USA AFRICOM is coordinating a conquest of Africa

"Towards the Conquest of Africa: The Pentagon’s AFRICOM and the War against Libya"
2011-04-01 interview with Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya from "Life Week Magazine (China)", translated an archived at [globalresearch.ca/towards-the-conquest-of-africa-the-pentagon-s-africom-and-the-war-against-libya/24171]:
Global Research Editor’s Note: The following is the English transcript of Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya’s interview with Life Week, a major Chinese magazine based in Beijing. Nazemroaya was interviewed by Xu Jingjing for Life Week’s feature article about AFRICOM and Libya on April 1, 2011. The 2008 article cited by Xu Jingjing is Nazemroaya’s “The Mediterranean Union: Dividing the Middle East and North Africa.”

XU JINGJING: According to your analysis, what is AFRICOM’s role in the military intervention in Libya? What is its capability?

NAZEMROAYA: In reality, AFRICOM is still very much attached to EUCOM and dependent on EUCOM in many ways. It will be through this Libyan military intervention and the future military operations that will bud out of this war against Libya that AFRICOM will manage to further secure its independence from EUCOM. But I want to be clear. This does not mean that AFRICOM has no role in North Africa, because it has a role on the ground and I believe that it was actively involved in supporting the fighters now opposed to Colonel Qaddafi in Libya.
AFRICOM’s role is currently latent or concealed. It is EUCOM, the U.S. military operational command that is based in Europe, which is currently running the operations against the Libyans. EUCOM also overlaps with NATO and both EUCOM and NATO have the same military commander, which is Admiral James Stavridis.
Several days ago, I listened to Admirial Stravridis speak to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee and he made it clear that Operation Odyssey Dawn is being led from Europe and that the U.S. military will always be in control of the military campaign against Libya. He also contradicted NATO’s official spokesperson, by saying that there was a possibility that NATO troops could land in Libya for “stabilization operations.”
Returning to AFRICOM’s role, I said AFRICOM’s role is currently latent or concealed. As the fighting in Libya proceeds, the role of AFRICOM will become clearer, more important, and more visible.
AFRICOM has been involved in the intelligence work in regards to Libya. When Admiral Stravridis was asked by the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee about the role of Al-Qaeda in the Benghazi-based Transitional Council, he automatically answered that the commander of AFRICOM, General Carter Ham, could answer this question. This indicates that in the intelligence front and possibly rebel training it is AFRICOM that has been responsible and much more involved on the ground in Libya.

XU JINGJING: AFRICOM has no assigned troops and no headquarters in Africa itself. What is its major mission and objection? How do you evaluate its decision to enhance U.S. influence in Africa?

NAZEMROAYA: As I mentioned earlier, AFRICOM is still attached to EUCOM. Its capabilities in some senses are nominal. It will be via the military campaign against Libya and the years of instability that will haunt Africa after this war that AFRICOM will solidify itself as a separate operational military command.
AFRICOM’s main objective is to secure the African continent for the U.S. and its allies. Its mission is to help secure a new colonial order in Africa that the U.S. and its allies are working to establish. In many ways this is what the military intervention in Libya is all about. The recent London Conference about Libya can even be compared to the Berlin Conference of 1884. The difference in 2011 is that the U.S. is at the table and more importantly leading the other participants in carving up Libya and Africa.

XU JINGJING: How is an African strategy important to the United States? How do you evaluate the influence of the U.S. in Africa now? What are the major barriers for the U.S. to expand its influence?

NAZEMROAYA: Of course the People’s Republic of China and its allies play a major role in answering this question. The U.S. and its allies are not only formulating a new strategy to maintain and deepen their control over Africa, but are also working to push China and its allies out of Africa. The U.S. and many E.U. powers have watched China nervously throughout the years. China has been making major inroads in Africa and China is a major strategic and economic rival and challenge to the U.S. and Western Europe in Africa.
It will also be China and its allies that will form one of the barriers to the U.S. strategy to control Africa. The people of Africa cannot be forgotten either, because they will play a very important role to resisting the U.S. and the E.U. in the long-term.
Even as we speak there are protests in sub-Saharan Africa, which not too many people in the Northern Hemisphere even discuss or know about. In Senegal and other parts of West Africa there have been protests. In Central Africa there have been protests. While the protests in the Arab World are watched and intensely reported upon, the protests of these people are mostly ignored.

XU JINGJING: What were the changes of U.S. Africa policy in the past 20 years? What were the major motivations for those changes?

NAZEMROAYA: There are many ways to examine U.S. foreign policy in Africa in the past two decades. We can see a period of intense rivalry with the old colonial powers, such as France, but what I think is important to note is that U.S. foreign policy in Africa has worked incrementally to push out China. Again, the motivations for this are the rise of China and its growing influence in Africa.
One cannot ignore China when speaking about Africa.  All this has resulted in an actually dimension of cooperation between Washington and France and the old colonial powers. They are working together to secure the African continent within their collective sphere of influence and to muscle out China. At the end of the day, this is what AFRICOM was made for.

XU JINGJING: In one of your articles, you mention French plans on forming a Mediterranean Union. In your analysis, why is France always active in this region?

NAZEMROAYA: Paris has always been active in Africa, because of its proximity to the continent and its colonial history in Africa. It was the French that controlled the largest colonial empire in Africa. This is also why at one point France, with the support of Belgium and Germany, has been a major rival to the U.S. and Britain in Africa. This appears to have changed as Paris and its close partners have harmonized their interests with the U.S. and Britain. I am glad you brought up the Mediterranean Union or the “Union of the Mediterranean” as it was renamed later as part of a public relations stunt. The article you mentioned was actually published by the North Africa Times several years ago, which I believe is Libyan owned. When the North Africa Times published the article, they removed the section where I quoted Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security advisor of the Carter Administration, about the longstanding plans to form a Mediterranean Union and what it involved. The Mediterranean Union is a political, economic, and security entity. It is also complemented at the military level by NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue. The events leading to the formal declaration of the Mediterranean Union follow the same patterns that were used to expand the European Union and NATO in Eastern Europe.
The Union of the Mediterranean is meant to entrench the Mediterranean and the Arab World into the orbit of Washington and the European Union. It is also a bridgehead into Africa. The project calls for economic integration, massive privatization, and harmonization of policies. It is a colonial project and it serves to control and exploit the pools of labour in the Southern Mediterranean for the European Union. In the future, this can be used to upset the labour market in Asia and other regions. Also, it is through the Mediterranean Union that the immigration and refugee laws being used to manage the influx of people from North Africa were created. The E.U. was expecting these events and its members clearly spell this out when they made these laws.

XU JINGJING: What is your analysis on the U.S. and the military alliance’s actions in the first ten days of the war in Libya?

NAZEMROAYA: The actions in the first ten days of the war were never meant to protect civilians. The military operations have been offensive in nature and a means to weaken Libya as an independent state. I mentioned earlier that I listened to the testimony of Admiral Stavridis to the U.S. Armed Services Committee in Washington and I would like to refer to it again. At the hearing both Admiral Stavridis and Senator McCain both unwittingly stated that sanctions and no-fly zones do not accomplish anything. This is very profound. If these actions do not accomplish anything, then why did the U.S. push for them to be imposed on the Libyans? The answer is that the operation is not of a humanitarian nature, it is an act of aggression meant to open the door into Libya and Africa for a new colonial project.


