International law: catching up with Washington
Reason Wafawarova ― Opinion
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:06:00 +0000
COMMENTING on international law and institutions in his book Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky said, “In systems of law that are intended to be taken seriously, coerced acquiescence is invalid. In international affairs, however, it is honoured as diplomacy.”
When one looks at the trends of international law from the formation of the United Nations after World War II, the Nuremburg Trials, Geneva Conventions, the Yugoslavia Tribunal, the Rwanda Tribunal, Sierra Leone’s Special Tribunal and even the Iraqi Tribunal that tried Saddam Hussein, there is this selective application of terms of law, as meaning, focus and direction is derived from the centre of global political power and not from the power and legitimacy of the law.
The Nuremburg trials treated crimes as criminal acts exclusively carried out by the Germans and the Japanese and not by the Allied forces. Israel has next to zero regard for Geneva Conventions each time they carry out their ritual attacks on Palestinians or on the Lebanese people and the US is always ready to veto each Security Council resolution that seeks to discipline its rogue outpost.
The Yugoslavia Tribunal was designed to deal with selected atrocities that did not incriminate NATO and all similar atrocities in places where NATO was evidently involved in carrying out war crimes were just ignored.
The Rwanda tribunal also totally ignored the war crimes of the Tutsi rebels, including the gunning down of a plane carrying a democratically elected President.
The Sierra Leone Special Court was established to bring to book Charles Taylor for supplying weapons to Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone in a brutal war that left many dead, raped, maimed and traumatized for life.
This is regardless of the fact there is no Iraq Special Tribunal to try George W. Bush for similar crimes against the civilians of Iraq. There is no Palestinian Special Tribunal set up to prosecute American leaders for supplying weapons to the murderous Israelis so they can fulfil their holy wish of obliterating Palestinians.
The Saddam Hussein trial was described by his defence lawyer as “a sham and a travesty” and he was lucky to live to express himself because many of Hussein’s defence lawyers were slaughtered on the way to his conviction. Saddam is probably the only known convict whose gallows were prepared specifically for him well before a judgment was passed.
International law has to “catch up” with the wishes of the sole super power or else that law is rendered “irrelevant”.
According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, “the international rule of law is an overarching goal of policy.”
The Academy noted that that neither international law nor the UN Charter was even mentioned in President George W. Bush’s 2002 National Security Strategy. The academy pointed out that the primacy of law over force that had been a major thread in global politics after World War II had “disappeared from the new strategy” and that the international institutions “that extend the reach of law, and seek to constrain the powerful as well as to grant the weak a voice” had “all but disappeared”.
What the Bush administration left for President Barack Obama is a message that force reigns supreme and the US will exercise that force as it sees fit. Now Obama has to deal with a strategy that has increased “the motivation of US enemies to act in reaction to growing resentment of perceived intimidation,” according to the Academy’s report.
Two of the Academy’s international affairs specialists noted that “extended confrontation, not political accommodation” was “inherently provocative”.
This observation fits perfectly well in the Zimbabwean situation of the inclusive government involving the three major political parties. The African Union, Sadc, South Africa and Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai as well as President Robert Mugabe have all appealed for political accommodation of the inclusive government and an end to the embargo that has brought the country to a near halt.
The Western community seems however to be still engaged in “extended confrontation” with New Zealand trying to convince the International Cricket Council that Zimbabwe is unsafe for its cricket players and the US, UK and Australia sending a chilling message that “no consideration for a review of the sanctions regime has been made yet”.
For Anglo-Americans, this latest stance on Zimbabwe must be viewed by many ordinary Western citizens as a violation of the traditional Adam Smith truism. Adam Smith bitterly condemned the merchants and manufacturers in England who were “by far the principal architects” of policy and were solely motivated by a desire to ensure that their own interests were “most peculiarly attended to,” regardless of how grievous the effect would be on others, namely the poor masses that are often hit the most by the ruthlessness of such policies.
Sanctioning Zimbabwe by way of refusing to play their cricket team has a grievous effect on the careers of the young cricket players denied a chance to showcase their skill on the basis of differences in opinion between politicians from Western countries and those from Zimbabwe.
Equally, a continued reign of the illegal sanctions regime has a grievous effect on the masses of Zimbabwe who are currently afflicted by hunger, disease and a collapsing education system.
The fact that all attempts to have UN approved sanctions on Zimbabwe have failed at the Security Council literally means international law does not recognize the sanctions regime as legal international practice.
The sanctions regime is not even a supported political statement of goodwill, when one considers that Russia, China, the African Union, Sadc and many individual countries have openly condemned the sanctions and also called for a lift on the embargo.
