Essential The Africa the Media Doesn't Tell You About

Yehuda

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Kenya, the United States, and the Project of Endless War in Somalia

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Posted at 22:32h in Blog, Conference Reports, Featured by roape1974

With American-supplied aerial reconnaissance, satellite surveillance, and troop presence, Somalia has now been under military occupation for thirteen years. Samar Al-Bulushi analyses the involvement of regional bodies and states in the project of endless war in Somalia.

By Samar Al-Bulushi

On 5 January, the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab launched an attack on a military base in northeastern Kenya that houses Kenyan and American troops, and that serves as a launch pad for US drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen. Three Americans were killed when the Shabaab fighters fired a rocket-propelled grenade on a plane piloted by contractors from L3 Technologies, an American company hired by the Pentagon to carry out surveillance missions in Somalia; due to Kenyan government secrecy about the loss of its own troops in the war with Al-Shabaab, it remains unclear how many Kenyans lives were lost.

This is unprecedented: Al-Shabaab has never launched a large-scale assault on a military installation within Kenyan territory. While the group has targeted military sites within Somalia, most of its targets in Kenya have been on civilian spaces, with the 2013 attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall as the most notable. As analysts familiar with the region have observed, Al-Shabaab’s actions are a likely response to the United States’ rapidly expanding undeclared war in Somalia, where American drone strikes have killed between 900-1,000 Somalis in the past three years alone, and where the American troop presence now exceeds 500.

The Pentagon responded with a new round of drone strikes in Somalia (at least three in the month of January), and with the prompt deployment of additional troops to Kenya’s Manda Bay military base—a clear reminder that the US military establishment has not lost its appetite for endless war. While the New York Times reported in December that the US was likely to ‘draw down’ its military presence in Africa, the Times focused only on the military’s interests in West Africa. In doing so, they overlooked the strategic significance of the Horn, a site of growing competition between the US, China, and Russia, with Turkey and the Gulf states playing increasingly influential roles. While instability in Somalia served as a pretext for many of these states’ initial involvement in the region, the rapidly expanding archipelago of foreign military bases suggests that most of these actors have long-term, if not permanent, visions for securing their respective political and economic interests.

In my presentation to the Political Economy, Knowledge, Solidarity, Liberation: From Asia to Africa workshop in Tunis, I reflected on the significance of these developments and drew on my research in Kenya to analyze the imbrication of Global South states and regional bodies in the project of endless war in Somalia. Somalia has now been under military occupation for thirteen years. With American-supplied aerial reconnaissance and satellite surveillance, Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia in December 2006. At the time of the invasion, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) had presided over six months of relative stability in Somalia. Contrary to mainstream media coverage that claimed Al-Qaeda ties, the ICU was an indigenous response to CIA-backed warlords, whose drug and weapons-trafficking had subjected Somalis to years of violence and uncertainty.[1] Its popularity grew not because of a unified Islamist ideology, but because of a shared desire to counteract the warlords. With the ICU driven into exile by the invasion, more militant factions emerged. As such, the invasion and subsequent occupation planted the seeds for the growth of what is now known as Al-Shabaab.[2]

The United Nations not only failed to publicly condemn Ethiopia’s invasion, but authorized an African Union-led ‘peacekeeping’ mission known as AMISOM. It is important to underscore here the ways in which liberal governing discourses of ‘peacekeeping,’ and the ‘rule of law’ function to mask and depoliticize the realities of imperialism and war. While AMISOM’s initial rules of engagement permitted the use of force only when necessary, it gradually assumed an offensive role, engaging in counterinsurgency and counter-terror operations. What began as a small deployment of 1,650 peacekeepers progressively transformed into a number that exceeded 22,000 as the architects of the intervention soon battled a problem of their own making.

