The U.S.-Africa
Leaders Summit: The Case for Doing More in Congo
Editor’s Note: The U.S.-Africa
Leaders Summit blog series is a
collection of posts discussing efforts to strengthen ties between the United
States and Africa ahead of the first continent-wide summit. On August 4,
Brookings will host “The Game Has Changed: The New Landscape for Innovation and
Business in Africa,” at which these themes and more will be explored by
prominent experts. Click here to
register for the event.
As leaders prepare to gather for the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit
next week in Washington, there is welcome news from the forgotten
continent: While there remains considerable turbulence and a more
dispersed threat from Islamic extremists than ever before—from Nigeria to Mali,
Libya to Somalia, and now even Kenya—overall security trends on the continent
are in fact favorable. Mortality rates from all kinds of warfare have been
approximately cut in half in recent years. The African Union is playing a more
constructive and unified role in addressing regional and intra-state conflicts
than was previously the case. Flashy terrorist attacks are more frequent than
before, but, at least at present, the old-fashioned and highly brutal civil
wars are fewer in number and more restrained in intensity than at almost any
time in Africa’s roughly half century of independence.
The United States and like-minded states should build on this
positive momentum with two new initiatives at the summit. One is a
proposal to send a brigade of American combat forces to the Democratic Republic
of the Congo (DRC) in support of the U.N. peacekeeping mission there and to
reinforce the progress that the DRC has begun to experience over the last
couple of years, in terms of disarming and concluding peace agreements between
the government and the various rebel groups. That progress is very
fragile and far from adequate for the well-being of the nation’s people or the
prospects for future stability within the DRC. But it is real, and
hopeful, and provides a rare opportunity for the United States to support and
strengthen local solutions to the conflict. The United States should focus its
security agenda in Africa foremost on the DRC because, while the entire
continent deserves attention, the country is one of the continent’s two or
three “pivotal states” given its size and location—and also the place where the
prospects for near-term progress appear most real. Second, the United States
and partner nations should seek to rescue an earlier victory in Libya from the
current jaws of defeat, mayhem and anarchy with a much more robust
train-and-equip effort to get Libyan security forces on their feet so they may
establish control over the various militias and criminal gangs.
There would be much resistance in America to any such ideas, of
course, underpinned by the nation’s war fatigue in general, and its desire to
do less abroad. With the broader Middle East in such turmoil, the moment may
seem strange for a big proposal on a greater military role in Africa. And, of
course, as I mentioned in a piece earlier this year,
“America’s military role and experiences in Africa have been generally unhappy.
The 1993 ‘Black Hawk Down’ tragedy in Somalia was the most notorious case and
contributed to President Clinton’s decision to stay out of Rwanda’s genocide in
1994, with much regret.”
While insecurity remains a major challenge for the continent,
still, there is an opportunity to support the momentum of a growing number of
countries that are moving toward peace. And there is a significant group of
international actors helping to consolidate this peace. Beyond the
French role in Cote
d'Ivoire, Mali and the Central African Republic, African states are stepping up
to the plate, as the efforts by Ugandan and Kenyan forces in Somalia
demonstrate. China has also increased its direct involvement in African security
affairs, dispatching combat troops to Mali, engaging in mediation in South
Sudan, carrying out naval escort missions in the Gulf of Aden, and contributing
financially and militarily to the African Union, as noted by my
colleague Yun Sun. Additionally, Japan has provided 400 self-defense
forces personnel as part of the U.N. mission in South Sudan.
The United States has already deployed a small contingent to
help Uganda pursue the Lord’s Resistance Army while maintaining special
operations forces in Djibouti to pursue al-Qaida. It is also trying to help
Nigeria in a targeted way with the rescue of the missing schoolgirls, kidnapped
by the Boko Haram extremist movement.
Most recent U.S. efforts have worked through Africa Command to
build capacity in African states through programs such as the Global Peace
Operations Initiative and the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership.
These efforts, aimed at helping to set up an architecture that allows
well-equipped African-led troops to be deployed rapidly are worthy, if
generally small-scale, and should continue.
But there is a case for doing even more, and it is strongest in
the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Libya. In the DRC, despite the
creation of a rapid reaction brigade in recent months to strengthen the U.N.
presence and take on militias such as the M23 group, Congolese forces remain
weak. In addition, health care, education and other national institutions
remain dysfunctional or simply absent in the country’s east. The general
absence of the state will continue to compromise the quality of life and very
survivability of vulnerable groups such as the young, women having children,
the elderly and the sick. The best path towards a more hopeful future is a
systematic effort by the United States and other outside powers to strengthen
and reform Congolese security forces. Given the enormous distances and
logistical challenges involved, this requires more than a few dozen trainers in
traditional missions, but a deployed force on the ground such as an
advise-and-assist brigade or Security Force Assistance Brigade to complement
the nearly 20,000 U.N. forces, mostly from other African states, now in place.
In Libya, the real strategic loss has been a missed opportunity
to help strengthen and stabilize the new Libyan government. The new proposed
mission need not be large or costly. But the minimalist approach that the
international community has followed to date has left the country worse off
than it was under Moammar Gadhafi. Militias roam the streets; oil production
and national GDP are way down; and institutions, including those providing
education and health care, are barely functional. As part of a larger
international effort, several hundred American troops in a training role could
make a major difference. In so doing, they could also help reduce the spillover
risks posed by renegade and extremist groups to neighboring countries like
Mali, Tunisia and Algeria.
There are, of course, risks from any such increased American
role in African conflict zones. But this country’s general casualty aversion is
not what it was in 1993, when tragedy in Somalia led to the rapid end of a U.S.
military role there. Going forward, the political stakes in such a mission
would appear to be less—as, admittedly, would the political reward for any
successes that U.S. forces helped achieve. In a broader historic sense, helping
transform Africa from a zone of conflict to a zone of hope could prove a
durable and notable accomplishment.
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