GAO Report On AFRICOM, Where AFRICOM Is Active

Map of AFRICOM presence in Africa, current and projected locations, from the GAO report (PDF), click map to see the graphic readable full size (you may have to click more than once to make it big enough to read the small print). AFRICOM still intends to locate its headquarters on the continent, but has not yet selected or persuaded a host.
1.AFRICOM has not confirmed whether these 11 embassies are the same embassies in which it currently intends to establish offices, but is still negotiating with State.

The US Africa Command is already active all over Africa. AFRICOM is operating out of US embassies in a number of countries. This according to the February GAO report released last week, PDF: Actions Needed to Address Stakeholder Concerns, Improve Interagency Collaboration, and Determine Full Costs Associated with the U.S. Africa Command.

… initial statements about the new command’s intended mission and scope of its activities met with concerns from U.S. government, nongovernmental, and African partner stakeholders. Concerns are particularly keen in areas like humanitarian assistance and other non-combat activities that involve non-DOD agencies and organizations. Their concerns center on the view that AFRICOM could blur traditional boundaries between diplomacy, development, and defense.
…

Until AFRICOM has a communications strategy that ensures a consistent message and facilitates two-way communication with stakeholders, it may be limited in its ability to reduce persistent concerns from U.S. government, nongovernmental, and African stakeholders and garner support for the command.

The Africa Command’s communication problem remains the same as it has been, and has been mentioned many times across the archives of this blog. The description of the mission does not describe the actual mission. The mission statement has been changed and modified several times. The current mission statement from africom.mil:

AFRICOM Mission
United States Africa Command, in concert with other U.S. government agencies and international partners, conducts sustained security engagement through military-to-military programs, military-sponsored activities, and other military operations as directed to promote a stable and secure African environment in support of U.S. foreign policy.

This statement does not accurately describe the true mission, which is more accurately described as: secure and guarantee U.S. access to vital energy sources and distribution channels while containing China’s growing superpower status. That is what “a stable and secure African environment in support of U.S. foreign policy” means. Stable and secure does not mean stable and secure for the people of Africa. It means stable and secure for US energy needs and policy objectives. An example of the difference is the elections a year ago in Kenya, where the US decided it preferred to continue dealing with President Kibaki, a known quantity with whom they were comfortable, and did not want to allow the possibility that the opposition might be democratically elected. So the US supported a Coup in Kenya.

Security and stability operations are the language of the new colonialism, the recolonizers. This has been researched and described eloquently by Mahmood Mamdani. From an interview:

Q. Are you saying that humanitarianism is a form of colonialism?

A. I’m saying that historically it has been. The movement after which Save Darfur patterned itself is the antislavery movement of the 19th century. Remember that the elimination of slavery was the ostensible reason given by British officials for colonization of the African continent. The cataloging of brutalities – real ones, not exaggerated – was essential preparation for seizing chunks of real estate, again ostensibly to protect victims. Today, the humanitarian claim uses ethics to displace politics. Conflicts are typically presented as tribal or race wars between perpetrators and victims whose roles are unchanging.

Q. Does the problem lie in who uses the humanitarian label?

A. The language of human rights was once used primarily by the victims of repression. Now it has become the language of power and of interventionists who turn victims not into agents but into proxies. It has been subverted from a language that empowers victims to a language that serves the designs of an interventionist power on an international scale.

All the narratives about war and disasters in Africa enable more “humanitarian” intervention. The intervention is “justified” by a disasterous situation. But the intervention is not designed to alleviate the situation, but rather, take advantage of it, allowing the “humanitarians” to acquire land and resources. Only the surface of the intervention is designed to appear humanitarian to the people outside the affected countries, who are generally not knowledgeable, and not particularly interested. For examples see the land acquisitions of Jarch in Sudan, or the US sponsored invasion of Somalia Dec 2006 and Jan 2007, or the military assistance provided to the Nigerian government to help put down the violence in the Niger Delta.

As the GAO report (PDF) points out:

In November 2005, DOD directed that stability operations be given priority on par with combat operations.
…
AFRICOM is primarily focused on this shift toward emphasizing the importance of stability operations.
…
According to the President’s National Security Policy, defense, diplomacy and development comprise three key elements of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus.

The words defense, diplomacy and development are called the 3Ds. US officials have claimed they are what AFRICOM will bring to Africa. This is eerily and offensively reminiscent of 19th century colonialism, in which Europe claimed it was bringing the 3Cs to Africa, commerce, Christianity and civilization.

In the 12 US embassies in African countries, listed in the map above, AFRICOM is active, and as a consequence, has been militarizing diplomacy. But the military actions coming out of these embassies are more than just military to military liaison. As an article in HStoday writes:

… one of the Command’s fundamental roles is indeed counterterror intelligence and disruption operations.

and:

For the time being, AFRICOM will be based in Stuttgart, with covert intelligence operatives working out of US installations and front companies throughout Africa.

So look at the list of countries where the US Africa Command already has an active presence: Algeria, Botswanana, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia. What kind of covert ops and disruption operations are being run in your country? or in a country near you? Who are the targets? Which companies are front companies? Does this make you feel more stable and secure?

 

AFRICOM Settling In For a Long Stay In Djibouti

Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, seen from space, view it in Google Maps.

It looks like Camp Lemonier is on its way to becomming a permanent base. From the Stars and Stripes (you can see more photos in the article):

Camp Lemonier grows to support AFRICOM

… Increasing American activity in the Horn of Africa has propelled Lemonier from a sleepy 97-acre post to a 500-acre base that’s become one of the military’s major installations on the continent. Last year’s stand-up of U.S. Africa Command means the base is only going to get busier.

“As AFRICOM matures, Camp Lemonier will transition to supporting long-term [theater security cooperation] efforts and establishing strong and enduring regional relationships,” Gen. William “Kip” Ward, the AFRICOM commander, said during testimony to the House Armed Services Committee in March 2008. “Camp Lemonier will be a part of supporting and developing regional African capability and capacity; thus, its funding support must continue.”

… Congress has set aside more than $100 million for camp improvements between fiscal 2007 and 2010 …

… the most telling indicators of the camp’s larger role may be the new infrastructure that will allow it to serve as a support hub for Africa Command. Crews have already broken ground on new taxiways to increase its ability to manage aircraft. Leaders are considering putting in a “hot pad” that will allow planes to refuel, rearm and get back on their way quickly.

Lemonier is now set to be an enduring base of operations for Africa Command. Navy Capt. Patrick Gibbons, the base commander, envisions the camp as a forward staging base for troops making last minute preparations before a mission. It is already a logistics hub that supports ships working in the Gulf of Aden and aircraft flying counterpiracy missions there. Other teams are tasked to pick up anyone who needs to be rescued. Lemonier’s mission even extends beyond the Horn of Africa region where Djibouti lies.

“The camp is becoming an enduring mission” …

Unfortunately, to date, and aside from the development photo ops in Djibouti, Camp Lemonier has contributed to destabilizing both Somalia, and Kenya, and facilitated the invasion and occupation of one country by another, the Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somalia, and involved in planning and funding the disastrous raid on the Lord’s Resistance Army by Uganda in December. These are all the actions of AFRICOM in East Africa. AFRICOM and Camp Lemonier contribute to propping up the dictator Meles in Ethiopia, as the US cozies up to Meles, funding his ambitions and excesses in the way that has discredited American good intentions and foreign policy around the world. It does not matter how real your politik, deeds tell the story. Mary Carlin Yates was just in Ethiopia planning further cooperation. The effect will be to destabilize, exploit, and oppress in Ethiopia and its neighbors:

March 25, 2009 (ENA) – Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Wednesday received and held talks with US Africa Command Civilian Deputy (AFRICOM), Ambassador Mary Yates.

Ambassador Yates said as Ethiopia is AFRICOM’s partner in security, the visit is intended to further scale up the relation.

Meles said Ethiopia and AFRICOM have been cooperating to ensure peace and security.

Accordingly, he said encouraging activities are being carried out in the area of military cooperation and capacity building.

The two parties have also discussed as to how to maintain the prevailing peace and security in Somalia, according to a senior government official who attended the discussion.

Of course step one to increase and maintain peace and security in Somalia would be to end Ethiopian involvement. There is nothing good Ethiopia can do in Somalia. It has no credibility. The history is so bad, that even if Ethiopians had good intentions, they would not be believed. That Ambassador Yates was discussing continued involvement in Somalia with Meles signals just how bad are US intentions, and how poorly informed is US planning.

AFRICOM is still looking for a permanent base in Africa. I doubt Camp Lemonier is seen as the permanent HQ, but it obviously is becoming permanent. Judging from a number of signals, including the very minor one, which parts of the archive of this blog are getting traffic, Ghana and Botswana are both under pressure and being seriously considered as potential home bases for AFRICOM. I surely hope Ghana can resist. The idea of hosting AFRICOM is not popular with any Ghanaians I know.

The US GAO, General Accounting Office, released a February report. From the New York Times

A report issued Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office acknowledged that the command had taken steps recently to win the trust of American diplomats and development experts, as well as African leaders. But it said the command must do a better job explaining what it does to build credibility among its United States government partners and with the African nations it is seeking to help.

“The military’s large size brings the promise of increased resources,” the report said, but that size also stirs concerns among African nations “about potential encroachment into civilian responsibilities like development and diplomacy.”

In an interview here on Monday, before the G.A.O. issued its report, Gen. William E. Ward, the head of the command, said many of the misperceptions about the command had been dispelled.

If General Ward believes the “misperceptions”, the products of realistic skepticism and knowledge of history, have been dispelled, he is living in a dream world. More likely he is continuing the same mistake AFRICOM planners have made all along, only listening to themselves, and those they have selected to agree with them.

The GAO report (PDF) on Africom makes clear that AFRICOM headquarters is still planned for the continent. It is one of the three main recommendations of the report:

• Include all appropriate audiences, encourage two-way communication, and ensure consistency of message related to AFRICOM’s mission and goals as it develops and implements its communications strategy.

• Seek formal commitments from contributing agencies to provide personnel as part of the command’s efforts to determine interagency personnel requirements, and develop alternative ways for AFRICOM to obtain interagency perspectives in the event that interagency personnel cannot be provided due to resource limitations.

• To determine the long-term fiscal investment for AFRICOM’s infrastructure, we recommend the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of State, as appropriate, conduct an assessment of possible locations for AFRICOM’s permanent headquarters and any supporting offices in Africa.

 

Ambassador Ranneberger, fighting democracy, making America less safe

Police violence following Kenya election, inset Ambassador Ranneberger

The energetic continuation of Bush administration policies in East Africa and the Horn of Africa are damaging the United States. Though far less well known, these policies are as mishandled and misbegotten as the Iraq war, the handling of the Katrina disaster, and the global financial meltdown.

US Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger bears much responsibility for the disasterous handling and direction of these policies. He actively undermined democracy in the Kenya elections a year ago. As a result Kenya is less democratic, and less safe and secure. Extra judicial murders are on the rise.

