U.S. President Joe Biden (center) at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit held Dec. 12-16 in Washington, D.C. On left is U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and on right is Senegalese President and African Union Chairperson Macky Sall / credit: The White House
WASHINGTON, D.C.—It was a meeting of Uncle Tom and Uncle Sam.
At least, that’s how African-led anti-imperialist organization Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) referred to the Biden administration’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit during a Dec. 16 press conference.
“Uncle Tom” is a euphemism for a person of African descent whose loyalty appears to be with their European-descended master. “Uncle Sam” is a nickname for the United States.
“Some people think that was somewhat harsh,” said BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka, moderating the press conference at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies. “We believe it reflects the character of that relationship. African leaders claim that they want to have respect, but it’s difficult to get respect when you allow yourself to be put in a position where you are summoned to the center of empire with a stick and a carrot.”
Some perceived a major deal that took place at the summit as an example of the subservient relationship many African countries have with the United States. On Dec. 13, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the U.S. government and the governments of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that would employ U.S. agencies’ technical assistance and financing support to mine for copper and cobalt. The goal is to help Zambia and the DRC develop an “electric vehicle value chain,” according to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The terms of the deal remain unclear.
He added the DRC possesses 70 percent of the world’s known cobalt reserves, though other sources estimate it at about 50 percent. Meanwhile, Zambia is the world’s seventh-largest copper producer, according to the U.S. International Trade Administration.
After the deal was announced, media outlets reported a Bill Gates-backed startup, KoBold, bought a $150 million stake to use artificial intelligence to search for copper in a Mingomba-based deposit owned by the Lumambe Copper Mine in Zambia.
“Converted to copper contained in electric vehicles, it’s like 100 million electric vehicles,” KoBold President Josh Goldman told the Wall Street Journal.
Blinken touted the deal as a way to combat the global climate crisis. However, the thirst for minerals to produce gadgets and electric cars has been linked to the 2019 coup of Bolivian President Evo Morales and 5.6 million Congolese dying in a war. That led the International Court of Justice to order Uganda to pay $325 million in reparations to the DRC.
“Non-governmental organization Global Witness reported in April that 90 percent of minerals coming out of one DRC mining area were shown to have come from mines that did not meet security and human-rights standards. Companies relying on minerals from such mines include U.S.-based Apple, Intel and Tesla.”
‘Uncle Tom Part and Parcel of U.S. Plunder of Africa’
To counter the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, various organizations pulled together events to raise public awareness. The African Peoples’ Forum held Dec. 11 in Washington, D.C., attracted a couple of hundred African-descended people for three panel discussions, two of which Toward Freedom published here and here. The Global Pan-African Congress held a “people’s intervention” on Dec. 10, while BAP organized a week of actions Dec. 12-16.
“The U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit was clearly set up to obscure the real U.S. role in Africa and give legitimacy to the continuing U.S. plunder of African resources, exploitation of African people and military domination of the African continent,” said BAP Mid-Atlantic member Khari Gzifa, as he read aloud an organizational statement at the Dec. 16 press conference.
BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley defended the use of terms like “Uncle Tom” and “Uncle Sam.”
“Do not rejoice just because African leaders gather in Washington,” she said. “The U.S. cannot cover up its many crimes […] the overthrow and murder of [first Congolese Prime Minister] Patrice Lumumba, coups against [first African-born Ghanian Prime Minister] Kwame Nkrumah, the destruction of Libya, the murder of its president. You cannot cover all of that up with a few days of receptions and photo opportunities.”
Samir Amin analysis of neo-colonialism with Frantz Fanon Critique of the National Bourgeoisie is so useful to understanding economic constraints on African nations today. pic.twitter.com/nIzvr8wqFU
Rafiki Morris, who represents the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party on BAP’s Coordinating Committee, said the summit wasn’t simply a meeting, but an indication of a partnership.
“Uncle Tom isn’t colluding with U.S. imperialism,” Morris said. “Uncle Tom is part and parcel of the U.S. plunder of Africa.”
