Freedom Fighters or Criminals? AFRICOM Doesn’t Care.

May 13, 2009 by admin · Comment
Filed under: Age of Conan 

 

whateverby Mark P. Fancher
The U.S. military’s African Command – AFRICOM – extends its tentacles on the east and west coasts and deep into the interior of the continent. Its mission: “to keep Africa safe for western corporations that need access to the continent’s oil and mineral resources.” All indigenous opposition to imperial policies and interests is deemed “criminal” or “terrorist” – whether along the internationally exploited shores of Somalia or in the oil-rich delta of the Niger River. As African Liberation Day approaches, we must understand that “AFRICOM…is really all about building the capacity of western corporations to hold fast to Africa.”

 

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Freedom Fighters or Criminals? AFRICOM Doesn’t Care.
by Mark P. Fancher
“The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has been establishing an extensive high profile presence on Africa’s western coast.”
After U.S. Navy sharpshooters put bullets into the heads of companions of Somalia-born Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, the problem of “piracy” in the waters off the Horn of Africa dominated the news. Muse and other Somalians had allegedly hijacked an American ship and held its captain hostage until the captors were all killed or, in the case of Muse, taken into custody.
These events caused many progressive observers to have concerns comparable to those expressed nearly 40 years ago by Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president. He said: “By means of press and radio, accounts are given of the capture of ‘terrorists’ by ‘security forces’ …the ‘terrorists’ being usually described as poorly-trained, ill-equipped, demoralized and uncertain of the cause for which they are fighting.” Nkrumah went on to observe: “This refusal to recognize freedom fighters as soldiers is again part of imperialist strategy designed to pour scorn on the armed revolutionary movement, and at the same time to discourage further recruits.”
It is not suggested here that Muse and his companions were freedom fighters, and there are likely many petty criminals among the ranks of those who have captured ships off the coast of Somalia. But the western media has been so relentless in its characterization of all who hijack ships as “pirates” that few people know that one of the first of these groups, known as the “Somalia National Volunteer Coast Guard,” was, according to some reports, established by fishermen who armed themselves and chased away foreign ships that were suspected of engaging in illegal fishing and the dumping of waste in Somali waters.
“One of the first of these groups is known as the ‘Somalia National Volunteer Coast Guard.’”
When U.S. right wing media pundits began urging the U.S. military to conduct full scale operations to clean out the “nests” of pirates in Somalia, there was reason to worry that legitimate freedom fighters would be caught up in the dragnet. Already, the U.S. has engaged in military activities and covert actions that have included complicity in a 2006 regime change in Somalia. There is also a significant U.S. presence at a special military installation in Djibouti. The U.S. search for “pirates,” “terrorists” and other purported “evil-doers” (as Bush used to call them) has not been limited to the Horn of Africa. For some time now, the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has also been establishing an extensive high profile presence on Africa’s western coast - specifically in the Gulf of Guinea and the Niger Delta.
Notwithstanding its official mission statements, AFRICOM is proving itself to be a vehicle for the U.S. to use proxy troops drawn from Africa’s armies to keep Africa safe for western corporations that need access to the continent’s oil and mineral resources. It is understandable then why AFRICOM’s directors have been just as interested in West Africa as they are in Somalia. A study by the Nigerian government shows that during 2008, the country lost nearly $28 billion as a result of armed groups having blown up oil pipelines. These organizations have also kidnapped oil company personnel. The government study estimates that about 1,000 lives were lost last year in connection with oil thefts and sabotage.
“AFRICOM is proving itself to be a vehicle for the U.S. to use proxy troops drawn from Africa’s armies to keep Africa safe for western corporations.”
The attacks on the oil industry have not emerged from a vacuum. Oil operations have caused widespread environmental catastrophe, ruining fishing, farming and sources of fresh water for many villages in the Niger Delta. Unemployment in these areas that (according to government estimates) exceeds 80 percent fuels a spirit of rebellion and resistance among the youth that continues to spread. Patrick Aziza, a traditional leader in the Okpe Kingdom in the Niger Delta, has urged rebels to lay down their arms, but he has also acknowledged that their deep-seated frustration is justified. His conclusion is particularly significant because he is also a retired Nigerian army general. Nevertheless, the Nigerian government has begun to chart plans for bolstering the capacity of special military forces to fight the rebels. With so much oil at stake, AFRICOM has not been sitting idly by. It has collaborated in the operation of an “Africa Partnership Station” that has cruised from port to port along Africa’s western coast training African naval personnel to conduct military operations that are helpful to U.S. corporate interests in the region.
AFRICOM has justified its activities by claiming that the region is plagued by crime and terrorism. It has also protested accusations of imperialist military intervention by insisting that the U.S. has been “invited” into the region by Africans themselves. Admiral Robert T. Moeller, a high level AFRICOM official said: “Recognizing (threats of piracy, oil smuggling and other crimes) themselves, the Africans have requested that we provide this kind of assistance.” Also, to calm fears that the U.S. is in Africa to militarize the continent, much has been made of AFRICOM’s humanitarian work. For example, during one mission, the Africa Partnership Station delivered food to AIDS patients and orphans.
“Nkrumah understood four decades ago how easy it is for the underlying causes of armed struggle to be forgotten because of media lies.”
History has proven that for as long as foreign corporate operations create instability and hardship for Africa’s people, it is all but certain that there will be those who will be moved to resist – with arms if necessary. Nkrumah understood four decades ago how easy it is for the underlying causes of armed struggle to be forgotten because of media lies and caricatures of Africans who resist foreign exploitation.
When African Liberation Day arrives later this month, we who wish to ensure African self-determination should heed the call of event organizers and “honor Nkrumah” (see: www.africanliberationday.net) by striving to become as skillful as he was in cutting through the crap. When Moeller says: “It is all about building the capacity of our African partners to be able to attend to their own security needs,” we must instinctively know that, for AFRICOM it is really all about building the capacity of western corporations to hold fast to Africa in leech-like fashion and to suck the continent bone dry of all of its most valuable natural resources.
Mark P. Fancher is an attorney, writer and activist. He can be contacted at mfancher(at)Comcast.net.
 

