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Mozambique supports Mugabe

Mozambique will not attend the forthcoming European Union-African Union summit if Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is excluded, Radio Mozambique reported on Wednesday.

Eduardo Koloma, Mozambican Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister said the participation of Mozambique in the summit set for December in Portugal depended on the unconditional attendance of Mugabe.

Koloma’s remarks comes in the wake of similar threats by Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa — also Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional chairperson.

"Mozambique subscribes to the principles and decisions of SADC leaders and the position of the regional body was announced by the current chairperson.

"As current chairperson he [Mwanawasa] speaks for the region," said Koloma.

Participation of Mugabe at the meeting, which is expected to discuss cooperation between Europe and Africa, hangs in the balance after United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown threatened he would not attend if Mugabe was invited.

Mugabe is barred from travelling to most European countries in terms of sanctions imposed on the Southern African country.

This week Mugabe was quoted in the international media as having said United Kingdom and the United States should "stay out of his country’s business".

"Mr [George] Bush and Mr [Gordon] Brown have no role to play in our national affairs. They are outsiders and should therefore keep out." Mugabe was quoted as having said in a speech before the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week

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America’s next air war

An invitation to visit "Checkmate", the US air force’s most important and secretive strategic planning group, was an offer that, as a veteran military analyst, I could not refuse. A few weeks earlier, I had written that the air force was the supreme instrument of America’s global power, likening it to the 19th-century Royal Navy. Were it not for the USAF’s 24-hour close air support, I said, US and British ground forces in Iraq and Afghanistan would be unable to defend their long, vulnerable supply lines, and might even face defeats like those suffered by imperial Britain at Kut and in the Afghan wars.

My column ricocheted around the Pentagon’s top brass and received a positive response from General Michael Moseley, the air force chief of staff. I was invited to the Pentagon to brief Checkmate’s senior officers on strategic developments in my speciality areas, the Middle East and South Asia. Soon after, I was in the Pentagon’s 17.1-mile maze of corridors amid 23,000 military and civilian personnel. The Checkmate group planned the devastating 1991 air force attack on Iraq, and the 2003 strike aimed at decapitating Iraq’s leadership. Its austere, high security offices are deep in the Pentagon’s prestigious inner rings, heavily shielded against electronic penetration. As I walked through each new section of Checkmate’s headquarters, a major preceded me, warning fellow officers to cover secret documents on their desks, and ensuring I did not stray into forbidden areas. I wryly recalled that security had not been this tight when I was the first western journalist invited into the Lubyanka, the KGB’s headquarters. Checkmate’s staff work close to the Pentagon’s Mount Olympus, the offices of the joints chiefs of staff. Brigadier General Lawrence Stutzriem, Checkmate’s brainy commander, reports directly to Moseley, who advises the president. In the Pentagon, reporting line can be more important than rank. Unlike other military bureaucracies, Checkmate has the ear of the gods of war. Its 20-30 young, high-energy officers have advanced academic and military degrees and are on the fast track to the top of America’s most forward-thinking, smartest service.

While the army and navy plan to re-fight America’s last wars, Checkmate is busy planning the next ones. Checkmate’s mission is to "think out of the box", develop new, often unorthodox ideas, outflank bureaucracy and ensure they remain "air warriors". Checkmate officers were eager to tell me about the fast-advancing decrepitude of their air fleet, whose average age is nearing 25 years. The air force has been in almost non-stop combat for 17 years. Many aircraft, such as the B-52 heavy bombers, America’s version of the Royal Navy’s Dreadnoughts, and tanker aircraft, are older than the pilots flying them.

I asked when the Bush administration’s widely expected air war against Iran would begin. This was not a subject my hosts cared to discuss. Smiles vanished. Dr Lani Kass, Checkmate’s formidable senior civilian official, a former Israeli military officer who had somehow morphed into a senior Pentagon advisor, dismissed my question, insisting no decision to attack Iran had been made. She called a possible air war "unlikely". But I was ready to bet plans to blitz Iran were being drawn up in an adjoining office. One could feel a buzz of excitement among Checkmate’s hard-eyed officers who wore combat flight suits and tensed up every time I mentioned Iran. Pentagon sources say the air force has selected 3,000-4,000 targets in Iran, and that some US and British special forces are already operating there. However, Washington sources also report strong opposition to war against Iran among the Pentagon’s brass, and high-ranking officials in the CIA, Treasury, and state department. They view war with Iran as unpredictable, unwise and dangerous at a time when US ground and air forces are stretched to breaking point in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We can defeat Iran," insisted Dr Kass, `but are Americans willing to pay the price?"

