All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest on the show today is Mark Sheffield.
He writes a great blog at policyonpoint.com.
Welcome back to the show, Mark.
How are you doing?
Good.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Welcome back.
Uh, I like this article.
The title is I drink your milkshake, checking the Chinese in Central Africa.
And, uh, I like how you have this big map of Central Africa, uh, posted here.
It reminded me of the old, uh, adage.
Someone probably coined it, but I'm not giving them credit.
Cause I don't know that, uh, this is how Americans learn geography.
It surely isn't in our government schools.
It's, uh, when we go to war and we have to figure out, well, where's the Central African Republic exactly?
Uh, that's how we figure out, uh, what shape the rest of earth looks like there.
So, uh, here we go.
I'm learning all about Uganda and Central African Republic, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo because Barack Obama has sent American troops there.
Do tell.
Well, I mean, I had to break out my map too, but, uh, yeah, earlier, mid, mid October, Obama announced to, uh, to Congress that he sent a hundred, presumably, you know, special for special operations advisors there to help combat some awful militia, right?
That's the, uh, terms that it's couched in.
Um, and so I guess the easiest place to start would actually be with the militia.
Um, yeah.
You really write up a great history of them here.
You've really done your homework, it seems.
Yeah.
Um, so, so they started off in the late eighties, um, as Moose Vaney, the president of, or dictator of Uganda came to power and, uh, there was a lot of pre-millennialist Christian groups, the ones that, you know, they want to usher in, um, a thousand years of rule by Jesus if he comes back.
Um, so there was this one group called the Holy, uh, Holy Spirit Movement, and this was led by some, uh, woman, Alice, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, but, uh, basically she was possessed by a spirit and raised this army and had pitched battles against the Spanish forces and eventually they tried to push on Uganda and got shattered by artillery.
Um, so all of these little splinter, splinter cells kind of fractured off.
And, uh, one of these was led by Joseph Coney and it became, uh, the LRA, what we, what we call the LRA today.
And these guys are horrible people.
I mean, don't get me wrong.
Uh, so, I mean, it's easy for Obama to come out and say, look, we're just going to go save some people.
Um, this is why we're doing it, blah, blah, blah.
Um, but if you just read up a little bit on them, it's pretty obvious that, uh, I believe is Pepe Escobar pointed out in the recent interview they used to have in 2003, 2,000, uh, combat troops and 3,000 support personnel.
And now they're down to about 400 combat troops and they have, right.
And they have no presence in Uganda.
Um, that comes from a congressional, uh, what is that?
Congressional service report, um, from July of 2011.
They have no presence in Uganda after, yeah, Musabini's pretty much pushed them out and they fled to the neighboring countries, South Sudan, Central African Republican DRC, um, have a theory about why you gone to got the headline.
I mean, they, when they put, gave the leak to a tapper, um, they did announce they were going into Congo, Central African Republican and South Sudan as well, but really it was us troops to Uganda was the headline.
You're telling me that the, uh, death cult.
So these crazies running around, uh, which is much smaller than it used to be, isn't even in Uganda at all at this point.
Correct.
Correct.
And you can look up maps of their, uh, most recent, you know, there's a, I believe it's a small arm survey.
They break it down at three month intervals and you can find maps of where they've attacked and where they think they are.
And it's always centered around, uh, this national park that's in this giant forest in Eastern DRC and it borders, um, uh, CAR, Central African Republic, and then right to the right of that, to the east is South Sudan.
So they kind of do cross border raids, um, all over that area.
Um, you know, not as much as they were in 2003, which may bring you to the question, why didn't we send them then, uh, if we cared so much about these people and saving them from these murderers, uh, why now, and once you start looking at some of the other things that have been happening in that region over the last few years, it kind of begins to take shape that we're not really there to, you know, ostensibly we're there to protect these people, but there are a lot of other factors, you know, and play here that should be considered.
So, I mean, I guess we could, I guess we could start in Uganda, um, 2006.
That's when they officially announced or TULO oil officially announced that they'd found oil there.
The proven reserves as of today, I believe are in the ballpark 2.5 billion barrels.
And as the exploration matures, I guess it could get up to, I think there's estimates of maybe 6 billion.
