AFRICOM: Furore over America's African trail

What looked like a riot act from the sub-region's diplomatic, economic and military key player underscores the mounting opposition to America's unsolicited decision to establish a military base on the continent.

The US had in announcing the bid last year enunciated several developmental and altruistic reasons which Africa stands to gain from hosting the force. US defence Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the " main purposes of the Africa Command Centre would be to fight the war on terror, cooperation, provide humanitarian aid, building partnership capability, oversee security, defence support to non-military missions, and if directed, military training operations designed to help local governments."

Against perceived African opposition to AFRICOM, several other members of the Bush administration had risen in defence of the mission including some American envoys who came to Nigeria recently to persuade the authorities in the wake of last months declaration by the Yar'Adua administration.

Their visit was followed by a hurriedly packaged visit to Washington for Yar'Adua. During the session with Bush at the White House Yar'Adua was quoted to have agreed to partner with the US on AFRICOM.

In what seemed like policy reversal just a couple of weeks after the National Council of State strongly objected to the idea, Yar'Adua said:

"We shall partner with AFRICOM to assist not only Nigeria, but also the African continent to actualise its peace and security initiative, which is an initiative to help standby forces of brigade-size in each of the regional economic groupings within the African continent."

However, as the full import of this new position began to be dissected by critical Nigeria public and political parties, a clarification came from the presidency that the president was misquoted during the Washington visit.

In denying the media reports in an interview with the Hausa Service of the Voice of America (VOA), Yar'Adua stressed that he never gave the approval for the establishment of Africa High Command (AFRICOM), in the country.

The president said he only asked Bush to help Africa to establish its own version of African High Command, and manage it by itself, without allowing Americans to site their base in Nigeria.

The assistance, he maintained should be in form of weapons, gadgets, and training of the soldiers for the joint military command to be established in every sub-region on the continent.

He said further: "I did not agree that AFRICOM should be based in Africa. What we discussed with Bush is that if they have something to do for Africa that has to do with peace and security, they should contribute. I told him that we African countries have our own plan to establish a joint military command in every sub-region (as we) have in economic groupings.

"(America) should assist us, the African countries, with military weapons and training of our solders; they should assist us to establish these sub-regional military commands in every sub-region where African countries have economic co-operation.

"That, instead of them coming by themselves to Africa, they should assist us to form and manage our own military commands by ourselves. Since they already have the AFRICOM, it is only through it they should assist us in whatever way they can, especially in relation to peace.

"I asked him that they should help those of us African countries in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea…since we already have the plan to unite, to establish a joint military command to protect the territory. They should assist us to establish the military command and help us with weapons and gadgets to monitor the happenings in the area.

"Therefore, it is a kind of co-operation, not for them to come and establish the command. This was what I also said back in Nigeria. I hope it is understood.

"Those who reported the matter in the media or insinuating did not actually understand what we said. They did not even wait to understand the kernel of the discussion at the White House."

For AFRICOM to be fully operational by September of 2008 as envisaged, Washington is required to have relocated its headquarters to Africa from its temporary base in Stuttgart, Germany. The nature of the force headquarters is not yet clear but Ryan Henry, Principal Deputy Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, said in June that the latest plans envisage "a distributed command" that would be "networked" across several countries rather than a single combatant command.

But like Nigeria many African governments are suspicious of the US intentions. South Africa, Libya and Ghana are some of the nations that have already voiced their disapproval. Many of them fear that contrary to the professed conflict prevention potentials, the mission might actually promote the radicalisation of the continent especially against growing opposition to US anti-terror wars; a development that has infuriated fundamentalists around the world. The fear of many Africans is that the presence of AFRICOM in Africa might drag the continent into a needless crisis, turning it into a theatre of war and the new frontier where US will be squaring up against 'terrorists.'

African scepticism stems largely from the feeling that America is driven solely by economic and patriotic reasons. It is the thinking of many analysts that the US bid is driven by the need to secure its energy source through military means in view of the worsening crisis in the Middle East and the concomitant danger in gaining access to the region's oil fields.

Closer watchers of America's military strategy hold that AFRICOM is being pursued as a pressing necessity despite the groundswell of opposition from the continent. One of such analyses insist that although people on the continent appear not to have much choice. "African Command (AFRICOM) must be established as the newest Combatant Command in the Unified Command System. The Unified Command Plan (UCP) currently divides the Continent of Africa into areas of responsibility served by European Command, Central Command, and Pacific Command.

"This current division of Africa, within the UCP, has led to the creation of "seams" between the current combatant command boundaries. EUCOM's is based on their expansion into the newest NATO countries on their Eastern border. CENTCOM's focus is for the indefinite future …of U.S. presence in the Middle East. PACOM's focus has been and remains on the Asian continent. For these and other reasons that will be further developed the UCP must establish AFRICOM as its Combatant Command Headquarters on the African continent."

