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Africa: U.S. And NATO Build Neo-Colonial Proxy Forces
by "Rick Rozoff"
rwrozoff
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Video Interview: U.S. Targeting Independent, Principled Governments
by "Rick Rozoff"
rwrozoff
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Sun Jul 1, 2012 6:27 am (PDT) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://rickrozoff.
Stop NATO
July 1, 2012
Africa: U.S. And NATO Build Neo-Colonial Proxy Forces
Rick Rozoff
Although the regular U.S.-run multinational special forces exercise in Africa, Operation Flintlock, was cancelled this year because of unrest in the intended host country, Mali, over the last seven years the exercises have played a key role in integrating the militaries of the West Sahel into the orbit of the Pentagon and NATO.
Run by U.S. Africa Command's Special Operations Command Africa, Flintlock 2011 included forces from the U.S., its NATO allies Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, and African states Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria and Senegal.
As NATO and U.S. European Command (EUCOM) share a common top commander, and as EUCOM was in charge of Pentagon operations in almost all of Africa until Africa Command (AFRICOM) achieved full operational capability on October 1, 2008, the relationship between U.S. and NATO in Africa is one of cooperation between master and subordinates engaged in a joint endeavor: The repenetration and domination of the world's second-most populous continent by Western powers.
By training, modernizing, arming and integrating the armed forces of the 54-nation African Union (in the case of Egypt through U.S. Central Command and NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue), the U.S. and its main NATO allies are developing regional proxy forces - most notably the African Standby Force - for armed interventions against nations whose governments are not to the West's liking. Hence the talk of a joint brigade from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the foundation for a projected West African Standby Force, intervening in Ivory Coast last year and Mali this.
Since its activation AFRICOM has assisted in the creation of the African Standby Force, originally envisioned to have five components, one each for North, South, East, West and Central Africa, and NATO has done so since 2007 through its Joint Force Command Lisbon, training African officers at the NATO School in Oberammergau and in African nations.
Indeed the North Atlantic military bloc has committed itself, in its own words, to "the operationalisation of the African Standby Force – the African Union’s vision for a continental, on-call security apparatus similar to the NATO Response Force.” The latter was launched in the African island nation of Cape Verde in 2006 with the large-scale Steadfast Jaguar war games, to indicate where from its inception the NATO Response Force was concentrating its attentions.
AFRICOM concluded this year's Africa Endeavor, the largest command, control, communications and computers (C4) interoperability training event in Africa, whose role includes preparing the African Standby Force, in Cameroon on June 27. It included the participation of 35 African nations, the U.S., Canada, European NATO member states, the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States and the Economic Community of East African States. The past four Africa Endeavor exercises have also been held on or near the strategic Gulf of Guinea: Gambia in 2011, Ghana on 2010, Gabon in 2009 and Nigeria in 2008.
Africa Endeavor is modeled after European Command's Combined Endeavor C4 interoperability training, the largest in the world. Combined Endeavor includes 40 NATO and Partnership for Peace members, "other strategic security partners" like Afghanistan and NATO's Multinational Corps Northeast (headquartered in Poland).
In June representatives from 36 NATO and Partnership for Peace nations participated in the week-long final planning conference for Combined Endeavor 2012 in Montenegro, which became a member of the Partnership for Peace in 2006, the year it declared independence. This year's exercise will be held in Grafenwöhr, Germany from September 6-20.
Africa Endeavor is a replication and extension of the Pentagon-NATO model.
On June 28 the AFRICOM website reported on the visit of African defense attaches to AFRICOM headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany to "[expand] their knowledge of U.S. Africa Command and its key programs and objectives..
An American general told the attaches from Algeria, Botswana, Egypt, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tunisia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, "This is the first step to building a long, lasting relationship with all of you." This is the first confirmation of Zimbabwean involvement with AFRICOM the current writer has seen, all but completing the integration of African armed forces into the AFRICOM matrix.
The above claim was confirmed by the organizer of the visit, Bradford Sellers, a Capstone Corporation contractor working as a member of the AFRICOM Cooperation Center staff, who added:
"This visit is a first step in building and enhancing relationships with these African officers posted to our host country. By inviting the DATTs [defense attaches] here from Berlin, we can leverage their nearby location and knowledge of Western and NATO military practice to augment our engagement efforts in Africa...Reaching out to African officers already in Germany is a natural step to building closer ties with their home countries."
A civilian AFRICOM official, one Eric Wills, also reiterated the point:
"DATTs are our link to their government leaders. We are asking them to talk with their leadership, to be a liaison to initiate discussions leading to decisions to work with the United States via AFRICOM."
