Djibouti, Droned to drowsiness

Tichaona Zindoga
For those who follow the United States of America’s military expansionism, especially in the name of the so-called US Africa Command, something quite curious happened in Djibouti last week.
Djibouti, a tiny West African nation, is home to the only official Africom base on the continent. But the Pentagon, US military headquarters, announced it was moving its fleet of drones off Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti partly because Djibouti’s government had voiced safety concerns following several recent drone crashes.

Camp Lemonnier sits on the edge of Djibouti’s international airport, and the drones were taking off and landing from the same runway used by commercial aircraft, prompting concerns by Djibouti government officials. For those not in the know, drones or unmanned aerial vehicles, are remote controlled killer machines that the US has been using in surveillance and bombing remote enemy targets in a low cost, highly effective strategy that does not entail loss of precious US lives but devastates targets, including, more often than not, unarmed, innocent civilians.

Apart from the absence of body bags on the part of the US, soldiers do not have to witness gory sights of civilian casualties and fatalities as the machines are operated from remote lab locations where the controllers kill people like one would do in a video game. The drones have proven notorious in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Another reason offered for the move, according to VOA, was that US officials were “adjust(ing) their overall strategy for the use of unmanned aerial vehicles.’’

But Pentagon officials said, added VOA, they had not reduced operations in any way ‘‘as  it (US military) increases its dependence on unmanned aircraft to keep an eye on militant groups that are operating in eastern Africa’’ like al Shabaab which recently caused carnage at a Kenya shopping mall.

This development is important in at least two major ways. First, for the pan-African puritans among us, it highlights the very curious thing that an African nation, where it has, in the case of Djibouti, accepted to be a launch pad for patently criminal and immoral video-game-killings in real life, it now decides to alter the location of such ruthless games.

The right thing would be to just order Africom and its killer machines out! Yet therein lies the tragedy.
The Africa of today is so emasculated and so given to selling out the ideals of independence and self-determination thus happily prostitutes itself to powerful but immoral countries like the US. Various sources state that there are no less than 49 states that have given themselves up to US military consorting.

The result is that the US is now able to launch its murderous games anywhere but also globalise its bigoted and evil military crusades.
It is easy to imagine that African countries, though, won’t have any power to stop their abuse, as will Djibouti in this case not have power to end US occupation any more than Judas Iscariot had after giving Jesus up to the enemy. Africom is now an unfolding tragedy before our very African eyes.

And one does not have to be a conspiracy theorist to suspect there is something fishy in the now rampant ‘‘terrorist’’ activity, now peaking in Africa, especially when there are even efforts to incorporate the hitherto safe and peaceful Southern African sub-region.

The US is most probably founding and funding these activities as a reason to hold onto, maintain and expand its incontinence for war.  The second interesting point to analyse in this is how the US is ‘’adjusting’’ its drone strategy.

The VOA article says ‘‘the extended use of drones has created a liability for the United States, however, in terms of public perception in countries where they are deployed’’ while their unpopularity in the countries in which they operate could fuel anti-American sentiment and actually bolster militant groups.

It takes one article by one Ken Hanley to actually expose the new strategy of the US.
In a September 26 piece titled ‘‘US invisible pivot to Africa’’, Hanley cites one investigative report that claims that behind closed doors the (US) military says that “Africa is the battlefield of tomorrow, today.”

However, the US wants to be ‘‘invisible’’ and to have a ‘‘small footprint’’.
Explains Hanley: ‘‘In order to keep the ‘small footprint’ story alive much of the AFRICOM activity is not in Africa itself but in Europe.
‘‘Africom’s headquarters is located at Kelley Barracks in Stuttgart-Moehringen,  Germany. The US base in Stuttgart and the US Air Force’s Air Operations Center in Ramstein are reportedly both integral to drone operations in Africa.’’

Hanley says ‘‘support hubs’’ and logistics sites for Africom, are located in Rota, Spain; Aruba in the Lesser Antilles; and Souda Bay, Greece, as well as at Ramstein; Britain’s Ascension Island, located about 1600km off the coast of Africa in the South Atlantic and in Italy, including at Sigonella on the island of Sicily. The Sigonella base is said to be ‘‘particularly active” as it hosts the so-called Special-Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Africa, which provides teams of Marines and sailors for “small-footprint theater security co-operation engagements”.

It recently deployed personnel to Botswana, Liberia, Djibouti, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Tunisia, and Senegal.
Thus the strategy hinges on scaling down on unpopular big wars with US casualties and huge costs but still acting militarily on a global scale.