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#AfricanLiberationDay2021

What’s So Frightening About Revolution?

2021-05-21 by A-APRP Editor Leave a Comment

Some years ago, a member of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party spoke to university students about the thousands of years of African history that preceded slavery, explaining that the length and breadth of that rich history and culture meant descendants of enslaved Africans are not simply emancipated slaves, but they have been and remain “Africans.”  The lecturer recalls: “A student came up to me after the presentation and said she understood and agreed that she should have an allegiance to Africa, but she also suggested: ‘you would attract more people if you didn’t call yourselves revolutionary. Revolution scares people away.’”

What’s so frightening about the word revolution? The capitalists always use that word to advertise their products. The pictures below are three examples.

So why do capitalists train us to become frightened when socialists use the word revolution? The reason is simple. Socialist revolution requires the destruction of capitalism. This would mean the elimination of a system where a few own and control the factories, banks, farms, mines, and oil fields across the planet.  The wealthy don’t want this to happen, so their media outlets make people think fighting for revolutionary social and economic change is harmful and dangerous and buying more and more of their “revolutionary” junk is good.

It has been this way for a very long time. Years ago, students were taught that the invention of the transistor was a “revolutionary” advance in technology. Transistors replaced vacuum tubes. When it comes to technology, revolutionary change is applauded. Integrated circuits replaced transistors, then computers on a chip replaced circuit boards of integrated circuits. We are taught that the industrial revolution was a great thing. Now there is much discussion of how Africa must embrace the fourth industrial “revolution.”

Each year individuals are awarded Nobel prizes in a range of disciplines. We are told that it is for their “revolutionary” contributions in physics, chemistry and even peace-making. An award-winning physicist once spoke of the days and hours of running experiments. After a breakthrough, he was so excited he ran from his lab into the hallway to share his excitement, only to find the building empty. He then realized it was 3 a.m. on a holiday weekend. It was evidence of the fact that revolutionary change of any kind, including scientific change, requires hard work, determination, sacrifice, and discipline. Organizing to bring an end to neo-colonialism and capitalism is no exception.

Although capitalists imply socialist revolutionaries are dangerous or criminal, socialists are actually fighting for a better world. Capitalism is based on a few people owning and controlling all production and distribution and operating to make personal profits. The so-called free market system involves cutthroat competition and a drive to increase profits to survive. Where do these profits come from?  They come from the labor of workers and the cheap extraction of natural resources. Capitalism increases the wealth of a few while increasing the toil, work, and exploitation of the many. That toil, work and exploitation are the basis for capitalist profits. It is only natural that well-meaning people – good socialist people – want an end to this system of exploitation. The elimination of capitalism and its replacement with a system that asks people to contribute according to their abilities and to receive according to their needs is the revolutionary change capitalism demonizes. However, it is in the best interest of humanity for us to struggle for this revolutionary change. In fact, our collective conscience demands that we do all we can to support and improve humanity and our world. This is the essence of being human. Therefore, the highest expression of humanity is to struggle for revolution!

Are you ready for revolution?

“Forward Ever to World-Wide Pan-African Unity”

Filed Under: ALD Tabloid 2021 Tagged With: #AfricanLiberationDay, #AfricanLiberationDay2021, A#ALD, ALD, ALD2021, All-African People's Revolutionary Party

Revolutionary African Culture And an End to Gender-Based Violence And Border Wars Are Critical to Establishing African Unity

2021-05-21 by A-APRP Editor Leave a Comment

The key to worldwide Pan-African unity is found in Africa’s history. African civilizations once developed their own societies based on their needs and visions for the future. These societies had social, political, and economic foundations grounded in an African way of life. However, colonial intrusion caused disorder and confusion as well as the adoption of beliefs and practices that opposed matriarchal culture.  This had a significant impact on gender, class, and clan, and led to the abandonment of the social and communal principles that guaranteed African unity and prosperity. It was an abandonment of principles intrinsic to African culture.

