Football and Chagos

"Our situation is like a football match. The superpower countries are the players, and we are just the ball to be kicked around."

- A young Pakistani civilian,
North Waziristan

Nima Shirazi

The Great Game is indeed alive and kicking. This summer's World Cup tournament is providing yet another way for the United States to project its power across the globe, though not as a result of the American national team's action on the pitch.

Rather, this year, the subjugation will be televised.

While the presence of U.S. Marine Corps recruiting advertisements at each and every commercial break is perhaps mundane at this point, far more surprising is the frequent, scripted announcement by various British and Scottish play-by-play commentators on ESPN that "we'd like to welcome our men and women in uniform, serving in over 175 countries and territories, watching today's 2010 FIFA World Cup match on AFN, the American Forces Network." Other various comments have also been made about how proud the ESPN color men are of the American troops, what a fine job they are doing, and that the commentators are "glad to have them with us" and "sincerely hope [the soldiers] are enjoying the broadcast."

Beyond the surreal fact that announcers from the UK, like Adrian Healey, Martin Tyler, and Ian Darke, are eagerly praising American soldiers and sailors during the broadcast as their own ("our brave men and women..."), how can the rest be said with a straight face or without the most shameful sense of hypocrisy? That there are US troops stationed in over 175 countries around the world is a stunning fact in itself - although well-known by now if you've been paying attention at all for the past decade. At this point, there's probably an 'App' for that.

But again, this is the World Cup, and overseas ESPN announcers are lauding the attention, entertainment, and service of U.S. world domination forces, a military that has invaded, occupied, overthrown, exploited, bombed, blasted, burned, and reduced to rubble many - if not most - of the countries that now vie for the cup of all cups. The same Armed Force that now gets to enjoy the harmonious excitement of the 'beautiful game' in all its High Def glory has stoked tension and supported instability (to say the least) in countries as Greece (in 1947-49, over 500 U.S. armed forces military advisers sent to administer hundreds of millions of dollars in their civil war), Brazil (in 1964, U.S. backs a coup d'etat to overthrow popular president João Goulart), Chile (in 1973, U.S.-supported military coup overthrows - and murders - democratically-elected president Salvador Allende and brings dictatorship of Pinochet to power), Uruguay (in 1973, U.S.-backed coup brings military dictatorship to power), Argentina (in 1976, military junta deposes government of Isabel Perón with U.S. support), Honduras (besides past interventions in 1905, 1907, 1911, and 1943, in 1983 over 1000 troops and National Guard members were deployed to help the Contra fight against Nicaragua, not to mention the U.S. support for last year's coup), Slovenia and Serbia (in 1992-6, U.S. Navy joins in a naval blockade of Yugoslavia in Adriatic waters while in 1999, U.S. participated in months of air bombing and cruise missile strikes in Kosovo 'war').

The U.S military is still essentially occupying Germany (52,440 troops in over 50 installations), Japan (35,688 troops with an additional 5,500 American civilians employed by the DoD - oh yeah, and Japan pays about $2 billion each year for the US to be there as part of the 'Omoiyari Yosan,' or 'compassion budget'), and South Korea (28,500 U.S. troops). There are 9,660 U.S troops still stationed in Italy, 9,015 in the United Kingdom, over 1,300 in Serbia and over 1,200 in Spain.

Furthermore, Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Algeria, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, and Uruguay all suffer the presence of at least a few American soldiers who are officially stationed there; some of these countries are forced to host 400-800 US troops. All told, there are about 78,000 American military personnel in Europe, along with approximately 47,240 in East Asia and the Pacific, 3,360 in North Africa, the Near East, and South Asia (obviously not including the 92,000 troops in Iraq and about 100,000 in Afghanistan and Pakistan), 1,355 in sub-Saharan Africa, and an additional 1,940 in the Western Hemisphere outside the United States itself.

When broadcasting from the new Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban on the east coast of South Africa, Scottish announcer Derek Rae has made sure to point out that "U.S. sailors and Marines are with us today...on AFN, the American Forces Network."

As of 2008, the U.S. Navy had over 90,000 sailors afloat in and around the United States and its satellite territories around the world. Another 18,280 are deployed in foreign waters, accompanied by over 4,300 Marines. There are about 10,500 Naval personnel stationed in East Asia and the Pacific alone.

Continuing, Rae states, "We'd like say hello to the crews of all the ships at sea. And we are just a stone's throw from the ocean ourselves, the Indian Ocean, in this case. Great to have you with us."

The island of Diego Garcia, located about 1,000 miles from the southern coasts of India and Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean, is a British colony, part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, and serves as a massive U.S. military naval and airbase under an arrangement made in 1971 (for which the UK does not charge the U.S. any rent). The agreement led to 2,000 native islanders being forcibly evicted to the Seychelles and Mauritius. (Reportedly, the U.S. is "opposed to anyone other than military personnel and their employees living anywhere in the Chagos archipelago, asserting that security will be compromised." Since the U.S. has always had such an ironic sense of humor when it comes to unabashed ethnic cleansing - whether in the Americas, Palestine, or the Indian Ocean - it should come as no surprise that the island's military base was named "Camp Justice" until 2006.) Currently, about 50 British military staff are stationed on the island, with more than 3,200 U.S. personnel.

