxism, organizing along democratic-centralist lines and planning to nationalize their economics. Although some still own Lenin’s complete works, they are pragmatists, favoring free markets and insisting that corruption, not class difference, is the greatest threat to national development. Steeped in the values of secular nationalism, each has sought to incorporate disenfranchised ethnic and religious groups. Yet not one of these leaders can easily be called democratic, as each still runs a de facto one-party state.

Some of these states are coalescing into a new political and military bloc that, though relatively small, aspires to remake much of the continent. At its core are Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, with Angola and South Africa playing smaller roles. These countries enjoy the sympathies of Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Burundi. Having ousted Mobutu, the bloc now seeks to topple the Islamist regime in Sudan and influence Chad, the Central African Republic, and Somalia. While these new leaders disagree over tactics, they share the goal of ending the cronyism and instability that has epitomized postcolonial Africa.

More by default than by design, the United States has gained influence while France, especially, has lost ground. The Clinton administration has largely played catch-up in response to events in Africa, with guidance flowing as much from foreign missions to Washington as the other way around. U.S. policymakers have been mostly sanguine about the new bloc and its aims. Yet on key issues affecting Africa, they remain divided.

The agents of change

LEADERS OF the new bloc share interests and experiences that manifest themselves in fiercely independent attitudes. Take Eritrea, a small, poor country on the Red Sea, colonized by Italy and forcibly incorporated into neighboring Ethiopia in 1962. It fought U.S.- and then Soviet-backed Ethiopian regimes for 30 years before gaining independence in 1993. Its new president, Isaias Afwerki, is a long-time guerrilla leader and is unusually candid. In his first address to the Organization of African Unity, Isaias (Afwerki, by regional custom, is his father’s first name) lambasted the assembled heads of state for neglecting Africa’s problems while wasting money on their own lavish lifestyles.

A former engineering student, Isaias, 51, is a problem-solver, willing to borrow from any plan or formula that might work. At 23, he went to China for military training at the height of the Cultural Revolution. Today he is taking a correspondence course at a British institute to earn a business degree. Isaias retains — and demands from his followers — an unyielding spirit of self-sacrifice. Crime and corruption are rare in Eritrea. In 1995 the government imprisoned several high-ranking Eritrean revolutionary veterans for embezzlement. National service, including both military training and civilian labor, is compulsory, and many young men and women are surprisingly eager to serve. And unlike other African capitals, Asmara is impeccably clean.

Eritrea, while allowing more political freedom than before, is not a democracy. Isaias states clearly that the country will advance toward greater pluralism according to its own schedule and on its own terms. The movement he founded, which still dominates, has successfully incorporated Muslims and ethnic minorities into its ranks. But fearing ethnic fragmentation, Eritrea outlawed parties deemed to be ethnically or religiously motivated. Furthermore, only demonstrations in favor of the government are tolerated. In 1993, when disabled revolutionary veterans protested by blockading roads and taking hostages, government soldiers killed several of them. There is no free press either. An Eritrean journalist with Agence France Presse was arrested in 1997 for reporting on a private speech Isaias gave on Eritrea’s military involvement with allied states against neighboring Sudan.

Ethiopia, much larger than Eritrea, is one of those states. Its prime minister, Meles Zenawi, 42, who joined a revolutionary movement when he was a 20-year-old aspiring medical student, is another eclectic thinker. Meles fought alongside Isaias for 15 years against the brutal, Soviet-backed Mengistu. Isaias, who provided experienced combatants to help Ethiopian revolutionaries in 1975, provided the artillery for Meles’ final march on Addis Ababa in May 1991. These two leaders then negotiated the protocols for a referendum two years later that led to its independence. They have even more in common. Both men are ethnic Tigrinya, which leads many non-Tigrinya Ethiopians to suspect a conspiracy.

A third leader within the bloc is Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, about 53 (he is not sure), the president of the small but powerful Uganda. Often described as the “godfather” of the new bloc because of his voluble utterances, Museveni is the only bloc leader who came to power during the Cold War. He, too, has a history of involvement in revolutionary movements. In 1968, the 24-year-old Museveni was studying in socialist Tanzania. Later he led a group of students behind enemy lines in Mozambique to visit Marxist Guerrillas. He also spent time in North Korea seeking military training. By 1971 he was back in Uganda, working for President Milton Obote’s first regime when the army commander Idi Amin seized power. Museveni formed a guerrilla force to oppose Amin but eventually disarmed and joined the second Obote regime, only to break with him again. In January 1986, five years after forming a new guerrilla army, Museveni and his men overran Kampala.

