The West's war against African development continues
Dan Glazebrook
2013-02-21, Issue <
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/617> 617
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http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/86332>
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/86332
<
https://picasaweb.google.com/100388519422924291121>
Tax havens, rising debt-extortion, loans to African military dictators,
capital flight, unfair trade prices, militarization of Africa through
AFRICOM are the many ways in which the West's war against African
development continues. The recent crisis in Mali and Algeria are being used
by the West to further its domination over Africa.
Africa's classic depiction in the mainstream media, as a giant basket case
full of endless war, famine and helpless children creates an illusion of a
continent utterly dependent on Western handouts. In fact, the precise
opposite is true - it is the West that is reliant on African handouts. These
handouts come in many and varied forms. They include
<
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/81150> illicit flows of
resources, the profits of which invariably find their way into the West's
banking sector via strings of tax havens (as thoroughly documented in
Nicholas Shaxson's Poisoned Wells). Another is the mechanism of
debt-extortion whereby banks lend money to military rulers (often helped to
power by Western governments, such as the Congo's former President Mobutu),
who then keep the money for themselves (often in a private account with the
lending bank), leaving the country paying exorbitant interest on an
exponentially growing debt. Recent research by Leonce Ndikumana and James K
Boyce found that up to 80 cents in every borrowed dollar fled the borrower
nation in 'capital flight' within a year, never having been invested in the
country at all; whilst meanwhile $20billion per year is drained from Africa
in 'debt servicing' on these, essentially fraudulent, 'loans.' Another form
of handout would be through the looting of minerals. Countries like the
Democratic Republic of Congo are ravaged by armed militias who steal the
country's resources and sell them at sub-market prices to Western companies,
with most of these militias run by neighbouring countries such as Uganda,
Rwanda and Burundi who are in turn sponsored by the West, as regularly
highlighted in
<
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/democraticre
publicofcongo/9398748/Britain-accused-of-failing-to-speak-out-against-Congo-
violence.html> UN reports. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, are the
<
http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/includes/documents/cm_docs/2011/C/Cocoa%20Brief
ing%20FINAL%208Sept11.pdf/> pitifully low prices paid both for African raw
materials and for the labour that mines, grows or picks them, which
effectively amount to an African subsidy for Western living standards and
corporate profits.
IMPOVERISHING AFRICA THROUGH DIVISION AND WEAKNESS
This is the role for which Africa has been ascribed by the masters of the
Western capitalist economy: a supplier of cheap resources and cheap labour.
And keeping this labour, and these resources, cheap depends primarily on one
thing: ensuring that Africa remains underdeveloped and impoverished. If it
were to become more prosperous, wages would rise; if it were to become more
technologically developed, it would be able to add value to its raw
materials through the manufacturing process before exporting them, forcing
up the prices paid. Meanwhile, extracting stolen oil and minerals depends on
keeping African states weak and divided. The Democratic Republic of Congo,
for example - whose mines produce tens of billions of mineral resources each
year - were only, in one recent financial year, able to collect a paltry
<
http://www.gata.org/node/5651/print> $32million in tax revenues from mining
due to the proxy war waged against that country by Western-backed militias.
The African Union, established in 2002 was a threat to all of this: a more
integrated, more unified African continent would be harder to exploit. Of
special concern to Western strategic planners are the financial and military
aspects of African unification. On a financial level, plans for an African
Central Bank (to issue a single African currency, the gold-backed dinar)
would greatly threaten the ability of the US, Britain and France to exploit
the continent. Were all African trade to be conducted using the gold-backed
dinar, this would mean Western countries would effectively have to pay in
gold for African resources, rather than, as currently, paying in sterling,
francs or dollars which can be printed virtually out of thin air. The other
two proposed AU financial institutions - the African Investment Bank and the
African Monetary Fund - could fatally undermine the ability of institutions
such as the International Monetary Fund to manipulate the economic policies
of African countries through their monopoly of finance. As Jean Paul Pougala
has <
http://allafrica.com/stories/201104150792.html> pointed out, the
African Monetary Fund, with its planned startup capital of $42billion, 'is
expected to totally supplant the African activities of the International
Monetary Fund which, with only US$25 billion, was able to bring an entire
continent to its knees and make it swallow questionable privatization like
forcing African countries to move from public to private monopolies.'
