The News Review:
- The US joint task force experience in Liberia.
- US targets Africa’s ‘merchant of death’
- Making regional trade integration work: Africa has yet to fully…
The US joint task force experience in Liberia.
Free with registration – Military Review – AccessMyLibrary.com – May 1, 2005
Although it had once been a prosperous nation, it began to spiral downward after Samuel Doe’s bloody coup in 1980. Charles Taylor, the charismatic but corrupt president of Liberia, came to power in a questionable election in 1997. Under UN indictment for alleged war crimes in Sierra Leone, Taylor was preoccupied with his own war against two rebel factions: Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL). Through the first half of 2003, short but violent engagements characterized the fighting between rebel and government forces. Roving bands of armed fighters, many high on drugs, preyed on defenseless civilians. Both sides employed thousands of child soldiers. The collapse of security in Monrovia forced the UN and other humanitarian organizations to leave the country.
US targets Africa’s ‘merchant of death’
Independent Online – May 1, 2005
His social circle included the Swazi royal house and several ANC luminaries. However, South African authorities closed in on Bout and accused him of breaching civil aviation law and breaking UN sanctions by sending supplies to Unita in Angola. UN monitors accused him of shipping contraband weapons to rebel movements in Angola and Sierra Leone and to the Charles Taylor regime in Liberia. Although Bout stopped operating directly in South Africa at the end of the 1990s, the US-based Centre for Public Integrity’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has claimed he still functions in southern Africa via surrogates. An ICIJ report states: “Bout is now operating a covert network of sub-contractors consisting of smaller Russian operators,” adding that “there were 36 flights of his [Bout's] aircraft through South Africa” in 2000 and another 16 up to March 2001. This issue came under the spotlight last year when Raenette Taljaard, the then Democratic Alliance MP, called on the government to ensure it stopped using the services of such air cargo operators. No information has been forthcoming from the government as to whether departments are still using the services of these air cargo operators whose planes are often the only option for moving large equipment and supplies to difficult terrain in Africa.
Making regional trade integration work: Africa has yet to fully…
Free with registration – African Review of Business and Technolog… – AccessMyLibrary.com – May 1, 2005
Moreover, trade integration helps conflict prevention and resolution. Strategic trade ties would make military conflicts between partners economically more costly, thus less likely to occur. If regional instability does arise, the incentives for external intervention are stronger because the stakes for member countries are higher, a good example of this is the intervention by ECOWAS in Sierra Leone’s civil war, where ECOWAS troops, aided by foreign troops, played a key role in restoring political order and ensured peaceful democratic elections in 2003. And, for 15 landlocked sub-Saharan countries; Botswaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Rwanda. Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, RTAs effectively allow them to share coastal neighbours’ trade routes and seaport facilities in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria. Cote d’lvoire and Gabon. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] European expansion The increased global trend towards regionalism poses challenges for African trade policymakers.