Morris added no amount of attempting to appeal to U.S. Congressional Black Caucus members’ or African leaders’ conscience could work to transform their actions or, as he said, bring them over to “our side of the fence.”
“We now realize Uncle Tom helped build the fence.”
United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSCA) Force Commander commends readiness of Rwandan peacekeepers in Bangui in the Central African Republic on September 7 / credit: Rwanda Defense Force/Flickr
On July 9, the government of Rwanda said that it had deployed 1,000 troops to Mozambique to battle al-Shabaab fighters, who had seized the northern province of Cabo Delgado. A month later, on August 8, Rwandan troops captured the port city of Mocímboa da Praia, where just off the coast sits a massive natural gas concession held by French energy company TotalEnergies SE and U.S. energy company ExxonMobil. These new developments in the region led to the African Development Bank’s President M. Akinwumi Adesina announcing on August 27 that TotalEnergies SE will restart the Cabo Delgado liquefied natural gas project by the end of 2022.
Militants from al-Shabaab (or ISIS-Mozambique, as the U.S. State Department prefers to call it) did not fight to the last man; they disappeared across the border into Tanzania or into their villages in the hinterland. The energy companies will, meanwhile, soon start to recoup their investments and profit handsomely, thanks in large part to the Rwandan military intervention.
Why did Rwanda intervene in Mozambique in July 2021 to defend, essentially, two major energy companies? The answer lies in a very peculiar set of events that took place in the months before the troops left Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda.
Billions Stuck Underwater
Al-Shabaab fighters first made their appearance in Cabo Delgado in October 2017. For three years, the group played a cat-and-mouse game with Mozambique’s army before taking control of Mocímboa da Praia in August 2020. At no point did it seem possible for Mozambique’s army to thwart al-Shabaab and allow TotalEnergies SE and ExxonMobil to restart operations in the Rovuma Basin, off the coast of northern Mozambique, where a massive natural gas field was discovered in February 2010.
The Mozambican Ministry of Interior had hired a range of mercenaries such as Dyck Advisory Group (South Africa), Frontier Services Group (Hong Kong), and the Wagner Group (Russia). In late August 2020, TotalEnergies SE and the government of Mozambique signed an agreement to create a joint security force to defend the company’s investments against al-Shabaab. None of these armed groups succeeded. The investments were stuck underwater.
At this point, Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi indicated, as I was told by a source in Maputo, that TotalEnergies SE might ask the French government to send a detachment to assist in securing the area. This discussion went on into 2021. On January 18, 2021, French Defense Minister Florence Parly and her counterpart in Portugal, João Gomes Cravinho, talked on the phone, during which—it is suggested in Maputo—they discussed the possibility of a Western intervention in Cabo Delgado. On that day, TotalEnergies SE CEO Patrick Pouyanné met with President Nyusi and his ministers of defense (Jaime Bessa Neto) and interior (Amade Miquidade) to discuss the joint “action plan to strengthen security of the area.” Nothing came of it. The French government was not interested in a direct intervention.
A senior official in Maputo told me that it is strongly believed in Mozambique that French President Emmanuel Macron suggested the Rwandan force, rather than French forces, be deployed to secure Cabo Delgado. Indeed, Rwanda’s armies—highly trained, well-armed by the Western countries, and given impunity to act outside the bounds of international law—have proved their mettle in the interventions carried out in South Sudan and the Central African Republic.
What Kagame Got for the Intervention
Paul Kagame has ruled Rwanda since 1994, first as vice president and minister of defense and then since 2000 as the president. Under Kagame, democratic norms have been flouted within Rwanda, while Rwandan troops have operated ruthlessly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A 2010 UN Mapping Project report on serious human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo showed that the Rwandan troops killed “hundreds of thousands if not millions” of Congolese civilians and Rwandan refugees between 1993 and 2003. Kagame rejected the UN report, suggesting that this “double genocide” theory denied the Rwandan genocide of 1994. He has wanted the French to accept responsibility for the genocide of 1994 and has hoped that the international community will ignore the massacres in the eastern Congo.
