DYNASTY OR TRAVESTY?
keith harmon snow
Who
is the new president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Joseph Kabila, and
how did he rise to power in the bloody heart of darkness? Is he really the son
of Laurent Desire Kabila? Why was Laurent Kabila assassinated and by whom? What
is Joseph Kabilas relationship to the great white fathers in Belgium who once
ruled this colony? Are Joseph Kabilas days numbered?
In March 2007 the military and security forces backing newly
elected President Joseph Kabila in the Democratic Republic of Congo fought it
out with the supporters of Kabilas strongest challenger, the baby-faced
Jean-Pierre Bemba, a spoiled brat with a rebel army, who was seeking to
overthrow Kabila in a coup detat.[1]
KABILA OR KANAMBE?
Most people believe his name is
neither Joseph nor Kabila. Britains Telegraph newspaper, and others,
reported that Joseph Kabila was a taxi driver in Tanzania, but others say he
came from Rwanda, and Kabilas supporters says he was born in Congo. According
to some reliable sources, the real name of Joseph Kabila is Hippolyte Kanambe.
Asked where Joseph Kabila is from, Janet Kabila refused to answer.[2]
Jean-Pierre Bemba exploited the
question of Joseph Kabilas origins under the slogan Bemba: One Hundred
Percent Congolese. Bemba made speeches of nationalistic self-righteousness,
and whipped up riots in Kinshasa by his supporters. Many Congolese people today
say that Joseph Kabilas origins are unimportant: what matters, they say, is
good leadership.
Laurent Desire Kabila, the
supposed father of now President Joseph Kabila, was a thorn in the side of
President Mobutu during the early decades of Mobutus reign. In 1996, Laurent
Kabila was plucked out of a bar in Dar es Salaam, where he was owner/manager,
and installed as the Congolese figurehead of the Alliance of Democratic Forces
for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL). Clinton administration officials like
Madeleine Albright, Susan Rice, Prudence Bushnell, and Anthony Lake backed
Laurent Kabilas selection and the war that ensued. [3]
Laurent Kabila provided the
Western press the perfect face of rebellion, and they repeatedly invoked the
ghost of Che Guevara, who briefly fought alongside Kabila, the leftist veteran
guerrilla, in the 1960s. Kabila attended the University of Dar es Salaam
alongside Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, John Garang of the Sudan Peoples
Liberation Army, and Wamba dia Wamba, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) rebel leader from Kisangani, DRC.
The ADFL insurgency began in
1996 with Rwandan President Paul Kagame shelling refugee camps in eastern Zaire
in violation of international humanitarian and human rights statutes. The
Rwandans (RPA/F) and Ugandans (UPDF) swept across Zaire behind the mask of a
liberation struggle. Hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and
children—mostly Hutu refugees fleeing the U.S.-backed RPA/F coup
detat in Rwanda—were hunted down and
massacred, continuing the RPA/F genocidal campaign against Hutus begun in 1990.[4]
The ADFL used kidogo—children armed by RPA/F and UPDF and put at the
front to draw fire—and the people of Congo suffered unspeakable
atrocities and depredations.
Laurent Kabila was reportedly
held behind the frontlines during the ADFL campaign to overthrow Zaire. The
Rwandan-backed rebel General Laurent Nkunda, who at this writing continues to
destabilize and plunder in North Kivu, was an junior RPA/F officer. Leading the
charge beside commanders Paul Kagame, James Kabarebe, and James
Kazini—and their American military advisers—was the young man who
is now president of DRC.
