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.
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.