Editorial: Good to see US interest in failed states

It is good to see President Bush visiting Africa. Good, because this is a President who came to the White House proclaiming little interest in problems outside the United States. And when some of those problems assailed him out of a clear blue morning sky on September 11, 2001, his Administration struck back with righteous but rather mindless vengeance. American fury might have expended itself finally in the Iraqi mire. Having won the war in just three weeks Mr Bush is finding it much harder to win the peace.

Three months after driving Saddam Hussein from power, Iraq remains under US martial law, poorly policed by troops who still operate under combat precautions. The country's ethnic and religious divisions appear no closer to a reconciliation that would permit a restoration of power to Iraqis. And their impatience has fuelled an armed resistance that is taking a toll on the occupying force that approaches wartime losses.

Meanwhile, there remains no sign of Saddam or the weapons he was thought capable of unleashing at an invader, and never did, even when his position was desperate. None of that has worried the White House nearly as much as it has its closest ally, Britain, which was never as convinced that the weapons, if they existed, warranted a war. But now, with the Administration's admission its fears of a nuclear programme were based on bogus intelligence about uranium purchases, the US Congress and the Democratic Party are beginning to ask hard questions, too.

But the President has moved on, to more useful projects in Palestine and, now, Africa. If the Iraq adventure has any lasting benefit, beyond that country's relief from a detestable regime, it will be to engage a reluctant Administration closely in the Arab-Israeli dispute and, hopefully, in the real problems of what it calls "failed states". And when this President is engaged, wisely or not, he plainly means what he says and does what he says he will do.

There are signs of hope for the "road map" he has endorsed towards a two-state solution for Palestine. The truce declared for three months by two of the most militant Palestinian organisations, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, provides a rare opportunity for progress. Those groups might still not accept Israel's survival, even within pre-1967 borders, just as many Israelis still could not accept a surrender of the West Bank that they consider part of their biblical birthright. But Mr Bush has earned their trust, and the wary respect perhaps of Palestinians. It is a good start.

In Africa the horrors of failed states far exceed even the deadly reprisals in the Middle East. Hardly a month goes by, it seems, without a report of appalling carnage wreaked on populations in one African state or another. Last week it was Liberia. Turn the next page and you will find an account of more atrocity in the Congo. The countries are different but the stories begin to sound the same: warlords, whether in power or in rebel encampments, terrorise a region, enlist its population, particularly children, into a kill-or-be-killed contest for control of territories and resources, and often range across national borders destabilising neighbouring states.

Not many of these conflicts pose a threat to the developed world, unless the absence of law and order provides a base for terrorists with a wider agenda. Bombings of US Embassies in East African capitals provide Mr Bush with a national interest if he needs one. But hopefully his difficulties in Iraq have awakened him to the challenge of failed states generally and he realises he can help their people. He would do better to give them trade opportunities than increased aid, and help to enforce the laws and freedoms on which Western prosperity has been built. That is a mission he could embrace.