The New York Times finally wrote some of this up in A Chaotic Kenya Vote and a Secret U.S. Exit Poll. Much of this was reported at the time in a variety of places, you can read an account with links in this article, including the comment thread: The Coup in Kenya.

What the NYT article makes clear is that Ranneberger had determined Kibaki should win the election before the election occurred.

Heading the institute’s Kenya operations in 2007 was Mr. Flottman, on leave from his job as a senior counsel for a major defense contractor. … Mr. Flottman said he was surprised when, before the election, Mr. Ranneberger made public comments praising Mr. Kibaki and minimizing Kenyan corruption.

Behind the scenes, Mr. Flottman recalled, the ambassador was even more direct. A few months before the election, Mr. Ranneberger proposed releasing a voter survey showing Mr. Kibaki ahead and trying to block a roughly simultaneous one favoring Mr. Odinga, according to Mr. Flottman, who said he witnessed the episode during a meeting at the ambassador’s office. The suggestion was dropped, he said, after the embassy learned that the pro-Odinga results were already out.

“It was clear, in my opinion, that the ambassador was trying to influence the perceptions of the Kenyan electorate, and thus the campaign,” Mr. Flottman said.

Many of us watched the polling in Kenya and felt the soaring optimism that democracy might really be working. It was quite clear to any observer that the trend was strongly in favor of Mr. Odinga, and the polling was reasonably orderly and peaceful. As the ballots were being counted, President Kibaki and his cronies made a coup, seized control, and declared Kibaki the winner. Ambassador Ranneberger was quick to congratulate Kibaki on his win, although in the face of international opinion he had to retract this later. Then the US through Ambassador Ranneberger and Jendayi Frazer did its best to prevent completion of the vote count, and prevent a recount. Terrible violence followed the elections, and it was clear the security forces were responsible for a majority of the killings. Since it was clear and could not be denied that Odinga had won a lot of votes, the US pressed for a coalition government. That is not what Kenyans voted for. And now Kenyans say government failing them 1 year later.

During the Kenya election the IRI, was conducting an exit poll, which Mr. Flottman was supervising. Since the votes were not counted, Kenyans really wanted to see the results of the exit poll. but the results were supressed. From the NYT:

Under its contract, the institute was expected to consult with the Agency for International Development and the embassy before releasing the exit poll results, taking into account the poll’s technical quality and “other key diplomatic interests.”

Quality was not expected to be a concern. …

…

When the voting ended and ballot-counting began, Mr. Gibson and others involved in the exit poll said they expected its results to be announced soon.

But senior institute officials decided to withhold it. Most opposed to releasing the numbers, Mr. Flottman said, was Constance Berry Newman, … Mr. Flottman said Ms. Newman opposed “any kind of release from the outset — essentially suggesting it would be inflammatory and irresponsible.”

Ms. Newman, who had worked with Mr. Ranneberger when she was the Bush administration’s assistant secretary of state for African affairs, declined to comment.

…

Mr. Gibson said he told the institute that its technical concerns were baseless, to no avail. His contract barred him from publicly disclosing the polling data for six months, and in March of last year the institute asked him to sign a new contract that would have restricted him from speaking publicly about the institute’s polling program without written permission.

“I think they were trying to shut me up,” he said. “I refused to sign it.”

In July, after his contract expired, Mr. Gibson and one of his doctoral students presented their analysis of the data at a seminar in Washington. A month later — one day before Mr. Gibson was to testify before Kenyan investigators — the institute announced that, after the outside review, it “now had confidence” in the poll and released the results.

…

When Mr. Kibaki claimed victory on Dec. 30, 2007, the State Department quickly congratulated him and called on Kenyans to accept the outcome, even though international observers had reported instances of serious ballot-counting fraud. American officials backed away from their endorsement the next day and ultimately pushed the deal that made Mr. Odinga prime minister.

After insisting for months that the poll was flawed, the institute released it last August — long past the point of diplomatic impact — after outside experts whom it had hired determined that it was valid. It showed Mr. Kibaki losing by about six percentage points.

Michael Ranneberger led an active fight against democracy in Kenya. But it is not just in Kenya. As his State Department bio says:

Michael E. Ranneberger is currently serving as U.S. Ambassador to Kenya and is also responsible for U.S. relations with Somalia.

He has been ambassador to Kenya since mid 2006, when the Islamic Courts Union took control of Somalia. This brought the first functioning government Somalia had in 15 years. Under the ICU, piracy by Somalis stopped completely. Peace was restored, businesses sprang up, Somalis abroad returned home. But the US claimed that the Islamic government was allied with al Qaeda, even though many people knew, and a West Point study told them that:

“Al Qaeda found more adversity than success in Somalia,” states the report by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. “In order to project power, al Qaeda needed to be able to promote its ideology, gain an operational safe haven, manipulate underlying conditions to secure popular support and have adequate financing for continued operations. It achieved none of these objectives.”

At the end of 2006, the US supported an invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia, contrary to international law. The US helped install a (non) government by the hated Ethiopians allied with the hated Somali warlords, restoring civil war, exploitation, and insecurity to the Somali people. The US arranged with Kenya to rendition refugees of that disaster, who crossed the Kenya border, to be tortured in Ethiopia as “terrorists”. When asked about the US participation in the invasion, and killing Somalis, Ranneberger just ignores the truth and repeats lies:

Question [Dom]: Ever since the last attack by US to Somalia near Kenyan Border, which killed more than 20 innocent civilians. No word of apology has been spelled out yet. Was that not a mistake?

Answer [Ambassador Ranneberger]: I appreciate your question, because there has been a lot of rumors and misinformation, and I am happy to clarify what happened. No innocent civilians have been killed in U.S. attacks. U.S. efforts are solely directly against known terrorists.

This despite the fact that the US was:

running U.S. death squads in Somalia to “clean up” after covert operations. (The latter is no deep dark secret, by the way; officials openly boasted of it to Esquire Magazine.)

But Ambassador Ranneberger blithely continues to support the violent and corrupt TFG he helped install, and innacurately condemn the ICU government he helped overthrow:

Q [Abdalla]: … Somali people were able to say enough is enough and they established a government free from the warlords. The international community instead of forcing the warlords to accept the government it sided with the warlords and allowed the government to be dismantled and Ethiopia succeeded in establishing a client government led by warlords. Somali people again as usual and eager to have law and order they accepted the TFG with it is short comings and the past/present records of its members. The Warlords instead of working for their people they become dysfunctional and started harming the Somali people. Fortunately, in June 2006 the Somali people plus Islamic courts succeeded in getting rid the south-central part from the warlords. The only city they remained was in baidabo with the protection of their Ethiopian master. The international community blatantly ignored the presence of Ethiopian soldiers in a sovereign country. During the reign of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) the Somali people were able to forget the clan mentality and corrupt clan elders. For the first time the minority and un-armed Somali communities felt that they are part of the Somali society. They had a voice thanks to Sheikh Sharif Ahmed and Sheikh Dahir aways who was able to control former militias.

Also, we Somalis in the Diaspora were able to invest in the country in my case I built a house for my mum and planned to visit her in January 2007. Unfortunately, the American justice is with us and our old enemy plus the warlord government is back to Mogadishu. America rewarded the warlords and punished the ICU who brought peace and tranquility to their people. …

All of these good things are destroyed now and we are back to 1991.

A [Ambassador Ranneberger]: I recognize that the Islamic Courts did manage to establish a degree of order in Mogadishu. However, the Islamic Courts never had broad support among the Somali people and, importantly, the Islamic Courts were moving in a very radical direction, which would not have been to the benefit of the Somali people. The Transitional Federal Institutions were developed, with the assistance of Kenya, as the legitimate representatives of the Somali people. With the ousting of the Courts, the TFG now has an opportunity to establish its credibility in order to become an effective, inclusive government. Our objective is to support this process.

I want to emphasize our commitment to an inclusive process that truly bring together all Somalis who reject violence and extremism. This is the only way forward for Somalis to achieve lasting stability and security. I believe that the Somali people are tired of the chaos and conflict that has plagued their country and want to participate in an inclusive political process. This will, in turn, lead to a smooth transition to an elected government in 2009.

You can not appeal to people who reject violence and extremism if you have just overthrown their government by violence and extremism. There is no path to “security and stability” that way. Overthrowing the Somili government with Ethiopian proxies meets no definition of the word inclusive. It works against any possibility for democracy.

Ranneberger is telling the Somalis that he knows better what is good for them than they do. Whatever else this is, it is NOT democracy. The TFG brought violence, exploitation, and insecurity. It has been beaten and discredited since then. The 2009 elections were held by a small group of Somalis in Djibouti, arranged by the US, and then called “representational”. They elected Sheikh Sharif, the handpicked choice of Ambassador Ranneberger. Sheikh Sharif has been “persuaded” by Ranneberger to become an ally of the United States. Sheikh Sharif is supposed to give a new face to the TFG, but so far, there is not much evidence he will be accepted, or that things will change for the better. Any solution to the governance or the piracy problems in Somalia must involve Somali communities. Ranneberger’s actions continue to actively harm any possibility for democratic processes or participation. Inviation only “elections” in Djibouti will not help Somalia.

As b real points out, Ranneberger:

… has had official capacity wrt sudan during the early part of this decade, possessing a cv that intertwines w/ a history of cia hotspots & covert arms transfers

• country officer in angola (1981-84) while the u.s. was overtly supporting the “proto-terrorist” Unita
• then constructively engaged as deputy chief of mission in mozambique from ’86-9 while the u.s. was covertly supporting the outright terrorist mvmt Renamo
• then paraguay for the ’89 coup and on through 1992
• then ’92-94 around el salvador & guatemala for who knows what
• a brief stint as deputy chief of mission in mogadishu around ’94
• then some work in haiti
• then coordinator for cuban affairs (’95-99)
• on to ambassador to mali from ’99-2002
• in sudan from 2002-4 for a civil war while the u.s. supporting the south
• then on to the african bureau
• sudan again, as senior representative for sudan
• and, since 2006, ambassador to kenya & responsibility for u.s. relations w/ somalia

One of the things that has distressed me for decades is how negative and counter productive US policy has been towards the developing world, particularly during the Cold War. This is not just in Africa, but in Asia and Latin America as well. Look at the ravages that military coups wrought on Latin America under the training and aegis of Southcom and US Cold War policy. Cheney, with Rumsfeld and Bush, has done his best to lock Cold War patterns and thinking into place, and to lock Bush’s successors into misguided and counter productive policies going forward, policies that ultimately hurt the United States. So far Obama has slipped right into that trap.

In an interview Mahmood Mamdani speaks about the:

… way in which the Cold War almost seamlessly morphed into the war on terror.

We see that in action in the work of Ambassador Ranneberger. He opposed democracy when it was actually working. By doing so he hurt the United States by harming people in countries that would like to be our friends, by denying democracy, and by damaging trust, and the reputation and integrity of the United States.

