Webinar exposes crimes of AFRICOM, and Canada is horribly complicit
Photo Credit: (Asia Times/Google Images)
Written by: Aidan Jonah
A recent webinar titled AFRICOM and Human Rights in Africa provided a poignant reminder of the destructive impacts of militarism around the world. From all across the continent, panelists detailed the harmful impact of the United States Africa Command and how it is a tool to ensure American dominance and maintain its financial interests.
AFRICOM begins
AFRICOM was established in October 2007, during the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency. AFRICOM claims that it “employs the broad-reaching diplomacy, development, and defense approach to foster interagency efforts and help negate the drivers of conflict and extremism in Africa.”
However, its mission statement is more blunt: “U.S. Africa Command, with partners, counters transnational threats and malign actors, strengthens security forces and responds to crises in order to advance U.S. national interests and promote regional security, stability and prosperity.”
AFRICOM is delusional when it states that it works with “partners.” In reality, the continent was bullied into collaborating with the command by US imperialism.
During 2007 and 2008, the only country which responded positively to a vast US military presence on the African continent was Liberia, led by Ellen Sirleaf. All other countries flat out rejected the concept of AFRICOM at the time. As a result, the command was forced to keep its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.
In 2008, President Bush claimed that no new bases would be introduced in Africa. At the time, there was only one US base in Africa, located in Djibouti. There are now 27 US military bases across the continent, down from 34 in 2018.
Writer Marcello Rivers explained that “The US uses the facade of military aid [AFRICOM] to steal resources from Africa for multinational corporations to continue the monopolies of capitalism.” In essence, AFRICOM is a key part of the push to recolonize Africa.
AFRICOM claims to be a counterterrorism operation. Despite this, the rate of terrorist attacks in Africa have actually increased since the establishment of AFRICOM. It supports “moderate rebels” and known terrorists in attempts to overthrow African governments, including Libya in 2011 and Burkina Faso in 2015. AFRICOM has supplied weapons to terrorist groups on multiple occasions including Libyan arms in 2012, when they were received “by terror groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, and non-state groups operating in the Sahel region.” When it is not supplying weapons to terrorists, AFRICOM fails miserably to stop the flow of weapons to these groups.
It also serves to crush resistance to Western neocolonial resource extraction projects and other Western financial interests.
Canada and AFRICOM
Make no mistake, Canada has been an active participant in AFRICOM, despite allusions otherwise.
In 2011, Canada led the NATO bombing campaign against Libya. That year, Libya was the African country that had achieved the highest progress on the Human Development Index, for which accomplishment Muammar al-Gaddafi was set to receive a United Nations prize.
Two years earlier, Gaddafi had become president of the African Union and stepped up opposition to AFRICOM’s presence on the continent. Gaddafi was working to create a new African Union, based on a new African economic system. He had a plan to introduce the ‘Gold Dinar’ as backing for African currencies, to allow them to escape the dollar-dominated Western monetary system. French president Nicolas Sarkozy allegedly called Gaddafi a threat to the financial security of the world.
After Wikileaks released over 3,000 DNC emails in July 2016, VICE focused on an April 2, 2011 memo prepared by ex-CIA official Sidney Blumenthal, titled “France's client/Q's gold. ” It revealed France’s concern that Gaddafi’s move to a pan-African currency would undercut the currency guaranteed by the French treasury, known as the CFA franc, widely used in France’s former West African colonies, and which also gives the French government insidious financial controls over those countries.
According to Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey of Global Research, “They [NATO] bombed the water supply, then bombed the factory producing tubes so that it could not be repaired, they strafed the electricity grid “to break their backs,” murdered Gaddafi’s grandchildren because they were classified as “legitimate targets,” murdered civilians, told lie after lie about the Government forces attacking indiscriminately when all they were doing was trying to stem the onslaught of foreign terrorists shipped in to do NATO’s dirty work, orchestrated by NATO boots on the ground, in direct breach of UNSC Resolutions 1970 and 1973 (2011).”
So, this campaign against Libya was not one of “human rights” and “freedom,” but rather an imperialist war of destruction to crush an alternative society focused on the wellbeing of ordinary people.
Canada’s destructive role continues through training and military presence
Canadian interference and military training in Africa ramped up during the 1960s, after many African countries achieved independence.
In 1961, Canadian peacekeepers gave up the location of Congolese socialist leader Patrice Lumumba, leading to his death by firing squad. In 1966, the Ghanaian military, trained by Canadian soldiers, overthrew pan-African president Kwame Nkrumah. In the years before the coup, Canadian military figures boasted about the influence Canada had within the military, and their successful campaign to maintain the military’s loyalty to Western colonial countries.
