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Title:Deploying development to counter terrorism: post-9/11 transformation of U.S. foreign aid to Africa
Author:Miles, William F.S.ISNI
Year:2012
Periodical:African Studies Review (ISSN 1555-2462)
Volume:55
Issue:3
Pages:27-60
Language:English
Geographic terms:Africa
Sahel
United States
Burkina Faso
Chad
Mali
Mauritania
Niger
Nigeria
Subjects:international relations
development cooperation
terrorism
regional security
2000-2009
2010-2019
External link:http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/african_studies_review/v055/55.3.miles.pdf
Abstract:Since September 11, 2001, the aid component of American foreign policy toward Africa has undergone a significant evolution: U.S. security has come to rival development as an increasingly explicit rationale. Development programming and project implementation now contain a security dimension that is underpinned by Pentagon strategists working through AFRICOM (United States Africa Command ) as much as by USAID (United States Agency for International Development ) officers partnering with the State Department. This article argues that given the potential of terrorism for undermining development in Africa itself, soft counterterrorism should be envisioned as a strategic developmental defense activity. Making use of unpublished country risk assessments (on Mauritania, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali and Nigeria) and the author's participant observation during USAID field mission consultancies in the Sahel, as well as the scholarly literature and relevant policy documents of the Bush and Obama administrations, this article explores the new agenda and grassroots dynamics of development projects as tools for terrorism prevention. It contends that policy and institutional responses to 9/11 have resulted in a greater convergence of operational goals among U.S. government agencies that in the past, at least according to publicly stated goals, had pursued distinctly different missions in Africa. Normative implications of this change are mixed. Because of differing expectations with respect to separation of powers, African public opinion, paradoxically, may be more sympathetic to U.S. military engagement with civilians for developmental purposes than American public opinion is. App., bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]
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