Rev Left Radio - Against AFRICOM: US Imperialism in Africa

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

Nicholas Richard-Thompson and Tunde Osazua from the Black Alliance for Peace join Breht to discuss AFRICOM, or The United States Africa Command - responsible for U.S. military operations on the continent. Together they discuss BAP's month of action against AFRICOM, the strategic role that AFRICOM plays in the maintenance of US empire, the importance of proletarian internationalism in the fight against capitalism-imperialism, neocolonialism and comprador regimes, the consequences of 14 years of AFRICOM, and much more.   Learn more and support Black Alliance for Peace here: https://linktr.ee/blackallianceforpeace   Follow Nicholas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Nicholasseanrt   Follow Tunde on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TundeOsazua   BAP Chicago's Twitter: https://twitter.com/bap_chicago Outro music "I'm a African" by Dead Prez Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, I have on Tunday and Nicholas from the Black Alliance for Peace to talk about Afrikaum. The Black Alliance for Peace recently in October did their monthly shutdown Africom movement where they put a lot of energy and time and resources into trying to educate people about what Africom is, what its consequences are, not only for the African continent itself, for the world and for U.S. imperialism and U.S. hegemony more broadly. This is a really important and really essential conversation, and people, I don't think, understand it quite enough.

I don't think a lot of people have a grasp on what exactly Afrocom is and how it operates and what its actual goals are as differentiated from its purported goals. Of course, U.S. Empire will always present itself rhetorically in one way while its actual interests are hidden from public view, and it's our job as Mark. and anti-imperialist to peel back those layers and show people what these things actually are and in whose interest they actually serve. So these are two really principled, wonderful comrades from a great organization here to educate all of us on AfriCom and lay the political educational, foundational framework for more robust

resistance to it and things like it. So without further ado, here's my interview with Tunday and Nicholas from Black Alliance for Peace on Africom. Hello, my name is Nicholas Richard Thompson. I am the Midwest Regional Organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace. And my name is Tim Deh Sazwa. I am the coordinator of the Black Alliance for Peace, is U.S. out of African Network and a member of the Africa team.

for bat as well beautiful well it's an honor to have you both on today and we'll be discussing throughout this conversation africon and kind of doing an analysis of of that formation and what it means for the world what it means for u.s imperialism etc but first and foremost can you tell us a bit more about the black alliance for peace its overall goals and it's a month of action against africom yeah sure i can start with that and then have a tunday pick up anything if i miss out But essentially, the mission of the Black Alliance of Peace is pretty simple. We aim to recapture, redevelop the historic anti-war, anti-imperialists, and pro-peace positions of the black radical movement. And we do this through educational activities, organizing, and movement support of our membership organizations and our solidarity network.

And we do this to oppose, like, both domestic militarization of our communities and state repression, but also the policy, the foreign policy of the United States of destabilization. version of, you know, opposing that permanent war agenda. So our mission is really focused on, you know, all African people, both on the continent and those off of it and, you know, all the dash before. Definitely. And I'll just add that BAP is a network of radical black internationalist organizations and activists and organizers that are committed to ending the over 500-year war waged against black and other oppressed. and colonized people in the U.S. and globally, like Nick kind of already spoke to.

And so, you know, we're situated at the center of the system being here in the U.S. And, you know, we're committed to building. I think, like Nick already said, the anti-war and anti-imperialist movement in the U.S., ending all U.S. wars and closing all U.S. military bases. And, you know, we recently closed out our month of action against Afrika. which is a month-long mobilization effort each October in support of the U.S. out of Africa, shut down Afriqom campaign to raise the public's awareness about U.S. military existence in Africa and how the presence of U.S. forces exacerbates violence and instability throughout the continent.

So, you know, that month really consisted of teachings, different actions, webinars, you know, banner drops and other forms of activity, not just here in the U.S., but on the African continent and elsewhere around the globe, all aimed at implementing the necessary popular education and building on our general opposition to U.S. global militarization. Yeah, beautiful. And I'm a big fan of the work that BAP does and hats off to all the comrades that work with that organization

and within that organization. That's really, really essential stuff. So let's go ahead and get into the topic at hand, which is Africom. And I think the best way to perhaps start this conversation is maybe remind our listeners, maybe there's some listeners out there that don't even know what it is. Just kind of what Africom is when it was established and what its sort of main goals are. Yeah, sure. I will begin with that and have Tundi pick up anything I leave out. So Afriqom has its purported purposes as a lot of, you know, the United States military operations does. And then it had an actual operation

that I would say are much more accurate of what Afriqom is entailing to do. So Afrikan came into existence under the Bush administration, but was proliferated by the Obama administration. And it was, it's a part of a larger command structure, the permanent war agenda. And it's one of 11 combatant commands managed by the Pentagon. And it operates out of 53 out of 54 African countries, the one being Egypt that's oversawed by the central command and not Afriacom. But very similarly, if people are familiar with the Berlin Conference, which I won't go too deep into that, but was the partitioning of the African continent and why they have the colonial border they have today by European countries. This was done and initiated by Germany in 1885, Afrocomist stationed out of Germany, the main command post. And the aim of Africom, they say, is to bring stability and combat terrorism.

