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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Thu Apr 07 2011 - 17:11:02 EDT
Towards the Conquest of Africa: The Pentagon's AFRICOM and the War against
Libya
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
http://www.globalresearch.ca/coverStoryPictures2/24171.jpg
<http://www.globalresearch.ca> Global Research, April 7, 2011
Global Research Editor's Note
The following is the English transcript of Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya's
interview with Life Week, a major Chinese magazine based in Beijing.
Nazemroaya was interviewed by Xu Jingjing for Life Week's feature article
about AFRICOM and Libya on April 1, 2011.
The 2008 article cited by Xu Jingjing is Nazemroaya's "The Mediterranean
Union: Dividing the Middle East and North Africa."
_____
XU JINGJING: According to your analysis, what is AFRICOM's role in the
military intervention in Libya? What is its capability?
NAZEMROAYA: In reality, AFRICOM is still very much attached to EUCOM and
dependent on EUCOM in many ways. It will be through this Libyan military
intervention and the future military operations that will bud out of this
war against Libya that AFRICOM will manage to further secure its
independence from EUCOM. But I want to be clear. This does not mean that
AFRICOM has no role in North Africa, because it has a role on the ground and
I believe that it was actively involved in supporting the fighters now
opposed to Colonel Qaddafi in Libya.
AFRICOM's role is currently latent or concealed. It is EUCOM, the U.S.
military operational command that is based in Europe, which is currently
running the operations against the Libyans. EUCOM also overlaps with NATO
and both EUCOM and NATO have the same military commander, which is Admiral
James Stavridis.
Several days ago, I listened to Admirial Stravridis speak to the U.S. Senate
Armed Services Committee and he made it clear that Operation Odyssey Dawn is
being led from Europe and that the U.S. military will always be in control
of the military campaign against Libya. He also contradicted NATO's official
spokesperson, by saying that there was a possibility that NATO troops could
land in Libya for "stabilization operations."
Returning to AFRICOM's role, I said AFRICOM's role is currently latent or
concealed. As the fighting in Libya proceeds, the role of AFRICOM will
become clearer, more important, and more visible.
AFRICOM has been involved in the intelligence work in regards to Libya. When
Admiral Stravridis was asked by the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee
about the role of Al-Qaeda in the Benghazi-based Transitional Council, he
automatically answered that the commander of AFRICOM, General Carter Ham,
could answer this question. This indicates that in the intelligence front
and possibly rebel training it is AFRICOM that has been responsible and much
more involved on the ground in Libya.
XU JINGJING: AFRICOM has no assigned troops and no headquarters in Africa
itself. What is its major mission and objection? How do you evaluate its
decision to enhance U.S. influence in Africa?
NAZEMROAYA: As I mentioned earlier, AFRICOM is still attached to EUCOM. Its
capabilities in some senses are nominal. It will be via the military
campaign against Libya and the years of instability that will haunt Africa
after this war that AFRICOM will solidify itself as a separate operational
military command.
AFRICOM's main objective is to secure the African continent for the U.S. and
its allies. Its mission is to help secure a new colonial order in Africa
that the U.S. and its allies are working to establish. In many ways this is
what the military intervention in Libya is all about. The recent London
Conference about Libya can even be compared to the Berlin Conference of
1884. The difference in 2011 is that the U.S. is at the table and more
importantly leading the other participants in carving up Libya and Africa.
XU JINGJING: How is an African strategy important to the United States? How
do you evaluate the influence of the U.S. in Africa now? What are the major
barriers for the U.S. to expand its influence?
NAZEMROAYA: Of course the People's Republic of China and its allies play a
major role in answering this question. The U.S. and its allies are not only
formulating a new strategy to maintain and deepen their control over Africa,
but are also working to push China and its allies out of Africa. The U.S.
and many E.U. powers have watched China nervously throughout the years.
