Don’t Give Credit Where Credit Isn’t Due: Clinton and Africa Plus the Latest on Militarization and Questions About What’s Happening in Somalia

As a lifelong journalist, I still am not wholly comfortable in coming right out with an opinion. But I have to admit I had an almost visceral reaction of anger Wednesday night this week when I listened to Florida Congressman Kendrick Meek introduce former President Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

In the introduction, Meek hailed Clinton for a number of reasons, including this: “As Commander-in-Chief, President Clinton prepared our military to win wars, at the same time working everywhere in the world to make peace in Africa, in Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East.”

This struck me as profoundly wrong -- the notion of then President Clinton working “to make peace in Africa.”

I don't doubt Clinton wanted peace. But here’s what I remember: his administration’s initial refusal to acknowledge that there was a genocide under way in Rwanda and, before the killing, to allow the UN peacekeepers in Rwanda under General Romeo Dallaire to take aggressive steps that could have perhaps prevented and certainly could have mitigated the extent of the slaughter.

And what about Somalia? True, it was former President Bush who committed US forces to Somalia but it was Clinton who made haste to withdraw them after there were American casualties in Mogadishu. As a result, the entire international community pulled out militarily, leaving Somalia a festering, lawless, ungoverned sore.

As you may have read in previous postings here, I was in both those countries at the time all that happened and the sour taste lingers to this day. As much as I might admire Clinton for much of what his administration accomplished, its record vis-à-vis Rwanda and Somalia is, in my view, nothing to give him credit for.

Now, to the topic of militarization of US policy toward Africa. For a critical view, go to this item and check out the links.

And a question: in light of the latest Islamist takeover of the Somali port of Kismayo, and the talk of a possible Ethiopian troop withdrawal from Somalia, can we expect (a) fresh US air strikes against suspected extremist leaders and/or (b) a new abandonment of Somalia by the international community ala 1995? What do you think?

Militarization Claims Misleading, AFRICOM Says

You’ll recall the charges earlier this month that AFRICOM represents a militarization of US policy toward sub-Saharan Africa. There are four new articles on AFRICOM, including one on the militarization issue, in the latest issue of Joint Forces Quarterly.

Also, AFRICOM has posted on its website the following new response to the militarization accusation:

U.S. Africa Command is a "Model We Should Embrace," says Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Coulter

A senior Defense Department policy official has sought to put to rest concerns that U.S. Africa Command is an example of militarization of U.S. foreign policy. Instead, the new headquarters is "a model we should embrace," said Michael W. Coulter, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.

(To see more, go here)

Slow Road to China Talks (Update)

Still no word on when that previously-disclosed US defense dialogue with China on Africa issues might get under way. As we thought, the Olympics were an impediment. But sources at the Pentagon say with the Summer Games over, they hope to have some dates soon.

In the meantime, we’d like to note a few passages from the recently-issued US National Defense Strategy for 2008 that are relevant:

“China is one ascendant state with the potential for competing with the United States. For the foreseeable future, we will need to hedge against China’s growing military modernization and the impact of its strategic choices upon international security. It is likely that China will continue to expand its conventional military capabilities, emphasizing anti-access and area denial assets including developing a full range of long-range strike, space, and information warfare capabilities.

“Our interaction with China will be long-term and multi-dimensional and will involve peacetime engagement between defense establishments as much as fielded combat capabilities. The objective of this effort is to mitigate near term challenges while preserving and enhancing U.S. national advantages over time.”

As for the stated goals of defense units like AFRICOM, consider these excerpts:

“Working with and through local actors whenever possible to confront common security challenges is the best and most sustainable approach to combat violent extremism. Often our partners are better positioned to handle a given problem because they understand the local geography, social structures, and culture better than we do or ever could. In collaboration with interagency and international partners we will assist vulnerable states and local populations as they seek to ameliorate the conditions that foster extremism and dismantle the structures that support and allow extremist groups to grow. We will adopt approaches tailored to local conditions that will vary considerably across regions. We will help foster security and aid local authorities in building effective systems of representational government. By improving conditions, undermining the sources of support, and assisting in addressing root causes of turmoil, we will help states stabilize threatened areas.”

