Disarming the strategy of conscription: Children of AFRICOM

In 2006 at least 15 per cent of America's oil needs were provided by Africa and it has been projected that by 2015 the figure will be 25 per cent. No, wait, let me rephrase that – by 2015 America will extort sufficient oil from Africa to satisfy 25 per cent of its domestic needs, thus the creation of AFRICOM (US Africa Command).

AFRICOM was brought into existence by George W. Bush's approval of a Pentagon plan in January 2007 to set up an Africa command centre with the intention of going live by the end of September 2008. Robert Gates, the incumbent secretary of defense under the Obama administration, whilst serving in the same position under the Bush administration, revealed that: 'The main purposes of the Africa Command Centre would be to fight the war on terror, cooperation, provide humanitarian aid, building partnership capability, oversee security, defence support to non-military missions, and if directed, military training operations designed to help local governments.' Given the vast natural resources that have yet to be plundered across Africa, we certainly would be stupid if we believed that crap.

Meanwhile, in early 2010, South African 'Minister of War' Lindiwe Sisulu told parliament that she wanted the defence force to provide a rite of passage for young people 'leaving school with no skills and no prospect of being absorbed into a labour market that is already glutted. Every culture known to men has a process of coming of age. This includes some initiation into responsible adulthood, where the line is drawn from childish ways to purposeful, responsible adult behaviour. We can do that for this country, because that is the one thing we need, to build a future for our development and prosperity. A place where the young unemployed can find skills, dignity and purpose. Any television footage of service delivery protests will show you that at the forefront of this, in great majority, are our youth, with excessive anger and misdirected energy and frustration etched on their faces. We as a country can ill afford this. Our youth are an asset and we must direct them properly.'

My gut feeling says that this is nothing more than a massive recruitment campaign for the AFRICOM programme, but let's deal with this on two levels, firstly, in the context of Sisulu's spoken words, which strike right at the hearts of beleaguered parents who have come to believe that society is spiralling out of control and a bit of discipline may well be in order for their errant and wayward youth. But it is more for the more insidious and unspoken primary reason, which is AFRICOM – or put another way, 'NATO for the darkies', tastefully dressed up in African Union protocols intent on 'Developing a common doctrine for African Standby Force (ASF)'. All of this comes under the catchy slogan 'A force to support and keep peace for Africa's prosperity and a better life for all in the world', whilst delivering us bound hand-and-foot to the 'new Goree Island' for our journey into the 'middle passage' of the military industrial complex.

YOU'RE IN THE ARMY NOW

Let's firstly deal with the war ministry's insouciant remarks regarding the rite of passage, which is a ritual event that marks a person's progression of status within a particular society or culture. It is normally an initiation or induction ritual which defines your migration within or through a social hierarchy from youth to adulthood. Rites of passage are most often ceremonial events that define milestones achieved, such as puberty, coming of age, marriage and oddly enough, even death. Conscription is not a rite of passage, unless of course your country happens to be Sparta.

In South Africa we see people leaving school with no skills and no future job prospects or livelihood possibilities, within a society that has a 'designed-for-failure' component built into the educational system ensuring that the military maw has sufficient cannon fodder in the form of our youth to feed upon as and when required. Sisulu talks about a labour market glut in a country that has over the past 250 years specialised in extracting mineral wealth purely for export, thus leaving the country poorer for the exercise and with little to show for the off-shoring of the ill-gotten wealth. As a consequence of such ruthless exploitation, hundreds of thousands of migrant labourers from all corners of the country have no other skill but the singular skill of digging very deep holes across a landscape that has no more mineral wealth to be gotten. Just ask the 'smart young chaps' from Aurora. On this score I will agree will Ms Sisulu, we do currently have a glut of 'hole diggers', which is in the final analysis of little use when there is no more wealth to be extracted from the soil of their fore-fathers – it has all gone across the pond, thus leaving their youth bereft of skills that would otherwise enable them to survive in this terrible global economic climate.

In 'drawing the line between childish ways to purposeful, responsible adult behaviour', military conscription is a most spine-chilling methodology to instil the rigours of adulthood in the youth, but it does present an excellent opportunity to fuel the killing machine that has over the past 350 years raged up and down the shattered spine of Africa. The distinction between the cultural process of coming of age and training of young gullible soldiers is that the rite of passage is intended to inculcate in the youth a sense of value and of purpose within the mores of that society for that society's benefit – whereas the induction of youth into the army has but a singular purpose, and that is to turn them into fearsome killing units in order to eliminate the enemies of the state. It escapes me how Sisulu arrives at the point of believing that such a step is capable of 'building a future for our development and prosperity', or even 'find[ing] skills, dignity and purpose', when their singular purpose is to kill in the name of whoever has co-opted them, in this case the ANC (African National Congress) government in its defence of the capitalist order.

There are many things that as citizens we do need as a matter of urgency, and there are many things that the minister of war and the ANC should be doing for this country on that same basis of urgency, but they have chosen not to – instead they hang themselves on the view that 'We can do that for this country, because that is the one thing we need', the 'that' meaning round up the youth and ship them off to military barracks around the country. Sure! You do need to co-opt some of the youth into the army to protect you and your ilk against the rest of the youth and all the workers who take to the streets in righteous indignation to protest against your inept government of crony capitalism. You do not see them as an asset; you see them as a threat and as such you need to turn them against themselves in order for you to protect your worthless hide against, as you so eloquently put it, the 'excessive anger and misdirected energy and frustration etched on their faces'.

