Eritrea: A Puzzlement On Purpose

Eritrea can pretty much be summed up by the fact that even North Korea has more of a free press than they do. If it wasn't so completely dirt poor it would be declared a rogue nation by the State Department and we'd isolate it diplomatically. They are about as closed a society as you can get, without a single foreign journalist in the entire country. Not one. It seems to me that they're so bats**t crazy they're likely to start sponsoring terrorism just for the notoriety. I mean, they fight for independence from Ethiopia for years and years, get their independence, and then instead of working with their now landlocked southern neighbor they get all spiteful and close off all Ethiopia's access to the sea. I'm sure they were sitting back and thinking, "We showed them!" but then a funny thing happened. Little Djibouti raised a hand and said, "We'll be your port of entry." Now Ethiopia and Djibouti are relatively prosperous and Eritrea is poorer and poorer. Smooth move, guys.

Kenya: We Know What We're Doing. Wait, Was That a Gunshot?

All observable evidence shows that Kenya has their crap in one seabag. They have a relatively stable economy, decent education, and they can generally feed themselves. This was the common perception amongst the world powers for much of the last decade or so. Then came the elections of 2007 where the ruling party was way behind in the vote count before they seemed to mysteriously discover more ballots to count and that put them over the top. Riots, explosions, and murder in the streets followed. A thousand dead Kenyans later the rest of the world paused from their morning coffee with a seriously upturned eyebrow.

"Great," thought the world. "We thought we had that one handled. It's hard enough helping Africa without the success stories sliding backward."

Of course, what the election violence pointed out was that the rest of the world really doesn't understand Africa as well as they think they do. So now Kenya has held a national vote on a new constitution and things are moving along nicely. Since the U.S. really needs them as a regional partner in both the War on Terror and our anti-piracy operations, hopefully Kenya will continue to hold it together and move into the promising future that everyone expects of them.

Ethiopia: How Ya Like Me Now?

It's an odd thing, especially for people my age who grew up in the 80's watching Live Aid on MTV, to have Ethiopia as the local model of 'not too bad.' The electoral shenanigans there don't really seem that much worse than Cook County, Illinois. The general economy seems better than Detroit's, which really ain't saying much but you get my drift. Also they're only down to the occasional drought, which makes them a bit like central California. When you look at the positives-- host country for the African Union, plenty of water and arable land, reasonable lack of genocide and ethno-religious warfare-- you could almost say it looks kinda like the Garden of Eden. (Of course if you did say that, you'd probably spark a healthy round of ethno-religious warfare.) It seems to me that their biggest problem is an ornery neighbor to the north and a peasantry twisting to the whims of governmental cronyism. Not all that different from Philadelphia when you think about it.

Uganda: Punching Above Their Weight

Interesting things happen when bombs explode. Not only do you have general carnage but you also tend to register some altered motivations. Back in July the entire world, give or take a few billion, was watching the FIFA World Cup. So were a few hundred Ugandan Joe Sixpacks when bombs went off in their pubs and killed 76 of them. Then your not-so-friendly neighborhood terrorist group Al Shabaab claims responsibility and things get a little more dicey in East Africa. I mentioned before what a walking disaster Somalia is. That's mainly because of Al Shabaab.

So then you get Uganda ramping up the rhetoric as well as offering more 'peacekeeping troops' to 'assist with stability operations' within Somalia. Not only does 'stability operations' sound so much nicer than 'bloodthirsty revenge', it's also more likely to get you special funding from the United States. Now while the U.S. is plenty willing to give money and guns to whoever lines up to fight terrorists, Uganda has a bit of an image problem. Sure, they go after the gang of murdering thugs known as the Lord's Resistance Army and they've offered their courts for trying captured pirates (Who are mostly Somali. Hmmmm...), but when you've got a leader with a less-than-stellar human rights record and who likes to wipe out opposition parties and ignore his own constitution so he can run for office again and again, getting assistance from Uncle Sam is difficult at best.

In fact, in my completely unofficial and nowhere near expert opinion, Uganda, small as they are, encapsulates most of the problems with U.S. policy towards African states. (Ed. Note: I was going to call this post The Mouse That Roared but decided to be polite.) We want terrorists to die (sorry, 'come to justice') but we know we need to operate through other nations because we just can't be everywhere at once. We look around the world chess board and the only people we see with the capacity to kill bad guys are not all that good themselves. That, as we say in the English speaking world, is a bit of a pickle.

Sudan: Train Wreck's A'Coming, Let's Make Popcorn

I've been paying a lot of attention to the international and local news agencies reporting on East Africa. The situation in Sudan is puzzling and would be laughable if it wasn't so unavoidably tragic. Sudan has been wracked with civil war for decades, mostly between the north (where the national government is) and the south. They've got a peace agreement that calls for a vote on southern secession and that vote is scheduled for Jan 9th, 2011. Not even Vegas bookmakers are taking bets against the vote going in favor of secession. The south has all the oil. The north has all the guns. The south is a combination of animist religions and Christianity. The north is predominantly Muslim. The south is ready to secede even if there's no vote. The north is dragging its feet in preparing for the vote.

This is not going to end well. It's a train wreck that everyone can see coming down the track.

Throw into this mix a province that straddles the north-south line having its own vote over which side to join, the Darfur region of west Sudan where genocide has become so regular its practically written on everyone's daily 'to do' list, and that Sudan's ruling head of state has been indicted by the ICC for crimes against humanity or some such. Folks, this recipe for disaster is coming out of the oven whether we're ready for it or not and its not going to be a pretty mixed metaphor. Sure would be nice if someone could, I don't know, do something about it.

Somalia: Let's Do the Time Warp Again

I know people who've been to Somalia. I know people who've fired several rounds into a darkened cityscape in an attempt to force their way out of an ambush. I know people who watched as warlords waited for U.S. forces to fly away after delivering relief supplies so they could go in, shoot the starving people, and steal the food for themselves. Somalia was a geographic fiction back in the early 90's and it is pretty much the same now; only with international terrorists and pirates competing for space against the average run of the mill thuglord.

There's a reason CJTF-HOA doesn't engage in cooperative military operations within Somalia: There is no functional state to deal with. The 'Transitional Federal Government' measures their control over the the country by single digits of city blocks. Most of the northern parts of the country are made up of the soon-to-be-officially-recognized regions called Somaliland and Puntland. In the casual observations of this Marine, Somalia has about six more months before it completely falls apart. (And I realize that the word 'completely' suggests that it has far to fall. It doesn't.)

What makes this time different from the 90's is that there is a relatively strong desire amongst the rest of East Africa to see that some kind of stability rules the place. The African Union has 'peacekeeping' troops there and is trying to get UN support for thousands more. The U.S. has watched Black Hawk Down enough times to realize that another round of American forces in Mogudishu is a very bad idea. Also, there is a general movement among the U.S. government to let African problems be solved by Africans. We'll just have to see how long that sentiment can withstand the inevitable onslaught of internet video showing the misery and starvation that is currently prevalent but not currently seen.