Bread and Bullets

The South African Defence Review guides policy-making. The plan involves the country’s military providing "critical humanitarian assistance and reconstruction capabilities during and immediately after military operations."

Using armed forces to distribute humanitarian assistance in conflict or complex post-conflict areas violates the humanitarian principles. This includes foreign peacekeepers. The review does not even acknowledge humanitarian principles. Humanitarian and military actors differ profoundly in terms of their training. This includes differences in skills, aims, mandates, agendas, operational methods and institutional cultures. Because of this, the responsibility for providing humanitarian assistance rests primarily with humanitarian and aid organisations. The role of peacekeepers is to contribute to creating stability and security. They are also tasked with ensuring freedom of movement for local and international humanitarian aid workers. South African peacekeepers will endanger humanitarian efforts if they get involved in humanitarian work. Instead of helping bring peace, stability and relief, they will compromise the work of humanitarian organisations. Humanitarian work in Africa should be left to humanitarian and aid agencies.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2016/01/26/Bread-and-bullets---why-South-Africas-plan-to-militarise-humanitarian-work-is-a-bad-idea

The Military Muscle

As many remember Nelson Mandela on the anniversary of his death, his hopes seem as far away as ever. For now, the advance of democracy in Africa appears to have stalled. Elections have now been held across the continent, but their credibility varies. In some countries, rulers deploy state security forces to marginalize opposition leaders. Less autocratic leaders foster loyalty by doling out state jobs and other perks that would raise eyebrows even in many developing nations. In 1990, just three of Africa’s 48 countries were electoral democracies, according to Freedom House, a Washington-based pro-democracy advocacy group. By 1994, that number had leapt to 18. Two decades later, only 19 qualify. In many African countries, soldiers have run the show since the earliest days of colonialism. In the late 1800s, Europeans recruited local men into new armies to help conquer a vast continent. Throughout the imperial century that followed, Europeans used those colonial brigades to repress the African lawyers, civil servants and journalists who were agitating for independence. Today, blue-chip companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and General Electric Co. are expanding into countries whose leaders have never faced a real electoral contest.

Two decades of elections and economic progress in Africa haven’t erased the vast power that militaries have long wielded in many countries, large and small. In much of Africa, in fact, the armed forces have gained influence in recent years as battling Islamist terrorists has become a priority. The military remains a swaggering presence in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. On the surface, the country is a flourishing democracy. President Goodluck Jonathan, one of the first elected Nigerian leaders who didn’t come from the military. But Nigeria’s army—which led the country almost nonstop from 1966 to 1999—still wields considerable power. A fifth of Nigeria’s nearly $30 billion budget goes to the armed forces. When Kashim Shettima, the governor of a state in Boko Haram’s heartland, complained that the army was being gutted by corruption, Mr. Jonathan threatened on television to remove the soldiers guarding Mr. Shettima’s house, exposing him to attack by Boko Haram.

The military has defended Mr. Jonathan, too. Soldiers have blocked opposition leaders from landing at airports during their campaigns, and in June, soldiers confiscated bundles of newspapers containing articles criticizing government corruption.

The U.S. trained some 52,000 African troops in 2013 alone, at a cost of $99 million. After Liberia’s 14-year civil war ended in 2003, the U.S. paid security contractor DynCorp International, based in McLean, Virginaa, to train the country’s new, 2,000-person army. Other institutions like the health ministry received scant attention.

“There are signs of the predatory nature of military rule” returning to Africa, said Larry Diamond, director of Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. “This is a calamity for a number of these countries.”

Many African countries, such as Angola and Sudan, are resource-rich, single-party autocracies that have consolidated their grip on power. Angola’s president, José Eduardo dos Santos, is a military commander who has used his country’s vast oil wealth to build a police network that has helped to neutralize rivals for more than 30 years. In 2012, his party won more than two-thirds of the vote in elections that observers called deeply flawed. Nations that underwent the Arab Spring have regressed back to military dictatorship as in the case of Sisi’s Egypt or become militia civil war zones as in Libya. Africa has weathered more than 60 coups between 1960 and 1990, according to the African Development Bank. Some overturned election results that military leaders found unpalatable; others promised to stamp out political corruption, took over and became corrupt themselves. A whole generation of elected leaders is now angling for more time in power. Next year, both Faure Gnassingbé of Togo and Joseph Kabila of Congo are expected to seek third terms. (Mr. Kabila will have to change Congo’s constitution to do so; Togo has no term limits.) Both men inherited power from their fathers, who were ex-military leaders.