AMISOM’s donors (including the US, EU, and other actors) have been able to offset the expense and public scrutiny of maintaining their own troops in Somalia by relying on private contractors and African forces. The employment of multiple, interlinked security regimes has enabled the US in particular to replace images of its own, less credible, military adventurism with seemingly benign actors that are focused on ‘state-building.’ Entities like Bancroft Global, Adam Smith International, Dyncorp, Pacific Architects and Engineers, Engility, and the Serendi Group have tactically positioned themselves for contracts focused on logistics, capacity building, and security sector reform.[3] Like the private contractors, troop contributing states (Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Djibouti, Burundi) have financial incentives to maintain instability in order to justify the continued need for foreign intervention:[4] AMISOM troops are paid significantly higher salaries than they receive back home, and their governments obtain generous military aid packages in the name of fighting Al-Shabaab.[5]

Kenya is an important example of a ‘partner’ state that has now become imbricated in the project of endless war.[6] As a close ally of the US in the so-called War on Terror, Kenya has been one of the largest recipients of US security assistance in sub-Saharan Africa. It temporarily closed its borders to civilians fleeing the violence that ensued with Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia, and worked with US officials to arrest and interrogate over one hundred and fifty people who managed to cross over into Kenya, in some cases facilitating their rendition to detention sites in Mogadishu and Addis Ababa. Support from the US has been instrumental in emboldening the Kenyan military to engage in its own ‘war on terror’ at home and abroad. Within the country, the security apparatus has become notorious for the disappearances and extra-judicial killings of Kenyan Muslims who are deemed to be suspicious in the eyes of the state. In Somalia, Kenyan troops have been engaged in direct combat with Al-Shabaab since Kenya invaded the country in October 2011, without parliamentary approval.

AMISOM’s readiness to incorporate Kenyan troops into its so-called peacekeeping mission was a strategic victory for Kenya, as it provided a veneer of legitimacy for maintaining a military presence in Somalia. To this end, the Kenyan state has actively worked to cultivate an image of itself as a regional leader in multilateral peace and stabilization efforts. Yet the 5 January attack on a military base that serves as host for US drone and surveillance operations is a crucial reminder of the Kenyan state’s simultaneous entanglement in an American-led project of intervention and endless war in Somalia. Recognition of this reality is crucial for the broader effort to resist it.

Samar Al-Bulushi teaches at UCI Irvine, Department of Anthropology. Her research is broadly concerned with militarism, policing, and the ‘War on Terror’ in East Africa.

Featured Photograph: Ugandan soldier of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) with members of the Al Shabaab group (22 September 2012).

Notes

[1] Without explicitly naming the United States, the UN Monitoring Group for Somalia confirmed that a ‘clandestine third-country’ was responsible for violating the terms of the UN arms embargo at the time (Scahill 2013).

[2] For more see Jeremy Scahill (2013) and Mary Harper (2012).

[3] Abukar Arman uses the term predatory capitalism to describe the hidden economic deals that accompany the so-called stabilization effort in Somalia, as ‘capacity building’ contracts often serve as a cover for the negotiation of oil, gas, and other agreements, and for the illicit transfer of arms and other goods.

[4] Some troop contributing states have been accused of selling their arms on the black market, and of collaborating with Al-Shabaab in the illicit trade in sugar and charcoal.

[5] Paying the monthly allowances for AMISOM troops has become the EU’s single largest development project in Africa.

[6] For a nuanced discussion of Ethiopia’s role, see Sobukwe Odinga (2017) “We Recommend Compliance: Bargaining and Leverage in Ethiopia-US Intelligence Cooperation,” Review of African Political Economy 44:153, 432-448.

Kenya, the United States, and the Project of Endless War in Somalia
 

Red Shield

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Demons indeed.


It's like good grief, the usa has been offering this same shyt. FOR DECADES to these countries. And it always leads to the garbage bin of economic stagnation and ruin.



I think it should be obvious to any African country by now, that the usa isn't a good potential partner. So no economic deals should actually be done.

Entertain the usa to get better deals outta the countries you actually plan to deal with, sure but no further then that.


China might not be the greatest to do business with, but their far far better than the usa is
 

loyola llothta

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Coronavirus: Africans Accuse Europeans of ‘Coronising’ the Continent
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16 March 2020


Many of Africa's cases have been brought by Europeans

By Amandla Thomas-Johnson

The large number of Europeans being diagnosed with coronavirus in Africa has sparked debate and ridicule, with one Senegalese newspaper questioning whether France was out to “coronise” its former colony after two French nationals received a positive diagnosis.


