France and Libya, Mali violence

This photo of a French Foreign Legion soldier, part of the invasion of Mali, shows the real face of that war.

That war is not “against Al Qaeda terrorism” (supported by the French government in Libya, and still in Syria). It is not for women’s rights, human rights or secularism.

It is in support of a military dictatorship.

It brings death, mainly to Malian civilians.

This war is a neo-colonial war.

By Jean Shaoul:

Libya wracked by protests targeting government and French forces

3 May 2013

Violence is engulfing Libya’s capital city, Tripoli. Coming less than a year after elections that were trumpeted as a vindication of the NATO-led invasion to topple the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, the renewed clashes testify to the tenuous hold that Prime Minister Ali Zeidan’s government has over the war-torn country.

Last week, a car bomb blew up outside the French embassy, wounding two guards and several residents and causing extensive damage to buildings nearby. The bombing was thought to be the work of an Al Qaeda-linked group opposed to the French intervention last January in Mali against Islamist forces that had taken control over the northern part of that country. The previous week, Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), Al Qaeda’s North African arm, had threatened retaliation.

Yesterday, a bomb destroyed a police station in the eastern city of Benghazi. There were no casualties.

Only a few days ago, the French parliament voted to extend its military mission in Mali, while the United Nations has raised the prospect of a second “parallel” task force to carry out “anti-terrorist” operations “outside the UN mandate”. This special unit is to be set up primarily by France and will be stationed either within Mali’s borders or elsewhere in West Africa.

French embassies across North Africa had been on high alert since the bomb attack on the United States consulate and a CIA facility in Benghazi in September that killed the US ambassador and three other officials, and particularly after armed militants seized hostages in the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria, demanding a prisoner release and an end to France’s operations in Mali. Thirty-eight civilians were killed in the Algerian army’s botched rescue operation.

France worked closely with Qatar and other Gulf petro-monarchies, which financed, armed and trained Islamist forces to oust Gaddafi, and is currently working with Doha, as well as Ankara and Riyadh, which are backing forces including the Al Nusra Front, which is linked to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, in a sectarian war to overthrow Syria’s president Bashar Al-Assad and isolate Iran.

The NATO war undermined the tenuous equilibrium Gaddafi helped keep among Tuareg and other tribal groups in the Sahara. Together with the influence of regional Islamist groups, boosted by NATO’s decision to place Al Qaeda-linked Libyans in positions of power, this undermined the Malian military’s control over the country’s restive north.

Some of these forces sought to wrest control of Mali and its mineral resources from the French-backed military junta in Bamako, cutting across France’s geo-strategic and commercial interests in Libya and its former colonies in North and West Africa.

France sent its military into Mali to drive out the Islamist and tribal armed forces. Now, Islamist groups ejected from Mali have moved north, crossing the Sahara through Algeria and Niger back into Libya, fuelling a growing insurgency. The cynical policy of using Islamists to advance France’s interests is now backfiring, as it did against the US in Benghazi last year, destabilising the NATO-installed regime.

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who flew to Libya, said France “would work with the Libyan authorities to find out who had carried out the attack.” This may mean the dispatch of French special forces.

In other incidents, at least 200 gunmen have been surrounding the foreign ministry, the interior ministry and the state news agency since Sunday, demanding that officials who had worked for Gaddafi be banned from senior positions in the new government. On Tuesday, they occupied the finance ministry. Policemen also stormed the interior ministry earlier in the week, protesting pay.

There have been growing protests against former regime figures who still hold important positions. Last March, protesters barricaded legislators inside the Congress building for hours, insisting they pass a law prohibiting members of the old regime from holding office. Such a law, depending upon how it is implemented, would affect 80 percent of the National Congress, and if extended to the judiciary would remove almost all the judges.

Crucially, it would affect the cabinet, which includes ministers from the National Forces Alliance, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, and the Justice and Construction Party, as well as so-called independents, regional leaders and some former regime figures. Their confirmation by Congress last October led to angry protests outside the Congress building, which were dispersed by gunfire from the security forces.

Zeidan was a former diplomat who fell out with Gaddafi in 1980 and lived in exile in Switzerland where he worked as a lawyer. He was one of the founding members of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NSFL), which worked for the armed overthrow of the Libyan regime in the 1980s, backed by Saudi Arabia and the CIA.

In 2011, he served as the National Transitional Council’s European envoy and played a key role in persuading French president Nicolas Sarkozy to support the anti-Gaddafi forces. His party came second in the elections after the National Forces Alliance.

The NATO-led neo-colonial invasion of Libya in 2011 cut oil output, its primary source of revenue, to virtually zero and destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure. As a result, the economy contracted by more than 40 percent in 2011, from which it has yet to recover. Libya already suffered from massive social inequality, 50 percent youth unemployment, large economic disparities between the regions, and corruption. All of these problems were exacerbated by the war, which forced a million people to flee their homes.

Libya now functions as a global weapons bazaar, sending arms and fighters to Syria and other conflict areas. Within Libya, there are hundreds of militias, many affiliated to Al Qaeda, which fought in the NATO war against the Gaddafi regime.

These armed brigades now fight pitched battles against rival groups for “zones of influence” in Libya’s towns and cities. There were particularly deadly clashes in Zintan and Zuara over who should guard the oil and gas complex in Western Libya belonging to Mellitah, a joint venture between Libya and Eni, the Italian energy group, before the army restored order.

