Boko Haram A Blessing For Imperialism In Africa:

The Americans now admit they are training battalions of African Rangers and counterinsurgency troops. The next step is the proliferation of death squads in West Africa, as the U.S. did in Southeast Asia and Latin America. Nigeria’s schoolgirls may or may not be rescued, but U.S. and European “humanitarian” military interventionists have already gained more than they could have imagined.

“NATO’s aggression against Libya begat the sub-Saharan chaos that justified the French and U.S. occupation of Mali and Niger.”

Militarily, Africa is fast becoming an American continent. Barack Obama, who has been president for all but the first year of AFRICOM’s existence, has succeeded in integrating U.S. fighting units, bases, training regimens, equipment and financing into the military structures of all but a handful of African nations. The great pan-Africanist and former Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah’s dream of a militarily united Africa has been all but realized – with Americans and Europeans in charge. Under the guise of “humanitarian” intervention, Obama has vastly expanded Bill Clinton and George Bush’s African footprints, so that only a few patches on the continental map lie outside Washington’s sphere of operations. Eritrea and Zimbabwe are the notable exceptions – and, therefore, future targets.

Africa is occupied territory. The African Union doesn’t even pretend to be in charge of its own nominal peace-keeping missions, which are little more than opportunities for African militaries to get paid for doing the West’s bidding. China and Brazil may be garnering the lion’s share of trade with Africa, but the men with the guns are loyal to AFRICOM – the sugar daddy to the continent’s military class. U.S. troops now sleep in African barracks, brothers in arms with African officers who can determine who will sleep next week in the presidential mansion.

The pace of U.S. penetration of West Africa has quickened dramatically since 2011, when Obama bombed Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan government out of existence, setting a flood of jihadists and weapons streaming east to Syria and south to destabilize the nations of the Sahel. Chaos ensued – beautiful chaos, if you are a U.S. military planner seeking justification for ever-larger missions. NATO’s aggression against Libya begat the sub-Saharan chaos that justified the French and U.S. occupation of Mali and Niger. Hyperactive North African jihadists, empowered by American bombs, weapons and money, trained and outfitted their brethren on the continent, including elements of Nigeria’s Boko Haram. The Hausa-speaking Islamic warriors then bequeathed AFRICOM a priceless gift: nearly 300 schoolgirls in need of rescuing, perfect fodder for “humanitarian” intervention.

Nobody had to ask twice that Obama “Do something!”

The heads of Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Benin and Cameroon were summoned to Paris (pretending it was their idea) where they declared “total war” on Boko Haram, as “observers” from the U.S., France, Britain and the European Union (Africa’s past and future stakeholders) looked on. French President Francois Hollande said “a global and regional action plan” would come out of the conference.

“The heads of Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Benin and Cameroon were summoned to Paris where they declared ‘total war’ on Boko Haram.”

Of course, the five African states have neither the money, training, equipment nor intelligence gathering capacity for such a plan. It will be a Euro-American plan for the defense and security of West Africa – against other Africans. Immediately, the U.S. sent 80 troops to Chad (whose military has long been a mercenary asset of France) to open up a new drone base, joining previously existing U.S. drone fields in Niger, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Somalia, the Seychelles Islands, Djibouti (home to a huge French and American base), and CIA sites that need not be disclosed.

The new West African security grouping became an instant imprint of NATO, an appendage to be shaped by imperial military planners to confront enemies chosen by Washington and Paris.

What a miracle of humanitarian military momentum! The girls had only been missing for a month, and might not be rescued alive, but five neighboring African countries – one of them the biggest economy on the continent – had already been dragooned into a NATO-dominated military alliance with other subordinate African states.

It soon turned out that AFRICOM already had a special relationship with the Nigerian military that was not announced until after the schoolgirls’ abduction. AFRICOM will train a battalion of Nigerian Rangers in counterinsurgency warfare, the first time that the Command has provided “full spectrum” training to Africans on such a scale.

