Re: Africa
Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2022 3:26 pm
AFRICOM Watch - February 2022
Tunde Osazua 02 Feb 2022
U.S. Army Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander, U.S. Africa Command meets with Ghanaian military leaders after arriving in Ghana as part of four-day trip to West Africa beginning Sept. 20, 2021. (Credit: Africom.mil)
The U.S. has been waging wars in Africa since the 1950s. The creation of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2008 is only the logical development of a process of control meant to deny Africans democracy, self-determination and dignity.
Troops trained by AFRICOM have been behind nine coups d’etat on the African continent in the thirteen years of the military command’s existence. All but one of the G5 Sahel countries have experienced a coup in that period, and the military training that the U.S. and France provide to troops in these countries through the various AFRICOM exercises and the French Foreign Legion among other installations, present a serious concern. A 2017 study using data from 189 countries shows that greater numbers of military officers trained by the U.S. Military increase the probability of a military coup, and as Netfa Freeman wrote previously , AFRICOM serves as a “coup incubator” by emboldening a military class on the African continent that the U.S. can’t control.
The reasoning that the military troops often provide for carrying out coups d’etat, including the recent coup in Burkina Faso, often points to the inability of their comprador heads of state to effectively deal with armed opposition groups in their countries. The U.S./E.U./NATO war on Libya, in which AFRICOM played an important role , was pivotal in the enhancement of the military capabilities of these armed opposition groups and their proliferation across the Sahel. Western imperialist countries supported these groups in Libya, and they are now wreaking havoc in different parts of the continent.
As Burkinabé revolutionary Thomas Sankara once stated, “without patriotic political education, a soldier is only a potential criminal.” The officers involved in the recent coup in Burkina Faso, as well as the eight previous coups d’etat in the region, not only lacked patriotic political education, they participated in military training that came with indoctrination about colonization and the role the U.S., French, and European forces have played in Africa. It is almost impossible for these officers to develop or maintain any revolutionary consciousness.
Though there is a rejection of Western domination by the masses in countries like Mali , Burkina Faso , and Senegal , it is incorrect to assume that these coups d’etat are any threat to Western neo-colonialism. A successful challenge to neo-colonialism would go far beyond an effort from military officers that lacks commitment to genuine anti-imperialism. As Kwame Nkrumah one said, “The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked to the total liberation of the African continent.” A commitment to participatory democratic processes and self-determination is necessary, along with the understanding that African countries must pursue Pan-African unity to defend themselves from foreign domination.
U.S. Out of Africa: Voices from the Struggle
Tunde Osuzua (of the AFRICOM Watch Bulletin (AWB) speaks with Lauren Gould, who is Assistant Professor in Conflict Studies at Utrecht University and the director of the Intimacies of Remote Warfare programme on new strategies of remote warfare across Africa and the Middle East.
AWB: Would you please describe the concept of “liquid warfare” as it relates to U.S. military operations on the African continent?
Lauren Gould: Aiming to define the ‘new newness’ of interventionist warfare, we look to Western state-led operations as a marked shift away from ‘boots on the ground’ deployments towards light-footprint military interventions, involving a combination of drone strikes and airstrikes, special forces, intelligence operatives, private contractors, and military-to-military (M2M) training teams on the ground. Largely, these military interventions (and their lived realities) remain hidden from Western publics. And if they incidentally appear on our screens, the shadowy mix of alliances and actors involved makes it hard to trace lines of responsibility and underlying power constellations. This elusiveness is problematic for a number of reasons. For one, larger audiences are (effectively) confused into indifference, and, importantly, those at the receiving end of the violence are unable to hold governments to account. War is rendered invisible and normalized.
The ‘newness’ of war can be attributed to three developments. First, the horrors of interventionist ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq invoked a sense of risk aversion and war fatigue, ushering in a ‘post-interventionist’ or ‘pull-back’ era. As a reaction, the U.S. and its coalition partners (but also major powers such as Russia and Saudi Arabia) have combined a resort to ‘precision’ airstrikes with a shift to smaller, clandestine, more focused interventions. Second, the turn to military robotics (and drones in particular) is a key feature of interventionist warfare. What is often implied is that somehow new technologies are the drivers behind new forms of warfare. Third, and equally prominent, is the debate on the networked nature of war. Simply put, the argument goes that because the ‘enemies of the state’ are now operating through shadowy networks and cells, the state has to resort to similar tactics. Elements within the U.S. military and related agencies, legitimated (and ‘legalized’) by the War on Terror, have increasingly adopted more networked forms of organization, which has made possible the integration of drones and new technologies into so-called counternetwars, in which ‘hybrid blends of hierarchies and networks … mount strike operations across shadowy transnational battle spaces’. What is in fact implied is that ‘shadow warfare’ results from the state mimicking its enemies.
War is an alternative system of profit, power and protection. Wars are produced; they are made to happen by a diverse and complicated set of actors who may well be achieving their objectives in the midst of what looks like failure and breakdown. The changing nature of interventionist warfare cannot be attributed to reactive impulses or strategies alone. Rather, ‘war fatigue’, ‘remote technology’ and ‘enemy networks’ provide additional conditions of possibility for the spatial and temporal reconfiguration of war. As with the case of AFRICOM, they offer new opportunities to further what the U.S. Department of Defense articulates as “shaping the international security environment in ways that promote and protect U.S. interests.” Paying tribute to Zygmunt Bauman’s liquidity vocabulary and Derek Gregory’s notion of ‘everywhere war’, we use the term ‘liquid warfare’ to highlight how conventional ties between war, space and time have become undone. Liquid warfare is about flexible, open-ended, ‘pop-up’ military interventions, supported by remote technology and reliant on local partnerships and private contractors, through which (coalitions of) parties aim to promote and protect interests. Liquid warfare is thus temporally open-ended and eventful, as well as spatially dispersed and mobile.
AWB: What brought about the “newness” of war?
LG: The origins of the temporal reconfiguration of modern war, and particularly U.S. warfare, can be traced back to the 1950’s. The U.S. doctrine of the past 60 years is that of a long and consistent pattern of military expansionism in the service of empire, which some have termed ‘forever’ or ‘permanent’ war. We have to rethink late modern war not merely in terms of time but also in terms of space and territoriality. Whereas wars in the past were conducted in ‘resolutely territorial terms’, we now have to ‘supplement cartographic reason by other, more labile spatialities’ (Gregory, 2011: 239). War has become mobile. The concept of the battlefield in U.S. doctrine is replaced by a multiscalar, multidimensional battlescape. The geocentric concept of war is now opposed to a target-centered one, attached to the bodies of the enemy prey.
Although the War on Terror is often seen as the starting point of this ‘mobile turn’, we can see the military interventionism that ensued from it as a climactic summation of a longer history of ‘globalizing wars’ in which the goal is not to take over territory but to ‘remove the obstacles on the road to a truly global freedom of economic forces’. The power of the state in late modernity rests upon credit ratings, corporate capacity and global market shares, not on the capture of territory. Control over resources is of key importance, but access is arranged through free trade regimes, leasing and contracting, large scale land purchases, forestry permits, and ‘accumulation by conservation’, rather than territorial conquest. In contrast to the direct colonial era of rule, ascendancy over a territory has ‘ceased to be the stake of the global power struggle’. Today’s wars look like ‘the promotion of global free trade by other means’. This has been labeled ‘military neoliberalism’: a useful shorthand for the increasingly military means whereby the state seeks to make the world ‘safe’ for global capital. What we notice for the case of AFRICOM is that the major technique of interventionism is the rejection not just of geopolitical territorial confinement but also of biopolitical notions of controlling the life and death of populations, along with the related responsibilities and costs of order and nation-building. Instead, what is at its core is the notion of ‘shaping’ – pursued by ‘forward presence’ and ‘forward posture’ in military terms.
