DRC and Iraq wars linked - sundaymail
AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona P. Mahoso
Two events of the last two weeks have raised the question whether African
leaders as a group really understand the new Anglo-American unilateralism
demonstrated by the war against Iraq.
The first event was the publication by the United States of those African
countries which have endorsed the US-UK war of aggression against Iraq,
despite the fact that these same countries were present in Addis Ababa and
Kuala Lumpur, when the African Union and the Non-Aligned Movement
respectively denounced US-UK aggression against Iraq.
These countries � Mozambique, Angola, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda and
Uganda � did not speak out against the unanimous positions of the AU and
NAM at the respective meetings. They simply went back home and instructed
their UN representatives to endorse the US-UK aggression against Iraq.
The second event is the fanfare over the signing of the DRC peace accord in
Sun City, South Africa, where the countries which refused to contribute
troops to the defence of the Congolese people against proxies of the "New
Reich" in the Great Lakes region are nevertheless taking front positions in
negotiating and celebrating the resultant peace settlement. In Shona these
countries are called "vana muchekedzafa".
They want to be associated with the success of a regional defensive
intervention now which they expected to fail when the call came to save the
Congo from a Rwanda-like holocaust.
The question whether or not Africa understands the Anglo-American "New
Reich" arises because an astute African leader would not celebrate the
successful defence of the DRC while at the same time endorsing the US-UK
aggression against Iraq, because the two wars are linked.
The US and the UK supported the aggression against the DRC and the US
and the UK are recolonising Iraq.
The recolonising of Iraq because it is rich in petroleum means that we have not
yet seen the end of the imperialist struggle to recolonise the DRC for its
strategic minerals.
The peace accord is only a short break; and the African countries supporting
the US-UK aggression against Iraq may be used both to divide the African
Union and to endorse US-UK efforts to recolonise Africa.
The means will be different but the objectives will be the same in Africa as in
the Persian Gulf. That is why Anglo-American interests call Central and
Southern Africa "the Persian Gulf of minerals".
One way to illustrate the need for African leaders to read the world context of
Iraq properly is to step back to the 1930s at the time when the League of
Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations, was about to collapse.
l Hitler was setting up what came to be known as the Third Reich, the Nazi
regime. He had won an election to become Chancellor of Germany, but he was
contemptuous of democracy and elections. The fact that he came to power
through elections gave him credibility in the eyes of unsuspecting leaders
around the world.
l Hitler has also announced his programme for world domination through a
book called Mein Kampf. In that book and in another unpublished manuscript,
it was clear that Hitler�s faction and the people advising him saw themselves
as extremist outsiders to power, who had to struggle against old liberal
insiders whom they saw as having failed to propel Germany towards a new
imperial destiny.
l If we now glance at the United States and Britain, we see some similarities.
The Plan for a New American Century (1977) and a book called The New Right:
We Are Ready to Lead (1980) are the modern US announcements of a new
vision for world domination. The two American documents were
supplemented by the first ever visit of the entire US Senate Foreign Relations
Committee in January 2000, to the UN Security Council, where the then
chairman of the committee, Senator Jesse Helms, made an unprecedented
speech which also stood out as his Mein Kampf against the world.
In Britain the same phenomenon is presented not as the New Right (New
Reich) but as New Labour and its biggest proponent is Robert Cooper.
l In the US, the faction around George W. Bush also see themselves as
extremist outsiders coming from the New Right and dislodging old liberals
from power who are mostly from the Eastern US.
The new hawks are, however, clever enough to adopt a president with an old
establishment name, George W. Bush, son of a former president and son of a
former central intelligence director. But they see their faction as a once
marginalised force in US politics, a force representing the new wealth of the
empire based on oil, military hardware, construction industries and high-tech
communications.
l The rise of the New Right in the 1980s and 1990s in the US is similar to the
rise of the Third Reich in terms of context as well: a long-running global
economic crisis forcing nations to be preoccupied with domestic economic
and social upheavals at the expense of the global climate of international
relations. This upheaval has even convinced some that the UN should be
reduced to a welfare organisation.
But there was much more than inward looking in the 1930s; one historian on
the period says the approaches of most political leaders to the threat of
Fascism and Nazism and to Hitler in particular "were characterised many
leaders of the South and East today. The extent to which these leaders are still
regurgitating neoliberal slogans from London and Washington against a
starkly contrary reality is shocking.
