Foreign Policy In Focus

Over the next four years the U.S. will face a number of foreign policy issues, most of them regional, some of them global. Conn Hallinan has been outlining and analyzing them. His first report covered the Middle East.

Africa is probably the single most complex region of the world and arguably its most troubled. While the world concerns itself with the Syrian civil war and the dangers it poses for the Middle East, little notice is taken of the war in the Congo, a tragedy that has taken five million lives and next to which the crisis in Syria pales.

Africa represents 15 percent of the world’s population, yet only 2.7 percent of its GDP, which is largely concentrated in only five of 49 sub-Saharan countries. Just two countries—South Africa and Nigeria—account for over 33 percent of the continent’s economic output. Life expectancy is 50 years, and considerably less in those countries ravaged by AIDS. Hunger and malnutrition are worse than they were a decade ago.

At the same time, Africa is wealthy in oil, gas, iron, aluminum and rare metals. By 2015, countries in the Gulf of Guinea will provide the U.S. with 25 percent of its energy needs, and Africa has at least 10 percent of the world’s known oil reserves. South Africa alone has 40 percent of the earth’s gold supply. The continent contains over one-third of the earth’s cobalt and supplies China—the world’s second largest economy—with 50 percent of that country’s copper, aluminum and iron ore.

But history has stacked the deck against Africa. The slave trade and colonialism inflicted deep and lasting wounds on the region, wounds that continue to bleed out in today’s world. France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal sliced up the continent without the slightest regard for its past or its people. Most of the wars that have—and are—ravaging Africa today are a direct outcome of maps drawn up in European foreign offices to delineate where and what to plunder.

But over the past decade, the world has turned upside down. Formerly the captive of the European colonial powers, China is now Africa’s largest economic partner, followed closely by India and Brazil. Consumer spending is up, and the World Bank predicts that by 2015 the number of new African consumers will match Brazil’s.

In short, the continent is filled with vibrant economies and enormous potential that is not going unnoticed in capitals throughout the world. “The question for executives at consumer packaged goods companies is no longer whether their firms should enter the region, but where and how” says a report by the management consultant agency A.T. Kearney. How Africa negotiates its new status in the world will not only have a profound impact on its people, but on the global community as well. For investors it is the last frontier.

The U.S. track record in Africa is a shameful one. Washington was a long-time supporter of the apartheid regime in South Africa and backed the most corrupt and reactionary leaders on the continent, including the despicable Mobutu Sese Seko in the Congo. As part its Cold War strategy, the U.S. aided and abetted civil wars in Mozambique, Angola, and Namibia. Americans have much to answer for in the region.

Militarization

If there is a single characterization of U.S. policy vis-à-vis Africa, it is the increased militarization of American diplomacy on the continent. For the first time since World War II, Washington has significant military forces in Africa, overseen by a freshly minted organization, Africom.

The U.S. has anywhere from 12,000 to 15,000 Marines and Special Forces in Djibouti, a former French colony bordering the Red Sea. It has 100 Special Forces soldiers deployed in Uganda, supposedly tracking down the Lord’s Resistance Army. It actively aided Ethiopia’s 2007 invasion of Somalia, including using its navy to shell a town in the country’s south. It is currently recruiting and training African forces to fight the extremist Islamic organization, the Shabab, in Somalia, and conducting “counter-terrorism” training in Mali, Chad, Niger, Benin, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Gabon, Zambia, Malawi, Burkina Faso, and Mauretania.

Since much of the U.S. military activities involves Special Forces and the CIA, it is difficult to track how widespread the involvement is. “I think it is far larger than anyone imagines,” says John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org.

As a whole, U.S. military adventures in Africa have turned out badly. The Ethiopian invasion overthrew the moderate Islamic Courts Union, elevating the Shabab from a minor player to a major headache. NATO’s war on Libya—Africom’s coming-out party—is directly responsible for the current crisis in Mali, where Local Tuaregs and Islamic groups have seized the northern part of the country, armed with the plundered weapons’ caches of Muammar el-Qaddafi. Africom’s support of Uganda’s attack on the Lord’s Resistance Army in the Democratic Republic of the Congo resulted in the death of thousands of civilians.

