NOBO a Journal of africanamerican diialogue C O P S St T H E P S Y C H O L O G Y O F R A C I S T V I O L E N C E N O B L O O D S F O R O I L I . . . S I S T E R S A N D B R O T H E R S A G A I N S T U . S . I N T E R V E N T I O N W A R A T H O M E A N D A B R O A D SUMMER 1991 VOLUME I ISSUE II $3.95 T H E G U L F W A R , A F R I C A N S AND THE NEW WORLD D I S O R D E R by Horace Campbell F or most Africans the war in Iraq was a race-war - a war of the rich against the poor and the North Against the South. Peace loving persons of the World were shocked by the fact that the President of the United States prolonged the war so that American pilots could drop cluster bombs on a retreating Iraqi army five days after the government of Iraq had worked for a ceasefire and declared its willingness to withdraw from Kuwait. The 43 days of air and ground war had been launched despite the fact that the Iraqi government had expressed its willingness to negotiate its with drawal from Kuwait. This war killed hundreds of thousands of people, not only Iraqi soldiers but also civilian non-combat ants. The United States and "allies" in the more than 100,000 bombing raids against the people of Iraq used fuel air bombs, that were near nuclear in destructive capacity. The 88,300 tons of bombs dropped exceeded the tonnage of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima by more than five times. And while the media car ried stories of the potential use of chemical weapons by Iraq - with pictures of troops with gas masks - it was the United states army that used napalm in this war. The joy of the American pilots shooting the retreating soldiers was reported in the Western media as similar to "shooting fish in a barrel" or a "turkey shoot". Such was the inhumanity of the United States which is celebrating the war as a victory and kicking the "Viet namese syndrome." Iraq's invasion and an nexation of Kuwait was unjust and illegal. This invasion was opposed by the majority of the peoples of the world, including Africa. Many peaceful measures were put forward to bring the occupation to an end. This in cluded the mediation efforts of the President of Algeria and his government, an African govern ment which had mediated the release of American hostages from Iran in 1980. The Presi dent of Algeria was humiliated in the process of trying to pre vent the bloodshed of war. After receiving assurances from Iraq that it would withdraw leave Kuwait if the army was not at tacked, the Algerian leader was not allowed to go to Saudi Arabia and was told he was not wel come in Washington. This was because the United States wanted war from the outset. Efforts towards a peace ful solution to the Kuwait issue had been undermined from August 5, 1990 by the President of the United States who initi ated a massive military buildup, and then a military intervention which was given the cover of a resolution by the United Na tions. The principal countries mobilizing against Iraq were the United States, Britain and France. These were the principal colo nial powers in the Third world in the era of classical colonial ism. The "success" of these imperial armies against a Third World country has raised the prospect of a new era of desta- bilization, recolonization and violence in the Third World, a new era of disorder. This war over Kuwait is only the seventh in the region since the establish ment of the state of Israel in 1948. And it will not be the last. The devastation and car nage of this latest battle further exposed the problems of milita rism in the international politi cal economy and demonstrated that the contradictions of milita rism, demilitarization and con version were just as important for the peoples of the industrial ized countries as they were for the Third World. The United States in the midst of a major economic depression hoped to make up for the crisis of eco nomic retrogression, homelessness, police brutality, unemployment, drugs, racism, political corruption, financial scandals and ecological degra dation by diverting the attention of its citizens to the so called victory against Iraq. Moreover, the leaders of the United States and Britain have forgotten the lessons of World Warl; viz,that international problems of re gional and border disputes can not be resolved by military force. The new world order after the first world war led to the depres sion, fascism and second world war. The crisis and continued political destabilization in the Gulf had a profound impact on the peoples of Africa for many saw this as a dress rehearsal for more overt military intervention by the West in Africa, especially Southern Africa. The multiple levels of the crisis - the border of Kuwait and Iraq, the issue of the self determination for the Pales tinians, the problem of the re distribution of the wealth of the region, the problem of the emi gration of Soviet citizens to Is rael, along with the support for feudal monarchies - have tre mendous implications for the ongoing fight for self determi nation, peace and an end to racism and apartheid in South Africa. For this reason Africans, both on the continent and out side, have to grasp the implica tions of this war for the suste nance of the old order of white supremacy. Since the first World War the French had developed the art of using non-white troops as cannon fodder. In this war not only were Africans drawn directly into the combat but the economies of