AFRICOM AS A NEO-COLONIAL TOOL OF WESTERN DOMINATION
Along with these potentially threatening financial developments come moves
on the military front. The 2004 AU Summit in Sirte, Libya, agreed on a
Common African Defence and Security Charter, including an article
stipulating that 'any attack against an African country is considered as an
attack against the Continent as a whole,' mirroring the Charter of NATO
itself. This was followed up in 2010 by the creation of an African Standby
Force, with a mandate to uphold and implement the Charter. Clearly, if NATO
was going to make any attempt to reverse African unity by force, time was
running out.
Yet the creation of the African Standby Force represented not only a threat,
but also an opportunity. Whilst there was certainly the possibility of the
ASF becoming a genuine force for independence, resisting neocolonialism and
defending Africa against imperialist aggression, there was also the
possibility that, handled in the right way, and under a different
leadership, the force could become the opposite - a proxy force for
continued neocolonial subjugation under a Western chain of command. The
stakes were - and are - clearly very high.
Meanwhile, the West had already been building up its own military
preparations for Africa. Its economic decline,
<
http://www.realclearworld.com/2009/12/10/africa_getting_a_good_deal_from_ch
ina_106976.html> coupled with the rise of China, meant that it was
increasingly unable to continue to rely on economic blackmail and financial
manipulation alone in order to keep the continent subordinated and weak.
Comprehending clearly that this meant it would be increasingly forced into
military action to maintain its domination, a US white paper published in
2002 by the African Oil Policy Initiative Group recommended 'A new and
vigorous focus on US military cooperation in sub-Saharan Africa, to include
design of a sub-unified command structure which could produce significant
dividends in the protection of US investments.' This structure came into
existence in 2008, under the name of AFRICOM. The costs - economic, military
and political - of direct intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, however -
with the costs of the Iraq war alone estimated at
<
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=acXcm.yk56Ko> over
three trillion dollars - meant that AFRICOM was supposed to primarily
<
http://allafrica.com/stories/201207131248.html> rely on local troops to do
the fighting and dying. AFRICOM was to be the body which coordinated the
subordination of African armies under a Western chain of command; which
turned, in other words, African armies into Western proxies.
DIVISION WITHIN THE AU OVER LIBYA
The biggest obstacle to this plan was the African Union itself, which
categorically rejected any US military presence on African soil in 2008 -
forcing AFRICOM to house its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, a
humiliating about turn after President Bush had already publicly announced
his intention to set up the HQ in Africa itself. Worse was to come in 2009,
when Colonel Gaddafi - the continent's staunchest advocate of
anti-imperialist policies - was elected Chairman of the AU. Under his
leadership, Libya had already become the biggest financial donor to the
African Union, and he was now proposing a fast-track process of African
integration, including a single African army, currency and passport.
His fate is clearly now a matter of public record. After mounting an
invasion of his country based on a
<
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/07/27/lies-of-the-libyan-war/> pack of
lies worse than those told about Iraq, NATO reduced Libya to a devastated
failed state and facilitated its leader's torture and execution, thus taking
out their number one opponent. For a time, it appeared as though the African
Union had been tamed. Three of its members - Nigeria, Gabon and South Africa
- had voted in favour of military intervention at the UN Security Council,
and its new chairman - Jean Ping - was quick to recognize the new Libyan
government imposed by NATO, and to
<
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/01/17/188838.html> downplay and
denigrate his predecessor's achievements. Indeed, he even forbade the
African Union assembly from observing a minute's silence for Gaddafi after
his murder.
NATO ARROGANTLY IGNORES THE AU
However, this did not last. The South Africans, in particular, quickly came
to regret their support for the intervention, with both President Zuma and
Thabo Mbeki making
<
http://www.thabombekifoundation.org.za/Pages/Dullah-Omar-Eighth-Memorial-Le
cture-By-The-Tmf-Patron.aspx> searing criticisms of NATO in the months that
followed. Zuma argued - correctly - that NATO had acted illegally by
blocking the ceasefire and negotiations that had been called for by the UN
resolution, had been brokered by the AU, and had been agreed to by Gaddafi.
Mbeki went much further and argued that the UN Security Council, by ignoring
the AU's proposals, were treating 'the peoples of Africa with absolute
contempt' and that 'the Western powers have enhanced their appetite to
intervene on our Continent, including through armed force, to ensure the
protection of their interests, regardless of our views as Africans.' A
senior diplomat in the South African Foreign Ministry's Department of
International Relations said that 'most SADC [Southern African Development
Community] states , particularly South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola, Tanzania,
Namibia and Zambia which played a key role in the Southern African
liberation struggle, were not happy with the way Jean Ping handled the
Libyan bombing by NATO jets.' In July 2012, Ping was forced out and replaced
- with the support of 37 African states - by Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma:
former South African Foreign Minister, Thabo Mbeki's 'right hand woman' -
and clearly not a member of Ping's capitulationist camp. The African Union
was once again under the control of forces committed to genuine
independence.
