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So now Israel's trying to be arms dealer to African warlords?
Essential The Africa the Media Doesn't Tell You About
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I told nikkas about Sudan color revolution
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The D-List Vet
Being in a recommendation system.
Only the Struggle of the People Will Free the Country: The Thirty-Fifth Newsletter (2020).
AUGUST 27, 2020
Amadou Sanogo (Mali), Sans-Tete (2016).
Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
On 18 August, soldiers from the Kati barracks outside Bamako (Mali) left their posts, arrested president Ibrahim Boubacar Këita (IBK) and prime minister Boubou Cissé, and set up the National Committee for the Salvation of the People (CNSP). In effect, these soldiers conducted a coup d’état. This is the third coup in Mali, after the military coups of 1968 and 2012. The colonels who conducted the coup – Malick Diaw, Ismaël Wagué, Assimi Goïta, Sadio Camara, and Modibo Koné – have said that they will relinquish power as soon as Mali has been able to organise a credible election. These are men who have worked closely with military forces from France to Russia, and unlike the coup leaders of 2012 – headed by Captain Amadou Sanogo – they are sophisticated diplomats; they have already demonstrated their skill in manoeuvring the media.
Ibrahima Kebe of L’association politique Faso Kanu said, ‘IBK dug his grave with his own teeth’. A veteran politician, IBK came to power in 2013 when Mali had lost its sovereignty due to a French-led military intervention called Operation Serval. The French claimed that they intervened to protect Mali from an Islamist onslaught in the north of the country. But, in fact, the spur for Mali’s deterioration comes from a range of factors, not the least of which was the decision of France and the United States – through NATO – to destroy Libya in early 2011. The war on Libya destabilised the situation in Africa’s Sahel region, where countries – already weakened by economic turbulence and International Monetary Fund (IMF) pressure – now found themselves unable to fend off French and US military interventions.
Malick Sidibé (Mali), Les Retrouvailles au bord du fleuve Niger, 1974.
Mali won its independence in 1960 with great promise, as its first president – Modibo Keïta – led it with a socialist and pan-African stance; the Keïta years were marked by import-substitution economic policies and an honest administration that attempted to build public sector delivery of social goods. But the country was dependent on one crop (cotton) for more than half its GDP, it had little processing and industry, and it had almost no sources of energy (all the oil is imported, and the hydroelectric plants at Kayes and Sotuba are modest). Poor soil and lack of access to water in the northern part of Mali put pressure on agriculture; Mali’s distance from the sea makes it hard to take its agricultural products to the market. Further, the cotton subsidy regime in both Europe and the United States strike at the heart of Mali’s attempt to develop its already dismal economy. A coup in 1968 – backed by the imperialists – removed Keïta (who died nine years later in prison); the new government with the uncanny name of the Military Committee for National Liberation, set aside the socialist and pan-African policies, persecuted trade unionists and communists, and delivered Mali back into the French orbit. The 1973 drought and the 1980 entry of the IMF set the country into a cycle of crises, which culminated in the March 1991 democratic upsurge. Those street protests – magnificent in their enthusiasm – led to the victory of the Alliance for Democracy in Mali (ADEMA) led by Alpha Oumar Konaré.
Konaré’s government inherited a criminal debt of over $3 billion. Sixty percent of Mali’s fiscal receipts went towards debt servicing. Salaries could not be paid; nothing could be done. Konaré, who began as a Marxist in his youth but came to office as a liberal, begged the US for debt forgiveness, to no avail. The more Mali’s government went into debt, the less able was the government to hire an honest bureaucracy, and so the government slipped deep into corruption. This was acceptable to France and the US, since a corrupt government meant easier interlocutors for the transnational gold mining firms – such as Canada’s Barrick Gold and the UK’s Hummingbird Resources – to siphon off Mali’s gold reserves at low prices. Behind everything that happens in Mali is its gold reserves, the third largest in the world. A Reuters story that came out a day after the coup had the reassuring headline: Mali’s gold miners carry on digging despite coup.
Abdoulaye Konaté (Mali), Non à la Charia au Sahel, 2013.
Since its independence, Mali has struggled to integrate all its vast territory – twice the size of France. The Tuareg communities began a rebellion in the idurar n Ahaggar mountains in 1962 demanding autonomy and refusing to honour the borders that divide their lands between Algeria, Libya, Niger, and Mali. A century-long deterioration of the land around the desert, magnified by the droughts of 1968, 1974, 1980, and 1985, devastated their pastoral way of life, sending many Tuareg to seek their livelihood in the cities of Mali and in Libya’s military as well as its informal labour force. Peace agreements signed between Mali and the Tuareg rebels in 1991 and 2006 fell apart due to the weakness of Mali’s military (salaries for soldiers were held down due to IMF pressure) and due to the arrival in the area of various Islamist groups expelled from Algeria.
