No africom

Protecting African Economic Growth From Global Predators by Ambrose Nzeyimana

2011-01-12T20:20:00.000-08:00

A reader of our online material made the observation that he or she couldn’t find in its content anything referring to the rising continent, or the lions on the move, which both connotations are defining terms for our blog at www.therisingcontinent.wordpress.com. The reply was that the focus had so far been on one central aspect of African characteristics, which is as important as seeing the entire continent rising and progressing towards better pastures.

As that reader, and any other who might have similar questions, may probably agree, respecting human rights is part of the defining elements of societies which are today characterised by better life standards, particularly in material terms and available opportunities of improving people’s lives. There are obviously exceptions where you have countries with high GDP per capita but experiencing poor record of human rights. This does not dismiss the fact that the general rule is that economic development and respect of human rights go hand in hand.

In the last 40 years, PNUD reports that Africa development has been very slow; some few countries have even registered absolute regression. But during the last decade there has been a significant shift, and by that contradicting the usual pessimistic picture that paints the continent. At the opposite of such a positive trend from a continent nothing good is generally expected, at the global scene, the financial crisis of 2007/8 saw most developed governments pulling trillions of dollars or Euros into their banking systems, in order to avoid the collapse of Capitalism. One of the consequences of the crisis was a quite significant reduction of sources of revenues for developed countries to address their needs for investment and economic growth.

Developed countries are currently experiencing drastic budget cuts across the board. The reality right now is about being able to face payment of public debts in a context of slow economic recovery. Consequently, it has been wise for some governments including Britain, to take the bull by its horns, and cut back on not necessary expenses but only those that don’t kill. While economic recovery is still stagnant globally, every developed economy is particularly looking at alternative channels to add value to their balance sheet. In that quest, Africa as always is seen by many as one that could be the answer.

African economic prospects have been changing drastically in recent years. The momentum of the observable change took by surprise non informed observers. Interested watchers collected facts about the continent which should objectively prompt a complete shift from the usual pessimistic portrayal of the continent. In May 2010 Boston Consulting Group identified across the continent 40 companies which are making annual turnovers varying between 380 millions and 80 billions of dollars. McKinsey Global Institute on its part reported in June 2010 that, ‘Africa’s economic pulse has quickened, infusing the continent with a new commercial vibrancy. Real GDP rose 4.9 percent per year from 2000 through 2008, more than twice its pace in the 1980s and 90s. Telecom, banking, and retail are flourishing. Construction is booming. Foreign investment is surging.’

What may happen? For some more years, Africa will continue to be the source of raw material: oil, rare and strategic minerals. But with the increase of the working class population, consequent to existing and emerging business opportunities on the continent, Africans will be more a consumer market than a supplier bloc for the rest of the world. Deficits in external commercial balances will increase more than they have been so far as long as governments on the continent will not be responsible enough to think strategically in the interests of their citizens. Developed countries are aggressively tapping into current African opportunities individually and as economic blocs. Henry Berlingham, UK Minister for Africa, explained recently that business offensive towards Africa at Lancaster House. ‘I am on track to visit all 53 states in Africa by our next elections in 2015! These trips allow me to see firsthand the challenges and opportunities facing Africa,’ he pointed out to the attention of his audience. By the time of his speech on 16^th December 2010, the minister had already visited Uganda, Sudan, Libya, DRC, Kenya, South Africa and Angola.

Important considerations – As opposed to previous historical periods where the rest of the world was interested in Africa for its riches, Africans shouldn’t let themselves marched over this time as Americano-Indians or Aborigines of Australia who got nearly eradicated as communities. This may seem to be an exaggerated picture of the future of Africa. But if African children continue to be exposed to Hollywood movies though they don’t have access to education or clean water, consequences could be dramatic for the continent. Or if the continent continues to be led by self centred strongmen without particular interest in the well being of the people they lead, present economic opportunities that Africa has may be wasted. Unfortunately, they may not come around again for a very long time.

Allegiances to international financial institutions such as World Bank or International Monetary Fund should cease. It has emerged that these institutions are there to enslave Africans countries economically and financially. At the time when developed countries are favouring private investment, what works for them and has been tested over time, should be extensively applied in the case of African countries. There are numerous positive cases across the continent which should be emulated.

Ingenuity and new skills will need to be given prominence as countries will have to become less dependent on gimmicks of international aid which have kept most of them far behind their real potential development. Education (not selective and discriminatory as practiced in some countries) will need to be the pillar of the new era of the continent’s economic rise in the global market.

Pitfalls can be avoided. If enough willingness to take advantage of available opportunities is there, chances exist that the continent could effectively make a giant step towards its sustainable development. Below are some actions which are being tested or need being undertaken to optimise the current trajectory that Africa has embarked on for a few years now

Stopping countries from addressing individually problems which transcend national boundaries
Having common policies on infrastructures, industries, business contracts, human resources, technology, etc, and shared benefits
Ensuring that African opportunities are negotiated at their right and not discounted or distorted value because of lack of accountability and transparency from countries’ representatives
Operating as One Africa avoiding to succumb at the mercy of global predators; African Union and Regional Economic Communities and other continental specialised institutions could for example develop and produce best practices in all major sectors of development that individual countries could use as guides/ directives
Developing and operating cartels of specialised suppliers of specific commodities
Adding value to products through industrial processing – the example of China is well significant to learn from
Promoting African local sourcing and incentivising home grown producers and suppliers
Learning from what other economic blocs across the world are doing in specific areas of development
Developing African pools of funds from revenues coming from increased incomes that new structures of generating wealth create; these pools would aim to address continental issues such as investments in transport networks connecting several countries; strengthening the unification of the continent
Making the African Diaspora around the world an important component in the process of maximising outcomes from available opportunities on the continent

It would look shameful for Africa to miss out on opportunities the continent has at the moment of economic growth, which are making the usual global predators of riches around the world keener to grab them at the expense of African people. There are things people cannot control in their lives. African current economic positive prospects are in the people’s reach. Not taking charge and assuming more responsibility will historically be judged accordingly. No excuses will be permitted in the case of failure.

Resisting AFRICOM, the US military occupation strategy for Africa by Ambrose Nzeyimana

2011-01-12T20:13:00.000-08:00

Most if not all empires of the past have historically managed to conquer and maintain their rule over territories by using their military power. After Second War II, when United States and Russia emerged as the main global powers militarily, the world got divided into two spheres of influence aligned along their respective support. With the collapse of communism, U.S. found itself the only military superpower around. The situation prompted visibly a U.S. foreign policy geared to occupy territories lost by the traditional protagonist. At great extent the policy went as far as bringing under strong influence countries which were even traditionally seen primarily under old Europe stewardship.

Like past empires, U.S. are using towards the African continent strategies which proved their efficiency. Clare Burges Watson describes in ‘Silk Route Adventure’what a famous Mongolian Emperor was capable of achieving through such military ingenuity. ‘Genghis Khan organized his army in such a way that it cut across traditional clan loyalties. Those he conquered were split into different regiments, organized on a decimal basis. The tradition of absolute clan loyalty in Mongolia did not apply in peace-time. In order to prevent his newly-acquired army from simply disintegrating in the steppe, it was necessary to create a perpetual state of war. A sharp fall in the average temperature of Mongolia and the subsequent deterioration in the quality of grazing land may have made the search for pasture a motive for conquest.’
With the annihilation of communism, exclusivity of influence from ex-colonial powers to certain parts of the world also ended. The process became absolutely apparent in the early 90s. For example, countries which for decades had been marginal in their rapport with U.S. became major targets for the military only superpower of the globe. Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo have for the last twenty years been the theaters of the consequences of such interest from the U.S. Put aside that perspective of not respecting old traditions in terms of zones of influence, it is interesting to note that conflict situations will be probably created, sustained and fuelled to justify AFRICOM policy, instead of searching and solving root causes of issues. This is where we see everywhere on the African continent, military options overtaking any other peaceful approaches be it political or even dialogue between opposing factions.

Contrary to the official line of strengthening African people’s security, the real motives of AFRICOM need being well understood by everyone interested or concerned. Rick Rozoff explains that the U.S. is on a course of a new colonialism, which through its highest military structure, the Pentagon, is carving Africa into military zones, along the existing five African economic regions. ‘The U.S. is not dragging almost every nation in Africa into its military network because of altruism or concerns for the security of the continent’s people. AFRICOM’s function is that of every predatory military power: the threat and use of armed violence to gain economic and geopolitical advantages,’ he points out.

Rozoff adds that, ‘There are economic and strategic incentives to bringing more security [for example] to the Congo, which is rich in natural resources such as cobalt, a key component in the manufacturing of cell phones and other electronics. The country contains 80 percent of the world’s cobalt reserves….An April 2009 report to Congress by the National Defense Stockpile Center made clear that ensuring access to mineral markets around the world is of vital interest to national security.’ It could be objectively understood that each nation must care about its security as effectively as possible. But why this does have always to be at the expense of sometime shredding human rights of people of other nations and in some cases supporting regimes which are slaughtering or simply abusing their people in the millions.

AFRICOM strategy appears to be borrowed from US military foreign policies of the 60s. Noam Chomsky, in ‘America’s quest for global dominance,‘ explains that during that period the Kennedy administration changed the mission of the Latin American military, effectively, from ‘hemisphere defense’ to ‘internal security.’ As a consequence, the shift was from toleration ‘of the rapacity and cruelty of the Latin American military’ to ‘direct complicity in their crimes, to support for ‘the methods of Heinrich Himmler’s extermination squads.’

As for the picture of how the policy worked on the ground with Latin American forces, Alfredo Vasquez Carrizosa, president of the Colombian Permanent Committee for Human Rights, provides a telling narrative. ‘[The Kennedy administration] took great pains to transform our regular armies into counterinsurgency brigades, accepting the new strategy of the death squads. …the National Security Doctrine … not defense against an external enemy, but a way to make the military establishment the masters of the game [with] the right to combat the internal enemy …: it is the right to fight and to exterminate social workers, trade unionists, men and women [including politicians and journalists] who are not supportive of the establishment, and who are assumed to be communist extremists [or terrorists]. And this could mean anyone,…’

While receiving African Young Leaders at the White House in July 2010, Barack Obama, explained to his audience that the US in its relations with the external world was primarily after its own national interests. He was understandably right. This was in response to a question of knowing how the new intended Africa-US relationship would address protagonist issues where African and U.S. interests would seem to be opposed to each others. The American administration backing AFRICOM speedily implementation and those at the receiving end among African governments who espouse its objectives and adopt its operational mechanisms are either in denial of its impact in strengthening dictatorial regimes, or accomplices in structures of oppression of citizens and illegal or inappropriate exploitation of national resources.

People get what they deserve. Their destinies are shaped by the decisions they make. South Africans wouldn’t have ended Apartheid if they didn’t stand up against it as long as necessary to see it off. There are many historical examples to demonstrate that unwanted situations are only changed when there are people to oppose them. Be it for example slavery, or other discriminations of different sorts. Africans knowing what colonialism did to their nations and what new forms of imperialisms are doing to their people [e.g. millions of dead, looted mineral resources, western backed political and criminal leaders in the Great Lakes region] they shouldn’t shy away from raising these issues and stand together to get their people the best deal around.

Cables reveal how US and UK sought to plunder Zimbabwe’s resources by Ann Talbot

2011-01-12T18:33:00.000-08:00

Jan 12, 2011

The US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks contain revealing details of how the United States and Britain sought to further their commercial interests in Zimbabwe. WikiLeaks has released 12 cables, which originate from the American embassy in Harare in addition to others from the South African capital Pretoria, London and the State Department commenting on the situation in Zimbabwe. They range in date from September 2000 to February 2010.

"The cables track this human tragedy through the indifferent eyes of American diplomats, whose main concern was always for the potential profits to be made from Zimbabwe’s natural resources. They chart the efforts of US, British and European diplomats, often working through the UN, to establish a regime that will open up the country to international investment."

This was a decade in which President Robert Mugabe’s regime came into increasing conflict with the Western-backed Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by white agribusinesses and headed by former trade union leader Morgan Tsvangirai. The present power-sharing government was ultimately established in 2008, with Robert Mugabe as president and Tsvangirai as prime minister.

Inflation in Zimbabwe had by then reached the figure of 40 million percent. The infrastructure was breaking down, and the country had been devastated by a cholera epidemic. Thousands were fleeing across the border into South Africa every day to escape unemployment, poverty and hunger. Approximately 1.5 million Zimbabweans are now thought to live in South Africa.

A country that had once been among the richest in Africa, with an effective health service and educational system, had slipped to the lowest point in the UN Human Development Report for 2010. In 2006, life expectancy was the lowest in the world at only 34 years for women and 37 for men, according to the World Health Organisation. Since then, there has been some improvement, and life expectancy now averages 47 years. But in 2010, UNICEF estimated that one third of Zimbabwe children were at risk of dying as a result of malnutrition.

The cables track this human tragedy through the indifferent eyes of American diplomats, whose main concern was always for the potential profits to be made from Zimbabwe’s natural resources. They chart the efforts of US, British and European diplomats, often working through the UN, to establish a regime that will open up the country to international investment.

In reality, this was a tragedy largely manufactured by the international financial institutions that Washington sponsors. When the International Monetary Fund attempted to impose a structural adjustment programme in Zimbabwe at the end of the 1990s, Mugabe broke from it because he realised that it would mean dismantling the system of patronage on which he depended to remain in power. “Let that monstrous creature get out of our way,” he declared, and attempted to find other sources of international finance.
He has succeeded in remaining in power by enriching the clique around him at the expense of the majority of the population.

