The big African game

After the devastation of the Libyan State by “Operation Unified Protector”, which dropped no less than 40,000 bombs during more than 10,000 attack missions, and even provided arms to Islamic groups heretofore classified as dangerous terrorists, Washington has voiced concern that the weapons in government depots might fall into the wrong hands.

The State Department has run for cover, by dispatching to Libya squads of military contractors to the tune of 30 million dollars to “secure” to Libya’s arsenal. But behind the official mission lurks the more likely plan of tacitly taking control of the Libyan military bases. In spite of the stated commitment not to send “boots on the ground”, secret agents and special forces of the US, Great Britain, France, Italy, Qatar and other countries have in fact been operating inside the country for quite some time, guiding the air strikes and running the ground operations. Their mission now is to ensure that “pacified” Libya remains under the control of the powers that "liberated" it.

On 14 October, on the same day the State Department announced the deployment of subcontractors to Libya, President Obama announced he was dispatching special forces to Central Africa: kicking off with a contingent of hundred troops. Officially, they will serve as "advisers" to the local armed forces wrestling against the “Lord’s Resistance Army”. An operation for which the State Department has already laid out 40 million dollars.

The real mission of this elite corps, sent by Washington, is to create a military control network over an area encompassing Uganda, Sudan, Burundi, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And while the United States sends its own forces to Uganda and Burundi, ostensibly to protect them against the atrocities perpetrated by the “Lord’s Army” – purportedly imbued with Christian mysticism – thousands of troops from Uganda and Burundi are engaged in Somalia fighting against the al-Shahab Islamic group on behalf of the United States.

These soldiers are backed by the Pentagon, which in June equipped them with 45 million dollars-worth of weapons, including small drones and night sights.

On October 16, two days after the announcement of the U.S. operation in Central Africa, Kenya sent troops to Somalia. The initiative, officially driven by the need to protect themselves from Somali bandits and pirates, was in reality promoted by the United States to pursue their own strategic goals, in the wake of the military intervention fiasco in Ethiopia, also promoted by the United States. And in Somalia, where the "government" backed by Washington barely controls just one district of Mogadishu, the CIA has been at work for a long time, with properly trained and armed local commandos and private military contractors.

The United States is thus seeking to control the strategic areas of the continent: Libya, at the intersection between the Mediterranean, Africa and Middle East; East and Central Africa, straddling the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Apparently complicated, the game becomes clear by looking at a map. Even better, an historical atlas will reveal to what extent neo-colonialism startlingly resembles the old colonialist model.