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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Sat Apr 09 2011 - 06:32:02 EDT
>From Ivory Coast to Libya And Beyond: The Conquest of Africa
by Rick Rozoff
http://www.globalresearch.ca/coverStoryPictures2/24218.jpg
<http://www.globalresearch.ca> Global Research, April 8, 2011
On April 5 the chairman of the African Union, Equatorial Guinea's President
Teodoro Obiang Nguema, condemned French military operations in fellow West
African nation Ivory Coast and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's war
against Libya, stating: "Africa does not need any external influence. Africa
must manage its own affairs."
Though hardly a model of a democratic ruler, having come to power in a coup
d'etat in 1979 and governed his nation uninterruptedly since, Obiang Nguema
is the current head of the 53-nation African Union and his comments stand on
their own regardless of their source.
In reference to the mounting violence between the Western-backed Alassane
Ouattara's self-styled Republican Forces army and "Invisible Commandos" on
one side and incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo's military and security
forces on the other in Ivory Coast, the AU chairman said that it should not
"imply a war, an intervention of a foreign army."
He spoke after French attack helicopters struck Ivorian military bases in
the commercial capital of Abidjan and destroyed over ten armored vehicles,
four anti-aircraft weapons and the broadcasting station of the state-run
Radiodiffusion-Télévision ivoirienne as well as firing on the presidential
building and residence. French troops took over the nation's main airport
earlier in the week. (In 2004 French warplanes destroyed the Gbagbo
government's modest air force on the ground, an action heartily endorsed by
the U.S.)
President Obiang Nguema also spoke about what is now the almost
three-week-long war waged by the U.S. and its NATO allies against Libya: "I
believe that the problems in Libya should be resolved in an internal fashion
and not through an intervention that could appear to resemble a humanitarian
intervention. We have already seen this in Iraq."
He added: “Each foreigner is susceptible to proposing erroneous solutions.
African problems cannot be resolved with a European, American or Asian
view.”
On the same day Russia called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations
Security Council on Ivory Coast and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned
that recently reinforced French troops and cohorts from the United Nations
Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (ONUCI) operate under a mandate that demands
strict neutrality and impartiality.
The following day Lavrov expressed concerns about the U.S. and other NATO
members arming anti-government insurgents in Libya, stating that such a
measure "would constitute interference in the civil war."
Comparable statements have been voiced around the world, from the Bolivarian
Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) in Latin America and the
Caribbean denouncing the Libyan war to the leader of the world's 1.3 billion
Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI, referring to the violence in Ivory Coast and
Libya as a defeat for humanity and issuing "a renewed and heartfelt appeal
to all parties to the [conflict] to initiate a process of peacemaking and
dialogue, and to avoid further bloodshed."
American and other Western leaders, however, only desire an end to the
violence in both African countries after the belligerents they support, with
arms and air and missile attacks, have scored a decisive victory over their
opponents.
On the same day that the chairman of the African Union and the Russian
foreign minister articulated the concerns cited above, President Barack
Obama demanded that "former President Gbagbo must stand down immediately,
and direct those who are fighting on his behalf to lay down their arms,"
while applauding the actions of French troops and military helicopters in
the capital.
Obama and his secretary of state Hillary Clinton have repeatedly delivered
ultimatums to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to abdicate - backed up by bombs
and cruise missiles - with Clinton responding to the latter's recent letter
to Obama calling for an end to NATO attacks on his country by stating: "Mr
Gaddafi knows what he must do....There needs to be a decision made about his
departure from power [and] his departure from Libya."
The recently appointed commander of U.S. Africa Command, General Carter Ham,
told the House Armed Services Committee on April 5: "This is a historic time
for us in Africa Command. We completed a complex, short-notice, operational
mission in Libya and have now transferred that mission to NATO.”
Since AFRICOM handed over command of the war against Libya to NATO on March
31 over 1,200 air missions have been flown over the country, including
several hundred bombings and missile strikes.
Two of only five African nations that have not entered into individual and
regional partnerships with the Pentagon through AFRICOM are the targets of
violent uprisings aimed at toppling their governments and installing client
regimes subservient to the U.S. and its NATO allies. Eritrea, Zimbabwe and a
truncated Sudan will be left. And will be next.
As Alassane Ouattara, former unelected prime minister under the late
president for life Félix Houphouët-Boigny and Washington, D.C.-based Deputy
Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, is poised to take
control of Ivory Coast with the assistance of the French military, his
country is being prepared to join its Gulf of Guinea neighbors in the U.S.-
and NATO-supported West African Standby Force and be incorporated into
AFRICOM operations in one of the world's most oil-rich and thus strategic
regions.
The USS Robert G. Bradley guided missile frigate began a nine-nation Africa
Partnership Station West mission on February 1 with a port visit to the
capital of Togo, two countries removed from Ivory Coast's eastern border on
the Gulf of Guinea. The Africa Partnership Station is an initiative of U.S.
