The U.S.-backed French invasion of Mali with its 15 million people is geared to strip this country of its vast natural resources while hiding behind the Bush “war-on-terror” label. They use this label in the hope that it will generate unquestioning support for whatever the imperialists do in its name. This racist attack on innocent workers is occurring in the eighth nation in four years alone in which Western regimes are killing Muslims.
French bosses have a long history of colonization in Mali, having also established military bases in neighboring Niger, Chad and Burkina. So far they have sent in 4,000 troops equipped with armored vehicles, helicopter gunships and 40 airplanes which bombed Northern Mali. They hope for 5,800 more forces from other African capitalist countries.
Initially the air attacks killed 11 civilians, including three children who drowned as they fled into a river trying to escape the bombs, as well as other workers and their families in or near their homes, said the mayor of Konna. He fled the town with his family, reporting “significant infrastructure damage” (News Beacon, Ireland, 1/15). The bombings have displaced an estimated 30,000 people.
This flies in the face of a promise by French Socialist (read capitalist) president François Hollande who said “France would never be in the front line but would only provide logistical aid, without fighting” (le Canard enchainé, 1/23). It also violates the 1995 agreement with Mali on technical military “cooperation” which stipulated that “French soldiers cannot participate in the preparation and execution of war operations” (Canard, 1/23). But, of course, imperialist neo-colonialists regard such “agreements” as mere scraps of paper.
Still Another War for Obama
and U.S. Rulers to Escalate
Obama’s war machine is knee-deep in this French operation. Not only were U.S. rulers “providing intelligence to French forces in Mali” (News Beacon, 1/15) but, “The U.S. military has based a growing number of armed Predator drones as well as F-15 fighter jets at Camp Lemonnier, which has grown into a key installation for secret counterterrorism operations” in the Horn of Africa (Washington Post, 1/14).This is all “part of a more than $500 million…program to train and equip armies across the Sahara….American Special Forces provided Malian infantry troops with training in marksmanship, border patrol, ambush drills and other skills” (NYT, 1/25).
Furthermore, the past “overthrow of the Malian government [which destabilized the country] was enabled by U.S.-trained-and-armed soldiers….Commanders of this nation’s elite army units , the fruits of years of careful American training, defected…taking troops, guns, trucks and their newfound skills to the enemy” (NYT, 1/14) It was, “An American-trained officer [who] overthrow Mali’s elected government, setting the stage for more than half of the country to fall into the hands of Islamic extremists” (NYT).
Meanwhile, NATO countries — Canada, Belgium, Denmark and Germany — “have publicly backed the French incursion, pledging logistical support” (News Beacon). Britain has helped transport French troops to Mali and its Prime Minister David Cameron “has led Britain into Mali’s conflict without even a pretense at consultation” (columnist Owen Jones in the British Independent, 1/14).
This invasion has little to do with “terrorism” but rather is based on the usual reason for imperialist adventures: natural resources. Mali is rich in gold (Africa’s third largest producer); diamonds, iron ore, bauxite, manganese, copper, gypsum, phosphate, lead, zinc and lithium. And “Mali’s petroleum potential [is] already attracting significant interests from investors….Mali has stepped up its promotion and research for oil exploration, production and potential exports” (News Beacon). It “could also provide a strategic transport route for Sub-Saharan oil and gas exports through to the Western world” (News Beacon).
Blood for Uranium
The French bosses’ main interest in Mali revolves around uranium whose exploration is now in full swing. Following the 1973 oil shock, French rulers opted for nuclear energy. Its 59 nuclear reactors lead the world. These reactors generate nearly 80 percent of its electricity, making it the world’s largest net electricity exporter. Although Niger has been France’s primary source of uranium, Mali has an estimated 5,200 tons of untapped uranium sources. Malians have set up community organizations in mining areas, protesting the potential environmental degradation and outflow of resources to imperialist beneficiaries.
Much of the instability in Mali stems directly from NATO’s intervention in Libya. The Tuareg people, “who traditionally hailed from northern Mali, made up a large portion of [Muammar Gaddafi’s] army. When Gaddafi was ejected from power, they returned to their homeland, sometimes forcibly so as black Africans came under attack in [‘liberated’] Libya” (British Independent, 1/14) Alongside them, “Heavily armed, battle-hardened Islamic fighters returned from combat in Libya...The big weaponry coming out of Libya and the different, more Islamic fighters who came back” played the precipitating role [along with the Mali troop defections] in the collapse of the U.S.-supported central government” (NYT, 1/14, and British Guardian, 1/14). Blowback with a vengeance.
Obama’s second term has begun by joining newly elected French Socialist/capitalist president Hollande in still another racist/imperialist war spreading across northern Africa. In order to extract valuable natural resources for the profits of French, U.S. and other capitalists, they are killing black workers, much as their racist cops kill black and Latino workers on the streets of big U.S. cities and as French bosses super-exploit black African and Arab immigrant workers in France. Such racist wars are used to try to win masses of French workers to accept austerity in the name of restoring French bosses’ power.
It is only a communist revolution that creates a society run by and for the workers that can end this profit-hungry capitalist hell.