EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Into Darkest Africa
What’s the answer? Simple.
A new little war in Africa.
Having finished off former ally Muammar Gadaffi, the US Pentagon, CIA, and the new US Africa Command are now focusing on East Africa.
In recent weeks, the long simmering conflict in the Horn of Africa burst into flames as the US and France intensified military operations against Somalia’s rag-tag nationalist/Islamist militia, Shebab.
Western politicians and media warn Shebab is a dire international threat that must be stamped out, though most could not find Somalia on a world map.
Though CIA chief Leon Panetta recently admitted only 25-50 al-Qaida members were active in Afghanistan, it seems new al-Qaida threats are popping up all over Africa and the Mideast.
Just in time for Halloween, the ghost of Osama bin Laden is haunting us.
The US will send 100 special hunter-killer troops to Uganda, an undemocratic US ally. This new US force will also operate in Congo (ex-Zaire), Central African Republic, Kenya, and South Sudan – whose independence from Sudan was recently engineered by Washington.
The ostensible reason America’s new involvement in darkest Africa is a deeply obscure bunch of Ugandan bush rebels, the Lord’s Resistance Army, that has been kidnapping villagers and stealing chickens for decades.
At the same time, Washington is bankrolling a Kenyan invasion of southern Somalia, and France is providing naval support and arms. Kenya says it is reacting to attacks from Somalia by Shebab. But the real attackers were more likely traditional local Somali bandits known as “shiftas.”
CIA teams, US-financed mercenaries, Predator drones and Ethiopian forces are currently attacking Shebab.
All this should have been unnecessary. In 2005, a moderate Muslim movement, the Islamic Courts Union, had established control over most of chaotic southern and central Somalia. This was its first stable government since 1991.
But the Bush administration, still reeling from 9/11, went ballistic over the name “Islamic” and ordered the Courts Union overthrown. In early 2006, Washington financed Ethiopia, a close US ally, to invade Somalia. The Courts Union government was duly ousted, but the Ethiopians, ancient blood foes of the Somalis, had to eventually withdraw, leaving more chaos in their wake.
Enter Shebab, an Islamic youth organization dedicated to liberating Somalia from foreign control. Its fiery leaders took 19th Century Somali resistance to British colonialism as their model, and imposed Sharia law.
Meanwhile, northern Somalia went its own way in the form of autonomous Puntland and Somaliland, from which piracy flourishes.
The US set up a figurehead regime in Mogadishu, the grandly titled but powerless and derided “Transitional Federal Government,” which was sustained by 9,000 US financed Ugandan mercenaries called the “African Union Peace Force,” backed by Ethiopian forces on the border. US drones, fighter aircraft and special forces based in Djibouti now routinely attack Somali targets as well as ones in Yemen.
In the midst of this bloody confusion, famine and drought are ravaging the Horn of Africa, producing millions of desperate refugees. Shebab is accused of blocking food aid. But Shebeb sees the UN and other aid groups as “soft power” tools of the western powers.
Doesn’t Washington have enough on its hands without sending troops to Uganda and Somalia, or South Sudan?
The US is moving into southern Africa for two main reasons. First, to secure South Sudan’s important oil deposits and possible energy finds in Uganda. Second, to block the spread of further Chinese economic influence in the region. France’s neoconservative government is greatly alarmed by China’s involvement in its African sphere of influence.
However, there are manifest dangers for the US. Washington may get sucked into a complex, turbulent region in which it has no real strategic interests other than the lust for energy and a knee-jerk reaction to anything Islamic.
The White House is supposed to be cutting expenses at a time when budgets are out of control and 44 million Americans subsist on food stamps.
Let Washington’s squabbling politicians deal with budget headaches says the mighty US national security establishment. We’re in charge. Onward to Kampala and Juba!
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
27 Comments so far
Show All"Dark"est Africa often refers to the skin color of people.
Somalia has amazingly little vegetation and is quite bright.
Dark as in unknown is an anachronism with cell phones. If you want to know anything, call people up and ask them. Journalism students should try this sometime. You'll get the story while high-paid reporters are "embedded" and getting fed baby food all day.
This seems to be the headline-writer's issue. Oh wait, Eric used it in the story too. Please don't define countries by skin color.
Paul, in this context, Margolis is reworking a colonial term in the full knowlege that it no longer applies ... or in the current context of US empirialism, does it? It is a literary allusion to that period in history when colonial conquest by Europeans was at its peak and Africa was the "Dark Continent," unexplored and mysterious. (Eurocentric, I know.) One of the most well known novels out of this period situated in Africa is Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." Do I think this novel is racist? Yes. Do I think the term as used in this article has anything to do with skin colour or race? No.
I was horribly in rebellion against certain teachers in high school. I somehow knew that when they raged over and over against the "dirty lazy hippies" that opposed the war in Vietnam, that what they said could not possibly be right. No, I had never met a hippie before, but my big sister had some folk and rock albums. I also concluded that every book they forced me to read was probably not worth reading. I read science fiction instead. Heart of Darkness was one of those great novels that I skipped.
The US is the most predatory country ever. Why is it ok for the US to invade countries that are no threat to us, but if even 1 person comes to the US to do the same thing, they are terrorist?
We all know the answer.
the US military is the corporations whore, and Obama is the current bitch for the elites.
