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Understanding AFRICOM – Part III
Understanding AFRICOM:
A Contextual Reading of Empire’s New Combatant Command
(This is the last part of the Understanding AFRICOM series. You may want to start with reading part I and part II. A PDF version of the complete series is available. Your comments on this are welcome here.)
by b real
A New Cold War in Africa
Apart from its role in protecting oil and natural gas supplies, AFRICOM will inherit additional responsibility on a continent that is fast becoming the geopolitical centerpiece in a new Cold War. Aimed toward countering China, this context will cast the new combatant command on a parallel with that of EUCOM in its task containing the Eastern Bloc during the decades following the Second World War.
The most significant challenge to U.S. policy in Africa in the coming years may be China. The immediate topic of most strategic discussions regarding China and Africa is oil competition. "Twenty years ago, China was East Asia’s largest oil exporter. Now it is the world’s second-largest importer; last year, it alone accounted for 31 percent of global growth in oil demand." Just as the U.S. is recognizing the importance of African oil to its interests, China is actively seeking to expand its own market share. But China’s economic (and thus political) engagement of Africa since the turn of the century goes far beyond the hunt for energy. China’s overall trade with Africa doubled from 2002 to 2003, and then doubled again between 2003 and 2005. This 400% growth in three years comes atop 700% growth in the decade of the 1990s, and there is no end in sight. China is now Africa’s third largest trading partner, behind the U.S. and France, and ahead of former colonial power Britain.
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Thus Chinese engagement in Africa threatens to substantially reduce the leverage of the U.S. and its Western allies, and thereby undermine the political and economic reform agendas the West has been pushing in Africa for two decades. More than this, however, successful economic engagement by China could open a huge new market for trade and investment, which it would be in position to dominate. The political implications of an economically emerging Africa in close alliance with China are disconcerting in the U.S. policy circles. China’s engagement in Africa may soon challenge the longstanding American perception that ‘there is no there there,’ and encourage serious, interest-driven U.S. engagement with Africa for the first time in history. [48]
Africa weighs heavily in China’s plans for the future. Government officials have been making regular trips to Africa for the last few years, buying stakes in oil and natural gas fields, dealing for a variety of resources & agricultural products vital to its rapidly growing economy, signing trade agreements with 45 nations, handing out loans to starving governments, canceling debts, and lining up infrastructure projects. A three-year plan revealed at last November’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing clearly outlines objectives on multiple fronts to build upon a partnership between China and the majority of African nations.
The plan pledges that China will:
Double aid to Africa by 2009 (to about $1bn)
Set up a $5 bn China-Africa development fund to encourage Chinese companies to invest in Africa
Provide $3 bn in preferential loans and $2 bn in preferential buyer’s credits to African countries
Cancel all debt stemming from Chinese interest-free government loans that matured by the end of 2005, for the 31 highly indebted and least developed countries (LDCs) in Africa that have relations with China (an amount estimated at around $1.4 bn)
Further open China’s markets to exports from African LDCs by increasing from 190 to 440 the number of products receiving zero-tariff treatment
Train 15,000 African professionals, double the number of Chinese government scholarships given annually to Africans (to 4,000) and send 100 senior agricultural experts and 300 youth volunteers
Build 30 hospitals, 30 malaria treatment centers and 100 rural schools [49]
Chinese entrepreneurs have also been making inroads into the continent. As one analysis pointed out, "The 800 Chinese companies in Africa are viewed by Beijing as fulfilling both political and economic roles, and as part of a diplomatic effort to project influence." [50] Africa has become both a necessary market for Chinese goods and a laboratory for new products and market campaigns. The influence is continent-wide and largely received favorably by many nations looking to get out under the claws of the Western neoliberal institutions. And this reality is making the imperialists in Washington see red.
China has secured oil fields and exploration rights in nations ranging from Kenya and Sudan in the East to Congo in Central Africa, and Angola in the West. And Nigeria, holding 70 percent of Africa’s oil, has not gone ignored either.
Obasanjo is also shaking up the oil industry in a double maneuver interpreted as a rap on the knuckles for his Western allies and a last ditch effort to secure a legacy as the one Nigerian leader who tamed corruption in that sector.
American, British, and French oil companies enjoyed a virtual monopoly of Nigeria’s oil industry. Royal Dutch Shell’s joint venture with the government produces half of the country’s daily output of 2.5 million barrels. Two U.S. companies, Chevron Texaco and Mobil, are also key players. Obasanjo’s new oil policy threatens this dominance.
China made a dramatic entry into the picture last April, when Nigerian officials announced that China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) had bought a 45% stake in a Nigerian oil field for more than $2 billion. That field will pump 225,000 barrels per day when it begins production in 2008. Obasanjo also negotiated a loan of $1 billion from the Chinese government to finance repair of Nigeria’s railways and buy new rolling stock.
These deals were brokered at the height of the constitutional drama, when America said it would not support an attempt by the government to extend its stay in office unconstitutionally. In addition to rolling out the welcome mat for energy-hungry China, oil ministry officials say they will tighten financial regulations and impose sanctions on companies seen as defaulting on tax and royalty payments – moves apparently aimed as local subsidiaries in the Niger Delta. [51]
Two months after the $2.27 billion deal for the offshore oil-mining license, CNOOC paid Nigeria another $60 million USD for a 35 percent stake in one more offshore license. And Nigeria has currently opened another 50-60 oil and gas blocks up for investors, of which China is only one expected taker. [52] Basically, China has a lot of money to invest in Africa, and securing energy supplies prominently figures into its agenda.
Obviously, this conflicts with the United States’ priorities, as do the economic inroads that China has been successfully establishing in the continent, and Africa finds itself the major set piece for the grand game.