A recent report from the International Crisis Group spells out Libya’s pervasive insecurity. Armed gangs proliferate and lawlessness abounds. There is no functioning justice system in many parts of the country. Armed groups, originally sanctioned by Libya’s Transitional National Council, continue to run prisons and enforce their own summary justice systems, including assassinations, torture, abductions, and attacks on government forces.

The government is trying to cut the flow of men and weapons into its southern border region with the help of surveillance equipment supplied by Washington, which has set up a base for drones in Niger, from which it can monitor Mali and Libya. The Libyan government has also completed a 108-mile trench through its southwest desert border area to deter smugglers.

Zeidan is seeking to clear the militias out of the eastern port city of Benghazi, where attacks by Islamist militants are on the rise, but lacks the armed forces to do so. As of last December, the US has been supplying Libya with drones and an Orion electronic warfare aircraft to help it gain control of the city.

The government has launched a crackdown on the militias in Tripoli, with security forces stationed throughout the city. They have emptied several illegal detention centres and seized 36 bases used by the militias.

The continuation of these conflicts and the descent into street fighting expose as a lie the justification for the NATO-led war for regime change—that it would bring democracy and human rights—and the so-called left groups that supported it. These were convenient fictions behind which the US and its allies could advance their interests—by taking control of Libya’s oil wealth.

Nicolas Sarkozy was cheered in Tripoli on a recent visit. But the former French president could soon fall from grace if his alleged dark dealings with Gadaffi come to light: here.

The security situation in the Libyan city of Benghazi continues to deteriorate: here.

Related articles

• French embassy bomb attack, blowback from Libya, Mali wars (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• You: Libya faces growing Islamist threat (guardian.co.uk)
• Libya car bomb hits French embassy, wounds guards – Reuters (reuters.com)
• The Libyan Afterparty Comes Back to Libya (blogs.the-american-interest.com)

French embassy bomb attack, blowback from Libya, Mali wars

This video is about the bomb attack on the French embassy in Tripoli, Libya.

After Al-Qaeda and similar groups were allies of the USA, Britain, France and other NATO countries in the Libya war (which they still are in the Syria war) … the United States ambassador in Libya was killed by former allies of NATO.

NATO’s “new” Libya turned out to be unsafe for British, and Dutch, citizens.

It seems that now it is the turn of France.

From the BBC:

France condemns Libya embassy attack

23 April 2013 Last updated at 10:06 GMT Help

The French foreign minister has strongly condemned an apparent car bomb explosion outside the country’s embassy in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

Two guards were wounded in the blast, which completely destroyed the embassy’s reception area and parts of neighbouring homes.

The BBC’s Rana Jawad says embassies in the region have been on alert since France began its military operation in Mali.

See also here.

Related articles

• UN report reveals Libya as hub for arms deliveries to insurgents in Syria and Mali, fails to identify state sponsors of terrorism and elicits systemic flaws of UN System (nsnbc.me)
• Absolute Lawlessness: Libyan “Democracy” Two Years After NATO Air War (globalresearch.ca)
• Thousands of Libyan missiles from Qaddafi era missing in action (cbsnews.com)
• Syria fading away off stage as North Korea has center stage …… off stage Al – Qaeda of Iraq has merged with Syrian rebel force al – Nusra (fredw-catharsisours.blogspot.com)
• the french don’t appreciate the US strategy of arming jihadis and killing them at the same time (niqnaq.wordpress.com)
• UN: Libya Arms Fueling Mali, Syria Wars (news.antiwar.com)

Mali refugees flee French neo-colonial war

This photo of a French Foreign Legion soldier, part of the invasion of Mali, shows the real face of that war.

That war is not “against Al Qaeda terrorism” (supported by the French government in Libya, and still in Syria). It is not for women’s rights, human rights or secularism.

It is in support of a military dictatorship.

It brings death, mainly to Malian civilians.

This war is a neo-colonial war.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Refugee numbers at crisis levels after Mali intervention

Friday 12 April 2013

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres warned today of a growing humanitarian crisis in west Africa where around 70,000 Malian refugees are stranded in the Mauritanian desert camp of Mbera.

MSF emergency co-ordinator Henry Gray warned that “more than 100,000 people from northern Mali are currently displaced within their country or have escaped abroad as refugees.

“Most of the refugees are from the Tuareg and Arab communities. They fled, often for fear of violence due to their presumed links with Islamist or separatist groups.”

Mauritania has been poor in terms of health and nutrition for many years, but since the French military invaded MSF says the situation has deteriorated.

It said the intervention triggered an influx of 15,000 new refugees.

Consultations in MSF clinics have increased from 1,500 to 2,500 per week and the number of children admitted for severe malnutrition has more than doubled.

Related articles

• Mali prisoners tortured with acid (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Another French soldier dies in Mali (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Malian military dictator interviewed (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• German militarism and Mali war (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Fear of army reprisals sparks Mali refugee flight (news.terra.com)
• Portraits of Malian Refugee Camps in Niger, Mauritania, and Burkina Faso (sahelblog.wordpress.com)
• France wants 1,000 permanent troops in Mali (worldbulletin.net)
• ‘France, US want to keep Africa under the colonial rule’ (rt.com)

Malian military dictator interviewed

This photo of a French Foreign Legion soldier, part of the invasion of Mali, shows the real face of that war.