 

Rats v Landmines

Hero Rat sniffing a landmine

From Afrigadget comes the story of:

“Scratch and sniff” Africas HeroRATS

I heard about this extraordinary use of rats years ago and am hoping that sharing it today will bring a smile to many faces. Although Mozambique’s civil war ended nearly two decades ago, unexploded ordinance continues to be a major cause of injury and death. But now they have a solution. Rats! Local giant rats are being trained and employed to assist in mine detection.
…

Rats have the amazing record of being able to detect mines 95% of the time. If only all our politicians would work this hard and for a banana….. I keep hoping against hope…

For more scientific information, read this article in the Journal of Mine Action

HeroRat videos on YouTube:

Sniffer Rats Take Over Mozambique’s Landmines (2:26)

Rats detecting landmines (1:49)

Rats helping clear landmines in Tanzania (1:26)

APOPO (5:55)

(links corrected 3/22)

You can adopt a rat at the HeroRat.org website for 5€ per month.

Adopt a HeroRAT

HeroRats not only detect landmines, they also detect tuberculosis in sputum samples. When demining:

A trained HeroRAT can clear 100 m2 in 30 minutes, equivalent to two days work for a manual deminer.

In detecting tuberculosis:

… in 7 minutes one rat can evaluate 40 samples which is the equivalent of 2 days of microscopy work for a lab technician.

Plus, the rats are too light to explode landmines, they don’t mind repetitive tasks, and because, although they are large rats, they are small animals, they are easy to house and move around, and inexpensive to feed. The program provides work for farmers and restores land for farming.

I think supporting this program is an excellent idea for anyone. It is also nice because it is something that can be shared with children. But it would be even better to see some government security dollars spent on an inexpensive program that actually makes people a lot more secure.

 

Plans For A US (er, Combined Task Force?) Land Invasion of Somalia?

USS Boxer LHD 4 Wasp class amphibious assault ship (click photo to see enlarged version)

The USS Boxer, pictured above, has just been named the flagship of the Combined Task Force 151 off the coast of Somalia.

From the Wikipedia entry on wasp class amphibious assault ship

The Wasp class amphibious assault ships of the United States Navy are designed to land forces on hostile shores, and they are the largest vessels of this type in service anywhere in the world. They are named after former aircraft carriers, United States Marine Corps battles such as the USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7), and previous amphibious assault ships. The Wasp class has an air group of helicopters that are used to ferry Marines and equipment to the shore from the ships. These helicopters are supplemented by a squadron of up to eight AV-8B Harrier II V/STOL ground-attack aircraft. Up to 20 Harriers can be embarked when the ship is used as a temporary STOVL or “Harrier Carrier.”[2] They also possess a “well”-deck for launching smaller landing craft, up to three Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) hovercraft or Landing Craft Utility (LCUs).

As you can read, the Wasp class LDH 4 is designed for land assaults. You can see the helicopters and other equipment and features in the photo above.

USS BOXER, At Sea (NNS) — USS Boxer (LHD 4) … assumed the role as flagship for Combined Task Force (CTF) 151 March 8 after arriving in the U.S. 5th Fleet Area of Operations as part of a regularly-scheduled deployment.

Established in early January, CTF 151’s mandate is to deter and disrupt piracy in the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and the Red Sea and currently includes naval forces from the United States, United Kingdom, Denmark and Turkey.

…

“We’ve had a great deal of success in deterring piracy to this point,” said Rear Adm. Terence McKnight, commander, CTF 151. “We’ve conducted counter-piracy operations on the amphibious transport dock ship USS San Antonio (LPD 17), two guided-missile cruisers — USS Vella Gulf (CG 72) and USS Monterey (CG 61) — and now we’re going to continue our mission on Boxer, which continues our line of extremely flexible platforms. Boxer has a lot to offer in the fight against piracy.”

McKnight said that CTF 151 has coordinated with many nations to help thwart piracy in the region.

“Piracy isn’t a problem that affects one or two nations,” he said. “It’s a problem that affects the whole world and the free flow of commerce in the world’s waterways. Piracy requires an international solution.”

Of course, almost anyone who knows anything about Somalia and the Somali pirates will tell you that the only way to solve the piracy problem is to solve the political problem in Somalia by allowing a working government to settle in and try to work, without the disruptions of invasion, bombing campaigns, and other destabilizing interference, as the US did with the Ethiopians, bombing and invading Somalia at the end of 2006.

Piracy in Somalia cannot be defeated by military means alone, and dialogue with pirates is needed to address the root causes of the problem …

… Mwangura said without the involvement of local communities in Somalia the efforts were doomed to failure.

“If you are not going to invite the local community, it is not going to work,” he said. “We need to come up with a regional piracy information centre, security in Somalia and a regional action plan on illegal fishing and toxic dumping.”

Fishermen began targeting ships in the early 90s, saying they were defending their coastline from illegal fishing and boats dumping toxic waste in Somali waters.

…

UN Special Representative for Somalia Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah said the two issues were closely linked …

“It is clear that the problem of piracy is linked to the need for peace and stability in Somalia itself,” …

…

While Mwangura said this means pirates now can seize fewer ships, he said that naval patrols were never going to solve the problem completely.

“The warships are doing something, but it is only a short-term solution,” he said.

Combined Task Force 151, of which the USS Boxer is the flagship, from a jan 26th update:

Task Force 151 is a multinational force recently organized to conduct land and air attacks on pirate bases along Somalia´s coast. The task force is operating in the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea …

This was described in January by:

ADM. MCKNIGHT: Right now we’re looking at the — what we call a phase two operation — (audio break) — after the pirates and take them, you know, basically like a — round them up like a police force would, and basically take them to a country. And it was announced on the 16th of January that Kenya has agreed to take the pirates if we capture them. Now the lawyers are at work for the particulars, and as soon as we (can?) get those mechanisms in place, then we will shift our operation to go — to possibly go after some of the pirates and take them to Kenya. And they will be of course prosecuted in the Kenyan courts.

Phase two is probably:

a reference to the traditional phases of military campaigns:

0. shaping
1. deter/engage
2. seize the initiative
3. decisive operations / dominate
4. transition

PHASE II–SEIZE INITIATIVE The primary focus of ‘Phase II’ operations is to deny the enemy its objective. This is done by executing offensive operations at the earliest possible time, with the aim of delaying, impeding, or halting the enemy’s aggression, and otherwise creating the conditions for the exploitation, pursuit, and ultimate destruction of enemy forces. During this phase, joint forces strive to gain access to infrastructure and to stabilize all lines of communication.

Gaining access to infrastructure requires invasion. The infrastructure is on land. If land invasions are planned or underway, this is just another example of what Steve Coll writes:

Military liaison, even if it is conceived progressively, becomes its own self-fulfilling destination, especially when the rest of the U.S. government is starved, by comparison, for resources.

If further invasion and interference with Somalia is the agenda, and it looks like it is, as Daniel Volman & William Minter write more generally about AFRICOM in: Making Peace or Fueling War in Africa:

It will divert scarce budget resources, build resentment, and undercut the long-term interests of the United States.

Like the whole of AFRICOM, these Somalia policies:

… are in fact counterproductive, both increasing insecurity in Africa and energizing potential threats to U.S. interests.

Many thanks to b real, who follows this story with in depth research and in great detail at Moon of Alabama You can read more in the comment threads on these posts:
Behind ‘Fighting Piracy’
A Carrier Group to Attack Somalia
Somalia Thread for the most recent updates.

ADDED 3/17

b real added a comment on my earlier post that has much that is relevant to this post. I’ll add a couple of brief quotes here. He quotes an opinion piece published in Nairobi’s Daily Nation:

… what concerned me even more was Clinton’s assertion that the top US priority in Africa was “security”, which she described as “combating al-Qaida’s efforts to seek safe havens in failed states in the Horn of Africa”.

In short, America isn’t going to think about Africa much, but when it does, it will be to continue the Bush-era habit of worrying that there is an al-Qaida militant under every bed.

And he quotes Michael Weinstein about a recent CSIS panel on Somalia.

Somali civil society organizations … despite their diversity, their top priority was invariably peace and reconstruction.

Over and over again, their remarks betrayed a sense of astonishment and disbelief that the international coalition did not realize, particularly after the failure of the Ethiopian occupation, that the path to stabilization lay in helping Somalia rebuild its political and physical infra-structure, which, in their view, could be achieved at less financial cost than continued emphasis on military containment of terrorists and pirates. Why, they repeatedly asked this writer, did Washington, in particular, fail to understand what they believed was so obvious?

The disastrously ill-advised and destructive policies of the Bush administration are still operating in full force in Africa, being carried out by most of the same people who mismanaged things for Bush.

All of this is a huge and destructive waste of US taxpayer money. Those who don’t care one way or another about Somalia or Kenya, or even Africa, should understand these policies are a threat to the long term interests of the United States.

ADDED April 10, 2009:

There is much relevant information regarding the potential for invasion and war in the comment thread at Moon of Alabama Africa Comments. For the Somalia oil connection see comments 18 and 31, 32, 33. And there is much more information about the attempted hijacking of the Maersk Alabama starting with comment 21 and following, including these notes in 28.

this has gotta be bullshit. who are the kidnappers? special forces?
anomalies in this story:

only four individuals attempting to hijack a ship

sinking their own boat after boarding

taking a hostage off the vessel

and from 34:

“It was on a regular three-port rotation through the Indian Ocean from Salalah, Oman, to Djibouti and then to Mombasa, [John F. Reinhart, president and CEO of Maersk Line Ltd.] said”

If this is correct:

1. where did the ship pick up its alleged cargo of humanitarian supplies? from the u.s. military base of CJTF-HOA in djibouti? or oman?

2. how many pirates were involved in the hijacking? reports providing a number list it as four. four pirates in two skiffs? that far out at sea? even four individuals in only one skiff is an anomaly – esp taking on a vessel of that size, not to mention, one flying the stars & stripes.

 

Daniel Volman’s Tables of AFRICOM US Military Spending

U.S. Military Programs in Africa, U.S. Policy Toward Africa, and AFRICOM by Daniel Volman

From: ACAS Bulletin 78 : The Politics of Africom
ACAS Bulletin, No. 78, Winter 2007

TABLE: U.S. Military Programs in Africa, U.S. Policy Toward Africa, and AFRICOM (PDF)
By Daniel Volman

I took these tables from the PDF and made them into jpegs so they would be easy to view on the web. Click on one to see it full size. It will be more legible.

Introduction: Dollars in thousands. Data is current as of 21 December 2007. Sources are listed at the end.

FMS deliveries: Foreign Military Sales is the total dollar value of defense articles delivered to a foreign government or international organization in any fiscal year

FMF: Foreign Military Financing is the amount of credit/grant aid extended to a foreign government or international organization in any fiscal year for the procurement of defense articles. Such articles may be procured from U.S. Defense agencies through FMS or may be negotiated directly with U.S. commercial suppliers following the approval of the Department of Defense. FMF credit is extended in the form of direct loans, which must be repaid, or grants, which do not require repayment. However, repayments of nearly all FMF loans to African countries are waived, so that in effect all FMF aid for Africa is free.