LIBYA'S KEY ROLE IN THE SAHEL-SAHARA REGION
However, Gaddafi's execution had not only taken out a powerful member of the
African Union, but also the lynchpin of regional security in the Sahel -
Sahara region. Using a careful mixture of force, ideological challenge and
negotiation, Gaddafi's Libya was at the head of a transnational security
system that had prevented Salafist militias gaining a foothold, as
recognized by US Ambassador Christopher Stevens in 2008: 'The Government of
Libya has aggressively pursued operations to disrupt foreign fighter flows,
including more stringent monitoring of air/land ports of entry, and blunt
the ideological appeal of radical Islam.Libya cooperates with neighbouring
states in the Sahara and Sahel region to stem foreign fighter flows and
travel of transnational terrorists. Muammar Gaddafi recently brokered a
widely-publicized agreement with Tuareg tribal leaders from Libya, Chad,
Niger, Mali and Algeria in which they would abandon separatist aspirations
and smuggling (of weapons and transnational extremists) in exchange for
development assistance and financial support.our assessment is that the flow
of foreign fighters from Libya to Iraq and the reverse flow of veterans to
Libya has diminished due to the Government of Libya's cooperation with other
states.'
This 'cooperation with other states' refers to the CEN-SAD (Community of
Sahel-Saharan States), an organization launched by Gaddafi in 1998 aiming at
free trade, free movement of peoples and regional development between its 23
member states, but with a primary focus on peace and security. As well as
countering the influence of Salafist militias, the CEN-SAD had played a key
role in mediating conflicts between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and within the
Mano River region, as well as negotiating a lasting solution to the
rebellion in Chad. CEN-SAD was based in Tripoli and Libya was unquestionably
the dominant force in the group; indeed CEN-SAD support was primarily behind
Gaddafi's election as Chairman of the AU in 2009.
The very effectiveness of this security system, was a double blow for
Western hegemony in Africa: not only did it bring Africa closer to peace and
prosperity, but simultaneously undercut a key pretext for Western
intervention. The US had established its own 'Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism
Partnership' (TSCTP), but as Muatassim Gaddafi (Libyan National Security
Advisor) explained to Hilary Clinton in Washington in 2009, the
'Tripoli-based Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD) and the North
Africa Standby Force obviated TSCTP's mission.'
As long as Gaddafi was in power and heading up a powerful and effective
regional security system, Salafist militias in North Africa could not be
used as a 'threatening menace' justifying Western invasion and occupation to
save the helpless natives. By actually achieving what the West claim to want
(but everywhere fail to achieve) - the neutralization of 'Islamist
terrorism' - Libya had stripped the imperialists of a key pretext for their
war against Africa. At the same time, they had prevented the militias from
fulfilling their other historical function for the West - as a proxy force
to destabilize independent secular states (fully documented in Mark Curtis'
excellent Secret Affairs). The West had supported Salafi death squads in
campaigns to destabilize the USSR and Yugoslavia highly successfully, and
would do so again against Libya and Syria.
SECURITY FALLS APART
With NATO's redrawing of Libya as a failed state, this security system has
fallen apart. Not only have the Salafi militias been provided with the
latest hi-tech military equipment by NATO, they have been given free reign
to
<
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/13/islamists-mali-threat-europe>
loot the Libyan government's armouries, and provided with a safe haven from
which to organize attacks across the region. Border security has collapsed,
with the apparent connivance of the new Libyan government and its NATO
sponsors, as this
<
http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5btt_news>
=40367&tx_ttnews[backPid]=381&cHash=5a7b4cffa91bea02b8d8f33718a6656d]damning
report from global intelligence firm Jamestown Foundation notes: 'Al-Wigh
was an important strategic base for the Qaddafi regime, being located close
to the borders with Niger, Chad and Algeria. Since the rebellion, the base
has come under the control of Tubu tribal fighters under the nominal command
of the Libyan Army and the direct command of Tubu commander Sharafeddine
Barka Azaiy, who complains: 'During the revolution, controlling this base
was of key strategic importance. We liberated it. Now we feel neglected. We
do not have sufficient equipment, cars and weapons to protect the border.
