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Abstract
Sub-Saharan Africa, although not among Europe's closest neighbours, has, over the past decade, increasingly been perceived as a source of threats to Europe's security. This article will attempt to outline European perceptions of African security and justice issues and how these perceptions have in turn influenced the EU's policies in Africa. Specific attention will be given here to Guinea-Bissau, which is a particularly interesting and illustrative case study, as this small country in West Africa has attracted considerable European engagement in such fields as illegal immigration, counter-terrorism, drug-combating and security sector reform. This European engagement through different, at times uncoordinated and overlapping, channels does not always make for a consistent approach and underlines a profound gap between what has come to be a generally accepted diagnostic – that international insecurity is caused, or at least facilitated, by weak states – and the remedies applied by the EU. While Europe increasingly perceives Africa's weak governance as a security threat, it remains unwilling to engage politically and on a longer-term basis on the continent.
Acknowledgements
The author's warmest thanks go to Alexandre Abreu, fellow research student at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), for his generous help and advice in researching and preparing this article and to Richard Moncrieff (International Crisis Group) for his careful reading and useful comments. The author also wishes to thank the Central Research Fund, University of London, for providing funding for fieldwork in West Africa, as well as the foundations Compagnia di San Paolo, Torino/Italy, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Stockholm/Sweden, and VolkswagenStiftung, Hanover/Germany for making further research in Europe possible. Thanks also to the international, European and West African interlocutors for their openness, insights and time.
Notes
1 These arrangements have been regularly renewed, expanded and modified: Yaoundé I and II (1963–1975), Lomé I to IV bis (1975–2000) and Cotonou since 2000.
2 Lomé IV acknowledged that a democratic environment was favourable to economic development (Lomé IV Agreement 1990, art. 35b). Respect for human rights became a condition in the subsequent Lomé IVbis agreement (Lomé IVbis Agreement 1995, art. 5). The Cotonou Agreement, signed in 2000 and revised in 2005, further reinforced this conditionality and defined human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law as essential elements, whose violation could lead to the suspension of EU assistance and trade cooperation (Cotonou Agreement, Citation2000 and 2005, art. 9).
3 The EC trade agenda with the developing world incorporated a measure of conflict prevention through regulatory schemes meant to prevent EC trade from inadvertently fuelling conflicts and violence, for example through the Action Plan for Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT), which regulates the trade of timber, and the ‘Everything But Arms’ initiative, which excludes arms and munitions from the special duty-free access given to imports from least developed countries.
4 This has not precluded other policy fields from trying to integrate, in turn, development concerns into their own agendas. Please refer to Meng-Hsuan Chou's article in this issue, in which she shows how the Justice and Home Affairs policy field has attempted to integrate development into its migration agenda.
5 266 kg in 2003, to 3161 in 2006, to 6458 in 2007. An estimated 40–50 tonnes of cocaine – 27–34% of Europe's annual consumption – are shipped from the Andean countries to Europe via West Africa every year (Maria Costa, Citation2008; UNODC, Citation2008).
6 Security Sector Reform (SSR) involves addressing issues of how the security system – understood in its broadest sense, from core security forces to oversight bodies to the judiciary to private security companies and the like – is structured, regulated, managed, resourced and controlled. It seeks to increase the ability of a state to meet the range of both internal and external security needs in a manner consistent with democratic norms and sound principles of good governance, human rights, transparency and the rule of law (Council of the European Union, Citation2006).
7 The fight against organised crime is not new to ESDP missions, however, as it was among the aims of a number of previous ESDP missions in the European neighbourhood, such as the European Police Mission (EUPM) in Bosnia-Herzegovina or the European Union Rule of Law Mission (EULEX) in Kosovo.
8 An estimated 31,000 illegal African immigrants tried to reach Europe along this route in 2006. Subsequent Frontex operations are said to have prompted a 60% drop in this flow in 2007 (Economist Intelligence Unit, Citation2008b).
