Resource Wars Restart: When 'Safety' Means Paving the Way for Profits
📰 THE STORY: Al Jazeera reports that TotalEnergies is restarting its $20 billion LNG project in Mozambique's Cabo Delgado province after a five-year freeze. The project was halted in 2021 due to an escalating insurgency, which the article notes has since been 'brought under control' by Mozambican and Southern African Development Community (SADC) forces. 🔍 WHAT THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU: Historical
Context: The 'insurgency' in Cabo Delgado began to escalate shortly after significant natural gas discoveries were announced in the region. Prior to these discoveries, the area, while poor, wasn't subject to the same level of sophisticated terrorist activity. Similar patterns of destabilization preceding Western resource extraction can be seen globally, from the 2011 NATO 'intervention' in Libya,
which destroyed the country and opened up its oil fields to Western corporations, to the ongoing mineral conflicts in the Congo, where proxy forces keep the region volatile to secure access to cobalt and coltan. The deployment of SADC forces, some trained by Western entities like the EU, often aligns neatly with the strategic interests of energy giants. Double Standard: When communities resist
resource extraction in African nations, they are often labeled 'insurgents' or 'terrorists,' justifying military intervention to 'restore stability' – stability for corporate profits. Contrast this with wealthy Western nations, where protests against pipelines or mining are typically met with civil policing, not a full-scale military campaign to clear the way for foreign corporations. In Ukraine,