While the Obama administration has put soldiers and weapons into Africa, it has largely dropped the ball on reducing poverty. In spite of the UN’s Millennium Development plan adopted in 2000, sub-Saharan Africa will not reach the program’s goals for reducing poverty and hunger, and improving child and maternal healthcare. Rather than increasing aid, as the plan requires, the U.S. has either cut aid or used debt relief as a way of fulfilling its obligations.

At the same time, Washington has increased military aid, including arms sales. One thing Africa does not need is any more guns and soldiers.

There are a number of initiatives that the Obama administration could take that would make a material difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of Africans.

First, it could fulfill the UN’s Millennium goals by increasing its aid to 0.7 percent of its GDP, and not using debt forgiveness as part of that formula. Canceling debt is a very good idea, and allows countries to re-deploy the money they would use for debt payment to improve health and infrastructure, but as part of an overall aid package it is mixing apples and oranges.

Second, it must de-militarize its diplomacy in the region. Indeed, as Somalia and Libya illustrate, military solutions many times make bad situations worse. Behind the rubric of the “war on terror,” the U.S. is training soldiers throughout the continent. History shows, however, that those soldiers are just as likely to overthrow their civilian governments as they are to battle “terrorists.” Amadou Sanogo, the captain who overthrew the Mali government this past March and initiated the current crisis, was trained in the U.S.

There is also the problem of who are the” terrorists.” Virtually all of the groups so designated are focused on local issues. Nigeria’s Boko Haram is certainly a lethal organization, but it is the brutality of the Nigerian Army and police that fuels its rage, not al-Qaeda. The continent’s bug-a-boo, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Meghreb, is small and scattered, and represents more a point of view than an organization. Getting involved in chasing “terrorists” in Africa could end up pitting the U.S. against local insurgents in the Niger Delta, Berbers in the Western Sahara, and Tuaregs in Niger and Mali.

What Africa needs is aid and trade directed at creating infrastructure and jobs. Selling oil, cobalt, and gold brings in money, but not permanent jobs. That requires creating a consumption economy with an export dimension. But the US’s adherence to “free trade” torpedoes countries from constructing such modern economies.

Africans cannot currently compete with the huge—and many times subsidized industries—of the First World. Nor can they build up an agricultural infrastructure when their local farmers cannot match the subsidized prices of American corn and wheat. Because of those subsidies, U.S. wheat sells for 40 percent below production cost, and corn for 20 percent below. In short, African needs to “protect” their industries—much as the U.S. did in its early industrial stage—until they can establish themselves. This was the successful formula followed by Japan and South Korea.

The Carnegie Endowment and the European Commission found that “free trade” would end up destroying small scale agriculture in Africa, much as it did for corn farmers in Mexico. Since 50 percent of Africa’s GNP is in agriculture, the impact would be disastrous, driving small farmers off the land and into overcrowded cities where social services are already inadequate.

The Obama administration should also not make Africa a battleground in its competition with China. Last year US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described China’s trading practices with Africa as a “new colonialism,” a sentiment that is not widely shared on the continent. A Pew Research Center study found that Africans were consistently more positive about China’s involvement in the region than they were about the U.S.’s.

Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa, recently praised the continent’s “relationship with China,” but also said that the “current trade pattern” is unsustainable because it was not building up Africa’s industrial base. China recently pledged $20 billion in aid for infrastructure and agriculture.

One disturbing development is a “land rush” by countries ranging from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia to acquire agricultural land in Africa. With climate change and population growth, food, as Der Spiegel puts it, “is the new oil.” Land is plentiful in Africa, and at about one-tenth the cost in the U.S. Most production by foreign investors would be on an industrial scale, with its consequent depletion of the soil and degradation of the environment from pesticides and fertilizers. The Obama administration should adopt the successful “contract farming” model, where investors supply capital and technology to small farmers, who keep ownership of their land and are guaranteed a set price for their products. This would not only elevate the efficiency of agriculture, it would provide employment for local people.

