RUTHFULLY YOURS

As has become customary with this column, this first piece of the year is dedicated to laying out what are likely to be the leading flash points on the African continent during 2011 in something of an approximate order of their geopolitical significance, both as security challenges and strategic opportunities.

Sudan. Without a doubt the biggest story out of Africa this year will be the break up, whether peaceful or violent, of the largest African country of them all, the Sudan, and the subsequent emergence of two states in its place. In less than a week, voters in the ten states of southern Sudan as well as their fellows in the southern diaspora in the North and abroad will go to the polls to choose if they will remain part of a united country or secede to form their own independent state. The vote is a central feature of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which the United States helped to broker between the Islamist National Congress Party (NCP) regime in Khartoum and rebels from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), ending nearly half a century of civil war that left at least two million people, mostly southerners, dead and millions others displaced.

By every indication, the southerners will vote overwhelmingly for secession, which is entirely comprehensible given the long-term social and political marginalization they have endured—to say nothing of the violence they and their forefathers have suffered—at the hands of successive northern regimes. However, between the vote to secede and the actual independence of South Sudan, a myriad of highly contentious issues need to be resolved between the two states which will emerge from the wreckage of Sudan, including the highly emotive dispute over the status of the Abyei border district, which I wrote about in this column last month. There is always the danger that, despite the fact that it has grudgingly cooperated so far, the Khartoum regime of self-appointed Field Marshal Omar Hassan al-Bashir will resort to violence rather than let the southerners go free since the secession will mean the loss of more than 80 percent of the country’s proved oil reserves, which account for some 90 percent of Sudan’s foreign currency earnings (to say nothing of their contribution to the International Criminal Court-indicted war criminal’s multibillion-dollar personal skimming, according to a Wikileaks-inspired report in Sunday’s New York Times).

After the break up, which should take place in early July when the interim period mandated by the CPA expires, the two states which emerge, South Sudan and the rump of the northern state, will each face their own challenges. As I noted recently in The National Interest Online, given its lack of development and other problems, a great deal needs to be done in order to ensure that southern independence “is not followed by state failure, bur rather that the South Sudanese, in acquiring their political independence, have at least a fighting chance to win the battle for economic and social development and thus achieving the security and stability which are the true raison d’être for countenancing their secession in the first place.” As for the north, as I wrote in another National Interest Online commentary, Khartoum’s dénouement presents “the prospect of additional turmoil, economic collapse, radical ascendency, and even outright state failure in a strategic region already struggling for a sustainable modicum of stability.” In either scenario, there is the risk of renewed conflict and, possibly, an even wider conflagration.

The former Somalia. The only reason that the former Somalia does not top this year’s list of African “hot spots” is the scale of the potential geopolitical upheaval in the Sudan. It is a relative thing since, in absolute terms, the southern and central parts of the former Somali Democratic Republic are not only worse off than they were a year ago, they also constitute the most failed state in the world, bar none. Despite the doubling of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) force protecting, the appointment of a new prime minister (see my analysis of Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed “Farmajo”, pictured above), and hundreds of millions of dollars in international assistance, the rather ironically named “Transitional Federal Government” (TFG) of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed is not a whit closer to being the municipal government of its putative capital, much less the “federal government” of the Somali territories. Its many ministers, when they are not off on globetrotting tours to tell donors about all their great plans, are good only for whiling away their days camped out in the lobby of Mogadishu’s Nassa Nablood II Hotel—effectively the only choice left to them since insurgents bombed the Shamo and the Muna—drinking tea and stiffing its owners for the bill.

Despite wishful reports every few months—undoubtedly fed by the public relations firm which one European donor government hired for the TFG—the extremist Islamist insurgents, spearheaded by the al-Qaeda-linked Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (“Movement of Warrior Youth,” al-Shabaab), have shown no signs of disintegrating. To the contrary, this past year saw them operate abroad for the first time, mounting suicide bombings on two locations in Kampala, capital of Uganda, the country that has provided most of the AMISOM peacekeepers. The attacks, which took place during the broadcast of the FIFA World Cup Final, left 74 dead and dozens more wounded.