These Islamists – the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) – coalesced and took over northern Mali in 2012-13. These groups – notably AQIM – had become part of the trans-Sahara smuggling networks (cocaine, arms, humans), and raised revenue through kidnapping and protection rackets. The threat posed by these groups was used by France and the United States to garrison the Sahel countries from Mauritania to Chad. In May 2012, the French approved a plan to intervene in the region, which was hidden behind the fig leaf of UN Resolution 2085 of December 2012. The G5 Sahel agreement yoked the countries of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger into the security agenda of France and the United States. French troops entered the old colonial base at Tessalit (Mali), while the US built the world’s largest drone base in Agadez (Niger). They built a wall across the Sahel – south of the Sahara – as Europe’s effective southern border, compromising the sovereignty of these African states.
Penda Diakité (Mali), Bouana (2019).
Protests against Ibrahim Boubacar Këita’s re-election in March 2020 escalated with trade unions, political parties, and religious groups taking to the streets. Media attention focused on the charismatic Salafi preacher Mahmoud dikko (sensationally called the ‘Malian Khomeini’); but dikko represented only a part of the energy on the streets. On 5 June, these organisations – such as the Mouvement espoir Mali Koura and the Front pour de sauvegarde de la démocratie, along with dikko’s association – called for a mass protest at Bamako’s Independence Square. They formed the Movement of 5 June – Rally of Patriotic Forces (M5-RFP), which continued to pressure IBK to resign. State violence (including 23 killed) did not stop the protests, which called not only for the removal of IBK, but also for the end of colonial interference and for a total transformation of Mali’s system. M5-RFP had planned a rally on Saturday, 22 August; the military coup took place on Tuesday, 18 August. But the energy of the streets has not dissipated, and the coup leaders know that.
France, the United States, the United Nations, the African Union, and the regional bloc (Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS) have condemned the coup and called – in one way or another – for a return to the status quo; this is unacceptable to the people. L’association politique Faso Kanu has proposed a three-year political transition driven by the new leaders produced by M5-RFP, with transitional bodies created outside the formal state structure to strengthen the country’s depleted sovereignty. ‘Only the struggle of the people’, they write, ‘will free the country’.
In 1970, the South African Marxist Ruth First – who was assassinated on 17 August 1982 by the apartheid regime – published Barrel of a Gun: Political Power in Africa and the Coup d’État. Looking at a variety of coups, including the 1968 coup in Mali, First argued that the military officers in post-colonial Africa had a range of political views, and many of them came to power to redeem the national liberation dreams of their people. ‘The facility of coup logistics and the audacity and arrogance of the coup makers’, First wrote, ‘are equalled by the inanity of their aims, at least as many choose to state them’. There is no indicator that the current coup leaders in Mali have such an orientation; regardless of their own character and their own external backers, they will have to face a population that is once more eager for a break from the colonial past and from the miseries of poverty.
Only the Struggle of the People Will Free the Country: The Thirty-Fifth Newsletter (2020).
AUGUST 27, 2020
Amadou Sanogo (Mali), Sans-Tete (2016).
Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
On 18 August, soldiers from the Kati barracks outside Bamako (Mali) left their posts, arrested president Ibrahim Boubacar Këita (IBK) and prime minister Boubou Cissé, and set up the National Committee for the Salvation of the People (CNSP). In effect, these soldiers conducted a coup d’état. This is the third coup in Mali, after the military coups of 1968 and 2012. The colonels who conducted the coup – Malick Diaw, Ismaël Wagué, Assimi Goïta, Sadio Camara, and Modibo Koné – have said that they will relinquish power as soon as Mali has been able to organise a credible election. These are men who have worked closely with military forces from France to Russia, and unlike the coup leaders of 2012 – headed by Captain Amadou Sanogo – they are sophisticated diplomats; they have already demonstrated their skill in manoeuvring the media.
Ibrahima Kebe of L’association politique Faso Kanu said, ‘IBK dug his grave with his own teeth’. A veteran politician, IBK came to power in 2013 when Mali had lost its sovereignty due to a French-led military intervention called Operation Serval. The French claimed that they intervened to protect Mali from an Islamist onslaught in the north of the country. But, in fact, the spur for Mali’s deterioration comes from a range of factors, not the least of which was the decision of France and the United States – through NATO – to destroy Libya in early 2011. The war on Libya destabilised the situation in Africa’s Sahel region, where countries – already weakened by economic turbulence and International Monetary Fund (IMF) pressure – now found themselves unable to fend off French and US military interventions.