Africa isn’t mentioned in the NDS document. But consider this:

“Local and regional conflicts in particular remain a serious and immediate problem. They often spread and may exacerbate transnational problems such as trafficking in persons, drug-running, terrorism, and the illicit arms trade. Rogue states and extremist groups often seek to exploit the instability caused by regional conflict, and state collapse or the emergence of ungoverned areas may create safe havens for these groups. The prospect that instability and collapse in a strategic state could provide extremists access to weapons of mass destruction or result in control of strategic resources is a particular concern. To preclude such calamities, we will help build the internal capacities of countries at risk. We will work with and through like-minded states to help shrink the ungoverned areas of the world and thereby deny extremists and other hostile parties sanctuary. By helping others to police themselves and their regions, we will collectively address threats to the broader international system.”

Africans Training Africans

Another group of Angolans has completed a special training course in de-mining strategies and techniques in South Africa. In 1997, I was among a group of reporters who watched in Pretoria as they gave a demonstration of their newly-learned skills. I also got a demonstration of my own.

Five Angolans, each holding metal detectors, fan out across a barren Pretoria army base field, each listening intently through headphones for the telltale signals that will warn them they have located a real landmine.

Suddenly, one stops and shouts.

“Mina!”

The others immediately stop and begin withdrawing, while the one who found the mine, after carefully clearing away the soil around the deadly device, attaches a grapnel hook to it. Then he too retreats a safe distance, starts a countdown and yanks the mine from the ground with a mighty heave.

“Tres, dos, uno -- zero [pulling sound followed by slap of mine as it plops out of the ground]”

There is no explosion for this demonstration. But later the South African Army instructors who have been training the Angolans detonate a small anti-personnel mine, using a weighted boot dropped from a rope to trigger the explosion.

“Three, two, one, zero [explosion]”

I and the other reporters are later shown the boot -- which has been shredded at the heel. It takes little imagination to realize what the devastating effect would have been on a person's foot and leg.

To underscore for visitors the hazard posed by landmines, South African Army engineers seeded the observation area with small, unseen anti-personnel mines -- each loaded with tiny smoke bombs instead of real explosives.

The first reporter to unwittingly step on one was shocked as the green smoke billowed out. From that moment on, the rest of us stepped gingerly, realizing we could be next.

Later, I purposely triggered one, located for me by one of the de-mining specialists. It made a small popping sound before the smoke began hissing out.

South Africa this year banned the further production and use of such mines as part of its effort to work for a global prohibition. South African authorities are now helping neighboring countries deal with their landmine problems.

Besides the Angolans, being trained in demining strategies, South Africa will soon launch a demining program in Mozambique.

African Tensions: Rebels Harass UN Peacekeepers in Naraland!

Tensions are high in the embattled southeast African island nation of "Naraland" where armed rebels of the "Mananca Resistance Movement" are harassing UN peacekeepers and journalists. But not to worry. In this report dating back to 1999, I was one of a group of reporters who visited "Naraland" and can reveal now, as I did then, that it was all just a simulation -- part of the biggest peacekeeping military exercise ever staged on the African continent.

The rebels, some of whose faces were menacingly wrapped in camouflage netting, moved in on a UN convoy carrying journalists in armored vehicles as it halted at a crude roadblock erected by the Mananca Resistance Movement in central Naraland.

Although the rebels fired shots into the air and hurled verbal insults, no injuries were reported among the UN troops or reporters and the convoy, after reporting the incident, eventually proceeded.

But soon after the UN vehicles arrived at their final destination at a UN observation post and checkpoint in Naraland's demilitarized zone, another confrontation with the MRM rebels occurred.

A group of rebels demanded to pass through the UN roadblock with their weapons. UN troops said they could pass only if they abandoned their arms.

After a tense moment, the rebel leader entered the UN compound to discuss the matter. As the talks went on, the other rebels grew impatient

Eventually, the rebel leader returned and the MRM group drove off, refusing to give up their guns.