In More Than Humanitarianism, the Council on Foreign Relations … depicts the leading threat as coming from China: "China has altered the strategic context in Africa. All across Africa today, China is acquiring control of natural resource assets, outbidding Western contractors on major infrastructure projects, and providing soft loans and other incentives to bolster its competitive advantage." China imports more than a quarter of its oil from Africa, primarily Angola, Sudan, and Congo. It is Sudan’s largest foreign investor. It has provided heavy subsidiaries to Nigeria to increase its influence and has been selling fighter jets there. Most threatening from the standpoint of U.S. grand strategists is China’s $2 billion low-interest loan to Angola in 2004, which has allowed Angola to withstand IMF demands to reshape its economy and society along neoliberal lines.
For the Council on Foreign Relations, all of this adds up to nothing less than a threat to Western imperialist control of Africa. Given China’s role, the council report says, "the United States and Europe cannot consider Africa their chasse gardé [private hunting ground], as the French once did in francophone Africa. The rules are changing as China seeks not only to gain access to resources, but also to control resource production and distribution, perhaps positioning itself for priority access as these resources become scarcer." The council report on Africa is so concerned with combating China through the expansion of U.S. military operations in the region, that none other than Chester Crocker, former assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Reagan administration, charges it with sounding "wistfully nostalgic for an era when the United States or the West was the only influence and could pursue its … objectives with a free hand." [53]
AFRICOM is a vital centralization of that military expansion into the 21st century scramble for Africa. The U.S. naval buildup along Africa’s coasts is part of a new "force projection" that not only serves to monitor and protect strategic waterways, but also to intimidate and deter Empire’s enemies. Pentagon and think-tank strategists, responding to perceptions of China’s buildup of their own naval powers, are moving their game pieces around the world accordingly, "making sure that strategic waterways are under their control from the Straits of Hormuz to the Malacca Straits."
The United States’ desperation to control and patrol one of the world’s vital sea lanes – the Malacca Strait – indicates just how advanced the U.S. China geo-political containment policy is. A third of all world trade goes through the Strait, as well as eighty percent of China’s oil imports. … Due to threats of ‘terrorism’ and ‘piracy’ America has set up the PSI (Proliferation Security Initiatives) and RMSI – the ‘Regional Maritime Security Initiative’ – which is designed to ‘protect’ and ‘patrol’ this waterway. Discussing the issue in the Jakarta Post in June 2006, Ria Jaslim wrote: "China’s fast-paced economic growth and strengthening defense capabilities place them in a position to challenge America’s leadership in the Asia-Pacific region. This latent competition will likely prompt the U.S. to adopt a strategy to contain China. This would include controlling the sea-lines of communication and strategic maritime checkpoints, such as the Strait of Malacca, and thus indirectly controlling the movement of raw materials and goods to China.
Thus, the real reason America wants to bolster its presence in the region, and specifically the Strait of Malacca, is to limit China’s access to oil, raw materials, technology and industrial equipment, and to contain China’s influence in the region. Using the threat of terrorism and piracy to strengthen the Proliferation Security Initiatives is the most likely strategy."[54]
These increases in naval activity and initiatives in and around the Gulf of Guinea can be interpreted in the same manner. The possibility of a large strategic naval base on the island of Sao Tome and Principe [55] reminds one of an earlier era of U.S. imperial expansion aimed at the East. Efforts underway to sell resistant Gulf nations on the needs for maritime security programs, building maritime interoperability, forge the bottom section of the "ring fencing" of Nigeria. On the ground to the north, the TSCTI is connecting local militaries under U.S. command, fed regularly on a diet of GWOT pabulum and Congressional funding.
In FY 2005, the TSCTI received $16 million; in FY 2006, nearly $31 million. "The big push comes in 2008, when the administration hopes to get $100 million each year for five years." All of this far exceeds the $7.75 million allocated to the earlier Pan-Sahel Initiative. If and when the new African Command is approved by President Bush, funding will be ramped up accordingly. [56]
The goal of building large regional battalions may very well foreshadow larger proxy wars, as well as attempts at the strategic blocking of resource routes from Sub-Saharan to Northern Africa. Efforts are already under way to block access to deep seaports along the Horn of Africa, limiting seaway lanes to China (and India). Regime changes continue in the objective of gaining accommodating client states in strategic zones across the continent. Increases in arms trade and military hardware to gain stability. Agencies and contractors on the ground, building HUMINT. Money changes hands to arm insurgents and warlords. Election results are overturned to keep useful leaders in power. Intelligence equipment and assistance are offered for neutralizing "terrorists." Already, the U.S. supports unpopular governments in nations such as Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Central African Republican, Somalia, and Algeria.
Perhaps the most worrying of America’s new military partners in the [Sahel] region is Algeria. According to [former EUCOM deputy commander General Charles] Wald, European Command is working "heavily" with the Algerian government. When asked about Algeria’s contribution to the war on terrorism, Wald has said, "I think they’re doing a fantastic job," and that the U.S. military has "a lot to learn from the Algerians." But as Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, recently told the House of Representatives: "In human rights terms, Algeria, with its documented record of torture and ‘disappearances,’ is in many ways a model of how not to fight terrorism." During Algeria’s long-running struggle with the GSPC and other Islamic insurgents, Malinowski explained, "security forces arrested and tortured thousands of suspects. They engaged in summary executions, often rounding up victims arbitrarily in reprisal for attacks on their own troops. And between 1993 and 1997, they picked up and made ‘disappear’ an estimated 7,000 Algerians who remain unaccounted for until this day." [57]
This sort of "support" is only bound to increase as rhetoric of stabilizing Africa makes the dailies, copied directly out of official AFRICOM press releases. Readers of the mainstream media can expect to encounter more frequent usages of terms like "blunder" and "misguided." Already the propagandists decry China’s human rights record and support for Sudan and Zimbabwe while ignoring the ongoing violations of Western corporations engaged in the various extraction industries as they plunder natural resources and pollute other peoples homelands, of U.S. gunships mowing down villagers in the Horn, and of SOF-trained armies reportedly committing atrocities across the continent to pacify rebellions over territorial and resource disputes and "shore up" repressive regimes.
In that December Report to Members of the Committee on Foreign Relations, one can read the following example of U.S. priorities in the human and civil rights context.
