Africa victim of US fight against terror

By: Ali A. Mazrui
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[ Posted On: 2008-03-03 ]

Peace is disturbed in Africa not always for reasons internal to Africa. Conflicts abroad have often had huge repercussions in Africa.

In the November 2002 "terrorism" fiasco at the Israeli hotel, the Paradise, in my hometown of Mombasa, four times as many Kenyans died as did Israelis. Was it one more moment of convergence between the politics of the Middle East and politics of Islam in Africa?

There are two levels of terrorism: international and national. Kenya won its independence partly as a result of a liberation war that included terrorism at the national level. Both the British colonial forces and the Mau Mau resorted to terrorism at the national level.

Middle Eastern terrorism is international, intercontinental, and especially targeted at a global superpower and its protege, Israel. In response to the convergence between anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism, some leaders have been looking for an alliance between Pax-Africana and Pax-Americana.

Much of the old anti-colonial and anti-apartheid terrorism in Africa in the second half of the 20th Century was targeted against European minority regimes and the colonial powers. Much of the Middle Eastern terrorism has been targeted against the US and Israel. However, if anti-European guerrilla war and anti-colonial terrorism in Africa produced good results in the end for Africa, anti-American and anti-Zionist terrorism in the Middle East has not yet found its moment of triumph.

Africa is caught in the crossfire, the victim of violence intended by terrorists for the United State and a victim of violent actions taken by the United States and intended for the terrorists. To kill 12 Americans, Middle Eastern terrorists killed about 200 Kenyans in Nairobi a few years ago. This was the attack on the US embassy in Nairobi in August 1998.

Sudan was also caught in the crossfire soon after when President Bill Clinton ordered the bombing of an apparently harmless pharmacy near Khartoum. President Ronald Reagan before Clinton had ordered the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in Libya because Reagan thought the Libyans were responsible for a bomb in a German bar that had killed Americans. Violence between Americans and Middle Easterners had been spilling over into Africa for decades.

An unknown number of Africans were killed at the World Trade Centre, in New York on September 11, 2001: Senegalese hawkers, Nigerian investors, Ethiopian or Eritrean drivers or professionals, Ghanaian students and South African tourists and others. Who knows for certain?

September 11 had other consequences for Africa. African security forces opened their doors to the United State’s FBI and the CIA. Africa has fewer secrets from the Americans than ever, if it ever had any. Pax-Americana had returned to Africa. The FBI reportedly arrived in Tanzania after September 11 with 60 Muslim names for interrogation and potential action.

Pax-Americana was forging an alliance with elements of Pax-Africana. The Kenyan authorities were so eager to please the Americans that they were tempted to repatriate their own citizens to the US on the slightest encouragement. Fortunately, the American embassy in Nairobi was sometimes more cautious.

Grieving when Americans die

The President of Kenya marched in sympathy with the victims of September 11. The Kenyan Muslims marched against the America bombing of Afghanistan. The then President Moi asked "Why didn’t the Kenya Muslims march when Nairobi was bombed by terrorists in August of 1998?" the Kenya Muslims turned the tables on their President "Why didn’t President Moi lead a march when Nairobi was bombed in August 1998?"

The President of Tanzania declared a day of mourning for the victims of September 11 in the United States. His critics retorted that they did not remember a day of public mourning in Tanzania when 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the genocide of 1994.

In short, Africans grieve when Americans are massacred, but do we grieve as much when Africans are massacred? For a while, there was some anxiety that September 11 and its aftermath would exacerbate tensions not only between pro-Western and anti-Western schools of thought in Africa, but also between Christians and Muslims.

A demonstration by Nigerian Muslim in Kano against the American war in Afghanistan provoked stone throwing by Nigerians in Kano that flared up into communal riots. Churches and mosques were soon being burnt. President Olusegun Obasanjo had to rush to Kano to contain the tensions before they spilled over into sectarian riots countrywide.

There was another remarkable terrorist act in Mombasa on the same day as the suicide bombing of the Paradise Hotel. This was the attempted shooting down of an Israeli passenger plane with more than 200 tourists. A surface-to-air-missile seems to have been used in an attempt to blow up the Israeli plane. The global media presented this as a wholly new threat to civilian aviation. In fact, this attempt to shoot down a civilian plane was not new even in Africa. Sub- Saharan Africa had a 1978 precedent at the level of national terrorism.

North Africa was accused of a similar 1988 destruction of a civilian airline at the level of international terrorism. The Sub-Saharan precedent was the shooting down of a civilian Government airliner by Zimbabwe liberation forces in 1978, in which about 50 people died. Among those who survived on the ground, Joshua Nkomo’s forces killed several of them. Newsweek magazine carried a photograph of Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe raising their glasses. Nkomo publicly accepted "credit" for shooting down the plane.

This was all part of anti-colonial terrorism at the national politics of Rhodesia. Less clear-cut was whether Libya was really responsible for the bombing or the Pan- American flight 103 over Lockarbie, Scotland, in 1988. But if Libya was indeed responsible for the bombing Pan-American flight-103, it was North Africa’s participation in international terrorism.

The powerful have been playing war games with civilian airlines in the past and never got punished. The powerless are now resorting to similar games to end white rule in Zimbabwe, or to end Israeli occupation of Palestine, or to tame the mighty power of the US.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author(s): Prof. Ali Mazrui is Chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture, Kenya.

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