Friday 1 November 2024

The Legacy of the Algerian War (1954-1962)

Photo montage credit: Top by Phillip Jones Griffith and bottom by UIG.

The Algerian War lasted from November 1st, 1954, to March 19th, 1962.

Today marks the 70th anniversary of an anticolonial war, the significance of which cannot be overestimated:

. It was arguably a continuum of the genocidal series of wars undertaken by France between 1830 and 1875.

. It directly led to great military and political upheavals: the military coup led by Brigadier General Jacques Massu brought down the 4th French Republic in 1958 and brought about the return of General Charles de Gaulle to the centre of power as the first President of the 5th Republic. De Gaulle's subsequent "betrayal" of the promise to keep Algeria a part of France ("Algerie Francaise") led to the "Generals Putsch" in Algiers in 1961 and after its failure, the formation of the O.A.S. (Organisation de l'Armee Secrete), the underground movement of French military personnel which sought to assassinate de Gaulle on numerous occasions.

. It formed the backdrop to the theories on counterinsurgency devised by the French military officers Lieutenant Colonel David Galula and Colonel Roger Trinquier.

. It led to the creation of "La Main Rouge" ("The Red Hand"), a covert arm of the state which used terroristic methods to wage war which was arguably a forerunner of the MRF (Military Reaction Force) run by the British Army during the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the FLLF (Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners) run by the Northern Command of the Israeli Defence Force in Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War.

. It formed the background to a body of literature produced by Frantz Fanon who was arguably the most influential anti-colonial thinker of his time.

. It was immortalised in popular culture by the 1966 Gillo Pontecorvo film The Battle of Algiers.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2024).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.



Sunday 20 October 2024

Yoruba voices in Grenada

Map of Grenada (left) and Yoruba artwork titled The Spirit of the Warrior by Twins Seven Seven.

As the beginning of the commentary within the discography “Grenada: Creole and Yoruba Voices” states, Grenadian affairs have rarely come to global media attention save the Maurice Bishop-led New Jewel Movement era of the late 1970s to the early 1980s which culminated in Bishop's violent overthrow and the invasion of American armed forces in October 1983.

I would add that there were episodes during the tenure of Sir Eric Gairy when Grenada gained some measure wide attention.

Anyway, the commentary refers to the Yoruba influence on Grenadian music, music which is far removed from the cabaret style songs of Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson, the Grenadian-born singer and musician whose global fame was at its peak in the 1920s and 1930s.

This is all very interesting to me because my Mother was born in Grenada and my Father was Yoruba. I have been aware of Yoruba culture in the Atlantic in the southern United States, Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Trinidad, but not explicitly in the context of Grenada.

Excerpt from GRENADA: CREOLE AND YORUBA TRADITIONS By Kenneth Bilby and Morton Marks: "What sets Grenada off from the other Franco-English islands, though, is the presence of a third language, the ritual Yoruba of the Shango religion, also called African Work.

Grenadian Shango is probably the least known branch of the Yoruba diaspora in the Americas, and these recordings may be the only documentation in existence of its music. During the slave trade, many thousands of Yoruba from the Ijesha kingdom of Nigeria were sent to Brazil and Cuba, where they became known as ijexá and yesá, respectively.

But the Yoruba in Grenada are part of the history of Africans in the post-emancipation Caribbean. In 1849 (eleven years after full emancipation in the British colonies), about one thousand Ijesha Yoruba workers arrived in Grenada, becoming part of the indentured workforce that replaced former slaves who had migrated. The Grenadian Yoruba formed closely knit communities in particular villages, including Munich, Black Bay, Laura, and Rose Hill, and their influence then spread to other parts of the island."

© Adeyinka Makinde

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.



Saturday 19 October 2024

Between the International Slave Plantation and BRICS

Cartoon captioned “On the International Slave Plantation” on the front page of the Daily Worker, June 27, 1925. (Credit: Robert Minor).

A cartoon drawn by Robert Minor, a political cartoonist who was also a member of the American Communist Party, has been rediscovered by a new generation who have avidly shared it various social media platforms. It portrays three hulking figures representing China, India and Africa who tower over three cowering, horsewhip-wielding figures who represent US, French and British imperialism. A Soviet soldier can also be observed grinning in the background. Considered an incendiary image in its time for inciting hatred against “the white race”, many of those who share the image today are not invoking the original intended goal of international communism liberating oppressed non-whites, and instead are drawing parallels with the developing multi-polar world envisioned by BRICS which seeks to break free from the neocolonial stranglehold held by the West on the conduct of international trade and development.

When the cartoon appeared on the front page of the Black American newspaper The Negro Champion, which dubbed it "The Big Three", Joseph Wise, the Staff Correspondent of the International Labor News Service, referred to it as a "vicious cartoon" and Minor as "the notorious communist cartoonist".

Wise complained that the "entire contents of the publication are designed to arouse race prejudice and antagonism and to array the peoples of China, India and Africa against the white race."

The editor of The Negro Champion, Lovett Fort-Whiteman (1889-1939), was a functionary of the Communist International (Comintern) who was the lead organiser of the American Negro Labor Congress. Fort-Whiteman would die from malnutrition in a Stalinist gulag in 1939 after he was accused of being a Trotskyist.

Victor A. Olander, the secretary-treasurer of the Illinois State Federation of Labor, to whom Wise would refer to in his syndicated article, saw Fort-Whiteman as a Soviet proxy whom he likened to a man "carrying a flaming torch through dry grass." Yet, while Olander criticised the cartoons which appeared in The Negro Champion of ignoring "economic and political issues almost entirely" while making "a direct appeal to racial antagonism", he was ignoring the fact that race lay firmly at the heart of economic relations in the United States, a state of affairs which applied to the globe because the Chinese, Indians and Africans were at the time victims of long-term colonial exploitation of their lands and human resources.

In 1925, China was still in its "Century of Humiliation" which lasted from 1839 to 1949. India was Britain's most prized colony, and most of Africa was ruled by the French, British and Portuguese.