The Diego Garcia installation acts as a refueling and support station for the U.S. Navy and Air Force and is home of a U.S. naval prepositioning squadron (responsible for the readiness of naval vessels as part of the Military Sealift Command in the Indian Ocean). The aerial bombardment and invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq were launched from the island. More recently, Diego Garcia is home to forward deployed U.S. guided missile nuclear submarines, in stark violation of the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty, and has been used as a "black site" in the Bush administration's illegal extraordinary rendition program, a program protected and continued by Obama.

Earlier this year, the Scottish Sunday Herald revealed that "hundreds of powerful US 'bunker-buster' bombs" had been "shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for a possible attack on Iran." The cargo included "195 smart, guided, Blu-110 bombs and 192 massive 2000lb Blu-117 bombs," which are "used for blasting hardened or underground structures" such as Iran's fortified nuclear energy facilities. Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London and co-author of a recent study on US preparations for an attack on Iran, has stated that the United States is "gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran...US bombers are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours."

The only country in this year's World Cup proceedings without any substantial or even token United States military presence is - surprise - North Korea. Yet even this might change if Obama gets his way. That would put American troops in every single one of the 32 countries currently competing in South Africa, along with over 140 others.

A press release distributed by U.S. Africa Command (US AFRICOM) this week reports, "Through the cooperation of a host of international television licensees, the American Forces Network Broadcast Center (AFN-BC) has been granted permission by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) to distribute the full complement of matches of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa."

A recent article in Stars and Stripes, quotes Lt. Col. Steve Berger, an intelligence planner with U.S. Army Africa stationed in Vicenza, Italy, as saying, "It’s really great for the soldiers to see, especially for an emerging sport in the U.S.” (So that they can get a glimpse of the kinds of people they'll be ordered to conquer and kill next?) Even more exciting is the fact that, "Because AFN doesn’t pay for programming, it was important that it receive the rights to the World Cup for free, AFN chief of affiliate relations Larry Sichter said." Apparently, the military can invade your country and station troops there indefinitely, but it sure as hell won't pay for television broadcasting! Especially not with the $531 billion allocated this fiscal year for U.S. military spending (a total which is expected to rise by $18 billion next year along with an additional $272 billion for the ongoing occupation of Iraq, the escalation in Afghanistan, the illegal predator drone bombings in Pakistan, and rebuilding and updating a nuclear arsenal in clear violation of the requirements of the NPT). The U.S. armed forces just can't spare a square.

Perhaps FIFA had no choice but to comply with the requests of the U.S. military for fear of having their offices occupied or blown to pieces. What a relief a deal was struck! How global! How peaceful! How imperial! How obvious, unsurprising, and embarrassing.

"Having the most-watched sports event on the planet play out on AFN is a real feather in our cap," notes Jeff White, Executive Director of AFN-BC, in the text of the military press release filed from Riverdale, CA via Stuttgart, Germany. "But more importantly," White continues, "we'll be able to deliver the entire compliment [sic] of matches to the side that means the most -- our brave men and women in uniform serving their country overseas and in harm's way. It doesn't get any better than this."

That, out of the planetary pride, representation, and unification that the World Cup is supposed to be all about, the U.S. military would be "the side that means the most" is in itself upsetting - but hey, it's a military press release and the guy's name is White after all.

But White is wholly wrong about "it" not getting "any better than this." There is a very simple way for things to be much, much better. If the U.S. reduced its dominating and destructive presence and aggressive involvement around the world and dismantled the hundreds of foreign installations and imperial infrastructure that keep the rest of the world in submission and under American occupation, these "brave men and women in uniform" could - and should - be watching these 64 soccer games from the comfort of their own homes in the United States, on the couch with their families.

For the sake of the entire world, it truly wouldn't get any better than that.

Source.

Base on Diego Garcia aiming at China?

If China's satellites and spies were working properly, there would have been a flood of unsettling intelligence flowing into the Beijing headquarters of the Chinese navy last week. A new class of U.S. superweapon had suddenly surfaced nearby. It was an Ohio-class submarine, which for decades carried only nuclear missiles targeted against the Soviet Union, and then Russia. But this one was different: for nearly three years, the U.S. Navy has been dispatching modified "boomers" to who knows where (they do travel underwater, after all). Four of the 18 ballistic-missile subs no longer carry nuclear-tipped Trident missiles. Instead, they hold up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles each, capable of hitting anything within 1,000 miles with non-nuclear warheads.
Their capability makes watching these particular submarines especially interesting. The 14 Trident-carrying subs are useful in the unlikely event of a nuclear Armageddon, and Russia remains their prime target. But the Tomahawk-outfitted quartet carries a weapon that the U.S. military has used repeatedly against targets in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq and Sudan.

