Target Centermass

Category: Africa

  • NATO Sees U.S. Military Changing Strategy

    This piece is particularly interesting for its inclusion of Africa into plans for restructuring overseas deployment of U.S. forces.

    U.S. forces stationed in Europe will increasingly shift their stance toward Africa and the former communist countries in eastern Europe as they move to counter terror threats in those areas, the top European commander said.

    […]

    “The difference between the EUCOM of the 20th century — which I regard as the Cold War century — and the EUCOM of the 21st century is the family of threats that it faces, ranging from terrorism to radical fundamentalism to narcoterrorism to illegal trafficking of all sorts,” [NATO supreme commander Marine Gen. James. L.] Jones said at EUCOM headquarters in Stuttgart.

    […]

    Many of the changes, like consolidating different Army headquarters under one roof in Wiesbaden, are simply a continuation of post-Cold War cutback that began in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

    But deeper changes are on the way, as the U.S. looks less to large, fixed bases like those it has had for decades in Germany, to smaller, more bare-bones installations where troops could be moved quickly for training or to deal with a crisis.

    […]

    The large air bases at Ramstein and Spangdahlem, as well the nearby support community of Kaiserslautern, will remain hubs. The Army will concentrate on existing posts in Wiesbaden and Grafenwoehr. EUCOM headquarters will remain in Stuttgart, while both the Army and Air Force will remain in Aviano, Italy.

    But increasingly the focus is shifting toward Africa, seen as a potential haven for Islamic extremists who have been ousted from places like Afghanistan.

    Already five such agreements exist with countries in Africa, including the predominantly Muslim nations of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

    In Europe, the focus in increasingly turning to the new NATO members of the former Warsaw Pact. A special Eastern Europe Task Force would involve rotating troops on a regular basis for training exercises, including some with local militaries.

    Bases in Bulgaria and Romania, both of which hosted the U.S. military during the Iraq war, have been earmarked to host forces, but would differ from those in Germany in that they would offer only skeletal infrastructure and no families would accompany troops there on their tours of duty.

    Excellent. This shows that we are not just looking one or two steps down the road in the war against the Islamist terrorists. We are already game-planning and laying the groundworks to prepare for a possible theater shift many turns down the road. Just doing so may be sufficient to head off the threat before the proverbial pass.

    However, many dangers have always awaited in the Dark Continent.

  • U.N. Reaches out to Middle America

    The United Nations has an image problem among many Americans.

    Surprised? Of course you’re not. Despite its success as a political arena during the Cold War, a Coliseum for the diplomatic gladiators of the U.S. and the Soviets, the UN has long since strayed from its hopeful origins and purposes. At its best, it is bungling. At its worst, it is incredibly corrupt. In between lies the norm — spineless token gestures, misguided and half-hearted forays, hollow words and resolutions.

    Now, the UN wants to correct its image in the eyes of Americans with a planned revamping of the UN Human Rights Commission.

    The United Nations is out of touch with most Americans, who think the beleaguered organization has abandoned its mission to keep peace and protect human rights around the world, says U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s chief of staff.

    “In a very real way, we seem to have lost touch with the great middle in America, a middle which very much believes in the aspirational ideas of the U.N. … and who feel that we’ve drifted away from a commitment to human rights, a commitment to help the poor of the world,” Mark Malloch Brown said yesterday.

    The United Nations is under fire for several scandals including the oil-for-food program, charges of sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeeping forces and the resignation of a top official accused of sexual harassment, which Mr. Malloch Brown addressed in an exclusive interview with “Fox News Sunday.”

    The organization will propose changes in the coming weeks to begin repairing its reputation by revamping its “human rights machinery” to keep dictator nations off the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

    Governments making up the current membership include Cuba, Sudan, Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabia. Libya is the outgoing chair of the committee.

    The plan would “try and restore the credibility of this and have people on that commission who really are people of stature and reputation and record and come from countries of the same thing, with real human rights standing in the world,” Mr. Malloch Brown said.

    Go give it a read, as it does a good job of listing the current hot-button problems — chiefly, the oil-for-food scandal, subsequent investigations, and the allegations of atrocities by UN peacekeepers. Noticably absent is any mention of the organization’s horrible track record of its treatment of Israel vis-a-vis the surrounding despotic Arab states, but that would require too much honesty in the face of too much hatred and opportunism.

    How far has the UN fallen? They know they have a problem that they plan to address, and still I am sadly confident that they will fail to do anything more than change some window dressing.

  • South Africa’s Capital Renamed

    Tshwane (Not Pretoria).

    In a symbolic break with apartheid, officials in South Africa’s capital voted Monday to rename the city Tshwane, retaining the name Pretoria for the city center only.