Value systems adopted from colonizers conflict with the value systems of African societies that align life and nature. Africans’ instinct is to support others, but capitalist individualism promotes antagonism, disrespect, and abandonment of others. These foreign values create obstacles to unity and cause Africans to question their identity and transform gender respect and community cooperation into disruptive, divisive, and destructive relationships. The ultimate consequence is war. War in Africa has caused people to flee conflict and poverty by attempting to reach Europe by way of the Mediterranean Sea. In recent years, an average of 1,800 migrants from Africa and surrounding regions may have drowned each year attempting to make this journey.  War has destabilized millions of women and children, with more Africans living outside their country of birth than any other continent.

Gender-Based Violence

There are fifteen civil or border wars occurring in Africa today. Women and men of revolutionary African organizations like MPLA, PAIGC, TANU, PDG, FRELIMO, PAC/ANC, ZANU and others fought valiantly for unity and true liberation. They did not make sacrifices so that Africans might engage in the internecine conflict we witness today.

We are creating instability within our nations and a worker and brain drain in Africa which is feeding the labor base in capitalist, elitist and racist countries in Europe, Asia, and America. As they did during periods of enslavement and colonialism, capitalists benefit from our misery. When Africans internalize capitalist values, adopt capitalist governmental systems, military strategies and ways of life, Africans’ lives become meaningless.

In Ethiopia, Sudan, Congo, Nigeria, and throughout the African continent, children – especially women and girls are kidnapped and murdered by Africans at an alarming rate. During the current pandemic, the numbers have increased. The fight over mineral resources has made the weakest of the society pawns of corporate bloodsuckers.  This is not African!

Women and youth make up most of the African World’s population, and they have become the primary victims of war, migration, and poverty. In 2019 and 2020, there were 53,300 incidents of sexual violence reported in South Africa. Police report an average of 146 such incidents each day. Violence has escalated throughout Africa and Africa’s diaspora. These crimes include an increase in forced child marriages, domestic violence, honor killings, rape, political and sexual assassination, female genital mutilation, sex trafficking or slavery, and physical punishment – especially against gay and lesbian citizens. Such violence can only be addressed by revolutionary principles and a recommitment to revolutionary culture.

Our focus must be on ideological and political development of the masses. The enemies of our people are in our midst and only mass, revolutionary African culture and organization can combat this reactionary behavior. We must collectively reconstruct not only the ethical and political foundation for a new African society but also reinvigorate revolutionary and principled people willing to build an ethical and principled society for the future of Africa and all our African communities.

We must have a plan that guides development from youth to leader. We must build revolutionary collectives, be they community, political, cultural, social, and educational for the reconstruction of our ethics and principles. The contradictions throughout the diaspora are our contradictions and they must be honestly addressed so we can elevate our individual and collective consciousness and behavior.

A social/cultural revolution can cause a resurgence of revolutionary love, a commitment to principles that will bind us to a common foundation that will live beyond our years into the next generation, creating the revolutionary cultural foundation for Africa and the world.

Unity is one of the cardinal principles of revolution. The PAIGC of Guinea Bissau made “Unity, Struggle, Unity” their motto. In their struggle, there were the Fula, the Pepel, the Mandinka, and the varied classes but stronger than any ethnic or social division was a unity amongst those who wanted to free Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. So, our differences cannot be allowed to prevent us from achieving our Pan-African objective. It is the critical key for African Unity, stability, development and prosperity for all!

 

Filed Under: ALD Tabloid 2021 Tagged With: #AfricanLiberationDay, #AfricanLiberationDay2021, A#ALD, African Unity, ALD, ALD2021, Border Wars, Gender Based Violence

Imperialist Meddlers Keep Out! Conflict Resolution and the Military Defense of Africa are Africa’s Business

2021-05-21 by A-APRP Editor Leave a Comment

The longstanding strategy of ‘divide and rule’ was used to perfection throughout much of Africa, which now has more borders than any other continent. The scheme was simple: fossilize Africa’s various ethnic groups, many of which were historical rivals, then force them under one geopolitical roof with preferences given, in some instances, to one group over another. Independence, then, would be fraught with so many ethnic (and religious) hostilities and antagonisms that national integration and political stability would be practically impossible. As a result, Africa is replete with intrastate and interstate conflicts, many of which, over the years, have blossomed into full scale civil wars.

No to u.s. military!

