by Guy Arnold
In parallel with its search for resources and markets, China seeks to increase its overall influence on the continent; thus it promotes the study of Chinese culture and language. In 2003, approximately a third of all foreign students in China came from Africa. Graduate students are encouraged to study Chinese. At the same time, Chinese medical schools and physicians train African doctors and provide medicine and equipment free of charge to African countries. On the other hand, China has also become a major supplier of arms to Africa – and this readiness to sell arms is a controversial aspect of China’s policy. In 2004, in response to such objections, China’s deputy foreign minister Zhou Wenzhong defended the arms trade when he said, ‘business is business’. He was reacting to Western criticism of China’s policy in Sudan, about which he commented: ‘The internal situation in Sudan is an internal affair.’
What has startled and alarmed the West – both the EU and the US – has been the phenomenal speed at which China has expanded its operations in Africa and so gained a significant proportion of the continent’s resources. The West began to concern itself with the rapid growth of Chinese influence in Africa in 2002 when, on a visit to Libreville, Gabon, Hu Jintao announced a new partnership with Africa ‘without political strings’. On a major world platform, China had bypassed the West and asserted its right to be a leading power in Africa. China’s success in Africa has been achieved in part because African leaders had long been hostile to lectures about good governance from the IMF or World Bank and subsequent policy prescriptions for transparency and accountability in return for aid, while China made no such demands. So far China has refused to tie its aid to economic or political policies, while the West still does not understand how deeply the lingering resentment towards colonialism persists. Africans can feel an affinity with China and an animosity towards Europe which can now be expressed in their new relationship with China.
Despite Western suspicions of China’s motives, which are little different from those of the EU or US, though they would not admit it, the China–Africa partnership makes sense to both sides. China’s rapid industrialization fuelled demands for natural resources on a scale that it cannot satisfy except by looking beyond its borders – and Africa has many of the ores, as well as oil and other commodities, that it requires. In return for these resources, China is supplying at speed both the infrastructure development and finance on a scale that the West has never attained.
Yet African recipients of China’s aid should never forget that it expects payment for its largesse. A close examination of the Africa–China relationship reveals that it is far closer to colonialism than either side would care to admit. At the time of writing, the growing Chinese presence and impact are to be felt in more and more aspects of African life.
THE UNITED STATES AND AFRICA
During the 1950s and 1960s when most of colonial Africa became independent, the United States was largely an onlooker. It left African affairs to its two principal European allies, Britain and France, as they, with more or less reluctance, were bowing to the ‘winds of change’ and decolonizing. The United States had opposed the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt following Colonel Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal and had first become involved in sub-Saharan Africa when the Belgian Congo achieved independence in June 1960. From the viewpoint of Washington, the mineral-rich Congo should not be allowed to fall under Soviet influence, while US pressures brought about the downfall of Patrice Lumumba, the independent Congo’s first prime minister. The Congo crisis was resolved when, with US backing, Colonel Joseph-Desiré Mobutu (later known as Mobutu Sese Seko) became president in 1965, a post he would hold for more than thirty years. Apart from anti-communism as part of the Cold War, the US had no explicit Africa policy. In 1967, as the civil war in Nigeria became front-page news, the US Secretary of State Dean Rusk was asked at a press conference what US policy toward Nigeria was. He replied, to the outrage of Nigerians, that ‘We regard Nigeria as part of Britain’s sphere of influence.’
The end of the Cold War occurred over the years 1988–94 during which time the Berlin Wall was dismantled, the Soviet Union disintegrated and South Africa got its first black president in the person of Nelson Mandela. Washington allowed Africa to drop to the bottom of its international agenda while the disastrous US intervention in Somalia (1992–4) led the Clinton Government to deny to its shame that genocide was taking place in Rwanda between April and September 1994 – so as to maintain that it was not obliged to intervene. Western governments’ reluctance to intervene effectively in Africa’s Great War in the Democratic Republic of Congo (1998–2003) was matched by the cupidity of Western companies buying minerals and other resources that had been pirated from the DRC by Uganda and Rwanda. During the US elections of 2000, George W. Bush said that Africa didn’t fit into their national strategic interests. The major terrorist attacks that followed led the US government to reassess its Africa policy as part of the proclaimed war on terror after 9/11 and it decided on an aggressive forward policy that centred on the deployment of military bases in Africa. This policy assumed that the continent would provide increasing aid and numbers of military bases as a back-up for the US military role. The first move was to establish a Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti to monitor the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa for terrorist activity. By this time the US had determined to expand its activities in Africa. President Bush said they wanted to prevent problems becoming crises, and crises becoming catastrophes. The CJTF-HOA subsequently became a multinational naval force led by the United States that monitors and interdicts possible terrorist travel. Eight hundred US Special Forces are stationed there and the CJTF-HOA is set to be a permanent US base.
A parallel US objective was to tie up as much of the continent’s oil as possible (the fall in the price of oil and the discovery or opening up of new oil resources have had a significant impact on this oil strategy). The US African Growth and Opportunity Act 2000 (AGOA) made American aid conditional upon African governments opening up their markets to American investors and American intellectual property claims and lowering their trade barriers for American goods. In this respect the Nigerian Delta region was of great importance to Washington since it accounted for 10–12 per cent of US oil imports from Africa, although following the economic crisis of 2008 the figures were to change.