Dollars in thousands

DCS: The total dollar value of Direct Commercial Sales purchased directly from U.S. manufacturers by foreign governments. The Office of Defense Trade Controls of the Department of State licenses all sales.

EDA: Excess Defense Articles is the acquisition cost of surplus U.S. defense articles transferred to foreign governments by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency of the Department of Defense.

Dollars in thousands

IMET: International Military Education and Training is the dollar value allocated in any fiscal year for the training of foreign military personnel at U.S. military facilities and the total number of students trained at these institutions.

As Volman says, data is current as of 21 December 2007. You can get a pretty clear idea of the continuing trend from these tables

For More Information: For additional information, see Rachel Stohl, “U.S. Arms Exports and Military Assistance in the ‘Global War on Terror,’” Center for Defense Information (CDI), Washington, DC, 6 September 2007, available from CDI: http://www.cdi.org. See also country studies on Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya linked to the above report.

Sources: Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations, Fiscal Year 2008, U.S. Department of State, 2007 and Foreign Military Sales, Foreign Military Construction Sales, and Other Security Cooperation Historical Facts as of September 30, 2006, U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency, 2006.

For an updated discussion of these programs, and more, see Daniel Volman’s recent article AFRICOM from Bush to Obama. And for more discussion of the implications of all this see his most recent article: Making Peace or Fueling War in Africa, by Daniel Volman and William Minter | March 13, 2009.

 

Senator Feingold – Deceiver? Dupe? or Dope?

Uganda, from google maps, showing the border with Sudan and the DRC

Senator Feingold has been a leading proponent of AFRICOM. I am in many respects an admirer of Senator Feingold. But he has either missed the point entirely regarding AFRICOM, or he has one or more agendas he has not revealed.

At the end of December AFRICOM funded and advised a strike by Uganda against the Lord’s Resistance Army in the northern DRC. I wrote about it with a map of the location here, with more details here. The raid was badly botched. It was the equivalent of striking a hornets nest with a stick. The raiders found only empty campsites. The Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, which had been relatively quiet, followed their habitual predictable practice of reprisals against the civilian population. The result was hundreds of children kidnapped to be conscripted as child soldiers or sex conscripts. At least 900 people have been brutally murdered, and at least 100,000 displaced, their homes, villages, and livlihoods destroyed. These figures come from January. The killing, the theft of children and the displacement continue.

The New York Times described AFRICOM’s part in the raid:

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.

AFRICOM paid for the raid. Without the $1 million worth of fuel, it would not have been attempted, regardless of the other training and equipment provided. The LRA is a legitimate target for Uganda and its neighbors. But the raid was disasterously mishandled, and funded by US taxpayers.

As Steve Coll writes:

The larger issue here is the momentum that military liaison creates when it becomes the heavily funded nexus of U.S. policy. Africa Command’s mission is to “engage” with brother armies, its commanders have a professional bias to action, and they often do not take strategic direction from civilians until they are ready to present their war, engagement and training plans, whether in Colombia or Pakistan or Uganda. Military liaison, even if it is conceived progressively, becomes its own self-fulfilling destination, especially when the rest of the U.S. government is starved, by comparison, for resources.

After the raid, Mary Yates defended AFRICOM’s actions with the only defense available, that it was the LRA’s fault for committing the same evil acts that it has commited for decades, not mentioning that anyone could and should have predicted the danger. The error, in addition to botching the raid, was the complete failure to make any attempt to protect the civilian population.

But Sen. Feingold ignored all that. He blames only the local militaries, Uganda and the DRC. This is the great advantage of proxy armies. You can blame them for the losses, and claim credit for the wins. On Thursday Sen. Feingold testified to Congress:

Just over two months ago, the Ugandan, Congolese and South Sudanese militaries launched a joint offensive against the LRA’s primary bases in northeastern Congo. Serious concerns have been raised about the planning and implementation of this operation. …

… I am not ruling out that this offensive—still ongoing—may yet succeed. …

As a 17-year member of the Subcommittee on African Affairs and someone who has been involved with AFRICOM since its conception, I would like to offer some thoughts on this matter. While I supported AFRICOM’s creation, I have been concerned about its potential to eclipse our civilian agencies and thereby perpetuate perceptions on the continent of a militarized U.S. policy. It is essential that we get this balance right and protect chief of mission authority. By doing so, we can help ensure AFRICOM contributes to broader efforts to bring lasting peace and stability across Africa. When I visited AFRICOM’s headquarters last December and talked with senior officials, we discussed the important roles that it can play. They include helping to develop effective, well-disciplined militaries that adhere to civilian rule, strengthening regional peacekeeping missions, and supporting post-conflict demobilization and disarmament processes. In my view, assisting a multilateral operation to disarm an armed group that preys on civilians and wreaks regional havoc fits this job description, theoretically, at least.

Mr. President, to put it bluntly, I believe supporting viable and legitimate efforts to disarm and demobilize the LRA is exactly the kind of thing in which AFRICOM should be engaged

Following this botched raid, again, quoting Steve Coll:

The explanatory “commander’s vision” on Africom’s Web site is a mush of “Dilbert”-inspired, PowerPoint mission creep. The Africa Command, it says, “develops and implements military programs that add value to the important endeavor of stability and security on the content of Africa and its island nations.” It also “directs, integrates and employs credible and relevant military capability in peace and in response to crisis.” It is a “trusted and reliable partner for nations and security institutions in Africa.” And, of course, it is a “listening and learning organization.”

If you could even sort out what those slogans mean in practice, would you believe them? Not anymore. …

And it is important to emphasize again, that no one consulted with Africa, the African Union, or African governments in creating AFRICOM. It is not welcome in Africa.

Olayiwola Abegunrin writes in AFRICOM: The U.S. Militarization of Africa:

AFRICOM is an example of U.S. military expansion in the name of the war on terrorism, when it is in fact designed to secure Africa’s resources and ensure American interests on the continent. AFRICOM represents a policy of U.S. military-driven expansionism that will only enhance political instability, conflict, and the deterioration of state security in Africa. This is a project that most African countries have rejected to be located on their soil. … AFRICOM would destabilize an already fragile continent, which would be forced to engage with U.S. interests on military terms.

Militarization of Africa with the U.S. designed so-called AFRICOM is not the solution to Africa’s problem. What African countries need is development of their own institutions for security, political and economic independence; massive infusion of foreign direct investment, fair equitable trade, access to U.S. markets, and for U.S. to decrease/or total removal of agricultural subsidies, debt relief and improved Official Development Assistance tailored towards the development aspirations of (recipient countries) African countries and not AFRICOM that will only lead to militarizing the continent.

So what does Senator Feingold really expect to get out of AFRICOM? for the US or for Africa? Is he simply deluded as to the certainty that leading with military laison will destabilize a continent? Or is there something he is not saying that he hopes to accomplish? Does the importance to him of this unspoken goal outweigh recognition of the dangers of AFRICOM, just as the urge to attack the LRA outweighed the clear and obvious dangers of such an attack. The botched raid against the LRA is likely to be the template for many future disasters with AFRICOM leading US policy in Africa. All those involved in the planning and funding of AFRICOM will bear responsibility for this destruction.

ADDED March 16:

Daniel Volman & William Minter: Making Peace or Fueling War in Africa

The government has presented AFRICOM as a cost-effective institutional restructuring and a benign program for supporting African governments in humanitarian as well as necessary security operations. In fact, it represents the institutionalization and increased funding for a model of bilateral military ties — a replay of the mistakes of the Cold War. This risks drawing the United States more deeply into conflicts, reinforcing links with repressive regimes, excusing human rights abuses, and frustrating rather than fostering sustainable multilateral peacemaking and peacekeeping. It will divert scarce budget resources, build resentment, and undercut the long-term interests of the United States. 

…

While AFRICOM may be new, there’s already a track record for such policies in programs now incorporated into AFRICOM. That record shows little evidence that these policies contribute to U.S. or African security. To the contrary, there are substantial indications that they are in fact counterproductive, both increasing insecurity in Africa and energizing potential threats to U.S. interests.

I strongly recommend reading Making Peace or Fueling War in Africa.  It provides an overview of the issues that is both clear and thoroughly researched.

 

AFRICOM – Making A Move On Ghana

SEKONDI, Ghana - The USS Nashville lies at anchor in Sekondi, Ghana, during a visit of Africa Partnership Station. Nashville, with an international crew, arrived in Ghana on February 20, 2009. The ship is on a five-month APS cruise to promote international cooperation on maritime security in West Africa. (Photo by Vince Crawley, U.S. Africa Command)

AFRICOM’s floating headquarters, a sea base for the colonial administration of West Africa, is floating off the coast of Ghana. They have been doing some serious “partnering“, doing a variety of photo-op good works. AFRICOM’s Mary Yates has been talking up the drug menace to Ghanaian journalists and officials:

	2009-03-04	Journalists asked to assist in fighting drug war
	2009-03-04	Take drug war serious – Yates
	2009-03-03	8% of Europes drugs pass through Ghana

As I have written before, AFRICOM regards Ghana as a very desirable location. And one way of both ingratiating itself, and pressuring the Ghana government at the same time, is using the drug issue. The US will pressure Ghana to do something about drugs, and offer lots of training and military supplies to fight the “war on drugs”, which has been a miserable failure from its beginnings more than 50 years ago.

From The Ghanaian Times:

Defence Minister Receives US Team
By Times Reporter
Tuesday, 10 March 2009

The Deputy Commander (Civil Activities) of the US Military Africa Command (AFRICOM), Ambassador Mary Carlin Yates, has led a high powered delegation to call on the Defence Minister, Lt Gen (Rtd) Joseph Henry Smith at his office at Burma Camp.

According to a statement from the Public Relations Directorate of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), the meeting which was held behind closed doors, was believed to have centered on strengthening the relationship between the two countries.

Besides, it explored ways of extending AFRICOM’s support to the Ghana Armed Forces to enable it to effectively police Ghana’s coastline to check illegal fishing, trafficking of narcotics and also safeguarding the country’s oil finds.

The statement signed by Lt-Col Dzotefe Mensah, of the Armed Forces Public Relations Directorate said the meeting also discussed the establishment of AFRICOM and its advantages to Ghana in particular and Africa in general.

Ambassador Yates was accompanied by the US Ambassador to Ghana, Donald Teitelbaum.

This means the pressure is really on.

This story is likely part of the same pressure on Ghana to let AFRICOM use it as a regional headquarters:

The World Bank has agreed to speed up payments worth $250 million to Ghana to help it cope with the international financial crisis, the bank’s representative said on Wednesday.

“The World Bank has agreed with Ghana to front-load $250 million to the government out of Ghana’s allocation from the Bank, to enable it to cushion the effects of the crisis,” Ishac Diwan, the World Bank’s resident representative in Ghana.