The issue with that is that by every metric and by numerous outside observing organizations, terrorism has increased since the inception of Afrika. So even if we were charitable and said, hey, you know, maybe Afrocom isn't nefarious, it's still not achieving its goal and it's actually perpetuating and exacerbating violence and instability on the continent, you know, and trying to reassert kind of influence over African resources also, and I think we'll get into this later, but it's also. aimed at, I think, opposing Chinese influence in African countries as trade and partnerships has increased over the last decade with China and many African countries. And essentially, you know, Afri-com is this, again, like this command post, and, you know, it's overseeing drone strikes. It's overseeing boots on the ground type of operations and, you know, military-to-military trainings, right? The Afriqom has been, you know, known to have trained several individuals who have led coups from Mali to Burkina Faso.

And, you know, one of the, I think, largest and impact of Afriqom, which I think we're also getting to later, is in 2011 what Afriqom essentially did to Libya. And we're familiar with Libya in 2011, you know, it was one of the most prosperous African countries. And by every metric, right, free education, high standard of living, basic necessities such as like gas and electricity were cheap. And the country was guaranteed a very strong social safety net and a ton of welfare programs. And, you know, they made the great man-made river in the 80s. And there was such prosperous. It was, by every metric, the most prosperous country on the continent. And now today we see that it has fallen in every category.

there are weapons that then got dispersed all over to other groups vying for power struggling for power has been described as an open slave market and a lot of this comes from right you know the africom command post and goddafi opposing it right in 2009 i believe goddafi came out and you know with other some west africa countries we're talking about right talking about bringing in a a independent currency, the gold dinar that would be held by the Libyan Central Bank, which would be 100% state-owned and through their gold reserves. And they intended for this purpose to build a pan-African currency. And this frightened Western powers. And this was one of the reasons why France, and this was released in some of the emails that got out by WikiLeaks, that that's why France

ended up also helping with the invasion of Libya. Right. So they saw that as a way to undermine what they would do, American and French influence over, over Africa, and it would eventually weaken the Western monopoly over African resources. So, you know, and the international banking system as well, and, you know, rendering the neocolonial situation as useless. So they saw that as a really big problem. And Afri-Com helped with a lot of that on the ground. And since then, right, you know, NATO bomb the great, the great man-made river in 2011, destroying, you know, key civilian infrastructure, which is one, a war crime, and there's been no repercussions of that. But two, we recognize that AFRICOM isn't this thing trying to stop stability or create stability

because from that fallout, we've seen, I think, three coups in Mali. You know, we've seen destabilization over in this Sahel and other places because with Gaddafi present, he did bring a lot of stability. Regardless of how people felt about his policies, he had a lot of respect and helped a lot of countries in the, you know, African Union joined and paid their dues and he brought a lot of stability to the region, which then, unfortunately, hasn't been the case since the bombing and the, you know, presence of U.S., United States military presence. I think that's, you know, a basic understanding of Afrika. It's, you know, a military operation that's kind of clandestine. I would also say

there's been a lot of attempts to FOIA AFRICOM because they've had many civilian deaths. They've had deaths of United States CIA agents as well as just military personnel. And even Congress doesn't know, you know, there is a Republican Congress member who was surprised that there was a U.S. death because he was like, I didn't know we were in Somalia. I didn't know we were in Kenya. And it's because Afriqom operates in a very, very closed off way and it's incredibly difficult to get information from them. Absolutely. Yeah, Nick, I appreciated that. And that you started off talking about the purported versus actual goals. And I think that's always something to really make a distinction about when you're dealing with U.S. Empire and what it states as its goals and what it actually does. So, you know, it's Africom is created in part to help fight the quote unquote war on terror, as you said, to bring stability to the continent. And we all know if you have any sort of even a cursory understanding of the history of U.S. Empire that at least over the last time, years or so, the number one purveyor of terrorism, of destabilization, of violence, of conflict is the United States itself. So whenever it's presenting itself as the solution to those

problems, you should be very, very skeptical to say the least. But let's go ahead and move on, because a part of the creation of Afrocom is under this umbrella term known as full spectrum dominance. So what is meant by full spectrum dominance and what role does Africom play? in that strategy for the United States? Sure. I will start off here. Full spectrum dominance essentially means U.S. military control

over land, sea, air, and space. And space is the so-called fourth dimension of warfare. And all of that is to protect U.S. interests and investment. So protect, in this case, is referring

to, like, guaranteeing operational freedom and U.S. interest and investment really means corporate profits. So the United States military's doctrine has espoused a strategic intent to be capable of achieving this state of full-spectrum dominance in a conflict, either alone or with allies, by defeating any adversary and controlling any situation across the range of military operations, right? So, you know, I think this really just speaks to the intent and the, I guess, overall efforts of the U.S. and its military to be that, that hegemony continue to exert its control and power over the rest of the world, right? So, you know, the U.S. and NATO have effectively become a huge global axle in the wheel of the military industrial complex. which includes, I'm sure, a lot of y'all are aware more than 800 U.S. military bases around the world