Africa, especially those on the East African coast were negatively affected by the international blockade against oil from Iraq and Kuwait. Egypt, Morocco, Senegal and Sierra Leone sent troops to fight for the United States led "multinational" force while in the United States army more than 39 per cent of the combatants were African Americans or men and women from other oppressed nationali ties in the United States such as Mexican-Americans, Native Americans and Puerto Ricans. The most contradictory fighters were the Puerto Ricans. Here were people from a colonized country fighting for a major power to recolonize the Gulf and control the oil resources of the region. This experience of Afri can Americans being on the frontline of the US army replete with a Black general as Chair person of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has long term implications for the new imperial thrust of the West after the cold war. This was already evident in the fact that the African Americans in the U.S army were unaware that the populations of Grenada and Panama were overwhelmingly Africans. The ongoing efforts to legitimizeJonas Savimbi in black America is part of a larger effort to mobilize the African peoples in the United States in support of the new world order of ag gression and destabilization. In this sense the Gulf massacre highlighted four problems which are central for peace and secu rity in Africa in the twenty-first century. These are: (1) The issues of the out standing border demarcations in the ex-colonial territories. (2) The question of the right to self determination for op pressed peoples, especially the Palestinians. (3) The redistribution of the wealth of the Gulf and the con trol of the resources of the Third World by the peoples of the Third World. (4) The issues of demilitari zation and democracy. These questions corre spond to the search for a new mode of economic organization beyond the cultural, financial, technological and military domination of Western capital ism. As the Western world sharpens the weapons of domination, so too do the forces for peace and democracy have to resist the disinformation and violence, which is being called a new world order. People all over the world remember that it was Adolph Hitler who last called for a New World Order. Africans and the non- aligned movement had called for a new interna tional economic order but the double speak of President Bush is to redirect attention away from the inequalities of the interna tional system. Americans who fought 5 3 against the feudal monarch of Britain in 1776 were now fight ing to prop up conservative sheiks in societies where women are denied the most elementary rights as human beings. In real ity, however the battle to 'liber ate' Kuwait was a thin disguise for the support of the conserva tive government in Israel and its efforts to create a greater Israel which includes the territories which are now illegally occu pied. And to finance this project of recolonization Israel has been promised over $10 billion to support the resettlement of Eu ropean citizens (mostly So viet Jews) on the Palestinian homeland. One of the justifications for the massive bombing cam paign against the industrial in frastructure of Iraq was to pre vent the development of bio logical, chemical and nuclear weapons. This hypocrisy is clear from the fact that there is no pressure on Israel to sign a nuclear nonproliferation treaty and to open up its nuclear facili ties to inspection. While Iraq signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and had opened up its research facilities for inspection the Israelis and the South Africans have not only developed nuclear weapons but are advancing with the technol ogy to deliver these weapons. The collaboration be tween Israel and the white mi nority government in South Af rica is manifest in many ways: trade, commerce, industrial de velopment, military and cultural cooperation and most impor tant in the development of re pressive instruments to coerce civilians. The South African concept of the Bantustan has been refined in the occupied territories and there is the same desire to have large scale immi gration in the short-run to counter the long term popula tion imbalance between the set tler populations and the local oppressed peoples. A dying apartheid system seeks to at tract skilled workers from East ern Europe to support white domination. Hence, some of the settlers from Eastern Europe to Israel are already finding their way to South Africa. And in South Africa the white minority government provides refuge for 600,000 ex-settlers from Angola and Mozambique who want to go back to recolonize these two independent African countries. The recolonization of the Gulf along with the occupation of Iraq by United States army embolden the forces of racism, reaction and violence and mili tarism at a time when the popu lar forces are calling for demo cratic participation and expres sion from Benin, Egypt, Gabon, Morocco, Nigeria and Togo to Zambia, Zaire, South Africa and Kenya. This support for repres sive governments has been most evident in the cases of Egypt and Kenya. In response to the growing political maturity of the liberation movement, Mwakenya, and a human rights movement in Kenya the United States Congress had held up financial support for the Moi dictatorship. But because the port of Mombassa was needed as a base for the United States troops in the