Even after the ostensible process of decolonisation, the Western-run global economic institutions have maintained a grip on the economies of the Global South through the Bretton Woods institutions. The policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have typically indebted nations regardless of whether those policies were encouraging of socialist-orientated development economics or were inspired by neoliberalism.

Former colonial powers also continued to wield economic power in regard to their former vassal states. The economic relations between France and its former colonies, as well as the extractivist rationale for the creation of the European Union in relation to the minerally-rich African continent affirm the racial context of global economic relations.

The quest of the Western world to maintain global economic hegemony is no less the case when it comes to post-Soviet Russia and China.

There has been an enduring project aimed at pressuring Russia to surrender its sovereignty so as to enable the West to have unfettered access to and control of its vast resources, while China’s rise in economic power has caused apprehension on the part of the United States.

A closer examination of the relations between the West and these two powers reveal a racial subtext which few are willing to admit.

In the provocatively titled “Slavs and the Yellow Peril are ‘niggers, brutes and beasts”, in the eyes of the Western Empire”, Jeff J. Brown explained that:

Westerners cannot write about their racial superiority and the perceived subhumaness of non-Westerners, like they were able to do so freely until the 1950s. But it is still manifestly the fundamental principle that drives America’s “exceptionalism” and the West’s “shining beacon on a hill” superiority, thus legitimizing ongoing Western genocide, wars, government overthrows and economic and resource exploitation, through the “benign, invisible hand” of capitalism, across Planet Earth.

This attitude was reflected in the writings of the late Zbigniew Brzeziński, a hugely influential US foreign policy theoretician, who wrote the following in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives:

To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.

Japan may once have had the opportunity of breaking away from Western economic domination through its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, a plan which boldly proclaimed "Asia for the Asiatics". But the extreme cruelty and intense chauvinism that it deployed in its quest to expand its empire alienated its neighbours in east Asia and the Pacific.

Japan’s chief competitor for the allegiance of the countries in this area, the United States, militarily defeated it and incorporated it into its post-war alliance of nations. But the new global hegemon, now involved in an ideological war with the Soviet Union on a global scale inherited the attitudes and methods of its Anglo-Saxon predecessor in enforcing the compliance of states to the dictates of resource control.

An excerpt from an editorial written for the New York Times on August 5th, 1954, the year after “Operation Ajax”, a regime change endeavour in Iran which was orchestrated by the American Central Intelligence Agency with help from the British Secret Intelligence Service, will suffice:

Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism.

The coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohamed Mossadegh which had nationalised its British-controlled oil industry and replaced him with the pliant Shah who ruled Iran as a dictator. It would, of course not be the last such endeavour where American economic interests were threatened by independent thinking political leaders.

Minor's cartoon may resonate strongly with those who can relate it to the growing Eurasian world and development of BRICS at the heart of which are Russia, China, and India. The developing multipolar world order which is being characterised by the phenomenon of de-dollarisation and various geopolitical confrontations such as Russia withstanding the "shock and awe" sanctions regime imposed on it by the West and the ejecting of France from a number of Sahelian countries, in a sense represent a movement away from the so-called "international slave plantation".

© Adeyinka Makinde (2024).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

General Yakubu Gowon at 90

Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon, Head of the Federal Military Government and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. 

Former Nigerian military leader General Yakubu Gowon is 90 years old today.

Here he is photographed while a Lieutenant Colonel after his assumption of power following the violent overthrow of Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi in July 1966.

Source: Federal Nigeria, 1966.

NB.

Born Yakubu Dan-Yumma Gowon on October 19th, 1934, to a Christian catechist father from the minority Angas group in Nigeria's "Middle Belt", Gowon was educated at Barewa College and trained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst from 1955 to 1956.

He emerged as the Head of State in 1966 after the overthrow of Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi and remained leader until his own overthrow in July 1975.

Gowon oversaw the defeat of the secession of Eastern Region of Nigeria in 1967 which was led by Lieutenant Colonel Emeka Ojukwu. The breakaway Republic of Biafra collapsed in January 1970, and Gowon earned plaudits for his efforts at national reconciliation.

Gowon subsequently enrolled on a Political Science degree course at Warwick University and later earned his PhD. His thesis was titled "The Economic Community of West African States: A Study in Political and Economic Integration".

He gained a reputation as a gentleman officer who ruled Nigeria in a relatively benevolent manner. He presided over the oil boom years and although never accused of personal enrichment was seen as lacklustre in tackling Nigeria's bourgeoning culture of corruption. His regime was also responsible for decrees which curbed personal freedoms and justified detention without trial.

While largely considered an upstanding military officer and a devout Christian, some critics have accused Gowon of having foreknowledge of the assassinations of both Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi in July 1966 and General Murtala Muhammed in February 1976. Many on the secessionist side accused Gowon of tolerating human rights abuses against Igbos prior to the secession of the Eastern Region and during the civil war - all of which he has strenuously denied.

Ironically, both Gowon and his arch protagonist Emeka Ojukwu would in 1979 be designated by the Federal Military Government as common criminal suspects wanted by the Nigerian Police. Both men would later be amnestied and Gowon, who had been stripped of his rank of general, would have his rank and benefits restored by the civilian administration led by President Shehu Shagari.

In his later years, Gowon grew into an elder statesman respected both at home and abroad. Among his lasting accomplishments as a military ruler was the creation of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and the economic alliance of West African states through the establishment of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

While his achievement in preserving Nigeria as a united entity may have dimmed over the decades because of the country's perpetual fractiousness and economic maladies, Gowon arguably deserves the credit for building a coalition within the country which prevented Nigeria's breakup into several hostile polities each of which would have been potentially armed by various world powers.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2024).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.



Wednesday 16 October 2024

General Sir Mike Jackson (1944-2024)

Mike Jackson as a general (top) when he was the Chief of General Staff (CGS), and below as a captain of the Parachute Regiment while he was on duty in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s.

Known to many under his command as "Darth Vadar" and "The Prince of Darkness", General Sir Mike Jackson the British Army officer who rose to the position of the Chief of the General Staff (CGS) has died aged 80.