That's why alarm bells would have sounded in Beijing on June 28 when the Tomahawk-laden 560-ft. U.S.S. Ohio popped up in the Philippines' Subic Bay. More alarms were likely sounded when the U.S.S. Michigan arrived in Pusan, South Korea, on the same day. And the Klaxons would have maxed out as the U.S.S. Florida surfaced, also on the same day, at the joint U.S.-British naval base on Diego Garcia, a flyspeck of an island in the Indian Ocean. In all, the Chinese military awoke to find as many as 462 new Tomahawks deployed by the U.S. in its neighborhood. "There's been a decision to bolster our forces in the Pacific," says Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "There is no doubt that China will stand up and take notice."

U.S. officials deny that any message is being directed at Beijing, saying the Tomahawk triple play was a coincidence. But they did make sure that news of the deployments appeared in the Hong Kong–based South China Morning Post - on July 4, no less. The Chinese took notice quietly. "At present, common aspirations of countries in the Asian and Pacific regions are seeking for peace, stability and regional security," Wang Baodong, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said on Wednesday. "We hope the relevant U.S. military activities will serve for the regional peace, stability and security, and not the contrary."


Last month, the Navy announced that all four of the Tomahawk-carrying subs were operationally deployed away from their home ports for the first time. Each vessel packs "the firepower of multiple surface ships," says Captain Tracy Howard of Submarine Squadron 16 in Kings Bay, Ga., and can "respond to diverse threats on short notice."

The move forms part of a policy by the U.S. government to shift firepower from the Atlantic to the Pacific theater, which Washington sees as the military focus of the 21st century. Reduced tensions since the end of the Cold War have seen the U.S. scale back its deployment of nuclear weapons, allowing the Navy to reduce its Trident fleet from 18 to 14. (Why 14 subs, as well as bombers and land-based missiles carrying nuclear weapons, are still required to deal with the Russian threat is a topic for another day.) (See "Obama Shelves U.S. Missile Shield: The Winners and Losers.")
Sure, the Navy could have retired the four additional subs and saved the Pentagon some money, but that's not how bureaucracies operate. Instead, it spent about $4 billion replacing the Tridents with Tomahawks and making room for 60 special-ops troops to live aboard each sub and operate stealthily around the globe. "We're there for weeks, we have the situational awareness of being there, of being part of the environment," Navy Rear Admiral Mark Kenny explained after the first Tomahawk-carrying former Trident sub set sail in 2008. "We can detect, classify and locate targets and, if need be, hit them from the same platform."

The submarines aren't the only new potential issue of concern for the Chinese. Two major military exercises involving the U.S. and its allies in the region are now under way. More than three dozen naval ships and subs began participating in the "Rim of the Pacific" war games off Hawaii on Wednesday. Some 20,000 personnel from 14 nations are involved in the biennial exercise, which includes missile drills and the sinking of three abandoned vessels playing the role of enemy ships. Nations joining the U.S. in what is billed as the world's largest-ever naval war game are Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, Singapore and Thailand. Closer to China, CARAT 2010 - for Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training - just got under way off Singapore. The operation involves 17,000 personnel and 73 ships from the U.S., Singapore, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.


China is absent from both exercises, and that's no oversight. Many nations in the eastern Pacific, including Australia, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and Vietnam, have been encouraging the U.S. to push back against what they see as China's increasingly aggressive actions in the South China Sea. And the U.S. military remains concerned over China's growing missile force - now more than 1,000 - near the Taiwan Strait. The Tomahawks' arrival "is part of a larger effort to bolster our capabilities in the region," Glaser says. "It sends a signal that nobody should rule out our determination to be the balancer in the region that many countries there want us to be." No doubt Beijing got the signal.f China's satellites and spies were working properly, there would have been a flood of unsettling intelligence flowing into the Beijing headquarters of the Chinese navy last week. A new class of U.S. superweapon had suddenly surfaced nearby. It was an Ohio-class submarine, which for decades carried only nuclear missiles targeted against the Soviet Union, and then Russia. But this one was different: for nearly three years, the U.S. Navy has been dispatching modified "boomers" to who knows where (they do travel underwater, after all). Four of the 18 ballistic-missile subs no longer carry nuclear-tipped Trident missiles. Instead, they hold up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles each, capable of hitting anything within 1,000 miles with non-nuclear warheads.

Their capability makes watching these particular submarines especially interesting. The 14 Trident-carrying subs are useful in the unlikely event of a nuclear Armageddon, and Russia remains their prime target. But the Tomahawk-outfitted quartet carries a weapon that the U.S. military has used repeatedly against targets in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq and Sudan.

