Mekelle, Tigray January 20,2025 (Tigray Herald)
Conversations with Peter Pham About Africa
J. Peter Pham (PhD) works for the Atlantic Council as Director of the Africa Center. His area of expertise includes African Security, Piracy, US Foreign Policy, Violent Extremism, Weapons Trafficking, among others. Discourse engaged him in a brief conversation at his Washington DC office a while ago.
Discourse: Africa? What got you interested in Africa, in the first place? Dr. Pham: I grew up with a child- hood interest in Africa so far as a child would be. The seed was planted early. But the primary reason as I matured was the recognition of the fact that this is not only a resource-rich conti- nent, but also rich in history that is not appreciated for its dynamism. I think my optimism is well founded.
Discourse: And now you are leading African department in the Atlantic Council that solely focuses on the con- tinent. Do you see the entire continent through a single lens, or country by country?
Dr. Pham: Our key emphases are cer- tainly security, political and geopolitical trends, economic development and also giving a voice to Africans in
Washington D.C.., and helping African leaders understand Washington and also helping US leaders understand Africa. Within that, we prioritize coun-
tries that are pivotal states in the re- gion as well large states in a primordial crisis at any given time. For example, currently the pivotal states are very clear: Ethiopia, Egypt, Morocco, Nige- ria, Congo, and South Africa.
Discourse: The overall picture is that Africa is where it has always been: still poor, still conflict ridden, still vulnera- ble to so many challenges. And now terrorism is a new addition with so many strange actors of its own: al- Shabaab in the east, Boko Haram in the west, ISIS and the Maghreb Islam- ic groups in the north, Answar in the west. Why does Africa have so many more terror groups than in elsewhere? Dr. Pham: I think part of that is that majority of African countries have not had a long history of independence. Ethiopia is fortunate for being inde- pendent the entire time. Egypt is also another example. But the rest are mainly creations of colonial powers. Fifty-sixty years are not a long time for governments to establish themselves. And you have brutes that will always
Peter Pham
take advantages of any lack of effective control. So part of this African reality is the challenges of establishing the nation-state.
The other challenges of Africa are challenges only because there is lack of attention from the international com- munity. The international community is for the most part slow to recognize these challenges. I’ll give you an exam- ple related to Boko Haram in Nigeria. In 2011, I and a handful of people were already beginning to sound the alarm that this group was getting prob- lematic. In fact, there were very few people interested to know this group. It took several years for the United States to even designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. So, the needed recognition comes so slow be- cause some of the problems are distant and far off. Yes, specialists noticed but no one else.
The same is true with al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa. I briefed the US
Congress on al-Shabaab in 2005 when
it was still a unit within the Islamic Courts Union and this was way before Ethiopia had to intervene to protect the then Transitional Federal Govern- ment of Somalia.
Discourse: Al-Shabaab is still a potent force and still carrying out attacks do- mestically and across borders. Will
Somalia ever evolve to regain normalcy
at all?
Dr. Pham: I think one has to
acknowledge the sacrifices being paid by African countries: the neighbors of Somalia and other countries in the Af- rican Union Mission to Somalia, AMISOM. The sacrifices have helped push back al-Shabaab militarily. But it is still a challenge to establish a gov-
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ernment that is legitimate in the eyes of Somalis, accepted in ways it is ap- propriate in the Somali life. Until that occurs, until the political space that has been enabled by the military sacrifice is filled, there will always be a threat to that space, that vacuum that would be occupied by extremists and other non- state actors. We have to recognize that it is a long haul and until such times occur, one has to recognize the legiti- mate national security concerns of countries, especially those on the frontline with this vacuum.
Discourse: The Late Ethiopian Prime Minister used to get very annoyed of this tendency by the international com- munity and the lack of appreciation of the sacrifice Ethiopia was paying and the threat this extremist group was posing on Ethiopia. Some think al- Shabab was the making of Ethiopia. Dr, Pham: People forget to look at the timeline. Al-Shabaab may have only emerged in the first years of the 21st century. But people forget that al- Shabaab did not emerge on a vacuum. It had its antecedence in al-Itahad al- Islamiya, which Ethiopia knew, unfor- tunately, too well from its many at- tacks on Ethiopia’s soil.
fered most from the al-Shabaab terror- Discourse: Kenya seems to have suf- ist attacks. Is it because Kenya is not
doing something right or al-Shabaab is
much more interested in Kenya than in others?
Dr. Pham: I think Kenya is now in- creasingly recognizing that the threat from al-Shabaab is shifting. The threat is no more limited to military matters. There is also a terrorist threat. And you fight a military threat differently than you fight a terrorist threat. To fight a terrorist unit, you use police
Peter Pham
title. Now days, every one of the 54 countries in Africa, except one, has opened the political space for elec- tions. Eritrea is the only country that doesn’t have elections.
The other comment I would make – look at the refugee flows to Europe. It is the tragedy of these people risking their lives, drowning in the Mediterra- nean – it is a human tragedy. When one considers that a small country, a country of about 5 million people on a continent, singlehandedly contributing 20-25% of the people who are rescued, you know, heaven only knows how many of them didn’t survive and went unaccounted for- but a quarter of the rescued come just from one country. That is Eritrea. Clearly, the citizens are voting with their feet. People do des- perate things when only they are pushed to it. I think one has to look at not just the formal legitimacy of the regime and the lack of elections but the fact that its citizens are voting with their own feet.
