The Senate’s 2022 National Defense Authorization Act empowers the Pentagon to establish a strategic competition initiative for the U.S. Africa Command. If the bill passes, this will be the first security initiative expressly authorized by Congress since the Cold War to funnel military aid to African forces to counter Beijing and Moscow. The proposal lays new legal groundwork for a long-term bid to expand U.S. military influence in Africa. But the security initiative it authorizes will likely be dogged by U.S. military and diplomatic negligence and sow instability in Africa and U.S.-Africa relations. It should be cut from the bill before the 2022 NDAA is signed into law.
The proposed initiative aims to fight “coercion by near-peer rivals” against African governments by strengthening their militaries and addressing myriad “sources of insecurity” across the continent. If it’s established, high bipartisan consensus around both U.S. Africa policy and the threat posed by China and Russia suggest that its scope and funding are poised to grow quickly. This proposal warrants more public scrutiny than it has received, particularly given that the United States charted a similar course during the Cold War and African reformers are still facing the aftermath. A long history suggests that the proposed military aid for Africa will escape congressional oversight while the Pentagon and State Department will do little to monitor and account for its consequences.
Near the Cold War’s conclusion, while the Reagan State Department publicly deemed U.S. military aid to Africa “measured and moderate,” a classified Pentagon memo labeled key aid programs “a tragic joke,” “not demonstrably necessary and not sustainable,” based in “intuition and popular wisdom,” with “no success stories to date and none on the horizon.” There has been progress since then but much of that memo could have been written yesterday. U.S. training for coup leaders in Mali and Guinea, funding for rampaging battalions in DRC and Cameroon, and military aid to repressive governments in Uganda and Niger tell much the same story. It’s one that reflects not only a U.S. impulse to prioritize counterterrorism over peace and democracy in Africa, but also inept monitoring and assessment of U.S. “train and equip” programs for African armed forces.
The Pentagon, for example, rarely fails to tout its human rights training for African militaries. But the Government Accountability Office recently deemed its assessments of the scope and quality of this instruction unreliable. The Pentagon has no protocol in place to assess the impact of its human rights training on the “behavior, practices, or policies” of African militaries. It simply doesn’t know, and it doesn’t have a good means of finding out.
According to a Pentagon Inspector General report released through FOIA, the U.S. Africa Command also has a “personnel accountability” problem and is often unable to track the whereabouts and status of the numerous military contractors it employs throughout the continent.
State Department surveysofU.S. defense articles and services licensed for commercial export to Africa often indicate good chances of them falling into the wrong hands. Surveys during the Trump administration revealed record highs in the percentage of these exports deemed “unfavorable,” primarily because they were delivered to “unlicensed” or “unreliable” foreign parties.
Likewise, the State Department often had little idea where military equipment donated through its flagship Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership ended up. Rather than conducting site visits or relying on satellite technology to keep track of the armored vehicles and other equipment it donated to states like Cameroon and Niger, the agency often trusted social media to determine if it was being misused. Earlier this year, the House passed a reform bill for this floundering security partnership. The bill was rightly opposed by a handful of Africa experts and progressive House members because it would’ve also formally authorized the initiative. Its key reforms were written into the House's 2022 NDAA, but they aren’t in the Senate version, and they are sorely needed.
The 2017 NDAA passed even broader reforms to improve monitoring and assessment of U.S. security cooperation programs. Two years later, the Senate Armed Services Committee deemed the Pentagon’s progress toward this goal “wholly inadequate.” Nonetheless, this year the Biden administration requested budget cuts for these activities, from a paltry $8.9 million to $7 million out of a security cooperation budget of more than $6.5 billion.
This void of oversight should be kept in mind when assessing the failures of U.S. security policy in Africa. It should be scrutinized before U.S. soldiers are killed during security cooperation missions in Africa and U.S.-trained troops commit human rights violations and overthrow governments. The Senate’s new security initiative will inherit this legacy of negligence. It's more than enough reason to discard the proposal before the 2022 NDAA reaches President Biden’s desk.
Sobukwe Odinga is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a PhD in Political Science, and his research examines African security politics and the role of race in US foreign policy.
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DJIBOUTI (May 12, 2010) Marine Cpl. Robert Wood, assigned to the armory of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), instructs Ethiopian Lt. Col. Sultan Ebu, a coalition officer for strategic communications at CJTF-HOA, on the proper procedures for firing an M-16 service rifle before a U.S. Marine Corps Enhanced Marksmanship range evolution at the Djibouti City Police Department gun range. Nearly 20 military members deployed to Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti participated in the exercise, which focuses on advanced tactical weapons training. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Marc Rockwell-Pate/Released)
The Army and Navy ships that have left the U.S. for a massive humanitarian aid project in Gaza are still making their way across the Atlantic, with two still at ports in Florida and Virginia. It will likely take until mid-April for the vessels to reach Gaza and begin building a temporary causeway to facilitate the entry of life-saving aid into the strip.