Jackson's eventful career took him to theatres such as Northern Ireland, Kosovo and Iraq.

Reviled by republican militants during "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland, Jackson is famous for disobeying an order from U.S. General Wesley Clark, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), during the Kosovo War in 1999.

Fearing that Clark's order would result in clashes with Russian peacekeeping troops, the then Lieutenant General Jackson reputedly told Clark:

"Sir, I'm not going to start the Third World War for you".

Clark was later removed from his position by President Bill Clinton.

© Adeyinka Makinde

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Obituaries.

Daily Telegraph – “General Sir Mike Jackson, redoubtable former head of the British Army” – obituary

Financial Times – “General Sir Michael Jackson, 1944-2024: Celebrated British soldier with varied and illustrious military career famed for clash with his Nato commander

Footage.

General Mike Jackson speaking about the role of the MRF, the covert British Army counter-insurgency force, in the BBC Panorama programme titled “Britain’s Secret Terror Force” which was broadcast in November 2013:



Saturday 5 October 2024

Adeyinka Makinde with Steve Mulindwa at the Satellite Television Launch of Omega TV UK

Posing with Steve Mulindwa, the Ugandan presenter of Omega TV UK's "Africa Speaks", at the Satellite Television Launch held at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre, Tottenham Green, London on Saturday, September 21st, 2024.


Wednesday 2 October 2024

Mussolini's Eve of War Speech Prior to Fascist Italy's invasion of Ethiopia

War poster of Italian Fascist leader Mussolini (circa 1930). Printer: Cesare Capello.

October 2nd, 1935, Rome, Italy.

"Blackshirts of revolution, men and women of all Italy, Italians all over the world, beyond the mountains, beyond the seas, listen. A solemn hour is about to strike in the history of the country. Twenty million Italians are at this moment gathered in the squares of all Italy. It is the greatest demonstration that human history records. Twenty millions, one heart alone, one will alone, one decision.

This manifestation signIfies that the tie between Italy and fascism is perfect, absolute, unalterable. Only brains softened by puerile illusions, by sheer ignorance, can think differently, because they do not know what exactly is the Fascist Italy of 1935.

For many months the wheel of destiny and of the impulse of our calm determination moves toward the goal. In these last hours the rhythm has increased and nothing can stop it now.

It is not only an army marching towards its goal, but it is forty-four million Italians marching in unity behind this army. Because the blackest of injustices is being attempted against them, that of taking from them their place in the sun. When in 1915 Italy threw in her fate with that of the Allies, how many cries of admiration, how many promises were heard? But after the common victory, which cost Italy six hundred thousand dead, four hundred thousand lost, one million wounded, when peace was being discussed around the table only the crumbs of a rich colonial booty were left for us to pick up. For thirteen years we have been patient while the circle tightened around us at the hands of those who wish to suffocate us.

We have been patient with Ethiopia for forty years. It is enough now.

The League of Nations, instead of recognizing the rights of Italy, dares talk of sanctions, but until there is proof of the contrary, I refuse to believe that the authentic people of France will join in supporting sanctions against Italy. Six hundred thousand dead whose devotion was so heroic that the enemy commander justly admired them—those fallen would now turn in their graves.

And until there is proof to the contrary, I refuse to believe that the authentic people of Britain will want to spill blood and send Europe into a catastrophe for the sake of a barbarian country, unworthy of ranking among civilized nations. Nevertheless, we cannot afford to overlook the possible developments of tomorrow.

To economic sanctions, we shall answer with our discipline, our spirit of sacrifice, our obedience. To military sanctions, we shall answer with military measures. To acts of war, we shall answer with acts of war.

A people worthy of their past and their name cannot and never will take a different stand. Let me repeat, in the most categorical manner, that the sacred pledge which I make at this moment, before all the Italians gathered together today, is that I shall do everything in my power to prevent a colonial conflict from taking on the aspect and weight of a European war.

This conflict may be attractive to certain minds which hope to avenge their disintegrated temples through this new catastrophe. Never, as at this historical hour, have the people of Italy revealed such force of character, and it is against this people to which mankind owes its greatest conquest, this people of heroes, of poets and saints, of navigators, of colonizers, that the world dares threaten sanctions.

Italy! Italy! Entirely and universally Fascist! The Italy of the blackshirt revolution, rise to your feet; let the cry of your determination rise to the skies and reach our soldiers in East Africa. Let it be a comfort to those who are about to fight. Let it be an encouragement to our friends and a warning to our enemies. It is the cry of Italy which goes beyond the mountains and the seas out into the great world. It is the cry of justice and of victory."

Source of Transcript: History Central dot Com.


Sunday 29 September 2024

Francis Nyangweso: Soldier, Boxer, Sports Administrator

Francis Nyangweso, then a colonel, photographed on Wednesday, February 28th, 1973. Photo credit: Camerapix.

Francis Nyangweso was a talented boxer who was a long-term amateur national and East African Champion. In 1960, he represented Uganda at the Rome Olympics, where he failed to medal. However, he won a bronze medal in the light middleweight division at the Commonwealth Games in Perth in 1962 and a gold at the Hapoel Games in Israel a year earlier.

Trained at Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, Nyangweso rose up the ranks of the Ugandan Army and was appointed the Chairman of the National Council of Sports after Amin seized power in a coup d'etat in January 1971. That year, he was made the acting Brigade Commander of the 1st Infantry Brigade at Masaka before his appointment as Acting Army Commander in 1972.

He later became the Army Chief of Staff and the Minister of Defence. He left the Ugandan Army as a Major General.

After his army career, Nyangweso was involved in sports administration, becoming the president of the Ugandan Olympic Committee and a member of the International Olympic Committee. His hold on the Ugandan Olympic Committee lasted for 29 years after which he was unceremoniously edged out of power. Nyangweso received unwelcome publicity when a BBC investigation revealed that he was one of two African delegates who had been induced to back the 2000 Sydney Games at the expense of Beijing. He was exonerated after an investigation.