"Africom – Latest U.S. Bid to Recolonise the Continent"
2010-01-07 by Tichaona Nhamoyebonde from "The Zimbabwe Herald", archived at [globalresearch.ca/africom-latest-u-s-bid-to-recolonise-the-continent/16869], Tichaona Nhamoyebonde is a political scientist based in Cape Town, South Africa.:
African revolutionaries now have to sleep with one eye open because the United States of America is not stopping at anything in its bid to establish Africom, a highly-equipped US army that will be permanently resident in Africa to oversee the country’s imperialist interests.
Towards the end of last year, the US government intensified its efforts to bring a permanent army to settle in Africa, dubbed the African Command (Africom) as a latest tool for the subtle recolonisation of Africa.
Just before end of last year, General William E. Garret, Commander US Army for Africa, met with defence attaches from all African embassies in Washington to lure them into selling the idea of an American army based in Africa to their governments. Latest reports from the White House this January indicate that 75 percent of the army’s establishment work has been done through a military unit based in Stuttgart, Germany, and that what is left is to get an African country to host the army and get things moving.
Liberia and Morocco have offered to host Africom while the Southern African Development Community (SADC)  has closed out any possibility of any of its member states hosting the US army.
Other individual countries have remained quiet.
Liberia has longstanding ties with the US due to its slave history while errant Morocco, which is not a member of the African Union and does not hold elections, might want the US army to assist it to suppress any future democratic uprising.
SADC’s refusal is a small victory for the people of Africa in their struggle for total independence but the rest of the regional blocs in Africa are yet to come up with a common position. This is worrying.
The US itself wanted a more strategic country than Morocco and Liberia since the army will be the epicentre of influencing, articulating and safeguarding US foreign and economic policies. The other danger is that Africom will open up Africa as a battleground between America and anti-US terrorist groups.
Africom is a smokescreen behind which America wants to hide its means to secure Africa’s oil and other natural resources, nothing more.
African leaders must not forget that military might has been used by America and Europe again and again as the only effective way of accomplishing their agenda in ensuring that governments in each country are run by people who toe their line.
By virtue of its being resident in Africa, Africom will ensure that America has its tentacles easily reaching every African country and influencing every event to the American advantage.
By hosting the army, Africa will have sub-contracted its military independence to America and will have accepted the process that starts its recolonisation through an army that can subdue any attempts by Africa to show its own military prowess.
The major question is: Who will remove Africom once it is established? By what means?
By its origin Africom will be technically and financially superior to any African country’s army and will dictate the pace for regime change in any country at will and also give depth, direction and impetus to the US natural resource exploitation scheme.
There is no doubt that as soon as the army gets operational in Africa, all the gains of independence will be reversed.
If the current leadership in Africa succumbs to the whims of the US and accept the operation of this army in Africa, they will go down in the annals of history as that generation of politicians who accepted the evil to prevail.
Even William Shakespeare would turn and twist in his grave and say: “I told you guys that it takes good men to do nothing for evil to prevail.”
We must not forget that Africans, who are still smarting from colonialism-induced humiliation, subjugation, brutality and inferiority complex, do not need to be taken back to another form of colonialism, albeit subtle.
Africom has been controversial on the continent ever since former US president George W. Bush first announced it in February 2007.
African leaders must not forget that under the Barack Obama administration, US policy towards Africa and the rest of the developing world has not changed an inch. It remains militaristic and materialistic.
Officials in both the Bush and Obama administrations argue that the major objective of Africom is to professionalise security forces in key countries across Africa.
However, both administrations do not attempt to address the impact of the setting up of Africom on minority parties, governments and strong leaders considered errant or whether the US will not use Africom to promote friendly dictators.
Training and weapons programmes and arms transfers from Ukraine to Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Ethiopia and the transitional government in Somalia, clearly indicate the use of military might to maintain influence in governments in Africa, remains a priority of US foreign policy.
Ukraine’s current leadership was put into power by the US under the Orange Revolution and is being given a free role to supply weaponry in African conflicts.
African leaders must show solidarity and block every move by America to set up its bases in the motherland unless they want to see a new round of colonisation.
Kwame Nkrumah, Robert Mugabe, Sam Nujoma, Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Kenneth Kaunda, Augustino Neto and Samora Machel, among others, will have fought liberation wars for nothing, if Africom is allowed a base in Africa.
Thousands of Africans who died in colonial prisons and in war fronts during the liberation struggles, will have shed their blood for nothing if Africa is recolonised.
Why should the current crop of African leaders accept systematic recolonisation when they have learnt a lot from colonialism, apartheid and racism? Why should the current crop of African leaders fail to stand measure for measure against the US administration and tell it straight in the face that Africa does not need a foreign army since the AU is working out its own army.
African leaders do not need prophets from Mars to know that US’s fascination with oil, the war on terrorism and the military will now be centred on Africa, after that escapade in Iraq.

USA AFRICOM uses starvation as a weapon of war

"U.S. Starves Children in Somali War"
2009-11-10 by Glen Ford, editor, Black Agenda Radio [http://blackagendareport.com/content/us-starves-children-somali-war]:
Three years after creating the “worst humanitarian crisis” in Africa by encouraging Ethiopia to invade Somalia, the U.S. now unleashes the food weapon on starving people [nytimes.com/2009/11/07/world/africa/07somalia.html?pagewanted=print]. “Forty million pounds of American-donated food is sitting in warehouses in Mombasa, Kenya, but U.S. officials won’t allow aid workers to deliver the food to the Somalis that need it.”
The United States is waging a war of starvation against the people of Somalia. According to United Nations officials, Washington has interrupted the flow of desperately needed food to Somalia, on the grounds that some of it might find its way into the hands of the Shabab, the Islamists the U.S. calls “terrorists,” but who are winning the war for control of southern and central Somalia.
Forty million pounds of American-donated food is sitting in warehouses in Mombasa, Kenya, but U.S. officials won’t allow aid workers to deliver the food to the Somalis that need it. The Americans are blatantly using food as a political weapon, holding starving people hostage to U.S. political objectives – much like ancient armies did when they laid siege to cities to starve the inhabitants into surrender.
It’s now going on three years since the Americans imposed a living hell on Somalia. In December 2006, the U.S. encouraged Ethiopia to invade Somalia to crush an Islamist government that had brought a modicum of peace to the country. The invasion created what the United Nations called the “worst humanitarian crisis in Africa” – worse than Darfur. This U.S.-made crisis was worsened by a devastating drought, leaving half the population totally dependent on outside food aid, the largest part of it from the United States. By locking the food up in Kenyan warehouses, “the U.S. government is holding the Somalia relief enterprise…hostage to its counterterrorism policy,” according to a recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine [foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/28/terrorizing_aid_to_somalia].
The American puppet government in Somalia controls no more than a few neighborhoods of the capital city, Mogadishu, and its airport. Were it not for massive U.S. arms aid and the protection of Rwandan and Burundian soldiers, the U.S.-backed government would disintegrate. The Americans cannot win in any conventional military sense, so they resort to a war of starvation.
According to a New York Times article, Somali elders report that many children who had been kept alive by food relief are now dying because of the American aid cutoff. The situation is so dire, that only the U.S. food stores in Kenya can reach Somalia in time to stave off a disastrous famine. There are simply no other resources available.
The drought in East Africa has affected U.S. allies and enemies, alike. Ethiopia has made a plea on behalf of 23 million people threatened by drought in the region. And “the worst drought in ten years” has been exacerbated by a huge, artificial rise in food prices caused by speculators, most of them based in the United States and other rich countries.
Thus, Somalia's hungry are battered from three sides: by artificially high food prices, by drought, and by a deliberate U.S. war of starvation. The Obama Administration is determined to make the Somali people scream as punishment for resisting American domination. But starving babies cannot scream. They can't even cry.

USA AFRICOM sustains brutal dictatorships

"U.S. Escalates Military Penetration of Africa"
2012-06-13 by Glen Ford, Editor, Black Agenda Report  [blackagendareport.com/content/us-escalates-military-penetration-africa]:

The Americans are preparing to establish a network of bases in Africa, initially to serve a 3,000-troop roving brigade to be deployed on the continent, next year. The brigade has all the markings of a permanent presence on African soil, while the bases are euphemistically called “safe communities.” U.S. influence over African militaries is already pervasive. With the establishment of joint bases, “regime change will never be farther away than a drink at the officers club.” All but a handful of Black African states routinely take part in military maneuvers staged by the Americans.
According to the Army Times newspaper [armytimes.com/news/2012/06/army-3000-soldiers-serve-in-africa-next-year-060812/], the United States will soon deploy a brigade of about 3,000 troops – “and likely more” – for duty “across the continent” of Africa. The “pilot program” has all the markings of a permanent, roving presence, joining the 1,200 U.S. soldiers stationed in Djibouti and the 100-plus Special Forces dispatched to Central Africa by President Obama, last October.
As always and everywhere, the U.S. is looking for bases to occupy – although the U.S. military command in Africa doesn’t call them bases. Rather, “as part of a ‘regionally’ aligned force concept,’ soldiers will live and work among Africans in safe communities approved by the U.S. government,” said AFRICOM’s Maj. Gen. David Hogg.
The First Black U.S. President, who in 2009 lectured Africans that “corruption” and “poor governance,” rather than neocolonialism, were the continent’s biggest problems, has made the U.S. military the primarily interlocutor with African states [telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/5778804/Barack-Obama-tells-Africa-to-stop-blaming-colonialism-for-problems.html]. Functions that were once the purview of the U.S. State Department, such as distribution of economic aid and medical assistance, are now part of AFRICOM’s vast portfolio. In Africa, more than anyplace in the world, U.S. foreign policy wears a uniform – which should leave little doubt as to Washington’s objectives in the region: Africa is to be dominated by military means. Obama’s “good governance” smokescreen for U.S. neocolonialism is embedded in AFRICOM’s stated mission [africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=1644&blog=all]: “to deter and defeat transnational threats and to provide a security environment conducive to good governance and development." Translation: to bring the so-called war on terror to every corner of the continent and ensure that U.S. corporate interests get favorable treatment from African governments.
AFRICOM’s array of alliances and agreements with African militaries already embraces virtually every nation on the continent except Eritrea and Zimbabwe. All but a handful of Black African states routinely take part in military maneuvers staged by Americans, utilizing U.S. command-and-control equipment and practices. The new, roving U.S. brigade will further institutionalize U.S. ties with the African officer class, part of AFRICOM’s mission to forge deep “soldier-to-soldier” relationships: general-to-general, colonel-to-colonel, and so forth down the line. The proposed network of “safe communities” to accommodate the highly mobile U.S. brigade is a euphemism for joint bases and the most intense U.S. fraternization with local African militaries. Regime change will never be farther away than a drink at the officers club.
According to the Army Times article, the composition of the new brigade, in terms of military skills, is not yet known. However, the brigade is conceived as part of the “new readiness model,” which “affords Army units more time to learn regional cultures and languages and train for specific threats and missions.” This sounds like special ops units – Rangers and Special Forces – which have been vastly expanded under President Obama (and are quite capable of carrying out regime-change operations on their own or in close coordination with their local counterparts).
In most cases, coups will be unnecessary. Regional African “trade” blocs like ECOWAS, the 16-member Economic Community of West African States, and IGAD, the six-nation Intergovernmental Authority on Development, in East Africa, have provided African cover for U.S. and French military/political designs in the Ivory Coast and Somalia, respectively. These blocs will doubtless become even more useful and compliant, as U.S. military commanders and their African counterparts get cozier in those “safe communities.”
Americans, no matter how bloody their hands, have always liked to think of themselves as “innocents abroad.” “As far as our mission goes, it’s uncharted territory,” said AFRICOM’s Gen. Hogg. Not really. The Americans are following a European chart in Africa that goes back centuries, and their own long experience in the serial rape of Latin America, where the close fraternization of U.S. and Latin American militaries in recent decades smothered the region in juntas, dirty wars, torture-based states, and outright genocide.
The U.S. and its African allies perpetrated of the worst genocide since World War Two: the death of six million in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Uganda, which acts as a mercenary for the U.S. in Africa, is complicit in mega-death in Congo and Somalia. As Milton Allimadi, publisher of Black Star News, reported [amsterdamnews.com/opinion/we-must-reject-kony-the-pro-africom-propaganda/article_813cb8a2-745d-11e1-8f08-001871e3ce6c.html]: “In 2005 The International Court of Justice (ICJ) found Uganda liable for the Congo crimes. The court awarded Congo $10 billion in reparations. Uganda's army plundered Congo's wealth and committed: mass rapes of both women and men; disemboweled pregnant women; burned people inside their homes alive; and, massacred innocents.”
Naturally, as a henchman of the United States, Uganda has not paid the $10 billion it owes Congo. Ugandan leader Yoweria Museveni, who became Ronald Reagan’s favorite African after seizing power in 1986 with a guerilla army packed with child soldiers, and who for decades waged genocidal war against the Acholi people of his country, now plays host to the Special Forces continent sent by President Obama, ostensibly to fight the child soldier-abusing Joseph Kony and his nearly nonexistent Lord’s Resistance Army.
Rwanda, the Pentagon’s other hit man on the continent, has been cited by a United Nations report as bearing responsibility for some of the millions slaughtered in Congo, as part of its ongoing rape and plunder of its neighbor [blackagendareport.com/content/us-achieves-deep-penetration-african-armed-forces].
Gen. Hogg says AFRICOM’s mission is to combat famine and disease. Yet, the AFRICOM-assisted Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in late 2006 led to “the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa – worse than Darfur,” according to United Nations observers [blackagendareport.com/content/us-starves-children-somali-war]. The 2007 humanitarian crisis and the escalating U.S.-directed war against Somalia made the 2010 famine all but inevitable.
Ugandan soldiers, nominally working for the African Union but in the pay of the Pentagon, kept watch over western interests in the starving country, as did the 1,200 soldiers stationed at the U.S. base in neighboring Djibouti – a permanent presence, along with the French garrison.
There’s nothing “uncharted” or mysterious about AFRICOM’s mission. The introduction of the 3,000-strong mobile brigade and a network of supporting bases prepares the way for the arrival of much larger U.S. and NATO forces – the recolonization of Africa. Gen. Hogg swears up and down there are no such plans. “For all the challenges that happen and sprout up across Africa, it really comes down to, it has to be an African solution,” he said.
That’s exactly the same thing they said in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.