So, um, that, that's something that's important.
And also the splitting off of secession of South Sudan is also very important here because basically we knew that in 2011, they were going to have a referendum and we basically knew they were going to vote split.
Um, and that's important because I guess right now, Sudan as a whole puts out about half a million barrels per day, but most of that two thirds, if not a little bit more than that, all the oil deposits are in two thirds of the oil deposits rather are in South Sudan.
But they have no refineries and they have no pipelines except for cartoon system, that's Chinese finance.
So they have no way to get their oil to market aside from shipping it through Sudan or Sudan, I guess, North Sudan, Northern Sudan, um, via this pipeline to the red sea.
Well, now when it came to the Chinese development of those fields, were they working with, um, the, the southerners on that part of it, or they did all that under license from cartoon?
Well, has that changed?
Are the Chinese already getting kicked out since the secession a month or so ago?
Well, they don't have, they've never had a monopoly on the exploitation rights of the blocks in South Sudan.
Um, they have control over, over the transport infrastructure.
No, so there's already a bunch of Western companies and there's some Chinese, um, interest in South Sudan, as far as the companies that are getting the oil out of the ground.
But China owns the only way to get to market, which is more important to be, I mean, I think it's more important to control the infrastructure than it is to actually control the exploitation rights.
Um, so that, that is also a big thing.
And DRC, um, I'm a little bit more hazy on exactly where their deposits are, but I know it's a really, really resource rich country.
Um, you know, as Escobar pointed out, he rattled off, you know, a dozen or 20, uh, ultra precious minerals and whatever, uh, that the Chinese have a virtual monopoly over at this point.
And Uganda and DRC are both really, really rich in these resources.
And where the, uh, Ugandan oil deposits are is the Albertine basin by Lake Albert, which borders, um, which is in between, which is on the border of DRC and Uganda.
So they're, they're finding all this oil and, uh, Ugandan side of it.
And there's also exploration on the DRC side of it.
But then you get to the problem where, how are you going to get it to the ocean?
Right.
Um, and that's where, that's where I feel like this whole, you know, adventure in Central Africa is headed.
It's tried to get the stability of the region to a point where we can come in and actually build our own transport infrastructure, probably through Kenya.
So that's where, that's where we're at.
Um, you know, it just, just back to the point of if we were really trying to help these guys, just, just to kind of try to destroy the, uh, public reasoning behind it, just real quick, if we were really trying to help these guys, A, we would have done it back when they actually had a significant fighting force.
And B, we wouldn't be deploying them directly into an area where they have no presence.
It's only serving as a staging point.
Um, I mean, as they admit, they admit it's a staging point just because they say they're going to these other three countries.
But.
And also just tactically, they can't expect that they're going to have, what, some big battle in a field and wipe these guys out.
They're just going to melt away, take their rifles home for a little while anyway.
Right.
Exactly.
They've turned into a pretty classic guerrilla force, um, you know, hit and run tactics.
You know, they'll run and they'll jump across the border, hit a village, steal a bunch of children, force them to fight for them.
You know.
You really got to wonder, I do, uh, sorry to put words in your mouth.
I got to wonder whether the people at the Pentagon already are calculating that by invading, we're going to help this kooks recruitment.
We're going to end up trying to make as bad of an insurgency out of him and, and whatever other groups we can as an excuse to escalate in a medium term here.
Right.
Right.
And, uh, I'm sure.
I prefer to think they're too stupid to be that clever.
But then again, well, that's probably where it's at.
It is an escalation.
That's the main point.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, hold it right there, everybody.
It's Mark Sheffield.
The article is I drink your milkshake checking the Chinese in central Africa.
I'm not sure what that, what that's a reference to, but I think it's funny.
Anyway, a policy on point.com.
We'll be right back.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio and the invasion of sub-Saharan Africa is on.
And I kind of got to appreciate in a Ryan ironic and not really very funny kind of way that they're starting with just a hundred JSOC troops on the ground, a few advisors, you know, to prevent the communists from taking over the South.
And then it's just going to be on from here.
We can all see it coming.
And as 50 G in the chat room says, who didn't see all this coming back when they announced the creation of Africom in the first place?