and in Africa in particular, and through Afrikaans, bases or relationships with almost all African countries, which are effectively all controlled by the U.S. empire for the purpose of full-spection dominance, right? And I think that all of that is driven by, you know, the ferocious appetites of corporate capital, right the u.s africa command or africom puts uh you know african states who have or they have military to military relationships with it under the affected military control of the united states

and um you know or those partnerships include agreements to see operational command to africom so it just really speaks to um the uh neoclonial character of africom and of you know just the U.S. and this military operates, you know, it's about maintaining control and in power and, you know, kind of subverting any sort of claim of sovereignty. And so I think that's a key element to understand as we try to understand how Africom is, well, really what the purpose of Africom is. But yeah, that's, I think, you know, this idea of full spectrum dominance is key to just understanding U.S. military strategy. Absolutely.

And it's a core pillar in this idea that the world is the U.S. is to control and dominate. And this next question is going to be about China. And already we can see how this comes into play with the conflict with China, which is, you know, China even seeking just very reasonable, you know, maneuver room in the South China Sea or in their own region, is met with, you know, complete. rejection by the United States. So the United States really sees the world as its property. It can tell countries what to do all over the world. It can dominate anybody. And when there's any attempt to create a regional power that says, hey, I just want to have some maneuvering ability in my

own backyard. You know, the United States is going to come in and say absolutely not. And this full spectrum dominance is kind of a fancy, jargony way of saying we control the world. And we want to dominate every corner of it. And Africom and various versions of it throughout the world are one of the ways in which the U.S. does this. And of course, there are many more. But speaking of China in particular, it was mentioned earlier, you know, China engaging in economic trade with nations on the African continent is meant with the ratcheting up of military mobilization on part of the United States. So what strategic role do you think Afriqom plays in the U.S. is heightening Cold War with China.

Yes, so just to start out, you know, Afrikaans is in many ways the U.S. response to economic competition with China in Africa and China's increased influence on the continent. So Afrikan really serves as a means to circumvent China's approach to infrastructure-led economic development with its railways and water pipelines. And, you know, looking back to, you know, that the time period in which Africa was being established, you know, China overtook the United States as the African continent's largest trading partner in 2008, 2009, destroying the West's monopoly over, you know, export markets and investment finance. And that gap continues to widen. China's $208 billion trade with the African continent in 2019, the war for the United States, $39 billion. And the response from the West to this development has been the military one, right?

And that's what we are increasingly seeing with, I guess, U.S. empire, right? Like, they're relying on military solutions in many ways to, I guess, defeat their rivals. And I think, you know, when we look at the role of AFRICOM, like, it's, you know, maintaining the, you know, influence and, I guess, dominance over these military operations that they're able to try and, you know, circumvent, I guess, China's efforts. So I think that's an important question and an important thing to understand as well. like there's essentially right like this new cold war and and you know there's africa africa and african countries are kind of being used as i guess chess pieces um in that in that conflict and i would also add you know by it was a vice admiral of africom you know verbatim said one of the the goals of africom is also the controlling the free flowing resources about africa so you can see a contention

right there that now trade is being done differently than previously consider the relationships and of China and African countries. And one thing that should be understood is that like the multinational corporations like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Tesla that are taking resources out of places like the Congo, China also have relationships there. And that caused us a lot of problems because now there's more competition and the competition is difficult because China has a way different relationship with the African countries and has a whole deal of a lot more respect with them and gives them just more competitive like opportunities to build things right like an example I'll use was they're trying to build a bridge in Liberia and they had 73 million

right they put out a bid and European countries put out things west other you know United States put out what they could do and they're like we could the lowest was like we could The lowest was like 93. China went under the 73. They're like, oh, we'll do it for 68 and we'll do it faster. So China not only offers better situations, right? And they don't have like the colonial history. It just fits China, China and Africa, African economies better, right?

Africa has the largest endowment of natural resources. China has a great deal of capital. They help with infrastructure projects. They help with roads and other public works, which, you know, Africa lacks, lacks a great deal of, right? It's a known fact that 40% of the roads that are paved in Africa, 30% of those roads are in South Africa, right? So there's a lot of development issues that are due to colonial histories. And as they're developing, a lot of Africa has the states that just see better opportunity to do trade with China, which only ramps up the continued Cold War as America.

