Africa

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 23, 2023 3:26 pm

Why Africa Remains Behind in the World: Amilcar Cabral Revisited
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 22, 2023
Takudzwa Hillary Chiwanza

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“This alternative — to betray the revolution or to commit suicide as a class — constitutes the dilemma of the petty bourgeoisie in the general framework of the national liberation struggle.”

An obstinate fact that prevails in our epoch is how Africa seemingly remains perpetually behind in all facets of existence. Prosperity in Africa is a material reality for the elite few, while for the immense poor majority it is always out of reach. This dehumanizing state of affairs appears an immutable feature of the continent, but this does not mean that it will forever remain like this.

It is simply a perception that is ruthlessly reified through a conflation of ideas and myths that are fundamentally fashioned against the collective will of the masses.

That Africa perennially lags behind despite being exceedingly endowed with an abundant richness of natural resources and brilliant minds is purely a myth imposed on Africa by racist, supremacist imperialists—and maintained by the indigenous parasitic looting class: the elite political, economic, religious, and social ‘leaders’ and ‘influencers’.

An attempt to dissect the status quo of unbridled and relentless oppression, exploitation, and dehumanization of African peoples on the continent and throughout the world is inescapably an unsettling journey into the painful history of imperialist domination.

A Brief History of Colonial Cultural Domination and Africa’s Inferiority Complex

Africa’s history is one informed by colonial domination and subjugation, and the effects of this dehumanizing historical truism are palpable today. This is not to exonerate the leaders of post-colonial Africa.

Rather, the complicity of Africa’s leaders, who are mostly presiding over reigns of terror that negate liberation principles, in perpetuating neocolonial hegemony is inexorably intrinsic to the miserable status quo that African countries grapple with. In such cleavages of domination—local and international—it is ineluctably vital to underscore the preponderance of imperialism when analyzing this malaise.

The central feature forming the crux of Africa’s seemingly unending problems is fundamentally rooted in ideas and myths. And these are directly and wholly attributable to the phenomenon of imperial domination.

What colonialism wrought on Africa was the wholesale change in the ways that African peoples governed themselves: means of production, ownership, property relations, food production, trade, political governance, spiritual beliefs and customs, social norms and practices, and judicial methods of dispute resolution.

And most importantly, the cultural domination that European colonizers imposed on colonized African peoples.

In National Liberation and Culture (Return to the Source), Amilcar Cabral writes,

“History teaches us that, in certain circumstances, it is very easy for the foreigner to impose his domination on a people. But it also teaches us that, whatever may be the material aspects of this domination, it can be maintained only by the permanent, organized repression of the cultural life of the people concerned. Implantation of foreign domination can be assured definitively only by physical liquidation of a significant part of the dominated population.”

The conspicuous absence of a money economy meant that the above mentioned ways of governance—which were developing on their own in relation to specific contexts, time and space—was violently supplanted by primitive accumulation: the introduction of a money economy was in itself a triumph of the cultural domination of Western civilization.

A money economy eroded all intrinsic aspects of African life—cultures that were developing at their own pace. Africa had a history, but Europe’s cultural domination inculcated in the collective psyche of Africans that the continent had no history; that the arrival of Europeans suddenly thrust Africa into the realm of history.

Cultural Domination: Everything European and White is Good, Everything African and Black is Bad and Inferior

The money economy came with the classic colonial accompaniments: Christian religiosity, capitalist cheap labour, taxes, European lifestyles, European education, European laws and customs, and unrestrained exploitation and repression.

Underpinning this massive permutation was the implicit metaphysical myth (ideas not backed by any scientific proof but racist, imperial, and patriarchal attitudes) that Europeans are superior to Africans—that Africans are primitive, barbaric sub-humans who are inferior culturally and must thus be saved from their perceived and alleged inferiority by Western colonizers.

And this was done through a dehumanizing conflation of bloodshed, Christianity, deceit, greed, and European education touted as the immutable paragon of modernity. Cabral writes that with a “strong indigenous cultural life, foreign domination cannot be sure of its penetration”.

This colonial paternalism, a raw manifestation of unashamed imperialism (the highest stage of capitalism) saw Africans in need of saving, yet without treating them as humans: hence, there was need to unleash brute force and pacify Africans with Christian religiosity as the ultimate determinant of “fine civilization”, i.e., belonging to a “human culture”.

In this regard, we see Africans defeated on an ideological plane via this cultural domination. Struggles for independence were essentially national collective resistance battles against this cultural domination. For it was this cultural domination that gave Europeans a sense of warped justification to commit egregious, horrendous atrocities of genocide against Africans: keeping them “racially inferior”.

Culture is the “fruit of a people’s history” and a determinant of that history: now, if that culture is conquered by foreign domination, we are left with a people devoid of identity.

The identity of the colonized becomes an appendage to the perceived cultural superiority of the colonizer—and it also follows that the culture of the colonized people does not totally die, and as such, it within this culture that “we find the seed of opposition”, which necessarily leads to the structure and development of the liberation struggle.

This is what Africa needs: to conquer its daily internal contradictions, be proud of its culture [history, values, norms, identity, and core principles and beliefs for collective prosperity], for leaders to commit class suicide; through this, the long-drawn march toward holistic liberation commences, as the shackles of cultural domination are cast asunder.

Remembering Amilcar Cabral: Why Ideology/Theory and Actual Struggle Against Cultural Imperialism Matter

Such concocted justification for racial superiority was the basis of all dehumanization—Africans living in squalid urban conditions and in unproductive rural areas, perennially chained to the bottom of the social, economic, and political hierarchy, treated as a people with no history and culture, and existing solely to fund Western capitalist profits.

This ineluctably brings the immortal and iconoclastic revolutionary leader Amilcar Cabral—he was the leader of the PAIGC which fought valiantly for the independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. Assassinated on 20 January 1973, shortly before the total liberation of the two former Portuguese colonial territories, Cabral organized and led one of the most successful and effective anti-colonial struggles in history.

But this freedom could not have been achieved without Cabral’s revolutionary acumen in asserting that foreign domination exists first on an ideological plane through the destruction of culture and identity—and that any revolutionary struggle must involve revolutionary theory first; that those who participate in the struggle for liberation must be thoroughly immersed in theory to counter the ideas of cultural domination imposed on the colonized by the colonizer.

A quick revisit at Cabral’s revolutionary theory and praxis (critical thoughts, reflections, and practice) point us to an inescapable truism: the only reason why Africa is seemingly behind today is because neocolonial imperial masters still manage to win over Africans on an ideological plane.

The racist-capitalist notions of superiority that informed colonial cultural domination have been re-packaged for the continued subservience of post-colonial Africa. The dearth of revolutionary theory and practice from Africa’s leaders—who are seized with maintaining the vested interests of private capital for their self-enrichment—exacerbates this regrettable state-of-affairs.

Trapped in individualistic consumerism and [populist] neoliberal ideologies of privatization, profit, deregulation, the reduced role of the state in the political economy (leaving predatory private businesses, local and global, the effective rulers of African and global trade and economies), foreign aid, and anti-unionism, Africa seemingly remains mired in unending cycles of poverty, inequality, hunger, and instability. But such a reality is not peculiar to Africa. This is what prevails across the whole world, from the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, and Asia.

Amilcar Cabral and the ‘Weapon of Theory’ – Why This is Important for African Freedom and Material Prosperity

If the fight for Africa’s prosperity—i.e., the total economic, political, social liberation and self-sufficiency of African peoples everywhere—is hinged on defeating Western cultural domination and all its purported ideas of success (Jesus, modernity, consumerism, neoliberalism, authoritarianism, etc.), it is of supreme importance to look at the unrivalled and immortal salience of Amilcar Cabral’s Weapon of Theory. Delivering a speech at the historic anti-colonial/anti-imperial 1966 Tri-Continental Conference held in Havana, Cuba, Cabral laid the basis on why ‘theory’ is the effective weapon for success in the actual struggle against domination. And this speech is relevant in our unprecedented times of neocolonial cultural domination.

He resolutely remarked:

On a Tricontinental level, this means that we are not going to eliminate imperialism by shouting insults against it. For us, the best or worst shout against imperialism, whatever its form, is to take up arms and fight. This is what we are doing, and this is what we will go on doing until all foreign domination of our African homelands has been totally eliminated. Our agenda includes subjects whose meaning and importance are beyond question and which show a fundamental preoccupation with struggle. We note, however, that one form of struggle which we consider to be fundamental has not been explicitly mentioned in this programme, although we are certain that it was present in the minds of those who drew up the programme. We refer here to the struggle against our own weaknesses. Obviously, other cases differ from that of Guinea; but our experience has shown us that in the general framework of daily struggle this battle against ourselves — no matter what difficulties the enemy may create — is the most difficult of all, whether for the present or the future of our peoples. This battle is the expression of the internal contradictions in the economic, social, cultural (and therefore historical) reality of each of our countries. We are convinced that any national or social revolution which is not based on knowledge of this fundamental reality runs grave risk of being condemned to failure.”

In the face of relentless neocolonial onslaughts manifesting predatory supremacist imperialism to the detriment of African peoples, the continent’s leaders and political parties—some which fought for and won political independence from colonizers—still fail the “battle against ourselves”. Whatever that is parroted by neoliberal/state capitalist Western or Eastern powers is adopted as official policy without addressing our own internal contradictions.

The fundamental question being: is there enough social democracy in Africa by ourselves, for ourselves, for our egalitarian prosperity. The leaders, and the citizenry at large—reflecting populist and reactionary brands of politics—are failing this daily struggle “against ourselves”. Without ever critically reflecting on our collective goals, aspirations, and concrete success at such, we continue building castles in the air as we aimlessly pursue vapid ideas and myths that everything from the West is good—without conquering this inferiority complex induced by pervasive cultural domination, it means our leaders still see foreign aid and “investments” as positive development! And that is why Africa seemingly remains behind, along with the oppressed of the world.

To show the truism of the above-mentioned argumentation, we quote Cabral’s Weapon of Theory again:

“The ideological deficiency, not to say the total lack of ideology, within the national liberation movements — which is basically due to ignorance of the historical reality which these movements claim to transform — constitutes one of the greatest weaknesses of our struggle against imperialism, if not the greatest weakness of all.”

“Ideological deficiency” remains the bane of Africa. Where ideological robustness organically emerges, it is ruthlessly crushed by reactionary elite authoritarian leaders (key to note is that Africa’s authoritarian practices are a direct inheritance from colonialism).

Conclusion: The Betrayal of Africa’s Indigenous Parasitic Looting Class and the Need for ‘Class Suicide’

It is imperative to close off with Cabral’s concluding remarks from the Weapon of Theory:

To retain the power which national liberation puts in its hands, the petty bourgeoisie has only one path: to give free rein to its natural tendencies to become more bourgeois, to permit the development of a bureaucratic and intermediary bourgeoisie in the commercial cycle, in order to transform itself into a national pseudo-bourgeoisie, that is to say in order to negate the revolution and necessarily ally. In order not to betray these objectives the petty bourgeoisie has only one choice: to strengthen its revolutionary consciousness, to reject the temptations of becoming more bourgeois and the natural concerns of its class mentality, to identify itself with the working classes and not to oppose the normal development of the process of revolution. This means that in order to truly fulfill the role in the national liberation struggle, the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie must be capable of committing suicide as a class in order to be reborn as revolutionary workers, completely identified with the deepest aspirations of the people to which they belong.

This alternative — to betray the revolution or to commit suicide as a class — constitutes the dilemma of the petty bourgeoisie in the general framework of the national liberation struggle. The positive solution in favor of the revolution depends on what Fidel Castro recently correctly called the development of revolutionary consciousness. This dependence necessarily calls our attention to the capacity of the leader of the national liberation struggle to remain faithful to the principles and to the fundamental cause of this struggle. This shows us, to a certain extent, that if national liberation is essentially a political problem, the conditions for its development give it certain characteristics which belong to the sphere of morals.”


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https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... revisited/

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Burkina Faso urges France to withdraw troops

January 23, 9:22 am

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The scenario of the Central African Republic and Mali is being repeated. The new authorities of Burkina Faso against the backdrop of massive anti-French demonstrations demanded that France withdraw its troops from the country. We are talking about the withdrawal of the French special forces battalion, which provided the power positions of France in Burkina Faso. It is obvious that after their withdrawal, they will be occupied locally by the Wagner PMC, as was already the case in the Central African Republic and Mali.

Burkina Faso urges France to withdraw troops

Burkina Faso has demanded an "expeditious" withdrawal of French troops from its territory, writes Le Figaro. According to the sources of the publication, the French are given a month for this. It is this period that is laid down in the agreement between the two countries dated December 17, 2018. “This is not a break in relations with France. The notification concerns only agreements on military cooperation,” the authorities of Burkina Faso said.

France is a former metropolis whose position in Burkina Faso has been contested for months. There are demonstrations that demand the withdrawal of French troops from the country. At the moment, a contingent of almost 400 French special forces is stationed there.

At the same time, at the end of September, a putsch took place in Burkina Faso, and a transitional government came to power. The transitional president promised that the "struggle for sovereignty" had begun and relations with some states would be reviewed.

Last week, Paris sent its secretary of state there, who said: "France does not impose anything, it is ready to create a common future." But the new authorities intend to diversify their partnerships.

Among the alleged new partners, the authorities regularly mention Russia, the author of the article notes. “Russia is the smart choice in this dynamic” and “we believe our partnership needs to be strengthened,” Prime Minister Burkina Faso said after meeting with Russian Ambassador Alexei Saltykov. And in early December, he secretly visited Moscow.

Last summer, authorities in neighboring Mali ordered French troops to leave the country they had been in for nine years. Several sources report that the Russian PMC Wagner was invited to Mali, although they deny this information.

Now France is thinking about redeploying forces from Burkina Faso to neighboring Niger, where there are already about 2,000 French soldiers, writes Le Figaro, citing its sources.

https://russian.rt.com/inotv/2023-01-23 ... aso-hotyat - zinc

The collapse of the French neo-colonial empire continues. We are waiting for the start of events in Niger in 2023 and the contestation of French control over uranium mines.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8119849.html

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 26, 2023 4:04 pm

Amilcar Cabral and the South Africans
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 25, 2023
Phethani Madzivhandila

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Amilcar Cabral’s influence stretched far beyond the Portuguese colonies, profoundly influencing the political struggle in South Africa, past and present.

In 2021, the South African government was provided with funding of around €700 million (ZAR13 billion), from the German government to decommission its coal-based power stations in order to transition to green energy. True to their hypocritical nature, the Germans quickly reverted back to coal-fired plants when Russian president Vladimir Putin stopped supplying Russian gas to the rest of Europe. This dynamic is terribly familiar to countries of the global south. The Guinea-Bissauan revolutionary, Amilcar Cabral, already said in 1971: “Imperialism—as you know better than myself—is the result of the gigantic concentration of financial capital in capitalist countries through the creation of monopolies, and firstly of the monopolies of capitalist enterprises.”

Cabral was assassinated, in January 1973, by fascist Portuguese just months before the PAIGC (Guinea Bissau’s anticolonial movement) succeeded in achieving Guinean independence. His influence at the time reached beyond Portugal’s colonies in Africa (he had a hand in the formation of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, MPLA, and the Liberation Front of Mozambique also known as FRELIMO). He also inspired other liberation movements which combined mass and armed struggle in Southern Africa, especially in South Africa. There, the Pan-Africanist Congress and African National Congress of South Africa were contemporaries of the PAIGC and fashioned themselves in the same image, though not with the same success. Cabral also influenced the Black Consciousness Movement, led by Steve Biko.

At the time of Cabral’s murder, Yusuf Dadoo, a leading ANC ideologue, wrote about Cabral’s life lessons for the ANC and its allies. “Cabral saw the task of the national liberation movements as not merely to usher in Black rule replacing white faces with black ones; it was not only to raise a different flag and sing a new anthem but to remove all forms of exploitation from the country.” Dadoo added, “ Cabral was careful to distinguish the color of men’s skins from exploitation and repeatedly emphasized that the struggle was against Portuguese colonialism and not against the Portuguese people.”

Biko, who emerged as a political leader around the time Cabral was murdered, would himself die at the hands of apartheid police in 1977. Drawing parallels between these two anti-colonial thinkers one cannot help but notice how their insistence on using culture as a tool of anti-colonial mobilization was a key component of their political thinking. For Cabral it was vital that for people to free themselves of foreign domination they must first understand their own culture and that of the oppressor. Biko, in turn, argued that culture must be defined in concrete terms. “We must relate the past to the present and demonstrate the historical evolution of modern Africa. We must reject the attempts by the authorities to project an arrested image of our culture.”

These days, it is clear that the kind of cultural revolution desired by Cabral and Biko is less straightforward and fraught with appropriation. As the Angolan anthropologist Antonio Tomas puts it, Cabral’s life and work illustrates the striking gap between “revolutionary hopes and postcolonial realities.” In post-1994 South Africa the comprador bourgeoisie in the ANC have betrayed the people’s sacrifices and aspirations for their own material benefit. This present class of leaders plays the intermediary role between the first world and the third world—they facilitate oppression on behalf of their masters in the first world. At the same time, they are also bound to co-opt revolutionary ideals in service of their own economic advancement. South Africa’s energy minister, Gwede Mantashe, has described the worldwide pressure to decarbonize as a colonial, anti-fossil fuel agenda. It’s one thing to take aim at the double-standards of global elites, but it is another thing—as Mantashe has—to call opposition to land dispossession for extractivism by rural communities “apartheid and colonialism of a special type.”

As the academics Maurice Taonezvi Vambe and Abebe Zegeye summarize, what Cabral sought through cultural renaissance was “first and foremost a people’s renewal.” Unless culture sinks its roots into the creative humus of people’s experience, the discourses of Africa’s renaissances that are authored by Africa’s elite will surely wilt.

This is a key postcolonial dilemma: how to cultivate a truly mass, national culture. It was arguably #FeesMustFall and #RhodesMustFall that first challenged the post-apartheid cultural order by exploding the myth that the new South Africa had brought equality and opportunity. The ideology of rainbowism that founded this myth was imposed from on high. But, as Cabral emphasized, “Culture is not a superstructure, but is deeply rooted in the economic and social reality of a people.”

The question, therefore, cannot be answered in the abstract, and has to be grounded in the real struggle for emancipation waged by the people. Franz Fanon, just like Cabral, would later predict that the leaders of national liberation movements on assuming power would seek to fill the shoes of colonial masters and oppress the rest of the population. Still, Cabral believed that the post-independence role of the petty-bourgeoisie leadership holds the key to the potential of successful revolutionary socialism in the continent.

Any serious electoral politics from the African left must confront this terrain. Much as the labor movement and social movements are the bread and butter of successful left-wing political organizations, the precarious middle classes on the continent are an important constituency to target. It is this group that has the most reason to be disgruntled with the vagaries of neoliberalism, having originally been promised that the integration of Africa into global capitalism would issue steady economic growth and furnish all with opportunity for security and flourishing.

Yet it is precisely this that renders the petty bourgeoisie contradictory: on the one hand, disillusioned with the promise of individual success made by contemporary capitalism, and on the other, allured by it. In Cabral’s words, it is “a vacillating class, with one foot in the camp of the bourgeoisie and the other foot in the camp of the proletariat.” The #FeesMustFall moment planted the seeds of revolutionary consciousness across the burgeoning, professional managerial class, but these were quickly snuffed by the pressures to join the labor market and adopt individual strategies of pursuing upward social mobility. Fees Must Fall activist Lufefe Sopazi, notes that it was Cabral’s legacy and dedication to liberation that inspired them to remember that the struggle for liberation was not over and it was betrayed as the lives of the majority of the African people in South Africa were not liberated.

Nonetheless, the task of a revitalized left in Africa is to appeal to the middle class squeezed by neoliberalism. In Africa, the working class lacks the sufficient numbers to constitute a formidable political force. A counter-hegemonic coalition requires the vast ranks of the unemployed and under-employed, as well as progressive wings of the middle class. As junior partners of these broad-based coalitions, enthusiastic youth can bolster movements with their energy, capacity, and technical skills, as Cabral did in Guinea-Bissau.

For South Africa, 29 years after democracy, the question of post-apartheid remains an illusion, reinforced and spurred by native elements controlling political or state power. It remains an illusion because the ruling class as predicted by Cabral in Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories is subjected to the whims and impulses of imperialists. This pseudo bourgeoisie, however, strongly nationalist during the struggle for liberation, cannot fulfill a historical function; “it cannot freely guide the development of productive forces, and in short, cannot be a national bourgeoisie.” Evidence in South Africa today points to the inevitable destiny of another failed state, as we have witnessed in the past few years the total collapse of state owned enterprises such as PRASA (the passenger rail service), SAA (the national carrier) and Eskom (the state power utility).

For Cabral, national liberation is the restoration of a people’s historical personality through the eradication of imperialist domination. In South Africa, this has not yet been realized. He argued that only when the national productive forces are entirely liberated from all forms of dominance can there be national liberty. National liberation must acknowledge the right of the people to have their own history because imperialism usurps it via violence.

Any liberation organization that ignores this is undoubtedly not engaged in national liberation. That is the challenge for South Africa now.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... -africans/

Empire by Invitation: Pax Africana or Pax Americana?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 25, 2023
Samar Al-Bulushi

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(Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY / AFP) (Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, left, and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, right, attend a welcoming ceremony before talks at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 15, 2022.

AT A WIDELY anticipated summit hosted by the Biden administration in Washington, D.C., last month, African leaders called for more support from the U.S. government for counterterrorism efforts on the continent. Aware that the Biden administration has woken up to the geostrategic significance of Africa in the context of Russia’s war with Ukraine, a number of the heads of state in attendance approached the gathering as a political marketplace in which loyalties are bought and sold. All signs indicate that elite pacts in the name of “security” will continue to dominate U.S.-Africa relations, with ordinary people caught in the crosshairs of newly emboldened U.S.-trained security forces.

Forty-nine African leaders convened in Washington for the U.S.-Africa summit, the first such gathering hosted by the U.S. since 2014. At the Peace, Security, and Governance panel on December 13, Presidents Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud of Somalia, and Mohamed Bazoum of Niger joined African Union Chair Moussa Faki Mahamat in appealing for more U.S. security and counterterrorism aid.

The speeches delivered by each of these leaders poignantly illustrated what some might refer to as “empire by invitation,” wherein ostensibly sovereign leaders reproduce colonial power relations by inviting a more expansive role for imperial actors in their own affairs.

This is clearest in Somalia, where Mohamud recently asked the U.S. to loosen restrictions on its drone strikes targeting al-Shabab, despite documentation of, and lack of accountability for, the rise in civilian deaths due to drone strikes. “Not only does AFRICOM utterly fail at its mission to report civilian casualties in Somalia,” Amnesty International noted in 2020, “but it doesn’t seem to care about the fate of the numerous families it has completely torn apart.” While the Biden administration initially went to great lengths to suggest that it would curb former President Donald Trump’s lenient approach to drone warfare in Somalia by imposing more restrictions on the U.S. Africa Command, it continues to grant the military considerable leeway and has yet to publicly reject Mohamud’s request.

In the midst of a catastrophic food crisis, Mohamud has declared war on the Somali population by calling on all civilians to leave al-Shabab-controlled territory, warning that they risk becoming collateral damage if they do not physically distance themselves from the group. Mohamud’s approach amounts to a form of collective punishment, as his government is holding the entire population responsible for the actions of a small minority. Given that so many have already been displaced by drought and war, the assumption that further relocation is even possible shows a callous disregard for the challenges confronting ordinary Somalis.

The Somali president’s privileging of military solutions aligns perfectly with the primary interest of the Biden administration: addressing what it perceives to be threats to national and international security. Panelists such as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Samantha Power of the U.S. Agency for International Development approached political dynamics in Africa — whether in the form of hunger, unemployment, outward migration, popular protest, or coups — through the lens of risk and instability, rather than as the product of a longstanding scramble for African resources and a market-oriented global economy that has exacerbated marginalization and inequality.

The overarching message was that economic desperation and political frustration should be understood as threats that call primarily for one kind of solution: containment, and, if necessary, the use of violent force. None of the speakers on the Peace, Security, and Governance panel acknowledged that, particularly since the establishment of AFRICOM, the U.S. has in many ways contributed to the very instability it claims to want to solve, with the rise of al-Shabab in the aftermath of the 2006 U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia a case in point.

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(Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
Members of the National Guard block the streets near the site of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C, on Dec. 13, 2022.

Pax Africana or Pax Americana?

IN HIS REMARKS at the summit, Mahamat highlighted the efforts made by the African Union to establish its own security architecture. Noting that the continent’s national armies are “underequipped,” he stressed the importance of having permanent special forces at the continental level that would be “more flexible” and “more offensive” in their approach.

Mahamat was referring to the African Standby Force, a mechanism that has yet to become fully operational. Championed for its potential to offer “African solutions to African problems,” the extent to which such a force will in fact be African-led is the source of considerable debate. At a time when the U.S. is wary of the costs associated with its own direct intervention — whether in dollars, lives, or legal and political blowback — the Pentagon’s Africa Command increasingly relies on a growing number of African security forces to assume the burden of counterterrorism missions on the continent. Partnerships with elite African military units allow U.S. forces to rely on proxies in cases where America is not officially at war and where the very presence of U.S. troops is likely to raise eyebrows. For their part, African states’ readiness to deploy their own troops to the front lines has been critical to their continued ability to access development assistance and foreign aid.

The idea for a U.S.-trained, all-African military force was first proposed by the Clinton administration in the 1990s. Referred to at the time as the African Crisis Response Force, the Clinton plan came in the wake of the U.S. military’s painful exit from Somalia in 1993, which precipitated a shift in U.S. strategy away from a boots-on-the-ground approach to military intervention. Instead, the U.S. sought to cultivate partnerships with African militaries that could be trained and equipped for security operations, all while protecting U.S. interests. In the words of Nigerian scholar Adekeye Adebajo, “Africans would do most of the dying, while the U.S. would do some of the spending to avoid being drawn into politically risky interventions.”

At the time, some of the continent’s most vocal leaders were circumspect. Presidents Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Nelson Mandela of South Africa rejected the notion of such a force on the basis that Africans had not been consulted about the proposal. President Muammar Gaddafi of Libya saw the writing on the wall, presciently anticipating what would eventually become AFRICOM. At a 1999 summit of the Organization of African Unity (the predecessor of the African Union), Gaddafi instead proposed the creation of a continental army that would explicitly serve the purpose of protecting Africa from the meddling of external neocolonial powers.

In doing so, he rekindled an older proposal by Ghana’s anti-colonial leader and eventual president, Kwame Nkrumah, who in the 1960s called for the creation of an African Military High Command to protect African states in the face of interference from Western powers. Despite formal declarations of independence across the continent at the time, Nkrumah was mindful of the potential for new forms of colonialism to compromise African sovereignty, contributing to the rise of client states and of “exploitation without redress.” As he wrote in 1965: “For us, the best or worst shout against imperialism, whatever its form, is to take up arms and fight. This is what we are doing, and this is what we will go on doing until all foreign domination of our African homelands has been totally eliminated.”