We here include the above-mentioned temporal and spatial dimensions in the way we define liquid warfare as a form of military interventionism that shuns direct control of territory and populations and its cumbersome order-building and order-maintaining responsibilities, focusing instead on ‘shaping’ the international security environment through remote technology, flexible operations and M2M partnerships. Key to such an understanding of liquid warfare is its inherently indirect and assembled nature. Because of its reliance on remote management, it works through assemblages of heterogeneous and changing ‘partnerships’, which are often full of friction.
AWB: How does AFRICOM fit into liquid warfare?
LG: The hunt for Joseph Kony, the leader of the LRA rebel movement that was at war with the Ugandan government for over two decades, features as one of the campaigns justifying U.S. extrastate military engagement in Africa. Other more recent examples are ‘destroying’ Al-Shabaab, ‘countering’ Islamic State and AQIM (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), and ‘blunting’ Boko Haram, as well as the open-ended campaign to contain the fallout from the 2011 military intervention that ousted Muammar al-Gaddafi in Libya. These operations are coordinated by AFRICOM. In 2008, AFRICOM became the leading organization responsible for U.S. military and security policy towards Africa. According to its mission statement, AFRICOM ‘builds defense capabilities, responds to crisis, and deters and defeats transnational threats in order to advance U.S. national interests and promote regional security, stability, and prosperity’. The 2011 National Military Strategy stresses the importance of establishing partnerships between the U.S. and African governments to help ‘facilitate the African Union’s many security challenges’. In more unguarded moments, however, officials have been more straightforward: Vice-Admiral Robert Moeller, at a conference in 2008, declared that AFRICOM was about preserving ‘the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market’, while citing terrorism, oil disruption and China as major ‘challenges to U.S. interests’.
The U.S. has been fighting wars in Africa since the 1950s – in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Morocco, Libya and Djibouti, to name but a few countries. In some cases, this has involved overt military operations using U.S. troops, operating from large military bases such as Wheelus Field in Libya (stationing 4600 U.S. personnel) and Kagnew Station in Asmara (home to 5000 U.S. personnel at its peak during the 1960s). U.S. military engagement during the Cold War also involved clandestine military operations and the financing and arming of local forces. Washington’s militarization efforts were accelerated after 9/11, when Africa became the ‘new frontier’ in global counterterrorism operations, and were centralized under AFRICOM in 2008. AFRICOM’s mode of operation represents a change from large deployments of U.S. troops to more flexible and lighter operations. It has neither permanent combat troops assigned to it, nor even any permanent official bases housing U.S. troops in Africa, with the exception of Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti.
Instead, it aims to work through African partners. As Branch explains, ‘AFRICOM is being built through informal base sharing agreements with African states and through the establishment of barebones facilities, so-called “lily-pads” or “cooperative security locations,” which can be converted into functioning U.S. military bases in 24–48 hours’ – something we refer to as ‘pop-up warfare’. Moreover, the focus is on security cooperation, including military-to-military training. According to data supplied by U.S. Special Operations Command, there are 1700 people dedicated to assisting the U.S. military’s African partners, spread out across 20 countries, conducting 96 activities at any given time. AFRICOM claims ‘these activities build strong, enduring partnerships with African nations, regional and international organizations, and other states that are committed to improving security in Africa’. In practice, this means that African troops are doing the actual fighting and dying on the ground while AFRICOM performs most of the support tasks, such as logistics, medical support, surveillance and training.
AWB: Thank you for your time and analysis!
Tunde Osazua is on the Africa Team of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and Coordinator of BAP’s US Out of Africa Network.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/afric ... ruary-2022
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Death toll continues to mount as pro-democracy protests rock Sudan
Amidst this country-wide civil rebellion, the military junta is speedily moving to reinstate the Islamist regime led by former dictator Omar al Bashir, who was ousted in April 2019
February 01, 2022 by Pavan Kulkarni
Massive pro-democracy protests were held on January 30 in Sudan. Photo: Dalia Eltahir/ Twitter
On Sunday, January 30, mass demonstrations against the military junta in Sudan saw hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy protesters take to streets in at least 25 cities and towns around the country, for the 16th time since the coup on October 25, 2021.
Protesters have blocked the Sudan-Egypt border and several connecting highways to disrupt trade with the northern neighbor, whose government is known to be supporting the junta. Further a critical bridge on the highway connecting capital Khartoum and Port Sudan on the Red Sea has also been blockaded.
The security forces violently attacked the protesters on Sunday, injuring at least 180 people with the use of live bullets and tear gas canisters which were shot directly at their heads, the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors (CCSD) said in a statement on Monday.
In central Khartoum, where the junta has banned demonstrations, the security forces opened fire on rallies converging from various neighborhoods towards the presidential palace, which is the seat of coup leader and army chief Abdel Fattal al-Burhan.
27-year-old Mohamed Yousif Ismail died in this attack by security forces after succumbing to chest trauma. “The nature of the injury is yet to be identified. The death toll among civilians has now risen to 79 since the military coup,” the CCSD said.
The pro-democracy protests in Sudan have been met with violent repression by military forces. So far 79 civilians have been killed since the coup in October. Photo: Twitter
Ismail was a member of the Resistance Committee (RC) in the Wad Nubawi neighborhood in Khartoum’s twin city Omdurman. He was a representative of his committee in the Omdurman coordinating body of the RCs.
The mass resistance against the junta is being spearheaded by a network of RCs that were organized in neighborhoods across Sudan during the course of the December Revolution. Later in the evening on Sunday, hundreds attended Ismail’s funeral service and hailed him as a martyr and vowed to continue the struggle. “[E]ven if you kill the entire Sudanese people, you and your dogs will not rule us,” the RCs of Khartoum’s Al Kalakla Al Gubba neighborhood said in a statement addressing Burhan.
Forces also attacked the mass demonstrations in several other States and arrested the protesters, including in Red Sea, Kassala, Gedaref and Blue Nile. Protesters in several cities barricaded neighborhoods to defend from the attacks by the security forces who invaded residential areas.
A police captain reportedly had his fingers amputated after a stun grenade he was hurling at protesters exploded in his hands.
Blockading trade with Egypt
A major escalation in the resistance has been the blockading of trade routes with Egypt in the three northernmost Sudanese States along the Egyptian border. In River Nile State’s capital city Ad-Damir and in Port Sudan in Red Sea State, critical roads used by trucks to carry goods to and from Egypt have been blocked for trade. An important bridge connecting Port Sudan to capital Khartoum was also blocked by the RCs in Atbara city in the River Nile State.
In the neighboring Northern State, the Sheryan El Shima road to the Egyptian border has been blocked by farmers protesting against further hikes in electricity tariffs since January 9. Though the decision to hike the prices was rescinded on January 12, the farmers and the RCs have continued the blockade demanding a fair share of the State’s revenues from mining and agricultural projects in these regions. They are also calling for disinvestment of military-owned companies from these projects.
