{"id":26227,"date":"2013-03-04T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2013-03-04T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=26227"},"modified":"2013-03-15T20:53:24","modified_gmt":"2013-03-15T20:53:24","slug":"africa-and-africom-neo-imperialism-and-the-arrogance-of-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/03\/africa-and-africom-neo-imperialism-and-the-arrogance-of-ignorance\/","title":{"rendered":"Africa and AFRICOM: Neo-Imperialism and the Arrogance of Ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most Americans do not realize the extent to which the U.S. is becoming involved militarily in the welter of conflicts throughout Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa (check out the chaos as mapped here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Although recent reports have tended to focus on the French effort to kick Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) out of Mali \u2014 an effort that may now be devolving into a far more\u00a0complex guerrilla war<\/a>,\u00a0that French operation is just one operation in what may be shaping up to be a 21st Century version of the 19th Century\u00a0Scramble<\/a>\u00a0for the resources of Africa. It\u2019s a policy that, from the U.S. point of view, may\u00a0not be unrelated to the pivot to China<\/a>,\u00a0 given China<\/a>\u2018s growing market and aid presence in Africa.\u00a0 Together, the scramble and the pivot will be sufficient to offset the near term effect of an sequester in the Pentagon with a torrent of money flows in the future.<\/p>\n

Last year,\u00a0Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post provided a mosaic of glimpses into the widespread U.S. involvement in Africa.\u00a0 He authored a series of excellent reports, including here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0The map below is my rendering of the basing information in Whitlock\u2019s report (and others), as well as the relationship between that basing information to distribution of Muslim populations in central Africa. Consider the distances involved in this swath of bases loosely portrayed by the red dots: the distance between these bases along the axis from northwest to southwest on the African continent alone is greater that the distance from New York to Los Angeles.\u00a0 Think of the ethnic and tribal differences between Burkina Faso and Kenya, not to mention the differences within those countries!\u00a0 And remember, virtually all of North Africa, from Morocco to Egypt is over 90% Muslim.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

While the correlation between Muslim populations and our intervention activities in this variety of cultural mosaics will suggest a welter of differing messages to different audiences, one generalization is certain, given our recent history of intervention: Africom\u2019s continuing presence and involvement will further inflame our relationship with militant Islam and perhaps the far larger number of moderate Muslims.<\/p>\n

But think of the other possibilities for one\u2019s imagination to run wild.\u00a0 For example: In view of the recent Libyan adventure, conspiratorially-minded North African Islamic radicals (and moderates?) with a penchant for seeing visions in cloud formations may well interpret the swath of Africom\u2019s bases structure in Sub-Saharan Africa as early bricks in the construction an anvil, against which, they will be smashed by a new generation of European neocolonialists, attacking from the north in obedience with the new \u201cleading from behind\u201d doctrine of President Obama.\u00a0 Of course, given the distances involved and the porosity those distances imply, such divagations of the paranoid mind are silly from a military point of view.\u00a0 But given the US\u2019s murderous track record of lies in Iraq, incompetence in Afghanistan, and our blatant disregard for the Palestinians by constructing a peace processes that facilitated the growth of settlements in a forty-year land grab by Israel, that kind of characterization nevertheless will be grist for the propaganda mill as well as the fulminations of a paranoid mind.\u00a0 And remember, just because you are paranoid doesn\u2019t mean someone isn\u2019t out to get you.<\/p>\n

Another sense of the metastasizing nature of our involvement in Africa can be teased out of the leaden, terrorist-centric, albeit\u00a0carefully-constructed\u00a0verbiage in the\u00a0prepared answers<\/a>\u00a0submitted by Army General David M. Rodriguez \u00a0to Senate Armed Services Committee in\u00a0support of his 13 February 2013 confirmation to be the new commander of the \u00a0U. S. Africa Command or Africom. I urge readers to at least skim this very revealing document.<\/p>\n

The terrorist \u201cthreats\u201d in sub-Saharan Africa that are evidently so tempting to the neo-imperialists at Africom do not exist in isolation. They\u00a0are intimately connected to the ethnic\/tribal discontent in Africa, a subject alluded to but not really analyzed by Rodriquez or his senatorial questioners in their carefully choreographed Q&A.<\/p>\n

