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Time for Africa to Take Charge of Its Security?

By Peter P. Strzok, Special to The Pilot Dec 8, 2015

[ Note: The author, who lives in Pinehurst, is president of the Minnesota-based Agency to Facilitate the Growth of Rural Organizations (AFGRO). ]

I was an invited guest at the second Dakar Forum for Peace and Security for Africa, held Nov. 9-10 at Dakar, Senegal. Some 800 attended.

Under the patronage of the president of Senegal, Macky Sall, the conference drew experts on African security from all over the world, dominated by Africans and Europeans, who regard an unstable and weak Africa as directly threatening the stability of the European Union.

There is an uneven legacy of colonial Europe in Africa associated with granting independence to most African nations in the 1960s. The EU remains Africa’s largest donor for development; it is also Africa’s largest external market.

Increasingly confronted with multiple threats by terrorists organizations that are thriving in African territories, Europe and nations worldwide see the urgent need to expand help to Africa to strengthen its security capacities.

This concern seemed validated by the massacres in Paris and Bamako, Mali, shortly after the Dakar Forum. Similar atrocities occur on an almost daily basis, by Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region — by ISIS, expanding its power in Libya and Tunisia; attacks on U.N. peacekeeeping forces in Northern Mali; and maritime kidnappings on trade routes adjacent to Africa.

There are other considerations for a stable Africa.

There is more unused arable land in Africa than the rest of the world combined. The population of the world today is about 7 billion; by 2100, it will be 10.1 billion. Africa’s share of that population today is 1 billion.

Combined with Asia’s population, those two continents will represent, in 2100, 80 percent of the world's population.

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) indicates that sufficient food production capacity to meet these population increases is not infeasible, with the assumption that unused arable land (with water) can be exploited under positive conditions. Absent this, there is the spectre of millions of destitute Africans and Asians fleeing to other continents/countries. This is the challenge.

What are my takeaways from the second Dakar Forum?

First, the president of Senegal spoke of the need to promote a “tolerant Islam” in Africa. He asked assistance of Arab countries with schools of Islam, to assist Africans to better understand the attraction of jihadists and corrective responses. He stressed the need to professionalize African Union’s military- ready forces, in training, equipment and in sharing intelligence on jihadists.

Many experts spoke of the issues of porous borders, which, in this huge continent with vast open areas, present formidable problems to monitor and/or interdict human movements. This requires developing trust with local populations, not an easy task given that these diverse ethnic groups typically treat state authorities with distrust.

As to the U.S. roles: The deputy commander of USAFRICOM, Vice Admiral Franken, told a Reuters reporter that regional efforts against Boko Haram “could lead to a significant degradation of its activities within six months.”

It is also true that country-specific U.S. assessments, which in the past were provided by staff working and traveling throughout host countries, visiting with village chiefs and other notables, are now greatly impeded by the cautionary, almost bunker-down conditions that describe official U.S. staff working in many African countries.

There remain the issues of wide-scale corruption by national leaders in many countries. Control of land by an elite few in several countries inhibit maximizing food production; incentives for those who work the land are negligible at best.

As to natural resources, such as oil, gas and other precious minerals, there is no country in Africa that has a positive record of using the proceeds from that wealth in a significant way for the public good.

There are many younger Africans, educated in technical skills and dedicated to the power of democratic practices for the common good, who are involving themselves in strategies to save Africa from its negative practices of the past. How they fare going forward against entrenched interests is a significant problem.

In a final request by African leaders to the United Nations, one expert calculated that the Security Council spends about 70 percent of its time debating crises and other urgent issues about Africa. It would seem an imperative that the African Union have a permanent seat on the Security Council

A final caveat: If Africa is to take charge of its future, it has to create the right incentives for its working class, mostly agriculturists, so as to minimize the poverty and despair that leads its youth to the join the expanding groups of terrorists.

Peter P. Strzok: 50-year di!erence in Iran

By Peter P. Strzok

[Sep 3, 2016]

Like many of you, I followed the news last month about the Russian Air Force’s use of the Iranian Hamadan Air Base. First reported on Aug. 15, it has been copiously covered by Russian TV and the Sputnik International websites and other international news agencies.