“We will fully block the road between the two countries and stop the Sudanese exports to Egypt. Roads will be shut from both River Nile State and the Northern State, including the road linking Port Sudan with Khartoum to the south and with Egypt in the north,” the RCs announced earlier on January 30.
The nature of trade between the two countries is characterized by the export of raw materials including livestock and agricultural products by Sudan in exchange for imported valued-added goods from Egypt. This is perceived to be a reason for the rising prices of basic commodities in Sudan and a shirking market in the country for its native farmers.
Import reliance on Egypt has increased drastically over the last two years, much faster than the rate of increase in Sudan’s exports. Value of imports from Egypt has increased from USD 172.3 million in the first six months of 2020 to USD 419 million in the same period of 2021, while Sudanese exports to Egypt increased from USD 119.5 million to USD 299 million, Al-Monitor reported.
Widespread smuggling, allegedly undertaken with the connivance of the state authorities at the Sudan-Egypt border, is thought to be adding to the economic woes of the Sudanese people. The blockades are targeting not only the Sudanese state, but the Egyptian government for its perceived interference to prop up the military junta which has no domestic legitimacy.
Less than a month after the coup, on November 20, 2021, Egypt’s National Organization for Military Production signed a military industrialization cooperation agreement with Sudan’s Military Industry Corporation (MIC). Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi then assured Sudanese coup leader Burhan of full support in a phone call on January 2.
A week after the highway to Egypt was closed by protesters in Sudan’s Northern State, Sisi said in his subsequent statements that Egypt is not backing the coup in Sudan. However, few believe that to be true.
Military junta racing to revive the former Islamist regime?
Since the coup, the junta has taken several measures to reinstate members of Bashir’s Islamist National Congress Party (NCP) who were purged from state structures after his ouster. With resistance to the junta intensifying, it now appears to be in a race against time to complete this process.
On January 24, amid country-wide demonstrations, the junta reinstated 100 civil servants who were removed from their posts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their ties with the NCP.
They had been dismissed from their posts by the Empowerment Removal Committee (ERC) which was set up under popular pressure to purge elements from the NCP from the post-Bashir joint civil-military transitional government (dissolved since the coup).
On January 29, the Holy Quran Society, whose board was dominated by some of the senior-most members of the NCP and through which Bashir’s regime had “funneled millions of dollars” for Islamic radicalization, was reactivated. Its assets seized by the ERC “including a tv channel, 2 newspapers, real-estates and a gold mine” were returned, according to Nada Ali who is closely following the developments in Sudan.
Amid the protests on Sunday, 225 persons sacked by the ERC were reinstated to their former posts in the Zakat Chamber. Tasked with collecting taxes in accordance with Islamic law for the purpose of wealth distribution, this body was known to be among the most corrupt bodies under the NCP’s regime.
On Monday, the unlawfully obtained assets of senior NCP leader and former vice-president of Sudan under Bashir, Ali Osman Taha, were returned to him. These included two houses and a hundred thousand acres of agricultural land that were confiscated by the ERC. In all these cases, the judiciary has been used as an instrument by the junta to pass favorable judgements.
Protesters refuse negotiations with the military
Under these circumstances, calls by the UN as well as the US and its western and MENA regional allies for the pro-democracy movement to hold negotiations with the military have been met with outrage on the streets.
Turning down the invitation to meet with the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS), the RCs of Madani, capital city of El Gezira State, said in a statement last week: “So far, the international community has clearly supported the coup parties, including the European Union and UN entities, including the UNATIMS mission, and they are attempting to set the stage in order to tighten the coup’s military and security grip, whose brute power continues to harvest Sudanese lives.”
Reiterating that the Madani RC abides “by the decision of the revolutionaries that there is no negotiation, no partnership, and no legitimacy,” the statement urged “all the resistance committees to pay attention to the dangers of internal divisions and disagreements caused by such calls”.
Even as the security forces continued their crackdown and arrested around 65 RC members and other lawyers and activists by Tuesday, the coordinating body of RCs in Khartoum announced the ‘Revolution Timetable‘ for February. Country-wide demonstrations and rallies are scheduled on the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th of this month.
Barricading neighborhoods, strikes, smaller demonstrations and various forms of civil disobedience will continue between these days under the leadership of the local RCs and unions. In the meantime, the RCs intend to continue the blockade of Sudan-Egypt roads up north till the fall of the military junta.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/02/01/ ... ock-sudan/
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Eritrea and the Tripartite Alliance in the Horn of Africa
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 02 Feb 2022
Somali President Abdullahi Mohhamed Abdullahi, aka Farmaajo,Eritrean President Isais Afwerki, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali.
The motives behind US aggression towards Ethiopia have not been altogether clear. Is it simply that they lost their long standing puppet government led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front? Competition with China? Or is it the regional Tripartite Agreement between Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia , which poses too much independence from US global hegemony? Ethiopia borders both Eritrea and Somalia, and Eritrea has made its Red Sea ports available to Ethiopia since leaders of the two countries negotiated peace in 2018. Together, Eritrea and Somalia share a combined coastline of 2,672 miles in one of the most strategic corners of the world, on the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean. I spoke to Eritrean American doctor and activist Simon Tesfamariam, co-founder of the #NoMore Movement to end neocolonialism in Africa.
Ann Garrison: Simon, do you think that separating Ethiopia and Eritrea is the primary motivation behind US aggression towards Ethiopia?
Simon Tesfamariam: Absolutely. Think about what's been going on over this past year. They've been doing their best to separate Eritrea and Ethiopia, to isolate Eritrea, and to break the resistance to imperialism in the region.
Eritrea has long been a bastion of resistance against imperialism. I believe that US policymakers think they can win over Ethiopians and win over the Ethiopian government and pry it away from Eritrea. Same thing with Somalia. These are the old divide-and-rule tactics that were used during the colonial era. That's what they're looking to do in the Horn of Africa again.
AG: Tell us why the US is so hostile to Eritrea.
ST: Well, back in the ‘90s, when Eritrea gained its independence, US policymakers went along with it for a while, thinking that Eritrea would essentially play ball, that it would take part in their neoliberal machinations, that it would do their bidding and, despite its leftist stance, maintain their interests in the region.
It didn't take long for them to realize that Eritrea had a truly self-reliant policy. When the World Bank or the IMF would come to Eritrea and try to design its development programs, Eritrea would say, “No, we have our own programs. Thanks but no thanks. We're going to do this our way.”
That type of mentality was not common in Africa at that time, and for a nation to come in and say, “We want to do it our way”—moving toward self reliance—that was seen as a threat by Washington. And so US policymakers sent in the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front , or TPLF, as an attack dog against the ruling party in Eritrea, the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice . And basically, it was a regime change war. They wanted to take over the country and crush its sovereignty, because they felt that Eritrea was too independent of US global hegemony.
In Ethiopia, during the 27 years of TPLF rule, US policymakers had a willing puppet in a client state, and their goal was always to take Eritrea out. Now, despite the failure of decades of US proxy war against Eritrea, they continue to act as though they have no other choice, and they do indeed have no other choice within the logic of empire.
