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Acronyms of Acrimony in Africa

By Tyrone Savage

he war that, according to The New York Times, has claimed the lives of nearly two million people in two years continues to rage in and around the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire and usually referred to as the DRC). A fragile accord was signed in July, but its implementation has been hampered—to say the least—by U.S. policy in the region, which continues to be couched in a rhetoric that commits to a continuation of its devastating role in plundering and militarizing the region for the past 40 years.

To date, the war has drawn in 11 countries, including Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Chad on the side of the Congolese government; Rwanda, Uganda and various Congolese opponents of DRC President Kabila on the other; and to some extent South Africa, Burundi and Zambia. Libya has reportedly provided logistical support to Chadian troops. This past July 10 leaders of six of the countries (the DRC, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola, Rwanda and Uganda) signed a cease-fire in Lusaka, Zambia. The Lusaka Accord called for cessation of hostilities, deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force, disarmament of militia groups and the opening of negotiations among governments, insurgents, unarmed opposition groups and Congolese civil society. Disarmament, however, is not high on the United States’ agenda for Central Africa.

No Trade, No Aid
The Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, passed by the House of Representatives in March 1998, to push African governments to adopt market-oriented economic policies, represents the latest reiteration of the “trade not aid” motto driving U.S. policymakers on Africa. (It has been described by Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. [D-IL] as the Africa Recolonization Act.)

So far, the United States has only gotten the “not aid” part right. U.S. development aid to all of sub-Saharan Africa has dropped significantly in recent years. In 1995, Congress cut development assistance to Africa by 25 percent. In 1997, this country devoted only 0.09 percent of its gross national product to international development assistance, the lowest proportion of all developed countries. Only 20 percent of that aid went to the world’s least developed nations. The New York City-based Africa Fund, which advocates for support for human rights, democracy and development in U.S. Africa policy, reports that, in 1998, out of the meager $1.8 billion in total development funds in the U.S. budget, no money was specifically earmarked for Africa, leaving the world’s poorest countries competing for scarce funds. While the United States ranks number one in global weapons exports, according to U.N. reports it falls dead last among industrialized nations in providing non-military foreign aid to the developing world.

The “trade” part of the “trade not aid” policy is glaringly contradicted by the evidence—except for trade in arms. Sub-Saharan Africa has attracted just 3 percent of total foreign direct investment into the developing world, as against Latin America (20 percent) and East Asia (50 percent). Trade, as Nelson Mandela reminded Bill Clinton in his African tour, is never free—particularly for economies with uncompetitive formal markets, few external markets and comparatively little industry and few processing facilities for their primary products. Four years ago, according to reporter Carol Thompson, writing in Foreign Policy in Focus, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development declared, “The least developed countries, particularly those in Africa, remain constrained by weak supply capabilities and are unable to benefit from trade. Marginalization, both among and within countries, has been exacerbated. Too many people continue to live in dire poverty.”

Just Arms and ACRImony
The African Crisis Response Initiative (known as ACRI) was instituted by the Department of Defense in 1997. Its coordinator, U.S. Ambassador Marshall McCallie, has described its purpose as to “work in partnership with African countries to enhance their capacity to respond to humanitarian crises and peacekeeping challenges in a timely and effective manner … to assist Africans in developing rapidly deployable, interoperable battalions from stable democratic countries.” However, as Daniel Volman, director of the Washington-based Africa Research Project, has noted, much of the training and equipment provided lends itself to deployment in counter-insurgency operations or conventional warfare with other states. The African Crisis Response Initiative, in short, represents more of the same—a market for channeling U.S. military training and equipment to favored regimes—with the simple innovation that Africans themselves, rather than U.S. forces, get to do the fighting, albeit with weaponry made in America.

