The Obama administration is expanding its intelligence operations in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a lengthy report in the Washington Post. The increased surveillance is part of rapidly expanding military operations in Africa that are being carried out under the pretext of the “war on terror,” but are directed in large part at countering rising Chinese economic connections on the resource-rich continent.
The focus of the Post’s report was on aerial surveillance programs used to gather intelligence on local militant groups. The vast majority of these operations are being run by private companies, which are responsible for supplying pilots, sensor operators, intelligence analysts, mechanics, and linguists.
According to the report, about a dozen airbases have been developed in Africa since 2007. These bases are generally small additions to existing airfields in various African countries and are used to run small aircraft, disguised as private planes, and equipped with discreet surveillance equipment. Permission for these operations is usually granted by the local government in exchange for the US sharing the intelligence it gathers.
The program targets a wide variety of different groups on the pretext of combating terrorism. These include the loose affiliation of Tuareg secessionists and Islamists in Northern Mali, the Lord’s Resistance Army in Central Africa, and al-Shabab in Southern Somalia. Although humanitarian concerns and the threat of global terrorism are being used to justify these operations, they in reality comprise part of a new Scramble for Africa, as the US and Europe compete over the area’s natural resources and seek to minimize Chinese influence.
In particular, the Post report cited two targets of growing interest on the part of the US military: Boko Haram in Nigeria, and the Lord’s Resistance Army’s operations in Sudan and South Sudan. In the case of Nigeria, which provides over 8 percent of the United States’ crude oil, the economic motivation for “anti-terrorism” is particularly clear.
Since the very beginning of AFRICOM’s operations, the US has been preparing plans for possible military intervention in Nigeria. In 2008, the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania conducted a series of “wargame scenarios” concerning possible interventions for AFRICOM, and estimated that it would take 20,000 troops to control the Niger Delta oilfields. At a February 18, 2008 AFRICOM conference, Vice Admiral Robert T. Moeller stated that the guiding principle of AFRICOM was to protect “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market.”
Only a month later, the first commander of AFRICOM, General William Ward, declared that due to the US’s increasing reliance on African oil, the “number one theater-wide goal” would be combating terrorism. Although the US did not intervene militarily, the political significance of AFRICOM’s preparations could be seen when millions of Nigerian workers participated in a general strike against president Goodluck Jonathan’s end to fuel subsidies. Jonathan used a series of bombings claimed by Boko Haram to institute martial law and suppress the growing strike movement.
In the case of the Lord’s Resistance Army, the argument for “humanitarian intervention” is used to provide a similar cover for economic aims. According to The Post, AFRICOM is seeking a base in South Sudan that would both support the hunt for the LRA’s leader Kony and allow the US greater influence in the growing conflict between Sudan and South Sudan.
At the center of the Sudanese conflict are disagreements over oil revenues. Since South Sudan gained independence in 2011 it has been in continuous conflict with Sudan over control of oil fields in the border region and the fees to be paid to Sudan, whose pipelines are the only conduit available to export its oil. In April, while Sudan and South Sudan were engaged in regular border skirmishes, South Sudanese president, Salva Kiir, traveled to China in an attempt to gather support for construction of an alternate pipeline through Kenya.
China is a major investor in both Sudanese and South Sudanese oil infrastructure. Through an increased military presence, the US government hopes to offset Chinese economic influence. Last year in her tour of Africa, US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said, “We don’t want to see a new colonialism in Africa,” in reference to Chinese influence on the continent.
Ultimately the aerial surveillance programs will be used to lay the groundwork for future military intervention. Last October, Obama deployed 100 military advisors to central Africa in order to work toward “the removal of Joseph Kony.” In Somalia, drones and special forces strikes are also being used to the same bloody effect as in Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Although the surveillance program in West and Central Africa is currently unarmed, several officials quoted in the Post emphasized the potential to expand the program.
According to the report, AFRICOM already had plans for a drone program against the LRA, but it was canceled without explanation. Recently, however, the Senate Armed Forces Committee authorized $50 million to expand surveillance operations in Africa and emphasized the need for aircraft that can “loiter over areas of interest for extended periods of time,” i.e., drones. One anonymous US military official told the Post that if they wanted to fly drones “I’m certain we could get the access and overflight [permission] that is necessary to do that.”
