Boko Haram: A CIA Covert Operation

In the aftermath of the unfortunate bombings and sporadic attacks that took place in Damaturu, the Yobe State capital and environs on the last Sallah Day, the Embassy of the United States in Nigeria hastily put out a public statement declaring that such like bombings should be expected in three well known hospitality establishments in Abuja the nation’s capital.

To discerning observers not only did that score high marks for bad manners as that was hardly what a nation still grieving and coming to terms with its losses expected from a supposedly friendly nation, but that the US embassy was being economical with information on what it actually knew about the incident, and more significantly, the role the US government itself has been playing in the whole gamut of acts of destabilization against Nigeria.

We have already been regaled with reports provided by the Wikileaks which identified the US embassy in Nigeria as a forward operating base for wide and far reaching acts of subversion against Nigeria which include but is not limited to eavesdropping on Nigerian government communication, financial espionage on leading Nigerians, support and funding of subversive groups and insurgents, sponsoring of divisive propaganda among the disparate groups of Nigeria and the use of visa blackmail to induce and coerce high ranking Nigerians into acting in favour of US interests.

Beyond what we know from the Wikileaks report, what many Nigerians do not know is that US embassy’s subversive activities in Nigeria fits into the long term US government’s well camouflaged policy of containment against Nigeria, the ultimate goal of which is to eliminate Nigeria as a potential strategic rival to the US in the African continent.

Today as Nigerians are reeling from the negative effects of the insurgency that has befallen our dear country and earnestly seeking answers to what all this portends for the future, the GREENWHITE COALITION a citizen’s watchdog can reveal the true nature of this silent, undeclared war of attrition waged against Nigeria by the Government of United States of America.

BACKGROUND TO US SUBVERSIVE ACTS AGAINST NIGERIA AND TIMELINES;
From ACRI to AFRICOM

ACRI stands for Africa Crises Response Initiative and it was set up during the Bush Jnr Administration as a counterweight to the Nigeria led ECOWAS Monitoring Group on the Liberian Civil War or ECOMOG as it is more popularly known. ACRI came into being from the secret reports and recommendations [separately produced by the Africa-America Institute and the Brooklyn Institute commissioned by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the American Government’s Directorate responsible for organizing foreign subversive activities.] on the Liberian civil war and the intervention of ECOMOG.
Both reports zeroed in on the pivotal role Nigeria was playing in the ECOMOG initiative and noted pointedly the phenomenal success recorded by ECOMOG in containing the Liberian crisis without any significant role or intervention from any of the major Western powers, including the United States.

The report concluded that should ECOMOG be allowed to go the whole hog, the major beneficiary will be Nigeria and that might form the basis for a pax Nigeriana in the West African sub-region eclipsing the influence of former colonial powers France and Britain.

The reports also called on the United States Government to note that Liberia being its creation should not be allowed to fall into Nigerian hands with consequences to US strategic interests in the country and the region. Specifically both reports noted that should Nigeria be allowed to have a foothold in Liberia, it will further embolden Nigeria to challenge the US and the West in carving its own sphere of interest at their expense.

In this regard, the report further recalled Nigeria’s role in helping to liberate the southern African countries in the 70’s and 80’s in clear opposition and defiance to the interests of the United States and its Western allies which resulted in a setback for Western initiatives in Africa at the time.

Both reports concluded with a recommendation that the US Government in conjunction with its allies should seek to contain the growing influence of Nigeria in the sub-region by forming a parallel organization to ECOMOG. But in order not to unduly alarm and antagonize Nigeria which the report admitted still had considerable influence in the region, the US government was advised to go about this using quiet diplomacy...

Unlike its precursor, the ACRI which sought to disguise US intentions in Africa particularly as it pertains to Nigeria under the cloak of multilateral humanitarian intervention, AFRICOM which came to being on October 1, 2008 is clearly programmed to serve US military-strategic interests especially with regards to the ever expanding global reach and influence of China in direct competition with the United States.

In response to the growing influence of a rapidly expanding industrial China in Africa, the goal of AFRICOM is to seize key strategic areas in Africa and bring them under US control in order to block China’s access to vital energy and mineral resources for its expanding economy. But to effectively carry this out, such African countries of strategic importance must first of all be weakened internally and made to feel so vulnerable that they would have to inevitably seek US protection or intervention. A spur to this interventionist program provides that any targeted African country that does not see the wisdom or resists the need to seek US “protection” will then have to suffer dismemberment with the pliant areas carved out of the supposedly hostile country and given US “protection”.

We have seen this happen in the great lakes area where US Special Forces have been deployed ostensibly to protect the countries there from so-called insurgents, who in the first place were sponsored by the same US. In Sudan, we have seen how a blanket cover of international humanitarian cries orchestrated by the United States on the so-called Darfur crisis served as a prelude to the dismemberment of Sudan to punish the government of El-Bashir for daring to conclude oil deals with the Chinese to the detriment of American companies.

We have also seen how Libya and Gaddafi were put to the sword for daring to sidetrack American oil interests. But the greatest prize for AFRICOM and its goal to plant a PAX AMERICANA in Africa would be when it succeeds in the most strategic African country, NIGERIA. This is where the raging issue of BOKO HARAM and the widely reported prediction by the United States Intelligence Council on the disintegration of Nigeria by 2015 comes into perspective.

BOKO HARAM: A CIA COVERT OPERATION

From the 1st October 2010 bombing (Independence Day Bombing) that rocked Abuja till date, Nigeria seems to be locked in a vice like grip of a growing and intractable insurgency manifested in bombings of public places and sporadic attacks on public institutions, resulting in the loss of scores of lives and destruction of properties. Predictably, there has been a discernible growth in panic and tension in the country and not a few people are beginning to think that perhaps the country seems headed inevitably for a long drawn insurgency leading to a split. With the exception of the 1st October 2010 bombing incident, a shadowy group which goes by the name Boko Haram, has laid claim to most of the subsequent bombings that have occurred in the country.

The seemingly intractable nature of the Boko Haram outrage has prompted a lot of questions from Nigerians. What really is this Boko Haram thing and what are their grievances if any? Why have they chosen to remain faceless in spite of the devastating effects of their activities on the psyche of the nation and entreaties from Nigerian authorities to come forward for negotiations? Why are they able to perpetrate their attacks with relative ease and why has there not been a single clue at the scene of their acts to lead to them?

For sure, Nigerians are not unused to sectarian violence. But the ones we have witnessed in this country have been predictable and the modus (operandi) and fault lines have been well known to the authorities who have always done well to keep them within tolerable limits. The Boko Haram of Mohammed Yussuf which predated this new one can be so categorized and was well known through its operations, leadership and locations.

But how did a ragtag collection of largely half literate unsophisticated persons operating mostly on Okada (motorbikes) transform literarily overnight to being able to design, manufacture and deploy bombs in buildings and in vehicles, costing in excess of a million naira, to carry out attacks in several locations around the country?
How have their reach grown from just a corner of Nigeria to virtually everywhere in the country? For them to be able to mount such a sophisticated operation, they must necessarily have a well structured command and control system which in spite of their best efforts at concealment cannot remain undetected for long. So how have they seemingly defied the best efforts of (our) combined security agencies in the country in detecting and foiling their activities?