Only the might of an All-African Military High Command, under the centralized authority of an African Union Government, will be able to resolve these conflicts and end these devastating wars, including the various forms of violence resulting from religious extremism. The UN, NATO, EU, USA, or any other entity outside of Africa can never, and will never, solve Africa’s internal problems. None of them have the genuine interest, will, means, or mandate to do so. Instead, if left in the hands of outside forces (many operating with anti-African agendas) they are more likely to make matters worse.

Given what we know, it makes no sense to count on non-African forces to solve our problems. Who, after all, maneuvered the great Pan-Africanist, Patrice Lumumba, out of office in the Congo and into the murderous clutches of the CIA, the Belgians, and their puppet soldier, Mobutu Sese Seko?  Who pulled their troops out of Rwanda and failed to protect the lives of over 800,000 victims of genocide?  And who orchestrated and sponsored the civil war in Libya that resulted in the assassination of Muammar Gadhafi, one of Africa’s most serious Pan-Africanists?  Even now, consider the inability of the UN to prevent the war-torn southeast Democratic Republic of Congo from becoming the ‘Rape Capital of the World.’  Is there any wonder, then, why UN ‘Peacekeepers’ in Mozambique, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Haiti have been found guilty of fathering hundreds of children with local women and girls, in some cases subjecting them to the most virulent forms of sexual violence and exploitation?

As quiet as it has been kept, Africa itself, has an outstanding record of resolving its own conflicts, and it has done so for generations. Throughout the continent, there were many traditional systems and institutions that were strikingly similar, and that were designed to resolve inter and intra ethnic and regional conflicts long before the European invasion of Africa. Unfortunately, as with many indigenous African cultural patterns, these arbitration customs were either jettisoned or marginalized in favor of Eurocentric models.

Nonetheless, the tools for ending conflicts and building peace throughout Africa still lie essentially in Africa among Africans. More recently, this has been evidenced by the indispensable role played by African women in helping to resolve conflicts and build peace throughout the continent. Indeed, their success record, especially in countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone in West Africa, and Rwanda in East Africa, has been far better than the intervention experiences and mediating efforts of some of the regional (male dominated) ad hoc military formations. In this regard, the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) readily comes to mind. A weak resolve, inadequate funding, poor planning, flawed logistics, and uncertain objectives—all of which could have been remedied with an All-African Military High command—were the main factors that contributed to the blunders ECOMOG made in West Africa. Unfortunately, many of these same criticisms can be leveled at the African Union’s Standby Force (ASF), which has been plagued by poorly trained soldiers, ill-equipped armies, underfunded operations, and lack of centralized control.

Assata Shakur

Although the ASF and the various regional ad hoc groupings have not experienced complete failure, clearly the primary victims of war and conflict in Africa, women (and children), need to be at the forefront of any attempt to end conflicts and build peace in Africa. Who has a greater reason for this to happen than African women, whose lives have been ruined by ethnic conflicts, tribal wars, political violence, and sexual exploitation by peacekeeping soldiers?  And who is better equipped to make this happen than African women, who find it much easier than men to cross the explosive boundaries of religion, ethnicity, and party affiliation?  Their socialization, along with their vested interest in peace, renders them the greatest stakeholders for peace that we have. A Bureau of Women’s Affairs, then, as an integral part of an All-African Union Government, must be charged with the responsibility of institutionalizing a pivotal role for women in conflict resolution and peace building in Africa. With proper training, a steadfast commitment to Pan-Africanism, and the backing of an All-African Union Government, African women, especially women from the grassroots, can be deployed throughout the continent, alongside their male counterparts, as Africa’s primary arbitrators, negotiators, conciliators, and mediators.

On the international front, an effective defense against foreign espionage and aggression must be one of Africa’s top priorities. Without it, whatever gains made towards a unified and socialist Africa will be seriously threatened. Who begrudges China for acquiring the military capacity to protect the Chinese homeland, including building an arsenal of inter-continental ballistic missiles capable of reaching anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes?  Had they not, how safe, how secure, would their standing be as a growing industrial giant and formidable global power?  Global peace, with justice, including universal nuclear disarmament, must be the ultimate objective of all peoples around the world. However, until we get there, nay, in order to get there, Africa will have to be in a position to repel or dissuade any other country, or groups of countries, from establishing military bases on its soil, using Africa’s armed forces to fight proxy wars in pursuit of foreign interests, and bullying Africa into economic and political submission. This can only be achieved by the power derived from of an All-African Union Government.

