The Foreign Service Journal, January 2008

J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 11 A Chilly Reception for AFRICOM? On Nov. 19, within days of Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte’s visit to discuss the subject, the Nigerian National Council of State, that country’s highest presidential advisory committee, announced its disapproval of the new U.S. Africa Command. “The president restated the position of Nigeria: That it is not permitting the establishment of a U.S. base in our country or the [West African] subregion,” council spokes- man Bukola Saraki told journalists. Though this was the closest thing to a formal statement of opposition from Africa so far, controversy over AFRICOM has been swirling and bubbling throughout the continent for months. “The prospect of Ameri- ca’s vast military presence in Africa has instigated a flurry of talk and fear by Africans that, finally, all the chips have fallen into place of a long- planned recolonization of Africa,” wrote columnist Obi Nwakanma in the Lagos Vanguard on Nov. 18. Creation of the new regional military command was announced by President Bush in February 2007, after a 10-year deliberation process within the Department of Defense that focused on the emerging strate- gic importance of Africa ( www.afri com.mil ) . According to its develop- ers, AFRICOM will have a very different staff structure than other U.S. commands. Specifically, it will integrate USAID, the Department of State and other agencies involved in Africa. The command is poised to interact with partner nations through- out the continent and support exist- ing regional organizations, such as the African Standby Force. Formally established as a sub- unified command on Oct. 1, AFRI- COM will function under the U.S. European Command for its first year. But according to the presidential directive, it must be established as a separate unified command no later than Sept. 30, 2008. U.S. officials are currently consulting African leaders on where to base the command and what kind of presence it should have. According to the official Web site, “the presence issue is still very much a work in progress.” To date, only Liberian President Ellen Sirleaf has stated that her country would willingly host the command center. Morocco, Algeria and Libya are reported to have refused American requests to do so. South Africa, another obvious can- didate, has been ambivalent at best about the project, Francis Kornegay, senior researcher at the Center for Policy Studies in Johannesburg, told C YBERNOTES Site of the Month: www.lii.org The Librarians’ Internet Index is a useful directory of Web sites containing more that 20,000 entries. Cataloged into 14 main topics and nearly 300 related topics, the site averages over 10 million hits each month. (Created in 1990 by reference librarian Carole Leita, the index became the Berkeley Public Library Index to the Internet in 1994.) Today LII is publicly funded through the Library Services and Technology Act, which is administered in California by the State Librarian’s office. It is maintained by a team of librarians who carefully select high-quality sites and describe and compile them into the LII catalog. Each Thursday morning, LII sends out a free newsletter, “New This Week,” detailing the most recently added Web sites for nearly 40,000 subscribers. Users of the index can search Web sites by title, URL or description. Each entry provides a detailed description of the Web site, publisher information and related Library of Congress subject headings, and is accompanied by the name of the librarian who prepared it and the date it was added to the catalog. Sites are evaluated and added based on their availability, credibility, authorship and other characteristics. The criteria for selection, along with the organization’s mission statement, are included on the “About LII” page. Users polled in LII’s 2006 annual survey noted the standard of quality upheld by LII in providing credible sources, the utility of the index for academic research and the openness of the cataloging system. —Marc Nielsen, Editorial Intern