MERCHANTS OF DEATH:
EXPOSING CORPORATE-FINANCED HOLOCAUST IN AFRICA
White Collar War Crimes, Black African Fall Guys
keith harmon snow
www.allthingspass.com
4 December 2008
War in Congo has again been splashed across world
headlines and the same old clichs about violence and suffering are repackaged
and rebroadcast as news. Meanwhile, early indications out of America are that
President-elect Barack Obama will assemble a foreign policy-team primed for
business as usual.
How will Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State compromise
the Obama Administrations capacity to honestly redress the untold suffering,
massive theft of resources and millions of deaths in Africa? And Tom Daschle? Behind
the media smokescreens are people whose involvement has been documented and
exposed, but there is always some African fall guy—the embraceable
black subordinate or rebel commander—charged with war crimes and used
to deflect attention from the leaders of organized white-collar crime networks.
Blacked out are the corporate executives, government
officials and expatriate personnel of Western enterprises whose success amidst
chaos implicates them in the deracination and death of millions of black
people. Whats behind the recent hostilities and media posturing in Central
Africa?
THE SHORT, BRUTISH LIFE OF SANDRINE
On a darkling plain in a far away place the skeletons of
hundreds of unnamed people lie strewn over the land amidst the red dirt and
brown grasses scorched by the equatorial sun. Bones poke into the air here and
there, hidden by the tall grass, tripping you up as you walk; others lay
bleaching white in piles where the bodies fell. These are the killing fields of
Bogoro, a small hillside village on a southerly road out of Bunia, a metropolis
of suffering in the wild, wild east of Congo.
The grassy plains of Bogoro were guarded by soldiers and
when I arrived the militia of the day wore black trench coats and black mirror
sunglasses to enhance the aura of terror that surrounds them. With AK-47s
slung over their shoulders they talked on shiny Nokias and Motorolas and
Samsungs—cellphones built with the blood minerals of the Congolese
people.
Sandrine—not her real name—is a survivor who
participated in the massacre at Bogoro. I interviewed Sandrine, just seventeen
at the time, in 2007, and she recounted her ordeal as the sex slave of
soldiers. Sandrine told how people were forced by militia commanders to chase
down neighbors and kill or be killed. I found Sandrine living in misery in an
evacuated refugee camp.
Sandrine knows nothing at all of the vast mining operations
or minerals shipments being flown out of remote jungle airstrips in her home
territory—or even that such airstrips exist. Ditto for the Congolese
researchers I met, in Orientale, who worked with the International Criminal
Court. Moto Gold? Mwana Africa? Walter Kansteiner? They had never heard of such
companies, or such people.
In Western media reportage the plunder of raw materials in
Congo is usually de-linked from the killing, even though the extractive
industries are directly behind it, and even though almost everyone has begun to
parrot the accusation of resource wars in Congo.
The Bogoro massacre occurred in February 2003 and, like the
Hutu-Tutsi stories from Rwanda, the media whipped up the specter of ancient
tribal animosities between Hema and Lendu tribes. But the real story is not
quite so black and white. Or is it?
Today the International Criminal Court (ICC) holds three
Congolese warlords in the ICC prison at The Hague, Netherlands, and all three
were associated with events at Bogoro. However, the white patrons reaping the
profits behind the bloodletting in the eastern Congo are protected by a new
humanitarian order predicated on permanent inequality, structural violence and race
politics.
But for a few brief periods of relative calm, the war in
Congos eastern Orientale and Kivus provinces has hardly stopped since its
beginning in 1996, and the realities have been shrouded in media clichs and
stereotypes and disingenuous expressions of outrage that deflect attention from
the true protagonists and root causes of war and plunder in Africa.[1]
[1]
GOOD VERSUS EVIL AND THE NAMES GAMES
The UPC, FPRI, FNI—these are three of the scores of
militias that have risen and fallen in Orientale since the war began in 1996
and, more poignantly, they are meaningless acronyms used to scramble the brains
of western spectator-news-consumers.
First there was the Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A)
that invaded Rwanda, and then came the Alliance for the Democratic Liberation
of Zaire (ADFL) that marched across Zaire to unseat President Mobutu. Next came
the rebellion with Jean-Pierre Bemba and the Movement for the Liberation of
Congo (MLC), and all the different factions of the Rassemblement Congolais
pour la Dmocratie, or Congolese Rally for
Democracy—RCD, RCD-G (Goma), RCD-K, RCD-K-ML—backed by Rwanda and
Uganda.
Here are the comrades in arms who studied together at the Marxist University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania: Yoweri
Museveni, Ugandas president; Laurent Desire Kabila, the ADFL figurehead and
assassinated president of the Democratic Republic of Congo; Meles Zenawi,
president of Ethiopia; Isaias Afwerki, president of Eritrea; Africa scholar
Mahmood Mamdani; former RCD leader Wamba dia Wamba; Paul Kagame, Rwandas
president; and John Garang (d. 2005), former leader of the Sudan Peoples
Liberation Army (SPLA) and first president of South Sudan.
Both the RPF/A and SPLA waged successful covert
guerrilla wars against governments that were considered undesirable by
Washington, both achieved their objectives of seizing land and gaining control,
and both insurgencies were covertly backed by U.S. Committee for Refugees
official Roger Winter—a pivotal U.S. intelligence asset operating in
Sudan and a dedicated ally of Yoweri Museveni, Paul Kagame and John Garang.
Winters protg is Susan Rice, Clintons Assistant Secretary of State for
African Affairs. Rice was one of the primary architects of the Pentagons
prized Africa Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI)—a euphemistically named
entity created to project U.S. power in Africa, and run by U.S. Army Special
Forces Command (SOCOM).[2][2]
The coups detat in
Rwanda and Burundi occurred after the presidents Juvenal Habyarimana and
Cyprien Ntaryamira were assassinated on April 6, 1994. Similarly, more than a decade of covert
U.S. military support for the SPLA, channeled through Uganda and Ethiopia, led
to the Naivasha Peace Agreement of January 2005 and the creation of the autonomous
country of South Sudan.
The Rwanda genocide began with the 1990 invasion of
northern Rwanda by Ugandan forces that brutally targeted everyone in their
path. By the time the RPF/A forces—comprised mostly of seasoned Ugandan
troops—reached Kigali, more than 800,000 IDPs (internally displaced
persons) were hovering around the capital city: they were terrified, they were
homeless, they were hungry, they were angry and—justifiably—they
took up arms. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) and its
Canadian General Romeo Dallaire clandestinely backed the illegal guerrilla war.[3][3]
The guerrilla wars in Rwanda and South Sudan were
prosecuted much like the CIA-backed low-intensity guerrilla warfare, spawned by
Washington, against populist movements in Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile and
Guatemala. This is exactly what is playing out in Congo and Sudan today:
low-intensity guerrilla warfare prosecuted by powerful shadow forces competing
for land and loot.
SPLA leader John Garang received military training at the
School of the Americas, Fort Benning, Georgia. Paul Kagame received training at
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. At the time he was sent for training, Kagame was
Musevenis director of military intelligence; upon his return he assumed
command of the army created, financed and trained by Uganda: the Rwanda
Patriotic Army.
Both Garang and Kagame likely received counter-insurgency
training through the Pentagons International Military Education and Training
Program (IMET). Since 1998, the IMET program has provided training to 318 RDF
and 291 UPDF soldiers. Many other IMET soldiers who attended the notorious
School of the Americas are today known human rights violators in Latin America.
In North Kivu province we find the Forces for the
Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and the National Congress for the
Defense of the People, the CNDP, created by self-appointed Rwandan General
Laurent Nkunda. Here the media has historically cast General Nkunda as good,
the FDLR as evil. Only recently has Nkunda come under any kind of harsh
criticism.
The war in Eastern Congo is almost universally described
with clichs about the Rwanda genocide. The usual targets of white media
racial profiling and hysterical academic polemics are the Hutu—the
infamous Interahamwe and FDLR—the
killers that fled Rwanda after committing genocide there. This is how
millions of innocent Hutu people—comprising over 85% of the populations
of Rwanda and Burundi—are collectively dehumanized.
Congolese Mai Mai militias are described as nationalists
sometimes wearing bathroom fixtures on their heads and shooting magic
bullets. The Mai Mai are the closest thing to a peoples or indigenous justice
movement in Congo. The Mai Mai have most recently allied with the Congos
national army, the Armed Forces for the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC),
and the Mai Mai are sometimes cast as good, but usually as evil.
