The new American imperialism in Africa
southern africa |
imperialism / war |
feature
Monday January 22, 2007 19:29 by Michael Schmidt - ex-ZACF, southern Africa blackdragon at africamail dot com
In pursuit of its "long war" on terrorism and alleged terrorism, the US military is expanding into Africa's "arc of instability" - and striking secret pacts with regional powers like South Africa.
Those programmes include the “Next Generation of African Military Leaders” officers’ course run by the shadowy African Centre for Strategic Studies, based in Washington, which has “chapters” in various African countries including South Africa. The Centre appears to be a sort of “School of the Africas” similar to the infamous “School of the Americas”
The new American imperialism in Africa
by Michael Schmidt, Johannesburg
AMERICA MUSCLES INTO “FRENCH TERRITORY”
Former colonial power France maintained the largest foreign military presence in Africa since most countries attained sovereignty in the 1950s and 1960s. But France reduced its armed presence on the continent by two thirds at the end of the last century, though it continues to intervene in a muscular and controversial fashion. For example, under a 1961 “mutual defence” pact, French forces were allowed to be permanently stationed in Ivory Coast: the 500-strong 43rd Marine Infantry Battalion is based at Port Bouet next to the Abidjan airport.
When the civil war erupted there in September 2002, France added a “stabilisation force”, now numbering some 4,000 under Operation Licorne, which was augmented in 2003 by 1,500 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) “peacekeepers” drawn from Senegal, Ghana, Benin, Togo and Nigeria. In January this year, the United Nations extended the mandate of Operation Licorne until December.
But piggybacking off the French military presence in Africa are a series of new foreign military and policing initiatives by the United States and the European Union. It appears the US has devised a new Monroe Doctrine for Africa (the term has become a synonym for the doctrine of US interventions in what it saw as its Latin American “back yard”).
Under the George W Bush regime’s “War on Terror” doctrine, the US has designated a swathe of territory that curves across the globe from Colombia and Venezuela in South America, through Africa’s Maghreb, Sahara and Sahel regions into the Middle East and Central Asia as the “arc of instability” where both real and supposed terrorists may find refuge and training.
In Africa, which falls under the US military’s European Command (EUCOM), the US has struck agreements with France to share its military bases. For example: there is now a US Marine Corps base in Djibouti at the French base of Camp Lemonier with more than 1,800 Marines stationed there, allegedly for “counter-terrorism” operations in the horn of Africa, the Middle East and East Africa - as well as controlling the Red Sea shipping lanes.
But the US presence involves more than piggybacking off French bases. In 2003, US intelligence operatives began training spies for four unnamed North African countries - believed to be Morocco and Egypt and perhaps also Algeria and Tunisia.
It is also conducting training of the armed forces of countries such as Chad and in September last year [2005], Bush told the United Nations Security Council that the US would, over the next five years, train 40,000 “African peace-keepers” to “preserve justice and order in Africa”. The US Embassy in Pretoria said at the time that the US had already trained 20,000 “peace-keepers” in 12 African countries in the use of “non-lethal equipment”.
And now, while the US is downscaling and dismantling military bases in Germany and South Korea, it is relocating these military resources to Africa and the Middle East in order to “combat terrorism” and “protect oil resources”.
In Africa, new US bases are being built in Djibouti, Uganda, Senegal, and São Tomé & Príncipe. These “jumping-off points” will station small permanent forces, but with the ability to launch major regional military adventures, according to the US-based Associated Press. An existing US base at Entebbe, Uganda, under the one-party regime of US ally Yoweri Museveni, already “covers” East Africa and the Great Lakes region. At Dakar in Senegal, the US is busy upgrading an airfield.
SOUTH AFRICA SECRETLY JOINS THE “WAR ON TERROR”
Governments with whom the US has concluded military pacts include Gabon, Mauritania, Rwanda, Guinea and South Africa. The US also has a “second Guantanamo” in the Indian Ocean where alleged terror suspects kidnapped in Africa, the Middle East or Asia can be detained and interrogated without trial: a detention camp, refuelling point and bomber base situated on the British-colonised Chagos Archipelago island of Diego Garcia, an island from which the indigenous inhabitants were forcibly removed to Mauritius.
