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

Africa: Imperialism’s High Mark of Conquest in the 21st Century
10 Apr 2013
🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

The US-NATO military curtain has fallen the length and breadth of Africa. “Zimbabwe and tiny Eritrea are among the few nations on the African continent that have not yet been absorbed into the AFRICOM matrix.”

 

Africa: Imperialism’s High Mark of Conquest in the 21st Century

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

“Imperialism with a Black face has been fantastically successful, in Africa.”

At present, nothing stands in the way of the militarization and occupation of Africa by the United States and its junior imperialist partners. Every global and multinational organization of any consequence on the continent has been suborned to the service of the neocolonial military project. AFRICOM, the United States Military Command in Africa, has become the headquarters of recolonization, augmented by the militaries of NATO and legitimized by the African Union, itself, and the global credentials of the United Nations.

It is vital to note this great feat of imperialism and international white supremacy reached its zenith during first term of the Obama administration, which roughly coincides with the birth of AFRICOM, in 2008. Imperialism with a Black face has been fantastically successful, in Africa. In fact, Africa is U.S imperialism’s only generalized success story of the 21st century, to date.

Bizarrely costumed in the garb of “human rights” interveners, the greatest genociders and enslavers in human history – Europe and its superpower offspring, the United States – have nearly completed their reconquest of the African continent. Only a few patches of land are free of their military entanglements and treaties – notably, Zimbabwe and tiny Eritrea, among the few nations on the African continent that have not yet been absorbed into the AFRICOM matrix.

The United Nations and the African Union have become mere annexes of the AFRICOM military complex, under the fictitious banner of human rights.

“Only a few patches of land are free of their military entanglements and treaties.”

The African Union definitively sold itself to the Devil in Somalia, where an AU-accredited force of almost 20,000 troops fights a U.S. and European Union-armed and -financed war to subjugate the Somali nation. The greatest crime of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is now in the process of being sanitized, globalized, and Pan-Africanized in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since 1996, under Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, the United States has armed and financed the de facto annexation and bloody depopulation of the mineral rich eastern Congo. U.S. client states Uganda and Rwanda turned the eastern provinces of Congo into a vast killing field that has, so far, claimed the lives of 6 million people – the greatest holocaust since World War Two. All the while, successive U.S. administrations shielded their Ugandan and Rwandan hirelings from international censure – even as nearly 20,000 United Nations troops were stationed in the killing fields.

But eventually, Rwanda and Uganda’s role in the carnage could no longer be hidden. Now the United States – the superpower overlord of the Congolese genocide – drapes itself in the clothing of humanitarian savior of the Congo. It has pushed through the United Nations Security Council the creation of a new, 3,000-man force to aggressively intervene in Congo. Like the United Nations-African Union force in Somalia, the UN Congo “intervention brigade” will not move an inch without U.S. arms, training, and supervision. The U.S., which has choreographed the Congolese genocide for the past 17 years, will now pose as the great peacemaker and life-giver, through the offices of the United Nations and participating African countries. And the bought and paid for governments of the continent will bow, and applaud, and then bow again.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

 



Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20130410_gf_USCongoForce.mp3

More Stories


  • Nicholas Mwangi
    A continental call from Africa: standing with Cuba against imperialist aggression
    08 Apr 2026
    With the economic strangulation of Cuba by the United States, African progressive organizations and movements are calling for broader continental solidarity.
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Trump and U.S. Hubris Undid the Plan for Iran's Destruction
    08 Apr 2026
    The U.S. has been temporarily rattled in its regime change effort against Iran. Iranian resistance, hubris on the part of the U.S., and Donald Trump’s personal instability combined to undo a twisted…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist , ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    The Twilight of Western White Power Will Usher in the Dawn of a New Global Civilization Without Systemic Degradation and Dehumanization
    08 Apr 2026
    A conversation focusing on U.S. actions against Iran explains why the imperialist drive for domination will actually lead to a superpower becoming much less powerful.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: Is the US Anti-Caribbean? How to overcome it then, Tim Hector, 1997
    08 Apr 2026
    “...it is like a knee-jerk reaction in the U.S – this consistent, insistent and persistent anti-Caribbean policy in the U.S. from 1776 to the present.”
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Iran’s Nuclear Rights
    08 Apr 2026
    Most of the world would be at greater ease if Iran had a nuclear bomb.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us