With around 273 cases as of Sunday morning, Africa has been left relatively unscathed by the virus. However, governments there have come under intense pressure to put in place travel bans to stop Europeans bringing it in.

The situation has prompted some to speculate about the seeming reversal of fortunes between the two continents, with one analyst telling Middle East Eye that it was “ironic” that Europeans were attempting to travel to Africa when Africans refugees and migrants are virtually barred entry into Europe.

Some have pointed out also that many Europeans countries imposed restrictive bans during the Ebola crisis, including on African countries that had no cases.

After news broke in Senegal at the start of March that two French nationals had tested positive for the virus, Senegalese papers saw a chance to link the virus to grievances over France’s continued political and economic influence in its former colony.

Senegalese daily L’evidence pondered: “Is France Coronising Senegal?” A subtitle then added: “slave trade, economic colonisation, epidemiological colonisation?”

Rewmi, another Senegalese daily, meanwhile, exclaimed: “Another contaminated Frenchman.”

Le Pays, a daily in Burkina Faso, another former French colony, which reported two cases of Burkinabes returning from Italy this week, wrote:

“If a dozen countries on the black continent have confirmed cases here and there, the fact remains that the cases revealed are, for the most part, those of European travellers travelling to the African continent.”

Rufaro Samanga, a South African commentator at African news platform OkayAfrica, said that while African countries could continue to cope with the virus “so long as we keep the rest of the world out”, economic dependency on the West means African governments were reluctant to put in place travel bans.

“African countries are going to have lesser freedom to put in place travel bans compared to western countries because we are so dependent on things like business, investments and particularly tourism,” said Samanga, who is also a Rhodes-Mandela Scholar in Epidemiology.

“Our governments might feel that they need to pander to a lot to the governments of countries where there is a high prevalence of coronavirus just to manage the economic situation.”

She points to South Africa deciding to keep its borders open despite the country having dozens of cases, amid news last week that the economy has tipped into recession, as an example.

“I definitely think that the public health component of it at times will become secondary particularly for African countries,” she said.

“If we don’t nip it in the bud we will start seeing a steady increase in the cases.”

It was “ironic”, Samanga said, that while Africans are unable to find safe haven in the US or Europe, now people in the West are attempting to travel to various African countries.

While European nationals can enter countries like Senegal and South Africa visa-free with little more than a flash of their passports at the immigration desk, most other African nationals are required to go through a pricey and opaque visa application process that offers little guarantee of success.

Last year, a British parliamentary report said that Africans were twice as likely to be rejected for British visas than applicants from other continents, such as the Middle East.


There was a “lack of procedural fairness” in the application process, the report said.

But some, like nationals of Senegal and South Africa, regional diplomatic hubs, have it easier than others. Mauritanians would need to make a 4,000km round trip to Morocco in order to apply for a British visa, and to enter Morocco they would also need a visa.

In any case, the visa option is only open to those able to afford it and who feel they may have a reasonable chance of success. Instead, many young Africans risk their lives traversing the “backway” – the treacherous routes by sea via the Atlantic or across the Sahara desert – in the hopes of reaching Europe’s shores.

An estimated 20,000 migrants and refugees have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean since 2014, and the UN has said that the African land journey to the Mediterranean coast is twice as deadly.

On 3 March, Senegal reported its third case of coronavirus, a 33-year-old British woman and member of staff at the regional office for West Africa and Central Africa at the International Organisation of Migration (IOM).

The office, which oversees a supposedly voluntary repatriation programme for African migrants who reach Europe, or who are detained in Libya, has since taken precautionary measures.

IOM’s regional Assisted Voluntary Return programme has been heavily criticised by rights groups on the grounds that it is in fact not voluntary, because the conditions migrants face are so bad that they are left with little choice but to leave.

Visiting detention camps for mainly African migrants held in Libya in July, Vincent Cochetel, the UN’s special envoy on migration in the Mediterranean, said he saw people reduced to “skin and bone”.

