Should the U.S. military use humanitarian and development aid to further its security interests?

As a U.S. Army Civil Affairs specialist, my whole job is based on the premise that the answer to this question is “yes.”  Civil Affairs soldiers use development projects and aid distributions – mostly on a small scale – to achieve a number of objectives, such as improving relations between the U.S. military and a local population, or enhancing the capacity and credibility of the host nation government. Read the rest of this entry…

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Last week my 5-person U.S. Army Reserve team arrived at the site of a devastating landslide in Bududa, Uganda. At the request of the Ugandan Government, we were diverted from our normal mission in the northern Karamoja region (where we have worked for 6 months) to respond to the disaster. While the U.S. Embassy had allocated $50,000 to the Ugandan Red Cross for relief efforts, we ourselves had no resources or funding as such to contribute upon arrival. Our mission would be a limited one: we were to support our counterparts, the Ugandan People’s Defense Force, in our capacity as civil-military relations specialists, and to determine opportunities for future military-to-military disaster support.

But if there is one thing that we have learned in Uganda, it is that it is difficult to limit expectations or manage perceptions – especially in uniform. This is not Iraq or Afghanistan: our ACU uniform does not help us blend in with the landscape or with thousands of other soldiers. We are often the sole representatives of the U.S. government (and certainly the powerful U.S military) in the areas where we work – and by this virtue and others, we are a spectacle everywhere we go. This does not put us in danger, but it means that we must limit the time we spend on the ground assessing a potential project, for example, so that our presence does not start to raise expectations as well as eyebrows. Read the rest of this entry…

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A friend here in Kampala recently commented to me that in Uganda you find freedom without the rule of law, and in Rwanda you find the opposite.

Today I may have a chance to explore that. The police are deployed throughout the city in anticipation of political protests sparked by the decision to keep the CBS radio station closed. The government shut down the station last year – along with several other media outlets – as part of its response to the riots that shook the capital and left 27 dead. The coalition of opposition parties, which is organizing the attempted political actions today, will also be protesting the continuation of the leadership of the highly controversial Electoral Commission.

Since I have been in Uganda I have seen cartoons in the press that have characterized the police as out of control and inclined towards violence. One of them depicted a voter about to grab a helmet to participate in the 2011 elections. Certainly Uganda has many challenges with regard to the rule of law, police discipline being one to which Ugandans are frequently exposed. The police also have a reputation among them of being highly corrupt. Moreover, the police are often irrelevant: mob justice is common here, and foreigners are even advised not to stop if they cause an accident on the road…for their own safety. Up in the region where my team works, Karamoja, crimes as serious as murder are often still dealt with through local elders and traditions (usually involving reimbursement of a certain number of cows) rather than through the Ugandan criminal justice system.

The rule of law is flouted at higher levels too: official corruption, tales of exorbitant spending, and stories of “ghost” soldiers, workers, and even clinics (with “ghost” budgets) routinely make the headlines here in the non-government sponsored papers. The fact that these stories and cartoons are a regular facet of life here is certainly indicative of a level of press freedom and independence. But the decision to keep CBS closed and other tales of media harassment demonstrate that this freedom has limits.

For example: I cannot speak intelligently about Uganda’s experience with freedom, rule of law, etc. in comparison to Rwanda, but Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda can, and did in an article in his Independent magazine.  It is one of the most scathing and interesting articles I have read since I have been here. He writes in response to a letter from a Ugandan politician that criticizes him for taking a positive stance on the “authoritarian” regime in Rwanda. “Colin,” he answers, “democracies do not rob their own citizens the way we are witnessing in Uganda.”

After reading his opinion piece I instinctively googled, “Andrew Mwenda death threat.” This lead me to an article in which I learned that Mwenda has been held at gunpoint by government agents, charged with 20 criminal violations including sedition, and has purportedly already survived several plots against him. Still, Mwenda says in the article, “If Museveni were like Idi Amin (the infamous Ugandan dictator), I’d already be dead.”

Now there’s the power of positive thinking. I’m off to see what the papers and the police are up to on the streets of Kampala.