In South Africa’s case, while it is unlikely there will ever be US bases established because the strength of the country’s military, the SANDF, makes that unnecessary, in 2005, the country quietly signed on to the US’s Africa Contingency Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA) programme which is aimed at integrating African armed forces into US strategic (read: imperialist) objectives.
South Africa, by signing on to ACOTA as its 13th African member, effectively joined the American “War on Terror”. ACOTA started life as a “humanitarian” programme run by EUCOM out of Stuttgart, Germany, in 1996. After the 9-11 attacks, the Pentagon reorganised ACOTA and gave it more teeth.
Today, its makeup is more obviously aggressive rather than defensive. According to Pierre Abromovici, writing in the July 2004 edition of Le Monde Diplomatique about rumours that South Africa was preparing to sign ACOTA - a full year before it did so - “ACOTA includes offensive training, particularly for regular infantry units and small units modelled on special forces... In Washington, the talk is no longer of non-lethal weapons... the emphasis is on ‘offensive’ co-operation”.
The real nature of ACOTA is perhaps indicated by the career of the man heading it up, Colonel Nestor Pino-Marina, “a Cuban exile who took part in the 1961 failed US landing in the Bay of Pigs,” Abromovici wrote. “He is also a former special forces officer who served in Vietnam and Laos. During the Reagan era he belonged to the Inter-American Defence Board, and, in the 1960s, he took part in clandestine operations against the Sandanistas. He was accused of involvement in drug-trafficking to fund arms sent to Central America” to prop up pro-Washington right-wing dictatorships.
Clearly, Pino-Marina is a fervent “anti-communist” - whether that means opposing rebellious States or popular insurrections. He also sits on the executive of a strange outfit within the US military called the Cuban-American Military council, which aims at installing itself as the government of Cuba should the US ever achieve a forcible “regime-change” there.
The career of the US ambassador who concluded the ACOTA pact with South Africa is also an indicator of US intentions. Jendayi Fraser, now Bush’s senior advisor on Africa, had no diplomatic experience. Instead, she once served as a politico-military planner with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Department of Defence and as senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council. According to Fraser’s online biography, she “worked on African security issues with the State Department’s international military education training programmes”.
IS THERE A MURDEROUS “SCHOOL OF THE AFRICAS”?
Those programmes include the “Next Generation of African Military Leaders” officers’ course run by the shadowy African Centre for Strategic Studies, based in Washington, which has “chapters” in various African countries including South Africa. The Centre appears to be a sort of “School of the Africas” similar to the infamous “School of the Americas” based at Fort Benning in Georgia. In 2001, it was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).
Founded in 1946 in Panama, the School of the Americas has trained some 60,000 Latin American soldiers, including notorious neo-Nazi Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer, infamous Panamanian dictator and drug czar Manuel Noriega, Argentine dictators Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola whose regime murdered 30,000 people between 1976 and 1983, numerous death-squad killers, right up to Efrain Vasquez and Ramirez Poveda who staged a failed US-backed coup in Venezuela in 2002.
Over the decades, graduates of the School have murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands of people across Latin America, specifically targeting trade union leaders, grassroots activists, students, guerrilla units, and political opponents. The murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero of Nicaragua in 1980 and the “El Mozote” massacre of 767 villagers in El Salvador in 1981 were committed by graduates of the School. And yet the School of the Americas Watch, an organisation trying to shut WHINSEC down, is on an FBI “anti-terrorism” watch-list.
So Africa should be concerned if the African Centre for Strategic Studies has similar objectives, even if the School of the Americas Watch cannot confirm these fears. And there is more: we’ve all heard of the “Standby Force” being devised by the African Union (AU), a coalition of Africa’s authoritarian neo-liberal regimes. But the AU has also set up, under the patronage of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (which also covers North America, Russia and Central Asia), the African Centre for the Study and Research of Terrorism.
The Centre is based in Algiers, Algeria, at the heart of a murderous regime that has itself “disappeared” some 3,000 people between 1992 and 2003 (according to Amnesty International: equivalent to the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, but ignored by the African left). The Centre’s director, Abdelhamid Boubazine told me that it would not only be a think-tank and trainer of “anti-terrorism” judges, but that it would also have teeth, providing training in “specific armed intervention” in support of the continent’s regimes.