That war is not “against Al Qaeda terrorism” (supported by the French government in Libya, and still in Syria). It is not for women’s rights, human rights or secularism.

It is in support of a military dictatorship.

It brings death, mainly to Malian civilians.

This war is a neo-colonial war.

The military dictator of Mali now spouts his propaganda, in an interview with German weekly Der Spiegel. He fails as a war propagandist. Maybe, now he will want to hire Tony Blair, or Blair’s spin doctor Alastair Campbell, for damage control. These guys really like dictators. Though only if these dictators pay them very much money. However, as dictator Sanogo of Mali now gets lots of British and French taxpayers’ money, that probably won’t be a problem for him.

From Der Spiegel:

Malian Coup Leader Sanogo: ‘I Saved the Country’

Many believe that Mali’s de facto leader Amadou Sanogo thrust the country into a deep crisis when he staged a coup a year ago. But that’s not how he sees it. …

Captain Amadou Sanogo says he is just a simple soldier. But unofficially, the 40-year-old has been Mali’s strongman since he led a coup in late March last year, toppling the government of President Amadou Toumani Touré. Sanogo went on to suspend the constitution, and then put power in the hands of a transitional government in response to international pressure, though he remains Mali’s de facto leader.

In the weeks that followed, Islamists took over northern Mali. Now, the formerly unstable yet democratic country is in danger of becoming the next Somalia. Despite the troubles that have followed the coup, Sonogo tells SPIEGEL that he rescued the country.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Sanogo, do you regret plunging your country into chaos with the coup you staged a year ago?

Sanogo: What are you talking about? I saved the country! We were on the verge of ruin at the time.

SPIEGEL: But it was only after you assumed power that the Islamists established a reign of terror in the north and introduced Sharia law. That couldn’t have been your objective, could it?

Sanogo: The Malian army had already been overrun by rebellious Tuareg fighters before that, which is why I intervened.

The Tuareg rebels are not Islamist.

SPIEGEL: You yourself were trained in the United States.

Sanogo: I attended an infantry school, completed various military courses and worked as an interpreter. America is great country with a fantastic army. I tried to put all the things I learned there into practice here.

SPIEGEL: How does your coup fit into that?

Sanogo: Coup isn’t a nice word. I prefer to say that I performed a necessary medical operation. …

SPIEGEL: Still, you didn’t manage to liberate the north from the Islamists. For that reason, French troops have been in the country for the last two-and-a-half months, and now the German military is also going to train Malian soldiers.

Sanogo: The French are welcome, and so are the Germans.

SPIEGEL: That hasn’t always been your position.

Sanogo: You shouldn’t believe the media. I’m pleased about the foreign soldiers, and it doesn’t bother me that they are from the former colonial power. …

Sanogo: The conflict is far from over, which is why the foreign troops must remain in the country. …

SPIEGEL: The north has been a trouble spot for decades.

Sanogo: It’s true that the Tuareg are constantly rebelling. They did in the 1960s, in 1990 and in 2007.

From Associated Press:

Mali media outlets go silent over editor’s arrest

March 13, 2013

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — The airwaves in Mali’s capital fell silent on Tuesday and newspapers didn’t print a morning edition in protest over the arrest last week of an editor who published an open letter challenging the salary of the country’s coup leader.

Boukary Daou, editor-in-chief of The Republican newspaper, was taken away by agents from Mali’s intelligence service on March 6, soon after his newspaper published a letter from an army officer denouncing Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo’s recently-decreed salary of $8,000 per month, an incredibly high salary in the impoverished country. The letter argues that the salary — as much as 26 times what Sanogo earned before last year’s coup — is in fact an incentive for future coups.

Sanogo seized power a year ago last March. Faced with international sanctions, he was forced to relinquish control just weeks later, but succeeded in negotiating a golden parachute for himself, including the salary of an ex-head of state. Despite officially stepping down, country watchers say Sanogo remains the power behind the throne, as Daou’s arrest seven days ago underscores.

The media strike began on Tuesday and “will continue until Boukary Daou is freed,” according to a statement from the country’s press association.

President Dioncounda Traore defended the decision to arrest Daou and said that if he is innocent, he will be freed. Speaking to reporters during a stop in the capital of neighboring Senegal, Traore said the letter published in The Republican was subversive, and aimed to demoralize the nation’s troops at a time of war.

…

Kassim Traore, the president of the Young Journalists’ Organization of Mali said that Daou has refused to disclose the identity of the officer, who penned the letter under the name Capt. Toure.

“The security agents demanded that Daou give the name of his source and Daou refused, which is his duty as a journalist,” said Traore. “It’s because he would not disclose the name of his source that they are still detaining him, which is why the leaders of the Malian press have organized this No Press Day in order to free our colleague,” he said.

… The letter published in The Republican threatened that if Sanogo’s salary is not reduced, soldiers deployed in Mali’s north will refuse to fight. The average salary of a rank-and-file soldier is just $100 per month, 80 times less than what Sanogo is now earning.

The incendiary letter began: “Mr. President, we have learned that while we are dying in the great desert (in northern Mali), Capt. Sanogo, in return for leading a coup that plunged the country into the current situation, enjoys a salary of 4 million francs ($8,000). And the others in his group, in his clan, who are refusing to come fight are enjoying the same treatment,” wrote Capt. Toure. “If this decision (to accord him this salary) is not reversed within the next two weeks, we will cease … fighting.”

