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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/06/15/why-does-the-united-states-have-a-military-base-in-ghana/">peoplesdispatch.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Why does the United States have a military base in Ghana?<br></h1>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">Vijay Prashad - June 15, 2022<br></div>
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<p>In April 2018, the president of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, <a href="https://presidency.gov.gh/index.php/briefing-room/news-style-2/597-no-us-military-base-in-ghana-president-akufo-addo">said</a>
that Ghana has “not offered a military base, and will not offer a
military base to the United States of America.” His comments came after
Ghana’s parliament had ratified a new <a href="https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/18-531-Ghana-Defense-Status-of-Forces.pdf">defense cooperation agreement</a> with the United States on March 28, 2018, which was finally <a href="https://www.state.gov/18-531/">signed</a>
in May 2018. During a televised discussion, soon after the agreement
was formalized in March 2018, Ghana’s Minister of Defense Dominic
Nitiwul told Kwesi Pratt Jr., a journalist and leader of the Socialist
Movement of Ghana, that Ghana had not entered into a military agreement
with the United States. Pratt, however, <a href="https://www.pulse.com.gh/news/politics/disagreement-kwesi-pratt-defense-minister-in-near-fight-over-us-military-base-in/lkj0w5y">said</a> that the military agreement was a “source of worry” and was “a surrender of our [Ghanaian] sovereignty.”</p>
<p>In 2021, the research institute of Pratt’s Socialist Movement
produced—along with the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research—a <a href="https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-42-militarisation-africa/">dossier</a>
on the French and US military presence in Africa. That
dossier—“Defending Our Sovereignty: US Military Bases in Africa and the
Future of African Unity”—noted that the United States has now
established the <a href="https://www.afsbeurope.army.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/2002072141/">West Africa Logistics Network</a> (WALN) at Kotoka International Airport in Accra, the capital of Ghana. In 2019, then-US Brigadier General Leonard Kosinski <a href="https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2019/02/africom-adds-logistics-hub-west-africa-hinting-enduring-us-presence/155015/">said</a>
that a weekly US flight from Germany to Accra was “basically a bus
route.” The WALN is a cooperative security location, which is another
name for a US military base.</p>
<p>Now, four years later after the signing of the defense cooperation
agreement, I spoke with Kwesi Pratt and asked him about the state of
this deal and the consequences of the presence of the US base on
Ghanaian soil. The WALN, Pratt told me, has now taken over one of the
three terminals at the airport in Accra, and at this terminal, “hundreds
of US soldiers have been seen arriving and leaving. It is suspected
that they may be involved in some operational activities in other West
African countries and generally across the Sahel.”</p>
<h3><b>US soldiers don’t need passports</b></h3>
<p>A glance at the US–Ghana defense agreement raises many questions. Article 12 of the agreement <a href="https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/18-531-Ghana-Defense-Status-of-Forces.pdf">states</a> that the US military can use the Accra airport without <a href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/262921-ghanas-parliament-ratifies-deal-granting-unimpeded-access-to-u-s-troops.html">any</a> regulations or checks, with US military aircraft being “<a href="https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/18-531-Ghana-Defense-Status-of-Forces.pdf">free from boarding and inspection</a>”
and the Ghanaian government providing “unimpeded access to and use of
[a]greed facilities and areas to United States forces.” Pratt told me
that this agreement allows US soldiers “far more privileges than those
prescribed in the <a href="https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=IND&mtdsg_no=III-3&chapter=3&clang=_en">Vienna Convention</a>
for diplomats. They do not need passports to enter Ghana. All they need
is their US Army identity cards. They don’t even require visas to enter
Ghana. They are not subject to customs or any other inspection.”</p>
<p>Ghana has allowed the United States armed forces “to use Ghanaian
radio frequencies for free,” Pratt said. But the most stunning fact
about this arrangement is that, he said, “If US soldiers kill Ghanaians
and destroy their properties, the US soldiers cannot be tried in Ghana.
