US militarization in Africa: What anthropologists should know about AFRICOM

Abstract

While portrayed by the US as the rationalisation of its post‐Cold War global military command structure, AFRICOM is revealed as the culmination of a ten‐year thought process within the US Department of Defense, during which time Africa's strategic importance to the US has undergone several reappraisals as a result of the US's increasing need to secure African resources, notably oil; its global war on terror (GWOT) and China's growing investment on the continent. In the wake of 9/11, the US militarisation of Africa was justified in terms of its GWOT. However, this has become increasingly difficult as Africa, apart from the Maghreb and incidents in East Africa, has been relatively free of terrorism. Consequently, many of the ‘terrorist’ incidents in Africa, notably those in the western half of the Sahara‐Sahel, were either grossly exaggerated or fabricated. Far from bringing development and security to this part of Africa, as AFRICOM claims, the US's militarisation of this region over the last 5‐6 years (through its Pan‐Sahel Initiative, Trans‐Saharan Counter‐Terrorism Initiative and now AFRICOM) brought increased insecurity, repression, economic and social disruption, political destabilisation and ultimately armed rebellions to a hitherto relatively tranquil region. Since 2005‐6, the US has shifted its justification for the militarisation of the continent from the GWOT and counter‐terrorism to the more humanitarian security‐development discourse. This apparent paradigmatic shift, which presents AFRICOM as more benign than it really is, is part of the Bush administration's ‘information war’ and designed to mask the true purpose of Africom. The article explains the false premises on which the security‐development discourse is constructed, its serious consequences for the people of Africa and the implications that both this discourse and the way it is being used by AFRICOM have for anthropologists.