What drives the conflict in Central Africa?
By
Deirdre Griswold
Wars are raging throughout Africa. The largest area of
confrontation is Congo and the countries on its borders:
Angola, Rwanda and Uganda. What is driving these conflicts?
It is impossible to find the truth in the Western capitalist
media. Every article, every television commentary, focuses only
on the results, not the causes.
We are shown suffering and devastation almost too horrible
to contemplate. But left out is the enormous pressure being
exerted on Africa by the huge transnational imperialist banks
and corporations and the government bodies that front for them.
The implied racist message is that Africa can't govern
itself.
Take this quote from a substantial article in the Jan. 12
New York Times entitled "Congo's Struggle May Unleash Broad
Strife to Redraw Africa":
"Wars between nations, largely absent since Africans became
independent starting in the 1960s, may become more common. As
troubling, many experts say, the national boundary lines that
have defined African countries for a century, and lent some
stability, may slowly come apart. ...
"Congo is particularly divisible, experts say, because those
foreign [African] troops tread on land rich in gold, diamonds,
copper, cobalt, oil and timber. Each outside nation has
interests in Congo--security, financial or both. So some Africa
watchers say that a second or more subdued scramble for Congo,
this time involving not European colonists but its own
neighbors, is also helping pull the nation apart."
What a convenient revelation! This time the Europeans are
not involved, claim the unnamed "experts." The recarving is all
being done by other Africans.
But the exploitation and plunder of Africa by Britain,
France, Portugal and Belgium didn't end with decolonization, as
the Times writers should know well. And they don't even ask if
U.S. imperialism, which has supplanted the European
colonialists as the major exploiting power in so much of the
developing world, has a stake in these wars.
The article identifies six countries--Uganda, Rwanda,
Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia and Chad--as "outside nations" whose
troops are fighting in Congo.
Contras and Taliban
In this day and age, shouldn't the writers for the Times
know full well that one of the main strategies of the
imperialists is to let other forces do their fighting for
them?
Wasn't that the meaning of the "Vietnamization" of the war
in Southeast Asia? Wasn't that how the Contras became a force
in Nicaragua? Isn't that how the Taliban were able to oust a
progressive government in Afghanistan and install one of the
most reactionary regimes in the world?
For many years, the U.S. government claimed to have no
direct role in these struggles. The full extent of its military
involvement and the billions of dollars spent on
counterrevolution came out only much later.
The history of imperialist plunder of Africa is too infamous
to be belittled by any honest writer. And not only the European
colonial powers have been involved. In the century now drawing
to a close, the U.S. government and the banks and corporations
it represents have played an increasingly pivotal role as the
major imperialist power in Africa, with Britain as their main
partner in crime.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency maneuvered the
assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the Congo's first president,
in 1960. It was behind the overthrow of Ghana's Marx ist
leader, Kwame Nkrumah. It took the entity known as UNITA and
molded it into a powerful army trying to defeat the popular
revolutionary government in Angola. In all these cases, it
found agents to do its dirty work so that its own hands could
be concealed. All of this has been well documented.
Why can't the media here even ask the question: Is the same
process happening right now in Africa?
Aggressive U.S. expansion
There is a new world situation ushered in by the collapse of
the Soviet Union. The U.S. imperialist policy makers see
immense opportunities to expand their global power. With no
rival coming anywhere near them in economic or military might,
they think they can ride roughshod over whatever measure of
national sovereignty the African masses have been able to
attain.
After World War II many heroic national liberation movements
began to render colonialism unworkable. They received support
and sustenance from the bloc of socialist countries, which was
nowhere near as wealthy as the imperialists but did provide
assistance.
It was no golden age. Many movements were set back. And the
eventual split between the Soviet Union and China had a grave
impact, helping to fracture many African liberation
movements.
But taken as a whole, it was a time when the imperialists
had to accept some measure of independence in many African
countries, including a degree of state control over natural
resources and vital areas of the infrastructure like banking,
railroads, telephones and so on. They feared that unless they
struck a compromise with the bourgeois elements, they could
lose everything in a revolutionary upheaval of the masses.
Even those military and political leaders who came to power
with Western backing, like General Mobutu in the Congo,
benefited from this arrangement by keeping a larger share of
the national wealth than the imperialists really wanted to
concede.
During this period, a strong Pan-African movement sought to
unite all the African countries.
While the imperialists fought among themselves for the
biggest share of the loot--the Congo was a prime example, with
the U.S., France and Belgium all backing different factions in
the 1960s--they were united in trying to crush any truly
popular and revolutionary development.
`Structural adjustment' and U.S.-backed
insurgencies
Over the past decade, "structural adjustment" programs
forced on Africa by the International Monetary Fund and World
Bank have stripped many countries of whatever control they
still exercised over their economies. Under the catchword
"privatization," they have had to surrender ownership of mines,
industries, communications and finance.
Today, the rivalry among the imperialists has sharpened
greatly. The push to recarve Africa is coming most aggressively
from the Anglo-U.S. alliance, at the expense first and foremost
of the African people. French imperialism is being pushed back,
losing control in areas where it has maintained neocolonial
relations.
In Rwanda, for example, where French was the official
language and the currency was convertible to the franc, the
takeover by an insurgent force in 1994 has led to its
realignment into the English-speaking bloc.
While the U.S. hand is not always visible, it is widely
acknowledged that Washington has provided important backing to
the present regimes in Uganda and Rwanda, including military
support. They, in turn, have invaded Congo twice--first to
overthrow the dictator Mobutu, and now in a war against the
more progressive government of Laurent Kabila, who had been
their ally in the first struggle.
Kabila has tried to strengthen the national economy, making
contracts with neighboring African countries like Zimba bwe,
Angola and Tanzania to develop Congo's mineral wealth. This
angered a number of imperialist mining companies, which lost
contracts they thought were in the bag.
But now Rwandan and Ugandan troops are occupying the eastern
third of the country, where Congo's great mineral wealth is
concentrated. They seem to have abundant weapons and access to
the most up-to-date satellite communications technology. And
they are making their own contracts with imperialist
corporations.
Angola, which has itself been at war with the U.S.-backed
UNITA army for many years, at immense human cost, answered
Kabila's call for help when Congo was invaded last summer. So
did Zimbabwe, Namibia and Chad.
But new offensives by UNITA--which the U.S. claims it no
longer bankrolls--have forced Angola to bring home almost all
its troops in recent weeks. Clearly, UNITA is once again on the
CIA payroll--if it ever was dropped.
In the imperialist world order, some countries--indeed,
whole continents--are seen by the ruling capitalists as
existing for no other purpose than to provide cheap raw
materials and labor.
This has been nowhere more apparent than in the attitude of
the European and U.S. ruling classes toward Africa. No amount
of sighing over human rights or attending endless conferences
promising minimal aid for economic development can drown out
the imperialists' real interest in Africa.
They are scrambling over each other to grab Africa's riches
for their global industrial machine. In the process, they will
create, take advantage of and envenom antagonisms among
different cultures, religions and regions.
This is the main driving force behind the African wars.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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