U.S. Military Secret Ops Revealed

U.S. Military Averages More Than A Mission A Day In Africa

The numbers tell the story: 10 exercises, 55 operations, 481 security cooperation activities.

For years, the U.S. military has publicly insisted that its efforts in Africa are small scale. Its public affairs personnel and commanders have repeatedly claimed no more than a “light footprint” on that continent, including a remarkably modest presence when it comes to military personnel.  They have, however, balked at specifying just what that light footprint actually consists of.  During an interview, for instance, a U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) spokesman once expressed worry that tabulating the command’s deployments would offer a “skewed image” of U.S. efforts there.

It turns out that the numbers do just the opposite.

Last year, according AFRICOM commander General David Rodriguez, the U.S. military carried out a total of 546 “activities” on the continent -- a catch-all term for everything the military does in Africa.  In other words, it averages about one and a half missions a day.  This represents a 217% increase in operations, programs, and exercises since the command was established in 2008.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month, Rodriguez noted that the 10 exercises, 55 operations, and 481 security cooperation activities made AFRICOM “an extremely active geographic command.”  But exactly what the command is “active” in doing is often far from clear.

AFRICOM releases information about only a fraction of its activities.  It offers no breakdown on the nature of its operations.  And it allows only a handful of cherry-picked reporters the chance to observe a few select missions.  The command refuses even to offer a count of the countries in which it is “active,” preferring to keep most information about what it’s doing -- and when and where -- secret.

While Rodriguez’s testimony offers but a glimpse of the scale of AFRICOM’s activities, a cache of previously undisclosed military briefing documents obtained by TomDispatch sheds additional light on the types of missions being carried out and their locations all across the continent.  These briefings prepared for top commanders and civilian officials in 2013 demonstrate a substantial increase in deployments in recent years and reveal U.S. military operations to be more extensive than previously reported.  They also indicate that the pace of operations in Africa will remain robust in 2014, with U.S. forces expected again to average far more than a mission each day on the continent.

The Constant Gardener

U.S. troops carry out a wide range of operations in Africa, including airstrikestargeting suspected militants, night raids aimed at kidnapping terror suspects, airlifts of French and African troops onto the battlefields of proxy wars, and evacuationoperations in destabilized countries.  Above all, however, the U.S. military conducts training missions, mentors allies, and funds, equips, and advises its local surrogates.

U.S. Africa Command describes its activities as advancing “U.S. national security interests through focused, sustained engagement with partners” and insists that its “operations, exercises, and security cooperation assistance programs support U.S. Government foreign policy and do so primarily through military-to-military activities and assistance programs.”

 Saharan Express is a typical exercise that biennially pairs U.S. forces with members of the navies and coast guards of around a dozen mostly African countries. Operations include Juniper Micron and Echo Casemate, missions focused on aiding French and African interventions in Mali and the Central African Republic.  Other “security cooperation” activities include the State Partnership Program, which teams African military forces with U.S. National Guard units and the State Department-funded Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) program through which U.S. military mentors and advisors provide equipment and instruction to African units.

Many military-to-military activities and advisory missions are carried out by soldiers from the Army’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, as part of a “regionally aligned forces” effort that farms out specially trained U.S. troops to geographic combatant commands, like AFRICOM.  Other training engagements are carried out by units from across the service branches, including Africa Partnership Station 13 whose U.S. naval personnel and Marines teach skills such as patrolling procedures and hand-to-hand combat techniques.  Meanwhile, members of the Air Force recently provided assistance to Nigerian troops in areas ranging from logistics to airlift support to public affairs.

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Previously undisclosed U.S. Army Africa records reveal a 94% increase in all activities by Army personnel from 2011 to 2013, including a 174% surge in State Partnership missions (from 34 to 93) and a 436% jump in Advise-and-Assist activities including ACOTA missions (from 11 to 59).  Last year, according to a December 2013 document, these efforts involved everything from teaching Kenyan troops how to use Raven surveillance drones and helping Algerian forces field new mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles, or MRAPS, to training Chadian and Guinean infantrymen and aiding France’s ongoing interventions in West and Central Africa.