Before the Presidential election the World Bank praised Ghana, WB: Ghana still best place to do business in West Africa. Then, when the new government came in, the World Bank was critical and said Ghana was broke, WB paints gloomy picture of Ghanaian economy. This new loan looks like an attempt at a bribe. Timed as it is, with AFRICOM’s Yates conferring with Ghana’s Defense Minister, it looks like a bribe to get Ghana to host AFRICOM, and, as a first requirement, send proxy soldiers to Somalia to fight for whatever the US thinks it is fighting for there. So far President Mills has been canny, and said only that he would consider the possibility. Ghanaians don’t need to die in Somalia for an ill conceived and fundamentally misguided policy. US/UN activities in Somalia are no more honest or well planned than the US invasion of Iraq.

It is only natural and appropriate that the Ministry of Defense would talk with Yates. It is usually smart to talk. I am hoping they are tough, canny, and patriotic enough at the Ministry of Defense, to refrain from giving up Ghanaian sovereignty. I have reason to think the current administration at the Ministry of Defense is tough and canny. They will need to be. The bribes of the recolonizers are enticing and the pressure is strong, and certain to get stronger.

 

Terminator Seeds

Signs read:
SUICIDE SEEDS ARE HOMICIDE SEEDS
SAVE SEEDS__ TERMINATE TERMINATOR!

One technology AGRA, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, will bring to Africa is terminator seeds. One of the most concise explanations of these is from Teeth Maestro in Pakistan:

Monsanto is a chemical company posing as an agricultural company specializes in toxic, dependency-creating, genetically-engineered crops and pharmaceuticals. Monsanto is one of the world’s most notorious multinationals that has been caught red-handed for bribery, false studies and evaluations, and paying off scientists for favourable reports. It has been responsible for over 10,000 farmer suicides and thousands of poisoned sheep in India alone. Its GE products are banned in countries including in Europe after painful experiences.

“Terminator” seed controversy

In June 2007, Monsanto acquired Delta & Pine Land Company, a company that had been involved with a seed technology nicknamed “Terminator”, which produces plants that produce sterile seed to prevent farmers from replanting their crop’s seed, and are instead forced to continue purchasing seeds from Monsanto for every planting. In recent years, widespread opposition from environmental organizations and farmer associations has grown, mainly out of the concerns that these seeds increase farmers’ dependency on seed suppliers (having to buy these each year for seeding new crops)

… there have been countless protests all over India and Brazil demanding Monsanto be thrown out of their countries …

The picture above is from BanTerminator.org taken at protests in Brazil. They describe terminator seeds:

Terminator technology refers to plants that have been genetically modified to render sterile seeds at harvest – it is also called Genetic Use Restriction Technology or GURTS. Terminator technology was developed by the multinational seed/agrochemical industry and the United States government to prevent farmers from saving and re-planting harvested seed.

In India:

One of the top cotton-growing areas in India is Madhya Pradesh. It has a rich black soil, perfect for cotton. In 2002 farmers were persuaded to use BT cottonseed. — Some 10,000 acres were planted with it — although official permission had not been granted till then. The farmers ended up with 100 per cent failure. Due to the drought, indigenous cotton varieties had also been negatively affected but their ‘failure’ accounted for only 20 per cent of the crop, not all of it. Furious farmers demanded compensation from the company that supplied these seeds. That was Mahyco. And where did Mayco get these seeds from? – From Monsanto, the US multinational chemical giant which had a 27 percent share in Mahyco.

… reports emerged, confirmed by a Gujrat khadi institute, of allergies not only among farmworkers but also itching and rashes in people wearing clothing made from Bt Cotton.

Even when farmers found the seed to be four times as expensive, they felt it was because of ultimate economy, and even went into debt to buy the input package. There were other problems. Bt cotton requires 20 percent more water than other hybrid cotton which needs more water than traditional varieties to begin with. No one said anything about Bt cotton being drought resistant. The truth was that Bt cotton was unable to adapt to stress conditions. It was criminal to encourage Bt cotton in drought-prone areas – and not telling farmers about this drawback in Bt cotton. The rains failed to come in some districts. Farmers were ruined because they had not grown the local hardy species that had evolved to withstand drought conditions with minimal loss.

That was not all. There was serious oversight on the part of Monsanto scientists. Wouldn’t it be common sense to deduce that if the Bt cotton plant was poisonous to bollworms eating it, it could be poisonous to other living creatures too? After the harvest, sheep were allowed to graze on the harvested fields to eat the crop residues, a common practice worldwide wherever natural farming is pursued. In just four villages in Andhra Pradesh, 1800 sheep died horrible, agonising deaths within 2-3 days from severe toxicity. More deaths were reported in other areas. The word was quickly spread to avoid grazing sheep where Bt cotton had grown. It meant less fodder and greater expense for the sheep-owners.

Other reports have emerged from India on the ill health effects of Bt cotton on both people and animals. It is being held responsible for causing “untimely deaths, decline in milk quality and quantity, and serious reproductive failures.”

From SeattleTammy:

Farmers in 3rd world countries are being sold these patented seeds. The crops were planted by illiterate farmers, for whom, even if they could read, the information on the packaging would be worthless, it was in English only. That information would have told them that these crops would need irrigation, and shouldn’t be used in rain-fed farm lands. The crops would also need pesticides and fertilizers, again from Monsanto. These crops failed, leaving the farmers further in debt, to surprise, the company store: Monsanto. Since these seeds are patented, the farmers are forbidden from saving seed from one year to the next, selecting the healthiest traits for the next season. New seeds must be purchased. The in-debted farmer’s land is then seized by Monsanto, which compounds the debts. Now hopeless in their situation, the farmers are committing suicide.

By drinking Monsanto pesticides.

Many thousands of farmers in India have committed suicide.

In conclusion for today, I offer, and appreciate the words of this farmer from Zambia:

“Somebody is trying to befool me as a farmer,” said Clement Chipokolo of the African Biodiversity Network, who came here all the way from Zambia. “In my culture we don’t buy seeds. We save them. But now somebody is trying to bring agricultural slavery for us.”

 

AFRICOM Visits Ghana

Above: Yates address on drug trafficking, below: Yates meets President Mills at Osu Castle.

THE UNITED States Military Command for Africa (AFRICOM) has pledged to strengthen military ties with Ghana’s Military High Command and the Ghana Armed Forces towards enhancing Ghana’s democratic regime and good governance.

A delegation led by Mary Carlin Yates, Deputy Commander for Civil Activities of the US Military Africa Command, called on President John Mills at the Osu Castle yesterday [Wednesday March 4] and commended Ghana for the impressive elections held recently.

Yates and President Mills exchanged a number of compliments on democracy in each others countries. I do not think Yates was strictly honest in this, as I suspect the US wanted to interfere in the recent elections in Ghana, and may have made some attempt. Luckily, the interference was nothing to the scale of the interference with Kenya’s presidential election. Jendayi Frazer, U.S Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, was in Ghana just before the December 28 runoff: Frazer meets the press. At about the same time there was talk in the Ghanaian press about “power sharing”, and I suspect that was her work. It was unpopular, and inappropriate to the circumstances.

I think the previous US government and the AFRICOM establishment were far more comfortable working with the previous NPP government, not so much for ideological reasons, but because the NPP government was reliably corruptable. And I’m sure AFRICOM, which already has a robust presence, will try to expand in Ghana. The corruption quotient remains to be seen for the new government. I am a little bit optimistic, and very worried. I think the intentions of the present government are good for now, but the drug money and the coming oil money will be powerful forces encouraging corruption. And, with special thanks to the Kufuor government, corruption is seen by many in Ghana as the way government and business “works”. Not that there was no corruption before, but in the last eight years it was encouraged, and grew exponentially.

Drugs were one of the reasons Yates visited Ghana. As I have written before, drugs are the tool AFRICOM will use to infiltrate into Ghana. It is thanks to the counter effective US “War on Drugs” that the drug trade has moved to West Africa. The primary beneficiaries of the War on Drugs have been defense and security contractors, the same folks who are looking to AFRICOM for more contracts.

As I have written before:

The US War on Drugs has been a failure for at least half a century. It started long before Nixon, as the article indicates. You can read a history of it here: How America Lost the War on Drugs.

… the catastrophe along the [Mexican] border looks like a final reckoning for overseas interdiction. ” It’s like a balloon effect – we’ve never succeeded in cutting off the traffic, we’ve just pushed it around,”

But nobody is giving up the pretense that the effort is serious and worthwhile.

“It is absolutely shocking what has happened — the increase in drugs,” Ambassador Mary Carlin Yates says. …

… West Africa has seen a dramatic increase in narcotics trafficking, with an estimated $2 billion worth of cocaine crossing the mid-Atlantic from South and Central America. A majority of the drugs passing through West Africa are headed for Europe.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates at least 50 tons of cocaine transits through West Africa each year. Local communities are increasingly disrupted because drug traffickers pay their transport costs in cocaine instead of money, increasing the amount of narcotics available to populations.
…
In Ghana, as part of a larger US government program, US Africom is helping to fund drug screening equipment and upgrades at Ghana’s international airport to support Ghanaian counter-narcotics and customs programs.

Africom also is helping to fund a police evidence storage and training facility to provide more capacity in storing evidence in support of counter-drug operations. The goal is to assist in achieving a greater number of lawful convictions. The facility includes a training center and computer lab, with estimated completion this summer.

Before arriving in Ghana, Yates visited Cape Verde where she talked cooperation in counter-narcotics, illegal fishing, and illegal trafficking.

Yates is meeting with a range of officials to discuss how regional militaries can cooperate in partnership with police and other security organizations to address the growing trend of illegal narcotics, illegal fishing, and other criminal maritime activities.

Cocaine is a serious problem for Ghana. AFRICOM offers hype rather than help. Please keep in mind that the AFRICOM programs to counter drug trafficking, illegal fishing, and other police and security functions were not funded. Talk is cheap.

AFRICAN COASTAL AND BORDER SECURITY PROGRAM (ACBS) – provides specialized equipment (such as patrol vessels and vehicles, communications equipment, night vision devices, and electronic monitors and sensors) to African countries to improve their ability to patrol and defend their own coastal waters and borders from terrorist operations, smuggling, and other illicit activities … No dedicated funding was requested for FY 2008 [or for 2007]
From: AFRICOM from Bush to Obama

So the militarization of political space continues. This comes at a particularly dangerous time for Ghana. The coming expected oil revenues will create dangerous expectations, temptations, and pressures. A military strengthened beyond the control of civil institutions is a grave danger for any country. The active interference of AFRICOM, spells grave danger. Using AFRICOM, the US is already engaged in supporting and choosing sides in internal politics in African countries, most visibly in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia. So far the same people are running Africa policy for Obama that ran it for Bush. This is a time to be wary.

 

Delete AFRICOM and SOUTHCOM

AFRICOM & SOUTHCOM: Reliquaria from an Earlier Era – PDF by David Passage in the February 2009 issue of Foreign Service Journal contains advice that is right on target as budget policy and as foreign policy. He says it is time to rethink the US military command structure, which is bloated and out of date. When big budget cuts are necessary, the only practical way to make them is by cutting whole programs, not by making percentage across the board cuts that reduce functionality and efficiency everywhere. The US should delete AFRICOM and SOUTHCOM, eliminating those two programs from the federal budget.

