U.S. military presence in Africa and what happened during the ambush of U.S. Special Forces by militants in Niger, in which five Nigerien soldiers were killed along with four U.S. Green Berets. The incident is now the subject of a military and FBI investigation. At least 800 U.S. servicemembers are currently stationed in the country to support a French-led mission to defeat militants in West Africa. Meanwhile, Somalia continues to recover from a massive bombing in Mogadishu that killed at least 358 people.
during the ambush of U.S. Special Forces by militants in the West African nation of Niger, which is now the subject of a military and FBI investigation. During a press conference Monday, Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, laid out a timeline of the Niger attack on October 4th, in which five Nigerien soldiers were killed along with four U.S. Green Berets, after their 12-member Army Special Forces unit accompanied 30 Nigerien forces on a reconnaissance mission to an area near the village of Tongo Tongo, about an hour north of the capital. They reportedly ended up spending the night there, and when they left the next morning to return to their base, they encountered about 50 enemy fighters.
Dunford’s description underscored how long the attack dragged on. He said when he realized the body of Sergeant La David Johnson was missing, he made a call to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and got immediate approval to bring the, quote, “full weight of the U.S. government to bear” in order to locate the missing soldier. Dunford defended the broader American mission in Niger, saying U.S. forces have been in the country intermittently for more than two decades. At least 800 U.S. servicemembers are currently stationed in the country to support a French-led mission to defeat the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and Boko Haram in West Africa.
This comes as Republican Senator John McCain, chair of the Armed Services Committee, threatened to issue a subpoena in order to speed up the release of details about the attack. On Monday, Johnson’s widow spoke out on Good Morning America about her husband’s death, saying she’s upset about remarks President Trump made during a condolence call. Myeshia Johnson reaffirmed she and others heard Trump say, “He knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyway.” She said it, quote, “made me cry even worse,” and noted the president also struggled to remember her husband’s name.
Last week, Florida Congressmember Frederica Wilson said she heard the call in which President Trump told Johnson’s widow he, quote, “knew what he signed up for … but when it happens, it hurts anyway.” Over the weekend, Trump called Wilson “wacky” in a series of tweets, without once mentioning La David Johnson or offering condolences to his family. That was the day of the funeral.
Meanwhile, Somalia continues to recover [after] a massive bombing in Mogadishu that killed at least 358 people and wounded over 400 others, [and] a roadside bomb exploded on Sunday, killing 11 people. The explosions come after the Trump administration stepped up a U.S. campaign against al-Shabab in Somalia. In March, Trump declared Somalia a so-called zone of active hostilities, giving wide latitude to military leaders to launch airstrikes and ground assaults. In May, that led to the first U.S. combat death in Somalia since 1993, when Navy SEAL officer Kyle Milliken was killed in an assault on an al-Shabab radio station. In August, a raid by U.S. soldiers and Somali troops on a village outside Mogadishu left 10 civilians dead, including three children.
Horace Campbell talking:
What is happening with the United States’ presence in Africa is similar to the United States’ presence in the United States itself. That is, the lives of African people do not matter. The United States of America is involved in a duplicitous war on terror in Africa, when on the streets of the United States of America black people are being terrorized. At the same time, the United States is in a dubious alliance with France, that wants to instigate ideas about terror in order to save capitalism in France.
So, this relationship between the United States and France, in what is called fighting war on terror in the Sahel, comes six years after the United States, France and Britain went into Libya to destroy that country, because that country wanted to create the basis for the unification of Africa and an African currency. Last year, President Obama said that going into Libya was the biggest mistake of his presidency. Later, in October of 2016, the British Parliament had a report that said that going into Libya was based on lies. The only government that did not respond was the French government, that mobilized those who are called al-Qaeda to fight against Gaddafi. The same French government that mobilized the so-called al-Qaeda forces in Mali, in Niger, is mobilizing within the United Nations to get African Union, to get five countries in Africa—Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger—to support France, to get the United Nations to send millions of dollars in this so-called fight against terrorism.
The challenge for us in the peace and justice movement is to oppose both the United States and France in this so-called war on terror. What the people of West Africa need is money for reconstruction, health, housing, employment and changing the natural environment, so that the millions of youth can get jobs. It makes no sense for the United States of America to be spending $100 million to build a base in Agadez, in Niger, where France has already a military base, and France is using the United Nations in the so-called multidimensional peacekeeping force in this so-called war on terror. What we need is for a massive campaign to get the truth about why these people are in Niger, Mali and Chad, because there is no war on terror going on when they finance the so-called terrorists to overthrow the government of Libya.
in the case of France and the United States of America, both cannot compete with China. In the case of Niger, Niger provides 75 percent of the electricity needs of France, because it produces uranium; 7.5 percent of the world’s production of uranium comes from a French company in Niger. In 2010, in 2008, 2010, China promised to invest billions of dollars in oil production in Niger. The president of Niger at the time, Mamadou Tandja, had accused France of financing those who are called terrorists. He was overthrown in a coup d’état. Both the United States and France and other members of the European Union are opposed to the Chinese presence in Africa, because where in a country like Djibouti the United States has 4,000 troops, China has spent $5 billion building a state-of-the-art port and has spent $10 billion building a railway from Djibouti to the capital city of Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa. There is no possibility of the United States of America and Western Europe competing with China in Africa.
