Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Africa

  • After November: Can US-Africa Ties Be Rebuilt?

    Nairobi Kenya
    Nairobi, Kenya at night, July 29 (Unsplash.
    Mustafa Omar)

    Donald Trump has never been to Africa. At least not as president. Not for six decades, since John F. Kennedy, has an American president even met with fewer African leaders than Trump. During JFK’s time, of course, most African states were still colonial territories. His attitude toward the continent appears to be mired in either indifference or outright hostility, as his “shithole countries” comment and repeated (but unsuccessful) efforts to cut foreign aid demonstrate.

    The feeling is mutual. As with the rest of the world, Africa’s view of the United States has declined under Trump’s leadership. (more…)

  • Five Reasons to Doubt Libyan Truce Will Hold

    Libya’s two most powerful leaders have agreed to call a ceasefire and hold elections next year after a meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

    Their deal has the potential to end six years of civil war, but there are at least five reasons to doubt it will hold:

    1. Khalifa Haftar, the generalissimo in charge of eastern Libya, and Fayez al-Sarraj, the prime minister of the internationally-recognized unity government in Tripoli, did not agree on a date for elections, so there is no deadline.
    2. The truce exempts counterterrorism, which Haftar and Sarraj could interpret differently. Haftar calls his entire campaign a counterterrorist operation.
    3. Libya’s institutions, including the central bank and National Oil Corporation, have recognized Sarraj’s as the legitimate government, but he has no security force of his own and could struggle to convince the militias that support him to stop fighting.
    4. Haftar, by contrast, has his own army, which occupies two-thirds of Libya, most of its oil ports and the city of Benghazi. But he has to convince a rival parliament in Tobruk to agree to the deal. Given how well the civil war has been going for them lately, they may balk at its terms.
    5. While Western countries and the United Nations back Sarraj, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates support Haftar in his war against Islamists. (more…)

  • Egypt’s War on Sunni Supremacism Goes to Libya

    From Reuters:

    Egyptian airstrikes destroyed twelve vehicles loaded with arms, ammunition and explosive material trying to cross the border from Libya, the army spokesman said on Tuesday.

    The airforce acted after hearing that “criminal elements” had gathered to try and cross the western boundary, the army statement said, without giving details on exactly where or when the strikes took place.

    Despite the paucity of the initial report, it’s clear the Abdul Fatah al-Sisi is trying to look like he’s getting revenge for attacks on Egyptian Christians by Sunni supremacists, who are trying the same old terror tricks of the 1990s to destabilize the regime. (more…)

  • Donald Trump is Going to Love Egypt’s Dictator

    Call a spade a spade: Abdul Fatah al-Sisi is as much a president, with its democratic connotations, as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Egypt now rates a dismal 26 from 100 on Freedom House’s Freedom Index, just behind Qatar and barely above dysfunctional Iraq.

    Some may quibble that Sisi is more a “strongman” than a dictator; in terms of political outcomes, that’s the difference between holding rigged elections and having no elections at all.

    And now al-Sisi is coming to kiss the Trump ring. (more…)

  • South Sudan is Starving Itself, But We Shouldn’t Rush to Judge

    There are no famines anymore, unless people want them.

    South Sudan is starving. As reported by Foreign Policy, the world’s newest country is also one of the world’s hungriest:

    On February 20, the United Nations declared a famine in parts of the country, saying that some have already died from hunger and another 100,000 people are on the brink of starvation. One million more are headed toward the same fate. “Our worst fears have been realized,” Serge Tissot, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s representative in South Sudan, said in a news release.

    In an age where Hobbsian scarcity has been nearly conquered, it is discomforting in the extreme to see starving children on HD video. Humans produce some 17 percent more food per person than thirty years ago, yet that means little to the South Sudanese.

    In the cruelties of its civil war, there are key geopolitical understandings to be had in South Sudan. Why do some countries starve? How can one African country peacefully reject a dictator while another pits two democratically elected leaders into armed conflict? How much blame does the rest of the world deserve and what does this say about the future of our species? (more…)

  • Don’t Look Now, But West Africa Just Took a Huge Leap Forward

    “West Africa” should really only be a geographical label, not a geopolitical one. It is a place riddled with ethnicities overlapping tribes cut by religion bisected by language. There is nothing simple about West Africa except in the minds of long-dead imperial geographers.

    That hasn’t stopped Nigeria from deciding to reorder the whole region to its liking. But for once in geopolitics, this reordering has not only been largely successful but is also incrementally pushing West Africa to better governance and stronger states.

    And Abuja just had a stunning success in the Gambia, a tiny river-republic that just tried and failed to hold onto the bad old ways of West African politics. (more…)

  • The Day After Tomorrow in Morocco

    Amid the election victory of the intensely pro-coal, global-warming denier Donald Trump, the United Nation’s annual Climate Change Conference is underway in Marrakech, Morocco and is aiming to build on last year’s Paris Agreement.

