The U.S. Military Drags West Africa into 'War on Terror'

After decades of CIA assassinations, U.S.-supported coups and subversive interference during the Cold War in Africa, one would think that West African political leaders would run at the thought of another geo-political chess match in their own territories. But slowly and gracefully, the U.S. 'War on Terrorism', has been able to submit the continent to yet another round of imperial strategem with very little organized internal political opposition.

The U.S. military is training soldiers in West Africa for a potential confrontation with "jihadists" under the new U.S. Africa Command. The stated objective of the recent mobilizations is to prepare for confrontation with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The group is unlikely an existential threat to West African governments, is small in number compared to other violent criminal organizations and has so far only managed to kidnap foreigners and extort money. Partly due to the aggressive and often draconian work of their security forces, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, have already prevented the organization from operating in their territories. There is also no public evidence to suggest the group serves as a direct threat to the U.S.

Despite their infamous name and the constant fear-mongering in the Western press, the organization likely uses the name al-Qaeda for recruiting and fundraising purposes only as opposed to having any lasting ties with cells in Afghanistan/Pakistan. Nevertheless, the U.S. is mobilizing the armies of Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger and Nigeria for a protracted conflict with the organization.

Political leaders in West Africa are probably doing more harm than good by accepting the U.S. label of the region as a wellspring of jihadist terrorism. As we have seen in Iraq and Somalia, U.S.-backed military operations are often the principal cause of violent political terrorism and recruiting activity rather than a force for peace and social justice. In regions with large conservative Muslim populations the influx of America forces and assistance is among the top recruiting tools for new converts to the cause of political Islam. Certainly, an objective assessment of the American track record in the aforementioned cases among others should have caused alarm among government's participating in AFRICOM'S recent mobilizations. However, political elites in this region draw their legitimacy among top the military brass and petty-bourgeois intellectuals from receiving external aid from the United States and European Union. With the incoming military and financial support elites are able to crack down on internal opposition movements and consolidate their own political authority regardless of the long-term consequences.

Armed robbery and kidnapping conducted to extract ransom is not unique to al-Qaeda in West Africa. There are any number of violent drug cartels, rebel groups and other criminals in the region who exploit the vacuum of political legitimacy, and grinding poverty in order to advance this or that cause. The ideals of regional autonomy and national sovereignty have suffered so much in West Africa that because the least organized of such groups happens to be a potential threat to U.S. interests, government's are responding as if preparing for a full-scale war.

It was not long ago that the United States utilized political Islam and al-Qaeda extremists in a struggle against the Soviet Union and secular nationalists movements in North Africa and the Middle-East. The same networks and ideologies that West African governments are being paid to chase throughout the Saharan desert, were empowered in the first place by the U.S. State Department, CIA and Pentagon. Unfortunately, for the majority of the poor and formally unemployed people in West Africa the region is once again employed in another of the U.S.'s adventures.

Whereas China and other countries have sought to increase their influence in Africa through mainly political and economic means, the United States and European Union have estimated that their strategic advantage lies in a combination of economic assistance and military strength as it did during the Cold War. The clear parallel between the current U.S. strategy of establishing client-states today to the Cold War in the 20th century were outlined by U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates who argued in a recent article in Foreign Affairs that American military and economic assistance rather than full-scale invasions is the most effective way to expand its strategic influence.

"Building up the military and security forces of key allies and local partners was also a major component of U.S. strategy in the Cold War, first in Western Europe, then in Greece, South Korea, and elsewhere."

The triumph of AFRICOM in West Africa is perhaps one of the most striking indicators that the independence movements of 50 years ago achieved little to nothing in the area of self-government or regional autonomy. The so called independent democratic regimes in this region have literally become client-states of the United States and European Union completely dependent on the economic and military support of their patrons. There remains hope that a growing social and political movement can challenge the attempt to drag the poor into another U.S.-conflict and put the region on an endogenous path of social development against poverty, hunger, and disease.

Anti-Islamist Propaganda in Africa Fulfilling Itself

23 year old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to carry out a Christmas Day terrorist bombing on a Northwest Airlines flight flying into Detroit. Media reports are prematurely drawing connections between Abdulmutallab who was Nigerian and an alleged al-Qaeda conspiracy to spread its operations into West Africa and the Sahara.

