Discussing the crisis in Mali on Sahara TV on January 19, I noted that the U.S. created the conditions for instability in Mali and that the French are opportunists whose current military engagement in Mali is for selfish reasons. In part, the current destabilization in Mali is one of the immediate geopolitical consequences of the destabilization of Libya, in which the U.S. – and Western powers – was complicit.
The jihadists that have destroyed some of Africa’s richest
cultural heritage in Mali had not only been financed by the U.S. through the so-called
counterterrorism Pan-Sahel Initiative over the past 10 years. These jihadists
are also a creation of the U.S. and NATO involvement in Libya.
Ultimately, peace must come from the Malian people and not the
Jihadist or their Western financiers/militarists. As evident in the history of
French brutality, invasion, and exploitation in Africa, the country has
ulterior motives for its current military involvement in the crisis in Mali. The
Malian people and ECOWAS must push for the withdrawal of French forces. Peaceful
solutions to the crisis must come from within.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:
An African Solution to an African Problem: Omoyele Sowore of SaharaTV interviews Prof. Horace Campbell on the crisis in Mali.
Jan. 19, 2013
Omoyele Sowore: Professor
Horace Campbell is a noted peace and justice international scholar and a
professor of African-American Studies and political science at Syracuse
University in Syracuse, NY.
He has a book coming out which is called ‘Global NATO and
the Catastrophic Failure in Libya’ - the book will be out in March. Professor
Horace Campbell, welcome to Sahara TV. Let’s go into this directly.
What do you think is happening in Mali? Why is the world
suddenly interested in Mali and how do you think we got here because apparently
now France is bombing and there are troops over there and there have been a lot
of responses all over the world. People need to understand this and that is why
we have you on our show today.
Horace Campbell: Well,
I think your viewers should remember that it was two years ago that African
politics changed with the revolution in Tunisia and in Egypt. With these two
revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt we had counter revolutions in Libya. The
western financial speculators along with their army which is called the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization – called NATO – used the expedience of the
responsibility to protect to invade Libya and destabilize the country, creating
a situation with militia and eventually executing the president, Muammar
Gaddafi.
Mali and South Africa are two countries in Africa that have
a very strong civil society, … in Mali are organized at different levels: in
trade unions, in youth groups, students groups, women’s organization
cooperative, Islamic organizations and they have been active since 1992 to
change the political process in Mali. Now in the context where South Africa and
Mali have this tradition of people organizing to defend their livelihood, the
western countries are afraid of the potential that the ideas of revolution
- that came from Tunisia and Egypt –
that those ideas cascade and spread across Africa as they will and that there
is nothing to stop the revolutionary momentum because the revolution is calling
for one thing: The people of Africa want a better quality of life, the people
of Africa want the resources and wealth of Africa to change their standard of
living, the people of Africa want unity and reconstruction of Africa and the
people of Africa want peace. So if you listen to the Malian people - today the most
important Malian singer, a woman, {Fatoumata Diawara}
came out with a new song calling for peace and says that peace can come from
the people of Mali.
Now, here we have a
situation where the worst imperialist in relation to Africa for the last 180
years. France invaded Algeria first in 1830. France has been involved in a
brutal war against the Algerian people when they fought for independence.
France assisted in destabilizing Africa with the Congo. France has supported
military dictatorships all over Africa. How could France suggest to people that
they are in Africa to help Africa? That is something Africans will not accept.
However, Africans are put in a very difficult situation
because the jihadists who destroyed one of the most important cultural fences
in Africa – Timbuktu. These jihadists have been financed by the United States
of America for the last ten years under the so called Pan Sahel Initiative and
the United States of America with their African Command financed these
jihadists to overthrow Gaddafi. So Africans…caught in a trap, what do we do
against these jihadists?
Can ECOWAS send troops to fight beside France, which is a
bigger enemy than the jihadists?
These are real problems and these problems require priority,
organization and political mobilization for peace in Africa.