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An archival photo shows a pin-back button promoting the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, founded by Kwame Nkrumah in 1968.

Ultimately, neither Nkrumah’s nor Gaddafi’s visions came to fruition. In the early days of independence, many African leaders worried about the potential for such a force to challenge the sovereignty of their newly independent states, and many held differing viewpoints on the question of intervention during the crisis in the Congo, which became a battleground for influence between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

In the early 2000s, the African Union did establish its own security architecture, but in doing so, it abandoned the principle of noninterference long upheld by its predecessor, the Organization of African Unity. In an amendment to Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act of the African Union, the union now has the right to intervene in member states when there is a “serious threat to legitimate order” for the purpose of restoring peace and stability.

What explains the shift away from Nkrumah’s preoccupation with external (neocolonial) aggression to the African Union’s seemingly open-ended embrace of intervention in the name of protecting “legitimate order”? Perhaps the first and most obvious answer is that both Nkrumah and Gaddafi were removed from power, and Gaddafi was killed by NATO-backed Libyan forces.

In 1966, one year after Nkrumah wrote about the need for Africans to arm themselves in the struggle against ongoing foreign domination, he was deposed in a military coup orchestrated by the CIA. According to the U.S. State Department at the time, Nkrumah’s “overpowering desire to export his brand of nationalism unquestionably made Ghana one of the foremost practitioners of subversion in Africa.” These events sent a clear message to other African leaders, many of whom had assumed power just a few years prior.

The potential operationalization of an African Standby Force comes with an important set of questions, including whether such an entity can constitute a form of pan-African cooperation that is by and for Africans, or whether it functions as a cover and a tool for militarism and endless wars that serve imperial interests.

Despite the summit’s rhetorical emphasis on democracy and open societies, the U.S. continues to view the continent through the lens of threat and great power rivalry — particularly as it faces increasing competition from China, Russia, Turkey, and the Gulf states. Looking ahead, we can expect that AFRICOM will continue to rely heavily on its African partners to function as militarized extensions of U.S. power on the continent, even as it rehashes the myth that instability in the region remains a “local,” Africa-specific problem. The extent to which African leaders at the summit displayed their readiness to serve as alibis for this charade is cause for deep concern.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... americana/

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Targeting Eritrea and Ethiopia: The Warmongering Campaign of Disinformation
The National Council of Eritrean-Americans NCEA 25 Jan 2023


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2022 Conference of National Council of Eritrean Americans (Photo: Eritrean Ministry of Information)

Washington think tanks are home to the propagandists who help guide US foreign policy decisions. The National Council of Eritrean Americans highlights the words of one individual who uses his position as a think tank fellow to repeat disinformation regarding Eritrea. He and others like him make the case for interventions and interference around the world.

United States plans for aggression and disruptions abroad are developed by current and former officials whose names may not be well known. They often leave government positions to become fellows at a plethora of think tanks that are connected to high level policy makers. It is important to know what they are saying, as their words have an impact on US foreign policy decisions.

Michael Rubin is currently a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) , the rightwing think tank in Washington, DC, that mostly disseminates a neoconservative interventionist agenda, and where Rubin spends his time churning out misleading information and lies about the Red Sea State of Eritrea and the Horn of Africa. Rubin was a Pentagon staffer from 2002 to 2004, and an advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority during America’s disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003. He also claims to have spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. The misinformation and disinformation in both cases cost the lives of many Americans and led to a disastrous foreign policy for people in those nations. Since the Tripartite Agreement of Comprehensive Cooperation between Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia was signed on 5 September 2018, Rubin seems to be obsessed with the Horn of Africa.

It’s this Michael Rubin who is now leading a concerted campaign of disinformation against Eritrea. Rubin was among the American neoconservatives who pushed the US into war in Iraq in 2003 based on a series of lies. He is also a man with a “bounty of three million Turkish lira , or nearly $800,000, placed on his head” in connection with the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt for "supporting and committing offenses for the Fethullahist Terror Organization,'' an Islamist movement led by Fethullah Gülen. He exemplifies the links between official Washington and think tanks that masquerade as neutral observers.

Presently, Rubin as representative of those Western forces who are targeting Eritrea for sanctions and “regime change”, has found it expedient “to kill three birds with one stone” in the Horn of Africa region: regime changes in Eritrea as well as Ethiopia and keeping Somalia in a state of perpetual chaos. Though he has written many lies about Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali and Somalia’s ex-president Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed “Farmaajo”, his worst vitriol is reserved for Eritrea and its President Isaias Afwerki. He is obsessed with ageism when it comes to the Eritrean leader. While the current president of the US is an octogenarian, and about 10% of US senators are 76 years old or higher, Rubin loves to harp on about President Isaias’s age, and repeats TPLF’s lies and ill-wishes about President Isaias, who is in good health.

Michael Rubin is a representative of those who don’t want to see peace in the Horn of Africa, whether between Eritrea and Ethiopia or within the Somali nation as it struggles to emerge from decades of chaos and state collapse. Here is what he wrote about the former:

“Indeed, it is not certain Abiy’s détente with Eritrea will last, nor that Ethiopia itself will remain stable and unified. Alas, Abiy appears to have let the [Nobel peace] prize go to his head and, in doing so, may have forgotten an important rule of peacemaking: timing matters. Sometimes rushed reconciliation regardless of the good intentions behind it can lead to disaster.”

To Rubin and others who work to influence US policy, a peace deal between Eritrea and Ethiopia after twenty years of war and hostilities is considered “rushed.” In fact, at one time, he encouraged the Tigrayan terrorist group, TPLF, to invade Eritrea and as he did in Iraq twenty years ago, he promised them they would be received with flowers in Eritrea. His own words :

“The question now is whether Tigray Defense Forces will enter Eritrea to end a regime that was as much an aggressor against Tigray as Ethiopia’s Army but with even less legal justification. Isaias is old and in ill health. His people are demoralized. The rapid defeat of Eritrean forces in Tigray shows his weakness. Should the Tigray Defense Forces enter Eritrea or, more likely, organize and support Eritrean opposition forces, Isaias may find his own conscript army will dissolve and defect.”

Rubin also condemned the news of peace between the two Somalias:

“It has now been almost 30 years since Somalia descended into state failure. … Abiy, however, has decided that his Nobel mantle gives him a mandate single-handedly to reunite Somalia. Last week, Abiy brokered the first-ever meeting between Muse Bihi Abdi, Somaliland’s president, and Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed Farmaajo. Abiy likes Farmaajo for the same reason Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. Ambassador Donald Yamamoto do: because he is not known for an independent intellect and is pliable to their needs.”

Since February 2019, Rubin has written over 40 articles maligning and openly calling for regime change in Eritrea. His articles covered subjects ranging from accusations against the Eritrean president of considering “attacking Somaliland in order to gain a port on the Red Sea” and maligning the Ethiopian Prime Minister stating he intends to “keep Ethiopia in a state of perpetual crisis” to maintain power. In addition to his sinister intentions relating to Eritrean and Ethiopian people and their leaders, these statements expose his ignorance of the area . First, Somaliland doesn’t share a common border with Eritrea; second, it is not located on the Red Sea coast but along the western side of the Indian Ocean.

As Rubin knowingly recycled and regurgitated discredited stories about Eritrea as a panelist at a conference on “Reshaping Africa’s Narratives: The Media in Perspective” in Kigali, Rwanda, on 14 May 2021. Dr. Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, a Ugandan Professor Extraordinarius at the Archie Mafeje Research Institute at the University of South Africa had this rebuke to the likes of Michael Rubin:

“Everything that I knew about Eritrea came from the western media. I read a lot about Eritrea in all the major western newspapers and I never heard or read a single positive thing about that country … [So], I decided to go to Asmara and see Eritrea, talk to Eritreans, and talk to Eritrean leaders and try to understand what kind of country Eritrea is. I can tell you that I came out of Eritrea feeling extremely angry. I was angry about all the stuff I had read about Eritrea and believed. … There are so many things that happen in Eritrea which I think are very good things that the rest of us in Africa should know about, but which no one tells us about, absolutely no one.”

[Dr. Golooba-Mutebi visited Eritrea in 2018 and you can read what he wrote for The East African about what he found in Eritrea:

Eritrea, the 'police state' where there are no cops to be seen (September 7, 2018) https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/op ... en-1401900

Ignore the naysayers, Asmara is not reclusive and is open for business (October 1, 2018) https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/op ... ss-1403636

You can see of what he said at the Reshaping Africa’s Narratives: The Media in Perspective panel starting at the 35:45 minute mark at https://youtu.be/I7eJgT47m1s .

Rubin, however, didn’t care to take Mutebi’s eyewitness warning into consideration. Instead, he set out to promote Eritreans like Ahmed Chalabi to help him fabricate stories like what he did with the nonexistent “WMDs” in Iraq. Ahmed Chalabi was the Iraqi quisling who was the disinformation agent feeding the “WMD” and other lies to his US handlers in order to create pretext for US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Along with these Eritrean Chalabists, Rubin is recycling an old, discredited story of “slavery in Eritrea.” Of course, there is no slavery in Eritrea. It is Eritrea’s National Service that Rubin is maliciously misrepresenting as “slavery.” A national service that doesn’t spare the president’s or ministers’ children from serving their nation is twisted out of context and labeled as “slavery." If an honored service to one’s country and people is referred to as slavery, then millions who serve their countries around the world under national service programs are “slaves." National Service is not unique to Eritrea; nearly one-third of world nations have some form of national service. Furthermore, calling Eritrean National Service as “slavery” whitewashes the heinous crimes of slavery and minimizes the genocide that was committed on Africans during the Middle Passage and in the hands of slave owners in the Americas.

The battle for Africa is raging, with the US, China, Russia, Europe, and other countries vying to influence the many resource-rich countries of the continent. The US, in particular, has also been engaged in dangerous militarization of the continent through its Africa Command, AFRICOM, which has now established military bases in some form or the other in all the African countries except Eritrea. Unfortunately the barrage of misinformation and disinformation have been used as pretext and excuse to impose sanctions on Eritrea. Destabilizing Eritrea based on lies and misinformation will not benefit the people of Eritrea or the world. Rubin and others of his ilk have influence in Washington; US foreign policy will inevitably repeat the same aggressions it has committed in the past.

Rubin and AEI exemplify how imperialist think tanks work hand in hand with the US government, be it in Iraq, Iran, South Caucasus, Turkey, Syria or Yemen. They are now frantically attempting to derail peace efforts in the Horn of Africa. Our hope is that this cycle of interventions will end, and that these campaigns of disinformation about Eritrea and its neighboring countries will end too.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/targe ... nformation

AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #44
US Out of Africa Network 25 Jan 2023

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January 8, 2023 ceremony where U.S. presented $9 million in military supplies to the Somali National Army (Photo: courtesy AFRICOM Facebook page)

The Black Alliance for Peace AFRICOM Watch Bulletin discusses the first session of the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent and provides updates on the latest news from the African continent.

This article was originally published in the Black Alliance for Peace website.

The United Nations recently held the first session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent in Geneva, Switzerland. From December 5-8, more than 600 delegates from UN member states, UN structures, and civil society took the floor to call for global recourse and the institutional protection of human rights for Africans all over the world.

Established in August 2021, during the 7th year of the UN International Decade for People of African Descent—spanning 2015 to 2024—the Permanent Forum will act as an advisory body to the UN Human Rights Council. The UN General Assembly declared the Forum also will serve as “a consultative mechanism for people of African descent and other relevant stakeholders” and “platform for improving the safety and quality of life and livelihoods of people of African descent.”

The convening consisted of international and virtual pre-events and side events that discussed the human rights situation of Africans on the continent, as well as Africans in Europe, and what we call “Nuestra América,” the landmass encompassing what is now known as Canada to the tip of Chile. Representatives from the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN) attended the December convening to:

*engage in political struggles around the establishment of this forum—which are discussed in this month’s interview;
*reach out to and build international structures (significant numbers of folks from the global South were in attendance); and
*focus on issues of militarization and its impact on African people.

BAP and the USOAN emphasize the increased militarization of the African continent and Nuestra América, as well as its implications for resistance efforts by local communities and activists, as a key part of the war on African people. We seek to build the mass movement necessary to defeat it.

U.S. Out of Africa: Voices from the Struggle

AFRICOM Watch Bulletin speaks with Mama Efia Nwangaza, who is the Founder/Director of the Malcolm X Center for Self Determination, member of the Black Belt Human Rights Coalition Criminal Punishment System Sub-Committee as well as the Black Alliance for Peace, and a veteran of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC):

AFRICOM Watch Bulletin: What are your thoughts on the Permanent Forum?

Efia Nwangaza: The Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, December 5-8, 2022, Geneva, is the United States’ and other European countries’—former colonizers and enslavers—effort to control today's Bandung-like global reparations-centered freedom movement, as evidenced by the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA). The Forum, as presently constituted, is a mechanism designed to waylay, blunt and bury the DDPA with hand-picked gatekeepers and the racist slur of “anti-semitism.”

In Durban, South Africa, the world—meaning governments and civil society—reached a consensus and issued the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA). The world declared colonialism, slavery, apartheid, and genocide crimes against humanity, without statute of limitations and [with] a basis for reparations.

In 2001, the United States, led by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, walked out of the Durban World Conference Against Racism. The U.S. and other European countries—former colonizers—worked to prevent the global consensus that was reached and, having failed, continue to work to undermine and bury it.

AWB: Who are the main players in the Permanent Forum?

EN: The Forum is composed of 10 members; five nominated by states and five by the president of the Human Rights Council, “in consultation with civil society.” Here, “civil society” is not limited to people of African descent, as is the case with the members of the [United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues].

While the U.S. described how it pressured governments to vote for its pick, Justin Hanford, little or nothing else is known about the rest's appointment. It is located in Geneva, in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), instead of the more accessible New York, under the more appropriate Economic and Social Council.

The chair, Epsy Campbell-Barr, is a former vice president of Costa Rica, one of the world's smallest countries and [containing] an even smaller number of people of African descent; little more than 400,000. The vice chair is Alice Ange'le Nkom of Cameroon. She is the first woman admitted to practice law in Cameroon and is president of the Cameroonian Association for Defence of Homosexuality, co-chairperson of the Central Africa Human Rights Defenders Network, and a member of the National Democratic Institute International Working Group. The rapporteur [an independent human rights expert whose expertise is called upon by the United Nations to report or advise on human rights from a thematic or country-specific perspective] is Michael McEachrane, of Sweden, who calls himself a “mixed race, academic and activist.” As of 2016, there were 110,758 citizens of African nations residing in Sweden.

Justin Hansford, U.S. member/Pan-Euro representative is director of the Howard University Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center. He, like Clarence Thomas, enjoys the good will that comes from the use of Thurgood Marshall's name. Hansford, presenting himself as a Black “liberator,” dismissed the DDPA saying, “I was 16 years old when it was written.” He reportedly “believes he can get a better deal;” apparently under the ruse of “Sustainable Development Goals.”

AWB: What were your contributions to the convening?

EN: I publicly reprimanded Justin Hansford for trying to gaslight me and others when the chair attempted to refuse to take floor responses to McEachrane's attempt to limit DDPA relevance in his “interim” summary of the Forum's future work. “The DDPA will be applied to the extent it applies to people of African descent,” he said. His opening statement is attached.

I challenged Forum participants—in-person and virtually,—to read the DDPA. Admonished them to not let fancy, obscure language, lack of information, age, experience, and a short-term promise (Sustainable Development Goals [SDG]) of an immediate bowl of porridge cause us to betray our peoples. All were challenged to fully claim, affirm, and assert the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action as our human right of self-determination.

I reminded them, “The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action is the heart and soul of this Forum, without the DDPA this is nothing more than a free trip and a talk fest. The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action is our lifeline and that of generations unborn. HOLD ON TO IT—BLACK POWER! BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL! BLACK POWER! BLACK POWER to BLACK PEOPLE!!! ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!” The crowd roared and gave two standing ovations. Black Power and the call for fidelity to the DDPA rang out throughout the remaining days.

AWB: Thank you for your insights and analysis!

https://www.blackagendareport.com/afric ... ulletin-44

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France recalls ambassador and will withdraw military forces from Burkina Faso
By Joseph Ataman, CNN and Reuters
Published 6:35 AM EST, Thu January 26, 2023

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A soldier of the French Army patrols a rural area during the Barkhane operation in northern Burkina Faso on November 9, 2019.
Michele Cattani/AFP/Getty Images/FILE CNN

Following a formal request from the Burkina Faso government to do so, the French military mission will end a month after receipt of that written demand, the ministry said.

Since 2018, the French and Burkina Faso governments have had an agreement allowing the presence of French troops on Burkinabe soil. French troops have been deployed in West Africa since 2013 to fight jihadist groups in the Sahel.

This withdrawal is the latest step back for France’s military footprint in the Sahel region, after the 2022 withdrawal of French forces from Mali following a military coup in the country and the eventual breakdown in relations with the Malian government.

People hold a sign as they gather to show their support to Burkina Faso's new military leader Ibrahim Traore and demand the departure of the French ambassador at the Place de la Nation in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso January 20, 2023. The sign reads : "France's army get out from our country". REUTERS/Vincent Bado

Burkina Faso's military government demands French troops leave the country within one month
The French Armed Forces declined to comment on the composition of the mission in Burkina Faso, adding that it also did not have a comment on how the withdrawal will affect French operations in the Sahel region.

The French foreign ministry said on Thursday it was recalling its ambassador to Burkina Faso, citing “the context of recent developments”, a day after Paris announced it would withdraw its troops from the African country.

“We have decided to recall our ambassador in Paris, to conduct consultations on the state and perspectives of our bilateral cooperation”, the ministry said in a statement.

Protests by opponents of the French military presence have surged in Burkina, partly linked to perceptions that France has not done enough to tackle an Islamist insurgency that has spread in recent years from neighboring Mali.

https://us.cnn.com/2023/01/26/africa/fr ... index.html

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Who is responsible for Ghana’s debt crisis?

Ghana has approached the G20 to restructure its external debts, the majority of which are held by private lenders. The process is necessary to unlock a $3 billion IMF bailout that will see severe austerity measures imposed on the Ghanaian people

January 24, 2023 by Tanupriya Singh

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IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva meets with Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo (Photo: @KGeorgieva/Twitter)

On Wednesday, January 18, 26 civil society and aid organizations penned an open letter calling on international creditors to cancel Ghana’s debt. Ghana’s public debt stood at over 467 billion cedis ($46.7 billion) by the end of September, 2022, of which 42% was domestic debt. In December, Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta announced that interest payments on debt were taking up between 70 to 100% of the government’s revenue, and that the ratio of the country’s public debt to its GDP had exceeded 100%.

Based on the World Bank’s International Debt Statistics, 64% of Ghana’s scheduled foreign currency external debt service, which includes principal and interest amounts, between 2023 and 2029 is to private lenders. 20% of the debt is to multilateral institutions and 6% to other governments. Notably, while mainstream reporting on Ghana’s debt scenario tends to emphasize China as the country’s “biggest bilateral creditor,” only 10% of Accra’s external debt service is owed to Beijing.

Approximately $13 billion of Ghana’s external debt is held in the form of Eurobonds by major asset management corporations including BlackRock, Abrdn, and Amundi (UK) Limited. “Ghana’s lenders, particularly private lenders, lent at high-interest rates because of the supposed risk of lending to Ghana,” the open letter read.

“The interest rate on Ghana’s Eurobonds is between 7% and 11%. That risk has materialized… Given that they lent seeking high returns, it is only right that following these economic shocks, private lenders willingly accept losses and swiftly agree to significant debt cancellation for Ghana.”

A weak debt relief infrastructure

In early December, the government announced a domestic debt exchange program under which existing bonds would be exchanged for new ones with a longer period of maturity.

On December 19, the Ghanaian Finance Ministry announced that it was suspending debt service payments on the majority of its external debt, including commercial and bilateral loans. The country was expected to default on the first such payment, a $41 million interest payment due on a $1 billion Eurobond, on January 18.

On January 16, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, confirmed that Ghana was seeking to restructure its debt under the Common Framework initiative of the G20 countries, becoming the fourth country to do so following Chad, Ethiopia, and Zambia.

The Common Framework was one of two debt treatment schemes announced by the G20 in 2020, the first being the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), under which debt payments were to be temporarily suspended, giving poor countries space to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking to Peoples Dispatch, Tim Jones, the head of policy at Debt Justice, explained: “At the start, the DSSI was meant to lead to a suspension of debt to government lenders, to private lenders, and also determine how to do the same for multilateral institutions. However, multilateral institutions and private lenders both refused to take part.”

“So in the end only government lenders suspended payments, which meant that only 23% of debt payments were actually suspended for countries which had applied for the scheme. However, even if the scheme had worked as intended, the problem was that it was just a debt suspension, with the debts still due to be paid years later.”

While the DSSI ended in 2021 with very limited success, the Common Framework had the opportunity to provide a broader debt cancellation, involving private creditors alongside bilateral lenders in the process to ensure that countries’ debts became sustainable.

“But very little was done to outline the details of how that would work. While the G20 stated that government and private lenders would be included in the scheme, however, multilateral lenders were excluded,” Jones said.

“They did not give any new mechanisms to countries to negotiate a reduction in their debt owed to private creditors, leaving it to the debtor governments to say ‘If you want debt cancellation from governments, you have to negotiate the same deal from private creditors.’ But they did not offer any tools to help indebted countries to do that.”

Chad became the first country to reach an agreement under the Common Framework in November 2022, after the process had been delayed and blocked for nearly two years by Swiss commodity trading and mining company Glencore, which held nearly the entirety of Chad’s debt to private creditors, itself comprising one-third of the country’s external debt.

Even after the delays, the agreement did not yield any meaningful debt relief for Chad, merely a postponement of payments.

On January 19, an official from the Paris Club told Reuters that all members of the G20 were in favor of restructuring Ghana’s debt, and that members of the Paris Club were ready to take the initial steps towards forming a creditor committee.

It is possible that Ghana might enter these debt negotiations with a relatively strong position compared to Chad, given that, similar to Zambia, it has suspended its debt payments.

Advocacy groups have demanded that the G20 guarantee that Ghana will be “politically and financially supported to remain in default on any creditor which does not accept the necessary restructuring.” Importantly, they have highlighted that Ghana’s foreign currency bonds are governed by English law, which means that the UK parliament can take the necessary steps to provide legal safeguards for Ghana and rein in private lenders.

As this process plays out at the international level, the necessity of debt cancellation for Ghana is underscored by the fact that living conditions for millions of people in the country have steadily worsened.

Ghana goes to the IMF… again

By December 2022, Ghana’s consumer inflation had soared to 54.1%, the highest in over 20 years. According to figures published by the country’s statistics office on January 11, the prices of housing, electricity, water, and gas and other fuels rose by 82.3% year-on-year by the end of last year.

Meanwhile, the cedi, which had lost 54.2% of its value against the US dollar by November, was termed the year’s “worst performing currency.” These conditions sparked repeated protests in 2022, alongside trade unions struggles against a drastic decline in wages in real value terms.

In an interview with Peoples Dispatch, Kwesi Pratt Junior, the general secretary of the Socialist Movement of Ghana (SMG), said, “Why is Ghana’s economy in such dire straits? For one, while Ghana is heavily endowed with natural resources such as gold [being the 6th largest producer in the world], these resources are not owned by our people or exploited for our benefit.”

“The other part of the problem is that the US dollar has become the currency of preference in international trade. The US owns the dollar, its debt is in dollars, so all it has to do is reprint more dollars. Our [Ghana’s] debt is in dollars too, how are we supposed to pay?”

In July 2022, the government announced that it would approach the IMF for a bailout, in what would be Ghana’s 18th arrangement with the institution, in a stark departure from its earlier vocal opposition to seeking assistance from the IMF.

Also read: Ghana’s unions and left reject bailout talks with the IMF as economic crisis spirals
On December 12, the IMF announced that a staff-level agreement had been reached with Ghana’s government for a three-year, $3 billion dollar arrangement under an Extended Credit Facility (ECF).

“The Ghanaian authorities have committed to a wide-ranging economic reform program,” the Fund said in a statement, adding that the “fiscal strategy relies on front loaded measures to increase domestic resource mobilization and streamline expenditure…”

Such language of “structural reforms” is indicative of one thing—more austerity, similar to Ghana’s previous engagements with the IMF and their disastrous impacts, and the signs of which are already visible in the country’s 2023 national budget.

By the second quarter of 2022, Ghana’s unemployment rate stood at 13.9%. In a country where the civil service is the largest employer, the government has now implemented a hiring freeze in the public sector. Tax measures including a 2.5% increase in the Value Added Tax (VAT) rate, which disproportionately impacts poor people, have been announced.

The government has also imposed a “cap on salary adjustment of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) to be lower than negotiated base pay increase.” While the government and trade unions have reached an agreement to increase the salaries of all public servants by 30% in 2023, the increase will still not meet the rate of inflation.

The Ghana Trades Union Congress has also accused the government of defaulting on its contributions to the pension schemes of over 600,000 public sector workers since February 2022.

These anti-poor austerity measures are being implemented in pursuit of an IMF loan that is still pending approval—which is in turn conditional on the restructuring of Ghana’s debts to a level deemed sustainable.

Watch: Kwesi Pratt Jr.: Nobody believes IMF deal will solve Ghana’s crisis
“The IMF is unfortunately central to how debt is managed in the global system. In theory, there is no structured process of dealing with a government debt crisis, there is no way for governments to declare bankruptcy,” Jones said.

“So the IMF rules the system that exists in its place. When countries get into a debt crisis they turn to the Fund to seek more loans, and often the IMF grants these loans, which enables previous creditors to keep being paid while the IMF insists on austerity.”

The Fund determines the contours of debt relief—how much debt can be restructured, what does this restructuring look like, whether it is in the form of simply moving payments into the future or actual debt cancellation—in a package, Jones added, which also includes deciding the extent of austerity.

Rescuing Ghana from the imperialist debt trap

Ghana’s debt crisis has been attributed to a continued dependence on commodity exports—rooted in colonialism—which are susceptible to volatile prices, as well as irresponsible lending and borrowing practices. The present debt crisis also shares key similarities with the debt crisis that had affected much of the Global South in the 1980s and 1990s.

“The decade following the 2008 financial crisis saw a big increase in lending, the biggest driver of which are high interest loans from private lenders,” Jones stated. “A similar boom in lending had taken place in the 1970s. At the start of the 1980s, there were a series of economic shocks, commodity prices fell and interest rates went up. Even then much of the debt was owed to private lenders.”

However, in the 1980s and 1990s, the IMF and the World Bank lent more money, which allowed private lenders to keep being paid. As a result, “there was a transfer of debt from private lenders to multilateral institutions. This proved disastrous for countries who had to pay back these loans whilst implementing austerity.”

When some debt cancellation did take place in the 2000s, it was the multilateral creditors who were affected, and had to pay, instead of the original lenders. “This incentivized these lenders to keep acting recklessly, and is one of the reasons we have another crisis now.”