That's why alarm bells would have sounded in Beijing on June 28 when the Tomahawk-laden 560-ft. U.S.S. Ohio popped up in the Philippines' Subic Bay. More alarms were likely sounded when the U.S.S. Michigan arrived in Pusan, South Korea, on the same day. And the Klaxons would have maxed out as the U.S.S. Florida surfaced, also on the same day, at the joint U.S.-British naval base on Diego Garcia, a flyspeck of an island in the Indian Ocean. In all, the Chinese military awoke to find as many as 462 new Tomahawks deployed by the U.S. in its neighborhood. "There's been a decision to bolster our forces in the Pacific," says Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "There is no doubt that China will stand up and take notice."

U.S. officials deny that any message is being directed at Beijing, saying the Tomahawk triple play was a coincidence. But they did make sure that news of the deployments appeared in the Hong Kong–based South China Morning Post - on July 4, no less. The Chinese took notice quietly. "At present, common aspirations of countries in the Asian and Pacific regions are seeking for peace, stability and regional security," Wang Baodong, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said on Wednesday. "We hope the relevant U.S. military activities will serve for the regional peace, stability and security, and not the contrary."

Last month, the Navy announced that all four of the Tomahawk-carrying subs were operationally deployed away from their home ports for the first time. Each vessel packs "the firepower of multiple surface ships," says Captain Tracy Howard of Submarine Squadron 16 in Kings Bay, Ga., and can "respond to diverse threats on short notice."

The move forms part of a policy by the U.S. government to shift firepower from the Atlantic to the Pacific theater, which Washington sees as the military focus of the 21st century. Reduced tensions since the end of the Cold War have seen the U.S. scale back its deployment of nuclear weapons, allowing the Navy to reduce its Trident fleet from 18 to 14. (Why 14 subs, as well as bombers and land-based missiles carrying nuclear weapons, are still required to deal with the Russian threat is a topic for another day.) (See "Obama Shelves U.S. Missile Shield: The Winners and Losers.")
Sure, the Navy could have retired the four additional subs and saved the Pentagon some money, but that's not how bureaucracies operate. Instead, it spent about $4 billion replacing the Tridents with Tomahawks and making room for 60 special-ops troops to live aboard each sub and operate stealthily around the globe. "We're there for weeks, we have the situational awareness of being there, of being part of the environment," Navy Rear Admiral Mark Kenny explained after the first Tomahawk-carrying former Trident sub set sail in 2008. "We can detect, classify and locate targets and, if need be, hit them from the same platform."

The submarines aren't the only new potential issue of concern for the Chinese. Two major military exercises involving the U.S. and its allies in the region are now under way. More than three dozen naval ships and subs began participating in the "Rim of the Pacific" war games off Hawaii on Wednesday. Some 20,000 personnel from 14 nations are involved in the biennial exercise, which includes missile drills and the sinking of three abandoned vessels playing the role of enemy ships. Nations joining the U.S. in what is billed as the world's largest-ever naval war game are Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, Singapore and Thailand. Closer to China, CARAT 2010 - for Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training - just got under way off Singapore. The operation involves 17,000 personnel and 73 ships from the U.S., Singapore, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.


China is absent from both exercises, and that's no oversight. Many nations in the eastern Pacific, including Australia, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and Vietnam, have been encouraging the U.S. to push back against what they see as China's increasingly aggressive actions in the South China Sea. And the U.S. military remains concerned over China's growing missile force - now more than 1,000 - near the Taiwan Strait. The Tomahawks' arrival "is part of a larger effort to bolster our capabilities in the region," Glaser says. "It sends a signal that nobody should rule out our determination to be the balancer in the region that many countries there want us to be." No doubt Beijing got the signal.
(AP/Yahoo News, 9 July 2010)

Diego Garcia est un CIA blacksite clandestin

Le cinéaste mauricien Atman Ramchalaon, qui a produit un des premiers films documentaires sur Diego Garcia visionné dans plusieurs pays, soutient dans une communication adressée cette semaine au Mauricien que l'atoll de Diego Garcia dans l'archipel des Chagos est "un CIA blacksite, où il y a des camps de détention secrets". "Diego Garcia has become a clandestine CIA blacksite", dit-il, soulignant qu'il est grand temps que le gouvernement mauricien réclame Diego Garcia à la Grande-Bretagne en ayant recours à la Cour internationale de justice qui siège à La Haye aux Pays-Bas.

Établi à Amsterdam depuis plus de 30 ans, Atman Ramchalaon dit arriver à cette conclusion en se fondant sur les recherches effectuées en 2006 par le journaliste Stephen Rey, auteur de Ghost Plane, sur la présence de vols affrétés sur Diego Garcia. Selon lui, ces avions auraient été utilisés par la CIA pour des " restitutions " de prisonniers du Pakistan, de l'Afghanistan et de l'Irak vers Diego Garcia " for the so-called extraordinary rendition ". Les personnes soupçonnées d'actes terroristes, affirme-t-il, sont enlevés par l'agence américaine de renseignement et envoyés par avion dans des camps de détention secrets pour être torturés. Le général militaire américain Barry Mc Caffrey, ajoute-t-il, avait désigné Diego Garcia comme un de ses camps de détention gardés secrètement.