France pulls first troops out of Mali: here.

Related articles

• Ban says 11,200 peacekeepers needed for Mali (dailystar.com.lb)
• Mali newspaper editor detained over incitement to revolt (panarmenian.net)
• Mali media strike over editor arrest (bbc.co.uk)
• Mali prisoners tortured with acid (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• How Misguided U.S. Aid Contributed to Mali’s Coup (bloomberg.com)

Mali prisoners tortured with acid

This photo of a French Foreign Legion soldier, part of the invasion of Mali, shows the real face of that war.

That war is not “against Al Qaeda terrorism” (supported by the French government in Libya, and still in Syria). It is not for women’s rights, human rights or secularism.

It is in support of a military dictatorship.

It brings death, mainly to Malian civilians.

This war is a neo-colonial war.

From Associated Press:

Human Rights Watch: Malian soldiers inject suspected extremists with acid

March 26, 2013 4:11 PM

DAKAR, Senegal – An investigation by Human Rights Watch has found evidence that Mali’s military tortured seven men accused of links to the al-Qaida group that occupied the country’s north last year, prompting a French military intervention.

Human Rights Watch senior researcher Corinne Dufka spent hours interviewing each of the seven victims, all of whom showed visible signs of torture. All are from the Tuareg ethnic group, a community that has been the subject of increasingly violent reprisal attacks by Mali’s military due to the role prominent Tuaregs played in harbouring and aiding the extremists who invaded northern Mali.

The men described being injected with an acid-like substance which ate away their skin. They described being subjected to simulated drowning, akin to waterboarding. And they recalled being brutally beaten.

Related articles

• Mali: Soldiers Torture Detainees in Léré (hrw.org)
• Torture and murder reported in Mali (worldbulletin.net)
• Another French soldier dies in Mali (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Fear of army reprisals sparks Mali refugee flight (news.terra.com)
• In Mali, Forces Backed by UN, France, and Obama Slaughter Civilians (alhittin.com)
• Human Rights Watch warns on Mali (bigpondnews.com)
• Rights group demands action over Mali atrocities (dailystar.com.lb)

German militarism and Mali war

By Ernst Wolff in Germany:

German defence minister visits Mali

22 March 2013

Last weekend, German defence minister Thomas de Maizière made a surprise trip to Mali. He landed first in the Senegalese capital Dakar where the German army (Bundeswehr) has an air transport base with 90 soldiers. He then flew on to the Malian capital, Bamako, and on Monday travelled the 65 kilometres to the town of Koulikoro.

In Bamako, de Maizière met with his Malian counterpart, Yamoussa Camara, and Malian president Dioncounda Traoré. In Koulikoro, he visited a military camp where German soldiers have set up a field hospital and are making preparations for the so-called European Union Training Mission (EUTM), which involves 550 European soldiers, including 80 German soldiers, providing training to 2,500 Malian soldiers. The mission is due to begin on April 2.

The timing for de Maizière’s trip was carefully chosen. A day before he landed, Edmond Mulet, deputy secretary general for UN peacekeeping missions, also visited Bamako. At the weekend, an international meeting of ministers took place in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, which borders Mali. The meeting was attended by representatives from countries adjoining Mali, as well as members of the African Union (AU), the European Union and the United Nations. The theme of the summit was “Security in the Sahel region”.

The message from both de Maizière and Mulet, and the meeting in Nouakchott, was the same: the war in Mali will take longer than previously announced and will involve more soldiers across a larger stretch of territory.

Currently involved in the fighting in Mali are 4,000 French soldiers, 5,000 Malian soldiers and around 6,300 soldiers from the MISMA intervention force supplied by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). According to the wishes of the United Nations, these are to be replaced in July by a separate UN “stabilisation mission”, which involves a force of 10,000 soldiers. This requires a resolution from the UN Security Council.

After France, Germany is currently making the second biggest contribution to the war by European powers. Germany has stationed three Transall transporters and an Airbus A310 in Senegal to refuel French fighter jets. The Airbus has already flown eight assignments, and the Transall machines have undertaken around 170 flights transporting more than 420 tons of weapons and ammunition and almost 700 passengers.

The German parliament agreed on two mandates in late February for the Bundeswehr mission in Mali: one for the training mission, the other for transport assistance and in-flight refuelling, both limited to one year.

De Maizière made clear in Mali that the one-year time limit was insufficient. “You cannot train the very complicated and difficult Malian armed forces to provide security in their own country in 12 to 15 months,” he said after talks with the Malian transitional president. “This is a huge task that requires staying power.”

Dominique Moisi from the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI) was even more categorical. “There is no African army able to replace the French forces,” he said in Paris.

The German and French plans to remain in Mali for an indeterminate period confirm that the official reason given for the war—the expulsion of Islamist militias in the north of the country—was only a pretext.

At stake, in reality, are very definite geo-strategic and economic interests. Mali and the entire Sahel region are rich in natural resources, which the imperialist powers are seeking to secure for their own use, especially in competition with China. The war is part of the imperialist campaign for the re-colonial subjugation of Africa, which began two years ago with the NATO war against Libya.