He died of complications related to diabetes, an ailment which affected his eyesight.

His life may have had a considerably shorter span.

On October 14th, 1974, Nyangweso was summoned to State House by General Amin who challenged him to a six-round boxing contest. Amin began in aggressive mode and succeeded in cutting Nyangweso who retaliated by knocking Amin off-balance with a right hook. Amin, who was a long-term light heavyweight champion of Uganda, responded with vicious body attacks.

Nyangweso, who had initially thought of the contest as a joke, began to use his footwork, moving and shifting his bodyweight as he angled his shots at Amin. Nyangweso's wife appeared to be gripped with fear as her husband employed his skills to give Amin what witnesses to this extraordinary encounter recall as a thorough beating.

"We thought that was the end of Nyangweso's life, everybody feared for his life," Thomas Kawere, a boxing coach related at Nyangweso's burial.

But instead of earning Nyangweso a death sentence, the contest brought both men closer. Aside from his military appointments, Amin made him the Minister of Culture and Community Development. In fact, he became the de facto President of Uganda for a fortnight in 1975 while Amin was on holiday.

His rise was however halted by the politics of the time. A Christian from the eastern part of Uganda, Nyangweso fell out of favour as Amin increasingly relied on his kinsmen to remain in power. His "fate" was a remarkably soft one as he was handed an ambassadorial post to the Central African Republic.

Nyangweso was, if anything, a survivor.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2020).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England, He is the author of Dick Tiger: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal.

Thursday 19 September 2024

September 19th, 1945: The controversial finding of guilt and sentencing to death of William Joyce whose propaganda broadcasts from Nazi Germany earned him the nickname "Lord Haw Haw"

Photo of William Joyce when he was a member of the British Union of Fascists.

William Joyce, a former member of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, had been charged under the ancient English law of ‘Giving aid and comfort to the King’s enemies’. He had also assisted Germany "in her war against our country and our King".

The prosecution argued that he committed the relevant offences between September 19th, 1939 and July 2nd, 1940 when he was in possession of a British passport before he became a naturalised German citizen.

A jury of 10 men and 2 women found him guilty at the Old Bailey.

However, many have argued that he was unjustly convicted in a show trial by a vengeful British establishment.

1. Joyce, who was Irish, had been born in the United States.

2. The British passport which he had applied for and used in the 1930s had been acquired fraudulently.

Joyce was hanged at Wandsworth Prison on January 3rd, 1946. 

He was 39 years old.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2024).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.



Sunday 15 September 2024

The Hanging of Mossad Agent Eli Cohen

The lifeless body of Eli Cohen dangles at Marjeh Square (Martyrs Square) in the Syrian capital Damascus on Tuesday, May 18th, 1965.

About the inscription pinned onto Eli Cohen's execution shroud:

'Colonel Dalli then attached to the white sackcloth shroud a large placard, the invariable last act of a Syrian execution. On it was written, in Arabic script, the sentence of the Military Court. It read:

Eliahu Ben-Shaul Cohen was sentenced to death in the name of the Arab people of Syria, having been found guilty of penetrating into a military sector and communicating secret information to the enemy".'

- "The Final Night”, pp 5-6 Chapter 1 of The Spy From Israel by Ben Dan, published by Vallentine, Mitchell & Co. Ltd, 1969.

Forty-year-old Cohen had posed as a returnee Syrian businessman from Argentina named "Kamel Amin Thaabet". He managed to penetrate the highest echelons of the Syrian political and military establishment, including becoming the Chief Adviser to the Syrian Minister of Defence.

He was caught by Soviet-made tracking equipment which enabled Syrian counterintelligence to locate the source of coded transmissions to Israeli intelligence.

He was tried by a special military tribunal and condemned to death on May 8th, 1965. Pleas for clemency from world leaders were ignored by the Syrian military government who proceeded to hang him at Marjeh Square (Martyrs Square) in Damascus

Efforts by Cohen's family to have his remains repatriated to Israel have so far been unsuccessful.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2024).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.



Wednesday 11 September 2024

Operation Northwoods: A Planned False Flag Operation Designed To Provide The United States With An Excuse To Invade Cuba

Operation Northwoods involved U.S. intelligence staging False Flag incidents involving the hijacking of planes, the blowing up of ships and the shooting to death of innocent civilians on the American mainland which would be falsely attributed to Cubans operating on behalf of the Castro government.

The public outrage would then provide a justification for invading Cuba and overthrowing Fidel Castro.

Operation Northwoods was approved in 1962 by General Lyman Lemnitzer when he was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but was rejected by the Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara under the instruction of President John F. Kennedy.

It is not known who designed the Northwoods project, but many are almost certain that the architect was Air Force Brigadier-General (later Major General) Edward Lansdale. Lansdale, a specialist in unorthodox warfare, had been working at that time on Operation Mongoose, an overarching plan to assassinate Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader.

Images.

1. Document.

Operation Northwoods was signed off by General Lyman Lemnitzer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

2. Top right.

Lyman Lemnitzer, the Four Star General who approved of Operation Northwoods.

3. Bottom right.

Major General Edward Lansdale shortly before his retirement from the United States Air Force.

(c) Adeyinka Makinde (2023).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Sunday 8 September 2024

Rare Photograph of Timothy Onwuatuegwu, Sandhurst-educated Army Officer of Nigeria and later of Biafra

Timothy Onwuatuegwu in photograph taken some time after his appointment as second in command of the Biafran Western Front in October 1968. Photo credit: David Robison.

Sandhurst-educated Timothy Onwuatuegwu (d.1970) was a key participant in the bloody army coup of January 15th, 1966, and became a prominent commander on the Biafran side during the Nigerian Civil War.

As head of the 'S Division', he was viewed as one of the most effective field commanders of the Biafran Army.

A Nigerian Army major at the time of the coup of January 1966 and later a lieutenant colonel in the Biafran army, Onwuatuegwu's presumed death is still something of a mystery.

