The U.S. military—a major force in reproducing U.S. imperialism—is one of the principal obstacles to peace and stability in Africa. In the face of African resistance, the deployment of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has unleashed disaster after disaster on the continent.
The instability in Somalia, Libya, Mali, Mozambique and other countries on the continent are directly related to the military planning and activities of AFRICOM. The U.S. Africa Command has increased resource exploitation and imperial expansion. It also has instigated more violence, intensified regional conflicts, and undermined the authority of regional organizations like Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Southern African Development Community (SADC) and East African Community (EAC). AFRICOM, a formal vehicle of U.S. imperialism, is a disaster.
The establishment of AFRICOM has not served the best interest of the African peoples, and the argument that humanitarianism has fueled the deployment of this military command has been proved false. AFRICOM is not what the people of Africa need, and it is not what will achieve long-term stability on the continent. We must build a people’s movement to dismantle AFRICOM and get the U.S. out of Africa!
U.S. Out of Africa: Voices from the Struggle
Aziz Salmone Fall is an Egyptian-Senegalese lecturer and internationalist political scientist. He describes himself as an international pan-Africanist and has thus developed the concept of “panafricentrage,” or the pan-African internationalist strategy of disengagement and construction of balanced continental development. Fall was coordinator of the Quebec network against apartheid, currently is president of the Aubin Fondation and Ryerson Research Center, and co-founder and co-coordinator of the left-wing Mouvement des Assises de Gauche in Senegal. He also founded and is a member of the Group for Research and Initiative for the Liberation of Africa (GRILA), within which, together with a group of 21 lawyers and several organizations, he coordinates the first African international campaign against impunity—the case of Burkinabé President Thomas Sankara.
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin: Tell us about GRILA and why it is opposed to AFRICOM?
Fall: GRILA is a Pan-African group born in 1984 during the apartheid period and the era of structural adjustment policies and neocolonial policies against our sovereignty. It is an autonomous, non-profit, entirely volunteer-based organization of researchers and activists. It functions on the basis of the material and intellectual contribution of its sections, made up of members and supporters. GRILA has chapters and members in the continent and in the diaspora. Within its vision of a universalist world, GRILA’s goal is to contribute to the emergence and consolidation of self-directed and self-reliant development in Africa, and to foster international solidarity in support of this form of development.
GRILA was the first on the continent to stand in the way of the expansionist aims of the post-apartheid era, notably with Warren Christopher's “African Crisis Response Force” [a program the United States launched in 1996 to "address challenges of peacekeeping and conflict management in Africa"] and to propose our pan-African option which was Africa Pax. GRILA is also the first group that denounced AFRICOM in 2009, and launched on May 25, 2013—on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of African "independence”—a declaration co-signed by 50 prominent African and German personalities, titled, “AFRICOM go home, neither in Africa nor in Germany.” The advocacy and awareness-raising work of the declaration Africom go home is translated into 9 languages and which you can find here.
A film to illustrate our advocacy effort is available on YouTube and ages well. It is called “Africom go home foreign bases out of AFRICA.”
In the audiovisual document, “Africom go home foreign bases out of Africa,” the pan-Africanist analysis treats all non-African countries with bases in Africa or instrumentalizing our regimes in the same way, i.e. as occupying forces. We almost succeed in convincing some major parts of the German population that the base violates its own constitution. But the terrorist attack in Berlin jeopardized our peace effort. And Germany became more proactive, having now a more aggressive role in the continent.
AWB: Why should this be of concern to anyone who is not African or who does not live on the African continent?
Fall: Indeed, AFRICOM, NATO arrangements and unilateral initiatives by some NATO countries such as France are in the exclusive interest of the countries of the Core and their local compatriots. It may seem surprising to you Americans, who are so busy trying to rule the world, that pan-Africans consider the sovereignty of their continent essential. How would your fellow citizens feel if foreign armies occupied your territory, invoking the right to interfere and the responsibility to protect? The Americans, like all occupying forces on our territory, are defending their interests, of course, but to the detriment of ours. It is important that your citizens discover another history, namely that of imperialism and your country's actions in the real history of Africa and ask your leaders and your corporations to respect the integrity of our continent and the human rights of our people.
AWB: Given that the U.S. has military-to-military relationships with 53 of the 54 countries on the continent, how do you respond to those who say, "Africans must have embraced this”?
Fall: U.S. administrations change, but the system remains. The U.S. is a great power that tries to temper its decline by cunning and force. Unfortunately, most of our regimes are compradors (subordinate to imperialism) and have only a short-term view and manage the crisis. This placing of African national armies under the control of AFRICOM and NATO forces; the constant prospect of seeing the AFRICOM [headquarters] moved to Africa, the resurgence of French and other military interventions; the recently created military bases of Japan, as well as China in Djibouti, Germany in Niger, Turkey, Russia and Israel's protective support; all of this is jeopardizing any real African integration. We have welcomed prudently the so-called decision to pull out troops dedicated to Africa in the Stuttgart AFRICOM [headquarters] in Germany. It is very likely that some of the alleged 1,200 U.S. AFRICOM soldiers could be redeployed elsewhere in Europe, in the U.S. European Command and in Special Operations Command Europe, as well as in facilities on the African continent. The relocation plan, which might take some time to implement, does not mention what may happen with forward bases such as the Ramstein Air Base, a strategic hub for operations in the Middle East and Africa that is headquarters to the U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Africa; or the U.S. Special Operations Command. As Samir Amin has clearly analyzed: “The U.S. aims to contain its own European and Japanese allies and maintain their yoke on them by ensuring supremacy over NATO and adapting its strategy of Latin Americanization of any space it deems useful around the world. To ensure control of the oil slicks and vital transport resources and access to its markets. To weaken Russia and China and any other emerging country likely to oppose its doctrine. To thwart nationalist or progressive experiments throughout the global South that could challenge locally the global order it establishes and ensure that less useful regions of the world remain marginalized.” The blackmail of instability threatens Mali, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Egypt, Nigeria, Tunisia, the Central African Republic, Mozambique and Algeria... In theatres of operations, the UN is used as an instrument, leaving the free hand to NATO forces. The apparent unity of the militarized African countries in these missions is especially so in the wake of imperialism. At least, 36 countries of the continent have sent people to Washington to train the "next generation of security sector leaders" [ACSS - African Center for Strategic Studies]. These high-ranking officers are part of a system of operational and military capacity building under AFRICOM's Theater Security Cooperation programs (TSCP). The Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) program complements these troop training programs and is also part of the multilateral UN peacekeeping training. Over the past decade or so, an ever-increasing number of African armies have been participating annually in FLINTLOCK counter-terrorist maneuvers in North and West Africa. AFRICA ENDEAVOR is a maneuver in the intelligence communication sector. CUTLASS EXPRESS are maritime maneuvers designed to contain all types of traffic in East Africa and in the Indian Ocean, etc.
