And the cheers from the crowds seeing off the expelled French ambassador must be seen for what Europeans are.

The chicken or the egg? Did the Mali military junta’s decision to bring in Russian military contractors create the inertia for Emmanuel Macron to reduce his own troops’ presence there and initiate EU sanctions – or did his earlier decision to reduce troop numbers push the regime to take the measure to bring in around 400 Wagner mercenaries to keep it in power?

Regional buffs might mull this at length, but in many ways it doesn’t matter. What is important is that Macron’s childish reaction to the Russians coming shows the world so much about him and the French and their outdated and unrealistic views about themselves. The apparent lack of gratitude for being the big brother in Mali with originally 5000 troops and supporting the regime is the real issue. For the junta to turn to Russia, it was showing not only a lack of gratitude but also a lack of respect. It was, in a nutshell, saying ‘we can’t take Paris seriously’ and even in the best scenario, can’t imagine the French helping the generals stay in power if the brown stuff hits the propellers.

The reality is that the regime saw through the flawed narrative and could see why Macron had the troops there in the first place. On paper, it was all about fighting terrorism as Mali is at a crossroads of Islamic terrorism to plague the Sahel and terror groups there could take control. What this means for Macron is simply huge migrant flows to France which is just another headache for him battling to take a second term as serving President and aiming at lapping up the far-right votes with his stand on nailing immigration. And if that wasn’t bad enough, France has huge investments in Mali as French multinationals operate there, staffed by French expats who need protecting in the event of another attempted coup.

The tenuous link which kept Macron happy and kept the troop numbers high was the promise recently by the generals in Bamako of elections which would usher in a civilian government, but when the junta announced that these would be rescheduled to a new date in five years time, Macron’s patience waned. How much longer could he juggle the awkward scenario that he was, in effect, propping up a military regime which didn’t even have the decency to tug its forelock and show reverence to France as the only world power which mattered?

Last year in October, he announced that France would reduce its numbers in Mali starting with its presence in Timbuktu. We can assume that the regime decided that this was the time to turn to the Russians for help to fill the void.

What the Mali regime probably didn’t count on though was the reaction from Macron. Within days, literally, of the news emerging of the Russian presence Macron had not only raised a flag signaling his anger and disappointment with the junta but also managed to stir up similar discontent in Brussels which wasted no time in slapping sanctions on Mali.

Red in tooth and claw

The move though makes the EU look weak and France even weaker. So, when France can’t sustain the respect from former colonies in Africa who are required to play a certain role to keep the French happy then the Elysee turns to the EU to stick the knife in the back? And what does this say about the European Union as a whole? Ready and willing to keep the French dream alive in Africa and even happier for its own so-called foreign policy to be hijacked by a French President red in tooth and claw from a ruse based on revenge and score settling?

The signal to the whole of Africa is far worse though. As we are witnessing in the Middle East with Gulf Arab countries welcoming Syria’s Assad back into their pack following Russia’s intervention, the Mali move will be watched keenly by a number of failed francophone states in Africa. Either accept full hegemony and all that it entails and more or less stay a colony – and don’t seek any geo military support from anyone else – or face the petulant wrath of the EU and France in one almighty blow which will more or less push you in the arms of the Russians anyway.

For those countries who don’t think they have a good deal from France and the EU anyway, their regimes might well consider working more closely with the Russians in either case as Wagner mercenaries will at least go the extra length in keeping a junta in power with no conditions or silly EU human rights handbook.

What Macron has done is signal to African countries and to Russia itself that there is rich pickings for Putin there as all he has to do to expand his empire is send in the Wagner boys and clean up. With one swift move, armies of EU countries scarper once they even hear the word ‘Wagner’ and any remnants of trade with the EU is wiped clean. The clean slate is the perfect basis for Moscow to step in with its partners China, Iran and others to offer a new deal – to be part of a new bloc which sticks two fingers up to western sanctions and backs up the security component with real soldiers prepared to do real fighting. The talks recently between Nicaragua and Iran where the latter proposed a new trade bloc made up of countries sanctioned by the US is a glimpse of the future, which may well include African countries like Mali who now stand tall as the Russian model for others to consider replicating.

The recent bizarre meeting in Paris between Macron and Ursual Von Der Leyen, the European Commission president where both harp on about the need for a new defence strategy for EU countries (probably within NATO) was a desperate move by both the French President and his EU concubine. Macron was clinging on to an informal arrangement in Mali where other EU countries as well as the UK show support to his disingenuous stand against Islamic terrorism in the Sahel. But he is clearly afraid that countries like Germany, which has 800 troops there will be asking themselves just how far this farcical situation can sustain itself all in the name of keeping the Elysee fantasy alive of still being the only relevant power in francophone Africa. After all, if the EU has imposed sanctions and France is pulling out its own troops, then why should others keep theirs there? Mali now knows that the blurred lines of diplo talk with Macron’s people who might have suggested that France would help keep the junta in power have now been made clearer. The UN mission there now can only be there to keep Islamic fighters at bay but not to keep a junta in power. If others follow Macron, then isn’t this a clear sign that western powers are more interested in their own geopolitical goals and hegemony over fighting terrorism? Just look how the Europeans run like chickens when the Russians turn up. And the cheers from the crowds seeing off the expelled French ambassador must be seen for what they are. A landmark between the West and Russia, just as the current talks are between EU leaders and Putin. The times really are a-changin’.

TJ COLES

Like most countries, the Republic of South Sudan is a complex nation of shifting alliances and external influences.

Recently, President Salva Kiir, who sports a Stetson hat gifted him by George W. Bush, signed a peace agreement with old enemies, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-In Opposition. Around the same time, the so-called Embassy Troika consisting of the US, Britain, and Norway facilitated International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs for South Sudan.

When China proposes investment schemes, US politicians call it “debt-trap diplomacy.” As has been seen in South Sudan, whenWestern corporations seek to plunder poor, resource-rich nations, they call it “development.”

The West’s interest in South Sudan is oil. Invoking the colonial-era “white man’s burden” of 19^th century imperialists, the US government-backed Voice of America recently justified foreign interference in South Sudan by pointing out that the country’s 3.5 billion proven barrels of crude cannot be easily exported due to the lack of pipeline infrastructure and financial mismanagement. The Embassy Troika and its IMF programs insist “that fiscal data – including on oil and non-oil revenues – should be published … regularly and without delay.”

Today, the US has lost control of the proxy it created and South Sudan is descending into a humanitarian crisis. Alan Boswell, a South Sudan specialist at the International Crisis Group, has acknowledged, “US efforts in South Sudan seemed like a final spasm of naive American nation-building, which has all collapsed in epic fashion.”

So what role did the US play in splitting Sudan and driving the country’s south into crisis?

“Tell them Muslims are responsible”

In 1899, Britain created the Condominium of Anglo-Egyptian of Sudan. The “Egyptian” eponym was a misnomer because Britain also ruled Egypt as a so-called “veiled protectorate,” so Sudan and its capital Khartoum were basically placed under British control until independence in 1956.

According to a CIA Intelligence Assessment, a “profitable slave trade was developed by European traders and their Arab cohorts in Khartoum … [T]he violence and cruelty that it fostered have not been forgotten in the South.”

Britain adopted its typical divide and rule strategy. “Christian missionaries kept the slavery issue alive by telling southerners that northern Muslims were responsible.” After independence, the southern region was “barely integrated” with the north.

In 1955, secessionist southern rebels, the Anya-Nya (“snake venom”), initiated the decades-long civil war. The CIA’s Current Intelligence Country Handbook noted that religion was not the only — or even main — point of division. The majority of southerners were black and the ruling officials in the north were overwhelmingly Arab. Resource concentration was a major problem. Heavily dependent on revenue from cotton, Khartoum absorbed Sudan’s wealth to the detriment of the rest of the nation.

CIA analysts were hopeful that the first post-independence dictator, Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Abboud, would follow a pro-Washington course. An Intelligence Bulletin states: “The regime has accepted the American aid program … [and] has moved to curb pro-Communist …. publications.” Gains made by communist politicians a decade later were crushed after the elected government banned left-wing parties and disenfranchised southerners.

As the north’s war against southern secession continued, a reported one million people had died by 1970 and hundreds of thousands had fled to neighboring countries. The US tolerated Soviet arms to Khartoum as it effectively let the USSR fight a proxy war against the south. Israel poured weapons into the south, reportedly to worsen the war in the hope of diverting the attention of the northern government from the Arab-Israeli conflicts.

The South: “exploitable amounts of crude oil”

Between 1971 and ‘72, Ethiopia brokered a short-lived peace between Sudanese ruler, Maj. Gen. Gaafar Nimeiri, and the Anya-Nya’s political wing, the South(ern) Sudan Liberation Movement. The agreement later led to Anya-Nya rebel leader, Lt. Joseph Lagu, heading the High Executive Council of the Southern Sudan Autonomous Region; a political arrangement that lasted until its abolition by President Nimeiri in 1983. By this time, Chevron had spent millions of dollars in a fruitless effort to modernize the south so that it could efficiently extract oil.

US policy shifted to quiet support for the southern secessionists. With Sudan’s oil located mainly in the south, US analysts reckoned that Nimeiri’s regime, which they described as “moderate” and “pro-Western,” had continued de-developing the south. At the time, Washington’s adversary, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, had long been in power next door in Libya. The pro-Soviet Mengistu was ruling Ethiopia on the southeast border. The CIA feared that Sudan’s “severely underdeveloped” south would again rebel, weaken Nimeiri, and leave Khartoum open to Soviet influence.

The 1980s saw the emergence of American “soft power” in Sudan: the use of “aid” and investment to create a viable, independent southern regime.

A history of the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) operations in fertile Sudan noted in the early-‘80s that, “[b]efore Sudan becomes the ‘breadbasket’ of the Middle East and other parts of the world, … it will need a great deal of investment directed towards development projects.” Of greater interest to Washington was petroleum: “The Sudanese government is reasonably confident that commercially exploitable amounts of crude oil have been discovered in southern Sudan.”

In 1983, the Sudanese Armed Forces mutinied. Commander John Garang, who had been trained by the US at Fort Benning, Georgia, led the creation of the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army. A CIA research paper describes Garang as a “socialist.” Other papers note his being backed by Ethiopia and Libya. Their backing wasn’t to last in the face of US “aid” programs.

The Clinton years: “energy management” and soft power

Washington’s slow push for south Sudanese secession probably began in the 1980s, with so-called civil society projects designed to boost the rebel groups opposing the northern government. In 1987, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – the US government-sponsored regime change entity – began funding The Sudan Times, which “uses NED funds to purchase supplies essential to its continued publication.”

In the north, President Nimeiri was overthrown by General Rahman Swar, whose ephemeral reign saw him replaced by the elected President Ahmed al-Mirghani. At this point, the CIA’s record dries up, so it is unclear what relationship the US initially enjoyed with General Omar al-Bashir, who took over in a coup in 1989.

Martin Meredith’s history of Africa notes that from 1991, the ethnic Nuer commander, Riek Machar, was aided by al-Bashir to seize the oilfields by wresting control from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army, led by Garang, an ethnic Dinka. Evidence is scarce, but the Clinton administration (1993-2001) presumably saw southern political fractures as empowering their northern enemy, al-Bashir.

The USAID program, Sudan Transitional Rehabilitation, successfully negotiated a peace between Garang and Machar in 1999. The Agency notes that its grants included provision for “Energy management.” Northwest University’s William Reno seems to argue that the effect of USAID’s Operation Lifeline Sudan, which started the year in which al-Bashir came to power, ultimately legitimized the southern rebels. Claiming that they were spies, Al-Bashir’s men executed USAID staff in 1992, leading the Agency to halt its northern programs.

In 1993, Garang was openly courting the US State Department, though media showed little interest and the history is largely confined to specialist publications. At a meeting in Washington, Garang pressed the southern elites’ cause with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and longtime CIA hand, Frank Wisner, and Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, George Moose. Eventually, the meetings paid off.

USAID reports: “In 1998, at the urging of Congress, the White House changed policy to allow the United States to provide development assistance to opposition-held areas alongside humanitarian aid countrywide.”

In 1997, an Operation Lifeline Sudan report revealed the grassroots organizing in which USAID and partner NGOs were involved. So-called Capacity Building included working with “community leaders” from Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, the political wing of the southern Army (SPLM/A). Training included land surveying and gender empowerment “at odds with cultural norms and values.” The cultural modernization project prepared south Sudan for future independence.

Proxy nations as “front line states”

Garang was a personal friend of Uganda’s pro-Western dictator, Yoweri Musevini, who provided arms to the SPLM/A. Human Rights Watch reported in 1998: “The U.S. is providing U.S. $20 million in surplus military equipment to Eritrea, Ethiopia and Uganda, for defensive purposes (referring to the government of Sudan’s purported support for rebel forces from each of those countries).” Likewise a Library of Congress report notes that, “[d]uring the mid-1990s, [Clinton] instituted a Front Line States policy of pressure against Khartoum with the assistance of Uganda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.”