"U.S. Achieves Deep Penetration of African Armed Forces"
2009-10-05 by Glen Ford, editor of "Black Agenda Radio" [blackagendareport.com/content/us-achieves-deep-penetration-african-armed-forces]:

Supporters of African independence are generally pleased that the U.S. Africa Command, AFRICOM, has not yet established an official headquarters on the continent, for fear of igniting anti-imperialist passions. But AFRICOM does have a major base on the continent, and more than half the militaries of Africa are at this moment being trained by AFRICOM units.
AFRICOM, the U.S. military's Africa Command, has forged deep ties to a growing number of militaries on the African continent. And, contrary to popular belief and official U.S. proclamations, Africom has established a base on the African continent. The base is located in Djibouti, the former French colony in the Horn of Africa on Somalia's northern border. The huge American base in Djibouti, from which the United States coordinates military actions in the region, including operations in Somali territory, is under AFRICOM command. It is, therefore, a fiction to maintain that AFRICOM has no bases on African soil. The U.S. Africa Command has simply opened no new bases, or relocated its official headquarters from Germany – a move that might ignite a wave of protest on the continent.
But the Americans may not have to stage a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a formal AFRICOM headquarters to accomplish the militarization of Africa under U.S. domination. A massive, U.S.-led military exercise is just winding down in the west African nation of Gabon. Dubbed “Africa Endeavor” the training mission involves military units from nearly 30 African countries under the auspices of the Americans: the U.S. Africa Command [africanews.com/site/African_armies_begin_training_in_Gabon/list_messages/27220]. It is by far the largest joint exercise with African militaries, and the third in so many years; the first two involved South Africa and Nigeria.
The African American who commands AFRICOM, Gen. William Ward, claims the latest exercise in Gabon, which began last week and ends October 8, is designed to improve the ability of armed forces from various African nations to communicate with each other in peace-keeping operations. They are without a doubt learning how to communicate with and operate alongside the United States military. The current focus of U.S. AFRICOM activities appears to revolve around preparing African troops to operate under American command-and-control procedures. In early September, 50 Ugandan military officers were sent to the U.S. military base in Djibouti for training [allafrica.com/stories/200909080437.html]. A spokesman for the Ugandan Armed Forces told reporters the objective was to train Africans to fight with international forces. That is clearly a euphemism for operating alongside the Americans.
If the U.S. can turn the militaries of sovereign African nations into appendages of American forces, operating under American command-and-control, then there is no need to draw attention to the US. military presence in Africa by formally designating an AFRICOM headquarters in, say, Kampala, Uganda, or Monrovia, Liberia. Once the U.S. has subverted the officers corps of Africa's armies and made them dependent on U.S. equipment, procedures and logistics, American military domination becomes a fait accompli.
For its part, the U.S. Africa Command says the military exercises are meant to develop “standard procedures” for the operation of an all-African “Standby Force,” under the African Union. What they are in fact creating is a force that cannot operate without the assistance of the Americans. And, of course, such a force could never resist the Americans in battle. The U.S. will never give Africans the tools to defend themselves from... the Americans.

"The Pivot to Africa: The Startling Size, Scope, and Growth of U.S. Military Operations on the African Continent"

AFRICOM's Gigantic "Small Footprint"
2013-09-05 intro by Tom Dispatch for "The Pivot to Africa: The Startling Size, Scope, and Growth of U.S. Military Operations on the African Continent" article by Nick Turse [tomdispatch.com/blog/175743]:
Here’s a question for you: Can a military tiptoe onto a continent? It seems the unlikeliest of images, and yet it’s a reasonable enough description of what the U.S. military has been doing ever since the Pentagon created an Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2007 [africom.mil/about-the-command]. It’s been slipping, sneaking, creeping into Africa, deploying ever more forces in ever more ways doing ever more things at ever more facilities in ever more countries -- and in a fashion so quiet, so covert, that just about no American has any idea this is going on.  One day, when an already destabilizing Africa explodes into various forms of violence, the U.S. military will be in the middle of it and Americans will suddenly wonder how in the world this could have happened [tomdispatch.com/blog/175714].
In the Cold War years, while proxy battles took place between U.S.- and Soviet-backed forces in Angola and other African lands, the U.S. military, which by then had garrisoned much of the planet, was noticeably absent from the continent.  No longer.  And no one who might report on it seems to be paying attention as a downsizing media evidently sees no future in anticipating America’s future wars.  In fact, with the exception of Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post [articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-14/world/37100512_1_africa-command-djibouti-west-africa], it’s hard to think of any journalist who has dug into the fast-expanding American role in Africa.
Enter TomDispatch’s Nick Turse.  When it comes to American military plans for that continent, he has been doing the work of the rest of the American foreign press corps on his own.  For the last two years, while his bestselling book on the Vietnam War, Kill Anything That Moves, was being published, he has been carefully tracking and mapping the growing American military presence in Africa [tomdispatch.com/blog/175567/tomgram%3A_nick_turse,_america's_shadow_wars_in_africa_], exploring the way those moves may actually be helping to destabilize the continent [tomdispatch.com/blog/175714], and doing his best to make sure that U.S. planning for future wars there doesn’t go unnoticed and unreported [tomdispatch.com/blog/175574].
Today, he puts his work -- and his efforts to mine resistant AFRICOM spokespeople for information [tomdispatch.com/blog/175721/nick_turse_the_classic_military_runaround] -- into a single panorama of everything a fine reporter and outsider can possibly know now about Washington’s ongoing militarization of Africa.  It’s a grim tale of the way, via a hush-hush version of mission creep, the Pentagon and AFRICOM are turning Africa into a battlefield of the future.  Don’t say you weren’t warned -- at TomDispatch.
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"The Pivot to Africa: The Startling Size, Scope, and Growth of U.S. Military Operations on the African Continent"
2013-09-05 article by Nick Turse [tomdispatch.com/blog/175743]:
They’re involved in Algeria and Angola, Benin and Botswana, Burkina Faso and Burundi, Cameroon and the Cape Verde Islands.  And that’s just the ABCs of the situation.  Skip to the end of the alphabet and the story remains the same: Senegal and the Seychelles, Togo and Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia.  From north to south, east to west, the Horn of Africa to the Sahel, the heart of the continent to the islands off its coasts, the U.S. military is at work.  Base construction, security cooperation engagements, training exercises, advisory deployments, special operations missions, and a growing logistics network, all undeniable evidence of expansion -- except at U.S. Africa Command.
To hear AFRICOM tell it, U.S. military involvement on the continent ranges from the miniscule to the microscopic.  The command is adamant that it has only a single “military base” in all of Africa: Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti.  The head of the command insists that the U.S. military maintains a “small footprint” on the continent [voanews.com/content/us-military-pays-close-attention-to-boko-haram-militants/1681488.html]. AFRICOM’s chief spokesman has consistently minimized the scope of its operations and the number of facilities it maintains or shares with host nations, asserting that only “a small presence of personnel who conduct short-duration engagements” are operating from “several locations” on the continent at any given time.
With the war in Iraq over and the conflict in Afghanistan winding down, the U.S. military is deploying its forces far beyond declared combat zones [washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-military-drone-surveillance-is-expanding-to-hot-spots-beyond-declared-combat-zones/2013/07/20/0a57fbda-ef1c-11e2-8163-2c7021381a75_story.html].
In recent years, for example, Washington has very publicly proclaimed a “pivot to Asia,” a “rebalancing” of its military resources eastward, without actually carrying out wholesale policy changes [csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2013/0218/How-US-military-plans-to-carry-out-Obama-s-pivot-to-Asia] [foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/10/11/americas_pacific_century] [theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/04/what-exactly-does-it-mean-that-the-us-is-pivoting-to-asia/274936/].
Elsewhere, however, from the Middle East to South America, the Pentagon is increasingly engaged in shadowy operations whose details emerge piecemeal and are rarely examined in a comprehensive way [tomdispatch.com/blog/175557/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_the_changing_face_of_empire].  Nowhere is this truer than in Africa.  To the media and the American people, officials insist the U.S. military is engaged in small-scale, innocuous operations there. Out of public earshot, officers running America’s secret wars say: “Africa is the battlefield of tomorrow, today.”
The proof is in the details -- a seemingly ceaseless string of projects, operations, and engagements.  Each mission, as AFRICOM insists, may be relatively limited and each footprint might be “small” on its own, but taken as a whole, U.S. military operations are sweeping and expansive.  Evidence of an American pivot to Africa is almost everywhere on the continent.  Few, however, have paid much notice [articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-06-13/world/35462541_1_burkina-faso-air-bases-sahara] .
If the proverbial picture is worth a thousand words, then what’s a map worth? Take, for instance, the one created by TomDispatch that documents U.S. military outposts, construction, security cooperation, and deployments in Africa.  It looks like a field of mushrooms after a monsoon.  U.S. Africa Command recognizes 54 countries on the continent, but refuses to say in which ones (or even in how many) it now conducts operations. An investigation by TomDispatch has found recent U.S. military involvement with no fewer than 49 African nations [africacheck.org/reports/how-many-countries-in-africa-how-hard-can-the-question-be/].