Robert Mugabe, 90, has ruled Zimbabwe since 1980. This week, he tightened his grip on power at a party conference by sidelining perceived rivals and backing his 49-year-old wife, Grace, for a senior party post. And former rebel commander Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president since 2000, is widely believed to be weighing a constitutional amendment that would allow him to remain in power beyond his second elected seven-year term, which is set to end in 2017.

Taken from here 

In Peacetime - Prepare for War

It's projected that military spending among African nations will surpass $46 billion by 2018.

Nation-on-nation war among African countries has been on the decline, the report noted, and although conflicts between countries still flare up on occasion they rarely escalate to extreme levels. If the trend continues, decade-long sanctions and arms embargoes could be lifted and opportunities for global defense firms would expand, particularly in the area of internal security products and services, explained Forecast International said in a report titled The Military Market for Africa. "Key arms purchases will likely be state-of-the-art surveillance equipment such as unmanned aerial vehicles and electronics. African nations have already experienced firsthand how the lack of proper military surveillance equipment can handicap their militaries and security forces.

Forecast International said. "A number of Western nations are therefore eager to help equip African militaries, which remain open to practically all weapons suppliers."

"As optimism about the continent's prospects increases, global defense firms have started to eye the African market more closely," said the report's author, Nicole Auger. "It has ignited an intense competition between non-African defense companies while opening up an array of possible joint ventures and technology transfer agreements with African defense firms."

From here

Africom to expand

 US planned military expansion in Africa will see deployment of US soldiers and drones in as many as 35 nations dotted across the continent in the coming year under the familiar guise of 'fighting terrorism'. AFRICOM commander US General Carter Ham announced the US military would begin or expand operations in Mali, Sudan, Algeria, Somalia, and more than two dozen other countries.

 According to some, the US Africa Command has merely served to increase resource exploitation and imperial expansion, instigate more violence in Africa, and intensified regional conflicts.

Armies are no solution

Over the past year, Africa has seen the decomposition of states from coast to coast. A belt of war, coups and large-scale spontaneous demonstrations has emerged across the Sahel, from Guinea-Bissau to Somalia. These political processes have a variety of localised causes, yet they have some commonalities. All of them emerge in a context of failed agricultural markets and a boom in mineral and oil extraction. Fundamentalist Islam is merely a complicating factor: not a cause.

Frantz Fanon wrote in 1959 that:
"Colonialism hardly ever exploits the whole of a country. It contents itself with bringing to light the natural resources, which it extracts, and exports to meet the needs of the mother country's industries, thereby allowing certain sectors of the colony to become relatively rich. But the rest of the colony follows its path of underdevelopment and poverty, or at all events, sinks more deeply into it."

This is the basis of "combined and uneven" development: a state in which most of the continent still finds itself.

Current policies have resulted in growing inequalities and increasing poverty throughout Africa. Elections have therefore only offered the electorate a chance to choose politicians who continue to impose increasing poverty upon them. As a result, in some places, people are actually nostalgic about the years they were living under dictatorships - because they remember them as times when they had more food. Neoliberals like the World Bank had thought movements for democracy would chop away the burdensome state, freeing natural propensities to trade, allowing capitalism to flourish. The reality is that neoliberal policies destroyed existing local markets while leyying highly sinister elements flourished.

African states contain a wide variety of variables. They have diverse geographies, cultural histories and economic foundations. peasant-based economies have integrative tendencies. In contrast extractive industries around valuable commodities have greater tendency toward disintegration. There are few places in Africa where mineral industries have had a positive impact.