The GREENWHITE Coalition can reveal that the current Boko Haram campaign is a covert operation organized by the American Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, and coordinated by the American Embassy in Nigeria. For some time now, the CIA has been running secret training and indoctrination camps along the porous and vulnerable borderlands of Niger, Chad and Cameroon. At these camps, youths from poor, deprived and disoriented backgrounds are recruited and trained to serve as insurgents. The agents who supply these youth lure them with the promise of better life and the work of Allah and further indoctrinate them to believe they are working to install a just Islamic order from the ungodly one that currently holds sway in Nigeria.

The American CIA program officers for this project, prudently remain in the background, leaving the day to day running of the camps to supervisors of Middle Eastern origin, specially recruited for this purpose. After several months of indoctrination and training on weapons handling, survival tactics, surveillance and evasion techniques, the insurgents are now kept on stand-by for the next phase of the operation.
The next phase of the operations involves the identification and selection of the targets which have already been mapped out by the American Embassy. If buildings are the targets for attack, the weapons and technical equipment to be used are kept in safe houses.

The countdown to the attack involves ferrying of the insurgents and quarantine at safe houses for the H hour. After the attack, in the ensuing panic, the insurgents make their escape into safe houses to dispose the weapons and disappear and dissolve later into the local population. The technical angle of sending out e-mails and messages of responsibility for the attack to the media in the name of Boko Haram is done through secure telecoms equipment by the American programmers of the operation which are hard to trace.

If the selected target is to be bombed by an IED, the building is cased for days and the devise inserted when security is lax. The devise is then detonated by an in-built timing mechanism or by a hand held detonator, some distance away from where the bomb is placed. If on the other hand, the attack is to be carried out by a suicide bomber, the person to carry it out would have been severely drugged with CIA manufactured LSD to disorientate him. In his state of mind he would have no clue as to what he is programmed to do having been turned into a veritable human robot.

TOWARDS 2015: HOW THE US PLANS TO DISMEMBER NIGERIA BY 2015

It is neither a coincidence nor guesswork that the National Intelligence Council of the United States Government estimated that Nigeria will disintegrate by the year 2015. The whole report actually is a coded statement of intentions on how using destabilization plots the US plans to eventually dismember Nigeria.

The whole goal of the destabilization campaign is to ensure that Nigeria is weakened internally by intractable crises, leading up to 2015 when the next general elections are expected to come up. By that year, there will be so much mutual suspicion among Nigerians that the elections itself might not hold or if they did at all, will set the stage for a full rapture of the Nigerian state. By its calculation and design, the Nigerian state will be so fractious by then; it will be fully ripe for intervention and break up. It is in actualization of this plan that the US strategic planners on Nigeria devised a three stage plan of implementation.

Stage 1: Pakistanizing Nigeria

With the scourge of Boko Haram as an existential reality, in the coming months the spate of bombings and attacks on public buildings are likely to escalate. High value symbolic targets like churches, mosques and large congregations of people of both faiths will be targeted. There will also be escalation in provocative statements and incitements by groups to violence. For good measure and effect, the bombings and attacks will be staged on days of observance of religious activities.

The goal is to exacerbate tension and mutual suspicion among adherents of the two faiths in Nigeria, leading to sectarian violence. This pattern of destabilization operation is taken out of the Pakistani manual of destabilization where a sustained spate of CIA sponsored bombings and sectarian violence stretched the ability and resources of the law and order agencies to cope, rendering the country weak and vulnerable to foreign intervention.

Stage 2: Internationalizing the Crisis

Having set the stage for an intractable sectarian violence pitting Christians against Muslims and between the various disparate groups in the country, there will be calls from the United States, European Union and United Nations for a halt to the violence. A plethora of advocacy groups around the world will struggle for the photo opportunity to mouth concerns about the carnage and humanitarian catastrophe. They will try to make a great show of providing humanitarian aid. For effect, there will be carpet bombing coverage by the International media on the Nigerian crisis with so-called experts discussing all the ramifications, who will strive to create the impression that only benevolent foreign intervention could resolve the crisis.

There will be a deluge of international conferences at various capitals around the world all ostensibly aimed to save Nigerians from themselves. Meanwhile, away from all the public flurry of activities, the US, which initiated the crisis in the first place, will be secretly drawing up plans to carve out Nigeria for its strategic and economic benefits.

Stage 3: the Great Carve out under UN Mandate

Following worldwide outrage at the scale of carnage resulting from all out war among various sections of Nigeria, secretly induced by the United States and its allies, the stage will now shift to the United Nations where debates will take place on how the world body will work to resolve the crisis.

There will be proposals, first for an international peace keeping force to intervene and separate the warring groups and/or for a UN mandate for various parts of Nigeria to come under mandated occupying powers. Of course, behind the scenes the US and its allies would have secretly worked out which areas of Nigeria to occupy, guided as it were by naked economic interests.

It is trite really which power or powers eventually occupies Nigeria for whatever reasons. By the time the UN comes to take a decision to hand over Nigeria for occupation under its mandate, no part of Nigeria will emerge or profit truly from the exercise. The rump areas of Nigeria will all come under occupation and puppet governments will then be set up at the behest of the occupying powers. Nigeria’s fall will be like that of humpty-dumpty, into pieces beyond recognition.

The main beneficiary will of course be the United States which started all this in the first place and which will be there to profit at the end. By engineering the break up of Nigeria, the United States would have eliminated a potential continental rival, paving the way for the institution of a Pax Americana in Africa, and secondly it would have limited its main global strategic rival, China, from direct access to badly needed energy and other mineral resources on the resource rich African continent.

FOCUS ON TERENCE P. McCULLEY, US AMBASSADOR TO NIGERIA.

He is one of America’s top Foreign Service officers and in the parlance of the State Department, an “old Africa hand”. Do you know that Terence P. McCulley, the current United States Ambassador to Nigeria was one of the architects of the Africa Crisis Response Initiative, ACRI, which sought to undermine Nigeria’s involvement in ECOMOG?
Do you also know that he was also among the prominent resource persons that worked on establishing AFRICOM?

Do you also know that Ambassador McCulley’s alternate designation is State Department Coordinator of the AFRICOM, from which position he is to diplomatically sell and smoothen the way for the entry of AFRICOM into Nigeria? Do you know too that his main brief as Ambassador to Nigeria is to coordinate activities of the United States Government using the convenient cover of the Embassy of the United States in Nigeria?
Do you also know that the full classified report by the United States National Intelligence Council on the possible break up of Nigeria, which parts were only selectively released, contains details of how the US plans to carry out this desired end?

The full details of the bombing of the UN Building in Abuja; who did it and how it was done.

You might also need to know real mission of the so-called foreign security experts who came to “investigate” the bombing. Did they really come to investigate the incident and provide the details of their actual findings to Nigerian authorities or was their real brief to mop up any stray evidence from the bombing site in order to obscure the involvement of those who sponsored the act? The US Embassy in Nigeria operates a network of so-called safe houses all over Nigeria from where it runs various subversive operations, including electronic intelligence, surveillance, planning and carrying out of covert operations in Nigeria. We will provide details of the locations and addresses of such safe houses in Nigeria in the next GREENWHITE COALITION Report.