Malick Sidibé (Mali), Les Retrouvailles au bord du fleuve Niger, 1974.
Mali won its independence in 1960 with great promise, as its first president – Modibo Keïta – led it with a socialist and pan-African stance; the Keïta years were marked by import-substitution economic policies and an honest administration that attempted to build public sector delivery of social goods. But the country was dependent on one crop (cotton) for more than half its GDP, it had little processing and industry, and it had almost no sources of energy (all the oil is imported, and the hydroelectric plants at Kayes and Sotuba are modest). Poor soil and lack of access to water in the northern part of Mali put pressure on agriculture; Mali’s distance from the sea makes it hard to take its agricultural products to the market. Further, the cotton subsidy regime in both Europe and the United States strike at the heart of Mali’s attempt to develop its already dismal economy. A coup in 1968 – backed by the imperialists – removed Keïta (who died nine years later in prison); the new government with the uncanny name of the Military Committee for National Liberation, set aside the socialist and pan-African policies, persecuted trade unionists and communists, and delivered Mali back into the French orbit. The 1973 drought and the 1980 entry of the IMF set the country into a cycle of crises, which culminated in the March 1991 democratic upsurge. Those street protests – magnificent in their enthusiasm – led to the victory of the Alliance for Democracy in Mali (ADEMA) led by Alpha Oumar Konaré.
Konaré’s government inherited a criminal debt of over $3 billion. Sixty percent of Mali’s fiscal receipts went towards debt servicing. Salaries could not be paid; nothing could be done. Konaré, who began as a Marxist in his youth but came to office as a liberal, begged the US for debt forgiveness, to no avail. The more Mali’s government went into debt, the less able was the government to hire an honest bureaucracy, and so the government slipped deep into corruption. This was acceptable to France and the US, since a corrupt government meant easier interlocutors for the transnational gold mining firms – such as Canada’s Barrick Gold and the UK’s Hummingbird Resources – to siphon off Mali’s gold reserves at low prices. Behind everything that happens in Mali is its gold reserves, the third largest in the world. A Reuters story that came out a day after the coup had the reassuring headline: Mali’s gold miners carry on digging despite coup.
Abdoulaye Konaté (Mali), Non à la Charia au Sahel, 2013.
Since its independence, Mali has struggled to integrate all its vast territory – twice the size of France. The Tuareg communities began a rebellion in the idurar n Ahaggar mountains in 1962 demanding autonomy and refusing to honour the borders that divide their lands between Algeria, Libya, Niger, and Mali. A century-long deterioration of the land around the desert, magnified by the droughts of 1968, 1974, 1980, and 1985, devastated their pastoral way of life, sending many Tuareg to seek their livelihood in the cities of Mali and in Libya’s military as well as its informal labour force. Peace agreements signed between Mali and the Tuareg rebels in 1991 and 2006 fell apart due to the weakness of Mali’s military (salaries for soldiers were held down due to IMF pressure) and due to the arrival in the area of various Islamist groups expelled from Algeria.
These Islamists – the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) – coalesced and took over northern Mali in 2012-13. These groups – notably AQIM – had become part of the trans-Sahara smuggling networks (cocaine, arms, humans), and raised revenue through kidnapping and protection rackets. The threat posed by these groups was used by France and the United States to garrison the Sahel countries from Mauritania to Chad. In May 2012, the French approved a plan to intervene in the region, which was hidden behind the fig leaf of UN Resolution 2085 of December 2012. The G5 Sahel agreement yoked the countries of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger into the security agenda of France and the United States. French troops entered the old colonial base at Tessalit (Mali), while the US built the world’s largest drone base in Agadez (Niger). They built a wall across the Sahel – south of the Sahara – as Europe’s effective southern border, compromising the sovereignty of these African states.
Penda Diakité (Mali), Bouana (2019).
Protests against Ibrahim Boubacar Këita’s re-election in March 2020 escalated with trade unions, political parties, and religious groups taking to the streets. Media attention focused on the charismatic Salafi preacher Mahmoud dikko (sensationally called the ‘Malian Khomeini’); but dikko represented only a part of the energy on the streets. On 5 June, these organisations – such as the Mouvement espoir Mali Koura and the Front pour de sauvegarde de la démocratie, along with dikko’s association – called for a mass protest at Bamako’s Independence Square. They formed the Movement of 5 June – Rally of Patriotic Forces (M5-RFP), which continued to pressure IBK to resign. State violence (including 23 killed) did not stop the protests, which called not only for the removal of IBK, but also for the end of colonial interference and for a total transformation of Mali’s system. M5-RFP had planned a rally on Saturday, 22 August; the military coup took place on Tuesday, 18 August. But the energy of the streets has not dissipated, and the coup leaders know that.