AFRICOM spokesman Benjamin Benson refused to offer further details about these activities. “We do training with a lot of different countries in Africa,” he told me.  When I asked if he had a number on those “different countries,” he replied, “No, I don’t.”  He ignored repeated written requests for further information.  But a cache of records detailing deployments by members of just the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, from June through December 2013, highlights the sheer size, scope, and sweep of U.S. training missions.

June saw members of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team deployed to Niger, Uganda, Ghana, and on two separate missions to Malawi; in July, troops from the team traveled to Burundi, Mauritania, Niger, Uganda, and South Africa; August deployments included the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, South Africa, Niger, two missions in Malawi, and three to Uganda; September saw activities in Chad, Togo, Cameroon, Ghana, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Uganda, and Malawi; in October, members of the unit headed for Guinea and South Africa; November’s deployments consisted of Lesotho, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Guinea; while December’s schedule consisted of activities in South Sudan, Cameroon, and Uganda, according to the documents.  All told, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division carried out 128 separate “activities” in 28 African countries during all of 2013.

The records obtained by TomDispatch also indicate that U.S. Army Africa took part in almost 80% of all AFRICOM activities on the continent in 2013, averaging more than one mission per day.  Preliminary projections for 2014 suggest a similar pace this year -- 418 activities were already planned out by mid-December 2013 -- including anticipated increases in the number of operations and train-and-equip missions.

Full-scale exercises, each involving U.S. Army troops and members of the militaries of multiple African countries, are also slated to rise from 14 to 20 in 2014, according to the documents.  So far, AFRICOM has released information on 11 named exercises scheduled for this year.  These include African Lion in Morocco, Eastern Accord in Uganda, Western Accord in Senegal, Central Accord in Cameroon, and Southern Accord in Malawi, all of which include a field training component and serve as a capstone event for the prior year’s military-to-military programs.  AFRICOM will also conduct at least three maritime security exercises, including Cutlass Express off the coast of East Africa, Obangame Express in the Gulf of Guinea, and Saharan Express in the waters off Senegal and the Cape Verde islands, as well as its annual Africa Endeavor exercise, which is designed to promote “information sharing” and facilitate standardized communications procedures within African militaries.

Additionally, U.S. and African Special Operations forces will carry out an exercise codenamed Silent Warrior 2014 in Germany and have already completed Flintlock 2014 (since 2005, an annual event).  As part of Flintlock 2014, more than 1,000 troops from 18 nations, including Burkina Faso, Canada, Chad, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Mauritania, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Senegal, the United Kingdom, the U.S., and the host nation of Niger, carried out counterterror training on the outskirts of Niamey, the capital, as well as at small bases in Tahoua, Agadez, and Diffa.  “Although Flintlock is considered an exercise, it is really an extension of ongoing training, engagement, and operations that help prepare our close Africa partners in the fight against extremism and the enemies that threaten peace, stability, and regional security,” said Colonel Kenneth Sipperly, the commander of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahel, during the Flintlock opening ceremony.

Locations, Locations, Locations

A 2013 investigation by TomDispatch analyzing official documents and open source information revealed that the U.S. military was involved with at least 49 of the 54 nations on the African continent during 2012 and 2013 in activities that ranged from special ops raids to the training of proxy forces.  A map produced late last year by U.S. Army Africa bolsters the findings, indicating its troops had conducted or planned to conduct “activities” in all African “countries” during the 2013 fiscal year except for Western Sahara (a disputed territory in the Maghreb region of North Africa), Guinea Bissau, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Madagascar, and Zimbabwe.  Egypt is considered outside of AFRICOM’s area of operations, but did see U.S. military activity in 2013, as didSomalia, which now also hosts a small team of U.S. advisors.  Other documents indicate Army troops actually deployed to São Tomé and Príncipe, a country that regularly conducts activities with the U.S. Navy.

AFRICOM is adamant that the U.S. military has only one base on the continent: Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti.  Official documents examined by TomDispatch, however, make reference to bases by other names: forward operating sites, or FOSes (long-term locations); cooperative security locations, or CSLs (through which small numbers of U.S. troops periodically rotate); and contingency locations, or CLs (which are used only during ongoing missions).