As Francis Fukuyama noted in 1992, “the UN is perfectly serviceable as an instrument of American unilateralism and indeed may be the primary mechanism through which that unilateralism will be expressed in future.”
The trend since 1945 has been that whenever the UN fails to serve as “an instrument of American unilateralism” on issues of elite concern, it is summarily dismissed.
Equally when Sadc and AU declare that an election in Zimbabwe or in any African country not favourable to the West is unfree and unfair, the regional bodies are treated as “serviceable instruments” of Western interests. This is when they hit Western media headlines as “fledgling democracies”.
However, when they fail to serve as “serviceable instruments” and begin to request a lift on the West’s sanctions regime on Zimbabwe, they are summarily dismissed as “a club of dictators”.
For the UN, the illustration that the Anglo-American elites have no respect for a non-compliant UN is the veto record. The United States proudly leads in vetoing UN Security Council resolutions and is closely followed by Britain, with France and Russia far behind while China has hardly exercised the veto at all.
It was plausible to condemn Saddam Hussein for his failure to comply with a number of Security Council resolutions but not many people, if any at all, ever mentioned that the United States flatly and arrogantly rejected the same resolutions, especially Resolution 687, which called for ending sanctions on Iraq when compliance was determined by the Security Council, and moving on to eliminate Weapons of Mass Destruction and all delivery systems from the Middle East (Article 14, a coded reference to troublesome Israel).
Of course there was no possibility that the US would ever entertain Article 14, and they got it removed from discussions.
James Barker, Senior Bush’s Secretary of State announced that the US would not respect Resolution 687 and would bar “the relaxation sanctions as long as Saddam Hussein is in power.”
This is the same line of rhetoric that has been repeated on Western commentary in regards to Zimbabwe’s inclusive government – that the settlement falls short of Western expectations because it includes President Robert Mugabe.
This has prompted Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to say that the inclusive government is in place because, “Zimbabweans have a right to choose and they have decided that the inclusive government is the only way out."
When indications were that the UN Security Council was not going to endorse the war on Iraq, Colin Powell is famed for declaring that the UN needed to “catch up” or risked being “irrelevant”, terms that had already been used by John Bolton and another White House official.
South Africa resolutely refused to vote with the United States on a number of issues during its two years at the Security Council and their stance on Zimbabwe has evidently angered the US and its Western allies. Now Uganda is being told in no uncertain terms that South Africa’s behaviour was unacceptable and that the “international community” expects Uganda to improve Africa’s “miserable record”.
When Ronald Reagan urged Mexico to support his awesome resolve to invade Grenada for threatening the existence of the United States in 1982, the Mexican envoy to Washington said the only problem was that if he went home and told the Mexican people that Grenada was about to obliterate the US the people of Mexico would “die laughing”.
The Ugandan government knows very well that the Ugandan people would not die laughing if they voted for sanctions against Zimbabwe, simply because they would not find that action amusing at all. They know that the African Union would not be impressed either, and they know that Sadc would feel undermined, much as they know that Comesa would feel humiliated by such an action.
We hope that President Barack Obama will not be tempted to “be on the wrong side of history,” to borrow his own words, and that he will provide progressive world leadership on the issue of Zimbabwe’s chosen way of ending the socio-economic crisis that has crippled the country.
We also hope that the Western countries that are still “clinching their fists” and running a resolve that seeks to combat Zimbabwe instead of accommodating the country politically may realize that the plea of the Zimbabwean people is to be accommodated and not to be isolated, to build with others and not to destroy.
Zimbabwe we are one and together we shall overcome.
________
*Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@rwafawarova.com or visit www.rwafawarova.com
Labels: GW BUSH, NEOCOLONIALISM, NEOCONSERVATISM, WAR CRIMES
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Media is on the wrong side of history
Garikai Chengu ― Opinion
Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:49:00 +0000
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: "President Can't Swim." ~ Lyndon B. Johnson
JUST as the fledgling inclusive Government seeks to navigate its way across unchartered and tempestuous waters, the so-called independent media, which have been kept afloat and indeed buoyant by a voracious desire for negative news, appear intent on continuing to succumb to this desire at the expense of the national interest.
ZIP’s Raison d’être
In order to comprehend why the Zimbabwean Independent Press (ZIP) has locked horns with the inclusive Government, one must trace their trajectory back to their purpose and inevitably to those who fund them.
The simultaneous mushrooming of ZIP newsrooms at home and abroad, on the air and online, with the fast-track land reforms is about as coincidental as the fact that most of these new media outlets where being launched in Great Britain.