In 2007 the Mai Mai and FLDR joined forces to form the
Front for the National Liberation of Kivu (FNLK). Backed by the FARDC, the FNLK
is purportedly vying for power against General Nkundas CNDP. However,
alliances are constantly shifting based on private profit and warlord
fiefdoms, and ALL factions, at some point or other, have collaborated in war
and resource plunder.
Western news stories throw the acronyms and names of
militias around with little or no information about their rise or fall, and
nothing substantive about foreign
backers they collaborate with. Militias mysteriously appear and disappear.
Indeed, the more you read about Congo from venues like the New York Times,
Harpers, The New Yorker, or the Atlantic Monthly, the
less you will understand. This is no accident, and—no, you are not dumb.
Take the militia FNI: but for the victims and their
suffering, it makes no difference what the acronym stands for, its all one big
sadistic joke of language and power. The most significant fact to remember
about this F N I is that they served as the private proxy army for the
gold mining operations of Metalor, a Swedish firm, and AngloGold Ashanti,
headquartered in South Africa and partnered with Barrick Gold.[4][4]
Secondly, they were agents for Ugandan power brokers.
Anglo-Gold Ashanti directors include Sir Sam Jonah, who is
also a director of shady mining-cum-military companies operating in Sierra
Leone and connected to Tony Buckingham and other white-collar mercenaries.
Buckingham affiliated companies—e.g. Heritage Oil and Gas, Branch Energy,
Saracen Uganda—collaborate with the Museveni regime. Saracens top
shareholder is General Salim Saleh, half-brother of Yoweri Museveni, and
Congos nemesis, a Ugandan agent cited by the United Nations for war and
plunder in Congo.
AngloGold Ashanti is the Anglo American mining
conglomerate of the Oppenheimers and De Beers mining cartels of Britain and
South Africa, interests deeply aligned with Belgian American intelligence
insider Maurice Tempelsman—the godfather of covert operations in Africa.
Tempelsmans diamond interests in Congo were, at least partially, displaced by
the Israeli cartels of Dan Gertler and Benny Steinmetz.[5][5]
It is a no-brainer that the Tempelsman gang backs Rwandas occupation of
eastern Congo.
(Minerals map courtesy of Human Rights Watch)
For a second example,
media corporations have consistently blacked out the truth about the
lucrative corporate conservation industry with articles like the recent New
York Times production Congo Violence Reaches Endangered Mountain Gorillas
(Jeffrey Gettleman, 11/18/08). Unreported however are the many accusations
coming out of North Kivu that link the Jane Goodall Institute and Dian Fossey
Gorilla Fund to local Mai Mai and FDLR: like every other militia, or occupation
army, these factions have infiltrated villages and now prey on, intimidate and
abuse the locals. The white agents working for Western
"conservation" NGOs—and we know their names—are directly
responsible for extortion, racketeering, land theft, human rights atrocities
and for ripping apart the social fabric.[6][6]
The commander of the
Mai-Mai is Colonel Ntasibanga and the commander of the FDLR is Colonel Faraja,
report Congolese locals who have been documenting the abuses (the facts are
confirmed by a Spanish journalist). We count already five people killed
because of this [conservation] project DFGF and JGI are without doubt corrupt
they are paying armed groups and forcing us off of our lands. [7][7]
The Gettleman NYT
article, on the other hand, cites one of these agents, Samantha Newport,
described as a spokeswoman for Virunga National Park, who in fact works for
Richard Leakeys organization Wildlife Direct, a shady paramilitary entity
involving Walter Kansteiner.
A LITTLE MATTER OF
GENOCIDE
The international arrest warrants issued by Spain and France
against some 40 former RPF/A and current Rwanda Defense Force (RDF) are
patently dismissed by Western media of all stripes, buried behind waves of
pro-RPF propaganda and intimidation that labels anyone who does not support the
Kigali military dictatorship as genocide deniers, themselves guilty, by
extension, of genocide.
While the RPF/A and UPDF are often named for leading the
charge and supplying the bulk of the forces, the 1996 invasion of Zaire,
launched from Uganda and Rwanda, involved U.S. covert forces with
state-of-the-art C4ISTR—Command, Control, Communications, Computers,
Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance—and there were Humvees and
C-130 aircraft ferrying black-skinned U.S. Special Forces into South Sudan and
northeastern Congo. The invasion also involved Israeli military experts, an
assortment of Eritrean and Ethiopian regulars, and SPLA forces.[8][8]
The Anglo-European-Israeli forces penetrated eastern Zaire
through the Gulu and Arua Districts of northwestern Uganda—the heart of
Acholiland and ground zero for the ongoing genocide of the indigenous Acholi
people—and they backed the RPA/UPDF who marched across Zaire massacring
refugees, mostly women and children, mostly Hutus, that fled Kigali in 1994. [9],[10]
[9], [10]
Howard French, then the Africa Bureau Chief for the New
York Times, witnessed the Hutu genocide in Zaire, and wrote about it.[11][11]
Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani—who by no means was an impartial observer
when he arrived in Goma in September 1997—described an indiscriminate
slaughter of Interahamwe, of unarmed Hutu refugees, and of Congolese
Hutus in the Kivus.[12][12]
Bill Richardson, President Clintons Ambassador to the United Nations, stated
in a may 1997 interview: I think theres strong evidence that there have been
these massacres. [13][13]
But the subject of Hutus being slaughtered was only broached
as a tool to hammer down the uppity black rebel who diverged from his script
and upset Washingtons plans. Indeed, the rise and fall of ADFL figurehead
Laurent Desire Kabila exemplifies the embraceable black leader transformed almost
overnight into the unembraceable black fall guy. In the end, a bullet
dispatched Laurent Kabila on 16 January 2001, exactly 40 years after the
assassination of Patrice Lumumba (17 January 1961).
Anyone who dismisses the organized and intentional RPF/A and
UPDF military campaign against millions of Hutu people—massacred and
chased from the Uganda border to Kigali, into to eastern Congo, and finally
attacked in refugee camps and butchered all the way across Zaire—is a
genocide denier. (Of course, the UPDF-RPF/A alliance also summarily executed
and massacred Rwandan Tutsis and indigenous Twa, and Congolese people.)
Similarly, anyone who dismisses the organized persecution and atrocities
against the Acholi people in northern Uganda—maintained by the Museveni
government and the UPDF occupation—is a genocide denier.
The criminality of the Kagame
regime is whitewashed by the massive public relations campaigns involving
Kagames special advisor/sponsors: former Ambassador Andrew Young and former
British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Youngs Goodworks International also backs
the Museveni regime. Buffing
the shiny image of the government of Congos President Joseph Kabila is Stevens
and Schriefer Group the Washington D.C. PR-firm that twice helped get George W.
Bush elected [http://www.ssg-dc.com/].
The New Yorker and CNN have consistently
manufactured the pro-RPF/A propaganda, reported by Christiane Amanpour and
Philip Gourevitch. Amanpour is married to James Rubin, Bill Clintons Assistant
Secretary of State and Madeleine Albrights right-hand man, and now economic
adviser to President-elect Barack Obama. Gourevitch—who produced the
celebrated pro-RPF/A text We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be
Killed With Our Families, is a close friend of Paul Kagame and a conduit
for State Department disinformation passed by James Rubin, who was also Chief
Spokesman for the Clinton State Department (1997-2000), and whose sister,
Elizabeth Rubin, was dating Gourevitch.
U.S. business tycoon Joe Ritchie has volunteered in Rwanda
for the past five years introducing the country to business leaders around the
world. Ritchie also runs an entrepreneurial philanthropy called Friends of
Rwanda and serves on President Paul Kagame's Advisory Council and as CEO of the
Rwanda Development Board.[14],[15][14],
[15] Like Walter Kansteiner, Joe Ritchie is a commodities and options trader
from Chicago with deep pockets and dark secrets: involved in a private attempt
to overthrow the Taliban in 2000, Joe and James Ritchie were aided by their
favorite consultant, former national security adviser Robert McFarlane, who
successfully lobbied the CIA to dispatch an Unmanned Aerospace Vehicle (UAV) to
the skies over Afghanistan.[16][16]
The Congo wars have direct links to the many long years of
war in Sudan and Uganda, and they are intertwined with the current
low-intensity warfare and the mass murder in Darfur, Uganda, Rwanda and
Burundi. If we apply the genocide label to conflicts where it surely fits, then
genocide is ongoing in Congos Orientale and Kivus provinces, and in Acholiland
in Northern Uganda.[17]
[17] But it is also occurring in Iraq, Afghanistan, Burundi, Nigeria, Ethiopia,
Botswana, Columbia, the Palestinian Territories and Malaysia, to mention a few
irrefutable cases.
