The main imperialist powers, Britain, France and the US, are increasing their military presence in Africa, a region endowed with significant deposits of strategic raw materials which they are determined to control. African military capabilities are being upgraded via training missions, but direct military intervention is also increasing. France is sending 1,000 more troops to the Central African Republic. There is an expansion of US drone bases in Africa, already a key battleground in the fight to push out rivals, like Russia and China, and cripple their access to resources. The ‘war on terror’ is subterfuge. General Houghton, Chief of the Defence Staff, says British troops, will ‘certainly focus on Africa’ by January 2015. Britain is determined not to lose its privileged parasitic position as exploiter in chief. Charles Chinweizu reports.
Rwandan proxy evicted from Eastern DRC
A Rwandan proxy armed group was defeated in October 2013 by Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) national army (FARDC). Thousands of rebels were forced to flee over the border. It is the first time in almost two decades that a Rwandan militia has been evicted from the eastern part of DRC and a serious blow to US and British imperialism’s plans to balkanise and plunder DRC at will.
Since 1996, when Britain and the US removed Mobutu, then president of Zaire, the Rwandan and Ugandan military or their proxies have occupied eastern Congo, creating parallel administrations and robbing natural resources. It was Britain and the US that brought the current Rwandan regime to power in 1994, ousting rival imperialist France from the region, a process that cost almost one million lives. Rwanda has invaded DRC at least six times under the pretext of hunting Hutu FDLR rebels responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide. DRC possesses significant deposits of critical raw materials. Most of the fighting and resources are located in the eastern part of DRC, especially in the Kivus. Having no significant mineral resources of its own, Rwanda has made destabilising DRC and partitioning off the eastern provinces, strategic to its economic survival. Britain and the US want to turn the DRC into ‘a vassal state of Rwanda’ (WikiLeaks, 25 Feb 2010). The US, Belgium and France have even opened diplomatic offices in the Kivus.
Critical raw materials
In June 2010, the European Union identified 14 ‘high supply risk’ mineral raw materials, demand for which might triple by 2030. Too high a share of worldwide production came from a handful of countries including the DRC (for cobalt and coltan). Cobalt is critical for a wide variety of applications, and ‘DRC is the main primary extracting country…[whose] political instability has caused problems with long-term security of supply for Europe’. The US is the world’s largest consumer of cobalt and like the EU has no domestic production, so considers cobalt a ‘strategic’ metal. In 2011, 40% of world cobalt originated as a by-product from copper production in DRC. Coltan is used in consumer electronics manufacture. In October 2012, an EU report, Substitutionability of critical raw materials, identified Rwanda as a major producer of coltan despite it having no significant deposits of the mineral. DRC contains half the world’s cobalt, 80% of its copper and significant amounts of coltan.
Rwanda economic interests = British imperialist interests
This explains the imperialists’ interest in central Africa and their funding of Rwanda to destabilise DRC. Rwanda’s military budget comes from foreign donors who provide as much as 50% of the country’s budget. Belgium has given Rwanda over €150m in four years; Britain, the largest bilateral donor, has provided over £1bn since 2003 in aid and, along with the US, has close military ties with the country. Through mafia-like networks run by the Rwandan Army, huge quantities of Congo’s minerals are looted. Rudasingwa, a former Rwandan lieutenant, admitted, ‘In meetings it was often said, “For Rwanda to be strong, Congo must be weak, and the Congolese must be divided.”’ (Howard W French, TheDailyBeast.com, 14 January 2013.) Rwanda and Uganda are responsible for the worst war in Africa which has led to the deaths of 7-10 million people and displaced 2.7 million, more than half of them (1.83 million) in the Kivus; thousands have been raped and tortured.
The latest reincarnation, the M23
Key to dividing the Congolese has been the imperialists’ demand that rebels are incorporated into the army (FARDC). In 2003 the UN, Belgium, Britain and the US insisted that rebels, who took part in the Ugandan and Rwandan invasion of DRC in 1998, be made ‘vice presidents’. Rebels incorporated into FARDC in 2009 started a new rebellion as M23 (March 23 Movement) in April 2012 and occupied eastern DRC for 18 months. Like all previous such groups, the M23 engaged in illegal exploitation of mineral resources. They have committed barbaric abuses of civilians, including looting, murder, rape, torture, extortion and abducting children to fight and as sex slaves. They have now been given refuge in Uganda (1,700 fighters) and Rwanda (800), confirming numerous UN reports that the rebels are backed by neighbouring countries.
M23 is a foreign-sponsored militia, headed by Rwandan military officers and Defence Minister James Kabarebe himself. Massive caches of weapons, including 300 tons of ammunition, have been found left behind by the fleeing M23. Rwandan troops are said to be amassing on DRC’s border. Uganda has threatened that M23 ‘can regroup’ if its demands are not met. M23 is demanding reintegration into the Congolese army, and staying close to the Rwandan border.