So far, apparently not. Congress has not been renewing the air force’s fleet and will baulk at the cost of a new war. Ironically, the air force is victim of its own success. The last time US ground forces came under enemy air attack was in 1953 during the Korean war. America’s air force fights and operates so efficiently the public and congress do not understand the enormous efforts and cost of keeping American domination of most of the world’s skies, space and cyberspace. Today, the air force has no real enemies left because it shot them all down. If the balloon goes up, Checkmate are likely to target the initial waves of devastating strikes against either Iran, or, as I was told, "the next enemy of America that sticks up its head".

Eric Margolis is contributing foreign editor of Sun National Media, Canada

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Prepare for war

Allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons could destabilize the world and lead to war, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told the United Nations on Tuesday.

In his maiden speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Sarkozy said: "There will be no peace in the world if the international community falters in the face of nuclear arms proliferation."

Iran was entitled to nuclear power for civilian purposes, he said, "but if we allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, we would incur an unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world".

In a broader warning against the dangers of appeasement, the new French leader said: "Weakness and renunciation do not lead to peace. They lead to war."

Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but the West suspects the Islamic Republic of enriching uranium to develop a nuclear weapons capability.

Underlining French support for tougher sanctions against Tehran, sought by the United States but opposed by Russia and China, Sarkozy said: "We can only resolve this crisis by combining firmness with dialogue."

In an interview with the New York Times published on Monday, Sarkozy said that if the U.N. Security Council was unable to agree on further financial sanctions, the European Union should take its own measures to raise pressure on Iran.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner caused an outcry last week by saying if diplomacy failed to stop Iran’s nuclear program, the world should prepare for the worst — war.

But Sarkozy appeared to deliver the same message in a coded form, without mentioning the possibility of military action to prevent Iran achieving a nuclear capability.

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The new British empire?

Britain is preparing territorial claims on tens of thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean floor around the Falklands, Ascension Island and Rockall in the hope of annexing potentially lucrative gas, mineral and oil fields, the Guardian has learned.

The UK claims, to be lodged at the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, exploit a novel legal approach that is transforming the international politics of underwater prospecting.

Britain is accelerating its process of submitting applications to the UN – which is fraught with diplomatic sensitivities, not least with Argentina – before an international deadline for registering interests.

Relying on detailed geological and geophysical surveys by scientists and hydrographers, any state can delineate a new "continental shelf outer limit" that can extend up to 350 miles from its shoreline. Data has been collected for most of Britain’s submissions and Chris Carleton, head of the law of the sea division at the UK Hydrographic Office and an international expert on the process, said preliminary talks on Rockall are being held in Reykjavik, Iceland, next week.

Mr Carleton believes the Falklands claim has the most potential for acrimonious political fallout. Britain and Argentina fought over the islands 25 years ago, and the value of the oil under the sea in the region is understood to be immense: seismic tests suggest there could be up to 60m barrels under the ocean floor.

Britain has been granted licences for exploratory drilling around the islands within the normal 200-mile exploration limit and any new claim to UNCLCS would extend territorial rights further into the Atlantic.

"It would be beyond the 200-mile limit but less than 350 miles," said Mr Carleton, who is involved in preparing the submission. "It effectively joins up the area around South Georgia to the Falklands. It’s a claim but how it’s handled has not been decided yet. The Argentinians will say it’s not ours to claim. It’s all a bit tricky."

Martin Pratt, director of research at Durham University’s international boundaries research unit, added: "The Russians may be claiming the Arctic but the UK is claiming a large chunk of the Atlantic. Some states might ask why a big power is entitled to huge stretches of the ocean’s resources thousands of miles away from its land, but that’s the way the law is."

Because of the sensitivities – earlier this year Buenos Aires scrapped a 1995 agreement with the UK to share any oil found in the adjacent waters – the first formal application from the UK is likely to centre on Ascension.

The volcanic island, 1,000 miles from the African mainland, sits just to one side of the mid-Atlantic ridge. No gas or oil is likely to be found below the surrounding waters but there could be significant mineral deposits on the ocean floor.

Talks have already begun between Ireland, Iceland and Denmark for the division of rights far out into the north Atlantic. It includes the island of Rockall and the sub-sea Hatton ridge. The competing claims are nowhere near final resolution although Ireland and the UK have agreed a common boundary.

Other countries that have submitted claims to the ocean floors around remote overseas dependencies have run into fierce resentment from neighbouring nations. France, which this summer registered its claim to thousands of square miles around New Caledonia, in the Pacific, has received protests from Vanuatu warning that the claim has "serious implications and ramifications on Vanuatu’s legal and traditional sovereignty". Russia was criticised this summer for making claims beneath the Arctic Ocean.