The Clinton administration sanctioned Sudan, citing as an excuse the Bashir regime’s alleged links with “al-Qaeda” and the political National Islamic Front, which certain US politicians claimed was a terror group.  In 1998, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) revealed: “Dr. John Garang, in his meeting with SFRC staff, insisted that all development assistance be targeted to areas under SPLA control, some of which have not been under [National Islamic Front] control for five or more years.”

So-called aid money continued to pour into the south in an effort to consolidate the rebels and build a sense of southern nationalism in the public psyche. In March 1999, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) President, Carl Gersham, said: “NED grantees continued to play prominent roles in the human rights and democracy struggles in Liberia and Sudan, where NED has mounted significant programs.”

In 2001, NED began funding the Center for Documentation and Advocacy (CDA), which “publishes and distributes the South Sudan Post throughout Sudan and abroad.” The CDA also received USAID grants. USAID notes that ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains was signed in January 2002 at the behest of the US and Switzerland, calming violence between al-Bashir’s forces and SPLM/Nuba people, who sit on enormous oil wealth. The July 2002 Machakos Protocol, according to USAID, “established the premise of ‘one country, two systems’.”

But “one country, two systems” would soon become two countries, two systems. By then, the George W. Bush administration’s (2001-09) attitude towards the north was a little more balanced. Secret “counterterrorism” operations saw quiet collaboration between al-Bashir and the Bush administration, even as the US continued to bolster al-Bashir’s southern enemies. Al-Bashir’s National Security Advisor, Salah Gosh, for instance, was a CIA collaborator who met with Secretary of State, Colin Powell. (Gosh later attempted a failed coup against al-Bashir.)

In 2002, US Ambassador John Danforth described the SPLM as “the chief antagonists in the Sudan conflict.” In December, USAID’s Office of Transitional Initiatives (OTI) sponsored the All-Nuba Conference, which “[brought] together representatives of civil society, the [government of Sudan], the SPLM, and others from all parts of the political spectrum to discuss the future of the Nuba people.”

Peace agreements legitimized southern rebels

USAID’s OTI was described in 2004 as “supporting people-to-people peace processes in southern Sudan.” The program also sought to “increase the participation of southern Sudanese in their governance structures.” This would be achieved by establishing a so-called Independent Southern Sudan Media and the creation of legal aid units, women’s empowerment, and an Education Development Center to establish short-wave radio broadcasts in Dinka, English, Juba-Arabic, and Nuer.

Facilitated by USAID’s  then-administrator, Andrew Natsios, and Ambassador John Danforth, al-Bashir signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 with the SPLM. Though the US took credit, it was a hard-won peace largely negotiated behind the scenes with Garang and Vice President Ali Osman Taha. USAID notes that the CPA “usher[ed] in a new era of American assistance in Sudan.  The country became a U.S. priority in Africa, and among the highest in the world.”

Garang died in a 2005 helicopter crash attributed to “pilot error.” He was replaced with Salva Kiir, whom US President George W. Bush described as “a friend of mine.”

In November of that year, Kiir addressed the US government-funded think tank, the Wilson Center. “I have met very important officials and I have not only come to know at personal levels but has afforded me to know how things work at the American Government,” said Kiir. This led to the establishment of “the two chambers of the national legislatures” in the south, “as well as the council of ministers (Cabinet) of the Government of National Unity.”

“Aid” continued to mold fractured southern rebel movements into a cohesive whole in preparation for the independence vote. In November 2005, US Deputy Secretary of State, Robert Zoellick, noted the southern factions’ “inability to come together (sic).” Perhaps more importantly, aid was also used to propagandize the southern civilians into supporting unity. Run by the Grand Africa Media Service Co., the Khartoum Monitor was established in 2000 by southern journalists. Its publisher, Alfred Taban, won the NED’s Democracy Award 2006.

In 2007, Rep. Frank R. Wolf, a Republican stalwart of humanitarian interventionism, told Bush’s Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice: “Salva Kiir needs his people to be trained with regard to the security, with the death of John Garang, if anything happened to him. So if you can quickly make sure that his people are trained, that would be helpful.”

The Obama years: chasing “millions of dollars worth of oil”

The US-backed Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) promised a referendum on particular forms of government for the south, including the possibility of secession. In September 2010 just months before the referendum, President Obama’s Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and future head of USAID, Samantha Power, said of her boss: “The President decided to participate in this event, which was actually at one point originally intended as a ministerial, because this could not be a more critical time in the life of Sudan.”

NED funded and championed a host of South Sudan civil society and propaganda organizations, including: the South Sudanese Network for Democracy and Elections, Eye Radio 98.6FM, the Internews Community Radio Network the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, and the South Sudanese Women’s Empowerment Network.

With pro-Western PR stunts like wearing the Stetson hat, regional leader Kiir promoted US iconography. This was bolstered by a visit from Hollywood star, George Clooney, who “observed” the referendum, which was officially monitored by the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC) in Khartoum and the Southern Sudan Referendum Bureau (SSRB).

But USAID influenced both organizations: “we are playing a key role by providing technical and material assistance, and have provided significant funding to international and domestic groups to both educate voters and ensure credible observation of the referendum.” This included a voter registration drive, which according to the European Union Election Observation Mission (EUEOM) was more concerned with getting 60 percent of registered voters to participate, as the CPA demanded, than educating the populace about the issues.

The referendum took place in January 2011. Having seized control of southern media, the US by proxy blocked out pro-unity arguments. The EUEOM concluded: “An almost complete absence of pro-unity campaigning created an environment where debate on the consequences of secession or the continued unity of Sudan was drowned out.”

Despite a preposterous 98.83 percent of voters opting for independence, US President Barack Obama instantly recognized the new government of Salva Kiir and his Vice President Riek Machar as the leaders of the Republic of South Sudan.

In 2011, the SPLA was legitimized in the eyes of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM). SPLA soldiers were trained in de-mining and tactical casualty combat care by AFRICOM personnel.

Joseph Kony’s “Christian” Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is the African equivalent of “al-Qaeda”: an elusive terror group that offers the US a pretext to arm several nations under the banner of counter-crime and counter-terrorism. Commenting on the LRA, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Karl Wycoff, said in February 2012 (paraphrased by AFRICOM): “the United States is providing training, equipment and logistical support for military efforts in Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan to fight the insurgency.”

But South Sudan, flooded with US arms and training, descended into civil war. Noting the importance of oil to the equation, AFRICOM stated that “South Sudan’s government in Juba turned off the flow in early-2012, charging that the Sudanese are siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil (sic).” Also in 2012, US President Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travelled “to the world’s youngest country, … where she and President Kiir discussed security, oil and economic opportunity.”

Years of US meddling culminate in humanitarian disaster

US efforts to create an oil vassal state did not go according to plan. The South’s Kordofan and Unity states remained in conflict, with the African Union trying to mediate. With the northern Sudanese government based in Khartoum attacking the states, the SPLA sent troops to occupy the oilfields. Citing SPLA attacks, the Sudanese Armed Forces annexed Kordofan.

A year later in December 2013, Kiir accused Vice President Machar of attempting a coup. This led to the South Sudan Civil War, in which Machar formed the rival SPLM-In Opposition. The peace of 2015 was ruptured after the SPLM-In Opposition splintered and stoked more internal fighting.

In July 2015, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) reported: “The Obama administration is blunt: the humanitarian disaster now underway is the result of unscrupulous political leaders who have exploited an ethnic conflict that they cannot control.” But the CFR neglected to mention who empowered these corrupt leaders.

China has quietly done what successive US administrations had hoped it would not do: courted South Sudan’s government and invested in the country’s energy. The International Crisis Group has said that, “by 2013, roughly 100 Chinese companies were registered in South Sudan, covering energy, engineering, construction, telecommunications, medical services, hotels, restaurants, and retail.”

Meanwhile, the public suffers the consequences of neocolonial games. South Sudan’s GDP is under $5bn compared to Sudan’s already small $35bn. Extreme poverty is over 60 percent, compared to 25 percent in Sudan. Malnutrition is 12 percent in Sudan and not even measured in South Sudan, though USAID suggests that it could be as high as 50 percent. Infant mortality in South Sudan is 62 deaths per 1,000 live births compared to 41 in Sudan. The republic is suffering under internal power struggles and violence, including a border clash that left 24 dead on January 5, 2022.

Many of these economic disparities and political problems existed while the south was part of Sudan, but after decades of US meddling, there is little light at the end of the tunnel.

The hypocrisy is both stunning and comical. Mali has been in the news in the last couple of years for having a military coup in 2020 which installed a junta and then again in 2021 when the temporary civilian leader experiment was annulled by the military who took full control.

During this period, France has also been in the news for helping Mali with its fight against terrorism as the country stands at a pivotal point in the Sahel where Islamic terror groups operate and which, we are led to believe, were threatening the stability of this West African country and former colony of France.

Macron’s perceived position at the beginning was to send 5000 French troops there are a vanguard to a UN mission to keep the extremists at a distance and install France’s supremacy. The troops sent a message to the world and to the West in particular that showing a force against Islamic extremist groups operating in Mali and neighbouring countries was the right thing to do.

Critics of Macron both in Bamako and Paris point out however that there is a hidden agenda to Macron’s Mali policy, which is to serve France’s interests as an investor in the country and to stop any impending immigration flows to Paris. The French soldiers are also there to protect French nationals working for French companies.

But the relationship between the junta and France was always a fragile one. In early January, that relationship reached a breaking point as Macron threw the lever which set those relations to ‘reset’.

The official line from France’s foreign minister is that a recent move by Mali’s military to reschedule elections in five years has exhausted the patience of Paris.

The real reason however which prompted Macron to rapidly respond to his demands to sanction the regime in Mali is Russia.

In recent days it has emerged that around 400 Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group have arrived in Mali to support the regime.

This, and only this, is what has caused the fuse to jump. This is the ‘klack’ which has overloaded the circuit and got Macron in a state, to such a point that analysts in France have suggested that his decision to reduce French soldiers there since a year ago will now be accelerated following the Wagner presence.

Many will wrangle over the question whether it the reduction of French soldiers itself which prompted Russia to fill the vacuum. Or whether intelligence which got to France months ago that the regime was about to make such a move prompted Macron’s withdrawal.

In either case, it doesn’t show France and the EU to be very convincing powers in the region. France’s attitude was always a paternalistic one as it expected the regime to fall into line with the Elysee’s folly of democratising in the same way it has attempted to do in Lebanon. But the decision to turn to Russia for help was salt in the wound for Macron and his delusional views of France holding onto the hegemony in this failed state. The fact that Mali’s regime can’t take Macron seriously or rather sees through its veiled objectives and has turned to Russia is hardly surprising. In the region, Russia is playing a role more in line with what the West aspires to, but cannot pull off: regional super power hitting terror groups hard and building states. What Moscow has achieved in Syria is practically a geopolitical miracle which has won the praise and respect of former enemies in the Middle East who are now lining up in Washington to harangue the Biden administration to bring Assad in from the cold.

In Africa, both France and the EU have big ideas. The EU showed this week, by supporting Macron’s demands to hit it with sanctions, that it will support Macron’s absurd ideas about Paris being the big brother of its francophone former colonies. It’s about keeping a dream alive as, with France still playing such a paternalistic role, the EU is then afforded the opportunity to pump aid money into such countries and claim them as theirs, rather than America’s or Russia’s.

But the Mali debacle is showing the whole world how the EU model of hegemony, arm in arm with Paris, is failing. If Macron is so upset by the regime’s move that he is prepared to resort to such shameful vitriol against the regime, then France should forget about its African wet dreams and accept a new reality in the world, a new world order which we can see on our TV screens every day, which is that Russia, China and Iran are taking more power in Africa and the Middle East and are delivering on their side, when it comes to giving sovereign states what they want in return. The news just this week that China was developing new relations with Morocco is proof of that, or indeed that Beijing is helping Saudi Arabia with its ballistic missiles program. What happened in Mali is just another example of how the West’s model on hegemony is both outdated and fatally flawed. Macron is so obsessed with his media coverage and taking every opportunity to swipe at Brexit Britain’s economic success that he probably hasn’t time to read the memos from his advisors. This week France became almost a minor EU member state, turning to Nanny Brussels for help in its role as bully in the playground. Pathetic on so many levels. Just like Macron being scared that Russian mercenaries will intimidate French soldiers as part of a power struggle between Russia and the West which the latter is losing time after time in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan Belarus and even Poland. Mali has fallen, but others will follow and no new “EU pillar” in NATO would have ever prevented it.

Many westerners trying to make sense of the events in the “dark continent” of Africa have many barriers standing in the way of their minds and reality. This must be the case, for without such filters of spin proclaiming Africa’s problems to be self-induced (or the consequence of Chinese debt slavery), we in the west, might actually feel horrified enough to demand systemic change. We might come to recognize that the plight of Africa has less to do with Africa and more to do with an intentional program of depopulation, and exploitation of vital resources.

Despite a rich history and over a billion people living on the continent, Africa suffers from the lowest per capita rates of electricity and potable water in the world. Of the 30,000 children who die needlessly each day from preventable causes (disease, water availability, hunger, etc), the majority are from Africa. Living standards are in turn abysmally low for the 340 million Africans who live in extreme poverty while insufficient healthcare infrastructure, and sanitation has resulted in a massive rate of infant mortality that reaches as high as 80-100 deaths per 1000 for many African nations.

