Median Ages in Africa + Leader Tenure in Power
There’s nothing like a political crisis to get me blogging again. Following last week’s mass protests in Burkina Faso that resulted in the resignation and exile of Blaise Compaoré, who had ruled the country since 1987, I thought it would be cool to juxtapose the median ages African countries with the tenure in power of Compaoré and the seven other African leaders who have been in power longer than he was. The result is the graphic below:
For many of the youth in these countries, the sitting (or recently deposed) president is the only head of government they have ever lived under.
(Photos courtesy of Wikipedia & Africa graphic courtesy of Global Post)
Museveni plays peacemaker by day and combatant by night in South Sudan
(Originally published in African Arguments on January 31, 2014)
Within days of the outbreak of the violence in mid-December, the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) deployed to South Sudan at the government’s invitation. The UPDF’s mission at the outset was ostensibly to evacuate the over 200,000 stranded Ugandan nationals and to secure strategic installations in Juba. However, several weeks into the operation, President Yoweri Museveni disclosed that the UPDF was also involved in combat operations alongside government forces.
Indeed, the UPDF’s helicopter gunships, heavy artillery, tanks, and approximately 1,600 soldiers have been instrumental in helping the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) retake cities held by anti-government forces affiliated with former Vice President Riek Machar. In a motion passed in the Ugandan parliament to retroactively approve UPDF operations, the UPDF’s raison d’être in South Sudan was couched in terms of protecting the Ugandan expatriate community, ensuring Ugandan national security, and preventing genocide and other atrocities against humanity.
Nevertheless, the manner in which Uganda is securing its interests compromises concurrent efforts on the part of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), of which Uganda is a member, to mediate the crisis.
(Read the rest of the article on the African Arguments website)
South Sudan roundup (+ recommended readings!)
I’m in the process of transitioning from my current assignment back to The Mothership this month, so I haven’t been able to keep up with the events unfolding in South Sudan as much as I’d like. From what I can ascertain, here are some important developments from the past two weeks:
- Since mid-December, 189,000 South Sudanese have become internally displaced persons (IDPs) and 22,600 have become refugees in neighboring Kenya, Ethiopia, and Sudan.
- Negotiations to end the crisis have gotten underway in Addis, and are said to be focusing on a cessation of hostilities and the release of the nine remaining political prisoners held by the government of South Sudan for their complicity in the alleged coup attempt in December.
- South Sudanese civil society organizations marched for peace in Juba this week, demanding that warring parties end the conflict.
- In a complete surprise (sarcasm) to anyone who watches Central Africa and the Horn, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni (M7) sent the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) to “help evacuate Ugandan nationals” in late December. M7 subsequently declared that East African nations would move in to defeat Riek Machar if he did not accept the government of South Sudan’s ceasefire offer. Back in 2012 when Museveni likewise threatened to intervene in a hypothetical large-scale conflict between Sudan and South Sudan, I wrote a post explaining M7’s motivations, and I think many of these motivations are still valid today. In any event, M7 is now being asked by the Ugandan parliament why he failed to secure parliamentary approval before deploying the UPDF to South Sudan.
- Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir visited Juba earlier this week. Although initial reports stated that Sudan and South Sudan had agreed to a joint military force to protect South Sudan’s oilfields, it now appears that Sudan is sending 900 technicians to help run the oilfields – positions that were likely vacated by the evacuation of foreign oil workers in December. For additional insight on Sudan’s equities in the current crisis in South Sudan, I recommend reading posts by Magdi el Gizouli and Aly Verjee. Many of us have been wondering what role Sudan might play in the crisis given the ruling regime’s reliance on oil transport fees from the export of South Sudan’s oil on one hand, and its support for anti-SPLA armed groups from the mid-1980s until quite recently, on the other hand.
- Meanwhile, as @SamRosmarin aptly noted, SPLM-North, which has been fighting the government of Sudan in Blue Nile state and the Nuba Mountains since 2011, has been oddly quiet during all of this. The government of South Sudan had been supporting its civil war-era brothers-in-arms and the government of Sudan had been supporting various armed groups in South Sudan – but I’m not yet sure where SPLM-North is going to come into play in the current crisis, given Khartoum’s current support of the government in Juba.
- David Yau Yau, who had been leading a rebellion in Jonglei state since 2010 (with an amnesty period between June 2011 and April 2012), may have agreed to a ceasefire with the government of South Sudan. (Shameless Self Promotion: Read more about the government’s amnesty and integration approach to armed groups.) When instability broke out in Jonglei state in mid-December, the government of South Sudan was quick to extend Yau Yau a new offer of amnesty, possibly because it feared he would link up with the forces of serial SPLA defector Peter Gadet. This is, of course, not to assume that such an alliance would have been inevitable due to a history of tensions between the Murle (Yau Yau’s ethnic group) and the Nuer (Gadet’s ethnic group) and the fact that Gadet had been countering Yau Yau’s rebellion as part of his SPLA command until his defection in December.
