allAfrica.com
Katy Gabel
16 February 2008
(Page 2 of 2)
So we think that this change of administration to President Yusuf [Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed] and Prime Minister Nur Adde and their new cabinet forms a good basis for moving forward. The feeling at the Contact Group was that on the political front, there is a new dynamic, and that's a dynamic that we hope will lead to the transition in 2009.
On the peacekeeping or security front, we have the Ugandan peacekeepers that have been there for most of last year, but we also had the deployment in early 2008 of Burundian contingents bringing the AU force - the Amisom [African Union Mission in Somalia] force - up to about 2,500. Burundi is also prepared to deploy another battalion, and the United States has been key to training, airlifting, and equipping the battalion that's already gone, and to training the battalion that's soon to deploy.
We're also, of course, continuing to urge the United Nations to also look at putting peacekeepers into Somalia, to do contingency planning for a peacekeeping operation. I think the AU is meeting with the UN on trying to develop that further. So that's on the security front.
On the humanitarian front, the United States continues to be the major donor of humanitarian assistance, and we are working very closely with the French and others to stem piracy off the coast to make sure that those humanitarian deliveries get to the people in Mogadishu.
In Comoros, where you recently traveled, the stalemate between Anjouan authorities and the federal government has worsened, despite AU mediation efforts. President [Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed] Sambi recently threatened to take over the island of Anjouan by force. What is your assessment of the situation on the ground, and what steps is the United States taking to resolve the crisis there?
I went to Comoros because of the situation in Anjouan but also because of a long-term commitment to President Sambi that I would come. We held a meeting [with] the AU peace and security commissioner, [Ambassador Said] Djinnit, and [South African] Foreign Minister [Nkosazana] Dlamini-Zuma, my counterpart in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in France, and a few others.
We are looking at the possibility of a mission there that would be led by the South Africans as the lead AU mediator. That mission would go to talk to Colonel [Mohamed] Bacar [of Anjouan], and tell him, essentially, that he is acting unconstitutionally, that he must move aside so that there can be an election, and that if he doesn't, that there will be consequences. We're also working to look at sanctions. The AU already has sanctions, but [we're looking at] how we can make those sanctions work to be more effective to bring pressure to bear on Colonel Bacar.
The greatest leverage would really be with the French, so we're in good dialogue with the French and the AU, working together to solve this peacefully rather than militarily. But time is running out. President Sambi has lost all patience, as he stated at the AU summit. We do have a very serious crisis on our hands that we're trying to manage with the AU in the lead.
Will President Bush address confusion and disagreement surrounding the new Africa Command (Africom)?
I don't think there's too much confusion about Africom. Clearly, there are many countries that support it. There's a minority of countries that have vocally said that they don't, Libya in particular.
The president will talk about the Africa Command and the fact that it is a reorganization of how the United States does its business. It's not really going to change our engagement in Africa, because right now Africa is controlled, in terms of our engagement strategy, by three different commands – Central Command, European Command, and Pacific Command. [The reorganization] brings that engagement under one command – Africa Command – so we would expect [it] to do all the things that [the other three] are doing – stable visits, flag officer visits, medical exercises – providing what we call Medflags , providing medical assistance – training, joint operations in rare cases. So it's not a major, new development. We're rationalizing that engagement under one command.
Will the restructuring of a more traditional command for Africa be used as a test model for foreign aid restructuring?
No, certainly not. There's nothing new about the way we would engage Africa. There is something new about the way the command is constructed. That is, there is the traditional combatant commander, General [William E. (Kip)] Ward, but underneath him there is a deputy for civil-military affairs, who is a State Department person, and there's a deputy for military operations, who is a traditional Department of Defense person. That structure is somewhat different, in that they're trying to develop more of an inter-agency structure within the combatant command itself. That's more of an internal impact.
It's not the way in which we are expecting to deliver assistance, and I think that the president was fairly clear in his speech [on Thursday, February 14] about what Africom's mission will be. It certainly won't be a takeover from USAID. USAID is doing an excellent job. Our effort to deal with development assistance differently is through the Millennium Challenge Account - not through Africom.
Some are frustrated with the slow process of getting funds from the Millennium Challenge Account. Is there a longer-term plan to shift foreign development assistance to the kind of corporate model the Millennium Challenge Corporation uses?
The aid that goes through the Millennium Challenge Corporation is focused on countries that meet certain criteria, whereas USAID tries to address development and humanitarian challenges more globally. MCC is much more selective.
Part of the challenge in getting these compacts [five-year MCC agreements for targeted aid money] developed is that the new model is very much African ownership – and not just African ownership, because it's a global program. The countries themselves have to be central in writing the compacts, and there have to be very clear accountability measures – because we're talking about huge amounts of money – to ensure that that money is going to what that compact says it will, and it's not being diverted into someone's bank account.
So yes, there are significant accounting controls, and the process is a little bit slower because you have to get the ownership of the country, and the country has to get the ownership of the sectors and citizens that they are going to be operating in and with. Initially it's taking a little longer, but we think it's a model that will be quite successful, and it certainly is a model that has been appreciated by the African leaders whose countries have qualified.
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