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.

The Imam and The Pastor

Imam Muhammad Ashafa and Pastor James Wuye are two of the unlikeliest of allies

By Amjad Mohamed-Saleem

"My hate for Muslims had no limits," said the Pastor. "We had a zeal to protect and revive the glory of Islam," said the Imam.

Emerging from the 1990s in Northern Nigeria after being on the frontlines of confrontations that saw thousands dead, Imam Muhammad Ashafa and Pastor James Wuye are two of the unlikeliest of allies. Forging new grounds with their Interfaith Mediation Center, they became responsible for mediating peace between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria's Kaduna state.

They both came out of the heart of the religious teachings of their communities to become bitter enemies determined to kill one another. Imam Ashafa was committed to the total Islamization of Nigeria, and Pastor James to its total evangelization.

Their story in the documentary film “The Imam and The Pastor” is one that needs to be learnt to fully comprehend the importance of moving beyond clash to reach out and develop an alliance with one other.

Tough Journey

Joining rival militias, the pastor had his hand hacked off while defending his church against Muslims, and the imam had his spiritual adviser and two of his brothers killed by Christian extremists. "For 48 hours, we were killing and maiming each other. Each of us was fighting believing that we had to defend our faith," said Ashafa.

In 1995, a chance meeting between the two at a mediation conference held under the auspices of the Kaduna State Women's Commission saw them discovering a lot of commonalities between themselves. This started their journey toward healing and forgiveness. As they each began to question what the cost of violence is, they reverted back to their scriptures for guidance on common approaches. The culmination of this was the Interfaith Mediation Center, which has been described as a prototype of global conflict resolution. The journey has been tough. They were labeled as betrayers by their own respective people, and when they visited each other's religious institutions, they were met with suspicion.

Their personal journey was equally tough. Moving away from hating each other was a hard endeavor. The turning point for Imam Ashafa came when he heard a Friday sermon about forgiveness and the example of prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) who forgave the people of Quraysh upon the conquest ofMecca.

For Pastor James, it took him three years to really overcome his hatred. He says that sometimes when they would be travelling together, even sharing a room, he was sometimes tempted to suffocate Ashafa in retaliation for the loss of his hand. However, it was with the sickness of his mother and the support shown by Imam Ashafa that Pastor James began to really embrace the concept of reconciliation.

He was further helped by the words of a fellow evangelist, "You cannot preach to someone you hate. You must begin to forgive them for every hurt against you."

Lessons Learned

The two men are now working together and, more importantly, helping to empower others to understand and rejoice the commonality with the faith of others and to speak of those faiths with the respect they deserve, while remaining faithful to their own religions.

In fact, it is this demonstration of the importance of staying faithful to one's own religious principles while reaching out to others of a different faith that has been the appeal of their story over the last decade or so. This, and the fact that their solution is home-grown (becoming part of the solution after being part of the problem) means they talk not only with credibility but with a refreshing sense of uniqueness. This credibility is important, especially for a continent that has suffered from being told how to solve its problems rather than being provided with the space and facilitation it needs to solve the problems for itself.

Ashafa and James have been described by the Archbishop of Canterbury as a "model for Christian-Muslim relations." Their story shows how the power of responsibility can push them to rise above their narrow confines of individualistic concerns to face the broader concerns of all humanity and to redress contradictions of society. This is not something to be left to politicians or formal institutions, although no one can be ruled out from playing a part and contributing. Ultimately, the contradictions of society will be redressed when people come together, confident in their universal principles, strengthened by their common values, becoming defenders of pluralism in their societies, and respecting the identities of others. They must take up the challenge of joining forces in a revolution of trust and confidence against the tide of discrimination, intolerance, and poverty.

For Pastor James, it took him three years to really overcome his hatred

Their journey of forgiveness and reconciliation is about taking an individual responsibility to create a safe space for people to talk and share ideas. This safe space entails not only moving beyond victimhood, but also being cognizant of the past, accepting and facing up to the past honestly.

