Russian Imperialism After Assad: More Guns and Bullets are Heading to Africa

The Kremlin losing their main base for deploying forces into Africa and the Middle East has been a set back for Russian Imperialism and thus China and Iran despite them being primarily united by US & Western sanctions and by future sanctions against them. This is partially why Russia and Iran accepted the humiliation of withdrawing from Syria. Bashar Al - Assad was in negotiations with the US and UAE to have sanctions lifted and to be rehabilitated into the Arab League in exchange for breaking their relations with Iran and Russia.(1) This is despite Iran expending $50 billion in their intervention to save Assad's regime in 2011 & 2015-2016.(2) Russia fought against the Turkish backed HTS and Syrian National Army with its usual brutal airstrikes until it was clear that Assad’s regime was already spent out and plagued by mass desertions, due to soldiers being paid for only 3 days pay out of a month.(3) Bashar Al- Assad had also failed in fulfilling Russia's demands to expand the support base for the already long faltering regime.

Russia’s Africa Corps has close to a decade’s worth of experience in Africa and has sought to strengthen its foothold and increase its presence a few hundred nautical miles from NATO’s Mediterranean shores.(4) Russia sees Africa as one of the most important areas of competition in the Imperialist arena, which has mainly been at the expense of the US and French Imperialism and of course the workers and toilers caught up in intensified wars. Russia’s Africa Corps supports the AES (Alliance of Sahel States) and maintains government control in the Central African Republic during their own internal conflict(5) while using the country as a heavy weapons cache to supply primarily the RSF and more quietly the SAF in the ongoing Sudanese war. The imperialist war has already created the largest current humanitarian crisis with 7 million internally displaced refugees, 2 million externally displaced refugees many refugees are on the verge of famine, with 150,000 deaths, and the growth of sex slavery in the region(6) the war has reached the pits of capitalist barbarism.

Russia experienced a great initial headwind in the “coup belt” across the Sahel. This was due to an uptick in anti- French, nationalist sentiment from deteriorating conditions for workers and toilers and the failures of the respective states to fight a counter insurgency. In Mali, Burkina Faso and in Mali, France’s intervention tactics only furthered the Islamist and separatist crisis by entrenching the material separation of the states and separatist part of the anti - IS and Al Qaeda counter insurgency and further destroyed the desertified lands. In Niger it was the M-62 movement that used the seedbed of social media to spread a pro- Russian message against president Mohammad Bazoun leading the military to take advantage of the situation and seize control and change strategies for the counter insurgency.(7) The wars have continued to be brutal and there's been an increase in ethnic violence across the Sahel, the islamist part of the Islamic state and Al Qaeda have been able to take an offensive initiative against the governments moving further south near where the three borders meet. The AES states have also been preoccupied in attempts to centralize power due to the potential for a Nigerian led ECOWAS intervention from which the AES left.

In the AES the military establishment made up a section of bourgeois that accumulated military capital before their respective coup dé'tat’s, they're trained in western officer schools and their governments pushed them into pursuing wars on the cheap. The militaries would fund their campaigns and weapon purchases through smuggling gold. The Sahelian country Niger is the 10th largest producer of uranium, the exploitation of the mineral is controlled by the French nuclear firm Orano. Last June the military junta pulled the companies permits under the guise of revamping regulations and demands to renegotiate profit shares citing past corruption. In June, 2024 Orano ended production and pulled out of the facility due to deteriorating relations with Niger and the difficulty in exporting uranium through Benin border security. It's been speculated that the military authorities will try to get either Turkey or Russia to take over the concession giving them a much greater strategic position over energy production.(8)