Africans do not want this competition over their territory. What Africans want is a demilitarization of the continent and for the duplicitous role of France, the European Union and the United States to end in this so-called war on terror. The African people want money for reconstruction, so that in a country such as Somalia, every cent that is being used for fighting the war on terror could be spent in building schools, and then the police operation could be used against al-Shabab. We can only deal with terror when we demilitarize it and treat the extremists in Africa in isolating them from the communities of young people, who are fed up with the alienation because there’s unemployment and low standards of living for the African people.
Mark Fancher talking:
the U.S. Africa Command is something that was created in or about 2007. At the time, it was clear from its design that it was intended as a way for the United States to use military methods to carry out its imperialist agenda in Africa without having to run the risk of suffering U.S. casualties. The idea was that U.S. military forces would be placed in strategic locations in Africa for the purpose of training, advising and directing the armies of African countries, essentially, to carry out missions for the United States. So it was a, you know, they-could-have-their-cake-and-eat-it-too sort of a situation, where they could engage certain hostile forces in combat and not have to worry about U.S. troops dying.
It has not worked out that way. We have just seen within the past month the fact that there are U.S. troops that are at risk as a result of this. It was inevitable. Any time that you introduce violence into a situation that requires the construction of infrastructure and attending to the needs of the poor, you’re going to run into this kind of thing. So, it was, in a very real sense, their chickens coming home to roost. They did not escape.
it’s not just Niger. What many people also don’t know is that this level of military presence can be found in many countries throughout Africa—most of them, as a matter fact. Since 2007, the United States has been expanding its reach and has been planting small groups of people in various different locations, not always with what would be regarded as military bases, but as embassy-based operation centers, where they carry out military training and different operations using African armies. So, it’s no different in Niger. And the use of drones is just an extension of the basic idea of carrying out reconnaissance missions, and sometimes actual attacks, without putting U.S. troops at risk. So, this is very much par for the course.
And I really think it’s important to really understand what has happened in Africa over the last 10 years. In 2007, when AFRICOM was created, the presence of terrorists, to the extent that we see them now, was—there was nothing comparable. The presence, if any, was minimal. What was going on in Africa at the time was that you had organizations like the Movement to Emancipate the Niger Delta, or MEND, which had engaged in very militant kinds of attacks on U.S. oil installations, breaking up pipelines, kidnapping U.S. oil company and Western oil company personnel, and issuing a threat in 2006 that they could not guarantee the safety of either the facilities of oil companies in and about Nigeria and in that region or the people who were sent there to work on them. It was at that moment that the United States decided that it was going to set up this special command, which was unprecedented, for Africa exclusively.
You know, you also see what was happening during that period was what they branded as piracy off the coastal waters of Somalia. These were fishermen whose waters had been contaminated by people who had come in and had plundered and raided their fishing facilities and had made them unable to engage in a livelihood. And in retaliation, they began to attack those boats and ships that were coming through those waterways, which was a major international shipping lane.
So, these twin concerns about access to the coastal region in Somalia, the oil that was being produced in the Niger Delta and in the Gulf of Guinea, those were the primary drivers for the creation of AFRICOM. And the more that the U.S. military established a presence in that region and throughout Africa, the more terrorism tended to grow.
– the U.S. participation in the overthrow of Gaddafi and the situation in Libya and total destabilization of Libya. Libya is now, in essence, a failed state.
it had a huge impact. And if you look at the infamous emails of Hillary Clinton, which are available at the State Department’s website, you see an email exchange where State Department personnel are talking very frankly about their conversations with Sarkozy about his interest in overthrowing Gaddafi because he wanted two things. One, he wanted to eliminate the threat of a pan-African currency, gold-backed currency, that Gaddafi wanted to establish, because he was afraid that it would devalue the franc. And he also wanted access to Gaddafi and Libya’s oil fields. That was the bottom line for why they went after Gaddafi in the way that they did.
And in order to do it, AFRICOM stepped in and played a major role in recruiting local forces within Libya to attack Gaddafi. They chose to establish relationships with some of the worst elements in Libya. In fact, one of the groups that they established a relationship with was one which, by its very name, said that its mission was to eliminate black people from Libya. And so they gave guns, heavy artillery, to all kinds of people in Libya, with the hope and expectation that they would, you know, carry out this overthrow of the Libyan government and assassinate Gaddafi. That played itself out, but those weapons were still there.
Horace Campbell talking:
I want to follow up on the point about what happened in Libya and why the progressive forces must continue to press for a United Nations investigation in what happened in Libya. I spelled all this out in my book, Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya.
What is happening in Niger is a continuation of what happened in Libya. France is in deep crisis. France is over—has taken over as undersecretary of peacekeeping forces in the United Nations. France tried to put a resolution through the United Nations Security Council to get more money for France in Niger, in Chad, in Mali and Burkina Faso.