ZIP’s worst kept secret is precisely who or what has provided the bulk of their funding.
Similarly, the purpose of these media houses was as clear as the disdain those funding them had for the aforementioned land reforms. So clear was this disdain, and so poorly guarded was this secret, that the Global Political Agreement appreciates that “foreign government funded external radio stations broadcasting into Zimbabwe are not in Zimbabwe’s national interest.”
The broadsheets which cried wolf
I am cognizant of the fact that if we do not believe in freedom of expression for media outlets we consider detrimental, we do not believe in it at all. However, I am also of the belief that with this great freedom comes an equally great duty to use it in a responsible manner ― a manner which does not undermine the very system which promotes this right to free speech. In this case the Government, the inclusive Government.
The Herald, which has long been well within the crosshairs of ZIP, has put its weight firmly behind the inclusive Government, much to the chagrin of the independent press.
Now that ZIP, which has long considered itself as a progressive force, is acting as a countervailing force to national progress it appears that in light of the GPA’s intention to “ensure that appropriate measures are taken” to make sure that “private media shall refrain from using abusive language that may incite political intolerance,” ZIP will soon find themselves within the crosshairs of all true progressives.
Zimbabwe Media Commission vs. Zimbabwean Independent Media
It is clear is that without a distinct opposition within parliament, the media will be the most prominent countervailing force. However, to countervail merely for the sake of it or indeed merely to keep funds flowing does nothing to adequately hold the government accountable.
Rather ominously, the countervailing force which is filling the vacuum left by the MDC’s ascent to government is an entity which the government has already recognized as “foreign government funded” and “not in Zimbabwe’s national interest.”
This unintended consequence is made all the more unsavory by the fact that those funding this ‘new opposition’ have indeed always been vehemently opposed to the government and this vehemence has shown little sign of abating. The recent plans to evacuate certain individuals are the latest example of a lack of confidence these external powers have in the inclusive Government. And unsurprisingly, ZIP has compliably sought to undermine such confidence.
If the net effect of the inclusive Government is to maintain external opposition to the Government of Zimbabwe from Britain and to afford her proxy, by way of ZIP, the space to operate in a free environment, thus creating an equally hostile internal opposition then the Zimbabwe Media Commission will have their work cut out for them.
The role that a credible and responsible media can play in improving the country’s image, which has been undermined by certain sections of the powerful media, cannot be underestimated. The inclusive Government’s desire to promote national healing, tourism and foreign direct investment, all of which will be crucial to an economic revival, is directly linked to the manner in which we portray ourselves within our media and by extension how we are perceived by potential tourists and investors.
This not only renders ZIP’s irresponsible pursuit for self interest particularly egregious, but it also emphasizes the importance of the Media Commission’s role in promoting responsible media practices.
When change is just a slogan
Despite incessant calls for change from the independent press since their inception, their contemptuous response to the Prime Minister’s inauguration exposes ZIP’s desire, and indeed that of their sponsors, not for positive changes to Zimbabwe’s fortunes, but rather for changes to the political leadership. But since politics is a means to an end why would a positive end would be rejected by these backers in the name of politics?
Shortly after the inauguration, as the onslaught on government continued unabated as if nothing had changed, ZIP’s slip really began to show and this lack of a change in stance towards government is as revealing as it is ironic. Ironic, insofar as ZIP had formed the bastion of the change movement and just as the inclusive Government heralds a completely new form of governance these media houses are now at the forefront of resisting this union by dismissing it as a ‘marriage of inconvenience’ and a ‘shotgun wedding.’ Some have indeed gone so far as to put months or weeks on the duration of the union before what they predict will be a ‘painful divorce.’
This irony inherent in the independent media’s resistance to change is not lost on us and at best this resistance will wilt and turn into more tempered and constructive criticism as negative news dwindles and the Zimbabwe Media Commission and true progressives exert pressure on them to change, and at worst it is simply indicative of an unyielding self interest driven stance which those providing the funding are unwilling to alter without extracting a pound of flesh.
He who calls for change must change
As patriotic teachers agree to resume teaching our children, despite not yet being paid amounts commensurate with their contribution to society, and as doctors and nurses from across the country return to work despite difficult working conditions and disincentivising salary scales, is it too much to ask for ZIP editors comfortably tucked away in the Diaspora to bite the hand that feeds them and contribute to the effort to restore the nation’s greatness?
As Zimbabwe’s fortunes change for the better, mainly due to the collective sense of responsibility and sacrifice initiated by our leaders and emulated by the citizenry, both of ZIP’s primary sources of sustenance, namely, negative news and external funding will dry up.