With the American public in a “Save our girls” interventionist frame of mind, operations that were secret suddenly became public. The New York Times reveals that the U.S. has been running a secret program to train counterterrorism battalions for Niger and Mauritania. Elite Green Berets and Delta Force killers are instructing handpicked commandos in counterinsurgency in Mali, as well. The identity of one Times source leaves little doubt that the previously secret operations are designed to blanket the region with U.S. trained death squads. Michael Sheehan was until last year in charge of Special Operations at the Pentagon – Death Squads Central – where he pushed for more Special Ops trainers for African armies. Sheehan now holds the “distinguished chair” at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center. In the 1980s, he was a Special Forces commander in Latin America – which can only mean death squads.

“AFRICOM will train a battalion of Nigerian Rangers in counterinsurgency warfare.”

U.S. Army Special Forces have always been political killers, most often operating with the CIA. The Phoenix Program, in Vietnam, which murdered between 26,000 and 41,000 people and tortured many more, was a CIA-Special Forces war crime. From 1975 to deep into the 80s, the CIA and its Special Forces muscle provided technical support and weapons to killers for Operation Condor, the death squads run by a consortium of military governments in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil, believed responsible for 60,000 murders. Sheehan was probably involved in Operation Condor and its Central American component, Operation Charly, and has perfected the art of political murder, ever since. If he is happy and feeling vindicated by events in Africa, then U.S.-trained death squads are about to proliferate in that part of the world.

There is no question that Obama is enamored of Special Ops, since small unit murders by professional killers at midnight look less like war – and can, if convenient, be blamed on (other) “terrorists.” However, history – recent history – proves the U.S. can get away with almost limitless carnage in Africa. Ethiopia’s 2006 invasion of Somalia, backed by U.S. forces on land, air and sea, resulted in “the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa” at the time, “worse than Darfur,” according to UN observers, with hundreds of thousands dead. The U.S. then withheld food aid to starve out Somali Shabaab fighters, leading to even more catastrophic loss of life. But, most Americans are oblivious to such crimes againstBlack humanity.

U.S. ally Ethiopia commits genocide against ethnic Somalis in its Ogaden region with absolute impunity, and bars the international media from the region. Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama – each of them with help from Susan Rice – have collectively killed six million Congolese since 1996. The greatest genocide since World War Two was the premeditated result of the chaos deliberately imposed on mineral-rich Congo by the U.S. and its henchmen in neighboring Rwanda and Uganda. Paul Kagame, the current leader of Rwanda, shot down a plane with two presidents aboard in 1994, sparking the mass killings that brought Kagame to power and started neighboring Congo on the road to hell. America celebrates Kagame as a hero, although the Tutsi tribal dictator sends death squads all over the world to snuff out those who oppose him.

“The U.S. can get away with almost limitless carnage in Africa.”

Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni, a friend of the U.S. since Ronald Reagan, committed genocidal acts against his rivals from the Acholi tribe, throwing them into concentration camps. Joseph Kony was one of these Acholis, who apparently went crazy. Kony hasn’t been a threat to Uganda or any other country in the region for years, but President Obama used a supposed sighting of remnants of his Lords Resistance Army to send 100 Green Berets to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan. Just last month, Obama sent 150 more troops and four aircraft to central Africa, again claiming that Kony was lurking, somewhere.

Actually, the American troops were deployed near South Sudan, which the U.S, Britain and Israel had destabilized for decades in an effort to split it off from the larger nation of Sudan. South Sudan became independent, but it remained unstable – not a nation, but a place with oil that the U.S. coveted. Many tens of thousands more are certain to die in fighting in South Sudan, but few Americans will blame their own country.

As the carnage in Congo demonstrates, whole populations can be made to disappear in Africa without most people in the West noticing. The death squads the Americans are training in Nigeria, Niger, Mauretania and Mali, and those that will soon be stalking victims in Cameroon and Benin, will not be limited to hunting Boko Haram. Death squads are, by definition, destabilizing; they poison the political and social environment beyond repair, as Central Americans who lived through the 80s can attest.

Yet, that is U.S. imperialism’s preferred method of conquest in the non-white world. It’s what the Americans actually do, when folks demand that they “Do something.”

By Glen Ford 

Africa Beware Of Imperialism’s Fatherly Advice

Washington’s military tentacles daily tighten their grip on Africa, in ever deepening collusion with France. “Allowing the U.S., France and others to essentially take charge of Africa’s militaries creates or maintains an almost childlike dependence on imperialist forces.”