The trip by Defence Minister de Maizière to Mali, in which he announced an escalation of the military operation in the country, also sends a clear message around the globe: Germany is no longer willing to stand idly by and allow its economic rivals to share the spoils in West Africa. It is resolved to use its military might to ensure its share of the cake.

Related articles

• War in Mali and German militarism (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Another French soldier dies in Mali (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• French war in Mali war crimes (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• German Imperialism: Parliament Approves Military Operations in Mali (rinf.com)
• French army suppresses reporting of Mali war (alhittin.com)
• Hollande arrives in Mali after four weeks of fighting (morningstaronline.co.uk)

Another French soldier dies in Mali

This photo of a French Foreign Legion soldier, part of the invasion of Mali, shows the real face of that war.

That war is not “against Al Qaeda terrorism” (supported by the French government in Libya, and still in Syria). It is not for women’s rights, human rights or secularism.

It is in support of a military dictatorship.

It brings death, mainly to Malian civilians.

This war is a neo-colonial war.

From France 24 today:

A fifth French soldier was killed in the nine-week-old military campaign against Islamist rebels in Mali, the French government said on Sunday.

The corporal from the 1st Marine infantry regiment of Angouleme was killed in action, President Francois Hollande’s office said in a statement, without giving details. …

The military operation is in its “final, most delicate stage,” Hollande’s office said.

“Final stage”? This wishful thinking/propaganda reminds me of George W Bush in 2003, claiming “Mission accomplished” in Iraq. After that, thousands of United States soldiers and over a million Iraqis died in Iraq.

David Cameron, Prime Minister of Britain, said he expected decades of war in Mali and African countries around it. Cynically, I have to admit Cameron may be more realistic in this than Hollande’s office … IF governments will continue to see wars as solutions to international problems and as distractions from domestic problems, and if taxpayers won’t revolt against billions for wars far away, while they themselves are subjected to “austerity”.

The situation facing the Malian population is catastrophic. Towns and villages have been largely destroyed, forcing large numbers of people to flee the combat zone and find refuge in camps in neighbouring countries. Access to water and food is becoming scarcer every day, threatening a humanitarian disaster: here.

U.S. Air Force’s Bloody 100th: 100 Sorties In Support Of French War In Mali: here.

Related articles

• French war in Mali war crimes (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• War in Mali and German militarism (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• French invasion of Mali, its real deathly face (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• British soldiers to Mali war (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• French army suppresses reporting of Mali war (alhittin.com)
• Mali, war and more war (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• French soldier dies in Mali fighting (bbc.co.uk)

United States war in Africa

This video is called Africom: The New American Empire in Africa.

By Bill van Auken in the USA:

US troops to Niger: A new stage in the scramble for Africa

26 February 2013

President Barack Obama’s terse notification to Congress last week that American troops are being deployed to the northwest African nation of Niger confirms that a whole new stage in the imperialist recolonization of Africa is now in progress.

The dispatch of the first 100 troops—with hundreds more reportedly to follow—is bound up with a deal signed last month between Washington and the Niger government allowing the US military to set up a drone base on the country’s territory, creating the conditions for spreading the Obama administration’s remote-control killing spree throughout the region.

The buildup of US forces in Niger comes in the immediate wake of last month’s French intervention in neighboring Mali, carried out with critical US logistical and intelligence support, and aimed, in the words of French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, at the “total reconquest” of the former colony.

Both Paris and Washington have justified their military incursions into the African continent in the name of defeating Al Qaeda and associated organizations in Africa. British Prime Minister David Cameron chimed in last month, warning that the prosecution of this war in Africa could span “decades.”

The glaring contradiction between this pretext for war in Africa’s Sahel region and the line-up of these imperialist powers behind Al Qaeda-linked militias in the sectarian-based war to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria is passed over in silence by the media and the political establishments in all three countries.

No one in the US press, for example, bothered noting that Obama’s announcement of the deployment of US troops in a supposed war against Al Qaeda in Africa came on the same day that Washington blocked a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning an Al Qaeda terror bombing that massacred scores of civilians in Damascus.

Behind the incoherence of the pretexts for imperialist intervention, the real forces driving it are clear. Washington finds itself being economically eclipsed in Africa by China, which has emerged as the continent’s leading trade partner. Increasingly in competition over strategic resources—West Africa is soon expected to account for 25 percent of US petroleum imports—US imperialism is relying on its residual military superiority to combat this economic challenge.

In the prosecution of this predatory strategy, Al Qaeda serves a dual purpose—providing shock troops for the toppling of regimes seen as obstacles to US hegemony, and serving as a pretext for other interventions carried out in the name of combating “terrorism” and “extremism.”

Setting up the new base in Niger places US drones just across the border from Nigeria, which until recently has supplied 10 percent of US foreign oil imports and where the Pentagon has grown increasingly involved in an internal conflict involving Boko Haram, an indigenous Islamic sect that appears to have no ties to Al Qaeda nor any ambitions outside of Nigeria.

In light of these developments, the significance of the US-NATO intervention to bring down the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011 emerges with ever greater clarity. Claiming the lives of some 80,000 Libyans and leaving an entire society in rubble, this was the first war to be commanded by AFRICOM, the regional command set up under the Bush administration in 2007. It was waged to pave the way for new and more far-reaching military interventions.

The Gaddafi regime served as the linchpin of security and economic relations that maintained a semblance of stability in the Sahel region, providing economic aid, for example, that served to cushion the longstanding conflicts between the Tuareg people and the regimes in Mali and Niger.

