\n| “The United States Africa Command, also known as AFRICOM, is a new U.S. military headquarters devoted only to Africa. It is one of the U.S. Defense Department\u2019s six regional headquarters. Command officials will work with African partners to achieve a more stable environment in which political and economic growth can take place.”(Text & photo – U.S. Department of Defense website)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n Over 43 people have been killed in the Somali capital of Mogadishu in the past two days in fighting between Shabab (al-Shabaab) insurgent forces, who on March 10 advanced to within one mile of the nation\u2019s presidential palace, and troops of the U.S.-backed Transitional Federal Government. The fighting has just begun.<\/p>\n The last ambassador of the United States to Somalia (1994-1995), Daniel H. Simpson, penned a column for the\u00a0Pittsburgh Post-Gazette\u00a0on March 10 in which which he posed the question \u201cwhy, apart from the only lightly documented charge of Islamic extremism among the Shabab, is the United States reengaging in Somalia at this time?\u201d<\/p>\n He answered it in stating \u201cPart of the reason is because the United States has its only base in Africa up the coast from Mogadishu, in Djibouti, the former French Somaliland. The U.S. Africa Command was established there in 2008, and, absent the willingness of other African countries to host it, the base in Djibouti became the headquarters for U.S. troops and fighter bombers in Africa.<\/p>\n \u201cFlush with money, in spite of the expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department of Defense obviously feels itself in a position to undertake military action in Africa, in Somalia.\u201d1<\/sup><\/p>\nFulfilling its appointed role, the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0leaked U.S. military plans for the current offensive in Somalia on March 5 in a report titled \u201cU.S. Aiding Somalia in Its Plan to Retake Its Capital.\u201d (Note that the Transitional Federal Government is presented as Somalia itself and Mogadishu as its capital.)<\/p>\n The tone of the feature was of course one of approval and endorsement of the Pentagon\u2019s rationale for directly intervening in Somalia at a level not seen since 1993 and support for proxy actions last witnessed with the invasion by Ethiopia in 2006. The report began with a description of a military surveillance plane circling over the Somali capital and a quote from the new chief of staff of the nation\u2019s armed forces, General Mohamed Gelle Kahiye: \u201cIt\u2019s the Americans. They\u2019re helping us.\u201d<\/p>\n Afterward \u201cAn American official in Washington, who said he was not authorized to speak publicly\u201d \u2013 a hallmark of the American free press \u2013 was, if not identified, quoted as maintaining that U.S. covert operations were planned if not already underway and \u201cWhat you\u2019re likely to see is airstrikes and Special Ops moving in, hitting and getting out.\u201d2<\/sup><\/p>\nThe\u00a0New York Times\u00a0also provided background information regarding the current offensive:<\/p>\n \u201cOver the past several months, American advisers have helped supervise the training of the Somali forces to be deployed in the offensive\u2026.The Americans have provided covert training to Somali intelligence officers, logistical support to the peacekeepers, fuel for the maneuvers, surveillance information about insurgent positions and money for bullets and guns.\u201d3<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\nFour days later General William (\u201cKip\u201d) Ward, commander of United States Africa Command (AFRICOM), testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee.<\/p>\n In his introductory remarks the chairman of the committee, Senator Carl Levin, reinforced recent American attempts to expand the scope of the deepening Afghanistan-Pakistan war, the deadliest and lengthiest in the world, to the west and south in stating that \u201cal Qaeda and violent extremists who share their ideology are not just located in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region but in places like Somalia, Mali, Nigeria and Niger.\u201d4<\/sup><\/p>\nIn his formal report Ward pursued a similar tact and expanded the Pentagon\u2019s \u201ccounter-terrorism\u201d (CT) area of responsibility yet further from South Asia: \u201cU.S. Africa Command has focused the majority of its CT capacity building activities in East Africa on Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Uganda, which \u2013 aside from Somalia \u2013 are the countries directly threatened by terrorists.\u201d5<\/sup><\/p>\nHe also spoke of the current offensive by \u201cthe transition government to reclaim parts of Mogadishu,\u201d stating \u201cI think it\u2019s something that we would look to do and support.\u201d6<\/sup><\/p>\nSenator Levin and General Ward included eight African nations in the broader Afghan war category of Operation Enduring Freedom, countries from the far northeast of the continent (the Horn of Africa) to the far west (the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea). The U.S. military has already been involved in counterinsurgency operations in Mali and Niger against ethnic Tuareg rebels, who have no conceivable ties to al-Qaeda, not that one would know that from Levin\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/axisoflogic.com\/artman\/uploads\/1\/2_13.jpg\") <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n| “In an exercise last month near Bamako, Mali, American troops helped soldiers from Mali and Senegal in West Africa learn to guard their borders against infiltration by Islamic militants.”