We hear of good governance, transparency, accountability, peer review,
dialogue, governments of national unity, democracy, human rights and the
rule of law as values which have been imported from Europe and America,
values whose adoption and supervision Europe and America have the right to
monitor on a daily basis through their ambassadors and NGOs. But Europe
and America do not observe the same values in Afghanistan, Iraq or
Yugoslavia.
l The rise of Hitler�s Third Reich was also characterised by an extraordinary
amount of lying through the media and on a global scale. The same historian
says " . . . in pursuing his goals Hitler has never allowed himself to be deterred
by verbal professions to others." In other words, words and pledges were
only means to an end, not promises to be honoured and kept.
Interestingly, Paul Krugman of the New York Times on 25 February also
characterised George Bush�s New Right administration as one which makes
promises and pledges as fast as it breaks them. Among those who feel
betrayed by the US-UK alliance are:
l All the countries who endorsed the UN Security Council Resolution against
terrorism which was then abused in the war against Afghanistan
l The President of Mexico, who was asked to support Bush�s election in
exchange for having Mexicans working in the US illegally given an amnesty
and naturalised.
l Those who urged Iraq to disarm itself in the belief that the US and UK were
really concerned about disarmament, when in fact the US and UK wanted Iraq
disarmed so that they could commit genocide against its people with minimum
resistance.
l Even more striking is the fact that Hitler�s Third Reich emerged from the
outset with a list of nations it wanted to invade and destroy. Adolph Hitler in
June 1933 said "I will grind France to powder," and indeed this was done a few
years down the road.
Likewise, George W Bush and his New Right team emerged from the outset
with a hit list of nations which had to be destroyed and remoulded through
"regime change." These included Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Zimbabwe,
Cuba and others.
l While France, Poland, Belgium and Czechoslovakia were among Hitler�s
primary targets, one of the first to be invaded as a rehearsal ground was Spain
in 1936-1937.
Hitler encouraged Italian Fascist dictator Mussolini to attack Ethiopia and
force the League of Nations to dwell on that issue while he and Mussolini
were in fact more interested in Spain.
In other words, the Italian attack on Ethiopia in 1936 was used to divert
attention from Spain and other targets, just as Afghanistan was also used to
divert attention from Iraq as the prime target. The American documents in 1997
and 2000 mentioned Iraq and other countries but it was Afghanistan which
was attacked first, just as France was announced as a target in 1933 but Spain
was attached first, in 1936-37.
Hitler and Mussolini intervened in Spain to create a "regime change" which
later installed the fascist dictator Francisco Franco and overthrew a left-wing
Republican government.
They accused the Republicans of being communists. The so-called
communists had popular support around the world and people demonstrated
in their support and against Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.
But the major powers in the League of Nations were so pre-occupied with
other problems that the only support the legitimate Republican government
received from the world were volunteers.
The same thing is happening in Iraq. The world seems so distracted and
confused that only volunteers so far are going to Baghdad. Yet what is
needed is a counter force against the most bloated and lethal military machine
in world history.
Hitler, Mussolini and Franco also used ethnic chauvinism to divide Spain. The
Basques of Northern Spain were treated the way the Kurds of Northern Iraq
are treated and that division helped to weaken the democratic forces of the
Spanish Republic. Bush and Blair are using the same tactics in Iraq, turning
the Sunni Moslems against Shii�te Moslems and the Kurds against the rest.
But the main purpose of the joint German-Italian invasion of Spain was to
rehearse the plan for world conquest. Hitler said he sent his air force to Spain
in order to present "a lesson to our enemies," so that the enemies could see
German�s capabilities demonstrated.
Herman G�ering called the intervention "an opportunity to try my young air
force and for [military] personnel to gather [practical] experience.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are serving the same purpose today.
As Sarudzai Kamba of Harare wrote last week in response to the ZBC
programme on the US-UK invasion of Iraq:
"If Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq are recent additions to a trail of chaos
that the Americans and the British have unleashed over the period, the
question as to who will be next must not be allowed to arise. The record
speaks for itself. Everybody is the next target.
Everybody should therefore be asking what to do with the Americans and the
British."
In this regard, the first step Pan-Africanists would expect from African leaders
is a clear condemnation of the barbarism we are witnessing in Iraq.
The second step would be a wake-up call to the people of Africa, showing that
African leaders understand that the Anglo-American unipolar world is not
about democracy, human rights, transparency, good governance and rule of
law. Rather it is a world of greed, lies and genocide.
Mitayo Potosi/Potojsi
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