海角大神

When Mali received mentions in the final US presidential debate on foreign policy, some pundits began to ask if the landlocked West African nation would become a new focus of American anti-terror efforts. In actuality, the US has already been heavily engaged in counterterrorism activities in this part of Africa for the past decade, and聽the nature of this engagement has long been a subject of internal debate.

Since 2002, the US government has plowed at least $700 million in counterterrorism funding into Africa's Sahel, a large swathe of semi-arid territory on the southern edge of the Sahara desert. Mali was a key recipient, taking in approximately $60 million since 2002 from the US. Though exact dollar amounts are hard to pinpoint due to the sensitive nature of some activities, many analysts believe that both figures are probably much higher.

The money was supposed to boost the capacity of governments to respond to the challenges posed by terrorism and organized crime across the Sahel. In Mali, that effort received a setback in March when聽Mali's US-backed military turned its guns away from the Islamic militants in the country鈥檚 north and toppled the US-allied government in Bamako. Since the coup d'etat, US aid has been suspended due to legal restrictions barring US foreign assistance to the government of any country in which the military has overthrown a democratically elected government.聽

As the US mulls its position on military intervention in Mali and looks to continue shoring up other governments in the Sahel, the debate over how best to use aid in the region has grown sharper.聽

For Todd Moss at the Center for Global Development (CGD), the performance of the Malian army and the collapse of the Malian state is a 鈥減retty big indictment鈥� of US counterterrorism efforts there. Moss, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of African Affairs at the State Department from 2007 to 2008, wrote on CGD鈥檚 鈥淩ethinking US Foreign Assistance Blog,鈥� that the crisis in Mali 鈥渟uggests that something is very wrong about the U.S. approach to counterterrorism cooperation in the Sahel.鈥�

At the center of the debate is the Trans Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP), a State Department-led inter-agency effort to combat terrorism in the Sahel.聽

Sources from three separate agencies involved in TSCTP programming told 海角大神 that State Department officials regularly expressed concerns over the out-sized role of the US military within TSCTP. And while the program aims to take a holistic approach, TSCTP resembles an aggregation of traditional bilateral foreign assistance programs.聽For critics, these disparities are indicative of a broader failure to establish a comprehensive strategy.

Officials push back that there is a strategy. Says one State Department official in Mali: 鈥淭he assistance focused on building military, law enforcement, and civil society capacity, and programs to provide greater economic opportunities to populations potentially vulnerable to radicalization.鈥�

Yet many of these activities 鈥撀燾entered around community empowerment practices, small-scale infrastructure such as wells, educational programs, vocational training, and community radio programs 鈥撀爎ead like a list of tenuously linked development assistance projects, and serious questions remain as to whether empirical evidence suggests that these types programs are even effective in combating terrorism in the Sahel.

USAID officials told 海角大神 that counterterrorism programming in Mali is guided by the 鈥渨idely recognized assumption鈥� that 鈥渟oft side inputs such as strengthening community capacity and addressing factors contributing to radicalization鈥� are essential to effective counterterrorism.

These approaches are in fact 鈥渓argely in sync with the level of scholarship on drivers of violent extremism that exists at this moment,鈥� says Kate Almquist Knopf, who served as assistant administrator for Africa at USAID from 2007 to 2009 and is currently at the Center for Global Development in Washington.

However, Ms. Almquist Knopf, who describes herself as a 鈥渟keptic of the use of development programs to counter violent extremism,鈥� also says that the scholarship is only one part of the equation. 鈥淓ven when we know what the empirical evidence suggests 鈥撀爐o whatever extent that it exists thus far 鈥� the challenge for managers and policymakers of these programs is translating that, practically speaking, into policies and programs that make sense.鈥�

鈥淚f there is one significant overriding lesson thus far concerning countering violent extremism programming, it鈥檚 that context is of the utmost importance,鈥� Almquist Knopf continues. 鈥淛ust because we think we鈥檝e got the analysis down at one moment in time doesn鈥檛 necessarily mean that analysis will be relevant six months from now or a year from now.鈥� 聽

Meanwhile, TSCTP-funded cooperation with other Sahel countries has continued. A State Department official says the program now puts 鈥渋ncreasing emphasis on Mali鈥檚 neighbors and particularly their ability to control borders to limit the free flow of people, arms, and other illicit goods in and out of northern Mali.鈥