\u00a0(The New York Times, December 12, 2008.)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n In between South Asia and Africa lies Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula. The\u00a0New York Times\u00a0report cited earlier reminded readers that \u201cThe United States is increasingly concerned about the link between Somalia and Yemen.\u201d Indeed as Levin\u2019s comments quoted above establish, Washington (along with its NATO allies) is forging an expanded war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and into Africa.7<\/sup><\/p>\nThat extension of the South Asia war has not gone unobserved in world capitals, and earlier this year Russian political analyst Andrei Fedyashin commented: \u201cAdding up all four fronts \u2013 if the United States ventured an attack on Yemen and Somalia \u2013 America would have to invade a territory equal to three-fourths of Western Europe; and it is hardly strong enough for that.\u201d8<\/sup><\/p>\nStrong enough or not, that is just what the White House and the Pentagon are doing. The only other objection that can be raised to the above author\u2019s description is that it too severely narrows the intended battlefront.<\/p>\n In the past six months Somali troops have been sent to Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda for combat training and \u201cmost are now back in the capital, waiting to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition, \u201cThere are also about 5,000 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers, with 1,700 more on their way, and they are expected to play a vital role in backing up advancing Somali forces.\u201d9<\/sup><\/p>\nLast October the U.S. led ten days of military exercises in Uganda \u2013 Natural Fire 10 \u2013 with 450 American troops and over 550 from Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. The U.S. soldiers were deployed from Camp Lemonier (Lemonnier) in Djibouti, home to the Pentagon\u2019s Joint Task Force\/Horn of Africa and over 2,000 U.S. forces. The\u00a0de facto\u00a0headquarters of AFRICOM.<\/p>\n At the time of the maneuvers a major Ugandan newspaper wrote that they were \u201cgeared towards the formation of the first Joint East African Military Force.\u201d10<\/sup><\/p>\nIn addition to using such a multinational regional force in Somalia, the U.S. can also deploy it against Uganda\u2019s Lord\u2019s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in Uganda, Congo and Sudan, and could even employ it against Eritrea, Zimbabwe and Sudan, along with Somalia the only nations on the African continent not to some degree enmeshed in military partnerships with Washington and NATO. (Libya has participated in NATO naval exercises and South Africa has hosted the bloc\u2019s warships.)11<\/sup><\/p>\nEarlier this month the Kenyan newspaper\u00a0The East African\u00a0divulged that \u201cAmerican legislators are pushing for a law that will see another phase of military action to apprehend Lord\u2019s Resistance Army rebels.\u201d<\/p>\n The news source added that the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Bill adopted by the U.S. Congress last year \u201crequires the US government to develop a new multifaceted strategy\u201d and as such the new bill under consideration \u201cwill not be the first time the US government is providing support to the Uganda army in fighting the LRA.<\/p>\n \u201cThe US has been backing the UPDF [Uganda People\u2019s Defence Force] with logistics and training to fight the rebel group.\u201d12<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\nLast month it was announced that the U.S. Africa Command has dispatched special forces to train 1,000 Congolese troops in the north and east of their nation, where Congo borders Uganda.<\/p>\n Former U.S. diplomat Daniel Simpson was quoted above as to what in part is Washington\u2019s motive in pursuing a new war in and around Somalia: To test out AFRICOM ground and air forces in Djibouti for direct military action on the continent.<\/p>\n A United Press International report of March 10, placed under energy news, offered another explanation. In a feature titled \u201cEast Africa is next hot oil zone,\u201d the news agency disclosed that \u201cEast Africa is emerging as the next oil boom following a big strike in Uganda\u2019s Lake Albert Basin. Other oil and natural gas reserves have been found in Tanzania and Mozambique and exploration is under way in Ethiopia and even war-torn Somalia.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/axisoflogic.com\/artman\/uploads\/1\/3_14.jpg\") <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n| Emerging energy interests in Uganda\u2019s Lake Albert Basin.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n The region is, in the words of the Western chief executive officer of an oil prospecting firm, \u201cthe last real high-potential area in the world that hasn\u2019t been fully explored.