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Not long ago I noticed two headlines that appeared in the national newspapers here within a week or so of each other: one of them was “China Doubles Aid to Africa,”(1) and the other was “U.S Slams Uganda’s New Anti-Gay Bill.”(2) These headlines raise some important concerns and contrasts. That the Anti-Homosexuality Bill now in Uganda’s parliament –which calls for the death penalty in “aggravated” cases and makes the failure to report a suspected homosexual a crime- enjoys significant support among Ugandans raises concerns about the levels of tolerance and protection of minority rights that is essential to a functioning liberal democracy. It also raises the question: To what extent will the democracies of the world – several of whom are significant donors to Uganda – care to or be able to prevent the bill’s passage? Uganda’s Ethics Minister, James Nsaba Buturo, has recently confirmed that, “…Western countries were threatening to withdraw aid if the current Anti-Homosexuality Bill was not revoked.”(3)

Then there’s China. The New Vision article relates that both Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Sudanese President Omar el Bashir attended the China-Africa Summit in Egypt on November 8th, 2009, during which China announced its intentions to dramatically increase loans to several African countries and to step up initiatives ranging from food security to research scholarships. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao also took the opportunity to deny that China’s interest in Africa is based solely on its need for natural resources. According to the article, he also “[R]epeated that China would not interfere in the internal politics of any African country.”

Foreign aid represents 30% of Uganda’s operating budget, and while this is down from 50% three years ago (due largely to the global recession)(4), Uganda surely does not take alienating the donor community lightly. Carl Gershman and Michael Allen noted as recently as 2006 that, “Uganda appear[s] to be refraining from certain restraints on NGOs in no small part out of fear that foreign aid will be cut off.” (5)

Then again, Mr. Buturo has repeatedly asserted that, “…The integrity of our country and our values are more important than their aid.”(6) I cannot help but wonder if this statement is mere political rhetoric, or if there is (beginning to be) something to it. That is, I wonder if Uganda is better positioned to ignore the West’s moral outcries and monetary threats over illiberal practices due to the rise of China as a significant donor. After all, as Robert Kagan notes, “[China] will [not] impose conditions on aid to African nations to demand political and institutional reforms they have no intention of carrying out in China.”(7) While homosexuality has been de-criminalized in China, the government has essentially ignored campaigns to extend protections and rights to the gay community (8). And China’s human rights record in other respects requires no further comment here.

Uganda may very well pass this draconian measure, and if it does, what does this signify? Does it mean that Uganda has taken a step “backward” on the path towards becoming a democratic regime that respects human rights and protects citizens who are minorities? Does it mean that Western influence is being trumped by the aid and the attitude of the Chinese?

Until very recently the West – and the U.S. in particular – considered Uganda to be, as Larry Diamond puts it, “[O]ne of the brightest stars of African development.” (9) In my next blog post I will explore some of the reasons why this was case, and some of the reasons why it is the case no longer. Changing assumptions about the democratization process seem to have as much to do with this as developments within Uganda itself.

Sources:

(1) Josephine Maseruka and Agencies. 2009. China Doubles Aid to Africa. The New Vision. 09NOV.

(2) AFP. US Slams Uganda’s New Anti-Gay Bill. 29OCT2009. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jEEJXoeBrTi17hexzYZqvmPgpPxg

(3) Moses Mulondo. 2009. Pray for Replacement of Corrupt Officials. Sunday Vision. 29NOV.

(4) Liz Kobusinge. 2008. Let Us Examine the Role of Foreign Aid. The New Vision. 17NOV. http://allafrica.com/stories/200811180049.html

(5) Carl Gershman and Michael Allen. 2006. The Assault on Democracy Assistance. Journal of Democracy. Vol. 17, No. 2. April. P.46.

(6) Mulondo. Pray for Replacement.

(7) Robert Kagan 2008. The End of Dreams and the Return of History. Knopf. April 28. P.70

(8) The Economist. 2009. Comrades-In-Arms. 20JUN. Vol. 392 Issue 8636, p43-43

(9) Larry Diamond. 2008. The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World. Times Books. P.250.

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Last year, I started Georgetown University’s Democracy and Governance graduate program; this year, I’m in Uganda on a mission (or two). My primary mission is a military one: I’m deployed here as a civil affairs specialist with the U.S. Army Reserves. My team’s job is to assist the Ugandan army with the civil-military relations aspect of their disarmament campaign in a remote region of the country called Karamoja. As you may have guessed, it’s not your typical deployment – unlike in Iraq or Afghanistan, the U.S. military’s footprint in Africa is very small, and the only battles being fought here are in the “hearts and minds” of the African people. So you’re probably not going to hear much about this mission on the news, but as much as my time and my job permits, you’re going to hear about it here. Read the rest of this entry…

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