So they're going to continue to try to pry Ethiopia apart from Eritrea. They want to pry the entire region apart from Eritrea. This is an imperial absolute for them, but the strong people-to- people relationship between the Eritreans, Ethiopians, and Somalis at this moment is going to make that impossible.
AG: Okay, as I understand it, Eritrea has taken no IMF or World Bank loans since its independence, and it doesn't get foreign aid from the West. Nevertheless, it's the only country in Africa that’s been able to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goals on education and health care. Is that true?
ST: That's correct. And it did that at a time when it was under sanctions, when you couldn't get basic medicines, you couldn't get ambulances, you couldn't get servers for electronic medical record systems. So it was challenged from every corner, but it was still able to achieve the Millennium Development Goals for health and education. I think that’s a story in itself that needs to be told.
Eritrea is also one of the first countries in the world to get rid of USAID . Most people know that Cuba, Russia, and other countries expelled USAID from their borders, but few know that Eritrea did the same in 2005 or 2006. They got rid of USAID to stop all their covert operations to undermine national unity and sovereignty.
Similarly, like you said, they didn't take handouts or IMF or World Bank loans, which they saw as crippling tools of empire. It's not that Eritrea’s opposed to assistance from outside nations, but it didn’t want the strings attached to aid coming from USAID.
Again, Eritrea has a very independent policy, and has always strived for self-reliance. This is why it sees so much hostility from the United States.
AG: What's the potential in the alliance between Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia?
ST: There's huge potential in solidarity across Africa, like what we saw back in the ‘60s with the rise of Pan-Africanism and the anti-colonial liberation movements that brought many African countries together. The alliance of these three countries bordering one another in the Horn of Africa was formalized in the Joint Declaration on Comprehensive Cooperation Between Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea , also known as the Tripartite Agreement, and it will now be very difficult for the West to break, hard as they’re trying.
The key thing to understand here is the strong people-to-people relationships going on. Somalis, Eritreans, and Ethiopians are now having discussions online and in the streets, getting together and mobilizing on the streets. You have the people of the Horn of Africa at home, the governments at home, and the diasporas all connected, moving towards this common destiny.
AG: And your own online activism, particularly with the #NoMore Movement, has been so threatening to entrenched power that you've been banned from Twitter, right?
ST: That is correct, unfortunately, so has Horn of Africa Hub, New Africa Institute, and other accounts. My personal and professional accounts have both been shut down, and so have any organizational accounts that I had access to. The same has happened to other people within my circle.
Individual accounts of some #NoMore leaders are still up, but how long before they get taken down?
AG: Okay, and just to make sure that we've got this covered, the #NoMore Movement is a movement to end neocolonialism in Africa, particularly focused on the Horn but with Pan-African goals, right?
ST: Yes, but it keeps expanding. We hope to see it become a global movement with African origins. We’re saying no to tools of exploitation—disinformation, division, and war—to move towards collective prosperity across the world. But we can't forget that #NoMore originated in the Horn of Africa.
AG: Ethiopia and Eritrea were at war for nearly two decades, until Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power and negotiated peace. Since then the two nations and peoples seem very closely bonded, and the diasporas who support Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and President Isaias Afwerki rally against US intervention together. Do you think the Ethiopia/Eritrea war, which was really the TPLF/Eritrea war, is over going forward?
ST: US policymakers will make every effort to shatter the peace, but as I said earlier, there are now special relationships growing in the Horn of Africa, and it's not just governments; its entire peoples. The nations, the governments, and the diasporas are all connected at this moment. They feel as though they share a kind of destiny. So if one leader decides to go off and do their own thing, and maybe go in a different direction, the people are going to say #NoMore to that too.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/eritr ... orn-africa
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US approves massive arms sale to Egypt despite deteriorating human rights situation
The USD 2.5 billion arms deal was approved despite calls by rights groups and even some members of Congress for a tougher stance on Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who Donald Trump once called “my favorite dictator”
January 28, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch
12 Super Hercules C-130 aircrafts and other related equipment worth USD 2.2 billion are part of the arms deal . (Photo: AFP)
The United States approved a massive arms deal worth USD 2.5 billion with Egypt on Wednesday, January 26. The deal includes the sale of 12 Super Hercules C-130 aircraft and other related equipment worth USD 2.2 billion, along with an air defense radar system worth USD 355 million. The deal was cleared despite concerns raised by human rights groups and members of the US Congress about the deteriorating human rights situation in Egypt. Several US politicians and rights groups have repeatedly urged the US government to take a tougher stance on the human rights abuses being perpetrated by the Egyptian government under president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
According to reports, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified the US congress about the possible sale on Tuesday. The US state department, in a statement, said, “the proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a major non-NATO ally country that continues to be an important strategic partner in the Middle East. We maintain that our bilateral relationship with Egypt will be stronger, and America’s interests will be better served, through continued US engagement to advance our national security interests, including addressing our human rights concerns.” The US provides Egypt with USD 1.3 billion worth of military aid annually, of which USD 300 million is subject to Egypt fulfilling certain human rights criteria.
Watch | Alaa Abd El-Fattah is not defeated
Previous US administrations of Barack Obama and Donald Trump have waived these restrictions on the military aid to Egypt citing national security interests. Joe Biden, during his campaign, promised to make human rights a priority in his administration when it came to dealing with dictatorial and autocratic regimes. He has also failed to keep this promise, doing only marginally better than his predecessors. His government withheld USD 130 million worth of military aid to Egypt last September subject to improvements in human rights but cleared the USD 170 million out of the earmarked USD 300 million.
Following the approval of the deal this week, a journalist asked the US state department spokesperson, “what is the point of withholding 130 million in foreign military financing when you’re just going to turn around and sell them 2.5 billion in weapons?” The spokesperson had no clear answer.
Recently, gruesome videos have surfaced online showing brutal torture of detainees in a police station in Cairo. Human rights violations have been repeatedly documented since el-Sisi took power in a military coup in 2013. His regime has carried out a systematic campaign of repression of human rights and civil liberties. Thousands of protesters, journalists, human rights defenders, political activists, writers, lawyers and political opponents, including members of the outlawed-Muslim Brotherhood, have been arrested, tortured and persecuted. Many of them face manufactured charges and are undergo ‘show’ trials, most of which end in conviction.
According to estimates by rights groups, more than 60,000 political prisoners are currently being detained in prisons and detention centers around the country. The cases of human rights activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, university student Patrick Zaki, Mada Masr editor Lina Atallah, Palestinian-Egyptian activist Ramy Shaath and US-Egyptian activist Mohammed Soltan have drawn international scrutiny and condemnation.
Most countries, including the US, have turned a blind eye to the abuses taking place in Egypt and have carried on with business as usual.
Six members of the US house of representatives have in a letter to secretary of state Antony Blinken urged the government to reprogram the withheld aid of USD 130 million. The letter says, “we emphasize our expectation that the Administration will reprogram the portion of military aid withheld last year if Egypt fails to comply with the full set of specific human rights benchmarks communicated by the State Department to the Egyptian government. Making clear to Egypt and the world the United States will stand by its commitment to democratic rights and basic freedoms – and adhering to statute – is critical to addressing those very problems.”
