[PEN-L:4280] Conflict in Central Africa

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Mar. 18, 1999
issue of Workers World newspaper
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WHAT DRIVES THE CONFLICT IN CENTRAL AFRICA?

By Deirdre Griswold

Wars are raging throughout Africa. The largest area of confrontation is
Congo and the countries on its borders:  Angola, Rwanda and Uganda. What
is driving these conflicts?

It is impossible to find the truth in the Western capitalist media. Every
article, every television commentary, focuses only on the results, not the
causes.

We are shown suffering and devastation almost too horrible to contemplate.
But left out is the enormous pressure being exerted on Africa by the huge
transnational imperialist banks and corporations and the government bodies
that front for them. The implied racist message is that Africa can't
govern itself.

Take this quote from a substantial article in the Jan. 12 New York Times
entitled "Congo's Struggle May Unleash Broad Strife to Redraw Africa":

"Wars between nations, largely absent since Africans became independent
starting in the 1960s, may become more common. As troubling, many experts
say, the national boundary lines that have defined African countries for a
century, and lent some stability, may slowly come apart. ...

"Congo is particularly divisible, experts say, because those foreign
[African] troops tread on land rich in gold, diamonds, copper, cobalt, oil
and timber. Each outside nation has interests in Congo--security,
financial or both.  So some Africa watchers say that a second or more
subdued scramble for Congo, this time involving not European colonists but
its own neighbors, is also helping pull the nation apart."

What a convenient revelation! This time the Europeans are not involved,
claim the unnamed "experts." The recarving is all being done by other
Africans.

But the exploitation and plunder of Africa by Britain, France, Portugal
and Belgium didn't end with decolonization, as the Times writers should
know well. And they don't even ask if U.S. imperialism, which has
supplanted the European colonialists as the major exploiting power in so
much of the developing world, has a stake in these wars.

The article identifies six countries--Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Angola,
Namibia and Chad--as "outside nations" whose troops are fighting in Congo.


CONTRAS AND TALIBAN

In this day and age, shouldn't the writers for the Times know full well
that one of the main strategies of the imperialists is to let other forces
do their fighting for them?

Wasn't that the meaning of the "Vietnamization" of the war in Southeast
Asia? Wasn't that how the Contras became a force in Nicaragua? Isn't that
how the Taliban were able to oust a progressive government in Afghanistan
and install one of the most reactionary regimes in the world?

For many years, the U.S. government claimed to have no direct role in
these struggles. The full extent of its military involvement and the
billions of dollars spent on counterrevolution came out only much later.

The history of imperialist plunder of Africa is too infamous to be
belittled by any honest writer. And not only the European colonial powers
have been involved. In the century now drawing to a close, the U.S.
government and the banks and corporations it represents have played an
increasingly pivotal role as the major imperialist power in Africa, with
Britain as their main partner in crime.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency maneuvered the assassination of
Patrice Lumumba, the Congo's first president, in 1960. It was behind the
overthrow of Ghana's Marx ist leader, Kwame Nkrumah. It took the entity
known as UNITA and molded it into a powerful army trying to defeat the
popular revolutionary government in Angola. In all these cases, it found
agents to do its dirty work so that its own hands could be concealed. All
of this has been well documented.

Why can't the media here even ask the question: Is the same process
happening right now in Africa?


AGGRESSIVE U.S. EXPANSION

There is a new world situation ushered in by the collapse of the Soviet
Union. The U.S. imperialist policy makers see immense opportunities to
expand their global power. With no rival coming anywhere near them in
economic or military might, they think they can ride roughshod over
whatever measure of national sovereignty the African masses have been able
to attain.

After World War II many heroic national liberation movements began to
render colonialism unworkable. They received support and sustenance from
the bloc of socialist countries, which was nowhere near as wealthy as the
imperialists but did provide assistance.

It was no golden age. Many movements were set back. And the eventual split
between the Soviet Union and China had a grave impact, helping to fracture
many African liberation movements.

But taken as a whole, it was a time when the imperialists had to accept
some measure of independence in many African countries, including a degree
of state control over natural resources and vital areas of the
infrastructure like banking, railroads, telephones and so on. They feared
that unless they struck a compromise with the bourgeois elements, they
could lose everything in a revolutionary upheaval of the masses.

Even those military and political leaders who came to power with Western
backing, like General Mobutu in the Congo, benefited from this arrangement
by keeping a larger share of the national wealth than the imperialists
really wanted to concede.

During this period, a strong Pan-African movement sought to unite all the
African countries.

While the imperialists fought among themselves for the biggest share of
the loot--the Congo was a prime example, with the U.S., France and Belgium
all backing different factions in the 1960s--they were united in trying to
crush any truly popular and revolutionary development.


`STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT' AND U.S.-BACKED INSURGENCIES

Over the past decade, "structural adjustment" programs forced on Africa by
the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have stripped many
countries of whatever control they still exercised over their economies.
Under the catchword "privatization," they have had to surrender ownership
of mines, industries, communications and finance.

Today, the rivalry among the imperialists has sharpened greatly. The push
to recarve Africa is coming most aggressively from the Anglo-U.S.
alliance, at the expense first and foremost of the African people. French
imperialism is being pushed back, losing control in areas where it has
maintained neocolonial relations.

In Rwanda, for example, where French was the official language and the
currency was convertible to the franc, the takeover by an insurgent force
in 1994 has led to its realignment into the English-speaking bloc.

While the U.S. hand is not always visible, it is widely acknowledged that
Washington has provided important backing to the present regimes in Uganda
and Rwanda, including military support. They, in turn, have invaded Congo
twice-- first to overthrow the dictator Mobutu, and now in a war against
the more progressive government of Laurent Kabila, who had been their ally
in the first struggle.

Kabila has tried to strengthen the national economy, making contracts with
neighboring African countries like Zimba bwe, Angola and Tanzania to
develop Congo's mineral wealth. This angered a number of imperialist
mining companies, which lost contracts they thought were in the bag.

But now Rwandan and Ugandan troops are occupying the eastern third of the
country, where Congo's great mineral wealth is concentrated. They seem to
have abundant weapons and access to the most up-to-date satellite
communications technology. And they are making their own contracts with
imperialist corporations.

Angola, which has itself been at war with the U.S.-backed UNITA army for
many years, at immense human cost, answered Kabila's call for help when
Congo was invaded last summer.  So did Zimbabwe, Namibia and Chad.

But new offensives by UNITA--which the U.S. claims it no longer
bankrolls--have forced Angola to bring home almost all its troops in
recent weeks. Clearly, UNITA is once again on the CIA payroll--if it ever
was dropped.

In the imperialist world order, some countries--indeed, whole
continents--are seen by the ruling capitalists as existing for no other
purpose than to provide cheap raw materials and labor.

This has been nowhere more apparent than in the attitude of the European
and U.S. ruling classes toward Africa. No amount of sighing over human
rights or attending endless conferences promising minimal aid for economic
development can drown out the imperialists' real interest in Africa.

They are scrambling over each other to grab Africa's riches for their
global industrial machine. In the process, they will create, take
advantage of and envenom antagonisms among different cultures, religions
and regions.

This is the main driving force behind the African wars.

                         - END -

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