    The conference began on Monday and will run until the end of next week. (more…)

  • Will Russia Go into Libya Next?

    Herein may sound like rampant speculation, but I’m not the only one considering it: according to The Economist, high-ranking European diplomats also wonder if Russia will make Libya the next frontier of adventure. There are good reasons to consider why Putin may be doing so. (more…)

  • South Africa and the Perils of Forced Union in the Middle East

    On May 31, 1902, Lord Kitchener, second-in-command of British forces operating in South Africa, met with Boer delegates to negotiate terms for an end to the Second Boer War. The Boers were represented by some of their most talented field commanders, including Koos de la Rey, the “Lion of West Transvaal,” and Christiaan de Wet, who fought at Majuba Hill — the 1881 battle that forced London to recognize Boer independence for a further twenty years.

    De la Rey and De Wet passionately argued over the necessity of surrender. According to an interpretation by Joyce Kotze in her novel, The Runaway Horses, De Wet maintained that the religious honor and dignity of the Boers would be destroyed and Boer commandos should fight to the bitter end. De la Rey, emotional, retorted, “Fight to the bitter end? Is what you are saying? But has the bitter end not come?”

    Whereas Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox in order to avoid sending his shattered army off to fight as guerrillas, that was exactly what De la Rey had done so successfully for the better part of a year. His admission of the futility of continued resistance resonated; the alternative to surrender was, perhaps, to subject the Boers to the fate of the Jews after the Second Revolt: complete destruction and forced exile.

    The Second Boer War completed Britain’s domination of Southern Africa. The Boers had tried to get away from British rule since the Great Trek of the early nineteenth century and staved off Her Majesty’s government for many a decade. In the end, having absorbed the defeat of 1881 and crushed the Zulu in Natal, the British deployed half a million men to finish off the heavily outnumbered and internationally ignored Boers. The Boer delegation, functionally led by Louis Botha, acceded to the end of their people’s independence and swore loyalty to the British crown in exchange for the preservation of Afrikaans, a promise of future self-government and the avoidance of punitive economic measures in connection with the War.

    Perversely, Kitchener excluded from the de facto amnesty provisions of the Treaty of Vereeniging those Boers who engaged in “certain acts contrary to the usage of war.” This was the same Kitchener who supervised the wholesale destruction of Boer farming communities and herded thousands of women and children into concentration camps to die of starvation. Now, the Boers smashed, Britain wanted a quick settlement and to consolidate control of the gold and diamond assets which served as primary drivers of the conflict.

    Viewing the terms of Vereeniging in context, one could almost believe Britain had an on-off switch to prosecuting its colonial wars. To achieve victory, it was prepared to do almost anything, no matter how mendacious. Once secured, priority was given to a rapid exit. (more…)

  • With Mubarak Acquitted, Egypt’s Arab Spring Is Over

    Nearly four years ago, on January 25, 2011, millions of brave and patriotic Egyptians took over the streets of Cairo and demanded a change in the way they were governed. “The people want the fall of the regime” was heard around the country. It became the slogan of those wanting a future free of lengthy and arbitrary prison terms, unaccountable and corrupt government and a security state that administered the most brutal of beatings to even the slightest form of dissent.

    The revolution culminated in the resignation of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak who was pushed aside by his own army after eighteen days of protests and after 29 years in power.

    Today, the political climate couldn’t be more different. Egypt, for all intents and purposes, has regressed back in time to the pre-Tahrir Square period. What passes for democracy and human rights in Egypt is a joke to even Cairo’s strongest allies in the West. The current Egyptian government, voted in by over 90 percent of Egyptian voters in January, boils down to a mix of military men and former Mubarak advisors, all of whom share the goal of cracking down on any challenge to their authority. (more…)

  • Western Sahara: An Unlikely Key to American Strategy in Africa

    Africa, once the forgotten continent in American foreign policy, has rather abruptly become important again. US Africa Command has been front and center as a result of operations in Libya, Somalia and elsewhere. Terrorist groups like Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are active and spreading and Chinese economic expansion into the continent makes it strategically interesting almost by default. It is time, now rather than later, for Western policymakers to consider the place of Africa in the world.
    

    The first and most important way of engaging with an entire continent is developing regional allies. In the case of Africa, these can often be identified by what they oppose. Al-Shabaab may run rampant in Somalia but neighboring Kenya is ready and willing to listen to Western advice and aid. Boko Haram, a key substate actor in Nigeria, is counterbalanced by American diplomatic and economic engagement with the Nigerian government. And AQIM, arguably the most important of Africa’s major terrorist groups, is countered in some areas by a Moroccan constitutional monarchy that has shown great willingness to cooperate with the West on matters of counterterrorism and regional strategy.
    

    None of these regimes are entirely blameless. But they are convenient allies and a realist approach to international relations requires doing business with imperfect people whose interests nevertheless align with the United States’.
    