The UN body has been progressing slowly through its casework. The process of extending the normal 200-mile limit requires volumes of technical evidence of submarine soundings. According to the convention on the law of the sea, applicant states may register their rights by "establishing the foot of the continental slope, by meeting the requirements stated for the thickness of sedimentary rocks".

Once demarcated, the ocean floor may then be claimed up to 60 nautical miles from the bottom of the continental slope. When territorial rights have been obtained, states have the right to extract any minerals, natural gas or oil discovered in the annexed seabed.

There is a deadline of May 2009 for claims from the UK and other countries to be submitted, although states that ratified the treaty later have more time. "The amount of technical data required is massive," said Mr Pratt. "Australia recently submitted 80 volumes."

In the past, Greenpeace has described the process as a "land grab".

International community backing away from Kosovo independence

The international community is backing away from a clear endorsement of independence for Kosovo. According to the top European negotiator, Kosovo is no longer being offered internationally-supervised independence from Serbia, in an apparent concession to Belgrade and Moscow that is likely to infuriate the disputed province’s ethnic Albanian majority.

The envoy, Wolfgang Ischinger, who is the German ambassador to the UK and will be involved in separate talks in London today and tomorrow with a Serbian and a Kosovo delegation, said that it was time to get away from "labels" in order to achieve a "realistic" solution for Kosovo which has been administered by the UN for the past eight years since Nato’s bombing campaign forced Serbia’s withdrawal from the province in 1999. The Kosovo delegation, whose leaders are threatening to unilaterally declare independence, wants the London talks to focus on "technical issues between two independent states," the Kosovo Prime Minister, Agim Ceku, said yesterday before leaving Pristina.

But Mr Ischinger said: "The label is worth nothing. Where are they going to get their income from? They would continue to rely on foreign aid."

Asked whether the ultimate outcome of the latest negotiations could be internationally-supervised independence, Mr Ischinger replied: "I would say that we will try to reach a status solution which will provide for an internationally-supervised status for Kosovo. I would leave open independence. I would rather talk about a strong supervised status."

However he added that talks so far with Serbia – which strongly rejects an outcome of self rule for Kosovo – and the ethnic Albanian delegation had "made some progress, drawing both parties away from the label. Independence versus autonomy is a gap which cannot be bridged if you look at the fine print. International supervision is accepted."

Mr Ischinger also indicated that his "troika" of negotiators, including a US and a Russian diplomat, had given further ground by agreeing to a Serbian demand that the plan drawn up by former Finnish president Marti Ahtisaari would not form the basis for the talks. "I would not insist on the Ahtisaari package, but it’s not off the table," he said.

Russia stymied US and European attempts to endorse Mr Ahtisaari’s plan, providing for de facto independence for Kosovo under EU supervision but guaranteeing the rights of the Serb minority, by threatening to veto the settlement at the UN and demanding further negotiations. The UN Security Council has set a deadline of 10 December for the "troika" to submit a final status report to the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. The incentive for both sides to reach an agreement would be future membership of the European Union. Serbia is close to signing a stabilisation and association agreement with the EU marking its first step towards membership, but the move is conditional on Belgrade handing over the indicted suspect General Ratko Mladic to the UN war crimes tribunal.

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US aided Kosovo guerilla army

American intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia. The disclosure angered some European diplomats, who said this had undermined moves for a political solution to the conflict between Serbs and Albanians.

Central Intelligence Agency officers were ceasefire monitors in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, developing ties with the KLA and giving American military training manuals and field advice on fighting the Yugoslav army and Serbian police.

When the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which co-ordinated the monitoring, left Kosovo a week before airstrikes began a year ago, many of its satellite telephones and global positioning systems were secretly handed to the KLA, ensuring that guerrilla commanders could stay in touch with Nato and Washington. Several KLA leaders had the mobile phone number of General Wesley Clark, the Nato commander.

European diplomats then working for the OSCE claim it was betrayed by an American policy that made airstrikes inevitable. Some have questioned the motives and loyalties of William Walker, the American OSCE head of mission.

“The American agenda consisted of their diplomatic observers, aka the CIA, operating on completely different terms to the rest of Europe and the OSCE,” said a European envoy.

Several Americans who were directly involved in CIA activities or close to them have spoken to the makers of Moral Combat, a documentary to be broadcast on BBC2 tonight, and to The Sunday Times about their clandestine roles. Walker dismissed suggestions that he had wanted war in Kosovo, but admitted the CIA was almost certainly involved in the countdown to airstrikes.

Initially some “diplomatic observers” arrived, followed in October by a much larger group that was eventually swallowed up into the OSCE’s “Kosovo Verification Mission”.

