{"id":162151,"date":"2020-06-08T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2020-06-08T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=162151"},"modified":"2020-06-03T06:29:59","modified_gmt":"2020-06-03T05:29:59","slug":"germany-and-eu-expand-military-deployment-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/06\/germany-and-eu-expand-military-deployment-in-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany and EU Expand Military Deployment in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

2 Jun 2020 – <\/em>The coronavirus pandemic is acting as a catalyst in the scramble by the great powers to redivide Africa. German imperialism sees the crisis as an opportunity to assert its global geopolitical interests by force of arms. In the last few days, the Bundestag (parliament) decided to extend or prolong two military operations. Besides Libya, Mali and Somalia, German forces may operate in Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Chad and Niger in the future.<\/p>\n

Sahel region<\/h4>\n

On Friday [29 May], by a large majority, the Bundestag gave the starting signal for a massive escalation of the German military deployment in the Sahel region of west Africa. The stationing of 1,100 Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) soldiers in Mali under the umbrella of the United Nations (UN) MINUSMA mission was extended. At the same time, the training of African troops has been expanded.<\/p>\n

The Bundestag resolution provides for the European Union Training Mission (EUTM) programme, which has been running for seven years, to be extended until May 2024 and extended to the entire Sahel region. This means that in the future, European soldiers will also train the armed forces of the pro-Western regimes in Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger and Chad. The European Council had already created a corresponding mandate a week ago.<\/p>\n

In Mali, the EUTM \u201ctraining mission\u201d has so far built up an army of 20,000 troops. However, in a recent editorial, Lorenz Hemicker, political editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung<\/em>, considers the results achieved so far to be insufficient. He complains that the Malian armed forces are not yet capable of \u201cfighting insurgency on their own,\u201d although the Bundeswehr informs the government troops \u201cabout the best tactics in local and house fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n

For this reason, the new mandate provides for the mission to be strengthened by Germany with 100 additional soldiers. The troops of the Bamako regime, which is hated by the population, will thus be able to go into action in the future accompanied by up to 450 German \u201ctrainers.\u201d In this way, the Bundeswehr is provoking violent clashes between German soldiers and local oppositional militias, which in turn could provide the pretext for the deployment of armed combat drones<\/a> in the region. A currently unarmed Heron combat drone has been in service with the Bundeswehr in Mali since 2016.<\/p>\n

In addition, the EUTM mission is being transferred from Koulikoro in southern Mali directly to the war zone in the interior of the country. The new base will be in S\u00e9var\u00e9 near Mopti, where the heaviest battles between government troops and militias are raging. Only a few kilometres away, unknown persons murdered the inhabitants of the village of Ogossagou last March, including many women and children.<\/p>\n

As eyewitnesses told broadcaster Deutschlandfunk radio at the time, the murderers included heavily armed men in uniforms of the Malian army. They were equipped \u201cwith bulletproof vests and modern weapons, as the Malian army has them,\u201d a witness reported. The Malian government troops, according to their own statements, had \u201cwithdrawn\u201d from the village a few hours earlier and did not return to the scene of the massacre until hours later\u2014although the villagers had sent desperate distress calls to the authorities.<\/p>\n

For years, the Malian regime has been demonstrably committing atrocities against the civilian population. A report to the UN Security Council spoke of at least three \u201cattacks on civilians\u201d in 2018, including a \u201csuspected mass execution with 44 dead\u201d and an attack on a cattle market in which \u201c12 civilians were killed.\u201d UN investigators also discovered several mass graves. In 2019, the S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung<\/em>, which also supports military action, wrote that the regime-supported \u201cmilitias\u2026terrorise the population in order to impose its influence in disputed regions.\u201d<\/p>\n

This policy is now being extended to Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Chad in the interest of German and European imperialism. A strategy paper of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik<\/em>) states that \u201cthe regional security forces\u201d are indeed \u201cpart of the problem\u201d\u2014but \u201cwithout them, it is not possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since \u201covercoming the corona crisis will temporarily push everything else into the background,\u201d the German government should work towards \u201cincluding countries like Burkina Faso and Niger and better linking all missions [in the Sahel]. The focus initially<\/em> should be on civil and medical projects, rather than military capabilities [emphasis added].\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, under the pretext of the fight against COVID-19, Bundeswehr troops and the murderous \u201cregional security forces\u201d trained by Europe should \u201clink up\u201d their combat strength with the UN mission MINUSMA and the French military mission code-named Barkhane.<\/p>\n

MINUSMA comprises up to 15,200 foreign soldiers and police officers who were stationed in Mali \u201cfollowing Op\u00e9ration Serval\u201d in order to \u201cstabilise\u201d conditions. Barkhane, the successor mission to Serval, in turn officially includes 3,000 French soldiers for \u201ccounterinsurgency\u201d measures and the killing of \u201cIslamists,\u201d as well as special forces and mercenaries of the Foreign Legion.<\/p>\n

In addition to access to gold, uranium, and labour, involvement in the region, from the German point of view, is particularly concerned with combating so-called \u201cillegal migration\u201d\u2014i.e., using armed force to fight desperate refugees.<\/p>\n

