Washington, DC — Although African governments have largely supported the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism, general underdevelopment in many of the continent's nations make them fertile recruiting grounds for terrorist organizations like Osama Bin Laden's al Qaeda, the House Subcommittee on Africa was told Thursday.
Opening the session called "Africa and the War on Global terrorism," subcommittee chairman Edward R. Royce (R-CA) called Africa, "critical to the war on terrorism." He expressed particular concern over recent reports that al Qaeda has helped finance its activities through dealing in diamonds with Sierra Leone's rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and Liberia's President, Charles Taylor.
"Much of Africa is a veritable incubator for the foot soldiers of terrorism," former Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Susan Rice, told the subcommittee. Terrorist cells operating throughout East, Southern and West Africa, "take advantage of poor, disillusioned populations, often with religious or ethnic grievances, to recruit for their jihad."
The Bush Administration, Rice thinks, is not doing enough. Two "defensive" but "critical" pieces are "missing from our comprehensive strategy," said Rice The first is far greater and immediate aid to nations cooperating with the U.S. in its campaign against terrorism. An investment "of tens of millions of dollars annually in helping build counter-crime and counter-terrorism capacity in a large number of African countries," is necessary Rice told the panel.
Secondly, said Rice, "we have to drain the swamps where the terrorists breed." This means U.S. assistance in Africa's fight against HIV/AIDS, increased trade and investment, more engagement in peacemaking and peacekeeping. "We will have to pay the price, billions and billions, to help lift the peoples of Africa and other under-developed regions out of poverty and hopelessness."
In his testimony, Dr. J. Stephen Morrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the subcommittee that while a small set of powerful African leaders with comparatively strong, established ties to the United States have responded to the call for a U.S.-led campaign against global terrorism, many African states are "ambivalent."
Some of this ambivalence reflects skepticism born of past history, Morrison said: the quick U.S. disengagement from Somalia, failure to respond to the Rwanda genocide in 1994, and perceived bias toward Israel in the middle east. Also, as a politically practical matter, many nations have large Muslim populations and some leaders were fearful that civilian casualties in the Afghanistan campaign could "outrage domestic constituencies," inviting "further attacks on U.S. facilities in Africa that would wound and kill many Africans."
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
Like Rice, Morrison emphasized the need to address development issues. "An important subset of Africa's leaders appears genuinely ready to work with the United States in the battle against international terrorism. Their commitment is linked to their quest to reverse Africa's decline through new reciprocal partnerships with Western powers."
One critical need, said Morrison, is "protecting existing programs from abrupt depletions to support non-African programs - 'raiding' that has already begun within the Bush Administration." New initiatives are less important now than this protection, he argued. Existing policy priorities in Africa, he said, "require substantially higher commitments to be effective, and to earn credibility and leverage in Africa."
Howard University Professor Sulayman S. Nyang also appeared before the subcommittee. What he termed "the Arab Cold war" -conflict between the secular vision of Egypt's Gamal Abdul Nasser and the traditional Islamic societies led by Saudi Arabia - that was played out against the larger backdrop of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, help explain the revival of a "militant" Islam.
One "irony" of the current war against global terrorism, Dr. Nyang told the subcommittee, "is the fact that what we failed to do for African development during the Cold war must now be done with deliberate speed if we are to curb the forces of terrorism and lay the foundations for a strong African link in the chain against global terrorism."
RELATED: Chairman Royce's Statement