9 In the Horn, the Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), launched in 2002, focuses on detecting, disrupting and ultimately defeating transnational terrorist groups operating in the region. The East Africa Counterterrorism Initiative (EACI), launched in 2003, is designed to strengthen the capabilities of regional governments to ensure coastal, border, customs, airport and seaport security. The USA also supported the Ethiopian intervention against radical islamist groups in Somalia in 2006–2008. In the Sahel, the Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI) was launched in 2002 and provided military training by US Special Forces. It was succeeded by the Trans Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative (TSCTI) in 2005.
10 In both Sierra Leone and Liberia post-conflict reconstruction programmes have been extremely ambitious, especially in the security sector. Following Sierra Leone's long and violent civil war (1991–2000), the UK, with the UN, launched an ambitious SSR programme in the country, which, nearly ten years after the end of the conflict, is ongoing (Leboeuf, Citation2008). Liberia's SSR programme, led with significant support from the US, is no less ambitious –the country's army has been completely disbanded and a new army is in the process of being trained - although it has already shown some limits in the police and justice sectors (Crisis Group, Citation2009a).
11 Estimates of the Bissau-Guinean army's strength vary between 4000 and 10 000 men. The most recent estimate, established in cooperation with the international community (among whom are the UN, the EU and Portugal) puts the army at 4458 men. Guinea-Bissau would thus have 3.4 soldiers per 1000 inhabitants, the highest ratio in West Africa (Crisis Group, Citation2008).
12 In 2006, 674 kg of cocaine disappeared from a Ministry of Finance safe after it had been seized from traffickers. In 2006 again, two Colombians arrested in the country's largest-ever drugs haul were released without charge and, in September 2007, another Colombian suspect walked free two weeks after being arrested in possession of weaponry and large amounts of cash (Economist Intelligence Unit, Citation2008a). In August 2008, a Bissau-Guinean judge ordered the liberation, on bail, of four suspects arrested after more than 500 kg of cocaine had been found on two planes seized at Bissau airport. The four suspects fled the country and it remains unclear what happened to the two airplanes and their drug cargo (Economist Intelligence Unit, Citation2008d).
13 These tensions were made obvious once again in April 2008, when deadly clashes involved officers from the police's rapid reaction force, Polícia de Ordem Pública (POP), which is part of the Ministry of Interior, and officers from the country's anti-narcotics squad, Polícia Judiciária (PJ), which reports to the Ministry of Justice (Economist Intelligence Unit, Citation2008c).
14 See footnote 12.
15 Portugal is, of course, the former colonial power. France, on the other hand, expressed its – modest but genuine – interest in Guinea-Bissau, located among French-speaking countries, early on by establishing a French cultural centre in Bissau and supporting a number of cultural initiatives. Guinea-Bissau thus seemed in many ways to adopt France as a second tutelary power, an evolution that was confirmed by Guinea-Bissau's admission to the French-speaking Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine (UEMOA – West African Monetary and Economic Union) in 1997.
16 An Article 96 procedure can be launched if a party to the agreement – the EC and the member states of the European Union or an ACP state – considers that the other party has failed to fulfil an obligation stemming from respect for human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law, the agreement's three essential elements. This consultation procedure can lead to the adoption of ‘appropriate measures’ and, as a last resort, to a suspension of the agreement.
17 Interview with a European Commission DG Dev desk-officer, Brussels, October 2008.
18 Interview with a European Commission DG Dev desk-officer, Brussels, September 2005.
19 Guinea-Bissau's endemic instability and violence bears little resemblance to Sierra Leone's nine-year-long and extremely violent conflict. The size of Guinea-Bissau's army – one of my interviewees, who had been involved in an early DDR programme in the country, noted that 150 000 Bissau-Guineans, i.e. 10% of the total population, depended on soldiers' pay (interview in Bissau, March 2006) – the role it played in the independence war, its capacity to present itself as a guarantor of stability and the involvement of some of its elements in the drug trade also differentiate it strongly from its Sierra Leone counterpart.
20 Interview with a member of the Africa Unit, General Secretariat of the Council, Brussels, October 2008.
21 Interview with a European Commission DG Dev desk-officer, Brussels, October 2008.