France, the United States, the United Nations, the African Union, and the regional bloc (Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS) have condemned the coup and called – in one way or another – for a return to the status quo; this is unacceptable to the people. L’association politique Faso Kanu has proposed a three-year political transition driven by the new leaders produced by M5-RFP, with transitional bodies created outside the formal state structure to strengthen the country’s depleted sovereignty. ‘Only the struggle of the people’, they write, ‘will free the country’.
In 1970, the South African Marxist Ruth First – who was assassinated on 17 August 1982 by the apartheid regime – published Barrel of a Gun: Political Power in Africa and the Coup d’État. Looking at a variety of coups, including the 1968 coup in Mali, First argued that the military officers in post-colonial Africa had a range of political views, and many of them came to power to redeem the national liberation dreams of their people. ‘The facility of coup logistics and the audacity and arrogance of the coup makers’, First wrote, ‘are equalled by the inanity of their aims, at least as many choose to state them’. There is no indicator that the current coup leaders in Mali have such an orientation; regardless of their own character and their own external backers, they will have to face a population that is once more eager for a break from the colonial past and from the miseries of poverty.
Only the Struggle of the People Will Free the Country: The Thirty-Fifth Newsletter (2020).
loyola llothta
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US military conducts 46 airstrikes in Somalia in 2020
US military conducts 46 airstrikes in Somalia in 2020
somaliaffairs.com
Last edited:
voltronblack
Superstar
Who is Paul Rusesabagina and what role did he play during the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda?
In the early 1990s, Rusesabagina was the manager of a hotel in Rwanda’s capital, the Hôtel des Diplomats. Within hours of the plane crash that killed Rwanda’s president Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994, the president’s supporters spread throughout Kigali killing opposition politicians, civil society activists, and members of the Tutsi ethnic minority.
Many targeted people sought refuge in the country’s most prestigious hotel, the Hôtel des Mille Collines. With the hotel’s manager out of Kigali, Rusesabagina stepped in to manage the situation at the Mille Collines. Rusesabagina, a member of the Hutu majority, succeeded in keeping death squads out of the hotel. Ultimately over 1,000 people were safely evacuated.
In the aftermath of the genocide of the Tutsi, Rusesabagina was recognised for saving Tutsi lives. His story became the basis of the 2004 movie, Hotel Rwanda, with Don Cheadle portraying him. In 2006, he published an autobiography, An Ordinary Man.
Rusesabagina went on to become one of the best known Rwandans in the world. He travelled and spoke internationally, and received awards for his humanitarian work.
He eventually faced a backlash, however, as some survivors argued that he exaggerated his heroism. They also questioned his motives during the genocide, and criticised him for profiting from their suffering through self-promotion.
Why was Rusesabagina arrested?
After the genocide, Rusesabagina returned to his position as manager of Hôtel des Diplomats. I met him there in 1995 and heard from others, including several survivors from Mille Collines, the story of his saving people.
Rusesabagina was a political moderate, a Hutu married to a Tutsi. But through personal conversations, he told me he was increasingly troubled by what he saw as growing authoritarianism and anti-Hutu ethnic chauvinism of the post-genocide regime. In 1995, the Rwandan government used violence to close camps for displaced people. And in 1996, Rwandan troops bombed Rwandan refugee camps across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then known as Zaire) and drove refugees back into Rwanda.
Rusesabagina left Rwanda in 1996 and received asylum in Belgium. But he felt threatened there and moved his family to Texas, where they settled.
There has been tremendous friction between Rusesabagina and Paul Kagame’s government.
Rusesabagina’s autobiography published strong criticisms of the post-genocide government. As a result the regime, led by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), began a concerted smear campaign, attacking his reputation.
Survivors from the Mille Collines began to challenge his actions during the genocide more forcefully. For example they questioned why he charged room fees to people staying at the hotel during the genocide. The survivor’s group Ibuka claimed that he was lying about his role in saving people and should be arrested, and Kagame even publicly argued that Rusesabagina’s claims to heroism were false.
Facing harsh criticism, Rusesabagina become increasingly harsh in his own condemnation of Kagame and the post-genocide government.