Source: World Socialist Web Site
Showing posts with label Goodluck Jonathan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Goodluck Jonathan. Show all posts
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Côte d'Ivoire envoy warns of 'genocide' threat
The first recognised ambassador of Côte d'Ivoire's internationally-backed president Alassane Ouattara said on Tuesday that the United Nations had to act to prevent "genocide" in his country. The envoy, Youssoufou Bamba, made the plea after handing over his credentials as envoy to the United Nations to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Ban promised the "full cooperation" of the UN leadership for the government of Ouattara who is in a tense stand-off with Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to recognise the victory of his rival in Côte d'Ivoire's November 28 presidential election. The ambassador said Ouattara had "real concern" about attacks on his supporters. According to UN rights officials at least 173 people were killed in attacks between December 16 and 21.
The victims were only killed "because they wanted to demonstrate, they want to speak out, they want to defend the will of the people", Bamba told reporters. "We are on the brink of genocide, something should be done." Bamba said people's homes in some areas had been marked according to their tribe. "What will be next? So the situation is very serious and I have put that message across in all the meetings I have had, including with the secretary general. The protection of civilians is at the heart of peacekeeping and we expect the United Nations to fulfill its duties," he said.
There is a UN force of more than 9 500 troops in Côte d'Ivoire and 800 are deployed around the Abidjan hotel where Ouattara has his base. Ban made no comment on the Côte d'Ivoire crisis when he formally accepted Bamba's credentials in front of photographers at the UN headquarters. But he assured the envoy "of the full cooperation of the secretariat in meeting the challenges ahead". Ban was briefed again on Tuesday by the UN mission in Côte d'Ivoire on efforts to persuade Gbagbo to peacefully stand down, his spokesperson Martin Nesirky said.
The UN chief also held telephone talks with Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan, current chairperson of the West African regional bloc Ecowas, which has threatened to intervene militarily if Gbagbo does not quit. Bamba, who was previously ambassador for the Gbagbo government at the UN in Vienna, is the first ambassador named by the Ouattara administration to have started work. He hinted that he was not yet being paid, saying that as a career diplomat "I have savings."
Meanwhile, Gbagbo's most notorious street lieutenant has vowed that the country's youth will rise up from Saturday and seize Ouattara's headquarters. "From January 1, I, Charles Ble Goude and the youth of Ivory Coast are going to liberate the Golf Hotel with our bare hands," the leader of Gbagbo's radical Young Patriots told a cheering crowd in Abidjan on Wednesday. "It's the moment to liberate Ivory Coast," he declared.
Political showman and faction leader Ble Goude is now Gbagbo's minister for youth and employment, but he is best known for stoking bloody anti-French riots in 2004, a role which saw him placed under United Nations sanctions. "We are ready to die for this Ivory Coast," he declared, while insisting that his supporters were unarmed and hoped to triumph through strength of numbers and will against Ouattara's men. "We are mocked by rebels," he complained.
Tension is mounting in and around the Golf Hotel -- a waterfront resort on the outskirts of the port city which Ouattara and his supporters had turned into an election headquarters. The shadow government in the hotel is guarded by a small contingent of former northern rebel fighters dubbed the New Forces, and the grounds are shielded by armed UN peacekeepers backed by armoured cars.
Access to the area is blocked by Gbagbo's regulars, the Security and Defence Forces (FDS), working alongside what UN observers say are mysterious masked militia fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades. UN supply convoys are regularly blocked as they try to cross Abidjan -- one patrol was attacked on Tuesday a mob of pro-Gbagbo youths and a Bangladeshi soldier was hurt -- and the hotel is supplied by UN helicopter.
Source: Mail & Guardian
Ban promised the "full cooperation" of the UN leadership for the government of Ouattara who is in a tense stand-off with Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to recognise the victory of his rival in Côte d'Ivoire's November 28 presidential election. The ambassador said Ouattara had "real concern" about attacks on his supporters. According to UN rights officials at least 173 people were killed in attacks between December 16 and 21.
