USAFRICOM and the Militarization of the African Continent: Combating China's
Economic Encroachment
by Nile Bowie
http://www.globalresearch.ca/coverStoryPictures2/29919.jpg
<
http://www.globalresearch.ca> Global Research, March 24, 2012
As the Obama administration claims to welcome the peaceful rise of China on
the world stage, recent policy shifts toward an increased US military
presence in Central Africa threaten deepening Chinese commercial activity in
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, widely considered the world’s most
resource rich nation.
Since the time of the British Empire and the manifesto of Cecil Rhodes, the
pursuit of treasures on the hopeless continent has demonstrated the
expendability of human life. Despite decades of apathy among the primary
resource consumers, the increasing reach of social media propaganda
<
http://nilebowie.blogspot.com/2012/03/youth-movement-promotes-us-military.h
tml> has ignited public interest in Africa’s long overlooked social issues.
In the wake of celebrity endorsed pro-intervention publicity stunts
<
http://www.theprovince.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Clooney+arrested+Sudan
+protest/6320641/story.html> , public opinion in the United States is now
being mobilized in favor of a greater military presence on the African
continent. Following the deployment of one hundred US military personnel to
Uganda in 2011, a new bill has been introduced to the Congress
<
http://royce.house.gov/UploadedFiles/McGovern_Royce_Res_Spotlights_Kony_and
_LRA_3.13.12.pdf> calling for the further expansion of regional military
forces in pursuit of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), an ailing rebel group
allegedly responsible for recruiting child soldiers and conducting crimes
against humanity.
As the Obama administration claims to welcome the peaceful rise of China on
the world stage, recent policy shifts toward an American Pacific Century
indicate a desire to maintain the capacity to project military force toward
the emerging superpower. In addition to maintaining a permanent military
presence in Northern Australia, the construction of an expansive military
base on South Korea’s Jeju Island has indicated growing antagonism towards
Beijing. The base maintains the capacity to host up to twenty American and
South Korean warships, including submarines, aircraft carriers and
destroyers <
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26986>
once completed in 2014 – in addition to the presence of Aegis anti-ballistic
systems
<
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/world/asia/19base.html?pagewanted=all> .
In response, Chinese leadership has referred to the increasing
militarization in the region as an open provocation.
On the economic front, China has been excluded from the proposed
Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA)
<
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1111/S00589/tpp-and-us-anti-china-strategy
-conclusions.htm> , a trade agreement intended to administer US-designed
international trading regulations throughout Asia, to the benefit of
American corporations. As further fundamental policy divisions emerge
subsequent to China and Russia
<
http://news.yahoo.com/clinton-rips-russia-china-u-n-veto-syria-230200591.ht
ml> ’s UNSC veto mandating intervention in Syria, the Obama administration
has begun utilizing alternative measures to exert new economic pressure
towards Beijing. The United States, along with the EU and Japan have called
on the World Trade Organization to block Chinese-funded mining projects in
the US, in addition to a freeze on World Bank financing for China’s
extensive mining projects.
In a move to counteract Chinese economic ascendancy, Washington is crusading
against China's export restrictions on minerals that are crucial components
in the production of consumer electronics such as flat-screen televisions,
smart phones, laptop batteries, and a host of other products. In a 2010
white paper entitled “Critical Raw Materials for the EU
<
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/raw-materials/files/docs/report-b_e
n.pdf> ,” the European Commission cites the immediate need for reserve
supplies of tantalum, cobalt, niobium, and tungsten among others; the US
Department of Energy 2010 white paper “Critical Mineral Strategy
<
http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/edg/news/documents/criticalmaterialsstra
tegy.pdf> ” also acknowledged the strategic importance of these key
components. Coincidently, the US military is now attempting to increase its
presence in what is widely considered the world
<
http://theotcinvestor.com/mining-companies-could-see-big-profits-in-congo-8
55/> ’s most resource rich nation, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The DRC has suffered immensely during its history of foreign plunder and
colonial occupation; it maintains the second lowest GDP per capita despite
having an estimated $24 trillion in untapped raw minerals deposits
<
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/DR+Congo%27s+$24+trillion+fortune.-a019380018
4> . During the Congo Wars of the 1996 to 2003, the United States provided
training and arms to Rwandan and Ugandan militias who later invaded the
eastern provinces of the DRC in proxy. In addition to benefiting various
multinational corporations, the regimes of Paul Kagame in Rwanda and Yoweri
Museveni in Uganda both profited immensely from the plunder of Congolese
conflict minerals <
http://www.un.org/News/dh/latest/drcongo.htm> such as
cassiterite, wolframite, coltan (from which niobium and tantalum are
derived) and gold. The DRC holds more than 30% of the world's diamond
reserves <
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5209428.stm> and 80% of the
world's coltan <
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1468772.stm> , the
majority of which is exported to China for processing
<
http://project2049.net/documents/china_and_congos_coltan_connection.pdf>
into electronic-grade tantalum powder and wiring.