    Credibility, though, has a lot of different sides. The image that the United States want to project in Africa is a simple one: speak softly, carry a big stick in one hand and carry a lot of aid money in the other. That image is somewhat complicated, in the case of American-Moroccan relations, by the issue of Western Sahara. (more…)

  • Planner Benghazi Attack Formally Designated Terrorist

    Sixteen months after Islamist extremists attacked the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, the United States government has designated three groups that it believed were involved in the incident as terrorist organizations.

    Courtesy of The Washington Post, which broke the story two days before the designations were officially announced on Friday, the State and Treasury Departments have named the two branches of Ansar al-Sharia in Libya — one in Benghazi, the other in Derna — as foreign terrorist organizations that were intimately connected to the operation against the consulate.

    Inclusion on the list bans Americans from communicating with, joining or supporting the groups. Any financial assets they might hold in the United States have also been frozen.

    More unusual is that on the same day, the United States blacklisted the first individual who is suspected of involvement in the Benghazi attack. Ansar al-Sharia‘s leader, Abu Sufian bin Qumu, was named a terrorist operative for the role he allegedly played in the murder of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on September 11, 2012.

    While Qumu is not as well known in the jihadist lexicon as Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden or his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, he has been associated with Islamist extremist networks for most of his life. A former detainee of the Guantánamo Bay detention center, he was one of the original “Afghan Arabs” who traveled to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviets who had invaded the country. After his training at one of Osama bin Laden’s camps, Qumu traveled to Sudan in the early 1990s where he worked as a driver for one of the terrorist leader’s front companies.

    After pressure from the Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi forced Sudan to expel him, Qumu made his way back to Afghanistan and Pakistan where he became a close member of the Taliban movement. So close that he was wounded with the Taliban fighting against the Northern Alliance. Upon his return to Pakistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Pakistani security forces were able to arrest him, handed him over to the Americans, who transferred him to Guantánamo.

    Like many detainees in the prison, he was repatriated back to Libya at the request of the Gaddafi government. After a period of “reintegration,” Qumu was finally released in 2010. 

    Friday’s listing of Qumu as a specially designed global terrorist would seem to confirm fears that he never fully renounced his jihadist beliefs. When he is not directing attacks on Libyan security forces and Western facilities,

    The next step for American authorities is finding a way to capture Qumu and prosecute him in the United States. With the daring raid that captured Abu Anas al-Libi, another Al Qaeda planner, in the middle of Tripoli last fall, Special Forces undoubtedly have the capability to execute a similar operation to nab Qumu. The difficulty is pinpointing his location, monitoring his movements to establish a daily pattern of life and getting the Libyan government to cooperate with such an operation.

    It may take time to bring Qumu to justice for his role in the death of four Americans, including an ambassador. For now, the United States have taken the next best step: putting him on notice and freezing his assets.

  • New York and Cairo: Triumphs of Demagoguery

    One of the fundamental qualities of a statesman is that of probity. Most oaths of office include the term for a very important reason: because popular support is but one of the standards for governance. Indeed, the public is fickle and its capricious whims can be easily verified by the recurring opinion polls which show that the masses’ defining characteristic is that they are inconstant.

    Nowadays, many a democracy have been corrupted by populism and statesmen everywhere bow to public pressure when they should not. Instead of doing what they know is best, they rule cosmetically and simply do that which is popular. (more…)

  • Egypt Aid Suspension Worries America’s Arab Allies, Israel

    With a civil war raging in Syria, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process at a deadlock and Iraq returning to sectarian violence, the last thing the United States seem to need is another diplomatic headache in the Middle East. Yet now the Obama Administration has announced that it will suspend hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly military aid to Egypt, this is precisely what America may get.

    After a lengthy and at times confusing process that was designed to review America’s assistance to Egypt after the military removed Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi from office in July, the administration finally rolled out its new policy: most of the aid for Egypt’s armed forces is suspended until an inclusive democracy is restored to the country.

    The decision caught many lawmakers in Washington DC off guard, some of whom had vocally pressed the administration to continue sending Egypt’s military the equipment and funding it has received since it signed a peace accord with Israel in 1979, despite the ongoing crackdown against Muslim Brotherhood activists and officials.

    Others, including Vermont senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the committee responsible for funding the State Department, complained that the policy shift did not go far enough. (more…)

  • Authorities on Edge After Al Qaeda Leader Captured in Libya

    Al Qaeda’s core network of operatives was struck another dramatic blow on Saturday when American commandos executed a flawless operation in the Libyan capital against a man that has been on the United States’ most wanted list for the past fifteen years.

    Nazih Abdul-Hamed Nabih al-Ruqai’i, known by his alias Abu Anas al-Liby, may not be a household name like the terror network’s former chief, Osama bin Laden, or its current head, Ayman al-Zawahiri, but he is held responsible for plotting the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The attacks, which claimed 224 lives, including twelve Americans, marked the beginning of what would become America’s war on terrorism. For Americans, it was Al Qaeda’s most audacious and brutal terrorist attacks until September 11, 2001, when it crash three commercial airplanes into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington DC. (more…)