Even though we are part of national army, we receive no salary.' The report
concludes that 'The Libyan GNC [Governing National Council] and its
predecessor, the Transitional National Council (TNC), have failed to secure
important military facilities in the south and have allowed border security
in large parts of the south to effectively become 'privatized' in the hands
of tribal groups who are also well-known for their traditional smuggling
pursuits. In turn, this has jeopardized the security of Libya's oil
infrastructure and the security of its neighbors. As the sale and transport
of Libyan arms becomes a mini-industry in the post-Qaddafi era.the vast
amounts of cash available to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb are capable of
opening many doors in an impoverished and underdeveloped region. If the
French-led offensive in northern Mali succeeds in displacing the Islamist
militants, there seems to be little at the moment to prevent such groups
from establishing new bases in the poorly-controlled desert wilderness of
southern Libya. So long as there is an absence of central control of
security structures in Libya, that nation's interior will continue to
present a security threat to the rest of the nations in the region.'
MALI'S DESTABILIZATION IS LINKED TO INVASION OF LIBYA
The most obvious victim of this destabilization has been Mali. That the
Salafist takeover of Mali is a
<
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/algeria-hostage-crisis-grim-
news-that-can-be-traced-to-the-triumphant-removal-of-gaddafi-8456521.html>
direct consequence of NATO's actions in Libya is not in doubt by any serious
analysts. One result of the spread of NATO-backed destabilization to Mali is
that Algeria - who lost 200,000 citizens in a deadly civil war with
Islamists in the 1990s - is now surrounded by heavily armed Salafist
militias on both its Eastern (Libya) and Southern (Mali) borders. Following
the destruction of Libya and the toppling of Mubarak, Algeria is now the
only state in North Africa still governed by the anti-colonial party that
won its independence from European tyranny. This independent spirit is still
very much in evidence in Algeria's attitude towards Africa and Europe. On
the African front, Algeria is a strong supporter of the African Union,
contributing 15 percent of its budget, and has $16billion committed to the
establishment of the African Monetary Fund, making it the Fund's largest
contributor by far. In its relations with Europe, however, it has
consistently refused to play the subordinate role expected of it. Algeria
and Syria were the only countries in the Arab League to vote against NATO
bombings of Libya and Syria, and Algeria famously gave refuge to members of
Gaddafi's family fleeing NATO's onslaught. But for European strategic
planners, perhaps more worrying than all of this is that Algeria - along
with Iran and Venezuela - is what they call an OPEC 'hawk', committed to
driving a hard bargain for their natural resources. As an exasperated
article in the Financial Times recently explained, 'resource nationalism'
has taken hold, with the result that 'Big Oil has soured on Algeria [and]
companies complain of crushing bureaucracy, tough fiscal terms and the
bullying behavior of Sonatrach, the state-run energy group, which has a
stake in most oil and gas ventures.' It goes on to note that Algeria
implemented a 'controversial windfall tax" in 2006, and quotes a western oil
executive in Algiers as saying that '[oil] companies.have had it with
Algeria.' It is instructive to note that the same newspaper had
<
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/27183132-c8d2-11de-8f9d-00144feabdc0,Authorised=fal
se.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F27183132-c8d2-11
de-8f9d-00144feabdc0.html&_i_referer=#axzz2KPW9O6Bw> also accused Libya of
'resource nationalism" - that most heinous of crimes for readers of the
Financial Times, it seems - barely a year before NATO's invasion. Of course,
'resource nationalism' means exactly that - a nation's resources being used
primarily for the benefit and development of the nation itself (rather than
foreign companies) - and in that sense Algeria is indeed guilty as charged.
Algeria's oil exports stand at over $70bn per year, and much of this income
has been used to invest in massive
<
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100296208/Algeria_a_convert_to_OPEC_price_hardliner_
camp> spending on health and housing, along with a recent $23billion loan
and public grants programme to encourage small business. Indeed, high levels
of social spending are considered by many to be a key reason why no 'Arab
Spring' style uprising has taken off in Algeria in recent years.
ALEGERIA'S IMPORTANCE TO EU MEMBERS
This tendency to 'resource nationalism' was also noted in a
<
http://www.naturalgaseurope.com/strategic-importance-of-algerian-natural-ga
s-for-europe> recent piece by STRATFOR, the global intelligence firm, who
wrote that 'foreign participation in Algeria has suffered in large part due
to protectionist policies enforced by the highly nationalistic military
government.' This was particularly worrying, they argued, as Europe is about
to become a whole lot more dependent on Algerian gas as North Sea reserves
run out: 'Developing Algeria as a major natural gas exporter is an economic
and strategic imperative for EU countries as North Sea production of the
commodity enters terminal decline in the next decade. Algeria is already an
important energy supplier to the Continent, but Europe will need expanded
access to natural gas to offset the decline of its indigenous reserves.'
