US stalking Africa’s riches

that attitude has changed.
Apparently, Africa is more scared of the US than ever before and is more worried about increasing US military presence and footprints in Africa.

The war of attrition on the exploitation of natural resources between China and the US has made Africa a continent placed between a hard surface and a hard rock. In fact, the US, has gone overdrive to try and outwit China when it comes to Africa’s resources, but the Chinese have a more effective non-military approach, that has left the US trailing behind, hence Washington has gone physical through a cocktail of sanctions in the case of Zimbabwe.

Military intervention in Libya and elsewhere plus regime change agenda disguised as military co-operation has also been used. Under president Obama, in fact, military operations in Africa have accelerated far beyond the more limited interventions of the Bush years. What with continued illegal sanctions and military threat on Zimbabwe, last year’s war in Libya, a regional drone campaign with missions running out of airports and bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the Indian Ocean archipelago nation of Seychelles?

What with a flotilla of 30 ships in that ocean supporting regional operations, a multi-pronged military and a CIA campaign against militants in Somalia, including intelligence operations, training for Somali agents, a secret prison, helicopter attacks, and US commando raids; a massive influx of cash for counter-terrorism operations across East Africa?

What with a possible old-fashioned air war, carried out on the sly in the region using manned aircraft; tens of millions of dollars in arms for allied mercenaries and African troops? What with a special ops expeditionary force (bolstered by State Department experts) dispatched to help capture or kill Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and his senior commanders?

And this only begins to scratch the surface of Washington’s fast-expanding plans and activities in the region. Now with the careful but steadfast inroads being made by Africom, the US superior military command for Africa, it is clear that Africa is critically under the eagle eye of the US natural resource microscope.
But trying to apply military solutions to complex political and social problems has regularly led to unforeseen consequences. For example, last year’s US-supported war in Libya resulted in masses of well-armed Tuareg mercenaries, who had been fighting Muammar Gaddafi, heading back to Mali where they helped destabilise that country.

So far, the result has been a military coup by an American-trained officer: a takeover of some areas by Tuareg fighters of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, who had previously raided Libyan arms depots. They had also raided other parts of the country being seized by the irregulars of Ansar Dine, the latest al-Qaeda “affiliate” on the American radar.

One military intervention, in other words, led to three major instances of blowback in a neighbouring country in just a year. With the Obama administration clearly engaged in a twenty-first century scramble for Africa, the possibility of successive waves of overlapping blowback grows exponentially.

Mali may only be the beginning and there’s no telling how any of it will end. In the meantime, keep your eye on Africa. The US military is going to make news there for years to come. In addition, the US is conducting counter-terrorism training and equipping militaries in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Niger, and Tunisia.

Africom also has 14 major joint-training exercises planned for 2012, including operations in Morocco, Cameroon, Gabon, Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Senegal and Nigeria. — Day Africa.com.