As the U.S. ruling class plans to create a base for drone strikes in Kenya, it’s important to understand that the U.S. has been creating devastation in Africa through war and other means long before AFRICOM was founded on October 1st, 2008. According to a US Congressional Research Service Study published in November 2010, Washington has dispatched anywhere between hundreds and several thousand combat troops, dozens of fighter planes and warships to prop up neo-colonial leaders or to unseat adversarial regimes in dozens of countries, almost on a yearly basis since the 1950s. Their records show that the US armed forces intervened in Africa forty-eight times in that timeframe.
The countries receiving one or more US military intervention include the DRC, Republic of the Congo, Libya, Chad, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Rwanda, Liberia, Central African Republic, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Eritrea. Overt military operations have occurred, but large-scale proxy and clandestine military operations, often using special forces, are very pervasive. This has brought about destabilization and devastation for the African countries involved without the U.S. having to declare war or announce their involvement in these destructive events. U.S. imperialism has killed millions on the African continent through these wars and interventions. Calling for an end to the war on African people globally is imperative to stem the devaluation of Black life.
Most of the U.S.’s war-making and barbarism on the African continent is built on military links to military leaders. The Pentagon has military ties with fifty-three African countries. The Bush Administration announced in 2002 that Africa was a “strategic priority in fighting terrorism,” and U.S. foreign policy strategists, with the backing of both liberal and conservative congress people, moved to centralize and coordinate a military policy on a continent-wide basis by forming the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA). These commands organize African armies, euphemistically called “co-operative partnerships,” to support U.S. interests in Africa. U.S. special operations teams are now deployed to 23 African countries, and the U.S. operates 46 forms of bases across the continent. We at the Black Alliance for Peace and the U.S. Out of Africa Network demand an end to the U.S. invasion and occupation of the continent and an end to the war being waged on Black/African people globally.
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The absence of a domestic backlash against US Africa policy is testament to the blind spots of our movement.
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Latest US Military Report on Somalia Airstrikes Makes No Mention of Civilians Killed
By Brett Wilkins – September 2, 2020
AFRICOM acknowledges 46 bombings of claimed militant targets this year. Harm to innocent civilians continues to fuel the very terrorism such strikes are purportedly meant to destroy.
By SomTribune – August 30, 2020
Air strikes inflict irreparable damage on lives and property which is shoved under the carpet as ‘unavoidable collateral damage'.
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Photo credit: AFP 2020 / SEYLLOU
