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Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published
by the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC) from 1995 to 2001 and by Africa Action
from 2001 to 2003. APIC was merged into Africa Action in 2001. Please note that many outdated links in this archived
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Africa Action: Letter to Friends
Africa Action: Letter to Friends
Date distributed (ymd): 011012
APIC Document
Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List: an information
service provided by AFRICA ACTION (incorporating the Africa
Policy Information Center, The Africa Fund, and the American
Committee on Africa). Find more information for action for
Africa at http://www.africapolicy.org
Note to distribution list readers:
The need to find and act on a vision for human security across
boundaries has never been more obvious than in the last month. Our
vision must be inclusive: Americans, Africans, Arabs, Muslims,
Christians, and all who share the vulnerability of our common
humanity. It must encompass those lives taken by structural
injustice and indifference as well as those fallen to the
intentional violence of terrorism and war.
The letter below to members and friends speaks of our ongoing work
in this new context, and asks for your support.
Many of you who receive our information regularly are already
supporters of Africa Action, or supported one of our three
predecessor organizations in the past. We need your continued
support.
If you are among those who receive and use our information but have
not yet been able to support us with your contribution, please
support us now if you possibly can.
-- Salih
Letter from Salih Booker
October 10, 2001
Dear Friends,
As many of you know, our New York office is in lower Manhattan,
only blocks away from "ground zero." The building reopened the
following week, and no staff members were injured. The aunt of one
staff member, however, was killed in the attack on the Pentagon.
Our Washington office has been twice evacuated but the work
continues.
This is a time to open our hearts. To open our hearts for the more
than 6,000 people who died in the terrorist attacks of September
11th. To open our hearts to the thousands of family members and
co-workers and friends of those whose lives were violently stolen
from them. These murderous attacks have brought home to everyone
in this country the vulnerability of human life that each of us
shares with every single person around the world. Now more than
ever, the struggles for human security, here and in Africa, must
be joined.
It is a time to open our hearts to all people who are victims of
terror, war and the violence of impoverishment that the world's
structural inequalities visit upon them daily. It is a time of
global grief. We share in common this fragile human life without
any distinctions whether of ideology, race, class, gender,
ethnicity, religion, or nationality and we all share in common the
desire to achieve security, human security
It is also a time to think clearly about the consequences of what
we do and what we fail to do. There can be no real safety in
islands of prosperity or protected enclaves. The quest for greater
security for the United States must be one that seeks to promote
security for others. We can only achieve common security if our
efforts visibly reflect common concerns, and are not efforts to pit
countries, cultures, or "civilizations" against each other, or to
otherwise build rather than tear down barriers of hate among
categories of people however defined.
African leaders and citizens across the enormous continent have
expressed their solidarity with everyone affected by the tragedy
here. Many countries and organizations have held memorial
services, even though the U.S. did not show such solidarity in
1998 for the hundreds of Africans killed in attacks on U.S.
embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, or in 1994, for the
hundreds of thousands slaughtered in Rwanda.
As this letter is written, it is still difficult to raise
fundamental questions for fear of being branded insensitive or
unpatriotic. However, there is a growing recognition that genuine
international cooperation rather than coercion is an indispensable
component of any effective strategy for defeating organized
terrorist groups. The quick congressional vote approving payment of
part of delinquent U.S. dues for the UN shows a glimmer of new
recognition of global obligations.
And yet the necessary shift to a broader vision of human security
has hardly begun. Some acknowledge that human security requires
seeking solutions to the conflicts and structural injustices that
provide fertile ground for terrorism. But the illusion persists
that such action can be postponed for "later." And even when the
media does begin to cover some of the structural roots of conflicts
in the strategic region from the Middle East to South Asia, there
is still a failure to advance a fully inclusive vision of global
solidarity.
Africa is central to the possibility of making such a shift. We
join with others in urging restraint and advocating that the battle
against terrorism must not become a battle against Afghanis, Arabs,
Africans, or Muslims. Africa Action will insist that all human
lives are valuable. We reject the double standards of global
apartheid, and we will continue to make the connections between
lives lost to deliberate intent in violent conflicts and lives lost
to indifference to structural injustice.
This letter is not the place to go into detail about our continuing
programs, about which you can find more information at
http://www.africapolicy.org.
But I want to share with you a few highlights.
- Shifts in policy and perspective on Africa are intrinsically
connected to shifts in understanding of global issues. Our article
on "Global Apartheid" written for The Nation (July 9) has been
widely discussed among groups involved in global justice
campaigns. We are actively involved in the Foreign Policy in Focus
project, and working with others to discover how best to
communicate the connection between human security and global
justice. Our earlier article on "Bush's Global Agenda: Bad News for
Africa" in the journal Current History (May issue) takes on new
meaning today.
- In the wake of September 11, staff members have been on national
radio programs in Angola and South Africa as well as here,
discussing the impact for the U.S. and Africa. Angola is still
beset with its own war, and suffered 250 killed in August in an
attack on a passenger train by the forces of former CIA client
Jonas Savimbi. Yet the devastation of the war in Angola, and the
U.S. historical responsibility for that, is even more invisible
than was the devastation in Afghanistan before September 11.
- While we welcome the payment of U.S. UN dues, we continue to
campaign for greater international support for African efforts to
resolve current conflicts. To give only one example, former
Botswana president Masire, the facilitator for the inter-Congolese
dialogue set to meet in mid-October, reports lacking sufficient
funding for hosting the meeting.
Most centrally, we are continuing our Africa's Right to Health
Campaign. The particular circumstances and appropriate actions are
different, of course. But our sense of solidarity must be the same
for the 6,000 or more dead in the September 11 attacks and the
6,000 to7,000 people estimated to be dying each day in Africa from
AIDS. Each set of deaths, one concentrated and visible on
television, the other dispersed and only sporadically the focus of
coverage, are testimony to the vulnerability of life and to the
absolute need for international cooperation to promote human
security.
Since I last wrote to all of you in June, Africa Action has
participated actively in the non- governmental components of the UN
General Assembly special session on HIV/AIDS, in New York, and the
World Conference against Racism, in Durban, South Africa.
In both cases we have concentrated on working with African and
other non-governmental groups to press for specific actions rather
than simply passing resolutions. We have stressed the need to
address present inequalities that still so starkly reflect the
racial divides inherited from past centuries. In Durban, we joined
with South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign and other groups in
a press conference focusing on the failure to address the AIDS
pandemic as a contemporary manifestation of international racism.
This fall, within the Africa's Right to Health Campaign, we are
continuing to work on key issues which were not addressed by world
leaders before September 11, and continue to be just as urgent
though less likely to gain media attention. Among them: grossly
inadequate funding for the Global Health Fund set to become
operational by the end of the year, failure by the World Bank to
cancel unsustainable and illegitimate debt that adds overwhelming
obstacles to African initiatives, and international trade rules
that still put profits before health and hamper access to
affordable essential medicines for all but the rich.
It is not easy in times like these to keep a focus on Africa and on
structural issues and long-term solutions. But it is the failure to
do so that provides fertile ground for new tragedies.
We need your help in working for a world in which the right to
human security, the right to freedom from fear, and the right to
health apply to all.
This is a crucial period. We need your contribution now.
In Struggle,
Salih Booker
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For more ways to contribute.
This material is distributed by Africa Action (incorporating the
Africa Policy Information Center, The Africa Fund, and the
American Committee on Africa). Africa Action's information
services provide accessible information and analysis in order to
promote U.S. and international policies toward Africa that advance
economic, political and social justice and the full spectrum of
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