Finally, after 10 years the IMF is back in town—insisting on a programme of structural reforms that will address what they refer to as “labour market rigidities” and establish secure property rights for foreign investors. Mugabe’s bid to go it alone has failed, under circumstances that can only be described as disastrous for working people.

The cables that WikiLeaks has published reveal that throughout this decade the US was quite prepared to come to an accommodation with Mugabe and ensure him a lucrative retirement. They note the human rights abuses that his regime has committed, but show no desire to pursue justice in Mugabe’s case. They treat, matter of factly, the process of engineering regime change without reference to the popular will. Creating a new strong man in Africa is all in a day’s work for the US diplomatic corps.

Britain appears to play a minor role in the story told by the US cables, because they represent the American point of view. Yet, the relationship between the two powers is ever present. All of the cables are copied to Joint Analytical Command at RAF Molesworth in Cambridgeshire, England, where AFRICOM is based—demonstrating the close military and intelligence links between the US and UK. British companies, too, clearly look to the US as a friendly power that will protect their interests.

In 2000, the US embassy in Harare reported that elements in the ruling ZANU-PF were interested in a deal with the MDC that would involve Mugabe’s departure. The board of Lever Brothers (Unilever) had informed the MDC that Kofi Annan, then head of the UN, had offered Mugabe a deal if he would step down. It included a financial package and safe passage to Libya. It seemed that “a shady white businessman,” thought to be John Bredenkamp, had also offered Mugabe a retirement deal. It was not known whether Bredenkamp had sufficient resources to finance the package himself, but it was believed that he worked for MI6 and might become a conduit through which the British could channel money to Mugabe.

The cable noted that shortly afterwards, they were informed, probably by Bredenkamp, that “key members of the private sector here could prevent a political and economic train wreck.”
The businessman claimed that Britain had £36 million available for land reform, but would probably not be able to act as an honest broker in securing a settlement. He appealed to the US to find someone to play this role, so that businessmen could set up negotiations between the MDC and Mugabe. The US embassy interpreted the businessman’s discussion with them as a ruling party back-channel approach and believed it was probably genuine because elements of ZANU-PF had become convinced that Mugabe had become a liability.

In November 2000, the embassy reported a discussion with Tsvangirai, in which he stressed the need for a unity government with ZANU-PF remaining in power but with some MDC ministers brought into office. Mugabe would be removed by a convergence of ZANU-PF, the military and regional leaders such as President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. Tsvangirai agreed that mass action would be dangerous and said that if it became necessary the MDC would organise a general strike for the Christmas holiday when schools and most businesses were closed anyway. In the event, the MDC cancelled such plans.

In July 2007, US Ambassador Christopher Dell made his final report before leaving the country. According to the cable, the task for American foreign policy was to “stay the course and prepare for change. Our policy is working and it’s helping to drive change here. What is required is simply the grit, determination and focus to see this through. Then, when the changes finally come we must be ready to move quickly to help consolidate the new dispensation.”

Dell paid tribute to Mugabe’s tactical ability. “To give the devil his due, he is a brilliant tactician and has long thrived on his ability to abruptly change the rules of the game, radicalise the political dynamic and force everyone else to react to his agenda.” He traced Mugabe’s increasingly desperate measures to stay in power and the damage they had done to the economy, predicting that the collapse of the Zimbabwean dollar as a unit of trade would ultimately bring about his downfall. The cable is headed “The end is nigh”.

Events were to prove that Mugabe had not, as Dell supposed, entirely run out of options. A cable from 2008 describes how the ZANU-PF regime elite were looting the Marange diamond fields. Andrew Cranswick, the CEO of the British-based African Consolidated Resources, told the US embassy that leading figures in the regime were engaged in illegal diamond trading. First Lady Grace Mugabe is currently suing a number of media outlets for suggesting that she was involved in this activity. According to geological study carried out for de Beers, the field has a carats per hundred tons ratio (CPHT) of 1,000 compared to Rio Tinto’s Zimbabwean diamond mine at Murowa, which has a CPHT ratio of only 120. Cranswick’s motive for informing the American embassy was that the government had taken away his company’s concession in Marange, but a specialist sent to this restricted area found his report generally credible.

Another cable the following year reported that the army had moved into the Marange diamond field, taking control of the trade, and that Mugabe was planning to visit Russia in an attempt to get hold of foreign exchange in a diamond deal. By then, a power-sharing agreement had been signed along the lines envisaged earlier by the US ambassador. The military remained powerful, and by October 2009 Tsvangirai was asking the Americans to contribute to a trust fund that would “buy off securocrats and move them into retirement”. Tsvangirai said that he would approach the Germans and the British with the same request.
In another cable, Tsvangirai appealed for the easing of Western sanctions against Zimbabwe. That view was echoed by a member of ZANU-PF, who told the embassy that sanctions only provided a convenient “whipping boy” for Mugabe. ZANU-PF, he said, was like “a troop of baboons incessantly fighting among themselves, but coming together to face an external threat.”

The cables demonstrate how a form of neo-colonial domination continued to exist in this nominally independent country. Events did not always go according to Washington’s plans, but the power-sharing agreement that is now in place is essentially in line with the ideas mapped out by successive US ambassadors over the last decade. Tsvangirai emerges from the cables as a creature of Washington, who is useful to US interests because his background as a trade union leader provided the means of averting an independent political movement among urban workers that might provide leadership to the rural poor.

Washington was prepared to offer Mugabe a peaceful retirement, since it was better to let the old liberation fighter leave the scene with honour than to antagonise the mass of population by making too public a demonstration of US power. Tsvangirai was entirely in agreement and was prepared to extend the same consideration to other members of the elite.

Mugabe has used every possibility open to him to remain in power, but he is still ultimately subordinate to the dictates of the world market and international financial institutions that were designed with American interests in mind. Competition for Zimbabwe’s natural resources has given him very limited room for manoeuvre—by turning to Libya, Russia and China. But hyperinflation brought his regime to the point where he has had to make a deal with Washington.

The analysis that the World Socialist Web Site has made of Zimbabwe over the past decade has been entirely vindicated. We refused to back the MDC opposition and have consistently pointed to its reliance on Washington. Nor did we endorse the nationalist agenda of ZANU-PF or identify it with socialism, insisting that only an independent working class movement based on an international socialist programme can defend the interests of the mass of the population throughout Southern Africa.

Pentagon And NATO Apply Afghanistan-Pakistan War Model To Africa by Rick Rozoff

2011-01-12T18:10:00.000-08:00

January 2, 2011

The New Year began with three North Atlantic Treaty Organization soldiers killed in Afghanistan and 20 people, all portrayed as militants, killed in four American missile strikes in northwest Pakistan. The third drone missile attack killed four people attempting to rescue and remove the bodies of the victims of the first, a technique used by the U.S. and NATO in their war against Yugoslavia in 1999.

The West’s war in Afghanistan and Pakistan is currently the longest, largest and deadliest in the world. Fatalities among U.S. troops, non-U.S. NATO and allied forces, Afghan National Army soldiers and anti-government fighters reached a record high last year: 498, 213, 800 and an unknown number (by U.S. and NATO accounts well into the thousands), respectively. The United Nations estimated 2,400 Afghan civilians were killed in the first ten months of last year, a 20 percent increase over the same period in the preceding year. Approximately a thousand people were killed by U.S. drone missile strikes in Pakistan.

It says something discouraging about a world of almost 200 nations that perhaps no more than half a dozen countries – so-called rogue states (alternatively Condoleezza Rice’s “outposts of tyranny”) – have voiced opposition to the war.

Washington’s self-designated global war on terror (sometimes capitalized), in recent years more politely and antiseptically called overseas contingency operations, has not diminished in intensity but rather escalated in breadth and aggressiveness from West Africa to East Asia and against targets not remotely related to al-Qaeda, which has proven as nebulous and evasive as the West portrays it being ubiquitous.

From 2001 to the present the U.S. has engaged in and supported military operations against Marxist guerrillas in Colombia and the Philippines, ethnic Tuaregs in Mali, nominally Christian insurgents in Uganda and Shiite Houthi militia in northern Yemen in the name of combating…al-Qaeda. The Wahhabist school of extremism that characterizes al-Qaeda and analogous groups derives its doctrinal inspiration and material support from Saudi Arabia, yet last October Washington announced a $63 billion arms package with the kingdom, the largest foreign weapons deal in American history.

Washington and its NATO military allies have opened a war front across the Arabian Sea from Pakistan in the east to Somalia and Yemen in the west as the central focus of operations that began almost ten years ago.

[1]

On October 1, 2008 the Pentagon formally launched its first overseas military command in the post-Cold War era, U.S. Africa Command, which takes in 53 nations and an entire continent except for Egypt, which remains in Central Command.

The second command’s area of responsibility reaches from the eastern border of Libya to the western border of China and southern border of Russia. From Egypt to Kazakhstan. The Horn of Africa region, including Somalia, was ceded by Central Command to Africa Command (AFRICOM), but the Arabian Peninsula, including Yemen, remains in Central Command.

Though the Pentagon’s Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa, now subsumed under AFRICOM and based in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti, includes thirteen nations in East Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Peninsula in its area of operations: Comoros, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen. Operation Enduring Freedom, under which the U.S. conducts its greater Afghan war, encompasses sixteen countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Yemen.

The U.S. maintains at least 2,500 troops in Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti and in late 2009 deployed over 100 troops, Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) equipped for guided bombs and missiles and three P-3 Orion anti-submarine and maritime surveillance aircraft to Seychelles.

Washington was accused by Houthi rebels in the north of Yemen of participating with Saudi Arabia in deadly bombing raids against them in the northwestern province of Sa’ada in December of 2009. They stated American jet fighters launched 28 attacks in the province which included bombing the governor’s house and killing 120 people in one attack.

[2]

Later in the same month the U.S. conducted cruise missile and air strikes with the use of cluster bombs in southern Yemen which killed over 60 civilians, mostly women and children. Another air strike was launched in March of 2010.

Leading American officials have demanded drone missile strikes in Yemen and several hundred U.S. special forces are deployed to the country. The U.S. and its allies in NATO and the European Union are actively involved in the civil war in Somalia, across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen.

The Pentagon supported the Ethiopian invasion of the country in 2006 and launched two days of air strikes in January of the following year. In the autumn of 2009 U.S. special forces conducted a deadly helicopter gunship raid in southern Somalia.

The New Year in Somalia started with a fierce battle between foreign troops backing the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and al-Shabaab rebels, resulting in at 15 dead and 25 wounded. Inhabitants of the Somali capital reported that “the Mogadishu sky turned red [and] kids were crying and had been unable to sleep as the crackling of machine guns and barrages rocked throughout the city.”

[3]

There are approximately 6,000 troops from U.S. military client states Uganda and Burundi fighting on behalf of the formal government of the country under the banner of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). Although approved by the African Union, AMISOM and its predecessor, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Peace Support Mission in Somalia (IGASOM), primarily have been initiatives by Washington and its allies in NATO and the EU.

European warships are deployed for NATO’s Operation Ocean Shield and the EU’s Operation Atalanta off Somalia’s coast in the Gulf of Aden. (In military matters the distinction between NATO and the EU is becoming an increasingly formal one.)

At least fifteen EU member states, most of them also NATO members – Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Belgium, Portugal, Luxembourg, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Malta and Cyprus – have sent no fewer than 150 military personnel to Uganda to train 2,000 Somali troops for war in their homeland in a program financed by the U.S.

In the middle of last month the local press reported that the first 1,000 Somali soldiers “trained by officers from the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF) and senior military officers from 27 European Union countries” graduated from the Bihanga military training school in Western Uganda, a “facility…set up early this year to train TFG Officers and foot soldiers in a bid to boost the military capability of war-torn Somalia….”

“The soldiers are expected to provide the core of officers and men of a new Somali army…to provide a much-needed boost to the fragile Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Mogadishu.”

[4]

Since June of 2007 NATO has provided airlift and sealift for AMISOM (Ugandan and Burundian) troops deployed to Somalia. The next year NATO flew a Burundian battalion into Somalia and in March of last year the Western military bloc transported 1,700 Ugandan troops into and 850 out of the Somali capital.

The month before the initial inauguration of AFRICOM in 2007, when it was still under U.S. European Command (whose top commander is simultaneously NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe), a Pentagon official announced that Africa Command “would involve one small headquarters plus five ‘regional integration teams’ scattered around the continent” and that “AFRICOM would work closely with the European Union and NATO,” particularly France, a leading member of both organizations, which was “interested in developing the Africa standby force”.

[5]

In the same year the U.S. Defense Department acknowledged it had already “agreed on access to air bases and ports in Africa and ‘bare-bones’ facilities maintained by local security forces in Gabon, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Namibia, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia.”

[6]

The five regions of Africa identified by the U.S. military – north, south, east, west and central – are all represented by the locations named above and are each home to a branch of the African Standby Force (Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western and Central), like AMISOM nominally under the control of the African Union but in fact overseen by the U.S. and NATO.

The North Atlantic Alliance inaugurated the NATO Response Force, in NATO’s own words “a highly ready and technologically advanced multinational force made up of land, air, maritime and special forces components that the Alliance can deploy quickly to wherever it is needed,” in and off the coast of the African island of Cape Verde in 2006 in a two-week, 7,000-troop exercise codenamed Steadfast Jaguar.

[7]

The African Standby Force is modeled after the NATO Response Force. “NATO…supports staff capacity building through the provision of places on NATO training courses to AU [African Union] staff supporting AMISOM, and support to the operationalisation of the African Standby Force – the African Union’s vision for a continental, on-call security apparatus similar to the NATO Response Force.”

