AFRICOM, the kleptocratic state and under-class militancy http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/66140

The ‘War on Terror’ has provided US-NATO commands in Stuttgart and Brussels with justification for securitising ‘dangerous’ West African Muslim states, writes Caroline Ifeka. But competing with China to control strategic resources from oil to subterranean water around the Sahara and Sahel, they’re also quietly manoeuvring leases to exploit resources vital to US and EU capital accumulation.

The principal cause of youth militancy around ethnicity and Islamic reformism in these regions, says Ifeka, is the ruling classes’ failure to share the rental incomes from – traditionally – community-owned resources. Community capacity building and restoration of a sense of agency and ownership rather than the militarisation of development, says Ifeka, is better strategy for diminishing discontent and building trust in democracy among the youth.