This brings us around to the much more penetrating and dastardly purpose of the much-vaunted 'call to arms' by Sisulu, a reason that has everything to do with the history of the neocolonial re-conquest of Africa and how such plans will be allowed to gain traction through the introduction of the likes of Moeletsi Mbeki, whose function is to sell and/or gloss over the purely militarised image of AFRICOM – a dual pitch, applicable as is necessary.

NATO FOR THE 'DARKIES'

Since 2007, AFRICOM has established military partnerships with 51 of Africa's 53 nations. The US military has placed great emphasis on the geostrategic importance of Africa in their international military, political and economic planning. The two nations that do not fall into AFRICOM are Egypt, which is already an integral part of the of the US Central Command, and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (Western Sahara), which is a member of the African Union but which the US and its NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) allies recognise as part of Morocco.

In 2007 AFRICOM began its one-year incubation under US European Command and in 2008 it was revealed that Africa Command 'would involve one small headquarter plus five "regional integration teams" scattered around the continent' and that 'AFRICOM would work closely with the European Union and NATO', particularly France, a member of both, which was 'interested in developing the Africa standby force'. Accordingly, the Pentagon will divide the world's second-most populous continent into five military districts, each with a multinational African Standby Force trained by military forces from the United States, NATO and the European Union.

The five areas correspond to Africa's main Regional Economic Communities, starting in the north of the continent:

- Arab Maghreb Union: Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia
- East African Community (EAC): Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda
- Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS): Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo
- Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS): Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa), Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda and São Tomé and Príncipe
- Southern Africa Development Community (SADC): Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

AFRICOM's current headquarters will remain in the imperial city of Stuttgart, Germany, but it plans to have a central headquarters on the African continent – although Djibouti's Camp Lemonnier (historically the site of the French Foreign Legion – now the footprint of Operation Enduring Freedom) functions as the de facto HQ in Africa, with the establishment of five regional satellite outposts in northern, southern, eastern, western and central Africa, ensuring that the African Standby Force is nominally under the control of the African Union, while its troops are directed and trained by the US, NATO and the military wing of the European Union.

We must bear in mind that this programme of militarisation and re-colonisation is specific to the economic objectives of empire building and is only possible when collaborators with the imperialist conquistadors can be found. And believe you me it’s never difficult, just take a look at each and every other one of the 90-odd client states of the good old US of A, programmes of occupation replete with traitors – it's almost classic textbook stuff.

In order to evidence the extent of the oily subservience to the rising juggernaut of AFRICOM, enter Moeletsi Mbeki – and very soon many more like him, as they all scramble to serve 'da massa' in the unfolding militarisation and exploitation of Africa against its own people, in the hope that they benefit economically. Thus, in his own words: 'As in all human affairs, the use of force in the right social context does produce solutions. There is no better illustration of this fact than the history of the United States’, said Mbeki, referring to events in American history such as the War of Independence, the Civil War, and the civil rights revolution. Notwithstanding the undesirability of focusing on the military option to solve Africa's challenges, Mbeki added that the 'use of force to solve Africa's problems must however not be ruled out'. He holds the unalterable view that 'the creation of the African Command by the US government is an important initiative', re-enforced by the argument that the stability and the viability of Africa depends upon the establishment of AFRICOM and that the potential for 'building a viable, sustainable and stable society requires the establishment and development of legitimate, socially hegemonic group or groups that can then build a viable state', thus reaffirming the ignorant notion that no such framework existed prior to the coming the colonial powers, whom he believes failed in their 'civilising mission' as they merely left behind 'a semblance of a state that had no social anchors, which led to Africa's instability during the last half a century'. He couldn’t have said it any clearer than if he'd said 'Let's loot these dumb shits, and if they get uppity you get to shoot them.'

It must be abundantly clear to all by now that that the paymasters of AFRICOM will be flooded with a multitude of Mbeki-like characters wanting to share their brand of 'wisdom' in order to get in on the ground floor of 'gratis profit taken', and this fits neatly into the long-term strategic plans of the AU comptrollers. He is, after all, one of the leading 'academic' proponents of 'free-market economics' in Africa, thus he assists in providing a 'tastefully counterbalanced' view to the erratic policies of the ANC and its tripartite alliance – that is, without damaging the ANC’s given position of being the neoliberal sharp end of the wedge and as the most influential AU partner in the promotion and building of AFRICOM.

Meanwhile backstage, China's growing economic power as a rising imperial power seeks to usurp control from the established imperial power configuration of Euro-American partnership, which of necessity needs to be met with resistance in the form of military bases currently been superimposed over imperially controlled economic zones. That the global economic and/or military battles always filter down to regional posturing and stances, either directly or encouraged via willing proxies, is an indication of the concerted efforts on the part of America to retain its dominant position in these easy-pickings colonies in order to access raw materials and exploit labour via mercantile, colonial, bilateral and multilateral agreements.

And in the final analysis, our youth will be trained to kill in defence of that which seeks to enslave us. But this time they do not need to be sold off to the cotton kings in Alabama – Africa will become the plantation and the 'house niggers' will be our own governments.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Nicholas Tucker is publicity secretary of the [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.