their only real responses, they can't compete in trade because they don't actually want to see a prosperous Africa. So we have to put that out there first. China has their own ulterior motives in the sense that they have national objectives, right? But their future is way more entwined with a prosperous Africa than, say, United States in Africa. So the relationship is always going to be vastly different. And the United States knows that because the United States understands that a self-determined Africa is not good for their multinational. national corporations or their Western partners. So I would definitely think I would also add. Yeah, incredibly important, that qualitative difference. It's not that China is utterly perfect

or without any ulterior motives in the sense of it has its own national interest to take account for, but there's a qualitative and there's a historical difference in the way that China approaches African nations and what China wants for the nations of Africa going forward and what the U.S. and its allies have approached and what they want for the continent themselves. And so I think that is central to this and it really needs to be understood. But let's go ahead and move on it. And specifically, I want to explore the connections between, you know, a formation like Africom and what it does on the continent in Africa and local militarization of police forces

here in the U.S. and how African people are treated here in the belly of the beast, as it were. So can you kind of talk about militarization, these connections between how it plays out abroad and how it plays out domestically and what its impact on African people is broadly. Yeah, I can start. So we understand that police militarization in the U.S. specifically was first established to put an end to various liberation efforts, various movements, like, you know, the black liberation movement of the 60s and 70s. And, you know, at the same time as those efforts in the U.S. were taking place, there was also, there are also many, I guess, anti-colonial movements on the continent that also were kind of suppressed in some ways by militarization, right? And so we understand that, you know, the contradictions that are present and, you know, our current global. capitalist order, you know, show that, you know, the, the, uh, those behind the order,

the ruling class, uh, are relying more more on repression and military aggressiveness, right? And, and the rationale and objective of that increased militarism is to maintain the hegemony of, you know, the capitalist, colonialist, uh, patriarchal order. And so, you know, domestically, we see that taking place in terms of, you know, of, you know, an increase in mass, black incarceration, increase in police killings, political surveillance, and the generalized repression represented by, you know, the programs of the FBI and globally, right?

Like, outside the United States, the U.S. state has really centered militarism is the central element of its strategy with escalating and never-ending military interventions and unconventional warfare, like, you know, economic, warfare sanctioned. Right. So there's the link there is the really the need to suppress oppositional forces like in or African liberation efforts and to project military power abroad. Right. And so we, you know, understand that it's important to connect the violence of the U.S. Empire around the world with the violence it inflicts on our people domestically. Right. And so, you know, by comprehensively linking the issue of

state violence and militarism, we're not only opposing the U.S. war agenda globally, but the war repression being raised wage, rather, on black and brown communities domestically. So, for example, right, like BAP has done some work around the 1033 program, which transfers excess military equipment to U.S. police forces, whether they be federal, state, or local. and this program has sent over $6 billion in military gear to police departments. And those police departments, you know, may claim to fight the war on drugs or whatever. But that war on drugs was created to further control, colonize, incarcerate, and terrorized, poor and working class African or black people. And, you know, the militarized police responses in Ferguson and 2012.

2014, you know, Baltimore in 2015, you know, cities around the country during the 2020 uprisings after the murders of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor can be directly attributed to the 1033 program. So, you know, what we've noticed is that the Pentagon's weapons and tactics developed for their occupation, coups and wars on Africans and other colonized people around the world are also used to terrorize and control African. or black people and our uprisings in the United States. And I think, just to speak to another domestic example, right, like in Atlanta, where I live, the Atlanta Police Foundation is in the process of trying to bulldoze a significant portion

of the South River Forest, which is actually in DeKalb County. So, you know, very close to, well, just in the southern province. part of or just south of the city to build a police military training center. And the plans for this base is essentially a military base include like military grade training facilities, you know, a replicate of the city of Atlanta to practice, you know, urban warfare, like a black hawk helicopter landing pad, dozens of shooting ranges, bomb testing sites, and potentially a jail. And so, you know, we understand that this military grade weaponry in the hands of police trained in urban war tactics make our communities less safe. And they just speak to the increased efforts to, I guess,

suppress the aspirations or the liberatory aspirations of black people in general. And so I think we can make the connection between, you know, the many efforts that the U.S. is militarily exerting its influence abroad to some of these domestic examples. Yes. And I would also add, that one of the things that the United States always does and what it needs, it needs a pretext to justify its actions, you know, early on in its formation of the empire, it would talk about national security. And nowadays, it's more about humanitarian aid or crises. And in the same way, they have divested and exploited and essentially neglected our communities here. And they've manufactured the conditions for poverty, which lead to criminality, or so-called criminality. Then they can

do what, justify the increasing surveillance, increasing police, and so many other things to continue the occupation of our communities and send us in, you know, through the criminal punishment system as part of the prison industrial complex. In that same strategy, if you can look at it in the same way as the terrorism, right, it's been asked by many groups that folks who have joined some of these, these so-called terrorist groups, and there are terrorist groups for sure, But a lot of them have joined these groups because of poverty. And none of this can be understood outside of the context of colonialism, neo-colonialism. The need for resources, the need for, you know, family members who have died, you know,

some of the drone strikes and other military operations have purposely destroyed arable land in Somalia, thus destroying these people's livelihoods, which lead them to be more likely to join these groups, right? it's been said numerous times, right, in the same way, in the so-called like Middle East, right, parts of Western Asia, when they were bombing over there, people had come out and said, hey, you're not helping and in fact, you're making it worse, or perpetuating it because the people that you're hitting and almost killing are now joining the groups, right? So then in that same way, they manufacture the conditions for terrorism. Now they have a reason to justifiably be there, right? and I use air quotes, because now they've made the situation of terrorism and now they have to be the answer to it. In the same way, they send police to our neighborhoods to over-police us and, you know, in a militarized way through the 1033 program, right? Like, we have to really put all that in context, right?

