THE FOURTH WORLD / USA (APNS) -- Corporate news agencies are reporting that President Barack H. Obama has announced to the US Congress the deployment of nearly 100 combat-equipped troopers and various special-operations ‘advisers’ to central Africa with the goal of wrestling power from an indigenous Christian Ugandan guerrilla force known as the Lord’s Resistance Army and its claimed spiritual leader, Joseph Kony.
The Lord's Resistance Army, or movement, is an ethnic-driven, anti-government indigenous insurgency that began in 1987 with the goal of unseating current Ugandan head-of-state Yoweri Kaguta Museveni who gained political power after the ousting of the Okello regime following the 1981-1986 Ugandan Bush War (or ’Luwero War’). An outgrowth of the Holy Spirit Movement, (HSM) the LRA claims to support the establishment of a religious based state government and social system incorporating Christian religious principles and ethnic Acholi cultural traditions they say are rejected by the current government structure. The guerrilla organisation has been accused by outside observers as a particularly violent band guilty of numerous human rights violations including, but not limited to, sexual assault, rendition, collective punishments levied against civilians, the torture of captives and the forceful conscription of youths for deployment as field combatants.
In a letter dispatched to congressional representatives, Mr. Obama articulated the necessity for US force as a means to ‘...assist African forces in the removal of [LRA leader] Joseph Kony and the leadership of the LRA from the battlefield’. Earlier this year the United States reported that it would provide remote-controlled aircraft technology and other military ‘assistance’ to the Ugandan and Burundi governments as part of a foreign aid package rumored to amount to as much as 45 million USD.The US president, a ‘winner’ of the Nobel Peace Prize, dutifully raised the widespread violence attributed to the LRA as a conscientious justification for the further escalation of US military involvement on the continent. Interestingly, this decision comes at a time when the United States is directly engaged in military entanglements within several nations, including the strongly ambiguous neo-colonialist occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many dissenting international observers are questioning the logic, the necessity and the substantial cost of such an action and appropriately raise the severe and strongly contested domestic financial crisis being played out on the streets of the US and the rest of the capitalist world as a reason not to engage in any additional international conflicts. Although most mainstream news agencies are willing to feature this story without criticism, the independent news service, Democracy Now! has reported that the African nation’s Lake Albert basin has been found to contain significant petroleum reserves estimated to produce up to 6 billion barrels for the benefit of the global energy market.
They also report that industry researchers have suggested that this may be the most lucrative in-country find of African crude in more than twenty years. Further, there is widespread speculation that Uganda’s recent economic association with Iran may also have spurred this most recent US action as the two countries have openly sought to develop an economic relationship based on Uganda’s oil production. In 2009 President Museveni met with Iran’s leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to discuss a co-operation agreement that includes financial assistance for an oil refinery in Uganda and state-sponsored training for its personnel in Tehran. 2011-10-19 01:30:30 / Staff Writers / Inteligenta Indigena/Aboriginal Press News Service (APNS)
--
Sources:1) Luis Ramirez: ‘Obama Deploys Troops to Central’. 18 Oct. 2011. <http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/central/Obama-Deploys-Troops-to-Central-Africa--131895118.html>2) Goodman, Amy: ‘Democracy Now! | Headlines for October 17, 2011’, 18 Oct. 2011. <http://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/17/headlines>3) Haywood, Eddie, and Alex Lantier. "US Deploys Special Forces Troops to Central Africa." World Socialist Web Site. Web. 18 Oct. 2011. <http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/oct2011/ugan-o17.shtml>
No comments:
Post a Comment