Russia has an interest especially in the gold struck from the clandestine mines that pock marks the Sahel. It's been used as a lifeline for the sanction-saddled country, most of the gold makes it way to the UAE, first through an overland route protected by the RSF and then across the Red Sea in waters monitored by the Houthi movement(9) to eventually making its way to the Gulf 's gold markets; the other major gold and diamond markets Russia uses are Israel,(10) Egypt and India.(11) Gold has also been used by the Russian Central Bank to stabilize the Ruble. The directors of the state bank and the Russian Minister of Finance are mulling over formulas to soft land the economy from inflation peaking at 9.1%. The initial military Keynesian bump at the start of the war in Ukraine has worn off, Gazprombank has collected less revenue due to weaker oil prices and increased consumer demand has exacerbated the current conditions.The state bank appears not wanting to really fix the Ruble that's exchanging at RB100 to $1USD. This has greatly increased exports and given masses of rubles to the state budget. Workers are able to be paid in devalued rubles while the export industry is paid increasingly in yuan. The government is also paid in dollars and Yuan while paying out in devalued rubles this and an already historically high 21% interest rate, proposed increases in income taxes and targets to cut credit allocation on state industries, agriculture subsidies and exports are planned to tamp down consumer demand while increasing state waste production in the form of armaments all buoyed on the state banks gold holdings.(12)

Due to Russia's setback in Syria with the collapse of Assad's Ba'athist regime, the Kremlin is moving full speed forwards with increasing its presence in Eastern Libya. Russian military planners have long had another warm water naval port in mind to place pressure on the Mediterranean, the soft underbelly of NATO and entrench its growing footprint in Africa.The project for a new warm water naval port isn't up for debate while if Russia can keep their Naval base in Tartus and airbase in Khmeimim is still a question with the HTS dominated interim national government. Russia for now is reducing their deployment in Syria and has plans to redeploy to eastern Libya. Starting in mid December 2024 there was an average of one flight per day using Moscow’s giant Antonov - 124 transport planes from Khmeimim to the al- Khadim air base outside of Benghazi in eastern Libya.(13)

Cyrenaica is the domain of the Tobruk based Government of National Security and the most dominant warlord General Khalifa Belqasim Haftar and his Libyan National Army. Currently there's been two competing governments in Libya since 2021 when the UN mediated Government of National Unity collapsed due to the rampant corruption in selecting a president and prime minister to oversee the first elections since 2014. The political system and economy is still heavily divided amongst a new generation of post- Gaddafi factions who used their accumulated military capital to create immense patronage networks and reorganize control over economic assets and set up protection rackets for international oil firms and extort workers and toilers. The armed factions in Libya are noted as being praetorian guards made up of family members and loyalists of political military organization leaders.(14) The Russian navy has made annual visits to Haftar's court in Tobruk every summer, on August, 2023 and June, 2024 supplying the LNA with heavy weapons, while training 250 LNA officers and 100 for a burgeoning navy in Russia.(15)

The LNA has used Russia’s Africa Corps and support from Egypt and the UAE to prevent any military actions against them by the GNU’s armed factions that are primarily supported by Qatar, Italy and France. The growth in Libya’s strategic importance and the movement of weapons in the region will potentially empower Haftar to militarily settle which Libyan government is legitimate. Haftar is now in his best position and will likely welcome this change and the construction of a naval port in Tobruk before entering new negotiations to organize national elections. This has caused alarm for many western countries, which are now trying to rehabilitate Haftar and win him over to join the electoral process with the GNU. For Haftar the Sudanese civil war’s outcome can benefit him either way. His extended family has had long established dealings with the Sudanese political elite and close ties with the military and especially the RSF, Haftar's son was made honorary president of the Sudanese Al- Merreikh soccer club until the war began.The RSF has conducted assaults into Sudan from his territory and relies on him for fuel, truck convoys, and narcotics prolonging the war. The conveys are supplied from directly out of Libya or Haftar helps transport the supplies to the Central African Republic to transport them later into Sudan’s interior. The bases for supplying the CAR and Sudan’s RSF are alleged to be guarded by the Africa Corps there's many airfields including the al-Jufra, Tamanhent, Brak al-Shati, al-Khadim, Gamal Abdel Nasser, al-Abraq, Benina, al-Qardabiya, Maaten al-Sarra and finally al-Wigh, located in the southernmost part of the Sahara border region along the Libya-Chad border.(16)