To the degree that certain uncomfortable facts are kept obscured, this façade has been maintained.

Recently, a stone has been thrown at the glass artifice of false narratives that has attempted to maintain the belief that Africa’s problems arise from authoritarian governments or “not enough democracy”.

On November 23, a zoom conference call involving American, British and Finish and French diplomats went public, having been filmed and leaked by an unnamed participant. What made this zoom call relevant is that the topic of the call dealt with the need for regime change in Ethiopia, and the main speaker of the call was Berhane Gebre-Christos, former Ethiopian Foreign Minister (2010-2012) and now spokesman of the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Movement. The call itself was hosted by the Peace and Development Center International which is a cardboard cut-out operation partnered with the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID (both proven CIA fronts) and set up days before the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front attacked Ethiopian government’s northern command on November 3, 2020 which launched a year of armed atrocities.

Featured among the participants of the conference call were none other than Vicki Huddleson (former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs), Donald Yamamoto (former U.S. Ambassador to Somalia), Tim Clark (former EU ambassador to Ethiopia), Robert Dewar (former British Ambassador to Ethiopia) and a plethora of other rules-based orderistas. The point driven home is the need to force international pressure on the current Ethiopian government of Ahmed Abiy to treat the foreign supported insurgency of the TPLF as a legitimate group in arranging a restructured Ethiopian government OR simply depose of Abiy directly by all means necessary.

Despite the fact that the TPLF have been found complicit in trying to stage a civil war in Ethiopia and also having been caught using child soldiers, and using terrorism, the same Obama-era team running the Biden administration that carved up Sudan and brought about the humanitarian destruction of Libya and Syria have continued to give support to the rebels. Over the past months this has taken the form of sanctions, the cancelling of civilian loan programs affecting millions of lives, and consistently demanding Addis Ababa treats the rebels as a legitimate power broker.

Why the Regime Change Effort in Ethiopia?

The situation in Ethiopia is rather simple to understand as long as you don’t believe western media spin doctors.

For one, Ethiopia is the only nation of all sub-Saharan Africa to have successfully resisted colonization. Ethiopia is thus also among the economically most sovereign nations of Africa, capable of emitting sovereign bonds for large scale infrastructure projects (which it has done since 2011 to build the Grand Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile) and also one of the nations most interested in working closely with China and the emerging Belt and Road Initiative.

In recent years, Ethiopia has also resisted pressure to bend to the depopulation lobby which exerts vast influence across Washington, Brussels and London.

It hasn’t merely said no to depopulation regimes, but has driven forward with the construction of the largest infrastructure project seen on this continent for generations: the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Once completed this dam will generate over 6200 megawatts (mW) of electricity for not only its own 118 million people, but for all of the Horn of Africa which currently represents 255 million souls. Most importantly, this dam, the largest in Africa’s history, will become a driver for industrial development for the entire continent, providing electricity for all residents and establishing a successful model for other nations across Africa to follow. With the growth of the multipolar order led by China’s successful win-win model of cooperation, idea of “managing poverty” in Africa is quickly becoming superseded by the higher drive to end poverty through industrial progress. This sentiment was loudly conveyed by leaders of the global south amidst the fanatical drive to impose de-carbonization regimes onto the entire globe during COP26.

Ethiopia has been one of the closest friends to China, which has provided expert training, funding and diplomatic assistance to Addis Ababa in recent years (which is an active member of the Belt and Road Initiative). Among the top Chinese-sponsored projects is the 756 km Addis Ababa- Djibouti standard gauge railway which has connected the landlocked Ethiopia with its Red Sea neighbor and driven home new industrial corridors that the World Bank had never permitted in the nation.

Although the construction of the Grand Renaissance Dam had been envisioned by the great Pan African leader Haile Selassie (and assisted with engineering surveys conducted by the United States of JFK), the project was killed with Selassie’s ouster in 1974, and only revived in 2011 through the tireless efforts of the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Early on, a talented engineer and nation builder was recruited to oversea the construction of the project named Simegnew Bekele. Sigmenew had overseen the construction of several major hydroelectric dams in Ethiopia and became known as “the public face of the GERD” until he was suicided in his car in 2018. When western powers refused to finance the dam, Ethiopia decided to do it themselves by rallying the population to purchase $5 billion in bonds which is ironically exactly how Abraham Lincoln financed the trans-continental railway during the Civil War and how the USA paid for much of WWII.

China’s presence in Ethiopia frightens many western game masters who are afraid of losing Africa to the prospect of win-win cooperation as they have already begun to lose the Middle East. In March 2021, the two nations signed a Memorandum of Understanding to “protect major projects under the BRI framework”, with Ethiopia’s Commissioner General stating:

“Ethiopia and China are countries with long history, ancient civilization, and splendid culture. To achieve our goal, the support from China and its esteemed embassy plays a significant role… We like to see a continuation of our joint efforts for building a long-term and strategic partnership and today’s event comes at an important moment.”

More recently, on December 2, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited PM Abiy and recommitted China to defend Ethiopia’s sovereignty. Standing next to Abiy, Wang Yi stated: “China will not interfere in internal affairs of any countries. We don’t interfere in the internal affairs of Ethiopia as well”. Speaking to those seeking to sever the two nations, Wang Yi also said the “Ethio-China friendship is very solid and unbreakable.”

Having failed to break the Belt and Road Initiative’s growth within the center of Mackinder’s World Island with Russia stopping the regime change operation in Syria during the dark years of Obama, and now China extending a powerful vision of east-west development corridors through the Middle East, the same bag of tricks has been deployed to Ethiopia using rebel fighters from the Horn of Africa.

The TPLF: More Terror and Less Rebel

The Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (now renamed the Tigray Defense Forces) are not a “democratic peoples’ movement” as western propaganda portrays.

In fact, this group has been caught conducting mass atrocities across occupied cities like Mai Kadra and Lalibela, broken cease fire treaties, using child soldiers and working closely with foreign Anglo-American interests in pushing regime change in Ethiopia as the leaked Zoom conference call demonstrates. Anyone doubting these claims need only read the rigorously compiled essays produced by one of the most competent investigative journalists Jeff Pearce living in Ethiopia whose articles can be found here.

In fact, only one month ago, on November 5, the TPLF announced a new “United Front of Ethiopian Federalist and Confederalist Forces” at the National Press Club in… Washington D.C.! This new insurgency group has attempted to link as many ethnic minority interests of Ethiopia together under one umbrella organization in order to project a semblance of legitimacy to this obviously undemocratic operation. The group’s press release stated: “This united front is being formed in response to the scores of crises facing the country; to reverse the harmful effects of the Abiy Ahmed rule on the peoples of Ethiopia and beyond; and in recognition of the great need to collaborate and join forces towards a safe transition in the country.”

At the press conference Berhane Gebre-Christos threatened the government of Adiy saying: “We’re trying to bring an end to this terrible situation in Ethiopia, which is created single-handedly by the Abiy government. Time is running out for him.”

It’s all Perception

The fact is, that none of these groups has the means to actualize their objectives under current conditions, with the Ethiopian population both in Africa and among the diaspora rejecting the western-directed propaganda. Protests across the world in defense of Ethiopian sovereignty, and the government’s success in combatting these scattered rebel forces indicates that reality is far different from the projection which perception managers wish be believed.

Just as we were told repeatedly that Venezuela would fall to the democratic movement of Juan Juan Guaidó, or that Navalny’s democracy forces would depose of Putin’s authoritarian system, or that Syrian rebel forces would topple the “Butcher Assad”, or that Hong Kong and Taiwan would certainly win their freedom from evil Beijing… the rulers of the unipolar system have shown themselves to be little more than modern day illusionists caught one too many times trying to scam credulous townsfolk.

As Geopolitics.Press outlined in extraordinary detail, the replication of perception management operations used in Syria have taken the form of the Command and Control Fusion Center (C2FC) based in Kenya which gives the U.S. Government the ability to “conduct cohesive multi-pronged operations against the Government of Ethiopia across the domains of economic, information, diplomatic and kinetic warfare”… [the C2FC] has delegated some of its tasks to disparate subsidiary fusion cells that enjoy some degree of operational autonomy but organizational dependence on the fusion center.”

The Danger of Libya 2.0

If this fails, as it will, the greater danger waiting in the wings, is that the trans Atlantic population will be so confused and misinformed about the nature of the Ethiopian crisis that they will give their consent to a U.S.-led attack onto the nation, as was done in Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of 9/11. In a November 9, 2021 Bloomberg op ed former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, James Stavridis called for American-led forces to intervene into the civil war both “to counter Chinese influence” and avoid a new Rwandan-style massacre from occurring.

African analyst Lawrence Freeman, recently echoed this danger eloquently in an interview with the Addis Media Network on November 18 saying:

“The enemies of Ethiopia will use humanitarian concerns as an excuse to potentially deploy military forces under the pretext of protecting the Ethiopian people from their own government. This doctrine, known as R2P-the responsibility to protect- was created by George Soros and Tony Blair. Samantha Power and others in the Obama administration used R2P to justify the overthrow of President Kaddafi and the destruction of Libya.”

The author delivered an interview on this topic to Ethiopia’s Prime Media which can be viewed here:

TJ COLES

Ever since Belgium’s King Leopold II (1835-1909) established the Congo Free State in 1885, international powers have exploited the region’s vast resources. Leading a regime that went on to kill an estimated eight million people to plunder their gold, ivory, and rubber, Leopold reportedly described Congo as “a magnificent African cake.”

More recently, US President Biden’s International Trade Administration declared: “With total mineral wealth estimated in the tens of trillions of dollars,” what is now called the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) “offers opportunities for American firms with a high tolerance for risk.” The role of the Africa Command is to reduce that risk. The US Department of Defense says that Africa “has a plethora of strategic materials, such as cobalt, chromium, tantalum and more. African resources are critical to 21^st century progress” (read: US corporate dominance).

From the late-1990s to the present, Euro-American mining, processing, and financial corporations have relied on the slave-labor of miners and the muscle of armed gangs to export rare earth metals, such as coltan and tantalum, to the West for vital components in computers, phones, missiles, etc. The rush to renewables ushers in a new era of competition for the rare metal, cobalt.

The US sets its sights on a mineral rich Congo

population of 93 million. The country’s entire gross domestic product is around $50 billion, making it one of the poorest countries in the world. As trillion-dollar companies like Apple, Microsoft and Tesla rely on DRC’s materials, seven in 10 Congolese survive on less than $1.90 a day. Life expectancy is 60 years, compared to 78 in the US, and infant mortality is 66 deaths per 1,000 live births compared to 5.6 in the US.

The Pentagon’s main interest in Congo began during the Second World War (1939-45). Owned by Belgium’s Union Minière, the Shinkolobwe mine in the southern Katanga province contained the purest known uranium ore, which the US Army Corps of Engineers used in the Manhattan Project launched in 1942 to construct the world’s first nuclear weapon. Ore from the mine was used in the subsequent manufacture of nuclear weapons.

By the 1950s, the US State Department planned to invest $660 million (around $7 billion today) to “develop” Congo’s infrastructure for corporate exploitation. In 1960, Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba declared independence from Belgium, naming the country the Republic of the Congo (RoC), and making relatively mild overtures to the USSR. The politician Moïse Tshombé declared Katanga’s independence from RoC.

MI6 murdered Lumumba and the CIA replaced him with its asset, General Mobutu Sese Seko, who later renamed the country Zaire and ruled until his overthrow in 1997.

Mobutu (left) was a key CIA asset

Throughout the 1960s, the CIA essentially created and managed the Zairian Armed Forces (Forces Armées Zaïroises, ZAC), training special air units and hiring mercenaries to bolster Mobuto’s forces. Tshombé’s secession was crushed, as were intermittent struggles, such as the Simba Rebellion from 1963 to ’65; one of whose leaders was future President, Laurent-Désiré Kabila. The US reluctantly tolerated small Cuban and Chinese military contingents in Zaire because they did not affect mining operations. By the 1980s, Belgian, French, German, and Israeli personnel were also training the ZAC.

Washington plays innocent bystander while fueling intrigues

Geographical considerations, the involvement of neighboring states, international interference, the role of specific ethnic groups in particular conflicts, and shifting paramilitary alliances make the Congo Wars extremely complicated. What follows is a basic outline focusing on the largely-overlooked US role.

Since at least 1990, the US has used Uganda as a conduit to arm Zaire/DRC. Until Uganda’s role in the wars was exposed, the Bill Clinton administration’s African Crisis Response Initiative saw an initial round of US military training for the Uganda People’s Defense Force. Clinton’s International Military Education and Training programs continued regardless. Both programs worsened the Congo crises, as we will see.

The centerpiece of the First Congo War that began in 1996 was the overthrow of Gen. Mobutu, led by Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre, AFDL). The AFDL was supported by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), whose Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame, now the president of Rwanda, had been trained by the US at Fort Leavenworth. RPF personnel were trained by the Green Berets.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame

Described as a “visionary” by US Gen. George Joulwan, Kagame had honed his craft murdering Hutu during the Rwanda Genocide in 1994. Hundreds of thousands of Hutu fled into DRC, settling in the eastern regions where the mineral resources happened to be located. The RPF and its allied paramilitaries occupied DRC, initially to help build up Kabila’s Armed Forces, but also to avenge massacres of Tutsi and secure the mines.