President Obama faces a large number of very hard choices for the country. The US is involved in two expensive wars, the one in Iraq should never have been started. And these are not necessarily the most difficult or expensive problems he faces. Regarding the military:

And no pruning he might do can even begin to provide the resources needed to re-equip our armed forces with the hundreds of billions of dollars of materiel and munitions that have been expended in those current wars. Vehicles of all types are worn out; we are flying the wings off our aircraft and the rotors off our helicopters; and we are using much of our military equipment to within inches of its programmed life. And we have yet to calculate the ultimate costs of restoring the necessary capacity for other contingencies.

…

With respect to the Department of Defense, one of our biggest-ticket items, Pres. Obama could easily achieve significant savings by taking a hard look at restructuring our present geographic military command structure, with the explicit purpose of eliminating two major components: the U.S. Southern Command (responsible for Latin America and the Caribbean) and the newly established Africa Command.

The point of departure should not be a review of whether these two commands can be justified —for that simply invites proponents to make the best case for keeping them. Rather, the question should be how to handle residual functions the U.S. might wish to retain (and there shouldn’t be many) within a realigned geographic command structure that would consist of the European Command, Pacific Command, Central Command and a new Western Hemisphere Command. … WESTCOM.  …  EUCOM, PACOM and CENTCOM have clear, well-defined and unquestioned warfighting missions, as well as robust force structures to support them. AFRICOM and SOUTHCOM do not and should not.

AFRICOM is a particularly unfortunate creation.

Does Washington really want to project a military face toward a continent that already suffers from a surfeit of them? Do we Americans believe economic development and internal security structures (e.g., civilian and civilian-led police forces) should be built along military lines by armed forces? And is that what we want Africans to think we believe? If so, shame on us! We do not permit our military to train our own police and law enforcement personnel and do economic development work in the U.S. Why do we believe this should be done by our military in Africa?

Passage summarizes the history of SOUTHCOM, which should be a warning for the creators and proponents of AFRICOM.

If one wants to see what AFRICOM could become, one has only to look atwhat SOUTHCOM has been. Mercifully, a lot of lessons have been drawn from that experience, which, one hopes, is therefore unlikely to be repeated.

During the first four decades of its existence, SOUTHCOM supported our national interest in preventing Soviet-sponsored takeovers in the Western Hemisphere, such as occurred in Eastern Europe following the defeat of Hitler’s Germany. To be sure, the threat was real; we received a serious wake-up call in May 1948 when Sovietbacked insurgents briefly seized control in Colombia. The coup was undone within days, but fueled the conviction that Washington needed to strengthen Latin American militaries. “And the rest is history,” as the saying goes.

Over the next three decades, U.S.supported military regimes toppled elected civilian governments in virtually every country in Latin America —Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala —excepting only Mexico and Costa Rica.

And although U.S. policy began changing during the 1970s under President Jimmy Carter, our economic development assistance for Latin America actually declined during the 1980s, 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century. Instead, our military assistance grew, first under the guise of countering growing narcotics trafficking from Andean Ridge countries, and then — particularly after the 9/11 attacks —countering terrorism throughout the hemisphere.

In light of this history, here is the crucial question for President Obama’s national security team: Is a military response the right way (let alone the best or most cost-efficient one) to counter the twin threats of terrorism and narcotrafficking in Latin America? For that is now the primary rationale for having a four-star military command with Latin America as its sole area of responsibility

A military command is not the right or best way to address this, because the core of the problem is civil and political. So a military command is not only not the best way, it will by its nature work against that which it claims to support:

A principal deficiency suffered by virtually all developing countries, but particularly those in Africa and Latin America, is weak civil law enforcement institutions –- both the police and judicial branches. Police forces are, by and large, ill trained, poorly equipped, incompetently led and badly paid. The same can be said for the majority of judges and other law enforcement authorities. This is a prescription for corruption and abuse, so it should come as absolutely no surprise that that has been the result.

Washington’s response, regrettably, has been to look for ways our military, acting through SOUTHCOM and now AFRICOM, can ameliorate or rectify these problems. But is that the right, let alone best, means to help our Latin American neighbors or African friends with these structural problems? To see what AFRICOM could become, look at what SOUTHCOM has been.

And all the military training and military partnering is effort spent advancing in this pernicious direction.

Although our armed forces boast terrific civil affairs personnel, that’s not the face we should be seeking to portray to our neighbors, either in this hemisphere or in Africa. … SOUTHCOM is a relic from an earlier era the U.S. should wish to put behind it, while AFRICOM is the result of a manufactured need and never should have been created at all. There is simply no need for a standalone four-star command in either Latin America or Africa to achieve U.S. national security goals.

AFRICOM is highly unpopular in Africa. Sam Makinda has written an article about how Europe has been doing a much better job than the US with Africa policy, EU shaping policies without antagonism:

How has the EU managed to present itself in a way that is not antagonising to African states?

The simple answer is that European countries, which had colonies in Africa until the 1960s and 1970s, have learnt how to exercise influence without rubbing Africans, including dictators, the wrong way.

As a result, the EU is able to shape some of Africa’s political, economic and security policies without appearing to be doing so. In contrast, the USA utilises approaches that antagonise Africans and thereby invites their resistance.

A good example is the way the EU and the USA have pursued security policies on the continent. Working quietly, the EU helped shape the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) as well as the AU’s Common Defence and Security Policy (CDSP).

However, when the USA came up with the African Command (AFRICOM), it did so without consulting the AU and in violation of some of the principles that underpin the CDSP. The result is that many African states are opposed to AFRICOM, but they regard the CDSP and the PSC as their own products.

I do not think the European influence is necessarily benign. The EU has maintained a rapacious interest in African resources, and has been manipulative and exploitive. It has illegally fished out African waters, particularly in the Gulf of Guinea and off the Somali coast. Royal Dutch Shell has been the primary and longest termed polluter of the Niger Delta. And the EU has dumped toxic and nuclear waste in African waters. Even so, the EU has still managed Africa policy more effectively than the US. As Makinda points out in an earlier article:

Africans know that the militarization of political and economic space by African military leaders has been one of the factors that has held Africa back for decades. While African states are trying to put the culture of military rule behind them, the United States appears determined to demonstrate that most civilian activities in Africa should be undertaken by armed forces. To some African policy makers, this suggests that the U.S. Government lacks sympathy for what Africans so deeply want today, namely democratic systems in which the armed forces remain in the barracks.

David Passage’s suggestions make such good sense, I fear that no one will listen. I hope Obama’s team is capable of this historical understanding, and this kind of practical and strategic thinking. It would be very smart economic, military, and foreign policy to eliminate AFRICOM and SOUTHCOM.

 

Borders On The Hunt

The article Towards a Nomadic Fortress mentioned in my previous post, has a lot to consider when thinking about the contemporary functions of borders.

No longer just a question of contested territory, hard boundary lines, and stricter border enforcement between two nations, but a space that functions more ubiquitously on several paradoxes around global mobility and a rise in detention markets, detention politics, national security as the new global architecture.

Rather than a single structure, the nomadic fortress is a whole syntax of control spaces linked across multiple landscapes that constitute perhaps the world’s first universal border fence, loosely connected across continents through a kind of geopolitical geometry that super-imposes a border just as much as enforces one between the First World and the Global South. It is, you might say, the Great Wall of Globalization.

This space has no regard for borders any more as we traditionally understand them, no respect for national territory; it hovers over and slips between those definitions, goes around and under them when it needs to, ultimately passing through border fixity as it sees fit. It is in some way the final border, a border that is never at rest but is always modifying itself for greater tactical vantage; a kind of flexible mock-hydrological regime that deploys and aligns other sub-border levers and valves below it to secure the conduits of neoliberal capitalism and the flows of people who are captives of them in one way or another.

…

This border doesn’t take the defensive posture that borders traditionally have in the past, but instead is on the move and on the hunt for a new class of would-be border crossers who’ve been bound together in a dangerously wide-cast surveillance net that is incapable of distinguishing the refugee from the enemy combatant, the migrant from the smuggler, laborer from insurgent.

Finoki draws a global hydrologic picture of borders. He provides a lot to think about when we think about our home countries, or about wherever we may travel.

… capital is devising an unprecedented perimeter that encircles the global south through a flexible and strategic militarization of cross-border flows and refugee internment.
…
Since commerce, goods, and information now flow freely within a kind of liquid society of transnational interplay, the substrata of cross-border migration has become more of a parched landscape where liquidity and fluidity (in terms of movement) have been extremely deprived. Instead, the nomadic routes of migrants and refugees are dictated by tactical arrangements of concrete embankments, unsurpassable berms, dangerous ditches, trenches, and other deployed dikes and levees strictly designed to prevent the north from being flooded by the populations of the south. We can think of these floodgates as goliath mechanisms of bio-political hydrology, re-flooding certain labor zones and reservoirs with migrants ripe for exploitation while drying up other labor wetlands altogether where manufacturing industries have evaporated or moved on to different regions. Today’s border fences are less about stopping the flows of mass migration than they are about engineering a whole taxonomy of barriers that can identify and redirect them, informally outsourcing the pools of global labor from one geography to another. And while some routes are pushed deeper underground by all of this, other subterranean passages are merely forced to the surface. This massive border hydrology is shifting human resettlement patterns for generations to come.

The political implications of this are huge, and the political results are already well underway. But I have not seen the issue addressed as a global issue other than here. It is certainly worthy of more discussion and examination.

 

Prison ships

USNS Lewis and Clark

See a diagram of the USNS Lewis and Clark at Global Security

A friend sent me this link to Captives of Lewis and Clark. The writer, Bryan Finoki, looks at political and policy issues from an architectural perspective, how people use space. In this case the space is prisons the US is creating to incarcerate captives of the selective war against the Somali pirates in Somali waters, leaving the illegal unreported and unregulated, IUU, fishing fleets from around the world, and the illegal toxic dumping, to continue unimpeded.

I have long been disturbed by the way in which the US has replaced slavery with its prison system at home. During the Bush administration incarceration of poor and brown people became globalized, and far more brutal and abusive. So far Obama seems to be continuing the same pattern.

As part of a larger multinational effort, the U.S. 5th Fleet has sent additional ships into the gulf, that will be joined by the Coast Guard and other combat Marine search and seizure teams. While the UN uses UNOSAT to watch the seas from space, the Navy is using “an unmanned aerial spy plane known as the ScanEagle for target surveillance.” In what Navy Commander Stephen Murphy has described as “sort of racial profiling at sea,” the drone’s aerial footage is used “to help determine whether those on board the skiff are ethnic Somalis, and thus more likely to be pirates, or simply fishermen from elsewhere.”