He spoke regularly about Hutu killed by the RPF, and his positions seemed to become more extreme. He even argued that there had been a “genocide against Hutu intellectuals”, a position that resembles the double genocide theory widely rejected by scholars.
In recent years while living in Texas, he publicly supported opposition groups, like the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change (MRCD), which he co-founded. His arrest stems from accusations that he has supported the Front for National Liberation (FLN), said to be the armed wing of the MRCD, and RUD-Uranana, an armed group that launched a deadly attack on Rwanda in 2018.
What is the significance of his arrest for Rwandan opposition? And what does political opposition in Rwanda look like today?
The details of Rusesabagina’s detention remain murky.
His arrest was announced in Kigali, but he appears to have been arrested outside Rwanda. His family have claimed that he was kidnapped in Dubai, but we don’t know yet whether he was detained by authorities in the United Arab Emirates on an international warrant and then turned over to Rwandan authorities or captured by Rwandan agents.
Many observers of Rwandan politics are suspicious of the charges against Rusesabagina, because the RPF regime has a record of using prosecution to intimidate opponents.
As I’ve written in my book, “Memory and Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda”, the major challengers to President Kagame in each presidential election have been arrested and tried on trumped up charges. Former President Pasteur Bizimungu in 2002 and opposition party leader Victoire Ingabire in 2010 were tried on the vaguely defined crime of “divisionism” and imprisoned. Both later had their sentences commuted by President Kagame.
In 2017, businesswoman Diane Rwigara – a genocide survivor and women’s rights activist who attempted to stand as an independent candidate in the 2017 Rwandan presidential election – was charged with corruption. She was eventually acquitted on appeal, but only after spending a year in jail and having all of her family’s assets seized and auctioned off by the state.
The regime has also sought the extradition of critics living abroad and in some cases has kidnapped and repatriated opponents. For instance, former RPF official turned Kagame critic Patrick Karageye was assassinated in South Africa in 2014, while his associate Kayumba Nyamwasa survived at least two assassination attempts.
We cannot know for certain whether Rusesabagina provided material support to armed groups and supported terrorism, as he is accused of.
From my perspective, the tragedy of his story is that someone who took heroic actions to protect the lives of others became more radical because of unrelenting attacks on his character.
Sadly, in a political environment as polarised as Rwanda’s, there is no room for moderates and no space for critical voices.
Warring Libya: an outpost of global class war
Mass demonstration against the regime of Qaddafi in Bayda, Libya (22 July, 2011).
Posted at 09:52h in Blog, Featured by roape1974
In a major article published in ROAPE, and now available to access for free, Matteo Capasso re-frames the war in Libya by showing how US-led imperialism underlies the ongoing war and militarism that have contributed to the destruction of the country. In this blogpost, Capasso argues that war, militarism and killing have imposed themselves as new mechanisms of social reproduction and capital accumulation at the global level.
By Matteo Capasso
The history of colonialism and imperialism is a history of absolute or relative slaughter, depending on the balances of the class struggle. In our current age, where multiple and interlinked crises (including the ongoing pandemic) reveal the devastating power of neoliberal capitalist accumulation, class struggle is intensifying at the global level. Therefore, it is not surprising that the US-led imperialist structure has progressively embraced war and militarism to reshape the ways in which countries of the Global South enter the circuits of capital. After all, the choice has always been one between socialism or barbarism.
In my recent article published in ROAPE, and now available to access for free, I re-frame the war in Libya by locating it in such a scenario, showing how US-led imperialism underlies the ongoing war and militarism that have contributed to the gradual destruction of the country. Understanding the fate of Libya is crucial to map out the intensifying configuration of circuits of war and capital, as Libya’s fate mirrors the fate of US-led imperialism, thus needs to be understood if we are to chart a different way to imagine, fight and prepare politically for the future.
Trivialising History, Normalising War
The prevailing narrative proposed by policy think tanks argues that since 2011 Libya has become a fertile environment for the development of a pervasive ‘war economy’ dependent on violence, where various armed groups profit from the political turmoil. They present the current situation as an effective prolongation of Qaddafi’s system of patronage and a textbook ‘rentier’ economy, thus Libya’s refusal to embrace liberal ideas and neoliberal economic reforms. As a result, the war is turned into a local, self-inflicted, and cultural/tribal problem. In doing so, liberal political economy not only ends up condoning the logic of capital accumulation driving the US-led imperialist agenda; but—in the process—also rewrites the history of Libya, trivialising its anti-imperialist and progressive past. In such a scenario, war appears as a somewhat natural, if not necessary, outcome for Libya to move to a better developmental stage, while academics keep busy reflecting on the failures of Western ‘good intentions,’ of humanitarian interventions and state-building.