These geopolitical and strategic hotspots remain mostly
blanketed by media reportage that quite literally blacks out key white
protagonists by putting a black African face on things. Another example: there
has been little reported about the perpetual warfare and human rights
atrocities in Orientale linked to tight little airstrips carved out of the
rainforest and paved with support from the Pentagon-connected United States
Agency for International Development (USAID).[18][18]
Consider Mwana Africa, a South African firm that controls the
Kilo-Moto gold fields in Zani, DRC. The Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), led
by Thomas Lubanga, occupied the Zani gold fields in 2002 and stirred up ethnic
animosities that led to massive suffering and depopulation. However, according
to Congolese locals, it was the white missionaries from the Africa Inland
Mission (www.aimint.org/usa/where_we_work/) that deeply divided local ethnic
groups. French tycoons Jacques and Alvaro Hachuel own Mwana Africa. Mwana
Africas European director, Etienne Denis, began his long career of
impoverishing the Congo at Umicore, formerly the Belgian mining giant Union
Miniere, in 1974. The Mwana Africa airstrip at Zani, and nearby roads, were
built with USAID backing, and the gold is flown out to Tanzania—one of
the most underappreciated criminal players funneling weapons to Uganda and
Congo—or sometimes shipped out by road through Uganda.[19][19]
Mwana Africa is also involved in Congos bloody MIBA diamond concessions in
Mbuji Mayi and the cobalt/copper concessions in Katanga.[20]
[20]
Similarly, almost nothing in context has been reported of
the white mercenaries and their petroleum operations on the Uganda border with
Orientale.[21][21] Like
the ongoing covert war in Darfur, where the backers of the mysterious rebel
groups are never exposed, the militias operating in Congo are proxy armies that
serve the interests of external power blocks at the expense of their
competitors.
Most reporting from the Kivus zooms in on sexual violence
and the Western media always blames the victims—Congolese soldiers caught
in the maelstrom of international proxy warfare and organized crime—but
we hear nothing about U.S. or Canadian or Australian mining companies—and
for those rare times that we do the reportage de-links the mining from the mass
murder.[22][22]
More often, the media turns the story upside down, claiming that responsible Western mining executives are waiting in the wings
for security to improve so they can provide jobs and accountability and
sustainable development for the Congolese people. Nothing could be further
from the truth.
A recent front-page news feature, Congos Riches, Looted by
Renegade Troops, about the Bisie tin mine in North Kivu, offers the perfect
example. On paper, the exploration rights to this mine belong to a consortium
of British and South African investors who say they will turn this perilous and
exploitative operation into a safe, modern beacon of prosperity for Congo,
wrote Jeffrey Gettleman for the New York Times. But in practice, the
consortium's workers cannot even set foot on the mountain. Like a mafia,
Colonel Matumo and his men extort, tax and appropriate at will, draining this
vast operation, worth as much as $80 million a year.[23][23]
And thus do the valiant white knights of the New York
Times shine their spotlight on plunder and extortion in Congo. Alas, it is
a selective shining, an expedient humanitarian concern, and an arrogant moral
high ground. Indeed, it is just another shade of the black and white race
politics behind the politicization of the International Criminal Court.
THE BLACK AFRICAN FALL GUYS
In June of 2008 the ICC charged two black African rebel
leaders, Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, with six counts of war
crimes (willful killing; inhuman treatment or cruel treatment; using children
under the age of fifteen years to participate actively in hostilities; sexual
slavery; intentionally directing attacks against civilians; and pillaging) and
three counts of crimes against humanity (murder, inhumane acts and sexual
slavery).
ICC prosecutors say that Chui and his commander
Katanga—known as Simba—led a militia called the Front for Patriotic
Resistance of Ituri (FPRI); Chui was also a commander in another militia, the
National Integrationist Front (FNI). The FPRI was fighting against the Union of
Congolese Patriots (UPC); another militia in Congo backed by outsiders, in
particular, some faction from the U.S.
UPC commander Thomas Lubanga—another black
man—was the first person detained at the ICCs Scheveningen prison at The
Hague. Charles Taylor, former warlord and president from Liberia was the
second. Germaine Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui were next to be chosen for
this auspicious club. Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba is the last of five
detainees now held at the ICC. Bemba was the leader of the Congolese rebel
army, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), but he is charged with
crimes in the Central African Republic.[24][24]
These five men all have more in common than the charges
against them. They are all black men, once embraced by the system and empowered
as local or national leaders, and they are now the black stooges who fell from
grace to become, in the language of anthropologist and scholar Dr. Enoch Page,
unembraceable.[25][25]
The unembraceable status, applied to Africa, is reserved
for black males, for dictators and warlords, rapists and killers, for dirty
Arabs like Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan, and for former Marxist
guerillas, like Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe. Always they are people of
color: they are the O.J. Simpsons and Michael Jacksons of Africa, formerly
embraced black males now ruthlessly persecuted by the Western
establishment—primarily through racial surveillance and targeting in the
mass media. Such treatment is rarely applied to white males, anywhere.
Someone has to be held responsible for the mass murder at
Bogoro, but who paid the 29 year-old warlord Germaine Katanga? Why should he
be the only one prosecuted? Who provided the jeeps for the warlord Mathieu
Chui? Where did warlord Thomas Lubanga get the satellite phone to coordinate
his private militia? How did Charles Taylor go from Harvard University to money
laundering in Liberia to a Massachusetts prison—which he escaped
from—and then on to become first the President and later warlord of
Liberia?
How does Moto Gold Mining Company extract gold from a war
zone? And how do the shiny black leather belts and pressed camouflage fatigues
and crisp felt berets and rocket-propelled grenades find their way to Laurent
Nundas rebel army now fighting in the North and South Kivu provinces of
Congo?
Aware of their vulnerability as black African fall
guys—and soon after the ICC arrest of Jean-Pierre Bemba—the top brass
of the Ugandan Peoples Defense Forces curtailed their international travel
plans and convened a special meeting at Ugandas Bombo army headquarters near
Kampala, in June 2008, to discuss fears of ICC warrants being issued against
them.
Of course, the U.S. Government and its business partners
dictate the operations of the ICC. While considering soldiers of the United
States and its allies to be above international humanitarian law and protected
from the jurisdiction of the ICC, the Pentagon has simultaneously directed the
formation, operations and legal precedents of the ICC through the involvement
of members of the U.S. militarys Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps, the legal
arm of the Pentagon.[26][26]
UGANDA ARMING MILITIAS YET AGAIN
Congolese troops and militias connected to Ugandan president
Yoweri Museveni and wife Janet and their military collaborators operate
extortion and racketeering networks that are plundering Congo. While former
militias responsible for plunder have ostensibly been disbanded, new military
networks have replaced them again and again.
The Congolese military [FARDC] works with Ugandans,
reported Christian Lukusha, an expert with Justice Plus, a Congolese human
rights NGO based in Bunia, including Salim Saleh, Musevenis half-brother. And
they ship timber and minerals across the border at both Aru and Mahagi. Its
completely clandestine.[27][27]
According to the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo
(MONUC), fighting in Orientale in September 2008 drove over 90,000 additional IDPs from their homes and lands. Fighting continued
into October and November, and militias new and old are today floating between
Uganda, South Sudan and DRC, recruiting and conscripting soldiers, including
children, and training and indoctrinating them in the ideology of their
mysterious leaders.
The FPJC—Front Congolaise Pour la Justice au
Congo—is but the latest militia to suddenly emerge from the hills of
Orientale. On September 29, 2008, the FPJC, described as a newly formed rebel
group, attacked and pursued retreating contingents of President Joseph
Kabilas regular army, the FARDC, before raiding and looting villages. Since
mid-September the FPJC has engaged FARDC troops in firefights along the Lake
Albert border zone.
According to Congolese sources in Bunia, the FPJC is solidly
backed by Uganda and provides a second front in an alliance with Laurent
Nkundas Rwandan army, which has freely operated in the Kivu provinces for
years.
The FPJC rebels are in the bush close to the Semliki River
and the Uganda border, says Godefroid (not his real name), a Congolese
professional in Bunia who travels back and forth to Uganda by land. There is
some new recruitment of former militias along the Congo-Uganda border by Thomas
Lubangas former UPC minister Mr. Avochi, a Congolese who as been in exile in
Uganda since 2004. [28][28]
Military training camps for the new FPJC recruits are
today operating from at least four sites on the Uganda side of the border: {1}
in the Kikong-Hoima district; {2} in Kasatu (close to Djegu) in Nebbi district;
{3} in the Urusi area (close to Mahagi) of Nebbi district; and {4} in Bondo
(close to Aru and Arua) in the Uganda district.
