DOD RELEASES REPORT ON ENHANCING SECURITY AND STABILITY IN AFGHANISTAN

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by RC Porter

DOD Releases Report on Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan

Today the Department of Defense provided to Congress a report on “Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan” covering events during the period from December 1, 2016, through May 31, 2017. The report was submitted in accordance with requirements in Section 1225 of the Fiscal 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) as amended by Sections 1231 and 1531 of the Fiscal 2016 NDAA and Sections 1215 and 1521 of the Fiscal 17 NDAA.

The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) effectively conducted training and reequipped units during the winter. In March, the Afghan forces began implementing a yearlong campaign against the insurgency and simultaneously restructuring the force to build offensive capabilities over time according to a plan called the “ANDSF Road Map.” Major initiatives within the Road Map include transitioning the Afghan Air Force from Russian Mi-17 helicopters to U.S. UH-60 helicopters over the next several years, expanding the Afghan Special Forces, and gaining efficiencies through realigning paramilitary organizations from the Ministry of Interior to the Ministry of Defense.

The ANDSF continue to make progress in their efforts to counter terrorist networks and provide the United States with a valuable counterterrorism partner. Despite the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s regional affiliate, ISIS-Khorasan, conducting high profile attacks in Kabul, the organization’s influence has diminished. Both Afghan and U.S. forces have committed to defeating the organization, and continued operations and airstrikes against ISIS-K have largely confined the group to a few districts in Nangarhar province.

*** For Djibouti, It's All About Location

Djibouti's strategic position on the Bab el-Mandeb strait allows the country to rent some of its territory to foreign military bases. 

Given its relative lack of natural resources and human capital, Djibouti's leaders will be pressed to open the country to international powers if they want it to develop. 

China remains the sole long-term strategic partner for Djibouti as trade competition intensifies across the region. 

The tiny East African country of Djibouti has learned how to make money off its location. On June 27, Djibouti will celebrate the 40th anniversary of its independence, and it has experienced profound change since it was called first French Somalia, then the French Territory of Afars and the Issas. After its independence from France, Djibouti grappled with internal ethnic cleavages and a volatile region. But the secret to Djibouti's continued global importance and its success in recent decades lies in its strategic position on the Bab el-Mandeb strait and its status as the lone maritime entry and exit point for its dynamic neighbor, Ethiopia.

Not-So-Humble Beginnings

The rise of maritime trade and, most critically, the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869 drove European powers to seek strategic bases along the banks of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The British, already implanted in the port of Aden by 1839, began to expand the scope of their possessions in the area. France, on the other hand, was slower to join the scramble for territory, despite previously gaining some limited concessions in the Gulf of Tadjoura, bordered mostly by present-day Djibouti. Instead, it was the French Empire's strategic imperatives in the Far East and Southeast Asia — namely, Indochina — that propelled an intensified French push in the Horn of Africa. The start of the Tonkin War in 1884 and the United Kingdom's refusal to allow the French navy to refuel in its ports, including Aden, compelled France to re-examine its positioning in the broader Indian Ocean. Soon France attached a much greater importance to its small possession in the Gulf of Tadjoura, both for its strategic location and the access it gave France to the natural resources of Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia).

Colin Powell: American Leadership — We Can’t Do It for Free

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By COLIN POWELL

At our best, being a great nation has always meant a commitment to building a better, safer world — not just for ourselves, but for our children and grandchildren. This has meant leading the world in advancing the cause of peace, responding when disease and disaster strike, lifting millions out of poverty and inspiring those yearning for freedom.

This calling is under threat.

The administration’s proposal, announced Tuesday, to slash approximately 30 percent from the State Department and foreign assistance budget signals an American retreat, leaving a vacuum that would make us far less safe and prosperous. While it may sound penny-wise, it is pound-foolish.

This proposal would bring resources for our civilian forces to a third of what we spent at the height of Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” years, as a percentage of the gross domestic product. It would be internationally irresponsible, distressing our friends, encouraging our enemies and undermining our own economic and national security interests.