One Central African country in particular illustrates the need for State Department perspective and guidance to temper Defense Department enthusiasm. The country is unstable, desperately poor, and run by a repressive government that is being challenged by a persistent armed resistance. Desperate for a military strong enough to protect it from the rebels, the government has signed an Article 98 agreement, exempting U.S. military personnel from International Criminal Court procedures and thus enabling it to receive military assistance. It has also signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the United States. With extensive "under-governed spaces" as potential terrorist havens and bordering countries with equally uncertain futures, the country was termed "a model country for security assistance" by the regional combatant command. Civilian embassy officials, however, are demonstrably less keen. They question the rate at which military programs are rapidly escalating and the sizable and still growing presence of U.S. military personnel in-country. A U.S.-labeled backpack, observed on a government soldier undergoing U.S. training, underscored for SFRC staff the potential complications of a too-close association with the country’s military. It would be a major setback if the United States were to be implicated in support of operations shoring up the repressive regime, regardless of the stated intent of such training. [58]
A new cold war is underway in Africa, and AFRICOM will be at the dark heart of it.
Conclusion
Africa has been through this before, caught in the middle of a global chessboard during the first Cold War as competing world powers sought to win friends and contain enemies at the expense of those in the way. Militaries were trained and armed to fight proxy battles or overthrow unsympathetic regimes. Rhetorical allusions to notions of human rights and democratic governments lost out to the more pragmatic ends of protecting economic ideologies. For the most part, the blood that spilled was largely that of Africa, again prevented from achieving true independence, self-identity, and prosperity. The old Cold War blew in primarily on the exaggerated vapors of ideology. This one is not so abstract.
Africa is now perceived as the final frontier for the world’s energy supplies, crucial for the preservation of hi-tech global civilizations, and this new scramble will be much more serious. This is the context in which the new combatant command enters the history books, at the junction of the early 21st century and the pending flare out of the petroleum age. Expanding the military reach of the most powerful empire the planet has ever known, AFRICOM will be tasked with the responsibility of achieving full-spectrum dominance over mother Africa for fuel. Operating as both energy-protection service and strategic Cold War front, the unified command will concentrate whatever military forces are necessary to keep the furnaces of Empire lit. Whether AFRICOM will succeed in this directive is beside the point, for, while ends may justify the means for the elite in power, their so-called "national interest" payoff, it is regular people who pay the full price at all times. And it does not require a crystal ball or great imagination to realize what the increased militarization of the continent through AFRICOM will bring to the peoples of Africa.
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A PDF version of the complete series is available.
Your comments on this are welcome here.
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Notes:
48. Lawson
49. Ernest Harsch, "Big leap in China-Africa ties," African Renewal, Vol.20 #4 (January 2007), page 3, [link]
50. Bright B. Simons, Evans Lartey and Franklin Cudjoe, "China On Safari: Emperor Hu’s new clothes for Africa," Asia Times Online, February 8, 2007, [link]
51. Ike Okonta, "Obasanjo’s Troubling End-Game," Project Syndicate, July 2006, [link]
52. "Nigeria To Launch New Oil and Gas Licensing Round," Alexander’s Gas & Oil Connection, January 16, 2007, [link]
53. Foster
54. Maryann Keady, "U.S.-China and a New Cold War," January 14, 2007, [link]
55. [link]
56. Lubeck, Watts and Lipschutz
57. Khatchadourian
58. "Embassies As Command Posts in the Anti-Terror Campaign," p.5
PINR: Somalia Reverts to Political Fragmentation
The partial tabulation of violent incidents, protests and local conflicts during the first three weeks of February has been chronicled by PINR to give readers a sense of the persistent and deepening instability that characterizes Somalia today, and to temper statements by the T.F.G., Western powers, and regional and international organizations that the country has a “window of opportunity” to form a legitimate and effective government that would reverse the devolutionary cycle.
Taken separately, the events on the ground have not caused the collapse of the T.F.G. or forced the Ethiopians to withdraw from Somalia; taken together, they show the T.F.G. and the Ethiopians to be on the defensive and embattled, probably by multiple forces, and the population to be seeking safety in sub-clans. As PINR has noted before, the longer the devolutionary cycle goes on and deepens, the more difficult it will be for the T.F.G. to become a viable authority, whether or not reconciliation talks are held and/or AMISOM is deployed. Rather than making progress since the end of January, the T.F.G. has lost ground and is more dependent than ever on the support of external actors. As the T.F.G. gropes for a purchase, Somalia reverts to political fragmentation.
znet: Somalia: An Oily Cliché
The story begins in 1990, just prior to the horrible famine of almost Biblical porportions that claimed thousands of innocent lives in Somalia. Mohamed Said Barre was in charge of the country. Barre signed of nearly two-thirds of his country to Conoco, Amoco, Chevron, and Phillips (this was prior to the Conoco-Phillips merger). Unfortunately for them, Barre was overthrown by Mohammed Farah Aideed of the rival Hebr Gedr clan in January 1991 and launched a civil war shortly thereafter.
After Aideed started the civil war, the oil giants were unable to work their concessions for two reasons. One, the constant fighting, robbery, and pirating off the coast made it impossible. Second, it was technically illegal because Somalia did not have a recognized government. Since Somalia was run by a that it was illegal to do business with, the oil companies were out of luck. Either the U.S. had to legitimize Aideed in the eyes of the international community or remove him. Either way, the fighting had to stop.
As one of his last acts as President, George H.W. Bush (who owned oil concessions across the Gulf of Aden in Marib, Yemen via Hunt Oil) sent the first wave of U.S. soldiers to Somalia to officially help deliver food to starving Somalis. Meanwhile, U.S. Special Envoy to Somalia Robert Oakley kept in daily contact with Aideed from December 1992 to May 1993. He was unsuccessful in his negotiations to end the fighting. President Bill Clinton then resorted to “Operation Restore Hope.” Conoco’s office in Mogadishu served as a de facto U.S. Embassy for the landing Marines after the original building was shelled and looted. Mr. Oakley and Marine General Frank Libutti wrote a letter of commendation to Conoco Somalia’s General Manager Raymond Marchand thanking him for his service.
