As the Soviet Union retreated from its expansionist
policies of earlier decades and eventually collapsed
entirely, African governments increasingly and deci-
sively turned to the West for both political solutions
to long-standing conflicts and economic assistance
to cope with the problems of grinding poverty and
humanitarian emergencies typically associated with
the civil conflicts. Even as certain areas of Africa
showed dramatic improvement, others descended
into the throes of political chaos, civil war, and even
genocide. American policy makers were tested as
these crises moved either toward resolution or de-
scended into major emergencies.
Bright Spots On the positive side, several African
regions saw resolution of long-standing conflicts and
the emergence of new democratic regimes. This was
especially true of Southern Africa, which sported
several major changes of government that boded
well for future stability. At the heart of the region’s
general improvement was the demise of the white
racist regime of South Africa and the emergence of a
peaceful and democratic transition to black majority
rule as Nelson Mandela collaborated with white
South African president F. W. de Klerk to dismantle
the country’s apartheid system in the early 1990’s. As
South Africa moved toward peaceful reforms, prog-
ress was made in neighboring countries as well, in-
cluding in Namibia, where independence was
achieved in 1989 and further consolidated under
peaceful democratic rule during the 1990’s. A long
and bloody civil war in Mozambique finally came to
an end as the rebels and the government agreed to
demobilize forces and hold democratic elections. In
both Namibia and Mozambique, American engage-
ment in the settlements and U.N. peacekeeping
forces contributed to the restoration of stability.
During the 1990’s, the countries of Zambia and Ma-
lawi also benefited from democratic reform move-
ments in the general climate of improvement in the
region.
Trouble Spots In the Horn of Africa, a mixed pic-
ture emerged as the communist regime in Ethiopia
was toppled in 1991 and new governments were es-
tablished in both Addis Ababa and the newly inde-
pendent Eritrea (1993). However, by the late 1990’s,
war clouds appeared as the two countries sparred
over control of their disputed border. Moreover, civil
wars in neighboring countries, including Sudan and
Somalia, greatly complicated the stability of the re-
gion. Somalia descended into civil war and eventu-
ally into interclan fighting that caused severe fam-
ine. President George H. W. Bush decided in the
closing months of his tenure to deploy Operation
Restore Hope in a bid to end the starvation in De-
cember, 1992. The operation succeeded in its hu-
manitarian objectives, but as the United Nations as-
sumed control of efforts to disarm competing clans,
the situation deteriorated. Several Americans were
killed in the famous Black Hawk Down incident, and
the new Clinton administration, eager to avoid fur-
ther entanglement and loss of American lives, with-
drew forces, leaving Somalia to a fate of ongoing tur-
moil in subsequent years.
The Somali experience led to hesitance by
Clinton to intervene in other African civil wars, in-
cluding Rwanda, where about 800,000 people died
in 1994 in one of the most brutal and intense acts of
genocide of modern times. Civil wars in the West Af-
rican countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone also
failed to elicit strong American responses in the
1990’s. Moreover, after the Rwandan genocide de-
veloped in 1994, refugees fled into the neighboring
Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo),
provoking a civil war there, which later developed
into Africa’s first continental war. During a visit to Af-
rica in 1998, Clinton apologized for American inac-
tion in Rwanda, even as civil war raged in Sudan and
neighboring Congo. Although the United States
supplied considerable humanitarian aid to refugees,
displaced persons, and famine victims throughout
the continent, it was unable to negotiate settlements
in many of these intransigent conflicts. Moreover, in
a new and ominous development, terrorist groups
such as al-Qaeda were able to operate in Somalia and
later in Sudan. After the 1998 bombings of U.S. em-
bassies in Kenya and Tanzania by al-Qaeda terrorists,
the United States attacked a Sudanese pharmaceuti-
cal factory suspected falsely of producing chemical
agents. Terrorist activities in failed states such as
Somalia became a new and foreboding problem for
future U.S. policy makers.
Throughout Africa, another emerging scourge
was the AIDS epidemic. Central and Southern Africa
have been hit especially hard, with the worst hit
country of Botswana having an adult HIV/AIDS
prevalence rate of more than 35 percent. African
governments found stiff competition for increas-
ingly sparse foreign aid to address the AIDS crisis
and other needs, as American attention shifted to8 Africa and the United States The Nineties in America