Time up for Africom

planning to expand their activities in Africa.

Many of these financiers are integrated into the military-industrial complex. Charles Ferguson in his book, Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America, spelt out how the Ivory Tower and the academic establishment has been corrupted by the predators.

The Association of Concerned Africans has joined in the critique of the US military in Africa drawing attention to the increased funding for the military and the diminished resources for established Title VI centres. Through the financing of programs such as the Minerva Research Initiative and the Human Terrain System (HTS), millions of dollars have been diverted from genuine scholarly research to priorities determined by the military.

David Wiley in his critical analysis of how the study of Africa has been corrupted by the millions of dollars routed through the Pentagon noted,“Now, for the first time in 25 years, as US military activities expand all across Africa — much of it hidden from public view and inaccessible to African and US researchers — Africanist scholars can no longer say to their African hosts that the US Africanist community stands together in not taking military or intelligence funding that could affect their choice of research topics, how their results will be used, and how they and their students will be viewed in Africa.” What has emerged from an examination of the research projects financed by the Pentagon and routed through entities such as the National Defence University is the intellectual shallowness of the enterprise.

It is difficult for the researchers to start from any serious historical background because from the moment there is serious engagement with the history and culture of Africa it can be understood that the US Military has always been on the wrong side of history in Africa. Whether it was the placing of Nelson Mandela on the list of terrorists or the collusion for the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the experience of the US military has been to lay the basis for genocidal violence and the plunder of resources in Africa.

Patricia Daley brought out the reality that Africans have to learn from the protracted processes for peace such as that which was guided by Julius Nyerere and Nelson Mandela in Burundi.
Participants in the Achebe colloquium heard of the importance of the elders in Africa and how these social forces are necessary for building peace.In the final analysis of the intended benefits versus consequences of the establishment of Africom, the balance sheet weighs heavily against Africa’s continental good.

The current instability in Libya and Mali are directly related to the military planning and activities of Africom. It has been documented by a number of books that US Africa Command has increased resource exploitation, imperial expansion, instigated more violence, intensified regional conflicts, undermined the authority of regional organisations like IGAD, Sadc, EAC, and eventually the African Union.

As such, Africom as a formal vehicle of US imperialism is a disaster.
Although the Resist Africom formation no longer exists in a formal sense, their platform for the resistance fertilised and offered another way to get beyond the arguments of the military information operations of Africom. Of the three areas of “terrorist” activities in Africa, the case can be made that military engagement by Britain, France and the United States will only provide the rationale for increasing militarisation.

It should be of the highest importance for activists and scholars to push back from the argument that associated Al Qaeda groups in Africa “present significant threats to the United States”. This is an exaggeration. Second, the issues of reducing militarism and insecurity in Nigeria cannot be separated from the exploitation and oppression of the Nigerian people.

Third, after 20 years, the situation of peace in Somalia can only be solved in a regional context where there is cooperation among democratic states.

The peoples of Africa need international partners but Africans cannot accept partnership from a society where the military industrial-complex abroad fortifies the prison-industrial complex at home where African descendants are warehoused.
Africom is not what the people of Africa need and it is not what will achieve long-term stability on the continent.

The struggles against militarism and exploitation in the United States cannot be advanced by a military command that serves the interests of oil companies and private military contractors.
Mo Ibrahim spoke for many Africans at the colloquium when he said that it was time that US oil companies were as aggressive in cleaning up the African oil spills as they were in opening new oil platforms.

The call for resistance can now bring up to date the concrete experiences of the US military and mobilise for the dismantling of the US Africa Command.

General Carter Ham sought to use the space of a scholarly platform to justify the need for the existence of the US Africa Command.
Instead the content of his message provided some of the clearest reasons why the war on terror has passed the tipping point. — Pambazuka News.