28 January 2011 By Rick Rozoff The announcements of presidential election results
last month in West Africa and Eastern Europe have
served as the pretext for the United States and its
allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and
the European Union to again embark on the warpath of
sanctions, embargoes, travel bans, "regime change"
plots and even the threat of military force. The reelection of Belarusian President Alexander
Lukashenko on December 19 has been followed by the
U.S. State Department supporting EU sanctions against
him and other leaders of the nation. On January 20 the
European Parliament adopted a resolution demanding the
European Council "impose a ban on visas and freeze any
EU bank accounts of senior government officials and
members of the judiciary and security agencies
responsible for rigging the elections and persecuting
the opposition." The EU's 27 foreign ministers will
formalize that decision at their first meeting of the
year on January 31. State Department Spokesman Philip Crowley confirmed
American backing for the actions, about which, he
added, "we are consulting closely with our
counterparts in the European Union. "We are very much aware and supportive of steps
that the EU is taking, and we are also, in light of
our concerns, prepared to take additional steps to
restore sanctions that have previously been lifted."
[1] On December 2 the opposition-controlled Independent
Electoral Commission in Ivory Coast (Cote d'Ivoire)
released provisional results showing that presidential
challenger Alassane Ouattara had defeated incumbent
President Laurent Gbagbo in the November 28 runoff
election. The following day the nation's
Constitutional Council declared the Electoral
Commission's results invalid and proclaimed Gbagbo the
winner. Former colonial master France, the U.S. and the
European Union backed the result which best suited
their interests – an Ouattara victory – and secured
support from the Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS), the African Union (AU) and the United
Nations Security Council. Both Gbagbo and Ouattara were sworn in as president
and in the interim the drumbeats of military
intervention to depose Gbagbo have steadily risen in
intensity. Whatever the respective merits of the two
candidates' contentions, that the U.S. has entered the
fray on behalf of the one declared the loser by the
nation's top court exactly a decade after the 2000
U.S. presidential election was decided by the Supreme
Court would prove embarrassing to any country other
than the world's sole military superpower. ECOWAS has suspended Ivory Coast's membership in
the fifteen-nation group (Niger was suspended in 2009)
and pressure is being put on ECOWAS to activate the
West African Standby Force brigade under its control
for an invasion of Ivory Coast. The African Standby Force, under the nominal
direction of the African Union but trained by U.S.
Africa Command and NATO, was to have been activated
last year and to have provided brigades of an
estimated 3,000-4,000 troops each for five regions in
Africa: East, west, north, south and central. The West
African brigade is to grow to 6,500 troops. Previous ECOWAS military deployments in Liberia in
1990, Sierra Leone in 1997, Guinea-Bissau in 1999 and
Sierra Leone again in the same year were conducted
under the auspices of the Economic Community of West
African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) multinational
armed force and the 2003 deployment to Liberia under
the ECOWAS Mission in Liberia (ECOMIL), but the
proposed intervention in Ivory Coast will be the first
to employ the West African (ECOWAS) Standby Force
brigade with troops from Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cape
Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea (Conakry), Guinea-Bissau,
Liberia, Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. Before the initial activation of U.S. Africa
Command (AFRICOM) on October 1, 2007, the person who
would become its first and still current commander,
General William Ward, affirmed: "AFRICOM will assume sponsorship of ongoing command
and control infrastructure development and liaison
officer support. It would continue to resource
military mentors for peacekeeping training, and
develop new approaches to supporting the AU and
African Standby Forces." [2] Regarding NATO's role in establishing and
supporting the African Standby Force, the U.S.-led
military bloc has stated: "Joint Command Lisbon is the operational lead for
NATO/AU engagement, and has a Senior Military Liaison
Officer at AU HQ in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. NATO also
supports staff capacity building through the provision
of places on NATO training courses to AU staff
supporting AMISOM [African Union Mission for Somalia],
and support to the operationalisation of the African
Standby Force – the African Union's vision for a
continental, on-call security apparatus similar to the
NATO Response Force." [3] The African Standby Force is not only similar to
but based on the NATO Response Force, a 25,000-troop
globally deployable strike force which was launched in
the former Portuguese African possession of Cape Verde
with the massive Steadfast Jaguar war games in 2006.
Last year NATO began airlifting Ugandan troops
assigned to AMISOM to Somalia for combat operations.