About the GREENWHITE COALITION.

The GREENWHITE COALITION as the name implies, is inspired from the colours of the Nigerian flag and has set out to rally Nigerians to the flag, in defence of the greater interest of the Nigerian nation in the face of plans by the United States to destroy our country and our future. It is a citizen’s volunteer watchdog made up of Nigerians of all ethnic groups and religious persuasions, who are alarmed at the dark plans of the United States of America to break up our dear country. We have taken it upon ourselves to spare no effort to expose and thwart the United States Government from carrying out its diabolical plans in Nigeria. For this, we are dedicated to ferreting out information and planning counter actions against any untoward moves by the United States Government in Nigeria. In this endeavour, we are fortunate to count on the support of well placed functionaries of the United States Government and other highly informed sympathizers who supply us with valuable inside information on the intentions of the United States Government as it affects Nigeria. These persons are themselves alarmed and appalled by the fact that the Government machinery of the United States has been hijacked by rogue elements, denying the vast majority of American citizens their fundamental constitutional rights as envisaged by the founding fathers of America. Needless to say, these persons, among who are those that served America diligently, are aghast at the foreign policy of the American government which purports to act in protection of the American people but in reality protects the corrupt corporate elements that have taken America and Americans hostage.

In the coming days and months the GREENWHITE COALITION will manifest in many ways, legally, in the Nigerian public domain in its efforts to prevent our country from coming under the American boot. This write up is the first in the series. Many more will come with pinpoint expose of the American Government plans against Nigeria. The United States Government is hereby put on notice; we will not allow our women to be turned to widows and our children orphans, as in Iraq and elsewhere. We will not be turned to refugees at the mercy of so-called humanitarian charities. Nigeria must take its place under the sun.

ILIYASU GADU Ilgad2009@gmail.com
On behalf of the GREENWHITE COALITION

The London Olympics 2012: Of Empty seats and Empty barrels

Prized Olympic tickets entrusted to foreign delegations are being openly sold by touts on the streets of Britain, it emerged last night. They are cashing in on the huge demand for seats by selling tickets sent overseas by Games organizers.

The revelation came as a row raged over embarrassing scenes of banks of empty seating at many Games venues – including last night’s swimming finals. Last night Scotland Yard said every illegal seller arrested so far had held tickets despatched overseas to national committees and official re-sellers. One of the touts held is from Germany, another from Slovakia.

The discovery raises further questions about the way in which precious tickets are allocated by the International Olympic Committee. And it will fuel anger among millions of British sport fans who have been left watching events on TV because they failed to get a seat in last year’s ballot.

All by himself: A spectator sits among empty seats as he waits for the start of the final session on the first day of the swimming competition at the Aquatics Centre

The Yard confirmed that about 20 people had been arrested attempting to sell tickets since the opening ceremony on Friday.

Yesterday spectators who bought tickets for the Olympic Park, because all venues inside were sold out of lower-priced tickets, had the frustration of watching pictures on the big screen of unfilled seats. But a prickly Lord Coe insisted the ticketing process had worked. He even dismissed pictures of empty seats as ‘holiday snaps’ before admitting troops and students could be used to fill gaps.

‘We take it seriously,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to see swathes of those seats empty and that’s why we will make sure, where we can, people are in those seats when they are not used.’ The London 2012 chairman added: ‘Let’s put this in perspective. Those venues are stuffed to the gunwales. The public are in there.’

Initially, the empty spaces were blamed on ‘no-shows’ from blocks given to sponsors but yesterday the finger was pointed at the athletes, media and sports federations, who cannot be bothered to use their entitlement to a seat at the venue.

Designer Paul Chandler, 42, who travelled down to the Olympic Park from Nottingham with his family, added: ‘Standing in the wet watching pictures of empty seats on the big screen, we feel betrayed.’

Sally Pookey, 31, who lives less than a mile from the Olympic Park, said: ‘I felt disgusted when I saw all the gaps in the stands.’ Last night, Team GB cyclist Geraint Thomas said: ‘It’s quite sad, seeing all the empty seats.’

Soldiers drafted to fill empty games venue

Lord Coe revealed yesterday how troops, students and teachers were being drafted in to help end the embarrassing spectacle of empty seats at Olympic venues. The Locog chairman said fans with tickets could have them upgraded so they can sit in more expensive areas reserved for VIP members of the 'Olympic family'. He added that tickets for sports held in double sessions, such as hockey, basketball, water polo and handball, were being recycled and re-sold as people leave.

Deserted: Gymnast Pierre Yves Beny of France competes in front of empty seats in the North Greenwich Arena

A MoD spokesperson said: LOGOG has kindly offered service men and women working on venue security to make use of unutilised seating when they are off duty. These seats will be made available to venue security personnel to utilise on a voluntary basis when off duty. Olympics organisers had to call in extra military personnel before the Games after private firm G4S failed to provide enough civilian security guards.

Asked whether the military would always be brought in whenever anything went wrong during the Games, Lord Coe joked: 'We won't be cancelling leave to make sure they're sitting in our venues.

Prince Bander assassinated???

Though not yet announced by the Saudi authorities, the death of Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has been confirmed to Voltaire Network by unofficial sources.

Prince Bandar had just been appointed head of Saudi intelligence on July 24: a promotion which was interpreted as a reward for having organized the attack in Damascus on July 18. The Saudi services, with logistical support from the CIA, had managed to blow up the headquarters of the Syrian National Security during a Crisis Cell meeting: Generals Assef Chaoukat, Daoud Rajha and Hassan Tourkmani were killed instantly. General Amin Hicham Ikhtiar died soon after from his wounds. This operation, called "Damascus Volcano" was the signal for the attack on the capital by a swarm of mercenaries, mainly coming from Jordan.

Prince Bandar was himself the target of a bomb attack on July 26, and subsequently succumbed to his injuries.

A brilliant and cynical personality, Prince Bandar was 63 years old. He was the son of Prince Sultan (irremovable defense minister from 1963 until his death in 2011) and of a slave. Confidant of King Fahd, Bandar was ambassador to Washington throughout his reign (1983-2005). He became close to George H. Bush (then Vice-President of the United States), who regarded him as an "adopted son," prompting the U.S. press to dub him "Bandar Bush". Endowed with an outstanding genius for covert action, he brokered the Al-Yamamah arms deal, managing to divert more than one billion pounds, according to British official sources. He then used this windfall, and many more, to finance the activities of jihadist groups around the world, including Al Qaeda.

In early 2010, Prince Bandar attempted to overthrow King Abdullah to place his own father on the throne. The plot failed and he was banished from the kingdom, but the monarch’s declining health enabled him to return to Saudi Arabia a year later. Since the death of Prince Sultan in October 2011, he had become the de facto leader of the Sudairi clan, the hawkish wing within the royal family.

His death constitutes a serious blow to the whole system of Western covert action in the Muslim world. It took Syria only one week to mount this spectacular reprisal operation.

Patrice Lumumba; The Sacrifice of a True African Leader

"We must move forward, striking out tirelessly against imperialism. From all over the world we have to learn lessons which events afford. Lumumba’s murder should be a lesson for all of us”. — Che Guevara, 1964.

