Commentary
http://www.a2zafrica.com/commentary.php
To many political observers, the deals that were signed in Africa to end two of the
most devastating regional conflicts, came as a surprise. Breakthroughs were
declared for negotiations on Sudan on July 20 in Kenya's town of Machakos, and
one week later for the Democratic Republic of the Congo in South Africa's capital,
Pretoria .
In Machakos, the Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation
Movement (SPLM) signed a protocol in which Southern Sudan will be guaranteed
six years of autonomy within a united Sudan, before a referendum will be held on
whether the population wants to separate from the rest of the country or not. And
the government agreed that the Islamic {Sharia} legal code will not be applied in
the South. In the next few weeks, a definite cease-fire is supposed to be
negotiated between the two delegations.
For the Congo, President Joseph Kabila and his counterpart from Rwanda, Paul
Kagame, on July 30 signed a deal by which Kabila agreed to the disarmament
and repatriation of the so-called Rwanda Interahamwe militias and former
Rwanda Army soldiers within the next 90 days, and in return, Kagame promised
to withdraw his troops from Eastern Congo.
On the surface, both deals were arranged by African mediators, and Western
diplomats only attended the talks as observers. For Sudan, Kenya's President
Daniel arap Moi and Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni played important
roles. Moi was directly involved with the two delegations in Machakos, and
Museveni later organized the first-ever meeting between Sudan's President Omar
Hassan al-Bashir and the SPLM leader John Garang in Kampala, Uganda's
capital. For the Congo agreement, the South African government played a critical
role. President Thabo Mbeki was present at the signing, and his deputy, Jacob
Zuma, chaired the meetings between the Rwandese and Congolese ministerial
negotiating teams in Pretoria.
But looking behind the scenes, and taking into account how Western intelligence
services kept these conflicts alive in the past, it is pretty clear that
Anglo-American, and in particular U.S. pressure played the critical role in forcing
the parties in the conflicts to come to an agreement now, where earlier
negotiations had been fruitless for years. Reliable sources from the region report
that John Garang was simply threatened with the loss of any U.S. and British
support, if he would continue to refuse a deal with the Khartoum government, as
he had done before, when Madeleine Albright was U.S. Secretary of State and
demanded the toppling of the government in Khartoum.
Now U.S. intelligence services have reportedly already begun to withdraw some
of their personnel from Garang's rebel movement. The Bashir government in
Khartoum, on the other side, was threatened to become a target of the U.S. war
on terrorism. This set the stage for the Bush Administration to name former
Republican Sen. John C. Danforth as special envoy to Sudan, and to start the
process of U.S.-led mediation between the rebels and the government, which
produced the Machakos Protocol of July|20.
For the Congo, informed political observers from the region say that President
Kabila had no choice but to sign the Pretoria deal. He clearly had in mind the way
his predecessor had ended his life (his father, Laurent Kabila, was
assassinated in January 2001). He accepted the fraudulent premise that the
so-called Hutu rebels were all genocidalists and had to be delivered back to
Rwanda, in exchange for an empty promise from the Rwandan dictator to
withdraw his troops from Eastern Congo.
Shortly before these negotiations, World Bank President James Wolfensohn
visited Kinshasa, Congo, and praised the Kabila government for its economic
policy. One week after Kabila signed the deal, the World Bank announced a $454
million loan to the Congo, and Wolfensohn announced a proposal to cancel 80%
of the country's $12 billion debt, as if to prove once more how effective the crude
carrot-and-stick method can be in diplomacy. In the process leading up to the
Pretoria negotiations, the U.S. State Department was directly involved, through
Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Mark Bellamy, who declared on July
14 in Kinshasa that he had come to the region ``to accelerate the peace
process.''
High Stakes
Both deals fit well into a long-range plan to clear up the power structures in
Africa, in favor of unchallenged Anglo-American interests. What is hailed as an
African breakthrough for peace is, in reality, an attempt to cajole African leaders
into accepting an arrangement by which the West continues to have unlimited
access to Africa's raw materials, without providing in return the necessary means
for Africa's own development.