A balkanized Africa will have billions of dollars it spends on military hardware, and millions of its uniformed soldiers stretched across the continent, dissipated into ineffectiveness—the existence of regional ad hoc military groups and the ASF notwithstanding. Into this void slipped NATO, EU, and single country interlopers, each committed to maintaining geo-political dominance in Africa while protecting the financial interests of the global north (vis a vis its adversaries, e.g., China, Russia, and others). While France has become a perfectionist in this regard, one of the more recent and most troubling examples of this, because of its continental reach, is U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). With very little transparency, AFRICOM has carried out thousands of military missions in Africa since its inception in 2008, including a growing number of airstrikes. This has been carried out with thousands of U.S. troops, weaponized drone bases, and the connivance of various African governments scattered across the continent. Only an All-African Union Socialist Government will be able to put an end to foreign interference and establish an effective military defense, intelligence-gathering agency, surveillance operations, and reconnaissance missions. What is at stake is the peace and prosperity that Africa so urgently needs.

With the attainment of a free, economically and militarily strong Africa, African people the world over will have a real defense against vicious racist and neo-colonial exploitation. Africa, as projected by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, will then be a powerful force for world peace.

Filed Under: ALD Tabloid 2021 Tagged With: #AfricanLiberationDay, #AfricanLiberationDay2021, A#ALD, ALD, ALD2021, All-African People's Revolutionary Party

Poem: Guess Who They Are

2021-05-21 by A-APRP Editor Leave a Comment

By Nii Ardey Otoo

Organizer, All-African People’s Revolutionary Party

Guess who they are
Cowards unfit to rule
Cowards unfit to resist
Neo-colonialism and the
International community

Based on their Promises
We voted them into Power
But alas, all promises were Vain
As stomach politicians,
They represent cold-blooded
Multi-national corporations

Guess who they are
Cowards unfit to rule
Cowards unfit to resist
Neo-colonialism and the
International community

Honorable and Excellency are their titles
But nothing honorable or excellent about their nature
They inherited the OAU, now AU
To unite the African continent
With one army, one currency
One foreign policy and a common market
For our economic independence
But as perfect agents of neo-colonialism
They sabotaged the unification of Africa

Guess who they are
Cowards unfit to rule
Cowards unfit to resist
Neo-colonialism and the
International community

A stand they must take
Either they are agents of imperialism
Faithful servants of neo-colonialism
Or defenders of the people’s aspirations
Submerged in inferiority complex
They cannot manage their own affairs
So they give up a rich continent
For cheap food donations and used clothes
This keeps Africa underdeveloped

Guess who they are
Cowards unfit to rule
Cowards unfit to resist
Neo-colonialism and the
International community

Afraid to execute the African Revolution
They ran to the IMF, WB, G-8 and G-20
To participate in their own exploitation
Blind to the abundance of their own riches
Their people wallow in poverty
Shamelessly, they ask the people
To tighten their belt
For the benefit of cold-blooded multi-national corporations

Guess who they are
Cowards unfit to rule
Cowards unfit to resist
Neo-colonialism and the
International community

 

Guess who they are?

Filed Under: ALD Tabloid 2021 Tagged With: #AfricanLiberationDay, #AfricanLiberationDay2021, A#ALD, ALD, ALD2021

Spooks and Grunts and Pigs! Oh My! A Revolutionary Call to Smash the Industrial, Police-Military, Intelligence Complex (IPIC)

2021-05-21 by A-APRP Editor Leave a Comment

The capitalist/imperialist system is driven by a world view that is colonialist, racist, sexist and Zionist. It is an enemy that operates through governments, institutions and agencies that do its bidding. More particularly, a worldwide network of military, intelligence and police agencies protect the capitalist system with interconnected assets that operate locally, nationally, regionally, and internationally. The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party calls this network the Industrial, Police/Military, Intelligence Complex (IPIC).

IPIC Countries

Who makes up IPIC? It’s a collection of spooks, grunts and pigs. Spooks are the spies who staff intelligence agencies, and who direct military forces to the world’s natural resources. Grunts are soldiers enlisted in imperialist military forces who secure the resources identified by the spooks. The pigs are the so-called law enforcement forces that protect the property and resources of the capitalists.

