African Crisis Response Initiative

The history of mass murder in Central Africa has been traced to the colonial era when Belgian colonialists massacred more than ten million people during their occupation and pacification of the Congo in the 1890s. Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost documented this period of genocide, a central aspect of colonial expansion. The European powers defined their mission as the civilization of "uncivilized" peoples, elimination of slavery, redemption of souls through conversion to Christianity, and expansion of international commerce, all the while insisting that the key conflicts in the region related to tribal hostility.

The genocide and mass murder perpetrated within the Congo set the stage for a century of mass slaughter throughout Africa, with the killings in the German protectorate of Namibia in a sense serving as the rehearsal for the Holocaust during World War II. The Nazis' annihilation of some six million European Jews brought the issue of genocide to the center of international concern.

The U.S. government established the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) force in September 1996, during the Clinton administration, to respond in a timely fashion to humanitarian crises and develop peacekeeping missions on the African continent. The possibility of a major genocide in Burundi, along the lines of what had occurred in Rwanda in 1994, was the principal reason for the creation of this force. However, after the ACRI was formed, these murders continued and the force never officially intervened. As of mid-2004, with the mass murders occurring in the Darfur province of the Sudan, the U.S. government had yet to deploy the ACRI force to put an end to genocide in Africa.

Episodes of ethnically organized and targeted massacres have been constant in Burundi since 1965, with large-scale massacres documented for 1969, 1988, 1991, 1993, 1996, and 1997, and an actual genocide in 1972. Throughout this period the United States continued to provide military assistance to the Burundi government, the agent of the genocide. In fact, while the African Union and Nyerere Foundation labored to establish peace and demilitarization in Burundi, the official U.S. government, despite its statements calling for humanitarian intervention in Africa as outlined in the ACRI's founding articles, did not actively support these efforts.

The formation of the ACRI was interpreted by some African leaders, such as South African Nelson Mandela, as a cynical attempt by the U.S. government to repair its image in the wake of the Rwandan genocide. Although the United States had been willing to mobilize the United Nations (UN) to stop mass murders in Bosnia, it aggressively intervened to ensure that the UN did not send troops to end the Rwandan genocide in 1994, often regarded as the "fastest" genocide in history as it took place over the course of several days. While graphic images of the genocide dominated the media, the U.S. government remained reluctant to even use the term genocide to characterize what was unfolding in Rwanda. It simply declared, "acts of genocide may have taken place."

The experience of the U.S. military in Somalia is directly relevant to the creation of the ACRI. After the fall of the Siad Barre regime in Somalia, the United States, in 1992, chose to send in military forces in a humanitarian operation called Restore Hope. However, the mission soon took on other dimensions when U.S. foreign policy began to move in the direction of restructuring Somalia's government. Before long tensions erupted between U.S. forces and local military entrepreneurs. In 1993 the Battle of Mogadishu resulted in the death of several U.S. troops and the dragging of their bodies through the city's streets. The humiliation of this incident led the U.S. State Department to pressure the UN against intervening in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

An international panel of experts assembled by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) investigated the genocide in Rwanda and concluded that during the period of civil war, genocide had indeed occurred, and a high degree of tolerance for genocidal violence committed by African leaders seemed to exist. In calling its report Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, the panel drew attention to the possible culpability of the United States and UN in this tragedy.

Regional leaders such as Michel Micombero of Burundi, Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Republic, Idi Amin of Uganda, and Mobutu of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) directly and indirectly contributed to the perpetuation of war and genocide by supporting, tolerating, or adopting a stance of indifference toward state-implemented criminal prescriptions originating from extremist political elements that exploited myths of Tutsi and Hutu origins.

SEE ALSOBurundi; Early Warning; Humanitarian Intervention; King Leopold II and the Congo; Prevention; Rwanda

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Campbell, Horace G. (2000). The U.S. Security Doctrine and the Africa Crisis Response Initiative. Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa.

Frazier, Jendayi (Summer/Fall 1997). "The African Crisis Response Initiative: Self-Interested Humanitarianism." Brown Journal of World Affairs IV (2).

Henk, Dan, and Steven Metz (1997). The United States and the Transformation of African Security: The African Crisis Response Initiative and Beyond. Carlisle Barracks, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute.

McCallie, Marshall (April 1998). "ACRI: Positive U.S. Engagement with Africa." USIA Electronic Journal 3(2).

Horace Campbell