Such trainings cannot happen without a clear agreement
and support of the upper authorities of Uganda, says Godefroid. Its all
connected to the oil under Lake Albert and the gold in Orientale.
According to this source, a senior FPJC military commander
named Sherif confirmed that Laurent Nkunda and his National Congress for the
Defense of the People (CNDP) are involved with these Ugandan bases. They are
providing CNDP military training and recruits are given the CNDP ideology.
Coincidentally—but not reported by the media—a
hornets nest of Western petroleum and mining companies, all linked to
international private military companies, local militias, and the national
armies of Uganda, Rwanda and Congo, are fighting for control of the land on
both sides of the Congos eastern border.
Salim Saleh is involved in all of this, said one Congolese
official at the border town of Aru, DRC. He is certainly responsible for war
crimes and crimes against humanity. Saleh worked with Jerome Kakwavu when he
was the big chief in Aru. Kakwavu is a FARDC general now, in Kinshasa. Salim
worked all the different groups, trading arms, playing them off one against the
other.[29][29]
Petroleum companies that have recently emerged and now
laying claim to DRC or Ugandan concessions on Lake Albert include: Tower
Resources; South African consortiums PetroSA and Divine Inspiration; and H Oil
& Minerals Ltd.[30][30]
Tower Resources is a U.S.-U.K. firm affiliated with U.K.-based Hardman
Resources and tied to oil exploitation in Kenya and Namibia.[31][31]
H Oil & Minerals is a
European firm operating in South Sudan, DRC and Angola; financiers include the
Deutsche Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction & Development, and the
Belgian giant Socit Generale—one of the Congolese peoples greatest
historical enemies. H Oil & Minerals is also closely linked to Marc Rich
and his Switzerland-based company Glencore International, both known for arms
trafficking in Angola and DRC through Angolagate notable Pierre Falcone. An Arizona (USA) republican, Falcone is
reportedly very tight with the Joseph Kabila government. Marc Rich is
the fugitive Swiss financier
who for years appeared on the FBIs list of most wanted criminals on
charges ranging from trading with embargoed states, tax evasion, racketeering
and arms trafficking; Marc Rich was pardoned by Bill Clinton on Clintons last day in office.[32][32]
One of the most notorious global arms traffickers involved
in Congo, Namibia and Zimbabwe is John Bredenkamp, one of Britains 50 richest
men. Walter Hailwax, the Belgian honorary consul to Namibia, is a director of
arms producer Windhoeker Maschinenfabrik, and the local director of
Bredenkamps arms brokerage company ACS International Ltd. A key agent in
Zimbabwean and DRC organized crime networks, Bredenkamp is one of the phantom
white-collar criminals behind Robert Mugabe, another black African fall guy now
targeted by the Western press, think tanks and flak organizations, to the
exclusion of other major interests. Of course, the Ndebele people suffered war
crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide under Mugabe, with the bulk of the
atrocities committed from 1981-1988. (Mugabe remained an embraceable black
agent of white power until about 1999, and today—according to the Western
economic and policy establishment, and the mass media, who no longer embrace
him—he is the devil incarnate in Zimbabwe.)
THE LORDS RESISTANCE ARMY
If you asked Western media consumers to name a
bloodthirsty guerrilla movement in Africa it is likely they would point to
warlord Joseph Kony and the Lords Resistance Army (LRA), this thanks to the
one-sided fictional media campaigns waged by National Public Radio, Time
Magazine, Washington Post, or by Christopher Hitchens—who
calls them a Christian Khmer Rouge—and Vanity Fair.[33],[34][33],
[34]
In the simplistic Western media narratives, the LRA is
always described as a fanatical Christian cult that abducts children and
forces them to commit atrocities. In the dichotomy of good versus evil the
LRA is wicked and the forces they are fighting against, President Museveni
and the UPDF, are benevolent. Indeed, evangelical Christian missionaries from
the United States have been deeply involved with the SPLA war against the
satanic forces of the LRA and the Islamic Government of Sudan.[35][35]
Spilling over from the wars in Uganda and Sudan and
operating a clandestine network of terror and extortion in the north of Congo
today, the LRA has waged a low-intensity war against the Museveni regime since
circa 1987. The LRA is a Ugandan guerrilla force backed by the government of
Sudan (Khartoum) and its allies and clandestinely supported by unnamed factions
in Congo, Europe and Washington.
For 19 years, Joseph Kony has been enslaving, torturing,
raping, and murdering Ugandan children, wrote Christopher Hitchens, many of
whom have become soldiers for his Lord's Resistance Army, going on to
torture, rape, and kill other children. Parroting the establishment line, Hitchens
has no complaints about the UPDF brutalizing children in the refugee camps of
Acholiland, and he never mentions the SPLAs conscription of thousands of child
soldiers.[36][36]
According to a high-level United Nations source working in the DRC, the LRA maintains very high-level political ties in New York and Washington D.C. through Jongomoi Okidi-Olal, a Ugandan-American representative living in the U.S. The Uganda government has purportedly asked the Bush Administration and the United Nations to arrest Okidi-Olal and hand him over to the ICC.[37][37] Other sources claim that Okidi is a fraud.
Interestingly, we find that Mwana Africa—whose vast
Kilo-Moto mining concessions sprawl across northern Orientale—is also
operating in Angola and South Africa, and at five major mining concessions in
the so-called failed state of Zimbabwe.[38][38]
The government of Angola has always backed President Joseph Kabila, is very
hostile to the Kagame gang, and currently controls Congolese territory
(Kehemba) near the Angolan border. Given the spoils to be had, it is likely
that factions from Angola or Zimbabwe also back the Lords Resistance Army in a
bid to displace Mwana Africa and other competitors from mining and petroleum
sites in northeastern Congo.[39][39]
Congolese sources claim that MONUC moved into the Watsa
region in northern Orientale only after the LRA—coming in through Garamba
National Park near the Sudan border—began threatening the operations of
AngloGold Ashanti, Mwana Africa and Moto Gold Mining.[40][40]
Additionally, Garamba National Park is rich in diamonds and gold.
While the LRA is also supported by Ugandan factions opposed
to the Museveni dictatorship, it is widely believed the LRA is a tool of the
Museveni government used to manipulate public opinion, create chaos across the
region, gain international sympathy from foreign donors and thereby procure
massive financial backing to facilitate some of the worlds most lucrative and
unappreciated AID-for-ARMS scandals. It is the perfect ruse to facilitate
permanent foreign military intervention.
The LRA also reportedly moved into the northern DRC to
displace SPLA troops that had a long history of plundering the area, shooting
wildlife and harassing villages.[41][41]
Thus while the evil LRA is always in the crosshairs of the international media,
the same media protects the saintly SPLA, no matter the justice or criminality
of either.[42][42]
The mass media and foreign policy discourses are saturated
with the writings, op-eds and policy briefs of experts that serve as
apologetic propagandists for foreign interventions and hidden agendas. Such
experts exercise stark biases in naming or delineating the killers versus
victims and for this reason they often gain exclusive access to mass media
venues. The system of information control becomes self-perpetuating in favor of
power and deception.
Experts working for the Pentagon, State Department, or
national security apparatus deploy arguments cloaked in righteous assumptions
of higher morality about human rights or humanitarian concern. For example,
Sudan experts like Dr. Eric Reeves and Alex De Waal provide a constant
barrage of one-sided propaganda to manufacture consent at home and project
American power in Sudan.[43][43]
This propaganda is unassailable by Western news consumers, because consumers
are not otherwise privy to, interested in, or compelled to discover the deeper
truths.
STARBUCKS GENOCIDE COFFEE
Like the Save Tibet campaign, the one-sided propaganda
campaign and institutionalized big-money networking of the Save Darfur
movement compelled ordinary citizens to become active participants in stopping
genocide. A similar agenda is driving the new RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO
initiative. While their ideological programs are advanced through the Western
mass media, organizations—e.g. the International Crises Group, Center for
American Progress, International Rescue Committee, ENOUGH!—work to
manufacture consent and channel popular consciousness through jingoistic
sloganeering and humanistic language that offers news consumers exactly what
they want to hear: peacekeeping, human rights, democracy, sustainable
development, participatory mapping, Africa for the African people, and never
again interventions against genocide.