Uganda is also a mainstay of the East Africa Standby
Force. The ECOWAS/ECOMOG intervention in Sierra Leone in
1999 was followed the next year by Britain's Operation
Palliser in the nation, commanded by Brigadier David
Richards, now the United Kingdom's Chief of the
Defence Staff. In the interim Richards was commander
of NATO's International Security Assistance Force in
southern Afghanistan and Britain's Chief of the
General Staff and Commander-in-Chief of Land Forces. The British invasion of Sierra Leone in 2000
included airborne troops, Special Air Service
commandos and helicopter units. The Royal Navy
dispatched the HMS Illustrious aircraft carrier,
diverted from NATO exercises in the Bay of Biscay,
along with seven other warships. British military
forces remain in Sierra Leone almost eleven years
later and the country was used by ECOWAS militaries
for the intervention in Liberia in 2003. During the latter operation the U.S. redeployed two
warships from the Horn of Africa off the coast of
Liberia with an initial contingent of 2,300 Marines.
In July Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed an
order adding another ship and bringing total troop
strength to 4,500 Marines and sailors. In the same
month U.S. special forces, part of an "anti-terrorism"
unit, and an elite rapid response Marine unit were
deployed on the ground in the country. U.S. efforts
were coordinated with those of 1,000 Nigerian troops
assigned to the ECOWAS Mission In Liberia, who were
airlifted into the capital on August 15. After President Charles Taylor stepped down and
went into exile in Nigeria, Washington set a $2
million bounty for his capture and extradition. The role of ECOWAS military forces is to prepare
the way for and give an African cover to Western armed
interventions in West Africa. When Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a graduate of the
University of Wisconsin in Madison, the University of
Colorado and Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of
Government, was sworn in as Taylor's successor
following the 2005 runoff election she was accompanied
by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and First Lady
Laura Bush. Three months afterward she spoke at the
Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. where
she said: "We made this visit essentially in response to
President Bush's kind invitation, but to use that
opportunity to thank him, to thank the U.S.
government, to thank the American people for all that
was done to support Liberia in its transition from war
to peace." [4] Earlier Johnson Sirleaf worked for the World Bank
in Washington and was the first chairperson of George
Soros' Open Society Initiative for West Africa The president installed in Sierra Leone in 2002,
Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, received his post-graduate
education at two universities in Britain and practiced
law in London before going to work for the United
Nations. After stepping down as his nation's head of
state, he was in charge of the Commonwealth's observer
mission for the 2007 election in Kenya and the head of
the African Union's observer mission for the
Zimbabwean election the next year. Alassane Ouattara, the West's current man in Ivory
Coast, received his bachelor's, master's and doctorate
degrees in the U.S. and served as an economist for the
International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. from
1968 to 1973 and as its deputy managing director from
1994-1999. In 1990 he was appointed, not elected, prime
minister by Ivorian president for life Félix
Houphouët-Boigny, who ruled his country from its
independence in 1960 to his death in 1993. Houphouët-Boigny was not only France's but the
U.S.'s main ally in West Africa. He gave support to
forces opposing leftist and pan-Africanist governments
throughout the region, including those which overthrew
Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana in 1966, Marien Ngouabi in
Congo-Brazzaville in 1977 and Thomas Sankara in
Burkina Faso in 1987, the latter two killed in the
process. He also supported groups opposed to President
Sékou Touré in Guinea-Conakry and Mathieu Kérékou in
Benin and collaborated with the U.S. and apartheid
South Africa to back UNITA (National Union for the
Total Independence of Angola) in its war against the
MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola)
during the independence struggle against Portugal and
later when MPLA formed Angola's first government. He severed relations with the Soviet Union in 1969
and did not renew them until the Gorbachev era in
1986. He didn't recognize the People's Republic of
China until 1983. Laurent Gbagbo founded the Ivorian Popular Front in
1982 in opposition to the Houphouët-Boigny regime.
After he assumed the presidency in 2000, he paid
visits to Russia and China and strengthened relations
with those countries as well as others like Belarus
and Iran. During the last years of Houphouët-Boigny's reign
Ouattara was his faithful lieutenant. According to an
American magazine account of the event in 1993: "The African president's death was announced by
Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara in a televised
speech. Ouattara wept as he announced the death of
Ivory Coast's only ruler since it gained independence
from France in 1960." [5] Later, while serving as the Deputy Managing
Director at the International Monetary Fund in
Washington in 1998, Ouattara announced plans to return
to Ivory Coast, which he did the following year. The
government of then-President Henri Konan Bédié issued
an arrest warrant for him, leading him to flee Ivory
Coast, but in December of 2009 a military coup removed
Bédié from power, which allowed Ouattara to return
once more. His characterization of the military
takeover was expressed in this manner: "This is not a coup d'etat. This is a revolution
supported by all the Ivorian people." [6] He was acting perfectly in character, then, when he
issued these comments on January 20 of this year: "The position of Ecowas now should be using other
measures, including legitimate force. Clearly military
intervention now is necessary, to remove Mr. Gbagbo. I
talk to President Jonathan (of Nigeria) two times to
[a?] a week, and he has given me assurances that we're
still on course (for military intervention). If Mr.
