Another World is Possible.

As 2007 opens, the world's attention is predominantly focused on the worsening crisis and imperialist violence in Iraq and now, too, Somalia. In both cases, the current context has roots in the contadictions of the Cold War, when the Western powers supported and armed authoritarian regimes (including, during the 1980s, those of Siyad Barre in Somalia and Saddam Hussein in Iraq) and proxy forces (including the CIA-recruited Islamist 'mujahideen' wich later formed the basis for al-Qaida) in the name of 'containment'. Now in the era of the 'War on Terrorism' the same imperial logics are reproduced, as imperialist intervention reinforces and arms reactionary, sectarian and authoritarian forces. This may be seen as the other side of a coin on which the face value is the long-trerm promotion of neo-liberal 'freedoms' acrosds the globe. The immediate nature of the crisis in the Horn of Africa, particularly in Sudan and Somalia, has distraced attention from this unbderlying agenda in which the condition of Africa had acquired a more prominent place in public discourse in the West, especially after the campaigns and debates surrounding Blai's Commission for Africa and the G8 summit meeting in Scotland in 2005. These events had prompted considerable public debate in Western media which reflected in a series of articles aout Africa published in non-Africanist journals in politics and international relations. One outcome for critical observers from the left was the need for greater degree of agency for social mobementsd, politicians, organised workers and producers and activists in all those countries which are, or are likely to be, the object of Western attention We begin this Issus therefore with the opportunity which these events of 2005 provide, and their reflection of a perspective which is still contemporary, to conduct a critical review of some of the contours of debate and analysis as found in a sample of non-Africanist journals, taking as examples International Affrias, Gobal Dialogue and Historical Materialism. In our opening essay William Brown highlights some key differences between commentators who broadly accept the framework of Western policy towards Africa, but criticise the detail; and those who offer a more critical, wider perspective, stituating conditions in Africa in the context of Global capitalism and the legacies of colonialism. He sees three themes emerging across all three journals to service as a framework for his review.