AFRICOM has repeatedly denied requests by TomDispatch for further information on the numbers or locations of FOSes, CSLs, and CLs, but official documents produced in 2012 make reference to seven cooperative security locations, including one in Entebbe, Uganda, a location from which U.S. contractors have flown secret surveillance missions, according to an investigation by the Washington Post.  Information released earlier this year by the military also makes references to at least nine “forward operating locations,” or FOLs in Africa.

We Know Not What They Do

“What We Are Doing,” the title of a December 2013 military document obtained by TomDispatch, offers answers to questions that AFRICOM has long sought to avoid and provides information the command has worked to keep under wraps.  So much else, however, remains in the shadows.

From 2008 to 2013, the number of missions, exercises, operations, and other activities under AFRICOM’s purview has skyrocketed from 172 to 546, but little substantive information has been made public about what exactly most of these missions involved and just who U.S. forces have trained.  Since 2011, U.S. Army Africa alone has taken part in close to 1,000 “activities” across the continent, but independent reporters have only been on hand for a tiny fraction of them, so there are limits to what we can know about them beyond military talking points and official news releases for a relative few of these missions.  Only later did it become clear that the United States extensively mentored the military officer who overthrew Mali’s elected government in 2012, and that the U.S. trained a Congolese commando battalion implicated by the United Nations in mass rapes and otheratrocities during that same year, to cite two examples.

Since its inception, U.S. Africa Command has consistently downplayed its role on the continent.  Meanwhile, far from the press or the public, the officers running its secret operations have privately been calling Africa “the battlefield of tomorrow, today.”

After years in the dark, we now know just how “extremely active” -- to use General David Rodriguez’s phrase -- AFRICOM has been and how rapidly the tempo of its missions has increased.  It remains to be seen just what else we don't know about U.S. Africa Command’s exponentially expanding operations.

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at the Nation Institute.  A 2014 Izzy Award winner, his pieces have appeared in theNew York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, at the BBC and regularlyat TomDispatch. He is the author most recently of the New York Timesbestseller Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (just out in paperback).

Map Of Active US Military Ops In Africa

Thirteen nations – stretching from the Horn of Africa to Mali’s western border – already house U.S. troops involved in “actual military operations.” Their presence is widely considered part of an expanding “shadow war against al-Qaeda affiliates and other militant groups” in the region – and the American people know very little about it.

Like many wars throughout history, this one is starting small. Troop numbers remain low, and intelligence operations are housed mainly in small airbases constructed in the past seven years. They emphasize spy missions: Many involve aircraft disguised as private planes, and are equipped with full-motion sensors that track infrared heat patterns, record video and pick up radio and cellphone signals. At least 12 such bases have been built since 2007.

Things have been quiet thus far, but the U.S. has a troubled history of conducting proxy wars throughout Africa. Since 9/11 alone, American covert operations have contributed to violence and destabilization in Mali, the Central African Republic and Libya, among others. Without the level of pomp and troop involvement as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. forces can now subtly influence Africa’s political landscape as they see fit, while evading public scrutiny.

This should worry us. Despite their operations’ relative tameness nowadays – if launching drone strikes and fighting proxy wars can be considered “tame” – U.S. military intervention on the continent has rarely been without negative consequences. It’s grown increasingly important to remember this when calling for intervention in African affairs: Whatever Band-Aid effect Americans may have now, the long-term impact will be felt almost exclusively by the people who actually live there.

Remaining vigilant as our troops amass in growing numbers might be one of the few ways to avoid creating more problems we’re ill equipped to fix. The beginning of that process is education.

To that end, here’s a brief rundown of recent U.S. military activities and outposts in Sub-Saharan Africa:

Burkina Faso. Base established 2007 in Ouagadougou, launches spy planes to police and patrol the Islamic Maghreb.

Image Credit: Public Intelligence

Congo. Troops stationed in Congo to aid the search for Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army.

Central African Republic. Part of the broader search for the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Chad. 80 troops deployed May 21 to search for the kidnapped Nigerian girls.

Djibouti. Home to Camp Lemonnier, a full-blown military base that houses 4,000 troops and has a $1.4 billion expansion plan in the works. Also faces allegations of being used as a “black site” where terrorism suspects are tortured. A congressional investigation into the issue has yet to be declassified.

Image Credit: Public Intelligence

Ethiopia. Airport annex used to house Reaper drones flown over East Africa since 2011.

