02/05/13 – Rob Prince – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, and our next guest is Rob Prince.
You might remember we spoke with him I think about a year ago or so about Somalia.
And I remember thinking, wow, this guy really knows a lot about Somalia.
Good.
Well, here's his bio.
He's a lecturer of international studies at the University of Denver's Korbel School of International Studies.
And he's from New York, but he lives in Colorado.
And he's got a blog called Colorado Progressive Jewish News, which is at robjprince.wordpress.com.
And you can also find him, of course, at Foreign Policy in Focus.
That's fpif.org, fpif.org.
Welcome back to the show, Rob.
How are you?
Oh, I'm doing pretty good.
How are you, Scott?
I'm doing great.
So I was very pleased to see that you'd written about Algeria and Mali, and it wasn't just recycling what everybody else was saying.
And everybody else, I mean, like, I don't know, seven or eight people in the Western world who know anything about this.
So go ahead.
I mean, part one here, the in ominous fiasco.
You want to start with, you know, the background of the war in Algeria?
Go right ahead, please.
We got about half an hour.
We have a half an hour.
All right.
I'd like to work backwards, if you don't mind, and start just talking about the situation in Mali.
Is that all right?
And then everything kind of can flow from there.
Sure.
I mean, actually, yeah, that's the way I would have preferred to start.
But I thought maybe you'd just like to go by the article.
Well, thank you.
In fact, if we're going to start with today, let's start with today.
Last I heard, the Islamists, the Tuaregs had already melted away, kind of, and gone home for now.
And the Islamists were being run out, and McClatchy was reporting at least rumors that the Tuaregs and the French were going to make a deal at the expense of the Islamists.
And they've been reduced to planting some homemade landmines and running for their lives.
What do you say about that?
Well, you've got the party line down pretty good.
I'm just telling you what I read in the paper, not what I know.
Right, right, right.
Well, first, let's deal with it on two levels.
The Malayan level.
The problems in Mali have been going on for a very long time.
And there are problems that you see in many other African countries, i.e., one ethnic group is in power.
Those that are not in power have a rough deal.
In this case, the ones that have a rough deal are the peoples in the north, Tuaregs.
The term Tuareg, Tuaregs are basically part of the larger group which are referred to as Berbers, and they have a long history in the region.
And Tuaregs are what they used to be were the caravan folk who went across the Sahara Desert from the Niger River up to the Mediterranean coast with gold and salt and slaves, whatever.
Anyhow, the Tuaregs are a people that are similar to, let's say, the Palestinians or the Kurds, in that when modern borders were made, those borders cut through their traditional territories and left them with very little in all of the different states.
So this is true of Mali.
So in Mali, in case they're in the north, they've been neglected, to put it mildly, kind of the oppressed minority.
And the result of which has been is every few years they rebel.
They've rebelled six times since the 1980s.
The rebellions are crushed, and as soon as they have the energy, and sometimes even when they don't have the energy, they rebel again.
So what's going on in Mali has got this long history, and the essence of resolving the Malayan situation is not that complicated.
Some kind of attention given to the northern poorer areas and to the legitimate demands of the Tuareg people.
Okay, so now we're in this new round, and we have the collapse of Gaddafi in Libya and the extension of all these weapons that have been going on through the region, plus the fact that some of the Tuaregs were in Gaddafi's- actually, they were on both sides in the Libyan army.
But the result is a flow of weapons into northern Mali at a time when the regime in Bamako, the center, is in crisis and there's a coup d'état.
So it opens up the door for the Tuaregs to rebel again.
But this time they look for allies, and unfortunately the allies that they find are these militant Islamist groups.
Two of them, in fact.
One, Al-Qaeda of the Maghreb, which we could talk more about later, and then a split off of Al-Qaeda from the Maghreb.
What happens in the rebellion, as is well known, the rebellion seizes a good part of the northern regions of Mali, and then as the rebellion progresses, the Islamic fundamentalist groups basically ax out the Tuaregs and leave them nowhere and take over, and then we have the usual kind of dumb excesses of Salafist, Wahhabist types in Timbuktu and elsewhere.
That gives the French the possibility of intervening.
But actually what happened was France didn't, at least initially what it appears, is they did not want to intervene or they didn't want to intervene by themselves, and they wanted the Algerians to do it.
And they wanted the Algerians to do it, and the United States wanted the Algerians to do it.
A lot of pressure was put on the Algerians.
