In this two-part series, Rageh Omaar travels across Africa, investigating the consequences of US involvement in the region. In this first part, he investigates the genesis of Africom, the US military command for Africa which was launched in October 2008, and asks whether Barack Obama can turn US-African relations in a new direction.
Showing posts with label AFRICOM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AFRICOM. Show all posts
Monday, December 28, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
The Final Call | Africom: President Obama's Bush inheritance, challenge
October 26, 2009 - Africom is overseenby General William “Kip” Ward, the Army's highest-ranking Black American, and is the sixth U.S. geographic combatant command. Prior to Africom, the Pentagon's presence in Africa involved three geographic commands.
Created in February of 2007, launched in October of 2008 and headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany because it couldn't find a home base in Africa to protect U.S. interest abroad, this entity has been “charged with supporting U.S. military partners in Africa.”
Sounds more like the premier of the sequel to Ollie North and the boys Central American Insurgency. According to Colin Powell's former chief of staff during the Bush administration, Larry Wilkinson, it might not be far from the truth. “You have an enormous constituency for war, you have an enormous constituency for the instruments for war,” he told “Africom or Africon?” host/narrator Ragel Omar. Without skipping a beat, Mr. Wilkinson asked, “What constituency does the State Department have?”
“To find a voice that equals or exceeds the voice of the Pentagon is virtually impossible. How do you put up $30 billion,” which Mr. Wilkinson suggests is State Department's budget and “chump change,” against “nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars”—the estimated annual Pentagon budget.
Mr. Wilkinson went on to say, “That kind of money interests every congressman, every senator, every military contractor, from Haliburton to Lockheed.
According to the four-part series, when President Bush came into office, he had a series of meetings with oil executives. Mr. Wilkinson's “educated surmise” suggests they discussed “ensuring American's way of life,” and getting “our hands” on a “substantial” amount of oil to guarantee the continuance of the above. FULL STORY
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The Final Call is a newspaper published in Chicago. It was founded in 1979 by The Minister Louis Farrakhan and serves as the official newspaper of the Nation of Islam.
Friday, October 2, 2009
IntelDaily.com | Video: Africom or Africon? Parts 1, 2, 3, 4
Related:
United States African Command (AFRICOM)
Sep 23, 2009 ... Administrative headquarters responsible to the Secretary of Defense for US military relations with 53 African countries, focusing on war ...
www.africom.mil/
www.africom.mil/
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
BlackListedNews.com | Africa's oil boom and Africom
Source: UPI
Potentially major oil strikes announced by an American-led consortium and a British company in West Africa have bolstered the region's reputation as the world's hottest energy zone.
It has also become the focus of the U.S. military's global mission to protect America's energy supplies, a development that critics fear will trigger more trouble than it will prevent.
The Texas-based Anadarko Petroleum Corp. said Wednesday its deepwater Venus 1B well off the coast of Sierra Leone had hit paydirt and formed one of two "bookends" 700 miles apart across two prospective basins that extend into waters controlled by Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana.
These could each contain 150 million to 1 billion barrels of oil, according to Anadarko's CEO Al Walker.
One of Anadarko's consortium partners, Tullow Oil of Britain, which has a vast array of licenses in Africa, recently announced a new potentially important discovery in its Ngassa field in Uganda.
By 2025, the United States is expected to be importing about one-fifth of its oil from West Africa. That makes the region strategically important to the United States.
In the scramble for new oil reserves as the planet's older fields become depleted, the U.S. military has become a predominant force in U.S.-African relations.
Witness the 2008 inauguration of the U.S. military's latest command, Africa Command, or Africom, launched a year earlier in February 2007 by the George W. Bush administration, for whom energy security was of paramount importance.
The Bush team insisted that Africom was intended to promote a humanitarian agenda, strengthen democracy in a continent noted for its tyrants and dictators, and improve economic growth. President Barack Obama's administration endorsed that.
But many African see Africom's mission in more menacing terms: ensuring that the United States gets most of Africa's oil, not China or India, which need it to fuel their burgeoning economies.
"While Obama administration officials insist that U.S. policy toward Africa is not being militarized, the evidence seems to suggest otherwise," says Gerald LeMelle, executive director of Africa Action, a non-governmental organization.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Pravda.Ru | Russia makes subtle entrance to Africa while Washington busy with wars
| 25.06.2009 | Source: Pravda.Ru | URL: http://english.pravda.ru/russia/economics/107853-africa_russia-0 |
Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev started his visit to Africa on June 24. Medvedev will travel to Nigeria, Namibia and Angola. Moscow is ready to help the African countries in the development of their natural resources – oil, gas and uranium - despite the economic crisis.
Russia does not conceal its strategic interests in Africa. The black continent can indeed become a new perspective and attractive market if armed conflicts reduce in number there.
The market of developing countries is of great interest to Russian companies working in the energy industry, as well as in the railway, nuclear, defense and machine-building industries. Building new ties and retrieving old ones is extremely important for Russia for it goes about the nation’s entry to highly lucrative new markets.
Russia will have to face serious competition in Africa. China has signed a number of deals in Africa during the recent years. Beijing has a very reasonable approach to its policies on the black continent. It first implements humanitarian projects, credit the economy and signs contracts afterwards.
Nigeria is the first country, which Medvedev visited within the scope of his tour of Africa. Nigeria retrieved its civil administration, approved the new constitution and elected its president in 1999. Nigeria is one of the ten largest oil exporters in the world. The nation’s oil reserves make up over 9 billion tons, not to mention 5.2 trillion cubic meters of natural gas.
The head of Russia’s Gazprom, Aleksey Miller, and the Director of Nigeria’s state-run oil company NNPC Mohammed Sanusi Barkindo discussed an opportunity to sign a $2.5-billion gas production and exploration agreement. The officials discussed the opportunity within the framework of the recent Economic Forum in St. Petersburg.
Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Namibia on June 24-26 will be the first trip of a Russian leader to this country. Namibia is rich with mineral resources – diamonds, first and foremost. It also has extensive deposits of uranium, coal, lead, zinc, copper, silver, gold and marble. Russia’s diamond and gold giants Alrosa and Renova already carry out their projects in Namibia.
Angola - the last country which Medvedev will visit during his tour – is rich with oil, gas, diamonds, iron ore, copper ore, phosphates, quartz, granite, gold, silver and other raw materials. Most of the people living in such a wealthy nation earn less than $1 a day and die in their forties. Child mortality in Angola is one of the highest in the world.
Russia established its diplomatic ties with Angola on November 11, 1975, when the nation declared its independence. The two countries signed the agreement of friendship and cooperation in 1976.
Russia and Angola conduct successful cooperation in the field of diamond extraction and oil exploration. Russia offers its help to Angola in the development of the nation’s railway network and in the construction of hydroelectric power stations.
Moscow is bringing its economy to the black continent at the time when Washington continues to flex its muscles in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Vladimir Anokhin
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