Gulf this military' aid was released in early 1991. And to support prostitution in Africa, Egyptian women were flown in to satisfy the sexual desires of American soldiers in Saudi Arabia. The decadence and violence in this region which is a holy place for millions throughout the world will have long term repercussions for the United States and Europe. The African continent, which has had centuries of cooperation and conflict with the Gulf, need to reflect on the many issues of this war. Four are highlighted for this article. T H E I S S U E O F O U T S T A N D I N G B O R D E R I S S U E S I N E X - C O L O N I A L T E R R I T O R I E S . The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq on August 2, 1990 had brought to the fore the issues of the arbitrary borders which had been drawn by the colonialists. This border dispute between Kuwait and Iraq has not been the first and it will not be the last. For most of the borders in the Arab world as in Africa were drawn arbitrarily with little re gard for the culture and history of the dominated peoples. The borders were fixed by France and Britain in the service of their own geo-political and strategic interests. The devastation caused in the wake of the military at tempt to settle this issue refocuses attention on the Char ter of the Organization of Afri can Unity with respect to colo nial borders. One of the endur ing positive elements of the OAU is the insistence that border is sues were to be solved by peaceful means or be main tained. The agreement between the two Yemens in the solution of long standing dispute pro vided one example of why poor people in the Third World should solve border disputes by peace ful means. The evidence of the real reasons behind the Iraqi inva sion are still unclear especially since Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were former allies of Iraq and financed the U.S. $ 250 billion war of Iraq against Iran. There is some evidence to indicate that the CIA and the United States administration precipitated this crisis in order to crush an inde pendent Iraq. The transcript of the meeting between the Ameri can Ambassador to Iraq and Saddam Hussein on July 25 tend to confirm the view that the United States precipitated a cri sis in order to humiliate Iraq. Whatever the basis of the invasion, the hypocrisy of the West was manifest in the ma nipulation of the Security Coun cil of the United Nations. Not only has the United States not gone to war to enforce the United Nation's resolutions relating to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, The Golan Heights and Lebanon but the United States professed not to see the linkage between the problem of Kuwait and the question of self determination for the Palestin ians. This same United States for twelve years called for a linkage between the indepen dence of Namibia and the with drawal of Cuban troops from Angola. This same government supports the illegal occupation of Walvis Bay (the strategic port in Namibia) by the South Afri cans, they support the illegal occupation of the Western Sa hara by Morocco and the desta- bilization and destruction of Mozambique and Angola. It is the same United States which removed the citizens of Diego Garcia in order to establish a military base in the Indian Ocean. Why has this hypocrisy been so blatant? Part of the answer lays in the question of self determination for the Pales tinians and the issue of self determination all over the colo nized and oppressed world. T H E Q U E S T I O N O F T H E R I G H T T O S E L F DETERMINATION F O R O P P R E S S E D P E O P L E S . When in 1990 the lobby for Israel in the United States pressed Nelson Mandela to re nounce his support for the Pal estine Liberation Organization (PLO) he had said: "I sincerely believe that there are many similarities between our struggle and that of the P.L.O. We both live under a unique form of colonialism and a lot flows from that." Nelson Mandela spoke for many Africans when he ex pressed this clear support for the Palestinian cause. One only need to study the establishment and the expansion of thestate of Israel to understand the similari ties between Zionism and apart heid. The principled position of Nelson Mandela was a dis tinct difference from those op portunist leaders in Africa and in the Arab world who support the violation of the rights of the Palestinians in order to get mili tary support from the United States. Syria, who claim to speak for the cause of Arab national ism, helped to weaken the Pal estinians in Lebanon. Currying the favor of the USA was also behind the opportunism of Senegal, Sierra Leone, Morocco and Egypt in sending troops to fight in the Gulf war on the side of the United States. Similar op portunism could be discerned in the trip to Israel of the African American mayor of New York at the time when the Israeli gov ernment had a 24 hour curfew against 1.7 million Palestinians. The support of the Egyptian government for the government of Israel even after the Temple Mount massacre in Jerusalem in October 1990 exposed the comprador nature of this soci ety, which professes to be on the side of liberation in Africa and in Palestine. 