DARFURISM, UGANDA & U.S. WAR IN AFRICA
The Spectre of Continental Genocide
First published:
October 29, 2007
Revised &
republished: November 1, 2007
Revised &
Published with Global Research: 12 November 2007
Revised and expanded:
14 November 2007
keith harmon snow
President
Bush met with Ugandas President-for-life Yoweri Museveni in the White House on
October 30, 2007. Meanwhile, a broad swath of Africa is engulfed in
interrelated genocides and covert operations involving both the U.S. and
Uganda, there is a growing demand to probe the accounts of Save Darfur to
find out how the tens of millions collected are being spent due to allegations
of arms-deals and bribery, and the Save Darfur movement has become the false
flag action of the West, supported by most everyone, people who know little or
nothing about what it is they are supporting.
When President George Bush met with Ugandan President Yoweri
Museveni at the White House on October 30 they certainly discussed much more
than Uganda's leadership in Somalia, the Lord's Resistance Army, and President
Museveni's development plan for northern Uganda or their strong partnership
to combat malaria and HIV/AIDS in Uganda, as announced by the White House Office of the Press Secretary.
The role of Yoweri Museveni and his government in service
to the Western economic neoliberalism and the shock doctrine of deconstruction
and chaos is greatly misunderstood and deeply camouflaged by simplified
establishment narratives like those above. Bush and Museveni discussed the
U.S.-Uganda military relations and bilateral involvement in the ongoing wars in
Sudan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo). The partnership
to combat malaria and HIV/AIDS is camouflage language for military vaccination
and bio-warfare programs involving pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer, the
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, USAID, and humanitarian
philanthropies.[1] A vaccine
for malaria was developed for the U.S. military some time ago and this is
shared only with certain U.S. client state partners, though clinical trials
have been undertaken in public using African volunteers. [2]
Museveni and Bush certainly discussed Americas escalating
war in the Sahara desert, expanding petroleum operations across the region,
U.S. Special Forces deployments and newly identified uranium resources in
Uganda.[3]
Maybe they discussed the March 1, 1999 killing of eight foreign tourists at
Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, a story that has not yet been critically
unpacked.[4]
The development plan for northern Uganda is euphemistic language for the
ongoing depopulation and massive natural resource extraction that today
proceeds in northern Uganda in parallel with the genocide of the Acholi people
and Ugandas militarization in support of covert programs in Sudan and Congo.
The Darfur conflict rides along the fault line of
continental warfare spread from Niger to Djibouti and Somalia, and from eastern
Congo and Rwanda, through Uganda and Sudan, to Eritrea and the Red Sea. Congo
is at war with Uganda and Rwanda. Ethiopia is at war with Somalia, and poised
to reinvade Eritrea: there are massive troop build-ups on both sides of the
Eritrean-Ethiopia border. Ethiopia, Uganda and Chad are the three frontline
states militarily destabilizing Sudan. Uganda is internally and externally at
war, has intervened secretly in Burundi, and the Ugandan military recently
re-occupied towns in eastern Congo over petroleum. Rwanda is fighting in
Eastern Congo, meddling in Burundi, and has some 2000 troops in Darfur. Burundi
is militarily involved in Congo and soon to be in Somalia. Khartoum backs
guerrilla armies in Uganda, Chad and Congo.
The U.S. is all over the place, with both covert and overt
military programs. France, England, Canada, Belgium, Libya, Israel and China
are all involved. All these conflicts are intertwined, and the targeted
populations have allegiances and alliances that are dictated by the
pre-colonial boundaries and trade that existed prior to the demarcation of
colonial interests that occurred at the Berlin Conference of 1885 under the
imperial doctrine of divide and conquer. In 1885 Soudan was synonymous with
Sahara and Darfur was the center of power.[5]
Conflict involving U.S. covert forces and nomads in Niger and Nigeria, for
example, impacts Sudan: the history of the Sahara revolves around the
trans-Saharan influence of the Mahdi.
In 1875 the Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad, led the indigenous resistance against Britain.
Abdallah at-Taishi, the Mahdis Khalifah or successor, who took over as
leader of the independent Sudan when the Mahdi died in June 1885, was a native
of Darfur.[6]
People from Nigeria to Somalia today remember the Mahdi.
PEACE IS WAR IS PEACEKEEPING
On October 24, 2007, the United Nations awarded
Lockheed-Martin subsidiary Pacific Architects and Engineers (PAE) a $250
million no-bid contract to provide infrastructure for the United Nations
peacekeeping missions now unfolding in Sudan (Darfur), Somalia, and
Chad/Central Africa Republic. The newly announced contract is to build five new
camps in Sudan's Darfur and Kordofan regions for 4,100 U.N. and African Union
(A.U.) personnel. Lockheed Martin is the worlds largest and most secretive
aerospace and defense corporation.
This is not Pacific Architects and Engineers first contract
in Darfur, or in Africas peacekeeping missions, and PAE is not the only
private military company involved. PAE won the contract for staffing the deeply
compromised Civilian Protection Monitoring Team (CPMT) in Sudan under a U.S. State
Department contract. In 2004 the CPMT office was being run by Brigadier General
Frank Toney (retired), who was previously the commander of Special Forces for
the United States Army; General Toney organized covert operations into Iraq and
Kuwait in the first Gulf War.
Pratap Chaterjee reported in 2004 how Lieutenant-Colonel
Michael Bittrick, the deputy director of regional and security affairs for
Africa at the State Department, flew to Ethiopia to hammer out an agreement to
support African Union troops by committing to provide housing, office
equipment, transport, and communications gear. This will be provided via an
indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity joint contract awarded to Dyncorp
Corporation, and Pacific Architects & Engineers (PAE) worth $20.6 million.
[7]
PAE also set up MONUC operations in Congo, and continues to operate there; the
total PAE involvement includes numerous intermediary contracts. In 2002
PAE/Daher won a $34 million air-services follow-on contract amidst complaints
of a lack of transparency and irregularities in the procurement
systemconfirmed by the bidding of the air-service contract with
PAE/Daher. [8] Daher
International is a French aerospace and defense corporation.[9]
Meanwhile, the Save Darfur advocates pressing military
intervention in Darfur as a humanitarian gesture have escalated pressure in
the face of mounting failures, including allegations that millions of Save
Darfur dollars fundraised on a sympathy for victims platform have been
misappropriated.
But the players, the private military companies, the arms
dealers—and a handful of missing SRAM missiles armed with nuclear
warheads dumped by an American B-52 before it crashed—are mostly unknown
to the general public. These covert wars all involve different propaganda
strategies to provide cover and deflect attention through perception
management—managing the perceptions, stereotyping and creating false
belief systems—of the North American and European public.
The numbers of refugees and internally displaced persons
across the region are staggering and they are indicative of a cataclysmic
regional crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. This is not because refugees, insurgency
and guerrilla warfare are inherent to Africa: refugees and IDPs are big
business for white systems of power that maintain structural violence based on
profits and the globalization of poverty, terror and war. The numbers are
staggering, and these are not merely statistics, they are about suffering human
beings.
United Nations agencies report some 4,700,163 internally
displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan—2,152,163 in Darfur and 2,276,000 in
Northern Sudan—with some 686,311 refugees out of Sudan.
REGIONAL REFUGEES AND INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS [10]
Burundi: 100,000 IDPs 396,541
refugees out
Chad: 179,940 IDPs 36,300 refugees out
Central Africa Rep.: 212,000 IDPs 71,685 refugees out
Dem. Rep. of Congo: 1,400,000
IDPs 401,914
refugees out
Eritrea: 32,000 IDPs 193,700
refugees out
Ethiopia: ?200,000?
IDPs 80,000 refugees out
Kenya: 413,000 IDPs 5,356 refugees out
Rwanda:
???? IDPs 92,966 refugees out
Somalia: 700,000 IDPs 464,253
refugees out
Sudan: 4,703,163
IDPs 686,311
refugees out
Uganda: 1,310,000
IDPs 21,752 refugees out
Is Kenya at war? Sure looks like it. Unreported anywhere are
the massive petroleum concessions and exploration projects in Kenyas remote
Samburu and Turkana districts. (For $5000 apiece you can purchase reports like Petroleum
Potential of Lake Turkana Area from international oil and gas consultants
Beicip-Franlab.[11]) G.H.W.
Bushs old Swedish pal Adolph Lundin and Lundin Petroleum signed an exploration
contract for the Turkana region in June 2007.[12]
While the United Nations lists some 200,000 IDPs in
Ethiopia, the Norwegian Refugee Councils Internal Displacement Monitoring
Centre (iDMC) reports: [r]elatively little is known about the extent and
nature of conflict-induced internal displacement in Ethiopia. There are 92,966
refugees out of Rwanda, if we can trust the iDMC numbers, and an
indeterminate number of IDPs. Refugee and IDP statistics, like mortality
figures, are highly politicized. The situation in Ethiopia today is cataclysmic
and the U.N. and the vast network of profit-based NGOs operating in Ethiopia are
complicit in genocide because they do not challenge the regime for fear of
losing business.[13]
These humanitarian emergencies involve massive depopulation
and death, internally displaced persons and trans-national refugees, all of
which provide a lucrative business opportunity for Western relief and
development organizations. The business of AID is a racket. Weapons sales are
a racket. The people who suffer are different from the industries, the
providers of services, equipment and expertise who profit from these crises.
Like most weaponry, landmines are predominantly manufactured in white economies
of North America and Europe and, scandalously, it is the companies from the
same white economies who have a lock on U.N. landmine removal contracts worth billions
of dollars a year. The so-called humanitarian relief business is an industry
that relies on the creation of markets. Millions of people across the region
are dying, while millions more are homeless, set adrift in a sea of nowhere,
with no rights, no possessions, no protection and very little prospect for
survival; their only hopes come from the false belief that the Western
humanitarian AID enterprise is designed to rescue them.
All across the continent, people are dying in huge numbers,
but most of the deaths occur out of sight in places like the Ogaden basin,
rural Somalia, and northern Uganda, places where journalists dont go, places
where those who go are blind—either by whiteness and affluence, or by
their own interests—to what they look straight at.
The engagement of the worlds premier war-making
industries—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Bechtel, SAIC, PAE, Northrup
Grumman—behind and within a so-called peacekeeping platform is not new,
and something is seriously wrong with this picture.
THE SAVE DARFUR NARRATIVE
Save Darfur is the predominant propaganda front running on
Africa and it has overwhelmed the public consciousness with deceptions. In this
establishment narrative Arabs on horseback, the Janjaweed, backed by the Sudan government seated in Khartoum,
are the purveyors of genocide. This mirrors the establishment narrative of
Rwanda, 1994, which said that the Hutus and the nasty Interahamwe militias committed genocide against the Tutsis in
100 days of killing with machetes. The Rwanda genocide narrative—combined
with the narrative about humanitarian intervention in Yugoslavia, where the
final blow to dismember the country came with the NATO bombing
campaign—set the stage for the Darfur genocide narrative.
All over the United States, Britain and Canada advocates and
activists who claim to be concerned about human rights, and even those who
otherwise would not get involved, have supported the Save Darfur movement, a
political movement similar to the anti-Apartheid movement mobilized against
South Africa in the 1980s. The Save Darfur movement has resulted in a huge
outpouring of funds, and it has mobilized support from people in all walks of
life, and across the political spectrum, on the never again platform of
stopping genocide.