The U.S. Military’s Pivot to Africa, 2012-2013 (key below article) ©2013 TomDispatch ©Google

Key to the Map of the U.S. Military’s Pivot to Africa, 2012-2013
Green markers: U.S. military training, advising, or tactical deployments during 2013
Yellow markers: U.S. military training, advising, or tactical deployments during 2012
Purple marker: U.S. "security cooperation"
Red markers: Army National Guard partnerships
Blue markers: U.S. bases, forward operating sites (FOSes), contingency security locations (CSLs), contingency locations (CLs), airports with fueling agreements, and various shared facilities
Green push pins: U.S. military training/advising of indigenous troops carried out in a third country during 2013
Yellow push pins: U.S. military training/advising of indigenous troops carried out in a third country during 2012

In some, the U.S. maintains bases, even if under other names. In others, it trains local partners and proxies to battle militants ranging from Somalia’s al-Shabab and Nigeria’s Boko Haram to members of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb [tomdispatch.com/blog/175714].  Elsewhere, it is building facilities for its allies or infrastructure for locals. Many African nations are home to multiple U.S. military projects. Despite what AFRICOM officials say, a careful reading of internal briefings, contracts, and other official documents, as well as open source information, including the command’s own press releases and news items, reveals that military operations in Africa are already vast and will be expanding for the foreseeable future.

A Base by Any Other Name...
What does the U.S. military footprint in Africa look like? Colonel Tom Davis, AFRICOM’s Director of Public Affairs, is unequivocal [africom.mil/about-the-command/directors/colonel-thomas-a-davis]: “Other than our base at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, we do not have military bases in Africa, nor do we have plans to establish any.” He admits [tomdispatch.com/blog/175574] only that the U.S. has “temporary facilities elsewhere… that support much smaller numbers of personnel, usually for a specific activity.”
AFRICOM’s chief of media engagement Benjamin Benson echoes this, telling me that it’s almost impossible to offer a list of forward operating bases. “Places that [U.S. forces] might be, the range of possible locations can get really big, but can provide a really skewed image of where we are... versus other places where we have ongoing operations. So, in terms of providing a number, I’d be at a loss of how to quantify this.”
A briefing prepared last year by Captain Rick Cook, the chief of AFRICOM’s Engineering Division, tells a different story, making reference to forward operating sites or FOSes (long-term locations), cooperative security locations or CSLs (which troops periodically rotate in and out of), and contingency locations or CLs (which are used only during ongoing operations). A separate briefing prepared last year by Lieutenant Colonel David Knellinger references seven cooperative security locations across Africa whose whereabouts are classified.  A third briefing, produced in July of 2012 by U.S. Army Africa, identifies one of the CSL sites as Entebbe, Uganda, a location from which U.S. contractors have flown secret surveillance missions using innocuous-looking, white Pilatus PC-12 turboprop airplanes, according to an investigation by the Washington Post [articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-06-14/world/35462335_1_contractors-missions-central-african-republic].
The 2012 U.S. Army Africa briefing materials obtained by TomDispatch reference plans to build six new gates to the Entebbe compound, 11 new “containerized housing units,” new guard stations, new perimeter and security fencing, enhanced security lighting and new concrete access ramps, among other improvements. Satellite photos indicate that many, if not all, of these upgrades have, indeed, taken place.

Entebbe Cooperative Security Location, Entebbe, Uganda, in 2009 and 2013 ©2013 Google ©2013 Digital Globe


A 2009 image (above left) shows a barebones compound of dirt and grass tucked away on a Ugandan air base with just a few aircraft surrounding it.  A satellite photo of the compound from earlier this year (above right) shows a strikingly more built-up camp surrounded by a swarm of helicopters and white airplanes.
Initially, AFRICOM’s Benjamin Benson refused to comment on the construction or the number of aircraft, insisting that the command had no “public information” about it. Confronted with the 2013 satellite photo, Benson reviewed it and offered a reply that neither confirmed nor denied that the site was a U.S. facility, but cautioned me about using “uncorroborated data.” (Benson failed to respond to my request to corroborate the data through a site visit.) “I have no way of knowing where the photo was taken and how it was modified,” he told me. “Assuming the location is Entebbe, as you suggest, I would again argue that the aircraft could belong to anyone… It would be irresponsible of me to speculate on the missions, roles, or ownership of these aircraft.” He went on to suggest, however, that the aircraft might belong to the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) [twitter.com/MONUSCO] which does have a presence at the Entebbe air base. A request for comment from MONUSCO went unanswered before this article went to press.
This buildup may only be the beginning for Entebbe CSL. Recent contracting documents examined by TomDispatch indicate that AFRICOM is considering an additional surge of air assets there -- specifically hiring a private contractor to provide further “dedicated fixed-wing airlift services for movement of Department of Defense (DoD) personnel and cargo in the Central African Region.” This mercenary air force would keep as many as three planes in the air at the same time on any given day, logging a total of about 70 to 100 hours per week. If the military goes ahead with these plans, the aircraft would ferry troops, weapons, and other materiel within Uganda and to the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan.
Another key, if little noticed, U.S. outpost in Africa is located in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. An airbase there serves as the home of a Joint Special Operations Air Detachment, as well as the Trans-Sahara Short Take-Off and Landing Airlift Support initiative. According to military documents, that “initiative” supports “high-risk activities” carried out by elite forces from Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara. Lieutenant Colonel Scott Rawlinson, a spokesman for Special Operations Command Africa, told me that it provides “emergency casualty evacuation support to small team engagements with partner nations throughout the Sahel,” although official documents note that such actions have historically accounted for only 10% of its monthly flight hours.
While Rawlinson demurred from discussing the scope of the program, citing operational security concerns, military documents again indicate that, whatever its goals, it is expanding rapidly. Between March and December 2012, for example, the initiative flew 233 sorties. In the first three months of this year, it carried out 193.
In July, Berry Aviation, a Texas-based longtime Pentagon contractor, was awarded a nearly $50 million contract to provide aircraft and personnel for “Trans-Sahara Short Take-Off and Landing services.” [berryaviation.com/latest-news/330-berry-aviation-expands-airlift-support-into-africa-for-ustranscom.html] Under the terms of the deal, Berry will “perform casualty evacuation, personnel airlift, cargo airlift, as well as personnel and cargo aerial delivery services throughout the Trans-Sahara of Africa,” according to a statement from the company. Contracting documents indicate that Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tunisia are the “most likely locations for missions.”