- Spurred into action by the events of December 2013, a civil society initiative, Fresh Start South Sudan, came out with its Statement of Purpose. The initiative will officially launch in March 2014, and in the mean time, you can join here.
Here’s a few readings that have come highly recommended to me over the past few days. Full disclosure: since I haven’t yet gotten through all of these, consider this more of a “What I’m Reading” List:
- Breakdown in South Sudan by Alex de Waal and Abdul Mohammed
- South Sudan and the Prospects for Peace Amidst Violent Political Wrangling by Jok Madut Jok
- The Way Forward in South Sudan by Mahmood Mamdani
- The Crisis in South Sudan by Lauren Ploch Blanchard
- How the U.S. Triumph in South Sudan Came Undone by Colum Lynch
- No, the West Should Not Have Governed South Sudan by Ken Opalo
- African Union Missing in Action in Conflicts from Mali to South Sudan by Martin Plaut
- Crisis and Opportunity in South Sudan by Ambassador Princeton Lyman, Jon Temin, and Susan Stigant
- Comprendre la guerre suicidaire au Soudan du Sud (interview w/ Gerard Prunier, si vous lisez français)
Man, I have A LOT of reading to get done!
Playing chicken with the UN, Uganda threatens to withdraw from peacekeeping operations
You could argue that the President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, seeks to replace Muammar Qadhafi as the alpha male of Africa and Meles Zenawi as the pan-African mediator. But those aspirations may have to be put on hold.
In the UN Group of Experts (UN GoE) report that was leaked last month, Uganda and Rwanda were accused of supporting M23, an armed group that has been operating in the eastern Congo since the spring. Although Rwanda’s reputation as the donor darling and example of Singaporean-style economic development has been damaged, it unlike its neighbor, lacks the regional security clout and leverage that Uganda holds.
On Thursday night, Uganda’s Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi announced to the country’s parliament that the Ugandan People’s Defence Force (UPDF) would be withdrawing from regional peacekeeping operations to protect the country’s western border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Accusing Western powers of failing to recognize Uganda’s contribution of peace in the region, Mbabazi asked, “Why should we continue involving Uganda where the only reward we get is malignment? Why should the children of Ugandans die and we get malignment as a reward? Why should we invite retaliation by the al-Shabaab by standing with the people of Somalia, only to get malignment by the UN system?” This announcement was the other shoe to drop, following last month’s statements by Uganda’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs Okello Oryem that the accusations leveled in the report were “rubbish and absurd,” and that the country was “reassessing all its peacekeeping engagements and operations in the region.” The Ugandan government has now sent an envoy to UN Headquarters to inform them of its ‘irreversible’ decision.
As of late September, Uganda only had 47 personnel assigned to UN peacekeeping operations in Darfur, Côte d’Ivoire, South Sudan, Liberia, and East Timor. Therefore, the brunt of Uganda’s threats would fall upon the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), to which the UPDF contributes approximately 6,500 troops (about a third of AMISOM’s authorized force strength of 17,731). The UPDF also provides the force commander – a position that has been held by a Ugandan since the mission began in 2007. To a lesser extent, these threats could also affect Uganda’s contribution of at least 2,000 troops to the African Union-initiated Regional Task Force to hunt down the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the Central African Republic and DRC.
Aside from its regional military footprint, Uganda has been chairing the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) effort to facilitate a dialogue with the M23 rebels and, if necessary, plan a multinational military intervention in the eastern Congo. The accusations leveled in the UN GoE report certainly hurt Uganda’s credibility as a mediator in this process, but also threaten Museveni’s legacy as the man who brought an element of stability to Somalia in what many believed to be a suicide mission, when other nations refused to commit troops. (By the way, details for an ICGLR intervention force are still being worked out, and I believe a UN mandate would help facilitate financial and logistical support. Without that kind of support, an intervention would be highly unlikely.)
In reality, however, I doubt that Uganda can pull all of its troops out of peacekeeping operations. Quite simply put, it’s going to cost too much. Museveni’s survival is, in part, contingent on maintaining a large military deployed outside the country’s borders in case he needs them for internal security. While 8,000+ UPDF are deployed in support of AU or UN peacekeeping operations, Museveni doesn’t have to worry about paying them. However, if he brings them home, he’ll need to find a way to keep them occupied – and paid – so they stay out of trouble. Unless there’s a war in Uganda (unlikely) to rally the troops around him, he needs to keep them deployed on someone else’s dime. In addition, one of the reasons Uganda is so important for regional security is due to its involvement in peacekeeping operations. If you take that away, you also lose the justification for allocating the same level of security assistance from international partners to train and equip the UPDF in the future. This is income that Museveni would now have to find a way to make up for.