Gbagbo does not want to leave, military intervention
has been used elsewhere in Africa and Latin America,
so why not Cote d'Ivoire?" "I don't think mediation should be on the agenda
(anymore)." [7] In fact, an invasion by the ECOWAS African Standby
Force is exactly what is being finalized by the U.S.
and its NATO allies with the connivance of local
surrogates, Senegal in the first place. France had intervened in Ivory Coast starting in
2002, initially to serve as a buffer between the
government of President Gbagbo and rebel forces
infiltrating from Burkina Faso, and at first engaged
in fighting with rebel forces headed by Guillaume Soro,
now Ivory Coast's prime minister. But in 2003 France forced a so-called peace
agreement with the Ivorian government (similar to that
forced on Macedonia by the U.S., NATO and the EU two
years earlier which brought the Kosovo-based National
Liberation Army leader Ali Ahmeti into the parliament
and his party into a coalition government) and Soro
was made prime minister. It is intriguing to note that
the year before he threatened France with another
debacle like that at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 as he
"reminded France of its fate in Indochina where
Vietnamese nationalists threw off French colonial rule
in bloody fighting in the 1950s." [8] Tens of thousands of Ivorians protested outside the
French embassy in Abidjan in January of 2003 against
the French-engineered "national reconciliation" pact
with Soro's New Forces (Forces Nouvelles) rebels and
French troops fired stun grenades into the crowd. The
U.S. embassy was also besieged. In January of 2004 Senegalese President Abdoulaye
Wade called for United Nations forces to support
French troops in Ivory Coast, stating "he would expect
the French to provide the weapons and other countries,
possibly the United States, to help with transport."
[9] French troop strength in the country had grown to
over 3,000 the following month with the U.S. deploying
an initial military contingent as well. In November of 2004 Ivorian planes bombed a rebel
stronghold in the north of the country, killing nine
French soldiers and an American national, and French
forces responded by shooting down two government
Sukhoi fighter-bombers and a helicopter. In fact
France destroyed the entire Ivorian air force: Four
Sukhois and six helicopters. General Charles Wald,
commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, which before
AFRICOM included most all of Africa in its scope,
applauded the French action, saying: "We strongly
believe the French took the exact right action: they
destroyed those aircraft." [10] France scrambled three Mirage jet fighters from
Chad to Gabon (where it maintains a military base) and
set up a forward base in Togo for its aircraft.
President Jacques Chirac "ordered the destruction of
any other aircraft that violated the ceasefire and his
office announced that two companies of troops were
being rushed to the area to buttress the 4,000-member
French peace-keeping force." [11] France was at war with the government of Ivory
Coast. Its troops clashed with Ivorian civilians in
the commercial capital of Abidjan after the downing of
the aircraft. As the New York Times put it at the
time: "Since civil war erupted in 2002, the French, who
exercise significant economic influence in their
former colony, have been accused of aiding rebels and
have repeatedly come under attack by supporters of
President Laurent Gbagbo." [12] The country's speaker of the parliament accused
France of occupying the nation and conniving with
Soro's and other rebel groups operating out of
neighboring states, saying that "Since the beginning
of the crisis, we have had the feeling and the
evidence that it is Jacques Chirac who has armed the
rebels at first. "The Ivorian people and government hope that this
occupation army will leave the territory and go away."