Exploitation of the vast oil reserves that were discovered in the Gulf of Guinea and
in Sudan, is now the top priority for Anglo-American Africa policy, besides
continuing the old arrangements to loot the diamonds, gold, coltan[??], and other
strategic minerals.
For the Congo and the Great Lakes region, including Southern Sudan, this
strategy rests on the role that the two dictators of Uganda and Rwanda, Museveni
and Kagame, can play. Both came to power with British and American support,
and in 1990 they started the series of wars that led to the carnage in Rwanda in
1994, the continuing fighting in Burundi, and the devastating conflict in Congo.
Museveni's government has furthermore been the one used by Washington and
London to channel military support to John Garang's SPLA, fighting the
government of Sudan for the last 19 years.
Even though there are serious differences between Museveni and Kagame
locally, they continue to fit very well into the larger geopolitical design of the
Anglo-American powers for the African continent. In effect, the Congo deal forces
Kabila to accept the Kagame/Museveni dominance in the region, and the Sudan
agreement tends to bring the Khartoum government back into the orbit of
Anglo-American influence. Next on the agenda is a deal to end the war in
Burundi, which is right now being negotiated in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where
again South Africa plays the role of mediator.
That Presidents Museveni and Kagame are playing their role in this neocolonial
game, is no surprise. But the fact that the South African government seems to
look at its interests in the region in congruence with the interests of Washington
and London, prompts questions. Though it is commendable for South Africa's
Mbeki and Zuma to try to find peaceful ends to the conflicts plaguing the
continent, they must confront the fact that, right now, Washington and London are
ordering "peace without development'' for Africa--which, in the long term, will not
mean peace at all.
After the Bush Administration came into office, the Anglo-American powers
accelerated their venture into African oilfields for purely geopolitical reasons.
Having in mind a possible new Middle East war prompted by the Ariel Sharon
government in Israel and a new war against Iraq, Anglo-American strategists are
planning to lessen their dependence on Middle East oil, and replace it with
increased supply from Africa. They also are trying to roll back the influence of
China in Africa, which, in the absence of U.S. oil companies, since 1997 had built
the pipeline to pump oil from the fields in Southern Sudan to Port Sudan on the
Red Sea, and a refinery near Khartoum.
Shift in U.S. Africa Policy
The London {Times} of July 29 captures the current shift in U.S. Africa policy most
clearly, with the headline: ``U.S. Presses Africa To Turn on the Tap of Crude Oil.''
"The West has activated a plan,'' wrote the {Times,} ``to reduce its dependence
on politically risky Gulf oil by encouraging a huge increase in production in West
Africa and by tempting Nigeria to leave OPEC.'' The paper quoted Walter
Kansteiner, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs: ``African oil is of
national strategic interest to us, and it will increase and become more important
as we go forward.''
Kansteiner, who had already served as a specialist for strategic raw materials in
the administration of George Bush, Sr. in the 1980s, had just returned from a trip
to some of Africa's most important oil producers--Angola, Gabon, and Nigeria. In
a press briefing after his trip, Kansteiner explained that the United States is, right
now, importing about 15% of its crude oil from West Africa, and that this could
increase to 20% in the next three years.
In March 2000, the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa held
hearings on ``Africa's Energy Potential,'' at which testimony was given by
representatives of think-tanks and oil companies about the vast potential for
increased oil production in Africa, in particular West Africa. Paul M. Wihbey from
the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), a
Jerusalem-based think-tank linked to the most right-wing pro-Sharon circles in
Israel, discussed the increased strategic importance of the Gulf of Guinea region
of Africa for U.S. oil supplies. He already then proposed the formation of an extra
U.S. military command for the South Atlantic, and increased U.S. military
presence in West Africa, to safeguard the oil-supply lines.
After President George W. Bush assumed office in January 2001, discussions in
the Pentagon and State Department on the issue of African oil, along the lines of
the IASPS proposals, intensified. Following the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the war
in Afghanistan, the escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the early
planning of a U.S. war against Iraq, the question of alternative sources for oil
supply for the United States became highest priority for strategic planners.
Uwe Friesecke writes on Africa for Executive Intelligence Review he is based in
Germany. He writes for the African Desk and can be contacted at
lkfreeman@prodigy.net
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