One does not need to look far to see that agriculture across the region is in crisis. Famine has already been declared in Somalia. The Sudans are at war, while refugees have fled their herds and any crops they could scrape from the ground after years of drought. UN FAO notes that last year the Horn of Africa experienced a food crisis that left an estimated 13 million people dependent on humanitarian assistance. Currently there are 15 million people facing food insecurity in the countries of the Sahel. These famines are compounded by refugee crises. Altogether some 284,000 Malians have fled Northern Mali, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: 107,000 of them are thought to be displaced within Mali; 177,000 in neighbouring countries. New arrivals have pushed refugee numbers to 56,664 in Burkina Faso, to 61,000 in Mauritania, and to 39,388 in Niger, according to UNHCR. Around 810,000 Senegalese are facing hunger, according to a joint study in February 2012 by the Senegalese government and the World Food Programme (WFP). In the 2011 harvest season, cereal production fell by 36 per cent compared with 2010, and the production of peanuts, Senegal's main cash crop, fell by 59 per cent. One figure shows the latest harvest was 120,000 tons, down from a previous yearly average of 800,000.

Guinea Bissau's coup has disrupted the marketing of cashews - an important plantation crop in that country - but the story not being told is that the indigenous rice economy has already been seriously battered. This is the case with all the rice-growing economies in West Africa, as shown by USDA figures. Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, Ghana and Senegal all show declines in production. In the past year, imports have soared to meet local consumption. Mali's importation has risen 50 per cent. The Ivory Coast is importing a massive 80 per cent of their consumption. As Bryceson noted in 2009, sudden market shocks, gradually worsening terms of trade, market disincentives, "continue to undermine personal welfare, leading to social upheavals and political destabilisation". This has led to a process of de-agrarianisation, or more specifically, "de-peasantisation", whereby "peasant households and communities have lost their coherence as social and economic units". These patterns fuel burgeoning global unemployment rates. A recent report of the International Labour Organisation shows that youth are particularly badly hit. Between 2007 and 2010, youth unemployment increased by 5.1 million.

Armies are not signs of hope for those who have recently lost their land in mining concessions and land grabs, because in the experiences of the disposed, militaries have tended to come in to support those who are taking from them.

As much as those of us on the Left would like to believe otherwise,  poverty rarely produces pleasant political responses.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/201252981756447470.html

In Capitalism Death is a Profitable Business

The Killing industries are making profits by selling arms to the third world countries when analysing arms trade to the third world, there is one fundamental question which precedes all others; why have the Third World countries felt a need to buy weapons in the first place? And why is it that the disastrous armament policies of the Western Capitalist countries over the past 100 years and the resulting bloodshed of two World Wars have not discouraged the Third World from adopting the same militarists’ policies?

Colonialism-Legacy of Militarism

The legacy of Colonialism has been a prime ingredient in killing a demand for weapons, particularly in Africa and Asia. During the pre-independence period, most colonies were disarmed by the imperial powers in order to prevent military uprisings from population. The absence of a national armoury stung the pride of new governments in countries which became independent in the 1950s and 1960s. Many therefore strove to establish indigenous armed forces where none had existed previously. This policy immediately preresnted problems as none of the countries concerned had any industrial base for producing weapons locally. At that time, the only source of modern weapons was (and usually still is) the industrialised, former colonial powers, of the west. Thus, when it came to equipping newly formed armed forces in the Third World, the governments concerned imported the weapons from abroad.

When looking more closely at Third World militarisation one finds that the scars of colonialism run very deep. For example, the borders of countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East that became independent after 1945, were invariably based on artificial borders relating to the different colonial powers’ spheres of influence and not to any natural geographical divisions between peoples and cultures. This meant that many newly independent states contained several different ethnic and religious groups with which the newly independent government had to compete for its citizens loyalties. Under such conditions, the armed forces and their imported weapons came to be regarded as the symbol of unity and national pride.

In many newly independent states, the educated middle class elites who had acquired political power actually strove to model themselves on their former colonial masters, in military as much as in civil matters. This was to be expected as many of the leaders of these States had been trained in institutions like the British military College of Sandhurst.