AFRICOM's website featured an article on a U.S.-led military exercise recently conducted in Botswana that began with this sentence: "With more than 187,000 soldiers based in nearly 160 countries, the U.S. Army presence around the globe points to its commitment to strengthening relationships and assisting with building military capacity in partner nations."
The following day the same site provided details of the statement in June by AFRICOM commander Major General David Hogg that U.S. Army Africa will begin the regular deployment of a brigade of 3,000 or more troops to Africa. [1]
That unit will be the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, which "will be the main force provider for security cooperation and partnership-
Citing Pentagon officials, the report added, "The effort is a first step toward fulfilling national strategic and defense guidance that includes military services partnering with allies around the world to build capacity and security capability."
An Army officer was quoted in reference to the shift from the Central Command area of responsibility (essentially from Egypt in the west to Kazakhstan in the east) after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, stating, "what we're working on now is the organization of the Army beyond the current conflict to provide the capability required and maintain an expeditionary mindset in the Army."
With most every nation in Europe brought into the Pentagon's fold through NATO expansion and with only a handful of Middle Eastern and Asia-Pacific nations not in the same category or headed in that direction, the consolidation of military control of Africa by the U.S. and its NATO partners has achieved priority status.
1) Pentagon’s Last Frontier: Battle-Hardened Troops Headed To Africa
Stop NATO
June 12, 2012
http://rickrozoff.
============
Stop NATO e-mail list home page with archives and search engine:
http://groups.
Stop NATO website and articles:
http://rickrozoff.
To subscribe for individual e-mails or the daily digest, unsubscribe, and otherwise change subscription status:
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============
Stop NATO
July 1, 2012
Africa: U.S. And NATO Build Neo-Colonial Proxy Forces
Rick Rozoff
Although the regular U.S.-run multinational special forces exercise in Africa, Operation Flintlock, was cancelled this year because of unrest in the intended host country, Mali, over the last seven years the exercises have played a key role in integrating the militaries of the West Sahel into the orbit of the Pentagon and NATO.
Run by U.S. Africa Command's Special Operations Command Africa, Flintlock 2011 included forces from the U.S., its NATO allies Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, and African states Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria and Senegal.
As NATO and U.S. European Command (EUCOM) share a common top commander, and as EUCOM was in charge of Pentagon operations in almost all of Africa until Africa Command (AFRICOM) achieved full operational capability on October 1, 2008, the relationship between U.S. and NATO in Africa is one of cooperation between master and subordinates engaged in a joint endeavor: The repenetration and domination of the world's second-most populous continent by Western powers.
By training, modernizing, arming and integrating the armed forces of the 54-nation African Union (in the case of Egypt through U.S. Central Command and NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue), the U.S. and its main NATO allies are developing regional proxy forces - most notably the African Standby Force - for armed interventions against nations whose governments are not to the West's liking. Hence the talk of a joint brigade from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the foundation for a projected West African Standby Force, intervening in Ivory Coast last year and Mali this.
Since its activation AFRICOM has assisted in the creation of the African Standby Force, originally envisioned to have five components, one each for North, South, East, West and Central Africa, and NATO has done so since 2007 through its Joint Force Command Lisbon, training African officers at the NATO School in Oberammergau and in African nations.
Indeed the North Atlantic military bloc has committed itself, in its own words, to "the operationalisation of the African Standby Force – the African Union’s vision for a continental, on-call security apparatus similar to the NATO Response Force.” The latter was launched in the African island nation of Cape Verde in 2006 with the large-scale Steadfast Jaguar war games, to indicate where from its inception the NATO Response Force was concentrating its attentions.
AFRICOM concluded this year's Africa Endeavor, the largest command, control, communications and computers (C4) interoperability training event in Africa, whose role includes preparing the African Standby Force, in Cameroon on June 27. It included the participation of 35 African nations, the U.S., Canada, European NATO member states, the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States and the Economic Community of East African States. The past four Africa Endeavor exercises have also been held on or near the strategic Gulf of Guinea: Gambia in 2011, Ghana on 2010, Gabon in 2009 and Nigeria in 2008.
Africa Endeavor is modeled after European Command's Combined Endeavor C4 interoperability training, the largest in the world. Combined Endeavor includes 40 NATO and Partnership for Peace members, "other strategic security partners" like Afghanistan and NATO's Multinational Corps Northeast (headquartered in Poland).
In June representatives from 36 NATO and Partnership for Peace nations participated in the week-long final planning conference for Combined Endeavor 2012 in Montenegro, which became a member of the Partnership for Peace in 2006, the year it declared independence. This year's exercise will be held in Grafenwöhr, Germany from September 6-20.