Ghana’s debt fell significantly between 2003 and 2006 following debt cancellation under the IMF and World Bank’s Heavily Indebted Poor Countries and Multilateral Debt Relief initiatives. Ghana witnessed major economic growth in the following years as the prices of gold and cocoa, two of the country’s main exports, began to increase. This also led to a rise in lending—between 2007 and 2015, Ghana had $18.2 billion in external loans and $8.7 billion in debt payments.

Between May 2007 and February 2015, the IMF and the World Bank assessed Ghana to be at moderate risk of debt distress. This classification meant that Ghana was eligible to receive 50% of the support from the World Bank in the form of grants and the other 50% as loans. However, analysis has revealed that 93% of the Bank’s funding to Ghana during this time was in the form of loans.

In March 2015, Ghana was declared to be at high risk of debt distress, qualifying the country to access 100% of the support in the form of grants. However, the World Bank still agreed to give the country $1.16 billion in loans.

Between 2013 and 2014, commodity prices fell, as did the value of the cedi. As a result, the relative size of Ghana’s external debt and debt payments increased. The government was forced to take on new debts in the form of bonds in 2013, 2014, and 2015, all with high interest rates ranging from 7.9% to 10.75%.

The crisis was taking the shape of a new debt trap. Speculators now stand to rake in massive profits unless there is substantial debt cancellation for Ghana.

In 1987, the president of Burkina Faso and Marxist Pan-Africanist revolutionary, Thomas Sankara, had raised a rallying call for a “united front against debt”—“debt is neo-colonialism,” he had stressed, “controlled and dominated by imperialism, debt is a skillfully managed reconquest of Africa.”

35 years later, Sankara’s words still ring true, as Western private lenders continue to reap obscene profits off the very debt that is pushing people in countries such as Ghana further into poverty.

“These debts are simply unpayable not just because of the unfair international economic order. They are also unpayable because a lot of these loans serve the foreign policy interests of imperialist powers,” Kwesi Pratt Junior told Peoples Dispatch.

“The best example of this is Zaire (present day DRC) under Mobuto Sese Seko. Everybody knew that he was richer than his country, they knew that the loans that were being given to Zaire could not be repaid and yet they kept pumping in loans, because they wanted to hold up Zaire as a bastion against the expansion of communism.”

Pratt further added, “we are in the current condition because our economy is still modeled on colonialism. One of the best ways to understand this is to look at Ghana’s railway network—it always starts from areas of wealth, the mining areas of bauxite, gold, and diamonds, and ends up at the ports. These minerals do not move towards the centers of production, the factories, but they go to the ports to be exported out of the country.”

“This typifies the relationship between Ghana and the colonial metropolis,” he emphasized. “What does it mean when Ghana signs a foreign exchange retention agreement with mining companies allowing them to keep 98% of the total value of minerals exported from the country. In actuality, only about 2% of the value of what is mined in Ghana comes back to its economy. This has to change.”

For the SMG, the way out, not just for Ghana but for all of Africa, is through a fundamental restructuring of the economy and a return to the agenda of the independence movement—for the people to be able to determine their own political destiny and to own and use their natural resources for their own benefit.

“We need to build an economy that responds directly to the needs of the people, to restructure it in a way that will make land available to the tillers, and that will ensure that people have access to services such as healthcare and education,” Pratt added.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/01/24/ ... bt-crisis/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 27, 2023 3:48 pm

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Maurice Carney

‘The Cry Is “Lumumba Lives”—His Ideas, His Principles’
By Janine Jackson (Posted Jan 26, 2023)

Originally published: FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) on January 24, 2023 (more by FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting)) |

Maurice CarneyJanine Jackson interviewed Friends of the Congo’s Maurice Carney about the assassination of Patrice Lumumba for the January 20, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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Patrice Lumumba

Janine Jackson: CounterSpin listeners will have heard a number of tributes to Martin Luther King Jr. this past week—a few searching, many shallow. Importantly, the King holiday usually includes attention to his assassination, as well as to his life and work, though even the best reports, if we’re talking about corporate media, fail to draw the straightest lines between the two.

This week also marks the anniversary of another assassination, that of Patrice Lumumba, the first elected prime minister of the post-independence Democratic Republic of the Congo. Elite media appear to find that 1961 murder harder to pave over, and easier to just ignore.

But thinking about it, learning about it, involves the same sort of challenges to the U.S. role in the world, and how racism shapes that role—lessons that we very obviously still need to learn.

We’re joined now by Maurice Carney, co-founder and executive director of the group Friends of the Congo. He joins us by phone from Washington, DC. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Maurice Carney.

Maurice Carney: Thank you. Thank you, Janine. It’s my pleasure to be back with you.

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(PublicAffairs, 2008)

JJ: I will ask you to begin where we have in the past, with a reminder to listeners about January, 1961, and the circumstances of Patrice Lumumba’s assassination. How was the U.S. involved, but also why was the U.S. involved?

MC: Yes, the United States was directly involved. In fact, Janine, the United States State Department released declassified documents a number of years ago, in the last seven years or so, and those declassified documents revealed that the operation in the Congo on the part of the United States and its Central Intelligence Agency, the covert operation, was the largest in the world at that time, in terms of financing.

And the chief of station, Larry Devlin, chief of station of the CIA in the Congo, he wrote a book entitled Chief of Station, Congo, and he laid out why that the United States felt that Congo was important, and that it remained in the sphere of influence of the United States.

Larry Devlin said, in essence, that if we did not overthrow Lumumba, not only would we have lost the Congo, we would’ve lost all of Africa.

So Devlin centered the Congo as a part of U.S. overall foreign policy, strategic policy for the African continent. So the overthrow of Lumumba was vital to the United States.

And we say “overthrow” because, in Devlin’s book, it’s really a playbook that he lays out for how the United States moves against democratically elected leaders who are not necessarily inclined to toe Washington’s line.

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A painting of Patrice Lumumba by Bernard Safran, commissioned by Time magazine but not published.

And that was the problem that the United States had with Lumumba, that he was an African nationalist and a pan-Africanist, one who loved his people, loved the continent, and, as Malcolm X stated, he was the greatest African leader to ever walk the African continent.

And the reason why Malcolm X said that is because he saw that the U.S. couldn’t reach Lumumba, in the sense that they couldn’t corrupt him, they couldn’t entice him to sell out his people for trinkets, just like some of the other Congolese leaders had done.

So the Congo was key, and it’s key for a whole host of reasons that we can share a little later.

JJ: And the idea that the CIA chief of station, Larry Devlin, would use the pronoun “we”—”we” might lose Africa. This is so deeply meaningful in terms of policy narrative, and here’s where media come in to play their role of serving this narrative.

And I know that you’ve spoken in the past about the role that U.S. news media played in working with the CIA and Larry Devlin and other U.S. foreign policymakers to destabilize Congo and Lumumba. Media storytelling carried a lot of weight here.


MC: Absolutely, absolutely. The narrative is critical. It was a number of years ago we talked about, Time magazine at the time was portraying Lumumba as a monster, basically laying the groundwork to justify his liquidation and removal from power.

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NPR (12/20/22)

We paint this picture of a monster to the global media when covert action is actually implemented by the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. government, then folks are going to say, well, oh, he was a monster anyway. So it doesn’t matter if he was democratically elected. Doesn’t matter if he was a legitimate prime minister. He was a bad guy.

And the United States and its media and its people see themselves as the good guy. So if the good guys move in and get rid of the bad guys, then it’s fine.

And this is really an important point, too, Janine, because that narrative, these people who were involved at the time, some of them are really still alive today. They write books and they make films to paint themselves in a positive light, because of their concern of the repercussion of history, when the truth actually comes out, in terms of the dastardly role that they played, in not only removing a democratically elected leader who was subsequently assassinated, but also imposing a dictatorship over the Congolese people, in essence destroying any prospect of a peaceful, democratic, prosperous country in the heart of the richest continent on the planet.

So recounting the story and correcting the history and continuing to tell the story, especially during the commemoration of Lumumba’s assassination, is so vital. It’s so critical, and it’s not something that is stuck in the past, but it’s very, very much relevant for today, because the same forces that were at play in the ’60s to remove Lumumba are at play today in terms of keeping the Congolese from advancing and fully benefiting from the enormous wealth that’s in their country, which is what Lumumba stood for.

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CNN (9/10/22)

He made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that he was going to serve the interest of the Congolese people. He was going to leverage the wealth of the Congo, not only for the benefit of the Congo, but for Africa as a whole.

This basically scared the Western powers, because they thought they were going to lose access to the resources that we’ve learned, over the decades, are vital to a whole range of industries—not only in the West, but global industries.

JJ: This is absolutely a story about this very day today, and it’s so important to not think of this as a historical commemoration. But when I looked for coverage, I found pretty much nothing in terms of U.S. media coverage.

But I did find, for example, when I was just looking for references to Lumumba, one of the things I found was the Dutch prime minister’s official apology for that country’s role in slavery and in the trading of enslaved people.

And I wanted to ask the role of these official statements, about apologies, which is not the same thing as a truth and reconciliation conversation, but these official apologies in the context of a general informational void about the specific actions and attitudes that created the phenomenon that now official people are sad about.

And with context to Congo, I just wonder: This is the coverage, this is what media covers, is when a powerful person says I’m officially sorry, and that’s not the kind of coverage we need.


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Maurice Carney: “The same forces that were at play in the ’60s to remove Lumumba are at play today in terms of keeping the Congolese from advancing.”

MC: Right. And that’s in line with narratives over the past few years, right? Because, see, even the summer of 2022, you have the Belgian king, who had gone back to Congo. He didn’t apologize for the role that Belgium played in basically plundering and destroying the Congo. But he said he regretted it.

And this apology, regret, it’s really important, because remember, one of the events that shot Lumumba into world attention was his June 30, 1960, inauguration speech, where he laid out in excoriating detail the nature and the scope of the brutality of King Leopold II in the Congo and Belgian colonialism.

So we are talking about some 60 years later, where you have the Dutch or the Belgians issuing apologies or regrets, it really doesn’t carry weight for the masses of Africans. And I say that because, if you recall the passing of the queen of England, and if you look at the coverage, you saw that Africans writ large were basically celebrating, and recounting in detail the atrocities that the British colonial power carried out, not only in Africa, but certainly in India and in Asia.

So this apology narrative, Janine, it’s really an elite affair. And the broadcasting of it is sharing the crocodile tears of elites. But if you consult the masses, if you look at the oppressed masses, the working class, you’ll find the type of response that they have, not only to colonialism, but also to neo-colonialism and contemporary capitalists and imperialist exploitation of their lands.

And you’ll find outrage, you’ll find anger, and you’ll find people teeming to demand change of the power relations that exist currently in the world today.

JJ: I know that Friends of the Congo works year round, but that you also use every January 17 to uplift the life and the murder and the legacy of Patrice Lumumba, as well as that of Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo, who also died on that day.

And I would like you to talk a little bit about the goals of the action that you do every year, because it’s not just lamentation; it’s about more.


MC: Exactly. Exactly. We commemorate Lumumba to remind the world, not only of the imbalance in the power dynamics between the Western world and the global South, but also to remind people of the principles and ideas that Lumumba lived for and ultimately died: Self-sufficiency, self-determination, pan-Africanism, internationalism, and those principles obtain to this day, and they’ve been embraced by young Congolese in particular, young Africans in general, who are carrying out, building on the legacy of Lumumba.

So the cry is “Lumumba lives,” that is to say, his ideas, his principles. And I was in an exchange with one young Congolese before our commemoration yesterday, and he was sharing that there are a thousand Lumumbas in the Congo today.

So what we try to highlight is the extent to which the current generation has taken up the mantle, and is continuing that pursuit for a self-determined, independent Congo that is inextricably linked to the self-determination and independence of the African continent as a whole.

So that’s why we declare January 17 of each year Lumumba Day, and people go to LumumbaDay.org and they sign up to take action, either get a resolution passed commemorating the day; they can sign up to support the youth who are carrying on the tradition of Lumumba; they can be a part of the current movement in the Congo that is very much as critical today as it was during the time of Lumumba.

So it’s very current, very contemporary, and speaks to the tremendous importance that Congo carries, not only for Africa, but for the world as a whole, being part of the second-largest rainforest in the world, and is vital in the fight against the climate crisis.

And at the same time, Janine, being the storehouse of strategic minerals such as cobalt, which are vital in the pursuit of a renewable energy revolution.

So it’s at the nexus of critical resources that are vital to the future of the welfare of the planet as a whole.

JJ: I just wanted to ask you, if you have another minute in you, about precisely that, that Congo is not a story of the past. Congo is very much a story of the present. And I wonder, if journalists listening to this are looking to connect the history, and the ongoing history of exploitation, to the current exploitation, and are looking for stories as inroads to that, are there particular issues or stories that you would direct an enterprising U.S. reporter who’s looking to get into this; what should they start at?

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Africa Report (5/17/21)

MC: Oh my goodness. There are so many. And if you’re talking about questions of peace and security, we see the instability unfolding in the Congo as a result of, in large part, U.S. foreign policy and financing and backing proxy leaders in neighboring countries. So peace and security questions.

Congo has suffered the deadliest conflict in the world since World War II. It’d be interesting to see a comparison between the response that we have in Ukraine in the media and what we see in the Congo, wherein as many as 6 million people have lost their lives. But yet the coverage seems to lack in comparison to how Ukraine is covered.

But if we’re talking about the Green New Deal and climate crisis and renewable energy revolution, you have to talk about Congo. There’s so many stories that you can address in that kind of pursuit: the minerals, cobalt, critical to renewable energy sector; the Congo Basin, which is the second-largest rainforest in the world, and yet it sequesters more carbon than the Amazon itself.

It is the largest repository of peatlands and tropical peatlands in the world, and stores enough carbon that it can address the carbon emissions of the United States for 20 years. So just a tremendous number of stories that can be addressed.

And then you have a situation where you have the Congolese, 70 million of them, living on less than $2 a day, while one billionaire, by the name of Dan Gertler, he makes $200,000 a day from royalties from Congo’s minerals. So the question of poverty, exploitation, plunder, that can be explored by journalists as well.

So there’s just a tremendous amount of stories that can be written around the Congo, because its significance, as I stated earlier, is not just for Africa alone, but for the world, and therefore, it demands the world’s attention, and it demands in-depth, nuanced treatment, not only of Congo itself, but of the Congolese people, and the enormous courage and dignity that they stand on in confronting the challenges that they face.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Maurice Carney of Friends of the Congo; find their work online at FriendsOfTheCongo.org. Maurice Carney, thank you so much for joining us this week on CountersSpin.

MC: Thank you. Thank you, Janine. It’s my pleasure.

https://mronline.org/2023/01/26/the-cry ... rinciples/

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How Much Should the West Pay Africans as Reparations?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 26, 2023
Richard Oduor Oduku

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There have been countless attempts over the past 30 years to arrive at a ballpark figure for reparations. However, history shows that Africans should focus more on how the question of “how much?” is framed. What can be paid is largely dependent on who Africans ask for reparations, where they ask, and how much they ask for.

The colonisation of Africa lasted just over 70 years in most parts of the continent. Within the context of historical timeframes, 70 years is an extremely short period, yet as Walter Rodney wrote in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), “it is precisely in those years that, in other parts of the world, the rate of change was greater than ever before.” Under the guise of developing Africa, by bringing social order and economic modernisation, colonial regimes intensified the exploitation of Africa, in levels never encountered before in colonial history, to provide the resources for developing capitalist Europe. Africa’s development was “blunted, halted, and turned back.”

Under the guise of developing Africa, colonial regimes intensified the exploitation of Africa

The inordinate effect of colonialism on Africa’s development trajectory and destiny, stems primarily from the loss of power. Colonialism occupied, subordinated, and imposed its will on African societies and destroyed its power to decide and defend its interests. “When one society finds itself forced to relinquish power entirely to another society,” Walter Rodney wrote, “that in itself is a form of underdevelopment.”

The short colonial era was different from the centuries of pre-colonial slave trade because even though the trade was imbalanced and disadvantageous, Africans still retained some semblance of social, political, and economic control. Colonialism imposed alien social and political institutions and culture across diverse African governance systems, and usurped Africa’s power to free economic production and commerce. Africa, during the colonial era, ceased to exist as a socio-cultural, political, and economic entity.

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Zanzibar: Memory of Slaves. Photo: Missy/Flickr

The Tunisian, Albert Memmi, went further in diagnosing the pathology of colonialism: “The most serious blow suffered by the colonized is being removed from history and from the community. Colonization usurps any free role in either war or peace, every decision contributing to his destiny and that of the world, and all cultural and social responsibility.”

Once Africa’s cultural, social, political, and economic systems were infected by the pathology of colonialism, Africa was removed from history, only mentioned passively as subordinate to European history. Africans ceased to be makers of history. Foreign overlords, like puppet players, with amusement, toyed with the fabric and destiny of African states, sometimes quite dramatically.

It is no surprise that the golden age of European growth and transformation ran parallel with the extreme extraction of human and material resources from the African continent. It is not a coincidence, Gareth Austin wrote, that “most of Sub-Saharan Africa was colonized at a time when the industrialization of Europe was creating or expanding markets for various commodities that could profitably be produced in Africa.”

There is no need to further justify reparations for Africans. The big question is: How much?

That Europe appropriated and stole Africa’s material resources or executed one of the most barbaric and inhumane occupations in recorded history, is not in question; neither is the idea that Africans deserve social and economic justice. There is no need to further justify reparations for Africans. The big question is: “How much?”

How much?

What is the value of human life? In as much as we’d like to belabour over the question of “how much”, this difficulty was nonexistent among slave traders. Every slave on the market had a value. Slave traders had no trouble pricing human beings, neither were the abolition-era economists who calculated and approved compensation to slave owners following the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 in Britain. A total of 46,000 slave owners were awarded what in modern terms amounts to £16 to £17 billion. Freed slaves received zero compensation.

Following the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 in Britain, a total of 46,000 slave owners were awarded what in modern terms amounts to £16 to £17 billion

In the United States, New Orleans, a decade before the US Civil War, slaves were paraded on auction blocks in chains. In those auctions, an African man in good health sold for over $1,200, and a girl of nine or 10 fetched $1,400: prices based on the man’s health and strength, and the girl’s ability to bear children for resale. The value can be calculated.

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This is used in the blog article “Tennessee Republicans Yearn for Days of Lore” on Truthmonk blog. Flickr/01slaveSale

The movement for reparations was hot in the early 1990s. Different scholars, recognising the worldwide crusade for reparations by black people, offered what they believed were realistic approaches, particularly the need to formalise the process. In 1992, under the auspices of the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union), a group emerged to draft a formal request for reparations. The group, the “Eminent Persons”, was led by Chief Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola, a wealthy Nigerian businessman and championed by the renowned globally respected scholar, Prof. Ali Mazrui. They brought together an eclectic mix of political leaders, historians, economists, and cultural personalities.

For Mazrui, reparations meant empowering Africans and African states to bridge the gap between Africa and the rest of the world, in terms of development. This argument went beyond looking at reparations solely as monetary compensation but included conditionalities such as reduced support for African tyrants, increased support for democratisation, inclusion of African states in the decision-making structures of international organisations and cancelling debt.

For the monetary aspect, the Group devised the Middle Passage Plan, borrowing heavily from the thinking and structure of the Marshall Plan that guided America’s transfer of $13 billion (at the time) to rebuild Europe in the post-World War II period. In an analysis on Quartz Africa, Lynsey Chutel recounts that the Middle Passage Plan called for skills transfer to Africans through student scholarships, power transfer via voting rights in international organisations such as the World Bank, International Monetary Transfer, and the United Nations Security Council. The plan also estimated that 40 percent of Africa’s underdevelopment can be attributed to colonialism; however, the Group of Eminent persons avoided calculating the economic value of human loss due to slave trade and enslavement, for fear trivialising the sacrifices African slaves endured for hundreds of years.

40 percent of Africa’s underdevelopment can be attributed to colonialism

This responsibility was shifted to the Truth Commission in Accra, who in 1999, calculated the value to $777 trillion, excluding interest. However, criticisms over the lack of clarity over this figure, informed the work of other researchers, who in 2000, estimated the cost of reparations at $100 trillion using a methodology that assigned the value of every person lost to slavery at 75,000. The calculations were published in the Journal of Black Studies.

While these attempts at arriving at a ballpark figure are laudable, history shows that the framing of the request is what determines how much can be awarded. How much is paid is a question of who you ask, where you ask, and how much you ask for. There are historical cases that can offer a guideline.

In 1988, in the United States, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act that included provisions to compensate more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent who were incarcerated in internment camps during World War II. The Act offered a formal apology to the Japanese and authorised the payment of $20,000 in compensation to each surviving victim. The legislation was a win for a decade-long campaign by Japanese Americans, who, in celebration noted that the campaign wasn’t so much about compensating those who had already suffered, but more about the next generation of Americans, citing that it was rooted in the Japanese “kodomo to tame ni”, which means “for the sake of the children.”

In 2003, the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) began working with the Mau Mau War Veteran’s Association to bring a lawsuit against the United Kingdom. The British colonial regime was accused or executing, torturing, and maiming 90,000 Kenyans and detaining 160,000 in appalling conditions during the Mau Mar revolt against British rule in Kenya in the 1950s. 10 years later in 2013, the UK government recognised the injustices mete on Kenyans and issued an apology: “The British government recognizes that Kenyans were subject to torture and other forms of ill-treatment at the hands of the colonial administration… The British government sincerely regrets that these abuses took place and they marred Kenya’s progress towards independence.” The 5,228 victims were awarded a payment totalling to £19.9m following an agreement with the lawyers representing the Mau Mau War Veteran’s Association.

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Surviving Herero people photo credit Wikimedia Commons

In 2021, Germany in recognising the early 20th century genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples, agreed to pay Namibia €1.1bn (£940m) over a 30 year period. The German Minister, Heiko Maas, stated that, “our aim was and is to find a joint path to genuine reconciliation in remembrance of the victims” … “That includes our naming the events of the German colonial era in today’s Namibia, and particularly the atrocities between 1904 and 1908, unsparingly and without euphemisms.” However, while the text of the joint declaration called the atrocities committed by German troops a “genocide,” it omitted the words “reparations” or “compensation,” borne out of the fear that including such truthful language could set a legal precedent for similar claims from other countries.

The trend, therefore, as can be seen from these cases, is a departure of the argument for reparations for all Africans, to a precedent that ties reparations to specific atrocities committed by colonial regimes. Following the examples of the Kenyan and Namibian cases, campaigners in Africa, in addition with making general calls and arguments for reparations, ought to put together evidence for specific atrocities and sue former colonial masters for financial restitution until historical reparations become an international norm.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... parations/

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France on the way out
January 26, 23:03

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After demands from Burkina Faso to remove French troops from the country, France withdrew its ambassador from Burkina Faso. In neighboring Niger, work has already begun to prepare for the deployment of a special forces battalion, which is currently stationed in Burkina Faso, but should be withdrawn in the short term. It is assumed that its place in this country (together with the bases) will be taken by the Wagner PMC.

France is also allocating additional funds to strengthen its positions in Niger, fearing that a military coup may occur here (as happened in Mali and Burkina Faso) and France will be asked to leave from here as well. A number of French sources note that the recognition of the Wagner PMC as a "transnational criminal organization" is connected, among other things, with Macron's complaints to Biden, where the French actually signed that they could not do anything with the Russian strategy in northwestern Africa, where the PMC " Wagner" acts as one of the instruments of Russian politics.

It is noteworthy that even in the concept of the development of the French armed forces until 2030, a situation is already prescribed when the military presence of France in Africa will be reduced, which transparently alludes to the fact that Paris is aware of the simple fact that to restore the former neo-colonial empire, which was destroyed not without the help of Russia for the last few years, France will no longer succeed (although the remaining dependent countries like Niger or Senegal will hold on to the last). In fact, it can already be stated that under Macron, France has lost its neo-colonial empire in Africa.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8128841.html

Google Translator

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“Assassination of Thulani Maseko has killed prospects of peaceful struggle in Swaziland”

Activist and lawyer Thulani Maseko, who was at the forefront of Swaziland’s struggle for democracy, was gunned down hours after King Mswati’s threatening speech to pro-democracy activists. PUDEMO President Mlungisi Makhanya talks about Thulani’s struggle and what his killing means for the country

January 27, 2023 by Pavan Kulkarni

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Renowned human rights lawyer and leader of Swaziland’s largest pro-democracy coalition, Thulani Maseko was shot dead in his home in Luhelko, 50 kilometers from capital city Mbabane, on Saturday, January 21. Thulani was out of prison on bail in cases of sedition and terrorism.

The bullets, fired through Thulani’s window, “completely shattered his head. His wife Tanele, who was with the children in his house, saw two gunmen fleeing,” said Mlungisi Makhanya, president of the People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO).

Thulani was a member of PUDEMO, which is among the largest political parties in the country. It is a key component of the Multi Stakeholder Forum (MSF), a pro-democracy coalition of civil society organizations, unions, and political parties, all of which are banned in this small southern African kingdom. Thulani, who had played a key role in bringing this coalition together, was its chairperson.

At the time of his assassination, police officers who had allegedly camped outside his house, let the killers get away without a chase, Swaziland News reported. Hours before his assassination, Africa’s last absolute monarch, King Mswati III, had effectively declared in a speech that the pro-democracy activists complaining about attacks by hired mercenaries had invited it upon themselves. Mswati, whose rule has been facing an unprecedented challenge since the anti-monarchist uprising in mid-2021, threatened more retribution this year in that speech.

“There is absolutely no doubt that the assassination was carried out at the King’s order,” Mlungisi told Peoples Dispatch, adding, “Thulani’s assassination by King Mswati represents one thing and one thing only – the assassination of peace. Comrade Thulani was a man of peace. He was a principled leader who gave his all in the fight for human rights and democracy, but always employed peaceful methods.”

His death might prove to be a turning point in the nature of the struggle. “By killing comrade Thulani, the King has killed any possibility and prospect for the continuation of the peaceful method. Because for us, he has demonstrated that the employment of peaceful methods means we are inviting death for ourselves. There comes a time in the life of every nation when these choices have to be made,” he said. Swaziland, he argued, is facing such a decisive time now.

Arrested and charged with terrorism and sedition

“I have personally known Thulani for thirty years since 1993. He has been in and out of detention a number of times during his student days. There was a time when he was a part of an organization of the landless workers,” reminisced Mlungisi.

Thulani became a prominent figure when he was first arrested in 2009. It was a turbulent period in Swaziland’s politics. In April 2008, PUDEMO’s then deputy president, Gabriel Mkhumane, had been assassinated, allegedly by agents of the King. The following month, the draconian Suppression of Terrorism Act was passed by the parliament, whose members are either directly appointed by the King or elected from among a narrow list of individuals approved by the King’s chiefs.

In September that year, a car bomb went off on the Lozitha bridge, leading to one of King’s many palaces. PUDEMO member Musa ‘MJ’ Dlamini and a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP) Jack Govender died in the car, while another South African Communist Amos Mbedzi was injured at a distance from the vehicle.