Notre compatriote indique aussi qu'un rapport publié par le Conseil de l'Europe - fondé en 1949 - a lui aussi confirmé la présence d'un centre de détention sur cette île de l'océan Indien tout en condamnant le gouvernement concerné. Il a par ailleurs rappelé que " extraordinary rendition in secret detention camps is a violation of Art. 3 of the United Nations Convention on torture ". Et de souligner que des organisations internationales telles La Croix Rouge, Human Rights Watch et autres ont déjà demandé l'autorisation d'accès à ces camps, plus particulièrement sur Diego Garcia qui, rappelle-t-il, est totalement isolée.

M. Ramchalaon est catégorique : la cession de Diego Garcia aux Anglais en 1965 - alors que Maurice était toujours une colonie - en échange de l'Indépendance est " illégale ". Le démembrement, rappelle-t-il, était le résultat d'un deal entre les Américains et les Anglais portant sur la production des missiles Polaris aux États-Unis et leur achat par la Grande-Bretagne. C'est ainsi qu'à la suite d'un décret, le gouvernement britannique a cédé Diego Garcia et les Seychelles pour constituer une nouvelle colonie sous l'appellation British Territories of the Indian Ocean (BIOT). Cette action est une violation de la Résolution 1514 des Nations unies, estime notre compatriote.

D'ailleurs, poursuit M. Ramchalaon, le 14 décembre 1960, l'Assemblée générale des Nations unies avait condamné tout pays qui a cédé les territoires d'un autre État qui n'a pas encore obtenu son indépendance. Ce qui était justement le cas pour Maurice avec la cession de l'archipel des Chagos qui comprend principalement Peros Banhos, Salomon et surtout Diego Garcia qui était habité. Selon M. Ramchalaon, les Anglais et les Américains se contentent de circuler à l'intention de la communauté internationale des rumeurs selon lesquelles les habitants qui se trouvaient sur Chagos étaient des laboureurs qui prêtaient leur main-d'oeuvre à titre temporaire. D'où sa conviction que cette transaction entre Anglais et Américains aux dépens de la souveraineté territoriale de Maurice est " totalement scandaleuse ". " Scandaleux également les droits humains des Chagossiens qui sont piétinés d'année en année depuis 45 ans ! " dit-il.

Source: Le Mauricien

Reprieve on Diego Garcia

The organisation Reprieve works to enforce the law for the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guántanamo. The list of hidden prisons or prisoners. On Diego Gracia:

British Indian Ocean Territory Diego Garcia has been used for illegal rendition and detention of prisoners including Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni and Mustafa Setmarian Naser.

Suspicions were first raised by an open letter on to Prime Minister Tony Blair on 28 December 2002, when Human Rights Watch suggested that U.S. forces were holding and interrogating al-Qaeda suspects on Diego Garcia, violating international law and the legal obligations of the British government.

In a subsequent series of questions and answers in Parliament from 2003 until 2008, the UK Government consistently denied the allegations.
Further reading.

Reprieve on the history of Diego Garcia.

Chagos islanders must be allowed home

Sean Casey in The Guardian:

It was very crafty of David Miliband to instruct the commissioner of the British Indian Ocean Territory to declare a marine protected area in the Chagos archipelago on the afternoon of Maundy Thursday, 1 April. It wasn't quite a Jo Moore "it's now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury" moment, but it came fairly close.

It certainly wrong-footed a significant number of British MPs from all the major parties who had attended a debate on the Chagos islands in Westminster Hall on 10 March and were given the impression that the issue would be discussed in the Commons before any decision was made. The displeasure caused sparked emergency debates in both houses on 6 April, shortly before dissolution.

It is also revealing that the former foreign secretary's announcement was timed to catch out the authorities in Mauritius where, because the National Assembly had been dissolved in preparation for the general election on 5 May, there was no time for a parliamentary debate or statement.
Further reading.

Africa, new target of US imperialism

Rather to my amazement Allafrica.com very recently carried this piece from Zabalaza, South African "platformist"-anarchist journal with which I used to be in touch. Chagos is mentioned in passing but the whole article seems important enough to be placed here.

Michael Schmidt

Former colonial power, France, has maintained the largest foreign military presence in Africa since most countries attained sovereignty in the 1950s and 1960s. While France reduced its armed presence on the continent by two thirds at the end of the last century, it continues to intervene in a muscular and controversial fashion. For example, under a 1961 'mutual defence' pact, French forces were allowed to be permanently stationed in Ivory Coast and the 500-strong 43rd Marine Infantry Battalion is still based at Port Bouet next to the Abidjan airport.