On March 26, 2021, historian Vincent Duclert submitted a 992-page report on France’s role in the Rwandan genocide. The report makes it clear that France should accept—as Médecins Sans Frontières put it—“overwhelming responsibility” for the genocide. But the report does not say that the French state was complicit in the violence. Duclert traveled to Kigali on April 9 to deliver the report in person to Kagame, who said that the report’s publication “marks an important step toward a common understanding of what took place.”
On April 19, the Rwandan government released a report that it had commissioned from the U.S. law firm Levy Firestone Muse. This report’s title says it all: “A Foreseeable Genocide: The Role of the French Government in Connection with the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda.” The French did not deny the strong words in this document, which argues that France armed the génocidaires and then hastened to protect them from international scrutiny. Macron, who has been loath to accept France’s brutality in the Algerian liberation war, did not dispute Kagame’s version of history. This was a price he was willing to pay.
What France Wants
On April 28, 2021, Mozambique’s President Nyusi visited Kagame in Rwanda. Nyusi told Mozambique’s news broadcasters that he had come to learn about Rwanda’s interventions in the Central African Republic and to ascertain Rwanda’s willingness to assist Mozambique in Cabo Delgado.
On May 18, Macron hosted a summit in Paris, “seeking to boost financing in Africa amid the COVID-19 pandemic,” which was attended by several heads of government, including Kagame and Nyusi, the president of the African Union (Moussa Faki Mahamat), the president of the African Development Bank (Akinwumi Adesina), the president of the West African Development Bank (Serge Ekué), and the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (Kristalina Georgieva). Exit from “financial asphyxiation” was at the top of the agenda, although in private meetings there were discussions about Rwandan intervention in Mozambique.
A week later, Macron left for a visit to Rwanda and South Africa, spending two days (May 26 and 27) in Kigali. He repeated the broad findings of the Duclert report, brought along 100,000 COVID-19 vaccines to Rwanda (where only around 4 percent of the population had received the first dose by the time of his visit), and spent time in private talking to Kagame. On May 28, alongside South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, Macron talked about Mozambique, saying that France was prepared to “take part in operations on the maritime side,” but would otherwise defer to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and to other regional powers. He did not mention Rwanda specifically.
Rwanda entered Mozambique in July, followed by SADC forces, which included South African troops. France got what it wanted: Its energy giant can now recoup its investment.
Editor’s Note: The following is the writer’s analysis and was originally published byCovertAction Magazine.
Over the past few months, U.S. lawmakers, the Afghan government, and the international community have called on Washington to stop strangling the Afghan economy as its people continue to suffer from a U.S.-created humanitarian crisis. On December 22, the Biden administration effectively rejected those calls, opting instead for half-measures that will do little to counter the effects of stringent economic sanctions imposed on the Taliban or to improve the material well-being of the Afghan people.
Sanctions in Context
Contrary to the narrative of U.S. politicians and journalists, the August withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan did not mark the end of the United States’ so-called “forever war” but rather a shift in U.S. policy—from direct military intervention and occupation to one based on economic sanctions and indirect political subversion. Although the tactics changed, the goal is the same: The accumulation of wealth and power through class warfare against the Afghan people.
Just days after Kabul fell to the Taliban on August 15, Washington took measures to turn off the flow of funds to the new government and paralyze the Afghan banking system. The Treasury Department quickly issued a freeze order on nearly $9.5 billion of the Afghan Central Bank’s assets held in U.S. financial institutions, including the New York Federal Reserve Bank.
Although the Taliban was entitled to receive more than $460 million from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in currency reserves known as Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, the U.S. directed the IMF to block those funds as well.
President Biden has also ensured that $1.3 billion of Afghan funds held in international accounts remain frozen, including funds denominated in euros and British pounds and those held by the Swiss-based Bank for International Sanctions.