Special Ops in Africa -
Ouagadougou is just one site for expanding U.S. air operations in Africa.  Last year, the 435th Military Construction Flight (MCF) -- a rapid-response mobile construction team -- revitalized an airfield in South Sudan for Special Operations Command Africa, according to the unit’s commander, Air Force lieutenant Alexander Graboski [themilitaryengineer.com/index.php/component/k2/item/204-answering-the-call-across-continents].  Before that, the team also “installed a runway lighting system to enable 24-hour operations” at the outpost.  Graboski states that the Air Force’s 435th MCF “has been called upon many times by Special Operations Command Africa to send small teams to perform work in austere locations.” This trend looks as if it will continue. According to a briefing prepared earlier this year by Hugh Denny of the Army Corps of Engineers, plans have been drawn up for Special Operations Command Africa “operations support” facilities to be situated in “multiple locations.”
AFRICOM spokesman Benjamin Benson refused to answer questions about SOCAFRICA facilities, and would not comment on the locations of missions by an elite, quick-response force known as Naval Special Warfare Unit 10 (NSWU 10) [africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/8250/nswu-10-commissioning-provides-socafrica-operation].  But according to Captain Robert Smith, the commander of Naval Special Warfare Group Two, NSWU 10 has been engaged “with strategic countries such as Uganda, Somalia, [and] Nigeria.”
Captain J. Dane Thorleifson, NSWU 10’s outgoing commander, recently mentioned deployments in six “austere locations” in Africa and “every other month contingency operations -- Libya, Tunisia, [and] POTUS,” evidently a reference to President Obama’s three-nation trip to Africa in July [edition.cnn.com/2013/07/02/politics/obama-africa-trip].  Thorleifson, who led the unit from July 2011 to July 2013, also said NSWU 10 had been involved in training “proxy” forces, specifically “building critical host nation security capacity; enabling, advising, and assisting our African CT [counterterror] partner forces so they can swiftly counter and destroy al-Shabab, AQIM [Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb], and Boko Haram.”
Nzara in South Sudan is one of a string of shadowy forward operating posts on the continent where U.S. Special Operations Forces have been stationed in recent years [tomdispatch.com/blog/175574]. Other sites include Obo and Djema in the Central Africa Republic and Dungu in the Democratic Republic of Congo [bangordailynews.com/2012/04/30/news/wheres-joseph-kony-us-troops-have-yet-to-find-him].  According to Lieutenant Colonel Guillaume Beaurpere, the commander of the 3rd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group [soc.mil/swcs/SWmag/archive/SW2601/SW2601WagingSpecialWarfareInAfrica.html], “advisory assistance at forward outposts was directly responsible for the establishment of combined operations fusion centers where military commanders, local security officials, and a host of international and non-governmental organizations could share information about regional insurgent activity and coordinate military activities with civil authorities.”
Drone bases are also expanding.  In February, the U.S. announced the establishment of a new drone facility in Niger.  Later in the spring, AFRICOM spokesman Benjamin Benson confirmed to TomDispatch that U.S. air operations conducted from Base Aerienne 101 at Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey, Niger’s capital, were providing “support for intelligence collection with French forces conducting operations in Mali and with other partners in the region.”  More recently, the New York Times noted that what began as the deployment of one Predator drone to Niger had expanded to encompass daily flights by one of two larger, more advanced Reaper remotely piloted aircraft, supported by 120 Air Force personnel [nytimes.com/2013/07/11/world/africa/drones-in-niger-reflect-new-us-approach-in-terror-fight.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0].  Additionally, the U.S. has flown drones out of the Seychelles Islands and Ethiopia’s Arba Minch Airport [washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-african-network/2012/06/13/gJQAmozvaV_graphic.html].
When it comes to expanding U.S. outposts in Africa, the Navy has also been active.  It maintains a forward operating location -- manned mostly by Seabees, Civil Affairs personnel, and force-protection troops -- known as Camp Gilbert in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia [tomdispatch.com/blog/175567/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_america's_shadow_wars_in_africa_].  Since 2004, U.S. troops have been stationed at a Kenyan naval base known as Camp Simba at Manda Bay.  AFRICOM’s Benson portrayed operations there as relatively minor, typified by “short-term training and engagement activities.”  The 60 or so “core” troops stationed there, he said, are also primarily Civil Affairs, Seabees, and security personnel who take part in “military-to-military engagements with Kenyan forces and humanitarian initiatives.”
When it comes to expanding U.S. outposts in Africa, the Navy has also been active.  It maintains a forward operating location -- manned mostly by Seabees, Civil Affairs personnel, and force-protection troops -- known as Camp Gilbert in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia.  Since 2004, U.S. troops have been stationed at a Kenyan naval base known as Camp Simba at Manda Bay.  AFRICOM’s Benson portrayed operations there as relatively minor, typified by “short-term training and engagement activities.”  The 60 or so “core” troops stationed there, he said, are also primarily Civil Affairs, Seabees, and security personnel who take part in “military-to-military engagements with Kenyan forces and humanitarian initiatives.”
An AFRICOM briefing earlier this year suggested, however, that the base is destined to be more than a backwater post.  It called attention to improvements in water and power infrastructure and an extension of the runway at the airfield, as well as greater “surge capacity” for bringing in forces in the future.  A second briefing, prepared by the Navy and obtained by TomDispatch, details nine key infrastructure upgrades that are on the drawing board, underway, or completed.
In addition to extending and improving that runway, they include providing more potable water storage, latrines, and lodgings to accommodate a future “surge” of troops, doubling the capacity of washer and dryer units, upgrading dining facilities, improving roadways and boat ramps, providing fuel storage, and installing a new generator to handle additional demands for power.  In a March article in the National Journal, James Kitfield, who visited the base, shed additional light on expansion there.  “Navy Seabee engineers,” he wrote, “...have been working round-the-clock shifts for months to finish a runway extension before the rainy season arrives. Once completed, it will allow larger aircraft like C-130s to land and supply Americans or African Union troops.” [nationaljournal.com/magazine/outsourcing-the-fight-against-terrorism-20130307]
AFRICOM’s Benson tells TomDispatch that the U.S. military also makes use of six buildings located on Kenyan military bases at the airport and seaport of Mombasa.  In addition, he verified that it has used Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport in Senegal for refueling stops as well as the “transportation of teams participating in security cooperation activities” such as training missions.  He confirmed a similar deal for the use of Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in Ethiopia.
While Benson refused additional comment, official documents indicate that the U.S. has similar agreements for the use of Nsimalen Airport and Douala International Airport in Cameroon, Amílcar Cabral International Airport and Praia International Airport in Cape Verde, N'Djamena International Airport in Chad, Cairo International Airport in Egypt, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and Moi International Airport in Kenya, Kotoka International Airport in Ghana, ‎ Marrakech-Menara Airport in Morocco, Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Nigeria, Seychelles International Airport in the Seychelles, Sir Seretse Khama International Airport in Botswana, Bamako-Senou International Airport in Mali, and Tunis-Carthage International Airport in Tunisia.  ‎All told, according to Sam Cooks, a liaison officer with the Defense Logistics Agency, the U.S. military now has 29 agreements to use international airports in Africa as refueling centers.
In addition, U.S. Africa Command has built a sophisticated logistics system, officially known as the AFRICOM Surface Distribution Network, but colloquially referred to as the “new spice route.” It connects posts in Manda Bay, Garissa, and Mombasa in Kenya, Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda, Dire Dawa in Ethiopia, as well as crucial port facilities used by the Navy’s CTF-53 (“Commander, Task Force, Five Three”) in Djibouti, which are collectively referred to as “the port of Djibouti” by the military.  Other key ports on the continent, according to Lieutenant Colonel Wade Lawrence of U.S. Transportation Command, include Ghana’s Tema and Senegal’s Dakar.
The U.S. maintains 10 marine gas and oil bunker locations in eight African nations, according to the Defense Logistics Agency [dla.mil/DLA_Media_Center/Archive/newsarticle0906.aspx]. AFRICOM’s Benjamin Benson refuses to name the countries, but recent military contracting documents list key fuel bunker locations in Douala, Cameroon; Mindelo, Cape Verde; Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire; Port Gentil, Gabon; Sekondi, Ghana; Mombasa, Kenya; Port Luis, Mauritius; Walvis Bay, Namibia; Lagos, Nigeria; Port Victoria, Seychelles; Durban, South Africa; and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.
The U.S. also continues to maintain a long-time Naval Medical Research Unit, known as NAMRU-3, in Cairo, Egypt.  Another little-noticed medical investigation component, the U.S. Army Research Unit - Kenya, operates from facilities in Kisumu and Kericho [med.navy.mil/sites/namru3/Pages/Naval%20Medical%20Research%20Unit3.aspx].

(In and) Out of Africa -
When considering the scope and rapid expansion of U.S. military activities in Africa, it’s important to keep in mind that certain key “African” bases are actually located off the continent.  Keeping a semblance of a “light footprint” there, AFRICOM’s headquarters is located at Kelley Barracks in Stuttgart-Moehringen, Germany.  In June, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the base in Stuttgart and the U.S. Air Force’s Air Operations Center in Ramstein were both integral to drone operations in Africa [international.sueddeutsche.de/post/52323491304/exclusive-us-armed-forces-piloting-drones-from-bases].
Key logistics support hubs for AFRICOM are located in Rota, Spain; Aruba in the Lesser Antilles; and Souda Bay, Greece, as well as at Ramstein.  The command also maintains a forward operating site on Britain’s Ascension Island, located about 1,000 miles off the coast of Africa in the South Atlantic, but refused requests for further information about its role in operations.
Another important logistics facility is located in Sigonella on the island of Sicily. Italy, it turns out, is an especially crucial component of U.S. operations in Africa.  Special-Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Africa, which provides teams of Marines and sailors for “small-footprint theater security cooperation engagements” across the continent, is based at Naval Air Station Sigonella.  It has, according to AFRICOM’s Benjamin Benson, recently deployed personnel to Botswana, Liberia, Djibouti, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Tunisia, and Senegal.
In the future, U.S. Army Africa will be based at Caserma Del Din in northern Italy, adjacent to the recently completed home of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team [stripes.com/news/us-army-opens-new-base-in-northern-italy-1.228494].  A 2012 U.S. Army Africa briefing indicates that construction projects at the Caserma Del Din base will continue through 2018. The reported price-tag for the entire complex:  $310 million.