Among the various human rights conditions that the US has placed on Egypt for releasing the aid is ending the detention of 16 Egyptian political prisoners. It has also called for closing case 173, a politically motivated case in which 43 foreign and domestic NGO employees were sent to prison and a number of civil society groups were shut down in 2011.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/01/28/ ... situation/
Tunde Osazua 02 Feb 2022
U.S. Army Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander, U.S. Africa Command meets with Ghanaian military leaders after arriving in Ghana as part of four-day trip to West Africa beginning Sept. 20, 2021. (Credit: Africom.mil)
The U.S. has been waging wars in Africa since the 1950s. The creation of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2008 is only the logical development of a process of control meant to deny Africans democracy, self-determination and dignity.
Troops trained by AFRICOM have been behind nine coups d’etat on the African continent in the thirteen years of the military command’s existence. All but one of the G5 Sahel countries have experienced a coup in that period, and the military training that the U.S. and France provide to troops in these countries through the various AFRICOM exercises and the French Foreign Legion among other installations, present a serious concern. A 2017 study using data from 189 countries shows that greater numbers of military officers trained by the U.S. Military increase the probability of a military coup, and as Netfa Freeman wrote previously , AFRICOM serves as a “coup incubator” by emboldening a military class on the African continent that the U.S. can’t control.
The reasoning that the military troops often provide for carrying out coups d’etat, including the recent coup in Burkina Faso, often points to the inability of their comprador heads of state to effectively deal with armed opposition groups in their countries. The U.S./E.U./NATO war on Libya, in which AFRICOM played an important role , was pivotal in the enhancement of the military capabilities of these armed opposition groups and their proliferation across the Sahel. Western imperialist countries supported these groups in Libya, and they are now wreaking havoc in different parts of the continent.
As Burkinabé revolutionary Thomas Sankara once stated, “without patriotic political education, a soldier is only a potential criminal.” The officers involved in the recent coup in Burkina Faso, as well as the eight previous coups d’etat in the region, not only lacked patriotic political education, they participated in military training that came with indoctrination about colonization and the role the U.S., French, and European forces have played in Africa. It is almost impossible for these officers to develop or maintain any revolutionary consciousness.
Though there is a rejection of Western domination by the masses in countries like Mali , Burkina Faso , and Senegal , it is incorrect to assume that these coups d’etat are any threat to Western neo-colonialism. A successful challenge to neo-colonialism would go far beyond an effort from military officers that lacks commitment to genuine anti-imperialism. As Kwame Nkrumah one said, “The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked to the total liberation of the African continent.” A commitment to participatory democratic processes and self-determination is necessary, along with the understanding that African countries must pursue Pan-African unity to defend themselves from foreign domination.
U.S. Out of Africa: Voices from the Struggle
Tunde Osuzua (of the AFRICOM Watch Bulletin (AWB) speaks with Lauren Gould, who is Assistant Professor in Conflict Studies at Utrecht University and the director of the Intimacies of Remote Warfare programme on new strategies of remote warfare across Africa and the Middle East.
AWB: Would you please describe the concept of “liquid warfare” as it relates to U.S. military operations on the African continent?
Lauren Gould: Aiming to define the ‘new newness’ of interventionist warfare, we look to Western state-led operations as a marked shift away from ‘boots on the ground’ deployments towards light-footprint military interventions, involving a combination of drone strikes and airstrikes, special forces, intelligence operatives, private contractors, and military-to-military (M2M) training teams on the ground. Largely, these military interventions (and their lived realities) remain hidden from Western publics. And if they incidentally appear on our screens, the shadowy mix of alliances and actors involved makes it hard to trace lines of responsibility and underlying power constellations. This elusiveness is problematic for a number of reasons. For one, larger audiences are (effectively) confused into indifference, and, importantly, those at the receiving end of the violence are unable to hold governments to account. War is rendered invisible and normalized.
The ‘newness’ of war can be attributed to three developments. First, the horrors of interventionist ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq invoked a sense of risk aversion and war fatigue, ushering in a ‘post-interventionist’ or ‘pull-back’ era. As a reaction, the U.S. and its coalition partners (but also major powers such as Russia and Saudi Arabia) have combined a resort to ‘precision’ airstrikes with a shift to smaller, clandestine, more focused interventions. Second, the turn to military robotics (and drones in particular) is a key feature of interventionist warfare. What is often implied is that somehow new technologies are the drivers behind new forms of warfare. Third, and equally prominent, is the debate on the networked nature of war. Simply put, the argument goes that because the ‘enemies of the state’ are now operating through shadowy networks and cells, the state has to resort to similar tactics. Elements within the U.S. military and related agencies, legitimated (and ‘legalized’) by the War on Terror, have increasingly adopted more networked forms of organization, which has made possible the integration of drones and new technologies into so-called counternetwars, in which ‘hybrid blends of hierarchies and networks … mount strike operations across shadowy transnational battle spaces’. What is in fact implied is that ‘shadow warfare’ results from the state mimicking its enemies.
War is an alternative system of profit, power and protection. Wars are produced; they are made to happen by a diverse and complicated set of actors who may well be achieving their objectives in the midst of what looks like failure and breakdown. The changing nature of interventionist warfare cannot be attributed to reactive impulses or strategies alone. Rather, ‘war fatigue’, ‘remote technology’ and ‘enemy networks’ provide additional conditions of possibility for the spatial and temporal reconfiguration of war. As with the case of AFRICOM, they offer new opportunities to further what the U.S. Department of Defense articulates as “shaping the international security environment in ways that promote and protect U.S. interests.” Paying tribute to Zygmunt Bauman’s liquidity vocabulary and Derek Gregory’s notion of ‘everywhere war’, we use the term ‘liquid warfare’ to highlight how conventional ties between war, space and time have become undone. Liquid warfare is about flexible, open-ended, ‘pop-up’ military interventions, supported by remote technology and reliant on local partnerships and private contractors, through which (coalitions of) parties aim to promote and protect interests. Liquid warfare is thus temporally open-ended and eventful, as well as spatially dispersed and mobile.
AWB: What brought about the “newness” of war?
LG: The origins of the temporal reconfiguration of modern war, and particularly U.S. warfare, can be traced back to the 1950’s. The U.S. doctrine of the past 60 years is that of a long and consistent pattern of military expansionism in the service of empire, which some have termed ‘forever’ or ‘permanent’ war. We have to rethink late modern war not merely in terms of time but also in terms of space and territoriality. Whereas wars in the past were conducted in ‘resolutely territorial terms’, we now have to ‘supplement cartographic reason by other, more labile spatialities’ (Gregory, 2011: 239). War has become mobile. The concept of the battlefield in U.S. doctrine is replaced by a multiscalar, multidimensional battlescape. The geocentric concept of war is now opposed to a target-centered one, attached to the bodies of the enemy prey.
Although the War on Terror is often seen as the starting point of this ‘mobile turn’, we can see the military interventionism that ensued from it as a climactic summation of a longer history of ‘globalizing wars’ in which the goal is not to take over territory but to ‘remove the obstacles on the road to a truly global freedom of economic forces’. The power of the state in late modernity rests upon credit ratings, corporate capacity and global market shares, not on the capture of territory. Control over resources is of key importance, but access is arranged through free trade regimes, leasing and contracting, large scale land purchases, forestry permits, and ‘accumulation by conservation’, rather than territorial conquest. In contrast to the direct colonial era of rule, ascendancy over a territory has ‘ceased to be the stake of the global power struggle’. Today’s wars look like ‘the promotion of global free trade by other means’. This has been labeled ‘military neoliberalism’: a useful shorthand for the increasingly military means whereby the state seeks to make the world ‘safe’ for global capital. What we notice for the case of AFRICOM is that the major technique of interventionism is the rejection not just of geopolitical territorial confinement but also of biopolitical notions of controlling the life and death of populations, along with the related responsibilities and costs of order and nation-building. Instead, what is at its core is the notion of ‘shaping’ – pursued by ‘forward presence’ and ‘forward posture’ in military terms.