We can plausibly assume based on chronicles of events that Washington’s role was to play innocent bystander while benefiting from the mining and supply-chain operations of the RPF, Ugandan military, and related gangs.

Foreign demand for rare earth minerals drives an unprecedented death toll

Even before Kabila seized power, international mining and infrastructure giants were negotiating contracts with his AFDL party.

American Mineral Fields landed a $1 billion deal to mine DRC. Bechtel hired NASA to provide satellite images of mineral-rich regions and allegedly acquire information on rebel movements for Kabila’s military. As Anglo-American, Barrick Gold, DeBeers, and other corporations signed mining contracts, Kabila created the Banque de Commerce, du Developpement et de l’Industrie to finance mining operations. The bank was based in Rwanda, from which untraceable coltan sourced from DRC conflict areas was exported to Western corporations, including Afrimex, Banro-Resources, and Union Transport.

The Second Congo War, from 1998-2003 and de facto to the present, has led to the deaths of an estimated 5.4 million people: most of them civilians who perished from war-related hunger and disease. The war was, in large part, an effort by different powers and factions to back or depose the Kabila family dynasty, seize control of resource-rich areas, and to settle long-standing rivalries. Unlike the first war, this one was explicitly driven by demand in Asia, Europe, and North America for rare materials.

The Wall Street Journal reported at the time that Kabila’s nationalizations “sent a worrying signal … to foreign companies that are eager to do business in this mineral-rich country.” Kabila soon fell out with his Ugandan and Rwandan backers, who in 1998 helped to form a new party: the Rally for Congolese Democracy (Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie, RCD). The anti-Kabila RCD splintered into militant rebel groups and advanced across the country. Troops from Angola, Chad, Libya, and Zimbabwe entered DRC to back Kabila, who was assassinated in 2001, leaving his son Joseph (b. 1971) to rule from 2003 until 2019.

As far as international investors were concerned, the myriad rebel factions were crucial for maintaining the supply lines of rare materials. Typically, they were smuggled to Europe-bound cargo planes via Rwanda.

From the Kony 2012 psy-op by the NGO Invisible Children

Kony 2012: a US psy-war op aimed at protecting a key proxy

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni was one of America’s top proxies in DRC, and a UN report Uganda as a main sponsor of the conflict. In his effort to remove Museveni, the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led by the cultist Joseph Kony attacked Uganda from DCR. In 2006, the UN backed Uganda’s invasion of DRC to hunt for Kony. The newly-formed US Africa Command (AFRICOM) provided covert assistance to Uganda, including training and satellite phones, in a failed counterinsurgency war which caused the LRA to exacerbate their killings in DRC.

From 2011 to 2017, the US initiated the anti-Kony operation, Observant Compass. As part of the mission, the US Special Operations Command Africa established a task force “to command and control the operation that stretched from Uganda, through the eastern [DRC] into the Central African Republic, and across South Sudan.” Personnel from the fabled A-Team “served as advisors to [the] African Union Regional Task Force.”

Released in the eponymous year, the documentary Kony 2012 brought the atrocities of the LRA to international attention. But US Special Operations Command documents suggest that the film’s producer, the NGO Invisible Children, was unwittingly part of a US psychological warfare operation. Army Special Operations Forces name the Congolese and Ugandan militaries, as well as several NGOs including Invisible Children, as “partners” in their operations.

Unlike the first attempt, Observant Compass reduced the LRA’s numbers and notoriety.

As China fears rise, AFRICOM enters the fray – and atrocities ensue

Washington and various European “former” colonial powers shifted policy from indirectly backing proxies, like the Uganda and Rwanda-supported rebels, to “professionalizing” the central Armed Forces (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo, FARDC). The George W. Bush administration introduced a DRC “security sector reform” program, which included hiring the private “contractor,” Camber Corporation.

The Bush administration’s urge to “professionalize” and “legitimize” the FARDC coincided with China’s growing activities in the country. A Fort Benning Training and Doctrine Command document bemoaned the fact that in 2007 “China signed an agreement with [DRC] in which China provides $5 billion for infrastructure improvements in exchange for rights to DRC’s natural resources.”

Now that China was in DRC, human rights and traceable supply lines suddenly became a concern for Washington. US advanced training of the FARDC coincided with the passing of Dodd-Frank 2010, which required the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to mandate companies to verify supply chains.

In the same year, AFRICOM facilitated the US-DRC military partnership. The objective was “to transform the [FARDC],” among other things for “internal security operations.” A new Light Infantry Battalion was inaugurated by US Ambassador William Garvelink at the Kisangani Base Camp in north-central DRC. Training was provided under AFRICOM’s Special Operations Command, led by Brig. Gen. Christopher Haas, and unnamed State Department “contractors.”

By September, 750 soldiers had graduated in what AFRICOM describes as “a model for future reforms within the Congolese armed forces” and reveals the creation of a new 391^st Commando Battalion. Commander of training at Camp Base, Maj. John Peter Molengo, said: “In 2006 our president [Bush] promised a transformation of the [DRC] armed forces. I see this as an important step.”

Within a few years, the “important step” was revealed for what it was. Members of the Battalion had been exposed by the UN looting villages, murdering civilians, and raping dozens of women and girls, some as young as six. Stars and Stripes reported: “AFRICOM declined to comment …, referring questions to the U.S. State Department.”

Uganda’s military spreads chaos

If adding to chaos is the goal, AFRICOM’s strategy is working. To date, there are 4.5 million internally displaced Congolese, over one million of whom lost their homes during fighting in 2016-17 alone.

Like the LRA, another rebel group – this time, Islamic – called the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), bolted from the Ugandan military and based itself in DRC where it is now attempting to establish a caliphate. The UN Organization Stabilization Mission DRC is helping the FARDC. Operations that began in North Kivu in November 2019 wound up displacing 400,000 people. In a repeat of botched US efforts to conquer the LRA, FARDC tactics caused the ADF to enter previously peaceful territory.

Founded in the 1970s, the Cooperative for Development of the Congo (Coopérative de développement économique du Congo, CODECO) is an umbrella of militia based in Ituri province in the northeast. CODECO mainly consists of ethnic Lendu whose are engaged in long-standing conflict with the Hema people. Despite the July 2020 peace agreement, FARDC operations have exacerbated the violence.

Founded in 1969, the ethno-federalist Kongo-majority Bundu Dia Kongo (BDK) is a Christian cult that encourages violence against non-Kongo peoples, even setting up roadblocks to divide communities. The BDK faces crackdowns by the police and FARDC, which in April 2020 launched anti-BDK operations in Kongo Central and in the capital, Kinshasa.

Greenwashing the race for trillions in renewables profits

As the violence continues across much of the country, so do the exports to most of the world. Corporate profiteering from the global climate emergency has triggered a cobalt rush. The unreliability of DRC supply chains has also triggered a move to design cobalt-free renewables.

Concentrated among 3,000 companies, the so-called global green economy is worth $4.5 trillion; more than the international oil and gas sector. The renewables market alone is worth over $600 billion. Electric vehicles (EV) are valued at around $170 billion and expected to growth to $700 billion within the next five years.

Cathodes are an essential part of the lithium ion batteries (LiBs) that, until recently, had been ubiquitous but tiny, hitherto requiring small amounts of cobalt. The emerging EV market means that large 100 kilowatt-per-hour LiBs contain 20 kg of cobalt in their cathode components. The US Department of Energy explains that in addition to being mined, cobalt (Co) is obtained as a by-product of other materials and almost entirely sourced from abroad, making US businesses dependent on metal markets and exporting countries. American corporations are therefore “looking to secure sources of Co, to drastically reduce the Co content in LiBs, or both.”

At present, 255,000 Congolese mine for cobalt, mainly in the conflict-free south, earning less than $2 per day with no benefits in conditions that are both immediately hazardous (e.g., collapsing tunnels, dangerous tools) and carry long-term risk (e.g., respiratory, orthopedic). Some 40,000 cobalt miners are children.

Bolstered by their legal obligations to report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, numerous US corporations have attempted to greenwash their supply chains by claiming that they are sourced ethically. The Anglo-Swiss mining giant, Glencore, has a market capitalization roughly equal to DRC’s entire GDP. In recent years, it has signed partnership pledges with renewables customers to ethically source cobalt.

Other initiatives include Apple’s Supplier Responsibility Progress reports. BMW, Samsung, and others, meanwhile, have launched the Cobalt for Development Project. Tesla says that it will phase out cobalt from its lithium batteries and, in the meantime has, joined the Fair Cobalt Alliance. But a recent class action lawsuit on behalf of several injured Congolese miners alleges that Alphabet (Google), Apple, Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla are “aiding and abetting the cruel and brutal use of young children … to mine cobalt.”

Playing the blame China game

Despite the greenwashing, the cobalt mining, refining, smelting, and exportation industries remain dangerous, exploitative, polluting, and terrible for public relations. On the other hand, these conditions help to keep production costs low and profits high. The informal solution for many Western businesses and governments is to deploy media, NGOs, and the intelligentsia to point the moral finger of blame at China, whose corporations operate extensively in southern, cobalt-rich DRC.

For example, a recent article exposes the cruel working conditions in the town of Fungurume imposed on small and “artisanal” miners contracted by the big, so-called legitimate companies, like China’s Molybdenum. Describing a “slave and master” relationship, one of thousands of miners revealed how he works for $3.50 a day, eating two tiny bread rolls, with wages deducted for missing work.

A November 8, 2021 Guardian article sponsored by Pam Omidyar’s Humanity United

The report was funded by Humanity United, an NGO founded by eBay billionaire and Intercept owner Pierre Omidyar’s wife, Pam. Humanity United has received grant money from numerous sources, including the William J. Clinton Foundation. “This grant funded Humanity United’s continued contribution and membership to the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative.”

But such reports omit that China’s Molybdenum is owned by US institutional investors: JPMorgan Funds, Vanguard Total International, Vanguard Emerging Markets, BlackRock, and others. Amnesty International traces the “downstream” supply chain of Chinese-acquired cobalt to Asian, European, and US corporations.

Cobalt is typically smelted and refined by China’s Huayou and its CDM subsidiary, put into batteries by Amperex, BYD, LG, Samsung, Sony, and others, and sold as components in Apple, BMW, Dell, Fiat-Chrysler, GM, Microsoft, Tesla, and other Western products.

Weaponizing space to win the “Great Power Competition”

DRC is directly linked to Washington’s long-term efforts to rule the world by force. Just as King Leopold II described Congo as a “magnificent African cake,” ex-US Naval Intelligence Officer, Dr. Mir Sadat, Policy Director of the National Security Council, says:

“Great Power Competition in space is in some ways analogous to the Great Game of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries between Great Britain and Russia, which competed over access to resources and geostrategic positioning in Central and South Asia. Today, there is a similar great game brewing between China and other spacefaring nations led by the United States over access to potential cislunar [between Earth and Moon] resources and overall space dominance.”

But it wasn’t China that first declared its intention to rule space and therefore the world. In 1997, the US Space Command published its “full spectrum dominance” doctrine: to weaponize space by the year 2020 “to protect U.S. interests and investment” (read: corporate profits). Endangering us all, “full spectrum dominance” includes hypersonic missile drones and high-altitude craft that can strike Russia and/or China with “low-yield” nuclear weapons.

Like other products that emerged from taxpayer funding under the cover of military research and development (satellites, computers, the internet, etc.), space exploration is now commercialized through companies like Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin company, while serving the Pentagon by, for instance, launching military satellites, as Elon Musk’s SpaceX has done. The Pentagon and other federal agencies describe this arrangement as the Space Industrial Base.

Sadat helped to establish the Space Force, which largely took over from the Space Command. Specifically naming cobalt and other rare materials as the “greatest” supply risks, a fear-mongering report about supposed lack of US influence, co-authored by Sadat and sponsored by the Space Force, says: “The United States must compete for global market share and leadership – currently dominated by China, Russia over terrestrial commodities – basic and manufactured – into the space economy.”

It may turn out that the millions of destitute Congolese sitting on tantalum and coltan, and the hundreds of thousands of slave-like and child miners toiling in hazardous conditions to extract these products are not the only victims. If the “Great Game” for “full spectrum dominance” continues without grassroots pressure to end it, escalating geopolitical “competition” between nuclear powers could annihilate the rest of the world as well.

thegrayzone.com

By TJ COLES

The World Food Program recently reported that 7 million Ethiopians across three northern states—Afar, Amhara, and Tigray—risk starvation: more than 5 million of whom are in Tigray; a region that borders Eritrea and consists of seven million Ethiopians. The governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea are united against the potentially secessionist Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front. As usual in war, ordinary civilians pay the price.

But over the years, the Pentagon has armed and trained the Ethiopian military. While feigning concern for human rights, Washington appears to be taking a “wait-and-see” approach, especially as the current Ethiopian government has fallen out of favor with the US. History shows that successive US governments have had an ambivalent relationship with Ethiopia, but over the last three decades have modernized the nation’s military and expanded their footprint under the guise of peacekeeper training programs and the blurring of civil-military infrastructure and aid projects.