A Big Base Gets Bigger -
While that sum is sizeable, it’s surpassed by spending on the lone official U.S. base on the African continent, Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti.  That former French Foreign Legion post has been on a decade-long growth spurt.
In 2002, the U.S. dispatched personnel to Africa as part of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA).  The next year, CJTF-HOA took up residence at Camp Lemonnier, where it resides to this day.  In 2005, the U.S. struck a five-year land-use agreement with the Djiboutian government and exercised the first of two five-year renewal options in late 2010.  In 2006, the U.S. signed a separate agreement to expand the camp’s boundaries to 500 acres.
According to AFRICOM’s Benson, between 2009 and 2012, $390 million was spent on construction at Camp Lemonnier.  In recent years, the outpost was transformed by the addition of an electric power plant, enhanced water storage and treatment facilities, a dining hall, more facilities for Special Operations Command, and the expansion of aircraft taxiways and parking aprons.
A briefing prepared earlier this year by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command lists a plethora of projects currently underway or poised to begin, including an aircraft maintenance hangar, a telecommunications facility, a fire station, additional security fencing, an ammunition supply facility, interior paved roads, a general purpose warehouse, maintenance shelters for aircraft, an aircraft logistics apron, taxiway enhancements, expeditionary lodging, a combat aircraft loading apron, and a taxiway extension on the east side of the airfield.
Navy documents detail the price tag of this year’s proposed projects, including $7.5 million to be spent on containerized living units and workspaces, $22 million for cold storage and the expansion of dining facilities, $27 million for a fitness center, $43 million for a joint headquarters facility, and a whopping $220 million for a Special Operations Compound, also referred to as “Task Force Compound.”

Plans for Construction of the Special Operations or "Task Force" Compound at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti

According to a 2012 briefing by Lieutenant Colonel David Knellinger, the Special Operations Compound will eventually include at least 18 new facilities, including a two-story joint operations center, a two-story tactical operations center, two five-story barracks, a large motor pool facility, a supply warehouse, and an aircraft hangar with an adjacent air operations center. 
A document produced earlier this year by Lieutenant Troy Gilbert, an infrastructure planner with AFRICOM’s engineer division, lists almost $400 million in “emergency” military construction at Camp Lemonnier, including work on the special operations compound and more than $150 million for a new combat aircraft loading area.  Navy documents, for their part, estimate that construction at Camp Lemonnier will continue at $70 million to $100 million annually, with future projects to include a $20 million wastewater treatment plant, a $40 million medical and dental center, and more than $150 million in troop housing.

Rules of Engagement -
In addition, the U.S. military has been supporting construction all over Africa for its allies.  A report by Hugh Denny of the Army Corps of Engineers issued earlier this year references 79 such projects in 33 countries between 2011 and 2013, including Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, Cote D’Ivoire, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Tanzania, Tunisia, The Gambia, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia.  The reported price-tag: $48 million.
Senegal has, for example, received a $1.2 million “peacekeeping operations training center” under the auspices of the U.S. Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) program. ACOTA has also supported training center projects in Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Niger, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, and Uganda.
The U.S. is planning to finance the construction of barracks and other facilities for Ghana’s armed forces.  AFRICOM’s Benson also confirmed to TomDispatch that the Army Corps of Engineers has plans to “equip and refurbish five military border security posts in Djibouti along the Somalia/Somaliland border.”  In Kenya, U.S. Special Operations Forces have “played a crucial role in infrastructure investments for the Kenyan Special Operations Regiment and especially in the establishment of the Kenyan Ranger school,” according to Lieutenant Colonel Guillaume Beaurpere of the 3rd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group [soc.mil/swcs/SWmag/archive/SW2601/SW2601WagingSpecialWarfareInAfrica.html].
AFRICOM’s “humanitarian assistance” program is also expansive.  A 2013 Navy briefing lists $7.1 million in humanitarian construction projects -- like schools, orphanages, and medical facilities -- in 19 countries from Comoros and Guinea-Bissau to Rwanda.  Hugh Denny’s report also lists nine Army Corps of Engineers “security assistance” efforts, valued at more than $12 million, carried out during 2012 and 2013, as well as 15 additional “security cooperation” projects worth more than $22 million in countries across Africa.

A Deluge of Deployments -
In addition to creating or maintaining bases and engaging in military construction across the continent, the U.S. is involved in near constant training and advisory missions.  According to AFRICOM’s Colonel Tom Davis, the command is slated to carry out 14 major bilateral and multilateral exercises by the end of this year [tomdispatch.com/blog/175574/tomgram%3A_u.s._africa_command_debates_tomdispatch].  These include Saharan Express 2013, which brought together forces from Cape Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Liberia, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, and Sierra Leone, among other nations, for maritime security training [africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/10462/saharan-express]; Obangame Express 2013, a counter-piracy exercise involving the armed forces of many nations, including Benin, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Togo [africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/10389/exercise-obangame-express-2013]; and Africa Endeavor 2013, in which the militaries of Djibouti, Burundi, Cote d'Ivoire, Zambia, and 34 other African nations took part [dvidshub.net/news/111991/national-guard-reserves-bring-more-africa-endeavor#.Ug6YbG2wWpk].
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  As Davis told TomDispatch, “We also conduct some type of military training or military-to-military engagement or activity with nearly every country on the African continent.”  A cursory look at just some of U.S. missions this spring drives home the true extent of the growing U.S. engagement in Africa.
In January, for instance, the U.S. Air Force began transporting French troops to Mali to counter Islamist forces there [africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/10206/us-airlift-of-french-forces-to-mali].  At a facility in Nairobi, Kenya, AFRICOM provided military intelligence training to junior officers from Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and South Sudan.  In January and February, Special Operations Forces personnel conducted a joint exercise code-named Silent Warrior with Cameroonian soldiers.  February saw South African troops travel all the way to Chiang Mai, Thailand, to take part in Cobra Gold 2013, a multinational training exercise cosponsored by the U.S. military [africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/10915/silent-warrior-strengthens-partner-development].
In March, Navy personnel worked with members of Cape Verde’s armed forces [africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/10570/military-to-military-engagement], while Kentucky National Guard troops spent a week advising soldiers from the Comoros Islands [africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/10545/us-soldiers-make-big-impact-on-small-islands].  That same month, members of Special-Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Africa deployed to the Singo Peace Support Training Center in Uganda to work with Ugandan soldiers prior to their assignment to the African Union Mission in Somalia [africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/10628/ugandan-forces-train-with-us-marines-for-somalia-mission].  Over the course of the spring, members of the task force would also mentor local troops in Burundi, Cameroon, Ghana, Burkina Faso, the Seychelles, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Liberia.
In April, members of the task force also began training Senegalese commandos at Bel-Air military base in Dakar [africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/10846/us-marines-sailors-train-senegalese-military], while Navy personnel deployed to Mozambique to school civilians in demining techniques [navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=74347]. Meanwhile, Marines traveled to Morocco to conduct a training exercise code-named African Lion 13 with that country’s military [africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/10743/artllerymen-help-make-convoy-a-success-during-exercise-african-lion-13].  In May, Army troops were sent to Lomé, Togo, to work with members of the Togolese Defense Force [africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/10926/us-army-africa-sponsors-african-deployment-partnership-training-in-togo], as well as to Senga Bay, Malawi, to instruct soldiers there [africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/10798/malawi-defense-force-soldiers-complete-final-phase-of-pre-deployment-instruction].
That same month, Navy personnel conducted a joint exercise in the Mediterranean Sea with their Egyptian counterparts [navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=74301].  In June, personnel from the Kentucky National Guard deployed to Djibouti to advise members of that country’s military on border security methods [africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/10861/2-138th-fsc-shares-best-ecp-practices-with-djiboutian-army], while Seabees teamed up with the Tanzanian People’s Defense Force to build maritime security infrastructure [africom.mil/Newsroom/Article/10899/seabees-and-tpdf-team-up-for-boat-ramp-project-in-tanzania].  That same month, the Air Force airlifted Liberian troops to Bamako, Mali, to conduct a six-month peacekeeping operation.