Therefore, it is not only in our national interest for these media outlets to fundamentally alter course and begin to promote rather than incessantly tear down the government, but it is also clearly in their long-term self interest to do so.
Thus the choice for Zimbabwe’s independent media is simple, either continue to work hand in glove with anti-GNU forces, in pursuit of self interest, and risk being left in the dark and irrelevance of the wrong side of history or step into the light and join hands with proponents of the GNU in pursuit of the national interest.
__________________
* Garikai Chengu
African and African American Research Institute Fellow, Harvard University
chengu@fas.harvard.edu
The views expressed herein are those of Mr Chengu and do not necessary express those of the institute.
Labels: GARIKAI CHENGU, NEOCOLONIALISM, ZIMBABWEAN INDEPENDENT PRESS
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Lift Zimbabwe sanctions: Zuma
SAPA
Thu, 26 Feb 2009 23:28:00 +0000
CAPE TOWN.
South Africa’s Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma yesterday urged the west to lift sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe. Addressing the Sadc Council of Ministers’ meeting, she said the formation of an inclusive Government in Zimbabwe had indeed paved the way for Zimbabweans to begin the process of national reconciliation, economic recovery, reconstruction and development.
Sadc and the rest of the world should help the people of Zimbabwe in their endeavour to address their economic challenges as well as the humanitarian crisis facing their country.
"Accordingly, as the international community, we must create an enabling environment for the Zimbabwean people to succeed by, among others, lifting the sanctions imposed on the country," she said.
South Africa assumed the chair of Sadc in August 2008 against the milieu of a number of important political developments, not least of all developments in Zimbabwe, Lesotho and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the European Partnership Agreements negotiations and lately, the situation in Madagascar.
"As (the) Sadc, we can today proudly state that we have played a major role in facilitating the political solution to the situation in Zimbabwe."
Sadc would also continue to help the governments and people of the DRC and Madagascar address their challenges.
Dlamini-Zuma said Sadc could also not ignore the impact of the global financial and economic crisis facing the world.
"Indeed and unless urgent steps are taken to address the impact of this global crisis, the progress that our region has made over the years towards integration will be slowed down," she said.
The meeting ends today.
— SAPA.
Labels: JACOB ZUMA, SANCTIONS, ZIMBABWE
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Tsvangirai: the making and breaking of Zimbabwean rules
Comment
Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:42:00 +0000
THE Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister held a press conference yesterday where they said the appointments of the Permanent Secretaries announced on Tuesday were null and void, and cited article section 20.1.7 of the Constitutional Amendment Act Number 19 to justify their action.
Section 20.1.7 deals with senior government appointments and states that "the parties agree that with respect to occupants of senior government positions such as Permanent Secretaries and Ambassadors, the leadership of government, comprising the President, Deputy Presidents, Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Ministers will consult and agree on such prior to their appointment".
On the face of it, the Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Professor Arthur Mutambara, have a legitimate claim.
But when one looks deeper into how some decisions are being made in the inclusive Government, the Prime Minister and his deputy have also been involved in flouting some of the provisions and rules enshrined in the Zimbabwe Constitution, especially Amendment 19.
For example, the number of Ministers laid down in the Constitution of Zimbabwe since Constitution Amendment 19 is 31. A total of 36 ministers were sworn in and the MDC-T party got one extra Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office and a co-sharing Home Affairs Minister ― an extra 2 over their Global Political Agreement allocation, while Zanu PF swore in an extra 3 Ministers of State in the President’s office.
The slipping in of extra Ministries is indeed a breach of our Constitution, and the MDC is complicit in it. So which laws are they referring to? The same laws they are complicit in flouting?
We all agree that this is not sending out the right signals that the inclusive Government intends to respect the principles of constitutionalism and the rule of law.
As recently as yesterday, we saw Prime Minister Tsvangirai interfering in the judicial process by giving personal guarantees to secure the release of Roy Bennett ― a fugitive whose case dates back to 2004 and which has nothing to do with the Global Political Agreement.
Bennett fled the country in 2006. If he was innocent he should have stayed and cleared his name then. In any case, an amnesty is given after the law has taken its full course. Biti and Mutambara’s cases are different as they are a direct consequence of the conflicts during the electoral process of March-June 2008.
Bennett’s case was pending before then and is in a league of its own. He has been in exile for some years. He knew what awaited him when he came back into the country, without guarantee of an amnesty.