Military rule:

Most newly independent governments started off on a very weak footing, rooted as they were in foreign colonial systems rather than indigenous forms of government. Their fragility has since been accentuated by their subsequent failure to represent the interests of the majority of their populations. In the process of decolonisation, the imperial powers tended to transfer political and economic power to wealthy, western educated and sympathetic elites.

In many countries, the armed forces have become so powerful that they have managed to seize power from civilian governments. For example, most African States are ruled either by military governments or by governments of mixed military and civilians. It’s this military influence which partly explains the willingness of some countries to spend money on armaments rather than on economic development. The per Capita military expenditures of military dominated governments are enormously high.

Perceptions of defence

Third World States generally perceive themselves to be more vulnerable than their counterparts (in the industrial world). The reasons behind this sense of vulnerability are manifold. They range from internal tensions such as those between rich and poor or between different ethnic groups to territorial disputes with surrounding countries and perceived external political threats, such as a revolution or a military coup in neighbouring countries. Whatever the cause of the tension, the response is much the same as it has been in Europe at times of major political upheaval: rearmament.

Arms Races:

Importing arms to bolster security usually creates further insecurity, as neighbouring countries feel bound to buy yet more weapons to match the new arsenals on their borders. In Latin America, the re-emergence of a number of long standing border disputes in the Late 60s and 70s promoted many of the regions’ countries to purchase more weapons from abroad. However these arms purchases served simply to raise tensions even further and led to yet more arms purchases. Similarly, in the Middle East, Syria and Israel remain locked in an arms race which continues to fuel more and more armaments on both sides. Therefore the world is not safe as long as the profit system existed including death profit.

By Michael Ghebre

Reference: Death on Delivery
The impacts of the arms trade on the Third World

Gun Trade

Arms spending in Africa is rising once again. Billions of dollars are being poured into armoured vehicles and logistics.Since the end of the Cold War, global military spending has fallen by 35%. But the Stockholm Peace Research Institute estimates that in sub-Saharan Africa it has risen by almost a third over the same period. In Uganda alone, spending on military hardware almost doubled in a single year (1997-98), according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Paramount Group, a South African-based firm and the largest privately owned defence contractor on the continent sales have been rising by a quarter year-on-year since 2005.

Africom Again

In a key briefing to Congress on 13 March, General William "Kip" Ward, head of the US Command for Africa, AFRICOM, devoted only 15 seconds of his four-and-a-half minute opening remarks to a possible humanitarian role. His remarks came in sharp contrast to a year ago when officials announced that the command would concentrate on humanitarian assistance.

From Africa Focus

Real Reasons for AFRICOM

Professional military officers have made it clear that the new Africa Command has three main purposes.

First and foremost, the new command's main mission is to protect American access to Africa's oil and other resources, preferably by enhancing the ability of African allies to guard these resources themselves on behalf of the United States. But, to prepare for the day that Washington decides to try to use American troops in a desperate bid to keep them flowing, the United States is also acquiring access to local African military bases and dramatically expanding its naval presence off Africa's coastline, especially in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea region. Imports from Africa are expected to reach 25% by 2015, making Africa one of the largest future suppliers of U.S. oil - larger even than the Persian Gulf.

The new command will also expand and intensify counter-terrorism operations in Africa and will make the continent a central battlefield in the Global War on Terror. Through AFRICOM, the Pentagon will intensify and extend U.S. counter-terrorism operations in Africa as well as its involvement in counter-insurgency warfare and other internal security operations in African countries. American troops are already engaged in combat operations in Somalia where air and naval strikes aimed at alleged al-Qaeda members instead killed dozens of Somali civilians in January and June 2007 and U.S. troops were engaged in combat-support operations in Mali in September 2007.

Finally, the new command is designed to counter China's efforts to increase its influence and its access to African oil and other raw materials. The creation of AFRICOM is one element of a broad effort to develop a "grand strategy" on the part of the United States to compete with, and eventually restrain China's activities. It is also intended to demonstrate to Beijing that Washington will match China's actions, thus serving as a warning to Chinese leaders that they should restrain themselves or face possible consequences to their relationship with America as well as to their interests in Africa.