The RSF boss Hemeti’s family hails from Chad and is a part of the Rizeigat clan of the Mahariya tribe that has strong ties throughout the triangle border region of Sudan, Libya and Chad.(17) Making him very important for the continued illicit trade in the region and the growing importance of human trafficking routes for migrants into Europe that the West have accused Haftar and Russia of weaponizing. However, the civil war has drained the amount of Sudanese mercenaries he can bring into the LNA if the RSF happened to lose many more militia members and refugees would flee the indiscriminate punitive missions done by Al- Burham and Malik Agar’s SAF and their allied militias operating against the RSF in the Darfur. Hemeti's RSF was crucial in the second Libyan civil war in Haftar's stalled offensive on Tripoli. The Sudan and its expansive borders starting in the Sahara and deep into central sub Saharan Africa have been an Imperialist blood bath for nearly a century. The US has moved to sanction the RSF leaders and their associated businesses. The US believes freezing the RSF usage of dollars will land a blow against the march or Russian Imperialism. However there's ideological ramifications, the language states that the RSF is committing genocide. There's a need for the US to take a stronger position in condemning rival states(18) to make up for being lock stepped with arming Israel's genocide of the Palestinian population in Gaza.(19)

Haftar, just as Russia can see benefits in either armed factions winning the civil war and it's been made more clear as time has gone on that Russia might be leaning towards the SAF due to their promised gold concessions and access to the Port of Sudan, Iran has been supplying the SAF with Mohajer - 6 drones and heavy weapons throughout the conflict and reports are Russia is quietly doing similar. Even if the SAF wins the conflict their state will be in virtual free falling collapse and will find it hard to centralize authority across Sudan. For most imperialists a clear interest in the conflict is difficult to form and most of the division comes from those who have worked with the RSF in the past, or which states would benefit from a weaker Sudan. Many countries that were a part of the western aligned anti- Khartoum bloc including Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda have tended to quietly support the RSF in the war to simply weaken the state but there will certainly be consequences even for them in prolonging the crisis. Chad was also anti Al- Bashir and would host rebel groups that gained influence in the Darfur against Sudan such as the JEM and SLA made up of the Nilotic speaking Zaghawa, Fur and Masalit tribes. They're in support of the RSF to the extent of their relations with Haftar and the UAE which has loaned the Déby government $1.5 billion in exchange for allowing them to operate airfields and hospitals for the RSF in Chad.(20) South Sudan, one of the most precarious states in the world, has had to take on most external refugees from the civil war. This has further added to their deteriorating security situation at a time when the UN has ended its cantonment of rival ethnic political militias and civilian camps after their near decade civil war all while the already precarious food supply has been disrupted for close to a decade from fighting and increased communal violence.(21)

The decoupling of the AES from ECOWAS has also caused a growth in Nigeria - Niger cross border conflicts. The organization that's been wreaking the most havoc in the northern states are the Lakurawa. Their core membership is reported to be primarily Fulfulde speakers from Mali. They've had relations with the Jama’at Nustrat al - Islam wal Muslimin and the ISIS affiliated organizations in the Sahara. Originally they came into the region seeking territory during the Nigerian kidnapping crisis, local authorities paid them to police the region of bandits where they established state power for themselves and are now seeking to create a Caliphate. They're paying locals to join them in farm and fixed capital used in farming, along with cash bribes for informants. The Nigerian military has mainly responded with airstrikes reportedly killing mainly civilians, this and the resurgence of Boko Haram in the lake Chad region and Biafra separatist are taxing the deeply troubled Tinubu administration.(22)

Tinubu floated the Nigerian Naira causing further currency depreciation, this was one in many fiscal maneuvers the Nigerian capitalist have attempted to alleviate crisis. This was done in the midst of the Ukraine - Russian war, forced decoupling from Russia including energy and grain shipments and attempts to cut food and energy subsidies to stabilize the Nigerian financial system. The state has experienced institutional decay for decades; the Boko Haram crisis put this on full display in 2014 during the peak of the violence and hostage crisis. The government revenues are robbed daily by massive institutional corruption and oil theft, it's estimated 25%(23) of the state's oil profits are stolen by rebel groups or corrupt politicians, many cross over ! It can be predicted that a military intervention against the AES or internal wars against rebels to better centralize control of the state's revenues are becoming the only risky options.

