By Emeizmi Mandagi (University of California, Irvine and CIHA Blog intern)
This post looks at the relationship between increased military interventions and humanitarian assistance in parts of Africa to understand how these two components tie into the rhetorical use of Islam as justification of U.S. involvement in African security and development. I hope the post will be especially useful to practitioners working in parts of West and North Africa who deal with issues related to security and wish to understand how religion is used to justify interventions and security investments in the region.
Africa gained increasing importance in the strategic interests of the United States military during the Cold War. Africa’s military importance was initially cast in terms of countering the Soviet Union’s influence and the spread of communism. In parallel with leveraging its military might, U.S. foreign aid was also utilized as a tool of “soft” diplomacy to sway African states from communism (Miles 2012). However, this focus shifted during the 1990s under US President Bill Clinton, a shift that was accelerated following the terrorist attacks against the U.S. on September 11, 2001. Since the 9/11 attacks, much of U.S. foreign aid has been used to counter the perceived widespread radicalization and joining of Islamic terrorist groups in various African states. In this way, diplomacy, defense, and development have been compounded to encapsulate the U.S. strategy for counter-terrorism in Africa (Miles 2012).
Historicizing “Terrorism” in Africa’s Sahel region
The presence of terrorism in parts of Africa is not a new development, but traditionally the threat was confined to coastal east Africa and the Maghreb (Miles 2012). However, during the past ten years, terrorist operations have expanded to include the Sahel, a region consisting of all or part of nine countries that span from Senegal in the west to Eritrea in the east. More specifically, the territory considered part of the Sahel include northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, central Mali, northern Burkina Faso, southern Algeria, southwestern Niger, northern Nigeria, central Chad, central Sudan, and northern Eritrea. This resulted in the creation of the Pan-Sahel Initiative, which was funded by the U.S. State Department at $7.75 million (Ellis 2004).
The Sahel region is now largely perceived by the West as the epicenter of African terrorist activity, and a look at the historical, political, economic, geographic and demographic features of the region helps to shed light on why this is the case. The central Sahara and Sahel region is a central route used for smuggling, especially cigarettes. As is often the case with other smuggling trades, once the necessary infrastructure is created and the capital invested by entrepreneurs, these trade routes can be used for other types of contraband such as people and weapons (Ellis 2004). Particularly following the deposing of Muammar Gaddafi as leader of Libya after 2011, weapons and Islamist fighters made the journey back to the Sahel.
KEY MOMENTS
The Cold War
In many ways, the developments during the Cold War helped set up the infrastructure that allows the U.S.-led “War on Terror” to be carried out in the Sahel region. The combatant commands such as the European Command (EUCOM), Central Command (CENTCOM), and Pacific Command (PACOM), which were created during the Cold War to manage military forces in order to effectively prepare for armed confrontation with the Soviet Union continue to be prisms through which the Pentagon views the world (McFate 2008). Though the creation of Africa Command (AFRICOM), headquartered in Germany, did not occur until 2007, it originated as an internal administrative change within the Department of Defense that remedies “an outdated arrangement left over from the Cold War” as stated by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (Gates 2007). In other words, in 2007 the Bush administration, Pentagon and military analysts argued that the African continent’s growing strategic importance necessitated a regional command; although, some experts suggest that this increased geopolitical importance of Africa is motivated in part by oil (Hanson 2007).
Post 9/11
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., U.S. foreign policy, military, and intelligence leaders became more focused on the Arab world than ever before in the past. By extension, this focus on the Arab world eventually came to include North and West Africa due to the large presence of Muslims in Africa as well, meaning the U.S.-led war on terror came to include the Sahel region in Africa as well. Among the realm of policy makers, military leaders, and intelligence leaders, preemptive attacks and operations came to be viewed as the best approach for executing the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT).
Additionally, following the 9/11 attacks, the rhetoric of “good” Islamists and “bad” Islamists gained traction among the general public and even within politics (Mamdani 2005). The narrative of violent Islamist groups portrayed as a single, monolithic, globalized Islamist threat rather than localized movements in response to specific conditions became very common. This perceived globalized threat is primarily viewed as a danger for the West, and as a threat to African stability secondarily. Because of this, the rhetoric of an Islamic extremist threat is often used to motivate U.S. interventionism, and receives its support through the use of fear-mongering tactics. By using the religion of Islam to justify interventionism through the primary motivator of fear, the West was able to convert the War on Terror into a language the Western public could readily accept and understand, which involves the use of the common tie between Islam and terrorism.
