How Do You Deal?

[worldwidemike]

My opinion, based on my own reading of the UN involvement in Africa, and particularly the Congo, is that the UN is often more of a problem than an aid. The UN mission back in the 60s with Congolese independence was a sham, and they ended up being hated by the Congolese people and leaders.

Essentially, the UN operates on the principle of committee and compromise. It must water down all of its initiatives and decisions to avoid the objections of fringe member states. So, when a problem needs a hot dose of boiling oil, for example, all the UN seems to be able to cook up is luke warm bath water. Essentially, it needs to appoint its commanders in the field with more power (and especially, combat resources) than it does now. They need to be free from political micromanaging. To put it in blunt terms, its peacekeeping forces need a shot of testosterone. It sends out hamstrung, underpowered forces to deal with bloody, vicious rebel groups. These quickly realize they are dealing with weaklings, and thus, UN power and positions get no respect.

So, in my opinion, the UN will end up being of little use in solving this latest political crisis. What is needed is a private military company along the lines of Executive Outcomes, which stabilized Sierra Leone twice. A good read for this is Al J. Venter's recent book, "War Dog: Fighting Other People's Wars." PMCs (private military companies) can do the job at a fraction of the cost that UN initiatives could, and do the job more efficiently and more thoroughly. Of course, who would pay for them? Giving them a cut of the mineral wealth of the host nation would be abhorrent in the eyes of the UN and politically correct leaders of the world...

Sadly, I think all we can do is what Canadian Bacon says: Shake your head sadly and be thankful you do not live there.

Stay safe, Rhine!

worldwidemike

[Vanvan]

Oh how i wish people could just argue without any threat of war.It affects us all in one way or the other.

[voyd]

Originally Posted by MeTurk

That's what I thought, Africa's got loads of steel doesn't it? They've been doing shows on UK tele saying how cars are now worth more as scrap than a usable car due to steel prices going up. I doubt the Chinese would have such great interest in Africa if it didn't have something worth exploting. I'm sure they've got loads of natural energy sources as well, it's also a wonder Africa hasn't been exploited as a space port either, the continent has the most land mass around the equator.

I think it's more minerals like cobalt and columbite-tantalite (used in consumer electronics), than steel.

And yes, the only interest the US (or anyone) really has in the region is minerals. And actively keeping all other countries' (particularly China's) hands out of "their" cookie jar!

If France was the covert target of US ‘surrogate warfare’ in 1994, today it is clearly China, which is the real threat to US control of Central Africa’s vast mineral riches.

In fact, as various Washington sources state openly, AFRICOM was created to counter the growing presence of China in Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, to secure long-term economic agreements for raw materials from Africa in exchange for Chinese aid and production sharing agreements and royalties. By informed accounts, the Chinese have been far shrewder. Instead of offering only savage IMF-dictated austerity and economic chaos, China is offering large credits, soft loans to build roads and schools in order to create good will.

Dr. J. Peter Pham, a leading Washington insider who is an advisor of the US State and Defense Departments, states openly that among the aims of the new AFRICOM is the objective of ‘protecting access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources which Africa has in abundance . . . a task which includes ensuring against the vulnerability of those natural riches and ensuring that no other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan, or Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment.’

In testimony before the US Congress supporting creation of AFRICOM in 2007, Pham, who is closely associated with the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, stated, ‘This natural wealth makes Africa an inviting target for the attentions of the People’s Republic of China, whose dynamic economy, averaging 9 percent growth per annum over the last two decades, has an almost insatiable thirst for oil as well as a need for other natural resources to sustain it. China is currently importing approximately 2.6 million barrels of crude per day, about half of its consumption; more than 765,000 of those barrels — roughly a third of its imports — come from African sources, especially Sudan, Angola, and Congo (Brazzaville). Is it any wonder, then, that . . . perhaps no other foreign region rivals Africa as the object of Beijing’s sustained strategic interest in recent years. Last year the Chinese regime published the first ever official white paper elaborating the basis of its policy toward Africa.

Among Nkunda’s demands was that Kabila cancel a $9 billion joint Congo-China venture in which China gets rights to the vast copper and cobalt resources of the region in exchange for providing $6 billion worth of road construction, two hydroelectric dams, hospitals, schools and railway links to southern Africa, to Katanga and to the Congo Atlantic port at Matadi.

Personally, I think it's better for Africans to decide on their own who they choose to deal for the best deals with, though. I mean, who are former slave traders and colonialists to tell them what's "best" for them?