Mr Margolis' analysis here is Good- But- It leaves out one important point- The NeoCon 7 Muslim country {s}Hit List as confirmed by ex-NATO Gen Wesley Clark- including: Iraq & Libya [check them off], Iran & Syria [likely next on the List], Sudan [which has been split in Two by US & Western skull-duggery w S.Sudan having most of Sudan's Oil - which China & Russia will now have limited access to {Ditto Libya} as the US, EU & Israel will have increased access to], & last but not least Somalia. Everything that has been happening in these countries for at-least the past decade MUST take this into account for a Complete analysis! Other-wise one might be subject to Dis-info & mis-analysis!
Thus Bush took down the relatively moderate Islamic Gov't in Somalia via the Ethiopians [which allowed the rise of the Shebab], most likely because the NeoCons & Neo-Liberals don't want a stable & effective Gov't in Somalia! So the US [under the first Black Pres & supposed son of an African] is gearing up to attack Somalia's Muslim Fighters [because they're allegedly Al-Qaeda Affiliated] while at the same time backing AL-CIAeda Affiliated Rebels in Libya - HUH??!!
Good points, Nixakliel. Nice connecting of the dots.
I fully concur, alas.
- A new little war in Africa.-
No. This is wrong in 2 ways.
This is the same war that I have posted about 2 zillion times. Moreover, holding this opinion that every new battlefield is a new separate war is strategically stupid. Eventually we will be asked to protest against 195 separate wars against the same enemy.
I suggest yet again that we protest against 1 war.
The war to prevent future terrorism by military means, per Public Law 107-40 which goes unnoticed and unmentioned yet again, even though it is the cause of our misery.
- new al-Qaida threats -
I have posted repeatedly that anywhere someone finds/creates/imagines al-Qaeda or its affiliates to be, that's where the US military will surge. Here it is happening, once again, just as I predicted (which a good scientist attempts to do, in order to make valid his conclusion. And I am a political scientist. Am I a good one, since my predictions come true?)
- The US is moving into southern Africa for two main reasons. First, to secure South Sudan’s important oil deposits and possible energy finds in Uganda...(#2 is China). -
I posted the other day about resources (oil and coltan) and how the MIC uses the insane and DAFT war as excuse and constitutional/legal justification for surging military violence wherever there are yummy resources to steal.
btw, Uganda is not southern Africa. Mr. Author, can you at least get the geography correct?
- We have to take responsibility to do something to stop it. -
(from VisitingProfessor)
Yes! And I suggest that the best strategy is to unite against 1 target, 1 clear target that everyone can see. A law that needs to be changed.
1 target, not 195 separate targets.
This war is expanding, because potential future terrorists are everywhere and there are resources everywhere that the MIC wants to gobble up.
This war is 10 years old and expanding, because the correct strategy for ending it continues to be ignored.
End Public Law 107-40 and this insanity will end. Then, Obama will not have constitutional protection for his war-mongering and he could even be open to impeachment for doing so and you just know that Republicans will be all over the opportunity to impeach.
End the DAFT war.
I think the Lord's Resistance Army has been doing a little more than stealing chickens...characterizing it that way does not strengthen your argument for non-involvement.
Yeah, those LRA folks aren't really that bad. They just need a better PR firm to get out their message is all. Nothing more Freedom Fighters for the people.
Integration and free PR, sounds like a wini-win to me! Now if we could just convince them to desist with that pesky little issue of forced child soldiers. Me thinks, it's gonna take a bit of lipstick on the pig to convince Amnesty International to look the other way.......
Dark Europe and the West should be in the title as they created every bit of this problem. The coloinilaization of Africa is so easily documented that such as this is wrong as it can be. The text of the story is good but with a better titile we might not have being called on the carpet about racism and ethnocentrocism. Let's be real True enough our educational system and our media have brain washed us to think we have a God givern right to rule others without their consent, US and Western exceptionalism, but deep down we should see that this is a lie. We haven't been as unlucky as those in war mongering imperialist Prussia so far but we're getting there. We need to turn away from this and toward humanity, rule by the people, and civilization before it's too late. All "are created equal."
Obama has turned out to be one of the biggest imperialist warmongers in American history and it says a great deal about the stupidity of the supporters of the democratic party that they think Hillary Clinton and Obama are scoring great foreign policy victories when in fact they are making more enemies for the United States than even George Bush was doing.
The deal was that James Madison claimed all of North and South America as the country's private sphere of influence. Quite rarely, a European power would encroach on our country's personal sphere of exploitation, but the U.S. pretty much maintained hegemony for two centuries. For example, the U.S. invented the country of Panama in 1903.
Actually James Monroe didn't in the least say the USA should control Latin America. But the big stick policy got that silliness going all out.
World War1 USA, BRITAIN versus Germany
WW2 USA, BRITAIN versus Germany, Italy, japan
WW3 USA, BRITAIN versus Africa and Middle East & ( China?)
"Into Darkest Africa" is an obvious allusion to Conrad's novella "Heart of Darkness," and appropriate it is. Now we are the imperial power and the result is the same, "the horror."
Again looking for obscure faraway places, impoverished and relatively undefended, with promise of further access to loads of wealth, far enough from global scrutiny, where local forces can be blown to bits, by the corporate-military bureaucracy and their weapons of human destruction.