There's no other military that spins what we do, not just in military, but police, right? I think I saw a statistic a couple years ago and I still use it now when I do presentations on this, right? The big boogeyman of the United States are Iran, the DPRK, Venezuela, and Russia. They spend less than police departments in Chicago, Atlanta, D.C. So you're telling me, the entire nation's military need less than these police departments, right? That right there should concern you that these police departments take up so much of your general funds, which could be dollars that go to the people that are, you know, being deprived deliberately. And these same people, you're making criminals, right?

Malcolm X said you weren't born a criminal. You were made a criminal. And then now you have the justification to do whatever you want against that group of people in the same way they do that internationally, right? They will create the conditions for poverty, create the conditions through sanctions, through drone strikes, military operations, and other nefarious ways, low intensity, imperialism, and then say, hey, you know, there's instability there. Well, yeah, you would know, right? So we want to be really, really clear in our analysis that Africans here in the really the B should be deeply concerned with that there because the strategies are the same and in the same way when they're done using particular military equipment they're going to dump it in your neighborhood anyway so it should concern you and the money that they're wasting that they could be getting you uh you know to to use to uh for life affirming policies they're instead using it for drone strikes and military operations so it's deeply connected in so many ways and that's how we try to connect the broader struggle of anti-imperalism to the political and social and repression in our communities. Yeah. I mean, absolutely brilliant on both your parts,

making all those connections. It's absolutely essential to see. I mean, you know, zooming out a little bit, that is that is a core feature of dialectical materialism and the analysis that comes out of it is showing how all of these things are deeply connected, inexorably connected. And if you want to fight, let's say, racism at home, it's going to involve a fight against empire abroad and vice versa. And it's absolutely essential that people understand that. And kind of, you know, based off of that, it feeds well into this next question, which is about Southcom and also revolutionary internationalism. So we know what Africom is. We know it's one of 11 of these type of formations. So can you remind us what Southcom is and how it relates to

Africom and the necessity of revolutionary internationalism in the fight against U.S. imperialism? Yeah. You know, like you said, right, the United States Department of Defense is carved up the map of the earth into 11 unified combatant commands and the U.S. Southern Command or Southcom is one of them. It incorporates the Caribbean

and South and Central America. And, you know, again, right, like there's a difference between the state of purpose or the claims of these commands and their actual, like, you know, their true purpose

or what they do on the ground. And so Southcom claims to be protecting human rights, right, and those regions as a long-term responsibility through the development of regional militaries controlled and facilitated by the United States. You know, its mission includes things like contingency planning, operations, including disaster response and crisis action and security cooperation. And, you know, they use all these big words just to, you know, kind of, you know, describe their work, things like, you know, the force protection

of U.S. military resources in the region and ensuring the defense of the Panama Canal, which is a critical geographic node for U.S. commerce and security across both the Atlantic and the Pacific. But really, you know, Southcom works to extend U.S. military influence throughout the Americas and to promote militarism in line with U.S. interests, you know, again, relying on these spurious claims of humanitarian assistance. and disaster relief and counter-narcotics operations to increase U.S. control over the region. So, you know, every year, Southcom uses humanitarian assistance exercises and disaster efforts as really military training platforms.

And, you know, for us, we understand that it's important to stand against or fight against the growing influence and power of Southcom. and the ever-increasing militarization of the region of the Americas. And so, you know, we, I think it's key to call for something like a zone of peace in the Americas, right? Like, we have our own conception or framework that is informed by the black radical peace tradition and, you know, say that peace is not the absence of conflict, but the achievement by popular struggle and self-defense, right? And that could, you know, be very wide-ranging, right?

Popular struggling and self-defense, you know, to things like, you know, going to war to achieve peace, right? And so, you know, through that, we want to achieve a world liberated from, you know, unjust war, global white supremacy, things like nuclear armament and proliferation. And so all of that would need, revolutionary internationalism, right, to defeat U.S. imperialism, right? Like, we can't do that without revolutionary internationalism. And I think we see Southcom as just another manifestation of, you know,

U.S. militarism in another part of the world. And we kind of focus on it because of, you know, how African people are broadly, or just, you know, they are well represented in the America's region. Absolutely. So, Afrikaum is correctly seen by anti-imperialists and Marxists and pan-Africanists alike as yet another mechanism of neocolonialism. Can you discuss how this neocolonialism is expressed via its connections to Comprador governments on the continent of Africa?