The “simply fishermen from elsewhere” are simply pirates stealing the food and livelihood of the Somalis. But no one is even questioning that piracy, no one is protecting the interests of the Somalis. With the country weakened by close to two decades of war and civil strife, Somali seas are wide open to exploitation, including the illegal dumping of nuclear waste.

Yet, what interests me most in all of this is one vessel in particular that will be joining this crew – the USNS Lewis and Clark, an old 689-foot, 24,000-ton Navy cargo ship, or T-AKE supply ship, that has been converted into a naval detention facility. According to Strategy Page, this ship has had its crew reduced from 158 to 118 so accommodations for 26 prisoners could be improvised.
The T-AKE we learn “is the grandchild of the Servron” which developed out of necessity during World War II … these Servrons also acted as prison ships during WWII.
…
But for now, you can add the USNS Lewis and Clark to the list. In addition to concerns about mistakenly detaining innocent fisherman or innocents others, what could also be potentially very worrisome is whether this vessel will have any use or role in the roundup and rendition of ‘terrorist suspects’ in the good ol’ ‘War on Terror’ where too little transparency around unlawful detention and rendition exists.
If you read this article you will note, “Currently, six (T-AKE’s) are in service and eight are on order. The fourteen T-AKEs will replace 16 existing supply (separate ammo, cargo and fuel) ships that are reaching the end of their 35 year service life this year.” Not to read too much into things, but that could spell fourteen new prison ships soon circulating international waters. With the capacity for each to hold roughly 25 detainees, that would be 350 persons that could one day be swallowed up by the indefinite chambers of the nomadic fortress at sea.
Anyway, not to jump to any grim conclusions, all I’m sayin’ is it’s another ship to watch as the waves roll on.

Finoki ties this into a much larger picture of the use of space and the movement of peoples that are part of globalization.

…the nomadic fortress is a whole syntax of control spaces linked across multiple landscapes that constitute perhaps the world’s first universal border fence, loosely connected across continents through a kind of geopolitical geometry that super-imposes a border just as much as enforces one between the First World and the Global South. It is, you might say, the Great Wall of Globalization.

… It is in some way the final border, a border that is never at rest but is always modifying itself for greater tactical vantage; a kind of flexible mock-hydrological regime that deploys and aligns other sub-border levers and valves below it to secure the conduits of neoliberal capitalism and the flows of people who are captives of them in one way or another. A structure that utilizes an entire atlas of border fences with a range of satellite technologies, web-based border vigilantes and extra-territorial floating prisons, to feed the border as a kind of geopolitical gutter space that siphons the subjects of migration off into a swollen infrastructure of detention where billions of dollars and are spent on their bounty.

It is a fully transitional geography of unsettled coordinates, excessive legality and perpetual legal suspension. This border doesn’t take the defensive posture that borders traditionally have in the past, but instead is on the move and on the hunt for a new class of would-be border crossers who’ve been bound together in a dangerously wide-cast surveillance net that is incapable of distinguishing the refugee from the enemy combatant, the migrant from the smuggler, laborer from insurgent. It is the border as the worst kind of political blur space. It is as immovable as it is fluid, like a sea of transparent blast walls crashing on the shores of geopolitical exile.

Being incapable of distinguishing the refugee from the enemy combatant, the migrant from the smuggler, and laborer from insurgent has been a distinguishing feature of US policy, and policies of countries around the world during the Bush administration. This inability to distinguish is particularly true of the US and US proxies in Somalia and Kenya, and along the border between those two countries. I don’t feel any change in the air on this.

And to flesh out the picture, you may want to look at Finoki’s post on floating prisons coverted into housing, floating labor camps for migrant labor. Or the prisoner boxes used by the US in Iraq, where the space is the torture.

These are just a few of the blessings that AFRICOM and ongoing military liaison can bring to African “partners” that will “add value to the important endeavor of stability and security on the content of Africa and its island nations” and will “help build the capability for African partners, and organizations … to take the lead in establishing a secure environment“.

 

The Mercenaries Take Over In The Niger Delta

Oil spill fouls the water supply

defenders of human rights

Violence has been an instrument of governance in the Niger Delta as a constant companion to the oil business. Sokari Ekine has written a moving and well documented account of “how women have spearheaded the defence of local livelihoods through organised protests which cut across regional ethnic divisions” in Women’s responses to state violence in the Niger Delta, Violence as an instrument of governance.

The Niger Delta is a region of Nigeria that has been subjected to excessive militarisation for the past 13 years, where violence is used as an instrument of governance to force the people into total submission (Okonta and Douglas, 2001; Na’Allah, 1998). It is where, by far, the majority of the people live in abject poverty and where women are the poorest of the poor (Human Rights Watch, 2002; 2004; 2007). This region has little or no development, no electricity, no water, no communications, no health facilities, little and poor education. In contrast, the region generated an estimated over US$30 billion in oil revenues over a 38-year period in the form of rents for the government and profit for the multinational oil companies

Now, in order to keep this population poor, without water, without communications, or health facilities, or education, or jobs, in order to keep oil and money coming out of the Delta, going to the politicians and the oil companies, according to Nigeria’s Next, The Mercenaries Take Over.
(h/t Foreign Policy Exchange)

The Niger Delta is crawling with British and American private paramilitary companies providing security services for clients in the oil and gas industry, in clear violation of Nigerian law

There are at least 10 mercenary companies operating in the Delta, including Triple Canopy, Control Risk, Erinys International, ArmorGroup, Aegis Defence System, and Northbridge Service Group, the successor company to the now defunct Executive Outcomes … “the notorious South African paramilitary force known for its role in helping the Angolan government during the war with the rebel UNITA forces of Jonas Savimbi,and for fighting directly in the Sierra Leonean civil war.

Our laws forbid foreigners from operating armed security companies or paramilitary organisations of any kind and, strictly speaking, these hired guns are forbidden from freelancing here. But almost all of them have sought to get around the law by forming vague partnerships with local companies and by claiming to provide mainly advisory services, which contradict their stated objectives and services on their parent websites and their known activities in other countries.

Government denial

Astonishingly, our military and security services also claim to know nothing of their presence.

“I am not aware,” said the spokesman for Defence Headquarters in Abuja, Col. Christopher Jemitola. “If there is any evidence, including photographs, bring them up and we will address the issue.”

Some of the security companies also claim not to bear any arms in the Delta, a chaotic frontier where foreigners are routinely kidnaped and gunfights are a fact of daily life in cities such as Port Harcourt and in the creeks of the mangrove swamp.

This denial beggars belief, said Ishola Williams, a former commandant of the Nigerian Army Training and Doctrine Command.“They must be magicians,” said the retired general. “Are they going to fight the militants with karate or judo? We have to be very realistic, because if someone gives you a contract to provide protection for oil workers in the Niger Delta, what would you do– you would go there with your bare arms?”

Apart from the Biafran war of 1967-70, paramilitary groups are relatively new to Nigeria. But the protracted and deteriorating insurgency in the Niger Delta has made them increasingly sought after. One of the security companies that claims local partnership in Nigeria is Erinys International, a British company with experience of guarding oil installations in Iraq.

…

In the wild frontier of the internet, private military companies are rife and active, peddling their services to prospective patrons. Many of them have announced that they are now operationally domiciled in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, and some claim they work in partnership with the military Joint Task Force, the Nigeria defence forces known by its acronym JTF and which has primary responsibility for security in the area.

A JTF spokesman, Musa Sagir, denied knowledge of the existence of the foreigners nor any collaboration with them. We don’t have any connection with any foreign military contractor,” Col. Sagir said, adding that “With my inside knowledge and experience in the Niger Delta, in particular River State, I don’t have formal or informal knowledge of the existence of foreign military contractors.”

What was more, he added, somewhat indignantly, “we are trained for the job and we know what to do at the right time.”

Willaims, the retired general and now head of the local Transparency International office in Nigeria, was buying none of that. “Remember that these are government officials. If they say they know them, you as the press will go and blow it up that foreign military companies have taken over the job of security in this country and what are they doing? The House of Representatives will take it up and want to investigate, and it shows the weaknesses of all the armed forces and all the security agencies in Nigeria.”

Official denials and a seeming lack of awareness of the activities of these companies also demonstrate the enfeebled state of the Nigerian state, said Kayode Soremekun, a professor of international relations at the University of Lagos.

My own problem here is that the ministry of internal affairs and ministry of defence are not aware of their existence,” Soremekun said. “It is either one or two things: the ministry of defence is genuinely ignorant of this particular development, or it is pretending. Either way it does not bode well for the Nigerian state. And it simply shows what a lot of people had thought all along, that those who really control the Nigerian state, those who really determine what happens in the Nigerian state, cannot even be located in this country. You can locate them offshore.”

…

Since our laws do not allow for foreign owned security company to operate locally, most of these private security contractors have resorted to calling themselves “risk management consultants” rather than hired guns.

This way, they are able to provide a cocktail of services and products that are not different from what regular private military companies provide– or what the same companies do elsewhere in countries like Sierra Leone

Most of the companies are not forthcoming about their activities, for example:

At Control Risk, yet another of these security companies active in the Niger Delta, company spokesman, Edward Murray, told Next on Sunday to “go to hell” when asked to help define the scope of their Nigerian operations.

The company states that it is in Nigeria to protect British oil workers and names “a large oil producer” as a client. However, its mission includes, according to its official web site, “the provision of technical security services (onshore and offshore) and sophisticated management of security strategy in places where security is linked to broader issues of social performance.” In plain English, the company guards oil company interests against restive locals.

The mercenary companies are there to protect the “rights” of the oil companies to kill and oppress the people of the Niger Delta, pollute their land and water, and steal the resources from under their feet.

The people who are suffering most are the women. They are also organizing and fighting back. So women and children will remain major targets of violent military governance.

Meredeth Turshen wrote in 2004:

Specific effects of oil development on women’s health seem not to have been investigated. Although I found an article on the effects of exposure of crocodiles to sub-lethal concentrations of petroleum waste drilling fluid in the Niger Delta basin, I could find nothing on the health of women who live near oil wells and oil production stations, and nothing on reproductive outcomes in areas adjacent to petrochemical plants. Yet it is known that cadmium, chromium, mercury, and lead are contained in the refinery effluents that are constantly discharged into nearby bodies of water. At high concentrations these metals cause metabolic malfunctions in human beings. They enter the food chain through the drinking water and the local fish that people consume. Fish store mercury without metabolizing it, and people who eat mercury-contaminated fish can contract Minamata disease.

The health of the people and of future generations is not even important enough to study. The people polluting the environment don’t want the effects known. Until there is a serious effort to create a political solution to the problems of the Niger Delta, the people will continue to suffer, and the health and lives of the entire population are in danger. The proliferation of armed mercenaries will only escalate and prolong the problem.

(h/t sdnnigeria’s photostream)

 

Where Is AFRICOM In Africa? And Where Is Africa Policy Headed?

The Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC)

According to the Congressional Research Service January 2009 report to Congress: PDF: Africa Command: U.S. Strategic Interests and the Role of the U.S. Military in Africa

AFRICOM headquarters are based in Stuttgart Germany. Any long term decisisons as to their location have been postponed until 2012.

