ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Espionage, Intelligence, and Security Volume ...

Africa, Modern U.S. Security Policy and InterventionsChildren follow a United States soldier patrolling the Green Line, a heavily contested area in the Somali civil war of the 1980s, during Operation Restore Hope in1992. ©PETER TURNLEY/CORBIS.1980s and criminal activities in Nigeria during the twentyfirstcentury.BackgroundAfter the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania,the United States conducted bombing raids over bothAfghanistan and Sudan, attempting to neutralize Osamabin Laden and his al Qaeda terror network. The fact thatthe same terrorist group later caused the 2001 bombingsin New York City and Washington, D.C., serves to illustratethe fact that events in Africa are not removed from impactingAmerican security and policy. As of July, 2003, the U.S.made a limited troop commitment to secure stability inLiberia and considered a more extensive involvement.In choosing their policy priorities for Africa, Americanleaders managed a fine line between appearinginterventionist or imperialist on the one hand, and insensitiveto Africans’ misery on the other. Generally, U.S. policyin Africa has been guided by assessments of the strategicimportance of a given nation, its existing alignment ornon-alignment with U.S. interests, and the stability of itsgovernment.With the exception of Liberia and Ethiopia, everynation in Africa—more than 50 in all—was at one time aEuropean colony. This is true even in North Africa, whosepeople are linguistically and culturally distinct from theirneighbors to the south. At the beginning of the twentiethcentury, France held much of west and central Africa;Britain southern and eastern Africa, as well as parts ofWest Africa; Belgium what is now the Congo, and Portugala few notable colonies, among them Angola andMozambique. Germany and Italy, latecomers to Africancolonialism, controlled some of the sites less rich in naturalresources.In the period between 1945 and 1975, virtually everynation in Africa gained independence, with thePortuguese—first Europeans to colonize in Africa—becoming the last to relinquish colonies. High hopes attendedindependence, but with few exceptions (a notableone being Botswana), the history of modern Africa hasbeen an unrelieved tale of cruelty, corruption, mismanagement,and rampant disease and poverty. Funds givento help the African people have often ended up in theSwiss bank accounts of dictators, and money intended tobuild schools and feed children has instead been used tofund civil wars.6 Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security