\u201d13<\/sup><\/p>\nThe article added:<\/p>\n \u201cThe discovery at Lake Albert, in the center of Africa between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, is estimated to contain the equivalent of several billion barrels of oil. It is likely to be the biggest onshore field found south of the Sahara Desert in two decades.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It also spoke of \u201ca vast 135,000-square-mile territory in landlocked Ethiopia that is believed to contain sizable reserves of oil. It is estimated to hold 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas as well.\u201d<\/p>\n And, more pertinent to the Horn of Africa:<\/p>\n \u201cA 1993 study by Petroconsultants of Geneva concluded that Somalia has two of the most potentially interesting hydrocarbon-yielding basins in the entire region \u2013 one in the central Mudugh region, the other in the Gulf of Aden. More recent analyses indicate that Somalia could have reserves of up to 10 billion barrels.\u201d10<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\nWashington\u2019s North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies are also deeply involved in the militarization of East Africa.<\/p>\n On March 10 NATO extended its naval operation in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia, Ocean Shield, to the end of 2012, an unprecedentedly long 33-month extension. On March 12 \u201cStanding NATO Maritime Group 2 will take over missions from Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 for the four-month assignment. The change will increase NATO\u2019s contribution from four ships to five ships\u2026.\u201d15<\/sup><\/p>\nAt the same hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee that AFRICOM commander William Ward addressed, NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, America\u2019s Admiral James Stavridis, \u201cnoted that 100,000 NATO troops are involved in expeditionary operations on three continents, including operations in Afghanistan, off the coast of Africa, and in Bosnia.\u201d (Evidently Kosovo was meant for Bosnia.)<\/p>\n Stavridis, who is concurrently top military chief of U.S. European Command, said \u201cThe nature of threats in this 21st century [is] going to demand more than just sitting behind our borders.\u201d16<\/sup><\/p>\nHe also said he finds \u201cIran alarming in any number of dimensions,\u201d specifically mentioning alleged \u201cstate-sponsored terrorism, nuclear proliferation and political outreach into Latin America.\u201d17<\/sup><\/p>\nNATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen recently returned from Jordan and the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain where he pressured both nations to support the war in Afghanistan and Alliance naval operations.<\/p>\n \u201cNATO\u2019s top official said [on March 9] that he has asked Jordan and Bahrain to contribute to alliance naval operations fighting terrorism and piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf of Aden, as he ended a visit to the two countries. NATO is keen to improve cooperation with Arab and Muslim states, seeing them as important allies for a number of missions, including the all-important deployment in Afghanistan.\u201d18<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\nRegarding the Western military bloc\u2019s almost nine-year Operation Active Endeavor in the entire Mediterranean Sea and its Operation Ocean Shield in the Gulf of Aden, Rasmussen said, \u201cWe would very much like to strengthen cooperation (with Bahrain and Jordan) within these operations.\u201d19<\/sup><\/p>\nWhile in Jordan he was strengthening military ties with NATO\u2019s Mediterranean Dialogue partnership \u2013 Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia \u2013 and in Bahrain firming up the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative aimed at the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have military personnel serving under NATO in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n In late February a delegation of the 53-nation African Union (AU) visited NATO\u2019s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Mons, Belgium.<\/p>\n \u201cNATO continues to support the AU mission in Somalia (AMISOM) through the provision of strategic sea- and air-lift for AMISOM Troop Contributing Nations on request. The last airlift support occurred in June 2008 when NATO transported a battalion of Burundian peacekeepers to Mogadishu.\u201d21<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\nOn March 10 AMISON deployed tanks to prevent the capture of the Somali presidential palace by rebels.<\/p>\n The North Atlantic military bloc, which in recent years has conducted large-scale exercises in West Africa and inaugurated its international Response Force in Cape Verde in 2006, also supports \u201cthe operationalisation of the African Standby Force \u2013 the African Union\u2019s vision for a continental, on-call security apparatus similar to the NATO Response Force.\u201d22<\/sup><\/p>\nIn May the European Union, whose membership largely overlaps with that of NATO and which is engaged in intense integration with the military bloc on a global scale22<\/sup> will begin training 2,000 Somali troops in Uganda.