Image Credit: Public Intelligence

Kenya. Multiple bases, including Manda Bay (used to launch drone strikes) and Camp Simba, home to 60 military personnel since 2013.

Image Credit: Public Intelligence

Mali. Troops sent in 2013 to aid French and African forces in wartime, though the White House insisted they were not directly engaged in combat.

Niger. Drone base since 2013, also houses 100 military intelligence personnel.

Image Credit: Public Intelligence

Nigeria. Troops deployed to aid the search for the kidnapped girls earlier this month.

Somalia. Fewer than two dozen troops deployed for “training and advising” purposes in 2014.

South Sudan. Forty-five military personnel deployed to protect U.S. citizens and property in 2013.

Image Credit: Public Intelligence

Uganda. Launches surveillance aircraft out of a base in Entebbe, mostly used to search for Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army.

Image Credit: Public Intelligence

(Zak Cheney-Rice)

Has Syria Become The UN's Proxy Battlefield?

Following Kofi Annan's resignation we ask if the UN is engaged in a hegemonic power struggle over the Syrian conflict. 

"I do not intend to continue my mission when my mandate expires at the end of August," Kofi Annan said when announcing his resignation as the UN-Arab League peace envoy for Syria on Thursday.

While it was no secret that the former UN secretary-general was frustrated at his failure to implement a six-point peace plan in Syria, we are told that his announcement on Thursday took the international community by surprise.

Clearly, the prospects for a negotiated end to the violence look grim. Annan blames his decision on what he described as Syrian government intransigence, and the opposition's escalating military campaign.

But he was particularly critical of what he called the failure of a divided international community.

Speaking in Geneva, Annan said: "At a time when we need, when the Syrian people desperately need action, there continues to be finger-pointing and name-calling in the Security Council. The Geneva communique, endorsed by the Action Group for Syria on 30 June, provided an international agreement on a framework for political transition. This should have been automatically endorsed by Security Council and something the international community should have built on." 

After he resigned, Annan wrote an op-ed for the Financial Times saying that multiple players were responsible for the failure of diplomacy in Syria, and made it clear that al-Assad is not solely responsible for peace in the region.

Speaking to Al Jazeera just before Annan's announcement, John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the UN, when asked if he would advice Mitt Romney, the Republican US presidential candidate, to support Syrian rebels, said:

"I don't think we have an adequate grasp who the opposition really is, I think it remains disorganised. I think there's certainly pro-western pro-democratic elements but there are terrorist and jihadist elements as well. I'm very concerned that if we gave particularly lethal assistance to the opposition that we couldn't control what happened to it and that there is a risk if Assad falls of a bloodbath against the Alawite, Christian and Druze communities in Syria." 

In another development, it has emerged that Barack Obama, the US president, has secretly authorised US support for the Free Syrian Army, according to reports by Reuters news agency citing US sources.

This is thought to include clandestine CIA backup. But the White House is maintaining its public position that arming the rebels is not a solution.

"It is true that outside parties…bring their own interest to the table when it comes to formulating their approach to what is essentially an internal Syrian conflict…unfortunately the fact that it [remains] unresolved opens the country to more and more external influence."

Michele Dunne, a director at the Atlantic Council

U.S. Is The Driving Force Behind The Fighting In Somalia

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. David Hogg, center right, inspects Sierra Leone troops in Freetown during a deployment ceremony this year. (U.S. Army Africa / July 28, 2012)


Washington has been quietly equipping and training thousands of African soldiers to wage a widening proxy war against the Shabab, the Al Qaeda ally that has sparked alarm as foreign militants join its ranks.


David S. Cloud Reports,


 U.S. Army Maj. Gen. David Hogg: "You will push … the miscreants from that country, so Somalia can once again be free of tyranny and terrorism," he told them, according to a video of the May ceremony. "We know you are ready."

These weren't American soldiers. They were from impoverished Sierra Leone in West Africa. But Hogg, a top U.S. Army commander for Africa, was in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, because this was largely an American operation.

Nearly 20 years after U.S. Army Rangers suffered a bloody defeat in Somalia, losing 18 soldiers and two Black Hawk helicopters, Washington is once again heavily engaged in the chaotic country. Only this time, African troops are doing the fighting and dying.

