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06/03/2005:
"The New Scramble for the African Pie"
by Binay Kumar...The problem is that the British are past masters of the colonial game. And their approach to the 'new scramble for Africa' is camouflaged in heart-wrenching humanistic bravado. No such luck for the novices of neo-imperialism in America.
But American has not been sleeping on it. According to the highly-respected Le Monde, "The United States is turning its diplomatic and military attention to Africa, not just to the continent's oil and natural gas supplies (although these represent an important future contribution to US energy supplies) but to its metal and industrial diamond resources. It is quietly establishing military training and equipment links with a number of countries to secure future supply lines.
The US political and military interest in Africa has increased significantly in recent years. That is clear from Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit to Gabon and Angola in September 2002 (he spent just one hour in each) and from President George Bush's tour of Senegal, Nigeria, Botswana, Uganda and South Africa in July 2003."
The US military involvement in the African continent was next to nothing in the cold war years. Africa was the 'back of beyond', an expression so commonly used by Americans. No more; while Iraq, Iran and North Korea have hogged headlines last two years, Washington has deftly moved on several initiatives which can secure for them uninterrupted supplies of raw materials from Africa: manganese (for steel production), cobalt and chrome vital for alloys (particularly in aeronautics), vanadium, gold, antimony, fluorspar and germanium - and for industrial diamonds. And the insatiable US thirst for oil necessarily makes countries like Angola and Nigeria highly attractive for the likes of Chevron and Shell.
Can you not therefore genuinely ask if the Good Samaritan Sir Bob [Geldof] is unwittingly playing into the hands of the neo-imperialists? To quote Ms Clare Short, a long-time colleague of Tony Blair who quit his Cabinet in the wake of the Iraq war, "Debt relief and aid alone without really strong action to end conflict, arms supply, start building order, the basic institutions of a state, leave the poor outside the whole development system".
Full: hindustantimes