Walker said: “Overnight we went from having a handful of people to 130 or more. Could the agency have put them in at that point? Sure they could. It’s their job. But nobody told me.”

Walker, who was nominated by Madeleine Albright, the American secretary of state, was intensely disliked by Belgrade. He had worked briefly for the United Nations in Croatia. Ten years earlier he was the American ambassador to El Salvador when Washington was helping the government there to suppress leftist rebels while supporting the contra guerrillas against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Some European diplomats in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, concluded from Walker’s background that he was inextricably linked with the CIA. The picture was muddied by the continued separation of American “diplomatic observers” from the mission. The CIA sources who have now broken their silence say the diplomatic observers were more closely connected to the agency.

“It was a CIA front, gathering intelligence on the KLA’s arms and leadership,” said one.

Another agent, who said he felt he had been “suckered in” by an organisation that has run amok in post-war Kosovo, said: “I’d tell them which hill to avoid, which wood to go behind, that sort of thing.”

The KLA has admitted its long-standing links with American and European intelligence organisations. Shaban Shala, a KLA commander now involved in attempts to destabilise majority Albanian villages beyond Kosovo’s border in Serbia proper, claimed he had met British, American and Swiss agents in northern Albania in 1996.

Belgrade has alleged the CIA also helped to arm the KLA, but this was denied by the guerrillas and agency sources.

“It was purely the Albanian diaspora helping their brothers,” said Florin Krasniqi, a New York builder and one of the KLA’s biggest financiers. He described how sniper rifles were exported from America using a loophole in federal law that allowed them to be shipped to “hunting clubs”. Armour-piercing Barratt rifles made their way to the KLA’s “hunting club” in Albania.

Agim Ceku, the KLA commander in the latter stages of the conflict, had established American contacts through his work in the Croatian army, which had been modernised with the help of Military Professional Resources Inc, an American company specialising in military training and procurement. This company’s personnel were in Kosovo, along with others from a similar company, Dyncorps, that helped in the American-backed programme for the Bosnian army.

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Deadly blast in Kosovo

Two people have been killed and 11 injured in an explosion in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, police say.

The blast struck a shopping and business area early on Monday morning. Police said they did not know the type of explosives or who was responsible.

Police and troops from Nato-led peacekeepers have sealed off the area.

Kosovo – currently part of Serbia – has been governed by the UN since 1999. Talks are due this week in New York on its final status.

Police spokesman Veton Elshani told Agence France-Presse news agency: "The blast occurred at 0210 (0010 GMT) in the business area in which some coffee shops and restaurants were still working."

One person died at the scene and another in hospital, he said.

Tension has been rising as the 90% ethnic Albanian population pursues its bid for independence from Serbia.

The ethnic Albanian leadership and a senior Serbian team will meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Western nations have supported the independence plan but Serbian ally Russia has blocked it in the UN Security Council.

Serbia prefers a broad autonomy package.

The US has set a deadline of 10 December for a final decision on Kosovo’s fate but Russia rejects this.
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The New Military Frontier: Africa

A US Army captain in Africa waxes philosophical. It’s like the old saying, he opines; "give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he’ll eat forever."

Is he talking about skills-building, or community empowerment? No: Captain Joseph Cruz goes from channeling the musician Speech from the American hip-hop group Arrested Development back to his military-approved talking points: "the same can be said about military to military training and that’s why we do it."

The Delta company soldier is one of 1,800 based in Djibouti at an old French Foreign Legion base, and he is comparing lessons in small naval patrol boat tactics, approaches to counter terrorism operations, and how to use an M-16 rifle, to teaching a man to fish.

It is not just the Djiboutians who are receiving these lessons – members of the Ethiopian, Ugandan and Kenyan armed forces have also been on "fishing trips" with the US military.

Most Americans have never heard of Djibouti, and fewer can pronounce it correctly, but here – far from the bombed bridges of Baghdad and the flourishing poppy fields of Afghanistan – is the third front of the war on terrorism. As Rear Admiral Richard Hunt, the Commander of Combined Joint Taskforce-Horn of Africa (or CJT-HOA, in inimitable military style), explains: "Africa is the new frontier that we need to engage now, or we are going to end up doing it later in a very negative way."

As part of the CJT-HOA these soldiers are also building schools, digging wells and sanitizing slaughterhouses. Their work is delineated by the four Ps and the three Ds: Prevent conflict, promote regional stability, protect coalition interests and prevail against extremism in East Africa and Yemen through diplomacy, development and defense.