After a series of unsuccessful assassination attempts by U.S. forces, the Somalis struck back during a U.S. raid in the infamous “Blackhawk Down” incident (the U.S. Army dubbed it the “Battle of the Black Sea” while the Somalis’ called it “Maalinti Rangers” [Day of the Rangers]) on 3-4 October, 1994 that claimed the lives of 18 Americans and one Malaysian soldier. President Clinton pulled out of Somalia and the place was left to its own devices while the U.S. cultivated relationships with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Djibouti’s President Hassan Gouled, and Eritrea’s President Isaias Afewerki.
and, i’ve linked to the excerpted chapter that counterpunch ran from r.t naylor’s book previously, but it fits here too. especially as a counter to the spin about AQ in somalia.
To the Shores of Muqdisho: Usama in the Land of Qat, Clan and Cattle
It did not take long after 9/11/2001 for certain American institutions with small minds containing bitter memories to see the chance to use the post 9/11 atmosphere to even some outstanding scores. The usual prime-time experts on places to which they had never been, with names they could not pronounce, insisted that Usama received much of his terror treasure from sympathetic Somalis, well known for their hoards of clandestine wealth, that his operatives (including those responsible for the 1998 embassy bombings) had taken advantage of Somalia’s lawless society, long shoreline, and porous borders to smuggle guns and operatives, and that bin Laden himself was intent on making the place his next hideout. He could also use Somalia to run lucrative rackets, particularly in drugs and counterfeit money, to bolster his finances.
To deal with the first, the U.S. Treasury right after 9/11 had blocked on virtually a world-wide basis the transfer of funds from the Somali Diaspora to families back home–at a time when those remittances, annually around $250 million (some estimates ran to $500 million), were the only thing keeping the country afloat. (Apparently no one bothered to point out to the Treasury that if the problem was Somalia as a source of terror funds, it made little sense to block the flow of money to the country.) To handle the second, the U.S. Navy quickly sent a warship to keep an eye on Somalia’s unguarded 1,000-plus kilometer coastline which is serviced by enough small smuggling vessels to make southern Florida blush with envy. To take care of the third, the military dusted off plans for direct intervention, while waiting the situation on the ground to become more propitious. After all, based on the emerging fiasco in Afghanistan and the inevitable drainage of forces that Iraq would entail, it had enough sense to let to wait until proxy forces could do as much of the work, face as much of the danger and share as much of the resulting opprobrium as possible. After all, it had bitter experience in such matters.
Information about bin Laden’s intimate association with Somalia came from the kinds of objective and disinterested sources so often called upon in the Terror War. They included landlocked Ethiopia covetously eyeing a strip of the Somali coast; Somali warlords who, eager to emulate the Afghan Northern Alliance, wanted to use the U.S. military against local rivals; and the Pentagon, which had its own grudge. Among the misdeeds in Somalia they jointly and severally imputed to the dour Saudi were: his central role in the lucrative traffic in qat, the popular local “narcotic”; his financing and/or training of al-Ittihad al-Islamiyya (Islamic Unity), a local terrorist movement that had repaid him by helping to bomb the U.S. embassies; and his role in killing eighteen U.S. soldiers who, in 1993, had been simply helping with relief aid in the famine-ravaged country. Proof of this last offense came during the invasion of Afghanistan, when U.S. troops found in an “al-Qaeda stronghold” a GPS system taken from a U.S. soldier killed in Somalia–where he undoubtedly had been using it to locate pockets of starving people in need of an Afghan-style food drop. Hours after the find was announced, the company that had supplied the unit pointed out, uncooperatively, that it had been manufactured four years after U.S. forces had precipitously pulled out of Somalia.
Posted by: b real | Feb 23 2007 16:17 utc | 15
here’s an example of how little power the TFG has in somalia
earlier last week the gvmt tried to exert control over the media
Shabelle Media Network: Press Statement on Government curbs and threatens freedom of independent media in Somalia
Mogadishu 20, Feb.07 ( Sh.M.Network) Shabelle Media Network is deeply shocked and dismayed at the restrictions and threats directed at the freedom of local media by the transitional federal government of Somalia.
The national security agency of the transitional federal government have officially ordered the independent radio stations in Mogadishu not to report on anything that the government doesn’t need to be reported.
Gen. Nuur Mohammed Mohamud (Nuur Shirbow), the deputy chief of the Somali national security department, who chaired the meeting with the local media representatives, read the following articles;
1- You can not report about the Somali government and Ethiopian military operations in the capital as they are considered top secret.
2- You can not report about the civilian population fleeing the city under any circumstances.
3- The remnants of the Islamic Courts Union are directly responsible for the explosions and violence in the capital Mogadishu.
4- As there is an emergency state in place in Somalia generally, there is no so called freedom of expressions.
5- The government will nominate editors for these three radio stations and you must cooperate with them.
During the closed meeting with the directors of Shabelle, Horn Afrik and Benedir Radio Stations at the head quarter of NSA, General Nur Shirbow threatened the directors that part of the martial law imposed on the country, government soldiers can shoot and kill everyone they want.
however, the threats met w/ wide condemnations, the TFG had to backpeddle, and today’s headlines at shabelle read
A large number of residents in Mogadishu flee
Mogadishu 24, Feb.07 ( Sh.M.Network) – New exodus has begun in some of Mogadishu neighborhoods where residents have not fled during the Ethiopian and insurgents’ heavy weaponry exchanges in the past two weeks.
Residents living in Wadajir, Dharkenley and Karan, districts in the Somali capital Mogadishu, have massed in bus stations in Mogadishu on Saturday.
Many of the fleeing families have told Shabelle that they are fleeing in fear that they would be victimized by the guerrilla war staged by unknown gunmen against the presence of Ethiopian troops in Somalia.
Thousands of people have fled the capital Mogadishu since the mortar attacks against Ethiopian and Somali government positions deepened in the capital launched by unknown armed people who claimed to be members of a new organization dubbed the People’s Resistance Movement in the two migrations, while the Ethiopian troops fire back when attacked.
