While the United States wages wars and incites conflict in the oil-rich Middle East, France is continuing its colonial strategy by forcibly stealing a natural resource it wants and needs from African countries that own it.
The two key countries are Mali and Niger.
The essential natural resource France requires in large quantities is uranium. Some 80 percent of its electricity is generated from 59 nuclear reactors.
One of the world’s largest sources of uranium lies underneath the deserts in northern Mali and neighboring eastern Niger.
For 50 years, France has held a colonial power relationship with Mali in order to exploit its resources, particularly uranium.
This includes propping up government leaders who support the exploitation while opposing protesters in mining areas who are angered over environmental degradation and the outflow of resources to France.
The situation in Mali has significantly worsened as a result of the U.S.-led destruction of Libya in 2011.
With the fall of Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi and the complete collapse of the government, the Tuareg fighters who had supported Gaddafi fled south and west to Mali loaded with Libyan weapons.
Within months those fighters helped ignite an armed rebellion leading to the Islamist takeover of the government.
Under the guise of defeating these “terrorists,” France reinforced its colonial intentions.
As reported in the 2013 Winter edition of the Trends Journal:
“As we go to press, French President Hollande, with support from President Obama, has launched air strikes in Mali and sent French ground troops to attack Al Qaeda-linked Islamists.”
Initial reports claim that only a handful of rebels were killed and that the main victims
were women, children, and the elderly. “The hospital is overflowing. Both morgues in the city are filled with bodies,” a Malian official in Gao told The New York Times.Under the auspices of the United Nations, the U.S., France, UK, and other NATO members are planning broader intervention in Mali that will be reinforced with ground troops from some West African nations.
The Mali civil war, which has already turned 300,000 of its citizens into refugees, is but one of the many conflicts in the region. In response, the rebels sent a loud message that could be heard around the world: “Mali Islamists threaten to retaliate ‘at the heart of France,’ … Today, they threatened payback,” read the Christian Science Monitor headline the day after the French incursion.
Yes, “payback”! Just as we used to say in the Bronx, “Payback’s a bitch.” And as long as nations attack other nations and people kill other people, the “eye for an eye” payback cycle will continue.
Thus, the French, backed by the U.S., launched a military intervention to overthrow a government that had taken power as a direct result of the U.S., UK, French, and NATO supported destruction of Libya two years prior.
Now, in 2019, just as the U.S. justifies its Middle East wars on fighting terrorism rather than its lust for oil, France and its allies still claim their presence in Mali is to fight the infestation of terrorist violence by militant jihadists – not its lust for uranium.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: In contrast to the France-led military intervention, China has included Mali as part of its massive “Belt and Road” initiative. China has begun construction of a hydro-electric dam in the northern part of the country and continues to initiate large infrastructure projects.
As Gerald Celente has continually noted, “The Business of China is Business. The business of America is War. The 20th century was the American century. The 21st century will be the Chinese century.”