Africans are not asking for AFRICOM. In fact, most African civilians, governments, and many regional bodies have voiced a vehement "no" to the presence of an American military force in their backyard...Not only are the activities and structure of the command contentious, but the issue of erecting a headquarters on the continent is particularly alarming, especially to Africans. ...If history is any indication, the United States will prioritize its headquarters construction on what is in the strategic best interest of the United States, regardless of the consequences for democracy and human rights in Africa... Many African governments and regional bodies have noted the potential for further militarization and have voiced objection to a headquarters on the continent. According to Southern African Development Community's (SADC) Defense Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, "Africa has to avoid the presence of foreign forces on its soil, particularly if any influx of soldiers might affect relations between sister African countries." SADC is comprised of 14 southern African nations and has adopted a regional stance against AFRICOM and foreign military presence. As such, the Pentagon has made a concerted effort to shift the rhetoric away from "base" or "headquarters" and toward "lilypad" or "office." Regardless of the language or the final outcome, AFRICOM will have access to several military bases on the continent and will use the surrounding waters to push Bush's defense agenda forward.

Further info at Resist AFRICOM

Time To Demilitarize US Policy in Africa

From an article on American foreign policy in Africa by Bruce Dixon in Black Agenda Report -"the journal of African-American political thought and action " . It makes some pertinent points but unfortunately ends up with an appeal for an "ethical" American policy - as if capitalism can ever be morally good

It's time to demilitarize US policy toward the African continent. Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, Republican and Democratic administrations alike have provided military aid, military training, military assistance and arms transfers to at least 50 out of 53 African nations. and fomented no less than fourteen wars. Bipartisan US policy until now has been about arming Africans, and keeping the continent hungry, sick, desperately poor and permanently at war with itself. Thanks to our policy of flooding the African continent with arms,the price of an AK-47 assault rifle is lower on the African continent than anyplace else on earth.

Of the nine countries where armed conflicts are now in progress, US-supplied arms and training are a factor in every one. In the Ethiopian civil war, in the invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia, in Chad, in Morocco and Western Sahara and Sudan, in the continuing Algerian civil war and of course in the Congo's holocuast, which has accounted, conservatively, for six million dead since about 1996, the highest death toll of any conflict since World War 2. The US has equipped, trained and supplied every one of the national armies that have invaded and occupied parts of the Congo, from Kenya and Uganda to Rwanda, Burundi, Angola and even Namibia. US arms are also in the hands of non-government gangs and private armies that ravage and depopulate whole regions to facilitate the extraction of the coltan for our cell phones and computers, the titanium for our aircraft, and the uranium for our nukes.

America's militarized foreign policy on the African continent does not benefit Africans. The inauguration of AFRICOM, the US military headquarters for the African continent, was met with universal condemnation and scorn by ordinary Africans across the continent, and their governments. Africans don't want US arms, they don't want US intervention, and they don't want US bases.

African opposition to US military presence was the reason Bush did not set foot in the continent's most populous country, Nigeria or in South Africa during his recent visit, and why he stayed only a matter of hours in Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi. Not one African country has dared the wrath of its people by requesting to host AFRICOM. But the ring of US bases, from Mombasa to Djibouti on the east to Angola and the Gulf of Guinea on the west, continues to grow. US forces regularly fly bombing missions over Somalia in support of the Ethiopian invasion.

America's foreign policy elite, its multinational corporations, the Pentagon and its constellation of military suppliers and mercenary contractors know what they want. They want the coltan, the oil, the gold, and the diamonds. They want to privatize every state and social resource, down to the water supplies. They want to tie African agriculture to genetically engineered American crop varieties, and collect royalties for the use of these “patented” plants. They want to prevent African nations from spending their own wealth from their own resources on health and education infrastructure, on food subsidies, on growing jobs and healthy internal economies. And they want to keep Africa a war-torn hell on earth, because it's good for business. If you're not a “failed state” yet, they'll make you one.....