Yeah, I can pick that up. essentially when we look at neocolonialism, it is, you know, an operation in the system where the human and material resources of the exploited country and people are set up to be the main conduit for the benefit of the outside colonizing power. So essentially outside forces are dictating, determining, deciding the future and the formation of that country due to compradors or, you know, sellouts, right? Like here you might call them a sellout or, you know, Uncle Tom, but essentially a very similar, right? People. who not had interest of their, of their people or their nation, but their own pockets, their coffers and maybe other internal organizations that they have. So the neo-colonial situation, you know, as we recognize that's taking place, is something that is deeply connected to Afrikan and why it's able to operate so successfully. And a primary example of this is, you know, cocoa production in Ghana, right? So in 2022, chocolate products produced from, you know, in Ghana for cocoa accounts for about 75% and all the chocolate products consumed within the U.S., right?

The benefactors of the system are the multinational corporate entities that, you know, dominate the cocoa production in Ghana, right? And we can see this in Hershey, Nestle, and Godiva. And that's just one example, right? Like we talked about the Congo earlier, right? there was a lawsuit against the Google, Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, and I brought them up because they were, you know, found guilty of Congolese children dying in these minds for getting a coltint that is very, very critical to our smartphone devices and other pharmaceutical, like medical equipment that like we can't, we can't produce these things and have these things

unless we have this like raw material. So these countries don't benefit from these resources, though, right? And it's not because these people don't know how to do trade, but it's because there's outside forces controlling what's happening within the country from production, the land, the labor. And overall, it doesn't go back to benefiting the people in the country. Instead, it goes to multinational corporations. And that, you know, that's really the manifestation of what neo-colonial, neo-colonialism would end up doing. Definitely. And I'll just add quickly, you know, with its over 800 military bases in more than 80 countries, the United States has carved up the entire world into military commands, right? And so, Africom as a U.S.

neocolonialist occupation force in Africa shows that flag independence on the continent is very different from sovereignty, right? And so, you know, Africom is situated itself as a neoclonial occupying force using both hard and soft power to experience and U.S. degemony and the so-called purveyors of truth and justice, the congressional black caucus here in the U.S., right, have held no quantifying objection to the expansion of Afriqom, instead going along with the underlying subtext of protecting the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market, which I think Nick mentioned earlier. But the true neo-colonial mission of Africom is more sinister.

And, you know, Vice Admiral Robert Mueller, you know, one of the top officials of Africom in 2010, wrote the Afrikaum's job is to protect American lives and promote American interests. So, you know, currently there's an Afrikan presence in 53 out of the 54 countries on the African continent. you know the broad network of africom military bases in collusion with nato nations like france and the united kingdom illuminates the ways african government's relationships with the west are developed through the surrender of sovereignty right so you know africom's role in guaranteeing the free flow of resources includes u.s interests in fostering water security um and uh you know i think just to look at africon's mission statement, and they say in their mission statement that its purpose is to counter transnational threats and malign actors, but in the G5s to health countries, right, which is

like West Africa, essentially, it's really all about the capture and maintenance of African resources and Western interests. In spite of heavy Western military presence and joint training operations between the French military, the U.S. and the local militaries, Africa's Sahel is no more stable than when the NATO-backed collapse of Libya took place in 2011, which Nick spoke to earlier. You know, the G5 Sahel is rich in oil, and while U.S. dependency has declined, that's not the case for its NATO ally France. And so as members of NATO, the military presence of France and the U.S. and the Sahel's a reminder, of the western hegemonic block across the region.

Yeah, yeah, well said, and just, I mean, America's interest, as they say, it's about our interest. America's interest is not only not in Africa's interest, broadly conceived, it is anathema to the nations of Africa and their interests, medium, short, and long term. But as we've said earlier, AfriCom started about 14 years ago, that pivot point between the Bush and Obama administration. It was really mobilized and made more robust under Obama. So it's been in existence for 14 years, and we can look back and kind of see what the consequences of its existence in Africa has been. So can you highlight some of the consequences of AfriCom in Africa over the past 14 years, including we've mentioned, I think, drone wars and some coups. Can you just talk more about that?

Afriqom has just expanded the U.S. military footprint on the African continent. And, you know, that took place largely during the Obama administration through military-to-military trainings, joint counterterrorism operations, foreign aid, and surreptitious methods that created dependence on Africa for the defense needs of African states. So, you know, the U.S. has 46 U.S. military bases and outposts spanning the continent, despite the U. the fact that they're not officially at war with any African countries though I think you could look at some of their military operations in places like Somalia and

you know say differently but you know most of those bases and outposts are you can find on the Horn of Africa and even you know the camp

Lemonier base in Djibouti which is a small East African nation with a poverty rate of 79% that base serves as the current home to Afrikaum and the horn and so, you know, as Afrikaans' presence across the continent grows,

terrorism grows as well, even though, you know, Afriqam is supposed to be curbing or fighting terrorism. So, I think, you know, I mentioned Somalia just now, like, the U.S.-backed overthrow of the union of Islamic courts in Somalia paved the way for a more militant group

to grow and rank and reach and that's really just an example of how power vacuums caused by U.S. military intervention fortify the political will and strength of terrorist groups and that's really what we've seen across the continent and a 2019

report released by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies found that terrorist activity doubled from 2012 to 2018 and the number of countries experiencing attacks increased by 960% during that time period and there was a tenfold increase in violent events

jumping from 288 incidents in 2009 to 3,050 incidents in 2018, right? And we can look at the various, I guess, instances from Boko Haram's growth in Nigeria to al-Shabaab's territorial advancement across Somalia to the Daesh's reappearance in Libya. And so, you know, by all metrics, the war on terror has been an abysmal failure in Africa.