These are the following narratives:

. Onwuatuegwu was killed in an ambush conducted on the Cameroon border by Nigerian army soldiers of Northern origin as payback for the murder of the Sardauna of Sokoto as well as senior Northern military officers.

.  Onwuatuegwu was killed by Yoruba officers of the Nigerian army who lured him to a hotel in Owerri at the end of the war, this as revenge for the murders respectively of Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun and his wife, as well as that of Colonel Ralph Shodeinde.

. Onwuatuegwu was killed by Brigadier Hassan Katsina in Kirikiri Prison, Lagos. Katsina is supposed to have flown from Kaduna to put a bullet in Onwuatuegwu's forehead. A slightly different narrative puts the location of his execution as Enugu prison.

Onwuatuegwu was supposedly shot with two other captured Biafran army officers and had been betrayed by certain civilians from Nnewi, the home town of the Head of State of the secessionist state of Biafra.

In his memoir The Fall of Biafra, Ben Gbulie claimed that Onwuatuegwu's betrayers were part of a wider "Osu conspiracy" of sabotage which “caused" Biafra's eventual defeat. The Osu are the “untouchable” caste of Igbo society.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2024).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Thursday 22 August 2024

General François Lecointre and Eurafrica

General François Gérard Marie Lecointre, the now retired French Army Chief of Defence Staff. Eurafrica image by Francisca Roseiro. 

In an interview uploaded onto the YouTube channel of Le Figaro in April 2024, General François Lecointre, the former Chief of Defence Staff of France, made controversial remarks which were interpreted by many as meaning that he desired the recolonisation of Africa. Lecointre appeared to suggest that France needed to invade and militarily reconquer its old colonial territories including those from which France has recently been unceremoniously ejected. In doing so, he was in fact alluding to a long-held geopolitical concept known as “Eurafrica.” This idea, which has found expression in Herman Sorgel’s “Atlantropa” and in Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-Europa Movement, is one in which the destinies of the continents of Europe and Africa have been inextricably interwoven. In earlier years, Eurafrica, which was developed during the age of the colonisation of the African continent by European powers, was explicitly paternalistic and exploitative in its exposition. But even in more recent times, its theoretical enunciations through terms such as “partnership” do not hide its extractivist raison d'etre: That Europe requires untrammelled access to Africa’s mineral resources. This has been the demonstrable modus operandi of Eurafrica’s institutionalised application: Via France-Afrique, the device through which France managed its shadow empire in post-independence Francophone Africa, and also through the workings of the European Union. For unknown to many Eurafrica lay at the very heart of the creation of the European Economic project in the 1950s. Indeed, the Eurafrica-based relationship between the EU and African states persists to this day, a state of affairs which from the European perspective is threatened by resource-starved China’s expanding presence on the African continent.

During his interview General Lecointre said the following:

We must return and help these African countries. Rebuilding state structures, restoring administrations, and fostering development are all crucial steps.

Many interpreted the word “return” as a direct reference to the recent expulsions of the French military from the Sahelian states of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, implying that a resurrection of French power could only be achieved in the foreseeable future by military force. Further, his use of the word “help,” despite its link to fostering development did not strike critics as being predicated on philanthropic motives. Instead, his language, given a paternalistic import, was suggestive of the sort which has been used in the context of an enduring concept which fuses the destinies of Europe and Africa in a political and economic union.

The original concept of Eurafrica was a political project through which African colonies would be merged prior to the process of European integration. The resultant entity would serve as a counterweight to competing continental blocs in the Americas and Asia. Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the man who created and led the Pan-European Movement, believed European technical advancement and "high culture" would merge with the "primitive” vitalism of Africa to create a geopolitical power bloc. Coudenhove-Kalergi wrote that “Africa has become our closest neighbour and its destiny a part of our own destiny.” He also argued that “the future of Africa depends on what Europe makes of it.” It is therefore not difficult to see Lecointre’s choice of words as forming a continuum of Coudenhove-Kalergi’s approach of the twinning of destinies in an enterprise combining a latter day insistence on a sphere of influence with a modern Mission civilisatrice.

However, what Lecointre did not specifically address was the underlying motivation for returning to Africa, which of course is about France regaining and maintaining access to a continent which is abundant in crucial raw materials. It is important therefore to explain France’s two-tier application of Eurafrica as a national endeavour and as part of a supra-national enterprise. This refers respectively to France’s relations with its former colonies through France-Afrique, as well as the relationship between the European Union and Africa. In the post war years, Eurafrica was a central tenet of France’s foreign policy strategy aimed at reconciling French efforts in integrating with Europe while maintaining a hold on its African empire. This strategy was clear to one American analyst who stated in the early 1950s that France envisioned an economic link between Europe and Africa “with Paris in control.”

France-Afrique, an expression coined by Felix Houphouet-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire in 1955, formed the basis through which France’s extraction model was perfected. The Communaute Francaise ensured that France maintained access to a range of natural resources produced by its former colonies including oil, bauxite, tin and uranium. France was able to maintain control of what was a shadow empire in the areas of economics, security and culture. These would be strengthened over the decades through various formal and informal agreements. A key feature of the economic stranglehold France had over most of Africa’s Francophone states was through monetary union. The creation of two sets of currencies, the Communauté Financière Africaine in West Africa and the Coopération Financière en Afrique centrale in Central Africa, each set of which France is responsible for printing, provided a formidable device for controlling a collection of satrapies.

The CFA has been referred to as a “colonial currency” not only because of the restrictive terms under which it operates, but also because of its effect of stultifying the economic development of participant nations. For instance, the pegging of the currencies to the French Franc in yesteryears and today to the Euro is for African states a debilitating arrangement given the strength of both Franc and Euro. Right from the outset of the creation of CFA in 1945, its overvaluation in French colonies meant that while African countries had the purchasing power to buy products from metropolitan France, they were restricted in their ability to export. But they were for the most part purchasing products processed from the raw materials they had sold. France at the same time was granted special access to vital raw materials from its colonies in regard to which it had a right of first offer. This arrangement was extremely helpful in reviving the French economy which had been devastated during the Second World War. French control of CFA would also enable it to access raw materials in Africa in its own currency, in the process bypassing the US dollar which had become the de facto world reserve currency.

