AFRICA: A WAR AFRICA DOES NOT WANT OR NEED

AFRICA: A WAR AFRICA DOES NOT WANT OR NEED
Patrick Burnett
Djibouti, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan and Zambia: protests against the US-led invasion of Iraq have reverberated around Africa before and after the war began, with deep anger being expressed both about the way in which the United States has gone to war and the terrible human toll on the population of Iraq.

The message has been that this is not a war that Africa needs or wants and African leaders - although sometimes in rather muted fashion - have largely echoed this position. “There is an alternative to war,” said a February 20 statement after the 22nd Franco-Africa Summit. The declaration of African leaders and their representatives said the disarmament of Iraq was the shared goal of the international community, but that the only legitimate framework for handling this issue was the United Nations. The use of force, with its associated risks of destabilisation for the region, Africa and the world, should be a last resort.

Africa is not in a position to risk further destabilisation. The continent is struggling under the onslaught of HIV/AIDS, long-standing conflicts, repressive regimes and damaging global trade practices. Experts and commentators warn that war will further divert resources away from Africa and lead to a range of other damaging side effects.

For example, current estimates from UNAIDS are that 29.4 million people are living with HIV or AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. 3.5 million people were newly infected with HIV during 2002 in this region, and 2.4 million adults and children died during the same period, many of them with diseases such as tuberculosis in addition to HIV. Enormous resources are needed to fight the epidemic, but as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis said in early January: “If, as some suggest, there is a war in Iraq come February, then the war will eclipse every other international human priority, HIV/AIDS included. In other words, if the United States, and the other members of the G7 don’t augment their contributions to the Global Fund in the immediate future, we will be in desperate trouble. Wars divert attention, wars consume resources, wars ride roughshod over external calamities. People living with HIV/AIDS are in a race against time. What they never imagined was that over and above the virus itself, there would be a new adversary, and that adversary would be a war.”

The drain on resources is relevant in areas other than HIV/AIDS. Commentator George Monbiot writes in a recent article about a worldwide humanitarian crisis as donor countries set aside their aid budgets so as to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Iraq. Promises of cash as a result of appeals by various UN agencies, writes Monbiot, have failed to materialise. For example, in Ertirea, 70 percent of 3.3 million people are now classified as vulnerable to famine and although the UN has asked rich countries for $163m to help them, only $4m has been received. Burundi, listed as the third-poorest country on earth, has received three percent of its UN request. Liberia has received 1.2 percent; Sierra Leone 1.2 percent and Guinea 0.4 percent. Somalia, Sudan and the DRC have each received less than six percent.

Apart from the diversion of resources away from Africa, fears exist that human rights and governance issues will be increasingly compromised as a result of a need for the US, the world’s only superpower, to secure its strategic interests. For example, even before the war began, Human Rights Watch’s World Report for 2003 pointed to the contradiction in a US condemnation of the Eritrean government's continued human rights abuses, while remaining quiet about ongoing human rights violations in Ethiopia and continuing non-humanitarian aid to the country, which it considered to be a well-positioned potential ally in the context of its “war on terror”.

More recently, Amnesty International has noted that since military action began there has been a backlash against human rights around the world. This has included attacks on the rights to freedom of expression and assembly; excessive use of force by police against anti-war demonstrators; and restriction of asylum rights. The organisation specifically mentioned Egypt, where hundreds of people associated with the anti-war movement, including lawyers, journalists, MPs, academics and students, have been arrested since 20 March and some have reportedly been tortured, and Sudan, where three students were reported to have been killed during several demonstrations in Khartoum, some of which turned violent.

African oil features prominently in US strategic plans. Hours after the war began Cameroon president Paul Biya was ushered into the White House to discuss areas of “common interest”. US Secretary of State Colin Powell summed up the dinner by saying that the two countries – Cameroon is a member of the UN Security Council -would work together on the UN Security Council, and that the US would assist in “economic development activities and aid activities and their interest in pursuing more aggressively the campaign against terrorism”. Not without relevance, Cameroon is part of a World Bank project which plans to move massive amounts of oil from landlocked Chad across Cameroon to the Atlantic ocean, where tankers will carry it to the U.S. The $3.7 billion dollar pipeline - dogged by claims of corruption - has the potential to reduce US dependence on Middle East oil.

