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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 7/31/12

Hillary Clinton Launches Neo-Colonial Tour of Africa

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Rick Rozoff
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From there Clinton will visit Uganda to discuss the joint U.S.-Ugandan counterinsurgency campaigns against the Lord's Resistance Army in Central Africa and against Al-Shabaab militias in Somalia.

Uganda, a major American military client on the continent, invaded Congo in conjunction with fellow U.S. ally Rwanda in 1996 and 1998, triggering a catastrophe that has cost the lives of over five million Congolese in the interim.

Uganda provides the largest contingent for the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) military force in Somalia, 5,700 troops.

Two years ago NATO transported Ugandan and Burundian troops to Somalia for fighting in the capital. European Union nations are training Ugandan troops at home for the war.

After Uganda, Clinton will go to Kenya which, like Uganda, is a key pillar in plans for the East African (or Eastern Africa) Standby Force, currently in formation as the Eastern African Standby Brigade Coordinating Mechanism (EASBRICOM). The Eastern African Standby Brigade (EASBRIG) is being prepared to intervene in a region that includes thirteen nations - Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda - at least two of whom, Eritrea and Sudan, are marked by the West for "regime change," with the island nations of Comoros and Madagascar subject to the same at any time.

Last October thousands of Kenyan troops invaded Somalia and this June 5,000 Kenyan troops were integrated into AMISOM.

Kenya has lost at least 13 troops in fighting in Somalia. Uganda has lost 50. Burundi 150.

Last autumn reports surfaced that the Pentagon was launching drone flights from Kenya in addition to Djibouti, Ethiopia and Seychelles.

While in Nairobi, Clinton is to meet with Somalia's nominal president,  Sheikh Sharif.

Her trip to Malawi will be short will be short and uneventful.

The final leg of her African journey will be in South Africa to participate in the third annual U.S.-South Africa Strategic Dialogue forum and to meet with former president Nelson Mandela. A reporter willing to lose his press credentials for life to accomplish it could ask Clinton why the Statement Department and White House branded Mandela and fellow African National Congress ruling party members terrorists until four years ago.

South Africa was one of only two members of the United Nations Security Council (Pakistan being the other) to abstain in the July 19 vote on a resolution supported by NATO states aimed against Syrian that was jointly vetoed by China and Russia. The third time the latter has occurred since last October. Clinton, who demanded China and Russia "pay a price" over Syria thirteen days before, will surely have a hectoring, chastising, patronizing comment or two to deliver to South African President Jacob Zuma on the score.

South Africa possesses Africa's most advanced military infrastructure, one inherited from the preceding apartheid regime which developed it with Western assistance. AFRICOM would like the nation to serve as the main participant in a Southern African Standby Force.

*****

Clinton may have arrived in Dakar, Senegal without a pith helmet, swagger stick and palanquin, but she nonetheless came as a modern-day avatar of Cecil Rhodes bent on reestablishing Western dominance in Africa. This time with a decided military dimension.  

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Rick Rozoff has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. Is the manager of the Stop NATO international email list at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/
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