Africa

Africa is completely dominated by European colonial powers and is consumed by an anti-imperialist conflict that has been raging since the 1940s with little sign of respite. The ongoing violence and the accompanying poverty and despair have ensured that Africa is still known as the "dark continent".

**Morocco** is a condominium between France and Spain, although France does most of the military heavy lifting. The Berber tribes of the Rif highlands are particularly resistant to colonial rule and, despite liberal use of heavy weapons the French cannot seem to suppress them permanently. The King, who still has a ceremonial role, is widely known to be playing both sides.

**Algeria** is, according to France, not a colony but an integral part of the French metropole, as much a part of France as Lille or Bordeaux. It also has a small but active white French minority. The anti-French resistance movement is very strong and well organised, although unlike the Moroccan resistance it is based mainly in cities and their hinterlands. The war in Algeria has become the permanent preoccupation of the French state, who are unable to win, but also unable to really lose. France is trying to encourage French or, failing that, Italian or Spanish settlers to relocate to secure areas to make Algeria more European - something that many are understandably reluctant to do, even though the financial incentives are generous. The current French President, retired *Armee de l'Air* General Edmund Jouhaud, is nicknamed "The Butcher of the Sahara" due to his planning and organisation of numerous heavy bombing raids on villages and communities believed to hold rebel strongholds. German military observers are often present during French operations.

**Tunisia** is relatively quiet. It also has a European community, although it is not as large as Algeria's. There were some murmurs of discontent in the 1950s but a military crackdown proved effective.

**Libya** is for Italy what Algeria is for France. The only consolation is that Libyan rebels sometimes fight one another rather than Italy - some of the resistance groups want Italian Libya to be split into multiple statelets rather than left intact. The Italian intelligence services attempt to play off this rivalry, although they are not deft enough to do so reliably.

**Egypt** is the only independent state in Africa. In the 1950s the last British forces were cordially asked by the King to withdraw, and neither the UK nor their patrons in the USA were prepared to use force to overturn this request, particularly since the King was more than willing to ask Germany for help. Since then the King has played a very subtle game. His court, military and population in general are all in favour of throwing the Europeans out of Africa and possibly expanding Egypt's boundaries. However, the King knows that his country could not stand up to an all-out war with Germany or the USA, so he cannot overtly support any of the various insurgencies. Egypt has cultivated a good relationship with Japan, although the King knows that Japan would not be able to protect him in the event of a general war. Egypt includes Sudan, which the British withdrew from in the late 1950s when their position grew untenable due to lack of Egyptian cooperation. The King strongly considered hosting the 1968 conference (see below) but felt it was too provocative.

**Ethiopia**, including Somalia and Eritrea, is the other Italian colony. French Djibouti technically belongs to France but is strongly integrated into Italian East Africa. Ethiopia rose up in the 1950s, but was put down and given some degree of self-government, an arrangement which has largely worked. There is still anti-imperialist violence but it is sporadic and limited to the backwaters. Many in Rome and Berlin realise that Italian East Africa may well explode again, and there is a large Italian garrison in anticipation of this possibility.

**Kenya** is the second largest British colony in Africa, after Nigeria, and the most troublesome. A major insurgency broke out in the 1950s, was repressed, but has boiled up again in the late 1960s. There are very substantial British forces in Kenya but the British fear they may lose the country, and have already lost control of some areas of the north and west - the Ethiopia/Sudan/Kenya border point is a very lawless area where British patrols pass through quickly and only in force.

**Uganda** is technically separate from Kenya but very much in the same boat.

**French West Africa** is a physically vast territory that covers almost all of Western Africa, including Senegal, Mauritania, French Sudan (Mali),Niger, Burkina Faso, Togo, Dahomey (Benin), Cote d'Ivoire and French Guinea. It is structured as a federation of colonies, each of which has its own series of subdistricts and internal protectorates, many of which are extremely complex. It is governed from Dakar in Senegal. Although physically large it is quite sparsely populated. Compared to Algeria and Morocco, French West Africa is relatively quiescent, although there are pockets of resistance in French Guinea and Niger.

**Portuguese Guinea** is the quietest of the Portuguese colonies, although this is only a relative statement - it is still suffering from the ongoing Portuguese colonial wars. Portuguese forces have had some major successes (with German assistance), although the conflict is not yet over.

**Nigeria** is the largest British colony. Perhaps due to its ethnically and spiritually diverse population, it is relatively quiet. An insurgency broke out in the early 1960s but it was limited to the Biafran area and was crushed, notably with quite a lot of support from other parts of Nigeria. The British are quite adept at playing divide and rule between the various regional, religious and ethnic groups in Nigeria, although it is a delicate dance that they may not be able to maintain indefinitely. The Niger delta is a major oil production centre with many American companies engaged in extraction, often with quite significant damage to the local environment.

**Sierra Leone and Liberia** are relatively calm, colonies of the UK and USA respectively.

**French Equatorial Africa** is the second French conglomerate of colonies, consisting of Cameroon, Central Africa, Chad and French Congo, with its capital in Brazzaville. Like French West Africa it is a famously byzantine administrative system. There is a major uprising taking place in Cameroon and Congo, an extension of the conflict in the Belgian Congo, and to a large extent they are the same war - Belgian authorities cooperate extremely closely with their French counterparts, and the goals of some of the rebels are an independent Equatorial state covering almost all of both territories. Chad is relatively pacified, probably due to its close ties to similarly calm French West Africa.