As an amorphous interpretive link between underdevelopment and terrorism also came into being this translated into increased levels of support for development in Africa (Miles 2012). The rhetoric of human rights provided the most compelling argument for new forms of intervention, which relied on the myth of an institutional vacuum, contending the nomadic Sahelians are backwards, belligerent, and primitive with no previous experience in governmental structures (Niang 2014). Security experts would thus encourage us to believe that the world we live in is increasingly insecure and fragile so long as autonomous groups are not under the structure of a formal government. However, Mark Duffield states that this supposed insecurity is partly artificial, and this belief is simply a requirement for new forms of interventionism in need of humanitarian justification (Duffield 2011).
Humanitarian aid and development projects in the Sahel soon became used as a counterterrorism strategy similar to the way that the U.S. humanitarian aid was used as a counter-communism tool during the Cold War (Miles 2012). This humanitarian aid was given by the United States in the hopes of countering the perceived economic incentives for individuals to join terrorist organizations. As noted by Robert G. Loftis, former senior adviser in the State Department’s Bureau of Political and Military Affairs and a member of the Africa Command transition team, humanitarian aid to Africa under President Bush tripled since 2001 (Hanson 2007).
KEY ISSUES
Oil and Natural Resources
Especially following the United States’ increased awareness of its own energy crisis in the 1970’s, the United States turned to other countries for possible sources of oil and energy, and eventually turned to the African continent which quickly became important to U.S.’s geopolitical interests. The Cheney Report described the strategic importance of Africa due to the large amount of oil supply it possesses, which prompted President Bush to frame Africa’s oil as a strategic national interest (Keenan 2008). Oil was seen as a resource that the United States could possibly control through military force in order to ensure consistent access. Thus, there was hope that by establishing a stronger military presence, the U.S. might be able to more easily regulate oil installations (Barnes 2005).
As instability in the Middle East continues to be a reality, and international demand for energy grows, the world–and the United States in particular–are becoming increasingly dependent on Africa as a source of oil supply. By 2006, sub-Saharan African oil made up approximately 18% of all U.S. oil imports (close to Persian Gulf imports which were at 21%) (Harris 2007). With the increasing presence of extremist, anti-imperialist groups in Africa, particularly in the Sahel, American policymakers see a special set of threats and challenges that motivate an increased presence in Africa – one risk being an interrupted oil supply (Barnes 2005). In this way, the United States reframed Africa’s importance by stating that in order to improve the security of America, the U.S. must improve the security situation in Africa (Miles 2012).
FURTHER SUGGESTED READINGS
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/25/world/middleeast/us-bombs-qaeda-libya.html
This article offers an in-depth look into the current military action the U.S. is taking in pursuit of waging its Global War on Terrorism.
Bibliography
Barnes, Sandra T. “Global Flows: Terror, Oil, and Strategic Philanthropy.” African Studies Review, vol. 48, no. 1, Apr. 2005, pp. 1-23. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=17840903&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Duffield, Mark. “Total War as Environmental Terror: Linking Liberalism, Resilience, and the Bunker.” South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 110, no. 3, July 2011, pp. 757–69, doi: 10.1215/00382876-1275779.
Ellis, Stephen. “Briefing: The Pan-Sahel Initiative.” African Affairs, vol. 103, no. 412, 2004, pp. 459–464. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3518567.
Gates, Robert. Secretary of defense, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, 6 February 2007.
Hanson, Stephanie. “U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).” Council on Foreign Relations, 2 May 2007. Web. 1 May 2018.
Harris, Edward. “Oil Boom, Politics Shape Africa’s Future,” Associated Press, 29 June 2007.
Keenan, Jeremy. “US Militarization in Africa: What Anthropologists Should Know about AFRICOM.” Anthropology Today, vol. 24, no. 5, Oct. 2008, pp. 16-20. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/j.1467-8322.2008.00613.x
Mamdani, Mahmood. 2005. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror. 1. Three Leaves Press. New York, NY: Three Leaves Press.
McFate, Sean. “U.S. AFRICAN COMMAND: A New Strategic Paradigm?.” Military Review, vol. 88, no. 1, Jan/Feb2008, pp. 10-21. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=28338932&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Miles, William F. S. “Deploying Development to Counter Terrorism: Post-9/11 Transformation of U.S. Foreign Aid to Africa.” African Studies Review, vol. 55, no. 3, 2012, pp. 27–60. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43904847.
Niang, Amy. “Ransoming, Compensatory Violence, and Humanitarianism in the Sahel.” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, vol. 39, no. 4, 2014, pp. 231–251., www.jstor.org/stable/24569467.