Postby Highland » Sat Oct 03, 2009 3:28 pm
Voltage, this is a corrobating evidence of what I have said. I just came across this book yesterday and felt posting it for the benefit of all.
Excerpt:
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Title: Africa: A continent self-destructs
Sub-title: The Slave Trade, Colonialism and the Cold War
The Cold War
"Just as the African slave trade proceeded seamlessly to colonial rule, so colonialism segued into the doctrinaire conduct of the Cold War. When, in the 1960s, most African states attained independence, the United States and the Soviet Union (and often European states) moved into the vacuum created by the departure of the imperialoists and extended the ethnic and tribal divisions so that their own interests could be served. Colonialization was replaced by a form of Cold War neocolonialism---control of the new nations (or the old ones, for that matter) of Africa via their economies and through the national elites who had been cultivated by the Europeans. One superpower would buttress the elited empowered by the colonial authorities, while the other often backed the opposition, as each supported a different client and a different agenda. If elites could not be controlled they were often dismissed or eliminated, replaced by other more patronizing to the superpowers. In Somalia and Ethiopia (a nation never traditionally colonized), for example, different politicians were served by one or the other of the major powers. By continuing the colonial intrusions, while pouring billions of dollars worth of weaponry into client states, superpowers trained political elites to use the arms to support the vital interests of the respective superpower and to resist competing indigenous forces....
Years later all this military hardware would be used against domestic opponents as Somalia entered a period of ferocious civil strife in 1991 that continues today, while from 1998 to 2001 Ethiopia and Eritrea engaged in one of Africa's bloodiest wars. Russia, one of the successor states to the now-defunct Soviet Union, and the United States have only their Cold War military policies to blame for the anarchy that presently passes for government rule in Somalia and the blistery destructive war that convulsed Ethiopia and Eritrea. Many other African states, as the evidence will demonstrate, have been left reeling by the hangover generated by the Cold War policies. It is a repugnant heritage."