Looking at real-time satellite imagery tracking military vessels, it looks like the USAV Gen. Frank Besson Jr., an Army support vessel that left Fort Eustis, Virginia, on March 10, has been moored and presumably refueling at a port in the Azores, Portugal, since Friday. It is at the half-way point between the U.S. and its final destination of Cyprus (nearly 5,000 nautical miles total). At an average speed of 10 knots, its journey will take nearly two more weeks, depending on weather conditions, once it gets going again.
The rest of the vessels are behind and, as of Tuesday, halfway across the Atlantic, though they can travel at slightly higher speeds than the Besson. They include the Army support vessels Loux, Matamoros, Monterrey and Wilson Wharf, which are all traveling together and were between Bermuda and the Azores Tuesday morning.
They all left U.S. ports around March 15. They are carrying modules and equipment to build the “trident” causeway — about 800 by 1200 feet — which will be anchored at the beach in Gaza to unload humanitarian aid.
The USNV Roy Benavidez, which, once in place, will help construct the floating pier and serve as a “roll on, roll off” facility two miles off the coast of Gaza, is the fastest of all the military vessels and is now ahead of the smaller Army landing craft on their way to the Azores, even though it left Newport News, Va., on March 21. When complete, aid will be ferried from Cyprus to the floating pier and then to the causeway at Gaza.
Meanwhile, two other Navy vessels that will be assisting with the floating pier, the USNSs Lopez and Bobo, are readying and still docked in Navy ports at Jacksonville and Norfolk respectively. Once on their way these particular vessels will take at least two weeks to reach Cyprus, depending on the weather and refueling at the Azores.
All told these vessels (carrying about 500 U.S. military personnel) won’t be realistically building anything until mid-April, which appears to be in line with a May completion date for the pier and the causeway. Considering that, according to experts, Gazans will be fully in the throes of famine by then, it is still hard to contemplate why the Biden administration has backed the massive JLOTS project instead of ratcheting up pressure on Israel to let in the thousands of trucks of aid that are stopped at borders and checkpoints.
The Pentagon has not returned calls regarding whether the military has hired contractor Fogbow to engage in the logistics on the beach, as the Biden administration insists there will be no boots on the ground. The Times of Israel reported a day ago that Fogbow, which is led by recently retired U.S. Special Forces, Marines and intelligence officers, has already been hired for the job and that the Israel Defense Forces will likely handle security at the aid staging areas. This, too, has yet to be confirmed.
Some are already questioning whether the U.S. military operation will be used to assist a massive refugee camp at the beach once the fighting begins in Rafah. Israel insists the millions of people now sheltering in the city will have to evacuate. The Pentagon has not yet said where the causeway and operations will take place. Stay tuned.
The State Department said on Monday that it has found no evidence that Israel is violating a recent directive that recipients of U.S. military aid comply with international human rights law.
In February, partly due to pressure over support for Israel’s war on Gaza, the Biden administration issued a national security memo that required any country receiving military aid from Washington while participating in an active armed conflict, to issue “credible and reliable written assurances” that they will use weapons funded by the U.S. in accordance with international law, and that they “the recipient country will facilitate and not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance and United States Government-supported international efforts to provide humanitarian assistance.”
Sunday was the deadline for Israel, along with the six other countries deemed to meet the criteria — Colombia, Iraq, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia and Ukraine — to issue these assurances.
“For these seven countries (...) we have received written assurances that are required in the memo,” State Department spokesman Matt Miller said during a press briefing on Monday. “In each case, these assurances were made by a credible, high-level official in the partner government who has the ability and authority to make decisions and commitments about the issues at the heart of the assurances.”
“We've had ongoing assessments of Israel's compliance with international humanitarian law,” Miller added. “We have not found them to be in violation, either when it comes to the conduct of the war or the provision of humanitarian assistance. We view those assurances through that ongoing work we have done.”
The announcement came shortly after the U.S. abstained from a resolution that demands an immediate ceasefire in Gaza — the first sign of public disagreement between Washington and Tel Aviv.
The Biden administration will now have 90 days to provide Congress with a report on whether the Israeli government has abided by its assurances.
This determination by the administration comes despite recent opposition from progressives in Congress to rule that the Israeli government’s assurances were credible.
“The current circumstances on the ground in Gaza, the many statements made by the President and other senior Administration officials, and the recent IPC assessment that:‘famine is imminent' – make it abundantly clear that Netanyahu’s government is not doing nearly enough to allow aid to reach starving and otherwise desperate people in Gaza,” 17 senators wrote the White House on March 22. “As a result, we believe it would be inconsistent with the letter and spirit of NSM-20 to find that assurances made by the Netanyahu Government meet the required ‘credible and reliable’ standard at this time. Such a determination would also establish an unacceptable precedent for the application of NSM-20 in other situations around the world.”
The letter’s signatories included Sens. Chris van Hollen (D-Md.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)
Six House Democrats made a similar case in a letter sent on March 23. “[T]he Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has restricted the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza by placing onerous burdens on the oversight of aid, severely limiting entry points for aid delivery, and arbitrarily preventing food, medicine, and other supplies from entering Gaza,” wrote Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), and Chellie Pingree (D-Maine).
