AFRICOM: Failing

Last year, I asked what the point of AFRICOM was. I criticized what I viewed as its bungled unveiling, at a time when it had no set definition or vision. I wondered what its mission would be, and how it would go about doing it.

Matt Armstrong (“Mountainrunner”, who has been doing INCREDIBLE work on public diplomacy in Washington D.C. and elsewhere) responded to my post with a well-informed analysis of how AFRICOM’s marketing was going badly but the concept was still solid.

A year has passed, and AFRICOM has only continued to fail, not only in its marketing, but in its execution.

The first failure seemed to be that AFRICOM’s creators and leaders did not consciously realize in their decision-making that the US and its military reputation on the continent did not receive a fresh reset from AFRICOM’s creation.

In recent memory (skip if you already know this tragicomedy of errors by heart), the US is remembered for a bungled effort in Somalia (displaying an utter lack of comprehension of Somalia’s tribal societies or the role outside aid played in conflict incubation), a non-effort on Rwanda’s genocide (that included an often bitterly remembered US effort to prevent African attempts to stop the genocide), the feeding and sheltering of the architects of Rwanda’s genocide in the Congo, so-so efforts to respond to criminal-state conspiracies of epidemic proportions in Sierra Leone and Liberia, indifference to Africa’s largest and deadliest war ever in the Congo and assorted failed or middling schemes to stem terrorism in the Sahara. Just in the past three years, America has promised do something about the lethal instability in Dar Fur and done next to nothing, egged on and supported an epic failure of an intervention in Somalia by an Ethiopian country most recently famous for killing thousands of its own citizens and done little to halt Zimbabwe’s slide to utter ruin.

Get all that? That’s the reputation AFRICOM came to the forefront with, irregardless of what was done with AIDS, trade and development. Indeed, AFRICOM’s first job was to convince African elites that it meant business, and that it would erase what has been considered by Africans a decade or more of American incompetence and indifference. A lot of talk has gone on, and more failed advice and training dished out to friends in Nigeria and Ethiopia. A great number of photo op efforts and small-scale relationship building (especially on the maritime security side) have taken place, but these are not the kind of ops that will change perceptions of AFRICOM on even a medium scale, let alone the image/reputation makeover it needed from Day One because it allowed misconceptions about its mission to run legion.

Now, AFRICOM was directed by then-President Bush to respond to a Ugandan request for help to take down the infamous Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army. The American help consisted of:

They described a team of 17 advisers and analysts from the Pentagon’s new Africa Command working closely with Ugandan officers on the mission, providing satellite phones, intelligence and $1 million in fuel.

The onset of fog and what appears to be a mix of poor planning and execution left the LRA free to fight another day, though civilians who were left undefended/unaccounted for in villages around the operational area were made to pay the price. As many as 900 of these civilians are dead in what has to be considered a bitter failure for both Uganda and AFRICOM.

This is not what you would hear talking to AFRICOM though. Responses there appear to center around a mix of “Its not our fault” and “Its not our failure”. This is about as brain dead a response as you could possibly imagine.

Not only does it falsely piss on the Ugandans for botching the op entirely (not exactly a good way to maintain alliances with countries or gain the cooperation of others), it advances the narrative in Africa that America simply does not take these problems seriously. It erodes African confidence in AFRICOM’s competence and role as an honest partner.

The bottom line is that in a joint effort, when one of AFRICOM’s partners fails, AFRICOM fails. Without this attitude and approach to joint efforts,  whether it be applied on the security side or the development side (whatever that will consist of), AFRICOM will fail miserably in the short and long term alike.

Irregardless of whether its AFRICOM’s fault or whether its a case of AFRICOM simply not being what Africans want, without a grand strategy or at least a compelling theme that guides AFRICOM from Day One  (not Day 502)  AFRICOM is doomed to failure as it joins the ranks of other good ideas poorly executed.