From Ivory Coast to Libya And Beyond: The Conquest of Africa

From Ivory Coast to Libya And Beyond: The Conquest of Africa

On April 5 the chairman of the African Union, Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, condemned French military operations in fellow West African nation Ivory Coast and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's war against Libya, stating: "Africa does not need any external influence. Africa must manage its own affairs."

Though hardly a model of a democratic ruler, having come to power in a coup d'etat in 1979 and governed his nation uninterruptedly since, Obiang Nguema is the current head of the 53-nation African Union and his comments stand on their own regardless of their source.

In reference to the mounting violence between the Western-backed Alassane Ouattara's self-styled Republican Forces army and "Invisible Commandos" on one side and incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo's military and security forces on the other in Ivory Coast, the AU chairman said that it should not "imply a war, an intervention of a foreign army."

He spoke after French attack helicopters struck Ivorian military bases in the commercial capital of Abidjan and destroyed over ten armored vehicles, four anti-aircraft weapons and the broadcasting station of the state-run Radiodiffusion-Télévision ivoirienne as well as firing on the presidential building and residence. French troops took over the nation's main airport earlier in the week. (In 2004 French warplanes destroyed the Gbagbo government's modest air force on the ground, an action heartily endorsed by the U.S.)

President Obiang Nguema also spoke about what is now the almost three-week-long war waged by the U.S. and its NATO allies against Libya: "I believe that the problems in Libya should be resolved in an internal fashion and not through an intervention that could appear to resemble a humanitarian intervention. We have already seen this in Iraq."

He added: “Each foreigner is susceptible to proposing erroneous solutions. African problems cannot be resolved with a European, American or Asian view.”

On the same day Russia called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Ivory Coast and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that recently reinforced French troops and cohorts from the United Nations Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (ONUCI) operate under a mandate that demands strict neutrality and impartiality.

The following day Lavrov expressed concerns about the U.S. and other NATO members arming anti-government insurgents in Libya, stating that such a measure "would constitute interference in the civil war."

Comparable statements have been voiced around the world, from the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) in Latin America and the Caribbean denouncing the Libyan war to the leader of the world's 1.3 billion Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI, referring to the violence in Ivory Coast and Libya as a defeat for humanity and issuing "a renewed and heartfelt appeal to all parties to the [conflict] to initiate a process of peacemaking and dialogue, and to avoid further bloodshed."

American and other Western leaders, however, only desire an end to the violence in both African countries after the belligerents they support, with arms and air and missile attacks, have scored a decisive victory over their opponents.

On the same day that the chairman of the African Union and the Russian foreign minister articulated the concerns cited above, President Barack Obama demanded that "former President Gbagbo must stand down immediately, and direct those who are fighting on his behalf to lay down their arms," while applauding the actions of French troops and military helicopters in the capital.

Obama and his secretary of state Hillary Clinton have repeatedly delivered ultimatums to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to abdicate - backed up by bombs and cruise missiles - with Clinton responding to the latter's recent letter to Obama calling for an end to NATO attacks on his country by stating: "Mr Gaddafi knows what he must do....There needs to be a decision made about his departure from power [and] his departure from Libya."

The recently appointed commander of U.S. Africa Command, General Carter Ham, told the House Armed Services Committee on April 5: "This is a historic time for us in Africa Command. We completed a complex, short-notice, operational mission in Libya and have now transferred that mission to NATO.”

Since AFRICOM handed over command of the war against Libya to NATO on March 31 over 1,200 air missions have been flown over the country, including several hundred bombings and missile strikes.

Two of only five African nations that have not entered into individual and regional partnerships with the Pentagon through AFRICOM are the targets of violent uprisings aimed at toppling their governments and installing client regimes subservient to the U.S. and its NATO allies. Eritrea, Zimbabwe and a truncated Sudan will be left. And will be next.

