Culled from:
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 339
Pambazuka News


AFRICOM THREATENS THE SOVEREIGNTY, INDEPENDENCE AND STABILITY OF THE
AFRICAN CONTINENT

A position paper of the National Conference of Black Lawyers
Mark P Fancher, Jeffrey L Edison & Ajamu Sankofa


The National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) concludes that the
mission of Africa Command (Africom) infringes on the sovereignty of
African states due to the particularity of Africa’s history and
Africa’s current economic and political relationship to the United
States.

Further, Africom is designed to violate international law standards
that protect rights to selfdetermination and that prohibit unprovoked
military aggression.

Africom is also likely to become a device for the foreign domination
and exploitation of Africa’s natural resources to the detriment of
people who are indigenous to the African continent.

NCBL opposes Africom in the strongest terms and calls upon people of
African descent in the U.S. to avoid military service to ensure that
they will not be ordered to carry out missions on behalf of Africom,
or any military unit or program engaged in violating international
law, committing crimes against humanity, or committing crimes of any
kind that threaten the peace of any continent.

What Is Africom?

Africom is a project that will substantially change the nature of the
U.S. military presence in Africa by establishing a single U.S.
military command headquarters that will have Africa as its sole focus.

Africom has become a Rorschach Test because while the U.S. government
sees it as a vehicle for bringing peace and prosperity to the
continent, it is seen by others as Africa’s greatest new threat.

Because of vague, confusing official statements, it has been
difficult to ascertain precisely what the U.S. government claims that
Africom will actually do. Africom’s website describes the project as
a vehicle for the Defense Department to collaborate with “partners to
achieve a more stable environment in which political and economic
growth can take place.” That description raises more questions than
it answers. The following official statement sheds little additional
light: “Africa is growing in military, strategic and economic
importance in global affairs.

However, many nations on the African continent continue to rely on
the international community for assistance with security concerns.
From the U.S. perspective, it makes strategic sense to help build
the capability for African partners, and organizations such as the
Africa Standby Force, to take the lead in establishing a secure
environment. This security will, in turn, set the groundwork for
increased political stability and economic growth.” Some critics are
highly suspicious of the reference to “economic growth.”
Specifically, does that refer in real terms to the economic health of
Africa’s poor, or instead to expansion of opportunities for
multinational corporations to exploit Africa’s natural and human
resources as they have for decades?

It has been suggested that the Bush Administration actually has three
primary items on its agenda:
1) making Africa another front in the Administration’s war on
“terrorism”;
2) protecting U.S. access to African oil, mineral wealth and other
raw materials; and
3) putting the U.S. in a better position to compete with China for
domination of Africa’s resources.

It is further suggested that the Bush Administration has no interest
in accomplishing any of these objectives directly, and that Africom’s
purpose is to identify and nurture the development of African
governments that will function as U.S. surrogates. In this regard,
Africom is off to a very bad start.

As of the date of this writing, the Africom concept has been received
with everything from skepticism to hostility by significant African
governments, and NCBL is aware of only Liberia as having expressed a
clear willingness to provide a location for Africom headquarters.

TransAfrica Forum spokespersons have astutely suggested that Africa’s
cool reaction to Africom may well reflect shared memories and
opinions that: “[d]uring the cold war, African nations were used as
pawns in post-colonial proxy wars, an experience that had a
devastating impact on African democracy, peace and development.

In the past Washington has aided reactionary African factions that
have carried out atrocities against civilians. An increased U.S.
military presence in Africa will likely follow this pattern of
extracting resources while aiding factions in some of their bloodiest
conflicts, thus further destabilizing the region.” Why NCBL is
concerned If there is any principle that runs like a thread through
all of the work of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, it is
that protecting the human right of self-determination for all people
must be given the highest priority.

NCBL also recognizes that crimes against peace are among the most
serious of all international criminal law violations. NCBL’s
principles have motivated the organization to consistently oppose
military intervention into the sovereign territories and internal
affairs of other countries.

NCBL has opposed military operations against the Palestinians,
instituted litigation against the Reagan administration in the
aftermath of the invasion of Grenada, and also provided a consistent
voice in opposition to the efforts by several administrations to
destabilize Cuba through covert and military means. NCBL has opposed
threats of military intervention and the use of mercenary proxies in
Nicaragua, Angola and elsewhere.

NCBL vigorously opposed the kidnapping of Jean Bertrand Aristide from
Haiti, and has sounded an ongoing note of concern about the shrill
threats made against the current government of Zimbabwe. Lastly, NCBL
has opposed the war in Iraq, and regards it as a crime against peace.
It is against this backdrop that NCBL has grave concerns about
expansion of U.S. military operations in Africa.

The U.S. in Africa – The Historical Context To say that the U.S.
enters Africa with unclean hands understates the reality. The full
extent of U.S. crimes against African governments and leaders during
the past 40 years is likely yet unknown.