Throughout Africa, supposedly sovereign, independent countries are teeming with western military personnel who claim to be friends, advisors or partners with Africans. In truth, they create paternalistic relationships that lock a continent into submissive, subordinate facilitation of its own domination and exploitation.

Perhaps no entity flings “partnership” rhetoric with greater frequency and abandon than U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). An AFRICOM statement says: “AFRICOM’s Theater Security Cooperation programs (TSCP) remain the cornerstone of our sustained security engagement with African partners, are focused on building operational and institutional capacity and developing human capital, and provide a framework within which the command engages with regional partners in cooperative military activities and development.”

Nevertheless, it is France and not AFRICOM that is the undisputed master of paternalism in Africa. During the colonial era, a French government official boasted of a strategy to transform “the best indigenous [African] elements into complete Frenchmen.” Even during the period of decolonization France presented itself as a benevolent guardian and attempted to strong-arm its colonies into a continuing master-servant relationship. At the time, only the people of Guinea had the pride and character to sever ties with the colonizer. In recent years France has maintained an active military presence in Africa, particularly in places like Mali and Libya. It is therefore troubling that through AFRICOM the U.S. is now formally making common cause with France, which unlike the U.S. makes no efforts to disguise its troops in Africa as advisors.

A French Special Forces officer said: “The Americans want to get involved in Africa. That’s good for us. We know that with the Americans it will be more efficient. We use American logistics – that’s what we are missing. On the other hand, we provide the local knowledge.” With respect to support the U.S. is supplying France, Reuters reported: “The United States fast-tracked the sale of 12 Reaper drones to France last year, the first two of which started operating in Niger in January alongside U.S. drones already there.”

In return for U.S. support, France takes on the large, sustained military operations in Africa that are off-limits to the U.S. because of military budget cuts and a U.S. public that is increasingly war weary. The U.S. military is left to lurk in Africa’s shadows training and manipulating African armies and staging occasional quick-hit raids on alleged terrorists.

Although the U.S. must remain committed to the militarization of Africa in order to preserve its empire, the situation is nevertheless awkward. Congressman Frank A. LoBiondo said: “It’s a balancing act. Many of these [African] countries consider the U.S. a partner and strong ally, but they have serious concerns about what our footprint looks like.”

Africa’s concern should extend beyond what the U.S. footprint “looks like.” At issue is the continent’s dignity. Horrific, devastating attacks such as the recent murders of dozens of children at a Nigerian boarding school by the group Boko Haram, make it easier for western countries to persuade African governments that they lack the expertise and resources to counter terrorism. But allowing the U.S., France and others to essentially take charge of Africa’s militaries creates or maintains an almost childlike dependence on imperialist forces. Africa should have enough pride to engage in an independent analysis of its own circumstances. In some cases it is likely the solutions won’t require a military approach at all.

Human Rights Watch researcher Eric Guttschuss told a UN news service the “root causes” of support for Boko Haram are “poverty and unemployment, driven by poor governance and corruption.” Guttschuss added that one of the group’s former leaders rallied support “by speaking out against police and political corruption [on behalf of Nigeria’s] vast numbers of unemployed youth.”

Abdulkarim Mohammed, another Boko Haram researcher, noted: “Boko Haram is essentially the fallout of frustration with corruption and the attendant social malaise of poverty and unemployment…The young generation sees how [the nation’s resources] are squandered by a small bunch of self-serving elite which breeds animosity and frustration, and such anger is ultimately translated into violent outbursts.”

Thus, African leadership has the capacity to address the root causes of the Boko Haram crisis without inviting western military involvement. A regional, if not continental focus on the needs of the most desperate elements of African societies would do much to eliminate the pool of recruits for groups engaged in violent attacks on civilians. Long-term, the solution is certainly the elimination of neo-colonial governments and a continent-wide, unified approach to the mass control and use of Africa’s natural resources. However, when Africa begins to walk down that path it will almost certainly find that its current western military “partners” will become fierce military adversaries.

Mark P. Fancher is an attorney who writes frequently about the U.S. military presence in Africa.

