Jendayi Frazer, former Bush advisor lobbies Obama for Uganda, supports AFRICOM
Dr. Jendayi E. Frazer, former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs is now working as a lobbyist on behalf of the Ugandan government.
Frazer, also a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has joined The Whitaker Group (TWG) as a strategic advisor. The Washington D.C.-based firm has a long-standing relationship with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and is currently under contract with the Ugandan government.
TWG has been instrumental in improving Uganda’s tattered image in the United States, and has been a key architect and promoter of the failed African trade initiative AGOA – the African Growth and Opportunity Act.
[Photo: Yoweri Museveni (in red tie) with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and Rosa Whitaker (in pink, right side)]
Meet with African presidents, Frazer recommends
In her Wall Street Journal article “Four Things to Help Africa: How the Obama Administration Can Help Sub-Saharan Africa and Advance U.S. Strategic Interests” Frazer recommends the Obama Administration organize “a summit at the White House with the presidents of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda” in order to address the continent’s challenges.
Frazer’s call for President Obama to meet with Uganda’s President may be a strategic move to change the Obama Administration’s cold relationship with Museveni.
The Ugandan daily Monitor reports:
“President Museveni was expected in Washington in early October but the visit has been canceled. The President has had a busy travel schedule and has recently visited Russia and Iran. However it is traditionally with Washington that he has been associated with. That visit has not happened so far with the Obama administration which it has been reported holds a very dim view of the way Kampala has been running things.
Frazer supports use of AFRICOM
Despite reports that U.S. involvement has worsened the Congo crisis, Frazer also urges President Obama to “galvanize U.S. efforts to end the militia violence of Rwandan and Ugandan rebel groups still operating in the Congo.”
Frazer also has called for AFRICOM to be moved from its temporary headquarters in Germany to Liberia in order to “promote U.S. strategic interests in the region, which include maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea, countering terrorism and drug trafficking, and promoting regional development and stability.”
The Liberian government has offered to host AFRICOM, Frazer says, because “the U.S. presence will create jobs and help stabilize the country and region.”
Establishing a presence in Africa is necessary according to Frazer, who says AFRICOM “needs to be in the region its operations are charged with shaping.”
AFRICOM’s first mission in Congo ended in disaster, failing to corral the Lord’s Resistance Army, despite the participation of 17 AFRICOM advisors and the use of satellite and GPS technology.
Can AFRICOM help Congo? Retired Army Colonel highlights rape, sexual assault in U.S. Army
Many believe it is unlikely AFRICOM’s involvement in Congo will improve matters, but former U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright goes even further, strongly warning against the deployment of US soldiers in a Congo riddled with sexual violence; citing the high number of rape and violent sexual assault cases in the US army. (Wrights piece on army coverups of rape and violent sexual assaults by US military personnel is extremely disturbing.)
Wright says AFRICOM is looking for a mission to justify its existence, and rape prevention fits the bill:
“AFRICOM is the U.S. military’s newest command and is looking for missions to justify its existence–in this case with new funding available–in rape prevention.”
But she cautions that the US military itself has a tragically high incidence of rape:
“If the women of the Congo should Google, “U.S. military – sexual assault and rape,” I suspect they will decline the offer of assistance from the African Command. 1 in 3 women in the U.S. military are sexually assaulted or raped. Women and girls in countries with U.S. military bases are raped by U.S. military. 8,000 U.S. Marines are being “re-located” from Okinawa in great measure because of citizen activist pressure following the numerous rapes of women and girls there. Prosecution rates in rape cases in the military are abysmal- 8% versus 40% in civilian cases.”
US strategy against LRA may feature AFRICOM if passed
AFRICOM will likely assume an even greater role in Central African conflicts if a bill currently in the U.S. Congress which calls for the Obama Administration to create a strategy to capture, kill or otherwise apprehend the notorious LRA rebels is passed. Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI), Sam Brownback (R-KS) and U.S. Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA), Brad Miller (D-NC) and Ed Royce (R-CA) are the bill’s chief authors, along with advocacy organization Resolve Uganda.
Jendayi Frazer’s role in the buildup to the failed mission in Congo against the LRA last December goes back to 2001.
Newsweek reported May 25, 2009 that the Bush Administration responded to President Museveni’s early appeals for help in solving the LRA issue:
“In a 2001 meeting with Bush, Museveni appealed for help. “Can you give us some helicopters?” Frazer recalls the Ugandan leader asking. “We’ve got this terrorist.” Bush lobbied hard for the military aid and got Kony placed on a “terror exclusion list” that gave the United States much broader powers to intervene. “Museveni was happy,” says Frazer. “We did it partly because we felt it was appropriate, but also to give ourselves some leverage on how to deal with [Kony].”
In 2007, Frazer expressed her preference to a military solution in resolving the conflict, and eventually the Bush Administration assisted in a disastrous attack on LRA bases in Congo.
Frazer said UN Security Council resolutions gave the U.S. grounds for involvement in apprehending the LRA and promised US support: “We feel that we have the basis, especially under the U.N. Security Council resolutions, to assist an effort to mop up the LRA.”
But for Congolese civilians, “mopping up the LRA” has resulted in hundreds of unnecessary deaths and new abductions.
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