Such propaganda campaigns proscribe ideas and possibilities,
and they subvert popular movements. In the end, the true grass roots
initiatives for social justice and legitimate peace have been expropriated or
channeled into serving narrow prerogatives of power. And the voices of the
voiceless are crushed, along with their bodies. The International Criminal
Court serves a similar and necessary function in manufacturing consent and
consolidating Western power. It is really about keeping up appearances: the
appearance of justice being served, human rights being protected.
On October 14, 2005, the ICC unsealed arrest warrants
against five LRA commanders, all of them black Africans: Joseph Kony, Vincent
Otti, Raska Lukwiya, Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen. In October 2008, after
the LRA committed fresh atrocities in northern DRC, the ICC renewed its calls
for the arrest of Joseph Kony.[44][44]
Ugandas representation at ICC proceedings to explore war
crimes in Congo has included at least two very high-profile lawyers from Foley
Hoag LLP, an influential Washington law firm.[45][45]
Similarly, the Pentagon seconded its lawyers from the Judge Advocate General
(JAG) Corp to the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR), where
victors justice has arbitrarily and selectively politicized genocide in favor
of the Pentagons UPDF/RPA proxy governments.[46][46]
Foley Hoag LLP is also tied to the U.S.-Uganda Friendship
Council, a consortium that involves Coke, Pfizer and Chevron-Texaco. 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 the
white-collar crime in Congo. Ugandas image is further sanitized by London PR
firm Hill & Knowlton. [47][47]
From 2000 to at least 2004,
Yoweri Museveni was co-chair of the euphemistically named Partnership to Cut
Hunger and Poverty in Africa (PCHPA). The PCHPA is a front for multinational
corporations and USAID, a Christian-based soft policy wing of the Pentagon
that uses food as a weapon under the disguise of charity. Other PCHPA chairs
include former U.S. Senator and Alston & Bird lawyer Bob Dole; Peter
Seligman, Chair and CEO of Conservation International, an NGO connected to the
Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and Jane Goodall Institute operations in DRC; George
Rupp, President of the International Rescue Committee, a flak-producing
organization involved in DRC; and Alpha Konare, the former Chair of the
Commission of the African Union (2003-2008), the governing body responsible,
for example, for oversight of the supposedly neutral African Union
peacekeeping force in Darfur, Sudan—a force that again deploys RDF forces
as proxies to secretly further U.S./U.K. interests.
One PCHPA director also represents Bread for the World,
a protectionist and nationalistic U.S.-based Christian evangelical
charity whose directors include Bob Dole and former White House cabinet
officials Mike McCurry and Leon Panetta. Along with Thomas Pickering, Susan
Rice, Gayle Smith, Donald Payne, Ed Royce, John Podesta, Anthony Lake, Bill and
Hillary Clinton and others, these are the architects of covert operations in
Africa during the Clinton years.[48][48]
Senator Tom Daschle is a Special Policy Advisor for Alston
& Bird, and an Honorary Senior fellow of the Center for American Progress
(CAP), the nationalist U.S. big money think tank behind a multitude of front
groups with hidden foreign policy agendas around Uganda, Rwanda, Congo and
Sudan.[49][49]
These include the ENOUGH! Project, the new RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO initiative, the
Genocide Intervention Network, the ONE Campaign and the International Crisis
Group (ICG)—all of which somehow involve agents like John Prendergast,
former national security insider for President Bill Clinton. It is interesting
that a lot of the same people show up tied to different organizations involved
in the grass roots campaigns to help Africa.
The ONE campaign was launched by a coalition of 11 prominent
corporate so-called charity organizations, including Bread for the World,
CARE, Save the Children and the International Rescue Committee (IRC); each of
these profit-based organizations has a euphemistic name that suggests a
humanitarian or humanistic agenda, but they actually serve corporate interests.
CARE has received funding from weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin
Corporation. In 1996 the IRC reportedly took over bases near the Hutu refugee
camps in eastern Zaire and proceeded to shell the camps with heavy weapons;
also, Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright are IRC overseers.[50][50]
ICG director Zbigniew Brzezinski is an advisor to President-elect Barack Obama.
In July 2008, Senator Tom Daschle led a special delegation
of policymakers on behalf of the ONE Campaign, described as a bipartisan
movement of over 2 million advocates for the elimination of global poverty and
disease. The ONE delegation also met with civic and government leaders, as
well as everyday citizens and entrepreneurs, to discuss Rwandas courageous
national reconciliation since the genocide in 1994 [51][51]
Daschle and Doles law firm, Alston & Bird, is a sponsor
of the corporate Millennium Promise project, and they provide pro bono legal
services, in both the U.S. and Africa, for the Millennium Villages and
Millennium Promise, both in Rwanda.[52][52]
These programs are designed to put a development face on Africa while
maintaining structural inequality, protectionist trade barriers and military superiority.
To put it simply, white people will always get the best
jobs, corporations will run and ruin the world—dumping substandard and
outdated products on confused populations; seeding the natural world with
genetically engineered crops; peddling pretty plastic junk; pushing
pharmaceutical pills; strip-mining everything—and we will all fool
ourselves and ease our consciences by pretending that we are breaking down
barriers of inequality and building a better world.
According to a very high level United Nations special
investigator sent to negotiate with LRA commanders in DRCs far north Garamba
region in February 2007, the Uganda government had then recently arrested a
U.S. military agent and five Congolese militia leaders discovered in Uganda. Originally
detained in Kampala, the U.S. military agent was nonetheless allowed to move
freely in and out of the DRC.[53][53]
The U.S. maintains Intelligence Fusion Cells in Congo and
one cell, in Kisangani, capital of Orientale, was situated in a compound, ringed
with coils of barbed wire, near the Tshopo River power station, and was run by
a ex marine named Tom who refused to discuss the cell. There were two U.S.
military and two Rwandan military working there.[54][54]
MONUCs local spokesman confirmed only that the cell revolves around a
tripartite security arrangement between Rwanda, Uganda and DRC, adding, that
one we dont touch. Its very hot.[55][55]
British soldiers stationed in Kisangani said the American fusion cell monitors
intelligence on tantalum extraction.
A few years back, the U.S. donated to Rwanda two Boeing
aircraft that were routinely used by the regimes Ministry of Defense for arms
and minerals trafficking between Rwanda, Belgium, Albania and Bulgaria.
Operated by Silverback Cargo Freighters, a Kigali-based company blocked from
European airspace since 2006, the planes were also reportedly used for CIA
operations, including the transfer of U.S. war on terror prisoners. The
Rwandan government refused to aid UN investigators seeking information about
the companys clandestine operations.[56],[57][56],
[57]
Recent massive human suffering and the escalation of
hostilities by the Nkunda army in eastern Congo have provoked a spate of
high-visibility policy statements where some powerful Western interests are
calling on the international community to strengthen the MONUC military
occupation of Congo, while other powerful interests from the new humanitarian
order are calling for the European Union to send in a rapid reaction force.[58][58]
BLESSED BE THE PEACEKEEPERS
Congolese sources everywhere confirm the widespread
involvement of MONUC soldiers in guns-for-minerals swaps and sexual violence;
sources repeatedly accuse MONUC troops of delivering weapons back to militias
to justify MONUCs one billion dollar a year occupation of Congo.[59][59]
MONUC was giving weapons to the militias, says yet one
more Congolese official. MONUC had their own ambitions. It was about gold. The
peace that was achieved in Orientale around 2006 was not achieved by MONUC; the
National Police Force from Kinshasa and the integrated FARDC brigades achieved
it. MONUC was frustrating the peace.[60][60]
In the new Congo war documentary by Dutch filmmaker Renzo
Martens, ENJOY POVERTY, we see South African mining staff of AngloGold
Ashanti confirming MONUCs pivotal role in securing the companys access to
gold in Orientale. The entire humanitarian enterprise must be properly
situated in the political economy of profit-based charity, resource control and
racial injustice.[61][61]
MONUC doesnt need more guns, it needs fewer guns (but arms
dealers keep shipping them in), and Congo doesnt need more foreign mercenary
forces posing as peacekeepers but secretly serving narrow, undisclosed
interventionist agendas on behalf of multinational corporations.