5 5 As the massive resistance of the mass democratic forces had isolated the South African government, so had the Intifada brought international attention to the repressive policies of Is rael. The Palestinian youth in their opposition to Israel were also exposing those Arab states who collaborated with Israel via the United States. In this respect the Gulf war clarified the fact that the political power of the present leadership in Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates was more im portant than the issue of self determination for the Palestin ians. Some of these same states want to cooperate with the United States to liquidate the leadership of the Palestinian people in order to speak for them at any psuedo conference set up under the auspices of the United States. The issue of Palestine has highlighted the fact that the self determination of the peoples of Palestine, Kurdistan, North Africa, The Middle East and the Gulf are inextricably linked. The dispersal of the Palestinians in this region, along with the con tradictions of recolonization, will determine that the transforma tion of the politics of the whole region is tied up to the issue of self determination for Palestine. This is already clear in Kuwait where the anti-democratic forces always use the Palestinians as their target. The experience of the Palestinians in Jordan in 1970, in Lebanon under Syrian bombardment and in Israel, should inspire Africans every where who remember the sacri fices needed for self determina tion. The fundamental weak ness of the Soviet Union throughout the crisis was an other important lesson for the peoples of the Middle East and Africa. For more than four de cades the socialist posture of Soviet Union acted as a deter rent to the militarists in the United States. But the USSR, as one of the five permanent mem bers of the Security Council, failed to take a principled stand so that the United States would not use the United Nations as a 'fig leaf to launch the ground war. Not only has the Soviet Union allowed the emigration of hundreds of thousands to settle in the occupied territories, but in the Security Council the USSR approved the resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq. In this, the USSR joined sections of the European and US left, which actively sup port Zionism. It is this support, from sections of the left, which hampered clarity among the ranks of the peace movement in the USA. THE REDISTRIBUTION OF THE WEALTH IN THE GULF A N D THE CONTROL OF THE RESOURCES OF THE REGION. The slogan by the peace movement internationally- No Blood for Oil - adequately summarized one of the princi pal issues behind this war. The West has enjoyed cheap oil from this region for decades when the majority of the people of the oil producing states are poor. Related to the control over the production of oil is the social structure, which is in place to exploit the hydrocarbon re sources. The division of labor in the Gulf reflected the interna tional division of labor where 20 per cent of the world's popula tion control 80 percent of the wealth. The conditions of the reproduction of labor in the Gulf was one of the worse in the world where the vast army of migrant laborers had no rights. There was hierarchy with the Feudal emirates, kings and oil company representatives at the top and at the bottom, millions of cheap unskilled labor from India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Africa. One writer for the International Labor Organiza tion compared the working conditions as similar to slavery. There were more than three million Africans from Egypt, Sudan, Tanzania, Somalia, Mo rocco and Djibouti, who worked under these slave-like condi tions, but the remittances sent home were very important to their families and to the respec tive economies. The way in which U.S. companies have se cured the contracts for recon struction in Kuwait - and the language of restructuring and modernization-also suggest the USA, France and Britain do not want the workers from the Third World to return to the Gulf. Part of the present purge against the more than 400, 000 Palestinians in Kuwait is to be able to pro vide jobs for the Egyptians and, if necessary whites from Europe so as to solve the unemploy ment problem in Europe and the United States. The presence of finance capital in this region recycling the resources of this area back to Europe and the United States pose a challenge for the long term independence of the Gulf. The dependence of these ruling classes in Saudi Arabia and those Emirates forming the Gulf Co operation Council was most evident from the lifestyle of the A1 Sabbah family. This family had over $100 billion invested in Europe; and while young African Americans were serving in the desert to 'liberate' Kuwait, the ruling class of this city state was gambling and dancing in Cairo. The issue of the lopsided division of wealth in this region is also a mirror of the crisis for Africa in the wake of the debt crisis. The IMF stabilization policies throughout the Third World imposed austerity mea sures on the working people, while the rulers of Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia spent millions on purchasing weapons from the West. Not even the oil pro ducing states such as Nigeria, Algeria or Egypt could escape the strictures of the international crisis which gripped Africa. The deeper the economic crisis the more calls there were for the control over resources and calls for the delinking from international capitalism. Iraq was one of those states which had used its resources to build up a solid industrial base. It had edu cated its citizens and the Iraqi society was developing to be a cultural