When the Prime Minister allows such convenient slip-ups in the constitution and interferes in the activities of the judiciary, he should not expect the world to listen to him when he criticizes President Mugabe.
He should, as matter of principle, not negotiate in the media and engage President Mugabe in confidence. Otherwise his ultimatums will make him look ineffective, if they expose hypocrisy on his part.
As for Prof. Mutambara, some things are better left unsaid.
Philip Murombedzi
philipmurombedzi@yahoo.com
Labels: CONSTITUTION, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, NATIONAL UNITY GOVERNMENT, ROY BENNETT
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Five in custody over death of 7 Zimbabwean in SA
Newnet/TZG
Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:01:00 +0000
FIVE people have been arrested and are in police custody in South Africa over the death of seven Zimbabwean nationals killed when their shack was set alight on Saturday evening.
One of the five suspects appeared before the court Wednesday and is being charged with arson and murder.
Investigations are still continuing to bring to book the rest of the members of the gang
Authorities say the incident which authorities believe is criminal occurred in a Wine-farming area, some 150 kilometres north of Cape Town.
The Consul-General in the Zimbabwean embassy in South Africa Mr. Mapanga said investigations by embassy and the South African authorities revealed that the incident started as an attempted robbery on two Zimbabwean nationals.
The two Zimbabweans ran away and sought assistance from a shack belonging to their compatriots and a skirmish arose between the attackers and the occupants of the shack.
The robbers are believed to have temporarily retreated only to return later with a reinforced group of about 10 to 15 people.
The robbers doused the shack with an inflammable liquid that looked like fuel and set it alight.
The report says that only one person managed to bolt out of the burning house while 7 occupants were burnt beyond recognition.
Authorities are withholding the names of the victims until DNA tests are completed to establish the identities of the victims.
Labels: SOUTH AFRICA, XENOPHOBIA
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Darfurism, Uganda and the U.S. War in Africa - The Spectre of Continental Genocide
by Keith Harmon Snow
November 24th, 2007
President Bush met with Uganda’s President-for-life Yoweri Museveni in the White House on October 30, 2007. Meanwhile, a broad swath of Africa is engulfed in interrelated genocides and covert operations involving both the U.S. and Uganda, there is a growing demand to probe the accounts of “Save Darfur” to find out how the tens of millions collected are being spent due to allegations of arms-deals and bribery, and the “Save Darfur” movement has become the false flag action of the West, supported by most everyone, people who know little or nothing about what it is they are supporting.
When President George Bush met with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni at the White House on October 30 they certainly discussed much more than “Uganda’s leadership in Somalia, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and President Museveni’s development plan for northern Uganda” or their “strong partnership to combat malaria and HIV/AIDS in Uganda,” as announced by the White House Office of the Press Secretary.
The role of Yoweri Museveni and his “government” in service to the Western economic neoliberalism and the shock doctrine of deconstruction and chaos is greatly misunderstood and deeply camouflaged by simplified establishment narratives like those above. Bush and Museveni discussed the U.S.-Uganda military relations and bilateral involvement in the ongoing wars in Sudan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo).
The “partnership to combat malaria and HIV/AIDS” is camouflage language for military vaccination and bio-warfare programs involving pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, USAID, and “humanitarian” philanthropies.1 A vaccine for malaria was developed for the U.S. military some time ago and this is shared only with certain U.S. client state partners, though “clinical trials” have been undertaken in public using African “volunteers.”2
Museveni and Bush certainly discussed America’s escalating war in the Sahara desert, expanding petroleum operations across the region, U.S. Special Forces deployments and newly identified uranium resources in Uganda.3 Maybe they discussed the March 1, 1999 killing of eight foreign tourists at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, a story that has not yet been critically unpacked.4 The “development plan for northern Uganda” is euphemistic language for the ongoing depopulation and massive natural resource extraction that today proceeds in northern Uganda in parallel with the genocide of the Acholi people and Uganda’s militarization in support of covert programs in Sudan and Congo.
The Darfur conflict rides along the fault line of continental warfare spread from Niger to Djibouti and Somalia, and from eastern Congo and Rwanda, through Uganda and Sudan, to Eritrea and the Red Sea. Congo is at war with Uganda and Rwanda. Ethiopia is at war with Somalia, and poised to reinvade Eritrea: there are massive troop build-ups on both sides of the Eritrean-Ethiopia border. Ethiopia, Uganda and Chad are the three “frontline” states militarily destabilizing Sudan. Uganda is internally and externally at war, has intervened secretly in Burundi, and the Ugandan military recently re-occupied towns in eastern Congo over petroleum. Rwanda is fighting in Eastern Congo, meddling in Burundi, and has some 2000 troops in Darfur. Burundi is militarily involved in Congo and soon to be in Somalia. Khartoum backs guerrilla armies in Uganda, Chad and Congo.