Museveni has been a relatively benign dictator, often delivering homilies about the value of work and individual initiative. While encouraging political participation in villages, he outlawed political parties, claiming they would only breed chaos. Before the 1996 presidential elections, he allowed long-dormant parties to resurface, although they were still prohibited from formally endorsing candidates or organizing rallies. During the campaign, Museveni’s followers intimidated the opposition, while state resources were used to mobilize his own supporters, and he won easily. Opposition groups nevertheless hold some seats in the parliament and control The Monitor, Uganda’s second-largest daily. While the opposition tries to attract members of ethnic minorities, the issue of ethnicity is less divisive in Uganda than elsewhere. The country has many small ethnic groups, so no single group dominates. Museveni himself is from the Banyankore ethnic group in southwestern Uganda. Because some key Rwandans who fought alongside him during his rise to power are Tutsi, he is frequently accused by foreigners, especially Francophones, of being one as well.

Paul Kagame, 40, Rwanda’s vice president and minister of defense was one of Museveni’s comrades, supporting him in 1981. In turn, Museveni aided Kagame and the Tutsi rebels that defeated the French-backed Hutu government in Rwanda in 1994. Like others in the new bloc, Kagame and his movement have a Marxist past; some Rwandan officers still subscribe to North Korean newspapers. Yet the new Rwanda is hardly antediluvian. Western experts consider Kagame a top military strategist who commands an effective army that he is not afraid to use. Kagame does not deny that his forces played a decisive role in the recent Zairean rebellion that brought Laurent Kabila and his followers to power. Kagame’s main objective was to rid eastern Zaire of Rwandan Hutu rebels. But an unknown number of them have since returned to Rwanda, hiding among its Hutu majority and launching new attacks. Hutus outnumber Tutsis six to one. Kagame has no intention of sharing any real power.

The new four-state African bloc, therefore, emerged from the prior understandings between the men who are now leaders of Eritrea and Ethiopia on the one hand, and Uganda and Rwanda on the other. These leaders still disagree on many issues, however. While Rwandan and Eritrean senior officials get along well, Uganda’s Museveni is critical of Ethiopia’s Meles for encouraging ethnic identity politics that could backfire and divide the country. Similarly, since Kagame’s 1994 takeover in Rwanda, some distance has opened up between the Ugandans and the Rwandans. Although Museveni is prone to making indecorous public comments, he privately discouraged Kagame from taking measures that might have provoked France in the former Zaire. Kagame ignored him. In general, Museveni has advocated restraint, while the leaders of the bloc’s two smallest countries, Rwanda and Eritrea, have called for action.

For better or worse?

Emerging conflicts have brought the four members of the bloc closer together. Since the late 1980s, Sudan has provided bases and arms to various Islamist and extremist rebel groups launching raids into Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Uganda. After one cross-border attack into Eritrea in December 1994, Isaias took the initiative to strike back. He invited various factions of the Sudanese opposition to Asmara to forge a military alliance and flew to Addis Ababa and Kampala to persuade Ethiopia’s Meles and Uganda’s Museveni to form a coalition of frontline states. Each, state now provides bases, logistical support, and arms to Sudanese rebel groups operating from its territory, with their combined momentum even drawing U.S. support. In 1997 the Clinton administration’s budget for nonlethal military aid to Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Uganda to help fend off rebels backed by Sudan was $20 million.

The former Zaire was a second catalyst of cooperation. While Zaire had long provided bases to rebels of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) fighting the Angolan government along its western border, its own ethnically-driven policies on its eastern border harrowed the terrain for insurrection. Zaire allowed Rwandan rebels to operate from its territory, and Zairean forces joined with these groups in 1995 and 1996 to attack local Tutsis, massacring thousands and displacing as many as 250,000.

Although Laurent Kabila took credit for its success, the Zairean rebellion was a joint effort. Kagame has since admitted that Angola and Uganda provided initial funding. Angola also deployed troops right before the fall of Kinshasa; Rwanda helped plan and execute the operation and provided combat forces. From the beginning, Eritrea provided material support and combat training in eastern Zaire. The operation, while impressive by military standards, exacted a grisly human cost. Evidence suggests that both Kabila’s and Kagame’s forces hunted down and killed unarmed civilians — including women and children — suspected of being, or being associated with, the rebels. Many officers suspected of ordering the killings spoke Kinyarwanda, Rwanda’s language. These massacres cast a harsh light on Kagame, Kabila, and the new bloc.

Despite this record, some international observers like the World Bank and Oxfam International, a private anti-hunger consortium, welcome the bloc. They see a new axis emerging across the continent, linking leaders who seek to break the corrupt and colonial ties of the past and ending the vast patronage systems that have undermined African development. For decades, leaders failed to invest in infrastructure, education, health care, or legal and regulatory reform. Nations became aid-dependent, while their leaders established predatory regimes. They used their armies and what judiciaries they had to insulate themselves from any pressure for reform. When challenged, tyrants like Amin, Habyarimana, and Mobutu responded with unspeakable violence.

The legacy of their generation is obscene. Among Sub-Saharan Africa’s 590 million people, almost half live on less than one dollar a day and lack safe drinking water. More than one-third have no health care. Tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis, and AIDS run rampant, and preventive measures are minimal. Nearly half the adult population is illiterate, and worker productivity in most countries is among the lowest anywhere. Africa’s aggregate per capita income is lower than that of any region but south Asia. In fact, under the last generation of rulers, the continent grew poorer with every passing decade. Even if Africa’s aggregate growth doubles over the next nine years, its per capita income in 2006 would still be five percent lower than it was in 1974.