Hollywood personalities dubbed actorvists, including Mia
Farrow, Don Cheadle and George Clooney, have helped to whip up the Save
Darfur hysteria. From Elie Wiesel to Barak Obama, people are outraged by
genocide that the Bush Administration, we are told, is reluctant to stop. And
it is hysteria, in the true definition of the word, but it did not simply rise
out of a sudden concern for a bunch of Africans in some far-off God-forsaken
place (as it is portrayed).
At a Voices for Darfur fundraiser held on October 21, 2007
at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, for example, the local chapter
of the Congregation BNai Israel Darfur Action coalition, raised over $14,000
for humanitarian aid to Darfur. The BNai Israel Save Darfur Coalition had a
broad array of public and organizational support, including other Jewish
organizations, Smith College, Northampton Mayor Claire Higgins, Massachusetts
Senator Stan Rosenberg and Representative Peter Kocot. The campaign organizers
claim that more than 90% goes to direct-on-the-ground AID. Working with big
humanitarian groups like Doctors Without Borders and Save the Children, it is
impossible that 90% of funds will hit the ground in Darfur.[14]
Behind the Save Darfur movement are fundamentalist
organizations and think tanks with a deeply nationalistic, militaristic,
religious fundamentalist agenda. The Center for Security Policy, for example,
supports the star wars Strategic Defense Initiative, Homeland
Security—which is nothing more than expanding militarism and emasculated
public rights—and the Biometric Security Project. The BSP centers around
emerging biological technologies that will be used to register, identify,
monitor, track and control each and every U.S. citizen. They call it identity
assurance, it involves state-of-the-art recognition equipment, sensors and
security technologies, and it is a central component of the evolving national
security and counter-terrorism apparatus.[15]
The Center for Security Policy is the nerve center of the
U.S. military and intelligence apparatus, a deeply nationalist, neoliberal
think-tank and flak organization promoting the all-out attack against
non-cooperative governments—dubbed rogue states—peripheral to
Western economic control. These, of course, are primarily Iran, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, North Korea and Cuba. Zimbabwe is a special case
that has joined the list to some degree. What these states have in common is
that they are all targeted for divestment by the Center for Security Policy
brainchild, www.divestterror.org.
Sudan is another of the rogue states targeted.
The establishment narrative on Darfur motivates U.S.
citizens to take action to Save Darfur, thus facilitating popular support for
heightened U.S. military involvement. The truth is that the United States
military is already there, in its various incarnations, and the United States
is involved in atrocities.
THE UGANDA NARRATIVE
In the northern Uganda region—involving South Sudan
and northeastern Congo—another conflict has boiled for over 21 years
between the government Uganda Peoples Defense Forces (UPDF), led by Yoweri
Museveni, and the Lords Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony. This war
offers yet another one-sided Western establishment narrative that says that
Kony and the LRA—always described as a Christian fanatical cult that
captures and drugs children—is the primary problem in northern Uganda.
(Usually African savages are not Christian enough for Americas liking; here we
find that they are too Christian.)
The establishment narrative has been furthered across the
popular culture, in everything from Vanity Fair to the BBC to the
journal The National Catholic Weekly (America). The newly established
ENOUGH Project (ENOUGH genocide and not on my watch etc. etc.) picked up
the mantle of LRA atrocities and, like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International, has supported the establishment narrative which shields the
Museveni government from the kind of criticism and international action that is
called for in keeping with the scale of the atrocities the Uganda government is
responsible for. Amnesty International and Human Rights have produced
disinformation, in some cases, Rwanda and Yugoslavia being the most notable.
The Museveni war machine and its state terror apparatus have
perpetrated massive atrocities in the region and it has evolved into genocide
against the Acholi, Teso and Lango people of the north. The indigenous Acholi
people have been forced onto concentration camps over the past 21 years, and
these camps have become places of death. In the establishment narrative, the
people are always the victims of Konys LRA rebellion.
Human Rights Watch has addressed torture and government
complicity in atrocities in Uganda, and other problems, but they have rarely
named names or corporations and they almost never link the conflict or the
atrocities to Western interests. One massive report on Northern Uganda details
criminal government actions, but the recommendations sections effectively
sanction structural violence and white supremacy.[16]
The net effect of these policy and human rights positions is complicity in
genocide and genocide denial on Uganda.
Contrary to the proliferation of propaganda always attributing
child abductions to Konys LRA—another example of Western Orientalism
that essentializes Africa to serve political purposes—is research showing
that many LRA abductions are short term with children returning home from LRA
abductions in less than three weeks. Further, many children who fight with the
LRA have joined by choice, and they do so willingly.[17]
In Childhoods End (Vanity Fair, 2006) Christopher Hitchens described
the LRA as a grotesque zombie-like militiathat has set a standard of cruelty
and ruthlessness American troops that have committed atrocities in Iraq and
Afghanistan, no less brutal or gruesome or psychopathic, would never be
described this way.
Yoweri Museveni and his business and military partners are
responsible for millions of deaths, crimes against humanity and war crimes in
Eastern Congo. Museveni and his generals were the primary backers of Congolese
warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo. With
UPDF support, Bembas MLC perpetrated massive atrocities under the covert
military operation, Effacer le Tableau
(Erasing the Board)—a scorched earth policy amounting to genocide against
the Mbuti pygmies of Eastern Congo.[18]
The U.S. military invasion of Zaire (now Congo), involved
U.S. covert forces, U.S. military communications, logistical and weapons
support, and Ugandan and Rwandan forces. Humvees, C-130s and black-skinned
U.S. Special Forces entered South Sudan and northeastern Congo through the Gulu
and Arua Districts of Uganda, the heart of Acholiland and the center of
atrocities against the Acholi people.[19]
Ugandan and British interests living mostly in Britain and
aligned with the former dictator Idi Amin have always backed the Lords
Resistance Army and the West Nile Bank Front; support also came from Saudi
Arabia and Qatar (the Qatar General Petroleum Corporation is involved in
Sudans oil sector and has partnered in various international enterprises with
Norwegian, Japanese and French corporations). Idi Amin, the brutal dictator,
lived out his life in luxury in Saudi Arabia (d. 2003). The LRA stepped up its
military actions in parallel with the UPDF invasion of Zaire (1996), and the
subsequent years of warfare and plunder in Congo (1998-present).
According to the investigations of the United Nations and
the humanitarian law work of lawyer Karen Parker, the war in Uganda involves
massive rapes, killing, tortures, and extrajudicial executions as a policy by
the Ugandan military. Some 1.3 million people are displaced in the Gulu, Kitgum
and Pader districts of northern Uganda (there were 1.7 million IDPs in March
2007). There are over 73 camps with from 1000 to 50,000 people in them, all
forcibly displaced by UPDF soldiers, with over 350,000 people out of some
400,000 people displaced from the Gulu district alone.[20]
THE U.S.-UGANDA INVASION OF ZAIRE
The forced displacements of Acholi people began with
Musevenis ascension to power in 1986, but major forced displacements occurred
throughout the 1990s and again in 2002-2003. However, there was a massive
displacement operation in 1996 that appears to have been coordinated in part
with the planned U.S. invasion of Zaire from Northern Uganda and Rwanda.
The UPDF Army barracks at Masindi and airstrip at Gulu, both
in Northern Uganda, served as the staging grounds for the U.S. invasion of
Zaire. The Museveni government organized the closure of northern Uganda in
October 1996 ostensibly because of heightened LRA attacks. The UPDF, in
chronological coincidence with the U.S. invasion, forced hundreds of thousands
of Acholis into concentration camps in the fall of 1996, often by bombing and
burning villages and murdering, beating, raping and threatening those who would
not comply.
According to testimony from eyewitnesses, on Oct 26, 1996
the top Ugandan brass behind the invasion of Zaire met at the village of Paraa,
in the Murchison Falls National Park, near Lake Albert, in the Gulu District.
At the meeting were: [1] UPDF Brigadier General Moses Ali—Idi Amins
right hand man who later became Minister of Internal Affairs, Minister for
Disaster Preparedness, and Deputy Prime Minister in the Museveni
administration; [2] Musevenis half-brother Salim Saleh; [3] then Colonel James
Kazini; and [4] Dr. Eric Adroma—head of Uganda National Parks. Salim
Saleh is perhaps the leading agent of terror in the UPDF Zaire/Congo wars, but
both Saleh and commander James Kazini led UPDF troops involved in war crimes,
crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide involving millions of people in
Eastern Congo (1996-2007).
The meeting was ostensibly about security and it was
announced that due to a recent LRA rebel attack at Paraa, the UPDF would be
placing parts of Northern Uganda off limits to all non-military personnel. (LRA
rebels committed the Paraa attack; UPDF troops arrived on the scene quickly and
looted bodies but did not pursue the LRA.) The main road from Karuma to the
border town of Pakwach was thereafter closed. This road apparently served as a
primary transport route for Ugandan and non-Ugandan military—including black
U.S. Special Forces—who invaded Zaire.[21]
On November 6, 1996, Bill Clinton was re-elected. Around 10
November 1996 an armored 4x4 Humvee (HUMMWV)—heavily rigged with
sophisticated communications equipment inside and out—was encountered
carrying two black U.S. special forces in the Murchison Falls region: the
soldiers were wearing UPDF uniforms. Two
busloads of black U.S. Special Forces were encountered at a UPDF checkpoint on
the Karuma-Pakwach road; wearing civilian clothes, with duffel bags, the
muscled and crew cut civilians showed U.S. passports and claimed they were
doctors heading to the tiny Gulu hospital. From November 21-23 Boeing C-130
military aircraft passed over the region every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day,
heading both north and south. The C-130s apparently landed at Gulu
airstrip—closed by the Museveni government for a two-week
period—and offloaded military equipment then moved by roads—closed
by the UPDF—to the border. Some C-130s were charted on a course believed
to take them to Goma, Zaire. From mid-November to February 1997 access to
northwestern Uganda regions was highly restricted. On 1 March 1997 another wave
of C-130s passed over the region. The UPDF used the LRA threat as cover for
massive military operations involving the invasion of Zaire for the United
States of America.[22]
The in-country U.S. Ambassador to Uganda at the time was E.
Michael Southwick (October 1994-August 1997). Oil surveys began in 1998 and the
entire Northwestern Uganda region is now designated as oil concessions controlled
by Heritage Oil and Gas, Hardman Oil and Tullow Oil, three Anglo-American
companies connected to British mercenary Tony Buckingham (founder of he
mercenary firms Sandline International and Executive Outcomes) and his
partners.[23] Nexant, a
Bechtel subsidiary, is involved with the trans-Uganda-Kenya pipeline. South
African firm Energem—tied to Tony Buckingham through Anthony Texeira, the
brother-in-law of Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba—is also involved.
Another Energem and Buckingham affiliated company tight with the Museveni
regime is Branch Energy, involved with the oil pipeline and mining in Uganda.