Joseph Kabila was a soldier for
Kagame, one newly elected Congolese deputy said in April 2007. He worked for
Rwanda and the RPA rebels. He was in the war [1996-1997] from Rwanda to
Kinshasa, from the Kivus, through Kisangani, where they killed all the Hutus,
through Equateur to Mbandaka. He was there in Mbandaka when all the Hutus were
massacred—all across Congo, he was there. He was with General Nkunda in
Kisangani too. He was a friend with General Salim Saleh, Musevenis
half-brother, and with Colonel Mayombo, now a General in Uganda. [5]
Laurent Kabila rejected the
program his backers had planned. Attacks against Laurent Kabila increased in
direct proportion to Kabilas resistance to the directives of the great white
fathers and their agents. At first Kabilas resistance translated to threats
against the Kabila government that appeared couched in the language of human
rights. The massacres committed by the RPF/A and UPDF forces against the
populace as they marched across Zaire suddenly became the problem of the
ADFL—Kabilas liberation army—as if the RPF/A and UPDF were never
involved. Special Rapporteurs were duly
dispatched to Zaire to investigate the skeletons in Kabilas war chest. The
massacres of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees forced to flee in
front of the RPA/UPDF killing machine suddenly became worthy news, and the word
genocide flickered for a moment and then disappeared from sight. In the end
however, all the killing was blamed on the ADFL—dismissing the roles of
Rwanda, Uganda, and the US and Israeli military officials advising them and
Pentagon agencies providing logistics.[6]
While cheered and canonized for
ousting Mobutu just a year earlier (1997) Laurent Desire Kabila was soon
declared a dictator because he steered Congo on an independent course. Kabila
threw out Rwanda, Uganda, Bechtel, the World Bank and IMF, and so began the
War of Occupation. From 1998 to 2000 the Laurent Kabila government allied
with Angola, Chad, Namibia, Sudan (Khartoum), Libya and Zimbabwe; South Africa
has played both sides.
Khartoum joined the war because
the Ugandan government and the U.S. were backing John Garangs Sudan Peoples
Liberation Army in south Sudan, as they are today backing rebels in the U.S.
war for Darfur. Some 700 Ugandan rebels from the Lords Resistance Army (LRA)
fought for Kabila. The Lords Resistance Army is a Ugandan rebel faction backed
by Khartoum that Museveni for 20 years has courted to justify increasing
AID-for-ARMS scandals (unreported) and the ongoing UPDF genocide against the
Acholi people in oil- and gold-rich northern Uganda.[7]
Laurent Desire Kabila was
assassinated on January 16, 2001, exactly 40 years less one day after the
assassination of Patrice Lumumba. It was a clear message: not only will we
kill those who do not cooperate, we can do it when and where we like.
Joseph Kabila assumed the
presidency on January 26, 2001 and remained president throughout the transition
(2002-2006).
From 1998-2007 countless mining
and logging contracts were let with no transparency or accountability. (This
after decades, even a century, of plunder by European and North American mining
corporations and their banks, accounting firms and shareholders.) Meanwhile,
war has raged on in Congo killing millions, depopulating territories, and
providing hundreds of millions in profits and market share for the Western
humanitarian business sector, a.k.a. the misery industry, and the
international landmine racket.
KING
LEOPOLDS GHOST REVISTED
There are many powerful Belgians
behind the skeletons dumped in the forests, swamps, rivers, and other mass
graves across Congo. Belgium has pillaged Congo for some 150 years. It all
began with blood rubber and ivory and King Leopolds quest for a personal
territory to rival the colonies of competing kings and princes.
In 1876, Leopold II hired New
York Post journalist Henry Morton Stanley and Stanley became Leopolds
primary agent of death in the Congo Free State. The Leopold era (1876-1908)
claimed some 10 million lives through networks of bloodletting and slavery
directly overseen by Stanley. One Belgian national (later punished) shot 122
Congolese people on a single rubber collecting expedition in 1903.
Here is how the Belgian colonial
enterprise was presented in to 12 year-old Belgian primary school children in
2006: When the Belgians arrived in the Congo, they found a population that was
victim of bloody rivalries and slave trade. Belgian civil servants,
missionaries, doctors, colonists and engineers civilized the black population
step by step. They created modern cities, roads and railroads, harbors and
airports, factories and mines, schools and hospitals. This work greatly
improved the living conditions of the indigenous people. [8]
While the people of Congo resign
themselves to believing that the page has been turned in Congolese affairs,
much of the ongoing exploitation today can be directly connected to banking,
plantations and mining interests that plundered the Belgian Congo (1908-1960)
and then the independent state—the Democratic Republic of Congo
(1960-1972) and then Zaire (1972—1997)—controlled by Joseph Mobutu
and his western business partners and backers.
Amongst the many prominent
people involved are Belgian nationals like Louis Michel, tienne Davignon,
Philippe de Moerloose and Andre Flahaut, and U.S. nationals like Henry
Kissinger, Bill Richardson and Maurice Tempelsman. The interests of the Royal
Family of Belgium are also involved. The predatory meddling and plundering of
such people is rendered invisible by the international community—press,
think-tanks, non-government organizations, foreign policy institutes and
especially by academia—e.g. anthropology, international relations,
political science, and African affairs departments.
