Mercenaries & oil

Editorial, Workers World, 18 March 2004

As the days go by, more details may emerge about the planeload of mercenaries detained in Zimbabwe, especially if the government there is able to put those captured on trial. But the political implications are clear.

According to a former British special forces officer who talked to the Zimbabwean government, the 64 men on the plane were headed toward Equatorial Guinea. Their bosses had allegedly bought off top officials of the police and army there who would do nothing to stop them from ousting the president.

Zimbabwe government sources say British, U.S. and Spanish secret services are involved. Corporations in all three countries have material interests in the area, as does French imperialism.

Equatorial Guinea is a former Spanish colony with a population of only half a million people. It is about the size of Maryland and sits on the West Coast of Africa, just north of the Equator and south of Cameroon.

Its main natural resource? Oil.

Lots of oil, especially off its coast in the Bight of Biafra. Some of this offshore oil is contested.

Whether there is documentary proof linking the “privatized” soldiers to Western secret services, whether specific oil monopolies are named, there is no doubt that Washington's unending use of military force to build its empire is at the root of this new attempted crime.

The imperialists think the 19th century is back. As in Hawaii back then, they think now that a planeload of adventurers from the “military service” industry can carry out “regime change.”

Washington uses military power to take over resources, just as the imperialists all did before the Russian Revolution. Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti bear this out. Washington has announced further military targets in Iran, Syria, North Korea and Cuba, and it has tried to subvert Venezuela.

U.S. and British imperialism have also targeted Zimbabwe for “regime change.”

You might think these adventures would be discouraged by the hard lessons the Iraqi resistance is teaching the Pentagon. But if enough profit is involved, capitalists will take the risk.