British and Dutch North Sea gas reserves are estimated to run out by the end
of the decade, and Norway's to go into sharp decline from 2015 onwards. With
Europe fearful of overdependence on gas from Russia and Asia, Algeria - with
reserves of natural gas estimated at 4.5 trillion cubic metres, alongside
shale gas reserves of 17 trillion cubic meters - will become essential, the
piece argues. But the biggest obstacle to European control of these
resources remains the Algerian government - with its 'protectionist
policies' and 'resource nationalism.' Without saying it outright, the piece
concludes by suggesting that a destabilized 'failed state' Algeria would be
far preferable to Algeria under a stable independent 'protectionist'
government, noting that 'the existing involvement of EU energy majors in
high-risk countries like Nigeria, Libya, Yemen and Iraq indicates a healthy
tolerance for instability and security problems.' In other words, in an age
of private security, Big Oil no longer requires stability or state
protection for its investments; disaster zones can be tolerated; strong,
independent states cannot.
A NEW 'WAR ON TERROR' IN AFRICA?
It is, therefore, perceived to be in the strategic interests of Western
energy security to see Algeria turned into a failed state, just as Iraq,
Afghanistan and Libya have been. With this in mind, it is clear to see how
the apparently contradictory policy of arming the Salafist militias one
minute (in Libya) and bombing them the next (in Mali) does in fact make
sense. The French bombing mission aims, in its own words, at the '
<
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/mali/9814559
/France-aims-for-total-reconquest-of-Mali.html> total reconquest' of Mali,
which in practice means driving the rebels gradually Northwards through the
country - in other words, straight into Algeria.
Thus the wilful destruction of the Libyan-centred Sahel-Sahara security
system has had many benefits for those who wish to see Africa remain
consigned to its role of underdeveloped provider of cheap raw materials. It
has armed, trained, and provided territory to militias bent on the
destruction of Algeria, the only major resource-rich North African state
committed to genuine African unity and independence. In doing so, it has
also persuaded some Africans that - in contrast to their united rejection of
AFRICOM not long ago - they do, after all, now need to call on the West for
'protection' from these militias. Like a classic mafia protection racket,
the West makes its protection 'necessary' by unleashing the very forces from
which people require protection. Now France is occupying Mali, the US are
establishing a new drone base in Niger and David Cameron is talking about
his commitment to a new 'war on terror' spanning six countries, and likely
to last decades.
It is not, however, all good on the imperialist front. Far from it; indeed
the West had almost certainly hoped to avoid sending in their own soldiers
at all. The initial aim was that Algeria would be sucked in, lured into
exactly the same trap that was successfully used against the Soviet Union in
the 1980s, an earlier example of Britain and the US sponsoring a violent
sectarian insurgency on their enemy's borders,
<
http://www.proxsa.org/resources/9-11/Brzezinski-980115-interview.htm>
attempting to drag their target into a destructive war in response. The
USSR's war in Afghanistan ultimately not only failed but destroyed the
country's economy and morale in the process, and was a key factor behind the
gratuitous self-destruction of the Soviet state in 1991. Algeria, however,
refused to fall into this trap, and Clinton and Hollande's good cop-bad cop
routine - the former's 'pressure for action' in Algiers
<
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/29/us-algeria-usa-mali-idUSBRE89S0UC
20121029> last October followed by French attempts at
<
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20795750> sucking up 2 months later
- came to nothing. Meanwhile, rather than sticking to the script, the West's
unpredictable Salafi proxies expanded from their base in Northern Mali not
North to Algeria as intended, but South to Bamako, threatening to unseat a
Western-allied regime that had only just been installed in a coup less than
a year earlier. The French were forced to intervene to drive them North and
back towards the state that had been their real target all along. For now,
this invasion appears to have a certain level of support amongst those
Africans who fear the West's Salafi proxies more than the West's own
soldiers. Once the occupation starts to drag on, boosting the credibility
and numbers of the guerrillas, whilst exposing the brutality of the
occupiers and their allies, we will see how long that lasts.
Received on Thu Feb 21 2013 - 20:40:00 EST