The state initially made a case of terrorism, arguing that a bomb meant to target the King had gone off prematurely, killing the perpetrators. However, on failing to substantiate the case, it eventually charged Amos for murdering Musa and Jack, and imprisoned him.

Denied medical care in prison, Amos’s health degenerated. When it had become evident that he would not survive much longer, the veteran of the armed struggle against Apartheid was sent to serve out his last days at a prison in South Africa where he died in 2022.

Despite being unable to prove that any terrorist act had been committed, a month after the blast, PUDEMO and its youth wing Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO), along with two other organizations, were banned and designated as terrorist organizations.

Mlungisi’s predecessor, late Mario Masuku (passed away in 2021), the then President of PUDEMO, was arrested and charged under the terrorism act, and incarcerated for 340 days until his release in late-2009, when he was acquitted of all charges.

Earlier, in June that year, Thulani, who was Mario’s defense lawyer, was arrested for having allegedly said while addressing a workers’ rally on May Day that “MJ Dlamini and Jack Govender died for the liberation of this country. One day the Lozitha bridge will be called MJ and Govender bridge.”

He was charged under the Suppression of Terrorism Act, and the Sedition and Subversive Activities Act. With the prosecution being unable to make a case, he was released on bail later that month. But the charges against him remain to date, Mlungisi said.

Arrested for contempt of court

Then, in March 2014, he was arrested again, on charges of Contempt of Court, along with the editor of The Nation, Bheki Makhubu, who had co-authored articles critical of the then chief justice. Mlungisi, who was then the General Secretary of PUDEMO, was arrested the following month from a protest against the arrest of the duo.

“I was in the same prison as him. I have seen his resilience,” Mlungisi recollected. “I was charged of terrorism and sedition, but I was granted bail.” Thulani, who was already facing the same charges since 2008, was sentenced two years in prison for Contempt of Court in July 2014.

“Note that the very chief justice Thulani and Bheki had criticized in their articles was later arrested for corruption, along with the judge who had sentenced them for contempt,” he said. In this backdrop, “when Thulani appealed against the decision in 2015, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that their incarceration was wrong even before the case went to the stage of arguments.”

In the meantime, PUDEMO President Mario Masuku had been once again arrested, along with the then general secretary of SWAYOCO Maxwell Dlamini, for their speeches on May Day in 2014. They too were charged with terrorism and sedition, only to be released on bail in 2015.

Thulani’s legal victory against laws on terrorism and sedition reversed
While still in prison in 2014, Thulani, along with Mlungisi, Mario and Maxwell, went on to challenge the constitutionality of the Suppression of Terrorism Act of 2008 and the Sedition and Subversive Activities Act, enacted in 1938 under British colonial rule.

In September 2016, the High Court struck down vast portions of the two acts, deeming them unconstitutional. After launching its appeal against the High Court’s judgment, the King’s government “did not file the substantive papers for two years. By 2018, the appeal period had lapsed,” Mlungisi said.

That year, when the King renamed Swaziland as Eswatini, Thulani took to the High Court again to challenge Mswati’s arbitrary decision as unconstitutional. Thulani also coalesced together the diverse pro-democracy forces in the country and established the Multi Stakeholder Forum (MSF) in this period when he and his comrades were freed from charges of terrorism and sedition.

But it was only a respite. In an unprecedented move, the Supreme Court passed a judgment in September 2022, reinstating the state’s appeal, on the grounds that in such a high-stakes case involving constitutional matters, an exception had to be made.

“This case reflects the highest rot, corruption and lack of independence and impartiality of the judiciary and the highest court in the land,” Thulani had told Daily Maverick at the time. Deeming its reasoning as “flimsy, baseless, both factually and legally incorrect,” he accused the Supreme Court, all of whose judges are appointed by the King, of bending the law “to assist the government to prosecute and persecute us.”

Aftermath of the insurrection

“Remember, this is the same court which dismissed the bail appeal of the arrested pro-democracy MPs, on the grounds that it had not been filed within the appeal time,” Mlungisi remarked.

He was referring to Mduduzi Mabuza and Mthandeni Dube, two members in the King’s Parliament who had come out in support of the demands for multi-party democracy during the unprecedented country-wide protests in mid-2021. When rallies were taken out to submit petitions to MPs in every constituency of Swaziland, including, for the first time, across the rural areas, which until then were thought to be largely loyal to the King, the monarchy panicked.

Security forces attacked these peaceful rallies, whereupon an uprising erupted in the industrial areas, which have long been a hotbed of anti-monarchist sentiment. Angry workers hurled petrol bombs on businesses and industries of the King and his cronies, who own most of the economy and run it to finance the palaces, fleet of Rolls Royce cars, private jets, and decadent festivities of the royal family.

Such indulgences by the monarch, while nearly 70% of the population eke out a living on less than a dollar a day, has popularized the King’s properties as legitimate targets of attack in Swaziland. With several of his properties ablaze, the monarch fled his kingdom in late-June 2021, returning only in mid-July after his army had put down the insurrection with a crackdown killing at least 80.

“Mswati must fall” has since become a common slogan. The demands for multi-party democracy and the release of the arrested MPs, whom Thulani was representing legally, have been figuring prominently alongside the specific economic demands in nearly every memorandum submitted after protests and strikes, be it by students or by trade unions. Even businesses, which earlier used to publicize its connections with the monarch to curry favors, soon began publicly distancing themselves from the royal family.

Finding himself increasingly isolated a year after the insurrection, Mswati told security forces to take an “eye for an eye” in an aggressive speech he delivered during the ‘Police Day’ in August.

A month later, on September 20, 2022, Mlungisi’s residence was bombed. Mlungisi survived, having moved to South Africa two months earlier, on receiving credible intelligence of the impending attack. “This attack comes in the backdrop of threats from Mswati’s traditional governor, Timothy Ginindza, to the effect that the regime has trained an arson squad whose sole purpose is to target and burn down the homes” of pro-democracy leaders, PUDEMO had said in a statement at the time.

It was only two days after this attack that the Supreme Court reinstated the state’s late appeal against the High Court’s 2016 judgment which had ruled that the Suppression of Terrorism Act and the Sedition and Subversive Activities Act as unconstitutional.

“What this means in effect is that the judgment of the high court has already been reversed,” Thulani had told Daily Maverick. “We will go to the appeal for the purpose of going through the legal process, knowing that the case has already been determined against us.”

Foreign mercenaries to crackdown on the pro-democracy movement?
Amid a continued increase in cases of attacks on pro-democracy activists – including murders, abduction and torture – the Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN), which was among the organizations designated as terrorist in 2008, alleged that King is using foreign mercenaries.

South African “Bastion Risk Solutions” which is “owned and run by former Apartheid operatives and recruits mostly white right-wing Afrikaner males”, has been hired by King Mswati “to help Swaziland’s ineffectual security forces to suppress and quell rising opposition,” SSN said on January 15.

Without denying the accusation, the monarch said, in his address at the conclusion of the annual Incwala ceremony on January 21, “People should not shed tears and complain about mercenaries killing them. These people started the violence first, but when the state institutes a crackdown on them for their actions, they make a lot of noise blaming King Mswati for bringing in mercenaries.”

Labeling pro-democracy activists as “mentally disturbed people.. possessed by demons,” Mswati went on to declare, “Whoever continues with this demonic behavior will face the consequences this year.” Hours later, Thulani was gunned down.

“We shall pick up the spear where Comrade Thulani fell and continue the struggle”

Conveying its condolences to PUDEMO, the Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) said “under the current circumstances, democracy in Swaziland will be achieved only by rendering the Mswati regime unworkable, making all of its state organs ungovernable.” Its statement paying tribute to Thulani added, “The abnormality of the current situation must also be practically felt by the autocracy! The revolutionary fire must rise and burn down the entire system!”

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, the country’s largest union, condemned the “latest violent and brutal attack on freedom fighters in Eswatini,” adding that it supported “the demands of the people of Eswatini who are fighting for freedom and democratic reforms.” NUMSA also expresssed its support to the people of Eswatini who are struggling for democracy.

South Africa’s largest trade union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), said in its statement: “Comrade Maseko lived his life by the words ‘until freedom is achieved in my country Swaziland, I will be on the road to justice,” and to honor his legacy and how he lived – ours is to continue with the fight for a free and democratic Swaziland.”

Calling for an international investigation, Southern Africa Human Rights Defenders Network said, “As one of the founding members of SouthernDefenders, Maseko made an immense contribution to the advancement of justice and human rights not only in Eswatini but throughout the Southern Africa region. He has carried out several fact-finding missions to countries like Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi where he reported on the deterioration of civic space in the region.”

Calling him “a flagbearer for democracy and human rights,” executive director of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC) Anna Meerkotter remarked, “Even in the darkest hours, Thulani stood strong, defending those who were persecuted, despite huge risks to his own safety. We call on SADC to investigate the killing of Thulani, and to call out the continued impunity against those who target critics of the monarchy.”

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk commented, “Thulani Maseko was a stalwart of human rights who, at great risk to himself, spoke up for many who couldn’t speak up for themselves… His cold-blooded killing has deprived Eswatini, Southern Africa and the world of a true champion and advocate for peace, democracy and human rights,”

“But we want the world to know that the struggle against the monarchy will continue,” Mlungsi reiterates. “We shall pick up the spear where Comrade Thulani fell and continue the struggle. Thulani was a pillar of our struggle for democracy in Swaziland. We will make sure that his death is not in vain.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/01/27/ ... swaziland/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Fri Feb 03, 2023 3:38 pm

The colonialists are worried
February 3, 8:48

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France continues to notably burn out from what is happening in Africa, where the French neo-colonial empire that existed for several decades is collapsing, from which the Central African Republic, Mali and Burkina Faso have dropped out over the past few years.

French Foreign Ministry accuses Russia of conducting neo-colonial policy in Africa

The French Foreign Ministry responded to the words of the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, that Moscow is not interested in the opinion of Paris on the development of its relations with African countries. The agency criticized her statement, accusing Russia of pursuing a neo-colonial policy in Africa, RIA Novosti reported.

“Today, what we are seeing in Africa is the conduct of a neo-colonial policy by Russia,” the French Foreign Ministry said, adding that this approach is allegedly aimed at calling into question the sovereignty of the states in the region.

Earlier it became known that Russia wanted to resume flights to a number of countries in Africa and Asia - domestic carriers were urged to consider organizing direct flights to destinations inaccessible to Russians due to Western sanctions.

https://lenta.ru/news/2023/02/02/neocolonialism/ - zinc

Of course, when France placed puppet presidents in the countries of the region, deployed troops and supported military coups in its favor, this was not a neo-colonial policy in dependent countries.
Unlike France, Russia has never had colonies in Africa. On the contrary, the USSR, and now the Russian Federation, help the former colonies to gain real independence from the former colonizers.

It is high time to raise the question of the liberation of Niger from the heels of the French colonialists, who appropriate the local uranium.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8145542.html

Google Translator

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CP of Swaziland, Mswati’s police shoot two protesters during “Justice for Thulani Maseko” march in Manzini
1/30/23 2:12 PM

Communist Party of Swaziland

Mswati’s police shoot two protesters during “Justice for Thulani Maseko” march in Manzini


Friday, 27 January 2023:- Following a peaceful protest to the Manzini Police Headquarters on Friday to demand justice for assassinated human rights lawyer, Thulani Rudolf Maseko, Mswati’s police opened fire on the protesters, heavily injuring two protesters and assaulted many more.

The two activists who were shot are Mhlonishwa Mtsetfwa, Central Committee member of the Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS), and Sibusiso Vilakati, member of the Swaziland Liberation Movement. The police shot Mhlonishwa Mtsetfwa from behind, around the waist, while Sibusiso Vilakati was shot on the left leg.

Both have since been rushed to hospital. The police shot Mhlonishwa Mtsetfwa at close range with what appears to be a rubber bullet. He is currently in theatre, scheduled to undergo a critical procedure.

These brutal attacks on peaceful and unarmed protesters by the Mswati autocracy constitute some of its acts of desperation to cling to power and maintain Swaziland as Africa’s last absolute monarchy.

A mere two days ago, Wednesday 25 January, Mswati’s police targeted and arbitrarily detained and assaulted two Swaziland National Union of Students activists in Manzini, following a political school organised by their union. The two students, Sambulo Shongwe and Lwazi Maseko, are still in custody. The police have denied them their right to legal representation.

The arrest of the two student activists also followed the brutal assassination of human rights lawyer, Thulani Maseko, on 21 January 2023 as well as the assassination of many other activists by the autocracy.

Mswati has long declared war on the people of Swaziland. The CPS reiterates its call for the establishment of community councils, including security councils, among others, so that the people can adequately defend themselves against the regime’s murderous security forces.

As the year begins, the CPS reiterates its call for the oppressed people of Swaziland to render the country ungovernable! The regime’s resources must be exhausted by daily activism.

The CPS also calls for the intensification of international solidarity with the fighting people of Swaziland. On this score, the CPS reiterates its call for the international isolation of Mswati and his henchmen. The regime’s elites must not be able to land anywhere in the world until democracy is attained in Swaziland.

Issued by the Communist Party of Swaziland

http://solidnet.org/article/CP-of-Swazi ... n-Manzini/

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Tunisian elections are the third phase of President Kais Saied’s coup project: Ali Jallouli

Ali Jallouli, a leader of left-wing Workers’ Party of Tunisia, analyzes the recent second round of the parliamentary election, the resistance to President Kais Saied, and why the Tunisian revolution has not option but to succeed

February 03, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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Massive protests led by the Tunisian Workers' Party against President Kais Saied on January 14. Photo: Dhouha Kallali/Facebook

The extremely low turnout in the second round of the Tunisia’s parliamentary elections has yet again raised questions about the political project of President Kais Saied who since July 2021 has sought to reshape the country’s institutions unilaterally. The run-off elections on Sunday January 29 saw a turnout of only 11.4% of the 7.8 million voters, according to the country’s Independent Higher Authority for the Elections (ISIE). The runoffs were to decide the winners of 131 of the 161 seats in the Tunisian parliament.

The first round of elections on December 17 witnessed a turnout of only 11.2% of voters, and only 23 candidates registered victories. The elections were boycotted by all major political parties.

Speaking to Peoples Dispatch, Ali Jallouli, Member of the Executive Committee of the left-wing Workers’ Party of Tunisia said that these elections were a sign of the collapse of democracy and a step backwards as most political parties did not take part. He noted that only Kais Saied’s base and associates, as well as elements of the mafia, took part in the elections which he termed were conducted on the basis of traditional relations which the Tunisian people have struggled against.

The elections were the first held under a new constitution which came into effect in July last year following a referendum where once again the turnout had been low (around 30%). An online public consultation prior to the referendum had also seen little participation. Ali Jallouli referred to the parliamentary elections as the third stage of Kais Saied’s coup project after the consultation and the referendum. “The election was held under a constitution which gives no real power to parliament. The parliament has no control over the executive. It is just a forum to protect Saied’s supporters and friends,” Jallouli said. The parliamentary elections eliminated the role of political parties with candidates contesting as individuals as opposed to being representatives of their parties. The constituencies have also been made smaller so as to enable this project of the president, he added.

Several observers noted serious violations of election rules in different parts of the country during the runoffs. In some places, people claimed they were prevented from entering the polling booths, while in some areas, campaigns were still being conducted at the time of voting. Local election observer Mourakiboun accused the ISIE of violating “the basic tenets of elections through the whole process, mainly transparency, independence, and equality between candidates,” TAP reported.

The elections in Tunisia took place as the country is in the throes of a deep political and economic crisis. In July 2021, Kais Saied cited similar political and economic instability as the reason to dismiss the elected government and dissolve parliament. The Workers’ Party was among the first organizations in Tunisia to take a strong stand against Kais Saied’s actions. Ali Jallouli noted that the president’s actions were a coup was against the democratic constitution of Tunisia and achievements of people, especially in the field of democracy and liberty and freedom. The previous constitution had been drafted after the Tunisian Revolution of 2010-11 which overthrew long-time dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Almost two years after Kais Saied’s overthrow of the elected government, the instability has worsened. Inflation has risen to double digits and unemployment is at over 18%. The government is in talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a USD 2 billion loan as a bailout package which might bring more austerity policies. Ali Jallouli added that the country is on the verge of bankruptcy and normalization with Zionist forces and subordination to the US agenda has intensified. “In the midst of this, Kais Saied continues to deliver regressive speeches which aim to divide the people,” he said.

However, there has been increasing resistance to the actions of the president. Ali Jallouli cited the massive protests on January 14 against the elections as an example. “A number of factors indicate that in the future, there will be a return to the revolutionary process. Tunisia has no option but make its revolution succeed,” he concluded.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/02/03/ ... p-project/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Mon Feb 06, 2023 2:22 pm

Fatma Mehdi: “The Return to Armed Struggle Was Forced by the Moroccan Army”
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on FEBRUARY 3, 2023
Michele de Mello

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Fatma Mehdi is responsible for coordinating the humanitarian aid that serves about 90% of the population of Western Sahara – Michele de Mello / Brasil de Fato

Fatma Mehdi, minister of cooperation of the Sahrawi Republic, spoke to Brasil de Fato about the struggle for sovereignty


Fatma Mehdi walked across the Sahara desert to the Fadel family’s tent home, where we spoke for about 30 minutes about the political resolutions recently approved at the 16th Congress of the Polisario Front, held January 13 through 20 in the Dajla refugee camp in the city of Tindouf, Algeria.

Fatma is the cooperation minister of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, responsible for coordinating all humanitarian aid that serves about 90% of the Sahrawi population. “The Sahrawi organization is a key factor in distributing humanitarian aid. Here you don’t see anyone asking for alms,” the minister said.

Self-taught in Spanish and English, Fatma studied Economics, Development and Cooperation at the Hegoa University in the Basque Country, and Communication, Planning and Participation at the University of Tarragona in Barcelona. Mehdi is the only woman in the Polisario Front delegation at the negotiation tables with Morocco.

Before taking charge of the ministry in 2019, Fatma was also Secretary General of the National Union of Sahrawi Women for 17 years and said that “the Sahrawi woman is the basis of our entire society.” The organization was created in 1974, just one year after the Polisario Front was founded.

During the first years of the war against Morocco’s armed invasion, between 1975 and 1991, Sahrawi women were responsible for raising all the main structures of the refugee camps, such as nurseries, schools and hospitals, transforming the area into true Wilayas (states). At this time, Sahrawi women also had to learn everything from first aid to subjects such as history and geography, since they were the primary labor force while most of the men were fighting in the war. But women also joined the Sahrawi People’s Liberation Army, creating a Special Military School in Tichla in the Auserd camp. “We want to be on all fronts,” the minister said.

After more than 30 years of ceasefire, in November 2020, Morocco bombed the Sahrawi people again, leading the Polisario Front to take up arms again. “The return to armed struggle was not an option, it was forced by the Moroccan army and the marginalization of the Sahrawi cause in international bodies,” she said.

In the new context of war, Fatma Mehdi evaluated the changes in the presence of women in Sahrawi society and the challenges in achieving the definitive independence of Western Sahara.

Check out the complete interview:
Brasil de Fato: We are at the 16th Congress of the Polisario Front, the political organization that leads the people of Western Sahara. It is the first congress in the context of armed confrontation, after 30 years since the ceasefire with Morocco, which has now been unilaterally interrupted by the Moroccan Army. Considering the discussions that you have already had at the Congress, the political discussions, the return to armed struggle, and the whole history of violations by Morocco, in addition to the difficulties that the UN is having in making the referendum for the independence of Western Sahara. Can you comment on the perspectives of this Congress and the future to finally achieve the sovereignty and independence for the people of Western Sahara.

Fatma Mehdi: This Congress is taking place at a very important historical moment. We have the return to armed struggle, which was really not a choice of the Sahrawi people, but a decision forced by the Moroccan Army, but also by the marginalization, promoted by international forces, of the Sahrawi cause. Especially by the UN, by the Security Council, because for more than 30 years the Sahrawi people have given enough demonstrations of their intention to reach a peaceful solution. Starting with accepting the referendum, accepting many Moroccan voters, accepting the settlement plan…

In these 30 years, the Sahrawi people have been giving, giving and giving possibilities, opportunities to achieve a peaceful solution. Unfortunately, the international community has shown that there is no real will to find an end to this conflict. It is a conflict that really hurts the Sahrawi people, who are victims of this… But the Moroccan people as well.

It’s a conflict that, unfortunately, is helping other international forces. It is feeding their economic interests. It’s increasing the spoils of the riches of Western Sahara. Morocco wants a rich territory… without a people. This is impossible. So this Congress comes precisely at this historic and important moment, when the return to armed struggle is being seen as a mistake.

So, despite all this, the Sahrawi people, convinced of their just cause and of their right to use all possible avenues to defend their right, their land, no longer care how they portray us, what labels they put on us. Because we have already given many opportunities to give the UN and the forces time, but unfortunately we have come to the conclusion that if there is no war, if there is no blood, if there is no conflict, it is as if we are not here, as if we do not exist. We are observing the war from Ukraine.

We are observing and cannot understand how one people can be considered victims and others not, even though they live in worse situations. This year we are turning 50 years old. We have many generations that are very worried about the future. It is a very clear humiliation by international forces. And so the Sahrawi people have decided to take up arms again.

This congress [was] be very important because it marks the lines for the next 30 years, that is to say three years for this process of struggle for the liberation of Western Sahara. Right, you are the Minister of Cooperation, that means the person within the structure of the government of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in charge of everything related to humanitarian aid, to cooperation with other countries. About 90% of the Sahrawi people today depend on humanitarian aid.

BdF: About 90% of the Sahrawi people today depend on humanitarian aid. What is the relationship like with multilateral organizations? What has been the role of the United Nations Peace Mission to assist the Sahrawi people (MINUSRO) and the UN in getting humanitarian aid to the Sahrawi people? And where does most of the support come from?

FM: I want to highlight one factor that was very important and that ensured the organization and the equitable distribution of humanitarian aid, which is the Sahrawi organization. And this is what other international organizations that work in the camps, such as UN agencies, have also said. They say that the Sahrawi refugees are different from many others. This is thanks to the Sahrawi organization. Because, although we are living on Algerian land, everything concerning the organization, the management of everything related to the Sahrawis is the Sahrawis’ own management. Without anybody’s intervention. Humanitarian aid generally comes in different ways.

The first one, of course, being internationally recognized refugees by the UN, we have the UN agencies, WFP, UNHCR, but we also have other agencies, like the European ECHO, other international organizations, like the Red Cross. And also other NGOs that are counterparts of both the UN agencies and other countries that offer aid that is part of international cooperation to refugees worldwide. In addition, we have the solidarity movement with the Sahara. Mainly in Spain, Italy, France… and also the movement that we have in Latin America.

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The water supply in the five Sahrawi camps is provided every two weeks by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) / Michele de Mello / Brasil de Fato

Besides all this, we have help from our ally Algeria, the country that welcomed us since the 1970s and is still helping us in everything it can. The last three years, in my work as a minister, have been very complicated. Because, besides the economic crisis that we have been in for many years, there has also been the problem of COVID and the war. This caused the displacement of many Sahrawis who were living in the liberated zones, where now there is war and it is no longer possible to live. This has caused the needs of the refugees to increase a lot. But we always say, both to overcome COVID and to overcome the deficit of international aid. I think that the Sahrawi people or society is a very supportive society.

Living as refugees for almost 50 years, until today, you don’t find anybody living on the street. You don’t find people begging. You don’t find people without food. These social values that we have have always been present, and thanks to them, despite the almost chronic deficit in humanitarian aid, this solidarity has always covered any need for the Sahrawis.

BdF: Already in 1975, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in favor of Western Sahara, making it clear that there was no legal framework for the annexation of the Sahara by Morocco or Mauritania. The UN also recognizes the Sahara as an autonomous territory, just as several other countries recognize the Sahrawi Republic. But during all these years, there has been a history of human rights violations, arbitrary arrests, many complaints, including torture, against the Sahrawis living in the liberated zone and in the part occupied by Morocco. What are the means today to denounce what happens and also to hold the occupying entity, the invading entity, accountable for all the human rights violations it commits?

FM: I think that the struggle, in terms of human rights, has been used very well in these last 30 years, taking advantage of this peace process in which we have been for almost 30 years. As you know well, MINUSRO, which came here precisely to work on the referendum issue and which is controlling the Western Sahara part, is almost the only mission in the world that doesn’t have the capacity to monitor human rights. It is something curious, because… the large UN forces do not want to work on this issue, because they know very well that Morocco is one of the countries that does not respect human rights, that has a security system that only represses people.

France has always been against MINUSRO in Western Sahara having such a mandate. We continue to demand it, but we know that it is not going to happen, because it is not in the interest of the large forces, especially those that are friends of Morocco.

BdF: You say that the UN is no longer a space for denunciation, so who could they turn to?

FM: When the Sahrawis come to MINUSRO, after a few minutes they are handed over to the Moroccan security forces. And there are no reports about what is happening in Western Sahara either. Morocco forbids everyone to visit the occupied zones so that they don’t find out what is going on. Many European parliamentarians have been denied visas to visit the Sahrawis.

We have the latest case of the special envoy of the UN Secretariat. They didn’t allow him to visit Western Sahara and so he had to cancel his trip… Nevertheless, I think that something that we can say is good is the question of the complaints before the European Court.

The Polisario Front presented many complaints against fishing, trade, the contracts of the European Union with Morocco. I think that these are very important resolutions, especially because they are affirming exactly what the International Court said in 1975, when it said that there is really no link between the Sahara and Morocco and that they are two separate territories, different, and that for any investment related to the riches of the Sahara, the Sahrawi people must always be consulted, and the only representative of the Sahrawi people is the Polisario Front.

I think we won that battle. We are still waiting for the resolutions that will be presented in two months, I think. And, above all, we have learned now that also within the European Union bodies they are discovering a lot of corruption, whose origin is the Moroccan state.

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Chebani Bilal Mahmud studied medicine in Cuba and is now the physician in charge of Dajla Hospital / Michele de Mello / Brasil de Fato

BdF: In the West there is a lot of prejudice related to the Muslim religion. The whole US communication strategy has also played an important role in this, in trying to portray the woman as a subjugated being in the Muslim, Islamic culture. And being in the Sahrawi camps, you can see that this is not so. What is the role of the Sahrawi woman in everything that represents the resistance and, above all, in the construction of the Republic?

FM: I think that the Sahrawi culture is a culture that respects women a lot. This is something that we can find in many proverbs of the Sahrawi culture. I don’t know how to translate them into Spanish, but I can explain the idea. We say, for example, that women are… Have you seen around that men wear a turban on their heads? There is a proverb that says that women, for a gentleman, are a turban, which you have to put above your head, above everything.

And the woman is also… like the nucleus of a family. And when we talk about family, we are talking in broad terms. Because the Saharan family is very broad. So the woman is the core of the family.