    The decision was taken at a special meeting of the governing African National Congress-dominated metropolitan council, the South African Press Association reported.

    “By embarking on this process and project of transformation, our country is making a clear distinction between the old and the new, the past and the present,” Executive Mayor Smangaliso Mkhatshwa was quoted as saying during a four-hour debate.

    The city of 2 million, established by white settlers in 1855, was named after Andries Pretorius, a leader in the Afrikaners’ “Great Trek” into the interior of the country. Tshwane, which means “we are the same,” was the name used by some of the region’s earliest African settlers.

    The South African Geographic Names Council is expected to approve the change when it convenes in October and begin the process of changing the city’s name on maps.

    Monday’s vote is the latest in a series of geographic name changes since South Africa’s first all-race elections in 1994 ended decades of white-minority rule.

    The government says South Africans should not have to live in cities, towns and streets named after the people responsible for their racial oppression.

    Opposition councilors argued Monday that the process was a waste of money, and said the move to rename Pretoria threatens to split the capital along racial lines.

    Why did Pretoria get the works? That’s nobody’s business but the South Africans.

    (Apologies to They Might Be Giants and their incredible rendition)

  • Gadhafi Wants Libya, U.S. to Be Friends

    Dear ol’ Moammar Gadhafi — a nutjob dictator with the occasional good points, trying to position himself and Libya into a leadership role in the Arab world. Now he wants to buddy up to the U.S. Maybe. And denounce the UN. But work with it. Oh yeah, foreign terrorism is bad.

    Moammar Gadhafi said Wednesday he wants Libya and the United States to be friends, but the one-time international pariah slammed the United Nations Security Council for being controlled by a select group of countries.

    In a wide-ranging address to the annual meeting of Libya’s parliament-like General’s People Congress, Gadhafi also warned Libyans not to support foreign extremists and to stand strong in the face of terrorism.

    Gadhafi’s comments, moderate in the main but typically inflammatory in parts, come as Libya returns to the international fold following years of being regarded as a state sponsor of terror.

    “We don’t say love the Americans. We are talking policies, and (on that level) there is no problem or animosity” between both countries, Gadhafi, wearing a white robe, told hundreds of often-cheering Congress members during an address televised live and monitored in Egypt.

    Last year, the U.S. government lifted 23-year-old travel restrictions imposed on Libya, invited American companies to return to the oil-rich nation and encouraged Tripoli to open a diplomatic office in Washington. President Bush has also commended Libya’s progress in scrapping its nuclear weapons.

    Of the United States, Gadhafi said: “We are not enemies. We are not allies. We are not agents. We hope one day we will be friends.”

    Gadhafi, however, criticized the United Nations and the permanent five-member Security Council, repeating complaints he raised in a full-page advertisement that appeared in Wednesday’s Guardian newspaper in England.

    “They are suggesting to expand the Security Council. This is another attempt to fool the nations at the expense of international peace and security,” Gadhafi said during his speech in Sirte, a coastal city 260 miles east of Tripoli.

    Okay, so I can find common ground with him on the UN being little more than a pit of jackholes these days. I have to begrudgingly give him that point.

    Despite his criticism, Gadhafi said Libya has applied for a seat on an expanded Security Council, which he wants to rotate among African states.

    The United Nations had imposed sanctions against Libya, but the Security Council removed them last year after Tripoli accepted responsibility for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, and agreed to compensate families of the 270 victims.

    Gadhafi said his country must now take a lead role in combatting terrorism and warned Libyans that if their sons join extremists fighting U.S. forces in Iraq, they will eventually return home to kill their parents for being “infidels.”

    “A country that is weak in front of terrorism harms the international community,” he said, while suggesting Libyan security forces might be given extra powers.

    “The power that is responsible for security must be strong enough to make people feel safe,” he said without elaborating.

    Libya is known for its extensive security apparatus and highly active internal and external intelligence services, a system that neighboring Egypt helped install in the early 1970s. Most Libyan opposition members live abroad because of the country’s heavy handed security.

    Mix this buddy-buddy talk with this article where he espouses a desire for greater Libyan freedom and we start to see my case for the nutjob criteria.

    Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi urged his people on Wednesday to let “freedoms blossom” but made no mention of democratic goals like political parties that the United States wants to promote in the Middle East.

    […]

    “You have to let freedoms blossom. People must have the full freedom to chose useful and fruitful work, the full freedom to learn and carry out scientific search and the freedom of faith,” said Gaddafi, who came to power in a 1969 military coup, in a speech broadcast live on Libyan television.