“Given the catastrophic and devolving humanitarian situation in Gaza, we urge you to enforce the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act (Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act) and, as required by that law, make clear to the Israeli government that so long as Israel continues to restrict the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the continued provision of U.S. security assistance to Israel would constitute a violation of existing U.S. law and must be restricted.”
The determinations match with assessments made with leading humanitarian organizations and human rights groups.
Miller maintained that the current assessment was part of an ongoing process that “requires a fact-intensive analysis of relevant factors related to international humanitarian law,” but that “as of yet, we have not made a conclusion that Israel is in violation of international humanitarian law."
Reports last week suggested that officials at the State Department and USAID had expressed “deep skepticism” over ambassador to Israel Jack Lew’s assertion that Israel’s claims of compliance with international law were credible.
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Algeria's Representative to the United Nations Amar Bendjama speaks with U.S. Representative to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, during a vote on a Gaza resolution that demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan leading to a permanent sustainable ceasefire, and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, at U.N. headquarters in New York City, U.S., March 25, 2024. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
The United Nations Security Council finally managed to pass a resolution on Monday demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza — the first true indicator that pressure on President Biden to address the war’s calamities is working. The passing of the resolution was followed by spontaneous applause in the Security Council, which is highly unusual. The last time this happened was in 2003 when France’s Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin gave a historic speech against the Iraq war. The applause reflects the immense exasperation with Biden's efforts to keep the war going.
All countries supported the measure with the United States abstaining. Ten countries put forward the measure —Algeria, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, and Switzerland — that is, all of the non-permanent members, or “elected members,” of the Security Council.
By Friday of last week, when Russia and China vetoed Biden's draft resolution, the E10’s draft had three operative clauses: demanding an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan, demanding the immediate and unconditional release of the hostages, and emphasizing the urgent need to expand the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Over the weekend, intense negotiations took place following a U.S. threat that it would veto any resolution that didn't "support the diplomacy on the ground" — the diplomatic efforts of Qatar, Egypt, and the U.S. The Biden administration sought to link a ceasefire with the release of all hostages, that is, making progress on one issue depended on complete progress on the other.
This linkage could have made one issue hostage to the other. This is the Israeli position; it wants no pressure against its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza until all hostages are released, effectively making the entire population of Gaza hostages. The most immediate consequence of such a linkage is that the war and killing would continue since no issue can be resolved until all issues are resolved.
The other countries rejected the U.S. demand, insisting that both the release of hostages and a ceasefire are imperative and should not be linked, as it otherwise would provide justification for Israel's indiscriminate bombing of Gaza since Hamas hasn't released all hostages. (Which is why Israel and Biden have pushed for this linkage).
The resolution that passed does not accommodate the U.S. demand. Instead, it combines the two demands (ceasefire and hostage release) into one single operative clause, but without linking the two issues.
Here's how the operative clause currently reads:
“Demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a permanent sustainable ceasefire, and also demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, as well as ensuring humanitarian access to address their medical and other humanitarian needs, and further demands that the parties comply with their obligations under international law in relation to all persons they detain.”
The Biden administration tried to change the language of the resolution to support the diplomatic efforts co-led by the U.S. But this is a process that thus far has been unsuccessful, partly because the U.S. has pushed its parameters to meet all Israeli demands. This includes linking a ceasefire with the release of all hostages, including male soldiers.
Again, the other countries have resisted, and the E10 resolution only acknowledges these diplomatic efforts rather than supporting them or deferring the Council's responsibility to this process.
An African diplomat told me that the American draft resolution vetoed on Friday positioned the U.S.-led negotiations above the UNSC. The E10 rejected that proposal because they believe subordinating the U.N. Security Council to diplomatic processes preferred by the U.S. will delegitimize the legal authority of UNSC.
The fact that the U.S. abstained signifies the first instance in which we see Biden's rhetorical shift in favor of a ceasefire translate into political action.
The question is how the passage of this resolution will impact U.S. policy in practice. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly threatened to cancel a delegation to Washington if Biden didn’t veto the resolution. (He subsequently followed through on his threat). It is noteworthy that the Israeli Prime Minister felt comfortable publicly threatening the U.S. while Biden, after Israel has engaged in extensive war crimes using U.S. weapons and undermined U.S. interests, has not even been able to muster the courage to issue a meaningful warning to Israel.
But will the U.S. still continue to sell arms to Israel, even if Israel continues to refuse a ceasefire? Legally, the resolution does not oblige the U.S. to cease arms sales, but politically, there will be added pressure on Washington to help implement the resolution rather than simply acting as a bystander of a ceasefire.
The Biden administration has dismissed all accusations of Israel committing war crimes by declaring that Israel has a right to defend itself. But with the UNSC demanding a ceasefire, will it be more difficult for Biden to continue to turn a blind eye to Israel's indiscriminate killings in Gaza?