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As mulheres eram a maioria entre os 2 mil delegados do 16º Congresso da Frente Polisario, realizado em janeiro de 2023 / Michele de Mello / Brasil de Fato

In another sense also, for us, religion has always been something to improve things. Not to make things worse. The Muslim religion can be practiced as a person. We are Muslim women. Islam, when we analyze it, Islam teaches you the importance of studying, teaches you the importance of collaborating, of helping, of respecting people, of working, the importance of working, so if you don’t have the knowledge to work you won’t be able to do anything.

So this is how we understand Islam. As something spiritual that helps us to collaborate, to improve our relationships, to study, to help those in need. So, for us, it was never a problem.

BdF: Here, in Dajla, one of the camps, one of the Saharan cities, you can also see that it has been the women in all these years of resistance that have created a life in the camp. So the woman is a main actor in this struggle.

FM: Yes, women were protagonists in this struggle and at this moment we are returning to this role. Because during the 30 years of peace we experienced a life of coexistence… in a broader sense because the men, since there was no war, spent more time in the camps. During the 16 years before 1991, the women were the ones who set up the camps, made the adobe bricks to build hospitals, schools, offices.

They had to study at night to teach the children the next day. They had to take special care courses, courses to heal people without having any experience, and until today we have this school, which continues to train many women to become nurses, doctors, to train them to do this service. Almost all the work in the camps was carried out by women during the 16 years of war.

Today we are returning to that same role. Because for 30 years we had to understand how to protect our achievements. Because it is not easy. Because we are talking about a “normal” situation, where women and men live together. Because, before these 30 years, the majority in the camps were women. That is why they were mayors, ministers, and even took part in the war. But in those 30 years, we had to study our experience, see how we can protect our achievements, because when the war was over, we went back to a “normal” life and men started to be interested in political responsibilities.

We also don’t want men to be left doing nothing. They have to collaborate, but respecting the achievements that we had during the years of war. Today we are returning to this situation. We have a military school that continues to train women, especially young women, the ones who are interested. Military service has never been an obligation in the Polisario Front, even for men. It is a free option and we have women interested in learning because we want to be present on all the fronts.

So culture now is a very important factor that we are working on, as is war, diplomacy and internal work. So culture, for us women, is very important.

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Saharan children are soccer fanatics / Michele de Mello / Brasil de Fato

BdF: Today, 82 countries recognize the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), most of these countries are in Latin America. Only Argentina, Brazil, and Chile maintain a neutral stance. What are the expectations and possibilities with this new progressive wave in Latin America and with Lula’s third term in Brazil? Will it be possible to advance in a South-South cooperation?

FM: They are mainly countries that have suffered the same as we are suffering today. We know that they are the ones that will understand us the most. We are very hopeful about Brazil, now that Lula is back, because of the democratic thinking, because of the values, to which many other forces do not give much importance. But I believe that we can count on Latin America because they are still very respected values, they continue to be of great interest, so we think that now we have a good opportunity to conclude the efforts that we have been making for a long time with other governments.

And my desire is to conclude, to fulfill the final objective with the arrival of this last progressive bloc to get full support shown by the opening of embassies for the Sahrawi Democratic Republic.

We also count very much on the role that can be played by Latin American countries within the UN and the Security Council. And I take this opportunity to say that the member countries there have always played a very important role during the last years. Especially in the defense of the Sahrawi people and their right to self-determination.
This article was originally published in Portuguese on Brasil de Fato.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/02/ ... ccan-army/

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Violence in South Sudan leaves at least 27 dead

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Pope Francis arrived in South Sudan leading an ecumenical peace pilgrimage. | Photo: EFE
Published 4 February 2023

The attack occurred amid the arrival in the African country of Pope Francis from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A retaliatory attack carried out by rebels from the National Salvation Front (NAS) left at least 27 dead and two injured in Kajo-keji county (Central Equatoria, South Sudan), local media reported on Friday. .

The attack targeted suspected cattle farmers in Bor county who had killed 21 villagers to avenge six fellow believers killed by NAS members, said the region's commissioner, Phanuel Dumo Jame Lokajasuk.


The event took place the day before the arrival of Pope Francis, who arrived in South Sudan on Friday from the Democratic Republic of Congo leading an ecumenical peace pilgrimage.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/violenci ... -0006.html

Google Translator

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Peace deal between Ethiopian government and TPLF holds despite delays in implementation; US escalates attempts to scapegoat Eritrea

Attempts by US and other Western countries to sow discord between Ethiopia and Eritrea “will not be successful because the majority of the Ethiopian people are grateful for the Eritrean army’s help in defeating the TPLF,” former Ethiopian diplomat Mohamed Hassan told Peoples Dispatch

February 06, 2023 by Pavan Kulkarni

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On November 7, 2022, Redwan Hussien Rameto (2nd L), representative of the Ethiopian government, and Getachew Reda (2nd R), representative of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), signed a peace agreement in Pretoria, South Africa. Photo: Alet Pretorius/Xinhua

On Friday, February 3, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed held the first face-to-face meeting with a delegation from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) since the beginning of the civil war in the country—to take stock of the progress made in implementing the peace deal signed on November 2, 2022.

The Prime Minister has reportedly decided to increase flights to and banking services in the region, which were only restored in the war-torn northernmost state of Tigray following the peace deal. The TPLF had agreed to full disarmament as part of the deal signed in South Africa capital Pretoria.

Redwan Hussien, national security advisor to the Prime Minister, said that as per Ahmed’s decision, the “National Bank [of Ethiopia] has begun sending 5 billion Birr to Mekele to be dispensed starting Monday. It’s a multifold increment from hitherto 20 million.” He further added that Ethiopian Airlines has increased the number of flights to Tigray’s capital Mekelle from three to four.

Delegates from the government and the TPLF reportedly discussed the progress made so far, and acknowledged failures in the timely implementation of the deal.

The peace agreement had brought to an end to the two-year-long civil war that began after the TPLF attacked a federal army base in Mekelle on November 3, 2020. The war expanded to neighboring states in the subsequent year when the TPLF invaded Afar and Amhara.

About 600,000 lives were reportedly lost in northern Ethiopia as a result of the civil war, which concluded with the signing of a peace deal only after the TPLF’s forces had been beaten back and encircled in Mekelle. The peace agreement “stopped an average of 1,000 deaths per day,” Olusegun Obasanjo, the African Union (AU) envoy to the Horn of Africa, who had led the peace negotiations, told the Financial Times.

TPLF’s disarmament delayed
However, implementation of key aspects of the agreement have fallen well behind schedule. The agreement had set the “the disarmament of the heavy armaments of the TPLF combatants as a matter of priority,” to be completed within 15 days of its signing. However, it was only on January 11 that the TPLF began to hand over its heavy weaponry.

The agreement included a provision to extend the 15-day deadline, if endorsed by senior commanders on both sides. However, it stipulated that “the overall disarmament of the TPLF combatants, including light weapons,” had to be completed “within 30 days from the signing of this Agreement,” that is, by December 2, 2022.

“But the TPLF are still hoarding light weapons,” historian and former Ethiopian ambassador Mohamed Hassan told Peoples Dispatch. Last Sunday, January 29, when Tigrayan protesters took to streets in Mekelle to demonstrate against the TPLF’s continued hold on political power, “well-armed groups of TPLF surrounded the city and took over key areas to stop the demonstration,” he said.

Acknowledging that there was a discussion in the meeting on February 3 over “back-logged works,” TPLF delegate Wondimu Asaminew told the Ethiopian News Agency (ENA), “we have agreed to quickly reach the goal of [the peace agreement].”

Admitting that “there is much work to be done,” Peace Minister Binalf Andualem added, “by protecting and strengthening the work done [thus far], both sides should work on the delayed issues quickly.” He also said that “there is a determination and desire on all sides that this peace agreement should never be reversed.”

In the meantime, the US, which had backed the TPLF in its war against the federal government, has been escalating its efforts to place Eritrea at the center of this conflict. Eritrea had sent troops to assist the federal Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) in defeating the TPLF, which, soon after starting the war against the Ethiopian federal government, had also fired rockets into Eritrea.

Eritrea and Ethiopia’s common interest in protecting their peace deal from TPLF
Eritrea and Ethiopia had a common stake in defeating the TPLF. The TPLF had in 2018 opposed the peace deal between the two countries, for which Prime Minister Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. The decades-long conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia began under the TPLF’s US-backed authoritarian rule of Ethiopia (1990-2018), until it was overthrown by mass pro-democracy protests, against the backdrop of which Ahmed became Prime Minister.

Soon after taking charge, Ahmed undertook a slew of political reforms, including the release of political prisoners incarcerated by the TPLF, welcoming back political exiles, and lifting the bans on free press and on opposition political parties that had been instituted under the TPLF’s rule.

He also ended the war with Eritrea, and followed up the 2018 peace-deal with a Tripartite Agreement for peace and cooperation between Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia in 2019. Threatened by the prospect of unity between the countries of the geopolitically crucial Horn of Africa, the Biden administration, which was waiting to take the White House in late 2020, instigated the TPLF to start this war in an attempt to unravel the progress made, maintains Hassan.

Throughout the war, the US, the UK, and the EU, as well as the Western media, portrayed the Ethiopian federal government, and Eritrea—which had come to its assistance—as the aggressors. Forced conscription of Tigrayan children and youth into the war as cannon fodder for human wave attacks, massacres and gang-rapes in Amhara and Afar, burning of villages, looting of hospitals and food stores, and other atrocities by the TPLF were largely ignored or understated.

This attempt to paint the Ethiopian federal government as the aggressor appears to have halted after the peace agreement, which was signed only when the TPLF was said to be on the verge of a total military defeat. However, the US continues to train its guns on Eritrea, denying the widely reported withdrawal of its troops.

10 days after the Pretoria agreement, the joint declaration by senior commanders issued in Kenyan capital Nairobi on November 12, 2022, stated: “Disarmament of [TPLF’s] heavy weapons will be done concurrently with the withdrawal of foreign and non-ENDF forces from the region.”

On November 15, the US State Department threatened more sanctions if Eritrean troops and the militias of Amhara and Afar, which had fought alongside the ENDF, did not accordingly withdraw from Tigray.

While the TPLF began to hand over its heavy weapons only on January 11, 2023, well over a month after its full disarmament—including of light weapons—should have been completed as per the agreement, the withdrawal of Eritrean troops had already begun by December 30, 2022.

On January 15, AU envoy Olusegun Obasanjo confirmed that Eritrean troops had already withdrawn to the border. Large-scale withdrawal back into Eritrea was widely reported on January 20. In a phone call with Prime Minister Ahmed, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also “welcomed” the “significant progress to date on implementation of the November 2 Cessation of Hostilities Agreement” including “the ongoing withdrawal of Eritrean troops from northern Ethiopia,” according to a statement by his own spokespeople.

Nevertheless, only days later, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Representative to the UN, said at a press briefing in Nairobi on January 28 that the Eritrean troops “have moved back to the border and that they’ve been asked to leave Ethiopia.”

While implying that the Eritrean troops remained in Ethiopia against the wishes of the Ethiopian government, “she did not provide any evidence or source for this assessment,” Reuters reported. Later that same day, TPLF’s spokesperson Getachew Reda repeated her claim, saying that “thousands” of Eritrean troops were still present in the country.

Denying this claim, Major General Teshome Gemechu, ENDF’s Director-General of International Relations and Military Cooperation, stated that “There is no other security force in the Tigray region except the FDRE [Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia] Defense Forces.”

Thomas-Greenfield’s statement, aimed at sowing discord between Ethiopia and Eritrea, “is absolutely false,” Simon Tesfamariam, Eritrean activist and director of the New Africa Institute, told Peoples Dispatch. “There are agreements between the two countries extending to military cooperation. There is this desire to portray that the relation between Ethiopia and Eritrea is headed in a sour direction. But this is untrue. The cooperation between the two countries has only strengthened,” he added.

Hassan, who is also an adviser to the president of Ethiopia’s Somali regional state, concurs. “In fact, when the Eritrean troops were leaving, people in the northern part of Tigray, who were fearing a return of the TPLF, were pleading with them to stay,” he said. “But the Eritrean forces left, and the area is in control of federal troops.”

The attempts by the US and other Western countries to provoke tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea “will not be successful because the majority of the Ethiopian people are grateful for the Eritrean army’s help in defeating the TPLF,” he said. While the US was hoping to disrupt the strengthening of relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea by instigating the TPLF into waging this war, it has only resulted in solidifying their relations further, Hassan argued.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/02/06/ ... t-eritrea/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Wed Feb 15, 2023 3:17 pm

What Africa Expects from Russia
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on FEBRUARY 14, 2023
Nourhan ElSheikh

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Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Republic of Mali Abdoulaye Diop, Bamako, February 7, 2023

The Russian-African partnership is the core for a new multipolar world order that would be more fair and just for all. Africa expects a lot from Russia. Historical cooperation between the two and the huge capabilities that Russia possesses confirm its ability to meet these expectations and move forward together to the future, writes Valdai Club expert Nourhan ElSheikh.


Africa is a promising continent with broad prospects for economic growth. It is very rich in both natural and human resources. Africa has 30% of the world’s total minerals, 10% of oil reserves, 8% of gas reserves, and nearly 60% of the world’s untapped agricultural area. By 2040, Africa will have the largest labour force, as a quarter of the world’s population will live there; with young people accounting for more than 60%.

Although Africa possesses all the requirements needed for development and economic breakthroughs, it still suffers from hunger, poverty, poor living standards, and political instability. Over long decades of colonialism, Western countries exploited Africa and drained its wealth without investing in any development. Africa needs fair and balanced partnerships in order to help it face its problems and move toward the future.

African countries deeply trust Russia as a reliable partner. This reliance is rooted in the Soviet era, when Moscow was the only supporter of the African national liberation movements. Russia provided the newly independent African countries with economic, military and technical assistance. At a time when Washington considered Nelson Mandela a “terrorist”, Moscow supported him as a fighter against apartheid. The Soviet Union played a prominent role in educating and training African leaders in various fields. Some of them even became presidents, such as Jacob Zuma, Jose dos Santos, and Armando Guebuza.

Russia is also distinguished by its cooperative rather than competitive approach to the continent. Unlike Western countries, which view Africa as an arena for international competition, Moscow seeks development partnerships based on a win-win principle. Russia bases its cooperation on mutual respect of interests, non-interference in internal affairs, and consolidating peace and stability.


In this context, Africa looks forward to an active partnership with Russia in confronting its crises and launching economic and social development according to the following priorities.

Chief among these is the food crisis, which is considered the most pressing in Africa. More than a third of people in the world who suffer from chronic hunger and undernourishment are in Africa. Cooperation with Russia is crucial in overcoming this existential crisis. In the short term, this means providing African countries with Russian grain and fertilizers. In the long term, it entails helping Africans in developing their agricultural sector and providing them with the required technology. A number of African countries have fertile soil and sufficient water resources. But they are in dire need of investment in technology, not only to satisfy their nutritional needs but to become regional centres for Russian grain production.

Providing investment and technology for the energy sector is also an African priority. African countries need to exploit their natural resources in the field of energy. This includes oil, gas, new and renewable energy, and hydroelectric power, as many countries in the continent, especially Sub-Saharan ones, suffer from a severe deficit in electricity. Likewise, cooperation is needed in mining and the extraction of Africa’s huge reserves of minerals. Linked to this is the development of industries that depend on the natural resources that Africa possesses. The same priority can be given to the development of both the education and healthcare sectors, as well as transport infrastructure, especially railways. Ignorance and disease are fundamental challenges to any development efforts in Africa.

In parallel with those development areas, it is necessary to work on ensuring peace and stability. Africa suffers greatly from political instability, as well as from internal and regional armed conflicts. There is no sustainable development without stability and peace. Russia has played an important role in restoring stability and combating terrorism in a number of African countries, including Mali and the Central African Republic. Russia has actively participated in peacekeeping forces in Africa. It is important to enhance Russia’s role as a guarantor of peace and stability in Africa. African countries rely on Russia as an honest partner that sincerely supports peace and stability.

The Russian-African partnership is the core for a new multipolar world order that would be more fair and just for all. Africa expects a lot from Russia. Historical cooperation between the two and the huge capabilities that Russia possesses confirm its ability to meet these expectations and move forward together to the future.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/02/ ... om-russia/

Burkina Faso: How to Escape from Terror
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on FEBRUARY 14, 2023
Guadi Calvo

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Burkina Faso calls for a “federation” with Mali

“What our predecessors could not achieve, we have no excuse not to do. Our predecessors tried to regroup, like the Federation of Mali, which unfortunately did not last. But they showed the way. Even before I became Prime Minister, I had written articles and made proposals for what I called the constitution of the Sahel Federation […] Mali is a major producer of cotton, cattle and gold. Burkina Faso also produces cotton, cattle and gold. As long as everyone looks elsewhere, we don’t carry much weight. But if you put together the cotton, gold and cattle production of Mali and Burkina Faso, it becomes a powerhouse.” – Apollinaire Joachim de Tambela


Once again Burkina Faso has been hit by Wahhabi terrorism that since 2015 has caused the death of thousands of civilians, army and police personnel, in addition to having caused the displacement of more than two million people. Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries on the continent, with more than 22 million inhabitants, of which half of the population lives below the poverty line and almost 650,000 thousand people are on the verge of starvation.

Although the security crisis began in the northern and eastern provinces of the Sahelian country, it has begun to filter down to the south and west, so that almost forty percent of the country is under the control, or in dispute, of fundamentalist gangs following the misguided strategies of French commanders from the beginning of the terrorist onslaught, as has happened in Mali, Niger and Chad.

This failure, as in Mali, which brought to power Colonel Assimi Goita in May 2020, led to two coups d’état in Burkina Faso in 2022. The first in January, led by Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Damiba, who ousted President Roch Marc Kaboré from power. This was followed by the second coup d’état, in September, carried out by a group of young officers led by Captain Ibrahim Traore (See: Burkina Faso, adieu la france).

Beyond the political changes and the expulsion of the French troops, the death count of 2023 is horrifying, and in January alone there have been almost 80 deaths due to actions of the extremists.

On Saturday the 4th, another 18 people were killed in two different terrorist operations. It was learned that a group of unidentified armed men attacked Bani, a town some 300 kilometers northeast of the city of Ouagadougou, the Burkinabe capital, where a dozen civilians were killed while six men from the Diapaga military detachment were killed, in the east of the country, who were patrolling a sector of the Diapaga-Partiaga road, were killed after the vehicle in which they were traveling stepped on an “improvised explosive device” (IED).

These new attacks come just five days after the terrorist operations that left some thirty dead. Fifteen of them, who had been kidnapped over the weekend, were found executed on Monday 30 near Linguekoro, a village in the western province of Comoe. The 15 new victims had been abducted while traveling in two buses coming from Banfora, in the southeast of the country, together with eight other people, seven of them women, who were immediately released.

In another attack, ten military policemen, two men from the auxiliary army support forces and a civilian were killed in Falangoutou, in the north of the country, deployed to defend the city. In addition, five other gendarmes were wounded and ten others are missing. According to military sources, some 15 mujahideen were killed in the attack. Although no group immediately claimed responsibility, the methodology responds to the actions carried out on numerous occasions by the khatibas of al-Qaeda, Jamā’at Nuṣrat al-Islām wal-Muslimīn or JNIM (Support Group for Islam and Muslims) and the Islamic State of the Greater Sahara (EIGS), the Sahelian branch of Daesh, which operate throughout the region and are steadily advancing towards the countries of the Gulf of Guinea littoral.

These attacks represent a new escalation of an insurgency that has plagued Burkina Faso, one of the poorest and most troubled countries in the world, for more than seven years.

In an attempt to control this type of action, the Government continues to limit itself to establishing a greater presence of security forces, extending their stay in the region for a longer period of time, accompanied by measures such as restrictions on the transit of routes and communal roads, vehicle control, curfew and the strict prohibition of public meetings.

Given the monumental French failure in Burkina Faso, which replicates its fiasco in Mali, in mid-January the government of Captain Traore gave French troops 30 days to leave the country.

France has stationed thousands of men in the region since 2012 to counter the advance of the fundamentalist gangs after they overthrew the “natural dam” represented by Colonel Gaddafi’s government in 2010.

Since then, under the indifferent gaze of the West, dozens of fundamentalist movements of this type, born in the heat of the Algerian civil war (1991-2002), and the carte blanche represented by the Arab Spring, thousands of mujahideen overwhelmed the local armies, so that France and NATO seized the opportunity to establish themselves again in their former colonies with the poor results that we know and that have generated an increasingly accentuated anti-French sentiment.

In February 2022 Bamako expelled the 5,000 French troops of Operation Barkhane accused of atrocities against the civilian population and collusion with insurgents. Practically the same reasons have been used by the Burkinabe military junta to expel the French.

Although U.S. and British troops, among other NATO member nations, remain in the region, they are expanding from Morocco to Niger to do more than just control the extremists; they are monitoring the increasingly assertive presence of the Russian security company known as the Wagner Group.

An unlikely unity

Both landlocked Burkina Faso and Mali are among the poorest and most insecure nations in the world and during their independent history have experienced few moments of peace.

Thus, during his recent official visit to Bamako, the capital of Mali, from January 31 to February 1, Burkina Faso Prime Minister Apollinaire Tambela outlined the possibility that the two nations, which share a 1,000-kilometer border, could form a “federation”. This could encourage new commercial ventures and would give the hypothetical bloc greater unity in the fight against terrorism, a problem that has been plaguing these two nations, as well as several countries in the region, for more than a decade.

Tambela, in addition to recalling the attempt to create, shortly before their respective independence from France in 1960, a federation in French-speaking West Africa that would integrate Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Benin said, “As long as everyone looks elsewhere, we don’t carry much weight. But if you put together the cotton, gold and cattle production of Mali and Burkina Faso, it becomes a powerhouse”.

Another point of coincidence, and perhaps the fundamental one, is that both Ouagadougou and Bamako have practically severed all ties with Paris, the former colonial metropolis.

Despite having gained independence from France in the 1960s, the old metropolis has continued to intervene in both nations, as it has also done in Chad and Niger, controlling internal politics, the economy, the development of its armed forces and international relations, for its own benefit. Hence the assassination of President Thomas Sankara, instigated from Paris and executed by one of his closest men, Blaise Compaoré, who governed the country for the next 27 years under the protection of Paris, similar to what has, and continues to be done with other dictatorships in the region. Perhaps the most emblematic is that of General Idriss Déby, who remained in power for 30 years and after his death in combat in April 2021, his son, General Mahamat Déby Itno, with nothing to back him up but arms and France, captured the government and since then has ruled under the tutelage of French President Emmanuel Macron, who encouraged him to take power immediately after the death of his father.

In this regional framework, against a background of regional rivals such as Chad, which despite being one of the poorest countries in the world has one of the most powerful armies on the continent, which will undoubtedly be joined by the Wahhabi khatibas currently fighting against half a dozen Sahel countries, any idea of unity between Mali and Burkina Faso would become a highly improbable possibility, as well as extremely bloody, if it would come close to affecting the interests of France and its Western partners.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/02/ ... om-terror/

Ghana: Waiting for the Mujahideen
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on FEBRUARY 14, 2023
Guadi Calvo

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Ghana’s President Akufo-Addo welcoming and Germany’s Finance Minister Christian Lindner

While Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo is looking forward to the likely $3 billion loan to be granted by the IMF and expected in mid-March as part of the debt swap restructuring, he should address the domestic debt situation, which has increased after 2022 was considered the worst year in the last two decades.

Akufo-Addo’s announcement was made in Accra, the Ghanaian capital, during a conversation he held with the German Federal Minister of Finance, Christian Lindner, during an official visit to the African country, in the framework of the onslaught being made by Chancellor Olaf Scholz in an attempt to secure the raw materials necessary for the energy transition that Germany needs to make a priority, especially now, in the context of the war in Ukraine.

The African country’s economic brake is coupled with two relevant reports on the advance of Wahhabi terrorism, which for at least two years has been threatening to enter fully into the countries of the Gulf of Guinea littoral.

The first report, by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), based on data from surveys of 2,200 people in eight countries on the continent (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan), states that poverty is the main cause of the large influx of recruits to join the terrorist organizations that have been expanding in Africa for more than a decade.

Therefore, it is not religious fanaticism, but the lack of work that leads young people to become militia members of one of the many terrorist groups operating on the continent, with salaries that can reach up to five hundred dollars a month, which may be more than a family can earn in a year of work.

Other benefits are added to the salary, such as the provision of uniforms, in some cases vehicles, particularly motorcycles, and even a certain “prestige” in the mujahideen’s social groups. The second factor in the incorporation of the militants is the abuse exercised by the authorities against the civilian population, in many cases against the future insurgents, family members or clans to which they belong, fundamentally because they are poor, isolated and have little education. Only thirdly does the religious question appear as a cause for joining one of the khatibas of the Support Group for Islam and Muslims linked to al-Qaeda (GSIM) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), the local franchise of Daesh which has begun to march southwards.

The second of the reports, which particularly concerns the Ghanaian government, refers to the increasingly imminent arrival of terrorist gangs in the Gulf of Guinea region (Ghana, Guinea, Benin, Togo and Ivory Coast), which, since they established themselves in the north of Mali in 2012 and faced with the ineffectiveness of local armies and above all that of France and other Western powers, have gained thousands of square kilometers of territory not only in Mali, but also in Niger and Burkina Faso, causing the death of thousands of civilians and the displacement of nearly three million people.

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Benin, Côte d’Ivoire and Togo have all suffered armed actions by these extremist groups. Benin has already suffered at least twenty terrorist acts since 2021, while Togo has suffered at least five since 2021, although not all of them were claimed by the extremists.

Ghana in particular has remained on the fringes of such actions, but there are pressures and fears from the northern communities who have been suffering the economic and social consequences of the impending attack.

Although Accra has organized a comprehensive defense tactic by strengthening its military presence to prevent local populations from sympathizing with the terrorists, who usually try to buy support through various contributions that may include water pumps, electric generators, medical care and cash, the state has also strengthened its ties with local populations.

In November envoys from Washington, London and Paris met in Accra with officials from the Gulf of Guinea countries to establish common strategies with the intention of avoiding the “mistakes” made in countries from which they have already been expelled, such as Mali and Burkina Faso. At the Accra meeting, Ghana’s Minister of National Security, Albert Kan Dappah, warned his guests that the spread of terrorism was imminent, so the measures to be taken were urgent.

During 2022 across the African continent 6859 terrorist actions were executed, implying a twenty-two percent increase over the previous year, so another at least similar jump is expected for this year.

The fire comes from the north

In northern Ghana, in the border area of Bawku, in a center of agricultural and livestock activities with quick access to Burkina Faso and Togo, a conflict has been going on for several decades between the two major ethnic groups in the region – the Maprusi and the Kusasi – over the control of the village chieftainship, which, although an honorary position, also carries significant political weight. This dispute, over the years, has generated countless clashes and dozens of deaths; in the last five days alone more than ten people have died, according to local government officials.