IPIC is an economically motivated espionage-military-prison-police force controlled by a global empire supported by international, monopoly, finance capital. IPIC’s role is to repress popular discontent, secure resources, protect property, defend wealth, and pursue the vital interests of capitalism and imperialism. It is a vast criminal web that includes but is not limited to a global network of governments, corporations/financial institutions, intelligence agencies, military organizations, private armed militias, and local, regional, national, transnational police, and security forces. They are the world’s biggest gang.

Spies, soldiers and cops are the frontline forces in the enemy’s global assault on African people. They are the goons who facilitate the theft of the African World’s resources and the exploitation of our labor, inside and outside of Africa. They are the armed police thugs that occupy our communities. They are the military conquerors who bomb, invade, and plunder our nations. They are police officers trained by Zionists to smother dissent and rule through military occupation. They are African generals with allegiance to Washington or Paris. They are Haitian presidents managing by murder. They are international spies that infiltrate our organizations, destroy revolutionary governments, and assassinate our people-centered political leaders.

Capitalist countries and their partners (Transnational Corporations and international Institutions) employ these spies, soldiers, and police to protect their wealth and crush the People’s resistance to oppression and exploitation. The entire repressive apparatus is directed by super-secret spy agencies such as the CIA (USA), Mossad (Israel), and MI6 (Britain).

Grunts (soldiers) and Their Dirty Work

IPIC’s job is to identify resources such as oil, coltan, gold etc. and develop means of securing this wealth and delivering it into the greedy hands of international capital. To find IPIC at work, find the locations of valuable resources. When capitalism locates resources, it uses military forces to secure them. The invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Syria, are examples of how this happens. Also consider the establishment of 50 U.S. military bases in Africa (AFRICOM), and the 800 U.S. military installations in 80 countries around the world. The mission of these forces is to overthrow progressive and revolutionary governments, kill progressive leaders, infiltrate, destabilize and destroy revolutionary organizations, and suppress mass uprisings. They have blockaded Cuba and Venezuela, and murdered protesters in Uganda, Haiti, and Nigeria. They put knees on our necks and shoot us down in the streets of urban areas around the world.

IPIC employs sophisticated surveillance technologies, dirty tricks, invasion, mass murder, political assassination, extra-judicial police killings, mass incarceration, lies, bribery, mass kidnapping, disinformation campaigns, environmental terrorism, chemical warfare, drones, smart bombs, tactical teams, raw brutality, and plunder. Anywhere on the planet Earth where African people stand up courageously to fight for our freedom, we will be met with the coordinated force of IPIC.

Corporate Criminals

Resources, once controlled by grunts, are not handed over to governments that the spies and grunts work for. Instead, they are delivered to international corporations and financial institutions that control the world’s resources. They sell everything on Wall Street. They want everything, everywhere to be owned and controlled by the Gangster Banks, corporations, and international financial agencies Everything, from Baltimore’s dilapidated housing stock to South Africa’s gold and diamond mines, Nigerian Oil fields, Costa Rican mango farms, South American rainforests and Congolese coltan mines are all owned and/or controlled by the transnational corporations, banks, and financial institutions. All of this to accumulate wealth for the capitalist ruling elite, which represents 1/10th of 1% of the world’s population,

Control of a nation’s resources can sometimes be secured through diplomatic or economic means. Bribery, aid, trade agreements, arms sales, contracts, and diplomatic pressure are the not-so-subtle means used to coerce governments to comply with capitalist/imperialist pressures and demands. When these means fail, military force is considered.

A Coordinated Mission

The spooks come first. They identify, collect, and analyze data, collect assets, define targets, and coordinate missions. The grunts carry these missions out. These operations are very expensive and siphon away resources that could be used to address critical needs of people in need. In 2020-2021 the U.S. government alone spent 706 billion dollars on the military (grunts). This is more than half of the government’s annual discretionary spending. U.S. state and local governments annually spend over 115 billion dollars (about $350 per person in the U.S.) on police (pigs) and prisons. An additional secret budget of billions of dollars is set aside each year for the domestic and international intelligence services.