France and the US’s presence in the region is drastically receding. China has been able to work with most governments preferring a soft Imperialist approach in order to secure strategic commodities such as oil, rare earth and precious minerals, and increase the influence of the growing Yuan sphere. For France and US they’d responded aggressively ways to try and limit China’s influence such as implementing a UN resolution allowing NATO to bomb Libya in 2011,(24) France supporting rebels in Central African Republic in 2013(25) and the US supporting anti- Khartoum rebels for a much longer period in the Sudan culminating in the Darfur war.(26)

On January 5, 2025 In response to Chad and Senegal moving towards severing ties with French military assistance, president Macron had an outburst. He states that Sahel states "forgot" to thank France for its role, amid the continuing withdrawal of French troops from West African countries. He said no Sahelian nation would be a sovereign nation without France's intervention that prevented them from falling under the control of militants.(27) However it appears French Imperialism has learned for Russia’s gains in Africa. When France's historically most implacable ally on the continent Côte d'Ivoire requested France to begin withdrawing its military presence and that Ivorian forces would take over, France pivoted and moved towards a similar tactic by reducing their direct presence which can only help discredit governments. Instead France will heavily arm the state.(28) Through arms sales France can maintain better influence since they come with stipulations and are a massive source of profits. It's not too difficult though since Côte d'Ivoire tends to benefit from France's monetary policies on many of its former colonies. The valuations of the CFA franc tended to support Ivorian cash crops exports. While the US is approaching states that connect to the Sahel such as Côte d'Ivoire and Benin to maintain the presence of Africom after losing their air base command center in Agadez Niger. Africom just as the French interventions are heavily criticized as being unaccountable in causing civilian casualties.

All of these wars are connected, they're an outcome of capitalism long existing past its expiration date and entering its imperialist epoch. This bloodshed is presented by the bourgeoisie as the outcome of bad actors and or choices states make. But they're not an option, states are suffocating under too great of capital values and an ever declining rate of profit the only thing capitalist can do is lay off their losses onto their competitors, in the Imperialist epoch the state is the most dominant and predatory monopoly. In the US Congress passed the Small Yard High Fence act which limits US investments into China, the policy targets investments into Chinese firms that are developing artificial intelligence, quantum computing,or semiconductors and microelectronics. Similarly there's been policies to restrict and prevent China, Russia or North Korea from investing into US agriculture as part of the annual national defense act. The act also has provisions for investment review, export controls and supply chain restrictions.(29) It's becoming clearer that the US views China as the main Imperialist threat and is moving towards protectionism as a way to modernize the nation's social capital in preparation for a war economy.

So long as things go well, competition affects an operating fraternity of the capitalist class, as we have seen in the case of the equalisation of the general rate of profit, so that each shares in the common loot in proportion to the size of his respective investment. But as soon as it no longer is a question of sharing profits, but of sharing losses, everyone tries to reduce his own share to a minimum and to shove it off upon another. The class, as such, must inevitably lose. How much the individual capitalist must bear of the loss, i.e., to what extent he must share in it at all, is decided by strength and cunning, and competition then becomes a fight among hostile brothers. The antagonism between each individual capitalist's interests and those of the capitalist class as a whole, then comes to the surface, just as previously the identity of these interests operated in practice through competition.(30)

Karl Marx Capital Vol. III Part III, The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall

Russia is on the back foot and has to act more aggressively in the imperialist world system against the march eastwards of NATO, thus the USA, but also to compete in the accumulation of future profits and setting back rival imperialist powers. The USA is in the same mix whereas it must expand in order to maintain the undisputed role of the dollar hegemony, the marquis of US imperialism, it allowed the US to retain a rake on international profits. The preeminence of the USD is facing unprecedented challenges by BRICS+ spearheaded by the US’s main rival China and the Yuan offensive. China has been pursuing a policy or trashing its glut of accumulated dollars to subsidize the usage of the Yuan and the usage of currency swaps to have states in BRICS + to pay IMF debts with it. The US has a clear understanding of the USD’s decline and this can help explain the protectionist direction in order to support the USD at the expense of the US’s allies which are dependent on the NATO framework.(31)

The profit requirements have become too massive as capitalism suffocates from massive capital values, only destruction on the scale of a generalized world war where production is destroyed as quickly as it's produced and accumulation is paused or where constant capital is brought to cinder can lead to the temporary restoration of profitability. The multiplication of wars in capitalism’s periphery are a part of the same crisis of profitability that's plunged the system into a state of constant crisis.

