TESTIMONY: AFRICOM: A WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING?, by Mark Malan, Refugees International, Washington, DC Before, The Subcommittee on African Affairs, Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, At the hearing entitled, "Exploring the U.S. Africa Command and a New Strategic Relationship with Africa.", August 01, 2007

A reasonable comment from the NGO community betraying a lot of natural suspicions. They hear too much diplomacy and development coordination ambition in AFRICOM's statements and would prefer to hear more on mil-mil ties to build local military capacity, especially in the realms of improved civil-mil relations inside countries and the building up of the African Union's peacekeeping capabilities. Here's why you don't hear more of that in the AFRICOM's statements and officially-offered rationales: it's very sensitve stuff. When I was with Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, the subject of their very quiet assistance to the AU, especially over Sudan, was considered largely off-limits for my story, making them even more nervous to discuss than their minimal role in assisting the Special Ops "kinetics" in Somalia. Why is that? The African governments and militaries themselves are highly sensitive to being viewed as peacekeeping pawns of the U.S. And the Americans themselves are highly resistant of raising expectations of a heightened U.S. obligation to make peacekeeping happen in the region. Hence the focus on humanitarian stuff, which CJTF-HOA and AFRICOM view as the natural subject matter for improving local militaries' reputations among their own people and thus improving civil-military ties. Easy to do, easy to explain, easy to model good behavior for local militaries to embrace and copy. So while the comments in this statement are reasonable, they say more about the NGOs' fears than any nefarious intent of AFRICOM. Frankly, these comments simply highlight how far the discussion needs to go to clear up mutual suspicions. To that end, the NGOs should keep pushing, especially on the basic point that the more AFRICOM becomes a traditional combatant command, the more we waste the opportunity to do things differently and better.