Our science (dialectic materialism) teaches us to look behind phenomena and beyond appearances. In mid January 2013, politicians, journalists and opinion leaders (the army of zombies who plague us every day) made every effort to explain that the aim of France’s intervention in Mali (and in Somalia), approved and actively supported by the majority of the western-euro powers, with the military involvement of numerous surrounding African countries, was to limit the expansion of Al Qaeda in the Sahel, the region to the south of the Sahara, which for years has been the scene of local and international clashes and tension.
As has been happening in practice for over ten years, Al Qaeda (in its various guises and reincarnations – a real Foreign Legion which, under the cover of fundamentalist Islam, does the dirty work for whoever pays best) is the pretext for the umpteenth purely imperialist intervention, after the ranging of troops two years ago and with similar mechanisms in Libya (the continuity between Sarkozy and Hollande should be evident to everyone in this umpteenth proof of the unquenched thirst for grandeur). In reality, in this area, which is so crucial from an economic point of view (human and raw materials: uranium, gold, gas, oil, iron, tungsten, bauxite, coal, hydrocarbons, cotton, peanuts, mangoes etc. - not forgetting the precious water supplies) and from a strategic point of view (a true meeting point between Algeria, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, connecting the Mediterranean with the Gulf of Guinea, separating East Africa from the rest of the continent to the east and south), the conflict is between appetites made even keener by the continuing world crisis.
On the one hand, the progressive penetration of capitals (and thus businesses) from China, India, Russia and Japan, eroding the presence of the “old” Euro-American imperialism in Africa, is not just a recent phenomenon – and so it is no surprise that one of the levers of France’s vice-like intervention (which appears to have been a failure from a military point of view) should be in the east: in Somalia, i.e. in the Horn of Africa, which has always been one of the continent’s most critical seismic fault lines. On the other hand, and again not just recently, the area of influence of the country which, as we demonstrated at the time of the Marikana miners’ massacre (August 2012), has always set itself up as the leading imperialist pole on the African continent is extending: the influence of South Africa.
Thus Africa (we pointed this out in another article, available on this website: “As Long As There Is Capital, No peace Is Desirable, No War Is Less Than Infamous”) is another of those “critical areas” in which, more or less directly, bare-facedly or through third parties, competing interests clash in a capitalist world marked by growing instability with a relentless trend towards a wide-ranging conflict. With the end of the age of colonial rule in a period including two world wars and extending to the mid nineteen-seventies (the independence of Angola and Mozambique from Portuguese rule came in 1975 and completed the cycle of national, anti-colonial revolutions), the continent has nonetheless remained the prey of imperialisms. Coming, not by chance, only a few weeks after Hollande’s trip to Algeria, presented as confirmation of the olive branch of peace fifty years after the bloody civil war, French intervention in the republic of Mali (independent of France since 1960), under the pretext of defeating the Jihad armies of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, is the most recent and evident example of this clash of imperialisms that is gradually starting to surface. An example, needless to say, that is a tragedy for entire populations who, as usual, pay the price of all this: already hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing from the war zones and crowding into nearby or surrounding countries, destined to swell the numbers of the Biblical exodus affecting the whole world (despite the idiots who would like to set up barriers!).
In the meantime everyone takes advantage of the situation to … look after their own interests. France is interested in defending her own (precious) supply of uranium and other minerals (first and foremost hydrocarbons) and in limiting the advance of “other” capitals: in fact India has already got her hands on important sources of iron in the Koulikoro region and a cement plant in Bafoulabé, Canada is in Falea in the south-west and Gao in the north and Australia in Kidal in the north, all with enormous plants for extracting uranium; between 2001 and 2008 in the sector of gold alone 60 prospecting licences were issued to foreign companies; an enormous deposit of bauxite (which, if exploited, would allow Mali to become the leading world exporter) was recently discovered and all this whets appetites all over the world (1) … At the same time, as in the case of Libya, France’s role is to act as the spearhead of an International Holy Crusade, dragging behind it the corresponding African contingents (2). For her part, Algeria attempts to defend her own gaslines and oil wells, even at the cost of killing off “international hostages”. In addition, particularly after the upheavals in Libya (and as happened before in the Balkans), arms dealers and mercenaries are everywhere in the area, putting up the prices of their services in direct proportion to the “cries of alarm” which (to the usual accompaniment of sensational news that no-one can prove or disprove – ah, the freedom of the press!) are raised all over the world to suit the idiots about the “new threat of terrorism”. Italy has also made available a number of military airports (and meanwhile there are arguments about … whether or not it is ethical to use drones instead of ‘planes with pilots’!). Briefly, the whole area is being re-designed with the invention of new national territories and new “Liberation Movements” …
And so, whilst the seismic shocks recur at increasingly short intervals, the development of events must be followed with attention. At the same time, the task of revolutionary defeatism must be taken up with growing determination by the proletariat in all countries: the refusal to become accomplices, at any level (from the defence of the “national economy” to military mobilisation), of worldwide imperialist gangsterism.
NOTES:
1) Timidly, Italian economic daily “Il Sole-24 ore” of 3/2/2013 ran the headline “Paris on a mission for Niger’s uranium” and commented: “French intervention in Mali fights the advance of Islamic extremism but also defends important economic interests. […] The armed forces protect Niger’s mineral resources which will soon guarantee 40% of the mineral used by nuclear power stations”. Oh my goodness!
2) It is no coincidence that the vice-president of the USA recently offered his congratulations on the French exploit, exhorting a return now under the umbrella of the NATO. It’s fine to look after your own business but then you have to listen to “the master’s voice”, too, (no matter if it is a little weaker than in the past).
International Communist Party