China’s unprecedented economic transformation has relied not only on
consumer markets in the United States, Australia and the EU – but also on
Africa, as a source for a vast array of raw materials. As Chinese economic
and cultural influence in Africa expands exponentially with the symbolic
construction of the new $200 million African Union headquarters
<
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/01/28/uk-africa-china-idUKTRE80R0RG20120
128> funded solely by Beijing, the ailing United States and its leadership
have expressed dissatisfaction toward its diminishing role in the region.
During a diplomatic tour of Africa in 2011, US Secretary of State Hilary
Clinton herself has irresponsibly insinuated
<
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/11/hillary-clinton-africa-new-colonia
lism_n_875318.html> China’s guilt in perpetuating a creeping “new
colonialism.”
At a time when China holds an estimated $1.5 trillion in American government
debt
<
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/business/china-largest-holder-of-us-debt-
remains-tied-to-treasuries.html?pagewanted=all> , Clinton’s comments remain
dangerously provocative. As China, backed by the world
<
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16541661> ’s largest foreign currency
reserves, begins to offer loans to its BRICS counterparts in RMB
<
http://www.cnbc.com/id/46659945/China_Offers_Other_Brics_Renminbi_Loans> ,
the prospect of emerging nations resisting the New American Century appear
to be increasingly assured. While the success of Anglo-American imperialism
relies on its capacity to militarily drive target nations into submission,
today’s African leaders are not obliged to do business with China – although
doing so may be to their benefit. China annually invests an estimated $5.5
billion in Africa
<
http://carnegieendowment.org/ieb/2012/02/09/china-s-growing-role-in-africa-
myths-and-facts> , with only 29 percent of direct investment in the mining
sector in 2009 – while more than half was directed toward domestic
manufacturing, finance, and construction industries, which largely benefit
Africans themselves – despite reports of worker mistreatment.
China has further committed $10 billion in concessional loans to Africa
between 2009 and 2012
<
http://www.american.edu/sis/faculty/upload/Brautigam-Chinese-Aid-in-Africa.
pdf> and made significant investments in manufacturing zones in
non-resource-rich economies such as Zambia and Tanzania. As Africa’s largest
trading partner, China imports 1.5 million barrels of oil from Africa per
day <
http://www.cfr.org/china/expanding-china-africa-oil-ties/p9557> ,
approximately accounting for 30 percent of its total imports. Over the past
decade, 750,000 Chinese nationals have settled in Africa
<
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1036105/How-Chinas-taking-Africa-We
st-VERY-worried.html%20%20http:/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1036105/How
-Chinas-taking-Africa-West-VERY-worried.html> , while Chinese state-funded
cultural centers in rural parts of the continent conduct language classes in
Mandarin and Cantonese. As China is predicted to formally emerge as the
world
<
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/27/china-imf-ec
onomy-2016> ’s largest economy in 2016, the recent materialization of plans
for a BRICS Bank <
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107115> have the
potential to restructure the global financial climate and directly challenge
the hegemonic conduct of the International Monetary Fund in Africa’s
strategic emerging economies.
