Hands off!

Monday, 7/21/97 Hands off! AFRICA: Western involvement in Africa
is a detriment to African people

So often we in the Western world hear our politicians talk of
how our world is at peace. Of course, the African continent is not
an area which they are referring to when speaking of "peace."
Although the continent has undergone a lot of positive successes in
the 1990s, such as the fall of apartheid in South Africa,
Botswana’s astounding economic success, independence for the
nations of Eritrea and Namibia, and high prospects for economic
success in Ghana, the 1990s will also be known as one of the
bloodiest periods for many countries in the African continent. A
seven-year war in once-peaceful Liberia, a civil war in Somalia
which included direct U.S involvement, an Angola which has been
shattered by a war lasting over 20 years, the 1994 genocide of over
1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda, and a civil war in
Democratic Congo (until recently known as Zaire) have characterized
this decade. Currently the agenda of the United States is the
creation of an African Peacekeeping Force which would be able to
respond to crises such as those described above. The operation has
been termed the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI), and will
include U.S. training of African militaries in Uganda, Senegal,
Mali, Malawi, Ghana and Ethiopia. Probable additions to this list
are Rwanda and Eritrea, strategically important nations because of
their close proximity to U.S.-supported Islamic Sudan, which has
been at war for many years with Southern Sudan’s Christian SPLA.
U.S. State Department spokesman John Dinger has stated, "the whole
point of this is to decrease reliance on outside intervention and
provide an African ability to respond to requirements for
humanitarian peacekeeping … our objective is to join with France,
the U.K. and others to move this initiative forward as quickly and
coherently as possible." While many critics applaud the ACRI as an
alternative to direct Western involvement in the problems of Africa
(such as the disastrous U.S. mission to Somalia earlier this
decade), many critical questions come to mind about this proposed
peacekeeping force. Who would be in charge? The Organization of
African Unity? The United Nations? Would ACRI be just another arm
to protect the interests of the West? Would ACRI be another success
for countries with a record of human rights abuses and provide easy
access to weapons to oppress their own people? Although all of
these concerns are important, history shows us that Western
involvement in African affairs, both direct and indirect, has had a
disastrous effect on African nations. After over a century of
exploiting Africa for its mineral and strategic resources, why
should the Africans believe now that the West is interested in
helping Africa? When one objectively looks at virtually every major
conflict which has taken place on the African continent, (Somalia,
Rwanda, Angola, Zaire, Central African Republic and Liberia) it
becomes evident that at least one of the Western nations has either
been a player in that struggle or was directly involved by
initiating it. The most relevant examples of the U.S. playing a
significant role in African politics are Somalia and Zaire. In
1992, the U.S. government under the Bush administration sent troops
to Somalia after Americans became exposed nightly to emaciated,
starving children in a country which was involved in a brutal civil
conflict. Those same Americans months later started to cry out for
the U.S. to pull out of Somalia after seeing pictures of dead
American servicemen being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.
Yet what most people didn’t think about was the fact that the
Somalis that killed U.S. servicemen had weapons that were supplied
to them by the United States! During the late 1970s and throughout
the 1980s, Siad Barre, the dictator of Somalia, was a puppet for
the U.S. in the Cold War against Soviet imperialism. Somalia was
strategically important for the U.S. because of its proximity to
the horn of Africa to the Middle East (They had established a
military base, and a significant military presence in Somalia).
