United Press International - June 10, 2005
Arnaud De Borchgrave, UPI Editor-at-Large

Twenty-five percent of some 400 foreign fighters captured in Iraq came from Africa, according to the U.S. military.

Saddled with an economically paralyzing debt burden that wipes out profits from the export of Africa's raw materials, many countries have been marking time, or losing ground. Conditions are ripe for myriad troublemakers, which prompted Britain's Tony Blair to move the African crisis to the top of the global agenda for next month's G8 meeting in Scotland.

Some 28 million Africans have died in the rapid spread of HIV and AIDS. Poverty-related diseases are killing 500 African children per hour.

At the turn of the millennium, the United Nations pledged to cut poverty in half by 2015. Sadly, experts now concede this will take several more decades in Africa. Describing Africa's transformation a priority for his five-year term, newly minted World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz chose the continent for his first foreign trip later this month.

Blair wants wealthy nations to double aid to Africa to about $50 billion and forgive all of sub-Sahara Africa's debts. Cancellation of Africa's IOUs will probably be agreed, with interest payments to the World Bank and the African Development Bank to be paid by western countries. This should relieve a score of the world's poorest countries of the $34 billion they owe.

President Bush believes over the past four years, "We have tripled our assistance to sub-Sahara Africa." On a recent swing through Africa, U.S. diplomats told this reporter U.S. aid has been -- in the words of one -- "cut to the bone." U.S. libraries were among the first victims.

Sidetracked by Iraq, and fearful of adding to the deficit, the Bush Administration resisted Blair's entreaties and agreed to kick in $674 million. These were funds already authorized by Congress for food aid to Ethiopia and Eritrea. These two countries recently warred for two years over a small, insignificant piece of real estate, and before that fought for 20 years over Eritrea's desire to secede from Ethiopia and become independent.

Ethiopia, the seat of the African Union organization, recently deployed several divisions along the demarcation line while the African Union, in its Addis Ababa headquarters, dithered over the issue of how to transport 7,700 African troops (from Rwanda, Nigeria, Senegal, and South Africa) to end the appalling bloodletting and ethnic cleansing atrocities in Sudan's Darfur province. Over the past two years, Arab "Janjaweed" militias forcibly removed some two million from their villages and killed up to 300,000, according to human rights groups.

For weeks, the African Union was caught in the middle of an absurd argument between NATO and the European Union over which organization would supply military, logistical and planning support for the eight African battalions assigned to Darfur (one Rwandan battalion made it on its own in two old Soviet-era Antonov transports, which both crashed later). France and Belgium were the lone holdouts for European logistics and finally had to concede NATO was better equipped with U.S. Air Force troop transports. But France, under the E.U. flag, insisted it would still transport the Senegalese contingent from its former colony.

As a result, the whole exercise slipped until the end of June. And the number of African troops committed is insignificant for an area the size of France or Texas.

South Africa could not send more men as 40% of its army is suffering from HIV/AIDS.

France also decided to set up a Euroepan military planning cell in Brussels and a separate military headquarters at Eindhoven in the Netherlands to coordinate all the military contributions from the 25 European Union members. NATO, meanwhile, with many of the same members, will coordinate at its 26-nation headquarters in Brussels and at SHAPE, the supreme allied HQ outside Mons, Belgium.

Darfur was not the only part of Sudan, one-third the size of the U.S., in need of an international fire brigade. Sudan's Jan. 9 peace treaty that put an end to a two-decade civil war in the south is now deemed by the United States to require 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers to keep it from falling apart again.

Not a single dollar of the $4.5 billion pledged at an Oslo donors conference in April has so far made it to where it is urgently needed.

Gen. James Jones, the NATO Supreme Commander and commander of all U.S. forces in Europe, is the most solicited American in Africa these days.

On a recent swing through five African countries, it became clear that Jones is seen as the American who cares most about Africa's tragic plight. Unlike the Bush Administration, Jones, who speaks flawless, unaccented French, sees social and economic problems driving chronic instability, inhibiting economic development, squandering human capital and leading to failed states, which, in turn, provide fertile ground for extremism.

President Bush has reiterated several times since Set. 11 that he sees no connection between poverty, despair and terrorism.

Jones' first African priority is to support the African Union's common defense and security policy and the five regional security organizations. The five regions are now developing common policies on defense and security issues with the assistance of U.S. officers. They advise on how to plan, mobilize and deploy a brigade-strength standby force of about 5,000 men for each region. These brigades will be designed to execute the full panoply of peace operations.

In the long term, these forces will hopefully take the lead to restore peace, security and stability, and subsequently reduce the need for international interventions when fighting erupts and humanitarian crises occur in Africa. But that's in the very long term.

On a shoestring Pentagon budget of $52 million per year for all of Africa, or, as Jones points out, the equivalent of what the U.S. spends every five hours in Iraq,the U.S. military is conducting training exercises in Mali, Chad, Mauritania, Niger and Algeria.

In the coming year, 1000 U.S. personnel will train 3,000 African soldiers in border patrol and airborne operations in the world's least-policed areas. The budget is being increased to $100 million - or what Iraq costs every ten hours.
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