The history of Hamadan Air Base provides a somber irony for Americans associated with Iran and the Middle East.

Following World War II, Presidents Truman and Eisenhower approved a massive development program for Iran. Its military component included efforts to contain the Soviet intrigues in Northwest Iran. To this end, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers established the Tehran Engineer District, which would go on to build military installations designed to block penetration of Soviets to Iran and Iraq oil fields and contiguous warm water ports.

After the Soviets surprised the U.S. with testing of its atomic bomb in August 1949, part of the U.S. response was to build a series of air bases from which to launch B-47s, our first jet bombers capable of carrying atomic weapons. On the southern flank, bases were in Morocco, Libya, Iran and Pakistan. Hamadan was multipurpose. It was a base for Iranian Air Force units, but it could also act as a recovery base for Northern African-based B-47s, whose combat range precluded their ability to reach Soviet targets and return to home base. Thus, Hamadan has three-mile runways, north to south; the strong prevailing winds are west to east.

In 1965, I was an Army engineer captain assigned to the U.S. Military Mission to Iran. Fresh out of Persian language studies at Monterey, California, one of my jobs was to accept civic action schools being built from funds accrued from sales by Iran of food aid provided by the U.S. These schools were being built in border areas, concentrating on nomadic groups such as the Kurds, Balouch, Turkoman, Azeris and Afghans, under the theory that educated nomads tend toward sedentary living with reduced security concerns. One was built in Marivan, a Kurdish village hard up against the Iraqi border. In October 1965, I flew from Tehran, in a de Havilland Otter, to meet with contractors and Tehran Engineer District staff, to turn over the Marivan school for transfer to the government to Iran.

Our pilot, an army engineer involved with topographic mapping of Iran, stopped at Manadan to refuel. With a strong west-to-east wind, and given the Otter’s expansive wing area, he decided he could not use the north-south runways. With the agreement of the Iranian base commander, he had the Otter pulled into a hangar and took off into the wind, using the parking area to gain takeoff. We landed in a harvested wheat field in Marivan. With his villagers, the village chief celebrated this new gift - an elementary school for the children, a first in the region.

Some 50 years later, the roles are reversed. News reports last month indicated Russia was granted use of Hamadan and was using its best aircraft to take the fight to both ISIS and Syrian opponents of President Assad.

Not so fast. Iranian leadership was apparently offended by the powerful Russian public relations efforts over its air force’s use of Hamadan. On Aug. 22, the Iranian foreign minister’s spokesman, Bahram Qassemi, spun the story this way: “Russia made a request to use Iran’s territory to battle against the terrorists in Syria. ... They got our temporary permission for that. ... The deployment is temporarily finished. ... Russia has no airbase in Iran.” (Tehran Times, Aug 24).

Russian-Iranian history is replete with confrontations. From the late 19th century to 1945, Russia had control over much of the northern half of Iran, with the British managing the southern half. Xenophobia is pervasive in Iran. After the glorious history of enlightened leaders such as Cyrus and Darius, Persia decayed too often into a corrupt and fragmented governance. Outsiders are still often viewed with distrust, no matter how much benefit Iran might gain. In the case of Hamadan, Iranian leadership was offended by Russia’s exuberant reporting of its TU-22M3 strategic bombers and Sukhoi SU-34s - a sales pitch by Russia, impinging on Iran’s sovereignty.

By the way, the village of Marivan has grown substantially. Reports about Iran’s nuclear program show it to have important activities in applied nuclear research. I last viewed the Marivan area from the Iraqi side of the border, in 1994. I was escorting U.S. visitors to Penjwen, a Kurdish Iraqi village that is called “the Iraqi Verdun” because of its almost total destruction, a strategic site won and lost many times during that horrific war, 1980-88.

Peter P. Strzok lives in Pinehurst. He was a longtime member of the Army Corps of Engineers. Since 1980, he has worked at village levels in over 13 countries in West Africa.