Africa: a continent under military occupation

All the armies of the world are investing in Africa, the African continent once again is at the center of all the greed, so much so that one has the impression that it is the future of the world which is played out in Africa. The continent whose mineral resources are no longer to demonstrate, faces however an exponential growth of its population. A datum that goes against the plans of those who hope to hara on its natural resources. Foreign armies in Africa are without any doubts, there for the strategic interests of their respective countries. However, it is legitimate to know if these interests are in line with the interests of Africa and its population, which in the coming years will have to find the means to impose a rational price on its mineral resources if it wants to be able to feed its growing population. While the African armies remain mostly rudimentary, will the governments of the continent have enough grip to protect the interests of their people respective countries, when one knows that in general they are seated on ejection seats, with these foreign armies which as in Ivory Coast in 2011, have often been decisive on the choice of the tenants of presidential palaces?

It’s relevant to note that, the influence of foreign armies in Africa is proportionately linked to the fragility of African states and their subordination to the interests of foreign nations, often more developed, which give them the prospect of economic gain or protection that has nothing to envy to the sponsorship of the mafia for the regents in place. This situation put in mortgage the future of present and next generations because these are indeed occupation forces roaming the plains of Africa, not for development aid or peace. In fact, a lot of these forces represent the countries which are at the base of the tragedy of Africa, by creating problems these countries have arrogated to themselves the right to find solutions which are only smokescreens for the slave exploitation of the continent. It is not wrong, to say that nothing has changed in the tropics and that the colon and his army is always master of the political and economic game. The long and unglamorous history of military intervention that began in the days of slavery and colonial trading resists time and era while simply taking a more cynical forms such as the fight against terrorism, which oddly is the most important vector of safeguarding Western interests in Africa by its armed forces. The busiest areas are also the most strategic, namely the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and the Gulf of Guinea where over 15 percent of oil consumed by the US come from. The Sahel, rich in unsuspected resources, also controls the migratory route taken by young men and women crossing the Mediterranean towards a western el Dorado. At the same time, it is also an area of instability par excellence, where al Qaeda, the so-called Islamic State (IS) and Boko Haram are present. The war game that unfolds there has pushed back the control of the States of the sub-regions over a vast portion of their territory, the various incursion of the terrorists in these zones have justified since the presence of foreign military bases of Western countries like the United States, and France. However, the famous war against terrorism is devastating for local residents, who have since paid a heavy price for both slowed economic activity and forced migration of people obliged to move to other regions, abandoning their land and their means of subsistence. The lands thus abandoned can often be sold back to the country who want to exploit them like China or Saudi Arabia without any resistance while the mining operations of Western powers in depopulated areas as in eastern Congo, are no less prominent, in the servile exploitation of the continent. At the end of the day, there is a perverse effect that warns observers, that terrorism, always precedes a kind of capitalist investment. On the other hand, African rulers often decried for their scabrous management find through foreign armies, godfathers, who protect them against a population often distraught by the impoverishment inflicted by the system of blatant exploitation and conflicts that strengthens it.Strategic alliances with foreign forces also allow leaders such as Idriss Déby in Chad, Ismaïl Omar Guelleh in Djibouti, or Paul Biya in Cameroon to strengthen their power and clean their dubious human rights record, and economic and political mismanagement of their respective countries.

Djibouti is the place to be, located on Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, a gateway to the Suez Canal which is one of the most popular sea routes in the world. Djibouti, it’s also at the crossroads between Africa, India and the Middle East, and earns a lot of money by hosting the military units of seven countries - the United States, China, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, Spain and soon Saudi Arabia. The rent of the only permanent military base of the United States in Africa, Camp Lemonnier, amounts to 63 million dollars a year. China, which is building its own base on the other side of the Gulf of Tadjourah, has done a good job by paying a rent of only $ 20 million. Only Iran seems to have refused to settle in Djibouti. The imperialist bases logically do not benefit the people, because all this money seems to serve the bourgeois class better than the Djiboutian people who continue to be one of the poorest in Africa. In the Gulf of Guinea, Cameroon, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Democratic Congo and Gabon offer de facto bases to Western armies. Garoua airport in northern Cameroon serves as a base for drones that officially hit Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria. It is home to unarmed Predator drones and some 300 US soldiers. An American presence that intervenes in a strategic area where mining resources were recently discovered, and where China was starting to be very present. There is no doubt that the American presence in the surrounding area should temper the economic expansionism ardor of the Asian giant's and put under the colonial yoke a government that was already thinking of taking some liberty, at a time when the debate of the future at the head of Cameroon is raging, the Cameroonian president has moved closer to Asia to sell hard his skin. In Gabon there is a rudimentary launch site used by the French rapid reaction forces responsible for protecting diplomatic facilities in the region officially, but unofficially, it ensures the protection of the Bongo family which has reigned solely over Gabon for more than 50 years serving by oil resources of the country the interests of a France always greedy when it comes to the exploitation of tropical resources.

In Chad, the headquarters of Operation Barkhane against insurgents, has some 3,500 French soldiers working in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. In the Central African Republic, US special forces based on the "temporary bases" of Obo and Djema support the Ugandan army's operations to officially seek Joseph Kony and the fighters of the Lord's Resistance Army who are still running, while the arrival of Russia in the country that had since been disarmed, suggests a very worrying war game between Russia, France and the United States, in the small Central African country rich in Diamonds and many other mineral resources. The mining scandal Congo, with Dungu, has another "temporary base" that the United States would use officially for the research of Mr. Kony, but unofficially to take care of its mercantile interests in the murderous bloodletting suffered by the Congo since the fall of the Mobutu regime in the 90s. It is well-known that the war in Congo, which has already killed more than 6 million people, does not prevent the exploitation of its mineral resources in complicity with riparian countries, as Rwanda which has since maintained armed groups that have fostered the climate of incessant warfare conducive to the plunder of the country. Even Germany and Britain, the former colonial powers par excellence have since returned to the continent. In Niger, there is now a military base for air transport at Niamey International Airport to support Germany's growing contribution in terms of the United Nations Mission in Mali.

England has recovered its colonial stronghold in Kenya where a permanent training support unit, mainly based in Nanyuki, 200 kilometers north of Nairobi was opened in 2017. There is virtually no African country that is affected by the military occupation of foreign forces. the continent is practically squared, and foreign powers whose war history no longer suffers from the slightest doubt have been joined by other countries like Japan, with its base in Djibouti since 2011, Saudi Arabia still in Djibouti, Turkey in Somalia , the United Arab Emirate in Eritrea, Libya, Somalia, and Somaliland, India to Madagascar and the Seychelles where it has a large community. All this military attention of a multitude of nations in a continent that needs no guns, but roads, hospitals and schools, has become the pivot in the war games in Africa devoting the multipolarism of the present era, which alas still does not benefit Africa.

Read more at www.flashmag.net Hubert Marlin Journalist