The new mass departures were fleeing to nearby region, Afgoi, about 30 km south of Mogadishu.
Also on Saturday, several hundreds of residents vacated their homes in neighborhoods around former Somali defense ministry, currently an Ethiopian military base, where heavy skirmishes between the insurgents and the Ethiopian forces occurred in late Friday afternoon, fearing other probable attacks against Ethiopian troops in the capital.
People were hiring buses to travel to southern and central provinces in Somalia. Most of the migrating people, women and children, were heading towards Baidoa about 245 km south of the capital.
meanwhile,
U.S. Diplomat Sees Progress in Somalia
Somalia’s struggle to form a unified government after 15 years of clan warfare is achieving success, thanks to partners in the Horn of Africa region like Ethiopia and with help from the United Nations, the African Union (AU) and the United States, Ambassador Vicki Huddleston told the Council on Foreign Relations February 22 in Washington.
Huddleston, a former U.S. envoy to Mali and Madagascar, recently served for 15 months as acting ambassador to Ethiopia, whose government, she said, was instrumental in “pressing for dialogue” between the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the Islamic Courts Council (ICC), a radical Islamist movement that had wrested control of the country until driven from power by a coalition of TFG and Ethiopian forces in December 2006 after talks failed.
Before that victory, “many warned that if Ethiopia intervened on behalf of the transitional government it would fuel a wider war. They were all wrong,” Huddleston told the CFR panel.
Now “Ethiopia’s and the Somali government’s surprisingly easy victories have given Somalia — and the West — a second chance to get things right,” said Huddleston, who returned in December 2006 from Addis Ababa.
As it stands now, “we do have a success in Somalia,” the diplomat said.
for a complete debunking of this nonsense, read the PINR analysis that i linked to in comment #15 above. that particular analysis, which in its declared purpose of just reporting the facts happens to completely omit the u.s. role/interest in the events, makes it clear that (1) the any power the TFG actually holds is symbolic, propped up w/ external help, (2) somalia is once again a deeply unstable country, reverting back to its fragmented, chaotic condition prior to the unification & order achieved by the ICU, and (3) “the introduction of AMISOM will further weaken the TFG’s position.”
your tax dollars at work
Posted by: b real | Feb 24 2007 20:43 utc | 29
some links
Nigeria plans new refineries with Venezuela and Iran
Minister of Petroleum Resources, Edmund Daukoru says Nigeria is negotiating with several oil companies including state-run firms from Venezuela and Iran, on the establishment of two refineries that will cost about $ 6 bn.
“Iran and Venezuela are involved in these discussions. There are also majors (international oil companies) Total, Shell, and Chevron,” he said.
The capacity of each refinery may be around 200,000 barrels.
“We are at early stage… We also have to get around the domestic situation. We have price caps here in Nigeria on diesel and gasoline and, obviously, that’s a concern to investors,” the Minister further said that India, which has already been looking at other energy investments in Nigeria, is also looking at the possibility of taking stakes in the refineries.
US oil major Chevron, Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell and France’s Total are also considering investment stakes in the projects, Daukoru said. The negotiations also entail discussions with some of the companies about building production facilities to convert cassava, a root vegetable that is a staple food in Nigeria, into ethanol.
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According to him, the country’s four state-run refineries have for years operated at reduced capacity, due poor management and maintenance and sabotage. He said the country has tried to boost its refining capacity by requiring companies bidding in some of the country’s recent oil exploration rounds to also invest in refineries.
Daukoru said he expected to announce in coming weeks a formal date for the country’s next bidding round on oil exploration blocks. The round will involve at least 20 onshore and offshore blocks, Daukoru said. In January, he said.
Nigeria planned a bidding round involving up to 60 oil blocks and also said talks were underway with India’s state-run NTPC Ltd. on a deal involving a new power plant and Nigerian supplies of liquefied natural gas to India. Nigeria’s oil production in January averaged 2.1 mm bpd, down from December, Daukoru said.
Nigeria produced about 2.25 mm bpd in December, according to OPEC’s monthly oil market report released in January.
Oil majors fine-tune plans for Nigerian gas project
A consortium of ChevronTexaco, Shell, British Gas and NNPC has concluded arrangements for the take-off of the 30-mm tpy Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant. The $ 7-bn project will commence operation before the end of the second quarter of this year at Olokola (OK) Free Trade Zone.
The Ondo Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, Chief Bode Sunmonu, said in Akure that “at the construction stage, OK LNG will require the services of 4,500 engineers and technicians”.
Sunmonu said at a ministerial press briefing that the pioneer housing camps alone would host 20,000 people and generate more than 60,000 employment opportunities. The commissioner explained that the gas plant would further make the OK Free Trade Zone attractive for gas-related industries for easy assess to the feedstock.
He said the free trade zone was an integrated multipurpose project made up of a free trade zone, a deep sea port complex and an oil and gas logistic base covering 10,000 hectares. The project, jointly promoted bythe governments of Ondo and Ogun states, was one of the ventures conceived by the Ondo government to serve as a catalyst to the economic development of the two states, he said.
human rights watch: Chop Fine: The Human Rights Impact of Local Government Corruption and Mismanagement in Rivers State, Nigeria
Summary
Nigeria has produced several hundred billion dollars worth of oil since independence in 1960, but ordinary Nigerians have derived appallingly little benefit from all of that wealth. This situation exists primarily because successive governments, both military and civilian, have stolen or misused much of Nigeria’s tremendous oil wealth. The head of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has stated that the country lost as much as $380 billion to corruption and waste between 1960 and 1999, the year Nigeria’s current government came to power.
The human rights impact of those losses has been profound, as funds that government could have spent on basic health care and primary education for Nigeria’s citizens have instead been squandered or embezzled. Nigeria’s public schools and clinics have been left to crumble and wither away and Nigerians have suffered greatly from the decay of those vital public services. Accurate statistics do not exist, but one million Nigerian children are believed to die each year before the age of five, and most of those children lose their lives to diseases that are easily preventable or treatable at low cost. The country is also thought to have the world’s second-highest number of maternal deaths each year, trailing only India. Public primary schools have reached the point of near-collapse in many areas, with many children passing through the system without learning to read.