Africa Endeavor is a replication and extension of the Pentagon-NATO model.
On June 28 the AFRICOM website reported on the visit of African defense attaches to AFRICOM headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany to "[expand] their knowledge of U.S. Africa Command and its key programs and objectives..
An American general told the attaches from Algeria, Botswana, Egypt, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tunisia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, "This is the first step to building a long, lasting relationship with all of you." This is the first confirmation of Zimbabwean involvement with AFRICOM the current writer has seen, all but completing the integration of African armed forces into the AFRICOM matrix.
The above claim was confirmed by the organizer of the visit, Bradford Sellers, a Capstone Corporation contractor working as a member of the AFRICOM Cooperation Center staff, who added:
"This visit is a first step in building and enhancing relationships with these African officers posted to our host country. By inviting the DATTs [defense attaches] here from Berlin, we can leverage their nearby location and knowledge of Western and NATO military practice to augment our engagement efforts in Africa...Reaching out to African officers already in Germany is a natural step to building closer ties with their home countries."
A civilian AFRICOM official, one Eric Wills, also reiterated the point:
"DATTs are our link to their government leaders. We are asking them to talk with their leadership, to be a liaison to initiate discussions leading to decisions to work with the United States via AFRICOM."
AFRICOM's website featured an article on a U.S.-led military exercise recently conducted in Botswana that began with this sentence: "With more than 187,000 soldiers based in nearly 160 countries, the U.S. Army presence around the globe points to its commitment to strengthening relationships and assisting with building military capacity in partner nations."
The following day the same site provided details of the statement in June by AFRICOM commander Major General David Hogg that U.S. Army Africa will begin the regular deployment of a brigade of 3,000 or more troops to Africa. [1]
That unit will be the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, which "will be the main force provider for security cooperation and partnership-
Citing Pentagon officials, the report added, "The effort is a first step toward fulfilling national strategic and defense guidance that includes military services partnering with allies around the world to build capacity and security capability."
An Army officer was quoted in reference to the shift from the Central Command area of responsibility (essentially from Egypt in the west to Kazakhstan in the east) after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, stating, "what we're working on now is the organization of the Army beyond the current conflict to provide the capability required and maintain an expeditionary mindset in the Army."
With most every nation in Europe brought into the Pentagon's fold through NATO expansion and with only a handful of Middle Eastern and Asia-Pacific nations not in the same category or headed in that direction, the consolidation of military control of Africa by the U.S. and its NATO partners has achieved priority status.
1) Pentagon’s Last Frontier: Battle-Hardened Troops Headed To Africa
Stop NATO
June 12, 2012
http://rickrozoff.
============
Stop NATO e-mail list home page with archives and search engine:
http://groups.
Stop NATO website and articles:
http://rickrozoff.
To subscribe for individual e-mails or the daily digest, unsubscribe, and otherwise change subscription status:
stopnato-subscribe@
============
Sun Jul 1, 2012 4:35 pm (PDT) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://www.presstv.
Press TV
July 1, 2012
'US targeting independent, principled governments'
Interview with Rick Rozoff, Manager, Stop NATO, Chicago
Video at URL above
This will not be the last president of a sovereign state that Hillary Clinton orders to step down as she did last year in the Ivory Coast and Libya if you'll recollect and as she may well do tomorrow in any number of other countries from Belarus to Venezuela."
UN Security Council members and representatives from Qatar, Kuwait and Turkey have held a meeting toward resolving the Syrian crisis.
Press TV has interviewed Rick Rozoff, Manager, Stop NATO, Chicago about the Geneva meeting and the participant nations that were permitted to attend.
What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: Look at the rights records of the participants at the meeting in Geneva particularly that of the US. It's hard to believe that their only concern is human rights. Can you tell us how regime change in Syria may benefit every participant in that conference?
Rozoff: Well, certainly not every participant, but you are correct in implying that the participation in the Geneva meeting - the so-called action group - was heavily weighed against Syria and against the interests of international law.
For example, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council include three founding members of NATO - the US, France and Britain - who are hardly impartial or disinterested parties.
And that in addition to the non-permanent Security Council members invited, three out of the four were clearly interested parties. I'm talking about Turkey, Qatar and Kuwait. Arguably only Iraq was a fair or impartial participant from the region.
The fact that Iran was excluded from the talks is a travesty, of course, even after Russia insisted that it participate.
And of course the European Union participated on behalf of the European members of the NATO alliance. And even the Arab League now one could argue has been undermined and effectively taken over by a very limited number of Arab States - I'm talking about the six members of the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council including the two in attendance, Kuwait and Qatar.
