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IITrouble Spots

Conflicts in Africa are sources not only of humanitarian concern. They effect important U.S. security objectives as well as theachievement of international norms of conduct that are vital toAmerica’s moral values. In this section, ‘‘Trouble Spots,’’ we deal

with several conflicts that touch on these various interests and thedifficulties in addressing them.

Zimbabwe is a tragic country. Over the past decade, PresidentRobert Mugabe has steadily destroyed the commercial farmingeconomy of the country, stripped away the protection of law by undermining and intimidating the judiciary, closed down much of the independent press, rigged elections, and ruthlessly crushedopposition. The result is a country nearly in ‘‘free fall.’’ Inflationexceeds 2,000 percent, unemployment in some estimates is as highas 80 percent, millions of Zimbabweans have fled the country,

and those remaining rely heavily on the support of internationalhumanitarian agencies and the remittances of their relatives abroad.

Yet somehow, neither the surrounding states, the African Union,nor the international community as a whole has been able to alterthese developments. In his article on ‘‘The Limits of Influence,’’Princeton N. Lyman explains how such happenings in a country cannot only go on without being stopped, but also how the interna-

tional community is perforce an enabler in Mugabe’s continuingauthoritarian rule. Only Mugabe’s recent excesses of brutality, anduneasiness within his own party, may portend an end to thissituation.

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Darfur, the western region of Sudan, has on the other handcaptured the world’s attention. With at least 200,000 people dead,2.5 million displaced, and continuing harassment and violenceagainst the survivors, Darfur has challenged the world’s commit-ment of ‘‘never again,’’ i.e., to prevent genocide such as happenedin World War II and again in Rwanda in 1984. In this situation,unlike Zimbabwe, the United States and the United Nations havebeen actively involved, seeking to end the conflict that began in2003, to bring an international peace force into the region to protectthe displaced, and to punish those accused of the most egregious

offenses. The Africa Union has been similarly engaged, providingthe only peacekeepers in the region so far, but at levels and equip-ment woefully below what is needed. For all these efforts, thesituation remains nearly as bad today as it has been for the pastfour years. Lee Feinstein has put this conflict into the context of the commitment, made at the UN’s Millennium summit, that itis the responsibility of the international community to protectthose in any nation whose government cannot or will not protect

them from widespread violations of their human rights and threatsto their very survival. Feinstein demonstrates the difficulties thatface nations and institutions in carrying out this commitment inDarfur and provides clear and practical recommendations not only for the immediate crisis in Darfur but for similar situations inthe future.

Eben Kaplan’s article traces the development of the terroristinfiltration in Somalia, and the complexities of how to address it.

For fourteen years, the conditions within Somalia simmered below the surface of American attention. Burned by the debacle of U.Smilitary intervention in 1992–93, when eighteen U.S. servicemen

were killed and some dragged through the streets of Mogadishu,the United States largely stayed out of the many subsequent butlargely ineffective efforts by neighboring African states to bringsome kind of order and centralized government to the country.

America’s interest, especially after 9/11, focused almost exclusively on trying to capture alleged terrorists who had taken refuge there.But in 2006, America’s interests were seriously challenged whenan Islamic movement, similar in its initial strategy to the Taliban


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in Afghanistan, swept to power in Mogadishu, providing for thefirst time in decades order, the protection of commerce, and thepotential for national government. The movement was, however,also determined to impose a strict Islamic system of laws andculture on the country, and was led by some who were on the U.S.and the UN’s terrorist lists. Ethiopia, whose interests were similarly challenged by this movement, swept the new government out of power in a lightning military attack in December 2006. But theresult has been a guerrilla war, pitting insurgents against boththe Ethiopian military and the fledging Somalian government it

protects. An Africa Union peacekeeping force, barely mobilized,faces similar opposition. Mogadishu has thus once again becomethe scene of daily fighting, mortars, and casualties. Hundreds of thousands have fled the capital, creating a major humanitariancrisis. The United States faces a more difficult challenge than everin trying to address the dangers of this failing state.

Somalia brings into relief the larger security threats that existin the Horn of Africa. Professor Terrence Lyons examines these

in his report. The Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict, which he addresses,has the potential to spill over into the larger region of the Hornof Africa. Sudan, Somalia, Uganda and Kenya are all drawn intothe complexities of the Horn’s conflicts. For the United States,there is the special dilemma of dealing with an Ethiopian regimethat is its most valuable ally in the war on terror in this region,but that has stepped back from the promising opening towarddemocracy of two years ago and that faces internal threats of its

own. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Senate has been calling for theBush administration to develop a comprehensive policy towardthe Horn. John Prendergast and Colin Thomas-Jensen offer oneapproach to developing such a policy.


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