AFRICOM official defends U.S. role in Ugandan mission

[lebkuchen]

Source: Stars & Stripes

STUTTGART, Germany — Though a U.S. military-backed offensive against a band of Ugandan rebels has fallen under criticism for being poorly executed and leading to several hundred civilian deaths, blame for the slaughter should be directed at the rebel group that butchered as they fled Ugandan defense forces, according to a senior U.S. Africa Command leader. Ambassador Mary Carlin Yates, a longtime diplomat and AFRICOM deputy who reports directly to commander Gen. William E. "Kip" Ward, said the mid-December attack on the Lord’s Resistance Army also has diminished the rebel group’s ability to abduct children who are forced to serve as fighters.

"I don’t think caused the atrocities or casualties. I think the atrocities and casualties of the LRA constituted the military action that the decided on their own that they wanted to take," said Yates, who serves as AFRICOM’s deputy to the commander for civil-military activities.

Seventeen advisers from AFRICOM worked with Ugandan officers on the mission, providing satellite phones, intelligence and fuel, the New York Times reported in a Feb. 7 article that first brought the massacre to light.

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Humanitarian agencies have estimated that some 900 civilians were killed in the aftermath of the offensive, which involved the Ugandan air force bombing five rebel bases in northeast Congo. AFRICOM’s most recent count put the number of casualties at 600.


Read more: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=60712

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I thought the US military didn't do body counts.

Why is it that our military commands are the ones sent into regions to "win hearts and minds." Why isn't this handled exclusively by the State Department?

[BunkerHill24]

1. This article exposes the faulty logic behind the creation of AFRICOM

AFRICOM: Wrong for Liberia, Disastrous for Africa

Ezekiel Pajibo and Emira Woods | July 26, 2007
Foreign Policy In Focus

Just two months after U.S. aerial bombardments began in Somalia, the Bush administration solidified its militaristic engagement with Africa. In February 2007, the Department of Defense announced the creation of a new U.S. Africa Command infrastructure, code name AFRICOM, to “coordinate all U.S. military and security interests throughout the continent.”

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Competition for Resources

This military-driven U.S. engagement with Africa reflects the desperation of the Bush administration to control the increasingly strategic natural resources on the African continent, especially oil, gas, and uranium. With increased competition from China, among other countries, for those resources, the United States wants above all else to strengthen its foothold in resource-rich regions of Africa.

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Opposing AFRICOM

The Bush administration’s new obsession with AFRICOM and its militaristic approach has many malign consequences. It increases U.S. interference in the affairs of Africa. It brings more military hardware to a continent that already has too much. By helping to build machineries of repression, these policies reinforce undemocratic practices and reward leaders responsive not to the interests or needs of their people but to the demands and dictates of U.S. military agents. Making military force a higher priority than development and diplomacy creates an imbalance that can encourage irresponsible regimes to use U.S. sourced military might to oppress their own people, now or potentially in the future. These fatally flawed policies create instability, foment tensions, and lead to a less secure world.


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Nigeria is the fifth largest exporter of oil to the United States. The West Africa region currently provides nearly 20% of the U.S. supply of hydrocarbons, up from 15% just five years ago and well on the way to a 25 share forecast for 2015. While the Bush administration endlessly beats the drums for its “global war on terror,” the rise of AFRICOM underscores that the real interests of neoconservatives has less to do with al-Qaeda than with more access and control of extractive industries, particularly oil.


more:http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4427

[lebkuchen]

2. Thanks for the article

I just printed it out. It was published in 2007. Last I heard, no African country wants the US military based there, beyond the "advisors" we already have stationed. However, higher rankers in Stuttgart say it's a myth that Africa doesn't want us, and furthermore, that the very overcrowded bases in the Stuttgart area have nothing to do with Africa Command being jammed onto the Stuttgart bases because no other country will take it. Anybody caught passing this "false" information is to be "checked up" by those listening in.

Classic lies with authoritarian hold-overs from the Bush administration telling them.

I recently spoke to someone who works for Africa Command, an American who speaks with a very understandable accent. The US being multi-cultural, the DoD employs Americans born/raised in countries like the PI, Puerto Rico, Korea, various African nations, et al. Every day this person goes to work very stressed because those in Africa Command constantly make fun of the accent, using "sign language" saying, "I DON'T UNDERSTAND YOU!" and other various forms of insult.

Your article aside, for an organization that pretends to be "helping" other countries, Africa Command sure has more than its fair share of bigots in terms of how it treats fellow citizen co-workers. If those assigned to this command can't understand a Hispanic or Philippino etc., accent, then entertaining for a moment the notion that we come in peace and friendship, how can Africa Commamd expect to succeed as ambassadors in Africa, a continent with hundreds of languages and dialects?

I don't want to cost this person a job, but I hope Obama dismantles Africa Command. It has had trouble receiving the funding Bush had requested.

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=57458