On September 5, 2007, UPDF troops—and rebels
reportedly aligned with Jean-Pierre Bemba—had occupied the Congos oil-
and gold-rich Semliki Basin on the western shores of Lake Albert. Heavily armed
foreign forces occupied the villages of Aru, Mahagi, Fataki, Irengeti and the
Ruwenzori mountains. The international press and the United Nations Observers
Mission in Congo (MONUC) remained completely silent about the Ugandan
incursions. By September 8, 2007, Ugandan troops were heavily massed on the
Congo border while Kabila and Museveni were signing oil and gold sharing
agreements in Tanzania. UPDF forces and rebel troops alleged to be Bembas
remained in Congo as of October 25. The MONUC information offices were claiming
by mid-October that UPDF had pulled out, but Congolese citizens in eastern
Congo continued to report a significant UPDF military occupation.[24]
The China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Company is also
involved in the Uganda-Kenya pipeline, offering an interesting comparison for
people concerned about Chinas involvement in atrocities in the Darfur region.
And, after much scrambling, Libya was cut out of the Kenya-Uganda pipeline deals.[25]
The petroleum sector in Libya involves U.S., Canadian and European companies.
Ugandas representation at the International Criminal Court
exploring war crimes in Congo has included at least two very high-profile
lawyers from Foley Hoag LLP, an influential Washington law firm deeply
entrenched in the proliferation of the mainstream narratives and the victors
justice doled out—through the ICTY and ICTR tribunals—on Yugoslavia
and Rwanda. The Pentagon seconded its lawyers from the Judge Advocate General
(JAG) Corp to the ICTR to try those unfortunate enemies both arbitrarily
and selectively accused of genocide.[26]
The people most responsible for atrocities in the
region—unprecedented human bloodletting, war crimes, crimes against
humanity, and genocide—are protected. These include Yoweri Museveni,
Salim Saleh, Paul Kagame, James Kazini, Moses Ali, James Kabarebe, Taban Amin,
Jean-Pierre Bemba, Laurent Nkunda, Meles Zenawia long list of people whose
culpability is without question, many of whom have been named for atrocities
again and again. U.S. Special Operations forces know what happened and should
be deposed under oath in a legitimate International Criminal Court, which at
present does not exist, and is not in the making. Ditto for Madeleine Albright,
Anthony Lake, Thomas Pickering, Susan Rice, John Prendergast, General William
Wald, General Frank Toney, Walter Kansteiner, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,
Richard Holbroke, Roger Winter, Frank G. Wisner, Andrew Younganother short
list.
Foley Hoag LLP is also tied to the U.S.-Uganda Friendship
Council. On May 6, 2002 in Washington D.C. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni
and wife Janet were special guests at U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council event
sponsored by members Coke, Pfizer and Chevron-Texaco. Museveni also met with
President Bush at the White House. Coke director Kathleen Black is a principle
in the Hearst media empire, while Coke directors Warren Buffet and Barry Diller
are directors of the Washington Post Company, and these are the media
institutions that whitewash client regimes, corporate plunder and Pentagon
actions. Of course, Coca Cola covets the gum Arabic potential of Darfur, and
Coke is a client of Andrew Youngs PR firm Goodworks International. Ugandas
image is sanitized by one of the worlds largest PR firms, Londons Hill &
Knowlton. In 2005 Uganda spent some $700,000 on a Hill & Knowlton contract
to facilitate and encourage dialogue between the Ugandan government and people
like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, Oxfam. [27]
THE RWANDA NARRATIVE
Musevenis bush war began in 1980. Paul Kagame, current
President of Rwanda, was Musevenis Director of Military Intelligence in the
mid-1980s. Museveni and Kagame led the invasion of Rwanda in 1990. The two
military commanders utilized terrorist tactics that assigned blame for
atrocities they committed—against both their enemies and their own
people—on their enemies. They used psychological operations, embedded
international reporters, and fabrication of massacres. These tactics have
continued to the present.
While Rwanda is billed as a major success story of
recovery and development after a devastating genocide—see for example the
PR documentary film Rwanda Rising produced by Andrew Youngs Goodworks
International—the country is ruled with an iron-fist and a finely tuned
intelligence and torture apparatus involved in political assassinations,
suppression of information and disappearances. Huge areas of Rwanda were
entirely depopulated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front and UPDF as they hammered
away at Rwanda beginning in October 1990. The invasion culminated in a coup
detat that succeeded, with broad U.S.
military support, in capturing Kigali in July of 1994.
From 1994 to the present President Paul Kagame has used the
genocide card and the establishment narrative to institutionalize repression,
criminalize or assassinate anyone who challenges the regime, and further
depopulate rural areas for development benefiting corporate interests.
Another member of the U.S.-Uganda Friendship council is the
Honorable Andrew Young, former Mayor of Atlanta and U.S. Ambassador. Andrew
Young and his firm Goodworks International have helped whitewash the image of
the Rwanda government and its state apparatus of terror. Andrew Young, Quincy
Jones and other wealthy Americans are building (have built) mansions on the
shores of Rwandas Lake Mwazi in areas where peasants were driven off the land
or killed by the Kagame terror machine before, during and after 1994. State
terror and depopulation is ongoing along Lake Kivu and in the Volcanoes
National Parks regions for methane and high-end tourism development.[28]
Back to the refugees and IDPs question, the United Nations
recognized some 650,000 IDPs in makeshift camps in Rwanda in 1998 and 1999, in
the northwestern prefectures of Ruhengeri and Gisenyi. These IDPs were
categorized as mostly Hutu and forcibly resettled through implementation of
Rwandas National Habitat Policy, or villagisation policy, of December 1996,
which provides for the relocation of all Rwandans living in scattered
homesteads into government-created villages.[29]
While the U.N. ceased to recognize these people in Rwanda as internally
displaced, in 2003 there remained 200,000 families living in IDP conditions.[30]
What is their status today?
Rwanda gains currency and good press through big HIV/AIDS
projects run by Paul Farmer but funded by the Clinton AIDS foundation. Rwanda
was overthrown by and for the Pentagon on Clintons watch. Hillary Clinton
toured Uganda in July 1997, wore African clothes, danced African dances, and
spoke about democracy and development and a partnership against HIV/AIDS.
The Kagame regime has recently awarded petroleum concessions
to Canadas Vangold Resources for the project titled White Elephant in
northern Rwanda—2700 sq. kilometers of land depopulated by the Rwandan
Patriotic Front/Army between 1990 and 2007. [31]
Contracted to provide feasibility studies of petroleum infrastructural
development in Rwanda is the San Diego firm Science Applications International
Corporation (SAIC). [32]
SAIC has ongoing collaborations with Bechtel—another
of the worlds most secretive aerospace technology, energy infrastructure and
defense contractors—both known for their involvement in U.S. beyond
top-secret black programs; SAIC also works closely with DARPA, the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency. [33]
Recent SAIC directors have included: U.S. Navy Admiral B.R. Inman (Ret.); U.S.
Army General W.A. Downing (Ret.); and U.S. Air Force General J.A. Welch (Ret.).
SAIC also has an ongoing collaboration with the multibillion-dollar
pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS). [34]
Unsurprisingly, through shared directorships, BMS is economically and
politically aligned with the New York Times Corporation. SAIC has also been
flagged for involvement in highly questionable U.S. mercenary activities and
human rights violations in Africa.[35]
Petroleum, defense and mining interests connected to the
Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International programs in gorilla conservation led
to the production of high-tech satellite prospecting data, gathered by remote
sensing over-flights (1994-2000), delivered to the Rwandan Ministry of Defense.[36]
The Pentagon has been involved in building military bases in
Rwanda, installing military and civilian communications infrastructure, and
training Rwandan Defense Forces; a military-communications radar installation
has been constructed with U.S. support on Mt. Karisimbi in Ruhengeri Province.[37]
The installation is being built by the Rwanda Ministry of Defense in
partnership with the Rwandan company Terracom SPRL and Rwandatel. Terracom is
owned by U.S. businessman Greg Wyler; Rwandatel is 99%-owned subsidiary.[38]
It is believed that Rwanda Defense Forces (RDF) sent to
Darfur on the African Union peacekeeping mission include black U.S. Special
Forces disguised as RDF—just as the black U.S. Special Forces were
disguised as UPDF during the invasion of Zaire.
Andrew Young is widely lauded as a leader of the
African-American civil rights movement and ally of Martin Luther King Jr.,
claims that were specious to begin with. In Rwanda Rising, reads the PR promo
for the film, Andrew Young, a former United Nations Ambassador, Civil Rights
leader and top aide to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. documented the
amazing transformation taking place in Rwanda today, including the countrys
remarkable story of reconciliation despite the 1994 Genocide. [39]
Rwanda
Rising opened the 15th Annual Pan African Film and Arts Festival
February 8, 2007. Fifteen years into the Pan African Film and Arts Festival
and we continue to showcase the important stories of our brothers and sisters
on the Continent, Festival Director Ayuko Babu said. Having Rwanda Rising
open this years festival is keeping in that tradition while making sure that
we stay connected to our roots in Africa. [40]
THE ROOTS OF STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE IN AFRICA
Lockheed Martin is a California-based aerospace and defense
giant involved in classified black programs that are beyond top-secret and
shielded from government oversight. In September 2003, CNN—a
corporate-military news agency deeply embedded with the
Pentagon—reported [a]ccording to the U.S. Center for Strategic and
Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) classified or black programs account for about
$23.2 billion or 17 percent of the 2004 budget request for the Department of
Defense.
According to United Nations spokeswoman Michele Montas the
six-month Darfur contract with Lockheed-Martin subsidiary Pacific Architect
Engineers, Inc. was awarded without competitive bidding because of complex
requirements and a short timeline.
Reporting from the United Nations, Inner City Press
said the terms of the contract will not be public and the United Nations has
violated numerous U.N. charter laws in the tendering of this award.[41]
The no-bid award process
followed the United Nations issuance of an official Expressions of Interest
notice on October 9, 2007. The
United Nations is seeking Expressions of Interest (EOI) from experienced Multi
Functional Logistics Services (MFLS) contractors, the U.N.s EOI notice reads,
for the provision of a wide range of services at headquarters, logistic bases,
military and police camps, airfields and water resources at various locations
in any or all of the following: the Darfur Region of Sudan, Chad/Central
African Republic (CAR), and Somalia.
Inner City Press
reported that the EOI solicitation, made after the rules had already been
waived to allow the transfer of $250 million to Lockheed Martin for six months
in Darfur, is intended to try to clean up the process after-the-fact.[42]
Another multinational aerospace and defense corporation
directly benefiting from this regional U.S. war is Boeing Aircraft Corporation.
The U.S. military used Boeing Chinook helicopters in the U.S. invasion of
Somalia in 2006. Tom Pickering, former U.S. Under Secretary of State for
Political Affairs, is senior vice president for International Relations and a
member of the Boeing Executive Council since January 2001. Pickering played a
decisive role in the Clinton Administration overthrow of Rwanda (1990-1994) and
Congo (1996-1997). He is a leading advocate for the Save Darfur propaganda.
He is also a member of the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa
along with Ed Royce (R-CA), former U.S. Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker (R-KS),
Donald Payne (D-NJ), and Andrew Young.
