Blog

 By Jennifer Cooke and J. Stephen Morrison

By Paul D. Williams

In January 2007, the African Union launched its fourth peacekeeping operation, the AU mission in Somalia (AMISOM). Now approximately two and a half years old, AMISOM’s short life has not been a happy one. It was deployed to Mogadishu essentially in support of the Ethiopian government’s preferred faction in Somalia’s ongoing civil war. Not surprisingly, and like the three UN-authorized peace operations deployed to Somalia during the early 1990s, AMISOM faced serious challenges which severely restricted its ability to operate.

By Michael Weinstein As the coalition of Western donor powers, the United Nations, the African Union, and regional African states, such as Kenya, Djibouti, Uganda and Burundi, see it, the narrative of Somalia’s contemporary political history pits the country’s new and expanded Transitional Federal Government (TFG) against an armed “insurgency” composed of “spoilers,” “extremists,” or “terrorists” operating under the banner of “radical Islamism.”

By Jennifer Cooke and J. Stephen Morrison

**The following is the opening, pre-publication draft, chapter in the forthcoming CSIS Africa Program publication, "Beyond the Bush Administration’s Africa Policy: Critical Choices for the Obama Administration." Pre-publication drafts of the other chapters are available on the CSIS Africa Program website or by clicking here. Final print publication will occur in mid–March.

The Bush Era: a Powerful Legacy

During President George W. Bush’s eight-year tenure, U.S. policy towards Africa underwent a dramatic enlargement, marked by an expansion of U.S. interests, a high-level diplomatic push on Sudan, unprecedented resource flows, and the establishment of several historic initiatives. This unfolded in an era in which security, energy, and health emerged as new, near-strategic U.S. interests in Africa, and in which U.S. Africa policy ascended to a position far closer to mainstream foreign policy than ever before. The U.S. constituency for an activist Africa policy broadened considerably to include public health institutions, powerful new foundations, vocal religious groups, and a more active corporate sector. U.S. Africa policy attracted consistently strong bipartisan support. But it was also criticized for approaches that were imbalanced, unsustained, underpowered, and inconsistent.

By Eddie Thomas

Sudan’s center is in the Nile Valley around the capital Khartoum—a middle-income enclave surrounded by some of the poorest societies on earth. The powerful, rich central government has a weak grip on its vast territory, but it may be losing its grip. It is fighting a war in Darfur; the neighboring region of Kordofan is being drawn in; and there is a huge military build-up on the oil-rich internal border between Northern Sudan and the newly autonomous South, which has recently emerged from decades of war. A rebellion in Eastern Sudan has come to an uneasy end; and in the far north, people are being thrown off riverain lands to make way for dams.

By Christian Hennemeyer

The world of 35 years ago was a dramatically different place, and nowhere more so than in sub-Saharan Africa.  In the early 1970s, Portugal still clung to its colonies in Angola and Mozambique, South Africa was under the heavy hand of apartheid, and Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was then called, was run by the white minority regime of Ian Smith.  The domination of Africa by Europe and people of European descent was intact, albeit showing signs of stress.

By Omer Ismail and Maggie Fick As the rainy season comes to an end in Chad, the recent détente between Chadian and Sudanese governments will not last. "Rebellion season" is on the horizon. Violence in the volatile East is again on the rise, and civilians are once again at grave risk. A high-ranking official in the Chadian government recently told us: "We know the rebels are just across the border [in Sudan]. They are coming as soon as the roads are accessible, but we are ready for them, because we monitor their moves." Indeed, flooded roads along the Chad-Sudan border are becoming passable once more; treacherous armed bandits known as zaraguinas are menacing Darfurian refugees and internally displaced Chadians; and tensions are escalating between pastoralists and farmers competing for land. The upsurge in violence has forced aid agencies to suspend assistance to tens of thousands of civilians.

By Bronwyn Bruton The clock has run out on the current international engagement in Somalia, and the United States faces a dearth of realistic policy options. The ability of the United States, the United Nations (UN) and the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) to influence political events in Somalia is almost wholly dependant on the presence of Ethiopian military forces. It was the Ethiopian invasion that ended the promising reign of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) over Somalia’s unruly capital city, Mogadishu; and the Ethiopian army, albeit with some assistance from the small African Union peacekeeping mission, is the coercive force that has allowed the unpopular Transitional Federal Government (TFG) to remain in power. But the TFG cannot retain power without the support of Ethiopian troops.