Africa as Battlefield
Source: Jacobin Magazine
The US is trying to win “hearts and minds” in Africa. It’s not going well.
Today, as the US military increasingly sees Africa as a “battlefield” against Islamist extremism, a significant number of its operations there have taken on the form of a textbook hearts-and-minds campaign that harkens back to failed US efforts in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and 1970s and more recently in the greater Middle East.
In Vietnam, the so-called civilian half of the war — building schools, handing out soap, and offering rudimentary medical care — was obliterated by American heavy firepower that wiped out homes, whole hamlets, and whatever goodwill had been gained. As a result, US counterinsurgency doctrine was tossed into the military’s dustbin — only to be resurrected decades later, as the Iraq War raged, by then-Gen. and later CIA Director David Petraeus.
Dr. Benjamin Dangl is the editor of Toward Freedom and a journalist focusing global politics and Latin American social movements. He has worked widely throughout Latin America as a reporter, and is the author of the books The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (AK Press, 2007) and Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America (AK Press, 2010). He has reported for a variety of publications including The Nation, The Guardian, The Progressive, Vice, and Al Jazeera. He teaches journalism at Champlain College and has a PhD in history from McGill University. Email: BenDangl(at)gmail(dot)com
