AfriCom: Control of Africa
By 2013, one quarter of the oil and raw materials consumed by the United States should come from Africa. On the basis of that consideration, a U.S.-Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (IASPS), recommended the creation of a U.S. military command for Africa: AfriCom. It was inaugurated at the end of the Bush Administration and placed under the command of Afro-American General William E. Ward, former coordinator for security between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
The announcement of its creation gave rise to a wave of resistance in Africa. No African state was willing to host it and AfriCom ultimately set up base in Germany and Italy.
AfriCom’s build up should crystallize around the U.S. base in Djibouti, where Israeli troops are already stationed, while control of the Gulf of Guinea may constitute another strategic focus. For diplomatic reasons, AfriCom will probably start out as a network of small bases, rather than a display of big installations.
Washington should take measures to show a more conciliatory façade, such as accepting China’s exploitation of Sudan’s oil fields, thereby halting that country’s destabilization.
Simultaneously, France should reduce its military presence, share it with other countries of the European Union, and engage it in the peace-keeping operations of the African Union. Paris still has a contingent of 9’000 men on the ground, stationed in the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Gagon, Central African Republic, Chad and Djibouti.


Created in 2007 on the findings of an Israëli study, AfriCom (US Command for Africa) has never yet managed to install its headquarters on the continent. This structure carries out anti-terrorist operations from Germany, with the support of France in the region of the Sahel. In return, US and French transnational companies conserve a privileged access to African prime materials.

Well, Kim, thanks very much, and thanks to you and Kay for inviting me here. I’m delighted again to be here at the Heritage, an institution that really has contributed so much to the public policy debate for many decades now in the United States. And I’m particularly pleased to be here to unveil the Trump administration’s new Africa Strategy, which the President approved yesterday, and which the administration will begin executing immediately.
This strategy is the result of an intensive (...)

Egypt and Sudan are entangled in a number of conflicts:
The border between the two states has not been defined. The Halayeb region, occupied by Egypt since 2000, is still claimed by Sudan. Upon Egypt’s surrender of the Tiran and Sanafir islands to Saudi Arabia, in 2016, the kingdom reportedly acknowledged Egypt’s sovereignty over Halayeb.
Sudan is ruled by a branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, now banned by Cairo. It has just signed a agreement with Turkey, current sponsor of the (...)

“I think it is very clear particularly to us Italians, that for historical and geographical reasons, Europe’s future is at stake in Africa”. So declared Paolo Gentiloni, President of the Council while on his African tour, from 24 to 29 November, travelling through Tunisia, Angola, Ghana and the Ivory Coast.
By making this statement, he unintentionally disclosed the truth to us: today Italy and Europe consider Africa to be crucial for the same “historical and geographical reasons” that arose in (...)

“Libya must return to being a stable and solid country”. So tweets Prime Minister Renzi from Washington, assuring “Prime Minister Sarraj, finally at Tripoli” that he will do all he can.
Those that share Renzi’s thinking in Washington, Paris, London and Rome are the very people that have used war to destabilise and shatter the Libyan state and are now going to collect the fragments through the “international aid mission to Libya”.
This idea of theirs is filtered down through authoritative (...)

“Identify, capture and systematically destroy the boats used for human trafficking, dismantle their networks and seize their goods”: this is the task of the CFSP mission (the European Policy on Security and Defense) that the EU High Representative Federica Mogherini is mandated to carry out. While it is very clear what needs to be done, there is no clarity on how it will be done. Comparison with other missions, such as Atalanta formally targetted against piracy in the Horn of Africa, which (...)

The Ebola virus was first discovered in 1976 in northern Zaire, near a river that gave it its name. The epidemic had then killed 280 people before disappearing.
It seems that certain bats are healthy carriers of the disease and can contaminate certain species of monkeys as well as men. Transmission can also occur from human to human through blood, breast milk, feces and vomit, and possibly through the saliva of a patient at a more advanced stage. It would appear that the virus cannot be (...)

