Sociology of Africa: 'Mali war will spill over to North and West Africa: Abayomi Azikiwe

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

'Mali war will spill over to North and West Africa: Abayomi Azikiwe

Press TV

January 26, 2013

To watch the video: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/01/26/285665/mali-war-is-spreading-across-the-region/

A political analyst tells Press TV that the war in Mali is spreading throughout the entire region and many governments have called for the resumption of comprehensive peace talks in order to resolve the situation in Mali.

This is while the African Union has been seeking to increase the size of the African-led force in Mali as French and Malian troops push further towards northern parts of the West African country.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, to further discuss the issue. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: The UN Security Council blasted the coup leaders in Mali last year. Now most of the same powers that is, including France, have intervened in Mali based on an invitation from the same coup leaders. How is the intervention justified?

Azkiwe: The aggression is not justified. We have to understand that the United States had strong ties with the Malian military. In fact in today’s New York Times it indicates that some five hundred million dollars was spent over period of years in training some of the top officers in the Malian military and all of this training has been a complete disaster because when it came time for the Malian military to confront the separatists in the north of the country, they collapsed immediately and a lot of the military equipment and even some of the combatants took off their uniforms and blended into the population.

So France’s military intervention in Mali right now is exacerbating the human rights violations and humanitarian crisis that exists in northern Mali at this time.

Press TV: Mali had twenty years of democracy, a constitution and an elected government. Now their restoration is not on the French agenda in Mali. What do you make of that?

Azkiwe: I think that it should be on the agenda. Many governments throughout the region, many non-government organizations have called for the resumption of comprehensive peace talks in order to resolve the situation in Mali and the war of course is spreading.

We saw what happened last week at the In Amenas gas fields in Algeria and now France just announced today that they are deploying special forces units to guard the Areva uranium mines located in neighboring Niger.

These mines are very valuable to the Western Industrial Complex, so this war is not just being maintained within the internal borders of Mali but it is spreading throughout the entire region of North and West Africa.

So we very urgently call upon the African Union which is meeting right now in Ethiopia as well as the Economic Community of West African States to demand the France seizes military intervention in Mali and also bring about the comprehensive negotiation of a peace settlement inside the country.

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Recommended Books on Africa, Africana and Black Studies

Delores P. Aldridge and Carlene Young. Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2003. ISBN 0-7391-0547-7.
Maulana Karenga. Introduction to Black Studies. University of Sankore Press, 2010.
Peter Gran. Beyond Eurocentrism: A new view of modern world history. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Michael George Hanchard. Black Transnationalism, Africana Studies, and the 21st Century. Journal of Black Studies, Nov 2004; vol. 35: pp. 139 - 153.
James L. Conyers. The Evolution Of Africology: An Afrocentric Appraisal. Journal of Black Studies, May 2004; vol. 34: pp. 640 - 652.
Mark Christian. Black Studies in the 21st Century: Longevity Has Its Place. Journal of Black Studies, May 2006; vol. 36: pp. 698 - 719.
Molefi Kete Asante. A Discourse on Black Studies: Liberating the Study of African People in the Western Academy. Journal of Black Studies, May 2006; vol. 36: pp. 646 - 662.
A. Adu Boahen. African Perspectives on Colonialism. John Hopkins University Press 1989.
David Birmingham. Decolonization Of Africa. Routledge 1995.
Frederick Cooper. Africa since 1940: The Past of the Present. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Terry Kershaw. Toward a Black Studies Paradigm: An Assessment and Some Directions. Journal of Black Studies, Jun 1992; vol. 22: pp. 477 - 493.
Mervat Hatem. Africa on My Mind. International Journal of Middle East Studies. (41) 2009.
Carolyn Somerville. The “African” in Africana/Black/African and African American Studies. International Journal of Middle East Studies. (41) 2009.
Terence Walz. The Fruit of the Africanist Contribution. International Journal of Middle East Studies. (41) 2009.
John O. Voll. Reconceptualizing of the “Regions” in “Area Studies”. International Journal of Middle East Studies. (41) 2009.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1992. “The Invention of Africa.” Pp. 3-27. In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2003. Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism And the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Comaroff, Jean and John. 1991. “Africa Observed: Discourses of the Imperial Imagination.” Pp. 86-125, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. X
Grant-Thomas, Andrew and john a. Powell. 2009. “Structural Racism and Color Lines in the United States. Pp. 118-144 in Twenty-First Century Color Lines: Multiracial Change in Contemporary America. Edited by Andrew Grant-Thomas and Gary Orfield. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. X
Mazrui, Ali. 2005. The Re-invention of Africa: Edward Said, V. Y. Mudimbe, and Beyond. Research in African Literatures 36 (3): 68-82.
Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1998.
Achebe, Chinua. A Man of the People. New York: Anchor, 1967, 1989.
Maier, Karl. Into the House of Ancestors: Inside the New Africa. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1998.
Peterson, Scott. Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Tugrul Keskin - Assistant Professor of International and Middle Eastern Studies

Tugrul Keskin is an Assistant Professor of International and Middle Eastern Studies and an affiliated faculty of Black Studies, Sociology and the Center For Turkish Studies at Portland State University. He is also the Middle East Studies Coordinator (INTL). His research and teaching interests include Sociology of Islam and the Middle East, Social and Political Theory, Post-Colonial Theory, Islamic Movements, Development and Urbanization in the Middle East, Sociology of Africa, and Modern Kurdish, Uyghur and Turkish Nationalism. Previously, Dr. Keskin taught as an instructor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Virginia Tech University and has also taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at James Madison University and Radford University. He received his PhD in Sociology from Virginia Tech, with certificate degrees in Africana Studies, Social and Political Thought, and International Research and Development. He is the founder and moderator of the Sociology of Islam mailing list, and editor of the Sociology of Islam and Muslim Societies Newsletter: http://www.pdx.edu/sociologyofislam. Dr. Keskin has recently had his edited book, The Sociology of Islam: Secularism Economy and Politics published by Garnet/Ithaca Press, 2011. Tugrul Keskin is a board member of Sociologists Without Borders and serves as a book review editor of Societies Without Borders http://societieswithoutborders.org/.