In the recent past, there have been other high profile stories related to terrorism that have been either exaggerated or fabricated to justify the surge in US-backed military operations in Saharan Africa. One of which was in 2002 when Algerian intelligence forces kidnapped Western tourists only to blame the abductions on so called 'jihadists' to justify their pandering to the U.S. for weapons and financial resources. And then of course there is the historic U.S. interference in Somalia that helped produce militant Islamism by arming warlords, backing a murderous Ethiopian invasion of the country in 2006 and splintering moderate factions of the Union of Islamic Courts. Recently, as indicated in a video by Al Jazeera, an offshoot of al-Qaeda has also emerged in the deserts of North Africa, claiming a 'Sahara Emirate', in part because of hostile actions taken by the Mauritanian government against Islamic opposition parties.

In the Sahara-Sahelian regions of Africa, Islam is mostly inclusive and pacifist characterizing jihad as a spiritual rather than military enterprise. To the outsider looking in via mass media, increased U.S. counter-terrorism operations in Africa could appear as natural responses to a sudden extremist threat but nothing could be further from the truth. The Islamic resistance in Africa being characterized as terrorism or "jihadism" is a new expression of anti-imperialism as well as a decade’s old opposition to political centralization and a perpetual lack of human development. What in previous decades was clothed in the rhetoric of Marxism-Leninism or Arab nationalism is today phrased under the loosely organized ideology of political Islam--- a political philosophy that a society governed under Islamic Sharia law will be more just than the status-quo.

So where is the sudden upsurge in militant political Islam coming from? Like their counter-parts in East Africa, North and West Africa have also been participating in joint counter-terrorism operations led by the U.S. and NATO through AFRICOM. For several years now Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania and others have participated in U.S.-led military exercises known as Flintlock. Flintlock exercises usually involve a hypothetical non-state threat to which governments are trained to respond immediately across borders and a lot destructive new goodies from the American military. The U.S. and its European allies have also been working with two dozen African governments to "overcome the tyranny of distance imposed by their massive continent through an exercise designed to increase command, control, communications and computer capacity" in Gabon. The partnerships between these governments and the U.S. military are kept secret from the public and for good reason. Imperial domination by the U.S. military, perceived or real, in Africa would be extremely unpopular and complicate their efforts to cling to political power.

Several of the most corrupt governments in Africa are using the cover of the "war on terror" to justify the continuity of clientelism, neglect of socio-economic rights and centralization of power under the protection of the U.S. African Military Command. Billions of dollars in U.S. tax-payer money for new weapons systems, development aid and financial assistance are sure-fire methods to consolidate political authority in a region where political opposition movements are fragmented and struggle without financial resources. The actions of African governments to marginalize not only political Islam but all political opposition, will inevitably fuel violent expressions in the future.

Make no mistake about it, violent expressions of political Islam won’t loosen these inept government’s grip on political power or respond to the fundamental social, economic and environmental needs of African people.

Egyptian economist and activist Samir Amin has accurately described both the lack of coherence and strategy among political Islamists responding to U.S. intervention,

"The exclusive emphasis on culture allows political Islam to
eliminate from every sphere of life the real social confrontations between the
popular classes and the globalized capitalist system that oppresses and exploits
them. The militants of political Islam have no real presence in the areas where
actual social conflicts take place and their leaders repeat incessantly that
such conflictsare unimportant. Islamists are only present in these areas to open
schools and health clinics. But these are nothing but works of charity and means
for indoctrination. They are not means of support for the struggles of the
popular classes against the system responsible for their poverty."

Nevertheless, as the U.S. continues its covert militarization of Africa through alliances with otherwise contemptible political regimes, violent political Islam may be the only opposition group which can effectively organize moral and financial support against the status-quo. By making ties with foreign Islamist organizations like al-Qaeda, these groups can tap into the material resources necessary to wage a sustained insurgency. This is a tragic moment of self-fulfilled prophecy the poorest continent in the world can do without.