While the incident was very real, it was all just part of a peacekeeping training exercise called "Blue Crane" -- staged at the South African Army's battle school at Lohatla, in a hot, dry and remote desert area of Northern Cape province.

With more than four-thousand soldiers from 11 southern and central African countries taking part, it is the largest such training mission ever held on the continent. It was organized by SADC, the Southern Africa Development Community, with support from the United Nations, various humanitarian groups, and several foreign governments, including the United States which provided two C-130 cargo planes for the operation.

The United States and other countries have been pressing Africa to develop its own peacekeeping capability and the scenario reflects real situations from real peace missions.

But South African General Andre Bestbier, director of the exercise, says no one should see "Blue Crane" as the last step before establishment of a permanent SADC peacekeeping unit.

“I don't think it is at all possible at the present moment. There's still a lot of things to be done prior to such a deployment.”

General Bestbier also says no one should read anything into the scenario involving insertion of a UN peace force between rival parties in a small African country. Fictional Naraland is just that -- a make-believe creation of the exercise planners.

But the mythical country's problems are all too similar to those in actual countries on the African continent -- rival armed groups, weak central government, a weak economy and famine, human rights abuses, weapons-smuggling, and a fragile ceasefire agreement.

Still, General Bestbier says it has been a success.

“The experiences we've had with our SADC friends, the cooperation, the enthusiasm for this exercise, I think is excellent. We've really achieved our aim.”

The cost of the exercise, which also included naval maneuvers off South Africa's coast at Durban, is estimated at more than three-million dollars.

For more on the exercise, I found this on the Internet that might be of interest. And, for the record, blue cranes are the national bird of South Africa.

Game Drive Interlude: Our Safari Stumbles On Wild….Refugees!

In December 1998, my daughter and I went on safari, flying to a relatively remote part of Botswana along the Caprivi Strip of Namibia. By that time, more than 2,000 Namibians had fled into Botswana from the Caprivi Strip area following a government crackdown against suspected separatists. That’s the background. Here’s the story:

It was supposed to be a normal dawn game drive in search of lions, wild dogs, and other predators on their morning hunts.

But the tracker in our four-wheel drive vehicle spotted human footprints as we traveled along a dirt track running parallel to the Kwando river, a sluggish, crocodile and hippopotamus-infested stream that marks the border with Namibia in this part of Botswana, just north of the Okavango Delta.

The tracker and our guide were astonished. There were not supposed to be any humans here at all in this huge private game reserve -- outside of the staff and the few guests at a tented safari camp perched on the shore of a Kwando River lagoon.

But as we came around a clump of trees, we spotted a group of 15 people in the distance. As they turned and saw us, they all slowly raised their hands in the air in surrender -- only to lower them when they saw that instead of a Botswanan border patrol, we were just a small group of tourists.

The 15, some of them carrying small suitcases or other bags with personal possessions, were Namibian refugees from the Caprivi Strip, a narrow finger of land jutting east out of northern Namibia and bordering Angola, Botswana, and Zambia.

Our guide asked the refugees if they wanted to turn themselves over to the Botswanan Defense Force. When they said yes, he told them to stay where they were and called our safari camp on the vehicle's two-way radio. He asked the camp manager to radio the nearby Botswanan Defense Force post and to inform them of the Namibians' presence.

We later learned the Botswanans sent a truck to pick up the 15. It took them to the town of Maun for processing as refugees.

Since the end of October (1998), more than 1,400 Namibians from the Caprivi have been formally registered as asylum seekers in Botswana.

In addition, about 1,000 more Namibian san or bushmen have also fled across the border. But relief workers say most of these have not sought official refugee status and are instead staying informally with members of Botswana's san community.

The unexpected exodus began when a group of about 90 armed men came across the frontier, followed by a number of opposition political figures from the Caprivi. Namibian authorities later announced they had broken up a militant secessionist movement in the strip and were conducting mopping-up operations aimed at supporters of the group, which officials claimed received military training in an unnamed neighboring country.

Soon afterward, more Caprivi residents began to flee -- claiming persecution.

