The Role of AFRICOM

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.