The idea that putting Americans “first” requires a withdrawal from the world is simply wrongheaded, because a retreat would achieve exactly the opposite for our citizens. I learned that lesson the hard way when I became secretary of state after a decade of budget cuts that hollowed out our civilian foreign policy tools.

Djibouti Wins Jackpot – Renting Out Desert for Military Bases

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Edward Paice

China is constructing its first overseas military base just a few miles from one of the United States’ largest and most important foreign bases — Camp Lemonnier in the small East African nation of Djibouti. Five other nations have put up bases there, and Saudi Arabia will soon join them. The Cipher Brief’s Kaitlin Lavinder asked Edward Paice, director of the Africa Research Institute in London, why China chose Djibouti, what the U.S. thinks about it, and why several other nations, including the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, focusing military attention on the coast of the Horn of Africa.

The Cipher Brief: Why is China building its first overseas military base in Djibouti?

Edward Paice: Djibouti has great strategic importance. It is located on the Babel el Mandeb. It’s only 20 or 30 miles from the Arabian Peninsula, opposite Yemen. Estimates vary but about 30 percent of the world’s shipping goes through there and onto Suez. From a trade point of view, Djibouti is a kind of chokepoint. China’s trade to Europe goes mostly through that route, and that’s a substantial proportion of a billion dollars a day. Part of the rationale is that in the development of China’s One Belt One Road initiative, this is a key point and will enable it to better protect trade flows. That’s the trade argument.

Militarily, it’s pretty well placed for access to both Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Djibouti is almost one leg in each – and that’s been attractive to a number of other powers. China has, over the years, gotten increasingly involved in peacekeeping, it has cited its desire to play a greater role in peacekeeping, and it has combat troops in both South Sudan and Mali. It’s logical that it needs an actual base somewhere in Africa, which is really no different from the Americans saying that they need Camp Lemonnier as a headquarters for operations in Africa, whether in peacekeeping or counterterror or whatever. That is the military rationale.

U.S., China, Others Build Bases In Djibouti – What Could Go Wrong?

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Kaitlin Lavinder

The small East African country of Djibouti – which sits on the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, a gateway to the Suez Canal and a shipping chokepoint in the sea lanes connecting Africa with the Middle East and India – hosts seven foreign militaries. The U.S. and China are now neighbors, and Saudi Arabia is coming soon.

The U.S. owns the biggest base there. Since 2002, Camp Lemonnier has occupied more than 600 acres of Djibouti’s land and hosted around 4,000 American military and civilian personnel. It is the U.S. Africa Command’s main base in the Horn of Africa, a strategically vital location for fighting terrorists on the continent and monitoring piracy in the waters off Djibouti’s coast.

The French, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, and Japanese have joined the U.S. as fellow land leasers, with similar strategic and economic interests. Saudi Arabia, another U.S. ally, has a strong interest in Yemen, because Djibouti sits just across the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait from Yemen. The Saudis support Yemen’s government in its ongoing war against the Iranian-backed Houthi militia. Washington has committed support to the Saudis for this fight.

But Beijing’s interests in Djibouti remain murky – and potentially at odds with U.S. interests in the region. “They view that [the base in Djibouti] as part of their long-term strategy to become a global power, not just a regional power, and they are spending an extraordinary amount of effort and investment,” Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on global threats earlier this month.

PRISM Volume 6, No. 4, Now Online

by Martin Kindl

ontinuity and Change in War and Conflict in Africa by Paul D. Williams

Strategic Dilemmas: Rewiring Africa for a Teeming, Urban Future by Greg Mills, Jeffrey Herbst, and Dickie Davis

The Security Governance Initiative by Julie E. Chalfin and Linda Thomas-Greenfield

The Armies of the Great Lakes Countries by Gérard Prunier

Brothers Came Back with Weapons: The Effects of Arms Proliferation from Libya by Nicholas Marsh

Islam in from the Cold: A Muslim Brother’s Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future of the Islamic Movement in the Sudan by Marie Besançon

Book Reviews

This Present Darkness: A History of Nigerian Organized Crime by Stephen Ellis

Security in Africa: A Critical Approach to Western Indicators of Threat by Claire Metelits

The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World by Steven Radelet

Return of Somali Pirates Alerts Pentagon and Ships

By Michael Clyne

Pirate attacks have returned to the Gulf of Aden, disturbing Somali waters once a hotbed for piracy but which in recent years achieved a remarkable reversal. At least six commercial vessels have been hijacked or attacked in northern Somali waters since March. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warned of the new threat during a press conference last week in neighboring Djibouti, where the United States maintains its only semi-permanent military base on the continent.