Clinton's visit, Hillary Clinton's visit to Algiers, the several visits on the part of the Afrikan head, Carter Ham, and basically what they were saying, look, we want you to go in, we want Algeria to go in.
Essentially, the connection with Somalia is this.
The United States wanted Algeria to do in Mali what it got Ethiopia and Uganda to do in Somalia, and the Algerians refused.
The Algerians refused not because they're such nice guys, because they're not a military dictatorship under the surface, but one could say that the leadership, the way I would put it, is they're smart thugs, and they've kept their repression, which has been really fierce, domestically, i.e. they've been very careful not to get involved in African politics outside of Algeria very, very much.
They did it once with Polisario in Western Sahara, and they got a bloody nose from it.
So they're cautious about such things, and they refuse to go in.
Well, this created this really weird situation, and who jumps into the fray?
Who becomes, as I call them, kind of the Israel of North Africa, but France.
And, of course, the French president says, well, we're going in there.
We have no interest whatsoever, blah, blah, blah, which is a bunch of hooey.
The Sahara is a very important area for France.
Uranium, gold, oil.
The uranium, at this point, is not being mined in Mali, but it's being mined right next to Mali, in Niger.
And one of the fears was that if things got out of hand in Mali, that it could spread to Niger.
And one of the uranium mines in Niger, big one, run by a company called Avena, A-V-E-N-A, which is one of the largest nuclear companies in the world, uranium mining companies, whatever, French company.
So there was fear on their part that this could spill over and French interests could be hurt.
Thus, the French intervention.
The French intervention is completely self-serving.
And, you know, I don't know.
If I was in Timbuktu when French troops came in, I might have cheered, too.
You know, what the Salafists were doing were the usual nonsense.
But the notion that France is going to leave soon, what we're going to see in that region is, number one, an increased French military presence, whether it's in Niger or in Mali around Timbuktu.
I bet money on that.
The other thing is, who's piggybacking on that but AFRICOM?
And AFRICOM, what it looks like now is the beginning of a deal between the Niger government and AFRICOM to increase the AFRICOM's presence there.
I know this stuff begins to get a little confusing.
So just for people listening, Niger is just to the east of Mali.
And in the minds of people of the region, you know, the border is not very important for many of them.
So a U.S. presence in Niger is almost a U.S. presence in Mali.
So that's where it stands.
It hardly looks like everything is going to work out well and the French are going to withdraw.
And we're just seeing part of the increased militarization of Africa.
I cannot cheer for what's going on in Mali, and I cannot cheer for the French military presence there.
It only makes things worse.
So that's an earful.
I don't know if you want me to go on and talk about where Algeria comes into all this at this point, but I can.
Well, let me see.
I'm taking notes, and I already had some things to ask you about, but I want to see if any of what I'm thinking is worth following up now or just wait.
I guess go ahead and talk about the background in Algeria.
You described the dictator, I don't know his official title there, of Algeria.
He's backed by the U.S., but not necessarily a loyal sock puppet.
As you said, he refused to invade back last fall when Hillary flew there to demand it.
Let's talk about that.
First, it's an unusual alliance, the American-Algerian security alliance.
And why is it unusual?
Because for most of the last 50 or 60 years, Algeria has been considered this radical Arab country, always taking positions against the United States and the United Nations, support for the Palestinians, criticism of imperialism, etc.
On the tip of my tongue is blah, blah, blah.
The reason I say that is that's the public posture.
The private posture has been half a century of very close cooperation with the United States.
First in the energy sector, and there, who is it that the Algerians have been working with?
Well, the kind of Bush wing of the American ruling class.
So Bush, Cheney, Texas oil money, Halliburton, that kind of stuff.
That goes back to the late 1960s, and it never really ends.
So long-term economic relationship.
The security relationship begins at 9-11.
It so happens that the head of the Algerian security apparatus is called the DRS, which stands for what?
The Department of Research and Security.
But it's basically something that kind of, they're combined FBI, CIA, that kind of thing.
And the head of that, Medellin, happened to have been in the Pentagon on 9-11.
So we saw what happened.
And the very next day, he goes to, I don't remember if it was Cheney or Bush, with a list of 500 supposed al-Qaeda people in the Afghanistan-Pakistan area, where Algeria, for other reasons, had been and had a lot of intelligence.
This was the beginning of a great romance.
And it was a quiet romance, but it went on.
It included a number of mutual visits to Algeria, to the United States, by high-level security delegations, and increasingly improved relations, which flowered about two years ago into an open security alliance, with big meetings that were taking place in Algiers and here.