and political center for the Arab world. Even though the leadership had squandered the wealth in the past twelve years on the senseless war with Iran, it was one of the few states seeking an independent foreign policy. This independence struck at the heart of the long term policies of the United States to control the oil resources and to militarize this region. Iraq had to be humbled and weakened, its religious and cultural shrines bombed. The humiliation of Iraq was to serve as a lesson for other countries, but it has pointed out that the opposition to the USA has to be carried forward from a popular and democratic political base. THE SEARCH FOR DEMILITARIZATION A N D D E M O C R A C Y I N T H E GULF A N D AFRICA. The war has exposed the propensity for capitalism to generate destructive and bar baric wars and has sharpened the alternatives towards democ racy and demilitarization. From the Cape in South Africa to Cairo in Egypt there were demonstra tions and militant opposition to the occupation and bombing of Iraq. Major demonstrations in South Africa led to tensions be tween the South African gov ernment and the government of Saudi Arabia when over 10,000 South Africans of the Muslim Council of theologians volun teered to fight in Iraq against the "allies". The Saudi government, in turn, held over 300 South Afri cans, who were at the time on a pilgrimage to mecca. However,the more perceptive among the South Africans rec ognized that the opposition to the war would, in the long run, be meaningful by the overthrow of apartheid and white domina tion in Southern Africa. This realization was not isolated to South Africa, a region and society which is itself at war. In the past ten years, more than 2 million persons have lost their lives and over $80 billion have been spent on a war, which has been waged by the South African government to support white supremacy in Africa. Thus, war and destruction are no strangers to Africans. As in Southern Africa, the war had an impact on sharpening the divi sions between the old repres sive forces and the forces calling for democracy and demilitariza tion. The calls for democracy have also been heard in every country of Africa (but more so in North Africa where the popular forces have been repressed for the past twenty years). All over 57 North Africa the war opened up the discussion of the cultural, financial and military domination by the West. In states such as Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, the governments openly opposed the United States and supported the people of Iraq. The Egyptian government closed schools and Universities and there were tensions between Egypt and the Sudan. A weak govern ment in Ethiopia hoped to gain a new lease of life with military capital from Israel. The demonstrations against the war acted as a force for the repoliticization of the youth, workers, students, women, small business per sons and religious leaders. This was most evident in Morocco where the demonstrations of over 500,000 were the largest since independence in the fifties. The Moroccan government, which has itself been waging a war against the people of the Western Sahara, will be one of the ones least likely to survive this crisis. For without the means to defend their living standards, the basic needs of the working poor were sacrificed so that the monarch could prolong the war to halt the independence of the Western Sahara. The destruction of popular forms of orga nization by the governments has ensured that opposition to Western imperialism has taken a religious form. This is called Islamic fundamen talism in the West. The form and content of this opposition, which is coated in religious robes, differs in many states but is most overt in the region of North Africa, where the people have resorted to religion as away of countering the culture of capital. No government in North Africa and the Arab world is immune from this wave of nationalism while fighting for democratic poli tics. Yet this nationalism also manifests anti democratic tendencies and religious intolerance. The West will reap the full harvest of this opposition with this revival of nationalism in the Arab world and Africa. And in response to anti- imperialist nationalism there will be a rise in racist attacks against the citizens from North Africa who live in France, Spain and Italy. Those who call for a common European home call for the old jingoism of Europe, which precipitated colonial ism and imperialism in the 19th century. In this period, military intervention and the violation of basic rights will be predicated on the fight against "terrorism". This will be the new bogey in the post cold war era. In the short run, the United States, France and Britain hope to exploit the differences in the Arab world to guarantee the Western programme of militarization and support for conservative monarchs. However, this process is not assured, for the American government cannot guarantee the survival of the present regime in Egypt. The fight for democracy in Egypt and other states in North Africa will have a profound effect on the Gulf and other parts of Africa. The West remem bers that it was the Algerian war of independence, which over forty years ago, lit the fires of rebellion and nationalism all over The Arab world and Africa. The legacy of the struggles for indepen dence, which was inspired by Nasser, is strong. Now it is clearer that independence must