AFRICA MAY STARVE, BUT IT HAS ARMS APLENTY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706920005-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 13, 2011
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: September 22, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STnT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706920005-6
ARTICLE
ON PAGE
Africa May
Starve7 But
It Has
WASHINGTON POST
22 September 1985
Even in relatively prosperous African
countries under reasonably stable civilian
rule, such as Cameroon and Kenya, military
expenditures represent a growing percent-
age of national budgets, and the arms trade
composes a significant part of the nation's
commerce with the outside world. Indeed, it
is now a given of African politics that what-
ever the nature of a government, it cannot
survive unless it keeps its military happy. It
cannot convince its people that it is truly in
charge unless it can stage frequent, ostenta-
tious displays of elaborate modern military
equipment
t .
, Aplenty
T here are practical factors that make
some of this preoccupation with mili-
tary matters understandable, if not
By Sanford J. Ungar entirely justifiable. Most African countries
I T IS IMPOSSIBLE to travel in Africa
today without being overwhelmed by
military images:
? The modern jetport in Douala, the
steamy seaside commercial center of
Cameroon, was built for boom times. In-
stead, it is enduring a bust. Nonetheless,
during the long intervals between takeoffs
and landings, the sky over the airport is
sometimes full; paratroopers, being dropped
from military planes, are practicing for some
future battle with an unspecified enemy.
? There is a severe crime problem on the
'roads of: Zaire, where armed bandits fre-
quently stop traffic and demand tribute. But
the problem defies solution, because most of
the bandits are members of the Zairean
army, who are rarely paid their official sal-
aries. After two recent attacks in the south-
eastern part of the country by rebels who
had crossed Lake Tanganyika, President
Mobutu Sese Seko decided to double the
strength of the country's armed forces from
50,000 to 100,000.
? In downtown Kigali, the capital of tiny
Rwanda, one can hardly move without en-
countering soldiers. They guard the en-
trance to the nationa! radio and most other
'public buildings, and they loiter in front of
many shops. But their pervasiveness is no
,surprise once you learn that Rwanda has 59
members of its armed forces for every 100
"square miles of land; in its sister country of
"Burundi, to the south, the comparable figure
is 74.3 military personnel per 100 square
smiles, the third highest percentage on the
'.African continent.
? ? On Madaraka Day last June, the 22d an-
Oniversary of Kenya's first formal steps to-
yard indepedence, life in Nairobi was inter-
,urupted by loud screeches and sonic booms.
t be main ccgnponent of the official festivities
was a fly-by, showing off the newest military
, ircraft shipped in by the United States.
inherited illogical and unstable borders from
the colonial era, and few have managed to
solve the problem since. Several face the
constant worry that their most prosperous
regions or provinces may try to secede.
What is more, the flow of refugees across
national frontiers - a result of ethnic or
political conflict - is more severe in Africa.
than anywhere else in the world. In addition
to the official total of 2 million refugees in
Africa, millions more people are displaced
within their own countries, and this contrib-
utes to instability.
There are psychological factors, too. In
states where agriculture has failed or been
neglected, industry has hardly gotten off the
ground, and few other symbols of economic
development and national achievement exist,
the military domain may be the only avail-
able source of pride.
And it is a well-known phenomenon that
the poor often spend their meager resources
in extravagant ways. Impoverished countries
sometimes buy advanced weapons for the
same reasons that the poor in the United
States buy Cadillacs: they are expensive to
maintain and they may soon fall apart for
lack of maintenance, but they make the own-
ers feel good in the meantime.
Still, on a continent with such severe prob-
lems, including a fundamental inability to
feed itself, the diversion of vast sums and
significant manpower for military purposes
is tragic. The trend is all the more troubling,
given the extent to which it is reinforced by
outside powers, including the United States
and the Soviet Union.
More than half of the countries south of
the Sahara are currently under some form of
military rule. In several other countries the
military, through the use of official violence
against its own citizens, helps keep a repres-
sive civilian regime in power. Even in South
'Africa, which purports to follow democratic
practices - at least for its white, Asian and
mixed-race citizens - the military has come
to have increasing influence over regional
policies and, some believe, over foreign
policy in general.
The trouble with every attempt to ana-
lyze the role of the military in Africa is
that generalizations are difficult to
sustain. Despite the contentions of some
idealists, it is not necessarily true that any
civilian government is better than any mili-
tary government. .
