Washington, DC — If there is to be global security, Africa must be moved from the margins to the center of U.S. foreign policy; that's the view of three campaign organisations who Thursday called for a new approach to foreign relations.
For the Executive Director of Africa Action, Salih Booker, the looming war with Iraq is resulting in a "malign neglect" of Africa. "Historically, the U.S. has segregated Africa within foreign policy....Now, Washington must move African concerns from the margins of U.S. foreign policy to the center, if it is to sharpen its focus on the most destabilizing international threats and the most urgent global priorities," said Booker.
Adotei Akwei, Africa Advocacy Director of Amnesty International, who along with Marie Clarke, National Coordinator of Jubilee USA Network, joined Booker on Thursday's panel, warned against "U.S. pre-occupation with the geo-strategic value of African countries in the war on terrorism." That "must not trump efforts to promote human rights and advance democracy," Akwei said.
Booker called the HIV/Aids pandemic "the greatest single global threat to human security today" and said it should be the top foreign policy priority of the U.S. "Africa's future depends on a victory in this fight as, over time, will the future of many other countries and regions, because the Aids pandemic is still in its global infancy."
"The absence of U.S. leadership remains the greatest obstacle to defeating Aids in Africa and globally," said Booker. "The war on Aids is more important, more urgent than the war on terror," said Booker. "And the war on Aids can be won."
Intertwined with fighting Aids is debt relief, said Jubilee's Marie Clarke. "It will cost at least US$10bn annually to turn around the Aids crisis. Sub-Saharan Africa alone is paying US$14.5bn annually in debt service." That's US$40m a week, she said. "Imagine how else that money could be spent."
"Essentially," debt is becoming "a new form of slavery, as vicious as the [earlier] slave trade," said Clarke. Citing Zaire under Mobutu, Clarke questioned the legitimacy of debt repayment obligations in countries like the central African nation of Congo-Kinshasa. Much of the debt was incurred when the country was Zaire, under the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko: "We bought our [cold war] allies and we got what we paid for... the people of the DRC are still paying down that debt. They pay US$63m on education, US$834m annually in debt service. This is absurd."
Debt cancellation can work, said Clarke. But it's "trapped" in a "sort of a scam." She was referring to HIPC, the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative. "this initiative not only provides very minimal debt relief, but it's so heavily conditioned, on conditions that actually counteract the benefits. [With HIPC] you're saying here's some debt relief, put it toward health care and education but charge fees to make the health care and education completely inaccessible."
Debt is "a major source of global inequality," said Clarke, and U.S. policy needs to address the issue.
While positive, U.S. involvement in conflict resolution in the Mano River region of West Africa, Sudan and Rwanda has been "offset by continuing security programs and relationships with African military which have records of human rights abuses that under U.S. law should have been restricted or prevented," said Salih Booker; he cited joint training exercises with Kenyan troops during the Moi regime as one example.
Many of these relationships are driven by the war on terror and the prospect of war with Iraq. September 11 "changed the [African policy] dynamic considerably," said Akwei. "The Bush administration now has one focus, and one focus only: the war on terrorism which includes consolidating military alliances, having access to military facilities, gathering intelligence and cooperation and aggressively dealing with persons suspected of being terrorists or supporting terrorist activities."
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Akwei urged the Bush administration to aid African peacemaking initiatives with diplomatic and financial support. Such efforts "are essential to regional and international security," Akwei said. However, "U.S. security policy towards Africa suffers from a lack of forceful and effective oversight to prevent it from contributing to human rights abuses."
Booker announced the release of a new Africa Action report defining an agenda for a new Africa policy. "The U.S. faces the challenge of determining how to use its power not only to safeguard its own future security and prosperity, but to promote the human security and international stability upon which America's own prospects depend," the report declares.