Anneli Botha, the senior researcher on terrorism at the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies, said, however, that only 10% of terrorist attacks in Africa were on armed forces, and only 6% on state figures and institutions, though the latter were “focussed”. She warned that a major cause of African terrorism was “a growing void between government and security forces on the one hand and local communities on the other”. Caught in the grip of misery and poverty, many people are recruited into rebel armies, even though few of these offer any sort of real solution.
The Centre in Algiers operates under the AU’s Algiers Convention on Terrorism, which is notoriously vague on what defines terrorism, opening the door for a wide range of non-governmental, protest, grassroots, civic, and militant organisations to be targeted for elimination by the new counter-terrorism forces. It would be naïve to think that bourgeois democracy - which passed South Africa’s equally vaguely-defined Protection of Constitutional Democracy from Terrorism and Other Related Activities Act into law last year - will protect the working class, peasantry and poor from state terrorism.
[This article first appeared in the ZACF journal Zabalaza #7, November 2006].
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10Michael,
Why ex ZACF? Can you give us an update on political developments of the anarchists of southern Africa?
Solidarity.
An intriguing statement taken from your article:
"And now, while the US is downscaling and dismantling military bases in Germany and South Korea..."
So, if the United States is actually downscaling and removing its military presence in Europe and Asia (you forgot to mention Saudi Arabia as well), then how, one might wonder, can you claim that the United States is being "imperialistic" in its endeavors in Africa?
Based off your own logic, it would seem that once the threat has abated, the United States will be dismantling and downgrading its military bases in Africa sometime down the road as well.
That seems rather antithetical to an "imperialistic" power.
There seems to be a denial written all over your comment Drew. To not accept reality that USA have a history of imperialistic eandevors is similar to deny that Europe have a history of colonialism in Africa. It is simply put reality.
I simply posited a question to you and others. How can you claim the United States to be an "imperialistic power" when it is true (and you admit) that the US is dismantling bases in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East?
Can you prove that the governments of these nations (i.e. Djibouti, Chad, etc.) did not want the presence of American military there?
Because, see, imperialism is a very specific definition. Willingly reducing one's "footprint" and "influence" with others is not a characteristic of an "imperial" power.
Thus, if anyone is in denial....the evidence suggests that it's you.
Among many other such descriptors....
Ufffffffff.... I do not think it is much of an issue of discussion if the US is imperialistic or not. Even the liberal press will admit to some degree that the behaviour of the US tends to be "unilateral" and "unaccountable" -fancy jargon to avoid mentioning the feared word imperialism. Even the most serious of the liberal press will acknowledge US imperialism. In fairness, it is quite obvious that the US is trying to get rid of some bases that after the end of the cold war, prove to be of little use for them, while directing their efforts to other areas of the world where they see their imperialistic domination of the world challenged -Middle East and Asia. The costs of the war in Iraq is proving too much of a burden to keep a number of useless bases functioning.
A quick look at the jargon of the neocons (we are not going to allow our hegemony to be challenged!), at their military policies (including the so called Revolution in Military Affairs and the Santa Fe documents), their recent record in Latin America and the Middle East, their constant intromision in world politics, their economic grip on the world resources (does oil rings a bell?), and their apalling so-called campaign to promote democracy, where a pro-US dictator is a democrat and an anti-US democrat is a dictator it is all very telling: YES, THE US IS AN IMPERIALIST POWER.
This is so obvious that it is not even a matter for discussion: the US imperialist? go to Iraq or to Haiti, and you might get plenty of people there quite interested in discussing that point with you.
Apparently, this is debatable as that's precisely what we're doing. As far as the liberal press goes, one has to wonder whether or not you actually know what you're talking about.
I first off do not accept your premise that the term "unilateral" is used in place of "imperialistic." This is primarily because if anyone shared your warped points of view on US foreign policy, it would be the liberal press.
That being said, the term "unilateral" (with regard to actions taken over the past few years) is not only woefully inaccurate, but also characteristic of one who isn't living in reality.