Yeah, well, I mean, they, it's gotta be pretty embarrassing for Africom to have to be based out of DC.
They need a new home.
Well, maybe they'll get one in Libya as soon as they put the third infantry division on the ground there to prevent the guys that we put in power from staying in power.
Right.
Right.
Well, okay.
So I guess, I guess we can go back.
One of the scariest things about this whole deal is like you said, I mean, a hundred is really just a baseline and that number probably isn't going to go anywhere but up.
And one of the main reasons for that is A, because we don't really want it to go down.
We being the United States government and the LRA, there's plenty of vicious rebel groups in that region that are maybe not as bad, but just, you know, not great guys.
So if we do actually, let's say it's the best case scenario and we wipe these guys out, we can just interchange the LRA with whatever other rebel group we say is threatening civilians in the region.
So it's not like, it's not like we're just going to get out if we somehow have a pitched battle against the LRA where they actually square off against a modern military force, which they will never do in the first place.
But there's really, it's, it's just all pretense.
I mean, every, it's just going to escalate.
And I just think that, uh, I think the 100 is the baseline and it's just going to expand from there as we find more threats to fight.
Yeah.
Well, the proof of that is they said the other day, this is not open-ended.
We promise.
So it's open-ended.
Well, the weird thing is in Libya, you know, the, although I'm sure we, of course did have some special ops guys running around, whatever, but the whole political debate was around not putting troops on the ground.
You know, they were banning Obama from doing it before he really even tried to do it.
Um, and now he does it with no debate.
None of the, none of the Congressman care at all.
I know it's just a hundred and it sounds small, but it's more than we publicly put on the ground in Libya.
And that was made such a big deal out of.
It's just kind of strange to see no pushback whatsoever from anyone.
Yeah.
You know, they continue to crank up these precedents at an extraordinary rate here.
You know, it used to be, um, well, like in the first Gulf war, it was, well, one state invaded another former ally of ours, invading an ally of an ally of ours.
So we'll go ahead and you got to respect those international borders that at least sort of made sense according to their story anyway.
Right.
But then next thing they intervene in a civil war in the Balkans as a Yugoslavia is breaking up.
They intervene all over the place.
There are two or three different sides at different times.
And then, uh, with Iraq, the best they had was, well, he's just bad to his own people.
There's no civil war cause they don't even have it within them to rise up since we've starved them to death with sanctions for a dozen years in a row.
And so, uh, um, and all along, uh, you know, like in Kosovo, they went just with NATO because the UN wouldn't approve.
And, uh, they did the coalition of the willing in Iraq cause they couldn't even get NATO to approve.
And, uh, now, as you say, they go into Libya, everybody, there's a big, uh, you know, fewer even in among Republicans in Congress that he's violating the war powers act by even just using naval and air forces and, and, you know, I guess CIA and special forces in the thing.
And now here he puts ground troops in Uganda a couple of months later with no authority whatsoever, but his own, not even pretending to go to the United Nations or anyone for it.
And there's crickets.
I wish I could do the crickets like Bill Hicks.
You know, he did it so good.
Yeah.
I mean, it's amazing.
It really is.
Uh, and, and I've talked to a few people about this who are, you know, a little bit more hawkish than I am.
And, and I have to agree with him on one point.
There's no reason for us to want China to control the, you know, transport infrastructure for Africa.
Um, but is this best way to go about it?
You know, the Chinese, like, you know, like a lot of people have said, they go around making good deals.
The people, you know, what do you want?
You want four hospitals, you know, a big road and schools and everything.
Just give us some rights.
And we have to go in because we don't have the Chinese state backing and investment.
You know, our companies have to go to an insurance company and say, all right, give me a coverage quote on a pipeline and some war torn African country.
I'm going to get out of here.
But the Chinese state will eat the equivalent of whatever that cost will be in terms of insurance or security risk to their investments.
They're more of a command economy, so they have more freedom in making wild bets with regard to security.
Yeah.
Although, um, you know, uh, maybe with the private insurance part of it, but certainly the American oil companies, uh, as we see, they've got the joint special operations command and they've got all kinds of subsidies and guarantees, uh, by the American taxpayer, not least of which is our Navy, um, you know, overseeing the security of all of their shipments on the high seas.