In opposition to this dominant narrative, this blogpost draws on the work of Ali Kadri to re-conceptualise the role of war and militarism as a form of accumulation by waste in the US-led imperialist structure. In doing so, it proposes a novel historicization of the gradual unmaking of the Libyan social formation vis-à-vis the interstate imperialist system from 1969 up to the present.
The Long Hybrid War on Libya
In order to comprehend how Libya reached the current level of destruction, it is crucial to delineate the structural and historical context that functioned as a prelude to the hybrid war unleashed on the country by US-led imperialism since the early 1980s, whose consequences triggered significant socio-economic and political changes and subsequently prompted political conflict in the country.
In 1969, a group of seventy graduates from the armed forces undertook a coup d’etat against the monarchy of King Idris. With this bloodless military operation, whose code-name was ‘Jerusalem’ in honour of the Palestinian cause, Libya embarked toward a path of revolutionary politics at home and abroad.
The Libyan government soon began pursuing a project of national independence that simultaneously advocated for a radical undoing of the relations of domination at the global level. In other words, national liberation required a wider restructuring of the process of unequal exchange and the power hierarchies that allowed the US-led imperialist order to dominate the Global South. By taking seriously into account the anti-imperialist and socialist ideas adopted since the early years of the 1969 revolution (rather than trivializing it, as liberal political economy does), one understands the kernel of the struggle: the Global South’s power to imagine alternative paths to development and regional cooperation by regaining control to shape one’s economy, culture and society. Therefore, numerous political and economic initiatives were undertaken in order to improve the living conditions of the population, including the nationalization of the oil industry in 1973, the construction of infrastructural and redistributive programs, as well as the support of revolutionary movements worldwide (including Palestine, South Africa and Angola), and the pursuit of projects of regional integration. These policies not only translated into a solid popular consensus and widespread support at home, but were also part-and-parcel of a wider post-colonial momentum leading the official call for a New International Economic Order in 1974.
This process of egalitarian development, however, was gradually abandoned in the 1990s. The hybrid war against Libya reached a turning point first with the long military confrontation in Chad; and second with the imposition of international sanctions in 1992. These two key historical moments culminated in a massive military-ideological defeat for the Libyan revolution, whose consequences reverberated across all levels of society. As the Libyan government began to lose its autonomy over economic policies, many members of the state-led capitalist class abandoned their support for anti-imperialist policies and aligned themselves with international dollarised capital. Like many other Arab republics, this shift marked the emergence of a merchant/comprador class, defined by its parasitic relationship to its country and its national resources.
The once nationalist and anti-imperialist elites enriched themselves through rent and commercial activities, systematically transferring their wealth abroad, instead of investing in national or regional enterprises. In such a context of geopolitical uncertainty and constant threat of war, further aggravated by the multi-lateral sanctions that progressively dismantled the infrastructural and redistributive achievements of the past decades, networks of patronage and less democratic structures began to appear. The result of these changes inevitably translated into the emergence of socio-economic inequalities, the mounting use of corruption and political repression (see, for example, the Abu Salim prison massacre), lack of job opportunities and revival of tribal affiliations as both tools of control and valves of a societal safety net.
Therefore, 2011 witnessed a large mass movement of Libyans who angrily protested in the streets, as well as the speedy mobilization of the military power of the US and its NATO allies to direct the course of events. At the same time, one could ask why the so-called ‘international community’ did not allow the reformist wing of the ruling elites, led by Saif al-Islam, to transition Libya into a full market economy, rather than having the country slip into total war.
A Moribund Bully
Since the US invasion of Iraq, the Arab world has been the protagonist in a passage from an equilibrium between economic and military imperialism, where the ideology of economic ‘globalisation’ had the upper hand, to a militaristic and technological form of imperialist expansion, where war and pauperisation are pursued, as in Libya and Syria. Consequently, while I agree with Kadri’s insights that wars respond to a process of accumulation by waste, I further argue in the ROAPE article that these wars are also the result of global contradictions and, particularly, the continuing decline of US imperialist power. This has resulted from the progressive decline of American hegemony in the world due to the worsening of its economy at home, which – in turn – has led to the pursuit and acceptance of ‘unfinished wars’, particularly in the MENA region. These wars are tolerated because they strike a new balance, and they maintain high levels of international competition, allowing many countries to participate while not necessarily dominating, as has happened in Libya.