“Dead, living, free, or in prison on the orders of the colonialists, it is not I who counts. It is the Congo, it is our people for whom independence has been transformed into a cage where we are regarded from the outside…” — Patrice Lumumba, October 1960.  

 Introduction The truth surrounding the brutal murder of Patrice Lumumba is an embarrassing event which, when exposed to the African youth of today, will definitely send the US government scratching its head. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has had a troubled history since the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. Currently there is conflict in the eastern DRC. But who are the main actors in the conflict at this time? 

Lumumba was a strong African revolutionary leader whose Pan-Africanist vision of a united Congo gained him many enemies from the outside world. Like Kwame Nkrumah, Lumumba sought for a country where the numerous resources of the Congo will benefit not only the Congo but the African people as a whole. In his famous first ever independence speech, as newly elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba who had not been scheduled to speak, stood up and made this speech (30th June 1960):

"You who have fought for independence, and are today victorious, I salute you in the name of the Congolese government. We have been subjected to insults and sarcasms, to the blows we had to endure from morning to night just because we were Africans. We learnt that the law was never the same according to whether it was applied to whites or blacks. Who will ever forget the shootings or the barbarous jail cells awaiting those who refused to submit to this regime of injustice, oppression and intimidation?" 

With this speech, it was said that he signed his death warrant. From the very first day, the West especially the American and the Belgian governments started to sabotage Lumumba’s government and sought the immediate removal of Lumumba at all cost. Ludo De Witte, the Belgian author of the best book on this crime, qualifies it as "the most important assassination of the 20th century". His assassination's historical importance lies in a multitude of factors, the most pertinent being the global context in which it took place, its impact on Congolese politics since then and Lumumba's overall legacy as a nationalist leader, writes Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, a professor of African and Afro-American studies at the University of North Carolina, author of “The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History”.

"Today, it is impossible to touch down at the (far from modernized) airport of Lubumbashi in the south of the DR Congo without a shiver of recollection of the haunting photographs, taken of Lumumba there shortly before his assassination, and after beatings, torture and a long, long flight in custody across the vast country which he so loved". — Victoria Brittain, The Guardian, 2011. 

Exposing The Facts and Debunking The Then Media Distortions 

It is a fact that both the Belgian government and the United States actively sought to have him eliminated. The CIA ordered his assassination but could not complete the job. Instead, the United States and Belgium covertly funnelled cash and aid to rival politicians (just as they recently did in Libya) who seized power and arrested Lumumba. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had said something [to CIA chief Allen Dulles] to the effect that “Lumumba should be eliminated". This was revealed by a declassified interview with then US National Security Council minute keeper, Robert Johnson, which was released in August 2000 from Senate intelligence committee's inquiry on covert action. The committee later claimed that while the CIA had conspired to kill Lumumba, it was not directly involved in the actual murder. Therefore one must ask: on whose orders was the actual murder executed if not the United States? Which elements in the CIA ever faced justice for such a brutal murder?

In his book, “In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story” John Stockwell (1978), revealed that a CIA officer in Elizabethville was in direct touch with Lumumba’s killers the night he was assassinated. Later, another CIA agent admitted to have had the body in the trunk of his car to try and get rid of it (p. 105). This leaked cable went on to state that Lumumba was first picked up from the airport by "all white guards", taken to the bush where his fate was decided and his body completely dissolved in acid, leaving no traces whatsoever... 

Having realized the complicity of the United Nations and the world powers, in this brutal murder, Kwame Nkrumah thus made a broadcast to the people of Ghanaian:

“Somewhere in Katanga in the Congo- where and when we do not know- three of our brother freedom fighters have been done to death. They have been Patrice Lumumba, the Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo, Maurice Mpolo, the Minister in his government who was elected from Katanga Province and Joseph Okito the Vice-President of the Congolese Senate. About their end many things are uncertain, but one fact is crystal clear. They have been killed because the United Nations, whom Patrice Lumumba himself as Prime Minister had invited to the Congo to preserve law and order, not only failed to maintain that law and order, but also denied to the lawful Government of the Congo, all other means of self-protection.” Kwame Nkrumah, (Challenge of the Congo, page 129). 

“History records many occasions when rulers of states have been assassinated. The murder of Patrice Lumumba and of his two colleagues, however, is unique in that it is the first time in history that the legal ruler of a country has been done to death with the open connivance of a world organisation (the United Nations) whom that ruler put his trust”, Nkrumah concludes (page 129/130). 

I believe what happened in Libya in 2011 goes to affirm the real agenda of the UN, so long as Africa is concerned. Just as it had always been, it is always the same for Africa... Between 1961 and 1973 alone, six African independence leaders were assassinated by their ex-colonial rulers, including Patrice Lumumba of the Congo.

Complicity of the Belgian Government 

A recent report by a Belgian Commission revealed that Belgium wanted Lumumba arrested and was not particularly concerned with Lumumba's physical well-being. Though informed of the danger to Lumumba's life when later arrested, Belgium did not take any action to avert his death. Under its own laws, Belgium was legally culpable for failing to prevent the assassination of the leader of a country where it had colonial ties. It was also in breach of its obligation (under U.N. Resolution 290 of 1949) to refrain from acts or threats "aimed at impairing the freedom, independence or integrity of another state.

In 2001, a Belgian Commission exposed that there had been previous U.S. and Belgian plots to kill Lumumba. Among them was a CIA-sponsored attempt to poison him, which might have come on orders from the then U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. A CIA chemist, Sidney Gottlieb, was made to devise a poison disguised as toothpaste for the elimination of Lumumba for which the corporate media intended to blame on “opposition elements”. This plot however backfired.

In another book, “Congo Cables”, the author details many communications by local CIA Station Chief, Larry Devlin, at the time who continually urged the total elimination of Lumumba as the only outcome the US government wanted to see (p. 53, 101, 129-133, 149-152, 158-159, 184-185, 195). Thanks to the power of suppression, political intimidation, as well as the fear and panic on the part of many African leaders who surrender at the expense of the African people, the bloody hand of colonialism, imperialism and neo-colonialism has always fought hard to bury the facts surrounding the brutal murder of many African heroes, African reggae legends and tens of thousands of our people. The African people of today, continue to live under the illusion of so-called 'independence', as foreign pressure continues to mount on their leaders to either comply or face similar fate. 

That notwithstanding, we the African generation of today, cannot sit aside and watch our history become distorted or completely buried for the sake of satisfying the wishes of oppressors. Our revolutionary leader, Patrice Lumumba, has underlined that the history of the African people must be written. This history should not be the type that Brussels, Paris, Washington, the United Nations nor the corporate media will teach. Rather, Africa’s history should be written by the African people and should be taught in all the countries emancipated from colonialism and its current puppets… a history of glory and dignity. 