While the New York Times reported in December 2006
that the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia
began in late December, military involvement of U.S. covert forces had been
ongoing, and was heightened significantly in the early spring of 2006 when the
U.S. Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency openly
complained about cross purposes in Somalia. Ethiopian troops began deploying to
protect the US.-backed Transitional Government early in 2006. Private military
companies were all over Somalia, as were known international arms syndicates,
including of course the criminal networks of John Bredenkamp, one of Britains
fifty richest tycoons and one of the primary financial backers behind the rise
and fall of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
John Bredenkamp reportedly acquired three SRAM missiles with
nuclear warheads jettisoned in shallow water off the coast of Somalia by a
U.S.A.F. B-52 that soon after crashed into the Indian Ocean near the U.S. military
base on the island of Diego Garcia. The U.S. invasion of Somalia is believed to
have been partly an aborted attempt to recover the lost nukes—called
broken arrows in Pentagon speak. While the story of the dumped nukes lost
by Dick Cheney has received some attention, no one has publicly identified John
Bredenkamp as the likely weapons dealer involved.[43]
COVERT OPERATIONS IN SOMALIA
The war in Somalia dates back to deep U.S. involvement in
the 1980s, where major oil concessions were awarded to four Western
multinational petroleum giants: Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Philips petroleum.
The infusion of Western AID provoked destabilization of Somalia, leading
to the U.S. military invasion that culminated in the 1993
mission where eighteen U.S. Special Operations Forces were killed when their
Blackhawk helicopter was shot down over the capital city, Mogadishu. [44]
The mythology of U.S. involvement was indelibly inscribed in
the popular consciousness through the Hollywood/Pentagon film Blackhawk Down,
a film that has played all over the world even while a covert U.S. war in
Somalia has continued.[45]
Blackhawk helicopters are produced by United Technologies
Corporation (UTC), which counts as directors General Richard B. Myers. General
Alexander Haig was director and senior adviser to UTC for years and his
consulting firm, Worldwide Associates, counts UTC and Boeing as clients. Haig
was also a director with MGM, producers of the fictional Hotel Rwanda film that
peddles the establishment Rwanda narrative.
Hollywood's subordination to Pentagon interests involves
moviemakers gaining access to expensive weaponry while the military basks in an
heroic glow that buffs its image and boosts recruitment.[46]
About forty of the actors who were portraying Special Operations Rangers in
Blackhawk Down were sent to Fort Benning (Georgia)—home of the School of
the Americas, the premier U.S. torture and terror academy—to attend
courses in becoming Special Forces. All Black Hawks used during the filming
were from the 16th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) and most of the
pilots in the film were involved in the actual battle. [47]
At least hundreds—some accounts indicate thousands—of Somali people
died during the two days of fighting on October 3-4, 1993.
Part of the consistent propaganda on Africa is that the
U.S. does not want to get involved and potentially face another Somalia. But
the U.S. pullout of Somalia occurred in perfect synchronicity with the heightened military involvement in Rwanda in 1994.
U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) did not cease
Special Ops deployments in Somalia with the U.S. withdrawal and covert
operations have proceeded on and off, with heightened activity through the late
1990s. Numerous private military companies have received contracts to work in
Somalia. In 2005 the U.S.-based Top Cat Marine Security won $50 million dollar
contract to fight piracy, theft of natural resources and terrorism within
Somali borders and its territorial waters; the contract awarded by Somali President
Abdullahi Yusufs transitional federal government—founded with U.N.
backing in 2004—includes special forces training and helicopter
reconnaissance.[48]
The private military companies Select Armor (VA, USA) and
ATS Worldwide (FL, USA) were all over Somali by June 2006, if not much sooner.[49]
Select Armor started its operation planning in Kampala, Uganda, with Ugandan
government pledges of weapons and logistics support. ATS uses former British
and U.S. Special Forces. Officials of
the U.S and British governments, the CIA and MI-6 were reportedly informed and
clandestine elite interests that can dictate U.S. Department of Defense
involvement orchestrated the operation. While the involvement breached United
Nations embargoes on Somalia, top U.N. officials were reportedly involved.[50]
The Pentagon confirmed in November 2006 that SOCOM forces
were in Somalia as of October providing military advice to Ethiopian and
Somali forces on the ground. The U.S. Navy moved additional forces into
waters off the Somali coast, where the Pentagon said they conducted security
missions, monitoring maritime traffic and intercepting and interrogating crew
on suspicious ships. These
included the USS Ramage guided missile destroyer, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower
aircraft carrier, the USS Bunker Hill and USS Anzio guided missile cruisers,
and the USS Ashland amphibious landing ship.[51]
On June 2, 2007, a U.S. Navy destroyer shelled northern Somalia. Somali news
media reported that the strikes destroyed farms, flattened hilltops and killed or
injured an unknown number of villagers.[52]
The British Navys newest warship HMS Bulwark was also
stationed off the Somali coast in early 2006. The HMS Bulwark deployed to the
Indian Ocean on 9 January 2006 for the first live operation of this unique Commando
Assault ship (as it is described by the British Navy).[53]
At least three U.S. Navy guided missile destroyers were
operating off Somalia in October and November 2007. The U.S.S. Porter, U.S.S.
Arleigh Burke and U.S.S. James E. Williams were operating—sinking pirate
ships and terrorist vessels—as part of the Combined Maritime Forces
Task Force headquartered in Bahrain.[54]
The U.S. Department of Defense Central Command (CENTCOM)
and European Command (EUCOM) initiated the Golden Spear anti-terrorism
(sic) program initiated in 2000 to address issues of terrorism,
humanitarian
crises, natural disasters, drugs trafficking and refugees
in the greater horn of Africa. The Golden Spear member countries include
Ethiopia, Kenya, Eritrea, Djibouti, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Jordan,
Seychelles, Comoros, Egypt, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. Golden
Spear military meetings occurred in Ethiopia, Seychelles and Tampa,
Florida. Amongst the many military
officials attending one 2005 Golden Spear meeting in Nairobi, Kenya were General
Marcel Gatsinzi, Rwanda Minister of Defense, and Ugandas Lt. General Moses
Ali. USCENTCOM representatives
from Canada and Australia also attended. There were forty-five delegates in
attendance from the United States: forty-two U.S. military commanders, special
agents, defense attachs or government and security officials, and three
executives from Northrup Grumman aerospace and defense corporation.[55]
The establishment narrative on
Somalia is that Ethiopia invaded Somalia to displace Al-Qaeda terrorists and
check the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, both of which are propaganda themes
that misrepresent the reality of U.S. and allied military interventions.
Ethiopia is considered an essential partner of the U.S. in
its War on Terrorism and Ethiopian bases have been used for attacks on
Somalia. In 2003, the U.S. Armys 10th Mountain Division (SOCOM) completed a
three-month program to train an Ethiopian army division in counter-terrorism
tactics—code language for covert operations. Operations are coordinated
through the Combined Joint Task Forces-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) base in
Djibouti. In January 2004, SOCOM forces from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment
replaced the 10th Mountain Division forces at a new base Camp United
established at Hurso, northwest of Dire Dawa, near the border with Somalia.
Since 2003, under the U.S. State Department-sponsored Africa Contingency
Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) program, CJTF-HOA provided
instruction to thousands of Ethiopian soldiers at a base in Legedadi. CJTF-HOA
forces from the U.S Army's 478th Civil Affairs Battalion also operated in Ethiopia
(Somalia) in and around Dire Dawa, Galadi and Dolo Odo, among other areas.[56]
Recent CJTF-HOA training exercises in Djibouti involved U.S.
and French Special Forces at an undisclosed French Special Operations base in
Djibouti. The Pentagons CJTF-HOA program has operated out of a Camp Lemonier,
in Djibouti, since at least 2001. The October 22, 2007 joint exercises involved
French naval Special Forces and the U.S. Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 464.
According to the CJTF-HOA report, [t]he Marines and Sailors are a part of the
CJTF-HOA mission involving more than 1,800 U.S. and coalition forces serving in
the operational effort to prevent conflict, promote regional stability, and
protect coalition interest in order to prevail against extremism. [57]
Female service members from the U.S. CJTF-HOA also
participated in joint Yemen-U.S. exercises educating some 40 Yemeni herdswomen
how to inoculate goats.[58]
As part of a community relations event, U.S. Central Command Air Forces
Expeditionary Band and Marines from the 3rd Low Altitude Air Defense Battalion
entertained and handed out school supplies, toys and shoes to
local villagers Oct. 9 at Damerjog, Djibouti.[59]
Following the U.S.-backed
Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, sources in Kenya and Eritrea have consistently
reported snatch and grab terrorist operations involving massacres and torture
that were run by SOCOM forces inside Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. This is not
some veterinary program involving U.S. Special Forces in inoculation programs
for nomadic herdswomen and their goats.
There are at least 52,000 U.S.
special operations forces on active duty and reserve military worldwide,
including SEALs, Green Berets and commando-style troops from the 10th
Mountain Division and others.
Ethiopia seeks to control
Somalia to gain access to a much-needed deepwater seaport. Ethiopias oil
concessions are contiguous with the oil reserves in Sudan, Somalia, Kenya and
Yemen. Hunt Oil, the Chinese National Petroleum Company and many others are
active in Ethiopia.[60]
Hunt's $18-million refinery across the waters in Yemen was officially dedicated
by then U.S. Vice-President G.H.W. Bush in April, 1986. In remarks during the
event, Bush emphasized the critical value of supporting U.S. corporate efforts
to develop and safeguard potential oil reserves in the region.[61]
The U.S. military used and uses Ethiopian air bases
modernized by infusions of millions of dollars of AID funds to launch attacks
against Somalia. Ethiopia now has the largest standing army on the continent
and this was achieved through the conversions of millions of dollars in AID
to weapons and militarization; even debt forgiveness—where foreign
debt was canceled—benefited the militarization of Ethiopia, and the
same occurred in Uganda.[62]
U.S. spy satellites were used provide intelligence to Ethiopian troops as they
swept across the Oganden basin and Somalia. Presidents Bush and Zenawi both
denied that the invasion was coordinated and well planned, and both denied the
involvement of the U.S.
The Ethiopian government retained former U.S. Republican
house majority leader Dick Armey as a lobbyist in Washington to whitewash the Ethiopian regimes crimes.[63]
ETHIOPIAS GENOCIDES
The Ogaden, Oromo and Anuak regions of Ethiopia have seen
massive military occupation and state repression. The Ethiopian government of
Meles Zenawi has perpetrated mass starvation and scorched earth policy in the
region. There has been very little international media coverage and most is
favorable the Zenawi regime or pressing the upside-down stories about relief
and starvation that serve the Western humanitarian business sector. The
Ogaden basin is a bloodbath today. Applying the same legal standards as in
Darfur, all three Ethiopian regions qualify as ongoing genocides against
indigenous people.[64]
Failure to apply the genocide standards constitutes genocide denial.
The United Nations Security
Council Resolution 1778 (2007) on 25 September 2007 established the United
Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT). According
to the U.N.s October 2007 Expression Of Interest, [i]n its Presidential
Statement of 30 April 2007, the Security Council requested the Secretary
General to immediately begin appropriate contingency planning for a United
Nations mission to Somalia. At this early stage it is planned to have a U.N.
logistics base at Mombassa, Kenya to support the main supply line from Mombassa
to Kismayo, Mogadishu and Hobyo, which will serve as secondary logistics bases
in Somalia. At this early stage the number and location of these sites is
unknown, but it is envisaged that approximately 24,000 personnel may be
required.
Ethiopias war in Somalia has taxed the government drawing
widespread criticism. The U.S. is pressing for an African Union mission as a
proxy force to replace the Ethiopian troops and further U.S. interests.
