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Volume 30 2003 Issue 96 Review of African Political Economy No.96:181-186 © ROAPE Publications Ltd., 2003 ISSN 0305-6244 War & the Forgotten Continent Rita Abrahamsen & Ray Bush As US and UK military forces invade Iraq the death of innocents in the Middle East will be added to those dying from AIDS, famine and preventable illness in Africa. The waging of war at any time, when not sanctioned by international law and the victims pose no threat to neighbours or invaders, is monstrous. It is even more so as US and UK resources are diverted towards the aims of death and destruction when millions in Africa are starving to death. In Iraq itself, the British Overseas Aid Group (Oxfam, Cafod, Christian Aid, Action Aid and Save the Children) warns of the humanitarian consequences of war in a country where more than 16 million are entirely dependent upon food aid. There has been little concern for the lives of those to be affected by military conflict as preparation to relieve the humanitarian disaster has taken second place to the creation of that disaster. The US will spend $12.5 billion a month on the war although it has offered $65 million to provide help with immediate humanitarian assistance. And when it is time for the reconstruction of Iraq, the US will offer only $50 million of a possible $1.5 billion to NGOs and the UN for the process – the rest goes to US companies, including those close to White House officials (The Guardian, 18 March 2003). Meanwhile in Africa 40 million need famine and food relief. More than 14 million of these are in Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea, another 15 million in southern Africa, while food relief is also urgently needed in parts of West and Central Africa. The crisis is the result of a complex set of factors, including a combination of drought, economic marginalisation and international and national food policies, which continue to harm Africa’s peasants and their ability to thrive. In this situation, the military aggression against Iraq and the missionary zeal of the Bush/Blair axis to promote their military solutions to regional conflicts pose enormous concerns for Africa. While Saddam Hussein’s policies have long been indefensible and his regime bestial, the launch of a military campaign to oust him rather than a tight inspection programme to ensure the non proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, breaches international law and promotes US imperialist aggression. The UN charter has been flagrantly abused in the riding roughshod over international anti-war opinion. The west can always summon, it seems, money and materiel to defend the ascendant US oil and military conglomerates encapsulated in the Bush/Cheney White House, but it will not create conditions to stop mass death through starvation. In March this year the UN accused the international community of being so distracted by the desire to silence Saddam that not a penny had been received in response to an urgent appeal for funds to respond to famine threatening 1 million in the Central African Republic. Torn by a war that has displaced more than 150,000 people, the UN World Food Programme launched an appeal in January 2003 for $6.1 million but by mid-March, just before General Bozize seized power and suspended parliament, had not received anything. A similar picture emerges from elsewhere. As 3.3 million Eritreans are confronted by famine, the UN has asked the industrialised world for $163 million only to receive $4 182 Review of African Political Economy million. Burundi has received 3 per cent of the amount requested by the UN; Liberia 1.2 per cent; Sierra Leone 1 per cent; Guinea 0.4 per cent and Somalia, Sudan and DRC each less than 6 per cent of funds requested by the UN to avert humanitarian disaster (The Guardian, 18 March 2003). In short meteorological drought seems to be accompanied by the drying up of donor funds for famine relief. African leaders have been wavering in their opposition to the war. Nelson Mandela certainly lent his considerable moral authority against conflict, and President Mbeki recently noted that war is ‘not in the best interests of the peoples of Africa’. Not the least this is because higher oil prices will undermine any possible economic recovery for non oil producers and erase any progress in debt relief – it would certainly undo any of the benefits from the 2002 deal with the industrial north to increase aid to Africa. So much for the improvement in economic relations between the leading industrial powers and Africa promised by the rhetoric of NEPAD. A presidential spokesman for Mbeki noted in January 2003 that war ‘would put paid to all the high hopes raised by … NEPAD … and therefore ensure that the people of Africa would continue to confront the reality of even further impoverishment’. Higher oil prices and falling aid budgets puts African development off the agenda. If Guinea, Angola and Cameroon did resist US bribery to sway them to support military action in the Security Council, it is to their credit. If it was simply that the US did not offer enough, fast enough and in cash rather than US commodities, then it will be to their shame. Elsewhere there certainly seems to have been a decay of principle. Djibouti it seems has not only its French garrison, but has also been hosting US troops. Another regional actor keen to replace Turkey as a safe haven from which to launch US attacks on the Middle East has been Eritrea. No longer, if ever, a bulwark against the onslaught of US adventure in the Horn, it has been visited by the Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and four times since September 11, 2001 by US Military Commander General Franks. Eritrea has also sent its own military commanders to Washington and employed Washington Lobbying firm Greenberg Traurig LLP (at an estimated $50,000 a month) to stress the importance of Eritrea’s geo-strategic position for US aggression. In the words of the lobbyists, ‘Eritrea provides the United States with a strategic advantage and hospitable atmosphere that cannot be matched in the region’ (Washington Post, 14 December 2002). On the surface, one counter to the gloom arising from declining western concern for Africa and the continents famine, and right on cue with his moral concern of Africa’s suffering, has been Gordon Brown. In February 2003 the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer lamented the struggle for survival of Africa’s 14 million (sic) facing famine. He noted limited progress on reaching the millennium poverty reduction goals and with Clare Short, the UK Secretary of State for International Development, launched yet another new initiative to raise cash to resolve injustice in Africa. It is very simple. In return for African countries promoting anti-corruption measures and stable conditions for equitable and sustainable economic growth, the developed world will raise aid from $50 billion to $100 billion a year – this latter figure, it seems, is the sum necessary to meet the millennium development goals. Halving poverty means doubling aid. The money is to be disbursed through existing bilateral and multilateral mechanisms and the commitment from rich countries is intended not to add to poor countries debt burden. Most assistance, although the figure was unspecified, will be in the form of grants. The intention is that the west’s insistence on ‘tough conditionality’ will prevent the repeat of previous excesses, namely cash lining the pockets of corrupt elites rather than feeding the hungry (even when the corrupt elites are the allies of the west). Aid should not, moreover, be seen as Editorial: War & the Forgotten Continent 183 recompense for past injuries but ‘investment in a shared future’. There is mutuality then in the proposed new initiative. The poorest and most populous continent represent the world’s next engine of economic growth – future consumers and producers with enormous potential purchasing power essential to the long term growth of industry and trade (The Guardian, 13 February 2003). Brown concluded that ‘Every bit as much as the poorest, we stand to gain in a world more united, more just and more prosperous – a world that grows together, rather than apart’. Brown’s position might be well-meaning, but like so much of New Labour’s policy towards Africa it is shot through with contradictions. First, while Brown pleads for greater international assistance to combating poverty in Africa, he simultaneously, and with apparent ease, finds money to defend the Bush/Blair war agenda. The Chancellor has set aside £3 billion for the military action in Iraq (www.news.bbc.co.uk, 27 March 2003). By comparison, the annual bilateral aid programme for Africa was £528 million in 2001/02 is set to reach £1 billion by 2005/06. After six years in government, New Labour’s development budget still only accounts for 0.33 per cent of GNP and will reach 0.4 per cent by 2005-06, a long way off the UN target of 0.7 per cent of national income (all figures from www.dfid.gov.uk and www.fco.gov.uk). Not only do the resources devoted to the war on Iraq outstrip those devoted to Africa’s development, but as discussed above, it will also harm the prospects for growth on the African continent. Second, Brown’s recent call for more aid to Africa remains steeped in the economic liberalism that has caused so much suffering on the continent in the last decades. Thus far, globalisation has not worked for the poor, and however many times the New Labour government repeats this mantra, it is unlikely to do so.
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