I wrote a book called Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya: Lessons for Africa in the Forging of African Unity. We now know, as was said on this program, that Sarkozy of France said that France went into Libya to save the Europe. There are 14 African countries who cannot have independent monetary and fiscal policy because their currency is tied to the euro through France. Now, France mobilized jihadists, those who are called terrorists, especially from among the Tuareg, in Libya to fight. France mobilized jihadists to overthrow Gaddafi. Those same jihadists were guided to Mali to overthrow the people and to disrupt the situation in Mali. The same France that mobilized the jihadists then went to the United Nations in 2013 to get the United Nations Security Council to support France to fight against terrorism. This is duplicity.
The same thing is happening with Chad. Chad had 4,000 troops fighting in Libya. Chad is part of this five-nation-plus-one that is working with France to destabilize West Africa and the Sahel. Now, the United States has recently placed the government of Chad on the list of countries that have a Muslim ban. And the United States call the government of Chad duplicitous. It is the same government of France and Chad and the United States of America that is working to undermine efforts of the African Union to bring peace and reconstruction and the African currency to Africa.
So what we must be clear about to the progressive forces in the United States of America, that neither France nor the United States can have any political legitimacy in Africa, when on the streets of the United States of America fascists are walking around with Nazi flags and police are killing black people. I want to go back to the point that we made at the beginning. United States has no legitimacy for fighting terrorism in Africa, because you cannot fight to defend black lives in Africa when black lives are not important in the United States of America.
We should send our condolences to Mrs. Johnson, because what is being played out with the congresswoman and Mrs. Johnson is a reflection of the relationship between the present White House and African population in the United States of America. We know the history of Donald Trump, the Republicans and the conservative forces, when it comes to the African people in the United States of America. It was inevitable that we would have this relationship, because one of the difficulties for the United States in Africa is that it’s very nervous about the presence of black people in the U.S. military, because if black people in the U.S. military get in touch with the revolutionary forces in Africa, then it could create bigger problems for the United States of America. So the nervousness that we see at the top of the U.S. military, in the White House, over its relationship with black people was manifest in what happened with the congresswoman and with Mrs. Johnson.
And what we should be doing is to intensify the call for the dismantling of the U.S. Africa Command, and that every cent that is being spent within the U.S. Africa Command to militarize and destabilize Africa should go to reconstruction in Detroit, in the inner cities and to provide water, healthcare and education for people in the United States of America. Africa is very rich. Africa can reconstruct itself, if the United States is not in Africa to ensure that the dollar is the currency of world trade and that African dictators send billions of dollars out of Africa to keep the dollar as the international currency.
The United States is very weak in Africa. I was in Djibouti in May, where the United States has 4,000 troops, the largest number of troops in Africa. They’re basically prisoners there. In 1993, we had the incident of the United States being militarily defeated in Somalia and this famous case called Black Hawk Down. It was decided then that the United States would not re-enter Somalia because the presence of United States troops instigate memories of the United States presence in Somalia and would be a recruiting tool for those who are extremists in Somalia.
Well, the situation is like this in Somalia, that the people of Kenya want the Kenyan troops to withdraw from Somalia. Uganda plans to withdraw from Somalia. Next door, in Ethiopia, there’s a revolutionary situation in Ethiopia, and Ethiopia cannot deploy troops into Somalia as it did in the past. Then, the United States have to deploy troops in Somalia in order to quell the possibilities of revolution in Ethiopia and to support the conservative forces in Kenya—if you note that the head of the Africa Command said to the Kenyan people that electing Raila Odinga would be wrong, because Raila Odinga is calling for U.S. troops to depart from Somalia.
So, the United States, by going back into Somalia, has a number of reasons: one, to intensify the destabilization of Somalia; number two, to prop up those conservative governments in Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya, who have troops in Somalia; and, number three, more importantly, to act as an ally of Saudi Arabia, Israel, in the planned war against the people of Iran. It is for those reasons why we have to see the United States’ militarization of the region as part of its failed militarization of the Near East and Iraq and Afghanistan. And Africans will not tolerate this militarization. So, the United States’ presence in Africa is creating the basis for supporting military dictators, as we have in Ethiopia.
Nikki Haley is someone who doesn’t have a clue about what’s going on in Africa. And in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we have, again, a situation where, for 40 years, the United States has supported the oppressive forces, after assisting in the killing of Patrice Lumumba. Again, in that society, the African Union, the peacekeeping forces and the democratic forces want peace. There is a collaboration between the United Nations peacekeeping forces and the government of the Congo to ensure that the situation remain destabilized so that the Congo can be looted. The same about South Sudan, where we have more generals than schoolteachers—I’m sorry, more generals in South Sudan than—the amount of generals is so much that millions of dollars are being spent on both sides. And the African Union had an investigation into how to bring peace into South Sudan. Nikki Haley, the United Nations, United States of America are stirring up fires in Africa to ensure that there’s no peace in Africa.
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Mark Fancher
an attorney and frequent contributor to Black Agenda Report.
Horace Campbell
currently in West Africa as the Kwame Nkrumah chair at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana. He is a peace and justice scholar and professor of African American studies and political science at Syracuse University.
— source democracynow.org 2017-10-25