When the civil war erupted in Ivory Coast in September 2002, France added a 'stabilisation force', now numbering some 4,000 under Operation Licorne, which was augmented in 2003 by 1,500 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) 'peacekeepers' drawn from Senegal, Ghana, Benin, Togo and Nigeria. In January 2006, the United Nations extended the mandate of Operation Licorne until December 2006.

Piggybacking off the French military presence in Africa, however, are a series of new foreign military and policing initiatives by the United States and the European Union. It appears that the US has devised a new 'Monroe Doctrine' for Africa (the term has become a synonym for the doctrine of US interventions in what it saw as its Latin American 'back yard').

Under the George W. Bush regime's War on Terror doctrine, the US has designated a swathe of territory - curving across the globe from Colombia and Venezuela in South America, through Africa's Maghreb, Sahara and Sahel regions, and into the Middle East and Central Asia - as the 'arc of instability', where both real and supposed terrorists may find refuge and training.

In Africa, which falls under the US military's European Command (EUCOM), the US has struck agreements with France to share its military bases. For example, there is now a US marine corps base in Djibouti at the French base of Camp Lemonier. More than 1,800 marines are stationed there, allegedly for 'counter-terrorism' operations in the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and East Africa, as well as for controlling the Red Sea shipping lanes.

But the US presence involves more than piggybacking off French bases. In 2003, US intelligence operatives began training spies for four unnamed North African countries. These are believed to be Morocco and Egypt and perhaps also Algeria and Tunisia.

It is also conducting training of the armed forces of countries such as Chad. In September 2005, Bush told the United Nations Security Council that the US would train 40,000 'African peace-keepers' to 'preserve justice and order in Africa', over the following five years. The US Embassy in Pretoria said, at the time, that the US had already trained 20,000 'peace-keepers' in 12 African countries in the use of 'non-lethal equipment'.

And now, while the US is downscaling and dismantling military bases in Germany and South Korea, it is relocating these military resources to Africa and the Middle East in order to 'combat terrorism' and 'protect oil resources'.

In Africa, new US bases are being built in Djibouti, Uganda, Senegal, and São Tomé & Prí­ncipe. These 'jumping-off points' will station small, permanent forces, but with the ability to launch major regional military adventures, according to the US-based Associated Press. An existing US base at Entebbe in Uganda, under the one-party regime of US ally Yoweri Museveni, already 'covers' East Africa and the Great Lakes region. In Dakar, Senegal, the US is busy upgrading an airfield.

SOUTH AFRICA SECRETLY JOINS THE 'WAR ON TERROR'

Governments with whom the US has concluded military pacts with include Gabon, Mauritania, Rwanda, Guinea and South Africa. The US also has a 'second Guantanamo' in the Indian Ocean, where alleged terror suspects who are kidnapped in Africa, the Middle East or Asia can be detained and interrogated without trial. This 'second Guantanamo' comprises of a detention camp, refueling point and bomber base situated on the British-colonised Chagos Archipelago island of Diego Garcia, an island from which the indigenous inhabitants were forcibly removed to Mauritius.

In South Africa's case, while it is unlikely that there will ever be US bases established - the strength of South Africa's own military, SANDF, makes this unnecessary - in 2005, the country quietly signed on to the US's Africa Contingency Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA) programme, which is aimed at integrating African armed forces into US strategic (imperialist) objectives.

South Africa, by signing on to ACOTA as the 13th African member, effectively joined the American War on Terror. ACOTA started life as a 'humanitarian' programme run by EUCOM out of Stuttgart, Germany, in 1996. After the 9/11 attacks, however, the Pentagon reorganised ACOTA and gave it more teeth.

Today, ACOTA's makeup is more obviously aggressive than defensive. According to journalist Pierre Abromovici - writing, in the July 2004 edition of Le Monde Diplomatique, about rumours that South Africa was preparing to sign ACOTA a full year before it did so - 'ACOTA includes offensive training, particularly for regular infantry units and small units modelled on special forces... In Washington, the talk is no longer of non-lethal weapons... the emphasis is on "offensive" co-operation'.

The real nature of ACOTA is perhaps indicated by the career of the man heading it up, Colonel Nestor Pino-Marina. He is, according to Abromovici, 'a Cuban exile who took part in the 1961 failed US landing in the Bay of Pigs... He is also a former special forces officer who served in Vietnam and Laos. During the Reagan era he belonged to the Inter-American Defence Board, and, in the 1960s, he took part in clandestine operations against the Sandanistas. He was accused of involvement in drug-trafficking to fund arms sent to Central America' to prop up pro-Washington right-wing dictatorships.

Clearly, Pino-Marina is a fervent 'anti-communist' - whether that means opposing rebellious states or popular insurrections. He also sits on the executive of a strange outfit within the US military called the Cuban-American Military council, which aims at installing itself as the government of Cuba should the US ever achieve a forcible 'regime-change' there.

