Aid and Development

Double-Edged Sword

As noted by Mother Jones, AFRICOM — the Pentagon’s newly established U.S. Africa Command — provides an enormous business opportunity for both arms merchants and the mercenary industry. The problem, though, is when hired guns like Blackwater are used “to kick out indigenous communities” in order to gain access to mining areas for US, Canadian and European corporations. As a complement to the US State Department mission to gain a foothold on the resource-rich continent, American-trained death squads might be seen as an effective counter to China’s aspirations there, but employing assassins to work under the guise of aid and development — euphemistically referred to as security and infrastructure — is indeed a double-edged sword.