China’s deepening economic engagement in Africa and its crucial role in
developing the mineral sector, telecommunications industry and much needed
infrastructural projects is creating
<
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/09/08/america.losing.influence.africa/
> "deep nervousness" in the West, according to David Shinn, the former US
ambassador to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia. In a 2011 Department of Defense
whitepaper entitled <
http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/2011_cmpr_final.pdf>
“Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of
China”, the US acknowledges the maturity of China’s modern hardware and
military technology, and the likelihood of Beijing finding hostility with
further military alliances between the United States and Taiwan. The
document further indicates that “China’s rise as a major international actor
is likely to stand out as a defining feature of the strategic landscape of
the early 21st century.” Furthermore, the Department of Defense concedes to
the uncertainty of how China’s growing capabilities will be administered on
the world stage.
Although a US military presence in Africa (under the guise of fighting
terrorism and protecting human rights) specifically to counter Chinese
regional economic authority may not incite tension in the same way that a US
presence in North Korea or Taiwan would, the potential for brinksmanship
exists and will persist. China maintains the largest standing army in the
world with 2,285,000 personnel and is working to challenge the regional
military hegemony of America’s Pacific Century with its expanding naval and
conventional capabilities <
http://newpacificinstitute.org/asw/?p=10085> ,
including an effort to develop the world’s first anti-ship ballistic missile
<
http://www.stripes.com/news/locklear-nominated-to-be-next-pacom-commander-1
.164676> . Furthermore, China has moved to begin testing advanced
anti-satellite (ASAT) and Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) weapons systems
<
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16588557> in an effort to bring the
US-China rivalry into Space warfare.
The concept of US intervention into the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
South Sudan, Central African Republic and Uganda under the pretext of
disarming the Lord’s Resistance Army is an ultimately fraudulent purpose.
The LRA has been in operation for over two decades, and presently remains at
an extremely weakened state, with approximately 400 soldiers
<
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/US-Troops-Deploy-to-Fight-Lords-
Resistance-Army-132070343.html> . According the LRA Crisis Tracker
<
http://www.lracrisistracker.com/> , a digital crisis mapping software
launched by the Invisible Children group, not a single case of LRA activity
has been reported in Uganda since 2006. The vast majority of reported
attacks are presently taking place in the northeastern Bangadi region of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, located on the foot of a tri-border
expanse between the Central African Republic and South Sudan.
The existence of the Lord’s Resistance Army should rightfully be disputed,
as the cases of LRA activity reported by US State Department-supported
Invisible Children <
http://www.movements.org/pages/the-summit> rely on
unconfirmed reports – cases where LRA activity is presumed and suspected.
Given the extreme instability in the northern DRC after decades of foreign
invasion and countless rebel insurgencies, the lack of adequate
investigative infrastructure needed to sufficiently examine and confirm the
LRA’s presence is simply not in place. The villainous branding of Joseph
Kony may well be deserved, however it cannot be overstated that the LRA
threat is wholly misrepresented in recent pro-intervention US legislation
<
http://royce.house.gov/UploadedFiles/McGovern_Royce_Res_Spotlights_Kony_and
_LRA_3.13.12.pdf> . An increasing US presence in the region exists only to
curtail the increasing economic presence of China in one of the world’s most
resource and mineral rich regions.
The Lord’s Resistance Army was originally formed in 1987 in northwestern
Uganda by members of the Acholi ethnic group, who were historically
exploited for forced labor by the British colonialists and later
marginalized by the nation’s dominant Bantu ethic groups following
independence. The Lord’s Resistance Army originally aimed to overthrow the
government of current Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni – due to a campaign
of genocide waged against the Acholi people. The northern Ugandan Acholi and
Langi ethnic groups have been historically targeted and ostracized by
successive Anglo-American backed administrations. In 1971, Israeli and
British intelligence agencies engineered a coup against Uganda’s socialist
President Milton Obote, which gave rise to the disastrous regime of Idi
Amin.
Prior to declaring himself head of state after deposing Obote, Amin was a
member of the British colonial regiment, charged with managing concentration
camps in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion
<
http://thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html> beginning in
1952. Amin conducted genocide against the Acholi people on the suspicion of
loyalty toward the former Obote leadership, who later reclaimed power in
1979 after Amin attempted to annex the neighboring Kagera province of
Tanzania. Museveni founded the Front for National Salvation, which helped
topple Obote with US support in 1986, despite the fact that his army
exploited the use of child soldiers
<
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upITVcXw_Gk> . Museveni formally took power
and was subsequently accused of genocide for driving the Acholi people into
detainment camps in an attempt to usurp fertile land in northern Uganda
<
http://allafrica.com/stories/201101050048.html> .