The career of the US ambassador, Jendayi Fraser, who concluded the ACOTA pact with South Africa is also an indicator of US intentions. Fraser, Bush's senior advisor on Africa, had no diplomatic experience. Instead, she once served as a politico-military planner with the joint chiefs of staff in the Department of Defence and as senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council. According to Fraser's online biography, she 'worked on African security issues with the State Department's international military education training programmes'.

IS THERE A MURDEROUS 'SCHOOL OF THE AFRICAS'?

The programmes that Fraser mentions include the 'Next Generation of African Military Leaders' course run by the shady African Centre for Strategic Studies based in Washington, which has 'chapters' in various African countries including South Africa. The Centre appears to be a sort of 'School of the Africas' similar to the infamous 'School of the Americas' based at Fort Benning in Georgia. In 2001, it was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).

Founded in 1946 in Panama, the School of the Americas has trained some 60,000 Latin American soldiers, including notorious neo-Nazi Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer, infamous Panamanian dictator and drug czar Manuel Noriega, Argentine dictators Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola whose regime murdered 30,000 people between 1976 and 1983, numerous death-squad killers, and Efrain Vasquez and Ramirez Poveda who staged a failed US-backed coup in Venezuela in 2002.

Over the decades, graduates of the School have murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands of people across Latin America, specifically targeting trade union leaders, grassroots activists, students, guerrilla units, and political opponents. The murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero of Nicaragua, in 1980, and the 'El Mozote' massacre of 767 villagers in El Salvador, in 1981, were committed by graduates of the School. And yet the School of the Americas Watch, an organisation trying to shut WHINSEC down, is on an FBI 'anti-terrorism' watch-list.

So Africa should be concerned if the African Centre for Strategic Studies has similar objectives, even if the School of the Americas Watch cannot confirm these fears? There is more: we've all heard of the 'Standby Force' being devised by the African Union (AU), a coalition of Africa's authoritarian neo-liberal regimes. But the AU has also set up, under the patronage of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe - which also covers North America, Russia and Central Asia - the African Centre for the Study and Research of Terrorism.

The Centre is based in Algiers in Algeria, at the heart of a murderous regime that has itself 'made disappear' some 3,000 people between 1992 and 2003 (according to Amnesty International this is equivalent to the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, but it is a fact ignored by the African left). The Centre's director, Abdelhamid Boubazine told me that it would not only be a think-tank and trainer of 'anti-terrorism' judges, but that it would also have teeth and would provide training in 'specific armed intervention' to support the continent's regimes.

Anneli Botha, the senior researcher on terrorism at the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies, said though, that only ten per cent of terrorist attacks in Africa were on armed forces, and only six per cent were on state figures and institutions, though the latter were 'focused'. She warned that a major cause of African terrorism was 'a growing void between government and security forces on the one hand, and local communities on the other'. Caught in the grip of misery and poverty, many people are recruited into rebel armies even though few of these offer any sort of real solution.

The Centre in Algiers operates under the AU's 'Algiers Convention on Terrorism', which is notoriously vague on the definition of terrorism. This opens the door for a wide range of non-governmental, protest, grassroots, civic, and militant organisations to be targeted for elimination by the new counter-terrorism forces. It would be naïve to think that bourgeois democracy - which passed South Africa's equally vaguely-defined Protection of Constitutional Democracy from Terrorism and Other Related Activities Act into law last year - will protect the working class, peasantry and poor from state terrorism.

- Michael Schmidt is a Johannesburg-based journalist and political activist. This article was first published in three years ago in 'Zabalaza: a Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism', No. 8, November 2006. Zabalaza is the English-language sister journal of the French-language Afrique Sans Châines.

Le combat prendra fin le jour où on retournera sur l'archipel des Chagos

Olivier Bancoult, leader du Groupe réfugiés Chagos (GRC), déposant devant la Commission Justice et Vérité hier, a indiqué que son combat contre les Anglais s'achèvera le jour où la communauté chagossienne sera autorisée à s'installer de manière définitive sur l'archipel des Chagos. " Je ne mène pas cette lutte pour obtenir le passeport britannique. Loin de là ! Je me bats pour le droit fondamental de la communauté chagossienne qui m'a délégué pour déposer devant la commission Borraine ", a-t-il précisé.

L'accent sur la souveraineté est correct mais insuffisant, estime de son côté le commissaire Paramaseeven Veerapen. Réagissant, Olivier Bancoult dit partager cet avis et qu'il compte faire un pèlerinage sur le continent africain avec comme point de départ l'Afrique du Sud pour alerter l'opinion internationale sur le sort des Chagossiens… " Côté finances, nous sommes limités. Mais en organisant des activités pour une levée de fonds, nous parvenons à couvrir les dépenses de certains déplacements ", indique-t-il.

