In recent months, two western ruling
groups have suffered defeat in
the elections.
Although it is not the
culture of Africans to talk about
other people’s “houses” (internal affairs
of other people), I feel compelled
to comment on the events in the USA,
Britain and Hungary in recent times
because they are somehow connected
with Africa and the Middle East.
In the month of June, our friend David
Cameron suffered a defeat in the
UK in a Referendum as to whether to
remain in the EU or not.
In the month
of October, the Government of Hungary
called a Referendum against immigration
to the chagrin of elements of
the elite in Europe where the voters rejected
the refugee policy of the EU and,
recently, Mr. Trump won the election
in the USA against our longtime friend,
Hillary Clinton.
Although Hillary won
the popular vote, Mr. Trump won the
Electoral College vote.
That is their system
which we must respect.
Although there are other reasons
that we outsiders cannot easily know,
there is one factor that has turned into
a curse for the perpetrators.
This is the
factor of conducting wars of aggression
against Sovereign States that are,
moreover, members of the UN.
In the
last 16 years, since the attack on the
twin-towers, in New York in the year
2001, the USA and the other western
countries have attacked Afghanistan,
Iraq and Libya.
Of these wars by the
West against Independent and Sovereign
States, two were clearly wars of
aggression; they were unjust wars.
It is only the war in Afghanistan that
was a just War because some confused
group, called Al-Quaeda, intoxicated
with religious chauvinism, had carried
out aggression against the USA.
It was
correct that the USA responded and
dislodged the Talibans and their allies,
Alquaeda, from Afghanistan.
We all
supported this.
It is the other attacks that were
wrong and unjust. These were the attacks
on Iraq and Libya. In the case of
Iraq, it was said that they had weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, biological
and chemical).
In the end, those
weapons were not there. In any case,
who is supposed to have the weapons
of mass destruction and who is supposed
not to and why?
Why doesn’t
the world concentrate on getting rid
of those dangerous weapons rather
than waging wars to maintain monopoly
over those criminal and cowardly
weapons? Why do some countries
want to maintain monopoly over those
criminal and cowardly weapons?
In
the case of Libya, it was because Gaddaffi
was about to launch a counter-attack
to recapture the City of Benghazi
in an internal civil war. It was to “protect”
the “people” against the “regime” ─ the same imperialist arguments that
were used in the last-but-one century
(“spreading civilization”, etc).
Cameron
was about to add Syria to the list,
when the UK Parliament rejected his
efforts in 2013. In the end, these wars
of aggression against Sovereign States,
have generated human catastrophes that
have few equals in the history of the world.
I, certainly, did not know
that there were 1.5 million Christians
in Iraq ( 2003 ). Since the 2003 Iraq
war, Iraq Christians have been relocated
to Syria. Currently, apparently,
there are 275,000 Christians in Iraq;
500,000 Yazidis in Iraq; 2.9 million
Christians in Syria, etc.
Until the recent upheavals in those
areas, these Christians and Yazidis
were living in these areas.
The authoritarian
regimes of the area notwithstanding,
those groups were living
there quietly.
Hundreds of thousands
of refugees started heading for Europe.
In the USA, there was talk of allowing
in the Syrian refugees. Both the movement
of refugees into the EU and the
talk of them coming to the USA, generated
a backlash from some of the
locals, not without justification.
With
different and conflicting cultures, big
infusion of refugees into countries,
can, in the long run, create conflicts.
In Uganda, we allow refugees from
Africa because they are part of the
Bantu, Nilotic or Cushitic communities
that are already part of Uganda.
In
fact, you cannot easily tell the difference between these African refugees
on the one hand and the Ugandans on
the other.
Middle Eastern and African
groups flooding into Europe and the
USA, could have a different impact.
Cynically speaking, though, the
USA and EU should not complain
about Africans and Arabs flooding into
those countries as refugees.
They are
the ones that had invaded our countries
as imperialists, in the first place.
The USA was built by African slaves.
Be that as it may, the promoters of
attacks in the Middle East and North
Africa, provoked a human exodus
that has caused the backlash bringing
down Mr. Cameron and Mrs. Clinton.
Although immigration is not the
only reason that brought down those
groups, it is certainly one of them.
The
question then, is: “Were these deliberate
imperialist designs or were they
just mistakes?”
The Western countries
and Africa need to scrutinize this issue
and come up with correct answers.
When I was in Germany in the
month of June, journalists from the
Newspaper Die Spiegal asked me the
following question: “Last year, 1.3 million
refugees came to Germany, mainly
from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan,
but also from Africa.
Many believe this
is only the beginning of an exodus to
Europe. What do you suggest to stop
this wave of migrants?” I answered the
questioner that I could not answer that
question at that time. I knew that it
was a delicate problem for people like
Mrs. Clinton who had been involved
in the attack on Libya that had turned
into such a disaster.
I am now released
from that obligation. That is why I have written this missive.
The present African leaders are,
however, also co-guilty in this matter.
We should never have allowed external
powers to attack any part of the African
soil without our permission. I had
fought Gaddafi two times: 1972 and
1979. I needed no lectures on the positive
and negative points of Gaddafi.