Meanwhile, notwithstanding the deployment of an unprecedented multinational flotilla against them, Somali pirates continue their predations unabated, shifting operations and tactics in response to the naval patrols. In fact, 2010 saw the payment of a record ransom to the marauders, $9.5 million in November for the release of the South Korean oil tanker MV Samho Dream, as well as attacks more than 1,000 nautical miles from the Somali coast, including the seizure last month of the Panamanian-flagged, Liberian-owned cargo ship MV Renuar just 500 miles off the coast of India. The pirates kicked off 2011 by hijacking the Algerian bulk carrier MV Blinda and her crew of twenty-seven some 150 nautical miles off the Omani port of Salalah from where the boat was heading to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The latest heist brings to twenty-eight the number of vessels the pirates currently hold along with 654 hostages.

On the positive side, this past year saw the holding of a peaceful presidential election in the northwest region of Somaliland which, despite the conduct of a poll that international observers acknowledged met global standards and an orderly transition to a new administration under President Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud “Silanyo,” has yet to achieve recognition of its de facto independence (see my report on the election, which I observed as part of the International Republican Institute delegation). Moreover, in September, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson unveiled a recalibrated policy for Somalia that included a “second-track strategy” of increased engagement of the governments of Somaliland and Puntland as well as outreach to various local authorities and other groups which oppose the extremists in southern and central Somalia irrespective of whether or not they are formally aligned with the TFG (see my analysis of this policy shift).

The biggest question—assuming the TFG survives that long—is what to do when its mandate expires in August 2011. While one would think that the failure of no fewer than fourteen of its predecessor and the TFG’s own impending ignominious end that the international community would think twice about pursuing the same failed top-down approach for a sixteenth time, it remains to be seen if enough courage and vision exist, together with some basic common sense to avoid perpetuating the vicious cycle that has only increased the level of chaos, violence, and extremism in the Horn of Africa.

Nigeria. The populous African country as well as the fourth largest supplier of America’s oil imports, Nigeria deserves a great deal more attention than it usual gets. It may well get it 2011, albeit for all the wrong reasons. In a little over a week, the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) will hold its presidential nominating convention. Seeking the nomination with all the advantages of incumbency is Goodluck Jonathan, who acceded to the presidency this past year when his long moribund predecessor, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, finally expired, thus saving the country from a constitutional crisis that was a preoccupation of mine in last year’s list of brewing crises.

The problem is, as I noted in September when Jonathan announced his intentions, is that the president’s bid for a term in his own right bucks the principle of “zoning” that, by alternating the PDP’s standard bearer between northern Muslims and southern Christians after every eight years (the constitutional limit is two four-year terms), has up to now kept the fragile peace among the country’s elites and prevented presidential elections from adding to the already nasty divisions between regions and religions. An influential group, the Northern Political Leaders Forum (NPLF), arguing that since Yar’Adua, a northerner, died before even completing his first term, the nod should go to another northerner. The NPLF has thrown its weight behind a consensus candidate, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.

A former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, Dr. John Campbell of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently warned that if the zoning arrangement fell apart, northern politicians may withdraw from the PDP, fragmenting the party and the elites who have hitherto dominated Nigeria along regional and religious lines, a development which would “not bode well for political stability or for credible elections in 2011.” The problem is that the last polls, in April 2007, were so marred by massive violence, fraud, and other irregularities (see my report at the time, which includes photographs of some of the abuses I personally witnessed), that the country can hardly afford for the vote, currently slated for April after being originally schedule for this month, to go awry.