In Nigeria, the most populous country on
the continent, for example, the military has
often served as the primary modernizing,
liberalizing - not to say detribalizing -
force in national affairs. The civilian regime
that held power for more than four years,
beginning in 1979, after Nigeria had adopted
an American-style constitution, was probably
the most corrupt in its history. Its overthrow
in a military coup was widely celebrated with
dancing in the streets.
In Guinea, the 25-year "socialist" reign of
Ahmed Sekou Toure was characterized not
only by a failure to develop the country but
also by an astonishing brutality; his oppo-
nents were often subjected to "the black
diet," or starvation until death. Those prac-
tices undoubtedly would have continued
under Sekou Toure's immediate successors
- members of his family and political entou-
rage - if the Guinean military had not.
seized power soon after his death and re-
vealed the excesses of the past.
And it is a close call whether Milton
Obote, who regained power in Uganda dur-
ing the early 1980s, was any less brutal to
his people than the notorious Idi Amin, the.
half-mad military man who ran that country'
into the ground during the 1970s.
What is clear from the available evidence
is that even as many African countries be-'
come steadily poorer, their military budgets
become more bloated. Ethiopia, the major
current focus of international famine relief
efforts, is a dramatic example.
The Marxist military council that over-
threw Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 has
since fought with Somalia over the Ogaden
desert and faced wars of secession in Eritrea
and Tigray province. For those reasons, and
because of its systematic campaign to kill
Ethiopian intellectuals, the regime of Men-
gistu Haile Mariam devoted 10.9 percent of
its gross national product to the military in
1980, more than twice as much as the
United States. Military expenditures at that
time were five times the amount spent on
education and nine times the national budget
for health. The ratio has probably increased
substantially since then.
As the military grew without limits, the
adult literacy rate in Ethiopia was only 7
percent and the average fife expectancy at
6A 01
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706920005-6
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706920005-6
Qr?
did much to try to stop it, in part because Therefore, any African country that diis:
the Ethiopians were trying out some of the plays hostility toward the Soviet Unit
latest Soviet arms and the Somalis were Libya or Cuba, claims to be menaced by one
doing the same for the Pentagon. At other of those bogeymen or threatens to align it%
times -- particularly when they aided the self with them, is a plausible candidate fos
Biafran secessionist
d
i
th
Ni
i
U
S
s
ur
ng
e
ger
an
.
. military assistance. The most obvious,
birth hovered around. 40 years. Indeed, even -civill, war the French have behaved simi- sustained winners of this contest in receht
as the people of the world were being en, 'lsrly in West Africa: years have been Zaire, Sudan, Somalia, Li-
couraged to open their hearts and their cof- By far the largest suppliers of arms to beria and, to a lesser extent, Kenya.
fers to help feed Ethiopians, the Mengistu African governments are the -50viet mom
hs mill assistance r Aton-
government was spending 42.6 percent of and its Warsaw act allies. According to CIA still far outweighs military American economic
its own revenues for military purposes - f arms and shaid. The elati on es the Soviets delivered ship in 1
far more than Israel, South Korea, and other lot eauiomerit and services worth $2R Wl 983 was almost 3 to 1: the total
highly militarized societies around the W-- - lion to Africa between 1970 and 1978 and $97 economic aid to the continent was
in totaled
Many Other African, states spend money. had another 1 billion wo in the nioeline $337.5 million. while military
on defense as if that were all that mattered. at that time. The Defense Department esti- site di n. But the trend is in the oppo-
Mauritania, a desperately poor country on mates the value of viet arms-Nks a ee- site nceasin, y with the Reagan equeststra-
the edge of the Sahara, spent 25.9 percent menu with. sub-Saharan ricer between tion roveaoivision nofy sympathetic to requests for
of government res xxnoes an its military in the pro of arms.
1980; Mali, a perennial victim of the 1977 and 1982 at $5.6 billion. The risk, of course, is that when much of
draughts that have ravaged the Sahel, used Eastern. bloc weapons are, to begin with, the American assistance, economic or milli.
up 20.5 peL' ent of its budget for the uuaiate- considerably terry, goes to prop up repressive
military
nonce of an 8.000--strong g military fom& Also cheaper than Western models. re - as it has in Zaire, Sudan, Somatic
A number of stro states Also, they can usually be shipped much more keep their and Liberia - it all seems like military quickly, there being no need toga tlhrahgh a aid.
military, budgets high, with Western enoour?. congressional appropriations process, to And when the arms portion. is on occasidd
agement,,, in part because they fear the worry about public opinion or to submit to used by, the regime against its own restne
Libyan leader, Muammar Qaddafi, who has the citizenry, it tends to provoke severe ante-
seized a large chunk of Chad and made plain scrutiny of the press. American feelings.
