Africa
The two main story lines for Africa at the beginning of 2007 are the Pentagon’s plans to create a new regional combatant command encompassing the entire continent, and the continuing – some would say increasingly more interrelated – chaos in the continent’s east and southeast.
Somalia. The 11-member International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), created in February 2005 to promote economic integration and, under a November 2005 protocol, greater security from violence originating from or supported by non-member countries, failed its first significant security challenge because the trouble came from within the ICGLR. For most of 2006, Somalia’s de facto rulers were the fundamentalist Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) – also known as the Somali Islamic Courts Council (SICC) – backed by Eritrea, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, and Libya. Opposing the UIC was the UN-recognized Transitional Federal Institutions (TFI) government, a “moderate” if ineffective coalition whose writ for most of the last six months ran only slightly beyond the borders of Baidoa, the one town in central/south Somalia that they controlled.
U.S. attempts in early 2006 to undermine the regime by funneling arms and money to dissident warlords failed to unseat the UIC, leaving the Bush administration little choice but to advocate diplomacy. Somalia became more of a distraction than a priority for the U.S., witness that until the White House pressed for a UN Security Council Resolution in December, the “diplomatic track” had not progressed much beyond the creation of a “Somalia Contact Group.”
As autumn advanced, so too did the UIC forces. The TFI seemed on the verge of collapse when, in mid-December, Ethiopia shed all pretense of “training” TFI soldiers and took a direct hand in the fighting. Ethiopian airplanes struck Mogadishu’s airport and ground troops forced UIC fighters back to and eventually out of Mogadishu, Kismayo, and smaller coastal towns and villages. As the Ethiopian offensive moved into gear, the TFI parliament endorsed a UN plan for African Union peacekeepers to deploy to Somalia to replace Ethiopian troops. But with neighboring countries excluded from the UN force, the source of troops for the UN mission remains a major stumbling bloc. Moreover, when – and if – the TFI consolidates its new position of power, it will have to address the separatist regions of Somaliland and Puntland if Somalia is to emerge as a single nation.
Sudan. The killing fields of Darfur in western Sudan remain active in spite of the African Union’s 7,000 under-funded, under-equipped, under-staffed, and under-mandated troops. In early May 2006, Khartoum agreed to a ceasefire with the main Darfur resistance and to curtail the depredations of the Janjaweed, but the violence did not stop. After months of negotiations among the members of the UN Security Council and growing international pressure, in late December Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir agreed to accept new UN staff and equipment to bolster the AU force and a larger, follow-on “support” package. What al-Bashir left in the air was acceptance of the third part of the UN proposal: the size and the command structure of the enlarged UN-AU hybrid peacekeeping force. Its fate rests with the UN-AU-Sudan “Tripartite Committee” that Khartoum has demanded be established to oversee implementation of the international plan. Meanwhile, in Darfur alone, the number of dead now stands at 400,000. Another 1.5 million are refugees with a similar number internally displaced.
Central African Republic (CAR), and Chad. Like a vortex, violence in Sudan is pulling neighboring countries into conflict. In a late November 2006 speech, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees highlighted the intertwined rebellions against authoritarian rulers in Darfur, CAR, and Chad that each government funds. Other UN officials voiced increased concern that the fighting in Chad and CAR would exacerbate existing and create new humanitarian crises in an area where extreme poverty has been compounded by prolonged drought. Already, or again, the violence has forced the evacuation of international aid workers.
Poor communications and the remote locations where fighting occurs contribute to the uncertainty about what is happening and which claims of which side are true. In CAR, rebels belonging to the Union of Democratic Forces for the Rally (UFDR) seized three towns before being repulsed by French-supported (“logistics and intelligence”) CAR troops. Some government soldiers have been accused of burning down whole villages.