Ethiopia: a “centerpiece of US policy” after WWII

Ethiopia is Africa’s second most populous country and seventh largest economy in terms of GDP, with the top one percent owning as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent. The average annual income of its over 110 million people is $850, with 26 million Ethiopians mired in absolute poverty. 

Its people include ethnic Oromo (around 35 percent of the population), Amhara (28 percent), Tigray (7 percent), Sidama (4 percent), and Welayta (3 percent), with dozens of other groups including Somali making up the remaining percentages.

The CIA described post-WWII Ethiopia as “the centerpiece of US policy in the Horn of Africa.” It borders Britain’s former colonies Kenya, Sudan and oil-rich South Sudan, and Somalia, which has a coastline on the strategic chokepoint, the Gulf of Aden. It also borders and used to control the former Italian and British colony, Eritrea, which has a coastline on another chokepoint, the Red Sea, and borders the former French colony, Djibouti, which sits on both the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Djibouti hosts a US military base, as well as China’s sole foreign military base.

From the outset of the post-WWII, US-led world order, the US foreign policy establishment sought to balance its relationships with Ethiopia, then ruled by Emperor Haile Selassie, and Eritrea, which Selassie annexed. At the United Nations, Washington suggested that Ethiopia be granted access to Eritrea’s ports but that occupied Eritrea gradually become a “federated” region of Ethiopia.

The main US military interest in Eritrea at the time was the Kagnew Station in the capital, Asmara. Kagnew afforded the Pentagon communications and interception capabilities across the continent and parts of the oil-rich Middle East, including spying on Soviet moves. Selassie sent over a thousand troops to back the Americans during the Korean War (1950-53) and later in Congo.

In 1953, Ethiopia signed a Mutual Defense Agreement with the US, receiving millions of dollars-worth of arms and training for 23,000 troops under a Military Assistance Advisory Group designed, in large part, to keep the country out of the Soviet sphere.

Because Ethiopia was not considered to be vitally important to the US, quantities of military aid were considerably smaller than Selassie would have preferred. Selassie feared a lack of American support in the event of an Eritrean or Somali invasion. Nevertheless, US Lt. Col. W.H. Crosson worked with Selassie loyalists to crush an internal coup against the Emperor in December 1960. Fearing that Selassie’s regime could fall, planners suggested that the US “seek to establish effective relations with the emerging group of middle-level, educated, reform-minded government and military officials who are the presumptive heirs to power.”

As we shall see, the current Washington policy towards potential allies also appears to be one of stepping back and waiting to see who wins.

The US manages “an embarrassing but reliable client”

Foreign “aid” may have the unintended consequence of helping poor people, but the underlying objective is propaganda. “Aid” has become a psychological weapon designed to present a positive image of what amounts to an occupation force. The second objective is to lay the infrastructural and cultural groundwork for private companies to take over public utilities and services.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) began operations in Ethiopia in 1962. A report two years’ later explained that “US objectives in Ethiopia” include maintaining access to Kagnew, nudging Selassie to adopt “reforms” so that the impoverished do no overthrow him, all the while preventing “civil disorder,” denying the Soviets access to Ethiopia, and ensuring the “[a]doption by the Ethiopia Government of positions favorable to U.S. interests.”

“Aid” in the form of water, sanitation, education, and medical assistance designed to foster “a pro-Western orientation” continued to flow.

In 1974, the young Marxist Colonel, Mengistu Haile Mariam, an ethnic Oromo, led the Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces, Police and Territorial Army (Derg) and overthrew Selassie. The events triggered the so-called Ethiopian Civil War, which actually involved rival Eritrean independence groups who battled until the ephemeral peace of 1991. Two academics from the period note: “the U.S. supports the Ethiopian military government by sending munitions to prolong the war. It is certain that Eritreans will neither forget nor forgive.”

A US Army publication notes that Derg soldiers, “a number of whom were trained by the U.S. military either in Ethiopia or in the US, … touched off a bloody purge in which thousands of Ethiopians were killed or tortured.” The “purge” included attacks on fellow Marxists of a different faction who were ethnic Tigray, leading them to form the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

In the words of the Library of Congress’ Federal Research Division, President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger expressed “uneasiness with Ethiopia’s violations of human rights and growing leftist tendencies.” Their strategy consisted of waiting and seeing how Mengistu’s regime played out, whether it would spout socialism while bending to Washington’s will or whether it would move closer to the USSR.

Until the Revolution of 1977, the CIA regarded Mengistu as “a difficult, occasionally embarrassing, but relatively reliable client of the US.” After the Revolution, Mengistu turned to China, Cuba, and the Soviets. The CIA saw Ethiopia as a lost cause. “The elimination of Mengistu … would probably be followed by a military government with generally similar objectives.”

Between 1981 and ‘82, US “aid” to Ethiopia was terminated.

US schools peacekeepers in Ethiopia with an “absence of peace-enforcement training”

In 1991, an umbrella of ethnic political groups calling itself the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, led by the ethnic Tigrayan, Meles Zenawi, overthrew Mengistu. In 1993, US “aid” resumed on the condition of massive privatization to advance business interests like the pesticide industry.

Following the Rwanda genocide and the new doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” recently tested in Somalia through the US military’s “Operation Restore Hope,” American military training resumed, but this time under the PR-friendly banner of “peacekeeping.” It turned out that peacekeeping meant subsidizing weapons contractors.

In 1996, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher launched ACRI: the African Crisis Response Initiative, which “offers training and equipment to African nations who seek to enhance their peacekeeping capabilities.” In 1998, 70 US trainers began instructing Ethiopian battalions and brigades. The Bill Clinton White House noted at the time: “Non-governmental and private organizations are invited to participate in the training.”

The weapons company Northrop Grumman boasted that that it “has supported the African Crisis Response Initiative/African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance program since its inception in 1998 and designed the initial training and materials as well as conducted computer assisted peacekeeping exercises.” Marine Captain Emmanuel T. Carper said of the PR: “In order to make ACRI more palatable and assuage fears of U.S military occupation of Africa, the decision was made to put ACRI under the management of the State Department,” instead of the Pentagon.

The program was delayed because in 1998, Eritrea fought what became a two-year border war with Ethiopia. In the end, the US was forced to cancel its ACRI program because “peacekeeper” training would look like what it actually was: warfighter training.

However, the US and Ethiopia initiated an annual exercise called Natural Fire the same year that ACRI fell apart. Now, under the auspices of “Justified Accord,” various African nations host annual joint exercises that include the militaries of non-African states, such as the UK and the Netherlands. In addition to training for “peacekeeping,” such as contributing to the African Union’s Somalia Mission, academic classes also refine military doctrine.

US Air Force Colonel, Russell J. Handy, cites ACRI’s “absence of peace-enforcement training,” which suggests that “peacekeeping” was a PR façade.

Under George W. Bush (2001-09), ACRI became ACOTA: Africa Contingency Operations Training Assistance. In 2004, Marine Captain Carper, was assigned to ACOTA.

“I was the only active duty Marine on a team of 11 people. Nine were contractors from Northrop Grumman Technical Services,” Carper reflected.

Peacekeeping, he said, turned out to be training for “crowd control” at a base on the Bilate River in Ethiopia’s central-southwest region. Carper concluded: “ACOTA was not an effective allocation of resources for a long term capacity building program, because it does not combat the root causes of insecurity in Africa which are poverty, illiteracy, and disease.”

Political warfare masked as humanitarian aid

Donovan C. Chau is an Associate Professor of Political Science at California University, and former Subject Matter Expert at the Army Medical Research and Development Command. In 2007, he wrote for the US Army War College’s Institute for Strategic Studies.

Chau explained that US military personnel had been digging water-wells and rescuing cheetah cubs from cruelty. At the same time, China was digging boreholes in Nigeria. Chau defines both powers’ acts as “political warfare”: “Both the United States and the [People’s Republic of China (PRC)] were using nonviolent means in a coordinated (or semi-coordinated) manner to directly affect the targeted population. They were using political warfare to achieve their national objectives.”

Under the “political warfare” concept, troops on the ground are repackaged as providers of humanitarian relief in zones prone to drought, famine, viruses, and underinvestment. This occupation-by-assistance doctrine is a form of psychological warfare that cements bonds between local populations and foreign (in this case US) soldiers, who blend civilian infrastructure and logistics programs with quasi-occupation. Other units call it WHAM: Winning Hearts and Minds.

In addition to WHAM/political warfare, the US Army Africa’s Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) launched a “train the trainer” program.

The US Army said that with 200,000 personnel, the Ethiopian National Defense Forces are, “in the eyes of U.S. policymakers, a force for stability,” meaning a potential proxy for US wars in Africa. In Guam, America’s Micronesian island territory, the 1^st Infantry Division 1^st Battalion, 16^th Infantry Regiment, and the Guam National Guard trained Ethiopian soldiers “in basic infantry tactics, non-commissioned officer skills and officer logistics.” The US Army specifically cited “Muslim militants in Somalia, and the ongoing threat of war with its breakaway rival, Eritrea,” as justifications for military involvement in Ethiopia.

In June 2009, following requests from the Ethiopian government, the CJTF-HOA authorized non-commissioned officers (NCOs) to “mentor” their Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) counterparts. NCOs from the 2^nd Battalion’s 18^th Field Artillery Regiment, Fort Still, Oklahoma, participated in a “train the trainer” program, teaching students about the roles of sergeant majors; a new rank in the ENDF. AFRICOM sergeants also assisted, teaching “operations, communication and logistics.”

In August, the program was expanded to include the Ethiopian Defense Command and Staff College. Initiated by US Army Central, four Army Reserve lieutenant colonels and a US Air Force lt. col. trained their would-be counterparts in “strategy, leadership, joint operations, military communication, research methods and English.” In October 2009, AFRICOM assumed command of “train the trainer.”

AFRICOM takes charge

The Stuttgart, Germany-based AFRICOM assists the African Union’s Peace Support Operations Division through its C4 doctrine: Command, Control, Communications and Computers. These communications are coordinated through Addis Ababa’s Peace Support Operations Center.

The transition to a whole-of-government approach included exercises broadcasting information about viral outbreaks. In such scenarios, the militarization of everything — from public health messaging to literal bridge building to famine relief — is normalized. In 2010, 36 states met in Ghana for Africa Endeavor, an AFRICOM-led military coordination exercise with the African Union’s Standby Force. Endeavor used Ethiopia as a base from which to facilitate the Union’s first successful satellite link-up.

As the modernization of the military continued into 2011, international “aid” programs, including those of the World Bank and UK Department for International Development, supported Ethiopia’s so-called Protection of Basic Services (PBS) project: a scheme to push 1.5 million farmers and pastoralists off their lands into villages, supposedly for their own health. In Gambella in the west, PBS was “accompanied by violence, including beatings and arbitrary arrests, and insufficient consultation and compensation,” in the words of Human Rights Watch.

In Negele, a town in southeastern Ethiopia, the US Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (“Seabees”) led a bridge building project to connect two villages. Under this propaganda-in-action model, residents “welcom[ed] the Civil Affairs team and the Navy Seabee team to their community and expressed that the Negele community is now their home.” Civil Affairs Team chief, Major Antonio Gonzalez, noted that in addition to the bridge, US-led teams have distributed mosquito nets and founded a Veterinary Civic Action Program.

In August 2012, Specialist Anthony Serna of the 345^th Tactical Psychological Operations Company (Airborne), said: “One of the biggest things I want to accomplish … is to get the local media involved; where traditionally I would put out a mission directly. (I want to) bring the reports to the local [Medical Civic Action and Veterinary Civic Action Programs] so they can tell their people in their own words with their own feelings.”

In other words: Set the scene and let the “natives” tell the Pentagon’s story so it doesn’t seem like propaganda.

In an example of merged military roles, Serna met with Civil Affairs Team Specialist Alissa Anderson and Seabee Petty Officer Kasey Dotson. Anderson said: “I feel that now I’m getting the full spectrum of what the military can do.”

The cynicism of “political warfare” knows no bounds. In September 2012, Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa soldiers were sent to deliver “care packages to a local orphanage” in Dire Dawa in the northeast.  US Army Captain and 3-124^th Cavalry Chaplain, Brett Anderson, said of US forces and the orphanage: “we spend a lot of time there.” Lt. Jose Muñoz revealed that the Seabees had “installed showerheads and electrics for a water pump.”

A schoolboy saw the US forces and was asked what he wanted to be when he matured. “Construction,” he said.

The US watches the blood flow in the Tigray war

The 28-year rule of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the ethnic umbrella party, ended in 2019. The Tigray PM, Meles Zenawi, died in 2012. With US military support, his successor, PM Hailemariam Desalegn, an ethnic Wolayta, oversaw what Human Rights Watch describes as “crackdowns on opposition political party members, journalists, and peaceful protesters, many of whom experienced harassment, arbitrary arrest, and politically motivated prosecutions.” Victims included Muslims who were abused under “anti-terror” legislation and ethnic Oromo, whose Liberation Front threatened the power of the central authorities.

