Stability operations cause 900 civilian deaths, 100,000 displaced, miss target

Photo of Joseph Kony and leadership of the Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, from a photo essay by Erin Baines taken in 2006. Kony is seated, front row, the second face from the right; lower left inset of some young LRA “soldiers”.

The Lord’s Resistance Army has plagued Uganda for 20 years. It is most notable for kidnapping children and turning them into LRA soldiers and slaves, and for its brutality towards civilians. It created a phenomenon in Northern Uganda called night commuters, children walking long distances to shelter in town overnight so they would not be kidnapped by the LRA.

AFRICOM, demonstrating its goal to “enhance the ability of each one of our African partners to provide for their own security”, helped plan and pay for a thoroughly botched attempt by the Ugandan Army to crush the LRA, Operation Lightning Thunder. According to the New York Times the LRA:

… had been hiding out in a Congolese national park, rebuffing efforts to sign a peace treaty. But the rebel leaders escaped, breaking their fighters into small groups that continue to ransack town after town in northeastern Congo, hacking, burning, shooting and clubbing to death anyone in their way. [map here]

The United States has been training Ugandan troops in counterterrorism for several years, but its role in the operation has not been widely known. It is the first time the United States has helped plan such a specific military offensive with Uganda, according to senior American military officials. They described a team of 17 advisers and analysts from the Pentagon’s new Africa Command working closely with Ugandan officers on the mission, providing satellite phones, intelligence and $1 million in fuel.

The operation made no effort to warn or protect the civilan population although reprisals and civilian massacres are standard operating procedure for the LRA.

The LRA got word the attack was coming and fled, leaving empty campsites.

In an indescribably savage manner, the rebels then attacked several homesteads, axing, cutting, slitting throats and crushing skulls with wooden bats and axes. …

According to the president of the civil society of Dungu, Felicien Balani: “The LRA entered around midnight. They surprised the faithful of the church who were in a prayer vigil. They burned them in the church,” said Balani. …

“In Doruma, it was really awful. They had killed at least 300 people. We were in a village where there are only six survivors, all the others were killed,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, who coordinates the investigations on behalf of Human Rights Watch. …

After the massacre, the rebels “ate the Christmas feast the villagers had prepared, and then slept among the dead bodies before continuing on their trail of destruction and death” through another 12 villages.

In September 2007 Jendayi Frazer, the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs said:

So we will not sit still and just let them live in Garamba Park and cultivate land and kill animals. … the US government is worried that a fresh regional war involving Uganda, Rwanda and DR Congo could flare up …

According to Dr Frazer, the US government is ready to back co-ordinated military operations by the three countries to fend off rebel forces fighting any government while using a neighbouring country as a military base.
…
Dr Frazer also vowed that her government would not shy away from employing military means to end the activities of the “negative forces” if efforts to end conflicts through dialogue are not successful – yet another indicator of the new approach the US is taking on conflicts in the region.

Instead of providing stability or security the US and Uganda have succeeded in expanding the war against civilians in the DRC. That area of the DRC had been relatively peaceful before Operation Lightning Thunder. Now many thousands more are suffering. And the slaughter of civilians has not ended. The LRA continues its path of slaughter and devastation through villages in the Congo. Uganda appears to consider the operation a success:

“The operation has been a success in that it has left Joseph Kony naked,” State Minister for Defence Ruth Nankabirwa told IRIN.

“Because of the surprise nature of the attack, he fled from his camp empty-handed. He left behind everything, including food, equipment and other gadgets, so this has reduced his capacity,” she added.

AFRICOM along with its African military partner, Uganda, launched Operation Lightning Thunder. The result is their target, the rebel LRA, escaped untouched, around 900 civilians are dead, thousands raped, maimed, injured and their homes destroyed, hundreds of children conscripted, at least 100,000 displaced. Of those 100,000 people who have been displaced, it is estimated at least half of them are inaccessible to help. And any aid would be a magnet to the LRA as they continue to restock by murder and theft.

I wonder how the AFRICOM side of the military partnership sees this. Is the biggest problem the devastation they have helped create? or is it the bad publicity? In recent history African militaries rarely engage in military to military wars. Most wars are against the civilian population. America had many of these military partnerships with Africa during the Cold War, with horrifying results. As long as American foreign policy is military policy in Africa, as long as military to military partnerships are the goal, there will be many more equally horrifying attacks on civilians.

 

AFRICOM – Getting brown people to fight each other over there so we can bring their oil over here

Over at Moon of Alabama b real makes a couple of critical points about AFRICOM’s purpose, and about Department of Defense talking points: Africom: Talking Points for Screwing Mother Africa:

(Brig. Gen. Michael A.) Snodgrass stressed the same message at a business expo hosted by AFRICOM near the German base on May 1st.:

“We’re going to take this one step at a time, we’re going to listen to the Africans and take their advice,” Snodgrass said. “At an appropriate time, we will be invited by countries to come to Africa to bring our presence, which then means (there) will be an increase in activity and an increase in effectiveness in our programs.”