The Obama administration should also strengthen, not undermine, regional organizations. The African Union tried to find a peaceful resolution to the Libyan crisis because its members were worried that a war would spill over and destabilize countries surrounding the Sahara. The Obama administration and NATO pointedly ignored the AU’s efforts, and the organization’s predictions have proved prescient.

Lastly, the Obama administration should join with India and Brazil and lobby for permanent membership for an African country—either South Africa or Nigeria, or both— in the UN Security Council. India and Brazil should also be given permanent seats. Currently the permanent members of the Security Council are the victors of WW II: the U.S., Russia, China, France and Great Britain.

In 1619, a Dutch ship dropped anchor in Virginia and exchanged its cargo of Africans for food, thus initiating a trade that would rip the heart out of a continent. No one really knows how many Africans were forcibly transported to the New World, but it was certainly in the tens of millions. To this day Africa mirrors the horror of the slave trade and the brutal colonial exploitation that followed in its wake. It is time to make amends.

For more of Conn Hallinan's essays visit Dispatches From the Edge. Meanwhile, his novels about the ancient Romans can be found at The Middle Empire Series.

Daniel Benjamin in Algiers

At about the time that the United States, the European Union and NATO were putting the final touches on their not-so 'humanitarian' interventionalism in Libya, U.S. Middle East policy was developing along quite different lines in Algeria.

On March 4-7, in Algiers, the United States and Algeria formed what both countries are referring to as 'a new contact group' for counter-terrorism collaboration, cementing even further a decade of close intelligence and military cooperation between the two countries.

Underlining the importance of the security arrangement, the United States sent Daniel Benjamin, the U.S. State Department's Coordinator for Counterterrorism, to attend. The Algerian side was represented by Algerian presidential advisor, Kamel Rezzag Bara.

At a press conference Benjamin welcomed 'the inaugural meeting of the bilateral contact group'. He asserted the U.S. intended to work with Algeria to 'counter groups that seek to launch attacks against innocents'. The crusader bombast and confrontational style of the Bush years has been replaced by a much softer touch stylistically at least. Poised, cutting a handsome 'Kennedy-like' image, Benjamin chose his words carefully.

'Algeria's future should be in its own hands', Benjamin told an audience of Algerian journalists. He continued, 'The U.S. supports the democratization process in Algeria and elsewhere in the Middle East, North Africa and the Sahel.' In response to a question, Benjamin categorically stated that 'the United States does not seek any more military bases in Africa'. Benjamin went on to state 'the future of Algeria is for Algerians to determine'.

Dick Cheney's Sahara Terrorist Scam

Indeed, the rhetoric was impeccable. If only it matched the reality!

Take, for instance, the comment that the United States does not seek military bases in Africa. The United States has been 'frantically' looking for an African home for AFRICOM, the African command center created during the Bush years to deal with Africa's growing strategic importance in terms of oil and rare minerals, and to counter China's growing influence throughout the continent.

Seems African countries – even allies – don't believe that AFRICOM is a Peace Corps-like outfit concerned with development and fighting AIDS. Despite repeated U.S. denials to the contrary, African leaders fear it is something more sinister. Imagine!

Furthermore the United States has at least one military base of some size and significance in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa. There is  evidence that another one existed for a number of years in Tamanrassett, deep in the Algerian Sahara out of which U.S. Special Forces operated.

U.S. and Algerian security cooperation is more than a decade old, beginning some time just after the ending of Algeria's 'dirty war' in 1999. One could argue it began even earlier with a number of visits by then Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney to Algeria to cut oil and gas deals with the North African country despite the fact that Algeria was bogged down in what is referred to as 'The Dirty War', a civil war that nearly split the country apart.

Willing to open its oil and gas deposits to U.S. companies, the Algerian government was also able to convince the Bush Administration in the days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack that it stood with the United States as a partner in global war on terrorism; unbeknownst to many, the relations between the two countries improved considerably. Then in 2002-2003, the U.S., in collusion with its new regional ally Algeria, launched a second front in its global war on terrorism across the Sahara and Sahelian regions of Africa.