Thus in the early years of the century the United States refined its strategy. On 1 February 2002, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner stated: ‘African oil has become an appealing national strategy for us.’ The US military subsequently began to examine the possibility of establishing military bases in Africa. It began to look like a form of neo-colonialism. The US European Command had, up to this time, responsibility for Africa. Now, visiting American generals had to respond to pressures from the aid industry and to the conservative politicians who wanted the United States to secure energy resources that could be available in Africa. Particularly important for American strategy were the Gulf of Guinea ‘oil’ states because of their considerable reserves: Nigeria, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea between them produced 4.5bn barrels a day, mainly for export.
In 2003, the United States established a new African Coastal and Border Security Program (ACPSB) to provide specialized equipment, training and intelligence data to selected African countries for efforts aimed at containing smuggling, piracy and other cross-border threats to internal and regional security. At this time, the US commenced the delivery of seven surplus US Coast Guard Cutters to Nigeria to enhance the Nigerian Navy’s ability to protect offshore oil installations and oil tankers. During the first years of the twenty-first century, the US carried out military exercises that involved Benin, Botswana, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda (fifteen countries altogether). Over 2002–2003, the US established the Pan Sahel Initiative (PSI) to deploy teams of
US Special Operations Forces (SOF) to provide counter-terrorist training and equipment to Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. The programme included the provision of training and equipment to six light infantry companies in these four countries.
In 2004, the PSI was transformed into the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative (TSCTI), which was then expanded to encompass the energy-(oil) producing countries of Algeria and Nigeria, as well as Senegal and Tunisia. The US acronyms for their military organizations were proliferating in Africa at this time. There was professional training of African military officers which came under the International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme, and eventually IMET came to provide training for forty-four African countries at centres in the United States. In 2006, US funds for peacekeeping training in Africa were channelled through the Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI). These programmes provided an excuse and a reason for the extension of US military controls over half of Africa with US military know-how that could easily be turned into a wider form of control if, for example, US oil interests came under threat. For instance, the African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) programme trained new battalions and speciality units. Africa was beginning to look like a US military training field or fields – all justified, of course, by the terrorist threat.
On 6 February 2007, President Bush announced the establishment of a sixth Territorial Unified Command, Africa Command or AFRICOM, in final acknowledgement of the strategic importance of Africa and certainly of the Sahel region. The US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates testified to the Senate that ‘AFRICOM will enable us to have a more effective and integrated approach than the current arrangement of dividing Africa between [different regional commands]’, as had been the case until then. AFRICOM also had to take cognizance of the fact that all the areas it was to operate in now had been former colonies of European powers. According to one analyst, AFRICOM had been created to address at least six issues of concern contingent to US interests: counter-terrorism; securing natural resources; containing armed conflict and humanitarian crisis; retarding the spread of HIV/AIDS; reducing international crime; and responding to growing Chinese influences. It would be difficult to find a more revealing description of the new ‘Scramble for Africa’ – bringing peace and security, obtaining resources, conferring benefits upon the natives and containing rivals.
What, it should be asked, has happened to the African dreams of independence and self-reliance that were envisaged at the turn of the century when NEPAD was launched and a Millennium Goal was set for 2015? How many of the targets aimed at reducing poverty and hunger and increasing human development have been achieved? How much has been met by African countries on their own? Must Africa surrender its capacity to safeguard its own continent, or does it simply allow this to be done by the United States? US security concerns in Africa have emerged with remarkable speed in the new century, although it may be difficult to discern where counter-terrorism ends and the protection of oil flows begins. The AFRICOM concept and policy have turned Africa into a frontline anti-terrorist region that is US-controlled. At the same time it paves the way for the United States to counter the rising power of China in Africa. The US military have been involved across the Sahara Desert for years in training and equipping missions for African armies from Senegal to Djibouti. The more chaotic the developments in countries like the Central African Republic (CAR), the more urgent the need for outside help, whether from the United Nations, the African Union or the United States, although the latter is best equipped for rapid interventions. Most of the violent developments in this Sahel region suggest that intervention will be required over a period of time.
THE ARAB SPRING
A phenomenon of 2011 was the series of demonstrations, uprisings and rebellions that took place across the Arab world as people demanded greater freedom in states that were run by autocratic dictatorial rulers. This series of uprisings came to be called the Arab Spring. The popular questioning of entrenched authority began in February that year and the first change of government that took place as a result was in Tunisia, where its long-lasting president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was forced from office and fled to Saudi Arabia. The Arab Spring was to last through the year to become an ‘Arab Winter’. In North Africa, after Tunisia, it was the turn of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak to be forced from power, also in February, followed by Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya in October. Morocco and Algeria managed to survive the year with many security measures in place without any serious challenges to government. In Egypt the fall of Mubarak was soon seen to be just the first development resulting from a popular and largely peaceful uprising, and it rapidly became apparent that the key to the future lay with the army whose Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) wielded ultimate control, while elections promised for September did not take place until December.