The U.S. is all over the place, with both covert and overt military programs. France, England, Canada, Belgium, Libya, Israel and China are all involved. All these conflicts are intertwined, and the targeted populations have allegiances and alliances dictated by the pre-colonial boundaries demarcated at the Berlin Conference of 1885 by the imperial doctrine of divide and conquer. In 1885 “Soudan” was synonymous with “Sahara” and “Darfur” was the center of power.5 Conflict involving U.S. covert forces and nomads in Niger and Nigeria, for example, impacts Sudan: the history of the Sahara revolves around the trans-Saharan influence of the Mahdi. In 1875 the Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad, led the indigenous resistance against Britain. ‘Abdallah at-Ta‘ishi, the Mahdi’s “Khalifah” or successor, who took over as leader of the independent Sudan when the Mahdi died in June 1885, was a native of Darfur.6
PEACE IS WAR IS PEACEKEEPING
On October 24, 2007, the United Nations awarded Lockheed-Martin subsidiary Pacific Architects and Engineers a $250 million no-bid contract to provide “infrastructure” for the United Nations “peacekeeping” missions now unfolding in Sudan (Darfur), Somalia, and Chad/Central Africa Republic. The newly announced contract is to build five new camps in Sudan’s Darfur and Kordofan regions for 4,100 U.N. and African Union personnel. Lockheed Martin is the world’s largest and most secretive aerospace and defense corporation.
This is not Pacific Architects and Engineers’ first contract in Darfur, or in Africa’s “peacekeeping” missions. PAE won the contract for staffing the deeply compromised “Civilian Protection Monitoring Team” (CPMT) in Sudan under a U.S. State Department contract. In 2004, the CPMT office was being run by Brigadier General Frank Toney (retired), who was previously the commander of Special Forces for the United States Army; General Toney organized covert operations into Iraq and Kuwait in the first Gulf War.
Pratap Chaterjee reported in 2004 how “Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Bittrick, the deputy director of regional and security affairs for Africa at the State Department, flew to Ethiopia to hammer out an agreement to support African Union troops by committing to provide housing, office equipment, transport, and communications gear. This will be provided via an ‘indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity’ joint contract awarded to Dyncorp Corporation, and Pacific Architects & Engineers (PAE) worth $20.6 million.”7 PAE also set up MONUC operations in Congo, and continues to operate there; the total PAE involvement includes numerous intermediary contracts. In 2002, PAE/Daher won a $34 million air-services follow-on contract amidst complaints of a “lack of transparency and irregularities in the procurement system…confirmed by the bidding of the air-service contract with PAE/Daher.”8 Daher International is a French aerospace and defense corporation.9
Meanwhile, the “Save Darfur” advocates pressing military intervention in Darfur as a “humanitarian” gesture have escalated pressure in the face of mounting failures, including allegations that millions of “Save Darfur” dollars fundraised on a sympathy for victims platform have been misappropriated.
But the players, the private military companies, the arms dealers—and a handful of missing SRAM missiles armed with nuclear warheads dumped by an American B-52 before it crashed—are mostly unknown to the general public. These covert wars all involve different propaganda strategies to provide cover and deflect attention through “perception management”—managing the perceptions, stereotyping and creating false belief systems—of the North American and European public.
The numbers of refugees and internally displaced persons across the region are staggering and they are indicative of a cataclysmic regional crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. This is not because refugees, insurgency and guerrilla warfare are inherent to Africa: refugees and IDPs are big business for white systems of power that maintain structural violence based on profits and the globalization of poverty, terror and war. The numbers are staggering, and these are not merely statistics, they are about suffering human beings.
United Nations agencies report some 4,700,163 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan—2,152,163 in Darfur and 2,276,000 in Northern Sudan—with some 686,311 refugees out of Sudan.