As Alassane Ouattara, former unelected prime minister under the late president for life Félix Houphouët-Boigny and Washington, D.C.-based Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, is poised to take control of Ivory Coast with the assistance of the French military, his country is being prepared to join its Gulf of Guinea neighbors in the U.S.- and NATO-supported West African Standby Force and be incorporated into AFRICOM operations in one of the world's most oil-rich and thus strategic regions.

The USS Robert G. Bradley guided missile frigate began a nine-nation Africa Partnership Station West mission on February 1 with a port visit to the capital of Togo, two countries removed from Ivory Coast's eastern border on the Gulf of Guinea. The Africa Partnership Station is an initiative of U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa and works in conjunction with AFRICOM.

After Togo, the U.S. warship's itinerary has included and will include visits to Cape Verde, Senegal, Gabon, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Angola and Nigeria. Angola and Nigeria are Africa's largest oil exporters. Gabon's sizeable oil exports are divided between Russia, the U.S., China and former colonial master France. In 2005 American oil giants ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil entered into an exploration and production agreement with Sao Tome and Principe.

The U.S. frigate is part of Africa Partnership Station 2011, operating off the coasts of West, Southern and East Africa with five U.S. ships and three from European NATO nations.

While visiting Cameroon late last month, USS Robert G. Bradley led the Obangame Express exercise with vessels from France, Spain, Belgium, Cameroon, Gabon and Nigeria.

From March 3-19 the U.S. Marine Corps conducted a joint Africa Partnership Station exercise with the Ghana Armed Forces at the Jungle Warfare School in the Gulf of Guinea nation.

In February USS Stephen W. Groves, an Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile warship like USS Robert G. Bradley, participated in a joint exercise off South Africa with that country's submarine SAS Charlotte Maxeke in training that U.S. Africa Command described as "part of the U.S. Navy's initiative to strengthen military partnership nations throughout the continent of Africa."

The ship next visited Tanzania, where it trained military personnel from Djibouti, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique and the host country in the first of several phases of the Africa Partnership Station East mission that has now taken it to Mauritius and will later bring it to Kenya and Seychelles and after that to Cape Verde and Senegal in West Africa.

Since the Africa Partnership Station initiative was launched in 2007, U.S. warships assigned to it have visited almost every African coastal and island nation except for those bordering the Mediterranean Sea. The exceptions have been Ivory Coast, Sudan and Eritrea as well as Libya in the north.

In February AFRICOM conducted the 19-day Operation Flintlock 2011 special forces exercise in Senegal with the participation of NATO allies France, Germany, Spain, Canada and the Netherlands and Sahel nations Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria and Senegal. (Last year's Flintlock included the above African states and Algeria and Tunisia.) Burkina Faso borders northeastern Ivory Coast.

The AFRICOM website wrote this of the exercise:

"Conducted by Special Operations Command Africa, Flintlock is a joint multinational exercise to improve information sharing at the operational and tactical levels across the Saharan region while fostering increased collaboration and coordination. It's focused on military interoperability and capacity-building for U.S., North American and European Partner Nations, and select units in Northern and Western Africa."

Note how African participants are listed after those of the U.S. and its European and Canadian NATO allies.

Late this January the main planning conference for Africa Endeavor 2011 was held in Mali. Modeled after U.S. European Command's Combined Endeavor, the largest military communications and information systems exercise in the world, this year's annual Africa Endeavor multinational exercise will be held in June in the same country.

According to AFRICOM, January's planning conference "brought together more than 180 participants from 41 African, European and North American nations and observers from [the] Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the Eastern African Standby Force and NATO to plan interoperability testing of communications and information systems of participating nations," with the "largest number of participating countries to date in the Africa Endeavor series" in the words of Brigadier General Roberts Ferrell, head of AFRICOM's Command, Control, Communications and Computers Systems Directorate.

Last year's Africa Endeavor included, in addition to U.S. and other NATO nations' military personnel, participants from Algeria, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Gambia, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Seychelles, Southern Sudan (a year before its independence referendum), Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda and Zambia.

Note the absence of Ivory Coast, Libya, Sudan, Eritrea and Zimbabwe.