Afghanistan-40+ Nations involved
Iraq-30+ Nations involved
North Korea Talks-6 Nations involved
If there's so much as one nation, aside from the US, involved in these endeavors, then it is factually impossible to characterize them as "unilateral."
I realize that I'm conveying points to anarchists, communists, and other misguided extreme leftwing individuals, and I fully realize that for some of you to believe what you believe, you are forced to obfuscate vast portions of reality, but I feel it necessary to at least point out some of the obvious flaws in your reasoning.
Coming from the US you use liberal as a sort of synonim for "progressive". I am using the term liberal as "capitalist" as mainstream media. So it is media that would not share my points of view.
It is true that "unilateral" cannot be necessarily used in place of "imperialistic". That's why the liberal-capitalist media choose to use that term instead of the feared imperilistic word. It is an euphemism to hide the true nature of US policy.
That said, US imperialism as any imperialism, is as well unilateral. The fact that many countries are participating in their invasions does not mean that they have much of a say or that the had the idea (have you seen the papers always saying "US-lead invasion"? Coincidence?). Everyone knows that the moronic idea of invading the Middle East was the US and everyone knows that countries participating are just puppets trying to get something out of the plunder that followed.
Every imperialistic power has their own subordinate allies: even the classic example of the Conquest of America by the Spaniards will show you how certain indigenous peoples sided with them in order to oppose their local enemies... will this make the act of invasion less imperialistic? Will you define it as a "multilateral" action?
Actually, the staunchest ally of the US, Blair's Britain, got a blush in late november when the analyst from the State Department (of the US), Kendall Myers made the point that it was embarassing the way in which Blair was systematically ignored when it came to decision making by the Bush administration... That's the nature of the unilateral relationship of the US with its "allies" -and that's not said by the pinko press, but by the very experts in the State Department. (Having said that, Britain is another awful imperialistic power)
When it comes to imperialism, it means the domination of one nation over another. This domination happens to all sorts of means:
1. threats (when Chile pronounced itself against the war of Iraq, next day Powell was saying to our Foreign Minister that he expected that was the last time we "disagreed" on international matters -a short while later, Chile was invading Haiti with the US)
2. economic pressure (blockading countries, for instance)
3. economic influence (the Troy Horse of Free Trade)
4. illegitimate influence (Nicaragua saw the CONTRAS and then the candidate Violeta Chamorro financed by the US; in Chile, the fascist group Patria y Libertad was financed by the US as well as the rest of the opposition to Allende; examples like that are easy to find out)
5. Open Military Might (well, Iraq)
There are all the forms in which imperialism exercise its domination. The US uses them all. It is imperialist as imperialist you can be. In return, they get strategical control over vast regions of the planet, political influence that plays in its favour and at the end of the day, a lot of bleeding money for the clique of capitalists it represents: In Iraq, oil capitalists have been greatly benefited by the profits of the war, while the tax payers are dealing with the costs of it. In Chile, it was mainly for copper that you put us the bloodiest dictator of our history (Pinochet) for 17 years. You got the profits, we got the victims: that's a miserable logic, but is the logic of imperialism.
It might be sad for you to know that your country is imperialist and it has an inhuman policy against the rest of the world. That's why wherever Bush goes, people chant him "yankees go home". But if you don't like imperialism, instead of giving out to people that acknowledge this, try to change things for good in your country.
...Just so everyone knows, Oscar Romero's assassination and the Mozote Massacre happened in El Salvador, not Nicaragua or Guatemala.
there is no difference of opinion at all and i remain very close to the zacf, but i was forced to resign from the zacf after its december 2005 congress because:
1) i needed to take a few months off to take care of pressing personal circumstances so i could not devote myself full-time to the federation; but
2) congress decided to scrap the intermediary category of inactive member (allowing members to take sabbaticals for a defined period) in favour of a simpler division between member and non-member.
briefly, on the current anarchist situation in southern africa, the zacf is still active (and has been invited to address several workshops by poor communities, zimbabwean militants, and a radical mineworkers' union), but conditions on the ground for their members, especially in swaziland remain very tough. other small groups of anarchists are still somewhat active, though irregularly so, it appears.
red & black regards
- michael
This article in Italian: