Chinese investment in Liberia brings risk

Eric Witte August 23rd, 2008

The Economist provides a nice overview of Liberia’s gradual recovery under President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf*, who took office in January 2006.   While she has tackled corruption and sought to spur economic growth to the advantage of average Liberians, Liberia has received substantial aid from the United States and Europe, as well as benefitted from mounting international investment.  As The Economist notes, China is among the countries putting cash into Liberia:

The Chinese are getting involved too. They have resurfaced the decrepit William Tubman Boulevard, Monrovia’s main artery, named after the country’s longest-serving president, and will take on similar projects throughout Liberia.

China’s influence across Africa is growing, which has rightly sparked concern.  In such places as Sudan, Chinese investment serves as a crutch for dictatorial (and in Sudan’s case, genocidal) regimes.  By contrast, Chinese investment in democratic Liberia seems unproblematic at first blush.  Yet it still poses a potential risk.

If Liberia’s fragile new democracy were to falter, there is a decent chance that western aid would be used as leverage to keep democratic governance on track.  The response of the United States and European Union to the August 6 coup in Mauritania, for example, could eventually create real pressure for the restoration of democratic order in that West African nation.  It is evident that Western defense of democracy in the region (and beyond) is far from guaranteed.  Witness, for example, the West’s appalling, passive acceptance of outright dictatorship in Liberia’s bauxite-laden neighbor, Guinea, or its cozy diplomatic relationships with the despots of oil-rich Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.  

While use of the established democracies’ leverage cannot be taken for granted in pressing for democratic change or seeking to prevent democratic backsliding, it is clear that China doesn’t care about democracy or good governance at all.  As long as natural resources from African countries continue to fuel China’s rapid economic development, Beijing will maintain support for the most odious of regimes.  To the extent that China becomes a major player in Africa, potential leverage from established democratic governments for maintance of human rights and democracy declines.

Liberia remains one of the poorest countries in the world and obviously cannot afford to turn up its nose at any aid or investment.  But China’s no-strings-attached approach to investing in Africa raises the stakes for Liberia by cutting away part of the safety net under President Johnson Sirleaf’s impressive high-wire act.

*Most media organizations - including The Economist - hyphenate her last name, but in interviews President Johnson Sirleaf has said that it isn’t hyphenated.

Genocide charges against Bashir: justice and peace in Sudan

Eric Witte July 11th, 2008

The Washington Post is reporting this morning that on Monday, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court will seek Darfur-related charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The United Nations is grappling with how the Sudanese regime might react, including by possibly targeting peacekeepers or cutting off their supplies. Likewise, humanitarian aid organizations worry about their access to people in need being cut off.

These are serious concerns, as is the major question examined in today’s New York Times about how the charges (there is no formal “indictment” at the ICC) could affect the tenuous north-south peace and what remains of the peace process in Darfur.

In different contexts, this is the same question that surrounded the indictments of Serbian and Liberian presidents Slobodan Milosevic and Charles Taylor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 1999 and Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2003, respectively. A major after-effect of those indictments was to make the rule of Milosevic and Taylor no longer tenable, and diminished their ability to string along negotiators ad infinitum as suited their power interests. Thus, Milosevic was no longer able to wine and dine Richard Holbrooke and maintain his position as the perceived go-to guy for stability in the Balkans. Likewise, the absurd merry-go-round of broken peace and cease-fire arrangements - interspersed by additional negotiations when Taylor felt pressure to regroup and re-arm - came to an abrupt end in Liberia following the unsealing of his war crimes indictment. In Serbia, this meant that Serbs saw their futures tied to that of a pariah. This helped to motivate the civic uprising that overthrew Milosevic after he tried to steal another round of elections in October 2000. In Liberia, it led to international demands that Taylor leave power and the country as an essential component of any peace deal.

The Milosevic and Taylor indictments also led to increased media and high-level political attention for the crises in Serbia and Liberia. In the New York Times piece linked above, Sudan expert Alex de Waal worries that “[Bashir] is prone to irrational outbursts and could respond in a very aggressive way.” That’s quite possible, and greater instability in the short term is a real danger.  But de Waal himself has a smart post up at the Africa Policy Forum blog, arguing that Sudan requires diplomatic attention at a higher order of magnitude. Charges against Bashir could not only create accountability for atrocities in Darfur, but bring increased political resources to bear on the Sudanese crises.  This could lead the international community beyond tactical crisis management, and into the realm of strategic thinking backed by requisite resources to forge a more durable peace.

When elections fail before election day

Eric Witte June 18th, 2008

Marwick Khumalo, head of the Pan-African Parliamentary observer mission in Zimbabwe has told the BBC that his team will not approve of Zimbabwe’s second-round presidential vote next week if the government does not rein-in rampant election-related violence.

“Mr Khumalo, head of the Pan-African Parliamentary observers, said it was the government’s responsibility to stop the violence which erupted after the first round.

‘It’s very difficult to me to judge the degree of the violence in terms of whether it’s decreased or it has escalated,’ Mr Khumalo told the BBC’s Network Africa programme.

‘But what is disturbing is that in a situation such as an election atmosphere… violence is one thing that you don’t want to see happening, because it has the capacity of spoiling an election.’”

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says that 66 of its supporters have been killed and around 25,000 displaced. MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti was arrested last week. Robert Mugabe’s government has indicated that it will bring treason charges against Biti, with the possibility of the death penalty.

Amid the bleak news from Zimbabwe, at least election observers are paying more attention (how could they not) to the conditions in which the elections are being held. Too many observer missions in the past have ended up blessing elections held in an environment of intimidation when voting and counting on election day has turned out to be relatively fair. The Liberian presidential elections of 1997 offered a clear example of this. Charles Taylor overtly threatened to plunge the country back into war unless he won. His election slogan was “He killed my ma, he killed my pa. I’ll vote for him.” International observers, eager to declare Liberia a success, called the elections free and fair. The situation in Zimbabwe is at a nadir. Some election observers, at least, recognize this.

Another crisis in Guinea: now will the international community give thought to democratization?

Eric Witte May 22nd, 2008

Guinea may have moved closer to civil conflict on Tuesday, when President Lansana Conté dismissed Prime Minister Lansana Kouyaté, replacing him with one of his loyalists, Ahmed Tidiane Souaré. Kouyaté was a consensus pick for the post following large-scale demonstrations against Conté’s regime in early 2007. As Kurt and I wrote at the time in the International Herald Tribune, the labor unions who led the protests in the face of violent repression received scant support from the international community. The crackdown by Conté’s forces killed around 130. The deal that ended the challenge to his rule left Conté in charge of the army and police. Worse, Kouyaté quickly alienated the very civil society that was responsible for bringing him to power, and little changed for average Guineans who still struggle in poverty - made all the worse by rising global fuel and food prices.

Meanwhile, even after last year’s stark danger sign, it is far from apparent that the international community has given much thought at all to Conté’s succession. Reports persist that the octogenarian Conté, now in his 24th year as Guinea’s dictator, is frail. Representatives of various power centers continue to circle, vying to succeed him. (Kouyaté was one official widely viewed as angling to take over the presidency.)

Within the Mano River Union (MRU), there has been real democratic progress in Liberia since the 2006 inauguration of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Sierra Leone, too, seems finally to be making halting progress in overcoming the burdens of corruption and mal-governance. Even the newest member of the MRU, Côte d’Ivoire, is stabilizing. Guinea was deeply involved in the Sierra Leonean and Liberian wars and an outbreak of violence now could cause significant disruption across this part of West Africa, where the United Nations, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Britain, France and United States have made such heavy investments in peacekeeping and nation-building.

Even if another short-term solution is found to ease the tension again bubbling up in Guinea, the international community should fully engage civil society and the various ethnic and elite factions with regard to Conté’s eventual succession. Bringing that discussion into an open, transparent process in which all Guineans have a voice - perhaps through agreement on a constitutional assembly - is the best hope for Guinea’s democratic development. Such assemblies are not unknown in West Africa, having proved successful in Mali and Benin. Assisting Guineans on the difficult path to democratic governance now offers the best hope of turning the country’s significant natural resource wealth into desperately needed development, and is vital to the consolidation of peace across the MRU.