If the country’s electoral politics were not enough cause for concern, Nigeria has also been experiencing an uptick in sectarian violence. Exacerbating the already fraught communal tensions between Christians and Muslims in the central city of Jos, where up to 1,000 people have been killed in sectarian clashes during 2010, a militant Islamist group called Boko Haram (in Hausa, literally “[Western] book-learning is forbidden”) set off bombs outside of several Christmas Eve celebrations, killing more than eighty people. The group followed up with a string of attacks in the northeastern city of Maiduguri which killed another dozen and a half people. Meanwhile, New Year’s Eve saw the bombing of a market near military barracks in the federal capital of Abuja. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the blast, which claimed four lives, although President Jonathan blamed it on Islamist militants.

The potential negative impact on global and regional security should things begin to fall apart in Nigeria can hardly be understated.

Côte d’Ivoire. While this is the African crisis that is currently in the headlines—I have given more than three dozen interviews since Christmas on this topic alone—it ranks fourth on this list because the potential fallout, while undoubtedly grave, would not amount to the geopolitical earthquake that the preceding three would constitute should things go very wrong. That being said, it is nonetheless a tragedy the year that was supposed to be Côte d’Ivoire’s “année de la paix” may well see the restart of the country’s civil war, with potentially devastating impacts on neighboring countries, global commodities markets, and the credibility of international organizations from the United Nations to the African Union to the subregional Economical Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Despite the fact that many of the conditions stipulated in the 2007 Ouagadougou peace accords—including the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of the rebel Forces Nouvelles (FN) and the reestablishment of the civil administration throughout the country (see my report nearly four years ago on the deal)—had yet to be met, much less that some of the issues at the root of the civil war that broke out in 2002 had even begun to be addressed, the international community pushed for elections this past year. The first round in October had incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo, whose primary base of support is among the mainly Christian southern part of the country, leading American-educated former International Monetary Fund executive Alassane Ouattara 38 percent to 32 percent. In the runoff at the end of November, the tally announced by the opposition-dominated Independent Electoral Commission gave Ouattara a 54.1 percent to 45.9 percent victory over Gbagbo, a result which the Constitutional Council, led by a Gbagbo ally, overruled, disqualifying for reasons of alleged fraud votes from a number of constituencies in the FN-controlled northern part of the country and giving the incumbent a 51.5 percent to 48.5 percent win. The United Nations, ECOWAS, and most Western nations endorsed the initial electoral commission results favoring Ouattara, although some experts, including veteran Senegalese statesman, Pierre Sané, former secretary-general of Amnesty International, raised serious questions about it.

Since then, the situation has quickly spiraled. Both men have proclaimed themselves head of state of the West African country that produces some 40 percent of the world’s cocoa. For now, Ouattara is barricaded inside Abidjan’s Golf Hotel, protected by UN peacekeepers, while Gbagbo, retaining the allegiance of the military and civil service, remains in control of most of the southern part of the country. Ouattara gained the support of the FN rebels, who still control the northern part of the country, by appointing their leader, Guillaume Soro, as his prime minister.

Just before Christmas, an emergency ECOWAS summit resulted in a ultimatum that Gbagbo give up power or be removed by force by the subregional group, a threat that it would be hard pressed to actually follow through on, even if the political consensus for it was not already dissipating (Ghana’s democratically-elected government has already stated it will not participate in a military intervention, joining The Gambia’s eccentric ruler in breaking ranks on the decision). Various UN officials have added to the tensions by sounding alarms about “genocide.” A three-man delegation from ECOWAS—Presidents Thomas Yayi Boni of Benin, Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone, and Pedro Pires of Cape Verde—together with the African Union envoy, Prime Minister Raila Odinga of Kenya, met with Gbagbo on Monday, but were unsuccessful in convincing him to cede power.

While the threat of intervention does create pressure, there are serious doubts about whether ECOWAS is capable of actually making good on it. None of the ECOWAS countries has anything approaching the ability to provide real-time operational intelligence on the whereabouts at any given moment of the Ivorian leader or his closest collaborators, much less the type of elite commando units capable of carrying out such a “decapitation strike” on the regime. That leaves the less-than-desirable option of mounting a full-scale invasion of the sort that would inevitably involve urban fighting and civilian casualties. It is not clear that any West African countries are prepared for that, especially Nigeria, which has an estimated two million citizens living in Côte d’Ivoire, most of whom are small traders and entrepreneurs. So far, these civilians have not been specifically targeted, but they could well be if there is a military intervention.