So to be clear, I don’t expect Uganda’s threats to come to anything. It’s just putting the UN and the West on notice to back the (insert expletive here) off over allegations of providing support to M23.
In possibly unrelated news, the United States’ Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman visited Uganda to discuss advancing regional security and to extend U.S. appreciation for Uganda’s peacekeeping efforts. This was the same day the PM made the announcement to withdraw from peacekeeping operations. #Awkward.
Key questions for African-initiated intervention force for eastern DRC
On August 7th and 8th, International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) heads of state met to discuss the deployment of an international force to fight the M23 rebel movement that has been active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) North Kivu region since April of this year. While they did not end up reaching a consensus on an intervention force, I still thought I’d attempt to think through the kind of questions that would need to be answered to establish such a force.
- What would the mission be? Like the current discussions the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is having about a regional intervention force for Mali, it will be essential for regional stakeholders to articulate what their objectives are and what their concept of operations might be in order to attain said objectives. Will they be focusing on fighting M23, or will they also be addressing instability caused by the Raia Mutomboki? Would this force attempt to address the underlying causes of the ongoing conflict in North Kivu, which could be a long-term commitment that would surpass a purely military intervention? Would this force focus on protecting civilians while allowing the Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC in French) to deal with rebel groups? Starting to answer these types of mission-oriented questions would be a prerequisite for obtaining African Union (AU) and United Nations (UN) mandates, which could facilitate international support – which gets to my next question.
- Who would pay for this deployment?Troop-contributing countries (I’ll get to who they might be in a minute) would need to determine whether they can afford to pay the salaries of the units they would deploy, the use of (or acquisition of) contingent-owned equipment during the deployment, the transport of military assets to the eastern Congo, and the maintenance of these assets in the field. (I’m sure I forgot something, but you get the picture.) If troop-contributing countries cannot foot the bill, then the AU, UN, European Union (EU), United States would need to be willing and capable of providing financial assistance – either on a bilateral basis or on a multilateral basis – which gets to my next question.
- What framework would be used for an intervention force? The UN already has just under 20,000 military and police personnel as part of the UN Organization and Stabilization Mission in the DRC(MONUSCO), but it is possible that the UN (and the AU for that matter) are overtasked, both globally and in the DRC itself. Therefore, we might be looking at a sub-regional organization taking the lead akin to what ECOWAS is attempting to do in Mali. Unlike the situation in Mali, however, the DRC is not a member of a sub-regional organization that has a functional security component with a precedent for regional military intervention. The DRC is a member of both the Economic Community of Central African States (CEEAC in French) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and these sub-regional organizations are supposed to have regional brigades that would fall under the African Standby Force (ASF). However, I don’t know whether the SADC Standby Force Brigade (SADCBRIG) or its CEEAC equivalent, the Central African Multinational Force (FOMAC in French), would be willing and capable of leading an intervention force. Therefore, if there is no sub-regional organization that has an established military component is able to take the lead, then how would this intervention force be comprised?
- Who would the players be? Since we don’t know whether a sub-regional organization or a multilateral coalition of countries would intervene in the DRC, it’s difficult to ascertain which countries could be part of this notional force. But since the ICGLR is talking about such a force, we’ll start with their members: Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Republic of the Congo, the DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan (not sure if South Sudan is a member), Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. If I were compiling an intervention dream team from these members, I would want Angola, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda on my team. Why these and not the others? Off the top of my head, these countries have reasonably professional militaries with proven warfighting capabilities, are active in AU and UN peacekeeping operations (with the exception of Angola), and have countries stable enough that deploying soldiers abroad would probably not inhibit their armed forces from addressing other national security threats. That said, many of these countries have baggage in the DRC as a result of their involvement in the 1998-2003 civil war (Angola, Rwanda, and Uganda), or more recently, alleged support for M23 (ahem…Rwanda). Also, would these countries even be interested in intervening? I would say Rwanda would because of the threat it perceives from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Angola’s participation would depend on the extent to which its security is affected by events on the opposite side of the Congo, as well as the extent to which the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA in Portuguese) feels more comfortable keeping the military at home in case there is instability surrounding this month’s elections or to contain additional protests by civil war veterans. And while I don’t think Kenya has baggage in the DRC, I doubt that instability in North Kivu is compelling enough to deploy the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) there when their focus is really on Somalia. Thus, the militaries that might be the most capable of fighting M23 in North Kivu may either fail to be perceived as a neutral force or their countries lack a compelling reason to get involved. As a result, an intervention force might have to look further afield to get troop contributors or make do with less capable forces.
So I guess the bottom line is that I don’t think an intervention force will come to fruition for the eastern Congo due to some of the issues I’ve raised above.
Lesley on Africa 
You must be logged in to post a comment.