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Until 1999, local governments often lacked any real resources to invest in health and education, but local revenues have now risen to unprecedented levels, due largely to rising oil prices in recent years. Local government budgets in much of Nigeria have quadrupled since 1999, fueled by federal government allocations that have risen on the strength of international oil prices. Too often, local leaders have failed to direct that windfall into any attempt to meet their most important responsibilities.
Human Rights Watch investigated these failures in Rivers State, which is in the oil-producing Niger Delta region. Rivers is the heart of Nigeria’s oil industry and its state government is wealthier than that of any other Nigerian state. The contradiction between Rivers’ wealth and the material deprivation experienced by many of its people could not be any starker.
In five local governments researched by Human Rights Watch in Rivers, local administrations have failed to make more than nominal investments into health care and education. Much of the money that could have gone into improving these services has been squandered or outright stolen. Human Rights Watch found that one local government chairman habitually deposited his government’s money into his own private bank account. Another has siphoned off money by allocating it towards a “football academy” that he has not built. According to state and federal government officials, civil society activists and other sources, these problems mirror the situation in most of Rivers’ local governments.
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This report is based on a four-week research mission to Nigeria. That research included visits to five of Rivers State’s 23 local governments—Etche, Khana, Tai, Obio/Akpor and Akuku/Toru—as well as interviews in Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers State, and the national capital Abuja. Human Rights Watch conducted more than 100 interviews with government officials, civil servants, donor agency officials, health care workers, teachers, civil society groups and residents of communities in Rivers.
Mercenaries for hire: Part 1
In this two-part series, Mmegi correspondent ALEXANDER VON PALESKE looks at the West’s involvement in the failed [2004] coup in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea. This first instalment profiles the personalities at the centre of the plot.
The mercenaries who were involved in the coup are in court in Zimbabwe and South Africa this week. This scandal seems to be drawing towards a dramatic end. So how did it all start?
On March 7, 2004, an old Boeing 727 started from the Wonderboom airport near Pretoria.
On board were 62 mercenaries, former members of apartheid South African terror and destruction gangs, like the Buffalo Battalion, 44 Parachute Brigade, Reconnaissance Commandos (Recce) and the death squadron, Civil Cooperation Bureau.
Their destination: Malabo, the capital city of the tiny but oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, Africa’s third largest oil exporter after Nigeria and Angola.
The task: to oust the despotic president, Obiang Mbasogo Nguema, and install a puppet government under the opposition politician in Spanish exile, Severo Moto Nsa, and thus getting hold of the oil income.
part two doesn’t appear to be up yet
Posted by: b real | Feb 27 2007 19:50 utc | 36
two on equatorial guinea
dec. 2006: Awash in Oil and Misery — Equatorial Guinea’s U.S.- Backed Dictatorship
Self-evidently, the triangle in Equatorial Guinea formed by Obiang’s dictatorship, the country’s oil wealth and Western economic interests results in prisons like Black Beach and another one in Bata (second most important city in the country). In other words: the Obiang clan’s machinations, thoroughly greased by United States oil companies, have turned them into plutocrats amidst an impoverished, oppressed population, who barely enjoy even the most meager crumbs while the dictator’s family and the oil companies feast.
General Obiang is a dictator. Backed by Western governments, he denies fundamental human rights to his compatriots. The United States government and its allies hypocritically tolerate Obiang’s dictatorship so long as their international companies enjoy rights to exploit Equatorial Guinea’s oil wealth. While an exclusive minority obtain huge benefits, the majority only enjoy a notional “democratization process,” which in practice means occasional fraudulent elections, Presidential birthday “pardons” for prisoners, and empty political speeches on Independence Day, all under the complacent gaze of Western ambassadors.
april 2002: U.S. Oil Politics in the ‘Kuwait of Africa’
It helps that the companies active in Equatorial Guinea have close ties to the Bush Administration. In addition to political heavyweights like ExxonMobil and Chevron, those firms include CMS Energy (which recently sold its holdings in Equatorial Guinea to Marathon). CMS’s CEO, William McCormick, gave $100,000 to the Bush-Cheney 2001 Presidential Inaugural Committee. Ocean Energy’s consultant on its Malabo operations is Chester Norris, a former ambassador to Equatorial Guinea under George Bush Sr. Perhaps best connected of all is Triton, whose chairman, Tom Hicks, made Bush a millionaire fifteen times over when he bought the Texas Rangers in 1998. Hicks’s leveraged buyout firm, Hicks Muse, is Bush’s fourth-largest career financial patron, according to the Center for Public Integrity.
Bush’s decision to reopen the US Embassy was taken soon after he received a plea to do so from the oil industry. “It is important to underscore that most of the oil and gas concessions awarded in Equatorial Guinea to date, have been awarded to US firms,” said a memo drafted on behalf of the oil companies and sent to Bush last year. “This is in stark contrast to neighboring countries in the region, where the United States has consistently lost out to French and other European and Asian competitors.” Sisinio Mbana, first secretary at Equatorial Guinea’s embassy in Washington, told me that at least four Bush Administration officials have consulted with Guinean leaders, including two from the State Department who have met discreetly with Obiang. “The oil companies have done a lot for us,” Mbana said. “The State Department gets its information about Equatorial Guinea from them.”
In addition to direct lobbying, the oil industry sought to improve Obiang’s image by hiring the services of Bruce McColm, a former head of Freedom House who now runs the Institute for Democratic Strategies (IDS), a Virginia-based nonprofit whose stated mission is “strengthening democratic institutions.” The Obiang regime’s most tireless champion, McColm works closely with the government, which now pays him directly. (According to its latest nonprofit tax form, the IDS spent $223,000 in 2000, of which all but $10,000 went toward its Equatorial Guinea work.) In 2000 McColm sent a team of observers to monitor Equatorial Guinea’s municipal elections, which it reported to be basically free and fair. “Electoral officials should be recognized for discharging their responsibilities in an effective and transparent manner,” said an IDS press release at the time. “Observers generally felt that the positives of this election far outweighed the negatives.” This was in marked contrast to a UN report that said the electoral campaign “was characterized by the omnipresence of the [ruling] party, voting in public and the intimidating presence of the armed forces.”