The victims were only killed "because they wanted to demonstrate, they want to speak out, they want to defend the will of the people", Bamba told reporters. "We are on the brink of genocide, something should be done." Bamba said people's homes in some areas had been marked according to their tribe. "What will be next? So the situation is very serious and I have put that message across in all the meetings I have had, including with the secretary general. The protection of civilians is at the heart of peacekeeping and we expect the United Nations to fulfill its duties," he said.
There is a UN force of more than 9 500 troops in Côte d'Ivoire and 800 are deployed around the Abidjan hotel where Ouattara has his base. Ban made no comment on the Côte d'Ivoire crisis when he formally accepted Bamba's credentials in front of photographers at the UN headquarters. But he assured the envoy "of the full cooperation of the secretariat in meeting the challenges ahead". Ban was briefed again on Tuesday by the UN mission in Côte d'Ivoire on efforts to persuade Gbagbo to peacefully stand down, his spokesperson Martin Nesirky said.
The UN chief also held telephone talks with Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan, current chairperson of the West African regional bloc Ecowas, which has threatened to intervene militarily if Gbagbo does not quit. Bamba, who was previously ambassador for the Gbagbo government at the UN in Vienna, is the first ambassador named by the Ouattara administration to have started work. He hinted that he was not yet being paid, saying that as a career diplomat "I have savings."
Meanwhile, Gbagbo's most notorious street lieutenant has vowed that the country's youth will rise up from Saturday and seize Ouattara's headquarters. "From January 1, I, Charles Ble Goude and the youth of Ivory Coast are going to liberate the Golf Hotel with our bare hands," the leader of Gbagbo's radical Young Patriots told a cheering crowd in Abidjan on Wednesday. "It's the moment to liberate Ivory Coast," he declared.
Political showman and faction leader Ble Goude is now Gbagbo's minister for youth and employment, but he is best known for stoking bloody anti-French riots in 2004, a role which saw him placed under United Nations sanctions. "We are ready to die for this Ivory Coast," he declared, while insisting that his supporters were unarmed and hoped to triumph through strength of numbers and will against Ouattara's men. "We are mocked by rebels," he complained.
Tension is mounting in and around the Golf Hotel -- a waterfront resort on the outskirts of the port city which Ouattara and his supporters had turned into an election headquarters. The shadow government in the hotel is guarded by a small contingent of former northern rebel fighters dubbed the New Forces, and the grounds are shielded by armed UN peacekeepers backed by armoured cars.
Access to the area is blocked by Gbagbo's regulars, the Security and Defence Forces (FDS), working alongside what UN observers say are mysterious masked militia fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades. UN supply convoys are regularly blocked as they try to cross Abidjan -- one patrol was attacked on Tuesday a mob of pro-Gbagbo youths and a Bangladeshi soldier was hurt -- and the hotel is supplied by UN helicopter.
Source: Mail & Guardian
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Acting Leader of Nigeria Dissolves His Cabinet
The acting president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, dissolved his cabinet on Wednesday in the strongest assertion yet of his authority over a country where his rule has been challenged. The ministers were all inherited from Umaru Yar’Adua, the gravely ill president whose place Mr. Jonathan took in February. Analysts and presidential advisers suggested that they had become an impediment to Mr. Jonathan’s attempts to put his stamp on the office. Information about Mr. Yar’Adua’s condition has been sparse. Three weeks ago, he returned home after a long hospital stay in Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Jonathan has had to deal with sectarian and ethnic violence in one region, a flare-up in the rebellion over oil in another and strife in the cabinet. “There are pro- and anti-Jonathan ministers in the cabinet, and pro- and anti-Yar’Adua ministers, and they were polarized as to whether the acting president should act or not act,” said Hassan Tukur, a retired diplomat who is close to Mr. Jonathan. In a foretaste of Wednesday’s dismissals, Mr. Jonathan dismissed Mr. Yar’Adua’s national security adviser last week after mass killings near the city of Jos. “It’s the prerogative of the president to change the cabinet whenever he feels the need to inject new blood, reinvigorate the cabinet and give it a new focus, and that’s what we’ve done here,” said Ima Niboro, Mr. Jonathan’s spokesman.