Limited or Limitless?
Counting countries in which it has bases or outposts or has done construction, and those with which it has conducted military exercises, advisory assignments, security cooperation, or training missions, the U.S. military, according to TomDispatch’s analysis, is involved with more than 90% of Africa’s 54 nations. While AFRICOM commander David Rodriguez maintains that the U.S. has only a “small footprint” on the continent, following those small footprints across the continent can be a breathtaking task.
It’s not hard to imagine why the U.S. military wants to maintain that “small footprint” fiction.  On occasion, military commanders couldn’t have been clearer on the subject.  “A direct and overt presence of U.S. forces on the African continent can cause consternation… with our own partners who take great pride in their post-colonial abilities to independently secure themselves,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel Guillaume Beaurpere earlier this year in the military trade publication Special Warfare. Special Operations Forces, he added, “must train to operate discreetly within these constraints and the cultural norms of the host nation.”
On a visit to the Pentagon earlier this summer, AFRICOM’s Rodriguez echoed the same point in candid comments to Voice of America [voanews.com/content/us-military-pays-close-attention-to-boko-haram-militants/1681488.html]: “The history of the African nations, the colonialism, all those things are what point to the reasons why we should… just use a small footprint."
And yet, however useful that imagery may be to the Pentagon, the U.S. military no longer has a small footprint in Africa.  Even the repeated claims that U.S. troops conduct only short-term. intermittent missions there has been officially contradicted.  This July, at a change of command ceremony for Naval Special Warfare Unit 10, a spokesman noted the creation and implementation of “a five-year engagement strategy that encompassed the transition from episodic training events to regionally-focused and persistent engagements in five Special Operations Command Africa priority countries.”
In a question-and-answer piece in Special Warfare earlier this year, Colonel John Deedrick, the commander of the 10th Special Forces Group, sounded off about his unit’s area of responsibility.  “We are widely employed throughout the continent,” he said. “These are not episodic activities.  We are there 365-days-a-year to share the burden, assist in shaping the environment, and exploit opportunities.”
Exploitation and “persistent engagement” are exactly what critics of U.S. military involvement in Africa have long feared [concernedafricascholars.org/bulletin/issue85/ifeka] [studies.aljazeera.net/en/reports/2013/05/2013521122644377724.htm] [military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,155571,00.html], while blowback and the unforeseen consequences of U.S. military action on the continent have already contributed to catastrophic destabilization.
Despite some candid admissions by officers involved in shadowy operations, however, AFRICOM continues to insist that troop deployments are highly circumscribed.  The command will not, however, allow independent observers to make their own assessments.  Benson said Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa does not “have a media visit program to regularly host journalists there.”
My own requests to report on U.S. operations on the continent were, in fact, rejected in short order.  “We will not make an exception in this case,” Benson wrote in a recent email and followed up by emphasizing that U.S. forces are deployed in Africa only “on a limited and temporary basis.”  TomDispatch’s own analysis -- and a mere glance at the map of recent missions -- indicates that there are, in fact, very few limits on where the U.S. military operates in Africa.
While Washington talks openly about rebalancing its military assets to Asia [thediplomat.com/2012/05/03/pivot-out-rebalance-in], a pivot to Africa is quietly and unmistakably underway.  With the ever-present possibility of blowback from shadowy operations on the continent, the odds are that the results of that pivot will become increasingly evident, whether or not Americans recognize them as such.  Behind closed doors, the military says: “Africa is the battlefield of tomorrow, today.”  It remains to be seen just when they’ll say the same to the American people.  

"Central African Republic: Another Western Backed Coup d’Etat"

2013-04-04 by Alexander Mezyaev of "Strategic Culture Foundation" for "Global Research" [http://www.globalresearch.ca/central-african-intrigue-another-western-backed-coup-detat/5330013]:
On 24 March, a coup d’état took place in the Central African Republic (CAR). Seleka (1), a coalition of rebel groups, seized the country’s capital Bangui and President François Bozizé fled to neighbouring Cameroon. Seleka’s leader, Michel Djotodia, then declared himself the new head of state.
The history of the Central African Republic is rich with uprisings. From 1960 onwards, the country’s government has almost never been replaced peacefully: in 1965, the country’s first president, David Dacko, was overthrown by Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa (subsequently Emperor Bokassa I), in 1979 Bokassa was overthrown by Dacko (although with the help of the French) and in 1981, Dacko was overthrown again, but this time by General André Kolingba.
In 2003, a coup d’état was carried out by General François Bozizé. Just last year, two conspiracies to overthrow Bozizé were uncovered. (2) And lo and behold, in 2013 François Bozizé has been overthrown. Following the coup, the country’s army chiefs pledged allegiance to the new government. This will fundamentally destroy the entire structure. The Central African Republic contains troops from a whole number of countries (Chad, Cameroon, Congo, Gabon and the RSA) which should assist the authorities in restoring legitimate authority. However, since the army has switched over to side with the coupists, the situation has changed. A couple of other «helpers» in overthrowing the government should also be mentioned – France (who sent in nearly 600 servicemen) and the USA (who sent in more than one hundred military advisers).
The coup on 24 March was not unexpected. What was unexpected, however, was the reaction of the international community. The most hard-line response came from the African Union, who suspended the participation of the Central African Republic in all the organisation’s activities.
It has been known for a long time that the overthrow of François Bozizé was on its way. In actual fact, the coup d’état was announced beforehand. At the beginning of January 2013, the latest session of the UN Security Council took place, at which a dramatic statement were made by the head of the UN Mission in the Central African Republic (the Mission was promptly relocated from CAR to Gabon). The head of the UN Mission announced via videolink that Seleka troops had already seized virtually the whole of the country and were advancing on the capital. They were advancing for nearly two months, and nobody helped Bozizé…
On the day the capital was seized and Bozizé fled the country, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon issued a statement in which he condemned the coup, but he made no mention of restoring power to the legitimate president. (3) An urgent UN Security Council meeting was held on 26 March, but it failed to come to a decision. As a result of this meeting, Russian representative Vitaly Churkin, as Chairman of the Security Council, issued a statement condemning the attack and seizure of power in CAR and called for all parties to refrain from any acts of violence against civilians, including international personnel, as well as ensure safe humanitarian access to those needing help. Members of the Security Council called for all parties in the Central African Republic to restore the rule of law and constitutional order in the country. And once again, absolutely nothing was mentioned regarding the reinstatement of President Bozizé.
It is impossible not to notice that the joint declaration of the BRICS countries following the Durban summit on 27 March contained no condemnation of the coup. There was everything else: «concern that the situation will deteriorate», «absolute condemnation of the use of force against civilians» and «calls for negotiation». (4) But there was nothing condemning the coup! Nor was there anything demanding «the immediate restoration of legitimate authority», which is traditionally heard in these kinds of situations. What is more, this is despite the fact that during the seizure of Bangui, citizens from two BRICS countries were killed – RSA and India!
During Seleka’s attack on the country’s capital, the head of the UN Mission in CAR spoke of the errors made by the national security forces. (5) Following the army’s move over to the side of the coupists, one could ask whether these were errors or deliberate acts. At the very least, the reaction of the «international community» still gives grounds to conclude that, in reality, it does not want Bozizé to return to power and if it is demanding that order be restored in the country, then it is already without him. Especially since the rebels have managed to find a rather interesting formula for the transition period – Prime Minister Nicolas Tiangaye has remained in power.
The authority of overthrown President Bozizé did not extend to a substantial part of the country. All military operations against the rebels were carried out with the support of foreign troops, primarily from France and the Republic of Chad. In fact, even the president himself was being guarded by soldiers from Chad who had been in the country since 2003 (the year Bozizé came to power). It is interesting that the overthrow of President François Bozizé took place almost immediately after Chadian soldiers began returning home in January 2013.
The Central African Republic directly borders several «problem» regions in Africa. Firstly, the north of the country is under the control of Chadian rebel groups, secondly, the east borders the Sudan province of Darfur and, finally, to the south of the country is the Democratic Republic of Congo and its rebels. To the southeast of the Central African Republic, the notorious Ugandan «Lord’s Liberation Army» is in operation (whose leaders are being hunted by both the Ugandan government and the International Criminal Court). All of this compounds the situation considerably.
The Central African Republic is a real storehouse of natural resources. One of its main treasures is diamonds, deposits of which are present in 40 percent of the country. The country also has reserves of gold. France has been removing gold from the Central African Republic since 1930. However, while more than a tonne per year was being extracted in the 1960s, these days reserves have virtually been exhausted (2-10kg are extracted per year). There are also large deposits of copper and tin (6) but, most importantly, the resource that remains virtually untouched in the Central African Republic is uranium. Known reserves of uranium amount to nearly 15,000 tonnes of ore. France is planning to build a uranium plant with an output of 1,000 tonnes of uranium concentrate. (7) That is quite serious grounds for interfering in the restoration of constitutional order… The new head of state’s first step was to appeal to France, the USA and the EU for financial help and promise to revise the agreements that François Bozizé had entered into with China…
There is one more significant aspect of the situation in CAR. The fact is that since 2005, the situation in the Central African Republic is being investigated by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The person being tried is not involved in the current situation in CAR, however, but is the former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Jean-Pierre Bemba, who is being tried for providing military help to the former president of the Central African Republic, Félix Patassé (who was later overthrown by the very same Bozizé). So a precedent for the international prosecution of a country’s president who has provided military assistance to a neighbouring country has already been established. The plan of prosecution is as follows: to establish that the troops sent in committed crimes while they were in the country, and charge the commander-in-chief of the armed forces in accordance with command responsibility. (8) Therefore, the heads of countries that sent in troops to help Bozizé should have a serious think about how to avoid becoming part of the «situation in CAR» in the International Criminal Court.
The world’s media has already started a campaign against South African President Jacob Zuma, who sent troops into the Central African Republic at the request of Bozizé. Reports have emerged that South African soldiers in CAR killed several teenagers. (9) It seems that South African troops will soon be charged with committing war crimes. It is not impossible that the coup d’état in the Central African Republic will turn out to be a preparatory operation by special forces for quite a different coup d’état – in South Africa. It is possible that the plan is for South African President Jacob Zuma to be removed and for the International Criminal Court to issue an order for Zuma’s arrest. (10) You will recall that the coup d’état in CAR took place three days before the start of the BRICS Summit in South Africa. As is well-known, joining BRIC was the initiative of South Africa. Similar initiatives, from the point of view of the forces of the «new world order», cannot go unpunished.