Libya then became the focus of international attention. A UN resolution that empowered NATO states (USA, Britain and France) to intervene to prevent human rights abuses soon escalated into a civil war to oust Gaddafi and bring about regime change. By the end of the year an interim government was still seeking to restore order and create conditions for a properly elected government to take over, and faced the growing task of protecting human rights in a developing revolutionary situation. Most of those who stayed with Gaddafi until he was found and killed also lost their lives, while others fled to neighbouring countries such as Algeria, Niger, Mali and Chad. Other Gaddafi supporters were imprisoned to await trial. Non-African countries infected by the Arab Spring were Syria, Yemen and Bahrain, while the whole Arab world braced itself for further eruptions. The West – more especially the United States and the European Union – watched the developments with trepidation because of the threat to investment, trade and stability in a region that was of profound importance to Europe.
In Egypt the Arab Spring had erupted in January 2011 with an intense campaign of widespread protests across the country against Mubarak’s government. The pressure for change was especially strong in Cairo. By 29 January it was clear that the government had lost control of the situation – though it became calmer in February when Mubarak resigned and fled. The subsequent November election saw a victory for Mohammed Morsi (the president of the Muslim Brotherhood), who formed a government. However, the army was determined to curtail Morsi’s tenure of office, and proscribed the Brotherhood and imprisoned its leaders. Support for the army came from people who feared a radical government and wanted the status quo to be restored, fearing the extremism of the Brotherhood. On 3 July 2013, the army carried out a coup, deposing Morsi and outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood. General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi then assumed full power. He said he would not stand by silently to watch the destruction of the country.
There were many expressions of support for the Arab Spring which Liberals saw as a great advance for the region. In Egypt’s case, however, the Army came to the fore and stopped it in its tracks. Moreover, government loyalists who wanted the maintenance of law and order supported the army coup and its leader, General al-Sisi, whose regime oversaw the security police who were responsible for the slaughter of 1,000 Muslims belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, while a further 10,000 members of the Brotherhood were imprisoned.
Egypt has always played a major role in Arab affairs, affecting Arab relations with the United States, Europe and Africa. In an ambiguous statement following the military takeover, US President Barack Obama (who succeeded George W. Bush in January 2009) claimed that the United States would always be a strong partner of the Egyptian people, who had now been given the chance to put the country’s post-revolution transition back on track. The President’s statement was an oblique way of saying that Washington now backed the army. The Arab Spring, with its promise of liberal reforms and democracy, was apparently less important than a ‘stable’ Egypt.
The impact of the Arab Spring in Libya produced a level of violence and brutality that has led to years of chaos before any kind of normal l
ife could be resumed. Since the fall of Gaddafi Libya has become a fractured state, not least as a result of NATO intervention. In 2015 attention was focused upon the fate of Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi’s son, who was wanted for war crimes. He was held in the western city of Zintan, with his captors refusing to release him for trial in Tripoli, claiming that the Islamist Libya Dawn government based there was illegal: Saif had been tried there in absentia and given a death sentence. The ‘justice’ arguments surrounding Saif are one of the many repercussions from the NATO intervention. The case (or cases) against him have been taken before the International Criminal Court at The Hague and human rights groups. He has been charged with recruiting mercenaries, air strikes on civilians, shooting unarmed demonstrators, as well as incitement to murder and rape. His charge sheet represented the legacy of a brutal regime, but it was reported in July 2016 that his sentence had been overturned by the new UN-backed governement and had been released.
Libya had split into two warring governments while half the country is now controlled by militias that answer to no authority. Recovery will either be achieved by the emergence of a strong man of dictatorial temperament, or through the division of the country into two or more parts, or intervention from outside. Meanwhile Libya has become a conduit for migrants on their way to being smuggled into Europe. ISIS appears to be interested in Sirte, Gaddafi’s birthplace. Whatever may have been the intentions of NATO when it intervened with air strikes, what they created shames NATO and the three principal NATO strike countries – the United States, Britain and France.
The five Arab countries that were affected by the Arab Spring are in North Africa, while the other states affected are in Arabia and the Gulf, spreading to Iraq and Syria. The African five are Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. Two of these countries that were apparently least affected, but are formidably policed, are Morocco and Algeria. Morocco, in particular, can boast an unusual degree of stability. In July 2011, King Mohammed VI held a referendum on his rule and this was followed by changes to the constitution. The king’s regime now appears to be in firm control. Algeria has endured some terrorist activity, although the security forces appear to exercise firm national surveillance. However, the terrorist attack on the huge gas plant in the south of the country placed Algeria in the dangerous Sahel Belt and allowed the terrorists to expand their activities in the region, take foreign hostages and execute them. Tunisia is also seen as the birthplace of the Arab Spring and in a troubled region has emerged as a success story, although 300 lives were lost as the price to be paid for the overthrow of President Ben Ali. Free elections were held in 2011 and 2013 and the conduct of these was largely peaceful. However, some terrorist attacks were registered in 2015.