[13] The speaker, Mamadou Coulibaly, told French public
radio on November 7 that French troops had recently
killed 30 and wounded 100 civilians, and on the same
day reinforcements arrived in Ivory Coast from the
French base in Gabon. Coulibaly also warned that France was in for a
"long, hard war" and that "Vietnam will be nothing
compared with what we are going to do here." [14] On November 10 France deployed two ships – Le
Foudre with 250 marines, tanks, five helicopters and
light vehicles and the cruiser La Fayette – off the
shores of Ivory Coast. A week later the Ivorian government announced it
would take legal action at the International Court of
Justice against French troops accused of killing what
were then disclosed to be 60 civilians and the
wounding of over 1,300 in Abidjan. In what is a fascinating parallel with current
events, then-French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie
accused Belarus of being responsible for the deaths of
the nine French troops killed earlier in the month,
claiming "the assault had been a planned act carried
out by Belarussian mercenaries who piloted two Sukhoi
Su-25 planes." [15] The government of Belarus denied
the charges. The situation settled down in 2005 but in January
of 2006 the ruling Ivorian Popular Front accused
France and the so-called international community,
which demanded the dissolution of the national
parliament, of carrying out a "constitutional coup
d'etat," pulled out of the putative unity government
and ordered 10,000 French and UN troops present in the
country to leave. President Gbagbo persisted in that
demand to the end of the year. In December the government foiled a coup attempt
planned for the 17th "with the support of a military
force present in Ivory Coast." [16] On March 4, 2007 a new peace accord was signed by
the government of President Gbagbo and the New Forces
of Guillaume Soro, who then became prime minister. Ivory Coast had been at peace until last month. In
the election of October 31 of last year Gbagbo's
Ivorian Popular Front received 1,756,504 votes, 38.04
percent of the total; Ouattara's Rally of the
Republicans won 1,481,091, 32.07 per cent; and former
president (1993-1999) Henri Konan Bédié 1,165,532,
25.24 per cent. The election was monitored by the UN, whose envoy,
Y. J. Choi, stated it was "peaceful and democratic,
and that the results of the elections were determined
through a fair and transparent process." [17] The head of the ECOWAS Observer Mission for the
election, Benin's Theodore Holo, said: "Our mission
did not observe any major irregularities likely to
taint the freedom, credibility and transparency of the
31st October 2010 presidential election in Cote
d'Ivoire." The mission "also found out that the voting process
was smooth and in accordance with current standards,
particularly in terms of collation and vote counting."
[18] With Gbagbo six percentage points ahead of Ouattara
in the first round, it was likely that he would also
win the November 28 runoff election, which is what the
Ivory Coast's top court ruled happened. That was not a result acceptable to the West. In a recent article, Pierre Sané, former Amnesty
International Secretary General and former UNESCO
Assistant Director General, warned: "Africa nowadays is subjected to a struggle for
power which, beyond the obvious ethnic and religious
national divergences, essentially opposes two concepts
of society, and which, in simple words, see leaders
promoting global liberalism to others, who support a
sovereign and socialist pan-Africanism. As we
celebrate 50 years of independence, all Africans
should mainly consider what is really at stake through
today's events in Côte d'Ivoire. Gullibility after 50
years is unforgiveable!" [19] He may have been alluding in part to recent threats
like the following from State Department Spokesman
Philip Crowley, the same who pledged U.S. efforts
against Belarus: "Nothing is preventing President Gbagbo from
leaving Cote D'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). And as we've
said, we don't know where he might go. But we believe
at this point it's important for him to leave soon.
And the opportunity for him to leave with a dignified
exit is an opportunity that is…that window is closing
fast." [20] His words were matched by American actions. The
State Department announced earlier this month that the
Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Treasury
Department is taking punitive actions against Laurent
Gbagbo, his wife and three of his senior advisers.
Their property will be blocked and U.S. citizens are
prohibited from engaging in any transactions with
them. The International Monetary Fund announced it would
only work with a government headed by its former
employee Alassane Ouattara. The ultima ratio of the U.S. and its European NATO
allies is a military invasion by the West African
Standby Force. According to a Sierra Leone newspaper, a meeting of
ECOWAS military chiefs in Mali on January 20 "adopted
a resolution to depose incumbent Ivorian President
Laurent Gbagbo from power by force." Nigeria has expressed some hesitancy and Ghana even
more so, but "Benin, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Sierra
Leone, Liberia, Mali and Togo are expected to
participate, while Niger is still to confirm." [21] Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore met with
French President Nicolas Sarkozy last week as head of
an ECOWAS delegation and afterward confirmed that
"Burkina Faso will take its full share of
responsibility when the Economic Community of West
African States (ECOWAS) decides to use force to oust
outgoing Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo." [22] After Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga met
separately with Ivory Coast's Gbagbo and Ouattara on
January 17 without the first conceding the presidency,