With relatively minor exceptions, the attacks are the region’s first in five years, a lull reached by a combination of international and private security efforts. But that lull eventually became a victim of its own success, with prevention fatiguing after attacks abated. Governments rolled back robust defense operations, eventually relegating them to monitoring and surveillance. Shipping companies followed suit, cutting costs on expensive security guards once hired to arm and defend their vessels.

Secretary Mattis’s warning, however, wasn’t aimed at the navies or military policy which once protected Gulf of Aden shipping lanes. Instead, his remarks were in reference to private shipping companies who should pick up the tab, strengthen security, and reconsider arming their vessels. “We want to make sure the industry continues not to be lax,” said General Thomas Waldhauser (head of U.S. Africa Command), as he re-enforced Secretary Mattis’s position.

Africa Growing? Past, Present and Future

By Morten Jerven 

Until the 2000s, economists deplored the stagnant incomes, slow growth and uncertain development that marred Africa. As a result, they spent much of their time elaborating on the historical roots of these problems. So, with African economies growing for more than a decade now, and fuelling a counter-narrative of ‘Africa rising’, what do the analysts do now? Morten Jerven thinks they need to explain the development that has taken place and explore its future prospects.

Until the late 2000s, the economic development performance of postcolonial Africa was summarised as a failure of economic growth. Accordingly, since the 1990s academic literature sought to determine which factors could explain slow growth. In addition, alleged failure and permanent stagnation cohered well with GDP per capita distribution of income in Africa, providing the impetus for an economic and political science literature that investigated the historical causes of low income persistence in African economies. However, African economies have been growing for more than a decade, fuelling the counter-narrative of ‘Africa rising’. This information changes the questions that should be asked when looking at African economies. There is now a need to focus on explaining the growth that has taken place in Africa and explore its future prospects.

Somalia’s Pirates Are Back in Business

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BY JASON PATINKIN

NAIROBI — After being all but stamped out by international naval forces following its late-2000s heyday, piracy has made a sudden return to the Horn of Africa. In the past month, there have been six suspected piracy incidents near Somalia, five of them successful, including three in the last week. That’s compared with zero successful attacks in 2016.

Three more murky maritime incidents off the coast of Somalia’s Galmudug state, where suspected illegal fishing vessels paid “fines” that may in fact have been ransoms, suggest that piracy has rebounded on a scale even larger than previously reported.

Unmasking the Unmaskers

What Susan Rice did used to be unusual, but it was encouraged by years of expanding access to signals intelligence.

“Now it’s in the original home of piracy, in an area they thought they cleaned up,” said John Steed, a senior maritime expert at the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime. “It’s very disappointing.”

The spike in banditry on the high seas off the Horn is a blow to the decades-long battle to stem piracy there, and bad news for the international shipping industry, which transports $700 billion worth of cargo through the dangerous corridor each year. It’s also a stark reminder that one of the main drivers of piracy, rampant illegal fishing that depletes local fish stocks and drives some fishermen to take up arms, remains as big a problem as ever.

India in Africa: Need to build on its own base rather than countering China

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By Namrata Hasija

President Pranab Mukherjee inaugurated the 12th CII-EXIM Bank Conclave on India Africa Project Partnership on March 9, 2017. His address on the occasion sets the tone of India-Africa ties during the past and present times. 

He said: "Mindful of our common history and shared future, we have decided to elevate our relationship. For the first time ever, we welcomed representatives of all 54 countries of Africa at the third India-Africa Forum Summit in October 2015. We have since then broadened our diplomatic footprint. Our leadership has visited almost every African country in the last 18 months." 