It cannot be short term and be driven by the Western
propaganda about what is going on in Mali.
Omoyele Sowore: Thank
you, Professor. You have just laid out what happened and how we got here, but
it is also important going forward, what would you suggest - with the kind of
leadership in Africa now, that led to the leadership in Tunisia and Egypt, the
kind of leadership we have in Nigeria that has been engaged in corruption and
looting of the common wealth … in several
African countries where there have been dictators and where they have refused
to allow the civil society, you mentioned, which exists in Mali and South
Africa to flourish. How do we trust these internal colonialists? Are they not
bigger enemies in some cases to Africa in some cases than even the western
countries who have financed and supported and sometimes helped them hide their
loot in their various vaults?
Horace Campbell: No
possibility. Most of these African exploiters that you have mentioned, they
would not be able to stand on their own two feet without the support of western
military and financial institutions. What we saw in the Congo in 1997, where
after 32 years Mobutu, who was supposed to be this strong person, collapsed
overnight. Now with the Mali situation I cannot be very simplistic. It is a
complex situation and as the French say, it is a complex operation. But that
complexity should have us not take our eyes of the number one question, which
is: This matter cannot be solved militarily, it has to be solved politically by
the organization of the people of Mali to isolate these people and ECOWAS must
come in to support the people of Mali and we must call for the withdrawal of
French troops in Mali. That is the bottom line. ECOWAS must be the main force
and in my view this attempt by France to intervene in Mali is to lay the
foundation to bring the United States into a war to further militarize Africa
because France on its own cannot afford a military operation in Africa at this
particularly historical juncture. They have a financial crisis and for France
to continue fighting it needs the support of the European Union and the United
States of America – well, the European Union is bankrupt.
We have heard a telephone call between the French president
Hollande and the British Prime Minister Cameron that was very instructive. He
was calling on the British to give more support. The European do not have the financial or the
military wherewithal to intervene in Africa at this particularly moment.
Therefore they need the United States and the United States Africa Command but
the United States Africa Command created a condition for what we have seen in
Mali today. One: Half a billion dollars was spent in the last ten years on what
was called the Pan Sahel Initiative; Number Two: What’s happening in Mali is a
direct result of the destabilization of North Africa and the war in Libya.
Number Three: The United States African Command was discredited when its
ambassador was killed in Benghazi because it was allied with militias – the
same militias and jihadists that they are financing to fight in Syria - and the
United States African Command is under review, because progressive African
scholars are calling for the dismantling of Africom.
Now, if Africom and the United States get involved in this
war in Africa it will create a situation where we will have to mobilize even
greater in the United States of America and lastly, this is about Nigeria.
Nigeria is a giant and a powerhouse in Africa. The attempt by the Wahabi, which
are the conservative Islamists, to destabilize Nigeria is part of the plan of
imperialism to make Nigeria weak. They have failed so far. They may kill a few
people with what they call Boko Haram but the Nigerian people, since 1970, made
a commitment that there will never be another civil war in Nigeria that will
kill three million people and the Nigerian revolution which now requires
political organization, mobilization, education from the Nigerian people to
root out the corrupt elements in Nigeria is at the heart of the unification of
Africa, bringing one currency for Africa, one freedom of movement across
Africa.
So this invasion of Mali has complexities that we have to be
clear about and that is why we have to be tactical to say the United Nations
Security Council must call for the withdrawal of France from Mali and give
support to ECOWAS to fight the jihadists.
Omoyele Sowore: Prof
Horace Campbell that’s all the time we have for you but it’s important to
mention that you have struck at the heart of something that is important to us
on this show - you have said that Nigeria needs a revolution and looks like
they know that Nigeria is on the path to a revolution that will root out the
corrupt elements that have held Nigeria down and this can also be linked to
what we are saying now, maybe to slow down the momentum. I think it’s a very
deep and fundamental submission that you have made and we appreciate you coming
onto this show. We want to remind viewers that you have a book coming out -
Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya. It will be coming out in
March.
Thank you very much.