Okay, so things are looking good, and they're working together on, quote, the war on terrorism.
And then this stuff in Mali happens, and the United States tries to push Algeria into the fighting.
And Algeria refuses.
All right, now, what happened at this oil facility, Ain Amaras, in the Algerian Sahara, is not clear.
And I don't want to speculate about certain things that went on there until I have better information.
But I can tell you this.
What is clear to me is that Algeria hoped to use that particular incident to show how strong it was in the fight against terrorism.
Instead, the incident blows up in their face in a terrible fashion.
All these people get killed, both foreigners and Algerians.
And it's a real mess.
Instead of looking like they're the great force that can counter domestic terrorism, they look really bad, that they don't know how to deal with it.
And what's happening is quite serious, because for all the problems Algeria has, never, at least to my knowledge, never has an oil facility been attacked.
And, you know, they had this big civil war in the 1990s.
The oil and gas, natural gas industry wasn't touched.
So the fact that now it's hit sends reverberations throughout the region.
It's quite clear how the United States and France and England are using this.
They're using this to pressure Algeria again to send troops to Mali.
And they're also pressuring to try and have more influence over how Algeria conducts its security policy.
So that's still, in the aftermath of that event, that's still the big issue.
And the reason it's a big issue is because the area itself, the Sahara, is so enormous that it's really impossible for 1,500 or 3,000 French soldiers, supported by U.S. drones coming from wherever, to patrol the whole area.
So they want the Algerians to become involved in it.
At least what I know, the last few days, Algeria is still resisting.
And that's a good, you know, from where I'm sitting, that's good.
So that's what's happening, if you like, from what I could tell.
You know, the immediate situation.
We should withdraw ourselves a little bit.
We should withdraw ourselves a little bit because what's really going on is this long-term plan for the militarization of Africa in order to secure oil and natural uranium, rare minerals, whatever, and to do it in a way where the U.S. military imprint is not as great as it has been in the Middle East.
So it requires—why?
Because the United States, its strategic focus is shifting to Asia.
So what that means in Africa is it has to rely on other countries to help with its security situation.
And we see a couple of things that are emerging in this Smalley thing.
First of all, a clear alliance and division of labor between the United States and France.
They're cooperating.
Secondly is to try to get a local player that's strong, a strong military.
You know, we talk about democracy, but we really like these military thugs.
That's who we go after in terms of who we want as allies.
So to cultivate the Algerians that they'll play more of a role in our interests.
So with the French, it's working very well for the U.S.
With the Algerians, it's been a little bit more problematic.
That's the deal.
All right, now let me ask you a couple of things here.
First of all, what do you make of the reports, have you seen them, that some of the weapons recovered from the hostage-takers at that oil refinery there were Libyan government weapons?
It wasn't, like, leftover from Qaddafi's arsenal like the Tuaregs were using down in Mali, but guns and even uniforms supplied by the Qataris to the NATO sock puppets in that war.
All right, again, I want to look into the weapon transfers more carefully.
I have little doubt, my hunch is, on some level, who's providing money and arms to the radical Islamists.
Well, it's the same people that have been doing it in Syria and elsewhere.
It's the Qataris and the Saudis, for sure.
They're connected there.
But there's more to it than that, and one has to look at the role of the French.
The role of the French in Libya, and what role did the French play in encouraging some of these weapons transfers to Mali?
And at this point, what we have is not clear enough.
But I'm not satisfied with the explanation that it's only the Qataris and the Saudis that are providing the logistical and military support to these Salafist elements.
But we don't know.
It's very – what it looks like – what has the United States been looking for?
It's looking to open a second front on the war on terrorism.
It hasn't been able to find an Osama bin Laden type yet.
But it's looking for a kind of crisis.
I've seen people say Libya is not Afghanistan.
Well, of course it's not Afghanistan.
But they're trying to do – excuse me, not Libya, Mali.
But they're trying to do in Mali essentially what they did in Afghanistan in the sense of using a domestic situation that really does not need to be an international crisis to use that to exaggerate it, to exacerbate it in some ways, and then to use that as an excuse for long-term military intervention.
Well, and you know, the fun part of that is they're as blatant about it as the Republicans were 10 years ago about how, yeah, this is what we're doing, and we'll use any excuse that we need, and no one can stop us, and what are you going to do about it?
Yeah, that's what I thought.
It's the same old thing.
I mean, General Ham from AFRICOM announced that, hey, every group of guys with guns that I don't like in Africa are all connected to al-Qaeda by way of Somalia and Yemen.