    […]

    “Every one has the full economic freedom of what to do and where to invest. Every one has the freedom to establish social and economic enterprises of his liking and interest,” said Gaddafi, shunning mention of Western-style democracy.

    […]

    “The people power and the direct democracy in Libya came to give an alternative to the worsening political crisis in the world where everywhere outside Libya dictatorship rules,” he declared.

    Gaddafi said the people of the United States, Britain and Italy were living “under the yoke of dictatorships” and invited their politicians, scholars and intellectuals to visit Libya to learn how “the only genuine democracy works.”

    “It is an international duty of the Libyans to help resolve the world political crisis. I advise you to set aside the money to pay for accommodation and other expenses for people we invite to come from America, Britain and other countries to learn at Green Book university.”

    Ummmm … we need to chat about freedom, democracy, dictatorships and the different meanings those words apparently hold to you an me, Moammar-baby.

    Look, it’s obvious he’s decided to emerge from retreat after his spanking by Reagan, sensing a chance to again become a leading figure for the Arab world. Good luck with that, Moe — you’re at least better than some of the other cluelessness running around in that area.

    I do want one bold statement from the guy: how do we spell his name in English … consistently and correctly? These two articles had two variations, and here’s several more.

  • Italy To Return Ethiopian Obelisk

    In post-9/11 America, much has been made of the appeasement that preceded World War II, especially the case of the Sudetenland and the Munich Agreement. Somewhat lost in the sands of time are the military conflicts in the years leading up to the outbreak of the war. Chief among these are the Sino-Japanese War, with the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and a wealth of atrocities that make Abu Graib look like a four-year-old’s birthday party, and the Spanish Civil War, the proving ground for the troops, equipment and tactics of the Soviets, Germans and Italians. Even more obscure is the invasion of Ethiopia (then Abyssinia) by Benito Mussolini’s Italy in 1935. That aggression may finally be finding a closure.

    An Ethiopian national treasure, the ancient Axum Obelisk that was plundered by Italian fascist invaders in 1937, will be returned by Rome in April, Italy’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

    The 24-meter obelisk, believed to be at least 1,700 years old, was split in three and hauled off when Italy under Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1937.

    Italy promised in 1947 to return the 200-tongranite column, a symbol of the dawn of Ethiopian civilization, but arguments and logistical problems delayed it until November last year when the two countries finally agreed to fly it home.

    […]

    Returning the segments of the monument and the machinery to put it back together is a gargantuan logistical task.

    Landlocked Ethiopia has had to build a special runway for the only aircraft big enough to carry the pieces, the U.S.-built C-5 Galaxy and Russian-made Antonov 124. The Antonov was the plane finally chosen to bring the obelisk home.

    It’s surprising that the massive artifact took around a year to remove and over a half-century to return. For no reason at all, I blame the recent resurgence of trucker hats.

  • Mbeki Attacks ‘Racist’ Churchill

    It seems the South African president is embracing the long-held Arab tradition of placing blame on outsiders in an attempt to shrug off local shortcomings, in this case those of Sudan.

    President Thabo Mbeki has made a withering attack on Winston Churchill and other historic British figures, calling them racists who ravaged Africa and blighted its post-colonial development.

    The South African president was addressing the Sudanese assembly, and he was criticised for not dealing with the government’s human rights violations in Darfur.

    He said British imperialists in the 19th and 20th centuries had treated Africans as savages and left a “terrible legacy” of countries divided by race, colour, culture and religion.

    He singled out Churchill as a progenitor of vicious prejudice who justified British atrocities by depicting the continent’s inhabitants as inferior races who needed to be subdued, and pointed out that Kitchener and Wolseley had waged ruthless campaigns in Sudan and South Africa.

    “To some extent we can say that when these eminent representatives of British colonialism were not in Sudan, they were in South Africa, and vice versa, doing terrible things wherever they went, justifying what they did by defining the native peoples of Africa as savages that had to be civilised, even against their will.”

    The speech was made on New Year’s Day but the full text was made available in South Africa only this week.

    As an exile in Britain in the 1960s Mr Mbeki was educated at Sussex University and worked in the London office of the African National Congress.

    Once considered an Anglophile, his admiration for South Africa’s former colonial power seems to have been cooled by spats over the Iraq war and strife in Zimbabwe.

    ….

    Mr Mbeki said this attitude [exhibited by Churchill] conditioned the behaviour of British empire-building in South Africa, including the crushing of the Zulu people and the scorched earth policy and concentration camps of the Anglo-Boer war.

    He was in Sudan after attending last week’s signing in Kenya of a peace accord between the Khartoum government and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement .

    He visited Darfur, where Khartoum is accused of massacres and ethnic cleansing.

