America Invades Africa: The Resource War and the Conquest of Mali
By Timothy Alexander Guzman
Global Research
Centre for Research on Globalization
December 13, 2012
The United States African Command (AFRICOM) was created in 2007
under then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the Bush Administration
as a Military Command center that covers the entire continent of
Africa. They wanted to create a permanent footprint in Africa to
maintain the peace and security it desires that is deemed beneficial for
US interests.
In a White House Press Release on Feb 6, 2007 the Bush Administration
announced that a new centralized US command will be present in the
African Continent through AFRICOM:
“This new command will strengthen our
security cooperation with Africa and create new opportunities to
bolster the capabilities of our partners in Africa. Africa Command will
enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa
and promote our common goals of development, health, education,
democracy, and economic growth in Africa”.
The interesting words used in the press release are
development and
economic growth.
There are a number of elements that involves AFRICOM and its mission.
The first being the competition it will encounter with China and other
countries who deal with African states through diplomatic negotiations
and business deals concerns the United States, especially western powers
such as France and Great Britain who colonized Africa for centuries
whether by signing treaties with African leaders who saw it as a benefit
or by military force.
The US and its Western Allies use military force, whether by an
invasion or by creating a coup d’état within the country of interest.
AFRICOM’s goal is to eliminate China and other countries influence in
the region. Africa’s natural resources is another important element to
consider because it includes oil, diamonds, copper, gold, iron, cobalt,
uranium, bauxite, silver, petroleum, certain woods and tropical fruits.
Just to get an idea what’s at stake for US corporate interests, West
Africa alone provides about 20 percent of the US supply of
hydrocarbons. The US corporate interest in Africa needs natural
resources to feed its appetite for profits, a fact that should not be
ignored. The US would create conflicts to justify their presence in the
resource rich continent by any means including a way to generate a
crisis within their targeted area of interest. As Rahm Emanuel, the
former Chief of Staff to US President Barack Obama once said “no crisis
should go to waste” is a motto that Washington is obviously using.
In the beginning of 2012, the Tuareg Rebellion took place in the
northern Mali conflict that involved several wars of independence
against the Malian government in the Sahara desert region of Azawad.
The Malian government lost its northern region to the Tuareg
secessionists as a result. The Tuareg is a faction of nomadic people
that live in the northern part of the country along with a local
Islamist militant group called the the Ansar Dine. However, the Anser
Dine was aligned with Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) an element of Al Qaeda who
eventually displaced the Tuareg and imposed Sharia law. Mali’s Timbuktu
eventually became a ghost town as the Ansar Dine and the Islamic
Maghreb gained power. Ironically, both groups obtained weapons from
Libya after the US/NATO led invasion.
The crisis began when the democratically-elected government of Amadou
Toumani Touré of Mali was overthrown on in the southern capital on
March 21
st due to his mismanagement of the crisis. The
leader of the military coup was Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo who was
trained by the United States on “several occasions” according to a
Washington Post article on March 23, 2012. It is obvious that
Washington was behind the action undertaken by Sanogo.
Now the United States wants an invasion for “Humanitarian
intervention” purposes. But as we all should know “Humanitarian
Intervention” only means “Economic Intervention” because the criteria
for such an intervention will lead to a vast of wealth including gold
mining, oil and agricultural commodities that the US and other Western
powers would want to exploit.
The Western controlled
United Nations (UN) wants sanctions imposed on Northern Mali because of
its ties to terrorism. That is the first step of a coming intervention
by the West. AFRICOM’s true purpose is to seek and destroy African
nations and install puppet regimes that are obedient to Washington. How
do they achieve such an outcome? Create the crises and offer the
remedy. AFRICOM will be the answer.
