The PANAFRICAN Review
These people paid the ultimate price to achieve their own liberation .
On the contrary , America propped up a corrupt and feckless South Vietnamese government to fight the more determined Vietcong . We know how that ended . It ’ s as if they had not learnt from the Bay of Pigs debacle only 5 years earlier , where they thought that arming a few hundred opportunistic Cuban exiles against Fidel Castro ’ s popular revolution would end the reign of El Comandante . Of course , it ended in embarrassment for President Kennedy and nearly led to the first nuclear war between the USA and the USSR , briefly putting the entire world on the cusp of nuclear annihilation .
Supporting a corrupt but spineless Afghan army against a determined Taliban was therefore bound to end in disaster , and it would be shocking and surprising that , as Biden claimed , nobody in America ’ s military brass ‘ saw it coming .’
The good news
Currently , some African countries are beginning to realize that the way to address Africa ’ s challenges is through Pan-Africanism . Rwanda ’ s Army ’ s support to Mozambique in that country ’ s battle against an Islamist insurgency has already started returning positive results merely weeks into their mission . Similarly , the pacification of Somalia , however temporary ( temporary because , just like in Afghanistan , the western conceived model that undermines the Somali elite ’ s ability to imagine solutions that are rooted in their historical , cultural and socio-economic realities will likely doom the country once foreign forces leave ) is in large part thanks to huge sacrifices made by African Union troops supporting that government , albeit with the financial and technical support of western powers .
This shows that local agency is far better than the mirage of comfort that may be provided by American dollars and hi-tech weapons . These are never meant for the national interest of the country they purport to be helping , but the power ’ s own interests . When those interests are met or when the cost of upholding them becomes too high , Uncle Sam normally leaves as he has done in the case of Afghanistan . Better than that , African countries should fight their own battles and should not look up to Uncle Sam for salvation , for he ’ s no well-intentioned messiah .
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