Naval Forces Europe-Africa and works in conjunction with AFRICOM.
After Togo, the U.S. warship's itinerary has included and will include
visits to Cape Verde, Senegal, Gabon, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone,
Cameroon, Angola and Nigeria. Angola and Nigeria are Africa's largest oil
exporters. Gabon's sizeable oil exports are divided between Russia, the
U.S., China and former colonial master France. In 2005 American oil giants
ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil entered into an exploration and production
agreement with Sao Tome and Principe.
The U.S. frigate is part of Africa Partnership Station 2011, operating off
the coasts of West, Southern and East Africa with five U.S. ships and three
from European NATO nations.
While visiting Cameroon late last month, USS Robert G. Bradley led the
Obangame Express exercise with vessels from France, Spain, Belgium,
Cameroon, Gabon and Nigeria.
>From March 3-19 the U.S. Marine Corps conducted a joint Africa Partnership
Station exercise with the Ghana Armed Forces at the Jungle Warfare School in
the Gulf of Guinea nation.
In February USS Stephen W. Groves, an Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided
missile warship like USS Robert G. Bradley, participated in a joint exercise
off South Africa with that country's submarine SAS Charlotte Maxeke in
training that U.S. Africa Command described as "part of the U.S. Navy's
initiative to strengthen military partnership nations throughout the
continent of Africa."
The ship next visited Tanzania, where it trained military personnel from
Djibouti, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique and the host country in the first of
several phases of the Africa Partnership Station East mission that has now
taken it to Mauritius and will later bring it to Kenya and Seychelles and
after that to Cape Verde and Senegal in West Africa.
Since the Africa Partnership Station initiative was launched in 2007, U.S.
warships assigned to it have visited almost every African coastal and island
nation except for those bordering the Mediterranean Sea. The exceptions have
been Ivory Coast, Sudan and Eritrea as well as Libya in the north.
In February AFRICOM conducted the 19-day Operation Flintlock 2011 special
forces exercise in Senegal with the participation of NATO allies France,
Germany, Spain, Canada and the Netherlands and Sahel nations Burkina Faso,
Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria and Senegal. (Last year's Flintlock included
the above African states and Algeria and Tunisia.) Burkina Faso borders
northeastern Ivory Coast.
The AFRICOM website wrote this of the exercise:
"Conducted by Special Operations Command Africa, Flintlock is a joint
multinational exercise to improve information sharing at the operational and
tactical levels across the Saharan region while fostering increased
collaboration and coordination. It's focused on military interoperability
and capacity-building for U.S., North American and European Partner Nations,
and select units in Northern and Western Africa."
Note how African participants are listed after those of the U.S. and its
European and Canadian NATO allies.
Late this January the main planning conference for Africa Endeavor 2011 was
held in Mali. Modeled after U.S. European Command's Combined Endeavor, the
largest military communications and information systems exercise in the
world, this year's annual Africa Endeavor multinational exercise will be
held in June in the same country.
According to AFRICOM, January's planning conference "brought together more
than 180 participants from 41 African, European and North American nations
and observers from [the] Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS),
Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the Eastern African
Standby Force and NATO to plan interoperability testing of communications
and information systems of participating nations," with the "largest number
of participating countries to date in the Africa Endeavor series" in the
words of Brigadier General Roberts Ferrell, head of AFRICOM's Command,
Control, Communications and Computers Systems Directorate.
Last year's Africa Endeavor included, in addition to U.S. and other NATO
nations' military personnel, participants from Algeria, Benin, Botswana,
Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, the Republic of Congo
(Brazzaville), Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Gambia, Kenya,
Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia,
Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Seychelles,
Southern Sudan (a year before its independence referendum), Swaziland,
Tanzania, Togo, Uganda and Zambia.
Note the absence of Ivory Coast, Libya, Sudan, Eritrea and Zimbabwe.
Only 30 months after becoming an independent command, AFRICOM has
consolidated military-to-military relations with 50 African nations,
including non-African Union member Morocco and the world's newest state,
South Sudan. Changes in government in Ivory Coast and Libya would add two
more countries to that column.
And as AFRICOM handed command of the current war against Libya to NATO on
March 31, so, if recent comments by African Union Commissioner for Peace and
Security Ramtane Lamamra are to be given credence, AFRICOM is preparing to
share its 50 new African assets with NATO. [1]
Just as the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference divided the African continent into
spheres of influence between the major European powers and the U.S., with
Ivory Coast belonging to France and Libya later taken by Italy, so now the
U.S. and all the major former European colonial masters, who are now fellow
NATO member states - France, Britain, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Germany,
Italy and Turkey - are again planning to establish dominance over what has
become the world's second most populous continent.
1. Africa: Global NATO Seeks To Recruit 50 New Military Partners
Stop NATO, February 20, 2011
<http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/africa-global-nato-seeks-to-recr
uit-50-new-military-partners/>
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/africa-global-nato-seeks-to-recru
it-50-new-military-partners/
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