The CFA system is also an affront to the sovereignty of African subscriber states who do not participate in the process through which monetary policies are decided. The free transferability of the regional currencies was not part of an equal bargain since each nation was for many decades obliged to deposit at least 50 per cent of their foreign exchange reserves with the French treasury, a rule which has been abrogated in West Africa but still applies to the Central African CFA zone. Free transferability also negatively impacts on African nations tied to the monetary system because French individuals and companies who invest in these countries can just as easily divest and repatriate their profits.  

Although President Franklin Roosevelt was strident in his insistence that the European powers break up their empires after the end of the Second World War, his successors did not oppose the neocolonial features of France-Afrique because it served as a bulwark against the spread of communism in the Cold War era. France was careful to deploy French military forces in each of the countries and it employed economic leverage against recalcitrant political leaders.

The man who “enforced” French hegemony among its former colonies was Jacques Foccart. Known as President Charles de Gaulle’s Monsieur Afrique, Foccart was the co-founder of Service d'Action Civique (SAC), a Gaullist militia that specialised in undertaking covert operations in Francophone Africa. He was also influential in the conduct of clandestine operations undertaken by the French foreign intelligence service, once admitting that the French secret service was responsible for assassinating Felix-Roland Moumie, the Cameroonian Marxist leader in Geneva, while the French state was orchestrating a “dirty war” in that country.

Foccart oversaw  “Operation Persil” after President Sekou Toure of Guinea refused to join Communaute Francaise, famously declaring that Guineans would prefer “freedom in poverty to riches in slavery.” Toure proceeded to create a central bank and a new currency. In retaliation, France withdrew its civil servants and technical staff during which equipment was destroyed. Then Foccart ordered the SDECE (Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage) to sabotage the Guinean economy by covertly flooding the country with fake currency. Operation Persil ultimately failed.

In July 1973, President Francois Tombalbaye of Chad led a demonstration in the capital city Fort-Lamy (later N'DJamena in protest against what he alleged to be French interference in the internal affairs of his country. Foccart was reported to have told friends that he intended to "save" Chad and predicted that Tombalbaye's government would not survive beyond December 1973. He was assassinated in 1975 during a coup d’etat. But France-Afrique, later pejoratively spelt as Franceafrique, because of its inherent neocolonial basis, weakened over the course of time because of France’s growing commitment to the European Economic project, and the deaths of key figures such as Foccart.

The key tenets of Eurafrica nonetheless survived in France’s relationship with most of its former colonies and persists in the European Union’s relationship with the African continent. For as the Swedish professors Peo Hansen and Stefan Jonsson explained in their book Eurafrica: the Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism, the foundation of the original European community of states which evolved into the European Union, was predicated on the principles theorised by Coudenhove-Kalergi. Key to this was the extractivist relations between a group of integrated European nations and the African continent. The rationale for European integration was, Coudenhove-Kalergi effectively argued, to exploit Africa as efficiently as possible. “Africa,” he said, “could provide Europe with raw materials for its industry, nutrition for its population, land for its overpopulation, labour for its unemployed, and markets for its products.” The unity of Europe as a precondition to the effective exploitation of the African continent was explicitly articulated by French Prime Minister Guy Mollet when he met with US President Dwight Eisenhower in February 1952. Mollet stated that he wanted Africa to be integrated into the European project through French and German capital, Italian labour, American and German machinery and French administrative expertise.

Both academics have thus challenged what they refer to as the Immaculate Conception narrative of the EU’s founding. This holds that tired of cyclical wars often centred on the rivalry between France and Germany, a group of Western European states grouped together to form an economic association of states which would “unite for peace, freedom and democracy.”

But there were clues that the creation first of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951, and then of the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Commission (EURATOM) in 1957 were not simply a peace project. For instance, at the time of the EEC’s establishment in 1957, a headline in the French newspaper Le Monde proclaimed the development to be a “First step towards Eurafrica”.

There were many other similarly worded headlines. One, a short dispatch from Rome by a correspondent for the International News Service (INS) which was published in The Rockland County Journal News on March 26th, 1957, reflected Kalergi’s twin idea of a union with Africa being predicated on mineral resource exploitation and the formation of a geopolitical bloc able to hold its own against rival continental power blocs. Titled “Signing of Unity Treaties Seen Step Toward Eurafrica”, the writer reflected the former by stating “...the pacts contain the seeds of an even bigger dream, a ‘Eur-Africa’ pooling of European and African marketing and political schemes”, and the latter which noted that “one aim of the two pacts is to raise the level of manufacturing methods in all of the nations in all so that ‘Little Europe’ and its 160,000,000 population will be able to compete on equal terms with the United States and Russia.”

As Jean-Michel de Lattre wrote in Politique etrangere in 1955: “It is in Africa that Europe will be made”.

France and its vast colonial empire in Africa would be central to this. In an article written 5 years earlier in the May 16th edition of the Edmonton Journal, which was titled “French Idea Of Eurafrica”, George W. Herald expounded on the meaning of Eurafrica. It meant, he wrote, “that the French would like to link colonial Africa to the forthcoming Federation of Europe.” And given that France controlled most of these colonies, Herald continued, “If that area and a federated Europe could be welded into one supra-national community, they say, unprecedented new vistas would be opened to future generations.”

He stressed that geological experts had asserted that the “mineral wealth buried south and west of the Sahara is virtually inexhaustible.” These he informed his readers included gold, diamonds, uranium, copper, lead, zinc, mercury, iron ore, phosphate and sulphur. It was also clear that at this stage France was not at all keen to pursue a course of decolonisation and was actively opposing independence movements in Tunisia and Morocco. It also did not appear to Herald to be enthusiastic about embarking on what he termed a “share-the-wealth” programme with other European states. The reluctance to embark on decolonisation and the unwillingness to give up the primacy of French access to the mineral wealth of her African colonies of course went against the key tenets of Eurafrica established by Coudenhove-Kalergi including that which insisted that those European states such as Germany which had been dispossessed of its African colonies would be granted access to African resources in order to solidify the unity of a future European Union. France of course relented by granting its colonies independence under the stringent condition of joining the Communaute Francaise.

