Human Wrongs Watch
By Robert Lacville – TRANSCEND* – In 2008, George W. Bush authorized the creation of AFRICOM, the Pentagon’s African Command. Why?
**A retouched image of Seal of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM)
A paper written in 2002 by the influential, right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, proposed that the Pentagon should create a unified command structure to assure American interests in Africa.
“With its vast natural and mineral resources,” wrote Heritage Foundation, “Africa remains strategically important to the West, as it has been for hundreds of years, and its geostrategic significance is likely to rise in the 21st century.”
According to the National Intelligence Council, “the United States is likely to draw 25 per cent of its oil from West Africa by 2015, surpassing the volume imported from the Persian Gulf”, the study reported.
The interests of the USA could be assured, wrote the authors, by using local allies to fight American battles. Any objective observer analyzing wars in Congo, Somalia, South Sudan, Libya, and now in the Sahara Desert might conclude that the Heritage Foundation strategy has been put into practice with great success for the USA.