The United States is doing almost everything else.

The U.S. has been quietly equipping and training thousands of African soldiers to wage a widening proxy war against the Shabab, the Al Qaeda ally that has imposed a harsh form of Islamic rule on southern Somalia and sparked alarm in Washington as foreign militants join its ranks.

Officially, the troops are under the auspices of the African Union. But in truth, according to interviews by U.S. and African officials and senior military officers and budget documents, the 15,000-strong force pulled from five African countries is largely a creation of the State Departmentand Pentagon, trained and supplied by the U.S. government and guided by dozens of retired foreign military personnel hired through private contractors.

Like CIA drone strikes in Pakistan and Somalia, and the overthrow of Moammar Kadafi's regime in Libya, the U.S. backing of African troops in Somalia is an example of how, after a decade of ground combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Obama administration is trying to achieve U.S. military goals with minimal risk of American deaths and scant public debate.

The U.S. can underwrite the war in Somalia for a relative pittance — the cost over four years has been less than $700 million, a tenth of what the military spends in Afghanistan in a month — but the price tag is growing. More than a third of the U.S. assistance has been spent since early 2011.

The administration has not disclosed much in public about its role in Somalia, in part because African Union officials do not want their force seen as a Washington puppet. But Wafula Wamunyinyi, deputy head of the African Union mission, calls the U.S. "our most important partner," noting that its assistance has been "quite enormous."

The U.S. is supplying the African forces with surveillance drones, ammunition, small arms, armored personnel carriers, night-vision goggles, communications gear, medical equipment and other sophisticated aid and training, documents show.

Before the soldiers deploy, they receive boots, uniforms, protective vests and 13 weeks of basic training in combat skills and detecting hidden bombs. There's also more specialized instruction for medics, intelligence officers and combat engineers.

"The U.S. government has done extremely well in providing for us and we are grateful for that, but they can do more," Brig. Gen Komba Mondeh, Sierra Leone's chief of operations and plans, said in an interview. "This is real war, and we expect to see the body bags coming back home."

Meanwhile, the force is growing. In October, Kenya sent several thousand troops into southern Somalia, which later were incorporated into the U.S.-backed mission. This month, an 800-strong battalion from Djibouti arrived, to be followed by the Sierra Leone battalion in early September.

By itself, Sierra Leone's ragtag military, which has no air force and little working equipment, would have been incapable of sending soldiers across the African continent for a yearlong deployment. Its battalion will be flown to Kenya to pick up vehicles paid for by the U.S. that are being shipped there from South Africa.

After driving across the border, the troops plan to link up with Kenyan forces, who have been bogged down in the south since their invasion. Their objective will be to flush Shabab fighters out of Kismayo, a strategic port city in the south. Meanwhile, the main African Union forces in Mogadishu have been extending their operations into the countryside.

No U.S. military personnel are deployed to Somalia with the African troops. Instead, the State Department pays a private firm to hire the retired foreign military personnel who advise the troops on tactics and operations.

"The U.S. is willing to be very open-minded about whatever the key components are that need to be funded, without which this mission would fail," said Michael C. Stock, president of Bancroft Global Development, the Washington-based company that hires the combat advisors. "When it comes to things like ammunition, when it comes to the mentoring and advising that we do, the U.S. is really playing the most important role."

Bancroft now has about 75 advisors in Somalia, double the number from a year ago, Stock said.

The only major part of the Somalia operation that the U.S. doesn't supply or pay for are the troops' salaries and logistical expenses, officials say. Those are handled by the European Union and theUnited Nations, although the U.N. contribution is partially funded by U.S. dues. Only Washington is willing to provide lethal aid, officials and contractors say.

"It's incredible bang for the dollar that we've gotten," said Michael Bittrick, a State Department official who oversees the effort. "It isn't just about getting infantry shooters to go do their work. We're training their intel people, we're training their indirect fire people, we're training their medical people, we're training their engineers."

That training is done mostly by U.S. contractors and small teams of American military personnel before the troops deploy from their home countries. But the military also brings African soldiers to the U.S. for training.