And the African people were caught in the nexus of the catastrophic violence of terrorism and ensuing counterterrorism efforts, which include, you know, the drone strikes that you mentioned just now. And so, you know, they're the ones that bear the weight of this failed war. But, you know, while Afrikaans training. has not helped African security forces curb terrorism. It has enabled them to repress civilian protests against reactionary African leaders

who align with U.S. interests as evidenced by the crackdown on N.S. protesters in Nigerian 2020. You know, SARS, the special anti-robbery squad, you know, was a notorious Western train unit of the Nigerian police and had a documented history of human rights abuse. And the war on terror not only created the conditions that enabled the U.S. and its allies unfettered collaboration on security and surveillance through shared counterinsurgency tactics, but also the development of like a shared language and logic, right? So, you know, making those domestic to international connections, you know, from Lagos to Minneapolis, right? The designation of terrorists is really deployed frequently against.

individuals or groups that challenge the U.S. imperial project or any of its puppet regimes. And so, yeah, I think, you know, the one thing Africom has succeeded at is boosting corporate profits associated with the lucrative counterterrorism industry that the war on terror has made possible. And so there was like a 2021 report from the cost of war project at Brown University that revealed that one-third to one-half of all Pentagon contracts since 9-11 have gone to five transnational weapons corporations, you know, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Gunman, Grumman.

And so, you know, from 2001 to 2020, those companies earned $2.1 trillion from Pentagon contracts. And so, I mean, I think, as Nick already kind of spoke to, terrorism is a manufactured political crisis and the global weapons manufacturers are tasked with selling the solution and Afrika plays a big role in that so those are some of the consequences I would also add and this will retire in the last question to actually you know the the aim of the neo-colonial you know project in the United States you know it's trying to fragment Africa and because the United States did not want to unified

Africa. And I don't know if I said that earlier, but you know, I've got to be explicit with that. Unified Africa is bad for them geopolitically. It's bad for them economically. It's bad for the longevity of the United States Empire. And they know this, right? And one of the things and, you know, consequences of Afriacom, there's far too many really to like go into detail. But overall, as my comrade said, it has increased insecurity. It has increased the terror they're claiming to fight and it has increased instability, right? And all of this is coming through, like, their partnerships with some of these neo-colonial leaders. And I think the example that was alluded to, right, like the proxy war wage changes in Somalia by Kenya, right? It's all to happen

because the people don't know much about Afrika. And for example, I was in West Africa for about a month and I got to go to Mali, Liberia, and I was in Ghana. And I was talking to some revolutionary group, right, a revolutionary pan-African group, particular, in particular in Liberia. And we shared a lot of the same politics. They weren't familiar with Afrikaum, only vaguely. And when I broke down what it was, they immediately wanted to connect with BAP and find some way to struggle against it and begin political education, right? So a lot of the folks on the continent aren't, aren't familiar with it. So I think one of the some of the consequences

of it outside of just instability, there has been a, almost a shadowing of what's taking place. So people on the continent, you know, working class, everyday people suffer in two ways. One, their government and the neglect due to the

neo-colonial situation. But two, they're the ones who's harmed by the terrorists, right? And they're not being helped at all by the presence of Afrika. So they're scarred in two ways, right? So I always think of it like that, that like the people who are harmed the most are African people, while they're heads of these states at times are, you know, willfully ignorant or, you know, colluding with Afrikaum purposely because they recognize that this is the best way for them to have their own interest met. So I would just say that. Yeah, an incredibly important point. And just saying, in summary, you know, the United States and Africom in particular produces and exacerbates conflict and terrorism because it is probably. profitable. Peace is not profitable. Having prosperous, you know, opportunity-filled, wealthy

societies and nations throughout the African continent is not profitable to the military industrial complex who disproportionately controls America's foreign policy and in whose profit the American government is constantly at service. And so I think, yeah, everything that both of you said there is so, so essential. And as Nicholas finished off by saying, it's African people that get hurt the most. They are not being protected or saved or bettered by the U.S. presence on the continent. It is in every way made worse. And so that leads into this last question, which is what should or does resistance to Afriqom look like on the continent of Africa itself as well as beyond? And what is still needed, in your opinion? Well, I think resistance to Africom should

look like bottom-up popular struggles that target neocolonial leadership that allow the U.S. and NATO to oppress our people, right? So in the U.S., for example, this leadership is consistently backed the white ruling class agenda of subversion and military intervention from its support for the U.S. Africa Command to its failure to oppose the Department Department of Defensive's 1033 program responsible for transferring millions of dollars worth of military equipment to local police forces that are then deployed against foreign working class black and brown communities and so you know on the continent you know that it would look like opposing these heads of state that are allowing for these military to military relationships with the United States to take place And so, you know, I think what we have to be doing is movement building, right? Like, I think it will really take a mass movement to truly shut down Africa and get the U.S. and NATO out of Africa. And so, you know, that's what that's the kind of work we're trying to do at the Black Lines to Peace in the U.S. out of Africa network.