Aid workers say a majority of these refugees, like those seen by this correspondent at the border this month, are young men and women in their 20's who are unemployed and have had no advanced schooling. The aid workers say the refugees feel marginalized in the undeveloped Caprivi area and suggest they were sympathetic to the militants' secessionist goals.

Spokesmen for the Botswanan government and the UN refugee agency say the number of border-crossers from the Caprivi has slowly declined, but the flow is continuing on a daily basis. While their applications for asylum are being investigated, they have been promised they will not be forced to return to Namibia.

The political leaders and other militants among the refugees have been separated from the others and are being held at a special facility outside of the Botswanan capital, Gabarone.

Note: I’m going on vacation and, to be honest, I think I may just take a two week break from posting. But do check back now and then. Thanks.

The Rwandan Genocide: Who Was Really To Blame? (Part Two)

Newly-released, declassified documents show senior US government officials were well-informed about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda --- even though they failed to use the word publicly to justify not intervening to halt the bloodshed. I filed this report on March 31st, 2004 – just ahead of the 10th anniversary of the start of the genocide.

Just two weeks after the start of the killings in Rwanda 10 years ago, senior Clinton administration policymakers were told by the Central Intelligence Agency that what was happening in the tiny Central African country was genocide.

The word appears in the CIA's April 23rd, 1994 National Intelligence Daily, a top secret intelligence summary delivered to senior US policymakers. Three days later, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research provided more detail. It noted some Hutu extremists were speaking of a "final solution" to eliminate all Tutsis. It went on to say, quoting now, "the butchery shows no sign of ending."

Despite this and other information flowing into Washington, the Clinton Administration waited until late May to publicly acknowledge that what it termed "acts of genocide" were taking place in Rwanda.

It took then Secretary of State Warren Christopher until early June 1994 to finally use the word "genocide."

Other declassified documents released by the independent National Security Archive of George Washington University show the administration deliberately sought to avoid using the word genocide. Officials feared, in the words of one declassified Pentagon paper, that it "could commit the US government to actually do something" under international law--- something the Clinton administration wanted to avoid.

Alison Des Forges is an authority on the 1994 Rwandan genocide with the organization, Human Rights Watch. She says the US position was inexcusable.

“A genocide should demand an investment of resources, a level of concern beyond other crises in the world.”

The administration felt it was militarily overextended elsewhere in the world and that there were no compelling American interests in Rwanda. It also wanted to avoid any repetition of the bloody experiences of US peacekeeping troops in Somalia.

The Clinton administration later apologized to the Rwandan people for its failure to do more. In 1998, President Clinton travelled to Kigali and met survivors of the genocide. He said the international community did not act quickly to prevent the massacres. Mr. Clinton also said the international community must bear its share of responsibility for the tragedy.

Note: Having seen the butchered bodies, at a time when US officials were still avoiding public use of the word “genocide,” I can tell you I was personally outraged. I agree with Ms. Des Forges that the position taken by the administration at the time was inexcusable.

The Rwandan Genocide: Who Was Really To Blame?

France today (8/6/08) accused Rwanda of making “unacceptable accusations" by alleging top French officials played an active role in the 1994 genocide. A 500-page report released Tuesday in Kigali alleged that France was aware of preparations for the genocide and said the French military helped plan the massacres and actively took part in the killing. It named 13 senior French politicians and 20 military officials as responsible raises the prospect of Rwandan legal action against them. But the foreign ministry spokesman, Romain Nadal, told reporters: “This report contains unacceptable accusations made against French political and military officials.”

Well, the accusations may not be acceptable to French authorities but they may be true. (See my eyewitness accounts from inside the so-called Zone Turquoise here and here.) And it recalled a piece I did in March 2004 when a French news report, in an adroit effort to muddy the facts, alleged Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, was responsible for the missile attack that marked the start of the 1994 genocide. What I reported from the Pentagon was that declassified US government documents pointed at another culprit.

The French newspaper Le Monde triggered an international controversy in early March when it reported on an investigation by a French judge into the April 6th, 1994 downing of an airplane carrying the then Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana.