In December, the Pentagon brought eight Ugandan soldiers and one of Bancroft's advisors to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., to train them to use the Army's Raven drone. The hand-launched, propeller-powered drone beams live video back to a laptop computer when used on the battlefield, as it was last month in Afgooye.

The U.S. has provided Burundi with a dozen heavily armored troop carriers similar to those used by American troops in Afghanistan, and Uganda brought its own tanks to Somalia, but more are needed for the growing force, officials said.

This week, the Pentagon approved the latest $41-million aid package to African countries with troops in Somalia, with little public notice. Uganda, with the largest contingent, received $19.5 million for "vehicles, small arms, boats, night-vision devices, communications and electronic equipment, training and minor military construction" for its forces. Burundi was given $13.2 million for vehicles and other gear, and Kenya received $7.1 million for eight handheld drones and training.

Army Gen. Carter Ham, who heads the Africa Command, alluded to the U.S. support for countries with forces in Somalia in a speech to African military officers and officials last month in Washington, but did not go into detail about the extent of the U.S. assistance.

"We think that's an ideal role for the United States — not a large U.S. military presence … but rather applying the resources that we do have to help those countries who are willing to contribute to this effort," he said.

Via: "The LA Times"

Balochistan: Another US Proxy War

By Eric Draitser
July 1, 2012
Courtesy Of "Global Research"

The current unrest in Balochistan centers around forced disappearances, kidnappings, targeted killings, assassinations and terrorism. However, these are merely the tactics of a much broader, more geopolitically complex war in which the United States and its Western allies are engaged.  Though seemingly insignificant against the backdrop of all the regional and international crises affecting our world, Balochistan is, in fact, a nexus: the point at which diametrically opposing strategic interests converge.

The United States views Balochistan, an area that encompasses western Pakistan, eastern Iran, and a piece of southern Afghanistan, as critical to the maintenance of US hegemony in the Middle East and Central and South Asia. Conversely, China regards the region as necessary for its own economic and political evolution into a world superpower.  Seen in this way, Balochistan becomes central to the development of geopolitical power in the 21^st Century.

Balochistan's Strategic Location

Balochistan is located in one of the most geographically and politically significant places anywhere in the world.  Not only does the region sit astride three countries which have become central to Western political and military power projection, it is also central to the development and export of energy from Central Asia, access to the Indian Ocean, and a host of other geopolitical imperatives for both the West and the SCO/BRICS countries.  Because of this, the region has grown exponentially in importance to all the major powers of the world.

Though the land seems, on the surface, to be inhospitable, it also holds great wealth just beneath the soil.  Aside from what is believed to be a large quantity of natural gas and/or oil, the earth under the feet of the Baloch people holds vast quantities of minerals necessary for economic development.  Because of this, the conflict raging in the region takes on the added dimension of being a resource war, on top of a geographical and political one.

Balochistan’s location has another crucial element that makes it geopolitically necessary: it sits at the crossroads of the most important trade routes between West and East.  Although, in the public mind, trade crossroads seem to be a thing of the past (one might imagine the Silk Road being traveled by camel), in fact, they are essential to development.  Land-based trade, something the Chinese understand to be a linchpin of their economic and political evolution into a superpower, is impossible without a stable and dependable Balochistan, and this is precisely what the United States and the West seeks to prevent.

This focus on land-based access to trade should always be seen in the context of energy. China’s insatiable thirst for oil and gas makes the development of pipelines from Central Asia, Iran, and elsewhere invaluable to them.  The Iran-Pakistan pipeline, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, and other projects all serve to increase the importance of Balochistan in the eyes of the Chinese.  Additionally, the Chinese-funded, Pakistani Gwadar Port is the access point for Chinese commercial shipping to the Indian Ocean and on to Africa.  With all of this as a backdrop, one can begin to see just why Balochistan is so significant to the Chinese and, conversely, why the United States and its Western puppets seek to destabilize it.

Western Subversion and Destabilization

The Western imperialist powers have an obvious interest in preventing a stable Balochistan from emerging.  Not only is the region essential to the Chinese, it is also a major part of the covert war being waged against both Iran and Pakistan.  Terrorist groups with direct and indirect links to Western intelligence agencies operate with impunity in Balochistan, a vast area that is nearly impossible to police.  The Pakistani government is not oblivious to the fact that foreign intelligence agencies are behind much of the violence in Balochistan, a fact that was even stated publicly by former President Musharraf.  In fact, Islamabad, though they cannot state it publicly, is aware that its survival rests on the ability to quell the unrest in Balochistan, which in turn means they must effectively combat the foreign-controlled separatism.

