The US has
made sure this week not to be seen to engage with selected authoritarian
African regimes, withholding invitations to Sudan’s ICC indicted Omar el
Bashir, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Eritrea’s Somalia-meddling Isaias Afewerki.
Yet, in a nod to similarly uncritical alliances of the Cold War era, its
expanding military engagement across Africa has depended on relationships with
similarly dubious governments. Djibouti, Uganda and Ethiopia, the increasingly
undemocratic pillars of US campaigns against Somalia’s al-Qaida franchise, are
the most blatant examples.