US president to emphasise democratic goals for African countries during speech to Ghanaian parliament

The US is planning a dramatically more assertive policy in Africa, sometimes backed by a threat of force, to end conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria that are seen as among the principal obstacles to the continent’s revival.

Barack Obama is to address Ghana’s parliament tomorrow on his first visit to Africa as president with a speech that is expected to emphasise that the key to prosperity is democratic, accountable government. But an important part of the new administration’s policy will focus on ending key conflicts through more forceful diplomatic initiatives after years of drift by the Bush administration.

The White House is shortly to appoint a special envoy to central Africa with a brief to tackle a web of conflicts that have afflicted eastern Congo for 15 years,and destabilised the region, in the belief that the success or failure of one of the continent’s largest countries will decide central Africa’s future.

A senior administration source said that the US believes the primary problem is the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which is led by men wanted for the 1994 genocide of Rwanda’s Tutsis who fled to Congo and controls swaths of territory close to Rwanda’s border.

The source said that the priority will be to break the FDLR leadership with a mix of diplomatic pressure, including the prospect of war crimes trials, backed by the establishment of “a more professional force” to replace the ill-trained troops serving in the UN largest peacekeeping mission who have failed to contain the conflict. However, the source said that there is a belief that the threat may be enough to force the FDLR to give up the fight. He said that the make-up of such a force is unresolved.

The initiative will also focus on confronting the Lords Resistance Army, a particularly brutal Ugandan rebel group also based in Congo. But the source said that broader pacification will require more interventionist diplomacy to press other countries such as Rwanda and Uganda that contribute to the destabilisation to recognise that their security is intertwined with Congo’s success.

The administration is also eyeing the continuing violent upheaval in the Niger Delta which is a major source of America’s oil imports amid deep scepticism over the capabilities of President Umaru Yar’Adua who is seen as weak and indecisive as his country fragments.

The conflict is deepening with several rebel groups and parts of the military now acting as warlords and some major oil companies warning that they are considering pulling out of the region altogether.

But the emphasis there is likely to remain firmly diplomatic as the US presses Yar’Adua to address seriously the issues of impoverishment, environmental devastation and endemic corruption that have alienated people in the delta and given rise to rebel groups and armed gangs that now control large parts of the region.

However there are fears that US intervention could result in the further militarisation of the continent. Confronting the FDLR is likely to draw in the US Africa Command (Africom) which is increasingly involved in conflicts on the continent, including overseeing a botched Ugandan attack on LRA rebels in Congo.

The US military is also now supplying weapons to the fragile government in Somalia as it tries to stave off Islamist insurgents. The Americans also allied themselves closely with Ethiopia’s repressive regime during its attack on Somalia.

Daniel Volman, director of the African Security Research Institute, one of three dozen organisations which wrote an open letter to Obama urging him to reverse the militarisation of US policy in Africa, said Africom’s growing role will further destabilise the continent.

“It encourages governments to rely on the use of force to deal with internal problems, to avoid democracy, to avoid addressing the internal issues these African countries face,” he said.

“The US is now engaged in a major new military project in Somalia, providing arms and ammunition to the Somali government there, encouraging countries like Burundi and Rwanda which have peacekeeping forces there to conduct military training so we don’t send to have our own troops there, all of which encourages that government to seek a military solution instead of developing a political solution to the kind of problems that exist.”

There remain deep divisions over other aspects of Africa policy, especially Darfur. Before his election, Obama promised strong action against the Sudanese regime but the state department is at odds with itself on the crisis. The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, believes the Khartoum leadership is not to be trusted and wants a hard line taken with Sudan but others argue that the conflict has been over simplified and that it is in any case largely over.

However, when Obama addresses Ghana’s parliament tomorrow, his focus will be on democratisation as the path to Africa’s revival.

“This isn’t some abstract notion that we’re trying to impose upon Africa,” he told allAfrica.com. “There is a very practical pragmatic consequence to political instability and corruption when it comes to whether people can feed their families, educate their children. And we think that the African continent is a place of extraordinary promise as well as challenges. We’re not going to be able to fulfil those promises unless we see better governance.”