Even if somehow the political agreement could be reached among the West African states for a military operation, there are serious doubts that ECOWAS could actually carry it out. First, there is the question of where ECOWAS would actually find the troops with which to intervene given that it has already committed its best personnel elsewhere on various UN peacekeeping operations. Second, even if the troops were found for an intervention in Côte d’Ivoire, how would they get to Abidjan? The type of transport capability required simply does not exist in the region. Third, even if an intervention force made it to Abidjan, assuming Gbagbo continued to resist, would it be prepared, both politically and operationally, to engage in pitched street battles in the midst of a city of nearly four million people just to get to him? Would the UN forces currently there join them? If so, what precedent would this set and how would it impact future UN peacekeeping missions? Would either of the two military forces, the hypothetical ECOWAS interveners and the UN peacekeepers, be prepared to protect civilians who might be targeted in the event violence breaks out?

The problem is that the current standoff, coming on top of the nearly decade-long division of the country by civil war which only worsened preexistent fault lines, could very well lead to a renewed civil war, one which would almost inevitably spill over to Côte d’Ivoire’s porous borders with its neighbors, including Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, which have emerged—or, in the case of the latter is just exiting—from their own crises. And even if the a peaceful resolution is found for the immediate challenge, presumably by Gbagbo agreeing to give way to Ouattara, it is not altogether clear that, political posturing aside, there is sufficient international interest to provide the massive support that the new president would desperately need if he is not to simply preside over a more gradual slide back into the same chaos.

Maghreb and Sahel. Several months ago, I voiced the concern that al-Qaeda’s franchise in northwest Africa, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), seemed to be “increasingly willing to make common cause with criminal elements in the interest of both augmenting its tactical and operational capabilities and extending its strategic reach.” Developments continue to confirm the reality of the threat.

First, it is clear that terrorist activity in the region is on the rise. Despite repeated reports of its demise, the group continues to reemerge, even in areas it was thought to have been cleared out, as the fact that just last month Algerian officials had to launch their biggest offensive in several years against the militants in the Sidi Ali Bounab forests east of Algiers underscored.

Second, alongside the increase in terrorist activity, there has been a rise in smuggling activities in the region, involving both legal and illegal commodities, especially drugs. The region has, in fact, become the preferred route for Latin American cartels to move cocaine to Western Europe. While no evidence has yet emerged of AQIM getting directly involved in the drug trafficking, considerable evidence suggests that that it has earned money by facilitating the movement of contraband through areas under its control. This stream of funding has not only helped to fund AQIM, but it also gives the group the opportunity to come into contact with South American terrorist organizations which have long been involved in the drug trade. In fact, in October, Moroccan authorities broke up an international drug trafficking ring which they claimed proved just that: its members had links to South American cartels as well as AQIM and were caught transporting cocaine and marijuana between Latin America and Europe. In early December, acting in tandem, the Mauritanian army and Malian security services broke up another gang, arresting six major traffickers who, according to a report by Agence France-Presse, came from the ranks of the Polisario Front, which contests Morocco’s sovereignty over the former Spanish Sahara, and had links with AQIM.

Third, AQIM has drawn closer to al-Qaeda to point where the head of AQIM, Abdelmalek Droukdel, in November, issued a videotape statement in which he declared that France should negotiate directly with Osama bin Laden for the release of the five French hostages that the North African group has held since September. The concern among authorities is that AQIM has links with African diaspora communities in Europe which might give it the opportunity to either carry out attacks there or allow them to be used by al-Qaeda to do so.

In short, expect the terrorist activity, drug trafficking, and extremist networking to continue and worsen in 2011, especially in the absence of comprehensive regional cooperation.