Nigerian Army 'Killed Hundreds'

Nigeria's army killed some 600 people after a recent attack by Boko Haram militants on a barracks, Amnesty International has said.

Quoting eye-witnesses, it said that after the raid in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri, detainees who had escaped were rounded up and killed.

One eyewitness told Amnesty that a self-defence group known as civilian JTF captured some of the hundreds of detainees who had escaped.

"I saw the soldiers asking the people to lie on the ground," the witness said.

"There was a small argument between the soldiers and the civilian JTF. The soldiers made some calls and a few minutes later they started shooting the people on the ground. I counted 198 people killed at that checkpoint."

Amnesty says satellite images have revealed three possible mass graves around the city.

Nigerian Military ‘Killing People Without Asking Who They Are’

By ADAM NOSSITER

For the soldiers, the young men’s long, flowing robes — the traditional garb of Muslim West Africa — were enough to establish guilt, the refugees said.

“As soon as they see you with clothing like this, they shoot,” said Abukar Ari, a Koranic teacher in a long robe who said he had fled across the border from Nigeria two weeks before. “They don’t ask any questions. I’ve seen them shoot people. Yes, I’ve seen them shoot.”

Other refugees in the registration lines of thousands who had fled Nigeria’s combat zone, say civilians were being killed there by soldiers unconcerned with the distinction between militants and innocents. 

Friends and neighbors were being shot, they said; young men were being rounded up at night; and citizens with the vertical ethnic scarring of the Kanuri, a group dominant in the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, were being taken away.

“They are killing people without asking who they are,” said Laminou Lawan, a student who said he had fled here 10 days before. “When they see young men in traditional robes, they shoot them on the spot. They catch many of the others and take them away, and we don’t hear from them again.”

The Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, suggesting that he was fed up with the four-year uprising by Boko Haram, announced “extraordinary measures” in his country’s north and placed a large part of it under a state of emergency, ordering troops to “take all necessary action” to end an insurgency that he said was now threatening the country’s foundations.

Nigeria’s foreign partners, including the United States, which considers the country an important ally in the fight against Islamist militancy, have watched warily, with Secretary of State John Kerry pointedly warning the Nigerian military about what he called “credible allegations” that Nigerian forces had committed “gross human rights violations” in the period before the offensive began.

Last month, more than 200 people were killed in what local officials, residents and human rights groups say was a sweeping massacre by Nigerian forces in the nearby village of Baga, in northern Nigeria. 

But some of the refugees who have massed here in this remote border village at the far eastern edge of Niger — there are at least 5,000 of them, and possibly as many as 10,000 in the area, officials say — described the fighting in terms that varied widely from the military communiqués.

Their testimony is among the first independent accounts of the Nigerian military’s offensive, and they spoke of indiscriminate bombing and shooting, unexplained civilian deaths, nighttime roundups of young men by security forces. 

All spoke of a climate of terror that had pushed them, in the thousands, to flee for miles through the harsh and baking semidesert, sometimes on foot, to Niger... the overwhelming majority blamed the military, saying they had fled their country because of it.

“The military just opens fire and kills people, and throws bombs and kills people, for no reason,” said Abubakar Ali, a shoe salesman waiting in one of the registration lines. “That is why you see these people here,” he said, pointing out at the crowd. “That is what is happening now in Nigeria.”

“I’ve seen the wounded; these are people I know,” said Muhammad Yacoubu, a farmer.

“The military are looking for Boko Haram, but if they don’t find them, they take revenge,” said Moustapha Ali, a shopkeeper.

Ousmane Boukari, a herdsman, said, “They bombed on Saturday, and they missed their targets; they’re just firing at random, they don’t even know where the Boko Haram are.”

Modu Goni, another refugee, said: “At night you hear the shooting, and in the morning you find the bodies, people from the village. When you see your friends dead, it’s scary.”

Others spoke of seizures of young men by security forces, a pattern already established in the insurgents’ stronghold city of Maiduguri, according to residents there.

“The soldiers took the young men away, at least 10 of them, at night; it’s at night that they make their raids,” said Sherrif Alhadji Abdu, another refugee. “They band their eyes, and take them away. They took away my friends.”