The young ethnic Oromo, Abiy Ahmed Ali, took office in 2018, winning the Nobel Peace for negotiating a settlement with Eritrea, whose government had been supporting Oromo independence movements in a strategic move against the central Ethiopian regime. Abiy dissolved the EPRDF and formed a new coalition, the Prosperity Party. Refusing to join, the once-dominant Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) saw Prosperity as an effort to destroy the ethnic federal model and an attempt to centralize power.

In November 2020, Tigray forces were held responsible for attacking a military base. President Abiy, the Nobel Peace Laureate, sent troops to the Tigray region. Failing to mention the years of US training, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) acknowledges that “[a]buses against civilians in Tigray by government-aligned forces have reportedly fueled insurgent recruitment.” Politically, many ethnic Afar and Amhara were aligned with the neighboring Tigray. Abiy has de facto embargoed the three regions, leading the Tigray Defense Force to try to break the blockade. In May 2021, Abiy designated the TPLF a terrorist group.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently alleged “human rights violations, abuses, and atrocities” carried out against the Tigray people by the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea while emphasizing the importance of “the sovereignty, national unity, and territorial integrity of Ethiopia.”

Trying to balance all sides is a common theme. “[F]or the first time years,” says the CRS, the US “aid” program in Ethiopia does not include the International Military Education and Training program, implying that the atrocities against Afar, Amhara, and Tigray are being conducting in part thanks to previous US training.

But why would Washington care about the atrocities it spent decades indirectly helping to facilitate? The answer probably lies in Ethiopia’s shifting allegiances.

Noted above is long-standing concern over China’s alleged “political warfare” in Africa. In September 2019, Fort Leavenworth’s Lewis and Clark Center hosted a panel discussion on Russian and Chinese “soft power” in Africa. In an effort to heighten concern among US foreign policy elites about alleged Chinese influence, the panel’s “target audience” included Army schools, Regionally Aligned Forces, universities, think tanks, and interagency partners.

Ethiopia’s friction with the US has been compounded by President Abiy’s recent military contracts with Turkey, which in recent years has drifted from Washington’s orbit, as well as growing alliances with Iran, a long-term US target. Tensions manifested when Ethiopia recently snubbed Samantha Power, the hyper-interventionist head of the US Agency for International Development.

Although Ethiopia is located in a strategically important region, Washington has traditionally taken an ambivalent attitude because the country itself is less relevant to the US domination of Africa. Ignoring its own role in enabling the ongoing wave of human rights abuses, Washington appears to be sitting back and watching the war unfold.

If the historical precedent is anything to go by, the current approach is to forge an alliance with the victor after the bloodletting finally ends.

thegrayzone.com

By TJ COLES

Last month, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times. It might as well have been written by the Pentagon. Buhari promoted Brand Nigeria, auctioning the country’s military services to Western powers, telling readers that Nigeria would lead Africa’s “war on terror” in exchange for foreign infrastructure investment. “Though some believe the war on terror [WOT] winds down with the US departure from Afghanistan,” he says, “the threat it was supposed to address burns fiercely on my continent.”

With Boko Haram and Islamic State operating in and near Nigeria, pushing a WOT narrative is easy. But counterterror means imperial intervention. So, why is the Pentagon really interested in Nigeria, a country with a GDP of around $430 billion – some $300 billion less than the Pentagon’s annual budget – a population with a 40 percent absolute poverty rate, and an infant mortality rate of 74 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared to 5.6 per 1,000 in the US?

A US Naval Postgraduate School doctoral thesis from over a decade ago offers a plausible explanation: the Gulf of Guinea, formed in part by Nigeria’s coastline, “has large deposits of hydrocarbons and other natural resources.” It added: “There is now a stiff international competition among industrialized nations including the United States, some European countries, China, Japan, and India.”

Since then, the US has been quietly transforming Nigeria’s police and military into a neo-colonial force that can support missions led by the US Africa Command (AFRICOM). Buhari’s offer makes US involvement in Nigeria appear as if Nigeria is asking for help, when in fact the stage is already set for AFRICOM.

The Pentagon’s broader aim is to stop China and Russia from gaining a foothold in the continent. In the meantime, it aims to crush any and all opposition groups that disrupt energy supplies so that oil giants can continue exploiting Nigeria’s resources.

A brief history of a complex country

It’s important to get an idea of Nigeria’s ethnic and regional complexities. The country’s 206 million people, nearly half of whom are Muslim and nearly half Christian, live north of the equator in West Africa. Their country has 36 states, seven of which are coastal. The country borders Cameroon in the east, Benin in the west, Chad in the northeast, and Niger in the north and northwest.

A US Strategic Studies Institute report from the mid-‘90s describes Nigeria as “an artificial state created according to colonial exigencies rather than ethnic coherence.” Its fragility explains the country’s susceptibility to ethnic, religious, and class warfare. The majority of Nigerian Muslims are Sunni, but Islam in the country spans the spectrum, from Sufism to Salafism. The Christian population is distributed among the Protestant majority as well as Anglicans, Baptists, Evangelicals, Catholics, Methodists, and Roman Catholics. Most of Nigeria’s Muslims live in the north in 12 states whose laws are based on sharia.

Nigeria boasts hundreds of languages and ethnicities, the largest groups being the Hausa (who make up 30 percent of the population), Yoruba (15.5), Igbo (a.k.a., Ibo 15.2), and Fulani (6 percent). There are, of course, exceptions, but in general the Hausa-Fulani and Kanuri peoples tend to be Muslim and the Igbo, Ijaw, and Ogoni Christian. Islam and Christianity tend to be mixed among the Yoruba. During the late-19^th century “Scramble for Africa,” the British colonized the region, Christianizing the south and leaving in place the Islamic political structures in the north both for convenience and as a useful divide and rule technique.

Black gold, British rule

Drawing up “contracts” for energy companies, the Foreign Office (FO) created a monopoly for Anglo-Persian oil (later BP) and particularly for Shell. Prospecting contracts were awarded by the FO in the late-1930s, but it was as late as 1956 that financially viable amounts of black gold were struck. Most of the country’s oil is in the southern, Niger Delta region populated by the Ijaw and Ogoni peoples, hence there is little militant Islam in Nigeria’s illicit oil sector. Shell operations began in Ogoniland in 1958.

Nigeria gained slow and painful independence from Britain in 1960. Seven years later, armed Igbo fought a war of secession in the oil-rich south to try to form their own country, the Republic of Biafra. Under a One Nigeria policy, the British supported the central regime of General Yakubu Gowon during the Biafra War (1967-70). Fighting and blockade  led to three million deaths. Biafra failed to secede.

The UK Labour government’s Commonwealth Minister, George Thomas, explained at the time: “The sole immediate British interest in Nigeria is that the Nigerian economy should be brought back to a condition in which our substantial trade and investment in the country can be further developed, and particularly so we can regain access to important oil installations.”

As the British Empire declined, the US gradually pursued the same policy in Nigeria. At first, the US considered supporting Biafra.

The Kennedy administration initiated $170 million in economic and military spending in Nigeria under a plan that continued until 1966, into the Johnson administration. William Haven North, who served as the Director for Central and West African Affairs for the US Agency of International Development (USAID) said: “The issue of supporting Biafra was also tied up with the question of oil interests; the major part of the oil reserves in Nigeria were in the Eastern Region with substantial American oil company investments.” In 1978, the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet began the regular exercises in the Gulf of Guinea that continue to the present.

Indigenous activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was arrested on phony charges and executed by a Nigerian military functioning as a private army for the Shell oil company

Enter Uncle Sam

In 1990, the Nigeria-dominated Economic Community of West African States (ECO) established a military wing, the so-called Monitoring Group (ECOMOG). The George H.W. Bush administration contributed $100 million. The succeeding Clinton White House said that for so-called peace-keeping operations in other African countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone, “Nigeria provided most of the ‘muscle’.” At this point, the seeds were sown for Nigeria’s use as a delegate for US wars in Africa.

By the dawn of the new millennium, the 3^rd Special Forces Group (Army Command) was training Nigerian battalions to assist United Nations support missions. The Nigerian military enjoyed tens of millions of dollars-worth of US weapons.

Meanwhile, indigenous activists suffering under oil spills and environmental destruction established the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People. Nine of this group’s leaders, including Ken Saro-Wiwa, were later arrested on trumped up charges and executed by the national military that had been funded by Shell to act as its own private army.

The murders sparked international outrage and activists successfully pressured the US to terminate military aid. General Sani Abacha, under whose dictatorship the Ogoni Nine were hanged, established a Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) to fight both activists and gangs. The MNJTF was later centered in Chad and used as a base from which to fight Boko Haram.

In 1999, Nigeria ended its military rule, at least on paper. By the mid-2000s, Human Rights Watch was wrote that, under the façade of parliamentary democracy, “the conduct of many public officials and government institutions is so pervasively marked by violence and corruption as to more resemble criminal activity than democratic governance.”

With the Ogoni, Ijaw, and other Niger Delta peoples crushed with force, some turned to violence. Following lobbying by Shell, Nigeria’s old colonial master, the UK, began spending taxpayer money on military operations to counter armed groups: £12 million between 2001 and 2014, when Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) co-authored their report. CAAT documents the UK exportation of nearly £500m-worth of weapons to Nigeria in that period, including missiles and grenades. It cites increased UK arms exports as a direct reason for the failure of the southern ceasefire. UK “security contractors” including Control Risks, Erinys, Executive Outcomes, and Saladin Security were embedded with mobile police units to crush protestors.

Nigeria and the “war on terror”

Western propaganda paid less attention to Shell’s systemic violence against the Ogoni and other peoples, focusing instead on the more headline-grabbing resistance, such as high-profile ransom kidnappings and pipeline disruption. State oppression in the drier, less fertile north, meanwhile, fed the narrative pushed by Islamic groups: that Western culture is toxic.

Founded in 2002 and led by Mohammed Yusuf who was later executed by the state, Boko Haram is officially called the Group of the People of Sunnah for Preaching and Jihad (Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihād). It emerged in the northeastern city, Maidugari, close to Chad and Cameroon, where it set up semi-autonomous communities. Religious graduates who studied in Sudan attempted to form similar communes but were attacked by the police. In 2009, Boko Haram members allegedly fired at a police station in Bauchi. The government response was to trigger civil war.

The MNJTF mentioned above, is described as “notorious” in a British House of Commons Library report. It was reactivated, this time to fight the Islamists. The report also notes how the Nigerian Armed Forces terrorized the civilian population with raids, arrests, and indiscriminate shelling.

The UK ramped up its training of Nigeria’s military while the US used Chad as a base for its “war on terror” operations: the Pan-Sahel Initiative (covering Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger) and the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (which included Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, and Tunisia). AFRICOM’s initial operations in Nigeria involved maritime training and integrating the country’s forces with those of other African nations to foster pan-African military alliances.

In its early years, AFRICOM paid little attention to Boko Haram. But this changed as the profile of attacks got bigger.

In 2011, Boko Haram launched a formal insurgency. A report published that year by the US House of Representatives Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence outlined Boko Haram’s roots and the reasons for its popularity. They included “a feeling of alienation from the wealthier, Christian, oil-producing, southern Nigeria, pervasive poverty, rampant government corruption, heavy-handed security measures, and the belief that relations with the West are a corrupting influence.” It added that “[t]hese grievances have led to sympathy among the local Muslim population despite Boko Haram’s violent tactics.”

These grievances were met with the kind of violence that further fuels grievances.

The US escalates involvement

In the context of the “war on terror,” the Pentagon saw Boko Haram as an opportunity to train Nigeria’s military and employ it for its objectives. The primary US goal was ensuring that the oil-rich regions did not fall into enemy hands.

The Congressional Research Service noted that by the time AFRICOM was founded in the late-2000s, Africa “supplie[d] the United States with roughly the same amount of crude oil as the Middle East.” An Armed Services Committee report in 2011 noted: “Nigeria’s oil rich Niger Delta is a major source of oil for the United States outside of the Middle East.” The US Energy Information Administration states: “Nigeria is the largest oil producer in Africa. It holds the largest natural gas reserves on the continent and was the world’s fifth–largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.” The country has 37 billion barrels of proven crude, second only to Libya, which was bombed to pieces by the US and NATO in 2011.

Nigeria’s forces summarily executed Boko Haram’s leader Yusuf in 2009. A thesis published by the US Naval Postgraduate School notes that in addition to the assassination, “security forces killing or displacing thousands of Nigerian Muslims, is credited with swelling [Boko Haram BH]’s ranks.”

Yusuf’s deputy, Abubakar Shekau, took over and escalated a suicide bombing campaign. The Navy thesis also notes that “the actions of BH, along with other militant groups such as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), have reduced the country’s oil production, displacing Nigeria from 5^th to 8^th on the list of America’s largest foreign oil suppliers.”

In 2013, the states of Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe imposed emergency powers. The Pentagon announced a $45 million-dollar budget to counter Boko Haram by training troops in Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria. One of the consequences is that Nigeria has been transformed from a peripheral US interest to a proxy force. Years of war, mostly in the north and border regions, have led to 2.1 million internally displaced people. The World Food Program calculates that 3.4 million face hunger and that 300,000 children are malnourished.

