Obama, the king of Africa By Pepe Escobar

Oct 18, 2011
Obama, the king of Africa
By Pepe Escobar
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MJ18Dj06.html

If United States President Barack Obama really wanted to get rid of the new bogeyman du jour, Uganda's Joseph Kony - a former altar boy turned mystical Christian prophet/politico, sporting at least 60 wives - he would order US Attorney General Eric "The Fast and the Furious" Holder to concoct a plot subcontracting the hit to a lunatic Iranian linked to a Mexican drug cartel.

Plan B would be to order the United Nations to tell the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to impose a no-fly zone over Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) "rebels", and then bomb them to oblivion.

Plan C would be to drone the LRA to death with a fleet of MQ-9 Reapers; yet the nearest US drone base is very far away, in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa.

As no unsuspecting Mexicans were available, and the "rebels" in
this case are the bad guys, Obama settled for the classic imperial option; he pulled an AfPak and ordered a surge cum boots on the ground, sending 100 US Special Forces to help a corrupt dictator - Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni - crush his local bunch of "rebels".

Anyone may be excused to see Uganda as Libya upside down - because that's exactly what it is; the dictator in this case gets a good guy billing - one of "our bastards" - while the "rebels" have a pact with the devil. But is that all there is?

I got an urge to surge

The reality in Uganda is an absolute, murderous mess. As much as the LRA "rebels", Museveni's government (helped by Washington) has also perpetrated horrendous massacres against civilians. Kony may even be an amateur compared to Museveni - a sort of dictator for life who has just supervised the displacement and mass murder of at least 20,000 Ugandans on behalf of British corporations. Additionally, Museveni basically stole the Ugandan elections early this year.

Obama's Uganda surge should be seen as a crucial exchange of favors with Museveni - who has sent thousands of Ugandan troops to the African Union (AU) force that is fighting the hardcore Islamist al-Shabaab in Somalia. So while Uganda fights a proxy war for the US in Somalia, Washington helps the dictator to get rid of the LRA "rebels". No wonder the Pentagon is quite fond of Uganda; Museveni recently got $45 million in equipment, including four small drones.

The LRA - a ragged bunch of hardcore Christian fundamentalists - is based in northern Uganda but spread out between four countries, including the new South Sudan and Congo, in Central Africa. They carry no heavy weapons. They don't stand a chance of destabilizing the Ugandan government - much less being a "national security" threat to the US. Bogeyman Kony may be in hiding somewhere along the immense Sudan-Congo border, with no more than 400 warriors left.

Uganda's proximity to the new country of South Sudan is key in the whole equation. So far, for Northern Sudan the LRA has been a convenient, weaponized firewall against Western puppet Museveni. But most of all, this whole area is prime real estate where the fierce battle between China and the Americans/Europeans plays out, centered on oil and minerals, all part of the Great 21st Century African Resource War.

Behold the mineral kingdom

That brings us to Uganda as a new land of opportunity. Ah, the sheer scale of humanitarian warmongering possibilities. For a semblance of success, the initial steps of Obama's African surge would have to include a military base with a long runway attached, and a mini-Guantanamo to imprison the "terrorists". If that sounds too good to be true, that's because it is; think of the Pentagon's Africom headquarters soon entertaining the possibility of time-traveling from Stuttgart, Germany, to somewhere in Uganda.

Any student of realpolitik knows the US doesn't do "humanitarian" interventions per se. Africom's surge parallels the real name of the game; precious minerals - and mining. Uganda - and nearby eastern Congo - happens to hold fabulous quantities of, among others, diamonds, gold, platinum, copper, cobalt, tin, phosphates, tantalite, magnetite, uranium, iron ore, gypsum, beryllium, bismuth, chromium, lead, lithium, niobium and nickel. Many among these are ultra-precious rare earth - of which China exercises a virtual monopoly.

The mineral rush in Africa is already one of the great resource wars of the 21st century. China is ahead, followed by companies from India, Australia, South Africa and Russia (which, for instance, has set up a fresh gold refinery in Kampala). The West is lagging behind. The name of the game for the US and the Europeans is to pull no punches to undermine China's myriad commercial deals all across Africa.

Then there's the inescapable Pipelineistan angle. Uganda may hold "several billion barrels of oil", according to Heritage Oil's Paul Atherton, part of a recent, largest-ever on-shore oil discovery in sub-Saharan Africa. That implies the construction of a $1.5 billion, 1,200 kilometer long pipeline to Kampala and the coast of Kenya. Then there's another pipeline from "liberated" South Sudan. Washington wants to make sure that all this oil will be exclusively available for the US and Europe.

Obama, the King of Africa

The Obama administration insists the 100 special forces will be "advisers" - not combat troops. Think of Vietnam in the early 1960s; it started with "advisers" - and the rest is history. Now, the "advisers" are even expected to fan out from Uganda to South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

And it's not even the first time this happens. George W Bush tried the same thing in 2008. It ended in unmitigated disaster because of - what else is new - corruption inside the Ugandan army. Kony was tipped off and escaped hours before an attack on his camp.

So on the surface, we have an uplifting narrative of the first black US president deeply disturbed by the "humanitarian crisis" in yet another African nation, Uganda; i n the perfect cover story for Anglo satrapy Uganda will be propped up as an advanced base for Washington to plunge a dagger inside Islamic Africa.

The official Washington spin hammers the fact that the LRA has "murdered, raped, and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children". Now compare it to devastation perpetrated by Washington, over two decades, on Iraq; at least 1.4 million people killed directly and indirectly, millions of refugees, a Sunni-Shi'ite civil war still in effect and the eastern flank of the Arab nation virtually destroyed.

And compare it to the thunderous silence of the Obama White House as racist eastern Libya "rebels" round up, harass, torture and even snuff out sub-Saharan Africans.

Africa has been fighting like forever against multiple strands of the great white genocidal slave master, aided and abetted by multiple strands of the subservient black dictator/kleptocrat - just to be presented in the early 21st century with an American president of direct African descent who has nothing better to offer than special forces, drones, a militarization surge and hypocrisy-laced "humanitarian" intervention.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).