Obama, the King of Africa

If US President Barack Obama really wanted to get rid of the new bogeyman of the moment, Joseph Kony of Uganda – a former altar boy turned mystical Christian prophet/politician with, reportedly, 60 wives – he would have ordered US Attorney General Eric "Fast and Furious" Holder to orchestrate a plot, subcontracting a crazy Iranian linked to a Mexican cartel as a hitman.

Plan B would be to have the UN tell the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to impose a no-fly zone over the heads of the "rebels" who follow Kony of the Lord's Resistance Army, and then NATO would simply bomb anyone who opposed Kony until everything and everyone was reduced to ruins.

Plan C would be to destroy the Army of God's Resistance with a fleet of MQ-9 Reapers, remotely controlled robotic aircraft (drones), although the nearest drone base is very far from Uganda (in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa).

But there were no Mexicans available, and in that case, the “rebels” are “the bandits.” So, Obama preferred the classic imperialist route: he pulled an Af-Pak and ordered, in the case of Uganda, an advance (with boots on the ground); he sent 100 Special Forces soldiers to rescue a corrupt dictator – President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda – and help him crush a handful of local “rebels” (but “bandits”) right there.

It's no mistake to see Uganda as an upside-down Libya: that's exactly what it is. The Ugandan dictator is "good" (one of "our sons of bitches"). Therefore, it's the "rebels" there who made a pact with the devil. Is that all there is to it?

I feel an urge to move forward.

The reality in Uganda is absolute, deadly chaos. As much as the “rebels” of the God's Resistance Army, the Museveni government (aided by Washington) also perpetrated the most horrific massacres of civilians. Kony is perhaps almost an amateur apprentice compared to President Museveni.

Museveni is the lifelong dictator who oversaw the displacement and mass murder of at least 20 Ugandans, as desired by some large British companies. Furthermore, Museveni rigged the elections in Uganda early last year.

Obama's "advance" in Uganda must be seen as a crucial quid pro quo with dictator Museveni – who sent thousands of Ugandan soldiers to join the African Union force fighting the hardline Islamists of the al-Shabaab group in Somalia. Thus, while Uganda wages a war in place of the US in Somalia, Washington helps the dictator rid himself of the "rebels" of the God's Resistance Army. It is no surprise that the Pentagon is so sympathetic to Uganda. Recently, Museveni received $45 million worth of weapons – including four small remotely piloted robotic aircraft and four small drones.

The Army of God's Resistance – a band of furious, hardline fundamentalist Christians – is based in northern Uganda, but is spread across four countries, including South Sudan and the Congo in Central Asia. They have no heavy weaponry. Therefore, they have no chance of destabilizing the Ugandan government – ​​and even less so are they a threat to US “national security.” The bogeyman Kony is probably hiding somewhere along the vast Sudan-Congo border, with a force that doesn't exceed the 400 fighters he has left.

The key to understanding the whole issue is that Uganda is a close neighbor of the newly created country, South Sudan. Up to now, for North Sudan, the God's Resistance Army has served as a useful armed barrier against Museveni, a Western puppet. But above all, this entire region is the stage for fierce competition between China and the US-Europe, centered on oil and minerals – at the heart of the 21st-century war for African raw materials.

Through control of the mineral kingdom.

One can thus see Uganda as a new land of opportunity. Ah! And the possibilities for humanitarian warfare are immense! To have any semblance of success, the first steps of Obama's African 'advance' will have to include a military base with a large runway and a mini-Guantanamo to detain the "terrorists." If it seems too good to be true, it's because it is: start considering the possibility of the Pentagon's Africom (African Command) headquarters going back in time and moving directly from Stuttgart, Germany, to some point in Ugandan territory.

Any first-grade student of realpolitik knows that the US doesn't engage in "humanitarian interventions" out of humanitarianism. The real name of the game seems to be, in fact, the first "advance" in Africon in search of precious minerals: extraction and mining. In Uganda – and nearby, in eastern Congo – there are fabulous quantities of, among other riches, diamonds, gold, platinum, copper, cobalt, tin, phosphates, magnetite, uranium, iron, gypsum, beryl, bismuth, copper, lithium, niobium, and nickel. Several of these are ultra-precious rare earth elements – of which China now has a virtual monopoly.

The race for African minerals is already one of the great commodity wars of the 21st century. China is in the lead, followed by Indian, Australian, South African, and Russian companies (Russia, for example, has already installed a gold smelter in Kampala). The West is leagues behind. The name of the game, for the US and Europeans, is to use every means necessary to undermine the myriad commercial businesses that China has already built throughout Africa.

And, as always, there's also the inescapable Pipeline-stan angle. There may be "several billion barrels of oil" in Uganda, according to Paul Atherton of Heritage Oil, part of a newly discovered oil field in sub-Saharan Africa, the largest ever found on land. This implies the need to build a 1.200 km, $1,5 billion pipeline to Kampala and the Kenyan coast. And there's another pipeline, starting from the recently "liberated" South Sudan. Washington wants to ensure that only the US and Europe have access to all this oil.

Obama, King of Africa

The Obama administration insists that the 100 Special Forces soldiers are “advisers” – not combat soldiers. Remember Vietnam in the early 1960s; it also began with “advisers” – and the rest is history. Now, the “advisers” are to spread from Uganda to South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This isn't even the first time this has happened. George W. Bush tried to do the same thing in 2008. It ended in a regrettable and complete disaster because of – and what else could it be? – corruption within the Ugandan army. Kony was warned and escaped before his camp was attacked.

Thus, on the surface, we have a lofty narrative of the first Black US president deeply disturbed by the “humanitarian crisis” in yet another African country, Uganda. It's perfect cover story, a front-page story, for Uganda, a British satrapy, to be converted into an advanced base for Washington to approach and plunge the knife into the heart of Islamic Africa.

The official press in Washington only repeats that the Army of God's Resistance “murdered, raped and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children” [1]. Compare this with the devastation perpetrated by Washington in Iraq over two decades: at least 1,4 million deaths, direct and indirect, millions of refugees, a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites still ongoing, and the western flank of the Arab nation virtually destroyed.

And compare this also with the thunderous silence of the Obama White House, while the racist “rebels” in eastern Libya wreak havoc, persecuting, torturing and murdering sub-Saharan Africans.

Africa has always fought against various forms of the great genocidal white master, always aided by various forms of black dictators/kleptocrats. And now, at the beginning of the 21st century, it faces a US president, a direct descendant of Africans, who has nothing better to offer than Special Forces soldiers, drones, a militarized "advance" armed to the teeth, and "humanitarian" intervention wrapped in pure lies and "media" hypocrisy.

Translators' note

[1] New York Times, 10/14/2011, in: Armed US Advisers to Help Fight African Renegade Group

Pepe Escobar is a journalist and correspondent for Asia Times Online.