Washington announces the establishment of a Military Command Centre in Liberia
Faced with the “unprecedented Ebola epidemic, which is spreading like wild fire across Western Africa” President Obama has announced that, “on the request of the Liberian government”, the United States will establish “a military command centre in Liberia”. Here we have a “Joint Force Command Headquarters” specifies the US African Command (whose “area of responsibility” covers the entire continent, except Egypt). On the (...)

The Elysée Summit for Peace and Security in Africa was held in Paris on 6-7 December. It dealt with peace and security in Africa, the economic partnership and development, and climate change.
Fifty-three delegations from African countries and France took part in the summit, as well as representatives from the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the African Development Bank.
Peace and security
1. The heads of state and (...)

Posing as a humanist, president Obama came to Africa to reinforce the exploitation of the natural riches which are now dangerously threatened by Sino-Iranian pressure. He was unable to set up a photo opportunity with the dying Nelson Mandela, who threw him out of South Africa during his 2006 visit.

February 22, 2013
Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)
On February 20, 2013, the last elements of a deployment of approximately 40 additional U.S. military personnel entered Niger with the consent of the Government of Niger. This deployment will provide support for intelligence collection and will also facilitate intelligence sharing with French forces conducting operations in Mali, and with other partners in the region. The total number of U.S. military personnel deployed to Niger (...)

U.S. drone bases are multiplying on the African continent: Niger has agreed to hosting surveillance drones on its soil”; neighboring Burkina Faso already has one; two new drone facilities are opening in Ethiopia and the Seychelles; and UN peacekeepers in Congo want to use U.S. drones. Drones, which have terrorized Somalia from AFRICOM’s base in Djibouti for the past seven years, have become the centerpiece of the modern U.S. version of gunboat diplomacy.

Out of the blue in the last days Mali has suddenly become the focus of world attention. France has been asked to militarily intervene by Mali’s government to drive Jihadist terrorists out of the large parts of the country they claim. What the conflict in Mali really is about is hardly what we read in the mainstream media. It is about vast untapped mineral and energy resources and a de facto re-colonization of French Africa under the banner of human rights. The real background reads like a John LeCarre thriller.

It is too obvious that Western economic interests in Mali are not enough to explain France’s intervention there. Similarly, it is clear that islamism is not enough to explain vast terrorist action conducted simultaneously at an Algerian gas site. For Manlio Dinucci, this cocktail contains the classic ingredients of the strategy of tension. The target is Algeria, Mali is the rear base for the attack, and the islamists are a pretext for intervention.

As French soldiers pour into Mali in the fight to push back the advancing Islamist militants, questions have been raised as to the motives behind the intervention.
Author William Engdahl told RT the US was using France as a scapegoat to save face.
RT: At a time when France and the rest of the Eurozone are trying to weather the economic crisis, what’s Paris seeking to gain by getting involved in another conflict overseas?
William Engdahl: Well, I think the intervention in Mali is another (...)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and an areopagus of multinational bosses have made a long journey through Africa, from July 31st to August 10th, 2012, during which she endlessly boasted of the altruism and philanthropy of the United States. It was a grotesque masquerade as outlined by Manlio Dinucci, in terms of Washington’s disastrous colonial record and that of its corporations on the black continent.

That China’s rise in Africa amounts to neo-colonialism and is resented by Africans is a notion existing primarily in the minds of Western analysts, as educator and author Brendan P. O’Reilly aptly points out. There are stark differences between Beijing’s and Washington’s foreign policies, and nowhere are these more obvious than in Africa: China’s interests are purely economic, while the U.S. remains obsessed with military dominance. In short, while the U.S. bombs and weaponizes, China is pursuing cooperation based on mutual benefits.

Northern Mali promises to be the graveyard of scores of innocent people if African countries don’t collectively challenge Western influence in the region.
The Republic of Mali is fast becoming the Afghanistan of Africa. The reference is being applied with growing enthusiasm by Western media. The tragic reality is that Mali, with massive size and relatively sparse population - 1,240,000 km² and a population of nearly 15.5 million - was, until a few months ago, paraded as a model of stability (...)