In Chad, conditions deteriorated so much that the UN and nongovernmental organizations evacuated their international workers from the eastern part of the country to avoid rebels from the Rally of Democratic Forces (RAFD) and Union of Forces for Development and Democracy (UFDD). Still, Chad’s Prime Minister Pascal Yoadimnadji offered to send troops to help the besieged CAR regime of President Francois Bozize, who seized power in a 2003 coup with the support from some now opposed to his rule.
Overall, the UN estimates 150,000 are IDPs in CAR while another 50,000 have left the country. Chadian officials say that since October, at least 300 people have been killed in the fighting and another 70,000 have fled their homes to escape the violence. Chad is home to at least 200,000 Darfur refugees. CAR may return to the active war list in 2008, as might Chad, although in very late December one rebel group signed a peace accord with the Chad government. But that still leaves three other groups warring against the government.
While Western Sudan continues to roil, implementation of the 2005 peace agreement between Khartoum and the Sudanese Liberation Movement is holding. However, rival militias in the South have fought from time to time as they position themselves in the new southern governmental structure.
Uganda. Negotiations to end 20 years warfare in Uganda began in August in south Sudan’s capital, Juba, between Uganda’s government and Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). It has not been smooth sailing however, as talks have been punctuated by armed clashes between the two sides. Although LRA fighters were to have left their hideouts in northeast DRC- Uganda-south Sudan and entered two temporary holding camps, not all complied. In December, negotiations were suspended after Kony blamed the Ugandan army for the deaths of three of his men. Nonetheless, Uganda extended the August truce for a second time – until February 2007, and at year’s end talks have reconvened. In two decades, some 2 million people – 80 percent of northern Uganda’s population, have been displaced by hostilities, tens of thousands killed, and an estimated 30,000 children kidnapped.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Next door in the DRC, October’s second round balloting for president saw the incumbent, Joseph Kabila, garner 48 percent of the vote to 42 percent for his opponent Jean-Pierre Bemba. Although fighting between partisans broke out in the capital Kinshasa after the results were announced, Bemba’s supporters returned to their barracks outside the city.
Meanwhile, battles continued to be waged in the north and east. Two dissident army brigades seized and held for two days the eastern town of Sake before UN troops in the area regained control. At least 120 rebel soldiers were reported dead in the fighting. UN forces also discovered mass graves with at least 30 bodies in a government training camp in Ituri province. But there was good news from the east as well. As had been expected, the last holdout indigenous Ituri warlord signed an accord with Kinshasa ending his opposition in return for the integration of his 1,000 fighters into to national army following reconciliation. Unexpectedly, 1,000 Mayi-Mayi warriors, among the fiercest opponents of the national government, also voluntarily entered government reception and reconciliation camps in the east. As for the 1.7 million IDPs, they seem willing to rely a little longer on the 17,000 UN troops for protection, perhaps unsure whether Bemba will retreat to the bush and reignite civil war.
Elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, Liberia continues its political reconciliation process, but it still does not control adequately its diamond mines, prompting the UN Security Council to extend into 2007 the embargo on “blood diamonds.” Similarly cursed by “blood diamonds” during its civil war, Sierra Leone now can market its gems. This, plus efforts to reduce poverty and curtail corruption, prompted creditors to write off 90 percent of the country’s foreign debt. In the Ivory Coast, split between warring factions since 2002, a renewed UN effort to find a basis for disarmament talks succeeded in getting government and rebel military leaders together for new talks.
Finally, a number of African countries have just completed or are scheduled for elections in 2007. Madagascar held presidential elections in December while Mauritania, emerging from a coup, elected a new parliament and will hold presidential elections in March. The results of the DRC year-end elections have already been noted. In April 2007, Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, is to hold presidential and legislative ballots. But the never-ending ethnic and religious conflicts, fed by extreme poverty despite the country’s petroleum-rich delta, always counsel caution about elections actually occurring when scheduled. This year there is added interest in that one candidate is a former leader of secessionist forces that fought for an independent Biafra in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Going against the electoral trend, Angola’s 2007 elections have now been postponed to 2008 for a new parliament and 2009 for the presidential race.