However, in 1978, former CIA agent John Stockwell provided for many
their first peek into a deadly, ruthless U.S. foreign policy that
destroyed what could have been a far more promising political and
economic future for the continent.

In his book, In Search of Enemies, Stockwell explained that U.S.
policy in Africa was driven heavily by cold war concerns. Socialist
forces in Angola and Mozambique were prime targets, and the favored
method of suppression was use of mercenaries. Stockwell wrote:

“Mercenaries seemed to be the answer, preferably Europeans with the
requisite military skills and perhaps experience in Africa. As long
as they were not Americans...” He went on to describe a collaboration
between the CIA and South Africa’s apartheid regime in a campaign to
crush emerging progressive Black leadership in Southern Africa.

The use of proxies and mercenaries to carry out U.S. objectives in
Africa became a standard practice as a new class of socialist leaders
emerged during the early years of African independence.

In his book, Stockwell referenced the CIA’s complicity with
dissidents in Ghana who overthrew Kwame Nkrumah, the country’s first
president. Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, received
special attention from the highest levels of the U.S. government
after he announced plans to nationalize major industries in his
country and to pursue a path of nonalignment in the then raging cold
war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Author Ludo De Witte wrote: “On 18 August 1960, during [a] National
Security Council meeting, [President Dwight] Eisenhower had made it
clear, without explicitly saying so, that he favored Lumumba’s
elimination. An assassination operation was planned with the support
of CIA chief [Allen] Dulles.” Thereafter, the CIA concocted elaborate
schemes to kill Lumumba by, among other things, putting poison in his
toothpaste.

Ultimately, the CIA saw its objectives accomplished by henchmen of
the agency’s stooge, Joseph Mobutu. After Lumumba was killed, Mobutu
went on to become head of state in Congo, and his more than three
decades of tyrannical reign was one of the bloodiest Africa has ever
seen.

John Perkins, a former operative of the National Security Agency, has
explained that the U.S. has routinely resorted to everything from
bribery to cleverly-disguised assassinations in cases where heads of
state have in some way threatened the profit-making potential of U.S.-
based corporations.

This raises special concerns because the threat to Africa’s political
and economic integrity comes not only from the U.S. government, but
also from the multi-national corporations that are the beneficiaries
of government policies.

In recent years, this is seen most dramatically in Congo. In 2005,
Human Rights Watch issued a report that from 1998 to 2003, a war to
control gold fields in northeast Congo resulted in the deaths of more
than 60,000 persons along with “ethnic slaughter, executions,
torture, rape and arbitrary arrest...” The report goes on to
attribute significant responsibility for this carnage to two foreign
corporations that financed and fueled the conflict. They were Metalor
Technologies, a Swiss refinery; and AngloGold Ashanti, a
multinational corporation that, notwithstanding its name, is
overwhelmingly directed and managed by non-Africans.

All of this raises critical questions of whether, with Africom, the
U.S. is now positioning itself to become more directly involved –
with or without proxies – in protecting corporate access to Africa’s
resources. In many other parts of the world, the U.S. has engaged in
“regime change” as a matter of course for more than a century as a
method of protecting the interests of the corporate world.

What’s Really At Stake?

The list of Africa’s valuable mineral resources is endless: gold,
diamonds, chromium, copper, etc. However, the continent’s vast oil
reserves have attracted perhaps the most attention from the U.S.
government. In 2002, Walter Kansteiner, former U.S. assistant
secretary of state for Africa, declared: “African oil is of strategic
national interest to us and it will increase and become more
important to us as we go forward.” It is easy to understand why that
perception exists. Currently, the amount of oil imported by the U.S.
from the Persian Gulf is about 16 percent of its total imports. By
the year 2015, it is projected that 25 percent of U.S. oil imports
will be from West Africa.

It is clear that, on this issue, the U.S. puts its money where its
mouth is. There is a stark correlation between U.S. aid to African
countries and the oil producing potential of recipient African
states. To be more concrete, as the two largest oil producers on the
continent, Nigeria and Angola receive the most U.S. aid.

More disturbing however (particularly for purposes of this
discussion) is the level of U.S. military involvement in the
protection of access to Africa’s oil. The U.S. spends about $250
million a year on military assistance programs in Africa.

This assistance is not only in the form of “peacekeeping training”
but it also involves direct arms sales. As a major oil and natural
gas supplier Algeria has been allowed to acquire large quantities of
counter-insurgency weapons.

Why the U.S. concern with “security” for Africa’s oil? U.S. access is
threatened for various reasons, but one that has been of great
concern is guerrilla activity in the Niger Delta.

An organization calling itself the Movement to Emancipate the Niger
Delta (MEND) has, in recent times, been accused of destroying oil
pipelines, kidnapping oil company personnel, stealing oil and
assorted other acts. MEND has complained of oil industry economic
exploitation and environmental destruction. It was reported that
during the last year, many oil fields were shut down because of the
attacks, and oil production fell short by more than 340 million barrels.