The Museveni regime has displaced approximately 1.5 million Acholi and
killed at least three hundred thousand people when taking power in 1986
according to the Red Cross
<
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10815%20http://www.gl
obalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10815> . In addition to accusations
of using rape as weapon and overseeing the deaths of thousands in squalid
detainment camps, Museveni has been accused of exerting a campaign of
state-sponsored terror onto the Acholi people in a 1992 Amnesty
International report
<
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AFR59/005/1992/en> . During an
interview with Joseph Kony in 2006
<
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdBcypx1DfE> , the LRA commander denies
allegations of mutilation and torture and further accuses Museveni’s forces
of committing such actions as propaganda against the Lord’s Resistance Army.
In a detailed report of Museveni’s atrocities, Ugandan writer Herrn Edward
Mulindwa offers
<
http://www.mail-archive.com/ugandanet_at_kym.net/msg27528.html> , “During the
22-year war, Museveni’s army killed, maimed and mutilated thousands of
civilians, while blaming it on rebels. In northern Uganda, instead of
defending and protecting civilians against rebel attacks, Museveni’s army
would masquerade as rebels and commit gross atrocities, including maiming
and mutilation, only to return and pretend to be saviors of the affected
people.” Despite such compelling evidence of brutality, Museveni has been a
staunch US ally since the Reagan administration and received $45 million
dollars in military aid
<
http://www.infowars.com/africa-open-for-plunder-now-that-libya-has-fallen/>
from the Obama administration for Ugandan participation in the fight against
Somalia’s al Shabaab militia. Since the abhorrent failure of the 1993 US
intervention in Somalia, the US has relied on the militaries of Rwanda,
Uganda and Ethiopia to carry out US interests in proxy.
Since colonial times, the West has historically exploited ethnic differences
in Africa for political gain. In Rwanda, the Belgian colonial administration
exacerbated tension between the Hutu, who were subjugated as a workforce –
and the Tutsi, seen as extenders of Belgian rule. From the start of the
Rwandan civil war in 1990, the US sought to overthrow the 20-year reign of
Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana by installing a Tutsi proxy government in
Rwanda, a region historically under the influence of France and Belgium. At
that time prior to the outbreak of the Rwandan civil war, the Tutsi Rwandan
Patriotic Army (RPA) led by current Rwandan President Paul Kagame, was part
of Museveni’s United People's Defense Forces (UPDF).
Ugandan forces invaded Rwanda in 1990 under the pretext of Tutsi liberation,
despite the fact that Museveni refused to grant citizenship to Tutsi-Rwandan
refugees living in Uganda at the time, a move that further offset the 1994
Rwandan genocide. Kagame himself was trained at the U.S. Army Command and
Staff College (CGSC) in Leavenworth, Kansas prior to returning to the region
to oversee the 1990 invasion of Rwanda as commander of the RPA, which
received supplies from US-funded UPDF military bases inside Uganda. The
invasion of Rwanda had the full support of the US and Britain, who provided
training <
http://www.junius.co.uk/africa-direct/tribunal.html> by US
Special Forces in collaboration with US mercenary outfit, Military
Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI).
<
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO305A.html>
A report issued in 2000 by Canadian Professor Michel Chossudovsky and
Belgian economist Senator Pierre Galand concluded that western financial
institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
financed both sides of the Rwandan civil war, through a process of financing
military expenditure from the external debt of both the regimes of
Habyarimana and Museveni. In Uganda, the World Bank imposed austerity
measures solely on civilian expenditures while overseeing the diversion of
State revenue go toward funding the UPDF, on behalf of Washington. In
Rwanda, the influx of development loans from the World Bank's affiliates
such as the International Development Association (IDA), the African
Development Fund (AFD), and the European Development Fund (EDF) were
diverted into funding the Hutu extremist Interhamwe militia, the main
protagonists of the Rwandan genocide.
Perhaps most disturbingly, the World Bank oversaw huge arms purchases that
were recorded as bona fide government expenditures, a stark violation of
agreements signed between the Rwandan government and donor institutions.