Countries that resist surrender of their resources are subject to sanctions, blockades, espionage, and regime change. Leaders who resist are often assassinated (Gadhafi, Sankara, Lumumba, Malcolm X are examples). The spooks lay the groundwork for invasions, coup d’états, drone strikes, mercenary conflicts, genocide, famine, sabotage, terrorism, and war. Soldiers and police fight wars directed by spies. Grunts and pigs fight under the direction of spooks!

Who are the Spooks?

Numerous intelligence agencies or departments serve the interests of imperialism. They include, among others: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Department of Military Intelligence, and Homeland Security. Israeli Intelligence includes Mossad, Aman (military intelligence) and Shin Bet (internal security). In Britain there is MI5, MI6, Secret Intelligence Services (SIS), Defense Intelligence (DI) and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and in France there is the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE), General Directorate for Internal Security (DGIS) and the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DRM). These are just a few of the spy agencies and departments of capitalist states set up to defend capitalist interests around the world and to ensure the continuation of the capitalist/imperialist enterprise. The intelligence community is the head of the imperialist snake.

Each of these capitalist/imperialist states has both an internal and external intelligence service. The internal agency combats dissent within by repressing progressive and revolutionary organizations and suppressing active opposition to the capitalist system.

The external intelligence agencies work to maintain control of the world’s economy by establishing monopoly control of natural resources, markets, and labor power. They protect corporate wealth and the capitalist elite.

The external intelligence services of all capitalist states are in cahoots and operate in conjunction with international institutions like the United Nations, financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and Wall Street, and regional institutions like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Organization of American States (OAS) and the African Union (AU)

The intelligence agencies of different capitalist countries are intimately connected by a common elitist ideology. They are led by The United States and Israel. Britain and France are two of many willing junior partners. The CIA, MI5 and Mossad are financed by nation states, but always they serve monopoly capital, the global master. Money rules, profit dictates and cash is king! In the end spies, soldiers, and cops work for the banks, and the owners of capital.

Pigs Wallow in Capitalist Filth

It’s all the same

National, state, and local police forces protect business interests, private property and maintain control of populations through extra-judicial killings, mass incarceration, crowd control and other anti-insurgency methods, harassment, and violence. Communities around the world are occupied by police forces loyal to capital. Many of these police forces, patrolling the streets of the world’s cities are trained by the Zionists, using methods perfected in the occupation of Palestinian land the suppression of Palestinian people. Lagos, Port of Spain, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Monrovia, and Port of Prince are policed by officers trained by Zionists, they are not alone.

We have found the enemy, and it is IPIC

Frantz Fanon

Spooks, grunts and pigs (IPIC) are the Enemies of African people and all humanity! The A-APRP understands that, to defeat capitalism and imperialism (to be free, united, and socialist) we must defeat IPIC. We long ago called for a coalition to Smash IPIC, especially the FBI and CIA. Our struggle is for the organization and political education of the people and against capitalism and its Industrial Police-Military Intelligence Complex. Failure to identify these enemies and unite in a fight against them can only result in continued exploitation and oppression of African people and the defeat of our movement to change the world for future generations.

Filed Under: ALD Tabloid 2021 Tagged With: #AfricanLiberationDay, #AfricanLiberationDay2021, A#ALD, ALD, ALD2021, All-African People's Revolutionary Party, Capitalism, Imperialism, Industrial, Intelligence Complex (IPIC)., Police/Military

World-Wide Pan-African Unity will Lead to the Liberation of the Sahrawi

2021-05-21 by A-APRP Editor Leave a Comment

Freedom Fighters

Forty-five years ago, the people of Western Sahara in northern Africa declared their independence, notwithstanding claims to the region by Morocco. The people’s struggle for their right to be recognized globally as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic has, over many decades, faced numerous challenges.

The Sahrawi march toward self-determination did not begin with the Moroccan aggression. As far back as 1957, the Sahrawi people fought to expel Spanish colonizers from Western Sahara. In 1972, U.N. Resolution 2983 affirmed the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination.  Nevertheless, Spain ceded its colonial occupation of Western Sahara to Morocco and Mauritania in 1976.