REGIONAL REFUGEES AND INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS10
Burundi: 100,000 IDPs 396,541 refugees out
Chad: 179,940 IDPs 36,300 refugees out
Central Africa Rep.: 212,000 IDPs 71,685 refugees out
Dem. Rep. of Congo: 1,400,000 IDPs 401,914 refugees out
Eritrea: 32,000 IDPs 193,700 refugees out
Ethiopia: ?200,000? IDPs 80,000 refugees out
Kenya: 413,000 IDPs 5,356 refugees out
Rwanda: ???? IDPs 92,966 refugees out
Somalia: 700,000 IDPs 464,253 refugees out
Sudan: 4,703,163 IDPs 686,311 refugees out
Uganda: 1,310,000 IDPs 21,752 refugees out
Is Kenya at war? Sure looks like it. Unreported anywhere are the massive petroleum concessions and exploration projects in Kenya’s remote Samburu and Turkana districts. (For $5000 apiece you can purchase reports like “Petroleum Potential of Lake Turkana Area” from international oil and gas consultants Beicip-Franlab.11) G.H.W. Bush’s old Swedish pal Adolph Lundin and Lundin Petroleum signed an exploration contract for the Turkana region in June 2007.12
While the United Nations lists some 200,000 IDPs in Ethiopia, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (iDMC) reports: “[r]elatively little is known about the extent and nature of conflict-induced internal displacement in Ethiopia.” There are 92,966 refugees out of Rwanda, if we can trust the iDMC numbers, and an “indeterminate” number of IDPs. Refugee and IDP statistics, like mortality figures, are highly politicized. The situation in Ethiopia today is cataclysmic and the United Nations and the vast network of profit-based NGOs operating in Ethiopia are complicit in genocide because they do not stand up against that regime in fear of losing business.13
These humanitarian emergencies involve massive depopulation and death, internally displaced persons and trans-national refugees, all of which provide a lucrative business opportunity for Western “relief” and “development” organizations. The business of AID is a racket. Weapons sales are a racket. The people who suffer are different from the industries, the providers of services, equipment and expertise who profit from these crises. Like most weaponry, landmines are predominantly manufactured in white economies of North America and Europe and, scandalously, it is the companies from the same white economies who have a lock on UN landmine removal contracts worth billions of dollars a year. The so-called “humanitarian relief” business is an industry that relies on the creation of markets. Millions of people across the region are dying, while millions more are homeless, set adrift in a sea of nowhere, with no rights, no possessions, no protection and very little prospect for survival; their only hopes come from the false belief that the Western “humanitarian” AID enterprise is designed to rescue them.
The engagement of the world’s premier war-making industries—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Bechtel, SAIC—behind and within a so-called “peacekeeping” platform is not new, and something is seriously wrong with this picture.
THE ‘SAVE DARFUR’ NARRATIVE
“Save Darfur” is the predominant propaganda front running on Africa and it has overwhelmed the public consciousness with deceptions. In this establishment narrative Arabs on horseback, the Janjaweed, backed by the Sudan government seated in Khartoum, are the purveyors of genocide. This mirrors the establishment narrative of Rwanda, 1994, which said that the Hutus and the nasty Interahamwe militias committed genocide against the Tutsis in 100 days of killing with machetes. The Rwanda genocide narrative—combined with the narrative about “humanitarian” intervention in Yugoslavia, where the final blow to dismember the country came with the NATO bombing campaign—set the stage for the Darfur genocide narrative.
All over the United States, Britain and Canada advocates and activists who claim to be concerned about human rights, and even those who otherwise would not get involved, have supported the “Save Darfur” movement, a political movement similar to the anti-Apartheid movement mobilized against South Africa in the 1980s. The “Save Darfur” movement has resulted in a huge outpouring of funds, and it has mobilized support from people in all walks of life, and across the political spectrum, on the “never again” platform of “stopping genocide.”
Hollywood personalities dubbed “actorvists,” including Mia Farrow, Don Cheadle and George Clooney, have helped to whip up the “Save Darfur” hysteria. From Elie Wiesel to Barak Obama, people are “outraged” by genocide that the Bush Administration, we are told, is reluctant to stop. And it is hysteria, in the true definition of the word, but it did not simply rise out of a sudden concern for a bunch of Africans in some far-off God-forsaken place (as it is portrayed).