Many of these tensions, for example, are in part a legacy of artificial borders created by the European interventionists of the 19th century. These interventionists deliberately designed borders to mix up tribal, ethnic, and religious groups to facilitate \u201cdivide and rule\u201d colonial policies. The 19th Century colonialists often deliberately exacerbated local animosities by placing minorities in politically and economically advantageous positions, thereby creating incentives for seething discontent and payback in the future. Stalin, incidentally, used the same strategy in the 1920s and 1930s to control the Muslim soviet republics in what was formerly known as the Turkestan region of Central Asia. In the USSR, the positioning of the artificial borders among these new \u201cStans\u201d were widely known as Stalin\u2019s \u201cpoison pills<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hostage crisis at the gas plant in eastern Algeria last January illustrates some of the deeply-rooted cultural complexities at the heart of many of these conflicts. Akbar Ahmed recently argued this point\u00a0in one of his fascinating\u00a0series of essays<\/a>\u00a0published by Aljazeera. \u00a0This series, which I believe is very important, is based on his forthcoming book,\u00a0The Thistle and the Drone: How America\u2019s War on Terror Became a War on Tribal Islam<\/i><\/a>, to be published in March by Brookings Institution Press.<\/p>\n

Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is the former Pakistani high commissioner to the UK, and he now holds the\u00a0the appropriately named Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, D.C.\u00a0 Considered to be one of fathers of modern historiography and the social sciences, Ibn Khaldun<\/a> is also one of history\u2019s most influential scholars of\u00a0 spontaneous nature of tribalism and its role in establishing social cohesion.\u00a0 The central thrust of Professor Ahmed\u2019s work is in that spirit.\u00a0 He aims to explain why discontent is so widespread throughout the former colonial world and how it is partially rooted in a complex history of oppressions of ethnic groups and in tribal rivalries throughout the region. This has created a welter of tensions between the weak central governments of the ex-colonial countries and their peripheral minority groups and tribes. Ahmed argues that these tensions have been exacerbated by our militaristic response to 9\/11. He explains why military interventions by the U.S. and former European colonial powers will worsen the growing tension between central governments and these oppressed groups.<\/p>\n

Among other things, Ahmed, perhaps inadvertently, has laid out a devastating critique of US failure to abide by the criteria of a sensible grand strategy<\/a> in its reaction to 9\/11. By\u00a0confusing a horrendous crime with an act of war, declaring an open ended global\u00a0war<\/i>\u00a0on terror, and then conducting that war according to a\u00a0classically flawed grand strategy that assumed \u201cYou are either with us or against us,\u201d\u00a0the US has not only created enemies faster than it can kill them, but in so doing, it has mindlessly<\/i> exacerbated highly-volatile, incredibly-complex, deeply-rooted local conflicts and thereby helped to destabilize huge swathes of Asia and Africa.<\/p>\n

Mindless? Consider please the following: Most readers of this essay will have heard of AQIM and probably the the Tuaregs as well. But how many of you have heard of the Kabyle Berbers and their history in Algeria? (I had not.) \u00a0Yet according to Professor Ahmed, the Kabyle Berbers are the founders<\/i> of AQIM, and that founding is deeply-rooted in their historical grievances. So, there is more to AQIM than that of simply being an al Qaeda copycat. You will not learn about any of this from Rodriquez\u2019s answers, notwithstanding his repeated references to AQIM and Algeria; nor will you learn anything about this issue from the senators\u2019 questions.<\/p>\n

You can prove this to yourself.<\/p>\n

Do a word search of General Rodriquez\u2019s\u00a0Q&A package<\/a>\u00a0for any hint of an appreciation of the kind of complex history described by Ahmed in his Aljazeera essay,\u00a0The Kabyle Berbers, AQIM, and the search for peace in Algeria<\/a>. (You could try using search words like these, for example: AQIM, Kabyle, Berber, history, Tuareg, tribe, tribal conflict, culture, etc \u2014 or use your imagination). In addition to noting what is not discussed, note also how Rodriquez\u2019s threat-centric context surrounding the words always pops up. Compare the sterility his construction to the richness of Ahmed\u2019s analysis, and draw your own conclusions. \u00a0Bear in mind AQIM is just one entry in Africom\u2019s threat portfolio. What do we not<\/i> know about the other entries?<\/p>\n

As Robert Asprey showed in his classic 2000 year history of guerrilla wars,\u00a0War in the Shadows<\/a>, the most common error made by outside interveners in a guerrilla war is succumbing to the temptation to allow their \u201carrogance of ignorance\u201d to shape their military and political efforts.<\/p>\n

Notwithstanding the arrogance of ignorance being reaffirmed in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, it is beginning to look like Asprey\u2019s timeless conclusion will be reaffirmed Africa.<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

Franklin \u201cChuck\u201d Spinney<\/i>\u00a0is a former military analyst for the Pentagon and\u00a0a contributor to\u00a0Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion<\/a>, published by AK Press. He\u00a0be reached at\u00a0chuck_spinney@mac.com<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 counterpunch.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most Americans do not realize the extent to which the U.S. is becoming involved militarily in the welter of conflicts throughout Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa. Notwithstanding the arrogance of ignorance being reaffirmed in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, it is beginning to look like Asprey\u2019s timeless conclusion will be reaffirmed Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,127,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-militarism","category-africa","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26227","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=26227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}