The story of Ashafa and James shows that strong ethical commitment in religious traditions can sharpen identity politics, but, more importantly, can also form the basis of inter- and intrafaith collaboration. Thus, religious pluralism not only can lead to an absence of violence, mainly due to better understandings and interaction, but it opens a space for discussion, dialogue, and engagement.

In short, we must learn to listen closely to one another, not simply because it is polite, but because it is just possible that we might learn something important about ourselves and build a better global village in the process. This is perhaps the greatest lesson we can get from the story of the Imam and the Pastor.

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.”

Is Nigeria's Conflict Religious Or Political?

As Violence Continues To Claim Lives In The Country's North, We Analyse The Factors Behind The Tensions.

For the last decade, Plateau state in central Nigeria has been a hotbed of ethnic tension between the Fulani, who are traditionally Muslim, and the Berom, who are Christian. The Fulani are seen as 'settlers' by the state's indigenous Berom.

Last month, more than 100 people were killed in violent clashes between the two communities.

Nigerian police blamed the most recent violence on tribal differences over land.

And on Tuesday, thousands of villagers were evacuated from their homes amid fears of more violence.

A military operation is underway in Plateau state to find the perpetrators. But the state's governor, Jonah David Jang, is not convinced that the military can bring peace.

He told Al Jazeera:

"The military service is becoming polluted. They are becoming part of the problem instead of solving the problem because some of them, as we've found out, do take sides .... The security forces generally have to sort out themselves to be able to maintain peace, law and order in Nigeria."

How dangerous is the religious and political divide in Nigeria? And what is the solution to this ongoing conflict?

"It is true that the Berom are predominantly non-Muslim, it doesn't make them predominantly Christian ... to make them a target group, they have to be considered as Christian and attacked for economic reasons. [That] is something that the reportage needs to clarify."

Michael Amoah, an Africa analyst

US Military To Help Fight Nigerian Boko Haram

Submitted By "Sayf Maslul" 

By David Axe 
November 11, 2011 | 3:59 pm 
Courtesy Of "Wired Magazine"

The Pentagon’s shadow war in Africa could have a new front, if reports coming out of Nigeria are accurate. U.S. troops are headed to Nigeria to help local forces do battle with Boko Haram, an Islamic terror group that has killed up to 400 people this year in an escalating campaign of bombings and shootings. At least that’s what Nigerian military sources tell Scott Morgan, a journalist based in Washington, D.C. who writes under the pseudonym “Confused Eagle.” The Guardian also has the story.

U.S. officials have refused to confirm the deployment.

However, a new U.S. assistance mission would be consistent with steadily increasing Pentagon involvement in a wide range of African conflicts. American forces have been active in and around Somalia for the better part of a decade, targeting pirates and the terror group al-Shabab. Last month, President Barack Obama announced he was sending 100 U.S. advisers to help the Ugandan army track the Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group in Congo. And this year the Pentagon has quietly set up a number of new bases in Ethiopia and the Seychelles to provide air support to all these operations.

Boko Haram certainly ranks alongside al-Shabab and the murderous LRA. In August, the Nigerian group attacked the U.N.’s Nigerian headquarters, killing 23. In their home town of Maiduguri, Boko Haram gunmen riding on motorcycles waged a campaign of terror that forced the government to ban the bikes. The Nigerian military and police have cracked down on the terror group, leading to allegations of brutality and extra-judicial killings.

The reports of a new U.S. deployment came just days after the State Department issued a warning to Americans living in Nigeria of possible Boko Haram attacks on luxury hotels in the capital of Abuja. Those attacks have not, as yet, materialized. But the terror group did send three truckloads of fighters to the town of Mainok near the border with Cameroon. They terrorized the locals and killed at least two people.

Now regional leader worry that Boko Haram could expand in to countries neighboring Nigeria. The chilling prospect of Boko Haram going international helps explain why the reports of U.S. intervention seem credible.

