[wvns] No Military Solution in Sudan
Militarizing Africa
Conn Hallinan
March 20, 2007
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/03/20/militarizing_africa.php
When the Bush administration recently unveiled its new African
military command AFRICOM Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Theresa
Whelan said that the initiative was aimed at "promoting security, to
build African capacity to build their own environments and not be
subject to the instability that has toppled governments and caused so
much pain on the continent."
And yet hardly was the announcement made when the Bush administration
organized the overthrow of the first stable government Somalia has had
since 1991, stirring up a hornet's nest of regional rivalries in the
strategic Horn of Africa. U.S. Special Forces accompanied the
Ethiopian Army when it stormed across the border in late December to
support the besieged and isolated Transitional Federal Government. The
United States also provided the Ethiopians with "up-to-date
intelligence on the military positions of the Islamist fighters in
Somalia," Pentagon and counterterrorism officials told The New York Times.
The target of the invasion was the Islamic Courts Union, which over
the past year had brought a modicum of peace to the warlord-riven
country. Since the poorly armed ICU militias were routed, fighting in
the capital, Mogadishu, sharply escalated. Nor have matters improved
in recent months." The situation here [Mogadishu] is out of control,"
Ali Said Omar, chair of the Center for Peace and Democracy, told The
Guardian in late February.
The ostensible reason for U.S. participation in the invasion was the
ICU's supposed association with al-Qaida, a charge that has never been
substantiated. U.S. warplanes and ships shelled and rocketed parts of
southern Somalia where, according to Oxfam and the United Nations
Refugee Center, 70 civilians died and more than 100 were wounded.
Beyond The Horn
The White House's plans for Africa, which reach far beyond the Horn,
are part of a general militarization of U.S. foreign policy. A recent
congressional report found that "some embassies have effectively
become command posts, with military personnel in those countries all
but supplanting the role of ambassadors in conducting American foreign
policy." The United States is already pouring $500 million into its
Trans-Sahel Counterterrorism Initiative that embraces Morocco, Tunisia
and Algeria in North Africa, and nations boarding the Sahara including
Mauritania, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Senegal. A major U.S.
base in Djibouti houses some 1,800 troops and played an important role
in the Somali invasion.
With Africa expected to provide a quarter of all U.S. oil imports by
2015, a major focus of AFRICOM will be the Gulf of Guinea. The gulf
countries of Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Angola and the Congo
Republic all possess enormous oil reserves. Some of them are plagued
by exactly the kind of "instability" that AFRICOM was created to address.
Nigeria, for instance, is the world's eighth largest oil exporter.
"Though all the eyes of the public seem focused on the atomic
ambitions of Iran, Nigeria is at the greatest risk of oil disruption
today," according to Peter Tertzakian, chief energy economist at ARC
Financial Corporation. A year ago, the Movement for the Emancipation
of the Niger Delta, or MEND, shut down one-fifth of Nigeria’s oil
production through a series of attacks on pumping stations and oilrigs.
General James L. Jones, North Atlantic Treaty Organization supreme
commander, says the U.S.-dominated military alliance is "talking"
about using its forces to protect oil tankers off the west coast of
Africa and to provide security for "storage and production facilities
in areas such as the oil-rich Niger Delta." NATO is doing more than
talking. In June of last year, NATO troops stormed ashore at Vila Dos
Espargos on the Cape Verde Islands. The war game modeled intervening
in a civil war over energy resources.
If NATO were to "provide security" in the strategic Niger Delta, it
would find itself in the middle of an enormously complex political
situation that pits local people fighting for a bigger slice of the
resource pie against corrupt elites allied with transnational oil
giants like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, France's Total and Italy's ENI.
A spokesman for MEND, Jomo Gbomo, charged that "oil is the key concern
of the U.S. in establishing its African command," and warned "we will
fight everyone who goes on the side of the Nigerian government." While
the United States says its focus is on "terrorism," Nicole Lee of
TransAfrica responds that "This [AFRICOM] is nothing short of a
sovereignty and resource grab."
The Bush administration has long considered the control of resources
like oil to be a strategic issue. In 2001, Vice President Dick
Cheney's National Energy Policy Development Group recommended that the
administration "make energy security a priority of our trade and
foreign policy," a blueprint the White House has religiously followed.
In 2002, the Administration also rolled out its "West Point Doctrine,"
which in essence said that the United States would not permit the
development of a major economic, political, or military competitor.
Both of these policies are increasingly running up against the new
energy-hungry kids on the block, particularly China and India. China
has been investing heavily into Africa. India, Malaysia and South
Korea have also joined the oil rush, along with competing for copper
from Zambia, platinum from Zimbabwe, timber from the Congo and iron
ore from South Africa. In a strange reversal of the 19th century,
former colonies are going head to head with their old masters in the
race for raw materials.
Darfur And Oil
The Sudan is one of those places where it seems easy to distinguish
the good guys from the bad. But up close, things are considerably more
complex. The tragedy unfolding in Darfur is fueled in part by
competition between nomads and agriculturalists. But it is also a
proxy war between Sudanese elites in Khartoum as well as an arena for
regional competition among Sudan, Chad and Niger.
Lost in the media images of burned villages and destitute refugees is
the issue of oil. The vast bulk of Sudan's oil is in its south, where
a long-running civil war is currently dormant. But in 2011 the south
will hold a referendum to decide whether to remain part of Sudan or
become independent. Will Western oil companies that pulled up stakes
in the 1980s and decamped to Chad push southerners to vote for
independence so they can move back in? Will Khartoum really accept a
breakup of the country?
The bottom line is that Sudan, like Somalia, Nigeria and most African
countries, is a complex place, where military solutions are likely to
cause problems, not solve them. There is also fear, according to
Nigerian journalist Dulue Mbachu, "that increased U.S. military
presence in Africa may simply serve to protect unpopular regimes that
are friendly to its interests, as was the case during the Cold War,
while Africa slips further into poverty."
Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus, where this
article originally appeared.
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