**Belgian Congo** is one of the darkest spots in a dark continent. The Belgian military is tied down in an ongoing conflict in extremely harsh terrain with poor infrastructure against highly motivated enemies under charismatic leadership. Unfortunately for the Belgians, their territory is a source of strategic resources that the Europa Bund cannot do without, including diamonds, lithium, tungsten and uranium - it was uranium from the Congo that formed the core of the German *Barbarossa* bomb. The conflict in Congo is extremely Germanised, since many of the mines are owned by German companies, and German military advisors are very closely involved. The two small Belgian colonies of Rwanda and Burundi are effectively part of the Congo and embroiled in the same war.

**Angola** is part of the vast swathe of conflict that runs from French Equatorial Africa down to the South African border. A very well organised and well funded coalition of nationalist groups have successfully driven the Portuguese from large parts of Angola. Angola, like its northern neighbour, has the curse of being an abundant source of a strategic resource - in this case oil. The bund is a prodigious consumer of oil for both civilian and military ends, and even with access to Libyan, Algerian, Iranian and Indonesian oil supplies, Angola is still needed. Here the Germans are most invested in seeing the Portuguese war fought and won, although it is also here that the anti-imperialist forces are strongest.

**Namibia** is unique in being the colony of another African country, in this case South Africa. The South Africans are facing their own war to hold it. The Angolan and Namibian rebels cooperate with one another closely.

**South Africa** is the only other independent country in Africa, even if it still has Queen Elizabeth as the head of state, which allows the Egyptians to claim it is not truly independent. While politically independent it is closely aligned with the American-led global bloc. American pressure led South Africa to formally end its *apartheid* policy in the 1960s in exchange for military and economic aid, although there is still very significant racial discrimination. Although there have been black riots in some urban areas, the country is relatively stable, and is able to dedicate its energy to fighting its own colonial wars in Namibia and Rhodesia, as well as assisting the British in Kenya and Tanzania. Many of the country´s black majority feel sympathetic to the independence struggles on the rest of the continent and engage in passive resistance against military conscription or defense work.

**Bechuanaland** is a British colony, a relatively peaceful one. It is effectively a puppet state of South Africa, to which it is very closely tied economically and militarily.

**Rhodesia** aspires to independent status like South Africa, but is also still a British colony. Its white minority are famous for even more viciously repressing their indigenous population than the South Africans, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Rhodesia has been embroiled in a war against an indigenous uprising since the late 1950s. It is going very poorly and without major South African, British and American support, the government would doubtless have collapsed. As it is the government only controls about one third of the country, the rest of which is controlled by the Zimbabwe National Army, a coalition of tribal resistance groups. Recently some of the groups within the ZNU have started fighting one another to establish power sharing in a post-victory scenario. The government in Salisbury is not sure if this is a good or bad sign.

**Mozambique** is another Portuguese colony. The anti-imperialists forces here are very well organised, but because Mozambique is not so strategically important as Angola, German assistance is relatively modest. Like Rhodesia, the Portuguese government effectively controls only a narrow strip along the coast.

**Tanzania** is a British colony and is embroiled in another anti-imperialist war similar to Kenya's.

**Madagascar** is a French colony that has always been difficult for the French to effectively administer. There are sporadic revolts and large areas of the interior are effectively already independent, but French colonial troops secure the major coastal ports.

Africa illustrates very well the absurdity of the current global cold war. At the same time British and American intelligence agents supply weapons, intelligence and funds to anti-imperialist rebels in Algeria or Angola, they work hard to throttle anti-imperialism in Namibia and Kenya - while their French and German colleagues do the opposite. Each bloc has the same goal - seeing its rival's African colonies burst into independence, while their own are kept in a firm grip. Needless to say, from the African point of view, this is absurd, although few of the African rebels are proud enough to refuse desperately needed assistance. In 1969, a significant scandal broke out when a Portuguese helicopter in Angola was shot down by German made *Skorpion* man-portable air defense missiles. An investigation by the Gehlen-Amt revealed the embarassing fact that the missiles had been provided by one of their local agents to an anti-South African rebel group in Namibia - but the group, not facing significant air attack by South African forces, had gifted them to their brothers-in-arms across the border in Angola in a gesture of fraternal support. Such events are probably extremely common.

Japan, as an independent non-European country with no direct colonial ties to Africa and with a history of anti-imperialist rhetoric (even if such rhetoric does not seem to apply to Koreans or the Chinese) is well regarded in Africa. In 1968 Japan, to the great distaste of Berlin and Washington, hosted a conference on African independence and anti-imperialism, playing host to rebel leaders from Algeria, Libya, Kenya, Angola, Namibia and the Congo, as well as a representative of the King of Egypt. Japan does what it can to assist the various independence movements but it is limited by being short on resources - it cannot match the flood of arms either Washington or Berlin sends into Africa, let alone both together - and being distant from the continent. Weapons are usually routed through Egypt, but this is difficult as the King is anxious to avoid giving his imperialist neighbours a *casus belli* through overt support for rebels. In late 1969 the Japanese consulate in Tripoli was closed down after it was alleged that the diplomats there had been providing funds and weapons to anti-Italian rebels, a charge that Japan only met with the weakest *pro forma* denial.