In an article published by the Qatari English-language newspaper The Peninsula, the author cited credible sources as saying that “the CIA is indulging in heavy recruitment of local people as agents (each being paid $500 a month)”.  Additionally we know that the CIA, under the leadership of Gen. Petraeus, has been usingAfghan refugees to destabilize Balochistan.  The significance of these revelations should not be understated.  The fact that the CIA is recruiting agents and informants throughout Balochistan indicates that the US strategy of subversion is multi-faceted.  On the one hand, a network of agents allows for intelligence and information manipulation while, on the other hand, the United States engages in terrorism through a variety of terrorist groups it controls or manipulates either directly or indirectly. As was reported in Foreign Policy magazine, the CIA and Mossad compete to control Jundallah, an important fact because it shows the way in which the Western imperialists use Balochistan, the base of Jundallah, to wage covert war on Iran, including the assassination of scientists, terrorist bombings aimed at critical infrastructure, and targeted killings of ethnic minorities.

Aside from Jundallah, the CIA and its counterparts (MI6, Mossad, and India’s RAW) are actively engaged in the handling and manipulation of a variety of other terror groups operating in Balochistan.  The Baloch Liberation Army, headed by Brahamdagh Bugti and others, has long-standing ties with British MI6 going all the way back to the early days of Pakistan’s independence.  This group is responsible for countless terrorist actions in the region, all of which have been aimed at innocent civilians.  This, and other groups like it, illustrates the way in which the United States and its allies use the weapon of terrorism to create chaos for the purpose of destabilizing Balochistan, thereby preventing economic development both for the Balochi people and, by extension, China.

Political Sabotage

The tactics of subversion are not limited to terrorism and espionage in Balochistan.  One of the most critical dimensions of this issue is the use of political destabilization through the US Congress.  Lawmakers such as Representative Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA), who himself has led the anti-Pakistan charge, have argued vigorously for the “right of self-determination of the people of Balochistan”.  Of course, what he means by this is that he, and others who have a vested interest in the issue, support separatism and the destruction of modern Pakistan.  In so doing, Rohrbacher and other members of the Congress act, as they always do, as apologists and facilitators of the US imperial strategy of dividing nations in order to control them.  Rohrbacher, who himself has long-standing ties to Al-Qaeda (former mujahideen) fighters, is a vociferous proponent of a fiercely anti-Pakistan agenda, one which treats that nation as a threat to the United States.  Naturally, the only threat Pakistan truly poses is that, in the course of the development of China, Pakistan has chosen to be on the side of economic development, rather than allow itself to be perpetually subjugated to the will of the United States.

The resolution introduced by Rohrbacher, who is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, called for the US to support Baloch separatism and end relations with the democratically elected government in Islamabad.  He has repeatedly issued threats and other provocations which have been correctly interpreted by the Pakistani government as meddling in their internal affairs.  The goal of these resolutions and provocations has been to make the case, both politically and in the court of public opinion, that Pakistan is a terrorist state which, because of the twisted logic of the American people, means that the US should be able to do whatever it wants to them.

The goals of the Western imperialists vis-à-vis Balochistan have been, and remain, very simple: destabilize the region in order to block the Chinese from using it to assert their regional dominance and continue on the path to economic development. Using the same, tired tactics of terrorism and political subversion, they hope to achieve these aims.  However, unlike the case of the British imperialist ruling class of a century ago, the United States must contend with a Pakistan that maintains a strong current of nationalism, one that rejects the hegemony of the United States in the region, and one that has friends internationally.  Unfortunately for the Baloch people, the US ruling class has learned nothing from history and continues to use them as pawns against their perceived enemy in Beijing.  Without a strong, nationalist government in Islamabad, one that is willing to do more than just protest US actions, there will be no peace in Balochistan.  Instead, the situation will only deteriorate as the US elites continue their drive for dominance in the 21^st Century, whatever the human and financial cost may be.