[8] It is a joint project of NATO and the Pentagon, formerly U.S. European Command and currently U.S. Africa Command. To date the only fully successful implementation of the project is the Eastern Africa Standby Force, whose Eastern Africa Standby Brigade (with headquarters in Ethiopia and its Eastern African Standby Brigade Coordination Mechanism in Kenya) consists of Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania (as an observer) and Uganda.

It is largely coterminous with the Pentagon’s Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa without Yemen and with Burundi and Rwanda added. In October of 2009 the Eastern Africa Standby Brigade (EASBRIG) held military exercises in Djibouti, where Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa is based.

Last month the defense chiefs of the twelve members of EASBRIG (presumably Eritrea was absent) met in the capital of Burundi to discuss “the Policy Framework for the Establishment of the Eastern Africa Standby Force [EASF] and the Memorandum of Understanding for Cooperation between the Eastern Africa Standby Force Coordination Mechanism [EASBRICOM] and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development [IGAD] that aims to harmonise the relations of both institutions….”

[9]

NATO, which has been training African Standby Force staff officers at its training center in Oberammergau, Germany, has designated the NATO Joint Command Lisbon to implement the bloc’s military cooperation with Africa. Joint Command Lisbon has what it identifies as a Senior Military Liaison Officer at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (The territory of every nation in Africa except for Liberia, founded by the American Colonization Society in 1821-1822, was formerly ruled by nations that joined NATO: Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Turkey.)

On September 5, 2007 “the North Atlantic Council – NATO’s top political decision making body – agreed to provide assistance to the African Union with a study on the assessment of the operational readiness of the African Standby Force brigades,” according to the NATO website.

In the west of Africa, the Economic Community of West African States Standby Force brigade is being readied to intervene in Ivory Coast to depose President Laurent Gbagbo as the Dutch Defense Ministry announced last week that one of its ships was “heading for the coast of Cote d’Ivoire to provide supplies for French warships stationed there.”

[10]

U.S. Naval Forces Europe – U.S. Naval Forces Africa, which is headquartered in Naples, Italy and directs its operations through the U.S. Sixth Fleet, also headquartered in Italy, launched the Africa Partnership Station in 2007 as a naval component of AFRICOM. Warships assigned to it have visited several African nations on the east, west and south ends of the continent, among them Angola, Cameroon, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Reunion, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania and Togo.

Last month the Pentagon’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Africa Vicki Huddleston and the State Department’s Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Donald Yamamoto (who was ambassador to Ethiopia when it invaded Somalia in 2006) visited U.S. Africa Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. While there the Defense Department’s Huddleston asserted that “East Africa becomes extremely high for DOD [the Department of Defense] in terms of priority. So the highest priority for DOD, and therefore AFRICOM, becomes East Africa because of Somalia and then West (Africa), North Africa….”

[11]

The month before, Ugandan People’s Defence Air Force Chief Major General Jim Owoyesigire visited 17th Air Force (Air Forces Africa) at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, also headquarters for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and NATO’s Allied Air Command.

Owoyesigire stated that his country’s new air force was in part the product of an African air chiefs conference he attended in Ramstein in 2007 where he “began learning from the US Air Force.”

In regards to Uganda’s role as one of the two major belligerent forces in the war in Somalia and its counterinsurgency war at home (and across its borders) against the Lord’s Resistance Army, the air force head confirmed that “Help from U.S. Africa Command and 17th AF has been a key enabler for the UPDAF’s [Ugandan People's Defence Air Force's] contribution to these missions.”

“When we started in AMISOM, we had no airlift capability. General Ward [William Ward, AFRICOM commander] came and visited and helped us to partner with the U.S. Air Force to get this airlift capability. To get training, 17th AF came and trained us in loading cargo and airdrops, and this has really helped us.

“This is a wide question, but right now, we are asking 17th AF to come and help us establish a squadron officers’ school and NCO academy in Uganda. If we can develop these schools, then we can also involve our east African partners.”

[12]

Early in December the commander of U.S. Army Africa, Major General David Hogg, visited Algeria to meet with senior military and government officials to discuss “bilateral relations and regional issues,” including joint reconnaissance and training activities and “a future visit by Algerian soldiers to the United States to investigate how the Army integrates its lessons learned center into its training regime.”

U.S. Army Africa is the Army’s newest service component command and is based in Vicenza, Italy, assigned to AFRICOM and tasked with “developing relationships with land forces in Africa and supporting U.S. Army efforts on the African continent.”

[13]

The regional issues deliberated on by the American general and his Algerian counterparts relate to Algeria’s military campaign against Salafist insurgents and similar counterinsurgency operations throughout the Sahel, which consists of parts of Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia and Sudan.

At the end of last month U.S. military personnel assigned to Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa and Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti participated in a combat casualty course in Burundi as part of a U.S. State Department-sponsored program. According to James Cobb, State Department program country manager in Burundi, “The course is part of a U.S. Department of State initiative to provide African armies an opportunity to partner with American defense forces to develop their peacekeeping skills for operations throughout Africa.”

[14]

In December the defense chief of Djibouti, Major General Fathi Ahmed Houssein, met with AFRICOM commander General William Ward at AFRICOM headquarters in Stuttgart to discuss “joint security cooperation activities and potential areas of further cooperation…in East Africa and throughout the continent.”

As the AFRICOM website put it:

“Djibouti hosts approximately 3,000 U.S. and allied personnel at Camp Lemonnier, which is the only major U.S. military facility in Africa, though small teams of U.S. personnel work across the continent on short-term assignments. The main military organization at Camp Lemonnier is the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). A component of U.S. AFRICOM, CJTF-HOA sends teams throughout the East Africa region [to] protect U.S. and coalition interests.”

Among several joint programs, the generals elaborated plans for “Support to Djiboutian armed forces in the Eastern African Standby Brigade (EASBRIG) field training exercise, aimed to assess the readiness and capability of EASBRIG, a component of the African Union’s Africa Standby Force….”

And expansion of the “International Military Education and Training, a program that invites foreign military officers to attend military schools in the United States, and provides funding for trainers to provide specific, localized training in African countries.”

As well as the continuation of the “Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance program, designed to improve African militaries’ capabilities by providing selected training and equipment required to execute multinational…operations.”

Ward and Houssein also discussed “other ways to increase support in building partner capacity in the Horn of Africa through the U.S. Defense Department’s 1206 program [to train and equip foreign militaries for "counterterrorism or stability operations"] and the U.S. State Department’s Partnership Regional East African Counter-Terrorism program,” especially in regard to Ugandan-Burundian AMISOM operations in Somalia.

[15]

Air strikes, drone and cruise missile attacks, special forces operations, helicopter gunship raids, counterinsurgency campaigns, multinational armed interventions, cluster bomb and depleted uranium weapons use, and the entire panoply of military actions associated with the Afghanistan-Pakistan war are already being conducted in Africa and will only be increased.

Africom Unmasked, Unwanted and Vulnerable by Mark P. Fancher

2011-01-12T17:57:00.000-08:00

“Africa’s continuing commitment to stand firm against an AFRICOM headquarters on the continent is an under-appreciated victory.”

When the Bush Administration created U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) to protect America’s oil and strategic interests, the door was slammed in its face by every African country except Liberia. Fortunately, AFRICOM never accepted Liberia’s offer to establish headquarters there, and the military command has by default made its home in Stuttgart, Germany.

Although AFRICOM has hinted that it may renew its efforts to establish its base in Africa, the Washington Post quoted a member of AFRICOM’s advisory board as saying the chances that this will actually happen are very low. He said: “I would personally put it at between slim and none.” There is no mystery about why. The Post article quoted Morocco’s director of intelligence as saying: “The African countries looked at [AFRICOM] as a threat. It was made very clear that no one wanted the presence of any foreign military, especially the U.S., anywhere in Africa.”

Africa’s continuing commitment to stand firm against an AFRICOM headquarters on the continent is an under-appreciated victory. If Africa has not learned from this experience that imperialism can be defeated to some degree simply through non-cooperation, it should. That lesson has certainly not been missed by others.

In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein wrote:

“The governments of Venezuela, Costa Rica, Argentina and Uruguay have all announced that they will no longer send students to the School of the Americas – the infamous police and military training center in Fort Benning, Georgia, where so many of the continent’s notorious killers learned the latest in ‘counterterrorism’ techniques, then promptly directed them against farmers in El Salvador and auto workers in Argentina. Bolivia looks to cut its ties with the school, as does Ecuador.”

“African governments must simply refuse to allow their soldiers to participate in AFRICOM training programs.”

Programs like Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA), Africa Partnership Station and the International Military Education and Training Program are all AFRICOM projects that provide African soldiers with military and ideological training, and it is not unreasonable to fear that they will evolve into a “School of the Americas” of sorts for Africa. If Africa’s government leaders are to prevent the militarization of their continent they must build on their non-cooperation with AFRICOM’s search for an African home by following the example of their progressive Central and South American counterparts. African governments must simply refuse to allow their soldiers to participate in AFRICOM training programs. Unfortunately, more than a few African countries have not hesitated to offer up their troops, and in the process they have illustrated yet another lesson that Africa should learn from progressive forces in Central and South America. That is that resistance to imperialist initiatives should not be left to governments.

In her book, Naomi Klein wrote:

“[Latin America’s mass movements are] less centralized than in the sixties, making it harder to demobilize whole movements by eliminating a few leaders. Despite the overwhelming cult of personality surrounding [Hugo] Chavez, and his moves to centralize power at the state level, the progressive networks in Venezuela are at the same time highly decentralized, with power dispersed at the grass roots and community level, through thousands of neighborhood councils and co-ops. In Bolivia, the indigenous people’s movements that put [Evo] Morales in office function similarly and have made it clear that Morales does not have their unconditional support….”

“If Africa’s government leaders are to prevent the militarization of their continent they must follow the example of their progressive Central and South American counterparts.”

There is never a guarantee that a mass movement will succeed in pressuring an African government to make the risky decision to tell the U.S. “no thanks” in response to an invitation to participate in an AFRICOM project. However, a mass movement does have the potential to establish a climate and consensus among the grassroots that the country’s young men and women should individually resist military service if it means their direct or indirect participation in AFRICOM’s projects.

Mass resistance must take place in the U.S. as well because only a few months ago, high ranking representatives of AFRICOM and others traveled to Liberia to establish a “partnership” between that West African country’s military and the Michigan National Guard. African-descended and other people of Michigan (and the seven other states that have joined AFRICOM “partnerships”) not only have a right, but an obligation to resist the use of their National Guard troops as AFRICOM pawns. In Michigan’s case such resistance should not only be for the sake of Africa’s independence, but also because of the large numbers of jobless and poverty-stricken African-descended persons in Detroit, Flint, Benton Harbor and elsewhere in the state who need a financial bail-out, but who will never get one because so much money is used to feed a ravenous military budget.

AFRICOM is unlikely to fold up its tent soon. It is more likely to continue nibbling away at Africa’s resistance through projects like the National Guard partnership program and strategies designed to put a friendly human face on what many Africans now see as a big, terrifying U.S. military monster. This makes holding the line against AFRICOM all the more important. AFRICOM’s inability to establish its headquarters in Africa has exposed its vulnerability, and it serves up on a silver platter the strategies that must be pursued to defeat it.

Mark P. Fancher coordinates the National Conference of Black Lawyers’ AFRICOM Task Force. He is also the author of the book: “I Ain’t Got Tired Yet.” He can be contacted at mfancher@comcast.net.

Africom Ain't the Peace Corps by Mark P. Fancher

2011-01-12T17:50:00.000-08:00

The U.S. military’s AFRICOM forces pretend their mission on the continent is humanitarian. In reality, AFRICOM is the sharp edge of U.S. imperialism, a killing force eager to impose American dominance. The military command “locks Africa into a state of dependency and maintains favorable political and social conditions for U.S.-based corporations that exploit Africa’s natural resources.” This is not a bug in the system. It's a defining feature of it.

“AFRICOM downplays its military projects and instead presents itself as a Peace Corps type operation.”

Mention the words “Peace Corps” to folks who associate that agency with the idealism of the 1960s and in their minds’ eye they will probably see a dynamic young president who dispatched a virtual army of gentle, denim-clad, pony-tail wearing young Americans into the world’s most poverty-stricken villages to carry out a simple mission - to lend a neighborly hand.

Not to be found in this naive, rosy memory is a provision of the 1961 Peace Corps law that required volunteers to submit to: “... instruction in the philosophy, strategy, tactics, and menace of communism.” The plan to use the Peace Corps as a Cold War propaganda tool was explained by John F. Kennedy himself when he was still a presidential candidate. An advance text of one of his speeches said:

“...A friend of mine visiting the Soviet Union last year met a young Russian couple studying Swahili and African customs at the Moscow Institute of Languages. They were not language teachers - he was a sanitation engineer and she was a nurse. And they were being prepared to live among African nations as missionaries for communism.... Missiles and arms cannot stop them - neither can American dollars. They can only be countered by Americans equally skilled and equally dedicated....”

“The plan to use the Peace Corps as a Cold War propaganda tool was explained by John F. Kennedy himself.”

Regardless of whether Peace Corps volunteers were aware that their benevolent impulses were being politically exploited, some leaders of underdeveloped countries knew exactly what was going on, and they did not take kindly to U.S. attempts to gain a Cold War advantage at the expense of impoverished nations. Irritation escalated to rage when some leaders began to suspect that the Peace Corps was a cover for intelligence operations. In 1965, Ghana’s then-president Kwame Nkrumah wrote: “[Sargent] Shriver’s record makes a mockery of President Kennedy’s alleged instruction to Shriver to ‘keep the CIA out of the Peace Corps.’...Since its creation in 1961, members of the Peace Corps have been exposed and expelled from many African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries for acts of subversion or prejudice.”