The corollary for Libya is that its integration into the global economy has also changed. How? Via war, militarism, border missions and the act of killing itself, which have imposed themselves as the new mechanisms of social reproduction and capital accumulation at the global level. In such a scenario, futile are the international actors’ calls for an arms embargo and ceasefires. Why? Because wars and their consequences are becoming the new terrain of social reproduction for an imperial capital that struggles to remain alive. Wars have increasingly become a paradigmatic form of investment opportunity through which the Third World is being framed and integrated into the global economy, where armaments, drones and technological infrastructures of surveillance can be tested, perfected and reused at home.
So, when thinking or approaching the war in Libya, it is important to step back and ponder what function war plays in the global economy. In doing so, the terrain of international class struggle will suddenly switch and inevitably reveal the failure of pseudo-leftist posturing over the next NATO intervention, as it happened in 2011. The imperative is to start drawing clear links between systemic and historical inequality at home and abroad, thus bringing back relentlessly the question of imperialism.
Warring Libya: an outpost of global class war
Mass demonstration against the regime of Qaddafi in Bayda, Libya (22 July, 2011).
Posted at 09:52h in Blog, Featured by roape1974
In a major article published in ROAPE, and now available to access for free, Matteo Capasso re-frames the war in Libya by showing how US-led imperialism underlies the ongoing war and militarism that have contributed to the destruction of the country. In this blogpost, Capasso argues that war, militarism and killing have imposed themselves as new mechanisms of social reproduction and capital accumulation at the global level.
By Matteo Capasso
The history of colonialism and imperialism is a history of absolute or relative slaughter, depending on the balances of the class struggle. In our current age, where multiple and interlinked crises (including the ongoing pandemic) reveal the devastating power of neoliberal capitalist accumulation, class struggle is intensifying at the global level. Therefore, it is not surprising that the US-led imperialist structure has progressively embraced war and militarism to reshape the ways in which countries of the Global South enter the circuits of capital. After all, the choice has always been one between socialism or barbarism.
In my recent article published in ROAPE, and now available to access for free, I re-frame the war in Libya by locating it in such a scenario, showing how US-led imperialism underlies the ongoing war and militarism that have contributed to the gradual destruction of the country. Understanding the fate of Libya is crucial to map out the intensifying configuration of circuits of war and capital, as Libya’s fate mirrors the fate of US-led imperialism, thus needs to be understood if we are to chart a different way to imagine, fight and prepare politically for the future.
Trivialising History, Normalising War
The prevailing narrative proposed by policy think tanks argues that since 2011 Libya has become a fertile environment for the development of a pervasive ‘war economy’ dependent on violence, where various armed groups profit from the political turmoil. They present the current situation as an effective prolongation of Qaddafi’s system of patronage and a textbook ‘rentier’ economy, thus Libya’s refusal to embrace liberal ideas and neoliberal economic reforms. As a result, the war is turned into a local, self-inflicted, and cultural/tribal problem. In doing so, liberal political economy not only ends up condoning the logic of capital accumulation driving the US-led imperialist agenda; but—in the process—also rewrites the history of Libya, trivialising its anti-imperialist and progressive past. In such a scenario, war appears as a somewhat natural, if not necessary, outcome for Libya to move to a better developmental stage, while academics keep busy reflecting on the failures of Western ‘good intentions,’ of humanitarian interventions and state-building.
In opposition to this dominant narrative, this blogpost draws on the work of Ali Kadri to re-conceptualise the role of war and militarism as a form of accumulation by waste in the US-led imperialist structure. In doing so, it proposes a novel historicization of the gradual unmaking of the Libyan social formation vis-à-vis the interstate imperialist system from 1969 up to the present.
The Long Hybrid War on Libya
In order to comprehend how Libya reached the current level of destruction, it is crucial to delineate the structural and historical context that functioned as a prelude to the hybrid war unleashed on the country by US-led imperialism since the early 1980s, whose consequences triggered significant socio-economic and political changes and subsequently prompted political conflict in the country.
In 1969, a group of seventy graduates from the armed forces undertook a coup d’etat against the monarchy of King Idris. With this bloodless military operation, whose code-name was ‘Jerusalem’ in honour of the Palestinian cause, Libya embarked toward a path of revolutionary politics at home and abroad.