Africa’s new leaders aspire to reverse this decline — to establish what Oxfam calls “new political systems of responsive and accountable government.” Interestingly, while all four members of the bloc share this goal, Eritrea and Rwanda have been particularly suspicious of foreign nongovernmental organizations. Neither country is a beggar. In 1996 Rwanda expelled many NGOs, accusing them of aiding rebels. Eritrea accuses NGOs of perpetuating their own existence by creating aid-dependency among its people. In 1996 Eritrea ended food relief programs, and in 1997 it suspended all other activities of NGOS in the country, allowing them to fund, but not operate, health and education projects.

The bloc’s four countries encourage development through investment and work rather than through foreign aid. With the exception of Rwanda, whose economy continues to plummet due to the civil war, these countries have seen their economies grow. Ethiopia experienced a 3.4 percent average annual increase in GDP in this decade. Uganda did even better, averaging 6.9 percent growth during the same period, rising to 10 percent in the past two years. This prosperity follows efforts, especially in Uganda, supported by the World Bank and others, to stabilize currencies, sell state-owned enterprises, reduce government budgets, and create a stable business climate designed to attract private capital. Pursuing similar policies, Eritrea has seen recent annual growth of almost 8 percent.

Sub-Saharan Africa now receives only five percent of all direct foreign investment flowing to developing countries. About half of that goes to Nigeria, mainly to extract oil. Nonetheless, South Africa, the Ivory Coast, and Ghana are attracting new investors, and countries like Senegal and Mozambique are trying to. Private capital alone, however, will not eliminate poverty. Oxfam and many other groups urge the World Bank and other Western institutions to use their funds to encourage economic equality, improve health and education, and develop agricultural and other projects that are self-sustaining in the long term.

Economic development should not distract attention from human rights abuses like the Congo’s recent massacres. These events, however, should not be seen through an historical lens. Looking at events over time, everyone emerges sullied, including members of the international community. Rwanda’s genocide began in April 1994. United Nations peacekeepers were already there, but their force structure and mandate were too feeble to stop the bloodletting. France deployed troops in Rwanda once the genocide was under way, but they set up a safe haven that protected many war criminals. The U.N. Security Council approved France’s establishment of a sanctuary. Oxfam and U.N. relief agencies also played host to killers in refugee camps in eastern Zaire.

Almost everyone involved agreed that civilian refugees should be separated from war criminals, but they disagreed on who should do it. When the United Nations in late 1996 decided to deploy a force under Canadian command, its proposed mandate was limited to providing safe corridors for refugees to voluntarily repatriate to Rwanda. It had no authority to segregate them forcibly from the killers who were holding them back. By then Kagame, the Rwandan leader, was fed up. Just as the U.N. force was about to mobilize, Kagame unleashed a rebellion. In less than one month, local Tutsi and Rwandan forces routed the war criminals from the U.N. camps, separating them from most of the refugee population. Half a million refugees returned to Rwanda within three days. The rebellion continued, and, Kabila proclaimed himself its leader.

A member of the Muluba ethnic group from diamond-rich southeastern Zaire, Kabila had participated in several communist-led revolts and an ethnic rebellion. He formed his own revolutionary party in 1968. Although it attracted little support, Kabila financed it through ivory, diamond, and gold smuggling. He remained in relative obscurity until he was recruited by Kagame and others to lead eastern Zaire’s Tutsi rebellion. Since assuming power, he has failed to incorporate opposition leaders and other ethnic groups into his movement, raising questions about whether he will be able to control the Congo, one of Africa’s largest countries with over 200 ethnic groups. His forces, like Kagame’s, have much to answer for concerning human rights, although he has agreed to allow the United Nations to investigate their alleged massacres. But brokered by U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson, the U.N. commission’s mandate begins in March 1993, which will enable its members to investigate Rwanda’s deadly slide into genocide, as well as subsequent events that precipitated the Congo massacres. Kagame, Kabila, and others have been assured that the antecedents to their own crimes will not be overlooked.

New targets

Although the bloc is cohesive, its influence elsewhere on the continent is modest. Stretching from the Great Lakes region to the Red Sea, its combined forces are one of several major military concentrations in Africa. While together they are stronger than the Sudanese army, they are no match for the armies of South Africa or Nigeria. Economically the bloc is small. Its most militant members, Eritrea and Rwanda, have economies smaller than that of Cyprus. The bloc’s two largest countries, Ethiopia and Uganda, have economies that are each less than that of oil-rich Sudan. So far the bloc’s influence has been limited to central and eastern Africa as well as the Horn. Nigeria dominates the Economic Community of West African States, and post-apartheid South Africa is a rising force on the continent.