Protests in DRC against the UN for attempting to hold back the FARDC in its fight against M23 have forced the weak DRC government to say no to the imperialists insisting on an agreement with M23. Rwanda and Uganda will not give up their proxies despite symbolic pressure on them from the US – over 40 armed groups, some with Rwandan links, still operate in DRC. However, the cycle of instability is starting to hurt mining interests who want stability to exploit the region. Belgian and South African economic interests in DRC, all collide with US and British imperialist interests. Belgium is contemplating sending troops back into central Africa. South Africa provided troops to the UN brigade. In the gaps between these rivalries, and the pressure from the people of Kivu who steadfastly refused to support M23, DRC has achieved a significant victory.
Charles Chinweizu
Imperialism partitions Somalia
More than one year after the formation of a new Somali federal government (SFG) in August 2012, there have been no concrete gains for Somalia, instead the country is being partitioned into de facto federal states due to the imperialists’ failure to win the civil war. Somalia has been in transition since at least 2000. Infighting and corruption in the SFG, rape and violence against civilians, and the presence of Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab, controlling at least a third of Somalia, continue. The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), made up mainly of Kenyan, Ugandan and Burundian troops (with an initial six-month mandate) has grown from 850 in 2007 to over 17,000 troops. Ethiopian forces have also entered Somalia, but not under AMISOM command. The African Union has called for a surge of 6,200, taking AMISOM up to around 24,000 troops.
The SFG signed a secret Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), allowing Kenya and Ethiopia to carve central and southern Somalia into three distinct semi-autonomous states to be ruled by clan-based Somali puppet local administrations: Kenya would establish Jubaland near its border, Ethiopia would create a buffer state from the central regions and AMISOM forces would establish Banaadir in the areas surrounding Mogadishu. The fairytale goes that ‘liberated’ areas of a ‘pacified Somalia’ will be handed over to the UN. In reality, Kenya and Ethiopia have long viewed a strong Somalia as a threat.
The latest stage in the balkanisation of Somalia was concretised in May 2013, when the new federal state of Jubaland was formed. Jubaland, a semi-autonomous region in the southern tip of Somalia, is lucrative and politically strategic. Ahmed Mohamed Islam (known as Madoobe) has been named President of Jubaland. Madoobe is a founder and former leader of Al Shabaab, and the leader of the fundamentalist Ras Kamboni Brigade, a split from Al Shabaab in 2008. The Ras Kamboni militia are armed and trained by Kenya and Ethiopia.
Jubaland is critical to the whole of southern Somalia. In theory Jubaland will be the Interim Juba Administration and last two years. In reality it is outside SFG control, like other fragments of Somalia. Another fundamentalist militia, the Ahu Sunna Wal Jama’a (ASWJ), is Ethiopia’s proxy for controlling the central regions. After the 2006-2009 invasion of Somalia, Ethiopia increased arms and training for ASWJ. Behind Kenya and Ethiopia lie the arms, training and support of Britain, France and the US. The imperialist predators are seeking to achieve their geopolitical goals in the Horn of Africa at all costs, even if it means funding terrorist groups.
Kenya invaded Somalia in 2011 to pursue Al Shabaab. Ethiopia invaded in 2006 under similar pretexts. The consequences of these invasions have been a strengthening of fundamentalist groups, especially Al Shabaab. 70-80% of arms provided to successive Somali puppet governments have found their way to non-state actors such as Al Shabaab. A 2011 UN report showed most ammunition recovered from Al Shabaab fighters came from AMISOM stocks.
Further justification for military incursions into Somalia came in September after a terrorist attack by Al Shabaab on the Israeli-owned Westgate Mall in Nairobi. 72 people died, including four attackers, and at least 175 others were wounded, after attackers held off security forces for four days.
It did not take long before ruling class hopes of using this attack as a pretext for further dismembering Somalia started to unravel: ‘15-20 attackers’ became four; how did four attackers hold off the special forces, including units of Israeli, US and British commandos airlifted to Kenya as soon as the siege began, for so long? Kenyan police were shot and killed by Kenyan soldiers, mistaking them for terrorists. Kenyan Defence Forces destroyed a roof causing three floors of the mall to collapse, killing unknown numbers of shoppers, after systematically looting every shop in the mall and stealing from corpses.
A May 2013 report of Kenya’s Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission on violations committed between independence in 1963 to 2008 states: ‘state security agencies, particularly the Kenya Police and the Kenya Army, have been the main perpetrators…of heinous human rights violations in the country…Almost without exception, security operations in [marginalised regions such as] Northern Kenya have been accompanied by massacres of largely innocent citizens, systematic and widespread torture, rape and sexual violence of girls and women, looting and burning of property and the killing and confiscation of cattle…practices starkly similar to those employed by the same forces during the colonial period’ ie the British. This is a glimpse of the terror being exported to Somalia by imperialism and its allies. Kenya is important to the British economy with British, rather than US, companies being key players. To defend these imperialist interests Britain actively supports terrorism against the Kenyan and Somali people.
British imperialism out of East Africa!
Charles Chinweizu
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 236 December 2013/January 2014