African scholars and all historians of African origin therefore owe our children, the youth and our children’s children, that responsibility to teach them the true history of their ancestors. The future generations have every right to know the sacrifices and the price which many of their ancestors had to pay (with their blood) before we were able to attain our political independence. It was Lumumba’s wish that “Africa writes her own history; a history of glory and dignity”.

by Honourable Saka

The author is a regular writer, a political analyst on African affairs and a well-known social commentator in Africa. He is currently seeking the establishment of the "Project Pan-Africa" to create a mental revolution across Africa. He is the editor of “The Doctor’s Report”, your most reliable source of critical analysis on African affairs. He is a strong Pan-Africanist, a youth activist and founder of the “Leaders of Tomorrow”; a transformational and inspirational group of possible future leaders. Please visit his blog at www.honourablesaka.blogspot.co.uk or email him at honourablesaka@yahoo.co.uk

U.S. Army General: The Whole Northern Hemisphere is at Risk of Becoming Largely Uninhabitable

You may have entertained the idea of an improbable civilization ending events such as a ‘global killer’ asteroid, earth crust displacement or massive solar storms, but what if there existed a situation right now that was so serious that it literally threatened our very existence?

According to a host of scientists, nuclear experts and researchers, were are facing exactly such a scenario – and current efforts may not be able to stop it.

When the Fukushima nuclear plants sustained structural damage and a catastrophic failure of their spent fuel cooling systems in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami in 2011, it left the government of Japan, Tokyo Power and nuclear regulatory agencies around the world powerless to contain the release of deadly radiation. A year on, the battle for control of Fukushima continues to no avail.

It’s estimated that tens of thousands of people in Japan and the whole of North America have been affected, with reports indicating that children in Japan and the U.S. are already being born with birth defects, as well as thousands who have already succumbed to radiation related illness. As we initially followed the breaking news during the first thirty days of the accident, we suggested the Fukushima disaster would be worse than Chernobyl. Not even we could have imagined how much worse it would be.

If current estimates are correct, Fukushima has already released as much radiation into the atmosphere and Pacific Ocean as Chernobyl, and the potential for a disaster at least ten times worse is highly probable in the event of another earthquake or accident that leads to a collapse of the cooling structures which are above ground and have already suffered significant damage.

According to U.S. Army General Albert N. Stubblebine (ret.) of the Natural Solutions Foundation, the situation is extremely serious and poses a significant danger to our entire civilization. Since TEPCO and the Japanese government have refused the entombment option (as the Russians did with Chernobyl) the world is at the mercy of nature. A mistake here would cause the deaths of tens of millions of people across the globe.

If there ever existed a threat that could cause the end of the world as we know it, it’s the ongoing and unresolved nuclear saga in Japan:

When the highly radioactive Spent Fuel Rods are exposed to air, there will be massive explosions releasing many times the amount or radiation released thus far. Bizarrely, they are stored three stories above ground in open concrete storage pools. Whether through evaporation of the water in the pools, or due to the inevitable further collapse of the structure, there is a severe risk. United States public health authorities agree that tens of thousands of North Americans have already died from the Fukushima calamity. When the final cataclysm occurs, sooner rather than later, the whole Northern Hemisphere is at risk of becoming largely uninhabitable.

Fact. On March 11, 2011, Fukushima Daichi nuclear power station with six nuclear reactors suffered cataclysmic damage that some believe was a man made event,and the resulting Tsunami. Hydrogen explosions…at least one nuclear explosion… and then subsequent deterioration of the visible plants at five of those reactors have created a threat situation unparalleled in human history.

Fact. Despite denial and cover-up, the reality has emerged, that enormous amounts of radioactive material has been spewing into the atmosphere, polluting the groundwater, and the food of Japan, and entering by the tens of millions of gallons the waters of the Pacific.

There’s no way to sugarcoat these facts. Denying them, blocking them out, pretending that they are not real is of no help to you and your family, and it leaves you totally unprepared for a danger that the Natural Solutions Foundation has been warning about since the first day. As of three weeks ago the levels of radiation inside of the spent fuel pools of unit no. 2 are too high to measure. Get that… too high to measure. And, the water there is evaporating, meaning that heat and radiation could easily build to very high levels.

Very simply put, if this much Cesium 137 is released, it will destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants.

This is an issue of human survival.

We can play the denial game all day long and pretend that, because the mainstream media is not reporting on it, there is no threat, but the facts are quite clear.

This is, without a doubt, the most immediate threat faced by the world. It’s so serious, in fact, that the Japanese government has considered and put into place evacuation plans for the whole of Tokyo – some 40 million people. Reports are also emerging that suggest a collapse of the spent fuel pools would be so serious that the entire country of Japan may have to be evacuated. The entire country – that’s 125 million refugees that will cause an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.

Before you argue that these are the ravings of just alternative media conspiracy theorists and fearmongers, consider the assessment put forth by Robert Alvarez, a senior policy adviser to the Secretary for National Security and the Environment for the US Department of Energy:

"The No. 4 pool is about 100 feet above ground, is structurally damaged and is exposed to the open elements. If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.

The infrastructure to safely remove this material was destroyed as it was at the other three reactors. Spent reactor fuel cannot be simply lifted into the air by a crane as if it were routine cargo. In order to prevent severe radiation exposures, fires and possible explosions, it must be transferred at all times in water and heavily shielded structures into dry casks.. As this has never been done before, the removal of the spent fuel from the pools at the damaged Fukushima-Dai-Ichi reactors will require a major and time-consuming re-construction effort and will be charting in unknown waters.

The total spent reactor fuel inventory at the Fukushima-Daichi site contains nearly half of the total amount of Cs-137 estimated by the NCRP to have been released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Chernobyl, and world-wide reprocessing plants (~270 million curies or ~9.9 E+18 Becquerel).

It is important for the public to understand that reactors that have been operating for decades, such as those at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site, have generated some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet."

Regulatory agencies all over the world are warning of the potentiality of a further degradation of the Fukushima nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools, and the subsequent nuclear fallout that would follow.

If these reactors go – and they could at any moment for any number of reasons – we’re looking at a situation for which you simply cannot stock enough food, or water, or supplies. Radiation would spread across the entire northern hemisphere and would be impossible to contain.

While we’ve argued in the past that there is no place we’d rather be than in the United States of America in the event of a socio-economic collapse or global conflict, if these spent fuel pools collapse, then an international exit strategy may be the only option.

Quotable Quotes

"People, governments and economies of all nations MUST serve the needs of multinational banks and corporations."

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Former US National Security Adviser, now serves as a counselor and trustee for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington policy research organization.

Exodus: Israel to drive Africans from Holy Land

Israel has initiated the first stage of a controversial “emergency plan” aimed at interning and deporting an estimated 60,000 African immigrants. Officials believe the presence of the Africans poses a threat to the “Jewish character” of the state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who believes immigrants are swamping his country, has claimed the African migrants “are seen by many Israelis as a law and order issue and even a threat to the long-term viability of the Jewish state.”

The Prime Minister promised that in order to stop the hiring of illegal Africans the legislation would be strictly enforced.

Israeli authorities are ready to grant 1,000 euros to any African who agrees to freely leave within five days. Some immigrants have agreed, while others are going to be repatriated by force.

Over a hundred African men, women, and children, mostly South Sudanese, have been reportedly detained in the Red Sea port of Eilat.
Senior immigration official Yossi Edelstein reported on Israel Radio “We have arrested about 140 infiltrators up until last night, the main portion of who are South Sudanese.”