the die is cast. Ghanaian President John Mills told Odinga that
"Ghana would only back ECOWAS on a military
intervention if the peaceful negotiations fail" as in
the view of the Western "international community" they
have, and former president of Ghana Jerry Rawlings
recently warned that "Africa has suffered enough and I
do not believe that we should be allowing ourselves to
be misled into waging war against ourselves simply to
satisfy some colonial or foreign interest." [23] Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated late
in December that his country "is against UN Security
Council interference in resolving internal problems in
Cote d'Ivoire" and that "the situation in Cote
d'Ivoire could impact the African continent as a
whole." [24] The current African contingent in the UN Security
Council – Gabon, Nigeria and South Africa – has also
cautioned against military action in Ivory Coast. But Nigerian General Olusegun Petinrin, speaking
after the ECOWAS chiefs of general staff meeting in
Mali last week, stated: "We are ready on the military
level. It is up to heads of state to give us
instructions." Another Nigerian military officer told Agence
France-Press that the ECOWAS Standby Force would work
with UN troops in the country – 9,500 soldiers with
2,000 more on the way, despite Gbagbo's long-standing
demand they leave – "if the military intervention is
decided." "ECOWAS military chiefs in December outlined an
intervention force headed by Nigeria which would also
provide the most troops including a combat squadron
and attack helicopters." [25] In recent days top U.S. military officials have
visited West Africa and its near environs. General David Hogg, commander of U.S. Army Africa (USARAF),
traveled to Ghana, Togo and Benin from January 10-14
to meet with senior military leaders and land force
commanders. "Hogg spent the week visiting with key leaders in
all three West African nations and toured the
peacekeeping training facility in Togo for a
first-hand look at the capabilities of their land
forces." "In addition to meeting with military leaders, Hogg
toured the Peace Keeping Operations (PKO) training
center in Togo. The largest PKO missions in the world
are in Africa, and all three nations visited allocate
almost one quarter of their soldiers to a variety of
missions on the continent. "The goal of the PKO center in Togo is to become a
regional center for enlisted soldiers throughout West
Africa, he said. "That regional focus is also a priority focus of
the USARAF mission." [26] U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Africa (MarForAf)
"recently received the first wave of new mentors bound
for Liberia to participate in Operation Onward Liberty
(OOL) – a U.S. Department of State-funded, U.S. Africa
Command program aimed at rebuilding the Armed Forces
of Liberia (AFL)." "The OOL mission is a five-year program to ensure
Liberia has the capability and capacity to defend her
borders and come to the aid of her sister countries if
that need should arise." "Operation Onward Liberty is a joint-service
venture with support from Economic Communities of
Western African States partner nations, and the United
Kingdom which provides a Ministry of Defense-level
advisor." Earlier efforts of the Liberia Security Sector
Reform program run by U.S. Army Africa and Combined
Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa "saw a force of
2,000 AFL soldiers recruited, extensively screened,
mentored and trained by State Department contractors
for a period of two years. U.S. Africa Command took
over the program January 1, 2010 and tasked the
Marines from MarForAf with spear-heading the program
and referred to the program as LDSR [Liberia Defense
Sector Reform], highlighting the fact that MarForAf
efforts [are] concentrated on the defense sector, a
subset of the overall security sector that the U.S.
State Department is committed to support." [27] U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Africa received a new
commander on January 18, Lieutenant General John
Paxton Jr., former chief of staff for the
Multi-National Force-Iraq and veteran of earlier
campaigns in Somalia and Bosnia. On January 10 AFRICOM chief General Ward arrived in
Rwanda to visit the Ministry of Defense headquarters
and meet with the country's defense minister and chief
of defense staff, "with whom he discussed bilateral
military issues." [28] Deputy Commander of the U.S. Africa Command J.
Anthony Holmes, in charge of civil-military
activities, is to visit Nigeria from January 24-28 to
meet with senior military, security and civilian
officials. "In Lagos, Ambassador Holmes will call on senior
Nigerian Navy commanders and visit joint naval
training facilities. In Abuja, Ambassador Holmes will
meet with the Honorable Minister of Defence and
address military officers at the National Defense
College…." [29] The Pentagon also has its Africa Partnership
Station naval program available to deploy an armada of
warships to the Atlantic coast of Africa in support of
an invasion of Ivory Coast. [30] The West African Standby Force will be used as the
West's proxy, either as advance guard or surrogate, as
with ECOWAS forces in Sierra Leone and Liberia,
respectively. If the member states of ECOWAS are
either hesitant concerning or unable to array the
forces needed to mount an intervention in Ivory Coast,
France with its bases in the region and AFRICOM with
its foothold in West Africa will engage directly. 1) Russian Information Agency Novosti, January
21, 2011 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/new-colonialism-pentagon-carves-africa-into-military-zones 3) North Atlantic Treaty Organization http://jjrawlings.wordpress.com 24) Voice of Russia, December 31, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/militarization-of-energy-policy-u-s-africa-command-and-gulf-of-guinea Comments 💬 التعليقات |
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