Abby Martin speaks to Eugene Puryear to discuss the big picture of US imperialism in Africa: From the Berlin Conference to the subversion of liberation movements to neocolonial puppets and the current sprawl of AFRICOM "counterterrorism."

Abby Martin

Here at the Empire Files, we're going to be covering a lot of stories about the U.S. empire in Africa over the next few months, but before we get into these focused episodes on specific countries, I wanted to get the big picture that explains the legacy and current U.S. policy on the continent. To do that, I'm pleased to be speaking with Eugene Puryear, and author and journalist who covers the politics of Africa frequently on his daily podcast called The Punch Out, which I encourage everyone to check out, as well as video reporting on a great new network called Breakthrough News. He joins me now from New York. Thank you so much for joining me, Eugene.

Eugene Puryear

Thank you so much for having me. Have you.

Abby Martin

So, Eugene, today we have AFRICOM and a growing number of U.S. bases and troops across the African continent, but if you look at where those bases are, it's pretty much a stripe from coast to coast across Central Africa. Why is that?

Eugene Puryear

I think that's such an important question and it's a very relevant point to the geography of Africa. So across the middle, most people have heard of the Sahara Desert. So just below the Sahara Desert, there's something called the Sahelian region, and that pretty much is exactly that length of base as you were talking about, cutting across the north-central, the northern middle part of the continent, and the Sahelian region is just between the Sahara and then further down closer to the coast, large forest regions and so on and so forth.

To put it a little bit more in context, there are a few things people should understand about this region and why the U.S. bases are there. Now, the first reason that those bases are there is that this is the front line of the defense, if you will.

These neocolonial countries, primarily in West Africa, but also in other parts of the continent, that are enforcing the writ and the rule of Western multinationals that are partnered up with them to remove a number of critical resources, many of them are in the Sahelian region entirely. Countries like Niger. Some of them to a lesser extent. Countries like Nigeria, where it's just the northern part of the country, but since most of these borders are colonial borders and they're totally fake, most of the problems are cross-border issues that affect all the different countries to lesser and greater degrees. So the conflicts in the Sahel have the opportunity to do two main things that the United States is very concerned about and hence why they have such a military presence.

Now, the first thing is an attempt to strengthen the security strategy of West African states, but what you have is a situation where the governments that are in place in these countries, what they want to do is extract as many resources they can from the country. The elites are in this government and those who are backing them keep as much of that wealth for themselves, the wealth that they don't send off to Europe and to the United States and other countries around the world and not let any of that trickle down. So almost all of them have states that have strong Western-backed, Western-armed, Western-trained militaries that enforce the writ of these elites in places like northern Nigeria, the whole country of Niger, the northern part of Mali, and they want to do whatever they can to make sure that the move...