What seems to be the chemistry to bring these unlikely allies together? If British anthropologist Jeremy Keenan is to be believed – and he makes an excellent case – U.S.-Algerian cooperation 'countering terrorism' has been little more than a pretext for a strategic military alliance in which both countries gained in different ways. The actual relationship bears little of the moral rectitude suggested in Benjamin's remarks.

• For Algeria, the partnership has meant increased access to U.S. military and surveillance technology which it was denied during the 1990s due to the 'dirty war'. In the name of fighting terrorism, the alliance also extends Algerian influence over its southern neighbors in the Sahara and Sahel:  Chad, Niger, Mali and Mauritania.
• For the United States, the arrangement permits Washington to 'piggy back' on Algerian security concerns, real and imagined, to create a security network that today extends in the north, from Algeria in the north – one of Africa's most prolific oil and natural gas producing countries, to Nigeria on Africa's western coast, another of the continent's great oil producing countries.
• The Algerian-U.S. relationship,  a marriage of convenience,  was cemented not long after 9-11 by a rather bizarre, if not surrealistic and apparently heavily contrived set of circumstances that fit the needs of both. The Bush Administration, with Dick Cheney taking the lead, wanted to open a second front on the 'global war on terrorism'  (GWOT)  in Africa focusing on the Sahara.

Only one minor problem: there was virtually no terrorism, no terrorist groups in the area. Indeed, despite its natural hazards, in 2001-2, the Sahara was arguably one of the safest places to travel anywhere in the world. If Keenan is correct, the Algerian Departement de Reseignement et Securite (DRS), the Algerian Security Service, in cooperation with the U.S. military – under the auspices then of EUCOM based in Germany – fabricated an incident and then blew it all out of proportion in the medias of both countries.

In The Dark Sahara, Keenan makes the case that the kidnapping of German speaking tourists from Germany, Austria and Switzerland in 2002 was managed by the Algerian DRS with the knowledge if not complicity of the U.S. Special Forces with whom the Algerians worked rather closely. He substantiates claims that:

• The so-called Islamic groups which participated in the kidnappings were either penetrated or run by the DRS.
• There was no 'terrorist pipeline' from Bin Laden's Al Qaeda in Afghanstan through to Africa.
• The whole kidnapping incident was essentially staged, and then blown out of proportion by both the Algerian press (with close ties to its security establishment) to create the myth of the Saharan terrorist threat.
• My favorite part of this pervasive scam is the likelihood that the `leader' of the Islamic fundamentalist group, a fellow named El Para, was an Algerian DRS operative who trained in counter insurgency for two years at Ft. Bragg North Carolina. Keenan claims El Para was in constant contact with his Algerian security handlers during the entire time of the 2002 kidnapping.

As a result, the Algerian military and security forces got their high tech death and communication toys, and the Bush Administration its pretext to deepen its military involvement in Africa.

Keenan's hypothesis fits the Bush GWOT pattern to a tee: Military intervention requires embellishing or fabricating an impending threat. An elaborate disinformation campaign is launched. The remoteness of the Sahara makes verifying fabrication difficult,  permitting Algerians and the U.S. military to liberally embellish the truth. Who could disprove what was or was not going on in the southeastern corner of Algeria or northwestern Niger?

But then they didn't reckon with Jeremy Keenan, with his encyclopedic knowledge of the Sahara, his decade's long human connection with the Tuareg peoples who live there, and his unflagging sense of decency and unwillingness to go along with a dangerous political charade.

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; across the Sahara and the Sahel, a terrorist threat with links to Al Qaeda was more a scheme hatched by the DRS in Algiers than a viable Islamic resistance movement. We've been conned once again.

Rob Prince is the publisher of the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

(Pictured: U.S. Secretary of Defense Gates and Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh.) 

Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) arrived on the continent a couple of weeks ago just in time for the big doings. Ham, who had only taken over his new post three days earlier, conferred with local and U.S. military and political officials in the east African nation of Djibouti, in the words of the newspaper Stars and Stripes, just as the United States and other nations debated “whether to place a no-fly zone over Libya.” If that were to happen, the paper said, AFRICOM “would play its first lead role.” Djibouti’s chief of defense, Maj. Gen. Fathi Ahmed Houssein, is said to have “advised circumspection, since any use of military force in Libya would have long-term ramifications.” Ham said he took it under advisement.

Ham’s visit to Djibouti, where the U.S. maintains its only military base on the continent, the timing of it and its subsequent use as coordinating point for the attacks on Libya, speak volumes about the quandary of U.S. policy toward Africa. It forms a contentious backdrop for the tour President Barak Obama in planning there for later this year.

Ham, who once served as an advisor with a Saudi Arabian National Guard Brigade, is based at AFRICOM headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. That it is not located somewhere in Africa owes to the fact that most African governments view it with, at best, suspicion and all the countries that really matter have refused to host it.

Ham’s predecessor in the job was Gen. William “Kip” Ward, one of the highest-ranking African Americans in the U.S. military. The new chief faces “some tough questions about the mandate and intentions of the nascent command” said Stars and Stripes. Ward “had gone to great lengths to assure African nations that the United States does not seek to build bases on the continent,” the paper said. And “Ham said that while he was looking at other locations in the U.S. and Europe as a long-term command headquarters, and will decide on one next year, he would not rule out Africa, either.”

The troubling little matter of where the command is to be headquartered is something that most major media reports leave out, along with another aspect of the current story. In a number of respects tiny Djibouti could be considered in some ways the Bahrain of Africa.

Since the early 1990s Bahrain has been the site of the U.S. military base at Juffair, home of the headquarters for the United States Naval Forces Central Command and the U.S. Fifth Fleet involving about 1,500 military personnel. Built by the colonial French, Djibouti’s Camp Lemonier is home to about 2,000 U.S. military personnel attached to the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa. But the similarities don’t end there.

There are said to be no foreign correspondents stationed in Djibouti but that’s no excuse for a paucity of news from there. There has been plenty of time to get someone there because, drawing inspiration from events in North Africa, people in Djibouti have taken to the streets in large number since early last month. Their calls for reform have been beaten back by clubs, water cannons and sometimes bullets. Political parties have been outlawed and opposition figures jailed. Last week, the government expelled a group of U.S. election monitors there to witness a disputed presidential election slated for next month. Opposition groups are boycotting the vote because they say the current regime is repressing dissent.

“The country is nominally democratic, but events leading up to the April 8 presidential election appear to show a hard line approach by President Ismail Omar Guelleh at a time when democracy movements are upending administrations,” the Associated Press reported last week from nearby Kenya.

“The unrest in the Arab world has spread south to the small Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti, host to the only official U.S. military base on the African mainland,” wrote Stephen Roblin on ZNet March 10. “In what have been called protests triggered by a wave of political unrest sweeping through the Middle East, Djiboutians numbering in the thousands have taken to the streets in opposition to President Ismail Omar Guelleh, who has held power since succeeding his uncle in 1999. The Guelleh family has maintained its grip over the small nation of 750,000 people since its independence from France in 1977.

“Demonstrations broke out in anticipation of the upcoming election in April, when Guelleh hopes to extend his reign by winning a third term. His bid for presidency comes a year after he scrapped the two-term limit in the constitution in a move the opposition considers unconstitutional. 

“The first political rally took place on January 28 and was attended by an estimated 2-3,000 people. Djiboutians continued to organize demonstrations throughout the month of February,” wrote Roblin. “The Guelleh regime responded by ordering state security forces to disperse demonstrators through force and perform mass arbitrary arrests in a campaign to stifle the democratic opposition.”

An estimated 30,000 Djiboutians calling for Guelleh to step down gathered in Djibouti City March 19. (Again, there are only 750,000 people in the country.) They “were met by riot police, who violently dispersed the protesters,” wrote Roblin. “Unlike in Egypt, where citizens temporarily took control over Tahrir Square, state violence in Djibouti successfully repressed the attempt by pro-democracy forces to establish a permanent protest camp in the center of the capital.”