The United States and Saudi Arabia played a role in the 1975 “Green March” where Morocco’s military led a 350,000 Moroccan settler invasion force that carried Moroccan, U.S. and Saudi flags in a colonial assault on Western Sahara and the Sahrawi people. Morocco brutally and mercilessly drove more than 40,000 Sahrawi people to the interior where the Moroccan Air Force bombed them with napalm and phosphorus. But the Sahrawi resistance stood firm and forced Mauritania to pull out in 1979.

From 1976 until 1991 the Sahrawi’s “Polisario Front” guerilla force fought against great odds to push back the Moroccan military. This led to a U.N.-brokered ceasefire in 1991 and a call for a referendum vote by the people of Sahrawi in 1992. Unfortunately, the referendum was never conducted, and the 29-year-old ceasefire between the Sahrawi Republic and Morocco was severely threatened on November 13, 2020 when the U.S.-trained and supplied Moroccan military moved in to crush Sahrawi protesters at the border crossing in Western Sahara’s “demilitarized zone,” a highway that connects Morocco to Mauritania, built in violation of international law.

This Moroccan military provocation was followed by diplomatic provocation by the United States. Efforts were made to declare Western Sahara as Moroccan territory in exchange for Morocco’s restoration of full ties with Zionist Israel. This unholy alliance between Morocco, the United States and Zionist Israel is not new.  The United States has supported Morocco since the Cold War, and now trains Moroccan officers in the U.S. and the Moroccan military forces in Morocco.

Morocco signed a new 10-year military pact with the U.S. and spent 10 billion dollars on U.S. weapons. The U.S. recognition of Moroccan colonial claims to Western Sahara is not only an attempt to legitimize the crimes of Israel, but it is also an attempt to hide the United States’ and the European Union’s participation in Morocco’s theft of the Sahrawi people’s oil, fish, phosphates and other resources.

Zionist Israel has a long covert relationship with Morocco. The Mossad (Israel’s intelligence agency) helped assassinate Morocco’s famed opposition leader and African internationalist Mehdi Ben Barka. The Moroccan government also used many of Israel’s tactics during the Green March invasion. Morocco waged a war of terror against Sahrawi men, women and children, and built illegal settlements in territory invaded and occupied in 1975. Like the Palestinian population in occupied Israel large numbers of Sahrawi were driven out. An estimated 200,000 live in refugee camps in Algeria. Morocco built a wall littered with Moroccan landmines called the “Berm” to separate Moroccan settlers from the Sahrawi people. The Sahrawi occupy only 20 percent of their land in Western Sahara and have been reduced to a third of the population.

Aziza Brahim – The Sahrawi songbird beats the drums for freedom. An artist, raised in refugee camps and received scholarships to attend school in Cuba, who uses her music to spread the word about the plight of her people and their Saharawi homeland.

Ultimately, it is African unity that will ensure the victory of the Sahrawi. To date, such unity has eluded this struggle. When the Organization of African Unity (OAU) gave its support to the Sahrawi in 1964, Morocco left the OAU in protest. Although support provided by Algeria and Libya was a critical factor leading to the ceasefire in 1991, after 29 years there has been very little progress. Since 1991 United Nations peacekeepers have stood by and allowed the Moroccan government to expand its settler population to 500,000, while also allowing the continued rape of the Western Sahara of its mineral and agricultural wealth. The U.N. Security Council members have taken very little action. The African Union (successor to the OAU) allowed Morocco to return to the African Union without any resolution of the Western Sahara issue. President Brahim Gali has expressed his frustration with the U.N. and reserved Polisario’s right to resume armed struggle.  The world-wide Pan-African movement must stand with the Sahrawi people in Western Sahara (Africa’s last colony) and support the call for an immediate solution to occupation by whatever means they deem necessary. The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party stands committed to the struggle of the Sahrawi people.

Brahim Ghali, the elected president of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, was chosen as the recipient of the 2020 Kwame Ture Black Star of Labor Award.

Filed Under: ALD Tabloid 2021 Tagged With: #AfricanLiberationDay, #AfricanLiberationDay2021, A#ALD, ALD, ALD2021, Morocco, Polisario Front

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  • Nahashon Kamau on Revolutionary Socialist League (Kenya) ALD 2020 Solidarity Message
  • Nana Esi on Abena Disroe Bio

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African Liberation Day is a permanent mass institution in the world-wide Pan-African movement. As an institution, it is stronger today because the masses of African people are stronger and ALD is their day.

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