1. We, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Ministers in charge of economic cooperation of the People’s Republic of China and 50 African countries and the Chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission, met in Beijing from 19 to 20 July 2012 for the Fifth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).
2. We express our thanks to H.E. President Hu Jintao of the People’s Republic of China and H.E. President Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma of the Republic of South Africa, (...)

The White House has put in writing its policies for sub-Saharan Africa. The problem is, there’s hardly a word of truth in the document, and not a single mention of AFRICOM, the U.S. military command on the continent. The presidential paper repeats Obama’s 2009 lecture to Africans on “good governance.” He also warned that they avoid the “excuses” of blaming “neocolonialism” and “racism” for their problems. Meanwhile, AFRICOM is “positioning the U.S. to launch coups at will against African civilian, or even military, leaders that fall out of favor with Washington.”

The United States has been expanding its secret intelligence operations across Africa throught a network of small air bases in the continent and under the pretext of fighting terrorism.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the US military has established some small air bases across Africa and trained many army personnel in a bid to keep crucial African regions under surveillance.
The report, obtained from documents and people involved in the US military project, said that the US (...)

President Obama’s statement on defense strategy announced a stronger U.S. presence in Asia-Pacific, while keeping Africa under the radar. Yet, recent developments clearly suggest that the Black Continent has become the new U.S. military playground of imperial conquest. It is now Mali’s turn to have plunged into turmoil. In this article, written in February 2012 when the latest "Tuareg rebellion" erupted in northern Mali, Rick Rozoff connects the dots between these events and Mali’s pivotal role in Washington’s strategy for Africa, conjecturing that, after Libya, the stage is possibly being set for another U.S. led intervention.

The Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa is one of two “commands” of AFRICOM, the new Unified Combatant Command of U.S. forces in Africa. Originally conceived by the Israeli-American Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, AFRICOM is the central command for the new ambitions of empire in Africa. The most recent illustration of this is the creation of the no-fly zone used in the conquest of Libya, allowing the United States to seize the oil resources of that country and the state of Israel to rid itself of its most serious rival on the African continent.

While few would criticize putting indicted Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony in prison, the motives and timing of the viral video campaign launched by an NGO with an angelic sounding name are less clear. Invisible Children has blurred the line between charity and politics, advocating direct military action. What is clear to this author is that “Kony2012” is ’manipulative propaganda being used to advance an AFRICOM military presence in the richest mineral region in the world’ before China stakes a claim to it. The battle for Africa has only just begun.

Israel is looking at Africa’s east as an important strategic interest, and trying to step up ties with nations in the region under the name of “controlling the spread of Islamic extremists”.
The Associated Press reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hosted the leaders of Uganda and Kenya earlier this week. The Kenyan leader (in the photo with Netanyahu) has said that the Zionist entity has promised to provide ‘security assistance’ to his country to help protect its borders. (...)

Divide and conquer stratagems are back with a vengeance throughout the Arab world, fanning the flames of discontent and undermining national sovereignty. The stage is being set for a contrived "clash of civilizations," closely following the 1982 plan of Israeli strategist Oded Yinon, for which any form of peaceful coexistence among the various ethnic and religious groups living in Arab countries spells disaster and must be stamped out. Nazemroaya analyses the process already underway.

Washington increased its drone fleet to 7 000 units in Africa, and opened a new drone base in an airport in Southern Ethiopia.
Along with two other drone bases located in Djibouti (Camp Lemonier) and on the Seychelles Islands, in the Indian Ocean, the new base in Ethiopia increases the mobility of the unmanned planes which are the main war instrument of the Pentagon and the CIA to launch an air attack against Al Shabab, in the Horn of Africa.
Drones currently flying over Somalia are (...)

Washington is expanding its humanitarian military operations in Africa: here, it’s to curb arms circulation; there, to fight against a criminal gang. Any excuse is good to seize control of the black continent and of its fabulous wealth. But on closer examination, as geographer Manlio Dinucci observes, the U.S. penetration of Africa is patterned after the old European colonialist model.