The Libyan government soon began pursuing a project of national independence that simultaneously advocated for a radical undoing of the relations of domination at the global level. In other words, national liberation required a wider restructuring of the process of unequal exchange and the power hierarchies that allowed the US-led imperialist order to dominate the Global South. By taking seriously into account the anti-imperialist and socialist ideas adopted since the early years of the 1969 revolution (rather than trivializing it, as liberal political economy does), one understands the kernel of the struggle: the Global South’s power to imagine alternative paths to development and regional cooperation by regaining control to shape one’s economy, culture and society. Therefore, numerous political and economic initiatives were undertaken in order to improve the living conditions of the population, including the nationalization of the oil industry in 1973, the construction of infrastructural and redistributive programs, as well as the support of revolutionary movements worldwide (including Palestine, South Africa and Angola), and the pursuit of projects of regional integration. These policies not only translated into a solid popular consensus and widespread support at home, but were also part-and-parcel of a wider post-colonial momentum leading the official call for a New International Economic Order in 1974.
This process of egalitarian development, however, was gradually abandoned in the 1990s. The hybrid war against Libya reached a turning point first with the long military confrontation in Chad; and second with the imposition of international sanctions in 1992. These two key historical moments culminated in a massive military-ideological defeat for the Libyan revolution, whose consequences reverberated across all levels of society. As the Libyan government began to lose its autonomy over economic policies, many members of the state-led capitalist class abandoned their support for anti-imperialist policies and aligned themselves with international dollarised capital. Like many other Arab republics, this shift marked the emergence of a merchant/comprador class, defined by its parasitic relationship to its country and its national resources.
The once nationalist and anti-imperialist elites enriched themselves through rent and commercial activities, systematically transferring their wealth abroad, instead of investing in national or regional enterprises. In such a context of geopolitical uncertainty and constant threat of war, further aggravated by the multi-lateral sanctions that progressively dismantled the infrastructural and redistributive achievements of the past decades, networks of patronage and less democratic structures began to appear. The result of these changes inevitably translated into the emergence of socio-economic inequalities, the mounting use of corruption and political repression (see, for example, the Abu Salim prison massacre), lack of job opportunities and revival of tribal affiliations as both tools of control and valves of a societal safety net.
Therefore, 2011 witnessed a large mass movement of Libyans who angrily protested in the streets, as well as the speedy mobilization of the military power of the US and its NATO allies to direct the course of events. At the same time, one could ask why the so-called ‘international community’ did not allow the reformist wing of the ruling elites, led by Saif al-Islam, to transition Libya into a full market economy, rather than having the country slip into total war.
A Moribund Bully
Since the US invasion of Iraq, the Arab world has been the protagonist in a passage from an equilibrium between economic and military imperialism, where the ideology of economic ‘globalisation’ had the upper hand, to a militaristic and technological form of imperialist expansion, where war and pauperisation are pursued, as in Libya and Syria. Consequently, while I agree with Kadri’s insights that wars respond to a process of accumulation by waste, I further argue in the ROAPE article that these wars are also the result of global contradictions and, particularly, the continuing decline of US imperialist power. This has resulted from the progressive decline of American hegemony in the world due to the worsening of its economy at home, which – in turn – has led to the pursuit and acceptance of ‘unfinished wars’, particularly in the MENA region. These wars are tolerated because they strike a new balance, and they maintain high levels of international competition, allowing many countries to participate while not necessarily dominating, as has happened in Libya.
The corollary for Libya is that its integration into the global economy has also changed. How? Via war, militarism, border missions and the act of killing itself, which have imposed themselves as the new mechanisms of social reproduction and capital accumulation at the global level. In such a scenario, futile are the international actors’ calls for an arms embargo and ceasefires. Why? Because wars and their consequences are becoming the new terrain of social reproduction for an imperial capital that struggles to remain alive. Wars have increasingly become a paradigmatic form of investment opportunity through which the Third World is being framed and integrated into the global economy, where armaments, drones and technological infrastructures of surveillance can be tested, perfected and reused at home.
So, when thinking or approaching the war in Libya, it is important to step back and ponder what function war plays in the global economy. In doing so, the terrain of international class struggle will suddenly switch and inevitably reveal the failure of pseudo-leftist posturing over the next NATO intervention, as it happened in 2011. The imperative is to start drawing clear links between systemic and historical inequality at home and abroad, thus bringing back relentlessly the question of imperialism.
Warring Libya: an outpost of global class war
loyola llothta
☭☭☭
2 September 2020
Facing Downturn in U.S. and Global Markets, Big Oil Targets Africa to Dump Plastics
American oil companies are keen to export more plastics to Africa through Kenya. According to the New York Times, a lobby group representing Big Oil and chemical companies, including Shell, Exxon and Total, has been pushing the US government to use a US-Kenya trade deal to dump petro-chemicals and plastics across Africa, to prop up Big Oil’s dwindling profits amidst a global pandemic and an oil crash.
Link:
Facing downturn in U.S. and global markets, Big Oil targets Africa to dump plastics