Amid the commemorations, tributes, and critiques that cluster around the September 11 anniversary, we should not lose sight of how the war on terrorism is militarizing Africa. With under-tapped oil reserves, vast stretches of ungoverned space, impoverished populations and pandemics of AIDS/HIV and other diseases, Africa is now on Washington’s radar screen. The National Security Strategy for the United States, 2006 says: "Africa holds growing geostrategic importance and is a high priority of this administration." But the most significant way that high priority status is being expressed is through commitments of military aid, training, troops and equipment.

The US base in Djibouti is just one plank in a new platform of military engagement in Africa. There is also the Trans Sahara Counter Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI), which Congress funded at $500 million over six years in 2005. There are also increased naval maneuvers in West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea, and establishment of a P3 Orion aerial surveillance station in Algeria.

And now, as though the Pentagon does not have enough on its plate, President George W. Bush has established United States African Command (AFRICOM) as the newest US military sphere of influence. The command brings together most of the continent (Egypt will remain under CENTCOM) for the first time, and according to President Bush it "will enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa and promote our common goals of development, health, education, democracy, and economic growth in Africa."

But the administration is mostly trying to define AFRICOM by what it is not:

Theresa Whelan, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs, says: "Africa Command is not going to reflect a US intent to engage kinetically in Africa. This is about prevention. This is not about fighting wars." At another point, Whelan also said "This is not about a scramble for the continent."

"We are not at war in Africa. Nor do we expect to be at war in Africa. Our embassies and AFRICOM will work in concert to keep it that way," notes Jendayi Frazer, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa.

Despite these reassurances, many African nations view this move with a healthy dose of skepticism. They are expressing this view by shutting their doors. AFRICOM is temporarily based in Germany, but commanders hope to make the move to the region by fall 2008. The military seems to be favoring a "lily pad" approach of small bases across West Africa and the Horn region so as to not commit significant troops or lend credence to African concerns of a US occupation. But where are these lily pads going to go?

Zambia has said no. In early September, President Levy Mwanawasa said that within the Southern African Development Community (a network of fourteen nations) "none of us is interested" in hosting the command. The South Africa Defense Minister Mosiuoa Lekota has refused to meet with US General William "Kip" Ward, who will command AFRICOM. Lekota said recently, "Africa has to avoid the presence of foreign forces on her soil."

But, some countries are viewing AFRICOM as an opportunity. The United States has already secured access agreements with Senegal, Mali, Ghana, Gabon and Namibia. And the United States’ close ally Liberia has aggressively promoted of the Command. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf penned a widely cited and circulated op-ed for AllAfrica.Com that hyped the Command as an opportunity for African nations. She has lobbied hard for AFRICOM to come to Liberia. The United States is also looking at Sao Tome and Principe, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Djibouti, and Ethiopia as possible locations.

In case none of these options work out, the Navy has a novel (and very expensive) idea to forgo land completely and house AFRICOM on a high-tech joint command and control ship that would circumnavigate the region.

Even as these discussions continue, some African nations are receiving significant increases in military aid and weapons sales; most of these increases have gone to oil-rich nations and compliant states where the US military seeks a strategic toehold. The Center for Defense Information recently completed "US Arms Exports and Military Assistance in the "Global War on Terror;" an analysis of increases in military aid since September 11, 2001. The report compares the military aid and weapons sales in the five-year leading up to 2001 and the five years since.

For example: since September 11, Kenya, which the State Department describes as a "frontline state" in the war on terrorism, has received eight times more military aid than in the preceding five years.

Djibouti, which has opened its territory to US forces, received forty times more military aid, and an eightfold increase in the value of weapons transfers.

Oil-rich Algeria, where the surveillance equipment is based, has received ten times more aid and a warm embrace from Washington.

Nigeria, the fifth largest supplier of oil to the United States, is slated to receive $1.35 million in Foreign Military Financing for 2008 despite persistent human rights abuses.

Mali is described as an "active partner in the war against terrorism" by the State Department and is a good example of a little military aid going a long way. The desert nation is slated to receive just $250,000 in International Military Education and Training (IMET funding) and no Foreign Military Financing in 2008. But, Mali participates in both the Regional Defense Counter Terrorism Fellowship Program and the Anti-terrorism Assistance program, receiving additional funding through these programs. Aid comes in other forms too. Just this week, a US C-130 military transport plane dropped food aid to Malian soldiers as they pursued armed members of the Tuareg ethnic group. This sort of assistance is not documented or quantified in any ledger or report but – if repeated regularly – could significantly increase the Malian military’s capabilities.

US arms sales to Ethiopia, which has one of Africa’s largest armies, have roughly doubled and military aid has increased two and a half times. But the nation has not received military Humvees since 2002, when it used them against its own people. During protests following the May 2002 elections, the Ethiopian military fired on crowds from the Humvees, killing 85 people. The US sold the Humvees to Ethiopia for counterterrorism operations. Will the other military assistance Ethiopia receives be similarly abused?

