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The US or those who for their own convenience work under that flag, are encroaching on the African continent by seeking a major military presence. The same architects move forward, following in the steps of their previous pseudonym, the "British Empire", but with even deadlier purpose.
AFRICOM was nurtured by U.S. European Command. In 2002 the then U.S. Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, proposed the creation of a NATO Rapid Response Force (NRF), which was approved by NATO defence chiefs in Brussels in June 2003 and inaugurated in October 2003. In 2006 Rumsfeld followed up on that initiative by forming a planning team to establish a new Unified Command for the African continent.
The top military commander of EUCOM is simultaneously NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and the two generals holding those joint positions during preparations for forming and activating AFRICOM were Marine General James Jones (2003-2006) and Army General Bantz John Craddock (2006-June, 2009). The first is now National Security Adviser to the U.S. president.
Its creation signalled several important milestones in plans by the United States and its NATO allies to expand into all corners of the earth and to achieve military, political and economic hegemony in the Southern as well as the Northern Hemisphere.
Before the official inauguration of AFRICOM, analysts around the world sounded the alarm that beneath the innocuous-sounding claims by Washington that it was solely interested in becoming a security partner to African nations lurked something more geostrategically significant. And more sinister.
Its area of responsibility includes 53 nations - more than any other U.S. military command.
EUCOM includes 51 nations, among which are 19 new nations emerging from the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and the reunification of Germany.
The Pacific Command (PACOM) incorporates 32 countries.
Central Command (CENTCOM) currently includes 20 nations in the "Broader Middle East".
Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) covers 32 states, 19 in Central and South America and 13 in the Caribbean, of which 14 are U.S. and European territories.
The beginning of AFRICOM's second year has witnessed major military exercises on the western and eastern ends of the continent.
Worries persist in Africa that the Pentagon intends to station large numbers of US troops on the continent, despite denials by Africom's leaders.
The reason for the heightened American military role in Mali and Niger was mentioned in a Reuters' dispatch of 2008:
"...The stakes are rising. We've got companies, beyond gold exploration (Mali is Africa's third largest gold producer), wanting to explore for oil in northern Mali....There has been significant interest by investors wanting to explore for oil in Timbuktu (and other northern towns)... If oil is eventually discovered, that could of course play a role.....AFRICOM's mission in the region, as with much of the rest of Africa, is to wage counterinsurgency campaigns to secure vital resources including gold, precious stones, oil, natural gas and uranium.
A Middle Eastern website put together several components of AFRICOM's plans in rendering the following analysis:"The United States is taking its military venture in Africa to new levels amid suspicions that Washington could be advancing yet another hidden agenda. American operatives are expected to fly pilotless surveillance aircraft over (Seychelles) territory from US ships off its coast... Washington has also started to equip Mali with USD 4.5 million worth of military vehicles and communications equipment, in what is reported to be an increasing US involvement in Africa.
"The developments come as the White House seeks grounds to establish a major military presence in Africa... Analysts caution that similar pretexts were used to justify the US invasion of Afghanistan, the missile attacks in Pakistan, and its waning military operations in Iraq, where the civilian population continues to bear the brunt of the US intervention."
It was also reported in a feature titled "US to make Blackwater-style entry into Somalia:
"The grounds have reportedly been established for armed American presence on Somali soil with a US security firm (Michigan-based CSS Global Inc.) winning a contract in the war-ravaged country.
The development was characterised as follows:
"Washington has been (increasingly) deputising the companies, which are notorious for misusing their State Department-issued gun licences as excuses for trigger-ready atrocities. The move has been denounced as an effort at putting a non-military face on the US pursuits in the respective countries."
The following comments are from Nigerian, Algerian and Chinese sources, respectively:
..."From the current data on production capacities and proven oil reserves, only two regions appear to exist where, in addition to the Middle East, oil production will grow and where a strategy of diversification may easily work: The Caspian Sea and the Gulf of Guinea.
The Caspian Sea came into the limelight after the demise of the Soviet Union, and the US has since entered the region and built up a strong military presence on both sides of the lake.
Some of the problems linked to Caspian oil give the Gulf of Guinea a competitive edge.
Much of its oil is conveniently located off shore.
The region enjoys several advantages, including its strategic location just opposite the refineries of the US east coast. It is ahead of all other regions in proven deep water oil reserves, which will lead to significant savings in security provisions. In addition the necessary drilling technology is easily available from the Gulf of Mexico."
"A major focus of AFRICOM will be the Gulf of Guinea, with its enormous oil reserves in Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Angola and the Congo Republic... The U.S. is already pouring $500 million into its Trans-Sahel Counterterrorism Initiative that embraces Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria in North Africa, and nations bordering the Sahara including Mauritania, Niger, Mali, Chad and Senegal.
By building a dozen forefront bases or establishments in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and other African nations, the U.S. will gradually establish a network of military bases to cover the entire continent and make essential preparations for docking an aircraft carrier fleet in the region.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with the U.S. at the head... carried out a large-scale military exercise in Cape Verde, a western African island nation, with the sole purpose for control of the sea and air corridor of crude oil extracting zones and to monitor the situation with oil pipelines operating there.
(The US) is also seeking to set up small military facilities in Senegal, Ghana and Mali, so as to facilitate its interference in the oil-rich African nations...The African Command represents a vital, crucial link for the US adjustment of its global military deployment.
At present, it moves the gravity of its forces in Europe eastward and opens new bases in East Europe.
Africa is flanked by Eurasia, with its northern part located at the juncture of the Asian, European and African continents. The present US global military redeployment centres mainly on an arc of instability from the Caucasus, Central and Southern Asia down to the Korean Peninsula...
AFRICOM facilitates the United States advancing on the African continent, taking control of the Eurasian continent and proceeding to take the helm of the entire globe."
The third set of observations is from a director of the Chinese Army's Academy of Military Sciences. That is, from an authority expected to be familiar with world geopolitical dynamics and trends. He situates America's military drive into Africa, all of Africa, within an integrated global context.
"The campaign to subjugate an entire continent with its more than one billion inhabitants to Western military and economic demands is an integral and milestone component of broader designs around the world. Starting with the Balkans and Eastern Europe as a whole after the breakup of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S. and its NATO allies have relentlessly pursued plans to penetrate and dominate the former Eastern bloc, former Soviet space, the Broader Middle East, the Arctic Circle and Greater Antarctica and to reclaim and solidify control of Latin America and Oceania.AFRICOM and complementary NATO initiatives are an exponential advancement of the campaign by the West to reassert and expand global supremacy by targeting a continent at the crossroads of north and south, west and east, and the industrial and the developing worlds. .... it is also the meeting place of three continents and the Middle East with coasts on two of the world's oceans and three of its seas.