Under the watch of the World Bank, the Habyarimana regime imported
approximately one million machetes through various Interhamwe linked
organizations, under the pretext of importing civilian commodities. To
ensure their reimbursement, a multilateral trust fund of $55.2 million
dollars was designated toward postwar reconstruction efforts, although the
money was not allocated to Rwanda – but to the World Bank, to service the
debts used to finance the massacres.
Furthermore, Paul Kagame was pressured by Washington upon coming to power to
recognize the legitimacy of the debt incurred by the previous genocidal
Habyarimana regime. The swap of old loans for new debts (under the banner of
post-war reconstruction) was conditional upon the acceptance of a new wave
of IMF-World Bank reforms, which similarly diverted outside funds into
military expenditure prior to the Kagame-led invasion of the Congo, then
referred to as Zaire. As present day Washington legislators attempt to
increase US military presence in the DRC under the pretext of humanitarian
concern, the highly documented conduct of lawless western intelligence
agencies and defense contractors in the Congo since its independence sheds
further light on the exploitative nature of western intervention.
In 1961, the Congo’s first legally elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba
was assassinated with support from Belgian intelligence and the CIA, paving
the way for the thirty-two year reign of Mobutu Sese Seko. As part of an
attempt to purge the Congo of all colonial cultural influence, Mobutu
renamed the country Zaire and led an authoritarian regime closely allied to
France, Belgium and the US. Mobutu was regarded as a staunch US ally during
the Cold War due to his strong stance against communism; the regime received
billions in international aid, most from the United States. His
administration allowed national infrastructure to deteriorate while the
Zairian kleptocracy embezzled international aid and loans; Mobutu himself
reportedly held $4 billion USD <
http://www.indianexpress.com/Storyold/1511/>
in a personal Swiss bank account.
Relations between the US and Zaire thawed at the end of the Cold War, when
Mobutu was no longer needed as an ally; Washington would later use Rwandan
and Ugandan troops to invade the Congo to topple Mobutu and install a new
proxy regime. Following the conflict in Rwanda, 1.2 million Hutu civilians
(many of whom who took part in the genocide) crossed into the Kivu province
of eastern Zaire fearing prosecution from Paul Kagame’s Tutsi RPA. US
Special Forces trained Rwandan and Ugandan troops at Fort Bragg
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/overseas/overseas3b.
htm> in the United States and supported Congolese rebels under future
President, Laurent Kabila. Under the pretext of safeguarding Rwandan
national security against the threat of displaced Hutu militias, troops from
Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi invaded the Congo and ripped through Hutu refugee
camps, slaughtering thousands of Rwandan and Congolese Hutu civilians, many
of who were women and children.
Reports of brutality and mass killing in the Congo were rarely addressed in
the West, as the International Community was sympathetic to Kagame and the
Rwandan Tutsi victims of genocide. Both Halliburton and Bechtel (military
contractors that profited immensely from the Iraq war) were involved in
military training and reconnaissance operations
<
http://books.google.com.my/books?id=fs9BVn1l_TcC&pg=PT80&lpg=PT80&dq=Bechte
l+Halliburton+congo+zaire&source=bl&ots=NPQsotq66j&sig=jKrxyGm6RemoJEujqgMYr
nr1ojo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=L0drT7fiItHHrQe7r4SIAg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Bechtel%
20Halliburton%20congo%20zaire&f=false> in an attempt to overthrow Mobutu
and bring Kabila to power. After deposing Mobutu and seizing control in
Kinshasa, Laurent Kabila was quickly regarded as an equally despotic leader
after eradicating all opposition to his rule; he turned away from his
Rwandan backers and called on Congolese civilians to violently purge the
nation of Rwandans, prompting Rwandan forces to regroup in Goma, in an
attempt to capture resource rich territory in eastern Congo.