All of this prompts NCBL to view with great suspicion U.S. military
statements that imply that the security objectives of Africom will be
focused on Al Qaeda or other organizations that fit popular
contemporary notions of terrorism. It will be all too easy for
Africom to target groups like MEND, or even other political
formations in Africa that pose no direct threat to oil operations,
but which in a broader sense threaten corporate hegemony in Africa.

NCBL has been quite clear about its interest in eliminating the
domination of Africa’s natural resources by foreign corporations, and
the idea that organizations that may engage in political work to
bring about that objective might somehow become the targets of U.S.
military operations is unacceptable.

The Legal Concerns As an association of lawyers and legal activists,
NCBL is particularly concerned about the potential Africom presents
for routine and ongoing violations of international law.

With disturbing frequency, the U.S. has in recent decades launched
unprovoked military attacks on other countries, or intervened in the
internal affairs of other countries through the use of mercenaries or
covert action designed to destabilize foreign governments or the
economic, political or social order.

Notions of self-determination and sovereign integrity are closely
intertwined, and international law has attempted to protect both by
proscribing military aggression and other actions that constitute
crimes against peace. In fact, the treaty that governs the
International Criminal Court has designated aggression as one of
“...the most serious crimes of concern to the international community
as a whole.” Nevertheless, the International Criminal Court is
currently unable to punish the international law crimes committed by
the U.S. because the Bush Administration has steadfastly refused to
submit to that court’s jurisdiction.

The absence of a method of prosecuting such crimes only heightens
NCBL’s concerns about the likelihood that Africom will engage in
criminal acts with impunity.

The United Nations Charter is one of the most authoritative sources
of international law, and it explicitly acknowledges the sovereign
equality of all countries and provides that aggression which
threatens international peace and the territorial integrity and
independence of sovereign states is prohibited.

So strong is this concern about respect for independence that the
United Nations even prohibits itself from injecting the U.N. into the
internal affairs of member states unless very specific circumstances
are present.

However, even with those purported safeguards in the U.N. Charter,
serious questions have been raised about the legality and usefulness
of certain U.N. interventions over the years, providing additional
reasons for the acute concerns about Africom, a far less restricted
entity.

The U.S. claims that Africom is a response to African countries’
continuing requests for assistance with security. However, this is at
best a distortion given the cold shoulder that Africom has been given
by most African countries.

If assistance has been requested, there is apparently little interest
in such assistance coming in the form of Africom. This means that if
the U.S. goes forward with Africom, even without malicious intent, it
will essentially become an unsolicited, unwelcome intrusion that
threatens the ability of African states to exercise rights to self-
determination.

It is more likely however that the ulterior motives of the U.S. that
have been suggested by various commentators are the driving force
behind Africom, and it will be difficult for that agenda to be
carried out without military action, either by U.S. troops, or by
surrogates.

This threat to the peace, independence and stability of Africa is
inconsistent with both the letter and spirit of applicable provisions
of the U.N. Charter, and NCBL is therefore compelled to oppose
Africom on legal as well as policy grounds.

What is to be done?

While NCBL will continue to call upon all people of good will to
voice their strongest opposition to Africom, there is also a
practical realization that the Africom train has already traveled a
good distance down the track and the chances of it being voluntarily
recalled are somewhat remote.

It is with that fact in mind that NCBL assumes a posture comparable
to that which it assumed with respect to the Iraq war. NCBL strongly
encourages Black youth to decline any recruiters’ requests to enlist
in the U.S. military. If Africom cannot be stopped at the outset,
then certainly there is no reason for Africans born in America to
participate in the destabilization and exploitation of a continent
from whence their ancestors were kidnapped for purposes of enslavement.

The call for Black youth to boycott the military has been raised not
only by NCBL, but also by countless unnamed ministers, educators,
youth counselors and other leaders in the Black community. There is
also evidence that these pleas have not fallen on deaf ears. Whereas,
Blacks constituted approximately 25 percent of Army personnel until
the year 2000, by 2004, less than 16 percent of the Army’s recruits
were of African ancestry.

In a study conducted by the Army itself, the conclusion was reached
that the continuing decline can be largely attributed to the
unpopularity of the Iraq war among members of the Black community who
are respected by the youths. This has had a significant impact on the
military’s ability to maintain troop levels in Iraq.

Finally, for those persons of African descent who are potential
recruits, or who are already members of the U.S. armed forces, NCBL
pledges to make its best efforts to arrange for pro bono legal
representation if they are threatened, disciplined or prosecuted for
refusing Africom assignments, or for exercising their right to
conscientiously object to military service.

blah blah blah

* This position paper was prepared by NCBL members Mark P. Fancher
(principal drafter), Jeffrey L. Edison and Ajamu Sankofa. It is
Distributed by the Pan-African Research and Documentation Center, 50
SCB box47, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202. Information
about NCBL can be found at National Conference of Black Lawyers

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at
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