How much is that saving them in insurance costs?
Very good point.
But that's how we have to, that's how the United States has to secure these deals is with the implication of military force.
Yeah, I'm not even sure it matters if the Chinese are the ones, well, to the American people, as far as our ability to get gas at the pump for a reasonable price or whatever.
Um, it's a liquid.
I mean, it's the most fungible resource of all.
It's a global marketplace for oil.
So who cares who's doing the pumping unless you actually hold the stock in Exxon or Texaco?
I mean, that's a good question too, but it's really the control over the ability to get it to market.
Um, we want to be able, you know, the Saudis have the oil gun to our heads.
Uh, well, we want to just be able to cut them off if it comes to it.
Right.
Exactly.
Exactly.
We want to be able to hold a gun to the Chinese head.
You know, they hold, they hold the economic gun to ours.
We want to be able to have some sort of, you know, pushback quality, but I mean, I don't know how successful it's going to be, but it's all, it's all just this, you know, geopolitical game in Africa.
And there's so many new finds in Africa that, you know, it's very undeveloped.
And I think that over the next, you know, 50 years or so, it's going to be a pretty interesting kind of economic war going on there between us and China and to a lesser extent, Russia and India.
Um, us meaning the Western powers, not specifically the United States.
Right.
But it's, I think it's going to be really interesting to watch because it's just going to be, it's a pre-for-all, you know, if you, this Mooseveeni guy, the Ugandan guy, he's no Spain.
He's not like, he's a great guy.
He, uh, the country is pretty split ethnically.
And the reason why all these rebel groups have been popping up since the eighties are because they know that the Akali people, I don't know if I'm saying that right either live in the North and the Bantu people who comprise two thirds of the population of which Mooseveenis apart control the government.
And they've been systematically marginalizing these people in the North.
So that's where the Holy Spirit movement came from in the eighties.
And that's where the LRA came from is this, uh, you know, that's what they publicly say they're fighting against their, the marginalization of their people.
And, you know, Mooseveeni has been putting them into camps and I don't know, it's just, it's not a good thing all around.
It's not like we're going in on the good side of a battle.
You know, we might be going on, on the least worst side of a battle, but yeah.
And, and even then it's a matter of, uh, you know, total power.
That guy, uh, you know, was it Coney?
The, the leader, he might be really bad if he was the actual dictator, but as the leader of a militia, he couldn't possibly be as bad as the dictator is.
Even if that guy isn't personally as sadistic as he, as he, this amount of authority that they have to wheel, that's really the question.
And you're right.
It's going to be interesting.
It's going to go on and on.
It's going to hurt like hell for a lot of Africans too.
I note that, um, in that Pepe Escobar interview that you referred to, he said that, you know, they announced these four countries, but, uh, anyway, at least best he could tell they hadn't gotten permission from the democratic Republic of the Congo.
They were just, they were putting troops in the Congo before asking whether it was all right.
I heard him say that.
Um, but when I read it before I even listened to that interview, I was kind of assuming that he already had some sort of, you know, handshake from these guys maybe.
Um, cause I don't see why they would, I don't know.
It's a pretty ballsy move to just come out and say, we're going to put troops in your country without even talking to him personally.
I'm not ruling it out, but I just kind of assumed that they had already had some little deal.
Um, because in dealing with the LRA, it's important to know, you know, you've gone in the DRC were vicious enemies for so long with almost 5 million people died in that war, I think.
And, uh, where you gone to occupied large parts of the DRC, but they've actually done joint, um, military operations against the LRA before, which is about the only positive thing that has come out of this whole mess is that these guys are at least working together against a common enemy, which is a, I think it's a positive thing for them.
At least it's a much smaller enemy that they're taking on than each other.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And we've already tried to take these guys out.
And, um, I think 2008, we sent JSOC troops in there with about 17 advisors, trapped them in the DRC.
And I wasn't aware of that.
I guess I'll have to follow that link in your piece here.
I didn't see it.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I'm sorry we're all out of time.
I got to let you go, but I really appreciate your time on the show as always, Mark.
All right.
Thanks a lot.
Mark Sheffield, everybody policy on point.com.
I drink your milkshake.