Conditions, he said, were comparable to concentration camps in Bosnia in the 1990s and those in Cambodia in the 1970s under the Khmer Rouge, which was responsible for the deaths of over one million people.

A number of reasons have been offered for why the disease has not penetrated Africa. Hot weather and the continent’s relatively young population have been put forward, while some have questioned whether low detection rates are a factor.

If a string of online publications are to be believed, however, it is because black people are somehow more resistant to the virus than white people.

One message circulating in French-speaking African countries about the recovery of a Cameroonian man who took sick in China, claimed that the Chinese doctors confirmed the man survived because the “antibodies of a black person are three times stronger, powerful and resistant than that of a white”.

The claim has been strongly refuted. The World Health Organisation has warned against an “infodemic” of fake news about the virus spreading across social media channels.

Samanga puts the reason down to African countries being able to build on previous experience fighting diseases like Ebola.

Africans have taken the lead with precautionary measures at airports, while a Senegalese innovation lab which made self-diagnosis kits for Ebola is now creating ones for coronavirus, she points out.

“You’re seeing a reversal of role,” she said, speaking to MEE from Johannesburg, South Africa. “You have Africa at the forefront and the West is flailing, unable to self contain the outbreak.”

According to the Washington Post, Senegal is testing and returning results within four hours, compared to about a week in the US.

During the height of the European migrant crisis, ideas likening African and other migrants to carriers of diseases were stoked by the media and politicians. In 2015, British Prime Minister David Cameron was accused of using racist language after referring to the numbers of people seeking refuge in Europe as a “swarm”.

Spanish daily El Pais, has imagined a different world, in which it is Europeans – and not Africans – fleeing to safety across the Mediterranean, only to be barred entry to North Africa because of the coronavirus.

“Imagine that the spread of the coronavirus is uncontrolled in Europe while on the African continent, due to climatic conditions, it has no incidence,” the article entitled “Our Everyday Dystopia”, said.

Travelling on “precarious boats” from across the Straits of Gibraltar, the Greek Islands and Turkish coast, migrants would arrive to African shores to find “the same fences they erected, the same violent controls and the most impregnable borders.”

“The North African forces would shoot at Westerners mercilessly, they would shout at them: go home, leave us alone, we don’t want your illness, your misery,” it says.

It goes on to imagine European migrants falling victim to extortion by a mafia who lock them up in “inhospitable quarantines, where they would be stripped of their belongings, their feelings and their dignity.”

Countries where Europeans have tested positive for the virus include both Nigeria and Cameroon whose first cases were Italian and French nationals respectively.

A Norwegian was among Ghana’s first two cases reported on Friday. Europeans are among the confirmed cases in Algeria, which has the second highest number of confirmed infections after Egypt. In South Africa, the bulk of cases have come from a group returned home after skiing in the Italian Alps.

Mauritania reported a case of an unspecified European being diagnosed with the virus on Saturday. But at the start of the month, a group of Italian tourists attempted to escape confinement but were caught and sent home.

“The 15 were caught 90km from [the capital] Nouakchott and brought back to the airport, from where they were re-routed to their country on Sunday via Morocco,” a health ministry spokesperson said on 5 March.

One of the worst migrant boat tragedies of 2019 took place off Mauritania’s Atlantic coast, when a vessel carrying 62 Gambians capsized in December en-route to the Canary Islands, which are a part of Spain.

Days later another boat carrying nearly 200 people from the tiny West African nation was intercepted by the Mauritanian coastguard

Link:

Coronavirus: Africans accuse Europeans of 'coronising' continent
 

Premeditated

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Ivory Coast just rebased their gdp(about time).

looking at their numbers, they should have by far the best standard of living in subsaharan Africa with their decent population(I'm including South Africa because black SA aren't living anybetter than the rest). what I don't get is why their life expectancy is so low compared to like Kenya and Senegal?
 

Yehuda

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32 Anniversary of Cuito Cuanavale.

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MAR 24 2020

March 23, 2020, marks the 32th anniversary of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale. That remote town of Angola became a symbol of resistance and courage, after the victory of Angolan, Namibian, South African and Cuban combatants, against the army of the opprobrious Apartheid regime.