Le Monde, citing the judge's official report, said French authorities have concluded then Rwandan rebel leader Paul Kagame gave the orders for the missile attack that brought down the plane.

Mr. Habyarimana's death marked the start of the Rwandan genocide.

Mr. Kagame is now Rwanda's president. He has rejected the French finding.

Newly-released, declassified US government documents also contradict the French version.

One is a memo to the Secretary of Defense written two days after the plane crash in Kigali. It says Hutu extremists "probably shot down the president's plane."

Another document, a May 9th, 1994 Defense Intelligence Agency report, also points to Hutu extremists -- this time, a group within Rwanda's military. The DIA report explains that President Habyarimana, a Hutu, supported a reconciliation agreement with Mr. Kagame's mainly-Tutsi rebel group. It says Hutu hardliners were against the peace-and-power-sharing deal, especially provisions for integrating Tutsis into a new military.

The report then goes on to say, quoting now, that "fueled antipathy to the president among hardline elements within the Army, particularly the Presidential Guard."

It concludes the plane crash, quoting again, "was actually an assassination conducted by Hutu military hardliners."

The State Department appeared to share that view. Another declassified document says the truth behind President Habyarimana's death may never be known. But there are, in theState Department document's words, "credible but unconfirmed reports that Hutu elements in the military" opposed to a peace deal with the Tutsis "killed Habyarimana in order to block the accords."

Almost immediately after the president was killed, Hutu extremists began the systematic slaughter of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus who supported reconciliation. The violence was directed by high-level Rwandan government officials.

Bizarrely, that declassified memo to the then US Secretary of Defense written two days after the plane crash took an optimistic view of the situation. It reported what the document termed "a glimmer of hope that this crisis is waning" -- based on the fact there had been a meeting between government and rebel generals and the leader of UN peacekeepers in Rwanda.

But the meeting did not bring about a hoped-for cease-fire or a disengagement of forces. In the bloodshed that followed the assassination of the president, more than three-quarters of a million Rwandans died.

The declassified documents were obtained and released by the National Security Archive, an independent, non-governmental research institute attached to George Washington University in Washington, DC.

Interlude: Death of a Literary Giant Takes Me Back to My Day at a Soviet Leader’s Secluded Retreat

The death of Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is the reason why I have decided today to go way back to my pre-Africa reporting days. I was by virtue of my university studies, not just a journalist, but nominally a Sovietologist, a species now extinct. One of my great experiences was being in the press pool on a visit made by (the first) President Bush to Moscow. We pick up the August 1991 story here… More than half of President Bush's eight hours of summit talks last week with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev took place at Mr. Gorbachev's secluded retreat outside Moscow, a compound about which little is known -- in the west or even among Soviet citizens. I was among the small group of American reporters who accompanied Mr. Bush to the countryside estate, the first US journalists ever allowed on the grounds:

The Kremlin: glittering domed cathedrals, massive ornate towers, and lavish military ceremonies. It not only physically dominates the center of Moscow, it has also been long regarded as the center of political power in the Soviet Union.

But lately another, quieter site has begun to rival it in importance. It is Novo Ogaryevo, Mikhail Gorbachev's retreat just outside the capital. His spokesman, Vitaly Ignatenko, calls it the epicenter of political thought in the Soviet Union today.

The well-guarded estate lies about a half hour's drive northwest of Red Square -- out past the last sprawl of suburban high-rise apartments and construction projects that ring Moscow, out in countryside dotted with tired-looking wooden cottages and fields of sunflowers, sunbathers and cows. No road signs direct visitors to the compound. It sits anonymously off a small, unremarkable road that winds through thick, dark forestland -- known only to those with a need to know.

On the day that President Bush visited Novo Ogaryevo, his motorcade sped through the stone gates that mark the entrance to the retreat. The small group of reporters that always travels with him -- a group that included myself that day -- fully expected our bus to be stopped at the entrance. We were told no news coverage of the private talks would be permitted and warned no journalists had ever been allowed beyond the walls that surround the estate. But to our delight, we were waved onto the grounds -- and even though the President disappeared in one direction and the press group went in another, we were inside -- amid a cool, shady canopy of birch and pine trees.