    Mr Mbeki said he had seen the “challenges” in the region, and he thanked the government for cooperating with the African Union and moving towards peace and reconciliation.

    South Africa’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, said the speech was a missed opportunity to press Khartoum to rein in the Janjaweed militias.

    “Mollycoddling the Sudanese government is hardly appropriate in the face of its failure to put a stop to the Janjaweed terrorism,” he said.

    Douglas Gibson, a party spokesman, said: “It amazes me that President Mbeki feels that he should insult the memory of the greatest Briton by associating him with British colonial policy of 120 years ago.

    “All this in order to create some superficial similarity between Sudan and South Africa.

    “There is no similarity at all. South Africa has a liberal democratic constitution … Sudan is a country which is hardly governed and where the Arab north dominates the African south and west.”

    And just what was Mbeki’s beef with ol’ Winston? Simply this:

    As a young man Churchill served in Africa as an army officer, he was colonial secretary in 1921-22, and wrote articles and books about the continent.

    Mr Mbeki quoted a passage from The River War, Churchill’s account of Kitchener’s campaign in Sudan, which described shortcomings in “Mohammedanism” – Islam.

    It said: “Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.

    “The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

    “A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.”

    Winston Churchill — though not perfect, right so many times in history about so many things. And as right today as he was then about the state of the Islamic world.

  • Gadhafi Denies Grooming Son to Succeed Him

    I’d advise all to take this with a grain of salt.

    Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi played down speculation that he is grooming his son to replace him, saying Friday that succession by family members is not part of his North African republic’s political makeup.

    “There is no succession in the (Libyan) republic’s regime,” the 61-year-old Gadhafi said when asked during an interview on the Arab Al-Jazeera network whether his son, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, will succeed him.

    Since staging a 1969 coup, the elder Gadhafi has run Libya with an iron fist, outlawing all forms of opposition under the guise of handing power to his country’s 5 million people.

    But in recent years, speculation has mounted that Gadhafi has been providing his 32-year-old son with highly visible duties, such as negotiating the release of hostages, in a bid to prepare him for leadership.

    While Seif al-Islam, one of Gadhafi’s eight children from two wives, has previously rejected talk of any future succession, his father has rarely gone public to play down the notion.

    Gadhafi also renewed his criticism of what he described as a lack of Arab unity in the Middle East.

    “The relationship between Libya and Italy is one thousand times better than its relations with Egypt, its sister,” he said. “Relations between Tunisia and Germany are a thousand times better than its (Tunisia’s) relations with Libya.”

    But when asked about the latest diplomatic rift between his country and oil-rich Saudi Arabia, Gadhafi responded by saying “there is no problems at all between the two countries.”

    Last week, Saudi Arabia announced the withdrawal of its ambassador to Libya and asked the Libyan ambassador to leave the kingdom in response to U.S. claims that Libya had plotted to assassinate Saudi de-facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah. Libya has dismissed the charges as false.

    I find it interesting that Gadhafi is so happy to publicly rip relations with his Mideastern brethren. As I’ve said before, I believe that he sees our war against Islamist terror as an opportunity to greatly increase his position in the Arab world.

  • Tsunami Update

    Latest counts of the devastating casualties:

    Summary: Tsunami Deaths by Country

    Ways to donate:

    Earthquake: How to Help [Updated Extensively 12/29]

    Also, please check out the map created by elgato at the Swanky Conservative for a look at the geographic immensity and human tragedy of the disaster.

  • Tsunami Map

    Elgato over at the Swanky Conservative has put together this map showing the devastating effects of this weekend’s violent quake and resulting tsunami. Mouse over the countries for the tragic details, which elgato appears to be updating as new info becomes available.

  • U.S. Tells Summit Landmine Cut Planned

    The U.S. released a surprise statement to the international landmine summit in Nairobi, promising to ban its usage of anti-personnel mines by 2010 … almost.

    The world will have to wait until 2010 before the United States of America bans the use of anti-personnel landmines.

    This is the message the military superpower sent to the delegates attending the first review conference of the anti-personnel Mine Ban Treaty held in Nairobi.

    In an unsigned press release distributed to the delegates, the US statement said between now and 2010, the possible use of persistent anti-personnel landmines will be restricted only to “our security treaty obligations in South Korea and any possible use outside that country will require presidential authorisation”.

    The US announced it had increased its mine action budget by 50 percent over the 2003 levels for a new total of $70 million per year.

    This is a wise maneuver, showing a willingness to cooperate against an international menace, yet still both retaining an out in case of need and maintaining a realistic view of the weapon’s current role as a deterrence on the Korean peninsula.