Background on the largest U.S. military programs in Africa:

AFRICOM: Begun Oct. 1, it is expected to be fully operational within a year. Oversees U.S. military operations in 53 African nations — all the continent except Egypt. Previously, Africa was split among three U.S. commands. Staff of 200 due to grow to around 800. Expected to focus on training African militaries and providing logistic support to peacekeeping missions.

HORN OF AFRICA: Since 2002, about 1,800 U.S. military personnel have been at former French Foreign Legion base in eastern African nation of Djibouti. Mission has evolved from capturing and killing terrorists to training local military forces, providing aid to the needy and gathering intelligence. Program covers Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Sudan, Yemen, Seychelles and Somalia, where al-Qaida-liked terrorists are believed active. U.S. Navy intervened in waters off Somalia twice last week to help ships seized by pirates.

TRANS-SAHARA INITIATIVE: U.S. troops training armies in northern and western Africa in this $100 million-a-year program. Covers Algeria, Chad, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Tunisia and Senegal, with focus on training local security forces to control borders and combat potential terror threats.

GULF OF GUINEA: Navy ships from Naples, Italy-based 6th Fleet patrol Gulf of Guinea, region on Africa's western coast that accounts for 17 percent of U.S. oil imports. Area stretches from Ivory Coast to Angola. U.S. naval presence rose from just a handful of days in 2004 to daily beginning this year. The U.S. naval presence in the Gulf of Guinea — measured by "ship days" — has increased more than 50 percent since last year, said Lt. Brian Badura, a spokesman for the 6th Fleet

A Navy cruiser, the USS Fort McHenry, self-sustaining, helicopter-equipped warship , arrived in Senegal's capital on Monday to begin a half-year training exercise for African naval forces around the Gulf of Guinea.

Africom's creation has provoked much skepticism on the continent that one of the most basic questions — where it will be located — remains unresolved. So far, only Liberia has publicly stated a willingness to host Africom . For now, Africom has just over 200 staff members, and is based in Stuttgart, Germany. Theresa Whelan, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs, estimates 80 percent of the command's eventual staff of around 800 will be based outside Africa.

"Africans have a feeling Africom represents something more than what is being sold to them," said Wafula Okumu, an analyst at South Africa's Institute for Security Studies.

It is meant to protect America's competitive stake in African oil and other resources increasingly sought by rising powers like China and India. The continent has surpassed the Persian Gulf as the leading supplier of oil to the United States. U.S. officials concede America's strategic interests come first. Moeller said increasing security in the gulf is partly an issue of open markets. The U.S. wants to work with "African partners to make sure the resources that emanate from the continent are available to the global community," he said.

The U.S. military is already well-entrenched in Africa, spending around $250 million a year on military assistance programs, said J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Proponents of Africom talk about its possible humanitarian role , that provides for a a deputy commander who is a civilian responsible for overseeing civil-military affairs and coordinating with other U.S. government agencies. Yet observers such as Okumu at the Institute for Security Studies point out "Why should they be using the military to promote development when they already have institutions within the U.S. government that are better capable and more acceptable?"

Some officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development worry their humanitarian programs could be "stigmatized" by direct links with the military, which has melded aid programs with combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan — wars unpopular in most of Africa.

The strategic importance of Africa and its natural resources means that Africa will now remain on the radar screen of the United States .

The Role of the Military in Society

There is no doubt that the military constitute a vital force in today’s society. This fact is based on the conventionally perceived role they play in the lives of the populace. Being an armed section of a nation, the military have the primary role of defending the nation against external aggression. They are trained in modern warfare and furnished with whatever weapons the state is capable of procuring to enable them repulse the enemy as swiftly and as brutally as possible. But in times of peace, the military engage themselves in such occupations as the construction of roads, bridges, etc. They may also get involved in such varied tasks as relief work and evacuating victims in times of disaster. Sometimes they are sent abroad to help in keeping or ‘enforcing peace’ in war-torn areas. However, it is not uncommon for the military to intervene in the political affairs of a nation. In fact, the mere mention of the military, in most cases, evokes memories of brutalities in many a mind. They have carved a somewhat negative image of themselves as notorious perpetrators of insecurity and instability. This stems from their often violent and bloody uprisings and coups d’etat which they are prone to staging. In other cases, governments use them to unleash terror on striking workers or students on peaceful demonstrations.