Meanwhile, the army is establishing small outposts along the border and immigration, increasing its presence from 50 soldiers to 400, to be joined by another half a thousand troops, which made possible the capture last year of two alleged mujahideen who arrived wounded from Burkina Faso, although many experts believe that the terrorists have used Ghana as a sanctuary to take care of their wounded, replenish their forces and re-enter the war that is being waged beyond the country’s borders, while other khatibas have begun to have a presence in the vicinity of Benin.

An investigation by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and Promediation found that at least 200 Ghanaians have now been recruited at the border, although it has not been established whether they have since returned to the country. Although the government is tightening security in the Bawku area, for the first time in the region, an attempt to blow up a bridge with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on the 6th was foiled. The security agency has since been working inside Bawku and its environs with the intention, beyond arresting those responsible for the foiled attack who have not made themselves known, to show a forceful response to prevent them from attempting it again.

Establishing secure checkpoints along the 550 kilometers of the porous border between Ghana and Burkina Faso is highly complex as this area has historically been characterized by a large number of smuggling routes through which a large amount of gold circulates, product of illegal extraction, protected by corrupt officials, so that in Accra it is feared that this “business”, as has already happened in other countries on the continent with other products, could be monopolized by terrorists.

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International Conference on the Accra Initiative

The Accra Initiative for security cooperation and intelligence sharing among the countries of the Gulf basin, which could be joined by the Sahelian countries, will be set up by Ghana. Western military intelligence services will not be absent once the mujahideen arrive.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/02/ ... ujahideen/

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Communist Party of Swaziland continues campaign to boycott ‘farcical’ elections despite arrests and torture

In Swaziland, only individuals approved by the local chiefs of King Mswati III can contest elections, and the parliament cannot hold the monarchy accountable. Pro-democracy activists have been calling for a boycott of the elections which are scheduled for August

February 14, 2023 by Pavan Kulkarni

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Bongi Mamba (Right) and Mvuselelo Mkhabela (Center) after being released. Photo: Communist Party of Swaziland)=

Mvuselelo Mkhabela (21) and Bongi Mamba (28), members of Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS), who were arrested and tortured by the police last week, have resumed their campaign against the parliamentary election to be held in August in Africa’s last absolute monarchy.

“The parliament does not have any real power,” CPS International Secretary Pius Vilakati told Peoples Dispatch. “It does not make policy. It is only a tool used by the absolute monarchy to sanctify King Mswati’s decision. It does not even have the power to hold to account the executive, which is appointed directly by the King. So it is a futile exercise meant to elect a puppet parliament.”

Members for 10 of the 59 seats in the parliament’s House of Assembly, will be appointed directly by the King. The remaining can be contested, but in an “undemocratic manner, since all political parties have been banned since 1973,” Pius said. Only those individuals approved by the constituencies’ traditional chiefs, who act as the local representatives of the King, can contest these elections.

“The chiefs deny candidacy for all sorts of reasons. It could be because you don’t provide free labor on his field. They control all community land. In Swaziland, people do not own the land. The land is held under the control of the chief on behalf of the King,” Pius said, highlighting the stranglehold they have on the daily lives of the people.

Elections under these circumstances are seen as devoid of any democratic value, aimed only at legitimizing the monarchy, which has grown increasingly violent against the pro-democracy movement since the unprecedented anti-monarchist uprising in mid-2021.

“They beat us with clubs and chairs and anything they could lay their hands on”
Among the latest acts of crackdown by the regime was the arrest and torture of Mvuselelo and Bongi on February 7, two days after they had led a protest in the small town of Hluti on February 5. “We blocked a road by burning tires in protest, demanding the release of political prisoners. We were also calling on people to not legitimize Mswati by voting in these sham elections,” Bongi told Peoples Dispatch.

About 100 people had participated in this protest in Hluti, about 50 kilometers from the city of Nhlangano in southern Swaziland, and over 180 kilometers from its capital Mbabane. Despite the relatively small size of this demonstration, the security forces are jittery about unrest in the rural hinterland, areas which were assumed to be largely loyal to the King until the rallies demanding multiparty democracy spread across the country ahead of the 2021 uprising.

Two days after the protest, around 4 am on February 7, 10 to 15 heavily armed policemen wearing civilian clothes barged into Mvuselelo’s house in Hluti, where Bongi was also staying after the anti-election campaigns in the town, which had carried on late into the night.

“They took us to the police station and accused us of burning properties and possessing marijuana. Then they beat us with clubs and chairs and anything they could lay their hands on, while interrogating us about the Communist Party. They wanted to know who recruited us, what positions we hold etc.,” Bongi said.

The following day, on February 8, Bongi was produced at the Nhlangano Magistrate Court in an injured state, and released without any charges. Mvuselelo was also released, but faces charges for which the trial is to begin months later. They were hospitalized after their release.

By February 11, both had returned to Mvuselelo’s home and resumed their campaign against the elections. “From our experience in detention, we are also holding discussions with community members about the need to organize local security councils to be able to quickly respond and defend one another when the police invade our communities,” Mvuselelo told Peoples Dispatch.

Swaziland’s police is an entirely political police, increasingly unable and unwilling to respond when distress calls are made by those facing crimes, Pius claims.

“The only task they undertake is to crush the monarchy’s political opponents. So the security councils are meant to safeguard the communities, both from criminals and from the regime’s police,” he said. “Often, when they invade communities, there is no one to defend the family or the individual from the wrath of the regime. This cannot go on.”

Mvuselelo and Bongi are also leading community initiatives to fix roads and secure water supplies, in an effort to organize a local “welfare council”—proposed by the CPS as a means to help communities democratically organize to cater to their needs, independent of the regime.

Breaking the monarchy’s back through community organizing
The independence of democratically organized local communities is the key to enabling communities to defy the local chiefs, who, Pius described as the monarchy’s backbone that needs to be broken by community organizing. “We are working deep inside the communities to organize Revolutionary Community Councils,” under which the Welfare Council and Security Council is envisaged, he said.

“Bongi and Mvuselelo are on the forefront of community organizing in the Hluti town. Their success in organizational work was the reason they were targeted,” he added.

Their success, Pius said, was evident in that “as soon as they were picked up by the police, the community members instantly mobilized themselves and barged to the police station demanding their release, without waiting for any call from the party. This is the result of grassroots organization by our cadres who are rooted inside the communities. We are not relying on the elites to fight for democracy, but building strength within the communities which can defend and look after one another while challenging the monarchy.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/02/14/ ... d-torture/

Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali propose strategic axis amid French military ouster

The three West African countries, all of whom have recently undergone military takeovers amid rising public anger against France, have agreed to a Bamako-Conakry -Ouagadougou axis, with enhanced cooperation on matters ranging from trade to the fight against insecurity

February 15, 2023 by Tanupriya Singh

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Foreign Ministers of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Guinea hold a tripartite meeting in Ouagadougou. (Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Mali)

As France is getting ready to withdraw its troops from Burkina Faso by the end of the month, signs of a possible realignment in the region are emerging with a tripartite meeting between the foreign ministers of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Guinea—Olivia Ragnaghnewendé, Morissanda Kouyate, and Abdoulaye Diop—held in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou on February 8 and 9.

The leaders discussed a range of issues, “in particular the success of the transition processes leading to a return to a peaceful and secure constitutional order,” and, importantly, the “revitalization of the Bamako-Conakry-Ouagadougou axis” to make it a “strategic and priority area” on matters including trade and economic exchanges, mining, transport, roads and railway links, and the “fight against insecurity.”

The meeting was held in the wake of major developments that have taken place in the West African countries over the past two years. In August 2020, the current head of Mali’s transition council, Colonel Assimi Goita, led a coup that led to the ouster of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. Goita led a second coup in May 2021, deposing transitional President Bah Ndaw, following which he took power as interim president.

Keïta’s removal came at a time of popular unrest in Mali, as anger grew over allegations of corruption in the government and its failure to address growing insecurity in the country. Importantly, protestors demanded the withdrawal of French troops, who had been present in Mali since 2013 to fight jihadist insurgencies, a mission which was increasingly being seen as a failure by the Malian people.

After seizing power, the military junta secured significant victories against armed separatist and Islamist groups. Crucially, in February 2022, Mali’s military-led government formally asked France “to withdraw, without delay, the Forces—Barkhane and the Task Force Takuba members from the national territory,” prompting celebrations in capital Bamako.

These developments were also unfolding in the context of Mali’s isolation from regional economic and political blocs—particularly the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU), both of which had suspended Bamako in 2021. ECOWAS proceeded to impose sanctions on Mali, which were expanded into collective punitive measures including border closures, the cutting off of financial aid, and a trade embargo on the land-locked country in January 2022, sparking massive protests.

The move was also condemned by civil society organizations, given that Mali was importing 70% of its food requirements and nearly one-third of its population is dependent on humanitarian aid. The sanctions were partially lifted last year after Mali’s interim government presented a transition plan with legislative elections scheduled for late 2023, followed by presidential elections in February 2024.

Meanwhile, just months after the coup in Mali, armed forces led by Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya in Guinea led a coup against President Alpha Conde in September 2021. Conde was removed from power in similar circumstances of public discontent against the government, including accusations of corruption.

Guinea was also subsequently suspended from ECOWAS, and had financial and travel-related sanctions placed on its new military rulers. The US government, which had publicly supported the sanctions, proceeded to remove Mali and Guinea as beneficiaries under its African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade pact.

Additional ECOWAS sanctions were enforced in September 2022, with the bloc’s Development Bank also announcing that it would suspend financing for development projects in Guinea.

At the time, Mali’s then interim Prime Minister, Lieutenant Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga, announced that the transitional government had “decided to break away from all illegal, inhumane, and illegitimate sanctions imposed on [Guinea] and will take no action on them.” Guinea and Mali also proceeded to sign multiple cooperation agreements in November 2022.

2022 also saw two military coups in Burkina Faso—the first in January when a group within the army called ‘Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration’ (MPSR), led by Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Damiba, ousted President Roch Kabore.

While Damiba had been entrusted with the task of recovering one-third of Burkina Faso’s territory that had been lost to armed groups, his failure to do so led to a second coup in October, led by 34-year-old Ibrahim Traore. Burkina Faso was suspended from ECOWAS in January 2022. The regional bloc and the military leadership subsequently reached an agreement for a two-year transition with elections in 2024. The country was also suspended from AGOA in January 2023.

The communique issued following last week’s tripartite meeting condemned the “mechanical imposition of sanctions which often fail to take into account the deep and complex causes of political change,” adding that these measures “affected populations already battered by insecurity and political instability,” “undermine sub-regional and African solidarity,” and “deprive ECOWAS and the AU of the contribution of the three countries needed to meet their major challenges.”

While calling for “technical, financial, concrete, and consistent support” for security efforts and the return to a normal constitutional order, the three countries have agreed to “pool their efforts and undertake joint initiatives for the lifting of the suspension measures and other restrictions.”

Just days prior to the tripartite meeting, Burkina Faso’s interim Prime Minister Apollinaire Kyélem de Tambela visited Mali, proposing the formation of a “flexible federation” between the two countries, recalling the first federation that had been formed between newly-independent Mali, Senegal, Benin, and Burkina Faso in 1959-60.

During the visit, Mali’s interim Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maiga reiterated the principles that the Malian junta had adopted: the defense of its sovereignty and the freedom to choose its foreign partners and national interests.

After ordering the removal of French troops, Mali has since sought military assistance from other countries, including Russia. In January, Burkina Faso announced that it had terminated a security agreement with France, adding that it had given the country one month to withdraw the 400 troops deployed in the country as part of Operation Sabre.

With the deadline drawing close, it has not been confirmed if France will recall its troops entirely, or whether they will be redeployed elsewhere. In the case of Mali, for instance, France had stated that its troops would be stationed inside the border of neighboring Niger, which would serve as the new base for its military presence in the Sahel, a move rejected by civil society groups and activists in the country. An estimated 3,000 French troops are still present in the Sahel, particularly in Niger and Chad.

It is also important to note that France is by no means the only imperialist power operating in Africa. The US, specifically through the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), already has 46 bases on the continent, and some form of military relations in 53 out of 54 African countries. It is now undertaking a concerted effort to expand its influence, particularly as it seeks to counter Russia and China’s ties with various governments.

Meanwhile, in the midst of all these contests, progressive forces in West Africa are striving to articulate their own agenda of sovereignty, of Pan-African unity, and of the fight against imperialism in all its forms—be it military or through more covert forms of control through international financial institutions.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/02/15/ ... ry-ouster/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Sat Feb 25, 2023 2:53 pm

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French soldiers in the Central African Republic. Photo: http://www.hispantv.com

The French are going, but the war in the Sahel continues
By Vijay Prashad (Posted Feb 22, 2023)

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

On February 9, 2023, around 100 armed men drove to Dembo, Burkina Faso, on motorcycles and in pickup trucks. They opened fire on a militia group called Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP), which works with the Burkinabé military to protect the areas of northwest Burkina Faso near its border with Mali. These men killed seven members of the VDP. Three days later, on February 12, at the other end of Burkina Faso near the border with Ghana and Togo, armed men entered Yargatenga and killed 12 people, including two VDP fighters. Meanwhile, in another incident that took place from February 9 night until the next day—further north of Burkina Faso near the border with Mali—men on motorcycles arrived at the Sanakadougou village and killed 12 people, burning homes, and looting “the few goods and livestock of the villagers,” reported a survivor to Agence France-Presse. These are not isolated incidents. They have become commonplace in Burkina Faso, where about 40 percent of the country is now largely controlled by a wide range of armed groups who began to target the Sahel after 2012.

Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who leads the Burkinabé government, came to power through a coup d’état in September 2022. He ousted Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who had himself come to power through a coup in January 2022. Neither of these coups was a surprise. Both followed after the two coups in neighboring Mali (in 2020 and 2021), where the military took over out of frustration with the civilian government’s inability to quell the armed violence. Much of the same dynamics that propelled Mali’s interim President Colonel Assimi Goïta to power pushed Damiba and Traoré to their successive coups. Pressure has been mounting on the military establishment in Mali and Burkina Faso, which are controlled by men in their late 30s and early 40s, to defeat the armed violence that has wracked their region for the past 10 years. Part of the motivation for these coups was the desire to remove the presence of the French military, which intervened in the Sahel region in 2013 to end the violence, but instead—it is widely believed—actively participated in inflaming the violence further. In May 2022, Mali’s Goïta told the French to leave the country, a move repeated by Traoré in January 2023.

Armed Men
When the Algerian civil war (1991-2002) ended, members of the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria (GIA) fled southward and set up bases in Mali, Niger, and southern Libya. Attempts to restart a war by GIA failed, since the Algerian population was exhausted after the decade-long civil war. In 2007, some hardened former elements of the GIA formed Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which—as I experienced firsthand in the northern Sahel—became an integral part of the trans-Sahara smuggling networks. AQIM members began to work with a group called Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MOJWA), led by Hamada Ould Mohamed El Khairy. Everything changed for these groups with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) war on Libya in 2011, which destroyed the Libyan state and provided Al Qaeda-aligned groups free rein in the region (many of them are now being armed by NATO’s Arab allies in the Gulf). By 2012, AQIM joined hands with many of the Arabs who had been brought to Libya during the war as well as with Tuareg groups from the northern Sahel who had been pursuing their own territorial aims against the government in Mali.

France, which had driven the NATO war against Libya, intervened militarily in Mali to block the rapid movement of these jihadist forces south toward Bamako, Mali’s capital. Operation Serval, the name of the first French mission, pushed these forces out of the major cities of central Mali. Then-French President François Hollande went to Bamako to celebrate these gains in 2013, but said, “the fight is not over.” France established Operation Barkhane thereafter, which expanded through the Sahel region and operated alongside the massive U.S. military presence in the region (which includes one of the world’s largest military bases in Agadez, Niger, not far from France’s garrison at the uranium mine in Arlit, Niger). The inability of France to halt the onrush of these armed groups into the heart of the Sahel has led—largely—to the anti-French sentiment in the region.

Rooted in the Countryside
In March 2017, many of these armed Islamic groups affiliated to Al Qaeda formed the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), whose leader Iyad Ag Ghali participated in the Tuareg fight against the Malian state (in 1988, he founded the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Azawad). The JNIM rooted itself in the local struggles in the region, capitalizing on the separatist sensibility of the Tuareg people and in the Fulani clashes with the Bambara people of the center of the country. A year after the founding of the JNIM, one of its emirs, Yahya Abu al-Hammam, released a video message that France’s retreat into the cities left the countryside in the hands of the JNIM and its allied forces, who will win “with patience.”

By rooting themselves in the smuggling networks and in the local conflicts over land and resources, the various armed groups affiliated to Al Qaeda made themselves a difficult target. The new governments in Mali and Burkina Faso accuse the French of both bringing these wars into their territory from Libya and exacerbating these conflicts by making deals with the armed groups to prevent attacks on French military bases. Rather than break the insurgency, the French war in the region has resulted in the creation of the Islamic State Sahel Province in March 2022 with the group extending its operations in Burkina Faso’s Oudalan and Seno provinces, Mali’s Gao and Ménaka regions, and Niger’s Tahoua and Tillaberi regions. Now, France departs, leaving behind military governments ill-equipped to deal with what appears to be an unending war.

Russia
In December 2022, Burkina Faso’s Prime Minister Apollinaire Kyélem de Tambèla visited Moscow to apparently seek assistance from Russia in the war against the Al Qaeda insurgency. During his visit, he told RT that he visited the Soviet Union in 1988 and regretted that Russian-Burkinabé relations have weakened. It is likely that more Russian aid will enter these countries, provoking a reaction from the West, but this aid by the Kremlin is unlikely to help the Sahel in breaking away from the entrenched set of conflicts that trouble the region, set in motion under France’s colonial supervision.

https://mronline.org/2023/02/22/the-fre ... continues/

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As Nigeria goes to the polls, Labor Party backed by the trade unions, emerges as strong third force

Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, is going to the polls on February 25. Key trade unions and progressive forces have backed the Labour Party and its presidential candidate Peter Obi to provide a break from the policies of the mainstream APC and PDP parties

February 25, 2023 by Pavan Kulkarni

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Labour Party candidate Peter Obi during a campaign event on February 15. Photo: Peter Obi/Facebook

With the backing of the country’s trade union movement, Nigeria’s Labor Party (LP) has emerged as a realistic third force ahead of the presidential and parliamentary election on Saturday, February 25, in Africa’s most populous country of over 200 million.

On Thursday, February 23, the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) issued a statement appealing to its members in “all the 36 states and the 774 local governments.. to vote for the Labour Party and all their candidates.” Earlier, on Tuesday February 21, the Nigerian Labor Congress (NLC) also declared its support for the LP.

Multiple pre-election polls have placed its presidential candidate Peter Obi in the lead, followed by Bola Tinubu, candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), and Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The LP, which identifies itself with ‘social democracy’ and opposes the ‘neoliberalism’ upheld by both the mainstream parties, has incorporated within its manifesto several key demands of the country’s labor movement.

60-year old Obi, former governor of Anambra state who left the PDP to join the Labor party last year, is also highly popular among the youth who make up 40% of the 93 million people registered to vote. Many leaders of the youth-led protest movement against police brutality that was met with a fierce crackdown by state, culminating in the Lekki toll Massacre of unarmed protesters by the army in October 2020, have also joined Obi’s campaign.

The incumbent, President Muhammadu Buhari of APC, has completed the constitutional limit of two terms, and will not be contesting the election. His assumption of the high office in 2015, two years after the APC was formed from a merger of four main opposition parties, had marked the first democratic transfer of power since the PDP formed the government at the end of the military rule in 1999. Buhari was re-elected in 2019.

Unemployment quadrupled and consumer prices tripled in Buhari’s two terms

During the eight years of his presidency, unemployment soared from about 7-8% (May 2015) to the current 33%. Among younger adults, the current unemployment rate is as high as 42.5%. Much of this increase came in his first term, well before the COVID-19 pandemic. Consumer Price Index (CPI) has tripled in this period.

“Buhari’s first administration inherited the financial crisis which had begun under the previous PDP administration led by President Goodluck Jonathan,” said Martin Adekunle, general secretary of the TUC- affiliated Nigerian Union of Allied Health Professionals (NUAHP). The price of oil, of which Nigeria is a major producer, had begun to plunge globally starting from 2015. “The sovereign wealth fund was used to cushion the recession, but was mismanaged and squandered,” he said.

Soon after being sworn in as president, Buhari entered into discussions with the World Bank for loans. “He accepted the neoliberal prescriptions of the World Bank and IMF, and went on to slash subsidies, and privatize the energy distribution. Power supply has since become very unsteady,” added Adekunle.

Despite having Africa’s largest reserve of gas and second largest reserve of oil, Nigeria national electric grid distributes only 5,000 megawatts, reportedly sufficient only to cater to about five million urban households on average.

“Most of the businesses are dependent on diesel. A liter of diesel is now above 1,000 Nairas ($2.18, well above the roughly $1.2 in the US). Companies have been moving out of Nigeria in large numbers to countries with a better economic climate,” Adekunle said.

“Workers who had permanent jobs before are now hired on contracts. This has adversely affected the strength of the unions. Companies, especially the MNCs, use intimidation and harassment to stop workers from joining unions. All these factors have combined to weaken the collective power of the working people,” he added.

The PDP, which ruled Nigeria from 1999 till the APC took power in 2015, offers no alternative, argues Adekunle. “The neoliberal policy of privatization and austerity, which began under the PDP administration, was continued by Buhari’s APC administration,” bringing Nigeria to the current crisis, he said.

“But I do see a significant difference in the manifesto adopted by the Labor Party,” he added. “It reflects the needs and aspirations of the country’s working class and its common people. It has a well-defined programme for social-democracy.”

Rooted in the anti-colonial struggles and the subsequent struggles against the military rule, the Labor Party, in its current incarnation, was formed in 2002 under the name Party for Social Democracy (PSD), before renaming itself.

While the party has been winning several local elections, and has had councilors and governors, it had not emerged as an alternative third force at a national level until “a synergy had developed between the trade unions and the Labor Party,” said Yunusa Tanko, LP’s national spokesperson.

“The NLC gave a ten-point charter of demands. The TUC had also placed before the party a document to transform Nigeria from a consumption-driven economy to a production-driven economy. All of this is captured in the electoral manifesto of the Labor Party,” he told Peoples Dispatch.

Key to addressing Nigeria’s economic crisis will be this transformation of its economy into an export-oriented production center, he said, adding, “This will be done by subsidizing production, instead of subsidizing oil consumption.” Results of privatization undertaken by the previous government will be “reviewed,” and a “mix of public-private partnership” will be used to expand and upgrade the country’s infrastructure, said Tanko.

The security crisis

The manifesto also commits to increase the size of the security forces, and sufficiently equip, train, and fund its personnel to enable them to deal with “the incessant banditry, insurgency, kidnaping and cross-border terrorism” wracking the country.

Defeating Boko Haram and reclaiming the areas it had taken over in Nigeria’s northeast was a key promise on which Buhari had won the 2015 election, and the subsequent one in 2019. While most areas have been wrested back from their control, its splinter Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), has carried out a series of attacks in the region and taken control of the region around Lake Chad.

The north and northwestern region is wracked by cattle raiders. Clashes have been reported between herders and farmers in the central regions, and secessionist forces have carried out several attacks in the southeast.

“The Islamist insurgencies in northern Nigeria and other countries in the Sahel have their roots in the US-led war on Libya,” said Adekunle. “Climate change has been another key factor here. The Lake Chad basin is shrinking, causing a shortage of water. Unable to find water and grass for cows, herders are moving south, and clashing with the farmers. Herders and farmers have coexisted in the same regions for centuries without coming into clashes, but that is changing due to climate change.”

Tanko maintains that “International interference for economic control of the Nigerian state is the main issue promoting insecurity in Nigeria,” reiterating LP’s commitment to robust diplomatic efforts and security-sector reforms to double-down the efforts against insurgent groups.

However, security threats to Nigerian citizens have not only from insurgent groups, but also from the security forces themselves. In particular, Nigeria’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) has been accused of murders, torture, extortion and several other atrocities. When what came to be known as the EndSars protests, led by youth, broke out in the country in October 2020, the army was deployed alongside the police to crush the protests, which led to the Lekki toll Massacre.

Peter Obi was among the few politicians who “condemned the killings of innocent protesters and has promised to restructure the police force, while others are still busy denying that any lives were lost during the protest,” Ayeta Jonathan, who was active the EndSARS protests in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, told Peoples Dispatch. The LP’s manifesto commits to “re-focusing the military on external threats and border protection” and “strengthening.. civilian oversight” of security forces.

Pointing to Obi’s track record during tenure as the governor of Anambra state as a competent administrator who is not mired in corruption scandals, Jonathan said, “he and the LP have ideas and plans of rejuvenating this country and right now the country is in crisis. Obi represents hope.”

While Obi’s supporters point to his frugal lifestyle despite him being a wealthy businessman, critical questions have also been raised about the Labor Party accepting a businessman and a former PDP member as its presidential candidate.

Adekunle, however, is confident that the trade union movement, in which the LP has its roots, is strong enough to “ensure that the party is held accountable to the promises it has made to the working class of the country.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/02/25/ ... ird-force/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Sat Mar 04, 2023 3:34 pm

War Over U.S. Military Base Quest in Somalia Rages On
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 2, 2023
Jamal Abdulahi

Image
Berbera, Somalia (Photo: Lakmi00 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0))

A conflict between Somali unionists and secessionists was spawned by a U.S. attempt to acquire a military base. War and a humanitarian crisis are the end result.


In the February 8th, 2023, edition of Black Agenda Report, I wrote about a brutal war in Northern Somalia fueled by America’s quest for an imperial base. The struggle is between secessionists who want to split Somalia based on 19th-century colonial borders and unionists who are yearning for a unified Somali Republic.

The secessionists are in favor of the American military base. The unionists vehemently oppose it. The casualties on both sides are staggering.

The epicenter of the violence is the city of Las Anod, in the state of Sool. The violence is raging for the 21st straight day as of this analysis.

Over 100 people are confirmed dead among the unionists. According to the unionist civilian defense unit’s spokesperson, many are noncombatant civilians. Most succumb to indiscriminate artillery shelling by the secessionist forces. The wounded cannot be accurately counted as the relentless shelling continues.

Casualties are hard to verify among secessionists. The Hargeisa regime makes an extraordinary effort to hide figures of dead and wounded. Hargeisa is the de facto capital of the secessionists.

One eyewitness who traveled on the highway connecting Oog, where secessionists set up a command center and the city of Burcio, described a bloodbath. The unimpeded bloodstain on the road between the two cities indicates the high number of wounded and corpses being transported according to one eyewitness.

Tens of thousands of Las Anod residents fled. Some estimates put the newly displaced population at 100,000 to 200,000.

The pregnant wife of one of my college classmates is among the displaced. She went into early labor and gave birth on the outskirts of Las Anod.

He is an able man and can provide for his family but there are tens of thousands of displaced people who do not have access to necessities. Many were day laborers in Las Anod with nothing more than clothes in their bags. It is a huge humanitarian catastrophe.

Secessionists bear the sole responsibility for the conflict and displacement. The destruction of telecommunication towers, hospitals, drinking water facilities, and other public infrastructure made life unbearable for the remaining residents of Las Anod.