Sudan is next on the bloc’s list of targets. For years the Islamist regime, led by General Omar Bashir, has backed fundamentalist rebels in three bloc states and elsewhere, including Egypt, Kenya, Senegal, and the former Somalia. Khartoum was also behind assassination attempts on Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1995 and Eritrea’s Isaias in Asmara in 1997. Here the bloc and the United States share common interests. Washington is irritated at Sudan’s support of individuals like the wealthy Saudi Osama bin Laden, whom the State Department claims has financed terrorism worldwide, and groups including Algeria’s Islamic Salvation Front, the Palestinian-based Hamas, and Islamist veterans of the war in Afghanistan.

Composed mainly of Muslim Arabs in the north, the Bashir regime has escalated the war against rebel forces in the south. The regime has banned political parties, trade unions, and all other “nonreligious institutions,” and has restricted dress and behavior in accordance with Islamic law. Taking some cues from Iran, it has also restricted the press and purged more than 78,000 people from its army, police, and civil service, reshaping the state apparatus to better stifle dissent. The army, faced with unprecedented rebel attacks, has been forced to recruit 14-year-olds to sustain its ranks.

Leaders of Sudan’s armed rebels are close to the bloc. John Garang, the commander of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, based mainly in the south, was in a revolutionary study group in Tanzania with Uganda’s Museveni. Abdel Aziz Khalid, commander of the Sudan Alliance Forces, a new group based in the east, is a former Sudanese army commander who consults frequently with Eritrea’s Isaias. Elsewhere in Africa, another leader compatible with the bloc is Thabo Mbeki, 55, the South African deputy president. More militant than President Nelson Mandela, Mbeki is expected to succeed him in 1999.

The bloc supports change elsewhere in Africa, even in states beyond its reach like Nigeria. Described by one U.S. expert as “a massive criminal enterprise,” Nigeria has become a major transit point for heroin from Asia and other drugs en route to Europe and the United States. Led by General Sani Abacha, who seized power in a 1993 coup, Nigeria’s regime has killed hundreds of political opponents and imprisoned thousands more, including many members of ethnic minorities. Composed mostly of northerners like Abacha, it has crushed dissent in the country’s southeast, especially among the Ogonis, who blame him and his predecessors for destroying their homeland. Ignoring them, Abacha in November 1995 hung Ken Saro-Wiwa, the award-winning writer, along with eight fellow Ogoni activists.

However unlikely the bloc is to effect change in Nigeria, it has already bolstered the opposition in other countries like Kenya. President Moi recently closed the offices of Ugandan rebels in Nairobi, and demonstrators there have begun shouting Kabila’s name in the streets. Moi has finally extradited Rwandan rebel leaders to stand trial. As part of its effort to isolate Sudan, the new bloc also seeks influence in the Central African Republic and Chad. In the former Somalia, the bloc plans to help rebuild the state’s institutions. On the Horn and elsewhere, it aims to inspire regimes in its image.

Although disorder reigns over much of the continent, Africa’s new leaders have begun to fill the vacuum left by the end of the Cold War. While all four members of Africa’s bloc are leery of France for historical reasons, all enjoy warm relations with the United States.

The Clinton administration has embraced the bloc and its allies. Since 1995 U.S. army special forces have been training Kagame’s troops in Rwanda. Last December, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. She sidestepped, however, many abuses, including the recent massacres in the Congo, drawing criticism from human rights organizations. Moral versus pragmatic views are at the heart of most foreign policy debates; the most sustainable solutions usually result from a synthesis of both. Such a policy is appropriate for dealing with Africa’s new bloc, which is led by market-oriented men who earned their mandates through protracted struggle. Although they still resist foreign guidance on democracy and human rights, they are far more responsive, accountable, and egalitarian than any of their predecessors. Together they comprise a new political-military alliance that is engaged in joint campaigns from the Great Lakes to the Sahara. However imperfect, the bloc changes Africa’s balance of power.

Eritrean Run

/in /by

Squeezing the nearest hand-hold, my right knuckles turned red from friction with the passenger door while my left hand clung to the handle of a 10-gallon water jug secured behind my bench. Our driver and translator, Kelata Abraham, honked each time he approached a blind mountain curve. This road of dirt and loose rocks was cut into the largely treeless highlands of central Eritrea, once a part of Ethiopia on the African Home. We were in a 6-cylinder, 4-door Toyota Land Cruiser equipped with a reserve diesel tank whose gauge was conveniently roof-mounted alongside an altimeter. Its needle read 2,200 meters (7,200 ft). Outside my window was a shoulderless drop-off whose end I couldn’t see.

We were on a day trip just outside the Eritrean capital of Asmara, before setting out on our main journey — a 200-mile run, first through the highlands and then down into its desert plains all the way to Eritrea’s western border with Sudan. As freelance journalists, our goal was to find and interview Sudanese guerrillas who had just opened up a new front there against Sudan’s regime.

The product of an Islamic revolution, it is backed now by both Iran and Iraq. En shala, Arabic for God willing, we’d return safely.