The handcuffed detainees were brought to the Saharonim detention facility in the Negev Desert.

According to Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai, the first to be deported are going to be 1.500 refugees from South Sudan, who fled the civil war that split their country.

“The next stage is the removal from Israel of all the infiltrators from Eritrea and Sudan, whose number comes close to 50,000 people,” the Interior Minister said.

Still, the deportation is legally questionable and the Interior Ministry admits it.

“At the moment, we are permitted only to deport from Israel the citizens of South Sudan and the Ivory Coast,” Interior Minister Eli Yishai said.

This raises concerns about those African that are going to be detained and put into camps pending deportation.

But for Minister Eli Yishai who also heads of the Shas religious party saying “no” to alien deportation plans means “shelving the declaration of independence, and the end of the Zionist dream.”

The Israeli parliament is also fueling anti-African rhetoric. Parliamentarians in the Knesset do not hesitate to label Africans “cancer” and “AIDS to Israeli people”.

It must be said that the majority of the 7.8 million Israelis supports government migration policies. The latest opinion poll showed 52 per cent of Israelis agree that Africans pose a threat to Israel.

A few Israelis tend to shift blame for the economic and demographic crisis on illegal immigrants, mostly coming to Israel via the poorly guarded border with Egypt in the Sinai Desert.

There have been a number of anti-immigrant demonstrations in Israel in recent months. The latest was held in Tel Aviv this month. Some participants of the rally accused the African immigrants of coming to their country “to steal and rape”, proposing to “burn them out” and “put poison in their food”, says Ynet News.

A senior police commander David Gez has acknowledged that despite claims of raging crime in sections of south Tel Aviv where Africans live the actual crime level among the migrants is drastically lower than among Israelis.

Nevertheless, the majority of the Israeli are against illegal aliens and there have been a number of hate crimes against Africans. Last Thursday someone set fire on to an Eritrean migrant’s home in Jerusalem, injuring three men. Israeli police said it appeared to be a racist attack. One Eritrean suffered serious burns, and a pregnant woman and her husband were treated for smoke inhalation.

Those Israelis who actually communicate with the illegal Sudanese immigrants are ashamed of the attacks.

David Blum, director of the Isrotel Hotel in Eilat is reported as saying that “Most of them are educated people who fled from a bloody war in their homeland. They speak a number of languages, most of them are Christian, and they did their job in the best way possible with dignity.”

Israeli scientist Dr. Shalva Weil warns of another “threat” to the state of Israel. Dr. Weil is an anthropologist and expert on Ethiopian Jewry of Hebrew University claims that in the past 15 years there has been a sharp rise in the number of African tribes "rediscovering" their Jewish heritage.

"It's important that in Israel people understand that millions of people throughout Africa consider themselves Jewish,” the professor said. “As far as they are concerned, they are the sons of the lost tribes, and are certain that the Promised Land awaits them."

Obama's Scramble for Africa

by Nick Turse

They call it the New Spice Route, an homage to the medieval trade network that connected Europe, Africa, and Asia, even if today’s “spice road” has nothing to do with cinnamon, cloves, or silks. Instead, it’s a superpower’s superhighway, on which trucks and ships shuttle fuel, food, and military equipment through a growing maritime and ground transportation infrastructure to a network of supply depots, tiny camps, and airfields meant to service a fast-growing U.S. military presence in Africa.

Few in the U.S. know about this superhighway, or about the dozens of training missions and joint military exercises being carried out in nations that most Americans couldn’t locate on a map. Even fewer have any idea that military officials are invoking the names of Marco Polo and the Queen of Sheba as they build a bigger military footprint in Africa. It’s all happening in the shadows of what in a previous imperial age was known as “the Dark Continent.”

In East African ports, huge metal shipping containers arrive with the everyday necessities for a military on the make. They’re then loaded onto trucks that set off down rutted roads toward dusty bases and distant outposts.

On the highway from Djibouti to Ethiopia, for example, one can see the bare outlines of this shadow war at the truck stops where local drivers take a break from their long-haul routes. The same is true in other African countries. The nodes of the network tell part of the story: Manda Bay, Garissa, and Mombasa in Kenya; Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda; Bangui and Djema in the Central African Republic; Nzara in South Sudan; Dire Dawa in Ethiopia; and the Pentagon’s showpiece African base, Camp Lemonnier, in Djibouti on the coast of the Gulf of Aden, among others.

According to Pat Barnes, a spokesman for U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), Camp Lemonnier serves as the only official U.S. base on the continent. “There are more than 2,000 U.S. personnel stationed there,” he told TomDispatch recently by email. “The primary AFRICOM organization at Camp Lemonnier is Combined Joint Task Force -- Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). CJTF-HOA's efforts are focused in East Africa and they work with partner nations to assist them in strengthening their defense capabilities.”

Barnes also noted that Department of Defense personnel are assigned to U.S. embassies across Africa, including 21 individual Offices of Security Cooperation responsible for facilitating military-to-military activities with “partner nations.” He characterized the forces involved as small teams carrying out pinpoint missions. Barnes did admit that in “several locations in Africa, AFRICOM has a small and temporary presence of personnel. In all cases, these military personnel are guests within host-nation facilities, and work alongside or coordinate with host-nation personnel.”

Shadow Wars

In 2003, when CJTF-HOA was first set up there, it was indeed true that the only major U.S. outpost in Africa was Camp Lemonnier. In the ensuing years, in quiet and largely unnoticed ways, the Pentagon and the CIA have been spreading their forces across the continent. Today -- official designations aside -- the U.S. maintains a surprising number of bases in Africa. And “strengthening” African armies turns out to be a truly elastic rubric for what’s going on.

Under President Obama, in fact, operations in Africa have accelerated far beyond the more limited interventions of the Bush years: last year’s war in Libya; a regional drone campaign with missions run out of airports and bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the Indian Ocean archipelago nation of Seychelles; a flotilla of 30 ships in that ocean supporting regional operations; a multi-pronged military and CIA campaign against militants in Somalia, including intelligence operations, training for Somali agents, a secret prison, helicopter attacks, and U.S. commando raids; a massive influx of cash for counterterrorism operations across East Africa; a possible old-fashioned air war, carried out on the sly in the region using manned aircraft; tens of millions of dollars in arms for allied mercenaries and African troops; and a special ops expeditionary force (bolstered by State Department experts) dispatched to help capture or kill Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and his senior commanders. And this only begins to scratch the surface of Washington’s fast-expanding plans and activities in the region.

To support these mushrooming missions, near-constant training operations, and alliance-building joint exercises, outposts of all sorts are sprouting continent-wide, connected by a sprawling shadow logistics network. Most American bases in Africa are still small and austere, but growing ever larger and more permanent in appearance. For example, photographs from last year of Ethiopia’s Camp Gilbert, examined by TomDispatch, show a base filled with air-conditioned tents, metal shipping containers, and 55-gallon drums and other gear strapped to pallets, but also recreation facilities with TVs and videogames, and a well-appointed gym filled with stationary bikes, free weights, and other equipment.

Continental Drift

After 9/11, the U.S. military moved into three major regions in significant ways: South Asia (primarily Afghanistan), the Middle East (primarily Iraq), and the Horn of Africa. Today, the U.S. is drawing down in Afghanistan and has largely left Iraq. Africa, however, remains a growth opportunity for the Pentagon.

