U.S. arms transfers to Africa are being carried out against the backdrop of a major strategic shift in U.S. attention toward the continent, as embodied in the creation of the Africa Command. Before the establishment of AFRICOM in October 2007, U.S. strategic planning and military missions in Africa were split between the European Command (for North Africa) and the Central Command (for sub-Saharan Africa). But with the growing U.S. interest in curbing terror and expanding access to oil in Africa, the Pentagon moved to create a dedicated military command for Africa.

AFRICOM has generated controversy because it is being organized in such a way as to make the U.S. military the principle "face" of the United States in Africa. In addition to coordinating training missions and military exercises with the majority of African nations and negotiating access to military facilities as needed, AFRICOM has ambitions to be the point of contact for all U.S. assistance to the continent, both civilian and military. In addition to the danger of underutilizing civilian expertise and mismanaging major projects--as happened when the Pentagon was running U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq--this approach could contribute to the militarization of overall U.S. policy toward Africa, undermining diplomatic and cooperative approaches to the region’s conflicts.[8]

Ethiopia

Ethiopia has been a major beneficiary of the increases in U.S. security assistance spending since 9/11. According to an analysis by the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C., support for Ethiopia through the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Financing program increased more than threefold for the five years from FY2002 to FY2006, compared to the previous five-year period.[9]

From FY 2002 through the proposed budget for FY 2009, Ethiopia will have received over $54 million in security assistance funding from the United States, with the largest amount over that period ($24.5 million) channeled through the FMF program (for details on major security assistance funding for Ethiopia for FY 2002 through FY 2009, see table 7).

Table 7
Major U.S. Security Assistance Programs to Ethiopia
FY 2002 through FY 2009 (dollars in thousands)

Source: U.S. Department of State, Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations, FY 2004 through FY 2009 editions.
^aFY 2008 figures are estimates.
^bFY 2009 figures are as proposed in the administration's budget. According to the State Department’s congressional budget justification for FY2009, "promoting regional stability and denying transnational terrorists a safe haven in the Horn of Africa" are key objectives of U.S. assistance to Ethiopia.

Over the past decade, the Ethiopian armed forces have been embroiled in three interrelated conflicts: one with its neighbor Eritrea over disputed boundaries and ethnic issues; one with neighboring Somalia, in which a U.S.-supported Ethiopian invasion deposed the Islamic Courts Union and installed a pro-U.S./pro-Ethiopian regime; and one with insurgents and separatists in its Ogaden region, in which ethnic Somalis predominate. Of the three, direct warfare with Eritrea has ceased for the moment, but tensions remain over alleged Eritrean support for separatists in the Ogaden and the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia; the situation in Somalia remains unstable, as evidenced by a recent incident in which Ethiopian troops killed at least 40 people in an incident south of Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital; and fighting in the Ogaden continues, with extensive allegations of human rights abuses by the Ethiopian armed forces.[10]

According to a June 2008 Human Rights Watch report:

During the peak of the army’s counterinsurgency campaign from June to September 2007, witnesses described how Ethiopian troops forcefully displaced entire rural communities and displaced entire rural villages; executed at least 150 civilians, sometimes in demonstration killings to terrorize those communities suspected of supporting the ONLF [Ogaden National Liberation Front]; and arbitrarily detained hundreds of civilians in military barracks where they experienced beatings, torture, and widespread rape and other forms of sexual violence.[11]

So far, the Bush administration has not responded to Ethiopia’s crimes against humanity in the Ogaden with any restrictions on U.S. assistance, presumably because of Addis Ababa’s role in helping to fight alleged terrorist groups in the Horn of Africa. This may be a false tradeoff, however. As Sam Zarifi of Human Rights Watch noted in his testimony before the subcommittee on Africa of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in October 2007, "U.S. support for Ethiopia in its conflicts in the Somali region and inside Somalia is ineffective and counterproductive.… The current U.S.-backed Ethiopian approach will lead to a mountain of civilian deaths and a litany of abuses.… This approach will only strengthen the hand of the extremist minority in Somalia [and] could lead to the escalation and spread of conflicts in the region and may well help to radicalize the region’s large and young Muslim population."[12]

Kenya

Kenya is a longstanding U.S. ally which has provided basing rights, intelligence cooperation, and communications support to U.S. military and intelligence agencies since the height of the Cold War. The 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy there further cemented U.S.-Kenya ties, as has Kenyan assistance to Washington in the post-9/11 war on terror.

U.S. security assistance to Kenya rose sharply in the five years after the 9/11 attacks. Funding to Kenya under the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Financing program totaled $23.1 million for the period from FY 2002 to FY 2006, an amount 23 times greater than FMF funding allocated to Kenya in the previous five-year period.[13]

Overall, Kenya will have received over $84 million in U.S. security assistance during the Bush administration, including $30 million through the Economic Support Fund program and $23 million in FMF funds (see table 8).

Table 8
Major U.S. Security Assistance Programs to Kenya
FY 2002 through FY 2009 (dollars in thousands)

Source: U.S. Department of State, Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations, FY 2004 through FY 2009 editions.
^aFY 2008 figures are estimates.
^bFY 2009 figures are as proposed in the administration's budget.

In recent years, Kenya has served as a base for U.S. operations in support of the 2006 Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, which overthrew the Islamic Courts Union government there, provided a corridor for the shipment of over $1 billion in humanitarian aid to South Sudan, and engaged in intelligence cooperation in efforts to trace the possible presence of Al Qaeda operatives in the Horn of Africa.