However, to allow the former colonial
countries to attack any portion of Africa
without a response from us, was
betrayal.
To be fair to the African leaders,
one could say that we were taken
by surprise. Even me, I did not believe
that Western leaders could be so reckless
as to do what they did in Libya.
However, attack Libya, they did.
What is the contingency for the future
and how do we rescue Libya? We recently
had a meeting in Addis Ababa
and told all and sundry that AU intends
to rescue Libya and we also made it
clear that future attacks on African soil
without coordinating with AU are not
acceptable, to put it mildly.
Can Africa
defend African soil? Very much so. In
the 1960s, a few frontline States Tanzania,
Zambia and Botswana supported
by the socialist countries and working
with the Liberation Movements
in the occupied African countries,
defeated Portugal in Mozambique and
Angola, Ian Smith in Zimbabwe and,
eventually, the South African racist
regime which had manufactured nuclear
weapons to intimidate us, as well
as its colonial government in Namibia
(SWA).
All these colonial dictatorships
(in Angola, Mozambique, Rhodesia
Zimbabwe, Namibia SWA and
South Africa), were either supported
or encouraged by some of the Western
countries.
The other countries that stood with
the Liberation Movements were Algeria,
Egypt and Guinea-Conakry; even
Nigeria, under the Military Government,
took a patriotic position.
Africa
today, the weaknesses notwithstanding,
is much more capable than we
were in the 1960s. The problem is lack
of consistent unity. Lack of cohesion is
Africa’s problem. When the USA was
still young, in 1823, one of their Presidents,
James Monroe, in order to shield
the Americas from the rapacious European
countries, promulgated the
Monroe doctrine which stated: “Further
efforts by European nations to
take control of any independent state
in North or South America would be viewed as ‘the manifestation of an unfriendly
disposition toward the United
States’.
At the same time, the doctrine
noted that the U.S. would recognize
and not interfere with existing European
colonies nor meddle in the internal
concerns of European countries”.
The AU needs to put out a “Monroe
doctrine” of sorts to all and sundry.
Otherwise, the present African leaders
will have let down Africa like the pre-colonial chiefs did between 1400
and 1900 when the European imperialists
slowly penetrated Africa while
these chiefs could not unite to defend
us against the slave trade and colonialism.
Before the Western countries killed
Gaddaffi, Libya, in spite of its small
population of only 6 million people,
had the second biggest amount of
electricity in the whole of Africa after
South Africa and was becoming a big
source of investments for the rest of
Africa as well as a market for African
products.
Hundreds of thousands of
Africans were also working in Libya
during that time.
The destruction of
Libya has also led to terrorist groups invading
Mali, Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger,
etc.
Why should Africa tolerate such
disruption on her territory caused, in
part, by foreigners? That was one reason
Uganda intervened in Somalia. We
could not tolerate the importation of
the Middle Eastern nonsense of intolerance,
allegedly on “behalf of God”,
into Africa.
We had to let those confused people
know that Africa has its owners, the
Africans. The same message needs to
be sent to the Western aggressors. Our
Lord’s Prayer says in part:“Thou shalt not lead us into temptation but deliver
us from evil”.
Africans should not
tempt greedy or confused foreigners
into the temptation of interfering with
us by being weak.
I cannot end this missive without
talking about the foreign agents that
masquerade as freedom fighters.
This
is a subject I talk about with alot of
authority. Freedom fighters do not
need foreign fighters to fight for them.
They fight for themselves. Who fought
for us? Genuine Revolutions do not
need foreign invasions. Who caused
the Russian Revolution in 1917? Who
caused the victory of the Chinese
Revolution in 1949? Who caused the
changes in the Soviet Union? Who has
caused the recent Trump victory in the
USA? Which foreign actors caused the
victory of the Brexit vote in the UK?
Who caused the Iranian revolution
in 1979? Did foreigners cause these
changes? Not at all. On the contrary,
the foreigners, in the majority of them,
tried to stop these changes but failed.
Therefore, the adventurism of some
groups in the West, should not be camouflaged
as fighting for freedom.
Many of the stooges of foreign interests
or local oppressors spend alot of
time looking for foreign sponsors rather
than looking for ways of how to reconcile
with their own people.
That is
the litmus paper test for pseudo-freedomism.
Authentic freedom fighters
will sustain themselves even if they
do not have external support. They
certainly do not need foreign troops.
Pseudo freedom fighters, on the other
hand, are always calling for foreigners
to interfere in their affairs.
It is a vote of no confidence in oneself
to call for foreigners to fight for
you? It is, therefore, wrong for foreigners
to eagerly rush into local situations
in support of local stooges or opportunists.
Those foreigners become part
of the problem and not part of thesolut ion. Local factions should be encouraged
to reach compromise rather
than getting foreign sponsors to suppress
and ignore their domestic rivals.
Anyway, for now, the adventures of
the Western countries into North-Africa
and the Middle-East, have caused
human disasters in those target areas
but also political casualties in
the countries of the aggressors, not
to mention the nationalist backlash
against “Western liberalism”.
“Whatever
a man sows, that is what he will
reap”, it says in the Book of Galatians,
Chapter 6, verse 7.