In an era of decolonisation, the purveyors of Eurafrica needed to portray the concept as being one which was far removed from the naked exploitation of Africa as had been the motive behind the division of the continent at the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885. The members of the Common Market, as the EEC was often referred, were quite conscious of the colonial backdrop to their formation and were at pains to explain that the relationship with Africa was not the story of a one way street of exploitation which socialist and communist ideologues were often keen to assert. Thus, in July 1962 it was announced in Brussels that associated African states would receive $1,000 million in development aid which would double the amount that they had received since its inception in 1957. The overall package which included guarantees related to price stabilisation for African raw materials and unrestricted, tariff-free access for African products to the Common Market one newspaper reported had “great political significance in counteracting communist propaganda that (the Common Market) is an instrument of neocolonialism.” 

While as mentioned earlier, the burdens associated with increased integration in the European project weakened France-Afrique, the European Community, as it then was styled, nonetheless continued to plot an economic path that bound it to Africa and also to other nations which today are referred to as the “Global South” in preference to the previous designation of “Third World”.

First, was the Yaoundé Convention of 1963, which was signed between the EEC and the Associated African States and Madagascar. A second Yaoundé Convention was signed in 1969 which included Mauritius, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Prior to this in 1966, the military government of Nigeria signed an agreement with the EEC which granted it the status of an Associate Member State. And building up on this the Lome Conventions of 1975 and 1979 were signed with the ACP Group consisting of African, Caribbean and Pacific states.

All these agreements reflected the extractivist model, with the Lome Convention aiming to transform the economies of the African and other states into “quasi-industrialised” ones. Although the combined agreements signed in Yaoundé and Lome were essentially dismantled following American claims that the provisions were incompatible with those of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the EU, Hansen and Jonsson remind, continues to aggressively exploit minerals on the African continent including the oilfields of Libya, the goldmines of Ghana, and the mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of Africa’s most minerally endowed countries.

The idea of Eurafrica is being brought back to public consciousness because of the rise of China as an economic power and an increasingly multipolar world. Although European trade and investment far outstrips that of China in Africa, the EU has been rattled by the challenges posed to its access to African raw materials by raw material-hungry China’s increasing presence on the continent. This has been magnified by the increased animus between resource-rich Russia and the EU which has imposed an extraordinary range of sanctions on the country over its conflict with Ukraine.

The European Commission’s Raw Materials Initiative launched in 2011 was a response to what is perceived as the threat posed by China, a country on which it was heavily dependent on rare earth minerals, lithium and magnesium. The idea behind this is to create a list every three years of designated Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) which are utilised in energy transition and digital technologies. This enables an assessment to be made of those which are at risk of short supply or of disruption in the supply chain. The European Critical Raw Materials Act came into force in May 2024. The Act acknowledges that the EU "will never be self-sufficient in supplying such raw materials and will continue to rely on imports for a majority of its consumption.”

Given the drift of geopolitical currents, it has been clear for some time to many political and economic analysts that the historical criticality of the EU’s relationship with Africa needed to be re-emphasised. This was reflected in the headline of an article in The Economist in September 2018 which was titled “The rebirth of Eurafrica” (“Why Europe should focus on its growing interdependence with Africa” in its online edition). 2018 also saw the launching of the Africa-Europe Alliance for Sustainable Development and Jobs and in the following year, the European Commission stressed that Africa was the EU’s global priority. Under the new president, Ursula von der Leyen, a policy paper titled “Comprehensive Strategy with Africa” was presented. Using words which resonated with past enunciations of Eurafrica, Josep Borrell, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said “A part of Europe’s future is at stake in Africa. To face our modern challenges, we need a strong Africa, and Africa needs a strong Europe.”

Yet, despite these positively expressed sentiments, including former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s pledged commitment to launching “a Marshall Plan for Africa,” the aura of an exploitative motive remains. For example, in 2021 when speaking of the need for the EU to become “a more active global player” in formulating a strategy to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), von der Leyen remarked that “It doesn’t make sense for the EU to build that perfect road between a Chinese-financed copper mine and a Chinese-financed harbour.”

Her words, Peo Hansen, argues encapsulate the Eurafrican mentality and expose that “agency, sovereignty and autonomy are alien to the EU concept of Africa.” It is such attitudes particularly those predicated on the exploitative mechanism of Franceafrique which have caused the military regimes in Sahelian West Africa to boot out the French. It is also the reason many African states have been turning to China and Russia, both presently building BRICS as an alternative to the EU and other Western institutions which they assert are not respectful to the specific needs and interests of Africans.

Eurafrica in both its theory and application is the antithesis of the spirit of multipolarity in which, in contrast to the hegemonic and neocolonial models of the EU and Bretton Woods institutions, is predicated on an equal partnership and respect for national sovereignty.

It is also worth noting that the EU has often not lived up to its concept as a peace project. For while the EU has succeeded in keeping the peace as far as wars among its member states are concerned, it chose to be silent and inert while the Algerian war raged. Oil and gas rich Algeria was at the time of the uprising of the Front de libération nationale (FLN) considered to be part of Metropolitan France, but no voices were raised in Brussels over the widespread atrocities including massacres and torture committed by the French armed forces. What is more, French state-sponsored terrorism was brought to European soil by “La Main Rouge” (The Red Hand), a terror group which was actually a covert arm of the French state. Under the auspices of the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Red Hand assassinated several key Algerian figures in the FLN, as well as West German arms dealers suspected of supplying weapons and munitions to the FLN.

The EU has also served to give cover to the illegal military adventures embarked upon by NATO, a military organisation to which most of its member states belong. This has included the destruction of the Libyan state which was led by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. The voices of independent spirited political leaders such as the Austrian Bruno Kreisky and the German Willy Brandt, both of whom Peo Hansen noted “spoke in the name of Europe,” are virtually non-existent.