Notes -
(1) In the Songo language – one of the main national languages spoken in the Central African Republic – «seleka» means «alliance». Seleka is made up of main groups including the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR), the Convention of Patriots for Justice and Peace (CPJP) and the Wa Kodro Salute Patriotic Convention (CPSK).
(2) See the Report of the UN Secretary General on the Situation in the Central African Republic // UN Document S/2012/956 dated 21 December 2012, paragraph 5.
(3) See the UN Secretary General press release – Condemning seizure of power in Central African Republic, Secretary-General // UN Document: SG/SM/14905 AFR/2585.
(4) Paragraph 31 of the eThekwini Declaration, 27 March 2013.
(5) See the UN Security Council session report dated 11 January 2013 for the 6899th meeting of the Council // UN Document: S/PV.6899, Page 6.
(6) See: Entsiklopediya Afrika, Chief Editor A.M. Vasilyev, Institute of Africa of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Entsiklopediya, 2010, Vol.2, p894.
(7) [http://cent-afr-rep.ru/uran-zoloto-neft/]
(8) This is also the plan favoured by the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Charges of command responsibility are being brought against virtually all of those accused in the tribunal, including Slobodan Milošević, General Mladić, Radovan Karadžić, Milan Martić and Goran Hadžić – all as the commander-in-chiefs of the armed forces of Serbia, the Republic of Srpska and the Republic of Serbian Krajina respectively.
(9) See, for example, the article in the British newspaper The Guardian, dated 1 April 2013, which allegedly quotes the South African soldiers themselves: «We killed little boys … teenagers who should have been in school.» // [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/01/central-african-republic-leader-government]
(10) A UN Security Council resolution is not even needed for this – South Africa is a member of the ICC Statute and a court prosecutor can, on his own initiative, begin an investigation and institute proceedings against the president of South Africa.

USA AFRICOM and CIA use aerial drones to assassinate and conduct war

"U.S. Drones Out of Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Everywhere!"
2013-03-28 call-to-action issued by "ANSWER" [http://www.answercoalition.org/national/news/april-13-us-drones-out-of-africa.html]:
Over 5,000 people have been murdered by U.S. drone strikes in the last few years, including a large number of children among the many civilians who have been slaughtered by these robotic killing machines.
Sitting in offices thousands of miles away from their targets, U.S. operators routinely decide to “push the button” and kill their unsuspecting targets on the ground with hellfire missiles fired from unseen drone aircraft. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, villagers have staged mass protests against drone strikes after their kids were incinerated while they were collecting firewood or farming in nearby fields.
The U.S. functions as a death squad government, permitting the president and military leaders to create secret “kill lists” of people who have been selected for assassination. There is no due process, no trial, no evidence – the individuals are selected to be murdered and they are killed, and many civilians who are nearby also die. Drones are the weapon of choice.
In the 19th century, it was a common tactic of imperialists to use gunboats to move around the world and assert their will, answering challenges to their authority with bullets and cannon shot. The use, or threat of the use, of naval force was used by Britain, the United States and other imperialist nations to force exploitative terms of trade and political accommodations on various political entities around the world.
The United States government’s drone program serves the same general purpose as gunboat diplomacy. It enables the United States to extend its military power over any country that lacks the ability, or will, to shoot down the aircraft.

Republic of Mali

"Oppose French Invasion of Mali!"
2013-01-17 by Eugene Puryear [http://crimsonsatellite.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/oppose-french-invasion-of-mali/]:
“Without Africa, there will be no history of France in the 21st century.”—Former French President Francois Mitterand
Recent events in the African nation of Mali mark a turning point in a secessionist crisis in the North that threatens to destabilize the entire country. Most notable has been the intervention of the French armed forces, seeking to “stabilize” and re-assert control over this former colony of France.
On Jan. 10, anti-government Islamic rebels who had previously controlled northern Mali surged south in a renewed offensive. Rebel forces took control of the central Malian city of Konna, routing the Malian army and expanding the fighting to several other cities in the center of the country. This caused the “official” government based in the South to fear that they would soon be overrun, resulting in a call for support from the “international community.”
The government of France quickly responded, sending in several hundred troops to keep security in the capital, and sending warplanes to launch airstrikes in northern and central Mali in an attempt to weaken anti-government forces. Despite French intervention, rebel forces have continued to make inroads on the ground, as of Jan. 14.
France claims that it is loath to get involved in a ground war and has urged “Africanization” of the conflict. ECOWAS, the political organization of West African countries, has promised to send troops, although the timeline is unclear, meaning French troops very well could see action.

Conflict in Northern Mali—some context -
The current conflict in Mali goes back to late 2011 and requires some understanding of the country’s history. Mali is a multi-national country, and its northern regions are inhabited by several national groupings that have suffered oppression, most prominently the Tuareg people, nomads whose traditional homeland stretches across parts of several nations in the Sahel region of Africa.
Tuareg forces for many years had found refuge and support for their aspirations in Col. Qaddafi’s Libya, and many Tuareg fighters had been integrated into Libya’s military. With the fall of that government following heavy U.S.-NATO bombing and missile attacks on behalf of a rebellion with a strong racist component, the African Tuaregs lost a key ally. Those who had been part of the Libyan military and survived the fighting fled back to their homelands carrying their weapons with them.
The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, a secular organization, desires a Tuareg-based state in the northern part of Mali. Most likely using weapons acquired from Libya, the MNLA launched a struggle against the Malian army, taking control of the North. The Tuareg rebellion was deep-rooted with some of the national and ethnic conflicts going back to the colonial and in some cases pre-colonial eras. Tuareg revolts in 1963 and 1990 were put down by the Malian government, but the demand for Tuareg national liberation has been a recurring theme in Malian politics.
The MNLA was quickly sidelined, however, by a coalition of Islamic militant groups that seek to create an Islamic state over broad areas of Africa, including northern Mali. The Islamists are a mix of fighters from various Malian groups across West Africa and parts of the Muslim world. This coalition began to enforce their strict interpretation of Sharia law in areas under their control, and gained worldwide infamy by destroying priceless artifacts.
Northern Mali contains some of the most historic cities on the African continent, including famed academic center Timbuktu. So while the rebellion in the North began as a struggle for national liberation, it has transformed into one pushing a reactionary sectarian agenda.

Malian government not much better -
The Malian army, not surprisingly, was easily routed. Since the start of “multiparty” democracy in 1992, a clique of capitalists and military leaders have ruled primarily through a patronage network and a standing army kept weak to reduce the threat of a coup. In the northern parts of the country, the government often relied on militias based among the Songhai and Fulani peoples to fight Tuareg forces and other opponents.
In 2012, despite the weak army, elements of the military dissatisfied with the central government seized power just before an election that would mostly likely have been something short of “free and fair.” While it has never been clear where the coup leaders stood, some revolutionary groups in Mali supported the coup, claiming that it emerged from the “proletarian wing” of the army.
Under intense pressure from ECOWAS, a civilian government was formed, but it has not been able to truly take power. Many reports from Mali indicate that there are rival power centers, although both the civilian government and former coup leader Amadou Sanogo support French intervention.

Why France?
France has maintained close relations with a number of its former colonies, through a policy known as Franceafrique, for all the obvious reasons—most importantly, preferential access to vital mineral resources such as uranium. This has resulted in a string of French military bases across the continent and periodic interventions by French troops in African conflicts. Most recently, in 2011, French military might determined the outcome of the Ivorian election.
So it makes sense that France would act to prevent the entire country of Mali from falling to the Islamic rebels. France and the Western imperialists more broadly have a key interest in opposing Islamic militant groups that challenge their hegemony. On the other hand, as we have seen in both Syria and Libya, and previously in Afghanistan, imperialism has no problem in allying with such groups to overthrow regimes considered to be unreliable or that are attempting to follow an independent course.
The United States has also been training Malian troops to fight in the “war on terror” and has done the same in many West African nations. These nations, grouped in ECOWAS, also opposed the Islamic militants in Mali, fearing what destabilization in the region could mean for their own economic and political prospects.

Prospects -
The intervention by French troops and the bombing of Malian cities by French warplanes marks a major escalation in the conflict. The strength of the Islamic rebels, who have attracted some support from disaffected peoples in the North, means heavier fighting can be expected. France and the Western imperialists are obviously concerned that anti-Western, non-cooperative forces could seize Mali and use it as a base to extend their influence across the region. Thus their goal is to defeat the Islamic rebels using whatever forces necessary.
While France and the United States are urging ECOWAS to intervene militarily in Mali, France in deed and the U.S. in word have shown their willingness to act unilaterally. It has even been reported that France is trying to recruit the MNLA to act as an imperialist proxy, which could lead to more divide-and-conquer policies in the North, as opposed to genuine processes of liberation and reconciliation.
From the standpoint of progressives and revolutionaries in the United States, it is paramount that imperialist intervention be opposed resolutely. With regime change in Libya and the destabilization of Mali, the recent announcement of U.S. military missions in up to 35 African nations make it clear that imperialism is using the conflicts in Africa to deepen the bonds of neocolonialism on that continent. This promises not to resolve but simply to transform and exacerbate some of Africa’s thorniest issues, resulting in greater suffering for her people.