My partner, Dan Connel, even with his grizzled moustache and thinning hair, looks and acts much younger than his 52 years. He has been covering wars here for the BBC, The Washington Post and others since 1976. Lengthy time away from home, however, led to family tensions including the painful estrangement of his youngest daughter. But before we left Asmara, Dan received a letter addressed “Dear Daddy,” in which his daughter wrote that she just had a baby girl. “Now I’ve got them both to celebrate,” he gushed, showing faint spider webs around hazel eyes.

Our first stop was an old plantation decorated with rows of violet bougainvilleas, a flowering tree whose limbs grow like vines. Today, they ring farms and vineyards throughout Eritrea — a legacy of the Italians who colonized it back in 1889. Later the Italians tried to expand south into neighboring Ethiopia. Sipping tea under an old log-and-bougainvillea canopy, I contemplated my own maternal roots and link to this region. My great-grandfather, Theodore Mussano, had served here as a non-commissioned officer in the Italian army. He was one of the few Italians to survive the 1896 Battle of Adua, a decisive campaign which checked Italy’s reach on the African Horn until the time of Mussolini.

Next we visited Zagher, a village where Dan is nothing short of a walking legend. Some of his old friends invited us into their home, shooing away two donkeys from the sitting logs on the dirt floor. We were treated to bitter home-brewed beer and a spread of shuro, a chickpea sauce spiced with fiery berbere, served communally over injerra, a flat, sponge-like bread, which is this area’s staple. Respecting decorum, we ate with our right hands, as the left is reserved for a less sanitary chore.

Eritrea, which only became an independent nation in 1993, is itself a mélange of the region’s cultures. The Tigrinya people and language dominate, although Arabic, especially in the lowlands near Sudan, is also widely spoken. Spiritually, the population is about equally divided between Eastern Orthodox Christians and Sunni Muslims. There is also a small minority who, like Kelata, are Catholic, converted first by Spanish Jesuits and later the Italians. These differences came clear during our journey. Seeing our white faces, children in the highlands repeatedly yelled “Italiani” to get our attention, while in the lowlands they playfully shouted “Khawagia”, the local Arabic word for white people.

A flat tire in Asmara delayed our departure for Sudan. But the Kumho 16-inch, all-terrain steel-belted radials still had almost an inch of tread. Kelata checked their air pressure, and made sure the diesel tanks were topped off. Our rented 1994 Land Cruiser had an appropriate Sandstone finish embellished with red sport stripes. Despite 53,657 kilometers, its ignition timing and compression sounded perfect. So did its cassette deck. Kelata brought Tigrinya ballads as well as some hybrids of traditional melodies with rock.

Security was a concern. In addition to the civil war in Sudan, Eritrea was fighting its own guerrillas, a small but very dangerous group known as Islamic Jihad or Islamic Holy War. But so far it had been limited to isolated acts of terrorism and assassinations, and, even among Muslims, seems to have little support. One reason is that Eritreans, Muslims and Christians alike just finished waging a 30-year war for independence against Ethiopia, leaving Eritreans everywhere with an uncanny sense of national pride. Take Asmara. It is both the cleanest and safest capital I’ve visited on five continents. Nonetheless, Islamic Jihad was still active in the lowlands, suspected of planting large land mines on rural roads, which had killed dozens of people.

While the road out of Asmara was paved, there was little if any shoulder, even as we climbed to 2,800 meters (9,240 ft). When there was a guardrail, it was only a series of white cement squares, each just a few feet high, and spaced out with almost a car length between them. Adding to the challenge, oncoming vehicles, especially large Fiat trucks, tended to hug the middle of the road, while mountain goats herded by mongrel dogs and Tigrinya shepherds often appeared as well without warning.

The terrain looked dusty and dry, even though it was the end of the highland’s rainy season. Topsoil here had little to cling to with most of the trees either cut down for firewood or otherwise destroyed during the war. Reminding us of it, about every hour we passed the rusted carcass of a tank. The more mangled ones had clearly been blown apart by large mines, while others looked like they had simply broken down and been abandoned by their Ethiopian drivers. Models included Soviet T-54s, and M-48s designed by Chrysler.

Each superpower had backed Ethiopia at different times against the Eritrean guerrillas, as what was an intense struggle between local forces was only part of a larger contest for them. The United States armed Ethiopia until 1977, when its new government turned east toward the Soviet Union. Regardless, the Eritrean guerrillas fought each foreign-backed regime with equal vigor.

Meanwhile, neighboring Somalia, which had been a Soviet ally, flipped in the opposite direction. At the same time, Sudan stayed in the American camp — until 1989 when its Islamic revolutionaries seized power.

Blacktop soon changed to dirt and rocks. Softer coil springs made this ’94 Land Cruiser a serious improvement over the durable, but spine-jolting ’70s and ’80s models that I had endured covering wars in Central America. Though the Land Cruiser’s oversized radiator can make it hard to get the heater fired up in winter, here — where temperatures can climb as high as 115 degrees Fahrenheit — our temperature gauge stayed well below the medium mark.

Descending to 800 meters (2,640 ft), we began to pass mountains of meteor-size boulders cracked from once-solid rock by the sun. Yet, Dan remarked that he had never seen the surrounding plains look so green. Abundant rainfall had made the brush and even some grass flush with color, while acacia trees, whose limbs branch out in a natural canopy, were also blooming. Dan had been here back in late 1984, when Ethiopia, then including Eritrea, suffered the worst famine in memory.

We stopped for the night in Keren, a small city settled between two jagged rows of mountains that open up into the desert. Kelata took us to see a giant baobab tree where, 141 years ago, Italian Franciscans had made a shrine. During World War II, according to legend, Italian soldiers who were under attack from British planes took refuge inside the tree and Survived. But many on both sides of this battle did not. Near the shrine today is a cemetery for British soldiers still maintained by the United Kingdom. Back in 1935, Mussolini reversed the defeat at Adua to finally annex Ethiopia along with Eritrea, with Italian forces staying in both until being driven out by the British in 1941. (The winning allies later made Ethiopia and Eritrea one state). According to the British Cemetery book, “the most bloody and decisive battle, took place here at Keren.”

The graves were adorned with freshly planted flowers, with a caretaker just finishing for the day. I gravitated to one, that of Captain H.S. Frost of the Cheshire Regiment, who, at 27, died on the battle’s last day. His headstone read: “Greater Love Hath No Man Than This. That a Man Lay Down His Life for Friends.” I wondered if this was an embellishment granted gratuitously to fallen officers. But only a few men, officers and enlisted men alike, had any such inscription. Next to Frost were I. Ulrich and S. Wajnsztejn, “pioneers” in the same unit. Engraved into each of their headstones was a Star of David.

More heat followed the dawn. Most of the riverbeds were dry, as they only have water during and right after a rain. But in a few places their banks were overgrown with tall palm trees, a green oasis in a dusty sea. We still had to stop often for passing herds of goats as well as sheep, and several times for camel trains loaded with firewood and led by bearded men wearing thin, white cotton jebel alias, one-piece mountain covers.

Islamic Jihad was still on our minds. The previous night we ran into an Eritrean doctor who is an old friend of Dan’s. He told us about two recently captured Jihad fighters. One he described as a young, impressionable lad who left his pastoral life here to move to Sudan’s urban capital of Khartoum where he was introduced to revolutionary Islamic ideas. But since his father had supported the Eritrean struggle, Eritrean officials saw him as a good kid under bad influence, and eventually let him go. The other one, however, admitted to being with jihad for six years. “He had a knife and a gun,” said the doctor, who had removed a bullet from his chest before turning him over to authorities from Asmara. “He told me that he shot Christians, but that he only used his knife to cut the throats of Muslims who failed to support their Holy War.”

The next morning for breakfast we had an egg, bean and onion dish, served with injerra and shai, Arabic for tea, with lots of sugar. On the way out of town, a young woman asked us for a ride. Selam, as I’ll call her, wore plastic gold shoes and a red-flowered dress with long sleeves, along with a green-print scarf covering her hair. She is an elementary school teacher. After she climbed in, one of her pupils, a beaming girl, ran up to hand us a clear plastic bottle of mineral water. Selam, who speaks Arabic as well as English, thanked her in Tigrinya. Shy at first, Selam displayed a delightful sense of humor. She told me that she had relatives living in Sudan. But mostly we played games with language and guffawed together when a redheaded bird perched on the back of a grazing goat.

Later we approached a deep riverbed, where a crowd of people and vehicles had gathered. Selam, to avoid giving the wrong impression, re-arranged her scarf to also cover the sides of her face and neck. It had rained heavily several days before, with the flood washing out the packed dirt, which had made a passageway through this depression. (Its bridge had been knocked out long ago.) A group of men pushed first a truck and then a bus through successfully. Once the way was clear, the Land Cruiser’s 4-wheel drive low range easily conquered this slippery challenge.

We dropped Selam off in Tessenei, the last town before Sudan, and then went on to find our Sudanese guerrilla contacts. Later, they took us to see a group of about 25 fighters dug in behind the rocks of a ridge just over the border. Armed with Kalashnikov rifles and larger machine guns, they peered out over the open plain at a Sudanese Army outpost. Two weeks before, these same fighters had ambushed a group of Sudanese militia riding in a Toyota Land Cruiser, destroying it and killing seven. Now the guerrillas handed me binoculars to see another Toyota Land Cruiser, a white 4-door with a .50-caliber machine gun mounted in back, raising a train of dust as it raced for the safety of the outpost.

Back in Tessenei, we met with Eritrean Army officers. They told us about two anti-vehicular land mines that had recently been uncovered on rural roads — planted, they said, by Islamic Jihad. Driving off to inspect one we got a flat. After changing it, we went back to town to get it fixed. An Eritrean Army colonel joined us in the cab before we left again — only to get another flat. This time we just changed it and kept going. Then at about 45 mph we hit a football-size rock, blowing a third tire. Without an extra spare to go on, the colonel flagged down a 6-wheel Russian military truck, while Kelata stayed behind with the Land Cruiser.

The colonel took us to see one of the mines with both its pressure plate and detonator safely removed. A new one made of plastic, it had markings in French, German and Italian. While waiting for Kelata to fetch us, an 18 year-old Eritrean Army soldier, Aden, prepared a batch of spoon-standing coffee. Following tradition, she first crushed the grounds, and then boiled water over charcoal fire, before brewing the grounds several times in a smaller silver pot filtered with horse hairs to serve the three progressively less potent rounds. Later Aden showed us her less traditional side, brandishing her Kalashnikov rifle.

We left a day later after lunch — soon to be overcome by a group of Eritrean Army soldiers in, of course, a Toyota Land Cruiser. They had just discovered a land mine a few miles back on the very same road that we were traveling. We went back to inspect and photograph it. Except for the lot number, it was identical to the other mine. Although the soldiers had already disarmed it, they feared lifting the charge itself for fear that it might also be booby-trapped.

Like the villagers who pass by every few hours in crowded buses, we were lucky. The only reason that nobody hit this mine is that it must have been planted over a week ago, before the last strong rain. The shifting mud and sand had changed the course of the road, with vehicles passing now only about 100 ft away. Fortunately one of the laborers sent to repair it saw part of the mine’s pressure plate sticking out of the dirt.

In single file we walked back to our Land Cruiser, and drove on. I prayed, to no particular deity, that we wouldn’t find any more mines. Humdillylah, Thanks Be to God, we didn’t.

The Changing Face of Power in Africa

/in /by

With Laurent Kabila’s successful overthrow of Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko, American policy makers need to conduct a long-overdue reappraisal of the contours of African politics. Rather than unfolding as an isolated insurgency, Kabila’s rise to power signals the latest in a series of victories for a new breed of African leaders. While their political futures remain uncertain, they still constitute a distinctive, and important, political bloc.

Most of the continent’s old, post-colonial leaders were despots. Typically they, like Mobutu, had served as national army officers, went on to lead post-independence coups and consolidated their power with military force and internal political repression. The new ones like Kabila led insurgencies that defeated these despots and their armies in battle. Other guerrilla commanders include Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame in Central Africa, as well as Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi and Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki on the African Horn. Uganda’s Museveni came to power in 1986. The rest did so only after the Cold War.

This recent vintage of these leaders means, among other things, that they are relatively free of the Cold War’s obsolete ideological baggage. While Kabila and company were all once influenced by Marxism, none espouses the Marxist faith anymore. Instead they have shed their ideology for pragmatism, with Eritrea’s Afwerki, for example, stating that corruption — rather than capitalism or colonialism — is the greatest threat to development. The new generation of African leaders has been looking for new development strategies that combine state-led economic growth with free-market reforms.

At the same time, none of these new soldier-statesmen could be easily called democratic: Each runs a de facto one-party state.

The Clinton administration, which has so far leaned little on these soldier-statesmen, now says that it will encourage the Congo’s Kabila to share power and ultimately hold elections. But all these other new leaders have yet to open their societies fully, making it unlikely that Kabila, whose own forces have already committed horrendous crimes, will be the first to open his.

This confusion is symptomatic of a wider policy drift in the Clinton administration. Clinton and his advisers have yet to develop an effective policy for Africa. As a point of departure, they should recognize that these new soldier-statesmen have begun to form a new, independent bloc.

It is a bloc, first of all, midwifed by a vigorous nationalism. Both Eritrea’s and Ethiopia’s guerrillas fought first against Haile Selassie, backed by the United States, and later against Mengistu Haile-Mariam, backed by the Soviet Union. Similarly, Rwanda’s long-time dictator, Juvenel Habyarimana, was backed by France until the end, just as Zaire’s Mobutu had been.

During the Cold War, Mobutu was backed by both France and the United States, in particular the CIA. Now the political landscape is different. Russia abandoned Africa after the Cold War, while Kabila and others have been pushing France out. At the same time, the U.S. presence on the continent has grown.

Most of Africa now seeks closer ties with the United States. But these new soldier-statesmen are not the type to come forward with their palms extended. This year Eritrea suspended the operations of all non-governmental organizations, fearing both that foreign funding to human rights groups, for example, might spur too much independence within civil society, and that it would lead to a welfare-like dependency among its people.

Rwanda has even more cause to distrust the international community. The reasons, not surprisingly, lurk in the country’s recent history, which is intimately linked with the fall of Mobutu’s Zaire. In fact, Kabila was just an old guerrilla-leader-turned-mineral-thug until Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. In addition to flagging the decline of France, it continues to help change the region. It is against this background that Rwanda lent the most important foreign troops, foreign advisers and other resources to Kabila’s campaign.

Rwanda is a central player in the new politics of nationalist independence. And to address Rwanda’s stature effectively, policy makers must squarely acknowledge that all their previous responses to Rwanda’s bloody internal strife have not only failed, but worsened it. Before the genocide against Rwanda’s Tutsis (and moderate Hutus) began in 1994, France armed and trained the Hutu government led by President Juvenel Habyarimana, despite its then-escalating massacres against Tutsis. The United States and other outside powers merely watched. The French, meanwhile, created a safe haven not for Tutsi survivors but for Hutu refugees, including the Hutu militias — known as Interahamwe — which led the attacks.

