US
Government To Set Up
New Military Command In Africa
By Lawrence Porter
19 May, 2007
World
Socialist Web
In
an ominous development mirroring the explosive expansion of US militarism,
the Bush administration has designated Africa as a continent of “strategic
national concern,” and has initiated a new military policy to
coincide with this new classification.
The Bush administration announced
in February the formation of a new military command system in Africa,
the United States African Command (AFRICOM), couched in the usual combination
of humanitarian and anti-terrorist terminology.
Last month Principal Deputy
Under Secretary for Defense Policy Ryan Henry was dispatched to a six-nation
African tour to “clear up misunderstandings” about the Pentagon’s
new military program. Several regimes raised concerns that the US was
moving into the region because of the discovery of vast oil reserves
in parts of the continent and the growing influence of China, seen as
both an economic and political rival.
After Henry returned from
meetings with officials from South Africa, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana,
Senegal and Kenya, he told the Washington media, “The goal is
for AFRICOM not to be a US leadership role on the continent. We would
be looking to complement rather than compete with any leadership efforts
currently going on.”
He added that AFRICOM was
not being set up in “response to Chinese presence” or to
“secure resources,” such as oil. “While some of these
may be part of the formula,” he acknowledged, the real is reason
is that Africa “is emerging on the world scene as a strategic
‘player,’ and we need to deal with it as a continent.”
To assure the African leaders,
Henry said AFRICOM will not result in large-scale deployment of troops
on the continent or a major increase in Pentagon spending there. However,
to anyone familiar with diplomatic language, “strategic player”
means that, in the view of the Bush administration, it is well worth
waging wars in Africa in the defense of US interests.
West Africa, including Nigeria,
presently supplies 12 percent of US crude oil imports. By 2015, it is
estimated this share will rise to 25 percent, a greater proportion than
Saudi Arabia.
China is the second largest
importer of oil after the US, to fuel its rapid economic expansion.
According to China’s General Administration of Customs, the Asian
nation imported nearly 11 percent more oil during the first four months
of 2007 than during the same period in 2006, with the bulk of the increase
coming from Africa. In 2006 China consumed 320 million tons of crude
oil, with 7 percent of its imports coming from the Sudan.
China imports 25 percent
of its crude oil from Africa and is looking for ways to increase the
supply from the continent. Since 2000 there has been a five-fold increase
in trade between China and Africa—now totaling $5.5 billion a
year—and China is now the continent’s third largest trading
partner, following the US and France and eclipsing Great Britain.
Sub-Saharan Africa includes
eight oil-producing countries: Nigeria, Angola, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon,
Equatorial Guinea, Cameron, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo and
Sudan.
Nigeria is the largest producer
of oil in Africa and has the 11th largest reserves in the world. It
is presently producing 2.45 million barrels a day, 42 percent of which
goes to the US. The three largest oil companies in the country include
two US firms, ExxonMobil and Chevron, and the British-Dutch Shell.
Angola is the second-largest
African oil producer and is expected to reach 2 million barrels a day
by 2008.
Sudan is also rich in oil,
and China has more influence there than any other country. China controls
40 percent of Sudan’s oil although Chevron spent $1.2 billion
there and discovered oilfields in the south and at one point estimated
that Sudan might prove to have more oil than Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Mandy Turner of the Guardian
characterized both the US and China as key players in a new “scramble
for Africa.” “The new entrant to the scramble is China,”
she wrote. “Africa offers the natural resources vital to fuel
its rapidly growing economy,” including copper and cobalt from
the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia, iron ore and platinum from
South Africa, and to Cameroon, Gabon and the Republic of the Congo for
timber. For oil, it has been striking deals with Nigeria, Angola, Sudan
and Equatorial Guinea.”
The military, security
and oil
With the end of the Cold
War, when the major concern of the US was the struggle against the Soviet
Union, requiring alliances with nominally independent Third World regimes,
after 1991 the US felt able to pursue a more openly colonial-style policy
of hegemonic control through the use of the military. The 9/11 terrorist
attacks have served as a useful pretext for this shift in US operations
in Africa.
Despite the pretense that
fighting terrorists and preventing humanitarian disasters will be the
main purpose of US military operations in Africa, a report published
by the National Intelligence Council, which bills itself as the US intelligence
Community’s center for mid-term and long-term strategy thinking,
makes it clear that US aims in the region are geopolitical in nature,
with control of oil resources a primary concern.
Entitled “External
Relations and Africa,” the report says, “Military engagement
has shifted from direct support of proxy regimes or movements during
the Cold War,” (as when the Belgium government, with the help
of the CIA, overthrew and murdered Congolese prime minister Patrice
Lumumba), “to a combination of capacity-building and, especially
post-9/11, direct American military involvement in basing areas such
as Djibouti.”
In the section, “Future
Trends in External Engagement with Africa,” one of the prime reasons
given for direct military engagement is “the increasing importance
of the oil sector in especially but not exclusively US policy calculations
on Africa.”
“Importantly,”
the report continues, “most of Africa’s oil producers are
not OPEC members—notably Angola, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Congo-Brazzaville
and Cameroon.”
An ominous warning of future
US military operations in Africa came last month when Ethiopian troops,
backed by the US, carried out a bloodbath in Somalia, leveling large
parts of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the capital city, Mogadishu.
Over a thousand people have died since US war planes bombed towns in
southern Somalia and 350,000 to half a million people have fled the
city, living in camps.
While officially there are
no American troops involved in this conflict, CIA personnel and military
special forces have been involved in the training of Ethiopian troops.
One of the first objectives of the Ethiopian forces was to reoccupy
the American embassy.
Somalia is just one strategic flashpoint. J. Peter Pham, director of
the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison
University and an advocate of US domination of Africa, commented in
an editorial in the National Interest online that the decision of the
Bush administration to establish the command center “represents
the administration’s single most purposeful step towards assigning
Africa its due priority.”
“The move,” states Pham, could represent “a significant
long-term engagement” that would “anchor the continent firmly
in America’s orbit” (emphasis added). He went on to cite
the 2002 National Security Strategy document where the Bush administration
stated it has the right to carry out preemptive strikes against any
country to defend its interests, “Africa,” states the report,
“holds growing geo-strategic importance and is a high priority
of this Administration.”
Presently the US controls
three regional commands in Africa, which share responsibility for US
interests in the continent. The largest area is controlled by the European
Command, which oversees North Africa, West Africa including the Gulf
of Guinea, and central and southern Africa. The Central Command is responsible
for the Horn of Africa—countries such as Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea,
Kenya, Djibouti, Sudan and Egypt. The Pacific Command includes Madagascar,
the Seychelles islands and the Indian Ocean area off the African coast.
AFRICOM will initially operate
out of the Stuttgart, Germany-based European Command center before it
moves to a permanent base in Africa. The US has been careful not to
spell out its plans, stating only that it will deal with peacekeeping,
humanitarian aid missions, military training and support of African
partner countries.
The US has claimed that it
does not plan to engage large numbers of troops in the region, similar
to its operations in Iraq. However, the presence of US troops will further
the militarization of the continent with the possibility that another
conflagration could develop over resources, like that in Iraq, with
wider and more ominous implications.
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