As
millions suffer from hunger, disease, illiteracy and grinding poverty
in the Lake Chad region of West Africa, a sinister game of resource
extraction and exploitation is playing out, with geopolitics at the
heart of it all.
by
Eric Draitser
Part
6 - U.S. Military Empire Expands Elsewhere in Africa
Recent years
have seen other countries in sub-Saharan Africa struggling with
terrorism and in desperate need of “assistance” from the U.S.
While some might recall the January 2016 attack on a luxury hotel in
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso’s capital, few know that the U.S. uses
the country as a key node in its aerial surveillance and military
intelligence network in Africa.
As the
Washington Post reported in 2012:
A key
hub of the U.S. spying network can be found in Ouagadougou,
the…capital of Burkina Faso… Under a classified surveillance
program code-named Creek Sand, dozens of U.S. personnel and
contractors have come to Ouagadougou in recent years to establish a
small air base on the military side of the international airport. The
unarmed U.S. spy planes fly hundreds of miles north to Mali,
Mauritania and the Sahara.
Of course,
these examples only scratch the surface of the vast military and
surveillance architecture constructed by the U.S. in Africa over the
last decade or so.
With China
becoming an increasingly dominant economic force on the continent,
the U.S., France and other powers have moved to consolidate their
control over both the resources and politics of Africa through
militarization. The crisis in Lake Chad is just one of the sad
results of these efforts.
It would be
incorrect to say that the crisis in Lake Chad is entirely and solely
attributable to imperialist intrigue. It must be said that climate
change is also playing a huge role, as Lake Chad, once the largest
reservoir in the Sahel region of Africa, has lost roughly 80 percent
of its total area. The loss of portions of the lake has had a direct
negative effect on people’s livelihoods and access to water. This
has had the effect of driving desperate young men into the arms of
Boko Haram and other criminal groups.
Though the
circumstances may be complex, the Lake Chad crisis cannot be
fundamentally resolved without addressing the political and
geopolitical questions at the heart of it all.
There is a
certain dialectical irony in the fact that climate change helps fuel
the loss of Lake Chad which, at the very same moment, is being
exploited for its oil wealth. There is an almost tragicomic quality
to such a reality.
Sadly, it is
an all too painful reality for the millions of Africans who live it
every day.
***
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