It was the largest military confrontation on African territory since the World War II battles between the Allies and the Axis in North Africa. The recent history of Southern Africa is marked by a before and after the battle of Cuito Cuanavale. It led to major strategic realignments with huge consequences for the whole region, leading to the complete withdrawal of South Africa from Angola, the independence of Namibia, and the eventual dismantling of Apartheid.

Cuito Cuanavale, said African leader Oliver Tambo, was the racist South African Waterloo.

Nelson Mandela would say about Cuba's participation in the battle:“Your presence and the reinforcement of your forces in the battle of Cuito Cuanavale was of truly historic significance. The crushing defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale was a victory for the whole of Africa! The overwhelming defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale provided the possibility for Angola to enjoy peace and consolidate its own sovereignty! The defeat of the racist army allowed the struggling people of Namibia to finally win their independence.

The decisive defeat of the apartheid aggressors broke the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressors! The defeat of the apartheid army was an inspiration to the struggling people inside South Africa! Without the defeat of Cuito Cuanavale our organizations would not have been unbanned! The defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale has made it possible for me to be here today!

Cuito Cuanavale was a milestone in the history of the struggle for southern African liberation! Cuito Cuanavale has been a turning point in the struggle to free the continent and our country from the scourge of apartheid!”

The Combats

By November 1987, the South African Defense Forces (SADF) had encircled 10 000 combatants of the best Angolan units in Cuito Cuanavale and were preparing to annihilate them. The fall of Cuito was imminent, which would mean a devastating blow to Angola and the consolidation of the Apartheid regime. The Angolan government requested urgent Cuba's support.

On November 15, the top leadership of the Cuban government, headed by Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, met in Havana and in a few hours it was decided to send significant forces and means from Cuba to confront the situation.

It was a brave decision, since Cuba was under serious threats from the government of US President Ronald Reagan, which strongly supported the South African offensive. But once again, Cuba prioritized internationalist solidarity before any other consideration.

Cuba's strategic plan was not only to defend Cuito, but to change the balance of forces, to expel the South African racist army from Angola once and for all, and to deliver a blow to the South African Apartheid regime so forcefully that it never recovered, forcing it to sit at the negotiating table. Commander in Chief Fidel Castro would describe his strategy to the leader of the South African Communist Party, Cde. Joe Slovo. He explained that Cuba would stop the South African onslaught in Cuito and then attack in another direction, "like the boxer who keeps the opponent with the left hand and hits him with the right".

The operation was of extraordinary magnitude: 29 Cuban ships were operated, transporting a total volume of 57 253 tons of combat materials and technique, including hundreds of tanks, artillery pieces, anti-aircraft groups, and combat aviation squadrons and in 140 airplane flights, dozens of thousands of combatants were transported, bringing to 55,000 the number of Cuban internationalist fighters in Angola.

In the more than five months of fierce fighting the SADF attempted several times to capture Cuito Cuanavale, but was successfully repelled. On March 23, 1988, the South Africans launched their last major assault against Cuito, but they were definitely stopped by the revolutionary forces.

In parallel, the Cuban, Angolan and Namibian allied forces, supported by MK combatants, with air superiority by the Cuban MiG-23s, launched a counter-offensive to the west, advancing towards Namibia, forcing the SADF to withdraw definitively from Angola. Our soldiers returned to our homeland with their heads held high, taking with them only the friendship of the African peoples, the satisfaction of the duty accomplish and the glorious remains of our fallen comrades.

Recalling today the events of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale is also a way of paying tribute to those that paid the supreme sacrifice combating in this continent for our belief in anti-Apartheid, freedom and justice.

The blood spilled on Cuito Cuanavale was not in vain. We will never regret having written one of the most beautiful pages in the history of solidarity among peoples and among revolutionaries.

32 Anniversary of Cuito Cuanavale.
 

frush11

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I was very surprised at how close Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are. For that matter Ivory Coast is very close by.

i find myself looking at the map a lot these days, and i always learn something new.

its crazy how one country can share borders with 5/6 countries.
 
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