The US Military's AFRIcan COMmand.

Due to the US' deep unpopularity across the continent AFRICOM is currently based in Stuttgart, Germany because no African nation wants it on their soil. During the Libya conflict nations such as Britain and Qatar played on this distrust of the US by starting a rumour that the US had only overthrown Qaddafi so they could install a puppet regime and build the AFRICOM HQ in Libya. This was deliberately done in order to force the US to keep a small footprint in post-Qaddafi Libya most noticeably highlighted by the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi. This light footprint meant that the US was able to successfully monitor and disrupt the flow of Islamist weapons and fighters into Mali. They were also unable to successfully respond to the highly suspicious coup that led to the collapse of the Malian army allowing the Islamists to set up a de-facto state.

In response to the French led intervention in Mali the US has now set up a spy drone base in neighbouring Niger. Although this had some reference to the peace plan for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that collapsed at the recent African Union (AU) conference along with the UK's deployment of a Sentinal spy plane the US base's primary objective is to spy the African nations as they fight what is almost something of a fake war with Qatar certainly providing support to the Islamists. Obviously though the US was hoping the African nations wouldn't notice that giving the Niger base a second purpose to discuss African nations feelings towards the US in general and AFRICOM in particular. The logistical issues surrounding any potential deployment of Chris Brown during Rihanna's Diamonds tour would provide a metaphor for those discussions.

However I'm at a loss to see how the US showing off how it is effectively keeping Rihanna as a slave in order for her to be used as a weapon against the entire continent will help them win friends in Africa. In fact as with Chris Brown's own Contra Mundum tour I'm pretty sure his handlers are actually trying to make sure that the US is permanently locked out of one of the most resource rich nations on earth.

Therefore I think it is long past time for the US to drop the gore fest it's got planned for Rihanna's tour and instead allow her to have a pretty dull (in geo-political terms) tour and letting her work off her debt by becoming my contact point. After all the US clearly needs to help.

(Originally posted) 21:40 on 6/2/13.