“Djibouti's primary donor, the United States, is fully aware of the harsh economic conditions facing the country, as well as the government's poor human rights record and corrupt rule,” wrote Roblin. “But the paymaster has been willing to put aside its unflinching commitment to high principles due to the Guelleh regime's well-demonstrated reliability as a regional client. 

The Guelleh regime is also charged with direct involvement in the US CIA’s secret detention and rendition program that saw alleged terrorism suspects secreted off to foreign locations for interrogation said to have involved torture.

The similarity of Bahrain and Djibouti these days is apparent in another respect: The failure of the U.S. to resolutely condemn the brutal repression by the regime on the former is in line with the soft gloves treatment and even support to the regime in the latter – as Ham’s visit attests. 

Events these days in Djibouti certainly shed light on the real scope of AFRICOM’s mission. On March 21, Eric Schmitt of the New York Times wrote from Washington that it was ‘the military’s first ‘smart power’ command. “It has no assigned troops, no headquarters in Africa itself, and one of its two top deputies is a seasoned American diplomat,” he wrote.

“Indeed, the command, known as AFRICOM, is designed largely to train and assist the armed forces of 53 African nations and to work with the State Department and other American agencies to strengthen social, political and economic programs in the region including improving H.I.V. awareness in African militaries and removing land mines.”

Descriptions like that have floated through the media repeatedly over the three years of the command’s existence. And now, suddenly it blossomed into control center for war in a neighboring country.

For three years, critics of AFRICOM in Africa and the U.S. have charged that it serves to militarize U.S. foreign policy in the region, as opposed to aid and diplomacy. Schmitt says Ward and others have consistently emphasized that AFRICOM’s role is “to train African militaries only when requested by governments.”

“Now the young, untested command and its new boss, Gen. Carter F. Ham, find themselves at their headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, setting aside public diplomacy talks and other civilian-military duties to lead the initial phase of a complex, multinational shooting war with Libya,” wrote Schmitt.

Obama will no doubt have trouble explaining that away as he arrives in various African capitals.

Carl Bloice, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, is a columnist for the Black Commentator. He also serves on its editorial board.

We're honored to have Michael Busch dissecting the latest WikiLeaks document dump for Focal Points. This is the forty-second in the series.

As US embassy cables from Libya continue pouring out of the WikiLeaks archive with each new day, the whistle-blowing group yanked the faucet off this afternoon, reducing the deluge to a drip. A single document, dating from May 2009, was released by the group, describing a meeting between Muammar Qaddafi and AFRICOM Commander William “Kip” Ward which naturally took place in the Libyan dictator’s trademark tent in Tripoli.

Not like they need it, but if any of Qaddafi’s sons take up the Boston Review’s suggestion to shoot “S**t My Dad Says: Libya Edition,” this cable will offer them yet more material. From carving up Switzerland to initiating a multilateral pirate peace process, Qaddafi treated Ward to a glimpse of the vagaries driving his distorted understanding of world affairs. And yet, before Qaddafi’s train of thought runs off the rails, the cable records some remarkably prescient and ironic observations from the Libyan leader on his region’s politics.

After exchanging pleasantries, al-Qadhafi noted that during Gen. Ward's earlier trip to Libya, he had been visiting Mauritania, where a political crisis was ongoing. "Every time we put out a fire in Africa, another one breaks out. We used to say this was a US conspiracy, but not anymore."

Qaddafi then described, at great length, the evolutionary anatomy of Middle East and North African regimes

during which he related the stages of governance in Africa from revolutionary liberation, to dictatorship, to multi-party elections.

Not clarifying his own government’s position in this schematic, nor seemingly concerned that the winds of change would whip against the walls of his army-issue tent anytime in the near future, Qaddafi concluded

that now was the time to establish common African institutions, such as a Ministry of Defense, that would better represent African interests before the world.

Up next on the Libyan ruler’s talking points memo: China. 