Secondly, Somalia was involved in a war with neighboring Ethiopia,
which was receiving a staggering amount of support from the Soviet
Union. Ethiopia was seen as Africa’s Soviet stronghold and if the
Somalis lost the war, a communist "domino effect" could happen in
the other nations of Africa. Despite the fact that Barre was a
dictator notorious for butchering political rivals, civilians, and
anyone in general who stood against him since he seized power since
1969, the United States sent him weapons for the war against the
Commies every year. In effect, the U.S. did everything it could to
ensure that he remained in power despite repeated attempts to
overthrow him. By the time the Cold War was finally ending and Siad
Barre was overthrown, Somalia’s infrastructure had been completely
destroyed by the U.S.-supported dictator. Chaos erupted in the form
of a civil war. The U.S, which of course never admitted to its
shameful role in the Somalia conflict through the American media,
sought to score brownie points in the global community by
spearheading a humanitarian mission to Somalia, to fix a situation
which to a large extent it helped to create. Yet in the mind of the
U.S. government, Somalia could be seen as a success, for it was
through the pimping of Somalia that they were successful in winning
the war against communism in Africa, even if they had to do it
through a corrupt dictator with no respect for human life. In
former Zaire (now renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo), the
U.S. helped overthrow in 1960 Patrice Lumumba, the
democratically-elected president of that country, which would have
repercussions lasting until present-day Congo. What made Lumumba
particularly dangerous to the West was the fact that he was a
socialist and a Pan-Africanist. This meant that Lumumba was a man
who believed in the unity of the entire African continent and the
end of colonialism, both de-facto and economic. Lumumba and his
compatriot, President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, were gearing up to
steer the African continent on a path of unity and self-sufficiency
from ex-colonial leaders who wanted to continue the rape of Africa
for its mineral resources. Back in Washington D.C., Lumumba’s
staunch Pan-Africanist stance did not fit so well with the U.S.
government’s Cold War psychology. In America’s eyes, a country
either stood on the inside or outside of the Iron Curtain.
Washington also knew that Congo contained over 70 percent of the
world’s cobalt, an essential component for aerospace alloys, as
well as being rich in uranium, which is necessary for nuclear
devices. Washington simply could not afford the possibility of
Congo falling into Soviet hands, which would give the Soviets a
drastic strategic advantage over the Americans. To make a very long
story short, the CIA, Joseph Mobutu, chief of staff of Congo’s
military, and his army decided to find, capture, and eliminate
Patrice Lumumba at all costs. Lumumba, the president of Congo, was
arrested by Mobutu and his men, and sent to the southern province
of Katanga where he was executed. Soon afterwards, Mobutu, with the
help of the CIA, would become president of Congo, renaming the
country Zaire. During Mobutu’s 32-year, CIA- sponsored reign, he
would become one of the richest men in the world – worth well over
$10 billion – by stealing funds from Zaire’s banks, mines and
national revenues. In turn, Zaire plunged into a state of abject
poverty ($100=50,000 zaires). To complicate the situation, on three
different occasions the Zairian people would rise to overthrow
Mobutu, and on each occasion the CIA and France would send soldiers
(most often mercenaries) to save Mobutu’s butt! It wasn’t until May
of this year that Laurant Kabila, in conjunction with Rwanda
Minister of Defense Paul Kagame, and Uganda’s President Museveni
(both U.S. allies) was able to end the CIA stooge’s 32-year reign.
The question which is now raised is why the West or the CIA did not
once again come to Mobutu’s rescue. The answer is that now the name
of the game is no longer the Cold War, but free market economies.
In fact, right after wresting power from Mobutu, a company
headquartered in Arkansas signed a billion dollar contract with
Kabila for exclusive mining rights. According to Vanity Fair writer
Alex Shoumatoff, President Clinton offered Kabila $50 million and
military cooperation if the new regime adheres to human rights
standards. Now that the Congo is no longer of as much strategic
importance (except as buffer zone against Islamic Sudan), its
future lies more with corporations than with the CIA. I could of
course go on with several other examples of the West’s involvement
in Africa and its detrimental effect on African people (the 1994
genocide of over 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda
which was sponsored by France, the CIA involvement in the overthrow
of Kwame Nkrumah, the CIA’s involvement in the Angolan conflict,
the CIA and U.S. government’s support of South Africa’s apartheid
era regime), but in the interests of the Daily Bruin’s space, I
will conclude here. I believe that a nation as powerful and as rich
as the United States has the power to do a lot of great things, not
only in Africa, but all over the world, yet when that help entails
some type of military action, or CIA operations, which has
typically been the case, it has the effect of destabilizing African
governments, and usually supports the greedy and corrupt bed
buddies of the West while the people remain in abject poverty. The
West has used Africa as a Cold War platform for their own political
means which led to an economic exploitation which will take decades
for Africa to recover from. In short, I believe Africa has to learn
how to depend on Africa, for whenever the West becomes involved in
any way, shape or form, there are usually strings attached, and a
lot of small print which has very detrimental effects on the future
of the African continent. Victor Patton Previous Daily Bruin Story:
‘I’m sorry’ just isn’t enough, 7/7/97