Others said that Mr. Jonathan’s agenda was not helped by the infighting. “There was a lack of cohesiveness in the cabinet, and the cabinet had become polarized, in a way that was harming effective governance on the core issues,” said a person close to the president who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Source: New York Times
Mr. Jonathan has had to deal with sectarian and ethnic violence in one region, a flare-up in the rebellion over oil in another and strife in the cabinet. “There are pro- and anti-Jonathan ministers in the cabinet, and pro- and anti-Yar’Adua ministers, and they were polarized as to whether the acting president should act or not act,” said Hassan Tukur, a retired diplomat who is close to Mr. Jonathan. In a foretaste of Wednesday’s dismissals, Mr. Jonathan dismissed Mr. Yar’Adua’s national security adviser last week after mass killings near the city of Jos. “It’s the prerogative of the president to change the cabinet whenever he feels the need to inject new blood, reinvigorate the cabinet and give it a new focus, and that’s what we’ve done here,” said Ima Niboro, Mr. Jonathan’s spokesman.
Others said that Mr. Jonathan’s agenda was not helped by the infighting. “There was a lack of cohesiveness in the cabinet, and the cabinet had become polarized, in a way that was harming effective governance on the core issues,” said a person close to the president who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Source: New York Times
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Nigerian Parliament Names Acting President
Nigeria’s National Assembly voted Tuesday to make Vice President Goodluck Jonathan the acting president, filling a power vacuum that has unsettled Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, since President Umaru Yar’Adua left the country for medical treatment in November.
The vote appeared to end weeks of political uncertainty in what had essentially been a leaderless country. Since Mr. Yar’Adua’s departure, there has been civil unrest in the north, threats of renewed violence in the south and diplomatic tensions with the United States, which required extra scrutiny of Nigerian travelers after one of their compatriots was arrested and charged with trying to detonate explosives on a plane to Detroit.
But while Nigerian political leaders said Tuesday’s vote was critical to restoring stability, questions were immediately raised about its constitutionality, about whether Mr. Yar’Adua’s partisans would accept it and about whether it would lead to more disorder. For weeks, a majority of Mr. Yar’Adua’s cabinet has insisted that there was no need to replace him, though there has been little word from the president about his condition. With Mr. Yar’Adua in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, the tenuous truce in the restive, oil-producing south of the country has fallen apart, while religious and ethnic clashes have broken out in the north in which hundreds have been killed. Meanwhile, citizens marched in the streets of the capital, Abuja, and in Lagos over Mr. Yar’Adua’s absence. Discontent focused on what many called his government’s failure to follow the Constitution, which prescribes a transfer of power when the president is gone. Demonstrators and government critics said that by insisting that the president not give up power, his northern allies had been promoting their own regional interests over national ones.
Pressure was mounting — the military had to tamp down talk of a possible coup — and the country’s 36 governors called last week for a transfer of power to the vice president, Mr. Jonathan. Finally, on Tuesday, both chambers of Nigeria’s National Assembly voted for the transfer, with the House saying “peace, order and good government” in the country justified it. The Senate president said Mr. Yar’Adua’s halting declaration, in a Jan. 12 BBC interview, that he would return when doctors allowed, was justification enough in the absence of the formal letter called for by Nigeria’s Constitution. Still, analysts immediately raised questions about whether Tuesday’s votes followed the Constitution, and they worried that the National Assembly’s seeming failure to do so would only create more problems. “What the Senate has done is compound the problem,” said Jibrin Ibrahim, director of the Center for Democracy and Development, a good-government research organization in Abuja. “They’re saying they heard the president’s voice on the radio. I’ve never seen such political farce.”
Balarabe Musa, chairman of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, had a similar take. “The National Assembly has illegally given power to the vice president to act as president, on the basis of what they call the doctrine of necessity,” Mr. Musa said. “If it continues, the end of the road in this case is bureaucratic anarchy.”
Mr. Jonathan, 52, is a former governor of an oil-producing state, Bayelsa. His calm demeanor and southern background are regarded as assets in tackling what both he and Mr. Yar’Adua have described as a primary objective: solving the conflict over oil in the south. As the de facto president in recent weeks, he sent extra troops to the north to help quell the violence there but has otherwise maintained a low profile, leaving others to raise the loudest voices for his appointment. “I don’t think there was a choice if the country was going to move forward,” said Walter Carrington, a former American ambassador to Nigeria. “They were simply in a state of drift,” Mr. Carrington said, adding that it was unclear whether or not Tuesday’s votes would settle the country’s political difficulties. The question, he said, is how the forces opposed to handing over power will react, and whether this will cause unrest.