A pernicious stalemate has emerged in the Congo conflict, in which costly alliances and exacerbated insecurity have drawn at least nine governments onto the battlefield—eight of them with U.S.-supplied arms (see “Armed for Profit,” NVA, March-April 2000). During the Cold War, the United States delivered more than $1.5 billion worth of weaponry to Africa, over $400 million of which went to the regime of Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, endorsing and entrenching a regime that for more than 30 years survived on suppressed human rights and rampant militarization. Many of those weapons have been recycled and are circulating in the present conflict. Human Rights Watch writes that the United States also provided an estimated $250 million in covert military assistance to Angola’s Unita insurgent forces between 1986 and 1991.

According to the Department of Defense, U.S. military transfers to the countries involved in the war—in the form of direct government-to-government weapons deliveries, commercial sales and training under the International Military Education and Training program—have totaled more than $125 million since 1990. The New African reports that in 1998 alone, U.S. weapons sales to Africa totaled $12.5 million, including substantial deliveries to DRC allies Chad, Namibia and Zimbabwe. Uganda, which received just under a million dollars in U.S. weapons in 1997 (up from $64,000 in 1996), boosted its total military expenditure in 1999 from $150 million to $350 million. In 1997, the State Department approved more than $11.6 million in direct commercial weapons sales to Angola, providing U.S. weapons makers open access to a country entrenched in a 30-year civil war. As Bridget Moix of the Quaker Mission to the United States notes, U.S. policy has done so well in helping create a demand for weapons in the developing world, and the industry has been so eager to fill it, that the arms market is taking a life of its own, largely outside government regulations and civilian oversight.

No Quick Fix
A progressive and constructive policy toward Africa would necessarily begin by recognizing this history and its consequences for U.S. credibility in the region, eradicating ad-hoc arms sales, and focusing on supporting grassroots peacemaking, civil society, and political alternatives to further militarization. Specifically, U.S. policymakers could do the following:

• Support the bipartisan McKinney-Rohrabacher Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers (HR 2269, note bill numbers will change with the new Congress next year), which would represent a starting point for preventing further distribution of weapons and training to dictators and human rights abusers.
• Take immediate steps to close the loopholes in the Pentagon’s Joint Combined Exchange Training—which includes instruction in, among other things, counter-insurgency and operations against internal movements—by passing the International Military Training Transparency and Accountability Act (HR 1063). This bill, introduced by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and supported by a strong bipartisan coalition, would go some way to addressing the special forces exemption that currently allows the Joint Combined Exchange Training program to function without open accountability or civilian review.
• Promote unconditional forgiveness of arms-related debts accrued by impoverished countries fighting Cold War-inspired battles in the African arena. A report by the Washington-based think tank Demilitarization for Democracy has noted that because many of the recipient countries remain some of the world’s poorest, the U.S. government has provided millions in foreign military financing loans (subsidized by U.S. taxpayer dollars) to cover the costs, increasing the debt burden that is already suffocating the continent. The DRC alone owes more than $150 million in outstanding Department of Defense loans.
• Promote the implementation of the commitments made to the Jubilee 2000 campaign for a one-time cancellation of the debt of the world’s poorest countries by the end of the year 2000, under a fair and transparent process.
• Tighten the ban on illegal diamond trading, thereby inhibiting the primary means by which Unita continues to wage its 30-year civil war in Angola.
• Demand the deepening and broadening of consultation with African civil society. Demilitarization for Democracy’s report cites a widespread consensus among the African non-governmental community that “reduced political and economic power of armed forces” is necessary for the establishment of human security in the region. Accordingly, consultation with African governments and civil society should be centered on mechanisms for social transformation and nonviolent political opposition.
• Push for an expansion of the peace monitor contingent of the U.N. Security Council mission, which currently consists of a commitment to sending 5,500 monitors and peacekeepers to help implement the Congo ceasefire signed in Lusaka in July 1999.

Tyrone Savage of South Africa is currently working in disarmament at WRL and at the Arms Trade Resource Center of the World Policy Institute. You can reach him at tyronesavage@hotmail.com