While casualties are high and the humanitarian situation is dire, the secessionists are amassing more militia on the outskirts of the city.

A spokesperson for unionist civil defense units told local media that heavy weapons including tanks are still being brought in.

Some of America’s allies in the region have joined the conflict in support of secessionist aggression. Djibouti is the most visible thus far.

Djibouti is a tiny one-city country with just over a million people in the Horn of Africa. Djibouti is an independent country and the majority of its population is ethnically Somali. The emergency of this tiny nation was a negotiated settlement between Somalia and France which colonized the territory until 1977.

Two men have ruled Djibouti since its independence. Hassan Gouled Aptidon, an independence fighter, ruled the country from 1977 to 1999. The current dictator, Ismail Omar Guelleh, resumed power after Aptidon died in 1999. Guelleh remained a ruler since.

Guelleh is a benefactor of America’s “War on Terror” after September 11th, 2001. America ignored Guelleh’s crimes including rampant corruption and dismal human rights abuses in exchange for access to infrastructure and other easements.

Djibouti had been designated as a strategic partner by Pentagon planners. Djibouti port has been a vital docking station to resupply America’s navy fleet patrolling the Gulf of Aden since 9/11.

The port in Djibouti is overflowing with commercial activities and no longer meets US Navy security protocols for large carriers. Hence, Pentagon planners see the military base in Berbera, Somalia as a crucial site to support rapidly expanding military operations in the Horn of Africa.

Guelleh is adjusting to America’s increased military presence in the region. He is betting on secessionists based in Hargeisa in order to influence the proposed base in Berbera.

Guelleh had been providing diplomatic support to the secessionists for years now. Secessionist leaders often travel overseas with Djibouti diplomatic passports including when visiting America.

Guelleh decided to directly support the secessionist’s brutal attacks on Las Anod. A Djibouti opposition group published a detailed press release on February 8th, 2023. It documented Guelleh’s commitment to “direct support on the battlefield (supply of arms, carrying out drone strikes on Laascaanood(sic)”. Drones flying over the city had been spotted by residents.

On Sunday, February 5th, 2023, an airplane from Burgas, Bulgaria landed in Hargeisa. Sources inside Guelleh’s regime confirmed the plane carried weapons and ammunition.

Somalia is under a United Nation arms embargo. The source confirmed weapons were purchased under Djibouti’s name.

Secessionist forces destroying Las Anod are equipped with old Soviet Union artillery. Only a few countries such as Bulgaria manufacture ammunition for such weapons.

This is a repeat of a similar arrangement in 2006 when Ethiopia Defense Forces (EDF) acting as an American proxy invaded Somalia and captured the capital Mogadishu. Ethiopia scoured the world for ammunition for its old Soviet weapons.

A sanctioned North Korea was the only country with sufficient stockpiles. The U.S. gave a waiver to Ethiopia to make the purchase.

We’re witnessing a similar playbook over 15 years later. This time Djibouti acting as a proxy of the U.S. is making purchases for a Somali group to evade the UN arms embargo.

It’s unlikely that the U.S. did not know about the February 5th shipment from Bulgaria. The plane carrying weapons stopped in several countries allied with the U.S. including Turkey, Egypt, and Sudan before delivering the payload in Hargeisa.

Djibouti is clearly providing direct support to the secessionists. The commander of the secessionist militia Nuh Ismail Tani confirmed that he was fighting on behalf of Djibouti during a presser on February 18th, 2023. Tani accused civilian unionist defense units in Las Anod of being terrorists and a threat to the Horn of Africa.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The unionists are mostly civilians who are yearning for a unified Somali Republic. Tani is trying to wrap himself around the old “War on Terror” mantra to solicit more American support through Djibouti.

U.S. covert support for secessionists in Somalia is the latest involvement. Efforts spectacularly failed once again. It led to hundreds of deaths, many wounded and nearly 200,000 people displaced.

The American Ambassador to Somalia was scheduled to meet with leaders of secessionists in Hargeisa last week. A lower level embassy staff met with secessionists instead. Communication by the embassy about the meeting was vague and the carnage of death and displacement continued. It will continue as long as the U.S. insists upon attempting to exercise control in Somalia.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/03/ ... -rages-on/

The Homeland or Death: Accomplishments of the Traoré Government in Burkina Faso
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 2, 2023
Thomas Sankara Center for African Liberation and Unity

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Who is Prime Minister Apollinaire Joachim Kyélem de Tambèla?

Burkina Faso cheered and celebrated at the news of Apollinaire Joachim Kyélem de Tambèla’s appointment to office as prime minister on October 21st, 2022. While there are many new faces and figures in Burkinabé politics right now, Kyélem de Tambèla is a familiar face to many Burkinabé who have known him for decades. In other circumstances this label may be given out too freely but, Kyélem de Tambèla has rightfully earned the title of Sankarist as demonstrated by his own background.

As a student in France in the 1980s, Prime Minister Kyélem de Tambèla founded the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) in Nice, Côte-d’Azur to defend and financially support the revolutionary struggle waged by Sankara and the Burkinabé masses. During this period, he also organized with leftwing groups: The National Union of Students of France (National Union of Students (UNEF) and the Union of Communist Students (UEC).

As an author, lawyer, and academic his magnum opus is Thomas SANKARA et la Revolution au Burkina Faso: Une Expérience de Développement Autocentré a 500-page book in which he details the history and philosophy of the Burkinabé Revolution. He cites Thoms Sankara, Kwame Nkrumah, Cheikh Anta Diop, Frantz Fanon, George Padmore, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Eduardo Galeano, and Samir Amin among others.

President Traoré and Ministers Decrease Their Salaries

Shortly after his appointment, one of Prime Minister Kyélem de Tambela’s first actions was to call for a lowering of the President’s and various ministers’ salaries. He famously declared, “I have already said that Burkina Faso cannot be developed outside the line drawn by Thomas Sankara.”

While former president, Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba increased his salary and those of the ministers during his short term in office, the current President Ibrahim Traoré has opted out of any presidential salary. Instead, Traoré has decided to keep the same salary that he had as a military captain in order to “show this spirit of sacrifice which must inhabit each Burkinabé in the current situation of our country.”

Meanwhile, during the month of November, the ministers gave up 50% of their salaries to the National Solidarity Fund which goes to help disadvantaged Burkinabe, especially internally displaced people.

À Bas la FrançAfrique: Leaving the Western Camp

As all of this was unfolding, the main question on everyone’s mind was whether or not the government would finally fulfill the desire of the masses by following in Mali’s footsteps and abandoning the French pré carré (backyard). The courageous actions of the Assimi Goïta administration in Mali completely transformed the atmosphere of the Sahel and the people across the sub-region have become tireless upon seeing the new possibility that has emerged with Mali’s escape from the western camp.

In early December, we saw the first clues as to the direction of this new administration. On December 3rd, 2022 a government communiqué announced the suspension of French-state-sponsored media Radio France International (RFI) until further notice. RFI along with French- state-sponsored media France 24 has similarly been banned in Mali since March 17th, 2022. France 24 would also run into trouble with the Traoré administration in Burkina Faso. On January 23rd, 2023, a correspondent from France 24 was summoned before the Council of Superior Communication (CSC). The outcome of this convocation and the long-term relationship between the administration and the popular French media outlet remains to be seen.

In the meantime, the administration has provided a definitive response to the questions raised by the masses through two key actions: the demand for the departure of the ambassador to Burkina Faso, Luc Hallade, and the expulsion of the French troops by the end of February. On January 2nd, 2023, Minister of Communication Jean-Emmanuel Ouedraogo confirmed that the government of Burkina Faso demanded the departure of French ambassador Luc Hallade. While not an end to a diplomatic relationship with France, the call signaled a changing order which was confirmed by the end of the month.

After over a year of mass mobilizations and several years of grassroots struggle, the much-awaited moment finally came. On January 18th, 2023 it was officially confirmed that the Traoré government had given the French troops one month to evacuate from Burkina Faso, ending the military agreement signed between Burkina Faso and France in 2018. On February 20th, 2023 it was confirmed that the French troops had evacuated Burkina Faso.

Living in a Multipolar World

The people of Burkina Faso are well aware that the world is rapidly changing. While collaboration with western countries such as the United States, Canada, and states within the European Union has long been seen as the only option on the table, new options are emerging in an increasingly multipolar world. Various grassroots Pan-African organizations in Burkina Faso have been calling for a closer relationship with Russia, an emerging world power that, unlike France, does not have a history of covert regime change operations or monetary and economic domination in Africa.

On December 7th, 2022, Prime Minister Kyélem de Tambèla visited Russia to meet with officials. During an interview with RT, Kyélem de Tambèla stated that Burkina Faso would like to ally with Russia in the fight against terrorism and would also like a stronger relationship with Russia in other areas such as trade, culture, transport, and health. In his words, “We would like Russia to take its rightful place as a great nation in my country because there is an experience of Russia and we would like it to share that with us,”

In a similar vein, Prime Minister Kyélem de Tambèla met with Iranian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ali Bagheri on January 20th, 2023 during his visit to Ouagadougou. The two ministers discussed the various ways in which their countries could strengthen their relationship. They agreed to form a joint Iran-Burkina Faso commission with a session in Ouagadougou in the near future. Prime Minister Kyélem de Tambèla was also invited to visit Tehran. He furthermore proposed the creation of an airline between Tehran and Ouagadougou, which would make the capital of Burkina Faso, a sub-regional hub for Air Iran. While much of the conversation revolved around military collaboration, Minister Bagheri also stated, “Our two countries have the firm will to strengthen their relations in various fields, more particularly in the economic, political, and health fields. In the near future, the new ambassador of the Republic of Iran will move to Ouagadougou. Also, Burkina Faso has decided to reopen its embassy in Tehran.”

Looking up to Sankara, Sékou Touré, and Modibo Keïta: Towards the Pan-African Federation

Finally and perhaps most importantly, the direction of the new administration in Burkina Faso can be measured by its adamant support for the creation of a federation of African states. “The United States of Africa” is a term heard all over the streets of Ouagadougou these days and Prime Minister Kyélem de Tambèla is convinced by the vision.

At the beginning of February, Prime Minister Kyélem de Tambèla met with the President of Mali Assimi Goïta, and other Malian authorities to express his people’s desire for an African federation. He stated, “We are considering a Federation today. This is our short or medium-term objective. We need everyone’s support in this sense because as long as we remain isolated, we are fragile. The Mali-Burkina Faso Federation will constitute a much more decisive striking power.” To clarify his use of the term federation, he cited the example of the Mali Federation during which Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Benin attempted to unite into a single country in the late 1950s.

On February 9th, Malian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdoulaye Diop and Guinean Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Morissanda Kouyaté met with Prime Minister Kyélem de Tambèla in Ouagadougou. Prime Minister Kyélem de Tambèla insisted upon a Burkina Faso-Mali- Guinea Federation drawing from the revolutions waged under the leadership of Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso), Modibo Keïta (Mali), and Ahmed Sékou Touré (Guinea). In his words, “Not long ago, Ibrahim Cissé walked from Bamako to Ouagadougou to call for the federation. We must measure the determination of this Malian citizen. Are we going to let this go unheeded? We must become aware and join together to realize the dream of our people.” Ibrahim Cissé is an African patriot who walked from Mali to Burkina Faso’s capital on foot over the course of three weeks covering 822.2 kilometers or 510 miles to express support for an African federation. The three ministers also discussed the construction of an Ouagadougou-Bamako-Conakry railroad to facilitate political integration.

The Pan African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), Burkina Faso’s most internationally important cultural festival, demonstrated the strengthening of the Burkina Faso-Mali alliance. Mali was selected as the country of honor this year and Prime Abdoulaye Maïga was once again in Burkina Faso between February 24-26th. Accompanied by the Malian delegation, Prime Minister Kyélem de Tambela of Burkina announced before the press that the intention of the Malian and Burkinabé transition governments is to lay the groundwork for the creation of a Mali-Burkina Faso federation that could not be dismantled by future political administrations. It was stated that both the Malian and Burkinabé heads of state were in agreement and working on the initial steps in the creation of such a federation.

Before leaving Burkina Faso, Prime Minister Abdoulaye Maïga co-signed a communiqué with Prime Minister Kyélem announcing the creation of a bilateral consultation framework that would be used to collaborate on security issues, the struggle against the sanctions imposed upon both countries, and the creation of a Mali-Burkina Faso federation.

In the meantime, the Burkinabe Minister of Energy, Mines, and Quarries met with the Malian Minister of Mines, Energy, and Water to begin the discussion of a shared electrical connection to help industrialize both countries as well as collaboration to protect their mineral resources.

May Ancestor Thomas Sankara Finally Rest in Peace

In the short time that President Ibrahim Traoré has been in power, he and his cabinet have demonstrated profound admiration for Thomas Sankara. Sankara, along with the 12 other revolutionaries that were assassinated alongside him, was given proper burials at the Thomas Sankara memorial site on February 23rd, 2023. According to Mousbilla Sankara, Thomas Sankara’s uncle, “[This burial is] the first time I’ve seen Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims perform the same ceremony for corpses. It means that it is a sign of union.” The intimate event was reserved for close family members and friends of Sankara but a large public event is planned for October 15th, 2023, the anniversary of Sankara’s assassination. Sankara’s body had been extracted from his modest makeshift tombstone eight years ago for legal reasons. Now he rests in an appropriate location where Burkinabé, Africans, and people around the world can pay him respect.

The only true justice for Thomas Sankara is revolution. Nothing short of revolution can serve as a substitute or reparation for the crimes committed against Sankara and Africa. The time has come for Africans everywhere to organize to defend the struggle for sovereignty waged by Burkina Faso and Mali in opposition to neo-colonialism. Pan-Africanism must move beyond words and towards actions of concrete support for states that are adopting Pan-African praxis as national policies.

La Patrie ou la mort…



Additional Sources

https://www.theafricareport.com/253271/ ... -minister/

https://lefaso.net/spip.php?article117388

https://lefaso.net/spip.php?article116859

https://lefaso.net/spip.php?article117104

https://www.sig.gov.bf/details?tx_news_ ... 38706a1f80

https://www.wakatsera.com/burkina-la-ch ... ar-le-csc/

https://www.aujourd8.net/le-burkina-dem ... saccelere/

https://www.aib.media/2023/01/21/le-bur ... erritoire/

http://apanews.net/en/pays/burkina-faso ... burkina-pm

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/481198 ... rkina-Faso

https://burkina24.com/2023/01/21/cooper ... a-teheran/

https://sahel-intelligence.com/30027-bu ... -mali.html

https://www.maliweb.net/politique/le-pr ... QC0i8jcZ3w

https://burkina24.com/2023/02/24/cooper ... deux-pays/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ochHcCij4wQ

On Damiba:

https://burkina24.com/2022/05/23/augmen ... nnable-si/

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/03/ ... kina-faso/

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Africans Protest Against France, Receiving Macron With Photos of Putin
MARCH 3, 2023

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Protestors across Mali, Burkina Faso, and Chad rejecting France and its "second wave of colonialism" in Africa. Photo: Al-Estiklal Newspaper/File photo.

French President Macron’s tour of Africa has provoked a wave of anger from the African people, confirming the decline of French influence in Africa.

This Wednesday, March 1, French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Libreville, the capital of Gabon, at the beginning of a four-day tour of Africa; a trip that, according to French sources, seeks to establish a new “responsible relationship” with the African continent.

After Gabon, the French president will head to Angola, Congo-Brazzaville (the Republic of Congo), and the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where people took to the streets on Wednesday to protest Macron’s visit to their country.

Demonstrators, waving Russian flags and photos of Russian President Vladimir Putin, gathered outside the French embassy in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC. According to a report, the walls of the embassy were covered with slogans against the French country’s policies in Africa.

Protesters accused France of cooperating with Rwanda in supporting rebel groups in the DRC. Anti-French demonstrations have broken out in recent months in the former colonies of the European country, including Mali and Burkina Faso.

Ce n'est que la partie visible de l'iceberg.
"Macron est un assassin, Poutine à la rescousse !"
Le slogan des manifestants contre la visite du président français au Congo devant l'ambassade de France à Kinshasa. pic.twitter.com/ex5ZUQNPDC

— C'était mieux avant (@CetaitMa) March 2, 2023


Macron acknowledged on Monday the “growing anger toward France in African countries,” calling for “the creation of a new balanced, reciprocal, and responsible relationship” with Africa. Stating that “Africa is not France’s backyard,” the French president called on his country to be humble and listen to African countries.

This comes after continuing diplomatic declines between France and various African nations, including inflammatory statements made by Macron last October where he stated that “official history” in Algeria was “totally rewritten” after its liberation in 1962 based on “hate speech towards France.” Macron then refused to listen to and acknowledge France’s crimes and spurned demands for France to apologize and provide reparations for the suffering it caused, which prompted Algeria to withdraw its ambassador from Paris.

Macron proposed a new approach, promising that French military bases in Africa would be run by the host countries themselves and populated with fewer French troops. He also said that his tour of Africa would not be political, and that his travel agenda would focus on the environment, culture, and scientific research, although evidence has proven that popular sentiment regards colonialism as not only military, but also economic, financial, and cultural.

Politico has linked recent events in Africa and the increasing decline of French influence in the continent to factors rooted in French colonial history on the one hand—as several experts as well as popular sentiment maintain that France pursues its own interests in the resource-rich region—and also to Russia’s attempts to strengthen its presence on the continent. Russia notably has not perpetuated the atrocities of colonialism and is thus able to forge relationships based on mutual development with African nations.

https://orinocotribune.com/africans-pro ... -of-putin/

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Amid allegations of voter suppression, Nigeria’s opposition candidates set to challenge presidential poll results

Opposition parties have alleged widespread voter suppression and intimidation in the presidential election in which less than 30% of eligible voters exercised their franchise. Opposition candidates Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar have said they will challenge the victory of Bola Tinubu

March 04, 2023 by Pavan Kulkarni

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Bola Tinubu, candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), was declared the winner of the Nigerian presidential election held on February 25. Photo: Xinhua/Guo Jun

On Friday, March 3, the Court of Appeal in Nigeria’s capital Abuja ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to allow the presidential candidate of the Labor Party (LP), Peter Obi, access to all poll materials for inspection. Bola Tinubu, candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has been declared the winner of the presidential election that was held on February 25.

The order was passed in response to an appeal filed by Obi on Thursday. Access was also granted to Atiku Abubakar, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who had also filed a separate appeal earlier on Wednesday.

Obi and Abubakar’s appeal was justified in court on the grounds that these electoral documents could be used in their petition to challenge the results of the presidential election.

Africa’s most populous country (200 million) has 93.4 million eligible voters. However, the voter turnout was less than 27% and less than 25 million votes were counted. Widespread voter suppression and intimidation are alleged to be the reasons for the lowest ever voter turnout.

On March 1, the INEC declared Tinubu as the winner with 8.79 million (36.6%) votes. Abubakar followed second with 6.98 million (29.1%) votes.

Popular among the youth and backed by the Nigerian Labor Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC), Obi, whose LP emerged as a potential third force in Nigeria’s politics hitherto dominated by APC and PDP, garnered 6.1 million (25.4%) votes. He won in both Abuja and Lagos, Nigeria’s economic hub and largest city.

“We won the election and we will prove it to Nigerians,” Obi told the press on March 2, alleging electoral fraud. “It will go down as one of the most controversial elections ever to be held in Nigeria.”

LP’s national spokesperson, Yunusa Tanko, told Peoples Dispatch, “Armed men were all over Lagos intimidating voters. They were telling people to leave the polling booth if they were not voting for the APC.”

Financial Times “witnessed armed men remove a presidential ballot box in Surulere, Lagos.” Channel Television reported that “Armed thugs.. carted away the ballot boxes and BVAS machines.”

“According to the tally from our situation room, we won Lagos with 900,000 votes. Not the allocated number of 582,000. And in Plateau state, we won by one million votes, far above the 400,000 votes that were allocated to us by the INEC,” Tanko said, adding that if all the votes had been counted, the result would have been different.

President-elect Tinubu maintains however that “the lapses that were reported..were relatively few in number and were immaterial to affect the final outcome of the election.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/03/04/ ... l-results/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Mon Mar 06, 2023 2:54 pm

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South African, Russian and Chinese officials at Armed Forces Day in Richards Bay, South Africa, February 21 2023. (Photo: Themba Hadebe KDOW.biz new)
Africans’ message to imperialism: “We are not your flunkies!”
Originally published: Black Agenda Report on March 1, 2023 by Mark P. Fancher (more by Black Agenda Report) | (Posted Mar 04, 2023)

In a remarkable display of independence, South Africa defied NATO on February 24th when it conducted naval drills with Russia and China on the first anniversary of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Writer and analyst Steven Gruzd, sensing the anger of the imperialists, speculates:

I don’t think Western nations are going to let this one slide.

But to date, South Africa has not been intimidated. Obbey Mabena, a veteran of the ANC’s armed wing, while not speaking for the South African government, told CNN:

By default, we are on the side of Russia. And to us Ukraine [is] what we call a sell-out. It is selling out to the West.

Mabena went on to say South Africa’s posture is rooted in the struggle against apartheid, explaining that when South Africa’s people rose against a white minority settler regime, the then-Soviet Union “…was ready to give us everything that we needed. Give us food, they gave us uniforms, they trained us, they gave us weapons. For the first time we came across white people who treated us as equals.”

South Africa has branded itself as one of the “non-aligned” countries, which since the 1960s have, as part of their exercise of self-determination, declined to become toadies of the superpowers. Nevertheless, Peter Stano, a European Union spokesman accused South Africa of becoming a Russian ally and saying that the country “is moving further away from a non-aligned position.” It is a charge that South Africa vigorously denies, and which makes sense only if one presumes that non-alignment implies apathetic passivity and non-engagement even for purposes of survival, independence, and self-determination.

Confusion results from ignorance about non-alignment’s historical context. During the U.S./Soviet Cold War, the superpowers aggressively sought to establish spheres of influence with the ultimate objective of securing global geopolitical dominance over sycophant nations. Because many smaller countries were unwilling to sit idly by and allow themselves to be helpless pawns, in 1955, representatives of 29 Asian and African countries convened in Bandung, Indonesia to consider prospects for genuine self-determination in the face of colonial, neo-colonial and imperialist domination.

The gathering yielded a 10-point declaration that, among other things, demanded: human rights, independence and respect for sovereignty, racial equality, non-intervention and ending acts or threats of aggression by large countries. While conference participants implicitly acknowledged the value of remaining independent from the superpowers, in the years that followed they did not hesitate to strategically collaborate with one or another superpower when it was in their best interests.

Walter Rodney explained how it would have been impractical for the non-aligned countries to have simply buried their heads in the sand as dynamic world events unfolded. In his book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa he said:

The process by which Africa produced thirty-odd sovereign states was an extremely complex one, characterized by an interplay of forces and calculations on the part of various groups of Africans, on the part of the colonial powers, and on the part of interest groups inside the metropoles. African independence was affected by international events such as the Second World War, the rise of the Soviet Union, the independence of India and China, the people’s liberation movement in Indochina, and the Bandung Conference.

In the wake of the Bandung gathering, representatives of 25 countries came together in 1961 to establish the Non-Aligned Movement. The movement has been an active force since that time with varying degrees of strength and influence, and the movement’s name has not been indicative of a commitment to passive isolationism, but rather a determination to manifest the Bandung demands for self-determination. Historian Gerald Horne cites at least one concrete example in his book, White Supremacy Confronted: U.S. Imperialism and Anti-Communism vs. the Liberation of Southern Africa from Rhodes to Mandela , when he explains:

By 1986 [Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe] was Chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement, a fierce opponent of the ‘constructive engagement’ policy toward apartheid. Mugabe was also presiding over a nation that had become a beehive of anti-apartheid activism by U.S. nationals, often conducted to the consternation of Washington.

It has therefore been clear, at least from the perspective of non-aligned countries, that simply taking a strong stance against a superpower is not a compromise of a non-aligned posture. H.M.G.S. Palihakkara, a former Sri Lankan Ambassador to the United Nations explained that non-aligned countries do not seek to avoid being perceived as being on the “wrong side” of a power rivalry, but instead they seek to gain benefits from all sides. “Non-alignment is not about distancing and meek diplomacy. It is about engagement and robust diplomacy,” he said. Thus, it is in no way inconsistent with non-alignment for South Africa to engage militarily with Russia and China if South Africa believes it is in its strategic best interests.

It is not surprising that regardless of whether the Non-Aligned Movement has been as disruptive to imperialist projects as it might be, imperialism nevertheless recognizes the potency of the idea. In 2001, Richard Holbrooke, the then U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. suggested that African countries: “consider distancing themselves from [the Non-Aligned Movement]…[s]o that you can protect African interests and not allow yourself to be pushed by less than 10 radicalized States into positions that you don’t need.” His paternalism-soaked statement further suggested:

The Non-Aligned Movement is not Africa’s friend at this point.

To its credit, Africa struck back. South African Ambassador Dumisani Shadrack Kumalo, said on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement:

This attempt by a non- [Non-Aligned Movement] member to prescribe to the African members of the Movement is, at best uninformed, or at worst, misguided, misleading and constitutes an affront to [Non-Aligned Movement] members as a whole.

Imperialism has every reason to fear non-alignment. Independent thought leads to actions that accelerate the progress of the oppressed while destroying the underpinnings of imperialist domination. It gives the power and confidence to not only think the unthinkable, but to also do the unimaginable. We can only guess how many imperialists wished they had been wearing diapers when they learned that the African Union recently stood up against Zionism by not only suspending Israel’s observer status, but by also ejecting that country’s ambassador from the African Union’s annual summit in Ethiopia.

We shouldn’t deceive ourselves by ignoring Africa’s continuing neo-colonial reality. But it is also highly significant that even when the continent remains constrained by imperialism it nevertheless shows flashes of radical independence. It is a reminder of Africa’s revolutionary potential and the certainty of its ultimate triumph.

https://mronline.org/2023/03/04/african ... -flunkies/

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Why are the Congolese in DRC protesting Macron?

Kambale Musavuli of the Centre for Research on the Congo explains why the Congolese are protesting French president Macron’s visit and the role of France in the country and the larger region.

March 05, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch



Late evening on March 3rd, French president Emmanuel Macron arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo. On March 1st, hundreds had gathered outside the French embassy in Kinshasa against his arrival, saying Macron is an assassin and calling for him to go back. His visit also comes at a time of rising anti-French sentiment in West Africa, with increasing calls for dismissal of French troops. Kambale Musavuli from Centre for Research on the Congo explains the reasons behind this opposition and the role of France in the country and the larger region.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/03/05/ ... ng-macron/

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Tunisians mobilize against rising political persecution and government’s failure to address economic concerns

Large protests were organized by political parties and trade unions on Saturday and Sunday against the crackdown on the opposition and economic woes. Calls have been given for for more people’s actions in the coming days

March 06, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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(Photo: TAP)

Thousands of Tunisians took to the streets on Saturday and Sunday, March 4 and 5, to denounce attempts by President Kais Saied’s government to silence the opposition with threats of arrest and intimidation, and its failure to address the people’s basic economic concerns.

