Prison Breaks & Presidents

Last week, President Obama made his first trip to the continent of Africa, visiting Ghana. It is, in terms of the continent, a relatively stable state with a democratic form - the latest reincarnation of their constitution has yielded two transitions in power sans violence. The visit itself has been posited as the beginning of a new era in American-African relations. Obama was quoted in The New York Times saying, "wherever folks want to help themselves, we want to be there as a partner." In light of this, and the way the trip is being framed, I thought I'd do a post on some of America's more recent history with African nations.

Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, is also in the news this week. He's on trial in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity for the actions of the various militia he once controlled in Sierra Leone. During the trial earlier this week, as he was allowed to re-cap his life story to the court, he said that it was the CIA who released him from a penal institution in Massachussetts - in order to assist Thomas Quiwonkpa in staging a coup against then-president Samuel Doe - where he was being held, waiting to be extradited on embezzlement charges amounting to some $900,000 dollars.

Interestingly enough, according to Doe's former justice minister, it was also the CIA who backed the coup that brought Doe to power in the first place. Immediately afterwards, it was easy enough to deduce why they'd helped: Doe distanced himself completely from the USSR, which (in 1980, during the Cold War) was invaluable to the US. Well, as it turned out, Doe ran a pretty damn tyrannical ship - suppressing political opposition and mistreating targeted ethnic groups - and his strategic use in terms of the Cold War diminished over the early part of the decade. Seeing that his value was gone, the CIA then decided to covertly endorse and support Thomas Quiwonkpa's coup against Doe's regime. This one, however, didn't go so well. Quiwonkpa was murdered in the course of the coup and Doe retaliated by slaughtering an estimated 3,000 people in Quiwonkpa's native county.

Similarly, in Ghana itself, the CIA backed a military coup in 1966 to overthrow Kwame Nkrumah (the former prime minister), who is now recognized as one of the continent's most respected leaders. His downfall led to a volatile environment and a series of coups resulting in the complete lack of a stable government from '66 straight through until 1981 - severely harming the economy for nearly two decades.

I certainly hope that this is the beginning of a new era in American-African relations; it would be about time. However, there's nothing yet indicating that this isn't simply a smarter administration moving to reclaim valuable resources that have been encroached upon over the last few presidents by a rising and eager China. All of this should be kept in mind while browsing the international news in which Africa is sure to have a prominent place for the indefinite future.

-the ambassador