Numerous well-meaning Peace Corps volunteers never became entangled in political intrigue and with the purest of motives they provided assistance and friendship that was much appreciated by the villages they served. But the program’s early propaganda agenda as spelled out in legislation and regulations was completely disrespectful of the rights to sovereignty, non-intervention and self-determination of the countries where volunteers were assigned. The Peace Corps’ Cold War agenda was later to be officially jettisoned, and in the 21^st Century, it is disturbing to look back on that chapter in U.S. history. At least we can now take comfort in knowing that the U.S. no longer uses deception to advance a propaganda agenda. Or can we?

“Irritation escalated to rage when some leaders began to suspect that the Peace Corps was a cover for intelligence operations.”

The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) deploys U.S. military personnel to advise and support African soldiers in missions designed to advance U.S. strategic and economic interests in Africa. But it also implements a not-so-subtle propaganda campaign to win the hearts and minds of Africans and the grudging support of a broader public that correctly suspects that AFRICOM is a Trojan horse for imperialism.

If one takes AFRICOM’s reports about its own activities at face value, it is easy to conclude that it exists solely for humanitarian purposes. For instance, the AFRICOM website has published warm and fuzzy accounts of a military's chaplin assistance to a homeless double amputee in Uganda; an Army Reserve nurse’s delivery of a baby in a rural village; the delivery of emergency supplies for Chad refugees; and the exchange of medical information with the Djibouti military. It almost appears from these reports that AFRICOM personnel are really Peace Corps-type volunteers who happen to dress in military combat gear.

Not emphasized is AFRICOM’s primary mission, which is to use the armies of African governments to make Africa “a stable and secure African environment in support of U.S. foreign policy.” Interviews given by AFRICOM’s leaders make it pretty clear that they pay special attention to armed African militants, even if these rebels claim they are preserving and protecting their environment and natural resources from exploitative western corporations and individuals.

“It almost appears from these reports that AFRICOM personnel are really Peace Corps-type volunteers who happen to dress in military combat gear.”

For example, insurgent forces in the Niger Delta that have battled oil companies have been specifically identified by AFRICOM’s leadership as a problem. Last year, AFRICOM sent a military ship from port to port in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea training African civilians and soldiers to combat “security threats” in the region. Likewise, so-called “pirates” in Somalia who in some cases have contested foreigners’ illegal dumping and fishing are among those that have been the focus of AFRICOM’s not-so-charitable concern.

By design AFRICOM downplays its military projects and instead presents itself as a Peace Corps type operation. However, missing from that version of its public face is the practice that makes it most like the 1961 version of the Peace Corps. That is, that AFRICOM is committed to the indoctrination of Africa’s people. It implements its program in a way that is far more sophisticated than any method contemplated when politicians hoped to use the Peace Corps to fight the “communist menace.”

Specifically, AFRICOM’s International Military Education and Training program is a vehicle not only for selling African leaders on the value of cooperating with the U.S. militarily, but also for exposing them to “the U.S. way of life.” An AFRICOM fact sheet on the program states that graduates “fill key leadership positions in militaries of many African nations.”

“AFRICOM is committed to the indoctrination of Africa’s people.”

Even the smallest, poorest African countries have a right to self-determination that is firmly grounded in international law. However, when AFRICOM drags future African leaders into a room to brainwash them into believing that U.S. strategic and economic interests are helpful to Africa’s development needs, it does not promote African independence, self-sufficiency and self-determination. Rather, it locks Africa into a state of dependency and maintains favorable political and social conditions for U.S.-based corporations that exploit Africa’s natural resources.

Although it is shameful that some Peace Corps volunteers were instructed to politically indoctrinate struggling, poverty-stricken villagers, it was probably a whole lot easier for a villager to tell a sandal-wearing Peace Corps volunteer to “go to Hell” than it is to give that same advice these days to a steely-eyed, square-jawed, gun-toting, U.S. military commander. AFRICOM ain’t the Peace Corps.

Mark P. Fancher coordinates the National Conference of Black Lawyers’ Africom TaskForce, and he is a member of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party. He can be contacted at mfancher(at)Comcast.net.

The empire strikes back: France and the Ivory Coast

2011-01-12T13:59:00.000-08:00

Gary K. Busch examines the current stand-off between Alassane Outtara and Laurent Gbagbo through a neocolonial lens, calling into question the international response to the crisis.

Currently there is an impasse in the runoff of the Presidential elections in the Ivory Coast. The French-linked and funded electoral commission declared that Alassane Outtara won the election while the Constitutional Court declared incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo as the victor. The ‘international community’ of Western countries, NGOs, UN appeasers, and a variety of Francafrique cowards and bed-wetters support Ouattara even though massive fraud has been demonstrated at the polls in the rebel-held North.

This result should be no surprise to anyone. There has been no effective disarmament of the tin-pot rebel warlords of the North and no unification of the country in anticipation of the election. A ‘security’ dividing line between the North and the South has been maintained by the occupying French forces pretending to be UN troops. Even so-called peacemakers like Blaise Campaore of Burkina Faso pretend to be neutral. Campaore, an un-indicted war criminal with a track record of subversion, arms smuggling and war profiteering in Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Cost is somehow portrayed as a neutral.

When arms were being shipped to the West African wars by Chirac and Ghadaffi they arrived at their destinations after having passed through the hands of Campaore and Tandja (who both profited on the deliveries). Ouattara, known as the ‘Father of the Rebellion’ in the Ivory Coast was sustained by operating from a safe haven in Burkina Faso when he was not busy maintaining his close personal ties to Sarkozy’s first wife in Paris. There was no mystery about the Ouattara-Campaore joint effort. Several hours of tapes exist which recorded the meetings called by Campaore in Burkina Faso which garnered support for Ouattara among the Northerners and actively plotted with two French military officers sent from Paris to attempt coups against the Gbagbo government.

Voter fraud and deception was the rule in the North for over seven years. Even when the AU originally appointed Charles Konan Banny as the interim prime minister and Thabo Mbeki as the mediator the frauds persisted. Mbeki visited the Ivory Coast and invited the warring factions to meet with President Gbagbo in Pretoria where two sets of agreements were made. These Pretoria Agreements achieved a resolution of most of the outstanding issues between the two sides, because President Gbagbo made concessions to achieve these ends. The most important point made in Pretoria was that there would be disarmament of the rebels.
However, no disarmament took place. The rebels agreed to disarmament plans, schedules and procedures but missed every deadline. They rejected President Mbeki as a mediator because he insisted that the rebels fulfill their agreement to disarm. To this day there has been no disarmament, despite calls by the UN Security Council.

The UN issued Resolution 1633 extended the deadline for the election of a President from October 30, 2005 (as written in the Constitution) for another year on the basis that a free and fair election could not be held under existing conditions and created the post of Prime Minister with elevated powers. It demanded that ‘all the parties signatories to the Linas-Marcoussis, Accra III and Pretoria Agreements, as well as all the Ivorian parties concerned, implement it fully and without delay’. These responsibilities were clearly delineated further on in the Resolution:

‘14. Demands that the Forces Nouvelles proceed without delay with the DDR programme in order to facilitate the restoration of the authority of the State throughout the national territory, the reunification of the country and the organization of the elections as soon as possible;

‘15. Affirms that the identification process must also start without delay…’
Since then there has been no effective progress on disarmament. This is the root of the crisis.
There was a program in place to ‘identify’ Ivorian citizens in an effort to create a current electoral roll. The question of ‘identity’ goes to the heart of the rebellion. Without a solution, there could be no elections and no serious hopes of peace between the armed camps.

Since 1993, when Henri Konan Bédié succeeded Félix Houphouët-Boigny as President, Muslim northerners have struggled to get identity papers; officials have accused them of hiding their foreign origins and abuses linked to constant identity checks have mounted. North-south tensions became personalised in the face-off between Bédié, from the south-west, and Houphouët's former Premier, Alassane Dramane Ouattara ('ADO'), who is both northern and Muslim, and a former International Monetary Fund deputy managing director. Konan Bédié promoted the nationalist concept of Ivoirité and changed the constitution to allow only '100 per cent' Ivorians to stand for the presidency. He claimed that Ouattara's family came from Burkina Faso and that he had faked his identity papers to hide the fact. Security agents carried on tearing up northerners' documents or made it impossible to renew them, effectively depriving them of their nationality. Bédié’s first act as President included expelling 12,000 Ivory Coast residents on the grounds that they were really from Burkina Faso. This was Bedie, not Gbagbo.

Banny's cabinet approved a fresh identification process, together with new identity cards and a new electoral register. Gbagbo and the FPI disagreed with the Banny program because it did not provide for disarmament in advance of the registration. This was insisted on because under the Ivorian Constitution, registration could only legally be conducted by registrars appointed by the Institut National de la Statistique (INS), who would draw up the electoral roll and issue voters' cards. The INS was run by the planning minister, former FPI Finance Minister Paul Bohoun Boubre.

Banny's scheme was being run by an ad hoc Office National d'Identification, which is not provided for by the Constitution. Without disarmament it was not safe for licensed registrars to visit the rebel-held North to examine the documentation of putative voters and citizens. Banny has said that a ‘village council’ could meet and make the necessary identification. Since these councils were dominated and controlled by the local rebel bands, this meant that whoever the rebels said is an Ivorian became one on the spot. Fraud becomes the byword.

In fact this type of fraud was widely reported. The National Assembly announced that the police had brought evidence which showed that the RDR (Ouattara’s party) was ‘selling’ registration documents. The President of the National Assembly, Mamadou Koulbaly, held up the purported registration of a man who claimed to be Ivorian and who used the existing documentation of a man, Sanago Aboubacar, to register. The real Sanago Aboubacar is a FPI delegate from Abobo and was very surprised to see someone else’s face on his identity document. The police reported that these false identification papers were being sold for the sum of 15,000 FCFA by the RDR village councillors in the North. The whole process is in disrepute because no one trained and licensed to perform the process of identification is able to attend these ‘village councils’. Any electoral roll prepared by this process is seriously flawed and incredible as a valid electoral roll.

The nub of the issue is that over half of the rebel forces grouped under the rubric ‘Forces Nouvelles’ are not Ivorians and never were. They were gathered as mercenaries and hired thugs by the French from Burkina Faso, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone and from the assorted other bands of riff-raff engaged in internecine warfare in West Africa. They were transported to the Ivory Coast and armed by the French, with the support and participation of Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso and Toure and Tandja of Mali and Niger.

There has been a peace treaty in place in the Ivory Coast since 2003. During the interval the ‘international community’ has intervened in the political process of the Ivory Coast. It has wrung concessions from Gbagbo and the FPI government and made formal agreements with the rebel bands. To date these commitments by the rebel bands have not been implemented or enforced. The international community has been resourceful in pushing Gbagbo, but has refused to deal in any meaningful way with the rebels. These rebels have not brought good government to their occupied areas. They have destroyed the infrastructure of the North. They have billeted themselves on a resistant population and stolen their houses, cars, children, jobs and opportunities. All of this has been done in defiance of the law, customary traditions and supposed UN standards. They pay no taxes; they pay no rent; they pay no customs duties. And yet, the UN and the international community has done nothing to stop them or to assist the poor, disenfranchised, impoverished and supine citizens of the North.

The rebels steal the cocoa, the cotton, the wood and the wool and make small fortunes, which they bank in Ouagadougou. The international community, to be fair, has no love for the rebels - they have been led in their deliberations by the French, who have a lot at stake in the country.

After 50 years of independence, France still controls most of the infrastructure and holds its foreign currency reserves as part of the 14-nation Franc Zone. The airline, telephone, electricity and water companies, and some major banks, are French-controlled. ‘Accords de coopération’, signed after Independence by the late President Félix Houphouët-Boigny and France's then Premier, Michel Debré, are still technically applicable. France maintains a stranglehold of Ivorian commerce and currency, which vitiates national initiatives towards independence.

This privileged position of France is confirmed by a report from the UN Commission: ‘The testimony we have assembled has also enabled us to see that the law of 1998 concerning rural property is linked to the dominant position that France and French interests occupy in Cote d'Ivoire… According to these sources, the French own 45% of the land and, curiously, the buildings of the Presidency of the Republic and of the Ivorian National Assembly are subject to leases concluded with the French. French interests are said to control the sectors of water and electricity.’ The report only superficially touched on the dominance of French interests in Cote d'Ivoire, but they are not hard to find. Below are some of leading players of the French business class in Cote d'Ivoire:

- Bollore, the leader in French maritime transport and principal operator of maritime transport in Cote d'Ivoire along with Saga, SDV (Switched Digital Video) and Delmas, control the port of Abidjan, the leading transit port in West Africa. Bollore also controls the Ivorian-Burkina railway, Sitarail. Although it has recently withdrawn from the cocoa business, it has maintained its leading position in tobacco and rubber.

- Bouygues (leader in construction and public works) dominates Ivorian construction projects, such as highways or dams, financed by public funds and constructed by the government. Since Ivorian independence it has been the number one company in construction and public works.

- Total (the biggest French oil company) holds a quarter of the shares of the Societe Ivoirienne de Raffinage Oil Refinery (number one in Cote d'Ivoire) and owns 160 petrol stations and controls the bitumen supply.

- France Telecom (seventh in rank among companies in France and leader in the telecoms sector) is the main shareholder of Cote d'Ivoire Telecom and of the Societe Ivoirienne des Mobiles, since concessions were granted in this sector, in the context of the privatisation of public enterprises.

- In the banking and insurance sector, there is the Societe Generale as well as Credit Lyonnais and BNP-Paribas. AXA (the second largest company in France and leader of the insurance sector) has been present in Cote d'Ivoire since the colonial period.