People fleeing from ethnic violence and colonial oppression and seeking a way through the Sahara meet watering points that are blocked by the Nigerian military. The result is a gigantic death strip right across the African continent. The International Organisation for Migration estimates that the number of people who die in the desert is at least twice as high as the number of dead migrants in the Mediterranean. The organisation estimates that more than 30,000 people \u201cdisappeared\u201d in the Sahara between 2014 and 2018.<\/p>\n

In Niger, which has been armed to the teeth by Germany in particular, the Bundeswehr also maintains a military base that, according to media reports, acts as a \u201chub\u201d for all German military operations in the Sahel region. Chancellor Merkel had thanked Nigerian President Issoufou Mahamadou in 2018 for the \u201chighly successful cooperation\u201d in the \u201cfight against illegal migration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Germany is directly involved in this bloody \u201cfight.\u201d For at least half a year now, elite German navy troops (KSM) have been on combat duty in the country and training special units of the Nigerian military. The secret mission had previously taken place without a Bundestag mandate, but with the extension of EUTM, a mandate has now been created for the so-called Operation Gazelle.<\/p>\n

Those who do not die of thirst in the Sahara are threatened with enslavement. In Mauritania, whose troops will in future also be trained by European soldiers, slavery was legal until 2007, though the economic structures of it still exist. According to estimates by local anti-slavery organisation SOS Esclaves, there were still 600,000 slaves in Mauritania in 2010.<\/p>\n

Horn of Africa<\/h4>\n

On Wednesday, the Bundestag extended the European \u201cAtalanta\u201d mission off the coast of Somalia by another year, by an overwhelming majority of 536 parliamentary deputies. This means that up to 400 German soldiers will continue to participate in the European Union\u2019s so-called anti-piracy mission, which has been ongoing since 2008. The German and European naval forces are defending imperialist interests in a region that has suffered unprecedented social devastation due to Western overfishing, unilateral trade agreements and decades of civil war.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough its presence in the sea area off the Horn of Africa, the EU…protects European interests and contributes to the stabilisation of the region,\u201d reads the German government\u2019s mission statement. Among other things, the mission plans to use armed force to shield UN food supplies from unauthorised access and to fight local \u201cpirates\u201d with naval forces.<\/p>\n

The military mission has not failed to have its effect over the past 12 years. According to a report by weekly Die Zeit<\/em>, which welcomes the mission, the number of attacks on transnational trawlers has \u201cdecreased enormously\u201d in recent years. Illegal fishing by foreign fleets, on the other hand, has continued to increase in the slipstream of European warships, according to UN sources.<\/p>\n

Somalia and other countries in East Africa are currently suffering the worst floods in 40 years. The massive rains have caused dams to burst, which in turn have destroyed infrastructure and homes, forcing people to stay in home-made huts. Nearly 1 million people have been affected, and 400,000 have lost their homes.<\/p>\n

The flood disaster is also hampering the humanitarian work of the UN, including the fight against COVID-19, and has created the conditions for the second plague of locusts since the beginning of this year. Twenty million Somalis are at risk of starvation, and almost 3 million are refugees. The country\u2019s infrastructure has been largely destroyed after three decades of armed conflict.<\/p>\n

As for COVID-19, the country is threatened by the epidemic. The US Johns Hopkins University lists the country in second last place in its Global Health Security Index (GHS Index), which represents the state of preparedness to deal with epidemics in 195 countries. The university currently measures the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Somalia at 1,731. The number of cases has been rising rapidly since the beginning of April, and the number of unreported cases is likely to be high; the 67 officially registered fatalities include the Minister of Justice of the state of Hirshabelle.<\/p>\n

Although the imperialist powers have created the conditions for this maelstrom of displacement, natural disasters and pandemic in the last decades, they are now using the devastating situation as a pretext to prepare a geopolitical redivision of the region using military force. The Atalanta mission also fulfils a \u201cdeterrent function\u201d in this respect, Die Zeit<\/em> notes.<\/p>\n

\u201cGermany and Europe face several challenges in dealing with COVID-19 in the Horn of Africa, but there are also opportunities,\u201d notes a current strategy paper published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. Germany has proven to be a \u201creliable partner\u201d for the East African regimes and should now \u201clead the way\u201d in taking on the role of \u201ccoordinator\u201d within the EU.<\/p>\n

In this context, the paper suggests \u201chosting a Sudan conference,\u201d as the country on the Red Sea is of \u201cenormous strategic importance\u201d for the entire region. At the beginning of May, the Bundestag sent almost 300 Bundeswehr soldiers<\/a> to Libya, where such a conference<\/a> was held in January chaired by Germany.<\/p>\n

Go to Original – wsws.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2 Jun 2020 – The Bundestag decided to extend or prolong two military operations. Besides Libya, Mali and Somalia, German forces operate in Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Chad and Niger in the future. The stationing of 1,100 soldiers in Mali under the umbrella of the UN MINUSMA mission was extended. At the same time, the training of African troops has been expanded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":151296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[237,1268,739,1050,291,780,769,551],"class_list":["post-162151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-militarism","tag-africa","tag-european-union","tag-germany","tag-imperialism","tag-military","tag-military-intervention","tag-military-supremacy","tag-neocolonialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}