This clarification of the colonial origins of the EU and its fundamentally extractivist relationship with the African continent needs to be correctly understood by Africa’s political leaders and the policymakers who have uniformly pursued the resource rental model as the default basis of running their economies. Contentment with an arrangement in which African states possess no ambition further than selling their minerals and raw materials to developed countries and supra-national entities such as the EU only serve to relegate them to the permanent state of unequal partners. It not only places limits on their ability to exercise economic statecraft, but it also sets a perpetual barrier on maximising national prosperity. There cannot be a future in leasing mining rights to their resources when they would be infinitely better off by extracting their resources and developing such resources into products that can then be sold on the world market under a single currency regime.

Eurafrica would be a much sounder concept if it were shorn of its neocolonial trappings. But for Africa and Europe to operate in genuine equal partnership, much of the onus in achieving this state of affairs will be on Africans who must embark on a quest to transform their consumer orientated, resource-based economies into productive ones by developing for themselves industrial base economies.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2024).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England. He has an interest in both history and geopolitics.

A note:

The origins of the EU are both fascinating and multifaceted. But the official narrative of it being guided to birth by the efforts of Robert Shuman whose plan was inspired by the ideas of Jean Monnet is incomplete. The bringing to fruition of the dream of a federated Europe owed a great deal to the covert efforts of the United States through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its precursor the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) both of which funded the post war European Movement. This has been backed up by scholarly research. The United States believed that a united Europe would serve as a bulwark to the spread of communism and provide a means for rehabilitating the successor state to Nazi Germany. It was envisaged as a means through which the United States could control Europe in an age of US global domination.

However, despite its foundational association with the idea of Eurafrica, the claim that it was purposefully set up to engineer the genocide of white Europe is one without any basis in fact. While Coudenhove-Kalergi, himself of mixed European and Japanese descent, predicted the development of a Eurasian-Negroid race with an appearance similar to that of the Ancient Egyptians, this was not an integral component of his specific project to unite Europe in a mission to exploit Africa. That Eurafrica was not a concept inexorably attached to racial interbreeding is clear from the fact that the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley incorporated his own vision of Eurafrica as part of his “Third Position.” At its inception, the Common Market acted with stealth and decisiveness in ensuring that Muslim Arab Algerians, as mentioned earlier then citizens of a country considered as Metropolitan France, did not have the same rights as other citizens in the European Economic Community.

Select sources.

Books:

Hansen, Peo and Jonsson, Stefan. Eurafrica: the Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism. Bloomsbury, 2014.

Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard N. Pan-Europe. Knopf, 1926.

Journal Articles:

Thorpe, Benjamin J. “Eurafrica: A Pan-European Vehicle for Central European Colonialism (1923–1939,” European Review, Cambridge University Press, Volume 26, Issue 3, June 2018.

Aldrich, Richard. “OSS, CIA and European Unity: The American Committee on United Europe, 1948-60,”  Diplomacy & Statecraft, Frank Cass, Volume 8, Number 1, March 1997.

De Lattre, Jean-Michel. “Les grands ensembles Africains,” Politique etrangere, Volume 20, Number 5, 1955.

News Magazine:

The new scramble for Africa,” The Economist, March 7th, 2019.

“The rebirth of Eurafrica” (Online title: “Why Europe should focus on its relationship with Africa”), The Economist, September 22nd, 2018.

Newspaper Articles:

Fleming, Sam and Khan, Mehreen. “EU proposes new infrastructure programme to rival China,” The Financial Times, September 15th, 2021.

“Eurafrica Concept Gets Another Boost,” National Post, July 28th, 1962.

International News Service. “Signing of Unity Treaties Seen Step Toward Eurafrica,” The Rockland County Journal News, March 26th, 1957.

“Nations Seek Strength in Economic Unions: Will Dream of ‘Eurafrica’ Come True?” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, March 24th, 1957.

Herald, George W. “French Idea Of ‘Eurafrica’,” Edmonton Journal, May 16th, 1952.

Pearson, Drew. “Mollet Emphasizes Eur-Africa,” The News Herald, February 26th, 1952.

Video:

Crazy or Laughable? Why The EU (Still) Thinks It Rules The World | Professor Peo Hansen,” Neutrality Studies YouTube Channel, uploaded April 21st, 2024.

Sahel, Russie, Ukraine... Le Général François Lecointre se confie,” Le Figaro YouTube Channel, uploaded April 14th, 2024.

Nigeria Becomes An Associate Member State Of The EEC | Brigadier Ogundipe Signs Deal | July 1966,” Adeyinka Makinde YouTube Channel, uploaded July 2nd, 2023.

Eurafrica: The Colonial Origins of the European Union,” Institute of European Studies, UC Berkeley YouTube Channel, uploaded March 19th, 2021.

Podcasts:

EURO—VISION / “📢 Colonial Currencies & Other Investment Stratagems — a conversation with Ndongo Samba Sylla,” Episode 3, April 21st, 2021.

. Listen also at Soundcloud.

. Read Pdf transcript.

EURO—VISION / “📢 EURAFRICA — a conversation with Stefan Jonsson and Peo Hansen,” Episode 2, April 6th, 2021.

. Listen also at Soundcloud.

. Read Pdf transcript.

EURO—VISION / “📢 The Curse of Berlin – a conversation with Adekeye Adebajo,” Episode 1, April 1st, 2021.

. Listen also at Soundcloud.

. Read Pdf transcript.

Blogs:

Hansen. Peo. “The colonial origins of European integration,” European Politics and Policy Blog, London School of Economics, October 31st, 2023.

Makinde, Adeyinka. “From Hegemony to Multipolarity: How Post-Cold War U.S. Foreign Policy Towards Russia is Creating a Modern Eurasia,” Adeyinka Makinde, Writer Blog, March 23rd, 2023.

Makinde, Adeyinka. “Rethinking the Legacy of Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea,” Adeyinka Makinde, Writer Blog, September 10th, 2022.