By the end of the 1960s, Canada had spent over $23M (around $170M today) training the military forces of seven African and Asian countries.
A 1960s memo to cabinet ministers stated the Canadian view on the political value of training foreign military officers.
“Military leaders in many developing countries, if they do not actually form the government, frequently wield much more power and influence domestically than is the case in the majority of Western democratic nations … [It] would seem in Canada’s general interest on broad foreign policy grounds to keep open the possibility of exercising a constructive influence on the men who often will form the political elite in developing countries, by continuing to provide training places for officers in our military institutions where they receive not only technical military training but are also exposed to Canadian values and attitudes.”
In 2011, the Canadian Special Operations Regiment (CSOR) began participating in the Flintlock military exercise organized by AFRICOM. The exercise is directed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and is held in a different nation of the Sahel region of northern Africa each year.
NATO described Flintlock as “an annual international training operation in which militaries from nations along the Sahel region of Africa receive training from Western militaries.”
CSOR was created in 2006. Ottawa Citizen journalist David Pugliese explained that “Its soldiers have conducted operations in Afghanistan but the details of those missions are secret.” NATO described CSOR training operations focus as “improv[ing] the combat, and counterterrorism capabilities of foreign militaries, which in turn enables them to neutralize regional threats before they become an international crisis.”
As of 2011, CSOR had 450 staff members, with a goal of reaching 600. That year, 14 members were sent to Flintlock. By 2016, nearly 100 CSOR members participated in the annual event as trainers.
CSOR explains that, “We can be used as a strategic asset for the Government of Canada. We are capable of breaching and disrupting enemy defensive systems, strike, seizure and control operations.”
Disrupt enemy defensive systems they did, in an indirect manner though. This year, Canadian trained Malian troops launched a successful coup against President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. Despite the coup, Canada confirmed it would continue to participate in Flintlock, which had “links to instructing troops who have been involved in two separate military uprisings in Mali.”
David Pugliese revealed that, “Coup leader Col. Assimi Goïta, as well as many of the soldiers who took part in the uprising, had received training at the annual US-led Flintlock military exercises, which involves Western special forces providing counterterrorism training to African units.”
Pugliese further detailed how Canadian forces were in Mali until a year before the coup: “Canadian military personnel deployed to Mali from August 2018 to August 2019 when Canada contributed an air task force that provided medical evacuation, logistics and transportation capability to the United Nations in northern Mali.”
Canada continues to build influence on the continent
This is far from the only training of African troops led by the Canadian military. The Military Training Assistance Program (MTAP) has allowed hundreds of African troops to train in Canada.
Respected author and activist Yves Engler said, “An important objective [of MTAP and Flintlock] is to strengthen foreign militaries’ capacity to operate in tandem with Canadian and/or NATO forces.”
MTAP states its training “serves to achieve influence in areas of strategic interest to Canada… Canadian diplomatic and military representatives find it considerably easier to gain access and exert influence in countries with a core group of professional Canadian-trained military leaders.”
In 2011, Ottawa negotiated to house equipment and soldiers in Tanzania, Senegal and Kenya (as well as four other non-African countries). Dubbed Operational Support Hub, the Canadian military was seeking “a permanent footprint on both sides of the African continent.” According to a military briefing note, the bases were designed to improve Canadian Forces’ “ability to project combat power/security assistance and Canadian influence rapidly and flexibly anywhere in the world.”
Yves Engler’s book on the subject, Canada in Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation, revealed that Ottawa spent hundreds of millions of dollars building African Union military capacity. Engler explained, “The bulk of the money supported AU missions in Sudan and Somalia, but Ottawa also funnelled tens of millions of dollars into developing a regional military structure to police the continent.”
In 2014, Canadian Special Operations Forces Command spokesman, Major Steve Hawken, told Embassy magazine that his force had recently trained 800 African military personnel.
Recently, Canada has even funded and staffed various military training centres across the continent, such as the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Ghana, the African Centre for Strategic Research and Studies in Nigeria and the École de maintien de la paix Alioune Blondin Beye in Mali.
Canadian mining companies run rampant in Africa, with the Canadian state actively enabling human rights abuses, even including slavery. Sadly, it should serve as no surprise that Canada should want to influence the military figures who are so important in maintaining the current neocolonial order in Africa.
Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news site founded in 2019. He has written about Canadian imperialism, federal politics, and left-wing resistance to colonialism across the world. He is a second-year Bachelor of Journalism student at Ryerson University, who was the Head of Communications and Community Engagement for Etobicoke North NDP Candidate Naiima Farah in the 2019 Federal Election.
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