allAfrica.com: Africa: Pay Attention to Africa's Strategic Importance, Policy Panel Concludes (Page 1 of 4)

Africa has increasing strategic significance for the United States, an importance often overshadowed by a focus on humanitarian concerns, according to a report by a Task Force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations.

A broader based policy is needed, taking into account the continent's importance as an energy source and as an arena of rising competition with China and a crucial battleground in fighting terror and combating HIV/Aids, the report concluded.

In an interview following release of the report this week, the Task Force two co-chairs outlined their group's chief findings and how it might influence the policymaking process. Anthony Lake, who currently teaches at Georgetown University, directed the National Security Council staff at the White house during the first Clinton administration. Christine Todd Whitman, a former governor of New Jersey, headed the Environmental Protection Agency during President George W. Bush's first term.

Now that you have issued this lengthy document, how do you expect it to impact on policymaking?

Lake: We are very concerned that we reach a broad audience and say: listen, pay attention, things are happening in Africa - the role of terrorism, competition with the Chinese, the extraordinary new importance of Africa when it comes to energy resources, a growing importance.

We need to pay attention, and it is hard to get that message out because so many Americans think of Africa as simply a basket case, a place where there are famines and wars. Not the kind of progress the report is trying to put out there. So we are working on how to get a broader American audience who can try to not only stir interest in policy prescriptions - , and there are many in this report - but to get across the idea that as Africans are more and more getting involved in their own peace-keeping, making economic process here and there, becoming more democratic in many parts of Africa, that there is a partner there that we can work with, not just in their interest but in ours.

As a former policymaker yourself, how do you hope to reach those who sit in the corridors of power?

Lake: I suppose there is a role for task forces like this and for meetings with policy makers, but I think it is more important to somehow to get it across to the American public that the image of Africa that they have is wrong.

Don't policymakers share these misperceptions?

Lake: Some policy makers certainly don't and some may, but we will be working on it.

There have been polls showing that Americans may be more willing to help Africa than their government is. Take the example of the Rwanda genocide in 1994. Wasn't the American public more inclined to get involved than the Clinton administration and Congress?

Lake: No, that was not the case. I have spoken many times on how deeply I wish we could do that over. I have talked a lot about my own failure to press the issue within the administration. The problem with Rwanda was not recognizing what was going on.

The heart of the matter was that we never had a senior meeting on deciding whether or not to intervene ourselves. We almost never- in fact, never got recommendations from NGOs to intervene. There were some editorials about how terrible the problem was, but essentially it has only been in retrospect that we have reached this consensus that we should have done far more than we did.

And as I say repeatedly, we only earn the right to be critical of ourselves and of others over what happened in Rwanda if we now concentrate on Darfur and Eastern Congo and HIV/Aids and famine and all the other humanitarian problems on the continent.

But Darfur is getting attention. There have been many pronouncements and denunciations.

Lake: And not nearly enough is being done. The African Union has seven thousand or so troops there with a very shaky mandate. They need probably twelve thousand or more and haven't been able to find them. They are short by a hundred million and more dollars in resources, and I think it is unconscionable that Congress and the administration and all of us have not done more to get all those resources. Which is why I believe that NATO should be intervening in some fashion to provide a bridge until more troops can arrive there from the AU and from the UN, because, the situation, again, is deteriorating.

And you are linking that failure to act to the pervasively negative perception of Africa?

Lake: Partly, yes. And as I have said before, I don't know whether it was worse not to have said very much about Rwanda and not to have done very much about Rwanda, or to say a lot about Darfur and not to do very much about Darfur. Take your pick. Both are very bad.

So the central take-away from the Task force report is that Africa is a lot more complex and significantly more strategic than is generally recognized?

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