Foreign Military Forces: The African Conundrum
The more consequential question, therefore, is what kind of players will remain engaged in or disengaged from.
To the extent that African ownership is emphasized it has always been accompanied by the presence of foreign military bases in the continent. I am exaggerating a little; but a surprising new trend among foreign security stakeholders and policymakers is the willingness to combine foreign military intervention with partnership. It is difficult to see what is genuinely African solutions to African problems, harder still to understand the dominance of external military operations in major conflict hot spots. International ‘partners’ cannot expect African ownership to blossom while escalating external military intervention. The G5 Sahel is claimed to be an ‘African solution’, which is only partly true. In reality, it is first a Franco-African affair, but one that involves and enjoys the sustenance of a myriad of external actors, the EU, Gulf and the US to various extent and involvement. This is reflection of all that’s wrong with U.S. and French efforts in the Sahel, which focus on military matters and pay considerably less attention to anything else.
If the West wishes to fight against jihadist groups, it should strive for bilateral cooperation not to replace but complement the leadership of the African Union and regional bodies. Unresponsive and reckless intervention of foreign players is fast escalating the crisis in Libya. The fact that external actors operate as both proxies and independent players makes it hard to establish accountability for violence or deter it in the first place. Qatar has emerged the most important player in Somalia eclipsing all its rivals in the Gulf including Turkey. It is now in full control of the Federal Government in Mogadishu. Another key development which started months back is an expansion in US airstrikes in Somalia, a progressive escalation authorized by President Trump. No wonder, the US military apparently has more operations going on in Africa than it does in the Middle East. And while America is making war and military engagement morphs into a proxy for foreign policy run by the Pentagon, Africa’s regional security organizations keep on demobilized.
Military intervention in the Sahel was intended to ensure regional ownership, incorporate development’ and ‘holistic approaches’ into its logic only to the extent that it normalizes and legitimizes the use of force. And the distinctive feature of foreign military constellation and counter-insurgency politics, or counter-insurgency governance, is perpetual war and intervention. This has complicated everything including the overarching framework of the African Union on Security Sector Reform/SSR/ which did not only sought to professionalize and democratize African security institutions but also serve as a watchdog to foreign security engagements in the continent. Similarly, it is vital that regional organizations intervene in the Cameroon crisis immediately in order to deter the possibility of the conflict becoming internationalized as some reports suggest. Ensuring African primacy should be one of the African Union’s primary concerns in order to deter the possibilities of foreign influence, which would have serious consequences for the entire region.
With such ongoing risks, the debate about the extent to which foreign military presence should be tolerated is the most critical issue. How foreign players should balance their engagement, distance themselves from the region and reduce their military footprint is important but somewhat beside the point. The more consequential question, therefore, is what kind of players will remain engaged in or disengaged from. A polarized continent with intersecting militarization, where external leadership invariably take on broader significance, will prove improvident and debilitating.
While external commitment to African affairs has provided global attention and secured financial contributions to peace keeping operations, its engagement has created bandwidth issues for regional actors and African interlocutors who have requested balanced support but contracted lop-sided intervention. This has not only elevated external stakeholders but also disrupted the capacity and ownership of African leadership. The snowballing of foreign occupation of several African regions has been increasing arrogant at best and counterproductive at worst.
The image of an African security policy establishment as unified and disciplined instrument is more than an academic interest. Africa’s underwhelming response is also the product of the narrow and disintegrating approach of the elite, who generally discount the pace of foreign intervention. Africa must not only manage its strategic vulnerability in the shadow of foreign intervention and protect its strategic interests. It should also secure the safest path for tactical advantages, particularly large scale military operations. However, this will not be possible without a parallel transformation on the political landscape. At heart, this means the gathering need to establish African consensus on what is expected from external military presence and overseeing its operations.