Ditto for Darfur. In an explosive new book by progressive
activists that mildly exposes some of the hypocrisies of the Save Darfur
movement we find the authors calling for greater military intervention and
sneering at others who have criticized and rejected military intervention for
being what we might call the new, old humanitarian warfare in Africa.[62][62]
The book, Scramble For Africa: Darfur—Intervention
and the USA, cites ad nauseum all
the usual propagandists that are monopolizing the English language mass media,
publications from the far right to progressive left, on Darfur. These experts
include Alex De Waal and Eric Reeves—and the International Crisis
Group—but there are plenty of citations and references to journalists who
peddle the establishment inventions and thereby black out the forces of Western
control.
By page xvii of the preface, the
authors—who have no experience anywhere near Sudan—have become the
prosecution, judges and jury of their own private international court: That
[President Omar al-Bashir] is a major war criminal is beyond doubt, they
wrote, as is the fact that he should face trial for his substantial violations
of international human rights law. The American authors, it seems, are also in
the business of overthrowing governments: Given the litany of abuses for which
[the Government of Sudan] is guilty, they wrote, there would be little to
mourn in Bashirs overthrow, and such a move—depending, of course, on the
actors involved, and its prospects for success—could be cautiously
supported. [63][63]
In other words, its fine for white people from the United
States to organize the overthrow of sovereign governments, as long as we
selectively chose the right people for the job. The authors never similarly
condemn leaders from the United States, Canada, Israel or Europe, and they
never suggest that President Bush should be overthrown, or that Donald
Rumsfeld, or Henry Kissinger, or General Norman Schwarzkopf, or Maurice
Tempelsman, should be prosecuted for war crimes. The book makes no mention of
covert operations or private military companies operating in South Sudan or
Darfur, and while it illuminates the Bush Administrations collaboration with
the Khartoum government, it is nothing more than a cheerleading tool for the
opposing power blocks, including the massive so-called humanitarian relief
operations. Such is the racial obliviousness of the new humanitarian disorder.
But Darfurs cheerleaders and Khartoums enemies are not so
neutral as they appear.
In 1992, Darfur human rights expert Alex De Waal established
African Rights, an NGO based in London, co-directed with Rakiya Omaar. In
August 1995, African Rights published the report, Rwanda: Death, Despair and
Defiance, one of the first human rights investigations to appear after
the so-called 100 days of killing and the successful RPA/UPDF coup detat in Rwanda of 1994.
Among the early reports on the
genocide, none matches Africa[n] Rights, Rwanda, Death, Despair and Defiance (September 1994) for the clinical description of the
atrocities inflicted upon Tutsi victims, wrote renowned Africa scholar Ren
Lemarchand, ranging from political murders to collective massacres in
churches, schools and stadiums, and the daily manhunts conducted on the hills.
Significant as it is to our understanding of the sheer savagery that has
accompanied the carnage, the African Rights report is utterly silent on the
grisly crimes and torture inflicted by Tutsi soldiers on innocent Hutu
civilians, some of which are by now well documented (Nduwayo, 2002: 9-16;
Amnesty International, 1994; Des Forges, 1999; Reyntjens and De Souter, 1994).
[64][64]
Lemarchand makes the usual error of accepting the clinical
description of the atrocities inflicted on Tutsis at face value. How does he
know they are all Tutsis and only Tutsis? Because African Rights says they are?
Where does he get his information about daily manhunts conducted on the
hills? Why would Lemarchand so quickly trust the claims of a report that he
simultaneously castigates for its (authors) extreme and obvious biases?
This woman of Somali origin is an RPF agent, says
Jean-Marie Higiro, about African Rights co-director Rakiya Omaar. Higiro was
Director of the Rwandan Information Office (ORINFOR). She has her office in
Kigali. In 1994 she was at Mulindi, the headquarters of the RPF. As the RPF
conquered territories from the Rwandan Government Forces, she collected
information fed to her by the RPF. [65][65]
An intensive back and forth activity between this so-called
British human rights organization, African Rights, and the intelligence
services of the Presidents office and the military, has been observed, wrote
Paul Rusesabagina. Her investigators are very close to the [RPF/RDF] military
intelligence apparatus, and the modus operandi of both appears to be similar. [66][66]
The African Rights report was one of the first to
manufacture and promulgate the false (one-sided) mythology of genocide in
Rwanda. It says nothing about RPF/A massacres or foreign military involvement
and peddles the now clichd and disingenuous stereotypes about victims and
killers. What does the African Rights report tell us about the veracity of Alex
De Waals human rights reports and political analyses coming out of Darfur? Further,
Alex De Waals ties to U.S. intelligence include his involvement with Harvard
University and the Council on Foreign Relations: De Waal was a member of a CFR
task force focused on defining a new military and intelligence engagement with
Africa that is cloaked in humanitarian rhetoric.[67][67]
We further witness the hypocrisy and international scandal
of having three battalions of Pentagon trained Rwandan Defense Force (RDF)
peacekeepers operating in Darfur while the RDF is openly backing Laurent
Nkundas occupation proxy force in Congo. Similarly, the UPDF—having
received fresh military training by U.S. covert forces in Uganda—has been
sent to Somalia. This is not peacekeeping, it is crazy making.
THE KANSTEINER CONNECTION
A few well-placed arrests—beginning in Washington,
Frankfurt, London, New York or Brussels—would redress the problem of
impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity everywhere.
The Moto Gold Project is located in the Kilo Moto goldfields
in the north east of the DRC, some 150 kilometers west of the Ugandan border
town of Arua. Kilo Moto was President Joseph Mobutus private mine, but the
project, at various stages, involved powerful Western interlocutors: Belgians
Yves Le Norvan and the Damseau family; Roger Lemaire, a Houston (TX) insider;
and an Israeli military agent identified as David Agnon.[68][68]
Kilo Motos gold, then as now, usually exited Congo (Zaire) through remote
airstrips.[69][69]
The present Moto Gold Mining lease—a massive land
grab corruptly obtained—covers an area of approximately 1,841 square
kilometers and involves sites at Durba, Watsa and Doko. Moto Golds partners in
Orientale include Siemens and Ken Overseas. Siemens director Tiego Moseneke is
also a director of PetroSA, a new South African oil minor poaching DRC oil
concessions on Lake Albert.[70][70]
Ken Overseas Company is involved in the Minire de Bakwanga (MIBA) diamond
mines in Congos Mbuji-Mayi province. In their reports on war and plunder in
DRC, the United Nations Panel of Experts named Ken Overseas in a MIBA mining
consortium linked to Belgian tycoon Philippe de Moerloose and Israeli mining
magnate Dan Gertler; both men have been flagged for arms trafficking.[71][71]
Walter Kansteiner III is one of the shadiest architects of
Congos troubles. The son of a coltan trader in Chicago, Kansteiner was
Assistant Secretary of State for Africa under G.W. Bush and former National
Security insider and member of the Department of Defense Task Force on
Strategic Minerals under Bill Clinton. Kansteiners speech at The Forum for
International Policy in October of 1996 advocated partitioning the Congo
(Zaire) into smaller states based on ethnic lineage; Laurent Kabila was
marching across Zaire at the time. [72][72]
The balkanization of Congo appears to be a major objective
behind the current organized chaos in the Great Lakes region. [73][73]
Further, it is obvious that conflicts from within the U.S.—between the
Department of State, Pentagon and intelligence agencies—are translating
to regional warfare on the ground in, especially, Sudan, Uganda, and Congo.
Kansteiner is a trustee of the Africa Wildlife
Foundation—another profit-based conservation corporation tied to
Conservation International, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and the Jane Goodall
Institute—entities whose front of gorilla and chimpanzee protection hides
a deeper agenda.[74][74] It is
not surprising to find that one of the AWFs premier sponsors is Barrick Gold.
Kansteiner is also linked to Richard Leakeys paramilitary front organization
Wildlife Direct, and to the Africa Conservation Fund, a shady Washington D.C.
entity.[75][75]
Kansteiner is a director of the precious metal firm Titanium
Resources Group, a company deeply tied to Sierra Rutile Limited, a firm pivotal
to the bloodshed in Sierra Leone. [76][76]
Sierra Rutile Ltd. director Sir Sam Jonah reportedly helped finance Rwandan RCD
rebel groups in DRC while he was a CEO of Ashanti Goldfields; Jonah is also a
director for Moto Gold.[77][77]
Sierra Rutile is owned by Max and Jean-Raymond Boulle and Robert Friedland,
Friends of Bill Clinton who are linked to clandestine networks of offshore
holdings and front companies involved in weapons trafficking, money laundering
and human rights atrocities from Burma to the Congos to Mongolia.[78][78]
On April 28, 2008, the ICC
issued an international arrest warrant for militia commander Bosco Ntaganda,
former commander of the Forces Patriotiques pour la Libration du Congo (FPLC),
a militia that operated in the oil and gold areas of Orientale. Bosco is
currently the Chief of Staff of Laurent Nkundas CNDP army in North Kivu.