He further stated that he personally went to Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and Namibia last year. 

His special emphasis on the recent spurt of interest in Africa by India's leadership showcases a new Indian approach towards the African continent. This interest has generated another debate as to whether India is competing with China in Africa and trying to counter the Chinese footprint in Africa.

The Chinese presence in Africa is huge and its trade with Africa was at $300 billion in 2015 while India-Africa trade stood at only $75 billion. To counter this kind of clout demands huge investments and other measures. 

The question, however, remains: Why should India counter China in Africa? Do their interests clash in Africa or both have their divergent interests in Africa?

Both countries look at securing their energy interests in the continent along with the huge African markets for their products. India has already ignored this continent for a long time while China consolidated its position by giving huge credit lines and loans for infrastructure development to African leaders. 

China in Africa: What's the Real Story?

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By Xie Tao

When traveling outside China, I rarely seek out Chinese restaurants. For one thing, my few experiences indicate that their taste is usually not the same “taste of motherland” that one gets back in China. For another, my philosophy is that when in Rome, eat as the Romans do. How can you fully appreciate a culture without exposing your palate to its cuisine, an integral part of any culture?

That’s why I was initially quite disappointed to find out that Tip Top, recommended by a street vendor in downtown Accra, Ghana, is a Chinese restaurant. It was March 31, the first day of my four-day visit to the western African country. I was wandering aimlessly with my family on Oxford Street when I came across the vendor. It was lunch time, so I asked him if there was any restaurant nearby. “Oh, yes, Tip Top, just over there, you see the sign?” After saying my thanks, we headed to the restaurant, assuming that Tip Top offers local African food. Not until I walked into the restaurant and noticed the pictures of dishes on the wall did I realize that it is a Chinese restaurant.

I hesitated for a moment, unsure whether we should stay or keep looking for a local establishment. Then my wife helped me make the decision. “It has air-conditioning, and the children are tired,” she said. So I ended up having the only Chinese meal during my two-month voyage. And I have to admit that the dishes were truly authentic (i.e., Northeast China cuisine), so authentic that we went back for dinner the day before we departed Tema.

Africom Commander Concerned About New Chinese Naval Base

By Yasmin Tadjdeh

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As great power competition heats up, the commander of U.S. Africa Command is concerned about a new Chinese naval base being constructed in Djibouti.

“There are some very significant … operational security concerns,” said Marine Corps Gen. Thomas Waldhauser on March 27.

Djibouti, a small country on the Horn of Africa, plays a major strategic role for the United States. It is home to Camp Lemonnier, an important U.S. foreign military installation.

China’s base is designed to be a port for the country’s ships that are transiting the region and that are involved in anti-piracy operations, Waldhauser noted. Already, China has several thousand peacekeepers in Africa, he added.

“You would have to characterize it as a military base,” he said during a meeting with defense reporters in Washington, D.C. “It’s a first for them. They’ve never had an overseas base, and we’ve never had a base of … a peer competitor as close as this one happens to be. So there’s a lot of learning going on and a lot of growing going on.”

China’s base will be located several miles away from Camp Lemonnier. Waldhauser anticipated that it would be completed sometime this summer.

The Sub-Saharan Security Tracker

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Mapping Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is made up of forty-eight countries and is home to approximately one billion people. It does not include Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. Continuing political violence in sub-Saharan Africa causes untold misery, and hampers political, economic, and social development. Mapping political violence is a valuable tool for identifying current and future trends.

The Sub-Saharan Security Tracker (SST) uses over three million data points to map the state of political violence, specifically deaths caused by such violence, in the region, including geographic distribution, trends over time, and actors involved.

The SST draws on data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) Project, which documents violent events across Africa by surveying open sources, such as the media, reports from nongovernmental organizations, and publicly available material from governments and international organizations.