These efforts in support of the Bush administration’s foreign policy in the region are set against a record of internal conflict and human rights abuses in Kenya. In January 2008, over a thousand Kenyans were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in postelection violence prompted by the disputed victory of President Mwai Kibaki over his rival Raila Odinga. Two months later, under pressure from the European Union and the United States, and following a successful mediation effort by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan, the rivals agreed to the establishment of a broad-based coalition government, with Kibaki as president and Odinga as prime minister.[14]

Unfortunately, this has not put an end to major internal violence in Kenya. Starting in March 2008, Kenyan security forces intervened in the Mt. Elgon area of the country to put down an ongoing rebellion by the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF), a militia that had been formed in 2006 in opposition to government efforts to evict squatters living there. According to Human Rights Watch, since 2006 the SLDF "has killed more than 600 people, and kidnapped, tortured and raped men and women who opposed them or their political supporters."[15] In response to these atrocities, the Kenyan military overreacted, rounding up virtually all of the adult males in the district, killing dozens and subjecting hundreds more to torture. Speaking for her organization, Georgette Gagnon of Human Rights Watch has urged the United States and the United Kingdom to "suspend military assistance until there is an independent investigation of the war crimes. They shouldn’t be supporting the military until Kenyan authorities commit to prosecuting those responsible for torture and war crimes."[16]

In the decade since the end of military rule in 1999, Nigeria has been torn by ethnic and religious conflicts ranging from fights between Christian and Muslim groups in the northern part of the country to violence among separatist groups, criminal gangs, and the Nigerian military and police forces in the oil-rich Niger Delta region. By one estimate, over 50,000 Nigerians have died in these conflicts since 1999.[17]

In its 2008 world report, Human Rights Watch summarized the situation in Nigeria as follows: "Widespread government corruption, political and intercommunal violence, police torture and other abuses continue to deny ordinary Nigerians their human rights. During 2007, Nigerian actors including the police, military and elected officials committed serious and persistent abuses against Nigerian citizens with near-complete impunity."[18]

The roots of the conflict in the Niger Delta involve demands by local residents for a greater share of the benefits of the oil taken from their region and used to enrich national and local political leaders at the expense of local residents. One relatively new organization, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), has been behind an escalating series of attacks on oil facilities. The attacks have targeted not only pipelines but also an offshore rig that had been considered invulnerable to sabotage by the rebels. The organization has also staged a growing number of kidnappings of oil industry workers. In 2006 and 2007, over 200 people were kidnapped by MEND and other militant groups operating in the Niger Delta, then released for ransoms that in some cases reached as high as several hundred thousand dollars. These high ransoms are in stark contrast to the situation that existed in the 1990s, when, according to Shell Oil executive Chris Haynes, "You could usually get them [hostages] released for a few bags of rice or a cow."[19]

In many cases, groups originally motivated by legitimate issues of fairness and autonomy have degenerated into criminal organizations willing to sell their services to the highest bidder, whether it be local politicians using armed thugs to promote their own power and influence, or gangs profiting from stealing oil or kidnappings. According to a Nigerian human rights activist based in the Niger Delta city of Port Harcourt, "Militancy has become a cloak for all forms of criminality in the Niger Delta. The Niger Delta cause has become everything for everybody."[20] In fact, Nigerians, rather than foreigners, are now more often the targets of kidnappers. As the International Crisis Group (ICG) reports, "The shift from targeting foreigners, known in the local hostage industry as ‘white gold’ or ‘Any Time Money’ (ATM), to Nigerians is partly a result of the mass exodus of expatriates from the region and stronger security around the remaining few."[21]

Rather than attempting to curb this multi-sided violence, more often than not the Nigerian government and Nigerian politicians are complicit in it. For example, in mid-2007 two rival gangs armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons fought each other in the middle of Port Harcourt, killing a hundred people in the process. But in interviews with local residents, the International Crisis Group learned that far from being autonomous entities, the leaders of the two gangs were "players in…Rivers State and Niger Delta politics, and the gangs were formed by and enjoy strong backing from politicians, including some in the present government."[22]

To give some sense of how much money is available to Nigeria’s various corrupt entities, the country’s top anticorruption official has determined that over $380 billion was stolen or wasted between 1960 and 1999, almost equaling the country’s $400 billion in oil revenues over the same time period. Recent budgetary figures for the regional Rivers State government indicate that it spent $10 million on catering, entertainment, gifts, and souvenirs for the governor’s office while allocating only $22 million for health services for the entire region.[23]

From FY 2002 to the present, nearly $/w50 million in U.S. security assistance has been transferred to Nigeria, despite this chaotic and corrupt environment, including over $10 million under the Foreign Military Financing program and $3.8 million under the International Military Education and Training program (see table 9).

Table 9
Major U.S. Security Assistance Programs to Nigeria
FY 2002 through FY 2009 (dollars in thousands)

Source: U.S. Department of State, Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations, FY 2004 through FY 2009 editions.
^aFY 2008 figures are estimates.
^bFY 2009 figures are as proposed in the administration's budget.

While there is a real need to curb the violence that is consuming Nigeria, the question arises as to whether sending more weapons can make a difference absent far greater accountability on the part of the police, the military, and the country’s political leadership. As only one of a number of countries -- including China, Russia, and the United Kingdom -- seeking access to Nigeria’s oil resources, the United States has limited leverage over the Nigerian government. It is conceivable that a multilateral effort to promote transparency and accountability in Nigeria would have a greater chance of success than anything Washington might do on its own, but as the foregoing suggests, it is likely to be a long, hard battle.