The U.S. is now involved, directly and by proxy, in military and surveillance operations against an expanding list of regional enemies. They include al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in North Africa; the Islamist movement Boko Haram in Nigeria; possible al-Qaeda-linked militants in post-Qaddafi Libya; Joseph Kony’s murderous Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the Central African Republic, Congo, and South Sudan; Mali’s Islamist Rebels of the Ansar Dine, al-Shabaab in Somalia; and guerrillas from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula across the Gulf of Aden in Yemen.

A recent investigation by the Washington Post revealed that contractor-operated surveillance aircraft based out of Entebbe, Uganda, are scouring the territory used by Kony’s LRA at the Pentagon’s behest, and that 100 to 200 U.S. commandos share a base with the Kenyan military at Manda Bay. Additionally, U.S. drones are being flown out of Arba Minch airport in Ethiopia and from the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, while drones and F-15 fighter-bombers have been operating out of Camp Lemonnier as part of the shadow wars being waged by the U.S. military and the CIA in Yemen and Somalia. Surveillance planes used for spy missions over Mali, Mauritania, and the Sahara desert are also flying missions from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, and plans are reportedly in the works for a similar base in the newborn nation of South Sudan.

U.S. special operations forces are stationed at a string of even more shadowy forward operating posts on the continent, including one in Djema in the Central Africa Republic and others in Nzara in South Sudan and Dungu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The U.S. also has had troops deployed in Mali, despite having officially suspended military relations with that country following a coup.

According to research by TomDispatch, the U.S. Navy also has a forward operating location, manned mostly by Seabees, Civil Affairs personnel, and force-protection troops, known as Camp Gilbert in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia. U.S. military documents indicate that there may be other even lower-profile U.S. facilities in the country. In addition to Camp Lemonnier, the U.S. military also maintains another hole-and-corner outpost in Djibouti -- a Navy port facility that lacks even a name. AFRICOM did not respond to requests for further information on these posts before this article went to press.

Additionally, U.S. Special Operations Forces are engaged in missions against the Lord’s Resistance Army from a rugged camp in Obo in the Central African Republic, but little is said about that base either. “U.S. military personnel working with regional militaries in the hunt for Joseph Kony are guests of the African security forces comprising the regional counter-LRA effort,” Barnes told me. “Specifically in Obo, the troops live in a small camp and work with partner nation troops at a Ugandan facility that operates at the invitation of the government of the Central African Republic.”

And that’s still just part of the story. U.S. troops are also working at bases inside Uganda. Earlier this year, elite Force Recon Marines from the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force 12 (SPMAGTF-12) trained soldiers from the Uganda People's Defense Force, which not only runs missions in the Central African Republic, but also acts as a proxy force for the U.S. in Somalia in the battle against the Islamist militants known as al-Shabaab. They now supply the majority of the troops to the African Union Mission protecting the U.S.-supported government in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

In the spring, Marines from SPMAGTF-12 also trained soldiers from the Burundi National Defense Force (BNDF), the second-largest contingent in Somalia. In April and May, members of Task Force Raptor, 3rd Squadron, 124th Cavalry Regiment, of the Texas National Guard took part in a training mission with the BNDF in Mudubugu, Burundi.

In February, SPMAGTF-12 sent trainers to Djibouti to work with an elite local army unit, while other Marines traveled to Liberia to focus on teaching riot-control techniques to Liberia’s military as part of what is otherwise a State Department-directed effort to rebuild that force.

In addition, the U.S. is conducting counterterrorism training and equipping militaries in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Niger, and Tunisia. AFRICOM also has 14 major joint-training exercises planned for 2012, including operations in Morocco, Cameroon, Gabon, Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Senegal, and Nigeria.

The size of U.S. forces conducting these joint exercises and training missions fluctuates, but Barnes told me that, “on an average basis, there are approximately 5,000 U.S. Military and DoD personnel working across the continent” at any one time. Next year, even more American troops are likely to be on hand as units from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, known as the “Dagger Brigade,” are scheduled to deploy to the region. The roughly 3,000 soldiers in the brigade will be involved in, among other activities, training missions while acquiring regional expertise. "Special Forces have a particular capability in this area, but not the capacity to fulfill the demand; and we think we will be able to fulfill the demand by using conventional forces," Colonel Andrew Dennis told a reporter about the deployment.

Air Africa

Last month, the Washington Post revealed that, since at least 2009, the “practice of hiring private companies to spy on huge expanses of African territory… has been a cornerstone of the U.S. military’s secret activities on the continent.” Dubbed Tusker Sand, the project consists of contractors flying from Entebbe airport in Uganda and a handful of other airfields. They pilot turbo-prop planes that look innocuous but are packed with sophisticated surveillance gear.

America’s mercenary spies in Africa are, however, just part of the story.

While the Pentagon canceled an analogous drone surveillance program dubbed Tusker Wing, it has spent millions of dollars to upgrade the civilian airport at Arba Minch, Ethiopia, to enable drone missions to be flown from it. Infrastructure to support such operations has been relatively cheap and easy to construct, but a much more daunting problem looms -- one intimately connected to the New Spice Route.

“Marco Polo wasn't just an explorer,” Army planner Chris Zahner explained at a conference in Djibouti last year. “[H]e was also a logistician developing logistics nodes along the Silk Road. Now let's do something similar where the Queen of Sheba traveled." Paeans to bygone luminaries aside, the reasons for pouring resources into sea and ground supply networks have less to do with history than with Africa’s airport infrastructure.

Of the 3,300 airfields on the continent identified in a National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency review, the Air Force has surveyed only 303 of them and just 158 of those surveys are current. Of those airfields that have been checked out, half won’t support the weight of the C-130 cargo planes that the U.S. military leans heavily on to transport troops and materiel. These limitations were driven home during Natural Fire 2010, one of that year’s joint training exercises hosted by AFRICOM. When C-130s were unable to use an airfield in Gulu, Uganda, an extra $3 million was spent instead to send in Chinook helicopters.

In addition, diplomatic clearances and airfield restrictions on U.S. military aircraft cost the Pentagon time and money, while often raising local suspicion and ire. In a recent article in the military trade publication Army Sustainment, Air Force Major Joseph Gaddis touts an emerging solution: outsourcing. The concept was tested last year, during another AFRICOM training operation, Atlas Drop 2011.

“Instead of using military airlift to move equipment to and from the exercise, planners used commercial freight vendors,” writes Gadddis. “This provided exercise participants with door-to-door delivery service and eliminated the need for extra personnel to channel the equipment through freight and customs areas.” Using mercenary cargo carriers to skirt diplomatic clearance issues and move cargo to airports that can’t support U.S. C-130s is, however, just one avenue the Pentagon is pursuing to support its expanding operations in Africa.

Another is construction.

The Great Build-Up

Military contracting documents reveal plans for an investment of up to $180 million or more in construction at Camp Lemonnier alone. Chief among the projects will be the laying of 54,500 square meters of taxiways “to support medium-load aircraft” and the construction of a 185,000 square meter Combat Aircraft Loading Area. In addition, plans are in the works to erect modular maintenance structures, hangers, and ammunition storage facilities, all needed for an expanding set of secret wars in Africa.