- The most long-established of the French companies in Cote d'Ivoire is the Groupe Compagnie Francaise de l'Afrique de l'Ouest de Cote d'Ivoire (CFAO-CI). It operates in many sectors (cars, pharmaceuticals, new technology, etc). For a long time, CFAO monopolised exports and the retail trade, and its profits (not a single year of loss, since its creation in 1887) led to it being taken over recently by the Pinault-Printemps-La Redoute group.

The presence of French capital is a demonstration of the profitability of Cote d'Ivoire. And although French direct investment is only 3.5-billion Euro - the most profitable former state enterprises having been acquired at knock-down prices - the annual profits from this investment are enormous.

Despite the flight of some French nationals during the rebel war of recent years, French business presence in Cote d'Ivoire has returned and has recovered its former levels.

One of the most important influences in the economic and political life of African states which were formerly French colonies is the impact of a common currency; the Communuate Financiere de l’Afrique (‘CFA’) franc. There are actually two separate CFA francs in circulation. The first is that of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), which comprises eight West African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo).

The second is that of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC), which comprises six Central African countries (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon). This division corresponds to the pre-colonial AOF (Afrique Occidentale Française) and the AEF (Afrique Équatoriale Française), with the exception that Guinea-Bissau was formerly Portuguese and Equatorial Guinea Spanish.

Each of these two groups issues its own CFA franc. The WAEMU CFA franc is issued by the BCEAO (Banque Centrale des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest) and the CEMAC CFA franc is issued by the BEAC (Banque des Etats de l’Afrique Centrale). These currencies were originally both pegged at 100 CFA for each French franc, but after France joined the European Community’s Euro zone at a fixed rate of 6.65957 French francs to one Euro, the CFA rate to the Euro was fixed at CFA 665,957 to each Euro, maintaining the 100 to 1 ratio. It is important to note that it is the responsibility of the French Treasury to guarantee the convertibility of the CFA to the Euro.

The monetary policy governing such a diverse aggregation of countries is uncomplicated because it is, in fact, operated by the French Treasury, without reference to the central fiscal authorities of any of the WAEMU or the CEMAC countries. Under the terms of the agreement, which set up these banks and the CFA, the central bank of each African country is obliged to keep at least 65 per cent of its foreign exchange reserves in an ‘operations account’ held at the French Treasury, as well as another 20 per cent to cover financial liabilities.
The CFA central banks also impose a cap on credit extended to each member country equivalent to 20 per cent of that country’s public revenue in the preceding year. Even though the BEAC and the BCEAO have an overdraft facility with the French Treasury, the draw downs on those overdraft facilities are subject to the consent of the French Treasury. The final say is that of the French Treasury, which has invested the foreign reserves of the African countries in its own name on the Paris bourse.

The creation and maintenance of French domination of the francophone African economies is the product of a long period of French colonialism and the learned dependence of the African states. For most of francophone Africa there are only limited powers allocated to their central banks. These are economies whose vulnerability to an increasingly globalised economy expands daily. There can be no trade policy without reference to currency; there can be no investment without reference to reserves. The African politicians and parties elected to promote growth, reform, changes in trade and fiscal policies are made irrelevant except with the consent of the French Treasury, which rations their funds.

The key to all this was the agreement signed between France and its newly-liberated African colonies, which locked these colonies into the economic and military embrace of France. This colonial pact not only created the institution of the CFA franc, it created a legal mechanism under which France obtained a special place in the political and economic life of its colonies.

The Pacte Colonial Agreement enshrined a special preference for France in the political, commercial and defence processes in the African countries. On defence, it agreed two types of continuing contact. The first was the open agreement on military co-operation or Technical Military Aid (AMT) agreements, which weren’t legally binding, and could be suspended according to the circumstances. They covered education, training of servicemen and African security forces. The second type, secret and binding, were defence agreements supervised and implemented by the French Ministry of Defence, which served as a legal basis for French interventions. These agreements allowed France to have pre-deployed troops in Africa. In other words, French army units present permanently and by rotation in bases and military facilities in Africa that are run entirely by the French.

In summary, the colonial pact maintained the French control over the economies of the African states; it took possession of their foreign currency reserves; it controlled the strategic raw materials of the country; it stationed troops in the country with the right of free passage; it demanded that all military equipment be acquired from France; it took over the training of the police and army; it required that French businesses be allowed to maintain monopoly enterprises in key areas. It is difficult to imagine what the changes were from colonial rule to today that aren’t merely cosmetic.

The civil war which broke out between the North and the South in the Ivory Coast was largely about the efforts of the Gbagbo government in seeking to achieve real independence - a breakaway from the colonial dominance of the French which controlled almost every aspect of national life. He had the support of the

Ivorian people. Now, however, after all the fighting and suffering by both sides, the current policy of Gbagbo seemed to veer away from confrontation to a policy of restoring the status quo ante: French neo-colonialism. This didn’t work. It fostered a level of bitterness and rancour among a people who were watching the yoke placed on their necks again and, despite their current apathy and discouragement after years of fighting and sacrifice, they realised that, North and South, they had nothing to lose by sweeping the board clean of their black Frenchmen and installing genuine Ivorian patriots in their place.

Unfortunately this was not an option in the ballot. The problem with trying to rectify these problems by negotiation was that there has been a government which was at war with itself. After Linas-Marcoussis and the subsequent agreements since 2002, culminating in the Ouagadougou Agreement, the Cabinet has been made up of representatives from the legitimate parties of the past (FPI, PDCI, RDR, PIT) and a bunch of jumped-up warlord rebel parties. Each has had its own ministry or ministries at its disposal. These imposed Cabinet members drew hefty salaries and expenses and rode in chauffeur-driven cars as they plotted the downfall of their Cabinet colleagues and the impoverishment of their fellow citizens. The National Assembly has not been elected since 2000 and many of the delegates are dead, dying or haven’t visited their constituencies in years. They present no hope for the populace.

Just as there is lawless theft in the North, the South is not much better. In the years since the rebellion the power brokers of the South have found an accommodation with the companies that thrive in the harvests of cocoa and coffee. Even more importantly they have taken large pieces of the burgeoning oil and gas businesses, which are expanding rapidly. A new refinery is being built. New pipelines are being connected. The rebels in the North have not had a chance to dine at those tables so feel that what they steal from the public purse is justified in comparison to what the Southern politicians are harvesting. Just as the rebels in the North are not likely to give up their piratical enterprises for a peace and national unity where they go back to being shoemakers and truck drivers; so the fat cats of the South are not going to take the fast money from the business community and put that cash into roads, schools, electricity and hospitals. That is why the election was a sham and without a clear conclusion.

The French, buoyed by their successful intervention in Guinea where they managed to advance their candidate, Alpha Conde, to the Presidency, were sure that their manipulation of the voters’ roll and their protection of the Northern rebel leadership would give them an unassailable lead in the runoff election.
However, the blatant vote-rigging in several Northern constituencies (where more people voted than were on the electoral roll) ensured that a real count could not be made in the requisite period. The Constitutional Court examined the situation and the voting procedures and declared that President Gbagbo was re-elected. This was in opposition to the Ouattara electoral commission which declared their man as the winner. Now there are two presidents. The army remains loyal to Gbagbo, despite tasty offers from the French Army and diplomats to the higher echelons of the army.

The French were able to convince the ‘international community’ that the election results were free and fair. This is, of course, preposterous. In a country divided into two camps, occupied by a group of foreign military ‘peacekeepers’ under the guidance of the former colonial master, and armed to the teeth at the same time, what kind of ‘free and fair’ are they talking about? The French used their influence on neighbouring

Francophone states to parrot their conclusions of ‘free and fair’. This is even more bizarre. How is it possible that the un-indicted war criminals of Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali, who have given open support to the rebel north on behalf of their French masters, are taken seriously by the international community? Their countries are economic basket cases and their leaders are despots that govern without democratic institutions. They survive by French subsidies and what they can steal from the Ivory Coast. The rise of the Assassin of

Abidjan, Michèle Alliot-Marie, to the post of Foreign Minister of France gives no comfort to anyone. It was she, as defence minister, who ordered the French soldiers to shoot down unarmed demonstrators at the Hotel Ivoire in November 2006, which killed 68 men, women and children and wounded a thousand others.
This situation cannot last. There are always fears that there will be another military confrontation.

The international community has hobbled the military preparedness of the Ivory Coast by sanctions and shooting down the Ivorian Air Force. However, there is no need for violence if the new Gbagbo government decides to take affirmative action in dealing with the rebel North. What is needed is a bloodless and legal retaliation against the current situation. The North survives on the goodwill of the South. The time is ripe for the Gbagbo Government to insist that this is paid for as contracted. Let them shut off the water pipes to the North;

let them turn off the electrical power; let them interrupt the communications links to the North; and let them stop the shipment of fuel from the South to the North. The North isn’t paying for them: they are not paying income taxes or corporate taxes and they do not pay customs duties.

Let the government act by shutting down these services to the North. Let the French bring in water, electricity, fuel and telephone links. If they want colonialism let them pay for their colonial ambitions. There is no need for war or conflict. Shut the valves and switches on a commercial basis. That will certainly bring the North and their glove puppeteers to a better understanding. France doesn’t have the funds to do this and desperately doesn’t want Francafrique to be an issue in the electoral campaign. This is the time to act.

Source: Pambazuka News

* Dr. Gary K. Busch is an international trades unionist, an academic, a businessman and a political affairs and business consultant for 40 years.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.
Let your voice be heard.

Cote D’Ivoire: The case against military intervention by Mawuli Dake

2011-01-12T11:38:00.000-08:00

Cote D'Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo Jan 11, 2011

Threats of military intervention in Cote D’Ivoire by international parties following Laurent Gbagbo's refusal to step down from the presidency are ‘pushing the country on a treacherous path to a precipice of war’, argues Mawuli Dake.

As the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), France, the African Union (AU) and the United Nations (UN) continue to beat war drums over Cote D’Ivoire, they are pushing the country on a treacherous path to a precipice of war. From all indications, the actions of these international actors are based on two precarious grounds – as though the fact of Laurent Gbagbo’s despicable conduct amounts to an unconditional justification for any form intervention; and as though the most important consideration for African leaders in this crisis is sacrosanct obligation to ‘prove something to the international community’. Could we not be witnessing another historic foreign policy blunder in the making?

President Elect Alassane Ouattara

Two of Africa’s most respected peace-building and governance organizations – The West African Network for Peace-building (WANEP) and the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG) respectively, have both expressed serious reservations about the proposed military intervention in Cote D’Ivoire. I cannot agree with them more. There is no question that any attempt to use military force by any party in the impasse will mean another costly war and human tragedy for the citizens of that country and neighboring countries. It is easy to sit in Abuja, Paris or our various peaceful corners of the world and call for or applaud military invasion of Abidjan, but I wonder if that will still be the case if any of these people have a mother or a child’s life at stake. The sad reality is that it will indeed be a matter of life or death for the many Ivorian families that will be caught in the middle of this fight – as many of the countries pushing for the use of force continue to make arrangements for the evacuation of their citizens in the event of a full blown violence. But what about the millions of Ivorian families that have no one to evacuate them and nowhere to go?

The single most important geo-political foreign policy hindsight of the past decade, arguably, is the lesson not to indulge in a hasty invasion of a foreign country – without counting the cost, absolute necessity to do so; and without a clear exit strategy. It will be unfortunate to repeat the biggest error of the past decade. We can blame Gbagbo – rightly – for the unfortunate situation in his country, but international actors in the crisis must also take some responsibility for their actions that continue to contribute to a poisonous atmosphere that increasingly limits options for non-violent engagement and solutions. How did we so quickly get to a near-consensus view settling an election dispute through war?

BIG MISTEPS BY THE INTERNATIONAL ACTORS

YOU CAN BE THE IMPARTIAL MEDIATOR OR CHOSE SIDES AS AN ALIGNED ACTOR, YOU CANNOT BE BOTH: The AU, UN and ECOWAS have all openly sided with Alassane Ouattara. There is nothing wrong with choosing sides if these bodies believe it is the right thing to do. But it smacks of political naiveté and self-delusion for these institutions to still expect to be seen and treated as neutral mediators by the direct parties in the conflict. They have forfeited their unique status as the rightful arbiters. Their current disposition of alignment while at the same time pretending to be neutral, in fact makes them totally ineffective at both.

GOOD MISSIONS, WRONG EMISSARIES: The AU and ECOWAS did the right thing by dispatching envoys to Cote D’Ivoire to push for a peaceful outcome to the crisis, but appeared to have totally miscalculated in their choice of individual leaders for these missions. The AU’s choice of Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga makes little political and strategic sense – as Odinga was one of the first and vocal proponents for military action against Gbagbo. An act that without question compromises his chances of having the confidence of both parties – a critical condition for a meaningful diplomacy or mediation.
ECOWAS on the other hand could not have made a worst choice. ECOWAS’ three member presidential delegation included Presidents Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone, Pedro Pires of Cape Verde and Yayi Boni of Benin. While it makes sense to choose them because they have not expressed any divisive opinions on the situation – and this is not to take anything away from these leaders, the political fact is that none of them have any political or economic clout to either persuade or compel Gbagbo in this matter. The fact that leaders of each of the ECOWAS member countries are presidents does not mean they wield the same influence.
LOUSY DIPLOMACY: There is difference between tough diplomacy and warmongering. From the get go, both the UN and ECOWAS appeared to have failed to put tough but tactful diplomacy front and center of their efforts – opting instead for approaches that are reactionary and incendiary instead strategic and thoughtful. Even to the extent that they appear be in alliance with armed rebels in their joint guarding of Ouattara's base at the Golf Hotel. Hastily threatening Gbagbo with the use of force even before attempting any genuine diplomacy and negotiations was a bad move and has not helped in any way in creating the conditions for a meaningful engagement with the outlawed regime. Sending a delegation with a message of ‘step down or face our military action’ cannot count as a serious diplomatic effort.