How India Can Build On Its Africa Ties To Counter Chinese Advances

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Keertivardhan Joshi

The benefits of establishing strong bonds with Africa must keep India motivated to take on even the unfair competition that the Chinese offer

The recent visit by Indian Vice-President Hamid Ansari to Africa was his second in two years. This had come close on the heels of President Pranab Mukherjee’s visit in June last year and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two visits, one in 2016 and another in early 2015. Starting with the last India-Africa Forum Summit, New Delhi has exhibited a renewed vigour in pursuing its long-neglected ties with the African nations. The primary reason behind these increased engagements has been to counter China, which has also ramped up its own efforts to have a larger footprint in Africa. Albeit India is far behind China in its quantum of trade with Africa, it has been steadfast in making inroads to the African economy.

This race between India and China has also made the world take stock of Africa’s undervalued economic importance in global trade. The attention that Africa received has helped it to take a relook at its partners and drift away from the donor-receiver relationship it has had with the Western powers. The US and Europe have for long exploited the region’s resources without actually helping the Africans set up a sustainable growth model. In this context, Africa also sees India and China as the new development partners, and is equally willing to have long partnerships with the Asian giants while learning from their respective success stories.

The African partnership is going to benefit India in multiple ways. Starting with strengthening energy and food security to gaining a diplomatic backing for its permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council, the reaps of establishing strong bonds with Africa must keep India motivated to take on even the unfair competition that the Chinese offer. While China may easily undercut India’s stakes with its huge line of credits and investments, what may work in India’s favour in the long run is its strong Indian diaspora, its deep cultural connect and its proximity with the African continent. Along with these natural advantages, India should look to craft a strategy to mitigate the Chinese competition.

Somalia: A failed state?

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It will not be an exaggeration to say that almost all the countries in Africa face some form of conflict. Yet, most of them have managed to survive, and some—like South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo—have even evolved into reasonably successful states. However, Somalia has not. What are the reasons for Somalia’s failure to survive? Did external interventions play a role? Was Islamophobia a contributing factor, and the inter-clan civil war, too? This paper finds that although there have been many reasons, such as unnecessary interventions—especially the case of Ethiopian in 2006—the failure of Somalia as a state is mostly because of a lack of an effective leadership.

Introduction

In the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, colonialist countries divided Somalia into five parts—the United Kingdom (UK) took two parts while Italy, Ethiopia and France took one each. The Somalis fought for independence from all the colonial powers. Northern and Southern Somalia gained independence on 26 June 1960 and 01 July 1960, respectively. All parts of Somalia would eventually form a Greater Somalia.[i]

From 1960 until 1969, Somalia was a democratic state. Through a coup d’etat in 1969, Siyad Barre came to power. Barre forged close ties with the Soviet Union, which provided aid to Somalia throughout the 1970s. Trouble started when Barre attempted to take back the Ogaden Somali territory from Ethiopia and the Soviets decided to back Ethiopia. This enraged Barre, resulting in Somalia and the Soviet Union severing their ties. Consequently, the United States (US) became close to Somalia. The US gave Somalia foreign aid for military technology, amounting to US $163.5 million between 1980 and 1988, and four times that for economic development.

* North Africa’s Next War

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By HANNAH ARMSTRONGJAN.

TIFARITI, Western Sahara — Uninhabited and less than three miles long, the rocky, flat area known as Guerguerat falls under no formal government rule. It lies near North Africa’s Atlantic coast, some 40 miles north of Nouadhibou, a thriving Mauritanian port city. The main industry — if you can call it that — is smuggling. And it could be the place where Africa’s next war begins.

Since August, this remote area has been the site of a standoff between two enemies that have been at an impasse for more than two decades: Morocco and the Polisario Front. Not since 1991 have they been closer to war.

The United Nations uses the sanitizing term “non-self-governing” to describe the Western Sahara, and has since 1963, when it was still a Spanish colony. When Spain withdrew its territorial claim in 1975, Morocco annexed the territory. After some 16 years of war, the two sides signed a cease-fire and a de facto border emerged. Morocco controls two-thirds of the Western Sahara, which it deems its “southern provinces.” The Polisario Front, a movement of indigenous Western Saharans that first formed to fight for independence from Spain, controls the remaining third, which it calls the “free zone.”

