Is the French Invasion of Mali tied to a Colonial War for Uranium?
By Saeed Shabazz
Global Research, January 30, 2013
finalcall.com
There is still confusion in UN corridors concerning France’s military intervention in Northern Mali, which began on Jan. 11 with air strikes against the so-called Islamist camps moving closer to the capital city of Bamako.
The confusion stems from the French ambassador Gerard Araud’s insistence that his government was responding to a request from the Interim-Malian government for assistance, under Chapter 51 of the UN Charter. The Article states that there shall be an inherent right of collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the UN, until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security.
Press reports indicated Jan. 16 that 800 French troops landed in Mali, with their numbers slated to reach 2,500 by the end of the month. President Francois Hollande, speaking on French television Jan. 15, said his government was determined to end “Islamist” domination in Northern Mali because it feared use of the territory as a base for attacks against the West.
“The Malian war has the potential to destabilize the region, a fact not lost on many of Mali’s neighbors. Yet the solution to this crisis will not be found in France’s intervention,” wrote Bill Fletcher, Jr. on his Blog, BillFletcherJr.com.
Troops from Niger, Togo, Burkina Faso and Senegal were expected to land in Mali, according to French officials, under the auspices of the Economic Community of West African States.
“Mali desperately needs the political intervention of the West African states and the African Union in order to advance a process of reconciliation, and to serve as a stabilizing force,” stated Mr.
Fletcher, an author, international labor activist and past president of the Washington, D.C.-based lobby TransAfrica Forum.
An African Union special representative speaking in Cote d’Ivoire Jan. 14 said ECOWAS and the African Union were working closely to find a solution to the Mali crisis, according to news reports.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius reportedly said on Jan. 14, “Key interests were at stake for us, for Africa, for Europe—so we had to act quickly.” Observers immediately began asking could that key interest be uranium.
Uranium is France’s key energy resource, according to the World Nuclear Association, with 75 percent of the European nation’s electricity being produced from nuclear energy, which explains French dependency on uranium. According to mineral resource analysts, beneath the deserts in Northern Mali and Eastern Niger, territory now exclusively claimed by the nomadic Tuareg tribes, exists the world’s third largest uranium reserves as well as substantial oil reserves.
Some observers say for 40-years the French company Areva had exclusive rights to uranium exploitation in Niger, until recently when the government of Niger issued permits to China, India, Britain, South Africa, the U.S., Canada and Australia to explore for uranium and oil, therefore France cannot afford to lose the uranium reserves in Mali.
There is also the China factor.
The Independent, a British publication, stated on Jan. 15 that China has given millions “as a gift” to the Malian people to raise their standard of living. A story in The China Times revealed that Mali and China signed three agreements worth $117.7 million. The Chinese are to build a hydro-electric dam in Taoussa, located in the region of Gao in northern Mali, now under Islamist control.
China is reportedly active in various development projects in Mali such dealing with industrialization, health, agriculture, education, security, communications and infrastructure.
The Mbendi Information Service reported in 2010 that several companies had been granted permission to explore for uranium in the Falea and Gao regions by the administration of former Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure, who was mysteriously ousted from office in March 2012 by junior Army officers a month before he was to step down.
Some mineral resource experts say uranium potential in the Gao region is thought to be 200 tons, while the Falea-North Guinea basin’s potential is thought to be 5,000 tons.
World renowned educator, Pan Africanist, African history scholar, and the U.S. chairman of the World African Diaspora Union, Dr. Leonard Jeffries told The Final Call he understands UN confusion over French insistence that Mali’s government requested intervention.
“The French don’t need a letter to intervene in their former colonies because of the accords they forced on them before granting independence; and these accords have not been re-worked,” Dr. Jeffries said.
For five decades, France has maintained a neo-colonial relationship known as “Pacte Coloniale” that gave France control of components of the new African states, including their economies and military institutions, Dr. Jeffries said. “Paris has cultivated the dependency of their former colonies by hand-picking weak regimes that gave them access to resources,” he added.
Labels: MALI, NEOCOLONIALISM, URANIUM
Read more...
Mali Invasion Shows That “Adieu” Does Not Always Mean
Tue, 01/22/2013 - 15:54 — Mark P. Fancher
by Mark P. Fancher
Whether rightists or “socialists,” all French governments believe in their inalienable right to dominate Africa. French troops are on the move in Mali and the Central African Republic, and not long ago overthrew the regime in Ivory Coast. If the colonial era has passed, somebody ought to tell Paris – and French-speaking Africans – the news.
Mali Invasion Shows That “Adieu” Does Not Always Mean “We’re Gone”
by Mark P. Fancher
“Decades of indoctrination and French cultural domination left an indelible imprint on the colonies.”
Recent military raids into Mali may seem like they came from nowhere, but France has never really been able to let go of its former colonial possessions. Like a bad case of athlete’s foot the “mother country” just keeps coming back, and Mali is now hosting a visit.
The French military presence in Mali may now raise a few eyebrows, but there was a time when the French domination of vast territories in Africa was taken for granted. Other European countries had African colonial possessions as well, but they often managed them in a clumsy, violent manner that portended the inevitability of resistance, and ultimately independence. Not so the French. For them, colonialism was handled with style and finesse. Historian Walter Rodney wrote:
“In 1935, a team of British educationalists visited French Africa, and they admitted with a mixture of jealousy and admiration that France had succeeded in creating an elite of Africans in the image of Frenchmen – an elite that was helping to perpetuate French colonial rule.”
So confident were the French in the undying loyalty of their African subjects that in 1958 as independence fever was sweeping the continent, French leader Charles De Gaulle offered France’s African colonies a referendum.
They had the option of voting in favor of a “French community” made up of France and its African colonies; or they could vote for complete independence. Guinea voted to go it alone. France was shocked, and it withdrew from Guinea in a huff, destroying the country’s infrastructure in the process.