 

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Sudan/Darfur is Test Case for Obama’s “Humanitarian” Aggression

April 1, 2009 by admin · Comment
Filed under: Age of Conan 

out of iraq into darfurby BAR executive editor Glen Ford

Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir had no choice but to expel the western "aid" organizations that had merged with the American propaganda machine aimed at regime change in Khartoum. Obama operatives like UN Ambassador Susan Rice have for years been "eager to blockade Sudan’s ports" and to launch "selective" bombing raids against Sudan. When imperial doctrine claims the right to intervene whenever disasters overtake sovereign countries - and proceeds to create and exacerbate those disasters - then no government is safe against regime change. President Obama "appears to be fine-tuning a ‘humanitarian’ interventionist doctrine that is applicable to any point on the planet."

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Sudan/Darfur is Test Case for Obama’s “Humanitarian” Aggression

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

“Obama has not broken the American mold, but rather, appears to be fine-tuning a ‘humanitarian’ interventionist doctrine.”

Any government in the world that believes it has been targeted for regime change by the United States and its allies would be foolish to allow western-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to operate freely in its territory. When Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir evicted 13 western NGOs from his country last month, he was responding quite rationally to the clear threat of so-called “humanitarian” military intervention by the U.S. under the pretext of “rescuing” Sudanese in the war-torn Darfur region.

Under the Obama administration, a military interventionist doctrine is rapidly crystallizing around the concept of “Responsibility to Protect,” or R2P, which holds that nations have a responsibility to forcibly intervene when a state is judged to be unwilling or unable to protect or otherwise fulfill its responsibilities to its people – responsibilities that can be broadly or narrowly defined. United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice and Samantha Power, a member of Obama’s National Security Council, are leading advocates of a broad and unilateralist interpretation of R2P. Both are very close to President Obama, and can be assumed to reflect his thinking on foreign policy. And both are implacably hostile to Omar Al-Bashir’s government in Sudan. Rice is eager to blockade Sudan’s ports and to launch “selective” bombing raids.

“Almost the entire Arab and African world supports Sudan against the ICC.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is also a hawk on Sudan, who talks of enforcing no-fly zones over Darfur. That’s the same policy the U.S. pursued against Iraq in the interim between the 1991 and 2003 wars. The logic leads inexorably to incremental invasion and regime change in Sudan.

The crisis exploded when Bashir was indicted for “crimes against humanity” – a step below formal charges of genocide – by the International Criminal Court (ICC), a body whose prosecutorial urges seem limited to Africa. As reported by IRIN, a news service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: “Almost the entire Arab and African world supports Sudan against the ICC, arguing it is a biased and political tool that only targets Africans and infringes sovereignty.” The African Union and the Arab League have long opposed ICC action against Sudan, on national sovereignty grounds and because an indictment could have been predicted to lead to disruptions in international aid to Darfuran refugees.