On July 14, 2008, the prosecutor of the ICC applied for an
arrest warrant for Sudanese President, Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, accused of
crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur. Bashir is
an Arab—another person of color—and the ICC has deeply politicized
the Darfur conflict in keeping with the imperialist smokescreen of the Save
Darfur movement.
There have been no ICC indictments against a single white
man who could be proven to be equally culpable in war crimes, crimes against
humanity, or genocide, though the list of possibilities—as indicated
herein—is very, very long.
Its name notwithstanding, the ICC is rapidly turning into a
Western court to try African crimes against humanity, writes Mahmood Mamdani.
It has targeted governments that are U.S. adversaries and ignored actions the
United States doesn't oppose, like those of Uganda and Rwanda in eastern Congo,
effectively conferring impunity on them.[79][79]
The writing is on the wall, and we can anticipate the
eventual arrest of Ugandan military
commanders, including Laurent Nkunda, James Kazini, James Kabarebe, Salim Saleh
and Paul Kagame. Such arrests arent likely to involve legitimate judicial
proceedings, and it wont merely because these people deserve to be arrested,
which they do, and they probably wont be arrested before a few more million
people are slaughtered in Central Africa.
The arrests will come because these are the notoriously
visible people of color used to make invisible—quite literally black
out—the white war criminals and covert operators wrecking havoc in Africa
and elsewhere around the world. They are the embraceable black Africans, and
the future fall guys, and Africas leaders should take note. And so should Barack Obama.
Even more critical is the need for the Western news
consuming public to recognize the face of propaganda and the nature of change
and what it means to people of color everywhere. Thus it is critical to note
the recent shift in media coverage that accompanies the imminent shift in the
post-election balance of U.S. power. General Laurent Nkunda has been deeply
involved in Congo for years and the Kagame military machine has been shipping
weapons and officers directly to Congo; these Rwanda Defense Force (RDF)
officers infiltrate the country and direct the rebel operations, and the CNDP
has served as a lever of power used against the Kabila government. Reported
herein—and nowhere else—is the ongoing secret military involvement
of Yoweri Museveni and the Ugandan crime networks.
Only recently, as power shifts from the G.W. Bush power
elite to the incoming Obama Administration—being packed with Clintonite
friends and officials, and by Democratic Party financiers like diamond kingpin
Maurice Tempelsman—has Nkunda or Rwanda been subject to any kind of
harsh criticism. The New York
Times article of December 3, 2008, is the perfect example of the news
media serving hidden agendas. In Rwanda Stirs Deadly Brew of Troubles in
Congo, the New York Times peddles the standard narrative about
genocide in Rwanda in 1994.
Suddenly, writes Jeffrey Gettleman, one of the NYTs
chief Congo propagandists of late, there is a secret Rwandan brotherhood and
Rwandan government officials are involved in the bloodletting and plunder in
Congo.[80][80]
Such exposs appear only because power factions—in this case a
right-wing Republican faction allied with the Bush administration—are
exerting leverage through their mouthpiece, the New York Times, and thus
mildly exposing the obvious links of the former Clinton administration—a
competing power faction, more heavily comprised of right-wing
Democrats—to war and covert operations in Congo. There is a similar
political economy of intervention at work vis--vis Darfur, Sudan.
Suddenly it is beneficial to name a few names—names
like Modeste Makabuza Ngoga—names that have been known and named before.[81][81]
These New York Times articles are nothing more than expedience, tricks
in a bag of tricks, as power jockeys for its positions, and for massive private
profit, as we approach the zero hour and the twilight of savior Barack Obamas
coming, bringing change to America, and the same old, new, humanitarian
warfare to Africa. [
NOTES:
[1] There are
exceptions to the rule, including the extensive publications by this author and
those by Africa researcher David Barouski. See, e.g., David Barouski, Mining
in the Ituri Province of the Congo-A Contemporary Profile, Z-Net, April
15, 2008; and David Barouski, Laurent Nkundabatware, His Rwandan Allies, and
the ex-ANC Mutiny: Chronic Barriers to Lasting Peace in the Democratic Republic
of Congo, February 13, 2007.
[2] Wayne Madsen, Genocide
and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellon Books, 1999.
[3] Investigations into
the 1994 events in Rwanda and documents presented at the International Criminal
tribunal for Rwanda reveal a huge body of evidence supporting what soon become
obvious conclusions.
[4] keith harmon snow
and David Barouski, Behind the Numbers: Untold Suffering in Congo, Z
Magazine, March 1, 2006; and Human Rights Watch, The Curse of Gold,
June 1, 2005.
[5] See: keith harmon
snow, Gertlers Bling Bang Torah Gang, Dissident Voice, February 9,
2008.
[6] Private
investigations, North Kivu, DRC, 2005-2007, and private communications, 2008.
[7] Private
communications, July through November 2008.
[8] See: Wayne Madsen, Genocide
and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellon Books, 1999; and keith
harmon snow, Darfurism, Uganda, and U.S. War in Africa: The Spectre of
Continental Genocide, Dissident Voice, November 24, 2007; private
interviews, eyewitnesses working in western Uganda at the time, October 2007.
[9] The Acholi
people—non-combatant men, but mostly women and children—have suffered
decades of genocidal treatment by UPDF soldiers deployed by Yoweri Museveni,
president in Uganda, and top military commanders Gen. James Kazini, Gen. Salim
Saleh, Gen. Kahinda Otafiir, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, Lt. Gen. Katumba Wamala,
Maj. Gen. Jim Owoyesigire, and Brig. Gen. Robert Rusoke.
[10] Private interview,
eyewitness working in western Uganda at the time, October 2007; see also Wayne
Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellon
Books, 1999.
[11] Howard French, A
Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, Vintage, April
2005.
[12] Mahmood Mamdani, Understanding
the Crisis in Kivu: Report of the CODESRIA Mission to the Democratic Republic
of Congo September, 1997, Centre for African Studies University of Cape
Town, November 20, 1998, http://hrp.bard.edu/resource_pdfs/mamdani.kivu.pdf .
[13] ZAIRE: Peace
Possible? Interview with Bill Richardson, PBS Online News Hour, May 9, 1997, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/africa/may97/zaire_5-9.html
.
[14] Friends of Rwanda
advisory board: http://www.friendsofrwanda.com/foractivity/
.
[15] A Brief Profile
of Joe Ritchie, The New Times, November 26, 2008, http://www.newtimes.co.rw/index.php?issue=13707&article=10610
.
[16] Marc Kaufman and
Robert E. Pierre, Rich Brothers Mission to Save Afghanistan Stirs Suspicions,
Washington Post News Service, International herald Tribune On-Line,
November 9, 2001, http://www.uni-muenster.de/PeaCon/global-texte/g-notes/IHT%20RichBrothersMission-IHT.htm
.
[17] Quotes are used
because the genocide label and realities on the ground are highly contested.
[18] Moto Gold Mines
web site: http://www.motogoldmines.com/board_of_directors.9.html
[19] Private
interviews, Bunia, Kisangani and Zani, DRC, March 26-28, 2007; and Mwana Africa
presentation, 30th Minesite Mining Forum March 28, 2006: http://www.mwanaafrica.com/ir/files/presentations/2006/minesite_mar06.pdf
.
[20] Mwana Africa
presentation, 30th Minesite Mining Forum March 28, 2006: http://www.mwanaafrica.com/ir/files/presentations/2006/minesite_mar06.pdf
.
[21] See: keith harmon
snow, Northern Uganda: Hidden War, Massive Suffering: Another White Peoples War
for Oil, Global Research, May 26, 2007.
[22] See: keith harmon
snow, Three Cheers for Eve Ensler? Propaganda, White Collar Crime and Sexual
Atrocities in Eastern Congo, Z-Net, October 24, 2007.
[23] Jeffrey Gettleman,
Congos Riches, looted by renegade Troops, New York Times, November
18, 2008, p. 1, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/world/africa/16congo.html.
[24] See: keith harmon
snow, A Peoples History of Congos Jean-Pierre Bemba, Toward Freedom,
September 18, 2007.
[25] See: Dr. Enoch
(Helan) Page, Black Male Imagery and Media Containment of African American
Men, American Anthropologist, March 1997, Vol. 99, No. 1, pp. 99-111.