WHY MILITARY ACTION IS A BAD IDEA

1) Recipe for human tragedy: No one can predict exactly what will happen in the event of military action against Gbagbo’s regime. But we can be certain about one thing – there will be tragic human cost.

2) This military intervention will be unlike any other that ECOWAS forces have ever engaged in. As stated by Dr Kwesi Aning, peacekeeping analyst at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, ‘Ivory Coast is different from Liberia and Sierra Leone. It is a functioning wealthy country with a strong army, so a force will meet some credible resistance.’

3) It will require long-term commitment of troops and scarce resources – so far there is no strategy on the table that could potentially result in a swift military operation that can ensure a quick transition and stability in Cote D’Ivoire. It will be a misplaced priority to divert the region’s limited resources to sustain a long-term operation of this nature. Wars are expensive and its financial cost is likely to be the most expensive among the various options available to both local and the international actors at this point. There is no indication that the West African countries threatening war will be able or willing to commit the troops needed for such an exercise considering their own internal developments.

4) Neither the regional nor international leaders can demonstrate that they have exhausted diplomatic and non-military options at this point to warrant war.

5) But ending the current impasse will be just the first step of a long process to build once again a united Cote d’Ivoire under one national leadership to which all Ivorians without exception would be loyal.

SOME IDEAS FOR THE PATH FORWARD

– Stop the unnecessary warmongering: War, whether civil or with international forces will not be in the interest of Ivoirians and their country. All parties must thus tone down the agitation for violent confrontation.

– Devise a deliberate diplomatic and mediated strategy: ECOWAS must lead efforts by crafting a non-military strategy that utilises the vast array of diplomatic and economic tools for persuasion, negotiating and compelling Gbagbo step down. Such a strategy must also utilise the experience and influence of some influential former presidents from the region – including Jerry Rawlings, Obasanjo and John Kufuor. Ghana’s John Kufuor showed great leadership as chairman of the African Union during a similar impasse in Kenya.

– Form an International Mediation Team: WANEP recently called ‘for the creation of an International Mediation Team’ comprising the leadership of the various sub-regional and international actors. I will strongly encourage the engagement of the The Elders – as one of the few entities that can be trusted to provide independent and thoughtful guidance to the mediation process.

– Quatarra and his ‘government’ must show leadership and statesmanship, by discouraging any hasty military invasion of their country. It was unfortunate for his appointed Ambassador to the UN, Youssoufou Bamba, to allege genocide in Cote d’Ivoire – a clear insinuation for military intervention. An international invasion, may eventually defeat the headstrong Gbagbo and get them their desire to be installed as a new government, but will have irreparable long term consequences for their people. In addition, they should also be held to the same standards as Gbagbo’s men – with regards to respect for human rights and responsible conduct. He must forcefully discourage the incitement and acts of vandalism from his loyalists – including the armed rebels that are fighting on his side.

– Just as the citizens are increasingly implored to desist from using violence to express or resolve electoral grievances, I believe leaders of the region should demonstrate that same level of restraint.

– Prioritise Ivorian lives above all else and be conscious of the implications of each of the options you consider on the safety and wellbeing of the people.

Not that democracy and elections are less important, but that the lives citizens must be paramount – as all that are bound to be meaningless in war. And not that anyone desires for Gbagbo to get away with his irresponsible and selfish misconduct, but the circumstances may demand some uncomfortable compromises, not because of Gbagbo, but for the many vulnerable families who may unfairly be the victims of doing otherwise. Oftentimes, there is no perfect choice in a messy crisis – but we can always choose the lesser of two evils. And in this case, we may have to explore some difficult approaches, but around the principles of respecting of the will of the people as expressed in the run-off elections and ultimately their lives and safety.
For the sake of sparing Ivorians another costly human tragedy, our leaders must pursue solutions that will not compel Ivorian citizens to have to choose between democracy and their fundamental rights to life and safety. That we can, even in our most difficult times, find solutions- that work, without resorting to violence. That political misfits like Gbagbo will no longer be tolerated in African leadership.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS
* Mawuli Dake is the CEO of Africa Group Consult, a premium consultancy firm committed to providing fresh strategic solutions to Africa’s challenges. He was a member of the four member ECOWAS Vision 2020 team, constituted by the president of ECOWAS in 2008 to develop the current vision of the sub-region.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.
Let your voice be heard. Comment on this article.
Mr. Dake makes very sound arguments for putting this conflict in the proper perspective rather than for a speedy and popular resolution. Diplomatic blunders have been made and the international community should take a deep breath, step back and reassess their previous moves. The rest of Africa is watching and the outcome of this diplomatic effort will serve as precedent for future conflicts. Ghana's Atta Mills served his country's interest's well by keeping their troops out of the conflict. Leaders like Gbagbo may be pariahs but we should beware of shaving the skin off our thighs when our baby shits in our lap.
Komla Prosper Ametu

2010-12-29T12:14:00.000-08:00

Cameroon: Back To The Roots For Over 40 Cameroonian Americans

Christopher Jator

27 December 2010

S-based ARK Jammers Connection - a mission-driven organization dedicated to spreading kindness and promoting intercultural dialogue through the unifying power of music - will be touring some areas of Cameroon. A delegation of 54 African Americans, most Cameroon Americans (over 40), whose ancestry was traced back to Cameroon with the support of the American DNA company, African Ancestry, will received a gesture of kindness as they will be taken to Douala-Bimbia-Foumban-Bafoussam-Bandjoun-Bafia-Yaounde-Kribi-Douala beginning December 27, 2010 to January 5, 2011.

This falls within a special programme, code named "Ancestry Reconnection Programme for Cameroon" for the invited African Americans who have traced their ancestry to Cameroon. With the support of the American DNA company and jointly with the Cameroonian government, the ARK Jammers will host an unforgettable set of programmes and events including visits and traditional ceremonies showcasing the geographical, ethnic, historical, and cultural diversity of the country that our guests' ancestors came from.

It was said during a news conference at the Douala Sawa Hotel on Monday, December 27, that an explosive ARK Jammers musical jam will be organized in Yaounde, featuring Manu Dibango, Noel Ekwabi, Jay Lou Ava, Etienne Mbappe, Donny Elwood, Eko Roosvelt, Vicky Edimo, Elvis kemayou, Ekambi Brillant, Georges Seba, X-Maleya and many young talented musicians. According the President of ARK Jammers, France-based Cameroonian Avline Ava, the show will also include an ARK Jammers "Inspirational Cameroonian" award ceremony to honour some Cameroonians whose actions are shining examples of citizen service.

Addressing the news conference, US-based Cameroonian Eric Chinje, co-founder of the initiative, disclosed that the ARK Jammers connection was created in the belief that every small act of kindness is an important building block in the edifice of a more perfect national society. "Active Participation", he went on, "is an initiative by the ARK Jammers to practice and promote acts of kindness in Cameroon by embracing a new spirit of service and citizen responsibility." The ARK Jammers Connection is a mission-driven organization gathering artists and music lovers from different cultures and from all walks of life, who are dedicated to spreading kindness and promoting intercultural dialogue through the unifying power of music. It believes that kindness and intercultural dialogue as the most powerful keys to love, respect, mutual understanding among people, and peace among nations.
SOURCE: Allafrica.com

Europe and The West Can't Keep Us Apart

2010-12-29T12:01:00.000-08:00

Cameroon: Retracing Ancestry after Slave Trade

Christopher Jator
28 December 2010

The Co-Founder of the American DNA Company, who uncovered the Cameroonian Americans, is part of the delegation visiting Cameroon. The President and Co-Founder of African Ancestry, an American DNA company, Gina Paige, has revealed that between 6,000 and 8,000 Cameroonian Americans have been uncovered, thanks to DNA technology. This number is just a few of the many Americans of Cameroonian ancestry living in the United States of America.

"There are possibilities that there are as many Cameroonians in Americas as in Cameroon today," said US-based Cameroonian Eric Chinje, Board Member of ARK Jammers Connection. "Think of what will happen if we make that connection between the two sides. This is what is behind the Ancestry Reconnection Programme fostered by ARK Jammers Connection," he added.

Gina Paige explained that the DNA technology, which is highly credible and through which the Cameroonian Americans were identified, involves using cheek cells then looking at the DNA that is maternally or paternally inherited. "We compare it to the over 25,000 indigenous African lineages or DNA. If matching with a specific lineage, we conclude the person is from that ancestry," she went on. The scientist, who was speaking at a traditional reception by Sawa Chiefs at the Dika Akwa Palace in Douala yesterday, traced her ancestry to Nigeria, adding that her mother was Fulani and Father Hausa. She said she finds interest in the discovery because it is important known one's roots.

The 50 Afro-Americans, who are in Cameroon since Monday, were yesterday blessed by traditional Sawa Chiefs at the Dika Akwa Palace in Akwa Douala. During the reception ceremony, heavily attended by other traditional Sawa notables and the media, the approx. 40 Cameroonian Americans and ten other Afro-Americans were each given a pair of Sandals which constitute a part of the cultural Sawa dressing, the "kaba ngondo". The symbolic gesture was made shortly after a session of incantations symbolizing the blessings, according to the Sawa people.

ARK Jammers Connection, an organization that saw the light of day in Baltimore, USA, in June 2008, is the brain-behind the initiative. With the support of the American DNA Company which has identified many Cameroonian Americans after the slave trade period, ARK Jammers Connection brought together the African Americans into visiting Cameroon. The guests will be in the country until January 5, 2011, visiting other areas of the country.

One of the Cameroonian American, Regina Jackson, said she is proud being in her country of ancestry, Cameroon. "It's not enough to be in Africa but to have found my home. Most importantly is the exchanges our country's children will make with American children, as pen pals," she noted joyously. Avline Ava, President of ARK Jammers Connection, said an ARK Jammers branch will be set up in Cameroon in 2011 with the goal of promoting exchanges between African Americans in the USA and Cameroonians in at home. The guests and ARK Jammers officials later visited Bimbia in the South West Region, where other cultural heritages were gleaned for.
SOURCE: Allafrica.com

A Big Misunderstanding? Accusers Are Supporters of WikiLeaks

2010-12-29T11:02:00.000-08:00

By Senay Boztas

Sunday, 26 December 2010

The two Swedish women who accuse Julian Assange of sex crimes are not pawns of the CIA but WikiLeaks supporters seeking justice for a violation of their "sexual integrity", their lawyer, Claes Borgstrom, has said.

"He [Mr Assange] has been spreading false rumours he knows are untrue," Mr Borgstrom said. Denying that the women were part of a smear campaign, he said: "They, too, are supporters of WikiLeaks."

Mr Assange denies allegations of sexual misconduct, which his lawyers say stem from a dispute over "consensual but unprotected sex". He is fighting extradition from Britain to Sweden.

Zimbabwe's Attorney General, Johannes Tomana, said yesterday he would investigate possible treason charges against any locals who had briefed US diplomats – details of which were reported in the cables released by WikiLeaks.

SOURCE: The Independent

Propaganda: united states IMPOSES IT'S WILL upon Zimbabwe

2010-12-29T10:44:00.000-08:00

Zimbabwe: U.S. Imposes Sanctions On Attorney General

Johannes Tomana

21 December 2010

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today designated Zimbabwe's Attorney General, Johannes Tomana, pursuant to Executive Order 13469, which targets, among others, senior officials of the Government of Zimbabwe and persons who have engaged in actions or policies to undermine Zimbabwe's democratic processes or institutions.

Appointed by President Robert Mugabe, Tomana has selectively prosecuted political opponents and their perceived supporters in an effort to undermine Zimbabwe's democratic processes and institutions. As a result of today's designation, U.S. persons are prohibited from engaging in transactions with Tomana, and any assets he holds under U.S. jurisdiction are frozen.

"Johannes Tomana's targeting of selected political opponents threatens the rule of law in Zimbabwe, harms the integrity of the Government of National Unity and counters the will of Zimbabwean people, who have expressed their desire to build a democratic political system," said OFAC Director Adam J. Szubin.

Formerly Zimbabwe's Deputy Attorney General, Tomana was appointed to the position of Attorney General by President Mugabe in December 2008. His appointment followed the signing of the Global Political Agreement between the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and MDC leaders in September 2008.

Occurring before the swearing in of the new Government of National Unity in February 2009, Tomana's appointment was made without consultation with MDC leaders and against the spirit of Zimbabwe's Global Political Agreement signed on September 15, 2008.

SOURCE: The Herald, Published by the government of Zimbabwe

united states BUSTED!

2010-12-29T10:35:00.000-08:00

Image via WikipediaZimbabwe: U.S. Controls IMF - Wikileaks Cable
20 December 2010

THE West's claim that its sanctions are targeted at the Zanu-PF leadership in Zimbabwe have been exposed for the sham they are by a WikiLeaks cable released yesterday that shows that the US government directed the IMF not to restore Zimbabwe's voting rights and lines of credit.

The IMF has over the years masqueraded as a multilateral institution that operates independently of the whims and caprices of its host, the US government. One of the cables, dated September 2005, from New Zealand, titled "New Zealand: Response to demarche on Zimbabwe Vote in IMF," and directed to the New Zealand Agency for International Development, which handles issues related to the IMF, shows that the US controls the IMF and played a lead role in blocking the IMF from reinstating Zimbabwe's voting and borrowing rights.