Other contracting documents suggest that, in the years to come, the Pentagon will be investing up to $50 million in new projects at that base, Kenya’s Camp Simba, and additional unspecified locations in Africa. Still other solicitation materials suggest future military construction in Egypt, where the Pentagon already maintains a medical research facility, and still more work in Djibouti.

No less telling are contracting documents indicating a coming influx of “emergency troop housing” at Camp Lemonnier, including almost 300 additional Containerized Living Units (CLUs), stackable, air-conditioned living quarters, as well as latrines and laundry facilities.

Military documents also indicate that a nearly $450,000 exercise facility was installed at the U.S. base in Entebbe, Uganda, last year. All of this indicates that, for the Pentagon, its African build-up has only begun.

The Scramble for Africa

In a recent speech in Arlington, Virginia, AFRICOM Commander General Carter Ham explained the reasoning behind U.S. operations on the continent: “The absolute imperative for the United States military [is] to protect America, Americans, and American interests; in our case, in my case, [to] protect us from threats that may emerge from the African continent.” As an example, Ham named the Somali-based al-Shabaab as a prime threat. “Why do we care about that?” he asked rhetorically. “Well, al-Qaeda is a global enterprise... we think they very clearly do present, as an al-Qaeda affiliate... a threat to America and Americans.”

Fighting them over there, so we don’t need to fight them here has been a core tenet of American foreign policy for decades, especially since 9/11. But trying to apply military solutions to complex political and social problems has regularly led to unforeseen consequences. For example, last year’s U.S.-supported war in Libya resulted in masses of well-armed Tuareg mercenaries, who had been fighting for Libyan autocrat Muammar Qaddafi, heading back to Mali where they helped destabilize that country. So far, the result has been a military coup by an American-trained officer; a takeover of some areas by Tuareg fighters of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, who had previously raided Libyan arms depots; and other parts of the country being seized by the irregulars of Ansar Dine, the latest al-Qaeda “affiliate” on the American radar. One military intervention, in other words, led to three major instances of blowback in a neighboring country in just a year.

With the Obama administration clearly engaged in a twenty-first century scramble for Africa, the possibility of successive waves of overlapping blowback grows exponentially. Mali may only be the beginning and there’s no telling how any of it will end. In the meantime, keep your eye on Africa. The U.S. military is going to make news there for years to come.

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. He is the author/editor of several books, including the recently published Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050 (with Tom Engelhardt). This piece is the latest article in his series on “the changing face of American empire,” which is being underwritten by Lannan Foundation.

Robbing Nigeria blind

By Thomas C. Mountain

As western oil companies loot some $140 billion a year of Nigeria’s black gold, two thirds of the country’s 100 million people live on less than $2 a day.

Nigeria’s “official” oil production figures show about 3 million barrels a day being pumped from their oil fields into the holds of western tankers, though for decades now informed observers have estimated up to one third of all Nigerian oil is actually “stolen”, secretly loaded onto oil tankers after bribes are paid to corrupt government officials.

If 4 million barrels of oil are being shipped out of Nigeria daily at $100 a barrel, times 30 days a month, times 12 months, you arrive at almost $150 billion a year in potential oil revenues for Nigeria.

The problem is not just theft but the fact that the western oil companies are literally looting Nigeria’s oil, paying as little as a 9% royalty.

Do the math, 9% of $150 billion minus the one third oil that is stolen and the Nigerian government only receives about $10 billion a year of this amount.

Simply put, at $100 a barrel, the western oil companies get $91 and Nigeria only gets $9. Or more shockingly, Big Oil makes $140 billion a year vs. Nigeria’s $10 billion.

The Big Oil robber barons famously promote themselves as “investors” in Nigeria, though when looking at the loot they are making from what should be Africa’s richest country it is doubtful that they have invested $140 billion in Nigeria in total over the last decades (Big Oil is notorious for sticking the host countries with a major share of infrastructure expenses, deducted from their royalty checks).

In other words, Big Oil has made its investment back almost exponentially. And all the while Nigerians are hungry, sick, and increasingly fed up.

What have the people of Nigeria gotten from all this wealth being looted from their country?

Malnutrition and disease are rampant across the country. Many if not most of Nigeria’s children have never seen the inside of a school room. Many if not most of Nigeria’s people simply cannot afford even primary medical care. Malaria, water borne diseases, TB, HIV/AIDS, the list of sicknesses killing Nigerians in the thousands every day is criminal.

Nigeria’s environment has been a victim with a large swath of the coast lying under a toxic blanket of oil, mainly as a result of the criminal failure of Big Oil to do even basic maintenance on its pipelines.

Yet Nigeria has the largest, best equipped army in west Africa, the better to enforce Pax Americana. As I write, Nigerian troops are pouring into Guinea Bissau, there to restore “democracy”—something they have done many times in the past.

Nigeria should be wealthy, its people the envy of Africa, if not the entire developing world. Instead its cities are filled with homeless children begging for their daily bread.

Nigeria imports almost all of its fuel needs, selling its oil for $9 a barrel and buying back the gasoline, diesel and kerosene made from its oil for hundreds a barrel.

Nigeria is in constant need of IMF bailouts and pays the price for such predatory loans. Earlier this year after Queen of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, paid a visit, Nigerian President “Badluck” Jonathan was forced to kneel down and kiss her feet, promising to more than double the price desperate Nigerians are forced to pay for their fuel.

The kleptocrats that rule Nigeria under the banner of “democracy”, for they stole the elections fair and square, cannot even provide electricity to their people, with most Nigerians receiving only a few hours a day of electric supply, if any at all.

Nigeria’s other infrastructure, what little there is, decays by the day with even its once functional railroads now barely operational.

Yet this is all applauded by the west, with Nigeria’s President a permanent member of the so called G-20 council of world leaders.

One of the leading candidates for the title of “Queen of African Kleptocracy”, the Nigerian Finance Minister, complained bitterly after she was rejected by Pax Americana to head the USA majority owned World Bank. Talk about the fox wanting to rule the chicken coop.

All this looting and theft has left a once proud and self-sufficient people on the brink of a major explosion with government repression barely containing a cauldron of ethnic/religious violence that continues to erupt in murder and mayhem. Muslims killing Christians, Christians killing Muslims, and the army killing ethnic rebels taking up arms over the looting and destruction of their homelands by the western oil companies.

These days the western media have begun carrying alarming reports of a dramatic decline in Nigerian oil production, down according to some reports by as much as 25% in the last few months. As bad as matters are already for Nigeria’s suffering millions, what is to come may be far worse, for without even the small morsels that their western masters allow to fall from their oil burdened tables the Nigerian economy is headed for a collapse, being almost completely dependent on their oil exports.

What is going to happen if Nigeria’s oil fields begin to run dry? Only time will tell, though thanks to the looting of Nigeria one might be forgiven for holding little hope for what should be one of the jewels of Africa.

>Thomas C. Mountain is an independent western journalist based in the Horn of Africa, and has been living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He was a member of the 1st US Peace Delegation to Libya in 1987.