Muslim's Massacred In Nigeria

Horrors Of Religious Violence Found In Nigeria

After Religious Violence In Nigeria, Horrors Of Death Lurk In Sewers, Wells Of Village

By JON GAMBRELL
AP News
Jan 22, 2010 15:11 EST
Courtesy Of Anti-War News Wire

Muslim volunteers discovered Friday that sectarian violence in central Nigeria this week extended beyond the long-restive city of Jos and into the burned shell of what used to be a small village near it.

Both Christians and Muslims died during the violence that began Sunday in the central Nigerian city once known as a prime tourist destination in West Africa. The nonprofit group Human Rights Watch puts the death toll among both religions at more than 200. More than 5,000 people have been displaced.

However, as Muslim volunteers arrived in the village of Kurujantar — about 18 miles (30 kilometers)south of Jos — they found corpses shoved three-at-a-time into sewer pits, pushed into communal wells and scattered in bushes. One volunteer held up the charred body of an infant that lay inside a cardboard box.

Nearly all the mud-walled homes in the one-time mining town suffered fire damage or had been destroyed. The central mosque, where residents say both the young and old sought refuge during an attack Tuesday, sat burned, ashes spread across the floor where the faithful once prayed.

Community leader Wardhead Umaru Baza, 58, said Friday that more than 300 were dead from the violence, which lasted seven hours. He said he hid in a hole as rioters armed with new and locally made firearms shot residents in the mostly Muslim village.

His causality figure could not be independently verified. Volunteers there said they had collected the bodies of about 100 people since the attack, though more likely remained.

Sectarian violence in this central region of Nigeria has left thousands dead over the past decade. The latest outbreak came despite the Nigerian government's efforts to quell religious extremism in the West African country.

Jos is located in Nigeria's "middle belt," where dozens of ethnic groups mingle in a band of fertile and hotly contested land separating the Muslim north from the predominantly Christian south.

There are conflicting accounts about what unleashed the recent bloodshed. According to the state police commissioner, skirmishes began after Muslim youths set a Christian church ablaze, but Muslim leaders denied that. Muslims say it began with an argument over the rebuilding of a Muslim home in a predominantly Christian neighborhood that had been destroyed in November 2008.

Baza said the police did not heed the community's call for help in the wake of violence in Jos, leaving the townspeople at risk.

Baza said he didn't know where his wife was. "Maybe she's dead," he said, wiping a single tear.

Even in Jos, volunteers discovered the charred body of one victim Friday in the Anglo Jos neighborhood. Resident Adamu Bala, 22, said rioters rampaged through the Muslim neighborhood Monday after police warned the residents to flee. Bala escaped, but attackers killed his 32-year-old brother and set his body on fire. Burning of corpses is considered desecration in Islam.

On Friday, graffiti written in burned charcoal left after the attack praised Jesus Christ as "the mighty man in battle" and declared the neighborhood "New Jerusalem." However, it couldn't be determined who wrote the slogans — or when.

During Friday prayers, Jos central mosque Imam Balarabe Daud told followers that the Quran forbade the killing of innocent people and warned "hell fire" awaited those who led the violence that has engulfed the city. He called on those praying to cooperate with the Army soldiers now manning makeshift road blocks throughout the city.

Maj. Gen. Saleh Maina, who is overseeing the security operation in Jos, warned that anyone violating the city's dusk-to-dawn curfew would be harshly dealt with. Maina also asked anyone with weapons to turn them over to authorities — something that could be unlikely in a city where gunshots still echo during the night.

As the sun began to set Friday in Kurujantar, volunteers carried bodies with a cheetah-print blanket to a large grave dug in front of a destroyed home. Abdullahi Wase, 52, watched as his wife's body tumbled into the hole. Two of his sons, ages 19 and 5, remain missing.

"I cannot even shed tears anymore," Wase said.

But as volunteers shoveled the clay-red dirt in the grave, he turned away and wept.

___

Associated Press Writer Ahmed Saka contributed to this report.