Mombasa, Kenya is a U.S. military port. The U.S. war in Somalia is ongoing.
More than 100 U.S. military trainers supervised combat training of two
Burundian African Union battalions (1700 troops) in Bujumbura, Burundi, in
advance of their deployment in Somalia expected in November 2007. French
military also provided training, while the U.S. and France both are providing
logistical and telecommunications support. Burundian troops are also in Darfur.[65]
On November 28, 2004, the Bush White House issued a document announcing a
cooperative agreement with Burundi, Guyana and Liberia preventing the
International Criminal Court from proceeding against U.S. personnel operating
in these countries.[66]
In March 2007 the Pentagon deployed an additional 150 SOCOM Forces in Uganda. The troops were part of
the Combined Joint Task Force Horn-of-Africa, an anti-terrorist naval force
deployed around the Horn of Africa with support points in Bahrain and Djibouti.
Ugandan sources divulged that the SOCOM troops would be dispersed around the
country to support UPDF troops and provide support to distribute
humanitarian aid. It was openly reported that the SOCOM are possibly training
the South Sudanese army, which has just signed an agreement for this with its
Ugandan counterpart, strengthening Ugandan capacity to fight terrorism. The
U.S. military has also modernized the old Entebbe airport for UPDF operations,
and the Entebbe airport supports a small but permanent U.S. military
contingent. [67]
It is believed that U.S. SOCOM troops are operating in
blood-drenched Eastern Congo. Ugandan opposition sources have reported that
SOCOM forces in UPDF uniforms have joined the more than 2000 Pentagon-trained
UPDF forces sent by Museveni to Somalia. The UPDF troops operating in Somalia
behind a peacekeeping propaganda front have been accused of widespread
atrocities. More than 1000 people die daily in Eastern Congo where fighting
since 1996 has claimed at least 7 million lives. The Democratic Republic of
Congo has seen multiple genocide campaigns, and multiple genocide denials are
ongoing.
SOCOM forces have been openly reported in Niger, where
operations are billed as humanitarian and human rights training of Nigerien
troops.[68]
But the insurgency and rebellion by the Tuareg and Toubou nomads has always
been about uranium and depopulation: Canadian and Chinese companies have
recently gotten involved but Esso (Exxon), Japan and French corporations were
exploiting the Agadez and Air regions in the 1970s and 1980s (at least),
dumping radioactive sickness and social devastation on another indigenous
population.[69] Niger is
the poorest country in the world. Yet another genocide?
Exxon, Elf and Hunt Oil are in Niger for oil. Barrick Gold
is also in Niger, and in Guniea, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Madagascar and Mali;
through their partnership with Anglo-Ashanti, Barrick is responsible for
atrocities and plunder in eastern Congo. Directors of the G.H.W. Bush-connected
Barrick Gold include former U.S. Senator Howard Baker (R-TN), whose wife, Nancy
Kassebaum Baker, has been an outspoken advocate for immediate action on Darfur.
I was in the Senate at the time of Rwanda, said Kassebaum
Baker at a speech in 2006 where discussed Darfur. Kassebaum Baker served as
chairwoman of the Foreign Relation Committee's Subcommittee on African Affairs.
We were all aghast at what was taking place there [Rwanda], but I must say no
one really knew what to do about it, Kassebaum Baker said.[70]
The Bakers are on the advisory board for the nationalist
think-tank Partnership for a Secure America—another
policy-formulating-perception-management-force behind the Save Darfur
movement—along with a stellar cast of corporate executives involved in
war and plunder in Africa.[71]
Most notable of these are Frank G. Wisner, Richard Holbroke, Anthony Lake,
Thomas Pickering, Carla Hills and Sam Nunn. Wisner was also on the National
Security Council under Clinton, along with the International Crisis Group (ICG)
Special Advisor and ENOUGH co-chair John Prendergast. Wisners co-directors of
the American International Group include: Marshall Cohen, a director of the
Bush-connected Barrick Gold Corporation; Clinton Cabinet members William Cohen
and Richard Holbrooke; and Carla Hills, NAFTA negotiator and director of
Chevron-Texaco and the ICG. Partnership for a Secure America advisory board members Zbigniew
Brzezinski, Pickering, Hills, and Kassebaum Baker are all on the Board of
Trustees for the ICG—International Crisis Group—the leading flak
organization pressing the Save Darfur and Lords Resistance Army (Uganda)
narratives.
George Soros founded the International Crisis Group in 1995
and serves on the ICG executive committee, another whos who of establishment
people entrenched in the production of militant establishment narratives and
structural violence. The Crisis Group think-tank is funded by Soros
philanthropy think-tank the Open Society Institute, and it pushes the rhetoric
of peace and democracy through hegemonic policy instruments advocating
direct humanitarian [read: military] intervention. The Crisis Group
executives have numerous interlocking ties with the International Rescue
Committee, a Kissinger-connected flak organization. Other Crisis Group
executives include Zbigniew Brzezinski, Wesley K. Clark, who led the NATO
deconstructive bombing of Yugoslavia, and Joanne Leedom-Ackerman—a
director of Human Rights
Watch.
George Soros is also an emeritus director of Refugees
International, another humanitarian NGO behind the massive suffering in
Africa. Other Refugees International directors emeritus include Judy Mayotte,
an executive boardmember of the International Rescue Committee, Frank G.
Wisner, and Richard Holbrooke. The current president of Refugees International
is Kenneth H. Bacon, who, prior to his appointment in 2001, had worked for
seven years as assistant secretary for public affairs at the U.S Department of
Defense. Beyond the global presence of RI in hot spots like Afghanistan and
Iraq are their permanent missions in Somalia, Central Africa Republic, Rwanda,
Uganda, Dem. Rep. of Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Chad, South Sudan and Darfur.
Refugees International profited from the RPF/A forced exodus of refugees from
Rwanda in 1994, and their involvement in the international war crimes behind
the destruction of the Hutu refugee camps in Eastern Zaire, shelled by the RPF/A
in 1996 as the U.S. opened its war there, or the subsequent genocidal massacres
of Hutus, have never been investigated.
Refugees International joined the Save Darfur Coalition in
April to rally against the genocide in Darfur. According to the RI Annual
report for 2006, [o]ur supporters joined the tens of thousands of human rights
activists, movie stars, athletes and politicians who converged on the U.S.
Capitol in Washington, DC, to show the world that we will not stand idly by
while genocide unfolds. [72]
DARFURISM
The Darfur region of western Sudan has been a hotbed of
clandestine activities, gunrunning and indiscriminate violence for decades. The
Cold War era saw countless insurgencies launched from the remote deserts of
Darfur. Throughout the 1990s factions allied with or against Chad, Uganda,
Ethiopia, Congo, Libya, Eritrea and the Central African Republic operated from
bases in Darfur, and it was a regular landing strip for foreign military
transport planes of mysterious origin.
In 1990, Chads President Idriss Dby launched a military
blitzkrieg from Darfur and overthrew President Hissan Habre; Dby then allied
with his own tribe against the Sudan government. Sudanese rebels today have
bases in Chad, and Chadian rebels have bases in Darfur, with Khartoums
backing.[GN1]
When the regime of Ange-Flix Patass collapsed in the Central African Republic
in March 2003, soldiers fled to Darfur with their military equipment.
Khartoum supported the West Nile Bank Front, a rebel army operating against
Uganda from Eastern Congo, commanded by Taban Amin, the son of the infamous
Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, who heads Ugandas dreaded Internal Security
Organization.
France is deeply involved in covert operations and genocide
in Africa. Central Africa Republic (C.A.R.), run by General Franois Boziz, is
a major base of French defense and intelligence operations linked to security
regimes in the bloody dictatorships of Republic of Congo, Togo, Cameroon and
Gabon, and France backs guerilla groups committing atrocities in Chad, Sudan,
DR-Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. C.A.R. is also a conduit for blood
diamonds, and the back-up for Frances nuclear policy, today heavily reliant on
uranium exploitation in Niger: C.A.R. reportedly has massive uranium reserves.
Like oil-cursed Equatorial Guinea, C.A.R. is also a bloodbath, completely off
the international media screen.[73]
Darfur is another epicenter of the modern-day international
geopolitical scramble for Africas resources. Conflict in Darfur escalated in
2003 in parallel with negotiations ending the south Sudan war. The
U.S.-backed insurgency by the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), the
guerilla force that fought the northern Khartoum government for 20 years,
shifted to Darfur, even as the G.W. Bush government allied with Khartoum in the
U.S. led War on Terrorism. The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA)—one of some
twenty-seven rebel factions mushrooming in Darfur—is allied with the SPLA
and supported from Uganda. Andrew Natsios, former USAID chief and now U.S.
envoy to Sudan, said on October 6, 2007 that the atmosphere between the
governments of north and south Sudan had become poisonous. This is no
surprise given the magnitude of the resource war in Sudan and the involvement
of international interests, but the investigation should center on the
involvement and activities of USAID officials Andrew Natsios, Roger Winter and
Jendayi Frazer.
Roger Winter, USAID chief in Khartoum today, is directly
linked to the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army and U.S. military campaign that
destabilized Rwanda and decapitated the leadership of Rwanda and Burundi.
USAIDs affiliations with the Department of Defense are now openly advertised
with the propaganda peddling AFRICOM—the Pentagons new Africa Command.
AFRICOM combines U.S. CENTCOM, PACIFICOM and EUCOM operations in Africa; it is
nothing new, merely the consolidation and expansion of widespread and ongoing
involvement.[74]
Darfur is reported to have the fourth largest copper and
third largest uranium deposits in the world.[75]
Darfur produces two-thirds of the worlds best quality gum Arabic—a major
ingredient in Coke and Pepsi. Contiguous petroleum reserves are driving warfare
from the Red Sea, through Darfur, to the Great Lakes of Central Africa. Private
military companies operate alongside petroleum contractors and humanitarian
agencies. Sudan is Chinas fourth biggest supplier of imported oil, and U.S.
companies controlling the pipelines in Chad and Uganda seek to displace China
through the U.S. military alliance with frontline states hostile to Sudan:
Uganda, Chad and Ethiopia.
There are claims in the Arab community that Israel
provides military training to Darfur rebels from bases in Eritrea, but insiders
in Eritrea dispute this. However, Israel has a deep history of intelligence and
military relations with both Eritrea and Ethiopia, and Israel reportedly has a
naval and air base on Eritreas Dahlak and Fatma islands, from which
German-made Dolphin-class submarines patrol the Red Sea with long-range nuclear
cruise missiles.[76] Eritrea
reportedly serves as Israels outpost for spying on enemies Saudi Arabia,
Yemen, and Sudan.[77]
Africa Research Bulletin in 1998 reported that
Israel had military bases in Eritrea on the Dahlak islands and in the Mahal
Agar Mountains near Sudan. They also reported a communications listening
station and that Mossad, the Israeli secret service, is operating a string of
previously top secret outposts in the Horn of Africa used to monitor hostile
states and service Israeli submarines operating in the area. [78]
One source in Eritrea claims that reports about Dahlak
Island and Israeli training bases are old, dried-up bullshit. No foreign bases
in Eritrea, not now, not ever, especially Israel. We have normal relations with
Israel, but even trade matters have decreased dramatically. The charges of a
base in Dahlak are old, going back over ten years. There are remnants of an old
U.S., then soviet base in Dahlak, but Dahlak these days is a marine preserve.[79]
An intelligence insider in Washington D.C. reports that a
journalist who wrote an article for Vanity Fair on the Israeli subs with
nuclear cruise missiles had confirmed the base in Dahlak; the journalist wrote Janes
Intelligence Weekly, so he had good sources. The source reports that Vanity
Fair killed the story so as to not upset its Jewish advertisers, Bergdorf,
Goodman and Saks.[80]
In May 2003, the Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa
(CJTF-HOA) hosted an Eritrean delegation aboard the CJTF-HOA amphibious Joint
Command ship the U.S.S. Mount Whitney. The Eritrean delegation included
President Asaias Afwerki, Minister of Defense, Gen. Sebhat Ephraim, Minister of
Foreign Affairs, Mr. Ali Said Abdell, top commanders of Eritrean ground, naval
and air forces and commanders of operational zones from across the country. The
CJTF-HOAs Major General John F. Sattler and Isaias Afwerki initially met in
Asmara in early January of this year, following previous visits to Eritrea by
the commander of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks in March 2002 and U.S.
Secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld in December 2002. The following day,
Maj. Gen. Sattler and members of the CJTF-HOA staff were hosted ashore by
General Sebhat Ephraim for visits to Massawa Naval Base and Dahlak Island, as
well tours of Beka and Hawakil islands.[81]
Israel has strengthened ties with the regime in Chad, from
which more weapons and troops penetrate Darfur. The refugee camps have become
increasingly militarized. There are reports that Israeli and U.S. military and
intelligence operate from within refugee camps in Darfur. Israel is all over
the Sahara, from Burkina Faso to Ethiopia and Uganda. Israels clandestine
actions are partly funded by Israeli-American diamond magnates involved in
Angola, Sierra Leone, C.A.R. and Congo, especially Dan Gertler (G.W. Bushs
unofficial Ambassador to Congo), Beny Steinmetz, Nir Livnat, Lev Leviev and
Maurice Tempelsman.[82]
African Union (A.U.) forces in Darfur include Nigerian and
Rwandan troops responsible for atrocities in their own countries. Ethiopia has committed
5000 troops for a U.N. force in Darfur. A.U. troops receive military-logistic
support from NATO, and are widely hated. Early in October 2007, SLA rebels
attacked an A.U. base killing ten troops. In a subsequent editorial sympathetic
to rebel factions Smith College English professor Eric Reeves espoused the
tired rhetoric of Khartoums genocidal counter-insurgency war in Darfur, a
position counterproductive to any peaceful settlement.[83]
To minimize the damage this rebel attack has done to their credibility Reeves
and other Save Darfur advocates cast doubt about the rebels identities and
mischaracterized the SLA attackers as rogue commanders. However, there is
near unanimous agreement, internationally, that rebels are out of control,
committing widespread rape and plundering with impunity, just as the SPLA did
in South Sudan for over a decade.
Debunking the claims of a genocide against blacks or an
Islamic holy-war against Christians, Darfurs Arab and black African tribes
have intermarried for centuries, and nearly everyone is Muslim. The Save
Darfur campaign is deeply aligned with Jewish and Christian faith-based
organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel. These groups
have relentlessly campaigned for Western military action, demonizing both Sudan
and China, but they have never addressed Western military
involvement—backing factions on all sides.
Christian and Jewish involvement in the Save Darfur
campaign centers on a long-running but deeply manipulative narrative about
slavery and genocide in South Sudan. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
furthered the establishment narrative about Darfur in keeping with the genocide
theme; no one ever examines the interests behind the Holocaust Memorial Museum
(e.g. Bob Dole), it is merely some apolitical institution with the championing
of supposed universal human rights of all people everywhere as its raison
detre. The new political and propaganda
doctrine that uses genocide as a political tool is morally ambiguous, it attacks
the crimes of some and passes over the crimes of others. It uses as its
universal principle the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its
complementary covenants and proclamations. On the one hand, however, this
involves genocide inflation, and on the other hand genocide denial. But the
USA—with good Christian and Jewish foot soldiers—is always the
final arbitrator: global cop, judge, jury, executioner, surgeon and savior all
in one.
Christian organizations involved in Sudan for years include
Servants Heart and Christian Solidarity International. On Servants Hearts
Board of Reference is British Baroness Caroline Cox, who is also closely
affiliated with Christian Solidarity International (CSI)—one of the main
Christian allies of the SPLM/A war in southern Sudan. The propaganda system
advocates in favor of the rebels in Darfur using a handful of techniques
developed in their propaganda campaign behind the rebels in South Sudan.
Rebels are supported partly by never mentioning them, partly by decrying abuses
against them, partly by providing sympathetic one-sided accounts of Khartoum
government attacks, and partly by defending their excesses if and
when—infrequently—the rebel abuses come to light.[84]
Christian Solidarity International (CSI) in 2006 issued
press releases claiming that the Lebanese organization Hezbollah is using
Christian villages to shield its military operations in violation of
international law. [85]
These reports appear to be fabrications to begin with and the CSI accusation a
projection of their own involvement with the SPLA in South Sudan, where the
SPLA for over a decade used the civilian population as human shields, used the
Western AID apparatus (Operation Lifeline Sudan) as cover for military support,
and used food as a weapon. If Hezbollah did this during the recent U.S.-Israeli
invasion they [Hezbollah] certainly learned it by studying SPLA (CSI) tactics
in Sudan. Thus we have twisted triple-standards where the establishment
propaganda accuses Hezbollah of violating international law, but the
SPLM/A—and the rebel groups in Darfur—while doing exactly the
same thing, are never anything but poor, defenseless Christians under attack in
a genocidal counter-insurgency run out of Khartoum government.[86]
Who are the rebels in Darfur? Where do they get new uniforms
and modern weapons? With the establishment propaganda on Rwanda and the
invading Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army from 1990-1994, all abuses were covered
up, the government of Juvenal Habyarimana was blamed for everything, and the
rebels—backed by Washington, partnered with the Pentagon—were
never exposed for atrocities and scorched earth attacks. It was the same with
the establishment propaganda that covered for the SPLA: their role in
committing and provoking atrocities in South Sudan from 1983 to 2003 has been
greatly misrepresented and mischaracterized by virtually every popular source
cited in the western press. No one has pressed this line more than Dr. Eric
Reeves, the Smith College English professor and most widely cited expert
behind the establishment narrative to Save Darfur. [87]
There is growing dissent within the Save Darfur movement
as more supporters question its motivations and the Jewish/Israeli link. Save
Darfur leaders have been replaced after complaints surfaced about expenditures
of funds. Many rebel leaders reportedly receive tens of thousands of dollars
monthly, and rebels emboldened by the Save Darfur movement commit crimes with
impunity. There is a growing demand to probe the accounts of Save Darfur
to find out how the tens of millions collected are being spent due to
allegations of arms-deals and bribery—rebel leaders provided with
five-star hotel accommodations, prostitutes and sex parties.[88]
The French humanitarian charity NGO Zoes Ark (LArche
de Zo) involved in Chad and Darfur is
under investigation by the United Nations, France and Chad for trafficking in
black children in the widely under-reported L'Arche de Zo affair. Chadian President Idriss Dby came under
attack for alleging pedophilia and organ trafficking and for arresting
seventeen Europeans intercepted at an airport in Chad attempting to depart to
France with 103 Darfur orphans aged six to ten. However, there is some
serious issue about whether these children were indeed destined for some shady
fate or merely being kidnapped for loving white parents as the western media
indicated (by reporting that on October 24 some French families were waiting at
an airport in France for the airplane full of needy orphans to arrive but it
never did). The French President apparently is afraid of something and has some
history behind this story and does not want the truth to come out in a court of
law in Chad.
FRENCH PRESIDENT FREES CHILD
TRAFFICKERS ARRESTED IN CHAD
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_keith_ha_071114_french_president_fre.htm
The Zoes Ark project began fundraising April 28, 2007 to
evacuate 10,000 orphans facing certain death to France and the United States.
Some 300 Europeans paid 2000 Euros ($3450) each as donations toward
logistics costs to receive an orphan. UNHCR determined the children were
living with their families in communities—they were neither from Darfur
nor were they orphans—and their health was not a serious concern.[89]
The NGO was reportedly provided logistical support by the French military, and
they had made numerous trips to villages on the Darfur border offering
enticements and taking children.[90]
Outraged Chadians on the border with Sudan had already been questioning the
motives of scores of foreign aid groups that work with Darfur refugees.[91]
The United Nations and other relief organizations initially denied all
knowledge of the Zoes Ark NGO but the NGO was registered as an international
charity with the U.N. Mission in Sudan. As recent as November 14, 2007, The
Zoes Ark website ( www.archedezoe.fr/accueil.htm ) listed
800,000 children in mortal danger today who must be saved now!
Humanitarian relief is an industry, with corporate
directors, big salaries, career advancement, permanent infrastructure in white
economies but mobile, structurally nebulous projects in black countries that entrench
structural violence and perpetuate dependence and suffering. Nancy Kassebaum
Baker, the outspoken advocate for Congo and Darfur, is also a Director Emeriti
for the International Medical Corps (IMC), a humanitarian NGO with operations
in Darfur, South Sudan, Central Africa Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya,
Somalia, Uganda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Sierre
Leone—all the problem countries involved in the transcontinental
warfare and then some—and 14 countries outside Africa, including the
U.S.-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. Total revenue to IMC in 2005 was
$101,727,119.
Amongst the (many) large International Medical Corps donors
for 2005 and 2006 were numerous Christian and Jewish organizations, charities
and missionary affiliates, the Christian right organization euphemistically
named Bread for the World (Bob Dole, Donald Payne, David Beckman, Leon Panetta
links), and the American Jewish World Service, Pfizer, BP, American Friends
Service Committee, Chevron, Trammel Crow (affiliated with Barrick Gold
directors), Coca Cola, World Food Program (Bob Dole link), USAID, U.S.
Department of State, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S.
Department of Defense.
CARE is one of the biggest organizations, and CARE receives
funding from Lockheed Martin. How many big international AID and charity NGOs
operate in Africa?
The failure of the international community to respond to the
1988 famine in Sudan led to the creation of the United Nations Operation
Lifeline Sudan (OLS), a cross-border emergency relief program. By the mid
1990s Operation Lifeline Sudan had achieved a major foothold throughout south
Sudan, with a consortium of United Nations agencies and some 60 international
relief agencies all vying for a piece of the billion dollars a year pie, and
thousands of humanitarian foot soldiers receiving lucrative salaries. While OLS
may be a humanitarian operation, it is also a United Nations-backed military
operation with massive infrastructure projected from Nairobi, Kenya, into South
Sudan. OLS operated formally until at least 2005, and much of the OLS apparatus and operational procedure has remained through
2007.[92]
This is an example of managed inequality which benefits white economies and
perpetuate structural violence.
The involvement of private
military companies (PMCs) in humanitarian interventions is widespread,
cloaked by the corporate media, or widely advertised as universally neutral
and positive by perception management. It is always in the interests of
humanity, fraternity, peace and brotherhood, the very slogans that the United
Nations was founded on. At a U.S. Congressional Hearing in 2004, House
Africa Subcommittee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) discussed the increasing role of
private military companies in African peacekeeping. [93]
PMCs have been hired by the U.S. government to clear [sic] landmines in
Djibouti and Angola, the involvement of mercenary companies is continental.