The toppling and murder of Gaddafi had the altogether foreseeable consequence of destabilizing the region, sending Tuaregs fleeing Libya into Mali, followed by the very Islamist elements that Washington had backed in the war for regime-change in Libya, and thus providing the pretext for both US and French imperialism to intervene again, putting troops on the ground in the region.

Plans for these interventions were well advanced before the first bomb was dropped on Tripoli. The region has been a focus of US strategic calculations for the past decade, beginning with Washington’s Pan Sahel Initiative in 2003, followed by its Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership in 2005.

In this context, the role played by a whole layer of pseudo-lefts internationally in justifying and promoting the war against Libya, touting it as a humanitarian intervention, a crusade for democracy, and even a “revolution,” also becomes clearer than ever.

The academic scoundrel Juan Cole of the University of Michigan used his inflated reputation as a critic of the Iraq war to sell the war in Libya. Gilbert Achcar, a member of the international Pabloite United Secretariat and a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, condemned NATO for not dropping more bombs on the country.

Related articles

• War in Mali and German militarism (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• New Drone Base in Niger Builds U.S. Presence in Africa (3quarksdaily.com)
• The West’s War Against African Development Continues (counterpunch.org)
• Obama Spreads U.S. Troops To Niger, Africa To “Support Tax Payer Predator Drone Base” ~ From Libya To Niger The Killing Goes On. (politicalvelcraft.org)
• Imperial Jockeying in Africa: U.S. Intervention Sets to Deepen (globalresearch.ca)

Britain, North Korea and Mali

This video says about itself:

Newsreel of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, August 9, 1945 and its horrible aftermath.

“The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts”. Omar Bradley.

Let us never forget the folly of war and learn to live in peace.

By Jeremy Corbyn in Britain:

Nuclear panic of a warlike world

Wednesday 13 February 2013

News channels today all led with North Korea and its latest nuclear test.

North Korea does not have a comprehensive delivery system, but it clearly does have the ability to manufacture a nuclear device and it increasingly has missiles that can travel considerable distances and could, one day, be used to carry such a device.

There can never be any moral justification for holding or developing nuclear weapons. They are weapons of mass destruction which, if used, would kill millions of civilians and destroy all the means of normal life in their wake.

Pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki show what total destruction is. But today’s nuclear devices are far more powerful.

So North Korea’s detonation of a nuclear device underground is bad news. It represents a failure of the six-party disarmament talks, and obviously I hope these will be renewed.

One hopes too that North Korea will engage with these negotiations and ultimately take the brave path of South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Ukraine and Kazakhstan in renouncing all nuclear weapons. Not the path, you note, of the UN security council powers berating them for their nuclear test.

The five permanent members of the security council are also the five declared nuclear weapons states – the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China.

These five have signed the non-proliferation treaty (NPT), which has also been signed by other non-nuclear countries which have pledged never to build such weapons.

Signing the NPT is a start. The problem is there are other nuclear powers who haven’t signed it – Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

It is essential that we keep up the pressure for disarmament among all nuclear states, and that conferences to get these countries to sign up to the NPT and agree not to proliferate their weapons are held in the Middle East to include Israel and the Indian subcontinent for India and Pakistan as well as in the Far East for North Korea.

If we want North Korea to disarm the country needs to be brought in from the cold. Despite its poverty and the huge problems of malnourishment wracking the population, the country clearly has a very skilled workforce. You can’t build nuclear devices without technically able and highly educated workers. Bringing it back into the community of nations would allow these to be redeployed for the country’s benefit.

And we could do no better than to lead by example and not renew Britain’s Trident missile system. Peace leads to peace.

Speaking of which I asked our Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday the relatively simple question as to what our military objective was in Mali and how long French and British troops would be deployed there.

Cameron said Britain was prepared to contribute 200 troops for training African forces, and that more might be offered to Nigeria. He added reassuringly that no-one wanted foreign troops to stay in Mali “a second longer than necessary.”

But the events of the last few days have shown that the war in Mali is far from over.

The French, with British logistical support, claim to have rapidly cleared Timbuktu, Bourem and Gao of al-Qaida-backed insurgent forces.

President Hollande soon arrived to take the victor’s salute.

Less than a week later an attempted suicide bomber in Gao set off a firefight between the French and the alleged al-Qaida fighters. The French finally “subdued” the situation by pounding their opponents’ positions with helicopter gunships.

The idea that French forces – whose casualties will sadly but inevitably start mounting soon – will withdraw in the near future, or that Britain will get itself out, seems far off the mark.

As pointed out by Jeremy Keenan in a recent article published in the New Internationalist, the origins of the Malian conflict go back to a colonial settlement in which the country was created, initially as a federation with Senegal and later as a stand-alone nation.

Like all former colonies in Africa, its border are utterly illogical. They ignore linguistic and physical barriers.

Often the resulting states see one community gaining power at the expense of the others. The isolation of the Tuareg people from the political process in Mali is a case in point.

This isolation, both within and outside Mali’s borders, means there is huge frustration among the Tuareg people which can only be dealt with by addressing their political representation.

In such circumstances al-Qaida will obviously be able to exploit grievances and develop its fighting forces.

