From Lagos to Cartagena
 From Lagos to Cartagena President Bill Clinton's trips to Nigeria and Colombia show what role the United States attributes to some key countries in peripheral areas. Washington wants to get Lagos and Bogotá involved in regional stabilisation projects. In the first case, its forces are channelled towards making and enforcing peace. The second case is based on strengthening the government militarily through Plan Colombia. However, these are geopolitical projects that fail to address fundamental economic and social problems. Nigeria is in a weak democratic transition, after four decades of independence and three decades of dictatorships. The current president, Olusegun Obasanjo, was elected in July 1999. This country of 120 million inhabitants suffers serious problems of poverty, lack of infrastructure, corruption and clashes between some of the country's ethnic groups, who number more than 400 (up to 1,000 if sub-groups are included). There is considerable tension between the government and part of the Islamist north, where sharia (Islamic law) has been implemented. Nigeria, with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a key state that could help regional stability. Local communities, human rights organisation and ecologists denounce multinational companies and Nigeria, as a large-scale oil producer, for overexploiting the environment in the Delta zone. Poverty and desperation leads local people to steal crude oil by breaking pipelines, a practice that causes huge and terrible accidents. Oil and external debt Clinton's interest in Africa has internal and external goals. Internally, he is trying to appeal to the black community in the US during an election run-up, and, in particular, to demonstrate the president's concern for the devastating effects of AIDS in Africa. More concretely, Clinton has indicated to Obasanjo that he should increase oil production in order to push down crude prices, thereby countering the demands put forward by Venezuela and some Arab countries that want to raise the price per barrel. Nigeria provides eight percent of US oil consumption. In return, Washington is offering Nigeria $120 million for primary school education and the fight against AIDS. At the same time, he has just unblocked a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that had been waiting for approval. Clinton will lobby for European members of the Paris Club (bilateral creditor countries) to partially cancel or renegotiate Nigeria's loan of some $32 billion. The United States also wants to be able to count on Nigeria as a stable regional ally in situations such as the wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Great Lakes region, Sierra Leone and Liberia. South Africa, a regional leader that is increasingly allied with Washington, shares this interest. Furthermore, Nigeria is a centre for drug distribution within Africa, Latin and North America and Europe. The mixture of corruption and drug trafficking has aroused Washington's fears that the country could become an uncontrollable hub for illegal activities. In order to strengthen the Nigerian state and its regional influence, the United States has begun to train its armed forces. The goal is for Nigeria to continue being involved in military peacekeeping operations in the region, but in a more professional way. For example, its forces have intervened in Liberia and Sierra Leone, leading the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), but have been accused of corruption and human rights violations. Some 300 US Special Forces troops arrived in Nigeria in July, while another contingent went to Ghana. This follows the policy being promoted by the United States and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, of creating an African military corps to intervene in crises. The United States and Europe do not want to risk their forces on peace operations in Africa and other complex scenarios. However, from Sierra Leone to Lebanon, the Congo, Burundi and Kosovo, the presence of peacekeeping forces is more and more necessary. The same day that Clinton arrived in Lagos, the UN secretary-general said that 20,500 troops were needed for Sierra Leone, but only half that number were available. These tasks are attractive to many European states: they offer international status and the chance of good payment for their troops. But soldiers from India, Jordan and other countries are not prepared for missions to control Sierra Leone's criminal guerrillas and even less so with the limited mandates of the Security Council. The United States and Great Britain (in Sierra Leone) are training African armies, but with weak or non-existent democratisation processes run the risk of boosting the military at the expense of civilian power. On the other hand, it could also reactivate the UN's own regional capacities to exercise and then delegate, neutral power. Otherwise, states with military capacity could act as regional powers responding to their own interests or delegated by external powers. Delegated intervention In Latin America, the United States opened discussions with several governments in 1999 on creating an inter-American force to intervene in Colombia in the event that the Bogotá government might fall to the guerrillas. Even though the response was negative, Washington has taken on Colombia as a vanguard territory for the model that includes sending official and private (i.e. security company) advisers, facilitating military and technological assistance for the war and destroying drug crops, and avoiding the risks implied by direct, large-scale deployment of US troops. The goal is to strengthen the Colombia state, while keeping open the possibility of a regional intervention with US backing. There is strong resistance in Latin America to interventionism. However, putting Plan Colombia into practice, with its powerful military content, will have unpredictable consequences. There are debates in Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru about the regional consequences of an increase in refugees and the potential impact that war could have on national boundaries. The United States is now starting to hand over $1.3 billion to help the armed forces combat guerrillas and drug traffickers without asking the Colombian government in exchange for any commitment on human rights. This allows the illegal and arbitrary Use of violence by powerful paramilitaries and security forces to continue and worsen. The US policy towards these countries in crisis is based on demanding cheap oil or crop destruction, opening their markets and anti-corruption measures. In exchange it offers discourses on political stability, economic liberalisation, and more resources for their armed forces. However, this policy lacks measures to relieve poverty, strengthen the democratic state or offer alternatives to the competitive international market that Washington is actively promoting. As a result, the response is based on the use of force, and this in turn generates more violence. From Nigeria to Bogotá, Clinton presents his apparently consistent liberal project, but this fails when confronted in Nigeria by 400 marginalised ethnic groups and by war being perpetuated by several groups in Colombia. Copyright 2000 La Republica |