Only 30 months after becoming an independent command, AFRICOM has consolidated military-to-military relations with 50 African nations, including non-African Union member Morocco and the world's newest state, South Sudan. Changes in government in Ivory Coast and Libya would add two more countries to that column.

And as AFRICOM handed command of the current war against Libya to NATO on March 31, so, if recent comments by African Union Commissioner for Peace and Security Ramtane Lamamra are to be given credence, AFRICOM is preparing to share its 50 new African assets with NATO. [1]

Just as the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference divided the African continent into spheres of influence between the major European powers and the U.S., with Ivory Coast belonging to France and Libya later taken by Italy, so now the U.S. and all the major former European colonial masters, who are now fellow NATO member states - France, Britain, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Turkey - are again planning to establish dominance over what has become the world's second most populous continent.


1. Africa: Global NATO Seeks To Recruit 50 New Military Partners
Stop NATO, February 20, 2011
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/africa-global-nato-seeks-to-recruit-50-new-military-partners/



Global Research Articles by Rick Rozoff

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Escalation of the Conflict: NATO Takes Command of the War on Libya

Escalation of the Conflict: NATO Takes Command of the War on Libya On the morning of March 31 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization assumed full command of military operations against Libya, effecting the transfer of air, naval and preliminary ground operations from U.S. Africa Command's Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn to NATO's Operation Unified Protector. In NATO's words, "The Alliance has the assets in place to conduct its tasks under Operation Unified Protector – the arms embargo, no-fly zone and actions to protect civilians and civilian centres." On the same day a press conference was conducted by NATO Spokesperson Oana Lungescu, the commander of Unified Protector Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard and the chairman of NATO's Military Committee Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola to announce the transition. Romania's Lungescu (a veteran of BBC World Service), Quebec's Bouchard and Italy's Di Paola spoke entirely in English, as notwithstanding NATO's formal command of Libyan war operations Bouchard reports to America's Admiral James Stavridis, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe and also the chief of the Pentagon's European Command, and NATO is after all a U.S.-controlled military alliance. One speaks to a master in his language. The day after NATO took over control of the war Stavridis asserted that "the Libyan operation demonstrates just how capable the Western alliance remains two decades after the end of the Cold War," in the words of an Associated Press dispatch. The news agency added that "This is the first time in its history that NATO is engaged in two major conflicts at once," meaning the wars in Libya and Afghanistan, in Africa and Asia. The day before NATO assumed command of the North African war, Stavridis told the House Armed Services Committee that the war in Afghanistan "has become a global effort, with committed partners from nations that include Mongolia, Bulgaria, Tonga and El Salvador." He referred to 49 nations contributing troops for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, one more than has been acknowledged before, with El Salvador evidently the latest. There are also military personnel assigned to NATO in Afghanistan from countries that are not yet official Troop Contributing Nations like Bahrain, Colombia, Egypt, Japan and Kazakhstan. Never before have armed forces from so many nations been stationed in a war zone in a single country. Stavridis, who as NATO's top military commander is in ultimate charge of both current wars, made the latter comments in an address commemorating the 60th anniversary of NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Mons, Belgium, which "was set up by NATO's then-commander and later U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower" as Associated Press reminded its readers. On March 21, hours after NATO launched Operation Unified Protector, Secretary of Defense Roberts Gates and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen also addressed the House Armed Services Committee on Libya. Later Gates appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee and confirmed that U.S. warplanes would remain in the Libyan war theater to assist the new NATO mission. Referring to the twelve days of Operation Odyssey Dawn, he said: “That part of our mission is complete and successful.” He further boasted of Western bombs and cruise missiles destroying Libyan air capabilities and ground assets - the second category includes administrative buildings, oil depots, ammunition dumps and naval facilities - and affirmed that the intensive onslaught "will not diminish under NATO leadership.” And indeed it hasn't. On the third day of Unified Protector, April 2, NATO announced that it had conducted 174 