Building a Sparta state

In June 2014, it was reported that a 650-person unit, the Nigerian Army’s 143^rd Battalion, was set up on the ground and trained by US Special Forces from the California Army National Guard’s Special Operations Detachment-US Northern Command and Company A, 5^th Battalion 19^th Special Forces Group (Airborne). By then the Nigerian Army was active in 30 out of the country’s 36 states.

Chief of the US Army Africa’s Security Cooperation Division, Colonel John D. Ruffing, said: “It is not peacekeeping … It is every bit of what we call ‘decisive action,’ meaning those soldiers will go in harm’s way to conduct counterinsurgency operation[s].” One US soldier said: “This is a classic Special Forces mission—training an indigenous force in a remote area in an austere environment to face a very real threat.”

In 2015, Boko Haram’s leader Shekau reportedly pledged allegiance to Islamic State, rebranding the organization IS West African Province (ISWAP). A Congressional Research Service report notes that ISWAP “has surpassed Boko Haram in size and capacity, and now ranks among IS’s most active affiliates.”

It’s not as if strategists don’t understand that violence doesn’t work. They understand that violence escalates violence which can then be used as pretexts for more violence. A US Council on Foreign Relations article from 2020 notes: “the last two years have been deadlier than any other period for Nigerian soldiers since the Boko Haram insurgency began.”

As the war against Boko Haram waged on, Niger Delta gangs in the south threatened to resume attacks on oil infrastructure. US “aid” expanded to include training the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) across the country. In November 2016, 66 officers graduated from the Fingerprint Analysis and Forensics training program, an initiative run by the US Embassy in collaboration with the Office of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement and Atlanta Police Department.

In March 2017, 28 Nigerian officers graduated from courses offered by the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs division, led by US police from Prince William County, Virginia. The program also provided “equipment, training, mentoring, and capacity-building support to various Nigerian law enforcement and justice sector institutions.”

U.S. Army soldiers deployed to Nigeria Army’s School of infantry trained more than 200 Nigerian soldiers in 2018

Expanding AFRICOM’s role

In what the US State Department calls a “whole of government” approach, military operations continued as police training expanded. In early-2018, 12 US Army soldiers, led by Captain Stephen Gouthro, trained 200 Nigerians at the Nigerian Army’s School of Infantry. Facilitated by the US Army Africa, eight Security Assistance and Training Management Organization soldiers and four 1^st Brigade Combat Team soldiers shared “ground-combat tactics” with the Nigerian Army’s 26^th Infantry Battalion.

In July this year, US Army Special Forces trained 25 officers of the Nigerian Navy Special Boat Service as part of JCET: a five-week Joint Combined Exchange Training program.  The Acting US Consulate Political and Economic Chief, Merrica Heaton, says that the training is designed to help the Nigerian military stop crime in the Gulf of Guinea and “counter violent extremists in the Northeast and enforce the rule of law throughout the region.”

As observers seemingly spotted the top-secret US stealth drone—Northrop Grumman’s RQ-180—over the Philippines, the Department of Defense sold nearly $500 million-worth of propeller planes to Nigeria, marking what the US Embassy and Consulate describes as “an historic level of cooperation …  between the U.S. and Nigerian militaries.” AFRICOM recently confirmed that the inauguration of twelve A-29 Super Tucanos into the Nigerian Air Force will serve a “critical role in furthering regional security and stability.”

The Pentagon allocated $36.1 million to the US Army Corps of Engineers to renovated Kainji Air Base, which will host the Super Tucanos. In addition to training simulator and small arms storage units, the Base includes “aircraft sunshades, a new airfield hot cargo pad, perimeter and security fencing, airfield lights, and various airfield apron, parking, hangar, and entry control point enhancements.”

“Gray zone” warfare against China

Having left operations to Special Forces, AFRICOM is now tasked with overseeing an expanding footprint in Nigeria. But in addition to preventing oil supply disruptions, the US seeks to counter Russian but particularly Chinese involvement. According to the US state-run outlet, Voice of America (VOA), the China National Offshore Oil Corporation began investing in Nigeria’s state oil sector in 2005.

A 2007 US Army War College thesis expressed concern that, following “donations” of Chinese military equipment to Nigeria, China had helped the government to drill hundreds of boreholes in a goodwill gesture to provide clean drinking water. The US acted to tarnish China’s image. As part of what is now called the “whole of government” approach, the US 96^th Civil Affairs Battalion, US Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command, networked with Nigerian civilians, private industry, and aid agencies. The US Army War College implies that this was to psychologically counter China’s influence.

Nigeria signed a Memorandum of Understanding with China in 2018 to integrate into China’s global infrastructure and investment project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). More recently, the VOA has said that China took advantage of Nigeria’s crime- and terror-related oil instability, investing billions of dollars in oil to stabilize supply lines.

From the US military perspective, this so-called “political warfare” creates what they famously call a “gray zone” of conflict in which areas traditionally thought of as economic and civilian are weaponized. Analyst Kaley Scholl of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisitions writes that in one war game, the 91^st Civil Affairs Battalion coordinated with the 3^rd Special Forces Group to uncover “a Chinese conglomerate active in Nigeria who announced a deep-water port being constructed in one month as part of China’s BRI.” In the war game, US PSYOPs beat back the Chinese.

Scholl claims that “Chinese gray zone operations are eroding the US’s legitimacy and challenging the liberal rules-based world order.” In reality, US imperial aggression and wars by proxy erode whatever legitimacy Pentagon planners think they have.

But such analysts seem to forget that both the US and China are armed with nuclear weapons and possess the intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of delivering them. The Pentagon might consider Nigeria to be just another pawn in the new cold war chess game. However, any escalation of tensions in flashpoints, like Taiwan, could unintentionally trigger nuclear catastrophe. This appears to be a risk the Pentagon is willing to take to enforce “full spectrum dominance.”

thegrayzone.com

Inaccurate Assumptions About Algeria

Algerian President Bouteflika’s surprise about-face in going back on his previous decision to run for a fifth consecutive term in office has been the talk of Africa the entire week, with this announcement taking many off guard but nonetheless largely being met with universal applause as the most responsible recourse to avoid an outbreak of violence in this strategically positioned North African state. The country had been experiencing an unprecedented wave of peaceful protests in reaction to his originally declared candidacy fed by the majority-youthful population’s indignation at high unemployment and a stagnant economy, to say nothing of how insulted they felt that an elderly leader who is speculated to be physically and perhaps even mentally incapacitated after suffering a 2013 stroke would be put forth once more as the face of the nation by what are thought to be his powerful military-intelligence “deep state” handlers.

A lot has already been written about what might come next in Algeria, but most observers are either analyzing events in a vacuum or are making predictable comparisons to the 2011 “Arab Spring” theater-wide Color Revolutions, neither of which are entirely accurate because they both miss the fact that Algeria represents the eighth non-electoral regime change in Africa in as many years and is therefore just the latest manifestation of a larger trend that has hitherto not yet been brought to the public’s attention. It’s true that there are shades of the “Arab Spring” in what’s presently taking place in Algeria, but simply stopping there doesn’t do the country justice because it misleadingly implies that foreign powers had a predominant hand in guiding the course of events there. It also overlooks everything else of regime change relevance that took place in the continent over the past eight years and therefore inaccurately assumes that this is a one-off event unrelated to anything prior.

Rolling Regime Changes

For simplicity’s sake, here’s a breakdown of the most pertinent events apart from the Algerian one that was just described, including the two non-electoral regime change attempts that failed, two electoral ones that deserve mention for reasons that will be explained below, and a short international intervention in support of a mostly forgotten regime change operation:

* 2011-2012 “Arab Spring” Events In Tunisia, Egypt, And Libya:

The whole world is aware of what happened during that time so there isn’t much need to rehash it other than to point out the author’s interpretation of those events as an externally provoked theater-wide regime change campaign that was originally intended to replace long-serving secular governments with Turkish-aligned Muslim Brotherhood ones prior to the inevitable leadership transition that would eventually take place after their elderly leaders pass away.

The whole point in preempting this process and artificially accelerating it was to ensure that their successors would remain geopolitically loyal to the US, which couldn’t be guaranteed if this “changing of the guard” was “allowed” to occur “naturally”. Moreover, the US thought that it could weaponize the semi-populist appeal of political Islam in those countries in order to portray its proxies as having the “genuine” support of the public. This nevertheless backfired in Egypt but was ultimately manageable.

* 2014 Burkina Faso:

The sudden onset of progressively violent protests in response to long-serving President Blaise Compaoré’s attempts to change the constitution to run for yet another term quickly resulted in a regime change that was briefly challenged a year later by loyalist special forces in a failed coup. Some observers predicted that the “Burkinabe Revolution” would trigger an “African Spring” against other rulers who had been in office for decades and also were speculated to soon announce their intent to follow in Compaoré’s footsteps and change their own constitutions as well, though this forecast didn’t unfold as expected.

Still, the 2014 Burkina Faso regime change could in hindsight be seen as evidence that genuine (as in, not externally provoked, guided, and/or hijacked) protests are capable of unseating entrenched governments and the permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucratic structures (“deep state”) behind them. It should also be noted that the international community recognized Compaoré’s resignation and subsequent decision to go into self-imposed exile (thought to be motivated by his desire to evade justice for his alleged corruption and other crimes by the post-coup authorities) whereas they were against the military coup attempt by his loyalists a year later.

* 2017 The Gambia:

Most of the world has forgotten about it and barely anyone paid much attention to it at the time anyhow, but a Senegalese-led ECOWAS military intervention toppled Gambian President Jammeh at the beginning of the year after he refused to step down from office following his electoral loss a month prior in December 2016. The leader of this tiny sliver of an African state was also becoming internationally reviled by the West even before the 2016 election because of his decision to withdraw from the Commonwealth of Nations and begin the process of doing the same when it came to the International Criminal Court. In addition, his 2015 declaration of an Islamic Republic also earned him the West’s consternation, not that they needed any other excuses given the aforementioned.

The Gambian case study somewhat mirrors the controversial French-led UN intervention that took place in the Ivory Coast in 2011 following a similarly disputed election a few months prior, though the Ivorian leader wasn’t as lucky as his Gambian counterpart in that he was captured by French-backed forces and extradited to The Hague, where he was charged with war crimes but eventually acquitted earlier this year. The lesson to be had from both the Ivory Coast and The Gambia is that international coalitions can be assembled to remove recalcitrant leaders from office who refuse to accept electoral results, though this is less of a “rule” and more of a trend, though one that might gain support at home and/or abroad if it follows highly publicized protests that give the intervention the pretense of legitimacy (whether genuine or not).

* 2017 Angola:

This rising power in Southern Africa experienced a democratic transfer of power that summer from revolutionary leader Jose Eduardo dos Santos to fellow MPLA member and designated successor João Lourenço in what was initially thought by many to be a carefully coordinated “shuffling of the cards” by the Angolan “deep state” but which eventually proved to be a “deep state” coup after Lourenço quickly went to work eradicating the power structure that his predecessor implemented and even going after the former “royal family” (in particular, his daughter [who’s also Africa’s richest woman and its first female billionaire] and son on corruption charges). Suffice to say, this was a shock for many, though generally a pleasant one for most.

The abovementioned events prove that sometimes the “deep state” is the most influential force driving regime change in certain countries, namely those with post-war revolutionary parties that still remain in power. It’ll turn out that Angola might have been an inspiration for what later took place in Ethiopia and just occurred in Algeria, albeit with both unfolding under slightly different circumstances and in varying ways, but the point is that the so-called “powers that be” might either be engaged in serious infighting among themselves and/or decide that the most responsible course of action in the name of national stability is either “shuffle the cards” or carry out a genuine regime change behind the scenes to preemptively or reactively quell (potentially) destabilizing (anti-corruption-driven or election-related) unrest.

* 2017 Zimbabwe:

The tail end of 2017 saw the Zimbabwean military carry out a de-facto coup against nonagenarian revolutionary leader Robert Mugabe during a period of rising civil society unrest in this economically destitute country. Barely anyone disputes that this was indeed a military coup, and one that was possibly partially inspired by Mugabe’s controversial grooming of his wife as his successor at the expense of the ZANU-PF political and military elite, but it wasn’t legally recognized as such abroad because otherwise the African Union and other actors would have been compelled to impose varying degrees of sanctions against the country in response.

This interestingly shows that some military coups are supported by the so-called “international community” while others such as the soon-to-be-described Gabonese attempt earlier this year aren’t, suggesting  that there might be certain criteria involved in determining whether such seizures of power (or attempts thereof) will be (even begrudgingly) accepted abroad or not. The 2005 and 2008 Mauritanian military ones and the 2010 Nigerien one weren’t endorsed by the world but serious actions weren’t taken to isolate them both because they uncontestably succeeded and also out of concern for destabilizing the security situation in the terrorist-afflicted West African region.

* 2018 South Africa:

Jacob Zuma was pressured to resign in early 2018 due to what many have interpreted as being a “deep state” coup against him carried out by a rival faction of the ruling ANC led by his eventual successor Ramaphosa. Party infighting heated up after the BRICS leader found himself ensnared in corruption scandals that may or may not have been tacitly facilitated by his rivals, with all of this occurring against the backdrop of rising anti-government unrest and the increasing appeal of opposition parties. Whether out of the pursuit of pure power and/or sensing that the party needed to change both its external branding and internal policies in order to remain in power, Ramaphosa eventually deposed Zuma and took the reins of this rising African Great Power despite the electorate never voting him into office.