However in the camp of analysts, opinions have remained divided on the matter. According to some school of thought, Africa has nothing to fear about the US intentions, especially judging by the experience of other nations in Asia and Europe that are playing hosts to US bases. They insist that the peace and progress being recorded in such nations had knocked the bottom off the analogy on US bases as targets of terrorist attacks.

An analyst who pleaded anonymity noted that Germany and Japan have not suffered more terrorist attacks than other nations without American military presence. He argued that it was even in the interest of Nigeria to let them come and become worthy partners in the nation building and development efforts than to antagonise them and let them go elsewhere. "Being in Liberia or Ethiopia is as good as being in Nigeria, so why not welcome the inevitable and take the glory," he queried.

However it appears that isolated voices like this would be drowned by the loud roar of those opposed to the bid.

AFRICOM is definitely not the way for Africans to go, if we do not wish to enter a new phase of slavery, says Valentine Ojo, a US based medical practitioner who insisted that " we should therefore all rise up to vehemently protest the idea by all means necessary.".

He noted that the American-led war on terrorism was designed primarily to "secure Western access to other people's natural resources without being ready to pay economic market prices and compensations for these resources.

"This can never be in the interest of Africa or of Africans, since prior

European military incursions into Africa have never benefited Africans, and have only made Europeans richer, while pauperizing the real owners of these natural resources."

Another Nigerian whose comment was published on the USA-Africa Dialogue series, Olayinka Abegurin dismissed AFRICOM is an example of U.S. military expansion.

He said "AFRICOM is a deadly project for any African country that wants

peace and stability to accept. Accepting this project would be a recipe to intensify anti-Americanism and for Al-Qaeda to make that African country a target of terrorist attack. AFRICOM would destabilize an already fragile continent, which would be forced to engage with U.S. interests on military terms.

"Militarization of Africa with the U.S. designed so-called AFRICOM is not the solution to Africa's problem. What African countries need is development of their own institutions for security, political and economic independence; massive infusion of foreign direct investment, fair equitable trade, access to U.S. markets, and for U.S. to decrease/or total removal of agricultural subsidies, debt relief and improved Official Development Assistance tailored towards the development aspirations of (recipient countries) African countries and not AFRICOM that will only lead to militarizing the continent.

"What has the President Bush's current policy in Somalia achieved but chaos and more disasters for the Somalia peoples. AFRICOM is another U.S. strategy of recolonization of Africa through the so-called military assistance to the continent. The age of gun-boat diplomacy is over. Africans do not need this in this twenty-first century."

Many other Africans are also worried that America would be talking about helping Africa militarily at this time when it did nothing to help the continent when it needed it. Africa is now transiting from a period of war to peace, says James Osoata, a research fellow at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, stressing that the same America maintained a studied silence at the time when the guns boomed endlessly on the continent. This is against the spirit for the establishment of both CENTCOM (for the Middle East) and EUROCOM (for Europe) which were established to protect American interests and check the spread of conflicts in both regions. This view was echoed by Mohamed Bedjaoui, the Algerian Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, whose country turned down US initial plan to build AFRICOM in Algiers, questioning why "no one had ever proposed for any anti-terror cooperation with Algeria in the 1990s when terrorist violence went on rampant and wrought great havoc in the country?"

Not even Liberia which is seen as America's 'step child' received any meaningful help at a time that deadly civil war seized the tiny West African nation by the jugular.

There is no gainsaying the fact that the peace that nations like Liberia, Sierra Leone and Cote d'Ivoire enjoys today came through a Nigeria-led sub-regional military intervention. That is why many analysts are worried that the same Liberia is now offering to host the headquarters of AFRICOM despite a Nigerian-led opposition to their presence anywhere in West Africa.

President Yar'Adua and few other African leaders are declaring their readiness to back the establishment of an African high command which will serve as the military wing of the African Union that was first proposed in the 1960s by Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah. It is interesting that the proposed US AFRICOM is forcing African leaders to rethink their former opposition to a home grown interventionist force on the continent. Osoata wants African leaders to go beyond paying lip service to actually establishing the force stressing that it was long over due. He feels that as an African multi-national force, it will be more responsive to the needs and sensibilities of the people. That way Africa, would also stay away from the suspicion of offering its grounds as launch pads for US military attacks and avoidable attacks from anti-American fundamentalists.

It is also being rumoured that Ethiopia is favourably disposed to the idea of hosting the force in Addis Ababa. The fact that Addis has not denied the claim suggests that it might be true after all. Prime Minister Menes Zelawi initiated the speculations when he hinted recently that Ethiopia would be willing to work with AFRICOM. Many analysts are already dismayed by the development and it appears as if there are ample reasons for their pessimism.

Their outrage stems from the fact that Ethiopia which is home to African Union headquarters has no reason to offer itself for the subversion of the will of majority of the countries on the continent.

In the words of Tony Adiran, public affairs analysts, African leaders should demonstrate their anger by urging Addis to either rethink its stand or lose the right to host AU. He added that there was no basis for Ethiopia to host AFRICOM next door to African Union headquarters and its security organs against the wish of African leaders.