Prior to becoming President in 1997, Kabila sent representatives to Toronto
to discuss mining opportunities with American Mineral Fields (AMF) and
Canada’s Barrick Gold Corporation; AMF had direct ties to US President Bill
Clinton and was given exclusive exploration rights to zinc, copper, and
cobalt mines in the area. The Congolese Wars perpetrated by Rwanda and
Uganda killed at least six million people
<
http://www.caritas.org/activities/emergencies/SixMillionDeadInCongoWar.html
> , making it the largest case of genocide since the Jewish holocaust. The
successful perpetration of the conflict relied on western military and
financial support, and was fought primarily to usurp the extensive mining
resources of eastern and southern Congo; the US defense industry relies on
high quality metallic alloys indigenous to the region, used primarily in the
construction of high-performance jet engines.
In 1980, Pentagon documents acknowledged shortages of cobalt
<
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1144&dat=19800907&id=ZIUqAAAAIBAJ&sji
d=kVwEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6952,1659211> , titanium, chromium, tantalum, beryllium,
and nickel; US participation in the Congolese conflict was largely an effort
to obtain these needed resources. The sole piece of legislation authored by
President Obama during his time as a Senator was S.B. 2125, the Democratic
Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006.
<
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/s2125> In the legislation, Obama
acknowledges the Congo as a long-term interest to the United States and
further alludes to the threat of Hutu militias as an apparent pretext for
continued interference in the region; Section 201(6) of the bill
specifically calls for the protection of natural resources in the eastern
DRC.
The Congressional Budget Office’s 1982 report “Cobalt: Policy Options for a
Strategic Mineral
<
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/51xx/doc5126/doc29-
entire.pdf> ” notes that cobalt alloys are critical to the aerospace and
weapons industries and that 64% of the world’s cobalt reserves lay in the
Katanga Copper Belt, running from southeastern Congo into northern Zambia.
For this reason, the future perpetration of the military industrial complex
largely depends on the control of strategic resources in the eastern DRC. In
2001, Laurent Kabila was assassinated by a member of his security staff,
paving the way for his son Joseph Kabila to dynastically usurp the
presidency. The younger Kabila derives his legitimacy solely from the
support of foreign heads of state and the international business community,
due to his ability to comply with foreign plunder.
During the Congo’s general elections in November 2011, the international
community and the UN remained predictably silent regarding the mass
irregularities observed by the electoral committee
<
http://allafrica.com/view/group/main/main/id/00014732.html> . The United
Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (MONUSCO) has faced frequent allegations of corruption, prompting
opposition leader Étienne Tshisikedi to call for the UN mission to end its
deliberate efforts to maintain the system of international plundering and to
appoint someone
<
http://sfbayview.com/2011/congo-deserves-a-leader-who-cares-about-the-congo
lese-people/> “less corrupt and more credible” to head UN operations.
MONUSCO has been plagued with frequent cases of peacekeeping troops caught
smuggling minerals such as cassiterite and dealing weapons to militia groups
<
http://www.congoplanet.com/news/1872/united-nations-driver-caught-smuggling
-minerals-eastern-congo.jsp> .
Under the younger Joseph Kabila, Chinese commercial activities in the DRC
have significantly increased not only in the mining sector, but also
considerably in the telecommunications field. In 2000, the Chinese ZTE
Corporation finalized a $12.6 million deal with the Congolese government
<
http://www.ccs.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/ENGLISH-Evaluating-Chinas-
FOCAC-commitments-to-Africa-2010.pdf> to establish the first Sino-Congolese
telecommunications company; furthermore, the DRC exported $1.4 billion worth
of cobalt between 2007 and 2008
<
http://www.city.china.com.cn/english/features/focac/183553.htm> . The
majority of Congolese raw materials like cobalt, copper ore and a variety of
hard woods are exported to China for further processing
<
http://www.ccs.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Chinese_Companies_in_the_E
xtractive_Industries_of_Gabon_and_the_DRC._CCS_report_August_2009.pdf> and
90% of the processing plants in resource rich southeastern Katanga province
<
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nw&pname=mm_0908_story3.html> are
owned by Chinese nationals. In 2008, a consortium of Chinese companies were
granted the rights to mining operations in Katanga in exchange for US$6
billion in infrastructure investments
<
http://elliott.gwu.edu/news/speeches/shinn031508.cfm> , including the
construction of two hospitals, four universities and a hydroelectric power
project.