And our month of action in October was for that purpose as well to support the development of the mass. mass movement to oppose what we call the US-EU-NATO access of domination. We think that it's crucial to join with other genuinely progressive and revolutionary forces throughout the world to proclaim the proletarian internationalism or revolutionary internationalism and pan-Africanism are the only real solutions to the monumental social and economic problems that, you know, are created by capitalism and imperialism. Yeah, absolutely perfectly said. And, of course, some of the foundational work of getting to that point is the political

education. People can't fight what they don't understand. People can't join coalitions to fight what they don't fully understand or they can't see. And so, you know, your organization is doing amazing work at letting people know, this is what this formation is. This is what it does. This is the effects of its presence.

and we have to unite to fight it, as we have to unite to fight U.S. imperialism, Western imperialism much more broadly. So thank you both so much for coming on. This has been absolutely an honor to host both of you. And again, I tip my hat to the Black Alliance for Peace and all the amazing work they do. What resources would you recommend for anyone wanting to learn more

about what we've discussed today and how might listeners directly help or contribute to all the great work that the comrades are doing over at the Black Alliance for Peace? Yeah, sure. I can answer that. And I would say if you would like to get involved, stay up to date with the campaign, we urge you to consider joining the U.S. out of Africa network. You can go to our website and join there, which is the driving force of the Black and Alliance for Peace for our U.S. out of Africa and shut down Afrika campaign. The U.S. OAN and the network of activists committed to pursuing strategy and tactics

for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Africa, the demilitarization of the African continent, the closure of U.S. military bases throughout the world and pressuring the CBC or the Congressional Black Caucus to unequivocally oppose AFRICOM and conduct hearings on its impacts on the African continent. So, like, what we're really hoping to do with that is, like, you know, we hope folks consider joining us as we continue to educate the public about the destructive U.S. hybrid war and their imperialist policies perpetuated by AFRICOM on the African continent and, you know, built real opposition to the design that the pan-European capitalist patriarchy, colonelius, colonelian. The Colonial Project of the United States, our national organizer always says that our enemy is global. The problem is global, so then the response would also have to be global. So always putting that internationalism at the forefront of that and understanding that victory is synonymous with unity. Yeah. And where can listeners find each of you online? Yeah, sure. If you want to find me online, I'll type in the chat too, but Nicholas, Sean, S-E-N-I-C-S-E-N-I-C.

T-H-O-A-S-E-A-N-R-T, and I'm on all the normal ones, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube and stuff like that. So people want to get connected and learn more about BAP or just getting connected. That's the best place to find me. Cool. Yeah, and similarly, I'm Tunday Osazawa on Twitter, and then Tunday.O-Sazwa on Instagram.

And, you know, Tunei-O-Sazua on Facebook. and TikTok. So, you know, it's easy to find me, and I'm here to, you know, get folks plugged in to work or, you know, just talk, whatever is helpful. But yeah, I appreciate this space and, you know, you're willingness to have us on. Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate both of you for coming on. And I'll link to all of that in the show notes.

So people can find you and your organization and those resources as quickly and easily as possible. Thank you again so much for coming on. Rev Left has an open invite for both of you and from anybody from the Black Alliance for Peace indefinitely. Always a pleasure and an honor. Keep up the amazing work. Thank you. Right back at you. I've been a big time fan of the show from quite some time. I've learned a lot from y'all. So really appreciate the kind words. And we look forward to, you know, working with you. Africa's in the Hulu

Kupete, Mulekai, Rwanda, Nigeria Africa's in the house My nigga Diyon Ambo Africa's in the house They get petrified Nigger the red is for the blood in my arm The black is for the gun in my palm

And the green is for the charm that grows natural Like locks on Africans Holding the smoke from the herb in my abdomen Camouflor for teas And dashiki Somewhere in between and W.A. and P.E. I'm played like Steve Biko,

raised in the ghetto by the people. Fucking police, you know how we do. Hey, yo, my life is like roots. It's a true story. It's too gory for them televise. Fables on cable. I'm a runaway slave watching the North Star. Shackles on my forearms running with a gun in my palm.

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And I know what's happening A F RCA Puerto Rico, Haiti and J.A New York and Cali FLA No, it ain't by where you stay It's about the motherland A F-R-I-C-A

Puerto Rico, Haiti and JA, New York and Cali, FLA. Yo, it ain't by where you stay, it's about the motherland. Just that tank top, flip-flop, naughty dreadlock, fuck a cop, hip-hop, make your head bob, bounce to this, socialist movement. My environment made me the nigger I am. Uncle Sam came and got me and the rest of my fan. Try to infiltrate and murder off the best of my clan. I'm not American. Punk Democrat or Republican, remember that.

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