Dutch soldiers’ union questions neocolonial Mali war

This Dutch 28 September 2017 TV video is about a war game by Dutch soldiers in Mali on 6 July 2016. A malfunctioning Dutch grenade, bought in the USA, killed two soldiers and severely injured a third one.

An official investigation has now said that the Dutch government knew these grenades were faulty and dangerous, but sent them with the soldiers to Mali anyway, because they wanted to start their Mali military mission as soon as possible.

In 2011, NATO waged war on Libya. This ‘humanitarian’ war (for oil) caused extremely unhumanitarian bloodbaths, still continuing; brought back slavery, abolished in Libya in the nineteenth century, into the twenty-first century; completely ruined healthcare; ruined Libyan women’s rights, and made Libya the country with the world’s worst child abuse.

That war also caused a chain reaction of bloodbaths in other African countries. Like in Mali: in 2012, an army officer, trained by the United States AFRICOM armed forces, did a military coup d’état. The new regime killed many people who they dumped in mass graves. More bloodbaths: the French Foreign Legion arrived, infamous from colonial wars in Algeria and elsewhere. So did armies from other NATO countries. There are many minerals in Mali which may boost profits of multinational corporations. The German armed forces arrived for the German Big Business share of Mali’s neocolonial booty.

And the Dutch armed forces arrived for the Dutch share of Mali’s neocolonial spoils. The officers (some of them rather controversial) came. The privates came. And the guns and ammunition came. The Dutch government was so scared that the Dutch soldiers would arrive in Mali too late for the scramble for neocolonial spoils that they ‘forgot’ to check the quality of the firearms and ammunition.

That had consequences.

Fist, the deaths and serious injuries for these three Dutch soldiers.

And now, yesterday, the indignation about this scandal has forced the resignation of Dutch Minister Hennis of ~~war~~ ‘defence’ and of the commander of the armed forces.

Anne-Marie Snels, chairwoman of the Dutch soldiers’ trade union AFMP, agreed with these resignations. She also questioned yesterday on the Pauw national TV show whether Dutch military participation in the neocolonial war in Mali should continue. According to Ms Snels, the Dutch government has systematically preferred political [like neocolonial in Mali] interests to the lives of soldiers being safe.