Le GRC, ajoute Olivier Bancoult, créera sous peu son siteweb. Le dirigeant du GRC dit ne pas croire dans la fermeture de la base militaire à l'expiration du bail en 2016. " Avec des sommes colossales dépensées par les États-Unis, je ne crois pas que les Américains partiront. Mo napa kroir dan bolom noel mwa. " De son point de vue, la revendication pour le retour des Chagos doit être entamée par le gouvernement en cherchant l'appui de la SADC, de l'Union africaine (UA) et du Commonwealth.

Olivier Bancoult affirme que les déracinés de l'archipel des Chagos ont été bouleversés par la vente de leurs îles en 1965 à une compagnie privée, cela sans aucune consultation avec les natifs. " Nous sommes un peuple indigène. Nous prions la Commission de faire son enquête à partir de l'époque coloniale jusqu'à 1965. " Dans les trois îles habitables - Peros Banos, Salomon et Diego Garcia - les Chagossiens, indique-t-il, menaient une vie paisible et formidable. " Tout le monde avait un emploi et un toit même s'il était couvert de chaume. " La construction d'une maison, dit-il, était autorisée même sans aucun contrat. " Quand on avait atteint l'âge de retraite à 60 ans, il n'y avait aucun ordre d'éviction. Les jeunes de 21 ans construisaient leur propre toit pour ne pas être dépendants de leurs parents. " La communauté qui y vivait, dit-il, était engagée dans la plantation de coco, utilisait ce produit pour la fabrication de l'huile " pou ekler sato leroi, larenn ".

Après les heures de travail, souligne le dirigeant du GRC, les Chagossiens s'adonnaient à des parties de pêche. " Il n'y avait pas de chômeur. On vivait avec cet esprit de partage. On était un. " En 1965, se souvient-t-il, Harold Wilson, Premier ministre d'alors en Grande-Bretagne, convoque des dirigeants mauriciens à Lancaster House pour leur proposer le détachement de cet archipel de Maurice pour en faire une base militaire. " Nous ne représentions pas de danger pour les Britanniques ou les Américains. L'Angleterre nous a déracinés avec en contrepartie accorder l'indépendance à Maurice. On ne nous a pas consultés. C'était une décision arbitraire et injuste ! " Il invite la Commission à reconnaître les injustices que les déracinés ont vécues. L'intégration des Chagossiens dans la société mauricienne, selon lui, est demeurée difficile. " Kalite travay ki ti ena Chagos pa ena Maurice. Adaptasyon inn difisil. Pa finn ena planifikasyon e formasyon pou nou integre isi. " Le gouvernement colonial, insiste-t-il, a commis un tort immense, a violé les droits universels des Droits de l'homme, a bafoué le droit fondamental de vivre sur la terre natale.

Après plusieurs victoires enregistrées en Cour d'Angleterre, le GRC a déposé sa plainte devant la Cour européenne des Droits de l'homme. " Notre cas sera entendu avant la fin de cette année. " Le gouvernement anglais, dit Olivier Bancoult, doit avoir honte, lui qui se fait passer pour un champion dans le respect des droits de l'homme. " Avec l'arrivée d'un nouveau gouvernement en Angleterre, nous gardons espoir pour un changement d'attitude. Nous espérons que la nouvelle équipe mettra fin à toute forme d'injustice à notre égard. Mais, je dois dire que tous les partis politiques quand ils se trouvent dans l'opposition se montrent solidaires mais, au pouvoir, ils changent leur prise de position. "

Côté Maurice, dit Olivier Bancoult, le gouvernement de Navin Ramgoolam se montre un peu plus sensible à notre cause. " Le gouvernement se concentre sur la souveraineté. Moi, en tant que simple natif, j'ai pris l'initiative de poursuivre le gouvernement britannique. Le gouvernement mauricien a un arsenal de moyens pour revendiquer la rétrocession des Chagos. Il peut solliciter les forums internationaux. Bizin aret dir friendly relations. Noule aksyon avek ki boukou perkitant. "

Par ailleurs, Olivier Bancoult ajoute qu'une étude menée auprès des Chagossiens a démontré que 89 % d'entre eux ont exprimé le désir d'y retourner. " Il faut aménager toutes les infrastructures. Déjà, il y a environ 4 000 étrangers sur Diego Garcia. Pourquoi les Chagossiens ne pourront-ils pas y vivre ? Un expert a dit que le relogement est possible. Les Anglais, eux, sont venus nous effrayer en disant que ces îles seront submergées avec le réchauffement de la planète terre. Nous sommes déterminés à aller revivre sur la terre de nos ancêtres. Nous pourrons faire développer toutes les îles avec leur 3 000 hectares sous plantation de cocotiers. La pêche est un autre secteur qui nous permettra de gagner notre vie. Il ne faut pas oublier que les plus importantes prises de thon sont faites dans les eaux des Chagos ", conclut-il.

Le Mauricien, 13. mai 2010