Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Building the Movement to Shut Down AFRICOM
Tunde Ozasua
29 Sep 2021
Building the Movement to Shut Down AFRICOM
Building the Movement to Shut Down AFRICOM

October 2021 is the 13th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Africa Command, AFRICOM. The Black Alliance for Peace is launching an international month of action with an October 1 webinar and other events to amplify the Shut Down AFRICOM campaign.

On the 13th anniversary of AFRICOM’s founding, the Black Alliance for Peace's Africa Team and the U.S. Out of Africa Network are organizing a month of action on AFRICOM to raise the public's awareness about the use of western military power to impose western control of African land, resources, and labor on behalf of the world’s corporate and financial elite, as well as the effort to build a popular movement for demilitarization and anti-imperialism on the African continent.

In 2008, the establishment of the U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, one of the eleven U.S. global command structures, began the new scramble for Africa, an effort by the United States to practice full spectrum dominance over the entire continent. Most governments on the African continent have corrupted leadership that is in alignment with the U.S. and western powers. These misleaders have allowed the U.S. to station their troops and bases in their countries and have relinquished their sovereignty to the West and the U.S. settler colonial empire, whose goal is to prevent true independent forces from emerging and to establish hegemony over the entire continent.

AFRICOM’s operations in Africa over the last decade, including hundreds of drone strikes, billions of dollars in “aid” and “development” projects, and countless massive military exercises, correlate with a 500% spike in incidents of violence attributed to Islamist terrorist organizations. Part of AFRICOM’s stated mission is to “promote regional security, stability, and prosperity.” But its very nature precludes the development of any of these conditions and really brings about destabilization and the furthering of U.S. interests on the continent.

As President Biden and other U.S. officials make the nonsensical claim that the U.S. is not engaged in war after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, AFRICOM continues to militarily occupy Africa, with thousands of U.S. troops now stationed in some 30 African countries with dozens of U.S. bases across the continent, while it carries out bombings in places like Somalia. U.S. Special Forces roam the Sahel, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic. Sanctions on Zimbabwe, Eritrea, and Ethiopia function as an economic form of U.S. war on African people.

 The U.S. empire does not only use direct forms of war. AFRICOM also functions as an infiltration-in-force to reinforce relationships that the U.S. Africa Command has been cultivating with African militaries. Through these relationships, the U.S. and other western powers use African militaries as proxies to fight wars on their behalf.

The continued drone strikes in Somalia, the western-led militarization in the Congo and Mozambique, the recent coups d'état in Guinea, Niger, and Mali, and the massive military exercises that AFRICOM has organized with the participation of tens of African states, demonstrate that western neo-colonial powers like the U.S. and France are intensifying war on African people and their military stranglehold on the African continent in response to competition from China, Russia, and others in the new scramble for Africa.

The U.S. recently passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2022 that included billions for AFRICOM and the continuation of the Department of Defense 1033 program that transfers millions of dollars worth of military equipment to police forces across the country. Resources that are being squandered to support imperialist adventures must be seized by the people and used to address the human rights needs of African/Black people and other oppressed and exploited peoples for housing, healthcare, education, food and clean water, instead of on war on behalf of the capitalist dictatorship.

A mass movement must be forged to expose AFRICOM and its real purpose and make it inseparable with the concerns we have over the militarization of police in our communities in the United States. In the U.S. Out of Africa!: Shut Down AFRICOM campaign, we are clear that the brutality, violence and systematic degradation of Black life in the colonized zones of the United States against Black people by the domestic police is replicated in Africa by the U.S. global police represented by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.

Please join us for the launch of the international month of action by attending a webinar on October 1st, titled “AFRICOM at 13: Building the Popular Movement for Demilitarization and Anti-Imperialism in Africa.” Speakers from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, and the African diaspora will discuss AFRICOM and what we can do to expel imperialist forces from the continent. Following the webinar, events will take place throughout October organized by various organizations on the African continent, in the U.S., and around the world to demand an end to the U.S. and western invasion and occupation of Africa.

BAP makes the following demands in the U.S. Out of Africa!: Shut Down AFRICOM campaign:

-The complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Africa,

-The demilitarization of the African continent,

-The closure of U.S. bases throughout the world, and

-That the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) oppose U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and conduct hearings on AFRICOM’s impact on the African continent, with the full participation of members of U.S. and African civil society.

