Editor's Foreword

Chapter Six
Sub-Saharan Africa
The strategic importance of sub-Saharan Africa is
rising gradually. Its oil and gas reserves, though
insufficient to dislodge broad dependence on Middle
East supplies, are substantial enough to warrant
global concern about potential sources of their insecurity
or inaccessibility, which include the activities
of militia groups like the Movement for the
Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) in Nigeria,
internal political instability in key oil-producing
countries and competing major-power customers.
These include, in particular, the United States and
China; the latter’s geostrategic priorities are exemplified
by its increasingly close bilateral security and
economic relationship with Angola (sub-Saharan
Africa’s second-largest oil producer after Nigeria,
which sells 44% of its exported oil to the United
States). China is now sub-Saharan Africa’s third
largest trading partner after the United States and
the EU, and gaining. Beijing also has a growing
foreign-assistance programme on the continent (see
Defence Economics, p. 289 and the IISS Adelphi book
China’s African Challenges). Meanwhile, Somalia is
becoming an increasingly popular destination for
aspiring jihadists in search of training, with similar
fears expressed for Yemen and the Maghreb.
Despite the ambitious agenda of the African
Union (AU) and its active efforts to enhance its diplomatic
and military capabilities, African nations still
lack the capacity to deal with many of the difficult
and substantial political and security challenges their
continent faces, although there are encouraging signs
on the structural level, such as the establishment
of the African Standby Force (ASF). The continent
is host to half of the United Nations’ global peacekeeping
operations. One promising development,
however, has been heightened cross-border military
cooperation. The Democratic Republic of the Congo
(DRC) restored full diplomatic ties with Rwanda and
Uganda in the summer of 2009; their rapprochement
had already facilitated Rwanda’s capture of renegade
militia leader Laurent Nkunda in January 2009.
Also, with help from the Central African Republic
(CAR), Ugandan forces pursued Lord’s Resistance
Army (LRA) rebels into Congolese and CAR territory
leading to their effective expulsion from northern
Uganda. Then, from December 2008 to March 2009,
Congolese, south Sudanese and Ugandan forces
pressed an offensive against the LRA. While the LRA
is a diminished force, starting in May 2009 it set about
raiding villages in northeast Congo, southern Sudan
and the CAR, burning property, taking hostages, and
stealing crops and livestock.
Sudan
The January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement
(CPA) has become increasingly fragile. As detailed
in The Military Balance 2009, pp. 277–8, the Sudan
People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M)
withdrew from the agreement in October 2007,
though the gravest threat to the CPA arose a month
later when clashes began in the disputed oil-rich
Abyei region. 50,000 people were displaced by May
2008, and hundreds were killed, with UN Mission
in Sudan (UNMIS) forces unable to protect civilians
against a 16,000-strong force of Khartoum-backed
militias.
In July 2009, after a judgement by the Permanent
Court of Arbitration in The Hague, the North was
awarded the Bamboo and Heglig oilfields, the
railway town of Meiram and a strip of grazing
land, while the South was allowed to retain the
high-production Diffra oilfield and more grazing
area than the North preferred. The ruling brings
greater legal certainty and an ostensibly equitable
compromise, but tension could still arise over: the
SPLA/M’s loss of the Heglig, Bamboo and other
oilfields (especially given that the Diffra field’s
output is falling); the government’s loss of grazing
areas; the northern Misseriya nomads’ protests over
a possible restriction of grazing rights; and the theoretical
bar on those living near Meiram from voting
in the referendum on independence in 2011. The
only mandated security forces in Abyei are Joint
Integrated Units (JIUs) composed of government
and SPLA/M military forces, and Joint Integrated
Police Units. But in July 2009 the UN Secretary-
General’s Special Representative for Sudan, Ashraf
Sub-Saharan
Africa