"On September 2 (2005), a representative of New Zealand's Treasury noted Zimbabwe's decision to pay back US$120 million of the US $290 million it owes the Fund. The representative asked whether the US government would now consider Zimbabwe to be in compliance with its IMF obligations, or whether the United States still believes Zimbabwe should be expelled from the Fund.

"Post seeks Department guidance on how it should respond to these questions. Post also notes that the Treasury representative is due to deliver a recommendation on the issue to New Zealand's Finance Minister on September 5 (2005) and that a response by COB September 2 (Washington) would be very helpful," reads the cable signed by one Burnett.

Analysts say the cable is disturbing given that Finance Minister Tendai Biti has received many "technical experts" from the IMF and only recently wanted Zimbabwe declared a "Highly Indebted Poor Country" at the behest of the IMF, a development that would have seen the IMF, and consequently the US by proxy, take over and direct not only the country's economic affairs but also the exploitation of its natural resources.
HIPC status would have served the US well in "smuggling" people into Government, disguised as technical experts, obser-vers say.

The US and its other Western allies inclu-ding Britain have been pursuing regime change in Zimbabwe.
The latest revelations also come at a time when Minister Biti's budget has raised a storm given its attempt to use Government processes to realign power centres to MDC-T ministers part of which was Minister Biti's attempt to transfer executive powers from the President to himself through amending the Exchange Control Act through the Finance Bill that was recently rejected by Senate and sent back to the Lower House for review.

Minister Biti, consequently, came under fire from the three principals to the GPA and inclusive Government; President Mu-gabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara; as well as fellow Cabinet ministers over his bid to usurp executive powers.

The WikiLeaks report also said a respo-nse from Washington would be very helpful before treasury representatives delivered recommendations to New Zealand's Fina-nce Minister on September 5, 2005.
The report also said on September 2, 2005 representatives of New Zealand's trea-sury asked the US if Zimbabwe should remain expelled from the fund after noting Zimbabwe's decision to pay back US$120 million of the US$290 million it owed.

This came at a time when the Bretton Woods institution had instituted compulsory withdrawal procedures against Zimbabwe, again at the behest of the Anglo-Saxon alliance.
The representatives asked whether the US Government would "now consider Zimbabwe to be in compliance with its IMF obligations, or whether the US still believes Zimbabwe should be expelled from the fund.
The New Zealand Treasury also reportedly sought the US guidance on how it should respond to the questions raised. Efforts to get comment from Minister Biti were fruitless at the time of going to press.

SOURCE: The Herald, Published by the government of Zimbabwe

What Tha? SMH - Sell Soul and Africa Away! All for $$$

2010-12-20T17:28:00.000-08:00

The US, the AU and the new scramble for Africa

2010-10-26

Jason Hickel

Jason Hickel attends a speech delivered by US ambassador to the AU Michael Battle and discovers a disturbing new rhetoric about Africa

The past few years have seen a dramatic up-tick in American diplomatic efforts in Africa, which has coincided with a decisive shift in political rhetoric about the continent. At first glance this might seem like a positive development, reflecting a more progressive attitude toward what has long been considered an unimportant global backwater. But a closer look reveals that American diplomacy in Africa is less about serving the good of African people than it is about securing the interests of private American capital. Nowhere has this been more flagrantly clear than on the lips of Michael Battle, the US ambassador to the AU.

First, a bit about Battle. He received a Masters degree in Divinity at Trinity College and a Ph.D in Ministry at Howard University, and served at the Interdenominational Theological Centre in Atlanta until he was nominated to his current post by President Obama in 2009.

Battle’s position at the AU is new and little known outside diplomatic circles. The US only established a dedicated ambassadorship to the AU during the Bush administration in 2006. This mission - known as USAU - is the first of its kind among non-African states, and is designed to facilitate US operations in Africa as a more ‘efficient’ and ‘effective’ alternative to bilateral relationships with individual African states.

This month I had the opportunity to attend a speech delivered by Battle during his visit to the Miller Centre of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. I noticed a new diplomatic rhetoric right at the outset of his presentation. First, he referred to Africa as a continent of ‘great riches’ and ‘abundance’, flagging a notable departure from earlier, longstanding representations of Africa as ‘desolate’ and ‘impoverished’. Paralleling this point, Battle spoke at length about shifting US policy in Africa toward corporate ‘investment’ and ‘partnership’ and away from public ‘aid’ and ‘assistance’.

On the face of it this seemed like good news to me, but the rest of Battle’s speech disabused me of any rosy assumptions about his intentions, as the two primary objectives of the USAU rose quickly to the surface: security and trade.

In terms of security, Battle confirmed America’s dedication to working with the AU and the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) to militarise the continent’s coastlines. While he claimed that the goals of this mission include responding to increased maritime piracy and breaking cartels that traffic illegally in drugs and humans, he made it clear that the primary military objective is to protect US oil interests in the Gulf of Guinea, suppress local resistance movements like MEND in Nigeria, and secure a favourable climate for returns on investment for American corporations. When pressed, Battle justified his call for militarisation by invoking the vague and poorly substantiated spectre of ‘terrorism’.

In terms of trade, Battle spoke excitedly about the partnership between the US, the AU, and the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA) to integrate and liberalise the continent’s national economies. Battle’s explicit vision is to facilitate the efforts of US corporations such as Chevron, Delta, and GE (which he mentioned explicitly by name) to expand investments across multiple African nations by ‘harmonizing trade rules’ and ‘simplifying regulations’.

RATHER DISTURBING....Wasn't Africa a bastard of the World, a place of degradation, violence, poverty? Now all of a sudden, Africa is the Great Hope! And Glorious Opportunities...WE CANNOT LET THIS GO ON! View original article here

Eritrea: President Fears U.S. Plans to Kill Him - Cable

2010-12-20T16:12:00.000-08:00

Addis Ababa — Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki suspects the United States has plans to assassinate him by bombing his residence, according to leaked secret American diplomatic cables.
The Cable from the US embassy in Eritrea released on December 15 on WikiLeaks, quoted US ambassador to Eritrea, Ronald McMullen also as saying that Isaias also believed Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has attempted to have him killed over a decade ago.

The Eritrean president was nearly assassinated while returning to Asmara after a family holiday in Kenya, 14 years ago

"Isaias thinks the United States will attempt to kill him by missile strike on his residence in the city of Massawa," the cable said, quoting a U.N. official.
"He is paranoid and believes Ethiopian PM Meles tried to kill him and that the United States will attempt to assassinate him," McMullen wrote to his superiors in Washington on November 5, last year.
The cables reveal an incident in 1996 when Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi offered one of his helicopters to fly President Afeworki to Asmara. .View original article here

Ase. Ogun O! Protect Mama Africa!

2010-12-20T15:43:00.000-08:00

Zimbabwe: Bizarre Warthog Incident Delays U.S. Ambassador
19 December 2010

A BIZARRE accident involving warthogs delayed the arrival of US Ambassador to Harare according to a WikiLeaks cable. Ambassador Charles Ray failed to arrive in Zimbabwe on November 3 2009 after the wild animals strayed onto the runway where they were struck by an Air Zimbabwe plane. Security officials forced passengers to surrender any photographic evidence of the crash before they were allowed to leave.

All night flights on that day, including Ray's South African Airways flight were cancelled. However, the warthogs saved the day for Getrude Hambira, the Secretary General of the General Agriculture Plantation Workers Union.

The unionist was supposed to arrive on the day flights were cancelled.

According to the cable, that night a team armed in masks broke into her home, put a gun to her husband's head and demanded to know where she was. Hambira then went into hiding. View the original article here

Opinion: Kenya: Wikileaks Reveals Hypocrisies of Those in Power

2010-12-15T12:57:00.000-08:00

Esther Dyson 15 December 2010

If institutions are not fully accountable, it is useful to have an unaccountable countervailing institution to reveal their secrets.

In fact, the Wikileaks model is fairly sensible: it solicits documents from anyone, assesses whether they are real, and posts them with alerts to the establishment press, which operates as de facto gatekeeper to the masses.

After all, how many people actually visit the Wikileaks originals?
Few, compared to the millions who see them interpreted in the mass media.

Esther Dyson

What about the possibility of endangering lives? What about real secrets about terrorists and delicate negotiations? By all accounts, that point has not been reached. If it is, I would support throttling Wikileaks' revelations...and most media would not republish its content. The irony is that little has been revealed that we didn't know already. What we're getting is the details - the personal comments, the texture of diplomats' lives and those of the people they watch, the horrible toll of war and its daily indignities, the hypocrisies and lies of those in power. Will all this make us more cynical rather than more demanding? Will it make governments more opaque rather than more transparent? Are we headed for an era of more paranoia about secrets, including less sharing of useful information?

Foster transparency

If the cure is to be worse than the disease, to quote Personal Democracy Forum co-founder Andrew Rasiej, let's find a better cure: let's make the proper distinction between what should be secret and what everyone knows.

Let's foster more transparency about the institutions that have power over us so that a Wikileaks is no longer necessary or justifiable. So far, little damage has been done - and little positive change accomplished.
The US reaction has been over the top. It called on Amazon to cancel its contract with Wikileaks, while PayPal shut off Wikileaks' account - apparently without even being asked. Why is it that the call for transparency seems to apply only to countries that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits, rather than to the one that she represents? I recently talked with an establishment stalwart who told me how much more difficult these leaks will make it for the US diplomatic corps to accomplish its putatively worthy goals.
But is diplomatic convenience really so important?

In the long run, Wikileaks matters for two reasons. The first is that we need a better balance of power between people and power. Second, we do want to trust our governments and institutions.
Dyson is chairman of EDventure Holdings.

View the original article here
Source: Business Daily (Nairobi)

Are You Serious? Kenya: Obama Urges Cooperation With ICC Probe

2010-12-15T12:32:00.000-08:00

15 December 2010

Nairobi — US President Barack Obama has called on Kenyan to cooperate with the International Criminal Court investigation into the post election violence.
"I urge all of Kenya's leaders, and the people whom they serve, to cooperate fully with the ICC investigation and remain focused on implementation of the reform agenda and the future of your nation," he said in a statement Wednesday.

President Obama said that those found culpable should not drag their community into their woes.
Nation A scene from the violence which swept areas of Kenya after the last election.

Contributions to the ICC's budget. 2008

"Those found responsible will be held accountable for their crimes as individuals. No community should be singled out for shame or held collectively responsible," he said.
He said Kenya "is turning a page in its history, moving away from impunity and divisionism toward an era of accountability and equal opportunity".

"The path ahead is not easy, but I believe that the Kenyan people have the courage and resolve to reject those who would drag the country back into the past and rob Kenyans of the singular opportunity that is before them to realize the country's vast potential," he said.
View the original article here
Source: AllAfrica.com

Mark P. Fancher's Blog/Black Agenda Report

2010-12-13T16:44:00.000-08:00

Mark P. Fancher's commentary on africom, click on the link below to read.

AFRICOM AIN’T THE PEACE CORPS

Nigeria: Wikileaks - U.S. Had Intelligence on Boko Haram Attack

2010-12-13T15:38:00.000-08:00

Tokunbo Adedoja
12 December 2010

New York — One of the United States diplomatic cables released by internet whistle-blower, WikiLeaks, has revealed that US had intelligence on last year's attack by the Boko Haram sect in some parts of North-east Nigeria before the attack was launched.
The cable dated June 29, 2009, which originated from the Secretary of State, with reference no 09STATE67105 and classified secret/noforn, was tagged, "Nigeria-Extremists believed to be planning a massive terrorist attack".

The cable, which described leader of the sect, Muhammed Yusuf, as "Nigerian Taliban", said the group was operating with unspecified extremist groups to launch a massive surprise attack on some piece of critical infrastructure, government officials, security agents, and members of the public who are opposed to its doctrines.

The cable also expressed US concerns about recent activities surrounding extremists associated with the "Nigerian Taliban."

Yusuf was reportedly killed in police custody on July 30, 2009, hours after he was captured by security agencies. his group, which has a doctrine that forbids western education, launched massive attacks on Borno and Bauchi states last year.

In the US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, it was also revealed that well-trained veteran Chadian extremist, Abu-Mahjin, who has limited ties to al-Qa'ida associates, also visited Nigeria to facilitate the operation and was seeking more funds for that purpose.

What was however not stated in the cable was whether the intelligence was shared with the Nigerian security agencies or was just meant to warn the US mission and American citizens in Nigeria of an impending attack that may affect American interest.

Text of the cable reads

"26. (S//NF) Nigeria - Extremists believed to be planning a massive terrorist attack: (S//REL TO USA, FVEY) Tearline states, Unspecified extremist groups, suspected to be operating in concert with Nigerian Shi'ites, Salafiya, or Muhammad Yusuf's Nigerian Taliban are reportedly planning to launch a massive surprise attack on some piece of critical infrastructure or against high-profile targets within Nigeria. Probable targets of this attack include top Nigerian Government officials or security agents. Members of the general public, who might be opposed to the attackers' doctrines, were also believed to be possible targets. This planned attack is reportedly aimed at sparking sectarian clashes across Nigeria.

"27. (S//NF) DS/TIA/ITA cannot immediately corroborate the current threat with additional intelligence. While no connection can be made between this threat and previous reports, DS/TIA/ITA is concerned about recent activity surrounding extremists associated with the Nigerian Taliban.