Who are the military?

These conflicting functions that the military plays in society calls into question the real position of this tiny but important segment of the population. To understand the military and their real (not perceived) role, certain questions must be posed and answered. First and foremost, who exactly are the military and how did they come into existence? Simply put, they constitute a part of the coercive arm of the state. The other parts of this coercive arm being the police, prison officers, lawyers, judges, the courts and other paramilitary groups.

Every nation is made up of two basic classes. There is the class of owners and there is the propertyless class. By the ‘class of owners’ we mean that tiny group in society who own and control the means of production and distribution of wealth - factories, mines, land, railway lines, aircraft, roads, communication network, media houses, etc. On the other hand, the ‘class of workers’ refers to the overwhelming majority of people who do not own any of the properties mentioned above. They only possess their mental and physical abilities. The class of owners hires the latter to work on the means of production in order to create wealth. The owners then appropriate the wealth created (by virtue of their ownership) and pay the producers wages and salaries. As the class of owners are looking for ever more profits, then the less wages and salaries they are prepared to give out to the workers. But as the workers also need to have enough to clothe, feed, educate and shelter their families and indeed themselves, they demand more wages and salaries. This conflict of interests leads to a constant friction in society. So in order to maintain peace and security so that production can go on, the state emerged as a body standing above society and serving as an ‘impartial' regulator. Thus, it has the task of stopping the two antagonistic classes tearing society apart. It does this by using its three arms – the executive (the government in power), the legislature (the law-making body) and the judiciary (the body which dispenses justice). Now, it is to the judiciary that the military belong.

For or against

Having seen who the military are (a part of the state), one may now ask whether the state, and for that matter the military, is as neutral as it is claimed to be. In other words, are the military unbiased or are they on the side of the workers or on the side of the wealthy owners of the means of production? Here again, in order to do justice to the question, one must understand how the state is formed or who are chosen to represent the state. As has already been explained above, the state comprises the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. The executive arm is the government in power. This government, under normal conditions, assumes power after having contested and won elections. But every mainstream political party is in reality owned by a few wealthy people who contribute huge sums to maintain the party and enable it meet the financial and logistical expenses of contesting elections. Therefore, the party in power (the executive) serves the wealthy owners, who are really in control. It is the same with the legislature. Only the rich owners of wealth are able to provide the funds to sponsor themselves or their stooges to get into the national assembly or parliament. The common people, the working class, only queue up on Election Day to vote for one group of wealthy individuals or another. The story is the same with the judiciary, the third arm of the state. This is peopled with individuals who have been privileged to attain the highest levels of academic achievement. They are, in the main, hands-in-glove with the few privileged wealth owners and leaders of society. Members of the judiciary are appointed to their positions mostly on account of their cordial relations with the leadership of the nation.

It follows, logically, that since the state apparatus is peopled with those in cahoots with the owners of the means of production and distribution, there is no doubt as to where the loyalty of the state lies in the conflict between these owners and the working class. At best the state is part and parcel of the privileged class and at worst it (the state) is controlled by this privileged few. Thus, the military, being an instrument of the state machinery has a historical role of defending the interests of the owning and ruling class against the interests of the working class.

The reality of the military

An honest analysis of the conventionally perceived role of the military, outlined in the first paragraph, clearly proves that the military stands solidly behind the owning class against the majority in the working class. For instance the issue of the military defending the nation in times of war only masks the reality. When a nation fights another nation it is always over sources of raw materials or markets for their finished products, or over trade routes, or even the strategic positions from which the same can be defended. The central issue is always wealth. And since wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few owners of the means of living, wars are fought in the interests of these owners. Wars are therefore not a matter of nations against nations but they are a matter of the rich of one nation against the rich of a competitor nation. Sadly, however, all wars are fought by the poor people of the belligerent nations and who have no stake at all in such wars.