Ghanaians cannot sue US soldiers or the US government for compensation
if and when their relatives are killed, or their properties are
destroyed by the US Army or soldiers.”</p>
<h3><b>Why would Ghana allow this?</b></h3>
<p>The US–Ghana agreement permits this disregard for Ghana’s
sovereignty. Pratt told me that the political ideology of the Ghanaian
government that is in power now has been to adhere to a long history of
appeasement toward the demands made by colonial and Western states,
beginning with Britain—which was the colonial power that ruled over the
Gold Coast (the former name for Ghana) <a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202203/1254193.shtml">until</a> 1957—and leading up to providing “unimpeded access” to the United States troops under the defense deal.</p>
<p>The current president of Ghana, Akufo-Addo, comes from the political
ideology that the former prime minister of Ghana (1969-1972) Kofi Abrefa
Busia also conformed to. In the early 1950s, Pratt told me, those
following this ideology “dispatched a delegation to the United Kingdom
to persuade the authorities that it was too early to grant independence
to the Gold Coast.” This led to a coup in Ghana, where those supporting
this ideology “collaborated with the Central Intelligence Agency to
overthrow the [then-President of Ghana] Kwame Nkrumah government on
February 24, 1966, and resisted [imposing] sanctions against the South
African apartheid regime in 1969,” Pratt said. The current government,
Pratt added, will do anything to please the United States government and
its allies.</p>
<h3><b>Why is the United States interested in Ghana?</b></h3>
<p>The United States claims that its military presence on the African continent has to do with its <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/defending-us-military-presence-africa-reasons-beyond-counterterrorism">counterterrorism</a>
campaign and aims to prevent the entry of China into this region.
“There is no Chinese military presence in Ghana,” Pratt told me, and
indeed the idea of Chinese presence is <a href="https://twitter.com/NoColdWar/status/1533877434176749574">being used</a> by the United States to deepen its military control over the continent for more prosaic reasons.</p>
<p>In 2001, then-US Vice President Dick Cheney’s National Energy Policy Development Group published the <a href="https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0428/ML042800056.pdf">National Energy Policy</a>.
The contents of this report show, Pratt told me, that the United States
understood that it could “no longer rely on the Middle East for its
energy supplies. A shift to West Africa for [meeting the] US energy
needs is imperative.” Apart from West Africa’s energy resources, Ghana
“has huge national resources. It is currently the largest producer of
gold in Africa and… [is among the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2021/06/23/updated-top-10-gold-producing-countries/?sh=2a127b072ce2">top 10</a> producers] of gold in the world. It is the second-largest <a href="https://www.worldatlas.com/industries/the-top-cocoa-producing-countries-in-the-world.html">producer</a>
of cocoa in the world. It has iron, diamond, manganese, bauxite, oil
and gas, lithium, and abundant water resources, including the largest
man-made lake in the world.” Apart from these resources, Ghana’s
location on the equator makes it valuable for agricultural development,
and its large bank of highly educated English-speaking professionals
makes it valuable for meeting the demands of the West’s service sector.</p>
<p>Apart from these economic issues, Pratt said, the United States
government has intervened in Ghana—including in the coup of 1966—to
prevent it from having a leadership role in the decolonization process
in Africa. More recently, the United States has found Ghana to be a
reliable ally in its various military and commercial projects across the
continent. It is toward those projects, and not the national interest
of the Ghanaian people, Pratt said, that the United States has now built
its base in a part of Accra’s civilian airport.</p>
<p><em>Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He
is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an
editor of <a href="https://mayday.leftword.com/">LeftWord Books</a> and the director of <a href="https://thetricontinental.org/">Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research</a>. He is a senior non-resident fellow at <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y2hdjcpo">Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies</a>, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Darker-Nations-Peoples-History-Third/dp/1595583424/?tag=alternorg08-20">The Darker Nations</a> and <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Poorer-Nations-Possible-History-Global/dp/1781681589/?tag=alternorg08-20">The Poorer Nations</a>. His latest book is <a href="https://mayday.leftword.com/catalog/product/view/id/21820">Washington Bullets</a>, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.</em></p>
<p><em>This article was produced by <a href="https://globetrotter.media/">Globetrotter</a>.</em></p>
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