How's that?
And not only that, because, you know, there's this kind of arc that goes from Mauritania on the Atlantic to Afghanistan and, you know, this al-Qaeda pipeline.
The logic that supports some kind of connection between what's going – some kind of concrete connection between al-Qaeda or Taliban in Afghanistan and what's happening in North Africa, this is the first myth about what's happening in North Africa.
There is no link.
So that didn't stop them.
There was no – there was – you know, they lied about Iraq.
They lied about Afghanistan.
So it's far away what American people know about Mali, you know.
So, yes, they had to create a pretext.
They have to exaggerate the threat, a threat which is – it's a threat to Mali for sure.
But it should – it's not even necessarily a regional threat.
It's a local and national conflict that they've blown up in such a way.
And, of course, once you have French troops on the ground, it becomes an international crisis for sure.
So it's kind of self – you know, from where I'm looking at it, they're looking for an excuse.
They found it.
It was – it really wasn't a very convincing excuse.
But look at – they haven't used a convincing excuse for the last 15 or 20 years for a major intervention.
So – and they find a way to portray it.
Once again, it's a humanitarian crisis.
It's really important.
Now, I'm sorry to interrupt here, but we're about to have to go.
Robin, I really want to ask you real quick about, you know, what you think of the state of the war.
It seems like – well, I don't know who all's party line this is.
But they say, you know, up in the north, especially the jihadists, they don't mind dying.
They're fierce fighters.
But the government of the south that's attempting to dominate the north, which they have their ethnic splits and whatever other splits too, language difficulties and whatever else, they don't really have the will or the capability, apparently, to do much fighting.
And I wonder if this is – you know, deliberate or not, this is the French policy, is fill a vacuum that no one else can fill in keeping this rebellion in the north down.
If they ever leave, then the south will lose control again.
And so, like in Afghanistan, we can't ever leave or we'll have another fall of Saigon thing.
We just have to keep staying and staying enduring forever.
Right.
The French – the French and Mali, what's the analogy?
It's Reagan going into Granada 30 years ago.
All right.
Oh, you think it would be that easy, huh?
I mean, we're talking about a couple of thousand Islamists or rebels, whatever they are.
It's a very small group that could be dealt with without difficulty.
The problem of the Malian army, you know, we've spent – we, the United States – billions of dollars trying to train these guys.
So first we train the army.
Then we also train the people in the coup who overthrew – through the government.
So one of the failures has been a failure of all this money that went into training this Malian military that can't function for beans.
But now the fact that it can't function that well becomes, of course, a pretext for continued French presence.
And where the French are, the United States is not far behind.
Absolutely.
Again, I want to emphasize this is a French-American operation that's taking place.
And yes, France has got the boots on the ground, but the United States is part of the planning.
Just – it's the repeat of what happened in Libya, more or less, more or less.
It's quite similar.
And we're seeing the development of a kind of a model of cooperation here.
They're just starting slowly instead of a bunch of chest-beating and yelling about it.
I guess Hillary Clinton did a little bit of yelling about it on her way out that, you know, she seemed to publicly differ with the president about just how dangerous this threat is.
Although I refuse to believe that the president is reluctant to do any of this stuff that he does, like announce a new drone base in Niger.
I mean, I guess if someone reported that that was insubordination and he never authorized that, I'd be happy to hear it.
But I don't think so.
You know what I mean?
Well, it's a new kind of – it's this high-tech – don't keep a lot of American boots on the ground because it'll be like Iraq, Afghanistan, but ultimately in the back of their minds, Vietnam.
So high-tech warfare.
Get others to do the fighting.
And then what's the result?
That people here in the United States won't know about it and won't care about it because the casualty rate is so low.
So, yeah, it looks like we're headed for more of a mess in Africa.
That's how it looks.
All right.
Well, it is neocolonialism.
The same thing as the old paintings of the British running around there or something.
So I guess maybe – well, like you were saying, the American people are so disconnected from it, they'll be able to get away with it.
They just keep on going.
That's what it is.
It's neocolonialism and it's a scramble for the wealth of Africa.
In the southern part, it's about the Congo, and up in the north in the Sahara region, it's Mali and uranium and stuff like that.
All right.
Well, listen, I'm sorry that we're all out of time, but I hope we can talk again.
In fact, I wouldn't mind catching up about Somalia.
It's been a little while since we had a good interview about that.
Sure.
Give me a call.
Okay, great.
Well, thank you very much for your time.
Appreciate it.
All right.
Bye-bye.
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