I recently traveled to the free zone. There is no phone service, no GPS and not a single paved road. To navigate, drivers rely on memories of where rocky outcroppings and dried riverbeds stand in relation to one another. The ground is mainly granitic, with waves of petrified forests, meteorites and land mines.

CHINA LEVERAGES BASE IN DJIBOUTI FOR EXTENDING ITS REACH IN AFRICA

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by RC Porter

A multibillion-dollar China-built rail line linking the Horn of Africa with the continent’s vast interior was officially launched on Tuesday, an important ­milestone for China’s burgeoning influence in the region.

The 750km line connects port city Djibouti and Addis Ababa, the capital of landlocked Ethiopia, the fastest-growing economy in­ Africa. The railway is expected to reduce the travel time between the two cities, from three days by road to just 12 hours by train.

It is also widely seen as the start of a trans-African railway project, in which a 2,000km track will connect Djibouti, a gateway to the Suez Canal and one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, with the Atlantic Ocean.

The high-speed electric line is expected to one day be part of a railway connection stretching across the continent. Photo: Felix Wong

U.N. discovers that some peacekeepers have disturbing pasts

By Kevin Sieff

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BUTARE, Rwanda — The three officers had received blue badges and slipped blue covers over their helmets. They were now U.N. peacekeepers, sent from Burundi to help protect victims of a brutal war in the Central African Republic. 

But each of them had a past the United Nations was unaware of. When the deployments became public, Burundian activists were aghast. 

One of the officers had run a military jail where beatings and torture occurred, according to civil-society groups and former prisoners. Another had committed human rights violations when anti-government demonstrations erupted in Burundi last year, U.N. officials would eventually learn. The third had served as the spokesman for the Burundian army, publicly defending an institution accused of abuses. 

They set out for the Central African Republic in different U.N. deployments over the past year. In each case, U.N. officials soon determined that the allegations against the soldiers and their units were credible enough to send them home. 

A New Wave of Maritime Threats

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Forecast

Piracy will continue to decline worldwide.

However, maritime threats will still pose a considerable challenge to global shipping companies, especially in waterways in unstable regions.

If the maritime security threat around the Bab el-Mandeb strait shifts from financially motivated piracy attacks to ideologically motivated militant attacks, shipping companies will need to rethink their security measures. 

Analysis

After three years of relative calm in the waters between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, a strait known as Bab el-Mandeb, at least seven security incidents were reported in October. Two of the attacks, one on an Emirati ship and the other on the USS Mason, a U.S. Navy destroyer, were confirmed to have been carried out by Yemeni militants with land-based anti-ship missiles. Two others, both on Oct. 22, were likely carried out by Somali pirates. Most concerning was an attempted attack on the Galicia Spirit, a liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker, involving a skiff loaded with explosives. The skiff exploded prematurely, leaving the tanker unharmed, but the tactic harkens back al Qaeda attacks against USS Cole in 2000 and the MV Limburg in 2002. Finally, on Oct. 26, the oil tanker Melati Satu was targeted with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). 

** The superpowers’ playground Everyone wants a piece of Djibouti. It’s all about the bases

Apr 9th 2016 | DJIBOUTI |

AT 2pm in the tiny African state of Djibouti everything stops. As the sun burns high in the sky people retreat to their homes, save for a few men lying in the shade of colonial-era walkways, chewing qat leaves that bring on a hazy high. In the soporific heat you would be forgiven for thinking that time had forgotten the New Jersey-sized nation. Yet its quiet stability within the volatile Horn of Africa has made the country of just 875,000 people a hub for the world’s superpowers.

The stars and stripes flutters alongside the runway where military and passenger planes touch down: Camp Lemmonier, America’s only permanent military base in Africa, hosts 4,500 troops and contractors who conduct missions against al-Qaeda in Yemen and al-Shabab in Somalia. The outpost, leased for $60m a year, shares an airstrip with the international airport, although its drones now fly from a desert airfield eight miles away after one crashed in a residential area in 2011.