 

Tunde Osazua is a member of the Black Alliance for Peace’s Africa Team and the coordinator of the U.S. Out of Africa Network.

AFRICOM
Shut Down AFRICOM
Black Alliance For Peace

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

The Black Alliance for Peace Calls on Latin American and Caribbean Nations to Boycott the Summit of the Americas
Black Alliance For Peace
The Black Alliance for Peace Calls on Latin American and Caribbean Nations to Boycott the Summit of the Americas
18 May 2022
The failure of the U.S.
The Sun Never Sets: Why Is AFRICOM Expanding in Zambia?
Jeremy Kuzmarov
The Sun Never Sets: Why Is AFRICOM Expanding in Zambia?
17 May 2022
Why Is AFRICOM Expanding in Zambia? Because of Zambia’s Copper and to Thwart the Chinese.
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #39
US Out of Africa Network
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #39
19 April 2022
The latest AFRICOM Watch Bulletin provides analysis of coups in
U.S. Airstrike Killed 11 Libyan Civilians and Allies, Human Rights Groups Say
Nick Turse
U.S. Airstrike Killed 11 Libyan Civilians and Allies, Human Rights Groups Say
05 April 2022
A criminal complaint accuses a former commander at a U.S. airbase in Sicily of murder. But U.S.
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #38
Black Alliance For Peace
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #38
23 March 2022
Black Alliance for Peace reports on its US Out of Africa: Shut Down AFRICOM campaign in the
For African and Colonized Peoples, to Understand Ukraine: De-center Europe and Focus on Imperialism
Black Alliance For Peace
For African and Colonized Peoples, to Understand Ukraine: De-center Europe and Focus on Imperialism
02 March 2022
The Black Alliance for Peace emphatically declares that the conflict in the Ukraine emerges from the ceaseless and single-minded drive of the U
NATO and Africa: A Relationship of Colonial Violence and Structural White Supremacy
Djibo Sobukwe
NATO and Africa: A Relationship of Colonial Violence and Structural White Supremacy
23 February 2022
NATO is the means of continuing colonial aggressions against African countries.
The Annual Resurrection of a Fake Dr. King and Re-entombment of the Black Liberation Movement
Black Alliance For Peace
The Annual Resurrection of a Fake Dr. King and Re-entombment of the Black Liberation Movement
19 January 2022
Black Alliance for Peace reminds us that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
MLK Day at Camp Lemonnier, US Army
T.J. Coles
Using and Abusing Djibouti: How the US Transformed a Tiny African state Into a Hub of Imperial Aggression
04 January 2022
From Djibouti, the US trains proxies and bombs strategically-important countries in the name of democracy and counterterrorism.
Black Alliance for Peace Condemns Trial of Black Activist Dedan Waciuri as a Violation of Human Rights
Black Alliance For Peace
Black Alliance for Peace Condemns Trial of Black Activist Dedan Waciuri as a Violation of Human Rights
07 December 2021
The state targets Black activists who exercise their right to speak and assemble freely.

More Stories


  • Liberals Drive State Censorship
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Liberals Drive State Censorship
    18 May 2022
    Liberals are the force behind censorship efforts. They defend the state and seek to silence anyone who questions its narratives.
  • The New White Supremacist Consensus Part Two: Shootings in Buffalo Solidify the Cons
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    The New White Supremacist Consensus Part Two: Shootings in Buffalo Solidify the Consensus
    18 May 2022
    The latest mass shooter in Buffalo, New York was clearly a racist, and identified with Ukrainian and other neo-Nazis. But white supremacy has a stronger hold on European and U.S. society than is…
  • REFLECTION: Choosing Ourselves: Black Women and Abortion, Beverly Smith, 1989
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    REFLECTION: Choosing Ourselves: Black Women and Abortion, Beverly Smith, 1989
    18 May 2022
    A 1989 talk by Black feminist Beverly Smith reminds us that for Black women, the right to abortion can be a woman’s right to life.
  • Notes from Ethiopia, Part 4: The TPLF Destruction of Afar
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Notes from Ethiopia, Part 4: The TPLF Destruction of Afar
    18 May 2022
    Contributing Editor Ann Garrison continues her reporting from the Horn of Africa. She is once again in Ethiopia.
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Camera and Pen
    18 May 2022
                                                                                                  Camera and Pen  
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us