Some argued for a more radical solution to the crisis. “The National Assembly should go ahead and impeach the president for gross misconduct,” said Mr. Musa, citing as justification Mr. Yar’Adua’s failure to inform lawmakers of the length of his absence.
Mr. Ibrahim said: “The president has been told over 70 days that he should transmit the letter, but he has refused to do that. We only have a crisis that is deepening. And that is why we are all very worried.”
Source: New York Times
The vote appeared to end weeks of political uncertainty in what had essentially been a leaderless country. Since Mr. Yar’Adua’s departure, there has been civil unrest in the north, threats of renewed violence in the south and diplomatic tensions with the United States, which required extra scrutiny of Nigerian travelers after one of their compatriots was arrested and charged with trying to detonate explosives on a plane to Detroit.
But while Nigerian political leaders said Tuesday’s vote was critical to restoring stability, questions were immediately raised about its constitutionality, about whether Mr. Yar’Adua’s partisans would accept it and about whether it would lead to more disorder. For weeks, a majority of Mr. Yar’Adua’s cabinet has insisted that there was no need to replace him, though there has been little word from the president about his condition. With Mr. Yar’Adua in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, the tenuous truce in the restive, oil-producing south of the country has fallen apart, while religious and ethnic clashes have broken out in the north in which hundreds have been killed. Meanwhile, citizens marched in the streets of the capital, Abuja, and in Lagos over Mr. Yar’Adua’s absence. Discontent focused on what many called his government’s failure to follow the Constitution, which prescribes a transfer of power when the president is gone. Demonstrators and government critics said that by insisting that the president not give up power, his northern allies had been promoting their own regional interests over national ones.
Pressure was mounting — the military had to tamp down talk of a possible coup — and the country’s 36 governors called last week for a transfer of power to the vice president, Mr. Jonathan. Finally, on Tuesday, both chambers of Nigeria’s National Assembly voted for the transfer, with the House saying “peace, order and good government” in the country justified it. The Senate president said Mr. Yar’Adua’s halting declaration, in a Jan. 12 BBC interview, that he would return when doctors allowed, was justification enough in the absence of the formal letter called for by Nigeria’s Constitution. Still, analysts immediately raised questions about whether Tuesday’s votes followed the Constitution, and they worried that the National Assembly’s seeming failure to do so would only create more problems. “What the Senate has done is compound the problem,” said Jibrin Ibrahim, director of the Center for Democracy and Development, a good-government research organization in Abuja. “They’re saying they heard the president’s voice on the radio. I’ve never seen such political farce.”
Balarabe Musa, chairman of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, had a similar take. “The National Assembly has illegally given power to the vice president to act as president, on the basis of what they call the doctrine of necessity,” Mr. Musa said. “If it continues, the end of the road in this case is bureaucratic anarchy.”
Mr. Jonathan, 52, is a former governor of an oil-producing state, Bayelsa. His calm demeanor and southern background are regarded as assets in tackling what both he and Mr. Yar’Adua have described as a primary objective: solving the conflict over oil in the south. As the de facto president in recent weeks, he sent extra troops to the north to help quell the violence there but has otherwise maintained a low profile, leaving others to raise the loudest voices for his appointment. “I don’t think there was a choice if the country was going to move forward,” said Walter Carrington, a former American ambassador to Nigeria. “They were simply in a state of drift,” Mr. Carrington said, adding that it was unclear whether or not Tuesday’s votes would settle the country’s political difficulties. The question, he said, is how the forces opposed to handing over power will react, and whether this will cause unrest.
Some argued for a more radical solution to the crisis. “The National Assembly should go ahead and impeach the president for gross misconduct,” said Mr. Musa, citing as justification Mr. Yar’Adua’s failure to inform lawmakers of the length of his absence.
Mr. Ibrahim said: “The president has been told over 70 days that he should transmit the letter, but he has refused to do that. We only have a crisis that is deepening. And that is why we are all very worried.”
Source: New York Times
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