Louis Michel is EU Commissioner
for Development and Humanitarian AID, a gatekeeper position that insures that
millions of Congolese people suffer miserably. Louis Michel has been one of
Kabilas strongest allies, and he played a pivotal roll in the 2006
electioneering of Joseph Kabilas victory. Previous to his EU posting, Michel
was a Belgian parliamentarian, minister and Vice Prime Minister, until 2004. He is
reportedly a diamond merchant exploiting the diamond rich Tshikapa region of
DRC. Michel also has ties to Congos diamonds through the Societe Miniere De
Bakwanga (MIBA),
a mainstay of Belgian neocolonialism in Congo; Michels son is reportedly
directly involved at MIBA.[9]
Immediately after the
assassination of Laurent Kabila on 16 January 2001, then Belgian Foreign
Minister Louis Michel was quick to confirm the involvement of Kabilas army
chiefs and steer attention away from the obvious coup detat: the assassination of Laurent Desire Kabila.
Belgian business tycoon Viscount
tienne Davignon is chairman of the board of directors of S.N. Brussels
Airlines, which he co-founded after the bankruptcy of Sabena, the Belgian national airline
that carried Patrice Lumumba to his own death in 1961 and shipped DRCs
plundered minerals out of Rwanda (1998-2005) in partnership with the Kagame
regime. Davignon is also a member of the board of numerous Belgian companies,
and a former director of Anglo-American Corporation, the big
Oppenheimer/DeBeers mining conglomerate operating in Congo in partnership with
G.H.W. Bush-connected Barrick Gold Corporation. A 2001 Belgian parliamentary
enquiry concluded that Davignon played an important and active role in the
assassination of Patrice Lumumba.[10]
Like Maurice Tempelsman, Davignon was deeply involved in the Western coup
detat that put Joseph Mobutu in power, and
kept him there. [11]
From 1989
to 2001, tienne
Davignon was chairman of the Belgian bank Socit Gnrale de Belgique, one of
the most lasting and perfidious enemies of the Congolese state. Hundreds of
billions of dollars of minerals were plundered by the Societe General de
Belgique through its majority-owned
subsidiary the Union Minire du Haut Katanga (UMHK)—the
Belgian Royal familys mining company that exploited Congos copper, cobalt,
tin, uranium and zinc from 1908, and later became GECAMINES, the parastatal
mining company controlled by Mobutu and his closest cronies and Western
allies. The U.S. purchased uranium from UMHKs Shinkalobwe mine and later used
it to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. GECAMINES was reportedly used by Joseph Kabilas
political party—Parti Pour la Reconstruction et le Dveloppement (PPRD)—as a vehicle for party financing. [12]
tienne Davignon was a director
of Kissinger Associates, the intelligence and defense-consulting firm set up by
Henry Kissinger, whose list of notable associates includes Clintons former UN
Ambassador Bill Richardson, who put a humanitarian face on the US invasion of
Zaire (1996-1998). Henry Kissinger is on the board of the International Rescue
Committee, a prominent relief agency in the Congo—and one of the
reasons the death toll is so high.
tienne Davignon is also a
director of Gilead Sciences, a biotechnology company whose past directors
include Donald Rumsfeld (1988- 2001). Gilead directors today include George
Shultz, a Bechtel director and former U.S. Secretary of State; Carla Hills,
International Crises Group director and NAFTA architect; John Madigan, a former
Tribune Company (mass media and news) director and current member of the
Defense Business Board of the U.S. Department of Defense; and Nicholas G.
Moore, another Bechtel director, and former CEO/Chairman of
PricewaterhouseCoopers from 1994-2004. Gilead Sciences was involved in the
Tamilflu scare.[13]
The International Crises Group
(ICG) is a flak organization with a humanitarian front that is pressing a
U.S. national security agenda. The ICG primes the international media with
white supremacist policy statements about Congo, Uganda and Sudan (Darfur) that
never address the structural violence that underpins the Western exploitation
of Africa. The ICG and International Rescue Committee are two of the main
organizers and steering entities behind the Anglo-European Congo Global Action
Coalition—self-described as a global alliance of humanitarian, human
rights, environmental, and faith-based organizations, students, members of the
Congolese Diaspora, and other grassroots movements. [14]
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) is
involved in the Lueshe niobium mine in DRCs North Kivu province, a mine
currently kept off-line—and soaked in blood—by Rwandan-backed
General Laurent Nkunda, the warlord in eastern Congo, in order to drive up
world niobium prices.