Imperialism is the policy of capitalism at the stage of development that makes the socialist organisation of production possible. [...] The struggle against the war opens up this new epoch. By showing the proletariat how capitalism, which in the name of its own interests sends peoples to the slaughterhouse, tears nations to pieces, tramples national needs, treats the masses like dumb cattle, and by protesting against this waste of peoples’ blood, this arbitrary splitting of nations between superpowers, this doubling down of national oppression, we prepare the proletariat for revolutionary struggle.(32)

Radek’s Theses On Imperialism, 1915

The outgoing Biden and the incoming Trump administration will continue to fuel wars across the continent to counter China and Russian Imperialist advances. The US is by far the largest arms exporter to begin with, controlling 41.7% of the arms market and supplying arms to over 100 countries. The two administrations are in near continuation with their imperialist strategies, an example is mining towards recognizing the breakaway state Somaliland.(33) Which serves as a strategic position on one of the most important shipping lanes and also a strategic position to counter the Houthi movement that has the US engaged in the largest naval operation since WW2.

This move will surely cause unintended destabilizing effects in the region. For one it will further empower Ethiopia’s militarist elite to continue on the warpath, much of the recognition is to help support trade. Another is it'll weaken the precarious Somali federal authority giving Al Shabaab room for a resurgence, also angering Turkey and Egypt which are working with Somalia to create a security sphere.(34) The message to the US’s allies is that they'll have to deal with Washington in its fight to maximize its advantages and retain the USD’s preeminence. Similarly with US ventures deep into the interior of Africa’s Congo in order to out flank China's move to corner the rare earth metals market. Billionaires such as Amazon and Blue Origins Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are working on an AI venture called KoBold metals to find veins of rare earth metals,(35) the two Congo wars which are the deadliest conflicts since WW2 and the long simmering conflict zone in Africa’s great lakes region were catalyzed over controlling mineral wealth.

The international proletariat has no interest in becoming fodder in the imperialist wars that enrich only the capitalist class at the expense of proletarian deaths and destruction. The Sahel is also ground zero for the climate crisis caused by the constant requirements for capital to accumulate. Imperialist wars have also rapidly increased the refugee crisis. States in capitalism’s heartlands have been preparing to further assault the working class through growing nativist policies and nativist sentiment as capitalism finds it growingly more difficult to profitably exploit migrant workers, and politicians have been laying off crises such as the housing crisis onto migrant workers. Capitalism’s permanent crisis has created a death spiral where wars will become more common and a generalized condition as blocs consolidate, submerging the world into war. The proletariat, through our autonomous self- activity, is the only social force capable of preventing barbarism with communism, a stateless, classless society where production is consciously based on social needs. The proletariat also requires a political organization that's properly reflected on the past experiences of the working class movement to develop a revolutionary program to achieve emancipation.

No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. Mankind thus inevitably sets itself such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation. ... The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production — antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals’ social conditions of existence — but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution to this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.(36)

Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in Early Writings, p.426 Pelican, 1975
B
Internationalist Workers' Group

Notes:

(1) reuters.com

(2) carnegieendowment.org

(3) theguardian.com

(4) aljazeera.com

(5) ibid

(6) en.m.wikipedia.org)

(7) leftcom.org

(8) google.com

(9) leftcom.org

(10) haaretz.com

(11) infobrics.org

(12) intellinews.com

(13) cnn.com

(14) atlanticcouncil.org

(15) riskintelligence.eu

(16) middleeasteye.net

(17) ibid

(18) nytimes.com

(19) leftcom.org

(20) nytimes.com

(21) cfr.org

(22) aljazeera.com

(23) lemonde.fr

(24) leftcom.org

(25) en.internationalism.org

(26) leftcom.org

(27) france24.com

(28) bbc.com

(29) skadden.com

(30) marxists.org

(31) amp.dw.com

(32) leftcom.org

(33) atlanticcouncil.org

(34) ibid

(35) finance.yahoo.com.

(36) Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in Early Writings, p.426 (Pelican, 1975)

Friday, January 31, 2025

Comments

This is an interesting topic but the article is hard to read properly with all the unexplained abbreviations, names etc