<\/p>\nBrigadier General Thierry Caspar-Fille-Lambie, commanding officer of French armed forces in Djibouti, said \u201cthe Somali troops will be trained with the necessary military skills to help pacify and stabilize the volatile country.\u201d<\/p>\n He issued that statement \u201cat the closing ceremony of four-week French operational training of 1,700 Ugandan troops to be deployed\u201d to Somalia in May. The French ambassador to Uganda said \u201cThe EU troops shall work in close collaboration with UPDF to train Somali troops.\u201d23<\/sup><\/p>\nThe 2,000 soldiers to be trained by the EU will represent a full third of a projected 6,000-troop Somali army.<\/p>\n The U.S.-NATO-EU global triad plans an even larger collective military role in the new scramble for Africa. On March 4 and 5 a delegation from AFRICOM met with European Union officials in Brussels \u201cseeking EU cooperation in Africa,\u201d specifically in \u201careas where cooperation could be possible, notably with the soon-to-be-launched EU mission to train Somali troops.\u201d24<\/sup><\/p>\nTony Holmes, AFRICOM\u2019s deputy to the commander for civil-military activities, said \u201cSomalia, that\u2019s an area where we\u2019re going to be doing a lot more, the European Union is already doing a lot and will be doing more\u2026.<\/p>\n \u201cSomalia is very important for us. The European Union is involved in training Somalis in Uganda and that\u2019s something we might be able to work closely with to support.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The AFRICOM delegation, including Major-General Richard Sherlock, director of strategy, plans and programs, also discussed \u201ccounter-terrorism cooperation with the EU in the Sahel region, notably in Mauritania, Mali and Niger\u2026.\u201d25<\/sup><\/p>\nIn late January the chairman of NATO\u2019s Military Committee, Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, said \u201cthat the Alliance is in discussion with a Gulf state to deploy AWACS planes for a reconnaissance mission over Afghanistan in support of its ISAF mission and also for anti-piracy off Somalia.\u201d26<\/sup><\/p>\nTo demonstrate that NATO\u2019s anti-piracy operation off the coast of Somalia has other designs than the one acknowledged, early this year a NATO spokesman announced that the bloc\u2019s naval contingent in the Gulf of Aden \u201cnow has an additional task\u201d to intervene against a fictional deployment of Somali fighters across the Gulf to Yemen.<\/p>\n The spokesman, Jacqui Sheriff, said \u201cNATO warships will be on the lookout for anything suspicious.\u201d27<\/sup><\/p>\nAs though Somali al-Shabaab fighters have nothing else to do as the U.S. is engineering an all-out assault on them in their homeland.<\/p>\n Five days after the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0feature detailed American war plans in Somalia, the\u00a0Washington Times\u00a0followed up on and added to that report.<\/p>\n U.S. operations are \u201clikely to be the most overt demonstration of U.S. military backing since the ill-fated Operation Restore Hope of 1992\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUnmanned U.S. surveillance aircraft have been seen circling over Mogadishu in recent days, apparently pinpointing insurgent positions as the TFG [Transitional Federal Government] marshals its forces. U.S. Army advisers have been helping train the TFG\u2019s forces, which have been largely equipped with millions of dollars\u2019 worth of U.S. arms airlifted into Mogadishu over the last few weeks.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The newspaper report further stated: \u201cIt\u2019s not clear when the offensive will start. The word on the street is sometime in the next few weeks\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n The campaign has already begun.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter securing Mogadishu, the offensive, supported by militias allied with the government, for now, at least, is likely to continue against al-Shebab in the countryside west and south toward the border with Kenya.\u201d28<\/sup><\/p>\nThe People of Africa Reject AFRICOM – A U.S. Bid for Military Dominance (Updated)\u00a0(\u00a00)![\"\"](\"http:\/\/axisoflogic.com\/graphics\/comicon.jpg\") <\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US \u00a0is forced to put its \u00a0 new Africa Command in Germany for now,only \u00a0Liberia, offered to host it. Most African countries are scared considering it as a new colonization of the US by\u00a0militarization\u00a0the\u00a0continent, since it has been only \u00a0half a\u00a0century\u00a0they came out of\u00a0brutal\u00a0colonization. The us military command was\u00a0created\u00a0to unite responsibilities shared by three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":11256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[171,275,176,14,170,13],"tags":[4188,3819],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/072.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3235"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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![\"The](\"http:\/\/www.africom.mil\/images\/AfricomCrestFresh.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"Gen](\"http:\/\/newsimg.bbc.co.uk\/media\/images\/44435000\/jpg\/_44435442_ward_ap203b.jpg\")