At present, DOD’s Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) has a semipermanent troop presence at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti with more than 1,500 U.S. military and civilian personnel in residence. The U.S. military has signed a five year lease with the Djiboutian government for Lemonier, with the option to extend the lease for two more five-year terms. The command authority for CJTF-HOA, formerly under CENTCOM, has been transferred to AFRICOM, and it will continue to be used as a Forward Operating Site.  The U.S. military has access to a number of foreign air bases and ports in Africa and has established “bare-bones” facilities maintained by local troops in several locations. The U.S. military used facilities in Kenya in the 1990s to support its intervention in Somalia and continues to use them today to support counter-terrorism activities. DOD refers to these facilities as “lily pads,” or Cooperative Security Locations (CSLs), and currently has access to locations in Algeria, Botswana, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Namibia, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zambia.
…
… DOD officials have stressed that the location in question would be a staff headquarters rather than a troop headquarters, and have suggested that they may consider a dispersed regional headquarters model, with several small locations spread across the continent to lessen the U.S. presence and burden in any one country. DOD may eventually try to co-locate those facilities with the headquarters of the continent’s regional and sub-regional organizations to link AFRICOM with the AU’s nascent regional security architecture (see “Security Assistance” below). AFRICOM already has military liaison officers (LNOs) at the African Union headquarters in Ethiopia and with ECOWAS in Nigeria, as well as at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center in Ghana. Those presences are likely to expand, and additional liaison offices may be attached to other regional organizations. DOD’s FY2009 budget request sought funding for a “limited presence on the African continent with the establishment of two of five regional offices,” although plans for those two offices have been postponed and funding for the offices was cut for the upcoming fiscal year.

The reports cites:

According to one defense analyst, “during the Cold War, United States foreign policy toward Sub-Saharan Africa had little to do with Africa.”

And despite all the fancy management speak about partnering with African partners, I think current policy has little to do with Africa, other than the fact that the US is far more focused on, and aware of, Africa’s natural resources, particularly oil. If US policy had more to do with Africa, the US would not be running its policy through its military. The CRS report emphasizes the issues of oil and counter terrorism as predominant reasons for the creation of the Africa Command.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS, has published Pursuing U.S. Energy Security Interests in Africa
A chapter in the forthcoming CSIS Africa Program report: Africa Policy in the George W. Bush Years: Recommendations for the Obama Administration, written by David L. Goldwyn. You can download the PDF prepublication draft of the report from the link. The synopsis reads:

Synopsis:
Africa plays a strategic role in U.S. and global energy security. It is a critical supplier of new source production to global and U.S. oil supply. It is a natural gas supplier, with enormous potential to meet increased future demand in a carbonconstrained world. Africa remains open to foreign investment and is one of the few continents that has not dramatically reduced access to investment in recent years. If the continent meets its potential, it may increase its production dramatically over the next two decades, serving as a pillar of global energy security by providing a major source of diverse oil and gas supply. The risk of instability in many of Africa’s key energy producers is high and rising, posing a threat to the stability of these nations and their neighbors, as well as U.S. investment and the global economy.

Once again it is clear that the interest of the US is not about Africa, it is about energy for the US.

From the body of the report:

While Nigeria and Angola, traditional large producers, have grown, new major players have emerged: Equatorial Guinea, which produced just 168,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2000, is now the third largest producer in sub-Saharan Africa. 13 Exploration has moved from West Africa to East Africa, with new discoveries in Uganda and Tanzania. Exploration is under way in Madagascar, and licensing or exploration is being conducted in Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Niger, Rwanda, and the Puntland region of Somalia. New infrastructure is emerging, from the West Africa Gas Pipeline (which will take Nigerian gas across Benin and Togo to Ghana) to development of major LNG facilities in Algeria, Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria.

Investment levels are rising and moving offshore. According to PFC Energy, 95 percent of all regional production will be offshore, with 85 percent of total production coming from Nigeria and Angola. Over the next decade firms may invest as much as $485 billion in regional exploration and production between 2005 and 2030 14 . Forty-five percent of the gross amount of capital expenditures for deepwater oil development worldwide is likely to be spent in West Africa.

The report discusses the importance and production of African oil, and discusses the competition from Asian countries:

The real concern over the rise of Asian NOCs [national oil companies], therefore, primarily stems from anxiety over business practices that negatively affect competition and the long-term stability of producing countries. So far, Asian NOCs have tended to place commercial over humanitarian concerns and have failed to incorporate into the norms of their overseas operation the long-term risks of disregarding governance, environmental, and human rights concerns.

The blatant hypocrisy (or ignorance?) of this statement should have informed readers rolling on the floor laughing hysterically. Look at Equatorial Guinea, an international symbol for rapaciously exploitive government. The US is heavily engaged with Equatorial Guinea and friends with its dictator, Obiang. It is engaged in military to military partnerships whose effect will be to shore up his power and further crush and oppress his people.

Or look at the Niger Delta, where 60 years of oil production, and engagement with the US and US military have completely disregarded “governance, environmental, and human rights concerns.” This has created and environmental, human rights, and economic disaster for the people of the Delta. Currently AFRICOM’s activities partnering with the Nigerian military appear designed for further attacks and military actions against the people of the Niger Delta, calling them “terrorists” for opposing oil exploitation and the degradation of their environment. There are serious security issues in the Delta,but they require a political solution, with far more limited military action than seems to be under consideration.

The CSIS report does go on to describe some of the issues in more realistic detail. And it describes recent policy:

In the period from 2001 to 2008, many voluntary initiatives to improve transparency and governance emerged: the implementation of the U.S.-UK led Voluntary Principles on Human Rights and Security, the development of the Equator Principles, which require assessment of environmental impact of lending, and the internationalization of the UK-initiated Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. The U.S. took a surprisingly distant approach to all of these efforts. …

There are several reasons for this relative disengagement on energy issues.

First was a shift in focus. After 9/11, the White House emphasis was on counterterrorism, with little attention to political and economic development. The link between underdevelopment and creating ungoverned spaces where terror might emerge was not identified or acted upon as a priority.

A second reason was that the White House and State Department saw that the market provided for energy supply despite internal problems in Africa, and concluded therefore that no energy market-related policy was required.

A third rationale was the absence of responsibility. The State Department Africa Bureau saw its duties primarily as crisis management. Sudan and Darfur in particular, along with DRC, Somalia, and Kenya, took most of the time of senior diplomats. Nigeria’s crisis in the Delta, despite implications for financing crime, spreading violence to neighboring countries, and destabilizing Nigeria’s democracy, did not make the cut for top priority. The State Department’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs follows business interests generally, but has no funds or mandate to address internal energy developments in producing countries. The Energy and Commerce Departments are technical agencies with no funds or mandate to engage producing countries. No one at the White House had the mandate to pull together a strategy for preventive diplomacy in a place like Angola or conflict management in the Niger Delta, much less to consider the potential impact of conflict driven disruption—such a shut in of nearly one million barrels per day of production in Nigeria—on U.S. economic interests.

Finally, there was a lack of strategic vision. There is a growing consensus among companies, NGOs, and many African countries that among energy producing countries, good governance, sound revenue management, curbs on corruption, and provision of development needs, can ultimately contribute to global energy security, and avoid the human and economic depredations suffered by Nigeria, Sudan, and other “resource cursed” countries. A partner country can help advance energy security by engaging nations on simply improving their own economy and governance. This view, which would require a coordinated multiagency approach, did not appear to figure in Bush administration calculations. Indeed, several remarked that “transparency will never be a top priority.”

The report provides a practical list of the challenges ahead for the Obama administration:

Nigeria. … The United States needs a realistic strategy for addressing the issue of the Delta that acknowledges the complexity and severity of the instability—especially in the absence of a credible government counterpart with whom the U.S. and its allies can engage.

Declining U.S. Influence. If the United States is to influence the development path of current producers like Angola, Chad, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, and emerging producers such as Ghana and Madagascar, a special effort will be needed to restore a respected voice in those countries. …

Traditionally the U.S. and international institutions have effectively used their financial clout as leverage to compel developing countries to implement policies … the U.S. will need a more nuanced approach to engagement, since resource rich countries now have ample funding on their own or through unconditional loans from China.

Security of the Offshore. If 95 percent of all energy production in West Africa will be offshore by 2010 there will be a need both for the U.S. to monitor international waters, and for countries to have the wherewithal to see who is in their water, interdict pirates and criminals, and deter attacks on facilities to protect the lives of workers. Nigeria has surpassed Indonesia to become the “number one hot spot” for piracy in the world. …

The Competition for Values. … the great challenge that China poses to U.S. and European investment in Africa is not domination of acreage (their share remains minimal) but the refusal so far to participate in international standards, a stance that erodes the incorporation of these standards into host country practice. …

In the competition for values the US needs to demonstrate its own committment, not just preach about standards others should follow. As far as strategic visions go, it would be very nice if the US strategic vision was “a stable, prosperous Africa that contributes to global energy security and uses its wealth to develop its nations”. I have not seen much sign to date of that being the case.

The Need for a Strategic Vision. The United States cannot get where it wants to go—a stable, prosperous Africa that contributes to global energy security and uses its wealth to develop its nations—unless it has a vision of how to get there. …

Deploying Resources. The two components needed to implement an effective policy are people and money. The United States needs people at the White House charged with a focus on a strategic energy policy for Africa, and a greatly enhanced diplomatic capacity. …

Asymmetric Engagement. The United States should take a holistic approach to improving stability and development, with an indirect benefit being increased energy security. Efforts to promote economic development, democracy, human rights, public health, and security will create an environment favorable to achieving energy security goals. …

And the report concludes with:

Recommendations for the New Administration
Priority recommendations for addressing these challenges are:

1. Promulgate a Policy Decision Directive on African energy security

2. Provide White House leadership

3. Apply State Department diplomatic resources and leadership to energy security

4. Give governance and transparency policy a bureaucratic home

5. Engage Africa on its own energy and economic agenda, not just ours

6. Focus development and technical assistance on governance

7. Sustain efforts to promote maritime security

8. Engage Europe and Asia on Africa issues

9. Procure a National Intelligence Estimate on African Energy Security

10. Engage on the Niger Delta

This is a very good list of challenges and conclusions. I hope there is some will to take them seriously. So far US Africa policy seems to be on Bush administration auto pilot, and run by holdovers from the Bush administration. The two areas where AFRICOM has engaged in action on the continent have been disasters, Somalia, and Uganda/DRC.

Steve Coll writes:

Military liaison, even if it is conceived progressively, becomes its own self-fulfilling destination, especially when the rest of the U.S. government is starved, by comparison, for resources.

So far military liaison is where the money is.  That will drive the policy regardless of intentions, and drive it to disaster after disaster.  The US will need to invest its money differently to achieve its objectives, and to be a positive force in Africa.  Is that likely to happen?  Is it even possible?  I certainly hope so.