As we have documented here off and on following the February 2007 public announcement of the creation of AFRICOM, one thing that its spokespersons, planners and transition team have typically not done is listen to Africans or anyone bringing up things they don’t want to hear. It’s hard to imagine that changing much at this point, other than trotting out those African representatives already on board and “advising” the U.S. on how to best to go about accomplishing their objectives.

Going from the lineups presented at the various thinktank conferences and seminars, a high percentage of these influential Africans are military officers, usually graduates of IMET or other U.S. training programs.

When General Ward testified before the Armed Services Committee in March, he used the phrase:

… “persistent engagement” five times throughout the 22-page text which emphasizes the long-term focus on building the capacity to help Africans help the U.S. take advantage of Africa’s wealth in “human capital and mineral resources.”

As would be expected, maintaining control of the perception of AFRICOM is very important in the initial stages of the new command. However, since the official public image of AFRICOM (“a new kind of command” combining humanitarian missions with the pentagon’s soft power capabilities to help Africans help themselves) hardly matches up with the command’s true mission (secure and guarantee U.S. access to vital energy sources and distribution channels while containing China’s growing superpower status), AFRICOM, and everyone involved in promoting it, will remain beset by their own contradictions and weaknesses.

Read the whole article, as well as some of his coverage of what is happening in Somalia, which b real continues to document, providing detailed information and insight.

We see these contradictions over and over. The Pentagon and the State Department continue to deny any US interest in oil or China as reasons for the creation of AFRICOM, despite the documentary trail citing oil and China specifically as the reasons for the command.

The denials saying AFRICOM is not about oil and China are no more convincing than denials that the Iraq war is about oil (as has been openly stated by Alan Greenspan, and implied by John McCain in his statements on energy policy last week). The Pentagon is the largest single consumer of oil on the entire globe.

In his book Blood and Oil, Michael Klare describes the Pentagon’s seldom acknowledged oil dependence:

The American military relies more than that of any other nation on oil-powered ships, planes, helicopters, and armored vehicles to transport troops into battle and rain down weapons on its foes. Although the Pentagon may boast of its ever-advancing use of computers and other high-tech devices, the fighting machines that form the backbone of the U.S. military are entirely dependent on petroleum. Without an abundant and reliable supply of oil, the Department of Defense could neither rush its forces to distant battlefields nor keep them supplied once deployed there. (p.9, ISBN 978-0805079388)

A friend sent me a link for a CBS segment about AFRICOM training Ugandans to fight in Somalia. The piece was entirely DoD talking points. I even wondered if it was one of the advertisements masquerading as news items produced by the Bush administration: U.S. Reaches Out In Africa Al Qaeda Fight.

American soldiers are training the Ugandans to combat terrorism, CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey reports, preparing them to go to Somalia to fight Islamic insurgents so the U.S. doesn’t have to.

…

Al Qaeda and other militants have expanded their operations to Africa. Across the top of the entire continent, rebel groups and discontented youth make ideal recruits-a situation made all the more dangerous by growing American dependence on African oil. It’s something the U.S. cannot ignore.

…

The hardest job facing Africom is image-making. In the words of a senior American official, “It’s open season on U.S. foreign policy. We have to convince people that this is not some diabolical George Bush plot.”

…

To make Africom succeed, the general has to spend as much time being a diplomat as a soldier. If he does it well enough, the enemy gathering in Africa won’t be America’s alone.

People from Uganda and Namibia have been heavily recruited as mercenaries in Iraq. Many have been recruited for Iraq under false pretences. This is quite controversial in some places. There is much concern about how mercenaries will behave once they return home. Namibia recently closed down and evicted the operations of an American company recruiting mercenaries. This training the US is providing is also suitable for creating an ongoing supply of mercenaries and surrogates for US purposes. And the US will need mercenaries and surrogates if it attempts to control the world by force, as it seems inclined. In fact the rebel groups and discontented youth [who] make ideal recruits – a situation made all the more dangerous by growing American dependence on African oil that the CBS piece describes are far more likely to be ideal recruits for American military aims if they have the opportunity. Al Qaeda is not really popular. Nobody likes outsiders coming in and telling them they are inferior practitioners of their religion. And the Somalis have generally been cool to hostile to al Qaeda. The only thing giving al Qaeda any credibility is US behavior.

In Somalia the US is encouraging one country, Ethiopia, to invade another, Somalia, helping overthow the existing government and occupying the country and bombing civilians. That is not counter terrorism. It is imperialism. Much of it is run out the the CJTF–HOA, being held up as a model and template for the rest of AFRICOM.

But all the US news sources are lapping up the al Qaeda terrorist spin and spitting it back out again, letting Americans think they are being protected from a terrible enemy instead of themselves becoming a terrible enemy of peace, and being conned into endless war of imperial aggression. And the only African voices that will be heard are the ones that have been coopted to replay the Pentagon talking points.

The real promise of AFRICOM is foolery, fallacy and failure, for the US, and for Africa.