Into this volatile mix was thrown the Western attack on Libya, which saw Tuaregs driven out of that country following the death of Muammar Gadaffi. Many were heavily armed with the often Western-supplied weapons looted from Libya’s broken military.

The attempt to declare an independent Azawad state for the Tuaregs has happened before, and its crushing, often involving massive French infiltration of rebel groups over decades, has led to increasing armed conflict and poverty.

The West’s intervention has made the situation worse in the past, and will do so now. We are seeing the use of expensive surveillance equipment and high-tech weapons against those who claim to fight for a poor and marginalised people.

The motive, as always, is to be found in the vast mineral reserves and resources that can feed the nuclear industries of Europe, particularly France.

—-

David Cameron returned from his EU summit on Monday like a dog with two tails. He radiated self-satisfaction as he was cheered by the empire-loyalist, Eurosceptic wing of his own party.

In a rather lengthy statement he claimed that the EU budget was going to be cut and this was all a result of how prepared he had been to stand firm against the rest of Europe.

This was rather strange, since the decision was apparently made unanimously at the end of the summit.

After Ed Miliband had briefly responded for Labour questions were invited from all MPs.

The most Eurosceptic backbenchers lined up to congratulate the PM. Bill Cash spoke of the power of national parliaments versus Europe. Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is normally very verbose, informed the house that there was rejoicing in Somerset. He asked if this “bodes well for our getting rule back to Britain.”

As the questions went on it became obvious what the Tory agenda on Europe is.

To ditch any social obligations, such as working time directives and environmental regulations, while deliberately confusing the Council of Europe and its European Court of Human Rights with the totally separate EU in order to attack the very idea of a human rights court.

What Cameron and the Tories want is a free market Europe without any social protections or environmental safeguards. Not too far from the current EU’s policies, actually.

It is essential that the left begins to build co-operation among working-class organisations across Europe against austerity and the privatisation of the whole continent.

Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North.

US deploys troops, drones to Niger: here.

Mali: African debt campaigners condemn France’s war: here.

Related articles

• North Korea informed US of Nuclear test plans (thehindu.com)

War in Mali and German militarism

This photo of a French Foreign Legion soldier, part of the invasion of Mali, shows the real face of that war.

That war is not “against Al Qaeda terrorism” (supported by the French government in Libya, and still in Syria). It is not for women’s rights, human rights or secularism.

It is in support of a military dictatorship.

It brings death, mainly to Malian civilians.

This war is a neo-colonial war.

By Wolfgang Weber in Germany:

The role of Germany in the war in Mali

12 February 2013

A month ago, French soldiers, tanks and fighter jets invaded the West African country of Mali. Since then, Germany has been expanding its involvement in the colonial war from week to week.

The government in Berlin immediately declared its unconditional support for the French invasion, providing two Transall transport aircraft to carry troops, arms and ammunition of the West African Economic Union (ECOWAS) to the war zone. In the meantime, Berlin has provided an additional transporter; and the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) has rapidly built up a support base in Dakar (Senegal). If is from here that the Transall craft operate, with a support force of 75 soldiers.

At the United Nations’ “donor conference” to finance the war, Berlin promised immediate payments of US$20 million towards a fund totalling US$456 million. This will serve to strengthen the Mali army and to finance the African-led International Support Mission to Mali (AFISMA).

As Defence Minister Thomas de Maizière (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) told the Munich Security Conference last weekend, the Bundeswehr will contribute 40 engineers to the European Training Mission (EUTM Mali). These will train troops from Mali and ECOWAS to be able to conduct combat missions.

At a “troop providers’ conference for Mali” in Brussels on Tuesday last week, Berlin also announced the deployment of 40 army doctors and paramedics, as well as the delivery and operation of a field hospital.

The French government’s request for support by Bundeswehr tanker aircraft is already being prepared technically. Without air-to-air refuelling, French bombers and fighter jets would not be able to travel the extremely long distances from their bases in France or Africa to their missions in Mali.

Since the belligerent nature of these operations and the training of Malian soldiers cannot be denied, they must be approved by the Bundestag (federal parliament), which should happen retrospectively in early March.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, Defence Minister Thomas de Maizière and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle never tire of protesting that they are acting out of “solidarity with France” and for the “defence of the security of Europe against terrorists.” This is the same mendacious war propaganda with which the United States justified the war against Iraq.

Paris and Berlin say the aims of the war are the elimination of groups such as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO). These same organisations were funded and armed in Libya by the US, France, Britain and their allies in Qatar and Saudi Arabia to fight against Muammar Gaddafi.

In Syria, organisations like al-Nusra, which is close to Al Qaeda or works with it, are part of the National Coalition of the Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces (NCSROF), which is recognised by the NATO powers and the Gulf countries as “the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people”, and is armed and financed by them to foment the overthrow of the Assad regime.

The war in Mali is a dirty colonial war. It is not a matter of a “war on terror”, but the military control of the Sahel in order to plunder its largely untapped natural resources in the long term.

The national bourgeois regimes that rule there are corrupt and hated. They have only been able to cling to power with the help of the French military in putting down uprisings. To this end, France maintains bases in its former colonies with naval units, tanks and fighter jets. In return, France, as well as other foreign mining companies and investors, are given access to cheap land, exploration rights and mining concessions.

France also used its military bases in neighbouring countries for the invasion of Mali. It is supported in the war over the Sahel by other imperialist powers. As with the war in Libya, Britain has immediately declared its support. As well as money and weapons, Prime Minister Cameron last week also promised the deployment of several hundred soldiers.