It is always heartening (and non-threatening) to hear soldiers speaking of their mission in altruistic terms. "The hope is to prevent another Iraq or Afghanistan by giving back," says John Harris, commander Command Senior Enlisted Leader of CJT-HOA. But, the soldiers are not there to make friends. The base had been used twice to launch incursions into Somalia (without the permission or even knowledge of the Djiboutian government).

Richard Lugar (R-IN), one of the wise men in the Senate, commented during an AFRICOM hearing that the Pentagon enjoys far greater resources than the State Department. He observed, "This imbalance within our own structure will be reflected in AFRICOM initially – hopefully not perpetually." There is no indication that humanitarian investments will outpace military contributions any time soon – especially when the justification for aid remains the war on terrorism.

The Congressional Research Service’s latest accounting of the Global War on Terrorism, of which AFRICOM would be a part, puts the cost at $611 billion since 2001, not including additional recent requests of $147 billion and another $50 billion.

For less than that $808 billion spent in the last six years, we could provide universal primary education, reduce infant mortality by two thirds and provide universal access to potable water and not just for the United States, but also for the world. These Millennium Development Goals have languished with sporadic investment and big promises, while military solutions to problems are funded robustly.

Reexamining this imbalance seems like a crucial first step. And the battle for African hearts and minds will not be won if it’s clear that it is being waged more for the sake of US strategic interests than African needs.

Making a killing

In Nigeria, corporate commandos exchange fire with local rebels attacking an oil platform. In Afghanistan, private bodyguards help to foil yet another assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai. In Colombia, a contracted pilot comes under fire from guerrillas while spraying coca fields with pesticides. On the border between Iraq and Iran, privately owned Apache helicopters deliver US special forces to a covert operation.

This is a snapshot of a working day in the burgeoning world of private military companies, arguably the fastest-growing industry in the global economy. The sector is now worth up to $120bn annually with operations in at least 50 countries, according to Peter Singer, a security analyst with the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"The rate of growth in the security industry has been phenomenal," says Deborah Avant, a professor of political science at UCLA. The single largest spur to this boom is the conflict in Iraq.

The workings of this industry have come under intense scrutiny this week in the angry aftermath of the killing of Iraqi civilians by the US-owned Blackwater corporation in Baghdad. The Iraqi government has demanded the North Carolina-based company is withdrawn. But with Blackwater responsible for the protection of hundreds of senior US and Iraqi officials, from the US ambassador to visiting congressional delegations, there is certainty in diplomatic and military circles that this will not happen.

The origins of these shadow armies trace back to the early 1990s and the end of the Cold War, Bob Ayers, a security expert with Chatham House in London, explains: "In the good old days of the Cold War there were two superpowers who kept a lid on everything in their respective parts of the world."

He likens the collapse of the Soviet Union to "taking the lid off a pressure cooker". What we have seen since, he says, is the rise of international dissident groups, ultranationalists and multiple threats to global security.

The new era also saw a significant reduction in the size of the standing armies, at the same time as a rise in global insecurity which increased both the availability of military expertise and the demand for it. It was a business opportunity that could not be ignored.

Now the mercenary trade comes with its own business jargon. Guns for hire come under the umbrella term of privatised military firms, with their own acronym PMFs. The industry itself has done everything it can to shed the "mercenary" tag and most companies avoid the term "military" in preference for "security". "The term mercenary is not accurate," says Mr Ayers, who argues that military personnel in defensive roles should be distinguished from soldiers of fortune.

There is nothing new about soldiers for hire, the private companies simply represent the trade in a new form. "Organised as business entities and structured along corporate lines, they mark the corporate evolution of the mercenary trade," according to Mr Singer, who was among the first to plot the worldwide explosion in the use of private military firms.

In many ways it mirrors broader trends in the world economy as countries switch from manufacturing to services and outsource functions once thought to be the preserve of the state. Iraq has become a testing ground for this burgeoning industry, creating staggering financial opportunities and equally immense ethical dilemmas.

None of the estimated 48,000 private military operatives in Iraq has been convicted of a crime and no one knows how many Iraqis have been killed by private military forces, because the US does not keep records.

According to some estimates, more than 800 private military employees have been killed in the war so far, and as many as 3,300 wounded.

These numbers are greater than the losses suffered by any single US army division and larger than the casualties suffered by the rest of the coalition put together.

A high-ranking US military commander in Iraq said: "These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There’s no authority over them, so you can’t come down on them hard when they escalate force. They shoot people."

In Abu Ghraib, all of the translators and up to half of the interrogators were reportedly private contractors.