We here include the above-mentioned temporal and spatial dimensions in the way we define liquid warfare as a form of military interventionism that shuns direct control of territory and populations and its cumbersome order-building and order-maintaining responsibilities, focusing instead on ‘shaping’ the international security environment through remote technology, flexible operations and M2M partnerships. Key to such an understanding of liquid warfare is its inherently indirect and assembled nature. Because of its reliance on remote management, it works through assemblages of heterogeneous and changing ‘partnerships’, which are often full of friction.
AWB: How does AFRICOM fit into liquid warfare?
LG: The hunt for Joseph Kony, the leader of the LRA rebel movement that was at war with the Ugandan government for over two decades, features as one of the campaigns justifying U.S. extrastate military engagement in Africa. Other more recent examples are ‘destroying’ Al-Shabaab, ‘countering’ Islamic State and AQIM (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), and ‘blunting’ Boko Haram, as well as the open-ended campaign to contain the fallout from the 2011 military intervention that ousted Muammar al-Gaddafi in Libya. These operations are coordinated by AFRICOM. In 2008, AFRICOM became the leading organization responsible for U.S. military and security policy towards Africa. According to its mission statement, AFRICOM ‘builds defense capabilities, responds to crisis, and deters and defeats transnational threats in order to advance U.S. national interests and promote regional security, stability, and prosperity’. The 2011 National Military Strategy stresses the importance of establishing partnerships between the U.S. and African governments to help ‘facilitate the African Union’s many security challenges’. In more unguarded moments, however, officials have been more straightforward: Vice-Admiral Robert Moeller, at a conference in 2008, declared that AFRICOM was about preserving ‘the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market’, while citing terrorism, oil disruption and China as major ‘challenges to U.S. interests’.
The U.S. has been fighting wars in Africa since the 1950s – in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Morocco, Libya and Djibouti, to name but a few countries. In some cases, this has involved overt military operations using U.S. troops, operating from large military bases such as Wheelus Field in Libya (stationing 4600 U.S. personnel) and Kagnew Station in Asmara (home to 5000 U.S. personnel at its peak during the 1960s). U.S. military engagement during the Cold War also involved clandestine military operations and the financing and arming of local forces. Washington’s militarization efforts were accelerated after 9/11, when Africa became the ‘new frontier’ in global counterterrorism operations, and were centralized under AFRICOM in 2008. AFRICOM’s mode of operation represents a change from large deployments of U.S. troops to more flexible and lighter operations. It has neither permanent combat troops assigned to it, nor even any permanent official bases housing U.S. troops in Africa, with the exception of Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti.
Instead, it aims to work through African partners. As Branch explains, ‘AFRICOM is being built through informal base sharing agreements with African states and through the establishment of barebones facilities, so-called “lily-pads” or “cooperative security locations,” which can be converted into functioning U.S. military bases in 24–48 hours’ – something we refer to as ‘pop-up warfare’. Moreover, the focus is on security cooperation, including military-to-military training. According to data supplied by U.S. Special Operations Command, there are 1700 people dedicated to assisting the U.S. military’s African partners, spread out across 20 countries, conducting 96 activities at any given time. AFRICOM claims ‘these activities build strong, enduring partnerships with African nations, regional and international organizations, and other states that are committed to improving security in Africa’. In practice, this means that African troops are doing the actual fighting and dying on the ground while AFRICOM performs most of the support tasks, such as logistics, medical support, surveillance and training.
AWB: Thank you for your time and analysis!
Tunde Osazua is on the Africa Team of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and Coordinator of BAP’s US Out of Africa Network.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/afric ... ruary-2022
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Death toll continues to mount as pro-democracy protests rock Sudan
Amidst this country-wide civil rebellion, the military junta is speedily moving to reinstate the Islamist regime led by former dictator Omar al Bashir, who was ousted in April 2019
February 01, 2022 by Pavan Kulkarni
Massive pro-democracy protests were held on January 30 in Sudan. Photo: Dalia Eltahir/ Twitter
On Sunday, January 30, mass demonstrations against the military junta in Sudan saw hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy protesters take to streets in at least 25 cities and towns around the country, for the 16th time since the coup on October 25, 2021.
Protesters have blocked the Sudan-Egypt border and several connecting highways to disrupt trade with the northern neighbor, whose government is known to be supporting the junta. Further a critical bridge on the highway connecting capital Khartoum and Port Sudan on the Red Sea has also been blockaded.
The security forces violently attacked the protesters on Sunday, injuring at least 180 people with the use of live bullets and tear gas canisters which were shot directly at their heads, the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors (CCSD) said in a statement on Monday.
In central Khartoum, where the junta has banned demonstrations, the security forces opened fire on rallies converging from various neighborhoods towards the presidential palace, which is the seat of coup leader and army chief Abdel Fattal al-Burhan.
27-year-old Mohamed Yousif Ismail died in this attack by security forces after succumbing to chest trauma. “The nature of the injury is yet to be identified. The death toll among civilians has now risen to 79 since the military coup,” the CCSD said.
The pro-democracy protests in Sudan have been met with violent repression by military forces. So far 79 civilians have been killed since the coup in October. Photo: Twitter
Ismail was a member of the Resistance Committee (RC) in the Wad Nubawi neighborhood in Khartoum’s twin city Omdurman. He was a representative of his committee in the Omdurman coordinating body of the RCs.
The mass resistance against the junta is being spearheaded by a network of RCs that were organized in neighborhoods across Sudan during the course of the December Revolution. Later in the evening on Sunday, hundreds attended Ismail’s funeral service and hailed him as a martyr and vowed to continue the struggle. “[E]ven if you kill the entire Sudanese people, you and your dogs will not rule us,” the RCs of Khartoum’s Al Kalakla Al Gubba neighborhood said in a statement addressing Burhan.
Forces also attacked the mass demonstrations in several other States and arrested the protesters, including in Red Sea, Kassala, Gedaref and Blue Nile. Protesters in several cities barricaded neighborhoods to defend from the attacks by the security forces who invaded residential areas.
A police captain reportedly had his fingers amputated after a stun grenade he was hurling at protesters exploded in his hands.
Blockading trade with Egypt
A major escalation in the resistance has been the blockading of trade routes with Egypt in the three northernmost Sudanese States along the Egyptian border. In River Nile State’s capital city Ad-Damir and in Port Sudan in Red Sea State, critical roads used by trucks to carry goods to and from Egypt have been blocked for trade. An important bridge connecting Port Sudan to capital Khartoum was also blocked by the RCs in Atbara city in the River Nile State.
In the neighboring Northern State, the Sheryan El Shima road to the Egyptian border has been blocked by farmers protesting against further hikes in electricity tariffs since January 9. Though the decision to hike the prices was rescinded on January 12, the farmers and the RCs have continued the blockade demanding a fair share of the State’s revenues from mining and agricultural projects in these regions. They are also calling for disinvestment of military-owned companies from these projects.