Notably, these punitive measures are in addition to the pre-existing economic sanctions that the U.S. has imposed on the Taliban, which began in 1999 under President Bill Clinton and which President George W. Bush ramped up following the 9/11 attack as part of the U.S.’s newly created counterterrorism sanctions program, known as the Specially Designated Global Terrorist list. The Obama and Trump administrations followed suit by imposing over 100 and 23 sanction orders, respectively, against Taliban-related targets.
Despite purported exemptions for humanitarian aid, the lack of clarity under U.S. law deters financial institutions from processing such transactions out of fear of violating U.S. sanctions—which not only freeze all assets associated with the Taliban; they subject any individual or entity that conducts a transaction involving the Taliban to criminal liability. The ubiquity of U.S. dollars and financial institutions in international commerce provides the U.S. with virtually globaljurisdiction.
Children in Afghanistan in 2020 / credit: UNICEF Afghanistan/Omid Fazel
Horrific Consequences of Sanctions
Decades of U.S. occupation and war have left Afghanistan a poor country dependent on external sources to fund public spending. No longer able to rely on brute military and political force to protect the interests of Western capital in Afghanistan, U.S. strategists understand that seizing the central bank’s money and cutting all international aid gives Washington powerful leverage against the Taliban, all while inflicting maximum pain on the Afghan people, who continue to be relegated to “starving pawns in big power games.”
The horrific and totally foreseeable consequences of these sanctions have, so far, been well documented by international humanitarian organizations, even if they are reluctant to depict the United States as culpable.
On October 25, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program published a report urging humanitarian assistance, warning that Afghanistan is on a “countdown to catastrophe.” According to the report, more than 50% of Afghans will face “crisis” or “emergency” levels of acute food insecurity, including over 3 million children under the age of five.
On November 22, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) published a report warning that Afghanistan’s financial and bank payment systems are “in disarray” and on the verge of collapse. The UNDP report, citing the IMF, predicts the Afghan economy could contract by 30% for 2021-2022.
On December 6, the International Crisis Group issued a more scathing report, warning that the “hunger and destitution” caused by “economic strangulation,” imposed by the West in response to the Taliban takeover, could “kill more Afghans than all the bombs and bullets of the past two decades.”
In other words, U.S. policy of intentionally starving the Afghan people through economic sanctions on Afghanistan is going as planned. As manypredicted, blocking funds from the Taliban and curtailing foreign aid and assistance would lead to a rapid financial meltdown and exacerbate the ongoing famine plaguing Afghanistan.
U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad (left) meets on November 21, 2020, with a Taliban delegation in Doha, Qatar / credit: U.S. State Department
U.S. Retaliates for Taliban’s Military Success
Despite the Taliban’s success in forcing the U.S. government to the negotiating table in Doha and then ousting the U.S. military from Afghanistan, or rather, because of that success, Washington has made it clear that it has no plans to respect Afghanistan’s sovereignty. Indeed, the Biden administration’s response to pleas that the asset freeze be lifted demonstrates the hypocrisy and callousness of U.S. foreign policy.
On November 17, as reported by Tolo News, Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi, Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, sent a letter to the U.S. Congress calling for the return of Afghan assets, correctly noting that “the fundamental challenge of our people is financial security, and the roots of this concern lead back to the freezing of assets of our people by the American government.”
The U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan, Thomas West, rejected the Taliban’s request in a series of revealing tweets. West’s remarks effectively admitted that the dire situation pre-dates the Taliban takeover and confirmed that the United States was preventing “critical” international aid from reaching Afghanistan as retribution for the Taliban’s military success, while recognizing that Afghanistan’s “economy [is] enormously dependent on aid, including for basic services.”
Further, in a fashion typical of bourgeois idealism, which values words and appearances over substance and material reality, West condescendingly lectured the Taliban that “[l]egitmacy and support must be earned” and confirmed that the United States would consider lifting the murderous sanctions if the Taliban only learned to “respect the rights of minorities, women and girls.”