Private soldiers are involved in all stages of war, from training and war-gaming before the invasion to delivering supplies. Camp Doha in Kuwait, the launch-pad for the invasion, was built by private contractors.

It is not just the military that has turned to the private sector, humanitarian agencies are dependent on PMFs in almost every war zone from Bosnia to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Which raises the next market the industry would like to see opened: peacekeeping. And the lobbying has already begun.

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‘Mandela’s dead’ says Bush

Nelson Mandela is still very much alive despite a gaffe by US President George W. Bush, who alluded to the former South African leader’s death in a speech yesterday.

"It’s out there," said Achmat Dangor of the Nelson Mandela Foundation of Mr Bush’s comment, which received worldwide media coverage.

"All we can do is reassure people, especially South Africans, that President Mandela is alive," he said.

In a speech defending his administration’s Iraq policy, Mr Bush said former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s brutality had made it impossible to unite the country.

"I heard somebody say, ‘Where’s Mandela?’," he said.

"Well, Mandela’s dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas."

The bizarre gaffe was made in a press conference in Washington yesterday.

Mandela became South Africa’s first black president in 1994. He won a Nobel Peace Prize for preaching racial harmony and guiding the nation into the post-apartheid era.

References to his death – Mandela is now 89 and increasingly frail – are seen as insensitive in South Africa.

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‘Blue, orange and white’…

The Madiba Banqueting Halls in Potchefstroom were defaced sometime on Thursday, the Tlokwe City Council said on Saturday.

The defacement was discovered on Friday morning by workers at the building, said the council – the building had been defaced with the old apartheid flag colours of blue, orange and white.

"Those behind these acts of vandalism are people with a political agenda.

"There are people who are mobilising for a rent boycott in protest against the name changes," said the council.

The council condemned "racist graffiti" found across the city as "completely unacceptable.

They contained insults, political defiance, and attacks on black people, their leaders and government.

The council said they had lodged a complaint with the police and would be studying their CCTV cameras for more information about who was behind these acts.

The city’s new street names were being removed and dumped in the Vaal River.

Others had been defaced with black paint, said the council.

"One of the Nelson Mandela Drive street name-plates was painted with black paint to read "Dela rylaan".

"We are now convinced that those engaged in these acts of political vandalism are people with a clear political agenda," said the council.

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SA experts sound ebola alarm

Fear that infected travellers arrive in SA.

South Africa’s medical experts are alarmed by an outbreak of the deadly ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo — fearing that infected travellers could spread the disease here.

This comes after World Health Organisation officials confirmed yesterday that five people had tested positive for the virus in the Congo.

Authorities have reported some “120 deaths among 300 sick people” over just the past four months, said its spokesman, Gregory Hartl.

Professor Robert Swanepoel, a consultant in the special pathogens unit at South Africa’s National Institute of Communicable Diseases, said while the fatal disease occurred mainly in the Congo, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, infected people are known to travel to South Africa and other parts of the world for medical treatment.

The World Health Organisation has now activated its global outbreak alert and response network , asking health organisations to send epidemiologists and other medical experts to the Congo.

Ebola, which causes death in 50percent to 90percent of cases, is transmitted by contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected persons.

Symptoms begin with fever and muscle pain, followed by vomiting and diarrhoea.

Foreign affairs ministry spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa said: “ An ebola outbreak is an ongoing problem in the region. However, I am not aware of South Africa being asked to assist with any outbreak.”

Swanepoel said it was not uncommon for medical evacuation companies to transport infected patients to South Africa, as was the case recently when an doctor infected with ebola was brought into the country.

The doctor, from Nigeria, was treated at the Unitas Hospital, outside Pretoria.

Swanepoel said: “He obviously died as there is no cure for the disease. It is known that people come to South Africa for treatment.”

Three airlines — SAA, Hewa Bora Airlines and Kenya Airways — operate flights between Johannesburg and the Congo capital of Kinshasa.

SAA is the only carrier that flies direct between the two destinations, four days a week, while the other two carriers have stop-overs in Lumbumbashi and Nairobi respectively.

SAA said it had noted the reports of “a suspected haemorrhagic fever outbreak in a remote part of the Congo”.

SAA spokesperson Sarah Uys said if the situation worsened , passengers would be warned about a possible danger.

“But for now we don’t foresee problems,” she said.

Swanepoel said viruses such as ebola usually stem from war- torn areas, and regions where there was bad governance.

He said: “I can’t explain why this is, but this outbreak in the Congo is yet another in a long succession.”

Jaco Folmer, medical director of SAA-Netcare Travel Clinics, said the people most at risk were health workers in the affected areas.