So, this was hardly an impartial or a representative meeting of nations and organizations; it was rather a US-dominated forum in which Russia and China stuck to their position arguing against of course external - and we're talking for the most part Western - interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nations.
That is an inviolable principle but is one that is being violated on a daily basis by the US and its allies.
Press TV: What is the situation on the ground there? Hillary Clinton says that Assad has to go because he does not pass a 'mutual consent test'. For how long do you think Assad will be able to absorb such huge pressure and remain in power?
Rozoff: That's a question I'm unable to answer. I can only say that should the West with its local allies and clients, and I'm speaking about Turkey and the [Persian] Gulf States, the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council States, succeed in overthrowing yet another government in the Arab world and I'm of course alluding to the precedent last year in Libya, this will not mark the end of this.
Any government that has a foreign policy orientation that's independent and principled will be targeted.
This will not be the last president of a sovereign state that Hillary Clinton orders to step down as she did last year in Ivory Coast and Libya if you'll recollect and as she may well do tomorrow in any number of other countries from Belarus to Venezuela.
The fact is there that there appears to be at least a substantive or perhaps plurality of the population that prefers stability and the nation remaining intact to the latest effort by Western powers, the US in the first place, to not only topple the government - that's the explicit intent of the US and its allies by the way, France and Britain most prominently - is to topple the government and have implanted a subservient client regime in the Middle East.
Should they succeed in that, it would be catastrophe for the Syrian people and the Middle East and the Arab world as a whole.
Press TV
July 1, 2012
'US targeting independent, principled governments'
Interview with Rick Rozoff, Manager, Stop NATO, Chicago
Video at URL above
This will not be the last president of a sovereign state that Hillary Clinton orders to step down as she did last year in the Ivory Coast and Libya if you'll recollect and as she may well do tomorrow in any number of other countries from Belarus to Venezuela."
UN Security Council members and representatives from Qatar, Kuwait and Turkey have held a meeting toward resolving the Syrian crisis.
Press TV has interviewed Rick Rozoff, Manager, Stop NATO, Chicago about the Geneva meeting and the participant nations that were permitted to attend.
What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: Look at the rights records of the participants at the meeting in Geneva particularly that of the US. It's hard to believe that their only concern is human rights. Can you tell us how regime change in Syria may benefit every participant in that conference?
Rozoff: Well, certainly not every participant, but you are correct in implying that the participation in the Geneva meeting - the so-called action group - was heavily weighed against Syria and against the interests of international law.
For example, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council include three founding members of NATO - the US, France and Britain - who are hardly impartial or disinterested parties.
And that in addition to the non-permanent Security Council members invited, three out of the four were clearly interested parties. I'm talking about Turkey, Qatar and Kuwait. Arguably only Iraq was a fair or impartial participant from the region.
The fact that Iran was excluded from the talks is a travesty, of course, even after Russia insisted that it participate.
And of course the European Union participated on behalf of the European members of the NATO alliance. And even the Arab League now one could argue has been undermined and effectively taken over by a very limited number of Arab States - I'm talking about the six members of the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council including the two in attendance, Kuwait and Qatar.
So, this was hardly an impartial or a representative meeting of nations and organizations; it was rather a US-dominated forum in which Russia and China stuck to their position arguing against of course external - and we're talking for the most part Western - interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nations.
That is an inviolable principle but is one that is being violated on a daily basis by the US and its allies.
Press TV: What is the situation on the ground there? Hillary Clinton says that Assad has to go because he does not pass a 'mutual consent test'. For how long do you think Assad will be able to absorb such huge pressure and remain in power?
Rozoff: That's a question I'm unable to answer. I can only say that should the West with its local allies and clients, and I'm speaking about Turkey and the [Persian] Gulf States, the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council States, succeed in overthrowing yet another government in the Arab world and I'm of course alluding to the precedent last year in Libya, this will not mark the end of this.
Any government that has a foreign policy orientation that's independent and principled will be targeted.
This will not be the last president of a sovereign state that Hillary Clinton orders to step down as she did last year in Ivory Coast and Libya if you'll recollect and as she may well do tomorrow in any number of other countries from Belarus to Venezuela.
The fact is there that there appears to be at least a substantive or perhaps plurality of the population that prefers stability and the nation remaining intact to the latest effort by Western powers, the US in the first place, to not only topple the government - that's the explicit intent of the US and its allies by the way, France and Britain most prominently - is to topple the government and have implanted a subservient client regime in the Middle East.
Should they succeed in that, it would be catastrophe for the Syrian people and the Middle East and the Arab world as a whole.