“France had succeeded in creating an elite of Africans in the image of Frenchmen.”
Mali and other French colonies were to join Guinea in independence in 1960, but decades of indoctrination and French cultural domination left an indelible imprint on the colonies, and these territories often proved to be fertile grounds for the growth of neo-colonialism.
Even though the African countries had “flag independence” and France appeared to maintain an arms-length relationship, it was an arrangement that preserved France’s advantage.
Hugh Schofield of BBC News characterized it as: “…a devil’s bargain: you stay tame and send us your minerals, and when we need it, under-the-counter cash. In return, from time-to-time, we will send French troops to save your presidential mightiness from the mob.”
It is ironic that although it is France that has intervened in Mali, it is also France that has nevertheless come to be regarded in some quarters as a moderating influence in the world as compared to the U.S., which has gained a reputation for reckless cowboy militarism. This is due in part to the fact that it was France that declined to become a member of the “coalition of the willing” during the invasion of Iraq, earning threats by angry U.S. politicians to re-name French fries “freedom fries.” But not much later France’s willingness to act ruthlessly was betrayed by its enthusiastic partnership with the U.S. in the kidnapping of President Jean Bertrand Aristide from Haiti because of his refusal to function as a neo-colonial stooge.
“The continuing success of the insurrection in northern Mali was apparently too much for the supposedly progressive French president.”
Notwithstanding France’s colonial and neo-colonial record, Schofield suggests that there has been a change in perspective.
“And now we have [French President] Francois Hollande, who as a good socialist has drunk deeply of the anti-colonialist potion and genuinely feels embarrassed about much of France’s past involvement on the [African] continent.”
Schofield goes on to say of Hollande:
“…now we have a socialist leader, a man who has promised to keep downsizing the military commitment in Africa…”
However, the continuing success of the insurrection in northern Mali by what are claimed to be a mix of Tuareg secessionists and purported Islamic extremists was apparently too much for the supposedly progressive French president and he responded with air strikes and more than 1,400 troops on the ground.
The debate over whether a military intervention was necessary to address the Mali crisis will continue. An even more significant question however is why France and other western countries believe that it is their duty to make these decisions for Africa. The obvious answer is that Africa’s oil and minerals are vital to western economies and the western countries will do whatever is necessary to preserve access to these resources. But in the process they are increasingly engaged in ridiculous efforts at public deception and self-delusion. France talks the talk of progressive non-intervention, but walks the walk of the paternalistic colonizer. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) deploys thousands of troops to Africa, but in its efforts to claim that it is not engaged in military occupation, it locates its headquarters in Germany and bases its African “rapid reaction force” in Colorado.
For Africa’s sake, it might be best for France, the U.S. and others to abandon the charade and simply admit that they will continue their efforts to call the shots in Africa. That might at least awaken those gullible Africans who never understood that when the colonizers said goodbye more than fifty years ago, it didn’t mean they were gone.
Mark P. Fancher is an attorney who writes frequently about armed conflicts in Africa. He can be contacted at mfancher@comcast.net.
Labels: MALI, NEOCOLONIALISM
Read more...
(WHAT'S LEFT) Al Qaeda’s enemy in Mali, friend in Syria, and air force in Libya
Posted in Al Qaeda, Libya, Mali, Syria by what's left on January 17, 2013
By Stephen Gowans
New York Times reporters Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, writing on January 16 about the
“hazy threat from Mali militants,” note that, “The group most worrisome to American officials is Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which emerged out of Algeria’s civil war in the 1990s and originally was strictly focused on overthrowing Algeria’s government.”
US officials didn’t find AQIM so worrisome when the Islamist group was focused on overthrowing Libya’s government. At the time, Washington was happy to allow Islamist militants to destabilize a government that wasn’t wholly congenial to US business interests.
As the Ottawa Citizen’s David Pugliese reported last year, Libyan leader Muamar Gaddafi had “said the rebellion had been organized by AQIM and his old enemies the (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group), who had vowed to overthrow the colonel and return the country to traditional Muslim values, including Sharia law.”
AQIM’s goals for Libya raised no alarm in Washington, but according to Mazzetti and Schmitt, the organization’s vow to convert Mali to Sharia law is setting off alarm bells in Washington.
To assist AQIM and other Islamist rebels in Libya, the United States led NATO into an air war against the Gaddafi government. Acknowledging AQIM’s role in the Libyan rebellion, some of the Canadian pilots who participated in the NATO air campaign jokingly referred to themselves as part of “Al-Qaeda’s air force.”
Washington’s use of jihadists to topple leftist and nationalist governments stretches back to its 1980s alliance with Islamist rebels, including Osama bin Laden, in Afghanistan. Today, al Qaeda-linked militants play an important part in the US-backed effort to overthrow the Syrian government.
To mobilize public support for jihadist rebellions, US officials and news media sanitize Islamist militants as “freedom fighters” or part of a “popular movement for democracy.” Few people anymore believe that the Islamists seeking to overthrow the Syrian government represent a popular movement for democracy. They are, instead, a movement for Sunni religious domination.
After the AQIM triumph in Libya, the organization turned to attacking the US consular building in Benghazi. With its transition from US cat’s paw to US enemy, Washington changed its naming protocol. Now AQIM would go by the moniker Gaddafi favored–terrorists. Which is also how Western officials and news media prefer to describe the organization today, now that AQIM’s goals in Mali collide with the West’s goal of maintaining a puppet regime in the country.
Were the AQIM working in Mali to topple a leftist or economically nationalist government, Washington and Western news media would be hailing the jihadists as a force for democracy.
Labels: AL-QAEDA, LYBIA, MALI, SYRIA, WORLD WAR III
Read more...