Belgian tienne Davignon is also
Special Adviser to EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel.
Belgian Philippe de Moerloose, a
member of Kinshasas elite, supplies jets, helicopters and other presidential
toys to Joseph Kabila.[15]
De Moerlooses firm Demipex—based in Brussels, Kinshasa and
Lumumbashi—deals in equipment and logistics and holds the sole Nissan
distributorship in DRC. His firm Overseas Security Services is responsible for
atrocities against desperate Congolese in MIBA held diamond concessions. MIBA
is reportedly $US 100 million in debt, with some $US 20 million owed to De
Moerloose. De Moerlooses Belgian aviation company, Demavia Airlines, partnered
with the DRC-based Hewa Bora airlines, is accused of arms shipments to DRC. De
Moerloose companies served as intermediaries shipping helicopters between
Frances Aeromechanic Corporation and Britains Sloane Helicopters Ltd. to Air
Katanga, a Congolese firm controlled by other notable Belgian nationals.
Philippe de Moerloose has
business ties to the companies connected to George Forrest, a mainstay of
exploitation in Congo since 1922; De Moerloose also operates in Rwanda and
Burundi, putting him in business relations on both sides of Congos wars. De
Moerloose vehicles sold in Rwanda and Congo are used by armed forces, and De
Moerloose (2002) confirmed that the Rwandan Ministry of Defense buys directly
from his companies.
Paul de Moerloose, a brother, married Marie-Pierre
Pairoux, of the wealthy French Pierre Pairoux family—partners of George
Forrest businesses.
Patrick de Moerloose has lived in Katangas copperbelt
zone for 30 years, and was accused of stealing coltan and copper from
Gecamines, the massive Congolese mining concern. De Moerloose companies are
believed to be involved in illegal diamond, copper and cobalt smuggling out of
DRC. Philippe De Moerloose is also implicated in selling weapons to Angola.[16]
ARMS
AND INTELLIGENCE FOR KABILA
Andre Flahaut, Belgian Minister
of Defense, provoked a row in Belgium after promising to invite President
Joseph Kabila to Brussels to receive a degree of Honorary Doctor of the Royal
Military Academy (Ecole Royale Militaire)
in Brussels. Flahaut announced the nomination of Kabila during a visit to
Kinshasa in February 2007. Some 300-500 Congolese military
elements—officers and instructors—were sent to the Belgian Royal
Military Academy for military training in 2004. France received 10 FARDC
personnel, China 20, and South Africa 200.[17]
Some 500 European Union
Community forces—EUFOR—arrived in Kinshasa in June 2006, sent to
insure that the electioneering would succeed. Notably, state-of-the-art Robocop
equipment provided to beef up Congolese security forces in support of the
electoral process is now being used against disenfranchised Congolese people in
Western-controlled logging, mining, diamond and plantation areas.
Joseph Kabila is married to
Sandrine Nguesso, the daughter of Dennis Sassou Nguesso, the President of
Congo-Brazzaville. There were reportedly only two white men who attended Joseph
Kabilas wedding: one was Israeli-American diamond magnate Dan Gertler, the new
King of the Congo, and the other was Belgian tycoon Philippe de Moerloose.[18]
France has very close ties with
Sassou Nguesso and Gabons President Omar Bongo, both of whom have supported
Jean-Pierre Bemba and his father.
It is notable that a
high-powered Angolan delegation visited Kabila in Kinshasa on March 14, 2007,
just days before the warlords deadly battle with Jean-Pierre Bemba. The
delegation included top Angolan military, police and intelligence officials.
While the agenda focused on Angolan military incursions in DRC territory,
occupying some 11 Congolese villages in diamond-rich areas, the Angolan
military support for the impending war with Bemba was certainly decided.
Congolese opposition officials affiliated with Jean-Pierre Bemba complained
about the Angolan incursions, but the Kabila government was unconcerned about
the Angolan presence on DRC soil.
UNTURNING
THE PAGE
With help from his friends
behind the scenes, Joseph Kabila outmaneuvered Jean-Pierre Bemba to win the
historic national elections of 2006, Congos first since so-called
independence in 1960. The two warlords—Kabila and Bemba—were
competing to be the new Black Face of Congo presented to the world by the great
white Anglo-European fathers.