Military Professional Resources Incorporated, out of Virginia, was just one mercenary
firm of many involved in the U.S. invasion of Congo.[94]
PMCs like Medical Support Solutions (MSS), which works with
African Union (AU) monitoring forces to prepare bases and set up logistics
systems in Darfur, operate under upside-down euphemistic names where peace
equals war equals peacekeeping as part of the umbrella smokescreen
International Peace Operations Association. The IPOA board of directors
(2005-2006) includes former SOCOM forces with extensive tours-of-duty with, for
example, Blackwater, ArmorGroup, PAE, or HART Security, all with U.N. or A.U.
peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Sierre Leone and Darfur.
The IPOA has produced position papers and proposals lobbying for $100-200
million private mercenary contracts in DRC, Somalia and Darfur, amongst others,
for ICI of Oregon, AirScan International, Task International, PAE and MPRI. [95]The
IPOA Concept Paper Support Operation to the Darfur Region of Sudan (2004)
proposed private military companies involvement on the frontlines in Darfur and
Chad for contracts of $2-4 million per month.[96]
ICI of Oregon has been operating in Darfur on U.S.
government grants. According to their web site, U.S. Public Law 106-426
appropriated up to $10 million of funds to provide assistance to the National
Democratic Alliance of Sudan (NDA), an umbrella organization of opposition
groups opposed to the Islamic regime in Khartoum.[97]
Support of the opposition of the Government of Sudan, even with non-lethal
materials, given the massive warfare in Darfur, constitutes support of war in
Sudan.
There are three major
International Conventions against Mercenarism in force today: [1] The OAU
Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa (1977); [2] The 1977
Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Conventions; [3] The U.N. International
Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries
(1989). Yet all of these conventions—like any convention that is worth
anything—have been completely violated.
It is clear that the violence is Africas hotspots has
spiraled out of control by design: chaos and destabilization are provoked by
international actors, intelligence operatives, SOCOM forces and PMCs, who then
leverage the need for further Private Military Corporate involvement. These
agents operate with zero accountability and zero transparency.[98]
Diplomats, state department officials, United Nations functionaries and their
highly paid lackeys stand around wringing their hands declaring: What is to be
done? With PMCs pressing to secure $100-200 million contracts to support
MONUC, it is no wonder that Africa is engulfed massive white-on-black
terrorism, the spectre of continental genocide.
Save Darfur is today the rallying cry for a broad
coalition of special interests. Advocacy groups—from the local
Massachusetts Congregation BNai Israel chapter to the International Crises
Group and USAID—have fueled the conflict through a relentless, but
selective, public relations campaign that disingenuously serves a narrow policy
agenda. These interests offer no opportunity for corrective analyses, but
stubbornly press their agenda, and they are widely criticized for inflaming
tensions in Darfur. This is what we might call Darfurism.
The latest Lockheed Martin contract with the United Nations
illustrates the latest stage in the transformation of international conflict
whereby military-industrial giants are openly engaged, rather than
clandestinely, as has been previously the case. This development parallels the
rise of Darfurism— a mass movement in the West designed to channel
popular sympathy and agitate people to act on a cause they know nothing about,
but think they do. Darfurism is a pathological mix of fear, patriotism, social
immaturity, opportunism and unconsciousness akin to fascism. Under the current
climate of apathy, fear and public opinion, anything goes, and warfare involves
humanitarian agencies as active players in the mix. Like the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum they are seen as neutral, described as apolitical, but nothing
could be further from the truth.
The United Nations and African Union serve as
pseudo-privatized military forces backing a hegemonic, corporate, political and
economic agenda. Someone who produces both the danger and, at a price, the
shield against it is a racketeer.[99]
The future has arrived, and it uses human rights institutions, the label of
genocide and accusations of atrocities, and the ever-expanding international
AID and charity industry—operating out of pure profit motives—as
pivotal elements in the Western portfolio of soft and hard weapons used to
further the prerogatives of Empire and clear the land for absolute corporate
exploitation. ~
keith harmon
snow—www.allthingspass.com—is
an independent human rights investigator and war correspondent that worked with
Survivors Rights International (2005-2006), Genocide Watch (2005-2006) and the
United Nations (2006) to document and expose genocide and crimes against
humanity in Sudan and Ethiopia. In January 2006 he produced a report on
genocide in Ethiopia, co-authored with an international humanitarian law and
genocide expert now working for the Office of the Prosecutor at the
International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia. He released this report without
authorization in December 2006 because the United Nations buried the report and
remained silent about the genocide and the Ethiopian governments role in it.
He has worked in 17 countries in Africa, heavily focused on the Great Lakes
region, and he recently worked in Afghanistan.
*
More information:
XPOSE UGANDAS GENOCIDE:
http://www.exposeugandasgenocide.blogspot.com/
CEGUN: Campaign to Stop Genocide in Uganda Now
UNIGHT: FOR THE CHILDREN OF UGANDA
FRIENDS OF THE CONGO
http://www.friendsofthecongo.org/
ANUAK JUSTICE COUNCIL
[1] Maurice Tempelsman chairs the International Advisory
Council at the Harvard AIDS Institute (HAI) of the School of Public Health; his
involvement in covert actions and interventions flags this program as cover for
clandestine biowarfare. HAI
partners with the U.S. Military HIV Research Program (USMHRP), a program whose
said purpose is to develop vaccines and AIDS prevention for U.S. Military
servicemen: <http://www.aids.harvard.edu/collaborations/external4.html#Anchor-United-58521>.
[3] Dulue Mbachu, Africas Unfolding Desert War, ISN
Security Watch, July 11, 2007.
[4] Tourist Killings in Buhoma, Gorilla Journal, June
18, 1999 <http://www.berggorilla.org/english/gjournal/texte/18buhoma.html>.
[5] See the 1885 map before partition <http://www.newberry.org/smith/k-12plans/africa/images/map_a.jpg>
and after <http://www.newberry.org/smith/k-12plans/africa/images/map_b.jpg>.
[6] Abu Iskandar as-Sudani, Darfur:
The New American French Protectorate, translated by Muhammad Abu
Nasr from Al-Hadaf, Damascus, No.1365, May 2005, pp. 22-25.
[7] Pratap Chatterjee, Darfur Diplomacy: Enter the
Contractors, CorpWatch, 21 October 2004, < http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11598 >.
[8] Fifth Committee Concludes Consideration of
Financing of U.N. Mission in Democratic Republic of Congo, Press Release
GA/AB/3499, United Nations, 12/3/2002, <http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2002/GAAB3499.doc.htm>.
[10] Statistics generated by United Nations bodies and
reported by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre: <http://www.internal-displacement.org/>.
[11] See: National Oil Corporation of Kenya: <http://www.nockenya.co.ke/content.asp?title=Upstream&ctid=3&childtitle=Hydrocarbon%20Packages%20Reports&contentid=40>;
and Beicip-Franlab <http://www.beicip.com/>.
[12] Lundin Petroleum Signs Production-sharing Contract with
Kenya, Alexanders Gas & Oil Connections, June 10, 2007, <http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/company/cna74384.htm>.
[13] See: Livelihoods &
Vulnerabilities Study Gambella Region of Ethiopia, UNICEF, January 2006.
[14] Michael Maren, The Road To Hell: The Ravaging
Affects of Foreign Aid and International Charity, 1996.
[15] From the BSP web site: As biometrics becomes an
increasingly important component of physical and logical security systems there
is a need for an authoritative and regularly updated reference and data base on
virtually all aspects of biometrics and identity assurance. <http://www.nationalbiometric.org/>.
[16] See e.g. Uprooted and Forgotten: Impunity and
Human Rights Abuses in Northern Uganda, Human Rights Watch, Vol. 17, No.
12a, September 2005.
[17] David M. Rosen, Child Soldiers, International
Humanitarian Law, and the Globalization of Childhood, American
Anthropologist, Vol. 109, Issue 2, 2007, p: 299.
[18] See: keith harmon snow, A Peoples History of
Congos Jean-Pierre Bemba, Toward Freedom, September 18, 2007; and Effacer
le Tableau: Rapport de la mission internationale de recherche surles crimes
commis, en violation du droit international, contre les Pygmes bambuti dans
lest de la Rpublique dmocratique du Congo, Minority Rights Group
International, ISBN 1904584217, July 2004.
[19] Private interviews, eyewitnesses, October 2007.
[20] Karen Parker, Forced Displacement in Northern
Uganda, United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of
Human Rights, <http://www.webcom.com/hrin/parker/sub01wsu.html>.
[21] Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in
Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Press, 1999.
[22] Private interviews, eyewitnesses, October 2007.
[23] See: Tullow, Hardman and Heritage Oil concessions
maps: <http://www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php?catid=49>.
[24] keith harmon snow & Georgianne Nienaber, Are
USAID Gorilla Conservation Funds Being Used for Covert Operations in Central
Africa? Z Magazine Online (ZNET) September 19, 2007.
[25] Angelo Izama, How badly did Libya want the
Kenya-Uganda oil pipeline deal? Alexanders Gas and Oil Connections,
Vol. 11, Issue 12, November 24, 2006.
[26] Ralph G. Kershaw, Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda:
International Justice According to Washington, Covert Action Quarterly,
No. 74, Fall 2002.
[27] Jeevan Vasagar, Uganda hires PR agency to buff up
its image, The Guardian,
May 21, 2005.
[28] Private interview, Eastern Congo, March 2007.
[29] See: <http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004CE90B/(httpCountries)/4745C8FA9EAB6F8A802570A7004B697A?OpenDocument
>.
[30] Are the Internally Displaced Persons in Rwanda? ReliefWeb,
July 2003, <http://wwww.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/AllDocsByUNID/3009aad694977bddc1256d6c002c5100>.
[31] The Rwandan Patriotic Army was renamed the Rwanda
Defense Forces (circa 2000?).
[32] Uganda: Kampala-Kigali Oil Pipeline Estimated at $
193.6 Million, 16 October 2007, Rwanda News Agency, <http://allafrica.com/stories/200710160576.html>.
[33] Laton McCartney, Friends in High Places: The
Bechtel Story, Simon & Schuster, 1988.
[34] SAIC information is taken from their Annual Reports,
Proxy Statements, and web site.
[35] Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in
Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Press, 1999: 358.
[36] keith harmon snow and Georgianne Nienaber: Gorillas
Executed Stories front for Privatization and Militarization of Congo Parks,
Truth of Depopulation Ignored, ZNET, August 3, 2007; and King Kong:
The Map, The Mad Scientist, and the Mayor, <http://www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php?catid=45>.
[37] Rwandas Karisimbi Antenna to Cost USD 2.3 Million,
New Times (Rwanda), 2007.
[38] David Barouski, Laurent Nkundabatware, His Rwandan
Allies and the Ex-ANC Mutiny: Chronic Barriers to Lasting Peace in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, ZNET, February 2007.
[39] Rwanda documentary to open U.S. Black gala, Rwanda
Cinema Center, January 2007, <http://www.rwandacinemacenter.org/RwandaRising.html>.
[40] Rwanda documentary to open U.S. Black gala, Rwanda
Cinema Center, January 2007, <http://www.rwandacinemacenter.org/RwandaRising.html>.