“We will fully block the road between the two countries and stop the Sudanese exports to Egypt. Roads will be shut from both River Nile State and the Northern State, including the road linking Port Sudan with Khartoum to the south and with Egypt in the north,” the RCs announced earlier on January 30.
The nature of trade between the two countries is characterized by the export of raw materials including livestock and agricultural products by Sudan in exchange for imported valued-added goods from Egypt. This is perceived to be a reason for the rising prices of basic commodities in Sudan and a shirking market in the country for its native farmers.
Import reliance on Egypt has increased drastically over the last two years, much faster than the rate of increase in Sudan’s exports. Value of imports from Egypt has increased from USD 172.3 million in the first six months of 2020 to USD 419 million in the same period of 2021, while Sudanese exports to Egypt increased from USD 119.5 million to USD 299 million, Al-Monitor reported.
Widespread smuggling, allegedly undertaken with the connivance of the state authorities at the Sudan-Egypt border, is thought to be adding to the economic woes of the Sudanese people. The blockades are targeting not only the Sudanese state, but the Egyptian government for its perceived interference to prop up the military junta which has no domestic legitimacy.
Less than a month after the coup, on November 20, 2021, Egypt’s National Organization for Military Production signed a military industrialization cooperation agreement with Sudan’s Military Industry Corporation (MIC). Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi then assured Sudanese coup leader Burhan of full support in a phone call on January 2.
A week after the highway to Egypt was closed by protesters in Sudan’s Northern State, Sisi said in his subsequent statements that Egypt is not backing the coup in Sudan. However, few believe that to be true.
Military junta racing to revive the former Islamist regime?
Since the coup, the junta has taken several measures to reinstate members of Bashir’s Islamist National Congress Party (NCP) who were purged from state structures after his ouster. With resistance to the junta intensifying, it now appears to be in a race against time to complete this process.
On January 24, amid country-wide demonstrations, the junta reinstated 100 civil servants who were removed from their posts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their ties with the NCP.
They had been dismissed from their posts by the Empowerment Removal Committee (ERC) which was set up under popular pressure to purge elements from the NCP from the post-Bashir joint civil-military transitional government (dissolved since the coup).
On January 29, the Holy Quran Society, whose board was dominated by some of the senior-most members of the NCP and through which Bashir’s regime had “funneled millions of dollars” for Islamic radicalization, was reactivated. Its assets seized by the ERC “including a tv channel, 2 newspapers, real-estates and a gold mine” were returned, according to Nada Ali who is closely following the developments in Sudan.
Amid the protests on Sunday, 225 persons sacked by the ERC were reinstated to their former posts in the Zakat Chamber. Tasked with collecting taxes in accordance with Islamic law for the purpose of wealth distribution, this body was known to be among the most corrupt bodies under the NCP’s regime.
On Monday, the unlawfully obtained assets of senior NCP leader and former vice-president of Sudan under Bashir, Ali Osman Taha, were returned to him. These included two houses and a hundred thousand acres of agricultural land that were confiscated by the ERC. In all these cases, the judiciary has been used as an instrument by the junta to pass favorable judgements.
Protesters refuse negotiations with the military
Under these circumstances, calls by the UN as well as the US and its western and MENA regional allies for the pro-democracy movement to hold negotiations with the military have been met with outrage on the streets.
Turning down the invitation to meet with the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS), the RCs of Madani, capital city of El Gezira State, said in a statement last week: “So far, the international community has clearly supported the coup parties, including the European Union and UN entities, including the UNATIMS mission, and they are attempting to set the stage in order to tighten the coup’s military and security grip, whose brute power continues to harvest Sudanese lives.”
Reiterating that the Madani RC abides “by the decision of the revolutionaries that there is no negotiation, no partnership, and no legitimacy,” the statement urged “all the resistance committees to pay attention to the dangers of internal divisions and disagreements caused by such calls”.
Even as the security forces continued their crackdown and arrested around 65 RC members and other lawyers and activists by Tuesday, the coordinating body of RCs in Khartoum announced the ‘Revolution Timetable‘ for February. Country-wide demonstrations and rallies are scheduled on the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th of this month.
Barricading neighborhoods, strikes, smaller demonstrations and various forms of civil disobedience will continue between these days under the leadership of the local RCs and unions. In the meantime, the RCs intend to continue the blockade of Sudan-Egypt roads up north till the fall of the military junta.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/02/01/ ... ock-sudan/
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Eritrea and the Tripartite Alliance in the Horn of Africa
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 02 Feb 2022
Somali President Abdullahi Mohhamed Abdullahi, aka Farmaajo,Eritrean President Isais Afwerki, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali.
The motives behind US aggression towards Ethiopia have not been altogether clear. Is it simply that they lost their long standing puppet government led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front? Competition with China? Or is it the regional Tripartite Agreement between Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia , which poses too much independence from US global hegemony? Ethiopia borders both Eritrea and Somalia, and Eritrea has made its Red Sea ports available to Ethiopia since leaders of the two countries negotiated peace in 2018. Together, Eritrea and Somalia share a combined coastline of 2,672 miles in one of the most strategic corners of the world, on the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean. I spoke to Eritrean American doctor and activist Simon Tesfamariam, co-founder of the #NoMore Movement to end neocolonialism in Africa.
Ann Garrison: Simon, do you think that separating Ethiopia and Eritrea is the primary motivation behind US aggression towards Ethiopia?
Simon Tesfamariam: Absolutely. Think about what's been going on over this past year. They've been doing their best to separate Eritrea and Ethiopia, to isolate Eritrea, and to break the resistance to imperialism in the region.
Eritrea has long been a bastion of resistance against imperialism. I believe that US policymakers think they can win over Ethiopians and win over the Ethiopian government and pry it away from Eritrea. Same thing with Somalia. These are the old divide-and-rule tactics that were used during the colonial era. That's what they're looking to do in the Horn of Africa again.
AG: Tell us why the US is so hostile to Eritrea.
ST: Well, back in the ‘90s, when Eritrea gained its independence, US policymakers went along with it for a while, thinking that Eritrea would essentially play ball, that it would take part in their neoliberal machinations, that it would do their bidding and, despite its leftist stance, maintain their interests in the region.
It didn't take long for them to realize that Eritrea had a truly self-reliant policy. When the World Bank or the IMF would come to Eritrea and try to design its development programs, Eritrea would say, “No, we have our own programs. Thanks but no thanks. We're going to do this our way.”
That type of mentality was not common in Africa at that time, and for a nation to come in and say, “We want to do it our way”—moving toward self reliance—that was seen as a threat by Washington. And so US policymakers sent in the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front , or TPLF, as an attack dog against the ruling party in Eritrea, the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice . And basically, it was a regime change war. They wanted to take over the country and crush its sovereignty, because they felt that Eritrea was too independent of US global hegemony.
In Ethiopia, during the 27 years of TPLF rule, US policymakers had a willing puppet in a client state, and their goal was always to take Eritrea out. Now, despite the failure of decades of US proxy war against Eritrea, they continue to act as though they have no other choice, and they do indeed have no other choice within the logic of empire.
So they're going to continue to try to pry Ethiopia apart from Eritrea. They want to pry the entire region apart from Eritrea. This is an imperial absolute for them, but the strong people-to- people relationship between the Eritreans, Ethiopians, and Somalis at this moment is going to make that impossible.
