No Arms! No Transfers! No Military Aid! It's Time To Demilitarize US Policy in Africa
by BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon
It's
time to demilitarize US policy toward the African continent. Since
the end of the Cold War in 1989, Republican and Democratic
administrations alike have provided military aid, military training,
military assistance and arms transfers to at least 50 out of 53
African nations, and fomented no less than fourteen wars. Bipartisan
US policy until now has been about arming Africans, and keeping the
continent hungry, sick, desperately poor and permanently at war with
itself. Thanks to our policy of flooding the African continent with
arms, the price of an AK-47 assault rifle is lower
on the African continent than anyplace else on earth.
Of
the nine countries where armed conflicts are now in progress,
US-supplied arms and training are a factor in every one. In the
Ethiopian civil war, in the invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia, in Chad,
in Morocco and Western Sahara and Sudan, in the continuing Algerian
civil war and of course in the Congo's holocuast, which has
accounted, conservatively, for six million dead since about 1996, the
highest death toll of any conflict since World War 2. The US has
equipped, trained and supplied every one of the national armies that
have invaded and occupied parts of the Congo, from Kenya and Uganda
to Rwanda, Burundi, Angola and even Namibia. US arms are also in the
hands of non-government gangs and private armies that ravage and
depopulate whole regions to facilitate the extraction of the coltan
for our cell phones and computers, the titanium for our aircraft, and
the uranium for our nukes.
America's
militarized foreign policy on the African continent does not benefit
Africans. The inauguration of AFRICOM, the US military headquarters
for the African continent, was met with universal condemnation and
scorn by ordinary Africans across the continent, and their
governments. Africans don't want US arms, they don't want US
intervention, and they don't want US bases.
African
opposition to US military presence was the reason Bush did not set
foot in the continent's most populous country, Nigeria or in South
Africa during his recent visit, and why he stayed only a matter of
hours in Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi. Not one African country has
dared the wrath of its people by requesting to host AFRICOM. But the
ring of US bases, from Mombasa to Djibouti on the east to Angola and
the Gulf of Guinea on the west, continues to grow. US forces
regularly fly bombing missions over Somalia in support of the
Ethiopian invasion.
America's
foreign policy elite, its multinational corporations, the Pentagon
and its constellation of military suppliers and mercenary contractors
know what they want. They want the coltan, the oil, the gold, and
the diamonds. They want to privatize every state and social
resource, down to the water supplies. They want to tie African
agriculture to genetically engineered American crop varieties, and
collect royalties for the use of these “patented” plants. They
want to prevent African nations from spending their own wealth from
their own resources on health and education infrastructure, on food
subsidies, on growing jobs and healthy internal economies. And they
want to keep Africa a war-torn hell on earth, because it's good for
business. If you're not a “failed state” yet, they'll make you
one.
On
the other hand, Africans know what they want for themselves. They
are keen observers of the US political scene, and well aware that the
next president may be a man with more direct ties to the African
continent than most of us. Africans are waiting for the American
people, especially African Americans to speak up and support their
demands for the US to keep its bases, its military “assistance”
and its arms to itself. How long will they have to wait?
It's
time this year to build a from-the-ground-up movement to hold the
little clay feet of the Congressional Black Caucus to a higher
standard on Africa policy, on African demilitarization, and on African
debt, pressing the US and international bodies to cancel the debts
and loan-shark interest owed by African nations, many of which have
already been repaid several times over.
The
Jubiliee Movement is one such effort on the part of hundreds of
churches and community organizations to do just that.
Next
year a new administration will be in the White House. Should we
wait and see what its elite advisers, its policy wonks and campaign
contributors and contractors convince it to do in Africa? Or should
we make it plain what ought to be, what must be done?
For now, a good start would be calling your Congressman, and a random member of the Black Caucus about the Jubilee Act now before that body. And later this year, we'll be covering visits to Congressional representatives, especially members of the Black Caucus, asking them to help in the demilitarization of US policy in Africa.
BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon can be contacted at Bruce.Dixon(@)BlackAgendaReport.com.
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