Al-Qadhafi turned to U.S. and Chinese involvement on the continent, characterizing the Chinese approach as soft, the U.S. as hard, and predicting that China would prevail because it does not interfere in internal affairs. He criticized what he said was a U.S. tendency to place military bases near energy sources, observing that [if] the U.S. did this in the Gulf of Guinea, it would spark terrorism. Turning to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, al-Qadhafi questioned what he characterized as U.S. support for Israel at the expense of Palestine, and advised that it would be in the best interest of the U.S. to support the Palestinians. 

Immediately on the heels of this advice, Qaddafi unceremoniously attempted to corner the market on influencing US policy in the Middle East.

He cautioned against trusting the advice of Arab leaders in the Gulf and Levant and offered to play a role in that region if the U.S. desired. The Leader concluded his remarks by expressing a desire for President Obama to come to the African Union Summit in Libya in July, and after that meet him in Italy at the G-8 conference.

The conversation between Warden and the Libyan leader takes a surprising turn when

In response to Gen. Ward's profession of respect for the sovereignty of African countries, al-Qadhafi said he understood the U.S. position, but questioned the U.S. military presence in Djibouti, noting military power would be used by extremists to justify terror.

He then

proceeded to identify two sources of terrorism, Wahabism and Switzerland. Qadhafi stated that the Swiss banking system was used to fund terrorists, and proposed that Switzerland be split among its neighboring countries according to language. 

A fine idea, indeed. 

From there, the conversation continues down the bizarre highway of Qadaffi’s self-aggrandizing imagination into a discussion of his plans to solve the pirate problem in Somali waters.

On the topic of Somali piracy, al-Qadhafi asserted that “foreign entities” had violated Somalia's territorial waters. The solution to the problem of Somali piracy was therefore to forge an agreement between the countries exploiting Somali waters and the pirates. Al-Qadhafi offered to identify a pirate spokesman and broker this agreement.

The meeting concluded with Qaddafi emphasizing

that as Libya now presides over the AU, there was a possibility for cooperation with AFRICOM in combating terrorism in the Sahara and piracy. He said that he could deal with “the new America without reservation”, now that the United States was governed by “a new spirit of change.”

That may be. But as we’ve seen, for Qaddafi, it’s one thing if foreign leaders are possessed by the spirit of change. It’s quite another when that same spirit drives Libyans into the streets demanding his removal.   

Earlier this week, the AP reported that Obama is

[Q]uietly but strategically stepping up his outreach to Africa, using this year to increase his engagement with a continent that is personally meaningful to him and important to U.S. interests.

This story and the statement from Obama represent an opening for progressives in the United States. and in Africa to begin to push the Obama Administration on its short-sighted Africa policy. The last two years have been more or less a honeymoon where folks were so enthralled by a son of Africa in the White House that there was not enough hard criticism of the Administration’s policies, which continued rather seamlessly from Bush.

As you know, extractive industries - oil, gas and mining remain the dominant lens through which U.S.-Africa policy is set. AFRICOM and the expansion of U.S. militarism in Africa is a tool through which the United States can secure its narrow interests in Africa’s resources. In addition, the Obama Administration is pushing hard on its “Feed the Future” Initiative – which translates on the ground into land grabs for biofuels and genetically modified foods.

The key in the coming year will be the degree to which progressives can position ourselves to challenge harmful policies while pushing forward alternatives on food sovereignty (local food), land rights, human rights, environmental justice, economic justice (debt cancellation) and peace (stop the flow of weapons and military contractors). Many of these themes will be featured at the World Social Forum in Senegal next month.

The article focuses on elections noting that,

The administration is monitoring more than 30 elections expected across Africa this year, including critical contests in Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

Out of the 30, there will be 12 key elections in Africa this year (including the referendum in Sudan and Presidential elections in Nigeria, Uganda, Liberia – all of whom now have oil). This will bring more sustained mainstream media coverage to Africa than in other years.

An Obama trip to Africa will intensify that coverage. Rumors are flying as to where Obama will go and when. My bet is on the UNFCCC which will be in South Africa in December.

But Big Oil and other powerful U.S. companies and the negative impact of U.S. guns and training will remain a serious challenge to peace and stability on the continent.