The war does come at a time when Africa’s oil production is being seen as increasingly important to world energy needs. US officials have hinted that African oil, which currently supplies 15% of U.S. oil needs, will increase to 25% in the next decade, according to an article published on www.profileafrica.com, which goes on to point out that what is good for America is not necessarily good for Africa. Two countries who have been exporting oil to the US for years are Angola and Nigeria. Oil exports for Nigeria are estimated at US$9 billion and for Angola US$3 billion. Both countries have slipped from ranks 136 (2001) to 148 (2002) and 146 (2001) to 161 (2002) respectively in the UNDP Human Development Index.

Along with the strategic drive to secure oil comes another area of strategic importance: trade. Even before the invasion of Iraq, The US Africa Growth and Opportunities Act, which governs the conditions of trade between the US and African countries, was seen in some quarters as a possible tool to extend discredited neo-liberal policies and US power, in that it would give George W. Bush powers to decide which African State he will open the US market to, and which he will close the US market to, thus imposing conditions that further dictate economic policy in Africa so that US multinationals can reap profits and at the same time, act as a tool to push African States into supporting US foreign policy and "national security" interests.

The think tank Foreign Policy in Focus said in its Africa Policy Report 2003: “In 2003 U.S. policy toward Africa will be driven almost exclusively by geopolitical considerations related to Washington's war plans against Iraq, and by its geostrategic interests in African oil. In a dangerous replay of the cold war, the U.S. is likely to ignore Africa's priorities, placing military base rights above human rights.” This bleak assessment is despite the fact that some of the most important challenges in the world today can be found in Africa and that those challenges do not include the threat of terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. The US, and other rich countries in the so-called “Coalition of the Willing”, instead of spending tens of billions on an unjust war, should invest their energy in combating the AIDS epidemic that threatens entire countries, beating back a famine that threatens millions, cancelling debt which prevents countries from providing healthcare and education to their people, restructuring an exploitative trade system, and working without self-interest to promote peace, democracy and human rights.

ENDS.

IRAQ LINKS

CIVILIAN CASUALTIES UPDATE:
The maximum amount of civilians killed stands at 725 and the minimum at 569.
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

TAKE ACTION:

BOYCOTT US AND UK CAMPAIGN
Drop Their Shops And Stop The War
http://www.pambazuka.org/newsletter.php? id=14115
This is a global campaign initiated by the People's Health Movement (PHM) on March 20, and is picking up momentum in many countries. The campaign was launched as a tactic to put pressure on the US and UK companies and thus influence their governments to stop the war on Iraq. Click on the link to read a list of products to boycott.

WORK FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
http://www.zmag.org/wspj/index.cfm
Sign and pass on a statement for peace to organisations, periodicals, and movement groups, for them to become involved in promoting it.

NEWS:

AFRICA: THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE TO WAR, SAYS AFRICA
http://allafrica.com/stories/200302210005.html

AFRICA: ANTI-WAR PROTESTS SWEEP AFRICA
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/2873045.stm

ERITREA/ETHIOPIA: ADDIS GRANTS US OVERFLIGHT RIGHTS
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=32967

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH WORLD REPORT 2003
http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/africa.html

IRAQ IN THE SHADOW OF WAR: BACKLASH AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/irq-engmde140572003

NIGERIA: US, NIGERIA TRADE HARSH WORDS
http://allafrica.com/stories/200303230052.html

SOUTH AFRICA: REPERCUSSIONS FROM WAR STANCE
http://allafrica.com/stories/200303210455.html

TAPPING AFRICAN OIL
http://www.transparency.org/cgi-bin/dcn-read.pl?citID=52156

COMMENT:

AFRICANS! WHY WE MUST OPPOSE THIS WAR!
http://www.profileafrica.com/Comments16dc1a2.htm

ALARMING DEVELOPMENTS IN US-AFRICA RELATIONS
http://profileafrica.com/Search136.htm

FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS AFRICA POLICY OUTLOOK 2003
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/africa2003.html

IRAQ IS A TRIAL RUN
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=3369

IRAQ WAR UNLEASHES BARBARISM
http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2003/0303barbarism.html
LEFT BEHIND TO STARVE
http://www.monbiot.com/

LITTERED WITH GRAVES
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=3364

THE TRUTH ABOUT BASRA
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=3340

ENDS