On Feb. 1, The New
York Times published a major article by Adam Nossiter and Neil MacFarquhar
entitled “Algeria Sowed Seeds of Hostage Crisis as It Nurtured Warlord.” The
warlord in question is Iyad Ag Ghali, who heads Ansar Dine, one of the three
Islamic groups that The Times says threatened to capture the Malian
capital, Bamako , in early January. The involvement of radical Islamists
provided the excuse for the Jan. 11 French military intervention, which is,
without a doubt, an important escalation in the imperialists’ new “Scramble for
Africa .”
Nossiter
and MacFarquhar explain that the Algerian government nurtured Ag Ghali in the
hope that Ansar Dine, which advocated an Islamic state but not a breakaway
state, could supplant the battle for self-determination of the secular Tuareg
organizations fighting in the northern regions of Mali and Niger .
The Tuareg
people traditionally have claimed territory not only in Mali and Niger but in the border regions of Algeria , as well. The Algerian government
feared that a victory for the Tuareg would unleash the pent-up anger of
oppressed peoples inside Algeria itself.
Like the
United States, which helped to create the Taliban to fight pro-Soviet forces in
Afghanistan—and Pakistan, which works to maintain dependent Islamic radical
“players” in the Pashtun tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan—so Algerian
elites supported Ansar Dine as part of a strategy to suppress more threatening
opposition forces like the secular National Movement for the Liberation of
Azawad (MNLA) or that creature of their own recent civil war, al-Qaeda of the
Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Instead, their game plan is now subordinate to the
goals of the direct military intervention of France , the United States , Britain , and Canada , all of whom see the Sahara-Sahel
as key to protecting their substantial economic and political interests.
Algeria’s
dirty tricks, illuminating as they are about the way that elites intrigue to
hold onto power, are really only a sideshow to the main operation—that is, the
effort of the U.S. and the old colonizers of Europe to successfully compete
with China and each other for Africa’s extraordinary petroleum and mineral
wealth in a period of deep capitalist economic crisis of incredible duration.
According to an article by Patrick Smith in the Financial Times of
June 3, 2010, “the Great Game being played out in Africa’s mines and on its sea
routes is no less dramatic than the great rivalries over Afghanistan two
centuries ago.”
The French
military intervention, which centered on air attacks supported by U.S. logistics, was ostensibly launched
to free northern Mali from the brutality of the
imposition of a crude sharia law by Islamic militants from al-Qaeda of the
Islamic Maghreb. Skepticism about the humanitarianism of France ’s assault, however, is warranted.
If
France—Mali’s old colonial master and one of the main brokers for European
investment, loans, and “aid” to Mali—were actually motivated by the interests
of the workers, farmers, traders, and herders of the Konna, Gao, Timbuktu
areas, it would be reasonable to assume that these peoples would not be among
the poorest on the planet. Before, during, and after this war, the majority of
Malians will continue to try to live on less than $1 a day. France ’s actual interests are clearly more
mercenary.
As the
former colonizer of much of Central and West Africa , France ’s economic stake in the region is
considerable. French uranium mines in the bordering country of Niger have for 40 years supplied the
lion’s share of the fuel for their nuclear power industry, and that industry
produces 75% of the country’s electricity. The global economic crisis has
pushed other capitalist countries to try to get a piece of the action long
dominated by France . China and India have now thrown their hat in the
ring in Niger and will undoubtedly jump to
participate in Malian mining developments.
The profits
from France ’s mines in Niger have been the target of the MNJ,
the Niger Movement for Justice. The MNJ is a mostly Tuareg group that has been
demanding a share of the revenues and an environmental cleanup. Kidal, one of
the northern Malian towns recently taken by French forces, and the heart of
Tuareg spiritual life, is at the center of a uranium-prospecting project given
a 2007 go-ahead by the Malian government of over 20,000 square kilometers. Oklo
Resources was due, as late as last October, to start drilling in May 2013.
Malian uranium reserves have been estimated at 5200 tons.
The Malian
government, which in the early 1990s was pressured by international financial
institutions to agree to mining regulations highly favorable to foreign
investors, abandoned a 1991 agreement to share power with the nomadic people
that inhabit the uranium-rich areas.
Subsequent
government policy, developed under economic and political pressure from
European and U.S. institutions, focused on integrating a small layer of Tuaregs
into the military and other government organizations rather than tackling the
huge disparity in resources that colonialism had bequeathed to the north and
the south. When the stick was required, they responded with direct brutality or
gave backhanded support to informal militias composed of other ethnic groups in
the north, such as the Songhai , who do not support a Tuareg-led government.
French
colonialism, of course, set in motion these modern-day ethnic divisions. The
occupiers focused on resource extraction and development in the south of Mali and recruited for government
service primarily from the Bambara and other southern people. The colonial
government then sent them north to implement policies that shrunk the pastoral
commons on which various nomadic peoples survived. Contemporary mining
concessions, security measures demanded as part of the global “War on Terror,
and severe drought have further exacerbated the shrinkage, forcing more of the
Tuareg to turn to black market operations or to migrate to an increasingly
impoverished south to vie for very scarce jobs.
“Jobless
growth” is the phrase used to describe the current African economic “boom.”
Policies imposed on Mali by the IMF and the World Bank for
40 years have exacted a terrible price in the more developed south, as well.
Neoliberal schemes have led to the privatizations of the Malian railway and
cotton enterprises, and encouraged corporate land acquisitions and genetically
modified seed experiments that threaten food sovereignty and the livelihood of
small peasants. Today, Mali faces one of the largest food
shortfalls in years.
The demands
of world capitalism have left Mali divided, impoverished, dependent,
and ripe for further plunder. The recent military coup, sparked by an ethnic
rebellion, was led by an officer trained by the United States , and it was dependent for survival
on the intervention of the French. It was, in a real sense, the sad outcome of
70 years of colonization, 40 years of IMF and World Bank intervention in the
interest of non-African elites, and repeated imperialist efforts to head off
genuine insurgency by nurturing hand-picked groups of Islamic extremists in Central Asia , the Middle East , and North Africa .
However,
the 2011 upsurges in Tunisia , Egypt , and the Western Sahara , to say nothing of the 2012
militant fight back of the South African miners of Marikana, suggest that
resistance is brewing against the dictates of global capital on the continent.
Activists in the Americas can contribute to that process by
demanding that France , Canada , and the U.S. get out of the Sahara-Sahel now.
> The article above was written by Christine Marie, and first appeared in Socialist Action newspaper.
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