After the attacks ended, the United Nations stepped in, providing aid to these Hutu refugees now in camps across Rwanda’s border in eastern Zaire. It continued to do so over the next two years, even though UN officials were well aware that many of these camps were controlled by the Interahamwe. The Hutu militias used the camps as sanctuaries from which to launch new raids back into Rwanda. Both sides were guilty of abuses, and hundreds more people were killed.

By late 1996 it became clear to many observers that the Interahamwe’s ongoing presence in the refugee camps had to be stopped. But while the United Nations agreed to send a peacekeeping force to eastern Zaire, it did not have the mandate to pursue and arrest the Interahamwe.

Enter Laurent Kabila. Last November as this UN force was preparing to deploy, Rwanda and Kabila decided to deal with them on their own. Kabila’s guerrillas defeated both Zairean army troops in eastern Zaire and put the Interahamwe on the run in just a few weeks. Then Kabila’s forces, feeding off of 32 years of popular discontent with Mobutu’s despotic rule, spread into Zaire, finally taking the country last week after a surprisingly short, seven-month campaign.

Kabila’s success in Zaire reminds us of another important trait that Africa’s new soldier-statesmen share in common: They all lead military forces that are, by any standard, highly competent and well trained. Nonetheless, after winning battles, Kabila’s troops systematically hunted down and killed unarmed Rwandan Hutus suspected of association with the Interahamwe, as well as Zaireans suspected of being ex-government soldiers.

This doesn’t bode well for the Congo’s future, and whether Kabila will become just another despot remains to be seen. He is the least impressive of all these new soldier-statesmen. Though he fought Mobutu on and off for more than 30 years, Kabila is better known for being a strongman among his country’s lucrative diamond and gold trades in Eastern Zaire. Kabila has limited experience and education; Africa’s other new soldier-statesmen are better prepared to lead their nations.

Politically, however, all these countries face an uphill task, and the always troubled question of ethnic conflict looms as one of the greatest potential sources of instability. Take the Congo, Kabila himself is a member of the Luba ethnic group, while most of his troops are Tutsi. Both are a minority, among the country’s more than 200 ethnic groups. Much the same pattern holds for the minority leaders of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Tigrean-led regime of Ethiopia. (Eritrea, whose Tigrean leader, Afwerki, governs a Tigrean majority, is the only exception.) Though other individuals from other ethnic groups hold even top formal posts in all their governments, these new soldier-statesmen have yet to develop any real plans to provide for the peaceful transfer of power — a key feature of any fledgling democracy. Nevertheless they all represent regimes that are far more responsive, accountable and egalitarian than any of the respective despots they’ve overthrown.

If American policy makers want to see democracy take root in Africa, they will take advantage of the new opportunities that statesmen like Kabila offer them. Freed of the worst ideological and human-rights excesses of their predecessors, the new breed of African soldier-statesmen could harbinge a new continental order that is more open to the benefits of market economies and civil society. Yet to nudge this new bloc of African regimes toward egalitarian rule, the United States needs to understand that they are a bloc in the first place.

Rwanda’s Butchers: the Interahamwe and Former Rwandan Army

/in /by

Special Report No 13

Military history will record the Interahamwe and allied Rwandan soldiers uniquely. Back in April 1994, they achieved a dramatic tactical success, while failing entirely in their strategic vision. When faced with having to share power both with a Tutsi guerrilla movement (RPF) and with moderate Hutu politicians, their leaders decided that if they could just eliminate both elements they could stay in power. Over the ensuing weeks, they and their followers successfully managed to kill about 800,000 people, including nearly all of Rwanda’s moderate Hutu political activists and at least half of the country’s then-resident Tutsi population. Yet, they still lost the war.

Today, the propensity of the surviving Interahamwe and former Rwandan Army elements to carry out seemingly irrational acts of terrorism should not be underestimated. Even before they embarked on genocide, these same forces were responsible for a wave of bombings of civilian markets as well as landmines left on rural roads. These killed mostly their own fellow Hutus in the cynical hope that Hutu survivors would blame these attacks on Tutsis.

Isolated now in the jungles of central Zaire, the Interahamwe and former Rwandan forces have nowhere to go. Collective starvation, like death from disease, is a palpable scenario. These forces are unlikely to allow any of the civilians still travelling with them to leave. And they still may have access to funds from radical supporters in the diaspora, and could use them to buy arms either through or from the Zairian Army. And unlike the latter, the Interahamwe and former Rwandan combatants now have nothing to lose by fighting.

The Interahamwe and their allies are well-supplied with small arms, including Kalashnikov, R-4 and Belgian FN assault rifles, FN MAG Belgian machine guns, RPG-7 grenade launchers, hand grenades, and mortars. These forces have also used landmines and South African No 2 mines modeled upon the US Claymore.