The 2018 situation in South Africa showed that even the most outwardly stable of the continent’s countries and the one most highly regarded by the “international community” (both Western and non-Western alike, the latter in regards to BRICS) can experience a non-electoral regime change, albeit one that was mostly executed behind the scenes following an intertwined pressure campaign by the public and the ruling party’s rival faction that aspired to enter into power. In a sense, South Africa – which is generally considered to be one of Africa’s most vibrant democracies – set the tone for the rest of the continent because the message that it sent was that all of its peers could potentially do the same without any external criticism being levelled against them whatsoever so long as they pulled it off smoothly and labelled it an “internal affair”.

* 2018 Ethiopia:

Ethiopia captivated the world’s imagination after its post-war ruling party decided upon the relatively young 41-year-old former military intelligence officer Abiy Ahmed to be its new leader following the outbreak of violent unrest in 2016 that threatened to return Africa’s second most populous country to civil war. To make a long story short, Abiy is of the Oromo ethnicity that represents the country’s largest plurality but which has traditionally been underrepresented in its ruling class, especially following the rise to power of the Tigray-led EPRDF, but he swiftly got to work dismantling the party’s “old guard” in what can only be described as a “deep state” coup with overwhelming public support. Importantly, he also made peace with neighboring Eritrea and put the two fraternal people’s lingering tensions behind them as they jointly embarked on crafting a new regional future for the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopia set the precedent whereby large-scale unrest might serve as an incentive for responsible factions of the “deep state” to carry out a coup against their ruling rivals, building upon the Angolan antecedent in that the Southern African case didn’t occur in response to any significant protests or outbreak of violence like the one in the Horn of Africa did.  The events in Ethiopia are also evidence that even the most entrenched and militarily powerful “deep states” are comprised of diverse factions, some of which have radically different ideas than the ruling ones, as might turn out to be the case in Algeria too depending on how the situation there unfolds. The main point, however, is that “deep state” factions might use naturally occurring or externally provoked unrest as their pretext for rising to power behind the scenes and ultimately in public.

* 2018 Comoros:

It’s difficult to categorize what exactly took place last year in the island nation, but it can most objectively be summed up as a semi-popular and possibly externally influenced attempt to actively challenge the country’s regional center by a peripheral unit that felt disenfranchised by democratically instituted constitutional reforms that removed the coup-prone state’s rotating presidency clause. There was briefly fear that Anjouan would attempt to secede from the union once more and that this scenario might provoke another international intervention to restore national unity like what took place in 2008, but these were abated after the military quickly restored law and order after dislodging the couple dozen fighters who attempted to take over that part of the country.

What’s important to pay attention to is that intra-state regional disputes could dangerously create the pretext for nationwide or provincial regime changes depending on how the course of escalating political events develops. The Comorian President in this case is thought to have taken advantage of his home region’s demographic (and consequently, electoral) dominance to legitimize his bid to remain in power, demonstrating a variant of other reform methods that have been attempted elsewhere in Africa but custom-tailored to his country’s specific situation. Even though some members of the international community criticized last summer’s referendum, they still accepted it because his initiative did in fact democratically win, even if the odds were stacked in his favor per the demographic factor that was just described.

* 2018-2019 Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC):

There was global trepidation for the past year after former President Kabila delayed his country’s first-ever democratic transfer of power for logistical reasons that he would try to change the constitution to remain in power indefinitely, something that his traditional Western  backers pressured him not to do while his new Chinese patron remained silent about on the basis that its political process is an internal affair (though its strategic cobalt interests there might have played a role in its position to stay on the good side of the government). The country gradually slid into an undeclared state of low-level civil war that could more accurately be described as a hybrid one and which could have exploded on command into a much larger conflict had he not unexpectedly reached a speculated deal with one of the opposition leaders to supposedly allow Tshisekedi to replace Kabila while the former strongman would remain the “grey cardinal” after his party came out on top in the parliamentary elections.

International media and local activists decried this stunt as a blatant undermining of what should have been a democratic transfer of power that some observers said would have rightly resulted in Fayulu winning had the vote truly been free and fair, but that candidate posed the greatest threat to the Congolese “deep state” that owes its lucrative existence to Kabila and was – as the narrative goes – sidelined in favor of Tshsekedi, the son of a well-known opposition leader. This can be seen as a hybrid form of both an “internationally recognized” election and a “deep state” coup, the former of which was universally recognized probably because of the multilateral interests involved in retaining stability in the mineral-rich country (at least for the time being) while the latter was suppressed in order not to sully the optics of the DRC’s “first-ever democratic transfer of power” (and consequently the soft power of those who endorsed Kabila’s cunning plan).

* 2019 Gabon:

As was touched upon earlier, there was a failed attempt to stage a military coup in the economically stratified and politically polarized country of Gabon where an ageing and ailing leader continues to rule as part of a political dynasty that’s been in power for over half a century. The regime change operation was quickly put down by the rest of the military forces that didn’t join in the coup, though the event succeeded in shedding global light on the underlying tensions prevalent in this OPEC member country. It also temporarily raised concerns about whether the French would use their in-country military forces to aid the embattled government and “restore democracy” if the rebels succeeded in seizing power from their proxy.

Because of its sudden onset and abrupt end, the international community had no choice but to reactively condemn it like they always usually do whenever something of the sort happens, but it might have been begrudgingly accepted just like the Mauritanian and Nigerien ones that preceded it earlier along this timeline if it succeeded without any serious resistance. That wasn’t the case in Gabon because it seemed like the military faction of the “deep state” is satisfied with President Bongo, possibly due to some behind-the-scenes patronage relationship, and therefore wouldn’t want to sacrifice their own self-interests even in the name of settling a still-lingering electoral dispute that sharply divided the nation a few years prior.

Key Variables

In view of the insight that can be gleaned from the abovementioned ten examples, it’s possible to identify the key variables that pertain to each targeted leader, the trigger event for the non-electoral regime change operation, and the determining factors behind its success or lack thereof:

Targets:

The typical target seems to be a long-serving elderly leader with speculative health concerns who represents a power structure (whether his own or inherited) that increasingly large segments of the population and/or a faction of his “deep state” has come to believe (whether on their own or with foreign infowar and NGO “nudging”) doesn’t support their interests. They’re also usually plagued by accusations of corruption (whether real, exaggerated, or false) that serve to incite unrest during periods of nationwide economic hardship caused by either systemic mismanagement, Hybrid War, and/or a drop in the price of primary exports (oil, commodities, etc.).

Triggers:

It’s usually the case that something directly or indirectly related to an impending “changing of the guard” or political transition triggers the non-electoral regime change movement, be it efforts by the incumbent to change the constitution in order to run for another term, declaring their candidacy for the x-consecutive time after already serving for many years, fears by a “deep state” faction that the incumbent will lose the next election and therefore lead to their successor possibly dismantling the power structure they inherit (usually on “anti-corruption” grounds for populist appeal), a disputed election, or in the case of the “Arab Spring”, the perception of so-called “regional momentum”.

Determinants:

Most non-electoral regime changes succeed because of factors beyond the public’s view, namely the state of affairs within the “deep state” and in particular the loyalty of the military forces that enjoy a legal monopoly on violence by virtue of their being. It’s important, however, that there’s some “plausible” public pretext for the regime change, be it protests, a corruption scandal, or a disputed election, and the unity of the “deep state” is also another important determinant because rival factions might abuse the aforesaid for their own purposes. Sometimes the threat of sanctions against the incumbent and their clique for using force to quell unrest could widen “deep state” divisions and facilitate regime change.

Who’s Next On The Chopping Block?

All of this begs the question of which countries might be next to experience their own non-electoral regime changes, with the following ones most closely aligning with the author’s model elaborated on above and being presented in alphabetical order:

* Cameroon:

President Biya won his sixth term in office late last year following a serious breakdown of law and order in the separatist Anglophone region abutting the Nigerian border, which came on the heels of Cameroon finally seeming to surmount the challenge posed by Boko Haram in the northern part of the country. The primary geostrategic consequence of his ouster under the possible scenario of a nascent Color Revolution in the cities merging with the Unconventional War in the rural periphery might be the destabilization of what the author described as China’s plans to create a “West-Central African CPEC”, though if managed properly by the “deep state”, it might contrarily stabilize this megaproject’s viability if the choreography succeeds in placating the population.

* Republic of the Congo:

The other less-discussed Congo located between the DRC and Gabon, this one is presided over by one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders who recently joined OPEC and also put an end to a simmering insurgency in the Pool region surrounding the capital. Unlike Cameroon, it’s less clear what the geostrategic consequences of a non-electoral regime change here could be, but it might potentially be a factor in whether the country continues to remain within the joint orbit of France and China or decisively pivots to one or the other. In this sense, it could change the “balance of power” in Central Africa and contribute to the gradual retreat of Françafrique in the face of overall Chinese gains in France’s historic “sphere of influence” and Russia’s recent ones in the Central African Republic.

* Chad:

Occupying the pivot space between Saharan and Equatorial Africa, President Idriss Deby came to power on the back of a coup in 1990 and has remained in office ever since, mostly relying on the fact that his country’s military is regarded as one of the strongest in all of the continent and has an operational reach as far west as Mali. He’s not without his domestic detractors, however, some of whom have led large rebel formations towards the capital in several unsuccessful coup attempts that were at times thwarted through the intervention of his French ally, such as last month when Paris bombed an anti-government convoy that crossed into northern Chad from Libya. For all of its faults, Chad seems to be “too big to fail” for France and it’s unlikely that the former colonizer will ever let this prized piece of real estate slip from its grasp.

* Equatorial Guinea:

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has reigned for nearly four decades and survived numerous coup attempts, some of which were planned by mercenaries in this tiny but oil-rich island-coastal nation in the strategic Gulf of Guinea.  Being located where it is and with the resource wealth that it has, it’s an important piece of the African chessboard that France might want to pry away from its American ally in order to reinforce its policy of Françafrique that’s facing its greatest threat ever from China and Russia in Central Africa. Apart from the “friendly competition” between those two Great Powers, there isn’t really much else that can be said at this time about the possible outcome of any non-electoral regime change in Equatorial Guinea.

* Mozambique:

The incumbent leader has only been in power for a few years, but he represents the corrupt and increasingly reviled FRELIMO party that’s been ruling Mozambique since independence, though to their credit, the authorities have been progressively implementing what appears to be a “phased leadership transition” to incorporate the former RENAMO rebel opposition into the country’s “deep state” as part of a peace deal. That said, this responsible arrangement could always collapse at any time, and the country is nowadays threatened by mysterious jihadists who’ve been wreaking havoc along the northern borderland with Tanzania, so “black swan” developments that might trigger a non-electoral regime change are more likely here than in most of the other predicted targets, which could have an impact on global LNG geopolitics given its sizeable offshore reserves (coincidentally located in close proximity to where the new terrorist threat emerged) and regional security.

* Sudan:

Sudan is undoubtedly in the throes of a multifaceted Hybrid War that the author elaborated upon at length in a previous piece late last year and which should be skimmed for reference if one’s interested in the strategic nuances involved, but the latest update is that its “deep state” might be preparing for a “phased leadership transition” in a manner which seemed to have influenced the Algerian one that suddenly followed soon thereafter. Simply put, Sudan is indispensable to China’s Silk Road vision for Africa and is also Russia’s gateway to the continent, so its destabilization and possible “Balkanization” like President al-Bashir warned about a year and a half ago would inflict very serious damage to multipolar integration processes all across the continent.

* Uganda:

Finally, the country that most closely fits the criteria of the author’s non-electoral regime change model is Uganda, the military heavyweight in the transregional East and Central African space that’s been ruled by President Museveni for the last one-third of a century. During the last few years, however, his mostly-youthful population (which is also one of the fastest growing in Africa, notwithstanding the large amounts of migration [sometimes illegal] that it receives) has become restive and most recently (and one can argue, quite naively) placed their hopes in the singer-turned-politician Bobi Wine because they see in him a comparatively younger face of anti-systemic change. However a non-electoral regime change might unfold in Uganda, its consequences would change the entire “balance of power” in this strategic part of the world at the height of the New Great Game and modern-day “Scramble for Africa” in the New Cold War.

Concluding Thoughts

Using the latest events in Algeria as the lead-in to discussing the other non-electoral regime changes and attempts thereof that took place in Africa since the “Arab Spring”, it’s clear to see that three separate – but sometimes interconnected scenarios – have unfolded, be they Color Revolutions like in the aforementioned 2011 events, genuine non-externally-influenced people’s movements like 2014 Burkina Faso, or “deep state” coups such as what took place in 2017 Angola and which later structurally inspired the subsequent ones in Ethiopia and Algeria (both of which were driven in part by the first two scenarios). All countries have power structures (“deep states”), but some are more flexible than others when confronting bottom-up pressure (which may or may not be externally influenced – and in the future, possibly weaponized against China’s geostrategic interests), which usually makes or breaks the regime change operation and will determine whether the forecasted targets will survive if they end up on the chopping block too.

eurasiafuture.com