The oil companies have also worked through the Corporate Council on Africa, which represents companies with investments on the continent. Last year the council published a “Country Profile” of Equatorial Guinea, which was paid for by six oil companies and AfricaGlobal, a DC lobby shop that at the time represented Obiang. The guidebook not only promotes the country as a new investment hot spot but also claims that the Obiang regime “has taken significant measures to encourage political diversity and address human and worker rights issues.” On February 8, the council sponsored a private luncheon for Obiang, who was visiting Washington with a small entourage. The event was held in the chandeliered dining room of downtown Washington’s Army-Navy Club, and each of the roughly fifty guests in attendance received a biography of Obiang, prepared by McColm’s IDS, that describes him as the country’s “first democratically elected president” and a man who has “embarked on the total physical reconstruction of his country and the improvement of the welfare of all its citizens.”
Sporting gold-rimmed glasses and dressed in a blue suit with American and Guinean flag pins on the lapels, Obiang sat at the head table, where he was dwarfed by oilmen and State Department officials. During a lunch of fish stuffed with crabmeat and a custard tart with raspberry syrup, a procession of five corporate executives sought to outdo each other in heaping praise on Obiang and his nation. “It will be the Kuwait of Africa,” gushed one of the speakers, Gene Van Dyke of Vanco. “It’s a fabulous country.”
aug 2004: Bank with close ties to Bush administration engulfed in scandal
The Justice Department announced on Friday that it is launching a criminal investigation into Riggs Bank. In recent months, the Washington-based bank has become engulfed in a scandal related to charges of money-laundering, corruption and terrorist financing.
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There are three separate activities for which Riggs has come under investigation: (1) its relationship with the Saudi royal family and the potential financing of two of the September 11 hijackers through an account owned by the wife of the Saudi ambassador; (2) its relationship with the corrupt and dictatorial regime of the oil-rich West African country of Equatorial Guinea; and (3) its banking business with the former military dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet.
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Equatorial Guinea was Riggs’ largest client. It held over 60 accounts at the bank, with varied holdings of $300-700 million. Its ruler, Teodoro Obian Nguema Mbasogo, came to power in a military coup in 1979 and is infamous for his corruption and brutality. Relations with the United States became strained in the mid-1990s, when the Clinton administration broke off diplomatic ties. However, these were restored by the Bush administration in 2003. The country holds interest for the United States because of its large oil reserves.
Riggs appears to have held both Equatorial Guinea government treasury accounts and the personal accounts of Obiang, his family members, and ministers in his government.
According to the subcommittee report, Riggs “serviced the EG [Equatorial Guinean] accounts with little or no attention to the bank’s anti-money laundering obligations…” For example, “Riggs opened multiple personal accounts for the President of Equatorial Guinea, his wife, and other relatives; helped establish shell offshore corporations for the EG President and his sons; and over a three-year period, from 2000 to 2002, facilitated nearly $13 million in cash deposits into Riggs accounts controlled by the EG President and his wife.”
Riggs also opened an account that received large sums of money from oil companies that did business with Equatorial Guinea, including Exxon Mobil, Amerada Hess, Marathon Oil and ChevronTexaco. Riggs allowed the wire transfer of over $35 million from the account to two unknown companies. “The Subcommittee has reason to believe that at least one of these recipient companies is controlled in whole or in part by the EG President.”
Riggs appears to have acted as a conduit for large-scale bribes or other corrupt machinations between the giant oil corporations and the dictator of a country with which they were eager to do business. The report also noted that these oil companies made a number of large payments (sometimes valued at over $1 million) to individual officials or family members for a variety of services.
The manager of Riggs’ accounts for Equatorial Guinea was Simon P. Kareri, who was eventually fired by the bank in January 2004. According to a bank employee, on more than one occasion Kareri visited the Equatorial Guinean embassy and returned with a suitcase full of $3 million in cash, which was deposited in the bank with no reports to financial regulators.
According to the subcommittee report, “The bank leadership permitted [Kareri] …to become closely involved with EG officials and business activities, including advising the EG government on financial matters and becoming the sole signatory on an EG account holding substantial funds. The bank exercised such lax oversight of the account manager’s activities that, among other misconduct, the account manager was able to wire transfer more than $1 million from the EG oil account at Riggs to another bank for an account opened in the name of Jadini Holdings, an offshore corporation controlled by the account manager’s wife.”
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The relationship of Riggs to the Bush administration is more than tangential. Riggs owns a money management firm, J. Bush & Co., operated by Jonathan Bush, the brother of George H.W. Bush and the current president’s uncle.
Jonathan Bush played a very important role in helping find investors for the various failed oil businesses that George W. Bush ran before he began his career in politics. Jonathan Bush also helped raise money for George H.W. Bush and is a former chair of the New York Republican State Finance Committee. In 2000, he was briefly named president and CEO of Riggs Investment Management Company (RIMCO), a wholly owned subsidiary of Riggs Bank.
While Jonathan Bush appears not to have been directly involved in the Saudi, Pinochet or Equatorial Guinean accounts, his position at Riggs is an indication of the close ties between the bank and the Bush family.
Moreover, Riggs is owned by the Allbritton family, a Texas family with close ties to the Republican establishment. Joe Allbritton, the former head of Riggs who bought the bank in the mid-1970s, is a friend of the Bush family.
Posted by: b real | Mar 3 2007 6:12 utc | 47
three articles on china in africa from foreign policy in focus
walden bello: China Provokes Debate in Africa
It was unexpected.
At the Seventh World Social Forum (WSF), held in Nairobi, Kenya, in late January, the most controversial topic was not HIV-AIDS, the U.S. occupation of Iraq, or neoliberalism. The topic that generated the most heat was China’s relations with Africa.