Like academic institutions and African Studies departments
all over America and Europe, the so-called human rights and humanitarian
organizations gloss over, ignore or completely mask the realities of Western
manipulation and control. The media reports the corporate line, full of
tribalism and savagery and ebola viruses.
Many of the same families behind the European colonial
enterprise—rooted in slavery, white supremacy and terror—are behind
the warlords in Congo today. The mainstays of exploitation, like the interests of
former Belgian Barons or the Ministers of Colonies, have morphed into more
insidious corporate entities. New players have dislodged some interests, like
the Israeli-Americans dealing in blood diamonds through the Tel Aviv diamond
exchange with the support of the White House. And now China is deeply involved
in the fray, but thats another story, another page to be unturned, and a
hidden history to be excavated from the rubble of Central Africa.
It has often been stated that
Joseph Kabila—whoever he is—had no choice but to assume the post he
was pushed into as President of DRC. For Joseph Kabila to complain, balk or
resist the machinations of power in any way, people close to him say, would
mean his certain death.
Today the DRC government
security forces continue to engage in repressive tactics against both innocent
civilians and perceived enemies of the state. In October 2007 the security
services in Kinshasa arbitrarily arrested scores of boys, women and children
who today remain in detention at three security facilities known for long
histories of torture during the Mobutu regime (1965-1997).
[1] See: keith harmon snow, Congos Baby-Faced Bemba: A
Peoples History of a Brat with a Rebel Army, Toward Freedom,
September, 2007, and keith harmon snow, Behind the Scenes: Warlords Deadly
Battle in Congo, Toward Freedom, August 9, 2007.
[2] Private communication, Janet Kabila, Kinshasa, DRC,
July 2006.
[3] See: Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations
in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Press, 1999.
[4] One of the very few accounts of the counter-genocide
by RPA and UPDF forces is provided by New York Times journalist Howard
French in his book Africa: A Continent for the Taking.
[5] Private interview, Kinshasa, DRC, April 2007.
[6] See: Howard French, Africa: A Continent for the Taking, 2001.
[7] See: keith harmon snow, Northern Uganda: Hidden War,
Massive Suffering: Another White Peoples War for Oil, and Tullow, Hardman
and Heritage Oil Concessions Map, <http://www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php?catid=49>.
[8] J.-P. Lefevre, Une ancienne colonie, le Congo, in A
la conqute du temps. Cycle 10/12, Ransart, p. B9, in Guy Vanthemsche, The
Historiography of Belgian Colonialism
in
the Congo
[9] Private interview, Kinshasa, 5 April 2007.
[10] Parliamentary Committee of enquiry in charge of
determining the exact circumstances of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba and
the possible involvement of Belgian politicians, Belgium, 2001.
[11] David Gibbs, The Political Economy of Third World
Intervention: Mines, Money and U.S. Policy in the Congo Crises, University
of Chicago Press, 1991.
[12] Barry Sergeant, Nikanors Quandry, April 4, 2007,
<http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page1329?oid=84351&sn=Detail>.
[13] See: A. Kronstadt, Bird Flu: Hype, Hypothesis, and
Hypodermic, World War 4 Report, 2007, <http://www.ww4report.com/node/1899>;
and Rumsfeld's Growing Stake in Tamiflu, Fortune, Oct. 31, 2005,
<http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/31/news/newsmakers/fortune_rumsfeld/>.
[14] Join the
Congo Coalition, IRC, <http://ga3.org/campaign/Congo_Global_Action
>.
[15] Diamonds: How Crooks Still Exploit the System, Africa
Confidential, Vol. 48, No. 3, 02 February 2007; "Diamond miners killed
in DR Congo," BBC News, 7 August 2006,
<http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:z9WCcOGeL8MJ:news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5254006.stm+%22MIBA%22+%22illegal+miners%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4>.
[16] Interview
with Philippe De Moerloose, Belgian Senate Great Lakes Inquiry, 2002. The
Rwandan subsidiary of Demipex is SOGERRWA-IMC.
[17] Africa Research Bulletin, Volume 41, Number 9,
15899-15938, October 2004.
[18] Africa Confidential, 2007; see also: Barry
Sergeant, Nikanors Quandry, 04 April 2007, <http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page1329?oid=84351&sn=Detail>