President Obama has dispatched a U.S. Air Force general as his special envoy to Sudan to deal with, in Obama’s words, the 4f7d4_sudan_syria_0319 Sudan/Darfur is Test Case for Obama’s “Humanitarian” Aggression“immediate crisis prompted by the Khartoum government’s expulsion of non-governmental organizations that are providing aid to displaced persons inside of Sudan." Obama is reaching for the heights of hypocrisy. First, the United States is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court, fearing that its own numerous and constant violations of international law might land an American president in the dock, one day. Second, the entire purpose of U.S. policy toward Sudan is to create a crisis in hopes of toppling the regime and transforming the largest country in Africa – or big, dismembered chunks of it – into a client of the United States. Susan Rice can’t wait for her “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Sudan” moment to arrive. Obama’s envoy/general would like to get an audience with his Sudanese military counterparts, and talk coup.

“Susan Rice can’t wait for her ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Sudan’ moment to arrive.”

The American search for a pretext for “humanitarian” military intervention is perfectly understood by the Darfur rebel groups seeking to topple Bashir, who control the refugee camps in Darfur. No sooner had President Bashir kicked the western NGOs out, than “activists” in the 88,000-person Kalma refugee camp organized a “strike” against accepting aid from United Nations relief organizations. As the Los Angeles Times reported on March 21:

"’We want the international [aid groups] back,’ said Ali Abdel Khaman Tahir, the chief sheik at Kalma, speaking by telephone because the government is refusing to allow journalists in the camp, which is on the edge of Nyala, the capital of Southern Darfur province.

"’If we allow them to distribute the food, then the government will be able to say to the world that everything is OK in Kalma,’ said Mubarak Shafi, a camp activist. ‘We want all the other problems solved first.’"

The “problems” the “activist” refers to are political, ultimately devolving to autonomy or independence for the region. The rebel groups are intimately involved with U.S. allies in the region and western individuals and NGOs attached to the aid effort. In accordance with Washington’s wishes, the rebel-led refugees demanded that their pipelines to western media, the NGOs, be allowed back in. Food and medicine were not the issue. Nor is refugee relief a priority of the Obama administration. It’s all about regime change.

“The rebel groups are intimately involved with U.S. allies in the region and western individuals and NGOs attached to the aid effort.”

The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), a major rebel faction, has offices in Tel Aviv. ABC News reports that “Israel has conducted three military strikes against targets in Sudan since January in an effort to prevent what were believed to be Iranian weapons shipments from reaching Hamas in the Gaza Strip.” The alleged Gaza/Iran connection is for western consumption. In fact, Israel is in the vanguard of U.S. clients, including Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Chad, that connive to dissolve the Sudanese state.

When “humanitarian” intervention and “Responsibility to Protect” are the watchwords of superpower imperial destabilization policies, no targeted nation can afford to host western “aid” groups that feed the propaganda machines of aggressors. Ethnic and other conflicts in Sudan are quite complex (see Mahmood Mamdani, “What’s Really Happening In Darfur?” BAR), and the numbers and nature of mortality in Darfur are in serious dispute everywhere except in the U.S. corporate media. The Washington narrative is constructed for the sole purpose of overthrowing the Sudanese government.

States will do whatever is necessary to preserve themselves, and in Sudan’s case, that meant the western echo-operatives in the “aid” industry in Darfur had to go. The U.S. knew full well that its destabilization campaign against Sudan would ultimately achieve just such a result.

“The Washington narrative is constructed for the sole purpose of overthrowing the Sudanese government.”

The United Nations has also adopted a form of R2P, which authorizes the UN Security Council to intervene in the affairs of individual states when "national authorities [are] manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.” But the United States cannot count on manipulating the UN Security Council, which includes China and Russia, to achieve its narrow imperialist goals – in this case, regime change in Sudan. The Americans are unilateralists. They can’t even bring themselves to join the International Criminal Court – although they revel in its indictments of Africans. Obama has not broken the American mold, but rather, appears to be fine-tuning a “humanitarian” interventionist doctrine that is applicable to any point on the planet where crises can be exploited to create chaos worthy of the Lone Ranger’s armed attentions.

Call it Disaster Imperialism.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

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