air missions over Libya on the preceding day, including 74 strike sorties, ones involving bombing missions and missile strikes. The total for the first two days of the NATO operation were 363 sorties and 148 strike sorties. In his testimony on March 1, Secretary Gates also said: "A decision about support to the opposition is clearly the next step. I think all members of the coalition are thinking about that at this point.” NATO Military Committee chief Admiral Paola was more candid, stating that he was "confident, absolutely confident, that one of the (NATO) allies" has already been arming anti-government insurgents in Libya. Gates offered the standard official explanation of the ongoing war as being actuated by alleged humanitarian concerns and disavowed a formal policy of regime change, but gave the lie to his own words in adding that NATO forces “will continue to attack (Gadhafi’s) ground forces with no opportunity for resupply" to the point where “His military is going to face the question of whether they are prepared to be destroyed by air attacks, or if it’s time for him to go.” In addition, according to the Pentagon's website: "The issue is more complicated than simply arming the rebels. What the opposition really needs, Gates said, is organization, training, and command and control - something he said likely requires coalition forces on the ground in Libya." He refrained from openly endorsing that strategy although it is already being implemented with American and British special forces and intelligence operatives directing air strikes from the ground in Libya. Gates warned against the alternative to an overthrow of the government and ground operations while speaking in the House earlier, saying "We have considered the possibility of this being a stalemate and being a drawn-out affair...where you achieve the military goal but not achieve the political goal" of regime change. Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Howard McKeon cautioned that NATO "could be expected to support a decade-long no-fly zone enforcement like the one over Iraq in the 1990s," a further incentive for entertaining the alternative - or complementary - option of staging a ground war. A recent poll demonstrated 47 percent of Americans in opposition to the military operation in Libya with 41 supporting it. The same survey, conducted by Quinnipiac University, shows that by a two-to-one majority, 58-29 percent, Americans feel that President Obama has not clearly and convincingly presented an argument for U.S. involvement. Pressure will be applied on the public to support a prospective invasion of Libya employing the same rationale used for the ongoing air war: The need for an alleged humanitarian intervention. Modeled after the calls by the likes of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark during the 1999 war against Yugoslavia, a ground invasion will be presented as a humane remedy for the death and destruction not so much exacerbated as caused by an air campaign. And there is no lack of Libyans being killed and wounded by the current one. The Vatican's senior representative (vicar apostolic) in Libya, Bishop Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, recently decried the fact that NATO air attacks "are killing dozens of civilians." He added that "In the Tajoura neighborhood [of the Libyan capital, Tripoli], around 40 civilians were killed, and a house with a family inside collapsed." In early March Bishop Martinelli had pleaded against the "further spilling of blood” in the country, warning against outside intervention and saying any attempt at a military resolution of the Libyan crisis would only escalate the level of violence. On April 1 it was announced that a NATO air strike killed seven Libyan civilians, including three girls from one family, and injured 25 in the village of Zawia el Argobe. On the same day Western warplanes strafed areas east and southwest of Tripoli. An Associated Press correspondent interviewed the mother and uncle of an 18-month-old boy killed by a NATO air strike in the village of Khorum on March 29. The mother said, "His blood was streaming down my arm." The uncle added: "We took him to the hospital where they treated him for...burns and some broken bones. But by nightfall he was dead." On April 2 a spokesman for the Libyan opposition reported that a NATO air strike had killed 13 rebels and wounded at least a score more, adding that the "collateral damage" was "an unfortunate accident." Evidently being killed by Western bombers is more humane than being killed in a firefight with government forces. Far more Libyans stand to be killed and injured in what NATO has announced will be at least a 90-day campaign. To indicate the probable true duration, and the scope, of the war, NATO spokesperson Lungescu said at the press conference on March 31 that the North Atlantic Council, the military bloc's highest decision-making body consisting of the permanent representatives (ambassadors) of its 28 member states, had met the day before to discuss the transfer of the war's command to the Alliance. She also said that the North Atlantic Council met with representatives of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, the Mediterranean Dialogue, the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative "and other partners around the globe." She added that "I can tell you it was a big room and the room was full." The Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council includes all 28 full NATO members and the 22 affiliates of its Partnership for Peace program: Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, Georgia, Finland, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue partners are Libya's neighbors Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia and Israel, Jordan, Mauritania and Morocco. The Istanbul Cooperation Initiative's members are Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - the last two providing warplanes for NATO's Operation Unified Protector - with Oman and Saudi Arabia next in line to join. After NATO led a conference in London on March 29 to plan for a "post-Gaddafi" Libya along the lines of such precedents as Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Afghanistan and Iraq, the bloc's Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen celebrated the creation of a Contact Group on Libya and stated "NATO has long-standing relations with partner countries from the region, notably through its Mediterranean Dialogue programme and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative." Two days later Rasmussen delivered an address in Stockholm titled "The New NATO and Sweden’s security" in which he stated: "NATO welcomes contributions from all its partners across the world to ensure that the will of the international community is heard....We have extensive experience of involving partner nations in our operations – partners such as Sweden, but also partners in the Mediterranean and Gulf regions." "Afghanistan is another example where we can see the value of partnership. 48 countries are now part of the International Stabilisation Force [International Security Assistance Force] ISAF. With one in four UN member states taking part, this is the largest coalition in history. And Sweden is part of it, along with NATO Allies." 400 Swedish troops serving under NATO in Afghanistan are fighting their country's first war in 200 years. On April 2, two days after the NATO chief left the country, Sweden deployed the first three warplanes assigned for NATO's air operations in Libya with five more leaving the next day. As with Afghanistan, the war against Libya is being employed by the U.S. and NATO to consolidate military partnerships with nations around the world under wartime conditions. Russian political analyst Pyotr Iskenderov recently wrote that "A deployment of multinational forces on a long-term basis under the aegis of NATO paves the way for Brussels to bypass the only restriction [against military occupation] imposed by the UN Security Council on an operation in Libya." His compatriot Alexander Karasev added: "An allegedly humanitarian intervention by NATO against Yugoslavia in 1999 ended with the deployment of NATO forces in Kosovo and the setting up of the largest U.S. [overseas base since the Vietnam war] Camp Bondsteel in the province. The U.S. and NATO may repeat this scenario in Libya." As U.S. military vessels are scheduled to depart the Mediterranean Sea, NATO is amassing an imposing array of warplanes and warships to intensify the attack against Libya. Tallies compiled by Agence France-Presse and Deutsche Presse-Agentur list the following inventory of military assets deployed against Libya: Britain: 17 Tornado and Typhoon fighter bombers as well as surveillance, reconnaissance and refuelling aircraft and two frigates and a submarine. France: 36 warplanes. 20 Mirage and Rafale combat planes and the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier with ten Rafale and six Super Etendard attack jets escorted by two frigates, as well as AWACS and refuelling aircraft. Italy: 16 jets, the Garibaldi aircraft carrier and four other ships as well as seven air and naval bases. Canada: Eleven fighter jets, patrol and refuelling planes and a frigate. Belgium: Six F-16 fighter jets and mine-hunting ship. The Netherlands: Seven jets and a ship. Turkey: Seven jets, five warships and a submarine. Norway: Six F-16s. Denmark: Six F-16s. Greece: Two jets, a helicopter, a ship and four bases. Bulgaria: A frigate. Romania: A frigate and use of an air base. From NATO partner nations: Sweden: Eight Gripen fighter jets, a C-130 transport plane and reconnaissance aircraft. Qatar: Six Mirage fighter jets and two C-17 military transport planes. United Arab Emirates: Six Mirage jets, six F-16s and one C-17 transport aircraft. Warplanes from the above nations have launched several hundred ground strikes against Libyan targets already. NATO's first African war, following its first European and Asian wars in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan respectively, will be neither short nor limited in scale and intensity. The new commander of U.S. Africa Command, General Carter Ham, said of the first phase of the war that "We've demonstrated the capability to [lead military operations]." Now NATO is following suit and escalating the conflict to new and more dangerous heights. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages Stop NATO website and articles: http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com Rick Rozoff is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Rick Rozoff