The irony of Washington’s position of respecting humanitarian rights by denying humanitarian aid was not lost on Muttaqi, who, in response to West’s tweets, questioned the tortured logic: “The U.S. froze our assets and then told us that it will provide us humanitarian aid. What does it mean?” Muttaqi reiterated the demand to release Afghanistan’s assets: “The assets should be freed immediately. The Americans don’t have any military front with us now. What is the reason for freezing the assets? The assets don’t belong to the Mujahideen (Islamic Emirate) but to the people of Afghanistan.”
In tacit acknowledgment that the state needs legitimacy to stabilize its rule, the U.S.-driven humanitarian crisis has prompted members of Congress to ask the Biden administration to reconsider certain aspects of its sanctions policy in light of the dire warnings issued by the UNDP and World Food Program.
On December 15, a bipartisan group of 39 lawmakers wrote a letter to the State and Treasury departments calling on the Biden administration to “allow international financial institutions to inject the necessary economic capital into Afghanistan while avoiding the transfer of money to the Taliban-led government” and designate a “private Afghan or third-country bank” as a central bank. The lawmakers also recommended, among other things, the release of the $9.5 billion of Afghan assets—but only if sent “to an appropriate United Nations agency” and only if used “to pay teacher salaries and provide meals to children in schools, so long as girls can continue to attend.”
On December 20, a group of 46 lawmakers led by House progressives wrote a similar letter to President Biden, explicitly linking the “U.S. confiscation of $9.4 billion” of Afghan assets to “contributing to soaring inflation” and “plunging the country…deeper into economic and humanitarian crisis.” Although the House progressives struck a harsher tone, they made the same requests as the December 19 letter, urging President Biden to allow Afghanistan’s central bank to access its reserves, consistent with proposals by “[c]urrent and former Afghan central bank officials appointed by the U.S.-supported government” and supported by “private sector associations such as the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Investment and the Afghanistan Banks Association.”
This congressional pushback, tepid as it is, also reflects an inherent tension in the U.S. use of sanctions: While economic warfare is a necessary tool of U.S. foreign policy, sanctions are not always good for business in the short term. Afghanistan had been a source of wealth for the imperialist bourgeoise for the past two decades, and now certain sectors of the capitalist class apparently want back in.
Still, the Biden administration has shown no sign of easing the sanctions. In fact, the Biden administration is considering permanently depriving the Afghan people of the funds needed to combat the current humanitarian crisis, by transferring those funds instead to U.S. plaintiffs with outstanding default judgments against the Taliban. That is what two groups of judgment creditors have argued to U.S. federal judges. (Those cases are captioned Havlish et al. v. Bin-Laden et al., No. 03 Civ. 9848, and Doe v. The Taliban et al., No. 20 Misc. 740, and are pending in the Southern District of New York before Judges Daniels and Failla, respectively.)
Although its formal statement is not due until January 18, the Biden administration seems willing to go along with the plan—the only apparent obstacle is how to seize the Afghan funds without recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate Afghan government. Press Secretary Jen Psaki has twicecited that ongoing litigation as the primary reason for maintaining the asset freeze.
Following its imperial playbook, the U.S. sanctions imposed on Afghanistan are aimed at destabilizing Afghan civil society, making daily life so unbearable that the Afghan people eventually blame the Taliban for their misery, providing the United States and its proxies an opening to enact regime change.
Similar to sanctions imposed on Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Nicaragua, and many others, the sanctions on Afghanistan are having their intended effect, which is to deprive the masses of essential goods and services as punishment whenever a government refuses to surrender its nation’s resources and sovereignty to the demands of U.S. and European capital.
Now more than ever, those in the imperial core must demand the end of U.S.-imposed sanctions against the Afghan people and oppressed people all over the world.
Zachary Scott is an attorney, activist, and member of Black Alliance for Peace Solidarity Network and the Sanctions Kill coalition. He can be reached at [email protected].