In 1996, a nurse in Johannesburg was diagnosed with ebola haemorrhagic fever and a frantic search ensued to locate the source, a doctor in Gabon who had sought treatment for his illness in South Africa.

The nurse died, but the spread of the infection was prevented.

Folmer said the risk of contracting the virus was greater when travelling.

He said: “Infected people start bleeding from the nose and ears and [should be] kept in strict isolation.

“What is even scarier is that there are no tell-tale signs for the disease, so you can’t tell one infected person from another just by looking at them.”

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Farms seizure warning in SA

Farmers in South Africa have been warned that they could have their land taken from them unless they stop "abusive" policies towards workers.

Most highly productive farmland in South Africa is still in the hands of white farmers. While the government has enacted a "restitution" policy of handing plots to blacks under a willing buyer, willing seller system, critics have said progress has been too slow.

While the situation is far from that witnessed in neighbouring Zimbabwe, tensions have soared recently over alleged illegal lay-offs of workers and mistreatment by farm owners.

Lulu Xingwana, the agriculture and land affairs minister, said at the weekend that some farmers could face tough punishment.

"We are obviously disturbed by the persistent reports of abuses on farms," she said. "For those people who are not keeping [within] the law, the government has the right to expropriate."

Mrs Xingwana was reacting to claims on Wednesday by Dirk du Toit, her deputy minister, that white farmers had a lingering feudal attitude towards their staff.

In response to a question about farmers who lay off and evict workers unlawfully, Mr Du Toit told MPs: "Those people who don’t want to hear, we are not only going to take them to court, we are going to also take their land away from them."

The leading opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, called Mr Du Toit’s statement racist. "As a senior member of the ANC, he [is] insinuating that all of [white farmers] assault their farm workers," said Maans Nel, the party’s land affairs spokesman,.

The country’s largest farmers’ union, Agri SA, said it was not aware of any illegal farm evictions this year.

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Iraq bans US security firm

Iraq has cancelled the licence of the private security firm, Blackwater USA, after it was involved in a gunfight in which at least eight civilians died.

The Iraqi interior ministry said the contractor, based in North Carolina, was now banned from operating in Iraq.

The Blackwater workers, who were contracted by the US state department, apparently opened fire after coming under attack in Baghdad on Sunday.

Thousands of private security guards are employed in lawless Iraq.

They are often heavily armed, but critics say some are not properly trained and are not accountable except to their employers.

The interior ministry’s director of operations, Maj Gen Abdul Karim Khalaf, said authorities would prosecute any foreign contractors found to have used excessive force.

"We have opened a criminal investigation against the group who committed the crime," he told the AFP news agency.

All Blackwater personnel have been told to leave Iraq immediately, with the exception of the men involved in the incident on Sunday.

They will have to remain in the country and stand trial, the ministry said.

The convoy carrying officials from the US state department came under attack at about 1230 local time on Sunday as it passed through Nisoor Square in the predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of Mansour.

The Blackwater security guards "opened fire randomly at citizens" after mortars landed near their vehicles, killing eight people and wounding 13 others, interior ministry officials said.

Most of the dead and wounded were bystanders, the officials added. One of those killed was a policeman.

A spokeswoman for the US embassy in Baghdad later confirmed there had been an incident in which state department security personnel reacted to a car bomb "in the proximity", and that they had been shot at.

"We are taking it very seriously indeed," she told the BBC, adding that discussions were still taking place about Blackwater’s status now that they had been ordered to leave.

When asked if Blackwater was complying with the order, the spokeswoman said she could not comment because the investigation into the incident was still in progress.

A spokesman for the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said she wanted to ensure that everything was being done to avoid the loss of innocent life and to make sure this kind of incident never happened again.

She is also expected to telephone Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to reassure him that the US had launched its own investigation.

Blackwater is reputed to have a contract worth $300m (£150m) with the state department to protect its diplomatic staff and equipment in Iraq.

The company, whose personnel have no combat immunity under international law if they engage in hostilities, has so far refused to comment on the shootings.

Sunday’s violence followed the publication of a survey of Iraqis which suggested that up to 1.2m people might have died because of the conflict in Iraq.

A UK-based polling agency, Opinion Research Business (ORB), said it had extrapolated the figure by asking a random sample of 1,461 Iraqi adults how many people living in their household had died as a result of the violence rather than from natural causes.

The results lend weight to a 2006 survey of Iraqi households published by the Lancet, which suggested that about 655,000 Iraqi deaths were "a consequence of the war".

However, these estimates are both far higher than the running total of reported civilian deaths maintained by the campaign group Iraq Body Count which puts the figure at between 71,000 and 78,000.

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