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SA REPORT SUGGESTS US BUILDING IN SD IS SPY BASE

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MBABANE – South African media are speculating whether the Americans are building a spy base and not just an embassy in the country.
The embassy is being built in Ezulwini and the Sunday Times reported that it could be a spy base for Africa.


The report said the United States of America’s (USA) building site was about the size of five rugby fields. It also said locals had seen ‘deep excavations’ that had taken place to possibly house a subterranean element of the building.
It also stated that the embassy being built was larger than that in South Africa. The report claimed that the construction site dwarfed a neighbouring shopping mall in Ezulwini, 20 km south of Mbabane.
“A network of security cameras covers the surrounding streets and a three-storey high fence shields the site from prying eyes,” reads the report.


The report quoted a certain Dr Mopeli Moshoeshoe of Wits University’s department of international relations, who also aired his more general views that as China’s influence on the continent had increased, the US has taken a much keener interest in Africa but had been resisted by the Africans.
“If we were to speculate, it (the Swaziland complex) may serve as a base for Africom,” Moshoeshoe said.


Meanwhile, Independent Newspapers Editor, Peter Fabricius said it would be nigh impossible for the US to move their controversial Africa Command (Africom) from Stuttgart to Ezulwini.
“US diplomats are understandably rather disparaging about a weekend report that they could be planning to move the headquarters of their controversial Africa Command (Africom) from Brussels to Swaziland. Not least because it’s not in Brussels, Belgium, now, it’s in Stuttgart, Germany,” Fabricius is reported to have said.


He said the story speculated rather loosely on the basis of one fact, that the US is building a large new embassy in Ezulwini, where the royals live, not far from Swaziland’s capital Mbabane.
He said the deep excavations that locals had claimed had taken place to possibly house a subterranean element of the building could be a basement.


Barriers


“For several years, Washington has been constructing rather fortress-like embassies on a roughly similar template – a concrete block in the centre of a wide and open expanse of ground encircled by concrete vehicle barriers and a security fence,” he said.


He also said the USA’s embassy in Pretoria gave one a pretty good idea of the template. “The size, solidity and design of these embassies is the result of a defensive rather than an offensive intention. They are designed and built to try to avoid any repetitions of al-Qaeda’s destruction of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998 at a cost of hundreds of (mostly African) lives, by driving vehicles packed with explosives close to the buildings and detonating them,” Fabricius said. He said It was true that the Pentagon originally intended to base Africom in Africa and met stiff resistance, largely led by former president Thabo Mbeki’s administration. He said the US decided to establish Africom in Stuttgart where it already was in effect, though until then, as a division of US European Command, rather than as a separate command.


“It’s very unlikely that the US would be so crass as to move Africom from Stuttgart to Ezulwini, surreptitiously, without consulting Africans very widely, including the AU,” he said.
He said in any case that would be physically nigh impossible, as anyone who had visited Africom Headquarters, Kelley Barracks, in Stuttgart would say. “It is a sprawling complex that spreads over many more than five rugby fields and, incidentally, has sub-divisions in other parts of Germany and Italy.


“For one thing, where would you put the Burger King, KFC and the other fast-food restaurants?” he asked.
He also wondered why the US would choose Swaziland of all places as other more substantial countries, like Liberia and Botswana, were believed to be willing to host Africom when the US was still lobbying African nations to host it on the continent. They would be more likely hosts of a clandestine Africom operating from a basement in Africa.

Comments (2 posted):

Kofi Mahama on 23/07/2014 11:12:52
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Africa we want piece and as you may notice there is no piece in the world today because of US, look they are silent on what is happening in GAZA, yet they can impose suctions on Russia but they cannot impose sanctions on Israel for killing innocent children and occupied GAZA STRIP
Born'n Bred on 23/07/2014 11:37:34
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This cannot be far from the truth. The amount of earth moved to the other side of the road, behind Happy Valley Hotel, says a lot. Lets hope the establishment won't attract American ''enemies'' to our shores.

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