A panel of environmental and human rights activists acted as judges in a People’s Health Tribunal organized by African communities impacted by the operations of extractive corporations Shell and Total Energy. Supported by organizations like Medact, We the People, the People’s Health Movement, #STOPEACOP, and others, they found the corporations guilty of harming the health of people across Africa. Nnimmo Bassey, Jacqueline Patterson, Kanahaus Manuel, and Dimah Mahmoud condemned Shell and Total’s activities, stating that they were “extremely harmful to the livelihoods, health, right to shelter, quality of life, right to live in dignity, quality of environment, right to live free of discrimination and oppression, right to clean water, and right to self-determination.”
This edition of the People’s Health Tribunal was built as activists witnessed extensive greenwashing by the oil and gas industry at COP 27 in Egypt last year. In response, they became even more determined to support the struggles of communities in Africa who are affected by the corporations who attempted to gaslight the public at COP 27.
However, governments in the Global North, where most extractive corporations have their headquarters, still choose to ignore the destruction caused by these industries. In 2022, Shell made a profit of $40 billion, while Total Energy ended the year with US$36 billion in profits. These profits came at the expense of the health and lives of people living in regions where these corporations operate.
Uprooting Set the Ground for Total’s LNG Operations in Mozambique
Decades of exploitation of African land have resulted in devastating consequences, including air pollution, water contamination, deforestation, violence, land grabbing, and forced migration. People in the Niger Delta and Mozambique experience these things daily. Omar Elmawi, who provided an overview of Total’s impact on Mozambique communities, emphasized that in the current situation, “everyone loses, except Total.” Elmawi said he believed that African countries must take control of their own resources and development to make sure that justice is restored.
In Mozambique, Total Energy’s plan to construct an onshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility led to the displacement of hundreds of families dependent on farming. Total’s plans also decimated traditional fishing activities, leaving people destitute. Instead of providing the uprooted communities with adequate living conditions and compensation, the company’s plan resulted in people being left without shelter, living in refugee camps, and exposed to violence.
At the same time, pointed out Elmawi, the company was not shying away from tax evasion, bleeding even more resources out of the country and leaving Mozambique without necessary means to build essential infrastructure.
Similar experiences were echoed by activists from Uganda and South Africa, who bore witness to the baleful behavior of Total Energy and Shell in the face of the communities which they so violently entered. The testimonies also highlighted the environmental impacts being shouldered by the same communities, as floods and storms regularly devastate local food production.
Shell Operations in the Niger Delta
Shell has been furiously extracting resources in the Niger Delta for over 60 years, attracting more companies to exploit the region due to its rich reserves. Videos from villages in the Niger Delta clearly show oil contamination of water sources, while Shell ignores the grievances raised by the communities. With Shell’s arrival, people’s health deteriorated, in addition to the environmental devastation caused by oil and gas extraction. People began suffering from previously uncommon diseases, including blindness, respiratory problems, and kidney disease, according to one of the testimony-givers.
However, the people of the Niger Delta aren’t asking for charity or pity; they are determined to fight for justice and see Shell restore the land it has devastated. In the light of that, Shell’s announcement of divesting from operations in the Niger Delta is seen as inadequate by community members. They view it as an attempt to evade responsibility for the damage caused over the years. After all, they pointed out, Shell would not be giving up on their business—they would be simply selling their assets to someone else.
The judges stressed the need to establish infrastructure for a reparative justice process to achieve true reparation for affected communities. They also called for Shell and Total Energy to halt all plans for expanding existing fossil fuel extraction sites, implement a permanent moratorium on exploring new sites, and cease supporting violence against communities through military, paramilitary groups, or private security forces.
In order to achieve that, it is necessary to constantly bear witness about the destruction caused by extractive corporations. By doing that, the people who spoke about their experiences during the People’s Health Tribunal showed extreme courage and deserved respect, said Nnimmo Bassey. “Staying alive and speaking out is the best we can do,” he said.
People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by thePeople’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and to subscribe to People’s Health Dispatch, clickhere.