Democratic Republic of the Congo. Last year, I chronicled here the misgovernment and other malfeasance of the regime of Joseph Kabila in the rather poorly named Democratic Republic of the Congo—the appellation is rather ironic since, after fifty years of independence which its elites celebrated in June with lavishness the government could ill afford, the country has yet to hold a complete set of free and fair local, provincial, and national elections. The security and political environments have only worsened with presidential and parliamentary elections due this before the end of 2011.

In November, a report by a group of experts mandated by the UN Security Council essentially charged the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FRDC), of which the incumbent Kabila is commander-in-chief, with being a massive criminal enterprise involved in everything from the plundering of mineral resources to using rape as a tool of political terror. Rather diplomatically, the report concluded that “officers at different levels of the FARDC hierarchy jostle for control over mineral rich areas at the expense of civilian protection.” No wonder the incumbent, who for all intents and purposes inherited his job from his warlord father, wants the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) gone by the end of this year: no more inconvenient snooping and, most definitely, a freer hand to extend his tenure.

As for the politics, it is only January, but the irregularities are already mounting. To begin with the very existence of the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI) is legally problematic: its mandate was supposed to expire in February 2007, when the elected parliament convened. But since neither Kabila, père or fils, ever let such niceties get in their way, none of their followers has bothered to take care of the issue and the CEI’s head, a priest named Apollinaire Malu Malu, has invoked “force majeure” to justify staying on. Moreover, the calendar published for the $715 million electoral exercise is no less problematic than the CEI’s legal standing to put out: Joseph Kabila’s current term of office is, according to the constitution he promulgated, expires on December 6, 2011, the fifth anniversary of his inauguration; however the CEI election calendar doesn’t envision a first-round vote until November 27, with a potential second round on February 26, 2012. The strange calendar has left one wondering if the good abbé intends to simply proclaim Kabila “reelected” immediately after the polls close in November or what would happen if the incumbent failed to get a majority the first time around.

Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that the little development that has taken place has stalled with investors unsure about the security of their holdings in the country given the predatory behavior of that the Kabila regime has exhibited over the course of the last year, to say nothing of the upcoming political battles. In one indication of how bad things had become, at the end of December, Vodacom, the largest mobile telephone service provider in the Congo, announced that it was exploring the sale of its unit in the country, which had become a significant loss-maker due to a dispute with its politically-connected local partner, and the abandonment of the Congolese market altogether.

With the virtually unlimited wealth of the Congo at stake and no great democratic tradition to fall back upon, expect the fight for power to get increasingly bitter and desperate as the year goes along with, sadly enough, the peoples of the Congolese left to pay the price.

In addition to the flash points mentioned above, there are all too many more localized crises which are likely to come to the fore at one point or another, including the increasingly untenable situation in Zimbabwe, saddled with a “unity government” of octogenarian despot Robert Mugabe and the man he cheated out of the presidency in 2008, Morgan Tsvangirai, and Kenya, which heads toward another general election with contentious ethnic “rights” now enshrined in the constitution and some of its most important power brokers—including Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, Head of the Civil Service and Cabinet Secretary Francis Muthaura, and suspended Higher Education Minister William Ruto—facing indictment by the International Criminal Court for their part in the campaign of violence and ethnic cleansing after the last poll (see my report at the time).

In short, over the course of the next twelve months, there will be no shortage of crises, expected and unexpected, affecting both the well-being and security of Africans as well as international order in general and the interests of the United States in particular. It should nonetheless be remembered that these challenges can either pose threats or present unique opportunities for promoting cooperation and strengthening relations—how they are viewed will, more often than not, be a matter of strategic perspective.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributor J. Peter Pham is Senior Vice President of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy in New York City. He also hold academic appointments as Associate Professor of Justice Studies, Political Science, and African Studies at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C. He currently serves as Vice President of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) and Editor-in-Chief of its refereed Journal of the Middle East and Africa.