The US has announced the establishment of a permanent military base in Niger. As well as a 300-man elite squad, drones are being stationed there capable of carrying out surveillance and combat missions over the Sahel. A US drone base is also planned in Burkina Faso [near] southern Mali.

In just a few weeks, Mali and its neighbours have been transformed into a veritable military staging area for the imperialist powers and their local African allies. In addition to the 4,000 French soldiers deployed, the German Transall planes will transport around ECOWAS 7,000 soldiers. They will also be joined by hundreds of American, British and German troops.

Two years ago, France, Britain and the US initiated a new round of wars to subjugate the African continent to direct colonial rule with their aggression against Libya. At that time, the Berlin government had decided against open German participation. That was not out of a love of peace, but with regard to China and Russia, which were heavily involved in Libya with investments and trade agreements and which are significant trading partners for German business.

In addition, the Bundeswehr was ill prepared for such an extensive and prolonged military campaign. With troops in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and other war zones, its capacity for foreign missions was exhausted.

The Bundeswehr, reorganised and rearmed 10 years ago by the previous Social Democratic (SPD)-Green Party government into an effective fighting force for international operations, was in a crisis. The then-defence minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (Christian Social Union, CSU), had made more of a name for himself through high-profile media appearances than for actually reforming the structure of the Bundeswehr.

Guttenberg was finally forced to resign following a plagiarism scandal, and was replaced by Thomas de Maizière (CDU) in March 2011, just two weeks before the bombing of Libya by the US, Britain and France.

De Maizière is considered a quiet but effective organiser. He was also familiar with the Bundeswehr since childhood. His father, Ulrich de Maizière, a staff officer in Hitler’s army, had built up the modern Bundeswehr in the 1950s and 1960s as the army inspector and general inspector.

Thomas de Maizière drove forward the “reorientation of the Bundeswehr” with professional efficiency. This was implemented during 2012 at the level of the ministry and the supreme military command. In January of this year, work began on the third, operational level, in a variety of so-called command capabilities.

For example, on January 15, in time for the first mission in Mali, the new, high-tech Bundeswehr Central Logistics Command opened in Erfurt. Under its command, 15,000 Bundeswehr personnel organise the logistics of all worldwide operations—i.e., supplying military task forces, weapons, transportation, clothing and food.

Thus, two years after the war in Libya, Germany is from the start an “equal partner” with the other great powers in the colonial war in Mali.

In an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, at the opening of the Munich Security Conference, de Maizière stressed the importance of this change. With more than 6,000 soldiers deployed abroad, Germany was making a significant contribution by European standards, he said. France has only 2,700 soldiers, and Britain 11,000, participating in multilateral missions, he said. “Our involvement began in 1992 with medical missions in Cambodia, but now it is clear that the Bundeswehr can fight too.”

In the same interview, de Maizière made clear that the Bundeswehr is not thinking of withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2014, and will stay there at least another 10 to 15 years. The mission will only be completed in its current form at the end of 2014. “We will then be present in a different way in Afghanistan”, he said, “so that the previous efforts were not in vain. That is, if they want sustainability.”

When asked whether such a policy can be implemented with domestic political support, he replied: “Yes, of course. But we will have to change the justification…. International missions must be…explained realistically and the reasons should not be too pathetic.”

In plain language, where the German government had argued in the 1990s and at the beginning of the Afghanistan mission that they were concerned with the “defence of human rights” and the “construction of wells, schools and hospitals”, in future, wars would have to be justified with reference to German interests and by openly declaring that they required great sacrifice and costs.

At present, combat missions in Mali are still being carried out and “legitimised” within existing alliances such as NATO, the UN or the EU. But German imperialism is already pursuing its own interests.

The chancellor made this clear when five days after the start of the French aggression in Mali, she received Alassane Ouattara, the president of the neighbouring state of Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and agreed to a substantial increase in investment by German energy and agricultural companies in this country.

At the concluding press conference, she said, “It is often thought of in Germany that this is actually a French sphere of influence, and so we don’t need to get involved there. The president will use his visit to make clear in Germany that this is by no means the case, and that other countries also have good relations to Ivory Coast.”

One-hundred-ten years after the barbaric genocide of the Herero and Nama in German South West Africa by the Kaiser’s military, and 70 years after Rommel’s murderous African campaign in World War II, Germany is once again acting openly as a colonial power in the new “scramble for Africa”.

According to a survey by the Emnid polling institute on January 17, 60 percent of the German population clearly reject this policy. But it is supported all the more vehemently by all the parties in the Bundestag.

The SPD and Greens attack the ruling coalition from the right: Germany must be an even more comprehensive and active participant in the war in Mali!

Germany To Deploy Several Hundred Troops To Mali: here.

Mali dictatorship arrests Leftist opposition leader: here.

Related articles

• Mali, war and more war (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• French invasion of Mali, its real deathly face (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Second Suicide-Bomb blast rocks Mali Forces In Northern town of Gao (therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com)
• Rebels’ raid poses Mali guerrilla war threat for French (news.yahoo.com)
• Militarized Politics at their Worst: The Genesis of the Mali Crisis (worldnewscurator.com)
• Threat Of Guerrilla War In Mali (warnewsupdates.blogspot.com)