US government to set up new military command in Africa

By Lawrence Porter:

In an ominous development mirroring the explosive expansion of US militarism, the Bush administration has designated Africa as a continent of “strategic national concern,” and has initiated a new military policy to coincide with this new classification.

The Bush administration announced in February the formation of a new military command system in Africa, the United States African Command (AFRICOM), couched in the usual combination of humanitarian and anti-terrorist terminology.

Last month Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Defense Policy Ryan Henry was dispatched to a six-nation African tour to “clear up misunderstandings” about the Pentagon’s new military program.

Several regimes raised concerns that the US was moving into the region because of the discovery of vast oil reserves in parts of the continent and the growing influence of China, seen as both an economic and political rival. …

West Africa, including Nigeria, presently supplies 12 percent of US crude oil imports.

By 2015, it is estimated this share will rise to 25 percent, a greater proportion than Saudi Arabia.

An ominous development indeed … probably preparing more wars like in Somalia now.

The name is not original, there already is an AFRICOM:

International Council of African Museums

AFRICOM is a non-governmental, autonomous and pan-African organization of museums (NGO) created in october 1999 in Lusaka, Zambia.

As we know from the Baghdad museum in Iraq, Bush’s AFRICOM may well mean very bad news for the African museums’ AFRICOM.

Demonstration against Bush’s plans in Botswana: here.