An aide to Mr. Bush told us the President and his wife, Barbara, were taken to a stately, two-story manor house that is the centerpiece of the retreat. Twin stone lions flank the massive wooden door that is the main entrance to the mustard-colored, stucco building, which the aide said was most notable for its lush, manicured lawn and rich gardens sloping down to a pond and a river. A Soviet employee at the compound said the house was built in 1824. He said that while the ceremonial greeting for the Bush-Gorbachev talks at Novo Ogaryevo took place in the gardens, the actual business meetings were held in one of the other buildings at the compound, a much newer structure added on in 1956.

Reporters were never given a firsthand look at either house, but we could see it was clearly a more formal setting than the rustic Camp David compound in the Maryland mountains outside Washington used by President Bush as a retreat.

No obvious recreational outlets, like swimming pools or tennis courts, were visible from our restricted vantage point. But we were told that when Mr. Gorbachev travels to Novo Ogaryevo, he comes to work, anyway, and not to play.

In fact, we later learned that on the night President Bush arrived in Moscow, Mr. Gorbachev and Russian leader Boris Yeltsin had held seven-and-a-half hours of talks at the retreat that lasted into the early hours of the morning. They were crucial follow-on talks related to the nine-plus-one power-sharing agreement between the Soviet central government and nine of the country's republics. Novo Ogaryevo came into the limelight earlier in the year as the place where the agreement was hammered out in bargaining between Mr. Gorbachev and republic officials.

Mr. Bush and the Soviet leader obviously spent most of their time working as well. While a US official said a boat ride had been possible, it never took place. Instead the two men, joined at times by senior aides, focused on a host of world problems -- and later that day announced their bold plan to co-sponsor a middle east peace conference.

During the nearly five hours of private presidential talks, our press group waited at a two-story building designed like a small hotel. On each floor, going off a central hall, there were several small, two-room suites -- one room with a desk and bookcases, the other with a sofa and chairs and perhaps a television. Each suite had its own bathroom. At the end of each hall there was a large dining room and a small adjacent kitchen. We were offered simple sandwiches, tea and coffee. During our stay, members of the two presidents' traveling entourages like security guards and drivers dropped by for refreshments.

Two highlights stand out from our stay at Novo Ogaryevo. At one point, our press group, listless from sitting about, startled Soviet officials when we suddenly rose en masse from the wooden benches where we had been napping or reading in the sun. There was no cause for alarm, though, and no confrontation. All we did was proceed into the nearby woods to pose for a group photograph. Having been denied access to the presidents, we resorted to taking pictures of ourselves.

The other highlight came after we had been told to return to our vehicles in preparation for the motorcade back into Moscow and the signing ceremony at the Kremlin for the historic strategic arms reduction treaty. As we stood by our press bus, suddenly, to our surprise, who should appear coming down the main road of the compound towards us but Mr. Bush and his wife, seated in the back seat of a huge gleaming, gray convertible "Zil" limousine. The president appeared just as shocked to see us, but in an obvious display of delight, he stood, smiled and waved before the vehicle surged past us and disappeared down the tree-shrouded lane.

China and AFRICOM Hand-in-Hand?

During a hearing before a House of Representatives subcommittee on July 15, 2008, Deputy Defense Secretary for African Affairs Theresa Whelan, was asked by Representative John Tierney (D-Mass.) what the US was doing, if anything, to bring China into a dialogue on African security issues.

She said: "With regard to China, we have recently opened up a defense dialogue with China on Africa issues. We had a member of the Defense Department travel to China just a couple of months ago to give a presentation to the Chinese as part of a larger bilateral DOD-China dialogue on the Africa Command and we have issued an invitation to the Chinese to come to Washington to talk specifically about security issues in Africa. We have given them three dates. We are currently waiting for the Chinese to come back to us with a response on those dates. "

Maybe they've been too busy with the Olympics to reply? Anyone at AFRICOM or the Pentagon know?