Africa’s
classic depiction in the mainstream media, as a giant basketcase 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 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 UN
reports. Finally,
and perhaps most importantly, are the 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.
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 $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 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 privatisation like forcing African
countries to move from public to private monopolies.”
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, 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 over
three trillion dollars - meant that AFRICOM was supposed to
primarily 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.
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 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 todownplay
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.
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 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.
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-publicised 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.
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 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 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.”
The most
obvious victim of this destabilization has been Mali. That the Salafist
takeover of Mali is a 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% 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 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 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.
This tendency
to ‘resource nationalism’ was also noted in a 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.
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 “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, 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 last
October followed
by French attempts at 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
guerillas, whilst exposing the brutality of the occupiers and their allies, we
will see how long that lasts.
Dan Glazebrook is a political writer and journalist. He writes
regularly on international relations and the use of state violence in
British domestic and foreign policy.
Fuente:http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/15/the-wests-war-against-african-development-continues/
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