The framework of the deal allocated an additional $3 million to develop
cobalt and copper mining operations in Katanga. In 2009, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded renegotiation of the deal, arguing that the
agreement between China and the DRC violated the foreign debt relief program
for so-called HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Countries) nations. The vast
majority of the DRC’s $11 billion foreign debt owed to the Paris Club was
embezzled by the previous regime of Mobuto Sesi Seko
<
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/LC11Cb02.html> . The IMF
successfully blocked the deal in May 2009
<
http://www.ccs.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Chinese_Companies_in_the_E
xtractive_Industries_of_Gabon_and_the_DRC._CCS_report_August_2009.pdf> ,
calling for a more feasibility study of the DRCs mineral concessions.
The United States is currently mobilizing public opinion in favor of a
greater US presence in Africa, under the pretext of capturing Joseph Kony,
quelling Islamist terrorism and putting an end to long-standing humanitarian
issues. As well-meaning Americans are successively coerced by highly
emotional social media campaigns promoting an American response to
atrocities, few realize the role of the United States and western financial
institutions in fomenting the very tragedies they are now poised to resolve.
While many genuinely concerned individuals naively support forms of pro-war
brand activism, the mobilization of ground forces in Central Africa will
likely employ the use of predator drones and targeted missile strikes that
have been notoriously responsible for civilian causalities en masse.
The further consolidation of US presence in the region is part of a larger
program to expand AFRICOM, the United States Africa Command through a
proposed archipelago of military bases in the region. In 2007, US State
Department advisor Dr. J. Peter Pham offered the following on AFRICOM
<
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11173> and its
strategic objectives of "protecting access to hydrocarbons and other
strategic resources which Africa has in abundance, a task which includes
ensuring against the vulnerability of those natural riches and ensuring that
no other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan, or Russia,
obtain monopolies or preferential treatment." Additionally, during an
AFRICOM Conference held at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008, Vice Admiral
Robert T. Moeller openly declared AFRICOM
<
http://allafrica.com/stories/200908140153.html> ’s guiding principle of
protecting “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global
market,” before citing the increasing presence of China as a major challenge
to US interests in the region.
The increased US presence in Central Africa is not simply a measure to
secure monopolies on Uganda
<
http://www.theecologist.org/investigations/energy/1276414/oil_deal_threaten
s_ugandan_biodiversity.html> ’s recently discovered oil reserves; Museveni’s
legitimacy depends solely on foreign backers and their extensive military
aid contributions – US ground forces are not required to obtain valuable oil
contracts from Kampala. The push into Africa has more to do with
destabilizing the deeply troubled Democratic Republic of the Congo and
capturing its strategic reserves of cobalt, tantalum, gold and diamonds.
More accurately, the US is poised to employ a scorched-earth policy by
creating dangerous war-like conditions in the Congo, prompting the mass
exodus of Chinese investors. Similarly to the Libyan conflict, the Chinese
returned after the fall of Gaddafi to find a proxy government only willing
to do business with the western nations who helped it into power.
As the US uses its influence to nurture the emergence of breakaway states
like South Sudan
<
http://pulitzercenter.org/articles/south-sudan-independence-khartoum-southe
rn-kordofan-us-administration-role> , the activities of Somalia’s al
Shabaab, Nigeria’s Boko Haram and larger factions of AQIM in North Africa
offer a concrete pretext for further US involvement in regional affairs.
The ostensible role of the first African-American US President is to export
the theatresque War on Terror directly to the African continent, in a
campaign to exploit established tensions along tribal, ethnic and religious
lines. As US policy theoreticians such as Dr. Henry Kissinger, willingly
proclaim
<
http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/china_total_dehumanization_report.htm>
, "Depopulation should be the highest priority of US foreign policy towards
the Third World,” the vast expanse of desert and jungles in northern and
central Africa will undoubtedly serve as the venue for the next decade of
resource wars.
<
http://nilebowie.blogspot.com/> Nile Bowie is an independent writer and
photojournalist based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; he regularly contributes to
<
http://www.globalresearch.ca/> Global Research Twitter:
<
https://twitter.com/#%21/NileBowie> _at_NileBowi
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Received on Sat Mar 24 2012 - 08:35:14 EDT