AG: Okay, as I understand it, Eritrea has taken no IMF or World Bank loans since its independence, and it doesn't get foreign aid from the West. Nevertheless, it's the only country in Africa that’s been able to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goals on education and health care. Is that true?
ST: That's correct. And it did that at a time when it was under sanctions, when you couldn't get basic medicines, you couldn't get ambulances, you couldn't get servers for electronic medical record systems. So it was challenged from every corner, but it was still able to achieve the Millennium Development Goals for health and education. I think that’s a story in itself that needs to be told.
Eritrea is also one of the first countries in the world to get rid of USAID . Most people know that Cuba, Russia, and other countries expelled USAID from their borders, but few know that Eritrea did the same in 2005 or 2006. They got rid of USAID to stop all their covert operations to undermine national unity and sovereignty.
Similarly, like you said, they didn't take handouts or IMF or World Bank loans, which they saw as crippling tools of empire. It's not that Eritrea’s opposed to assistance from outside nations, but it didn’t want the strings attached to aid coming from USAID.
Again, Eritrea has a very independent policy, and has always strived for self-reliance. This is why it sees so much hostility from the United States.
AG: What's the potential in the alliance between Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia?
ST: There's huge potential in solidarity across Africa, like what we saw back in the ‘60s with the rise of Pan-Africanism and the anti-colonial liberation movements that brought many African countries together. The alliance of these three countries bordering one another in the Horn of Africa was formalized in the Joint Declaration on Comprehensive Cooperation Between Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea , also known as the Tripartite Agreement, and it will now be very difficult for the West to break, hard as they’re trying.
The key thing to understand here is the strong people-to-people relationships going on. Somalis, Eritreans, and Ethiopians are now having discussions online and in the streets, getting together and mobilizing on the streets. You have the people of the Horn of Africa at home, the governments at home, and the diasporas all connected, moving towards this common destiny.
AG: And your own online activism, particularly with the #NoMore Movement, has been so threatening to entrenched power that you've been banned from Twitter, right?
ST: That is correct, unfortunately, so has Horn of Africa Hub, New Africa Institute, and other accounts. My personal and professional accounts have both been shut down, and so have any organizational accounts that I had access to. The same has happened to other people within my circle.
Individual accounts of some #NoMore leaders are still up, but how long before they get taken down?
AG: Okay, and just to make sure that we've got this covered, the #NoMore Movement is a movement to end neocolonialism in Africa, particularly focused on the Horn but with Pan-African goals, right?
ST: Yes, but it keeps expanding. We hope to see it become a global movement with African origins. We’re saying no to tools of exploitation—disinformation, division, and war—to move towards collective prosperity across the world. But we can't forget that #NoMore originated in the Horn of Africa.
AG: Ethiopia and Eritrea were at war for nearly two decades, until Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power and negotiated peace. Since then the two nations and peoples seem very closely bonded, and the diasporas who support Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and President Isaias Afwerki rally against US intervention together. Do you think the Ethiopia/Eritrea war, which was really the TPLF/Eritrea war, is over going forward?
ST: US policymakers will make every effort to shatter the peace, but as I said earlier, there are now special relationships growing in the Horn of Africa, and it's not just governments; its entire peoples. The nations, the governments, and the diasporas are all connected at this moment. They feel as though they share a kind of destiny. So if one leader decides to go off and do their own thing, and maybe go in a different direction, the people are going to say #NoMore to that too.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/eritr ... orn-africa
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US approves massive arms sale to Egypt despite deteriorating human rights situation
The USD 2.5 billion arms deal was approved despite calls by rights groups and even some members of Congress for a tougher stance on Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who Donald Trump once called “my favorite dictator”
January 28, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch
12 Super Hercules C-130 aircrafts and other related equipment worth USD 2.2 billion are part of the arms deal . (Photo: AFP)
The United States approved a massive arms deal worth USD 2.5 billion with Egypt on Wednesday, January 26. The deal includes the sale of 12 Super Hercules C-130 aircraft and other related equipment worth USD 2.2 billion, along with an air defense radar system worth USD 355 million. The deal was cleared despite concerns raised by human rights groups and members of the US Congress about the deteriorating human rights situation in Egypt. Several US politicians and rights groups have repeatedly urged the US government to take a tougher stance on the human rights abuses being perpetrated by the Egyptian government under president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
According to reports, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified the US congress about the possible sale on Tuesday. The US state department, in a statement, said, “the proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a major non-NATO ally country that continues to be an important strategic partner in the Middle East. We maintain that our bilateral relationship with Egypt will be stronger, and America’s interests will be better served, through continued US engagement to advance our national security interests, including addressing our human rights concerns.” The US provides Egypt with USD 1.3 billion worth of military aid annually, of which USD 300 million is subject to Egypt fulfilling certain human rights criteria.
Watch | Alaa Abd El-Fattah is not defeated
Previous US administrations of Barack Obama and Donald Trump have waived these restrictions on the military aid to Egypt citing national security interests. Joe Biden, during his campaign, promised to make human rights a priority in his administration when it came to dealing with dictatorial and autocratic regimes. He has also failed to keep this promise, doing only marginally better than his predecessors. His government withheld USD 130 million worth of military aid to Egypt last September subject to improvements in human rights but cleared the USD 170 million out of the earmarked USD 300 million.
Following the approval of the deal this week, a journalist asked the US state department spokesperson, “what is the point of withholding 130 million in foreign military financing when you’re just going to turn around and sell them 2.5 billion in weapons?” The spokesperson had no clear answer.
Recently, gruesome videos have surfaced online showing brutal torture of detainees in a police station in Cairo. Human rights violations have been repeatedly documented since el-Sisi took power in a military coup in 2013. His regime has carried out a systematic campaign of repression of human rights and civil liberties. Thousands of protesters, journalists, human rights defenders, political activists, writers, lawyers and political opponents, including members of the outlawed-Muslim Brotherhood, have been arrested, tortured and persecuted. Many of them face manufactured charges and are undergo ‘show’ trials, most of which end in conviction.
According to estimates by rights groups, more than 60,000 political prisoners are currently being detained in prisons and detention centers around the country. The cases of human rights activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, university student Patrick Zaki, Mada Masr editor Lina Atallah, Palestinian-Egyptian activist Ramy Shaath and US-Egyptian activist Mohammed Soltan have drawn international scrutiny and condemnation.
Most countries, including the US, have turned a blind eye to the abuses taking place in Egypt and have carried on with business as usual.
Six members of the US house of representatives have in a letter to secretary of state Antony Blinken urged the government to reprogram the withheld aid of USD 130 million. The letter says, “we emphasize our expectation that the Administration will reprogram the portion of military aid withheld last year if Egypt fails to comply with the full set of specific human rights benchmarks communicated by the State Department to the Egyptian government. Making clear to Egypt and the world the United States will stand by its commitment to democratic rights and basic freedoms – and adhering to statute – is critical to addressing those very problems.”
Among the various human rights conditions that the US has placed on Egypt for releasing the aid is ending the detention of 16 Egyptian political prisoners. It has also called for closing case 173, a politically motivated case in which 43 foreign and domestic NGO employees were sent to prison and a number of civil society groups were shut down in 2011.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/01/28/ ... situation/