Moreover;
the Soviets - having provided
his designs on several other countries in the weapons to. many liberation movements dur- For several years, Washington stood 6yr
region. Qaddafi himself, because of Libya s ing their struggles for independence helplessly while Sudan's president, Jeaet
small population and high oil revenues, can were in a position to continue doing so once Nimeri, resorted to Islamic law and other
afford to spend more than half a billion dol- the movements came to power. With few de- ;devices to keep himself in power and to tt~~
tars a year on his military - about 18 out of veloping nations seriously willing to accept revolt to deal with a Libyan- and Etat vast every 1,000 Libyans are in the armed forces agricultural or other economic advice from the southern part from that east ariWf
- and still use up only 1.6. percent of his the Kremlin - and with the Soviets unquali- try. When Nimeri fell from power erlii:!
country's gross national product. fled or frankly disinclined to provide mean- this year, just after conluding a visit to
Similarly, many southern African coun- ingful development assistance - the arms Washington, U.S. prestige in Africa fell wit#
tries justify military budgets disproportion- trade is sometimes the only channel for a him.
ate to their resources on the basis of the Soviet-African relationship. The circumstances could easil repeat
perceived threat to their security from y elf
South Africa, which has now developed the ~~' to the conventional wisdom in themselves in Zaire or. Somalia, where
Shi to build nuclear d e The some U.S. political circles, the supply of Mobutu and Mohammed Siad Barre, respec-
large budgets d9 little good, however. The Soviet arms to African states does not en- tively, play their American imprimatur to
South Africans have marched, flown, The sure a gradual communist takeover of the the hilt as they hang on to power. Already,
into Angola, Mozambique, d, Lesotho flown, or continent. The training that accompanies the Samuel K. Doe, the soldier who seized con-
driven
a rd Botswana with impunity, and without weapons is usually inadequate, spare parts trol of Liberia in 1980, has made a farce of
meetin are often used as an instrument of Soviet American efforts (and financial grants) to
g any significant resistance. d d
Few African states, with the exception
of South Africa and perhaps Nigeria,
produce any significant quantity of
their own arms, so their military establish-
ments depend greatly on the willingness of
outsiders to supply them. Recent academic
studies of "arms transfers" in Africa have
stressed that the flow of weapons to the con-
tinent is the consequence not only of "push
factors" - the aggressive marketing tech-
niques of manufacturers and suppliers - but
also of "pull factors the Africans' strong
desire for weapons, a result of increased
conflict and somewhat greater resources.
Outside powers have done little to resist
or weaken the pull. On the contrary, the
Soviet Union and the United States have
often treated Africa as a strategic battle-
ground during the past 25 years: a place to
recruit surrogates and, grisly as it sounds, to
field-test weapons.
It is widely acknowledged that as the war
in the Horn of Africa ground on during the
late 1970s, neither Moscow nor Washington
pressure an omestic commodities may be steer hum in the direction of democracy.
depleted by the Soviets in order to extract The greatest danger in U.S. policy toward
payment for the arms. As a result, the re- friendly African regimes is the growing as-
cipients frequently feel more resentment sumption that somehow military establish-
than gratitude toward the donors. And ments are the only ones that can be counted
Soviet emissaries tend to function poorly in upon to protect U.S. interests there. This
Africa, treating their hosts in a condescend- assumption has become so pervasive that
ing manner. even in Kenya, where the civilian govern-
But the easy availability of Soviet weapons ment of President Daniel arap Mol has been
probably does contribute to African political unstintingly and embarrassingly friendly to
instability, and it certainly adds to the pres- the United States, some American officials
sure on the United States and other Western have nonetheless hedged their bets by estab-
suppliers to provide more help to their Afri- lishing an independent relationship with the
can friends. Kenyan military. That kind of experimenta-
tion could have very serious consequences
I t does not take much to persuade Wash indeed, for both Kenya and the United
ington officialdom - Democrats or Re- States.
publicans - to establish client relation- If given the chance, Africans will eventu
ships in Africa, based largely on military sup- ally decide for themselves the role the mili-
port. It would be comforting to believe that tary should play in their affairs. It can only
U.S. customers and beneficiaries were se- be hoped that the United States and other
lected with special care and sensitivity, but outside powers will help them realign priori-
that is typically not the case. The guiding ties so that food, health, education, and other
principle often seems to be, "The enemy of human needs come ahead of machine guns,
my enemy must be my friend." uniforms, and fighter jets.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706920005-6