[41] Mathew Russel Lee, At UN, Darfur No-Bid Contract
Spun by UK, Chad and Somalia Preemptively Bid Out, Inner City Press,
October 24, 2007, <http://www.innercitypress.com/uklockheed102407.html >.
[42] Mathew Russel Lee, At UN, Darfur No-Bid Contract
Spun by UK, Chad and Somalia Preemptively Bid Out, Inner City Press, October
24, 2007, <http://www.innercitypress.com/uklockheed102407.html >.
[43] See, e.g., Wayne Madsen, The CIA's
Counter-Proliferation Division (CPD) and British intelligence have evidence
that then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney lost three nuclear weapons in 1991,
Madsen Report, May 2, 2007; Alexander Cockburn, Broken Arrows and
Iran, Counterpunch, August 3, 2005.
[44] Michael Maren, The Road To Hell: The Ravaging
Affects of Foreign Aid and International Charity, 1996.
[45] In The Kabul-ki Dance (The Atlantic Monthly,
November, 2002), a highly sexualized feature, Black Hawk Down author
Mark Bowden canonizes the astonishing precision of modern American weapons
used in Afghanistan (Somalia, Iraq) and the extraordinarily brave stealth
operators who deliver them. This includes sleek and cool weapons of
death-and-destruction, and the coming of age of UAVs—unmanned aerospace
vehicles—armed with cameras and missiles—drones like the Predator
(RQ-1), which made a name for itself for the first time in this
conflict—which, in Bowdens reading of war, eliminated the propensity
for death-and-destruction that characterized the anachronistic wars of bygone
eras. Indeed, he eulogized, War was never like this before—you arent
supposed to enjoy yourself while killing people.
[46] Peter Huck, Hollywood Goes to War, The Age.com,
September 16, 2002, <http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/09/14/1031608342634.html>.
[47] Peter Huck, Hollywood Goes to War, The Age.com,
September 16, 2002, <http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/09/14/1031608342634.html>.
[48] Somalia, U.S. Firm Sign Deal to Guard Coastline,
Xinhuanet, November 25, 2005, <http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-11/26/content_3837109.htm>;
US firm to fight Somali pirates, BBC, November 25, 2005.
[49] Antony Barnett & Patrick Smith, US Accused of
Covert Operations in Somalia, Observer, Sept. 10, 2006.
[50] Africa Confidential, September 2006.
[51] Pauline Jelenek, U.S. special forces in Somalia, Associated
Press, November 1, 2007.
[52] Stephanie McCrummen, U.S. Warship Fires Missiles at
Fighters in Somalia, Washington
Post, 6/3/07.
[53] HMS Bulwark welcomed home after Lebanon operations,
defense news, 15 August 2006.
[54] U.S.
Gunships Battle Pirates Who Seized Ships Off Somalia, Mogadishu, Fox News,
October 30, 2007, <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,306161,00.html>.
[55] Golden Spear Symposium Program Highlights,
CENTCOM and EUCOM, August 14-17, 2005, <https://seneca.centcom.mil/Humanitarian/documents/GoldSpear%20Library/Highlights%20_ENG.pdf>.
[56] keith harmon snow, State Terror Against Indigenous
People in Ethiopia: Another Secret War for Oil, World War Four Report,
April 2004.
[57] American and French sailors team up to train, CJTF-HOA
Public Affairs, November 5, 2007, <http://www.hoa.centcom.mil/story/english/article.asp?id=20071105-005>.
[58] Small footprint made in Yemen by female
servicemembers, CJTF-HOA Public Affairs, November 4, 2007, <http://www.hoa.centcom.mil/story/english/article.asp?id=20071104-001>.
[59] CENTAF band, Marines entertain Damerjog villagers, CJTF-HOA
Public Affairs, <http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123071828>.
[60] See: keith harmon snow, Today is the Day of
Killing Anuaks, Genocide Watch and Survivors Rights International Report,
February 25, 2004.
[61] Mark Fineman, The Oil Factor in Somalia, Los
Angeles Times, January 18, 1993.
[62] See: Ituri: Covered in Blood (part VII), Human
Rights Watch, July 2003, <http://hrw.org/reports/2003/ituri0703/DRC0703-08.htm>.
[63] Xan Rice, US military 'used Ethiopian base' to attack
Somali militants, Guardian Unlimited, February 23, 2007.
[64] Livelihoods and Vulnerabilities Study, Gambella
Region of Ethiopia, UNICEF report, December 13, 2006.
[65] Burundi: Troops Ready for Deployment in Somalia, www.allafrica.com, October 5, 2007.
[66] Waiving Prohibition on United States Military
Assistance with Respect to Burundi, Guyana, and Liberia, Presidential
Determination No. 2005–08 of November 29, 2004, The White House.
[67] Uganda: American Advisors Being Deployed, Indian
Ocean Newsletter, No. 1209, March 3, 2007.
[68] Robert Kaplan, Americas African Rifles, Atlantic
Monthly, April 2005; Dulue Mbachu, Africas Unfolding Desert War, ISN
Security Watch, July 11, 2007.
[69] See e.g.: Mouvement des Nigeriens Pour la Justice:
<http://m-n-j.blogspot.com/>;
James Finch, Uranium Mining in Niger at Risk, The Conservative Voice,
July 20, 2007; Niger's Uranium and Oil Sector Threatened by Rebels <www.Canada.com>
July 9, 2007; Uranium prices fall again, conflict in Niger, The
Conservative Voice, July 9, 2007; Niger Rebels Pressure Uranium Miners, Reuters,
July 5, 2007; Niger rebels attack power plant in uranium area, Reuters,
June 27, 2007.
[70] Bill Blankenship, Ex-senator speaks out: Kassebaum
Baker touches on politics of Sudan, Iraq, The Capital-Journal, October
16, 2006.
[71] See: DARFUR ACTION NOW, Partnership for a Secure
America, <http://www.psaonline.org/article.php?id=114>.
[72] Refugees International, Annual Report, 2006.
[73] Johann Hari, Inside Frances Secret War, The
Independent, October 5, 2007.
[74] AFRICOM <http://www.africom.mil/africomFAQs.asp>.
[75] Abu Iskandar as-Sudani, Darfur:
The New American French Protectorate, translated by Muhammad Abu
Nasr from Al-Hadaf, Damascus, No.1365, May 2005, pp. 22-25 ; see
also : keith harmon snow, Oil in Darfur? Covert Ops
in Somalia ? The New, Old Humanitarian Warfare in Africa, Global Research, February 2007.
[76] See: Close intelligence relations between Israel and
Ethiopia, Eritrea
, June 26, 1998, <www.arabicnews.com>; Israel to acquire two more German Submarines, IMRA
Newsletter, December 22, 2004, <http://www.kokhavivpublications.com/2004/israel/12/0412231619.html>; Muhammed Salahuddin, How Israel Casts Its Dark
Shadow Over Horn of Africa, Arab News, August 31, 2006.
[77] Muhammed Salahuddin, How Israel Casts Its Dark
Shadow Over Horn of Africa, Arab News, August 31, 2006.
[78] Foreign reports revealed that there were facilities
on the Islands for supplying Israeli submarines operating in the Red Sea. The
newsletter also said there was an Israeli presence on Hanish Island. Africa
Research Bulletin, Vol. 35, Issue 6, p. 13131-13166, June 1-30, 1998.
[79] Private communication, November 12, 2007.
[80] Private communication, November 12, 2007.
[81] African Port May Become U.S. Base, Eritrean News
Wire, November 19, 2002, <http://eri24.com/news2032.htm>; CJTF-HOA
Commander hosts Eritrean President, Marine Corps News, April 2, 2003.
[82] keith harmon snow and Rick Hines, Blood Diamond:
Doublethink and Deception Over Those Worthless Little Rocks of Desire, Z
Magazine, June & July 2007.
[83] Eric Reeves, Darfurs Bitter Ironies, Guardian
Online, October 4, 2007.
[84] See: keith harmon snow, Oil in Darfur? Covert Ops in
Somalia? The New, Old Humanitarian Warfare in Africa, Global Research, February 2007, <http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20SN20070207&articleId=4717>
and revised for allthingspass, April 2007, <www.allthingspass.com>.
[85] Hezbollah is Using Christian Villages to Shield its
Military Operations in Violation of International Law, Christian Solidarity
International, 1 August 2006, < http://www.csi-int.org/lebanon_immediate_release_c.php
>.
[86] See: keith harmon snow, Oil in Darfur? Covert Ops in
Somalia? The New, Old Humanitarian Warfare in Africa, Global Research, February 2007, <http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20SN20070207&articleId=4717>
and revised for allthingspass, April 2007, <www.allthingspass.com>.
[87] See keith harmon snow, Oil in Darfur? Covert Ops
in Somalia? The New Old Humanitarian Warfare in Africa, <http://www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php?catid=24>
and, e.g. SPLA Offensive Overwhelms Muslim Forces, excerpted from Frontline
Fellowship News, 197, Edition 2, <http://www.frii.com/~gosplow/2ffn97b.html>.
[88] Private communication, October 2007. See also, e.g.:
Gaddafi, the Peacemaker in Chad and Darfur, <http://www.wagingpeace.info/?q=node/67>.
[89] Stephanie Hancock, Most Chad Case Children Not
Orphans, Reuters, November 1, 2007.
[90] CHAD: French NGO Accused of Trafficking Children, IRIN
News, October 26, 2007, <http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75019>;
Chad: Government Accused of Hypocrisy in Zoes Ark Affair, IRIN News,
November 8, 2007, <http://allafrica.com/stories/200711080847.html?page=2>;
Guillemette Faure, Trafic d'enfants ou pieds nickels de l'humanitaire?, October
26, 2007, <http://www.rue89.com/2007/10/26/trafic-denfants-ou-pieds-nickeles-de-lhumanitaire/feed>, Anne Else, Untangling the Zoes Ark
Affair, Anne Elses Letter from Elsewhere, November 6, 2007, <http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0711/S00107.htm>.
[91] Stephanie Hancock, Most Chad Case Children Not
Orphans, Reuters, November 1, 2007.
[92] IRIN, Sudan: Making humanitarian work safer, ReliefWeb,
May 31, 2007, <http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/EDIS-73QMGN?OpenDocument&query=OLS>.
[93] Jim Fisher-Thompson, Important Role Seen for Private
Firms in
African Peacekeeping, Global Policy Forum, October 15,
2004.
[94] Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in
Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Press, 1999.
[95] Doug Brooks, Supporting the MONUC Mandate with
Private Services in the Democratic Republic of Congo, IPOA Concept Paper,
January 2003, <http://ipoaonline.org/en/publications/concept1.pdf>.
[96] See: Doug Brooks, Support Operation to the Darfur
Region of Sudan, IPOA Concept Paper, July 2004, <http://ipoaonline.org/en/publications/concept3.pdf>.
[97] ICI of Oregon web site, <http://www.icioregon.com/Sudan2.htm>.
[98] See: Fred Schreier and Marina Caparini, Privatising
Security: Law, Practice and Governance of Private Military and Security
Companies, Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), Occasional Paper
No. 6, March 2005.
[99] Charles Tilly, War Making and State Making as
Organized Crime, In Bringing the State Back In, Peter Evans et al.