It has also been mentioned that in times of peace the military are deployed in construction. The roads, bridges and other infrastructure they help to provide are not intended to benefit the masses. Given the fact that society as at present constituted is run in the interests of the owning classes, all undertakings on the part of the state aim at enhancing the profit prospects of the wealthy. Thus, even in times of peace, the role played by the military is still anti-working class. And this is manifest in the ease with which the military is unleashed on workers when they embark on an industrial action to demand better conditions of service. Even harmless school children, demonstrating peacefully over one issue or the other, can be brutally massacred by the military when given orders to do so by the powers that they serve. And if the international role they play in the various peacekeeping missions is critically examined, the fruitlessness of that role cannot be missed. Apart from the numerous reports of such peace keepers getting involved in widespread looting, rape and sexual abuse they, in all cases, only add to camouflage the real essence of war. Peacekeeping forces have been in the Middle East for umpteen years now, yet that region remains volatile and insecure. It is the same in the Horn of Africa and the Congo Basin, which have known no peace since the early days of independence.

A positive role

This being the situation on the ground, the next is question whether the military can play a positive role in society. The answer obviously is both yes and no. Depending on how the military see this class-divided society, they can either live up to the expectation of their class or they will continue in this present unenviable "killing" profession on behalf of the capitalist class. If the military accept the present unjust world economic order and think they can reform it by going to war or indulging in peace keeping abroad or by repairing bridges and roads at home, then they will be choosing to continue along the negative path. But if they understand the world economic system in operation today and strive to change it, then they will be charting a positive course. So what is the current economic arrangement like? Though this has been referred to earlier in this write-up, more light will be thrown on it. Society is locked in a continuous battle with itself: the few who own and control wealth against the majority who produce the wealth but own nothing. In other words the current material productive forces are in conflict with the relations of production. Material productive forces refer to the elements actually involved in production, such as workers, land, factories, mines, transportation etc. The relations of production are somewhat more difficult to explain. They involve such things as production costs, who owns the material productive forces and who owns the results of production. Currently, the relationship between people on the one hand and land, factories, mines, transportation, etc on the other, divides people into two groups. One group owns those things. The other group must use its physical and mental ability to turn raw materials into finished products. Workers produce everything from food to education, from automobiles to hammers, from houses to hospitals, and from shopping malls to factories. They even produce the weapons used to kill each other in wars.

Those who own the means of production (basically the material productive forces excluding workers) determine when, where and how production takes place. If a factory decides to shut down, the workers have no say in the matter. If the owners of a soap manufacturing company in The Gambia, for instance, decide to move their factories to Nigeria or Ghana, it is their choice. They own the means of production. If the owners of a soft drinks processing plant believe that they cannot sell their product for a profit, they have the right to shut down the plant. That right is theirs even if the processing plant produced all the soft drinks in the world. Profit trumps human need every time in capitalism.

Those who own the factories own the products of the factories. The owners may have never been on the same continent as the factory but they nonetheless own everything produced in the factory. Those who do the actual work have no legal right to the products they have produced. Those who own the means and the products of production and who control production are the capitalists. Those who do the actual producing are the working class.

Humanity has developed the ability to produce to a level which easily enables the planet’s real needs to be met.. But the current relations of production dictate who eats what, who sleeps where and at what price. Capitalism cannot accommodate necessary production. By and large, people do not go hungry, walk barefooted or die of curable illnesses because there is no food, shoes or medicines, but because they are, from the unalterable perspective of capitalism, unworthy: they cannot buy the food, pay for shoes or procure medicines. They do not have the finances to purchase what the capitalist sells, so they do not present as a market.

If the military were to understand the world as explained above, they would be in a position to throw their weight behind their historically determined class – the exploited class; to be in a position to stop serving the interests of the master class, to stop fighting their wars, to stop breaking strikes and attacking peaceful demonstrators. Were this to happen, then the military could be seen to be playing a positive role in society.

SB