China has been making major inroads in Africa and China is a major strategic
and economic rival and challenge to the U.S. and Western Europe in Africa.
It will also be China and its allies that will form one of the barriers to
the U.S. strategy to control Africa. The people of Africa cannot be
forgotten either, because they will play a very important role to resisting
the U.S. and the E.U. in the long-term.
Even as we speak there are protests in sub-Saharan Africa, which not too
many people in the Northern Hemisphere even discuss or know about. In
Senegal and other parts of West Africa there have been protests. In Central
Africa there have been protests. While the protests in the Arab World are
watched and intensely reported upon, the protests of these people are mostly
ignored.
XU JINGJING: What were the changes of U.S. Africa policy in the past 20
years? What were the major motivations for those changes?
NAZEMROAYA: There are many ways to examine U.S. foreign policy in Africa in
the past two decades. We can see a period of intense rivalry with the old
colonial powers, such as France, but what I think is important to note is
that U.S. foreign policy in Africa has worked incrementally to push out
China. Again, the motivations for this are the rise of China and its growing
influence in Africa.
One cannot ignore China when speaking about Africa. All this has resulted
in an actually dimension of cooperation between Washington and France and
the old colonial powers. They are working together to secure the African
content within their collective sphere of influence and to muscle out China.
At the end of the day, this is what AFRICOM was made for.
XU JINGJING: In one of your articles, you mention French plans on forming a
Mediterranean Union. In your analysis, why is France always active in this
region?
NAZEMROAYA: Paris has always been active in Africa, because of its proximity
to the continent and its colonial history in Africa. It was the French that
controlled the largest colonial empire in Africa. This is also why at one
point France, with the support of Belgium and Germany, has been a major
rival to the U.S. and Britain in Africa. This appears to have changed as
Paris and its close partners have harmonized their interests with the U.S.
and Britain.
I am glad you brought up the Mediterranean Union or the "Union of the
Mediterranean" as it was renamed later as part of a public relations stunt.
The article you mentioned was actually published by the North Africa Times
several years ago, which I believe is Libyan owned. When the North Africa
Times published the article, they removed the section where I quoted
Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security advisor of the Carter
Administration, about the longstanding plans to form a Mediterranean Union
and what it involved.
The Mediterranean Union is a political, economic, and security entity. It is
also complemented at the military level by NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue.
The events leading to the formal declaration of the Mediterranean Union
follow the same patterns that were used to expand the European Union and
NATO in Eastern Europe.
The Union of the Mediterranean is meant to entrench the Mediterranean and
the Arab World into the orbit of Washington and the European Union. It is
also a bridgehead into Africa. The project calls for economic integration,
massive privatization, and harmonization of policies. It is a colonial
project and it serves to control and exploit the pools of labour in the
Southern Mediterranean for the European Union. In the future, this can be
used to upset the labour market in Asia and other regions. Also, it is
through the Mediterranean Union that the immigration and refugee laws being
used to manage the influx of people from North Africa were created. The E.U.
was expecting these events and its members clearly spell this out when they
made these laws.
XU JINGJING: What is your analysis on the U.S. and the military alliance's
actions in the first ten days of the war in Libya?
NAZEMROAYA: The actions in the first ten days of the war were never meant to
protect civilians. The military operations have been offensive in nature and
a means to weaken Libya as an independent state. I mentioned earlier that I
listened to the testimony of Admiral Stavridis to the U.S. Armed Services
Committee in Washington and I would like to refer to it again. At the
hearing both Admiral Stavridis and Senator McCain both unwittingly stated
that sanctions and no-fly zones do not accomplish anything. This is very
profound. If these actions do not accomplish anything, then why did the U.S.
push for them to be imposed on the Libyans? The answer is that the operation
is not of a humanitarian nature, it is an act of aggression meant to open
the door into Libya and Africa for a new colonial project.
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya specializes on on the Middle East and Central Asia.
He is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization
(CRG).
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