be based on a popular democratic culture which can challenge the despotism of capitalism. The era of militarism and war can only be challenged by democratic societies, which seek to use the resources of the region for the development of the people. Ultimately, however,the problems of demilitarization in the Gulf are tied to the search for peace and conversion in North America and Europe. A F R I C A N S A N D T H E N E W W O R L D D I S O R D E R . Behind the rhetoric of the President of the United States, about a New World Order, is an awareness that in the restructuring of the interna tional capitalist economy the United States is much weaker than Japan and Europe. The new order is an attempt to create a new division of labor to replace the hegemonic position that was occupied by the United States after World War II. The racism of this order is clear when the pundits divide the world between Europe, Japan and the United States. When the imperial implications of this division are pointed out, the officials point to a second tier of power in India, Brazil and Korea. There is no place for Africans in this proposed new order. Africa is up for grabs between Europe. Japan and the USA. For this reason the African population in the USA have a central role to oppose the racism of this disorder. African Americans have an objective inter est in cutting through the disinformation cam paign behind the war, for the rise of racism in one part of the world emboldens racists everywhere. Despite the rhetoric of fighting aggression in Kuwait, the objectives of the USA were always at variance with the demand for the Iraqi army to leave Kuwait. The political objectives of the United States were: (a) to mobilize the citizens of the United States to support the Pentagon and the war making institutions in America. (b) to control the oil resources of the Gulf in the competition with Europe and Japan. (c) to find a new base for United Sfates troops as a result of the conventional arms treaties in Europe, and (d) to prevent the consolidation of the inde pendence in the Third World, crush the demand for self-determination as manifest in the Palestinian movement. In the short run to achieve these objectives, there will be greater cooperation between Israel and the United States and, by extension, South Africa. The United States will, in this period, have to maintain a large military force in the Gulf, on land, sea and air. Already the United States generals are discussing the need to place US troops in Africa to defend the strategic resources of the West. However, the very process of recolonization will sharpen the contradictions and undermine the legitimacy of the very regimes that the United States hope to prop up, whether in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Kenya. Usually, war sharpens the processes of transformation and/or regression. In the short, run the regression is clearest in the United States where the political leadership celebrates a "tur key shoot" as a military victory. The regression is also evident as the social stock of the society deteriorates and the leaders resist fundamental restructuring of the politics and economics of the society. Even in the midst of the celebrations over the "victory" in the Gulf, African-Americans were reminded of the violence when a video tape recorded the police beating of an unarmed Afri can American male in Los Angeles,California. This crude beating and celebration by the racist police captured the day-to-day reality of the Africans in the United States as the government continues to spend vast sums researching for a future war in space, while the living reality of the Africans in America is like hell. The rise in military expenditure redirects resources away from proper education, housing, health care and old age pensions. Most of the troops have not returned but the Bush administration has launched another war to destabilize the black community in America. This war is called the war on crime. This new war compounds the violence and insecurity which is generated by the so called war on drugs. The war on drugs serves to legitimize the militarization of the black community when many say that it is the objective of racists in the American administra tion to narcoticize the African Americans so as to render them unable to struggle against capital ism in America. Africans in America took the lead in opposing the carnage in the Gulf and now will have to play a vital role in converting the military industries to producing goods for civilian use. The war in the Gulf further exposed the inhumanity of capitalism. The racism of the colonial and imperial orders rearing its head as a force for the 21st century. It is unthinkable for human beings to deny millions of other humans their humanity without being dehumanized in the process. Once large groups of people are considered inferior, then it becomes possible to deny them not only basic rights, the rights to liberty, but the right to life itself. This is one lesson of the barbarity in Iraq. African people every where have to organize so that the regression in the West, and the rise of racism, do not result in the globalization of apartheid. HORACE CAMPBELL is author ofRasta and Resistance?A frica World Press) and is also on the Advisory committee of Africa World Review (18 Pilgrimage Street, London SE1 4LL,England). He is currently a profesor of Political Science at Syracuse University.