Obama Administration Sets Stage for Permanent War in Africa

Sept. 19 (EIRNS)—U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson today revealed that after playing a leading role in the toppling of the Libyan government of Muammar Qaddafi, the Obama Administration intends to play a prominent role in the spread of permanent warfare throughout Africa, an imperial policy demanded by the former colonial powers of Britain, and also France. He made the revelation in an address to the Air Force Association's Air & Space Conference at National Harbor, MD, near Washington, D.C., on the first day of its Sept. 19-21 conference.

Media sources of the NATO countries and non-NATO countries allied with NATO forces which toppled the Libyan government, are now reporting that there has been a widespread distribution of Libyan arms captured by the rebels, and that these arms are finding their way across much of Africa. Actions by special forces of NATO countries their allies (Qatar, Jordan, United Arab Emiratesk, and Egypt), and the prolonged NATO air assault against the Qaddafi government, to the benefit of an armed rebellion of the National Transitional Committee (NTC), has led to this arms proliferation, allegedly from supply depots of Qaddafi's government, but these sources do not mention that the backbone of the rebels were radical Libyan Islamists, many of whom had been active in Iraq and Afghanistan, who have seized the contents of the arms depots.

In an earlier speech, in Dakar, Senegal Sept. 1, Carson had called on African states to adopt laws against terrorism, so that these governments could collaborate with Washington's anti-terrorist program, according to a report in Africa Online the day the speech was delivered. He indicated that this was the way to avoid an expansion of international terrorism in West Africa.

Ironically, NATO's regime-change operation has ended up allowing the provision of arms, either from Qaddafi's depots, or from gun-running networks under the control of the imperial networks, for the organized crime networks being labeled "terrorists" that will create the possibility for an ongoing NATO military intervention in the region, from West Africa across to Somalia, and beyond. These conditions of prolonged warfare, in the interests of British financial power, are to be spearheaded by the United States.

The U.S. Army's Africa Command (Africom) division is already more openly discussing how to implement this move to permanent warfare, a shift in which military activity becomes prominent, and humanitarian disaster relief operations become secondary.

Army Gen. Carter Ham, commander of the U.S. Africa Command, and other unnamed senior U.S. officials said Sept. 14, according to published reports, that a number of al-Qaeda-affiliated terror groups in Africa and the Arabian peninsula are growing in significance and ambition, despite the number of al-Qaeda fighters who have been killed. He said these include groups not only in North Africa but also on the Arabian Peninsula and in Somalia.

In Africa he singled out three groups as significant anti-American threats: al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and al-Shabaab in Somalia. The three have taken responsibility for numerous bombings in Algeria, Nigeria, and East Africa.

Carson Issues Cover Story for Following British Permanent Warfare Policy

Sept. 19 (EIRNS)—U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson today issued a cover story for the Obama Administration's switch of U.S. policy in Africa, to that of openly adopting, and playing the lead military role in implementing, brutal imperial City of London policy of internal conflict and military intervention in Africa, just at the time that the global financial system is collapsing in bankruptcy.

He put forward the cover story, designed to sell the British policy to his military audience at the U.S. Air Force Association conference, and to the American population, that the United States had to intervene militarily in Africa because the continent's oil and gas resources are crucial for the U.S. economy.

To build support for his case, Carson noted that Africa provides 18% of U.S. oil imports. He said that Nigeria, the biggest supplier to the United States, provided 8% of U.S. imports, equivalent to the amount imported from Saudi Arabia. He added that Angola was just behind Nigeria.

He also stated that Algeria now provides the majority of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies for the U.S. East Coast. Carson said that over the next decades, African gas and oil exports to the United states are expected to increase to 25% of U.S. consumption.

Instead of infrastructural development, he delineated Obama's approach in Africa as being that of fostering good governance and democratic institutions, revitalizing of the traditional agricultural sector (i.e., using manual labor), health collaboration (which will be ineffective without economic development), resolving conflicts across the continent (which result from the lack of physical economic development in the first place), and what he termed "proactive diplomacy" to deal with unrest, to defend long term U.S. interests. He singled out governments which "peddle extremist ideologies" as causing problems.