------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 26, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
AS IMPERIALISTS RE-CARVE WORLD MARKETS: PENTAGON QUIETLY SENDS TROOPS TO AFRICA
By Monica Moorehead
The Bush administration continues to threaten the globe with its dangerous perspective of endless war. One of its lesser known yet important strategic targets is Africa, the most underdeveloped continent.
George W. Bush is scheming with his close ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to overthrow the legitimate government of Robert Mugabe in the southern African country of Zimbabwe. But this is just one piece in the U.S. government's overall plan to transform huge sections of Africa into a gigantic U.S. military base. Washington is carrying out a general campaign of recolonization in order for the U.S. ruling class to overtake other international corporate competitors for control of the world's capitalist markets, which are wracked with a deepening crisis.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, the U.S. has stepped up its military presence in Africa in the name of fighting terrorism.
It was reported on June 17 that the USS Kearsarge, with 1,800 Marines, 1,200 sailors and attack helicopters, has been diverted from Iraq to sail to Liberia.
At least 1,500 U.S. troops are stationed in the small African country of Djibouti, located on the Horn of Africa on the Red Sea. This region is a gateway to the oil-rich Middle East, where the U.S. is presently focused on the colonial occupation of Iraq and the Palestinian people are continuing their heroic resistance against the U.S.-backed Zionist state of Israel.
NATO's Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, Gen. James Jones, spoke at a Defense Writers Group breakfast last month in Washington, D.C. The DWG organizes journalists who cover Pentagon developments. Jones emphasized that the future of NATO, a post-World War II anti-communist military alliance made up of the U.S., Canada and capitalist Europe, could rest on establishing "forward operating locations."
The objective of these "locations" will be to carry out rapid training and deployments in times of "crisis." By this October, NATO plans to debut prototype quick reaction forces comprised of ground, sea and air forces numbering between 2,000 and 3,000 troops.
Jones stated, "The carrier battle groups of the future and the expeditionary strike groups of the future may not spend six months in the Mediterreanean Sea but I'll bet they'll spend half the time down the West Coast of Africa." (allAfrica.com, May 2, 2003)
At the present time, the USS Mount Whitney is stationed in the Red Sea. It is a highly sophiscated ship that uses helicopters and electronics to counter so-called terrorist groups within the area covering Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Kenya, along with Djibouti.
The Horn of Africa is not the only African region the Pentagon is interested in. According to an article entitled, "Pentagon Moving Swiftly to Become 'Globocop'," published on the June 11 internet edition of Ghana News, the U.S. also plans to use the West African country of Ghana as a military base, initially sending 1,000 troops. The article states that while U.S. military think tanks are planning to scale back their military presence in Germany, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, they are setting their sights on establishing semi-permanent, "forward" bases in Algeria, Morocco and perhaps Tunisia in northern Africa.
The Pentagon is also planning to establish smaller facilities in Senegal, Mali and Ghana in order to further dominate the oil-rich West African countries, especially Nigeria.
Just recently, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz met with military representatives from the East Asia region about U.S. global strategy. This is the same Wolfowitz who originally drafted the infamous "Defense Planning Guidance" doctrine in 1992, one year following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp. The DPG, which was first leaked by the New York Times, outlined the U.S. military strategists' plans to become the pre-eminent world police force and warned other imperialist allies, especially in Europe, not to dare challenge U.S. world hegemony.
Even before the so-called war on terrorism, the DPG was declaring that the U.S. military would become a "constant fixture" in the New World Order brought about by the demise of the Soviet Union. The Pentagon uses phrases like "the arc of instability" to describe underdeveloped countries in Africa, the Caribbean Basin, South and Central Asia. In their view, these countries are too weak to resist the U.S. turning them into military enclaves.
The brass use racist codewords to justify their military build-up in Africa and elsewhere. Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski, chief of the Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation, spoke last month at a meeting of the Heritage Foundation. "Disconnectedness is one of the great danger signs around the world," he said. He went on to talk about "gap" regions characterized by "politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and--most important--the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of terrorists."
Thomas Barnett, a representative of the Naval War College, wrote in the March edition of Esquire magazine, "If we map out U.S. military responses since the end of the Cold War, we find an overwhelming concentration of activity in the regions of the world that are excluded from globalisation's growing Core--namely the Caribbean Rim, virtually all of Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and much of Southeast Asia."
The U.S. is not the only imperialist power in Africa. Thousands of French troops are occupying Ivory Coast, a former French colony, wearing the uniform of the United Nations. They could not have gotten UN cover for this mission without the blessing of the U.S. Hundreds of French troops have also poured into war-torn Congo, considered to be the most mineral-rich country in Africa and one of the poorest worldwide. Along with British and German troops, they are part of a so-called peacekeeping team sanctioned by the UN and the European Union.
The British also have a military base near Mount Kenya. Hundreds of women, mainly from the Masai nation, have registered formal complaints to the British government against troops who raped them in the 1980s and 1990s. (The Observer, Oct. 20, 2002) These women and their lawyers are demanding compensation for these violent assaults. Where is the outcry in the big business media over these heinous crimes against African women?
The legacy of centuries-old super-exploitation and unspeakable atrocities in Africa by the imperialists is still being carried out today under the guise of humanitarianism. A new wave of anti- imperialist, organized fightback by the African masses is on the horizon. Our sisters and brothers will be counting on political solidarity from the multinational working class in the imperialist countries, who face deepening cutbacks in social programs and general decline in living standards at home.
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