"28. (S//NF) A well-trained veteran Chadian extremist, Abu-Mahjin (Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) number 24350378), who has limited ties to al-Qa'ida associates, recently travelled to Nigeria. He may be planning to conduct or facilitate a terrorist operation."
According to the text from May 1, "An Islamic extremist named Abu-Muhjin has recently been in northeast Nigeria. It is likely that he will be joined by other Islamic extremists in the coming weeks."
More recent tearline stated, "Nigerian-based probable Chadian extremist Abu-Mahjin is keen to obtain more funds in connection with some sort of nefarious activity (possibly terrorism related) he is engaged in. However, it is not clear when he will receive this additional finance." Little more is known about Abu-Mahjin's apparent efforts to organize a near-term operation.

"29. (S//NF) Though neither the Nigerian Taliban nor its more militant subset -- Tanzim al-Qa'ida group -- has ever attacked Western interests, they have discussed targeting foreign embassies in the past. In 2007, they reportedly plotted to attack the U.S., British, and Israeli embassies in Abuja, according to a single source that remains unsubstantiated. (Appendix sources 17-19)". View the original article here

Zimbabwe: Wikileaks Exposes Zanu-PF Official

2010-12-13T15:29:00.000-08:00

Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Hebert Zharare 11 December 2010

A ZANU-PF official has been exposed as giving information against President Mugabe and the party, justifying illegal economic sanctions and attacking the land reform programme during secret meetings with Western diplomats, a US classified cable released by WikiLeaks website has revealed.
The official also blamed the land reform programme for national food insecurity. There are about 2900 more cables yet to be released by the whistle-blowing website on Zimbabwe and speculation abounds that more officials will be unmasked.

Zanu-PF national chairman, Cde Simon Khaya Moyo, yesterday said the party took the matter seriously and would discuss the issue during the Politburo meeting on Monday. "The matter is of serious concern to the party and we are going to discuss it during our Monday Politburo meeting . . . The Politburo will definitely have interest in it," he said.

A February 10, 2010 cable titled "Observations on the Political Landscape and US- Zimbabwe relations," sent to Washington by American Ambassador to Zimbabwe Charles Ray, reveals details of a meeting with a Zanu-PF official identified as Mudarikwa.
Some reports posted on the Internet are implicating Uzumba House of Assembly Member Cde Simba Mudarikwa.

However, Cde Mudarikwa yesterday dismissed the reports as baseless, arguing those implicating him wanted to dent his political image ahead of elections. "I do not hold trademark to the name Mudarikwa and I am not a senior person in Zanu-PF. I am just a provincial member. By the time this was written in February, I was just a provincial secretary for transport. There are so many Mudarikwas in the party and all of them are at provincial level . . . We have been in Zanu-PF and we will remain Zanu-PF. For 27 years, I have been State Master of Ceremonies . . . How could I have done that? I do not know that Charles Ray and I am sure he does not know me as well," he said.

Cde Mudarikwa said he did not have children and any interests in America.
However, Mr Ray said he had a lengthy discussion on various topics on Zimbabwe including the state of Zanu-PF, the indigenisation programme and the anticipated general elections with the Zanu-PF official.
The official told Ambassador Ray that Zanu-PF was seriously divided.

"It was like a stick of TNT, susceptible to ignition and disintegration. Zanu-PF was holding together because of the threat of MDC-T and foreign pressure. He likened Zanu-PF to a troop of baboons incessantly fighting among themselves, but coming together to face external threat," wrote Ambassador Ray.
Commenting o the state of Zanu-PF, Ambassador Ray quoted the Zanu-PF official as saying the party was not going to have leadership renewal until President Mugabe and other hardliners were out of the picture.
"New leadership was essential and would emerge as soon as some of the old timers, including (President) Robert Mugabe, left the scene." View the original article here

Uganda: Oil Firm Denies Bribing Ministers

2010-12-13T14:47:00.000-08:00

Cyprian Musoke and Ibrahim Kasiita
11 December 2010

TULLOW Oil vice-president for Africa has refuted allegations in one of the Wikileaks stories in which he is quoted accusing security minister Amama Mbabazi and energy minister Hillary Onek of graft.
In a letter to President Yoweri Museveni on Friday, Tim O'Hanlon described the allegations as "doctored and absolutely false".

"I have never made such a claim to the US ambassador but merely discussed with him at our meeting in December 2009 the stories published in the local press and the associated rumours circulating in Kampala at the time. I have no evidence implicating the honourable ministers in corruption and have no reason to believe that the rumours sweeping Kampala at the time were actually true," O'Hanlon says in the Friday letter.
He said that as part of a general discussion about doing business in Africa with the US Ambassador to Uganda Lanier said he made reference to the rumours but did not give them credence as true.

In fact, he added, President Museveni insisted on a transparent process which led directly to the joint venture agreement between the Chinese Oil company CNOOC, Total and Tullow.

In the leaked cable titled "Tullow sees corruption in oil sale" sent December 2009 by Donald Cordell, the Economic Officer at the US embassy, Hanlon is alleged to have said that senior government officials were "compensated" to support the sale of a partner firm's exploration and production rights to Italian oil company ENI.

Tullow was prospecting for oil on Lake Albert together with Heritage, but the latter decided to sell off its stake to ENI, sparking a bitter row with Tullow who argued that as a partner, they were entitled to the buy-out before a third party is brought on board.

"Tullow vice-president Tim O'Hanlon identified Mbabzi and Onek as the Ugandan officials who benefited from the sale of production rights by Heritage to ENI," the cable said.
In response, Mbabazi said: "These allegations are absolutely untrue. I have never received even an offer let alone payment from Hetritage or ENI of that kind or for anything. However at that time there was report in The Times of London which did not name anyone but talked about corruption over the deal.

"What surprised me is that the embassy believes that the allegations are true and concluded that the deal showed signs of high level corruption in Uganda's oil sector. This is incredible. I am surprised they would make a statement like that without cross checking with me about my alleged involvement," Mbabazi said.
He said he only attended a meeting when ENI's leadership presented to the President their investment plan.
ENI Spokesman yesterday also denied the Wikileaks story calling it a ploy to destroy its credibility.

"This information is unfounded and defamatory we intend to sue them for this, adding that they will come out with concrete information. I am troubled by that (not being contacted). I have a good relationship with the embassy staff It is difficult for me to imagine that an ambassador could say they believe it was true, that I received payments.

"That could only happen if they have evidence. It is different from saying that there are rumours. It is absolute rubbish," he said.
At the time Heritage entered the deal to sell its share to Eni, he added, it was in partnership with Tullow who decided to exercise its right of first refusal as a partner.

"There were many words exchanged by the two companies in the media about this transaction. I think the speculation in the media about my role in all this was based on the fact that when Eni's leadership came to Uganda and made a presentation to the President about their investment plan for Uganda, I did attend that meeting," he said.

One of the local media houses, he added, raised speculative questions as to his attendance, but there was never anything more to it than that.
"I am also aware of a whispering campaign by one of the parties then, as I do now, with absolute contempt and I hold those who peddle these lies with contempt and I find them disgusting a lot," he said.

O'Hanlon's letter
His Excellency,
Yoweri Kaguta Museveni
President of the Republic of Uganda
State House
Entebbe
Uganda
10th December 2010

No doubt you have been made aware of the illegal theft of confidential communications from various US Embassies around the world including that in Kampala and the publication of selected and often doctored elements of these on the internet.
In one such release, I have been mentioned as accusing your Honourable Ministers ONEK and MBABAZI of involvement in corruption during a meeting I had with the US ambassador last year. This is absolutely false.
Of course, I never made such a claim to the US ambassador but merely discussed with him at our meeting in December 2009 the detailed stories published in the previous week's local press and the associated rumors circulating in Kampala at that time. I have no evidence to present implicating the Honourable Ministers in corruption and have no reason to believe that the rumors sweeping Kampala at the time were actually true.
In answer to the many media enquiries which have flooded Tullow since the Wikileaks publication, we have released the following statement to the Press :-
"As part of a general discussion about doing business in Africa with the US ambassador to Uganda, I made reference to a number of rumours then in circulation in the local media in Kampala to illustrate the issues the oil and gas industry faced. At no time did I give any credence to these rumours and would therefore dispute the record of our conversation as detailed by Wikileaks. In fact, President Museveni's government rightly insisted on a transparent process - which led directly to the joint venture agreement between CNOOC, Total and Tullow."
I can assure Your Excellency that we will continue to monitor these matters closely and will work in any way we can with the two Ministers involved to help clear their names. I remain available in Kampala and welcome any advice you may have to offer in this regard and sincerely regret this entire unhappy episode.
Respectfully Yours
Tim O'HANLON
Vice-President, African Business

View the original article here

Kenya: Report Warns of Rising Number of U.S. Citizens Signing Up for Al Qaeda Training

2010-12-13T12:00:00.000-08:00

Patrick Mayoyo
12 December 2010

Nairobi — Americans are among thousands of foreign fighters recruited by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror group for terrorism training in the war-torn Somalia, a new diplomatic cable released by whistle-blowing website Wikileaks reveals.

The cable dated August 26, 2009, and dispatched by US ambassador Michael Ranneberger says foreign fighters operating in Somalia include North Americans, Kenyans, Sudanese, Pakistanis, Yemenis and other unidentified nationalities and Arabs.

"Many of the foreign fighters currently operating in Somalia, particularly those who entered to fight the Ethiopians from 2006-2008, are ethnic Somalis, recruited from either neighbouring countries or Diasporas overseas and motivated in the past by a sense of Somali nationalism, jihadist propaganda, and the presence of foreign troops in the country," the cable says.

Mr Ranneberger added that others are North Americans, including at least 20 young men who were recruited from Minneapolis alone, and recruits from European countries with large Somali Diasporas.
"Fighters have also come from within East Africa, most notably Kenya and Sudan. In addition, press reports and our conversations with Somali government officials note the presence of an unknown number of non-Somali fighters from South Asia and the Middle East, including Pakistanis, Yemenis, and other unidentified Arabs," he adds.

The cable says some of these fighters may have chosen, or been directed to Somalia for training and to gain jihadist experiences because Somalia currently affords comparatively greater safety for camps and other sites than South Asia or Iraq.

"Neither we nor the Somali government knows exactly how many foreign fighters are in Somalia as reporting varies widely. Statements by Somali government officials mention several thousand foreigners, which we believe are exaggerations, or at best estimations based on fighter sightings and rumors," he says.
The timing and motivation of foreign fighters arriving in Somalia appears tied to perceptions of internal Somali dynamics, he notes, adding that conversations with Somali political leaders highlight that some foreigners were already present during the Council of Islamic Courts period, and that the Ethiopian intervention in 2006 both prompted some foreigners to flee, and provided motivation for a new influx of foreign fighters, including ethnic Somalis determined to drive Ethiopia out.

"Al-Shabaab's territorial gains in 2008, and the subsequent Ethiopian withdrawal from Somalia in January 2009, prompted additional foreign fighters to join what was seen as a successful struggle. Regardless of their initial motivations, these young recruits are subject to indoctrination and use by violent, often foreign extremists," the cable adds.

He says that, while there are widespread reports of Pakistani and Arab fighters in Somalia, the timing and influx of these fighters appear primarily tied to developments in Somalia and perceptions of Somalia as a suitable location for jihad.

"Nevertheless, al Qaeda operatives coordinate with al-Shabaab's core leaders and continue to use Somalia as a staging and training base," he notes.

Pressure in Iraq and Afghanistan is said to have has prompted al-Qaeda operatives to shift some of its operations and efforts to Somalia a development that is of major concern to the US government.
"The rise of al-Shabaab and the increase in foreign fighters operating in Somalia warrants significant concern; several al-Qaeda operatives, most notably Saleh Nabhan, have a history of involvement in East Africa and are currently cooperating with al-Shabaab leaders and involved in training foreign fighters in Somalia."
View the original article here

2010-12-09T14:14:00.000-08:00

Military Industrial Complex

The term originated in a speech given by former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation on January
17, 1971 in which he stated:

…This conjunction of an immense military establishment
and a large arms industry is new in the American
experience. The total influence – economic, political,
even spiritual – is felt in every city, every statehouse,
every office of the federal government.
We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must
not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil,
resources and livelihood are involved; so is the very
structure of our society. In the councils of government,
we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted
influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military
industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous
rise of displaced power exists and will persist…”

Dwigth D. Eisenhower, The Military Industrial Complex: with an Introduction by Jesse Smith
(Portland: Basementia Publications, 2006)

Danny Glover's call to Reverse africom.

2010-12-09T13:16:00.000-08:00

Ajua Martey

December 09, 2010
Atlanta, Ga Even though the interview and article is dated back in 2007, Danny Glover and Nicole Lee of TransAfrica Forum in Washington, DC. The issue that Danny and Nicole need everyone to understand back then and now, is that africom is a covert united states African military command with the goals and intentions from their forefathers of colonialism back during the kidnapping, trade, and enslavement of African people to the world diaspora.

Africa is in a vunerable position to submit to the power and might of the united states will of neo colonialism on the continent of Africa. We cannot let this happen again. Our ancestors call for us to stand up and seek retribution and complete a very big circle...
I have pasted the article for everyone to read and muse with.
I have included a youtube video of the interview with Danny and Nicole, and Amy Goodman with Democracy Now! Discussing africom and the effects against the citizens of the united states, particularly African-americans.

Peaceful Journey.

No Difference Between Bush and Obama...Read Here

Youtube Video Interview Click here to watch!

Danny Glover and Nicole Lee, click here to read

No africom

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The US, the AU and the new scramble for Africa

2010-10-26

Jason Hickel

Jason Hickel attends a speech delivered by US ambassador to the AU Michael Battle and discovers a disturbing new rhetoric about Africa

RATHER DISTURBING....Wasn't Africa a bastard of the World, a place of degradation, violence, poverty? Now all of a sudden, Africa is the Great Hope! And Glorious Opportunities...WE CANNOT LET THIS GO ON! View original article here

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