That, I think, says eve- rything that needs to be said. Discourse: Atlantic Council, and with- in it, the department you lead, is a source of knowledge and ideas. One would think the knowledge resources you have here at the Council are also shared. I wonder how some of your staff members view Eritrea as doing well and Ethiopia the opposite.
Dr. Pham: Well, here we have diverse views. Certainly, we encourage intellec- tual independence. We don’t have any ideological line to strictly adhere to. Discourse: Now on the US-Ethiopia relationship. You have been appearing in Congressional hearings as an expert witness on Ethiopia. Do you believe the general relationship is on the right direction? Do you believe there is enough awareness among Congress members about Ethiopian realities? Dr. Pham: I think the US partnership with Ethiopia is a very important one, a critical one, especially in the sub re- gion where there are not many reliable partners. If one looks at the Horn of Africa, Somalia is a failed state.
It has been so for more than two decades. Eritrea, we’ve already talked about the problems there. South Sudan – unfor- tunately, it is not only Africa’s newest state, it is the newest failed state as well. Our relations with Sudan, the government in Khartoum, are compli- cated, to say the least. One would hope there are ways of ameliorating the situ- ation. I certainly would hope for that but the political reality is very, very difficult, and many of the difficulties, quite frankly, are on the America side. I think the Sudanese do have some right to complain that we keep on changing the goal post, but that is a separate issue.
So when you look across the region like that, Ethiopia is not only a good partner, one with a long history of good relations with the US going back more than a century, but also the only realistic partner in the region with suf- ficient strategic heft. So the bilateral relationship is very important, a point underscored recently during President Barack Obama’s historic visit to Ethio- pia – the first ever visit of its kind by a sitting US leader – in the president’s acknowledgment that ‘the deep con- nections between our peoples [are] built on the values that we share’ even as ‘we’ve sought to secure our shared future against those who would threat- en us’.
That being said, however, perhaps es-
About Africa
and intelligence. Something is not right if reporters arrive at the scene of crisis before the police.
Discourse: And Ethiopia has taken precautionary measures to prevent such terrorist attacks. Apparently there seems to be a lot of blame on the Gov- ernment from human-right and de- mocracy advocate groups for enacting “repressive” laws. How can countries balance the concern of preventing ter- rorist threats without trampling upon citizens’ rights?
Dr. Pham: I think we need to recog- nize the difference of sensitivities when fighting terrorism from a dis- tance and when it is literally at your doorsteps. And also, no country is go- ing to be perfect at it the first time. We constantly adjust. Just recently in the United States, we passed a new legisla- tion to amend a legislation we passed immediately after the 9-11 terrorist attacks. If we are still trying to get it right almost 15 years since the attacks on our homeland, other countries that suffered more recent attacks should be given as much latitude to contextualize their fighting tools.
Discourse: Like we said, terrorism is a new addition to the menu of Africa’s political challenges, and the old prob- lems such as violent conflicts, and dis- placements are still there. South Sudan, after so much of a promising start and getting the entire world’s blessing to itself as a new nation, it has become a hot conflict scene.
Dr. Pham: The key take away is: wish- ful thinking cannot replace hard work. And I think that applies not just to South Sudan, but broadly to all coun- tries across the continent. It is very easy from a distance to underestimate the challenges required to build up a nation-state, both instilling a national identity in people who previously did not have that and to also developing appropriate solutions and developing the economy, the society and institu- tions to cope with the world in which we live. On that, although we have so many challenges including the more recent ones in South Sudan, I would make the argument that there is a rea- son for optimism when one looks across Africa to examples where Afri- can countries themselves developing solutions to many of these challenges. A great example is the recent frame- work agreement among Ethiopia, Egypt and the Sudan on helping them- selves address the long, long conten- tious issues regarding the Nile and de- veloping something that would not only provide electric power to Ethiopia but potentially exporting energy to its neighbors as well, and enabling those neighbors, for example, Sudan. Re- garding the site on the ground of the Renaissance Dam clearly the water needs to go somewhere after generat- ing hydroelectricity, they flow in to Sudan which gives a better opportunity to use those waters.
Discourse: Eritrea, which itself is not much older than South Sudan in terms of existence as a nation, doesn’t seem to be doing well lately, not as much as expected, at least. Can you share what your views are on Eritrea vis-à-vis its challenges?
Dr. Pham: On Eritrea, one may say many things but I will just say two. When I first begun my work as a stu- dent and young scholar about two dec- ades ago, very few African countries had had elections. Some even had titles with “President-for-Life” as a formal
About Africa
pecially for those who don’t get their feet on the ground and don’t know the region very well, these people do fail to appreciate the importance of that rela- tionship. And here, speaking as an ana- lyst, I think more can be done not just to raise awareness of the importance of the relationship but also to better inform policymakers and the general public about what is really going on in Ethiopia: not just how important it is as a strategic ally to the US which it is
-but, beyond that, about the economic dynamism, the significant development growth in recent years, the opportuni- ties for investment and win-win coop- eration, the amazing things happening in the infrastructure in the country. Those are the things that are not well known. And I think both sides, but especially the Ethiopian side, could work to make these things better known. That is very im- portant.