AWB: Outside of the continent, which word would you say best describes the feelings of African people about AFRICOM: Apathetic or unaware, or is there another description that best captures the general mindset?
Fall: Propaganda, disinformation, depoliticization, and the daily preoccupation with problems of development and survival make geostrategic issues too complex or generate a powerlessness to apprehend them or a fortiori to try to resolve them. However, more and more people realise the following: That, unfortunately, Africa is still subservient to imperialism. The integrated nebula of transnational firms, many American, imposes its iniquitous economic conditions on African countries and "legalizes" the plundering of mineral resources to the detriment of African peoples.
However, the emergence of more dynamic African social formations, the bulimic appetite of China and India for resources, the arrival on the scene of no less important players such as Brazil, India, Turkey, Qatar, Russia or Israel, are disrupting the situation.
The failure of neo-liberalism and the consequences of three decades of liberalization and the dismantling of areas of sovereignty are giving rise to new logics of multipolar partnership. These logics are of the South-South type and change the geopolitical, economic and cultural terrain. Some countries' debts are being wiped out; raw materials are being exchanged for infrastructure projects or business opportunities without imposing conditionalities, while OECD official development assistance is declining and is now lower than the remittances and various monetary transfers that African immigrants send from abroad. This worries the economically weak but geopolitically dominant powers. They are therefore playing the militaristic card to maintain their pre-eminence.
In the Sahel, the French President is both concerned about French human and material losses, the disaffection of popular support in the face of the duplicity of French policies and his desire to build a new structured international coalition in the Sahel. He has inherited a militaristic policy of rival administrations entangled in paternalistic visions of France overseas, combined with his own disparate Franco-African networks.
AWB: Talk about two to three things those of us outside of the continent can do to advance the struggle to rid the continent of AFRICOM?
Fall: We ask all progressive Americans to pressure their government to close these imperialist bases and facilities, and to dismantle the so-called U.S. strategic control of the African continent.
We ask Americans and African Americans to advocate for peace in foreign American policy and to help reduce its military budget and realign it on its own alleviation of poverty programs and ecological effort. The U.S. defense budget exceeds the combined budget of the seven countries that follow it, like the alpha male in the wolf pack, and accounts for 75 percent of the world's military spending.
We ask you to respect our right for self-defense and sovereignty and support our Pan-Africanism. It is up to Africa to defend its sovereignty and to take advantage of the diversified South-South perspectives of cooperation and solidarity that are still possible.
These military powers competing on our soil are not omnipotent, are riddled with contradictions and could not abuse their advantages so much if Africa is united. This allows us to continue to act and talk about this issue, wherever we can and defend our continent with the last energy.
AWB: Thank you for your time and analysis!
NEWS & ANALYSIS
How to Destroy a Nation in 10 Years
July 2, 2021 by Danny Sjursen
Over the past ten years, U.S. policy has wrought havoc in Burkina Faso and the rest of the Sahel as the war on terror brought Islamist militants to a region that had none previously.
Thousands hit the streets of Sudan against IMF deal
July 1, 2021 by Peoples Dispatch
The mobilizations, which also commemorated the Millions March of June 30, 2019, came right after the IMF approved a 2.5 billion dollar loan and debt relief of 56 million dollars on June 30.
We Charge Colonialism Repatriation Platform
July 1, 2021 by We Charge Colonialism
African people in the diaspora can either return to our mother Continent of Africa and fight for self-determination for the African continent; or stay and fight for internal-self-determination.
U.S. role in Africa driven by lust for resources, not fear of terrorism
June 29, 2021 by Brian E. Muhammad
Destabilization on the continent is in the context of the geo-strategic importance of Africa for Western nations and the struggle to remain relevant powers in this century and beyond.
AFRICOM Chief Pushes for US Troops to Return to Somalia
June 29, 2021 by Jason Ditz
U.S. operations in Somalia seemed mostly limited to assassinating suspected militants in rural Somalia and fueling complaints of civilian deaths.
Malian Whirlwinds: AFRICOM and the Military Presidency
June 28, 2021 by Abayomi Azikiwe
The U.S. and France have long worked to militarize Mali to protect their economic interests in the country, and the role of the military in post-colonial Africa has been a reactionary one.
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Banner photo: U.S. service members speak with Danab soldiers in Somalia on January 28, 2021. (Senior Airman Hannah Strobel)