On Saturday, protests were organized by the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) and the Tunisian Workers’ Party, among others. The protest, which appears to be the biggest against Saied’s rule so far, started from Tunis’ Mohamed Ali Square and ended at Habib Bourguiba Avenue.

Protesters raised issues such as government restrictions on trade union movements and other matters of concern, including the rising cost of living and the government’s move to reduce subsidies on essential commodities such as food and energy, TAP reported.

Speaking to the protesters, UGTT head Noureddine Tabouni asserted that “the workers are united and we have chosen the path of struggle; struggle does not come cheap.” He said that UGTT was opposed to the persecution of trade union activists and political figures, and committed to the protection of freedoms in the country.

Dozens of activists, journalists, and judges have been arrested over the last few months by the police in Tunisia. Some have been charged with “conspiracy against state security” and are being tried in military courts. The opposition has termed this political persecution.

Those arrested so far include Issam Chebbi, head of the opposition Republican Party; two leading members of the National Salvation Front (NSF), a coalition of parties opposing Saied’s rule; Noureddine Boutar, a senior journalist; and Anis Kaabi, a senior leader of the UGTT.

United National Front
On Sunday, the call for mobilization was issued by the National Salvation Front (NSF), which is led by the country’s largest political party, Ennahda. Tunisia’s other main liberal and centrist parties are also part of the front. They are opposed to Saied’s rule and have demanded his resignation.

Sunday’s protests demanded that the government release all those arrested in cases related to so-called “conspiracy against state security,” and stop the crackdown on the opposition.

NSF chief Nejib Chebbi also announced that beginning from this week, activists and ordinary citizens of Tunisia would hold weekly protests every Wednesday, until their demands are met. He also claimed that the NSF will try to form a united national front against Saied by working with the UGTT and other political forces in the country, TAP reported.

The protests on Sunday were held despite a blanket ban imposed by the government. According to an Al Jazeera report, protesters defied police warnings that their gathering was “illegal” and marched to Habib Bourguiba Avenue, breaking barriers erected by the police.

In July 2021, President Saied had dismissed the elected government and later dissolved the parliament. After ruling by decree for months, he introduced a new constitution last year that replaced the 2014 constitution, and made changes to various laws consolidating power in the office of the president.

Saied has justified his so-called ‘political reforms’ by suggesting that they were necessary for dealing with the alleged widespread corruption and inefficiency among the political classes in the country.

A majority of the country’s political parties and the largest trade union, the UGTT, have rejected Saied’s changes, with some of them accusing him of carrying out a political coup and attempting to establish an authoritarian system in the country.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/03/06/ ... -concerns/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Sat Mar 18, 2023 2:23 pm

Borderless Africa: Free Movement in Africa is a Step Towards Complete Decolonisation
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 17, 2023
Hardi Yakubu

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Les Ethnies De La Cote D’ivoire Et D’afrique

From 29th to 31st August 2022, Africans Rising held the All-African Movement Assembly (AAMA), a hybrid gathering of more than 600 movement leaders, activists, Pan-Africanists and change agents. I was leading the coordination and organising of the whole event under the supervision of then movement co-coordinators, Mohammed Lamin Saidykhan and Coumba Toure. As part of my duties prior to the main event, I had to deal with visas for people to enter Tanzania where the Assembly was to be held. An experience from this role turned out to be one of the key highlights of the event for me. One of my colleagues was travelling to Tanzania with three children, one of whom had an American passport while the other two had Senegalese passports. You won’t believe this, but the one with an American passport found it easier to enter Tanzania than the rest. We went through so much just to get visas for the two because of their Senegalese passports. And this was not isolated. At least 13 African countries need a pre-entry visa to enter Tanzania.

Unsurprisingly, one of the popular sentiments prevalent among the participants was the notion of borderless Africa. This idea itself found its way onto the program only because the series of Pre-Assembly regional consultative convenings revealed it as one of the key issues Africans Rising’s members wanted to discuss . It was an obvious choice for at least two reasons – first because of the difficulties many people faced to travel to Tanzania, the land of Julius Nyerere, and second, the long-held vision passed from earlier generations of a united, prosperous Africa. The former perhaps showed the wisdom of the latter as many began to recount the hurdles, they faced trying to travel from one African country to another. In fact, some could not even attend just because of visa issues.

Come to think of it; the way these divisive borders are guarded and defended makes one wonder if policymakers in Africa remember the historicity of the borderlines. It was in the Berlin conference of 1884-85 that European colonialists began the process of carving out the continent and dividing it among themselves with arbitrary borders that gave no consideration to the people of Africa then living on the territories they were taking. In fact, none of those colonialists had ever even been to Africa to see how the people lived. This action divided families, ethnic groups, and large polities, which hitherto either lived together or maintained close relationships. For example, in West Africa, the borderlines between Benin-Niger and Benin-Nigeria divided cultural areas such as the Hausa, Fulani, Gourmantche, Adja, Yoruba and Bariba among the three countries. The Adja and Gourmanche are further divided by the Benin-Togo and Benin-Burkina Faso borders respectively. In Southern Africa, the Tonga and Subiya were divided by the Botswana-Zambia border, the Va-Kalanga, Babirwa etc by the Botswana-Zimbabwe border and the Ba-tswana between the Botswana-South Africa border to name a few. These are just a few of the cultural areas arbitrarily divided by the borders. (For a more expansive list, see Asimaju’s Partitioned Culture Areas: a Checklist). For the colonialists, their commercial and other interests trumped everything. The direct colonial rule that followed from the partition cemented the domination of the people’s social, political, economic, and cultural systems for so long that even after political independence was regained, the legacy of colonialism remains till date and shapes decision-making and the interactions between the people and the institutions.

The legacy of colonialism remains till date and shapes decision-making and the interactions between the people and the institutions

After the AAMA, the participants dedicated themselves to run a post-event campaign on borderless Africa, advocating for connections between Africans across the arbitrary borders to build more solidarity and fellow feeling. Other campaigns that were hatched concerned gender justice, economic justice, climate justice etc. We subsequently launched the first pillar of the campaign – the People’s Petition for Borderless Africa and are currently in the process of deploying volunteers across the 55 African countries to reach millions with the message.

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Two people shaking hands across Ghana/Cote D'Voire borderTwo people shaking hands across Ghana/Cote D’Voire border

If one analyses critically, drawing from historical facts, it is apparent that the present injustices and systemic oppression in Africa, and indeed the rest of the so-called Global South are the effects of the continuing domination of systems and structures by neo-colonial ideology. The outcomes of the former are dictated by the interests of the latter. Much of the institutions, structures, and knowledge processes are still to this day designed and function for the purpose of extracting economic value for the richest while the rest are poor and subjugated. Lack of economic independence seems to be eroding the gains of freedom. Unaccountable governance and leadership continues while the comity of nations selectively supports or condemns based on what best serves their interests.

The struggle for decolonisation certainly acknowledges the deep-seated nature of the structures and institutions and the difficulty in eradicating them because they are so intangible and yet their effects are so real, excruciating and long lasting. Perhaps one of the most concrete of the remaining legacies of colonialism are the borders still dividing African countries. On a daily basis, African people struggle to trade across these borders. Maintaining these borders means travelling between African countries remains very difficult with visa restriction and border controls. Not being able to move freely between territories, people in different countries rarely know about one another and this significantly limits solidarity. When something is happening in Togo or Benin, Ghanaians hardly even know of it, nor do they show much solidarity when they do know.

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Borderless Africa: Free movement in Africa is a step towards complete decolonisation

It also limits trade amongst us. Intra-African trade is the lowest among all regions, 15% as opposed to 60% in Europe and 45% in Asia according to UNCTAD estimates. The effects on the African economy are obvious. On the other hand, a lot of studies have shown how free movement can unlock the African economy through increased trade, labour mobility, cross-border infrastructure, and security.Part of decolonisation is to remove these barriers erected between Africans and allow us to express ourselves freely through mobility. An African from Senegal should not need a visa to travel to Tanzania. Likewise, an African from Ghana must not need a visa to travel to South Africa. With free movement, we would be able to move several steps towards total liberation and unification. It will also catalyse trade, employment and boost the economies of Africa. Realising this, the African Union adopted a protocol on free movement in 2018. But it requires 15 ratifications to come into force. So far only four (4) countries have ratified it – Niger, Rwanda, Mali, Sao Tome and Principe. At this rate (that is 1 ratification per year), it will take another decade before the protocol kicks into effect. If we recognise the urgency of decolonisation, then we must not wait upon the snail-paced evolution of history. We must be prepared to give history a revolutionary push. We hope to use the #BorderlessAfrica campaign for that push.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/03/ ... onisation/

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The Plot Against Algeria
MARCH 17, 2023

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The pro-Moroccan lawyer Jesus Sanchez Lambas. Photo: D. R.

By Mohsen Abdelmoumen – Mar 14, 2023

A press release is circulating that attacks Algeria in many Spanish media, such as La Vanguardia, El-Independiente, and in several Spanish websites such as Servimedia and, of course, in the usual propaganda instruments of the Makhzen that never miss a chance to spit their venom on our country.

According to this statement, several EU reports, as well as information leaked by Le Monde and CNN, and a report by the Institute Coordinates of Governance and Applied Economics indicate that “the alliance between Russia, Algeria and Iran to control the Sahel is a source of growing political tension, which is of great concern to the European Union and the United States. According to these reports, “the Algerian regime intends to facilitate the installation of Russian military bases in the Sahel with the help of Iran”.

We quote: “The Algerian regime is reportedly receiving a large supply of drones from Iran, which are going directly to the armed militia of the Polisario Front, a group that has the support of the Algerian authorities in its struggle against Morocco. Iran, which is doing the same by supplying the terrorist group Hezbollah, intends to establish the most radical branch of its Islamism in the Sahel and Sahara, needing the support of the Algerian military establishment.” Also according to the statement, the newspaper Le Monde reportedly published an article indicating that the Algerian government had allowed the Wagner group to enter the Sahel to reach Mali, provoking France’s departure and thwarting the U.S.-led coalition’s efforts to end terrorism in the region. And of course, the communiqué embroiders on the purchase of arms from Russia by Algeria, which would thus finance “Putin’s war” in Ukraine, and on the joint military maneuvers between the two countries.

The scenario of instability
To add another layer to this concerted attack against Algeria, Jesus Sanchez Lambas, a Spanish lawyer, vice-president of the Coordinating Institute of Governance and Applied Economics and member of the Executive Committee of Transparency International, linked to Freedom House and the World Economic Forum, predicts a double scenario of instability that would allow Russia to impose a real “vice” on the European Union with Ukraine in the North and the Sahara in the South, aggravating the energy supply crisis in Europe.

We quote: “While the humanitarian drama in the North focuses all the political and media attention of the United States and the EU, the situation in the South is perceived as something distant and culturally alien to the West. This is a false security in the face of a social, political and military problem that will reach us sooner than expected. The Western powers must anticipate the foreseeable catastrophe by strengthening” – and this is where it gets even more interesting because it includes a dithyrambic panegyric of the rogue entity of Morocco – “their relations with the few reliable partners in the region, like Morocco. It is almost too late”. (https://www.institutocoordenadas.com/es ... 2_102.html )

I would like to ask Jesús Sánchez Lambás, who supposedly fights against corruption in Transparency International, how much is in the pockets of the Makhzen? Dear readers, here is another one who has sampled the jar of jam called Marocgate.

Algeria is not Libya
While the Makhzen is distributing envelopes to buy support for its policy of colonizing Western Sahara and in the process harming Algeria, the tarmac of the Houari-Boumediene airport in Algiers is crowded. Algeria is making a major comeback on the international scene and this disturbs many people, the intentions of the visitors not always being easily discernible at first sight. Nevertheless, we can say without much mistake that most of these visits obey a very precise agenda that is not always friendly, except with regard to representatives of friendly countries, and often aims to promote purely selfish interests.

For Algeria is rich, very rich, in gas, oil, rare earths, gold, iron, materials, water, sun, and territory … Enough to arouse many envies in this period of major crisis that sees Europe in full recession because of its counterproductive sanctions against Russia but also deprived of Russian gas because of the terrorist action of the United States in the Baltic against the Nord Stream pipeline that supplied Germany. Moreover, Algeria does not intend to bend to the diktats of anyone and leads its boat in full independence, rightly believing that it has won its sovereignty at the highest price and admitting no interference in its politics, whether internal or external. However, one cannot rule out the fact that the empire wants the same fate for us as it did for Libya, where the 3,000 leaked emails of Hillary Clinton revealed that the NATO intervention and the assassination of Gaddafi had nothing to do with a desire to establish “democracy” in Libya. Libya’s 143 tons of gold, billions and oil were far more attractive than any Western “humanitarian concerns. Except that Algeria is much tougher than Libya.

“European neo-colonialism for dummies”
We will not enumerate all the visitors who have been jostling each other in Algiers for several months, the list being too long. After Macron came to buy raï tapes in Oran, followed by Borne accompanied by a pleiad of ministers and business leaders, we saw the arrival of military delegations of several nationalities, including British and American, and high-level personalities on the security and diplomatic level, the latest being Bonnie D. Jenkins, assistant to the American Secretary of State Antony Blinken in charge of arms control, who came to consolidate the security agreements between the two states and, incidentally, to organize a “party” in Algiers between the ambassadors of the NATO countries. We had not yet had the pleasure of receiving a gardening specialist. It is now done with the visit of Josep Borrell, head of European “diplomacy” and vice-president of the European Commission, who travels to Algiers this Sunday for a two-day visit. It must be recognized that Borrell has a particular conception of diplomacy and that belongs only to him, which is why we insert quotation marks to his function.

Josep Borrell’s statements deserve to be included in a collection dedicated to his verve and colourful speeches, the title of which would be, “European neo-colonialism for dummies“. For example, the Americans “only had to kill four Indians to get independence,” he said in a speech to students in Madrid in 2018. It would seem that the colonization of America, which was done on the genocide of indigenous peoples, has escaped him. In December 2022, addressing Latin American parliamentarians who have not yet returned: “Like the conquistadores, we must invent a new world.” Or again, in October 2022: “Europe is a garden. The rest of the world… is the jungle. And the jungle can invade the garden. The gardeners must take care of the garden.” What on earth is the socialist Borrell, support of Pedro Sanchez, coming to do in the Algerian “jungle” and why now, at a time when Algeria is considered a major player very important in diplomatic matters on the international scene? Indeed, we do not rule out the hypothesis that it probably played a role in the historic rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and there is also talk of its role in the future settlement of the conflict in Ukraine with the upcoming visit of President Tebboune in Moscow in May.

We remind Josep Borrell of his comments during the freezing of the Friendship Treaty between Algeria and Spain following the political change of heart of Pedro Sanchez with regard to the colonization of Western Sahara, caused, we recall, by the blackmail operated by the Makhzen who had spied on the phones of Sanchez and his Minister of Defense with the Pegasus software. José Manuel Albares, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, had gone to cry in the lap of Borrel and he had said: “The unilateral Algerian act is a violation of the EU-Algeria Association Agreement”, adding that the European Union was “ready to face any type of coercive measure applied to a member state. Nor do we forget the recent partnership agreements between the European Commission and Morocco in the midst of the Marocgate scandal, while an arrest warrant is pending against the Moroccan foreign intelligence chief Mansouri and the Moroccan ambassador Atmoun. We mentioned these agreements in a previous article, where Europe is considering a tripartite partnership with the Zionist entity of Israel and its stooge, the feudal kingdom of Morocco, by extending billions of euros to the latter, without caring in the least about the serious problem of colonization of the Sahrawi territory, since Europe is the first importer of agricultural products from this colonization.

Algeria is not Morocco
Regarding the EU-Algeria agreements, it is clear that they do not serve the interests of Algeria, either they are revised to favor a true win-win partnership and not a game of fools as they are currently, or they are canceled. If Josep Borrell believes that he can come and expose the European demands for a win-lose commercial and energy partnership for the benefit of this arrogant Europe of which he is the proud representative and demand that Morocco be supplied with Algerian gas again, he is very much mistaken. Before expecting anything from Algeria, Mr. Borrell, you will have to realize that Algeria is not Morocco and calm down your ardor of matamore which does not impress anyone here. Do not take us for fools, it will be a fair partnership, otherwise you will return to Brussels empty-handed. As for opening the gas tap to Morocco, you can forget it. We have no reason to do a favor to a thug like Morocco, which seeks only to harm us in every way imaginable, even to the point of claiming our national territory. Stop interfering in Algeria’s affairs! We can’t stand it anymore. Algeria is a sovereign country, a centerpiece of the region with its great army and its free people, whether you like it or not.

And take note also that it is out of the question that Algeria considers any partnership with countries like Spain which participates in the Moroccan colonization plan of Western Sahara, thus opposing the UN resolution, or with France which supports the 5th column and exiles one of its agents from Algeria, and which interviews on the state television channel France 24 the leader of Aqmi, who calls for jihad against Algeria. This last point testifies to the degree of “civilization” of Europe by the propensity of its leaders to support terrorists of all kinds. You who are used to making great speeches and giving lessons in democracy and civilization to the savages of the jungle, could you explain to us why you have not said a word about Marocgate, while your colleague the vice-president of the European Parliament is in prison since December 9 in the company of several MEPs, how strange, all socialist like you.

Josep Borrell represents the incompetent and corrupt European oligarchic caste, like Ursula von der Leyen threatened by the Pfizergate scandal, who prefers to favour the interests of the United States over those of their own people. Your bellicose position towards Russia and your involvement in the conflict in Ukraine will lead you to your ruin, but do not count on Algeria to make up for your shortcomings and repair the damage that your negligence will not fail to cause.

Know that all the schemes, all the plots against Algeria, will fail.

https://orinocotribune.com/the-plot-against-algeria/

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Armed attack leaves at least nine dead in the Congo River

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Since June, Mai-Ndombe province has been the scene of clashes between rival ethnic groups. | Photo: Twitter: @une_cd
Published 18 March 2023

Around 22 people were rescued alive from the armed attack.

An armed attack on a barge on the Congo River left at least nine dead and at least 190 missing in the Republic of Congo.

According to African media, the attack occurred on Tuesday in the Kaba L'école village of the African country, when a group of armed men attacked the boat as it was passing through the river.

The details of the event continue to be confused, without knowing the perpetrators of the attack or their motives, nor the exact number of victims.


Despite the fact that the massacre occurred in the Republic of the Congo, the unfortunate event was denounced by the representative of the Mai-Ndombe province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Moïse Makani.

According to data from Moïse Makani, of the total of some 220 people who were on board the barge, nine were reported dead, 22 survivors and 190 missing.

For his part, the head of the Kwamouth government, Pius Makina, pointed out that the attacked boat was coming from the DRC capital, Kinshasa, when it was attacked from another boat, causing more than 100 people to panic and jump into the river.

Since June, the province of Mai-Ndombe has been the scene of clashes between the Teke ethnic group, who are considered the original inhabitants of villages spread along 200 kilometers of the Congo River, and the Yaka, who settled in the area later.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/republic ... -0009.html

Google Translator

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12 Years Ago NATO Bombed Libya to “Protect Civilians”, Leaving Tens of Thousands Dead and a Country in Ruins
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 18, 2023
Moussa Ibrahim


The Western war machine only served its own interests in destroying a nation that could liberate Africa

On the 19th of March 2011, the NATO bloc began a violent 8-month long military onslaught of Libya, a sovereign African-Union founding member state, which had enjoyed four decades of stability, prosperity and one of the highest Human Development Index (HDI) scores in all of Africa.

NATO’s justification for the aggressive and bloody attack was the now-infamous “protection of civilians” doctrine, formalized under UN Security Council Decree No. 1973. The French Air Force, however, had already initiated a major raid on immobile Libyan Army units. They had already pulled out of the city of Benghazi, a protest hotbed, in a show of goodwill and peaceful intent. More than 400 resting Libyan officers, soldiers, medical and media personnel were massacred without the chance to fight back against an unjustified and undeclared foreign air attack.

Tens of thousands more Libyans would later perish under more than 26,000 air raids, 100 cruise missile attacks and a naval blockade conducted by NATO’s 30-member coalition. Among the victims were a terrifying number of civilians from all walks of life. The number of women and children killed was especially high, as they sought refuge in civilian buildings deliberately targeted by the mighty NATO: including houses, apartment blocks, schools and community centers. As we witnessed time and time again in Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan and Syria, NATO justified these attacks by claiming they were seeking out fighters and weaponry housed in civilian facilities. No evidence has ever been presented.

In the weeks that led up to this aggression, I spoke officially for the Libyan Government in countless international press conferences, media appearances and diplomatic appeals. Before hundreds of international media outlets, I expressed one single demand: that all hostilities cease under the direct supervision of the UN and that the African Union installs an international fact-finding mission to determine who committed what act, paving the way for a national conference of all Libyan parties to the conflict. This single most powerful and earnest appeal was rejected without consideration in Western centers of hegemony and ridiculed in Western media outlets.

The only solutions that were endorsed and praised were more rockets, bombs and the continuous arming of Islamist and tribalist terrorist groups on the ground.

In the years after, “crimes against humanity” charges against the revolutionary government of Libya were either never proven or were shown to have been false. In fact, given its 12 years of total control over Libya (land, resources, institutions and archives), the West has been unable to show the alleged 8,000 victims of rape by the Libyan army, nor the 10,000 “murdered” civilians, nor the neighbourhoods of Tripoli allegedly destroyed by Muammar Gaddafi’s air force, nor the African mercenaries supposedly imported by the Gaddafi government in the first week of the “Libyan Spring” (15-22 February 2011).

The actual “crimes” of the Libyan revolutionary Government, however, were real and consequential: Gaddafi’s Libya was re-shaping the political, economic and cultural context of the African continent in radical and independent ways not seen since the nominal de-colonization of African countries in the 1950s and 1960s.

On September 9, 1999, under the leadership of Gaddafi, the establishment of the African Union was announced in his birthplace, the coastal city of Sirte (the very city in which he would fight his last battle against NATO in 2011). Gaddafi then announced the start of a major revolutionary project for the plundered and exploited continent: building pan-African economic, security and communication institutions with the aim of gaining complete and true independence from the control of the West. The most consequential of these institutions were the African Central Bank (ACB), the African Golden Dinar, the African Gold Reserve, the African Security Council (ASC), the Unified African Army (UAA), the African Parliament, the African Organisation for Natural Resources (AONR), the African Communications Network (ACN) and the African Common Market.


On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s former spokesperson Moussa Ibrahim, 12 years after NATO attacked Libya. He discusses the legacy of chaos and destruction of the US-UK-France-led regime change campaign in Libya and how the West continues to control Libya and provides an exclusive update on Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the former Libyan leader, what his plans are and his current activity in Libya. Moussa Ibrahim goes on to discuss other issues such as the Russia-NATO war in Ukraine and the deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia brokered by China.

Indeed, Gaddafi led the way towards the establishment of some of those institutions, initiated the build-up of the Libyan gold reserve and was on the threshold of issuing the African Golden Dinar, which he considered naming the Afro.

These real on-the-ground projects would have liberated the continent from the dominance of Western centers of power and monopoly, transforming global economic structures and inspiring other regions in the Global South to “unite, organize and fight”.

The Europeans and Americans did warn Gaddafi against his “meddling” in Africa. The US, under an African-American president, hurried to create AfriCom, the American pan-African military force, in 2008. The French followed suit with their deployment of an “anti-terrorism” task force in the Sahel. Moreover, the intensity with which the continent’s riches were stolen increased (especially gold) while the meddling of British, French and American diplomats in the affairs of the African Union and African Parliament also grew exponentially.

The focus of Western mainstream media in the 2000s on a “new and collaborative” spirit in economic relations with Africa was therefore not accidental – it was all as planned and in harmony with the military, economic and political agenda in Western centers of power.

Then, in 2011, utilizing the political turmoil in Tunisia and Egypt, the West encouraged and ordered its agents on the ground in Libya to foment a false revolution in small pockets inside the country. This was spearheaded by the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an infamous Afghani-Libyan terrorist organization with training and weaponry from the American army and “battlefield commanders” trained and exalted by NATO’s top “educational” personnel in the caves of Afghanistan in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The West promised the world democracy, human rights, and prosperity for Libya and the whole Sahel and Sahara region in Africa. Instead, by the 12th anniversary of the NATO onslaught, Libya itself had become a notorious slave market for illegally “imported” African migrants and a battlefield for French-orchestrated African Sahel tribalist conflicts (in Chad, Niger, Mali).

The country that once led Africa’s liberation project now lies in ruins, with 10 foreign-controlled military bases scattered across its territory, hosting more than 20,000 foreign troops and mercenaries, and bearing $576 billion in financial losses since the start of NATO’s intervention.

Over 60,000 additional Libyans have been killed in the ongoing civil conflict, fuelled and maintained by mostly foreign and Western-sponsored forces fighting for their interests and dominance on the Libyan front. All sectors of the Libyan economy and society (education, health, housing, employment and living standards) have been devastated, dismantled and ravaged by 12 years of Western-funded conflict and political turmoil.

As for Africa as a whole, the great African Union has lost its edge after a total freeze on most of the aforementioned “projects of liberation,” from the African Golden Dinar to the Unified African Army. In fact, the West’s exploitative economic, political and military presence in Africa has only increased since the murder of Gaddafi, a true testimony to the very reason he was assassinated.

In the last few weeks, the UN Security Council has appointed the 8th Special Representative to Libya since 2011, Mr. Abdoulaye Bathily. Mr. Bathily has been conducting the same routine visits to the warlords and their militias in Libya, holding the same routine political and press conferences and reiterating the same old Security Council discourse: we are here to bring democracy and prosperity to all Libyans, and we shall defend human rights and protect civilians. Those who oppose this political process will be brought before international justice.

The only problem is that Mr. Bathily is speaking as if this is the first day of the first year of the Libyan tragedy. He does not bother to mention that it is instead the 12th Anniversary of the devastation of a developed, prosperous and stable African nation. Furthermore, he doesn’t bother to highlight the simple fact that foreign military powers and mercenaries are present and active in Libya, something at least acknowledged by his predecessor, Stephanie Williams.

However, there is always hope for the great black continent. The legacy of its great leaders and martyrs from Gamal Nasser to Patrice Lumumba to Kwame Nkrumah to Nelson Mandela continues to inspire African consciousness, struggle and resistance. In the last few months, for example, a major popular movement has been building up in Western Africa to end all Western military presence in the Sahel region, with governments starting to slowly but steadily heed these calls for liberation and sovereignty. Wherever you go in Africa nowadays, you can hear the literal words and viable ideas of Gaddafi coming up in conversations about African liberty, independence and dignity.

In my work with the Libyan Green Resistance and the African popular movements, I am always faced by this question raised by thousands of African freedom fighters: what to do? My answer is always straight and simple to all my African comrades: unite, organize and fight!

Moussa Ibrahim, spokesperson of the Libyan Government and Minister of Media, 2011


https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/03/ ... -in-ruins/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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