Joining forces against terror in Africa

BUFFETED all round by conflicts and sundry other forms of insecurity, African leaders seem to be gradually rising to the challenges of making the continent safer and positioning it for the needed socioeconomic and political development. This note of optimism derives, in the main, from a recent meeting in Kenya where some African leaders, including the host President, Uhuru Kenyatta; and his Nigerian counterpart, Goodluck Jonathan; resolved to find a common ground to fight insecurity, with the active collaboration of forces from outside the continent. The initiative is long overdue.

Apart from incompetent and corrupt leadership, internal conflicts and wars have conspired over the years to render Africa prostrate in all spheres of development, while other continents have been making good progress, typified by good governance, economic prosperity and political stability. But just as the continent has been gradually feeling its way out of the dark alleys of incessant wars, its fortunes have been further blighted by the sudden emergence of terrorism.

Most of East Africa has been a battleground for terrorism since way back in the 1990s when the United States’ embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania were bombed in 1998, resulting in the death of 224 people, including 12 Americans. About 74 people were also killed in Uganda when a bomb was detonated while they were watching the World Cup final match between the Netherlands and Spain on television in 2010. Terrorism has ensured Somalia remains a failed state, while an invasion of Mali by al-Qaeda-affiliated terror groups was only stemmed by the combined forces of France and other West African countries, including Nigeria. Algeria has managed to keep religious fundamentalists at bay through strong-arm tactics, while, in Libya, the situation has been downright chaotic since the death of Maummar Gaddafi.

Nigeria is enmeshed in a full-blown war with terrorists, who, peddling a “warped ideology”, have seized territories in the North-Eastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe. Boko Haram has been credited with killing over 15,000 people over the past five years. After invading schools in the dead of night, they have slaughtered and burnt innocent students in their sleep and abducted more than 200 teenage girls, who have been in their custody since April 14.

Needless to say that the activities of these terrorist groups, described by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as “branches of the same poison tree”, are beginning to scare away prospective investors from a continent in dire need of foreign investment. This was part of the message in President Barack Obama’s address to the continent’s leaders when he hosted 50 of them in Washington last month.

Specifically, Obama stated the possibility of raising an African Rapid Response Partnership with sufficient capacity to respond to terror attacks and other conflicts on the continent. He promised to invest $110 million per year in the next three to five years for this purpose, insisting that “the entire world has a stake in peacekeeping in Africa.”

But, as happenings in other parts of the world have shown, that stake might not mean sending in American troops. That is why the opening gambit in Kenya by the few African leaders worst hit by terrorism could be considered very important. That only Africans can defend Africa is the main message from that meeting.

It is indeed heartening that, after living in denial for many years, Africans are gradually coming to terms with the reality that the conflicts and the general security challenges facing the continent can best be handled collectively. It is glaringly so in the case of the war against terror, which has always managed to spill from one country into another. This was the basis of the late Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah’s advocacy for the formation of an African High Command even before the mass independence of African countries in the 1960s.

From the AHC to the Organisation of African Unity Defence Commission and African Union Mission, there seems to be an agreement that African countries should form a central defence force. Unfortunately, countries have always found it difficult to agree on how such a body should be structured, let alone funded. But while some African countries have always found a way of assisting, as did Nigeria in Liberia and Sierra Leone, through ECOMOG, in the 1990s, others, especially the Francophone countries, have always felt more comfortable bringing in French troops whenever they are faced with security challenges.

African countries coming together in a joint defence arrangement is, therefore, an idea that should be supported. Unlike the Arabs who would rather wait for the US and Britain to provide their conflict resolution needs, Africa has a lot to gain by sticking together on matters of security. Apart from the promised US funding, African countries should be ready to fund their own security because no development can take place in an atmosphere of insecurity.

culled from The Punch