[26] See e.g., William
K. Lietzau, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/May2003/d20030522liet.pdf.
[27] Interview with
human rights investigator, Bunia, DRC, March 23, 2007.
[28] Private
communications, Orientale, DRC, November
[29] Private interview,
Aru official, Aru, DRC, March 26, 2007.
[30] See: An Industry
Rebirth? Oil in the DRC, Consultancy Africa Intelligence; and Tower
Resources: <http://www.towerresources.co.uk/corporate.html>;
H Oil and Minerals Ltd. web site: www.hoilminerals.com .
[31] Tower Resources
web site: http://www.towerresources.co.uk/operations.html.
[32] Ken Silverstein, The Arms Dealer
Next Door: International billionaire, French prisoner, Angolan weapons broker,
Arizona Republican. Who is Pierre Falcone? In These Times, December 22,
2001.
[33] Christopher
Hitchens, Childhoods End, Vanity Fair, January 20076, http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/01/hitchens200601.
[34] After querying Vanity
Fair editors with a story idea about war in Africa, the editors responded
that Christopher Hitchens is their sole source correspondent on Africa.
[35] See: Richard
Bartholomew, American Pastor Helps SPLA Battle LRA in Sudan, January 25,
2005, http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2006/01/25/american-pastor-helps-spla-battle-lra-in-sudan/; and keith harmon snow, Oil in Darfur? Special Ops
in Somalia? Global Research, February 7, 2007, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20SN20070207&articleId=4717.
[36] Jo Becker,
Children as Weapons of War, Human Rights Watch World Report 2004, Human
Rights Watch, January 2004, http://www.hrw.org/legacy/wr2k4/index.htm.
[37] Interviews with UN
Official in eastern DRC, August 2006 and February 2007. See also: "U.S.
asked to arrest Ugandan-American rebel Jongomoi Okidi-Olal—The real brain
behind LRA leadership?" Xinhua, April 9, 2006, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-04/09/content_4402556.htm ..
[38] Mwana Africa
presentation, 30th Minesite Mining Forum March 28, 2006: http://www.mwanaafrica.com/ir/files/presentations/2006/minesite_mar06.pdf.
[39] See: Charles
Onyango Obbo, Soon the Guns of Goma might be heard in Kampala, Monitor
On-Line, November 19, 2008, http://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/11dd77ace1d4c3d0.
[40] Private
interviews, Bunia and Kisangani, February and March 2007.
[41] The international
rhino conservation programs at Garamba are reportedly somehow tied to the
political interests of the opposition party in Zimbabwe; private interview, UN
investigator, Kisangani, DRC 2007.
[42] See: keith harmon
snow, Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia? Global Research, February
7, 2007, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20SN20070207&articleId=4717.
[43] See: keith harmon
snow, Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia? Global Research, February
7, 2007, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20SN20070207&articleId=4717.
[44] ICC calls for
renewed efforts to arrest Joseph Kony, RNW International Justice Desk,
October 6, 2008, <http://www.rnw.nl/internationaljustice/icc/Uganda/081006-uganda-kony>.
[45] Paul S. Reichler
and Lawrence H. Martin. See: Public sitting held on Monday 18 April 2005, at
10 a.m., at the Peace Palace, President Shi presiding, in the case concerning
Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the
Congo v. Uganda), International Court of Justice, CR 2005/7, 2005
[46] Ralph G. Kershaw,
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda: International Justice According to Washington, Covert
Action Quarterly, No. 74, Fall 2002.
[47] Jeevan Vasagar,
Uganda hires PR agency to buff up its image, The Guardian,
May 21, 2005.
[48] See: Wayne Madsen,
Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellon Press, 1999.
[49] http://www.americanprogress.org/aboutus/staff/DaschleSenatorTom.html.
[50] Private interview
with UN special investigator XXX XXX, Kisangani, DRC, 2006; investigations in
Goma and Bukavu, DRC, 2005-2007.
[51] See: Senator Tom
Daschle Leads Delegation in Rwanda, Alston & Bird web site, July 22, 2008,
http://www.alston.com/firm/News/Detail.aspx?news=2612.
[52] Alston & Bird
web site: http://www.alston.com/firm/News/Detail.aspx?news=2612.
[53] Private interview
with UN special investigator XXX XXX, Kisangani, DRC, 2006.
[54] Investigations of
American Intelligence Fusion Cell, Kisangani, DRC, July 31, 2006.
[55] Investigations and
interviews in Kisangani, DRC, 2006.
[56] Private interview
with UN special investigator XXX XXX, Kisangani, DRC 2007.
[57] See: Silverback
Cargo Freighters Rwanda, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, http://www.sipri.org/contents/armstrad/Air_Cargo_Operators/Silverback_Cargo_Freighters.html
and Silverback Cargo Freighters web site: http://www.silverbackcargo.com/inside.php?photo.
[58] Marianna Brungs,
EU: Coalition of Leaders Calls for EU Force in Congo, Crisis Watch Press
Release, Human Rights Watch, London, November 27, 2008.
[59] Private
interviews, Bunia, DRC, February and March 2007.
[60] Private
interviews, Bunia, Aru and Zani, February 2007.
[61] Renzo Martens, Enjoy
Poverty, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, http://idfa.nl/en/festival/schedule/film.aspx?id=781e5666-0d52-43d5-ba66-67c6815ce198.
[62] See: keith harmon
snow, Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia? The New, Old, Humanitarian
Warfare in Africa, Global Research, February 7, 2007, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20SN20070207&articleId=4717.
[63] Kevin Funk and
Steven Fake, The Scramble for Africa: Darfur—Intervention and the USA,
Black Rose Books, 2008.
[64] Ren Lemarchand,
Scholarly Review: Rwanda: The State of Research, http://www.massviolence.org/Rwanda-The-State-of-Research?artpage=4.
[65] Private
communication, Jean-Marie Higiro, October 17, 2008.
[66] Paul Rusesabagina,
Rusesabagina responds to Rwanda government book on 'Hotel Rwanda', EUX-TV
(Brussels), April 12, 2008, http://eux.tv/article.aspx?articleId=20114.
[67] More Than
Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa, Council on
Foreign Relations, Task Force Report Number 56, January 2006, http://www.cfr.org/publication/9302/#author.
[68] Private interview,
keith harmon snow with OKIMO Company officials, Bunia, March 24, 2007.
[69] Private interview,
keith harmon snow with OKIMO Company officials, Bunia, March 24, 2007.
[70] Legal Brief
Today, July 27, 2006, http://www.legalbrief.co.za/article.php?story=2006072709081497;
and Local Companies in Scramble for DRC Oil, Johannesburg Sunday Times,
August 18, 2008; and H Oil and Minerals Ltd. web site: www.hoilminerals.com/index.php/news/entry/local_companies_in_scramble_for_drc_oil/.
[71] The others
included the Groupe Van De Ghinste, Demimpex, Chanic and OSS; both OSS and
Demimpex are De Moerloose companies. See: Report of the United Nations Panel
of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Also see: keith harmon snow, Gertlers Bling Bang Torah Gang, Dissident
Voice, February 9, 2008; and keith harmon snow, Congos President Joseph
Kabila: Dynasty or Travesty? Toward Freedom, November 13, 2007.
[72] Genocide and
Covert Operations In Africa, 1993-1999, United States One Hundred Seventh
Congress, Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, First
Session, 17 May 2001, comp. Centre for Research on Globalization: <http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAD111A.html
>.
[73] The U.S.
(Under)mining Job of Africa : < http://cryptome.org/us-africa.wm.htm
>.
[74] See the KING KONG
series published by keith harmon snow and Georgianne Nienaber, Op-Ed News, 2007
and 2008.
[75] Africa Wildlife
Foundation: http://www.awf.org/section/about/trustees.
[76] Titanium Resources
Group, http://titaniumresources.com/about-us/management-team.
[77] See Wayne Madsen, Genocide
and Covert Operations In Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Books, 1999.
[78] See Wayne Madsen, Genocide
and Covert Operations In Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Books, 1999.
[79] Mahmood Mamdani,
The New Humanitarian Order, The Nation, September 29, 2008.
[80] Jeffrey Gettleman, Rwanda Stirs Deadly Brew
of Troubles in Congo, New York Times, December 3, 2008; and Jerome
Delay, Many of the most powerful people in Congo have close ties to Rwandas
elite in Kigali, New York Times, December 3, 2008.
[81] See: Roxanne
Stasyszyn, A World Playground: Congolese People Sacrificed for International
Games and Profits, Dissident Voice, and Global Research,
November 8, 2008.