At a packed panel discussion organized by a semi-official Chinese NGO, the discussion was candid and angry. “First, Europe and America took over our big businesses. Now China is driving our small and medium entrepreneurs to bankruptcy,” Humphrey Pole-Pole of the Tanzanian Social Forum told the Chinese speakers. “You don’t even contribute to employment because you bring in your own labor.”
Stung by such remarks from the floor, Cui Jianjun, secretary general of the China NGO Network for International Exchanges, lost his diplomatic cool and launched into an emotional defense of Chinese foreign investment, saying that “we Chinese had to make the same hard decision on whether to accept foreign investment many, many years ago. You have to make the right decision or you will lose, lose, lose. You have to decide right, or you will remain poor, poor, poor.”
The vigorous exchange should have been anticipated since many Africans view China as having the potential to bring either great promise or great harm. If African civil society representatives were hard on China, this was because they desperately wanted China to reverse course before it was too late, so that it would avoid the path trod by Europe and the United States.
akwe amosu: China in Africa: It’s (Still) the Governance, Stupid
In its engagement with Africa, China certainly aims to build a political constituency for its much-touted “peaceful development.” But its primary interest is petroleum and raw materials. If Beijing’s goal of quadrupling the size of the economy by 2020 is to be met, energy consumption, and therefore demand, will climb even higher. Africa has resources in abundance but almost no capacity to process those resources: a perfect opportunity for a rising economy like China. Africa can supply its raw inputs and also provide a market for China’s manufactured products.
Over 800 Chinese companies, the vast majority of them state-owned, are operating in 49 African countries. These companies are the forward edge of China’s operations, although they are backed up by frequent visits by top-level officials to seal deals and smooth their path. China is either drilling or exploring for oil in Nigeria, Sudan, Angola, Algeria, Chad, Gabon, Mauritania, Kenya, Congo Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, and Ethiopia – and this list is not exhaustive. China purchases 64% of Sudan’s production, which accounts for around 6% of its oil imports. Angola contributes half of the oil China buys from Africa. Beyond oil, China is extracting copper and cobalt from Zambia and Congo. It is buying timber in Gabon, Cameroon, Mozambique, Equatorial Guinea, and Liberia. It buys platinum and chrome from Zimbabwe and iron ore, coal, nickel, and aluminum from several other locations.
In each of these countries, the Chinese and the government in question will sign a broad-spectrum “package deal” that gives the African partner a number of rewards, featuring a mix of cash, investment, cheap credit, technical expertise and training, and in-kind benefits such as new presidential palaces and stadiums, or cheap infrastructure such as roads, dams, and railways. The Chinese agreed to such an aid package involving major infrastructural investment for Angola, which is Africa’s second largest oil producer and the continent’s lead supplier to China. A $2 billion line of credit was announced in 2004, but since then available finance has risen to a reported $6 billion, over several years, to finance a raft of different projects such as hospitals, schools, roads, bridges, housing, office buildings, training programs, and the laying of fiberoptic cable. China’s diplomatic support in international fora has also proved notoriously handy, for example, for President Bashir of Sudan. Other, less contentious elements include contributing to Africa’s peacekeeping missions, sending medical aid teams to supplement struggling health services, and training and education opportunities for African students in China.
China is effectively making Africa an integral part of its economic development for decades to come. Africa has not seen inward flows of this volume in all the post-independence years. This is not only a matter of cash but also the linkages, backward and forward, into Chinese and African markets and into government policy and planning. To continue arguing about the desirability of the relationship no longer makes any sense. China’s deep penetration in, and increasing integration with Africa is an established fact. Much has been made of Washington’s decision to announce its new African Command while Chinese President Hu Jintao was on his latest tour of Africa — as if to warn China that the United States will protect its African interests. But even if China’s rivals in the West wanted to roll back this expansion, there seems little chance that they could do so.
ian taylor: China and Africa: The Real Barriers to Win-Win
Over the last five years, Angola has lost to graft as much as $4 billion in oil revenues — equivalent to 10% of its GDP. As a result of this misgovernance, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was determined to include transparency measures to curb corruption in its 2004 loan to Angola. However, as the IMF pressed for agreement, the Angolan government suddenly stopped negotiations. It had received a counter-offer of a $2 billion loan from China’s export-credit agency. The deal came with an interest rate repayment of a mere 1.5% over 17 years. Angola also agreed to supply China with 10,000 barrels per day of crude oil — later to increase to 40,000 barrels per day — as well substantial construction contracts.
This Chinese offer provoked consternation within Angola’s nascent indigenous business sector. “There is a condition in the loan that 30% will be subcontracted to Angolan firms, but that still leaves 70%,” explains Angolan economist José Cerqueira. “Angolan businessmen are very worried about this, because they don’t get the business, and the construction sector is one in which Angolans hope they can find work.” Thus the real cost of the loan is higher, because the exclusion of non-Chinese suppliers will negatively affect the prices of goods and services imports.
Furthermore, none of the IMF’s conditionalities regarding corruption or graft was included in the loan’s details. Luanda was thus able to overcome the refusal by Western donors to bankroll a donor’s conference until Angola had reached agreement with the IMF and concluded a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper. Critics of the Bretton Woods institutions might think putting the World Bank or IMF in their place is a good thing. But ordinary Africans will not likely see any tangible benefits of cutting these institutions out of the picture.
The Angolan case illustrates the hazards of Chinese investment in Africa. Beijing can easily facilitate corruption, negotiate lopsided contracts, and reinforce existing patronage systems. For many elites in Africa, wealth generation and survival does not depend on productive development on a nationwide scale. Elite survival depends on access to rents to distribute to patronage networks, thereby generating key support, but this network can encompass a relatively limited geographic area. In other words, the advancement of policies that bring in revenue for the elites but that also benefit broad swathes of the population, such as general agricultural policies that raise up large sections of the community, is not required. Consequently, China’s economic and political support could offer African politicians increasing leeway in misusing public funds and manipulating institutions to preserve their own power.
Posted by: b real | Mar 9 2007 19:41 utc | 65
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