At a “Voices for Darfur” fundraiser held on October 21, 2007 at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, for example, the local chapter of the Congregation B’Nai Israel Darfur Action coalition, raised over $14,000 for “humanitarian” aid to Darfur. The B’Nai Israel Save Darfur Coalition had a broad array of public and organizational support, including other Jewish organizations, Smith College, Northampton Mayor Claire Higgins, Massachusetts’ Senator Stan Rosenberg and Representative Peter Kocot. The campaign organizers claim that “more than 90% goes to direct-on-the-ground AID.” Working with big humanitarian groups like Doctors Without Borders and Save the Children, it is impossible that 90% of funds will hit the ground in Darfur.14
Behind the “Save Darfur” movement are fundamentalist organizations and think tanks with a deeply nationalistic, militaristic, religious fundamentalist agenda. The Center for Security Policy, for example, supports the “star wars” Strategic Defense Initiative, Homeland Security—which is nothing more than expanding militarism and emasculated public rights—and the Biometric Security Project. The BSP centers around emerging biological technologies that will be used to register, identify, monitor, track and control each and every U.S. citizen. They call it “identity assurance,” it involves state-of-the-art recognition equipment, sensors and security technologies, and it is a central component of the evolving national security and “counter-terrorism” apparatus.15
The Center for Security Policy is the nerve center of the U.S. military and intelligence apparatus, a deeply nationalist, neoliberal think-tank and flak organization promoting the all-out attack against non-cooperative governments—dubbed “rogue states”—peripheral to Western economic control. These, of course, are primarily Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, North Korea and Cuba. Zimbabwe is a special case that has joined the list to some degree. What these states have in common is that they are all targeted for divestment by the Center for Security Policy brainchild, divestterror.org. Sudan is another of the “rogue states” targeted.
The establishment narrative on Darfur motivates U.S. citizens to take action to “Save Darfur,” thus facilitating popular support for heightened U.S. military involvement. The truth is that the United States military is already there, in its various incarnations, and the United States is involved in atrocities.
THE UGANDA NARRATIVE
In the northern Uganda region—involving South Sudan and northeastern Congo—another conflict has boiled for over 21 years between the government Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF), led by Yoweri Museveni, and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony. This war offers yet another one-sided Western establishment narrative that says that Kony and the LRA—always described as a Christian fanatical cult that captures and drugs children—is the primary problem in northern Uganda. (Usually African savages are not Christian enough for America’s liking; here we find that they are too Christian.)
The establishment narrative has been furthered across the popular culture, in everything from Vanity Fair to the BBC to the journal The National Catholic Weekly (America). The newly established ENOUGH Project (ENOUGH “genocide” and “not on my watch” etc. etc.) picked up the mantle of LRA atrocities and, like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, has supported the establishment narrative which shields the Museveni government from the kind of criticism and international action that is called for in keeping with the scale of the atrocities the Uganda government is responsible for. Amnesty International and Human Rights have produced disinformation, in some cases, Rwanda and Yugoslavia being the most notable.
The Museveni war machine and its state terror apparatus have perpetrated massive atrocities in the region and it has evolved into genocide against the Acholi, Teso and Lango people of the north. The indigenous Acholi people have been forced onto concentration camps over the past 21 years, and these camps have become places of death. In the establishment narrative, the people are always the victims of Kony’s LRA “rebellion.”
Human Rights Watch has addressed torture and government complicity in atrocities in Uganda, and other problems, but they have rarely named names or corporations and they almost never link the conflict or the atrocities to Western interests. One massive report on Northern Uganda details criminal government actions, but the recommendations sections effectively sanction structural violence and white supremacy.16 The net effect of these policy and “human rights” positions is complicity in genocide and genocide denial on Uganda.
Contrary to the proliferation of propaganda always attributing Kony’s LRA with child abductions—another example of Western Orientalism that essentializes Africa to serve political purposes—is research showing that many LRA abductions are short term with children returning home from LRA abductions in less than three weeks. Further, many children who fight with the LRA have joined by choice, and they do so willingly.17 In “Childhood’s End” (Vanity Fair, 2006) Christopher Hitchens described the LRA as a “grotesque zombie-like militia…that has set a standard of cruelty and ruthlessness…” American troops that have committed atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, no less brutal or gruesome or masochistic, would never be described this way.
Yoweri Museveni and his business and military partners are responsible for millions of deaths, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Eastern Congo. Museveni and his generals were the primary backers of Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo. With UPDF support, Bemba’s MLC perpetrated massive atrocities under the covert military operation, Effacer le Tableau (Erasing the Board)—a scorched earth policy amounting to genocide against the Mbuti pygmies of Eastern Congo.18
The U.S. military invasion of Zaire (now Congo), involved U.S. covert forces, U.S. military communications, logistical and weapons support, and Ugandan and Rwandan forces. Humvees, C-130’s and black-skinned U.S. Special Forces entered South Sudan and northeastern Congo through the Gulu and Arua Districts of Uganda, the heart of Acholiland and the center of atrocities against the Acholi people.19
Ugandan and British interests living mostly in Britain and aligned with the former dictator Idi Amin have always backed the Lord’s Resistance Army and the West Nile Bank Front; support also came from Saudi Arabia and Qatar (the Qatar General Petroleum Corporation is involved in Sudan’s oil sector and has partnered in various international enterprises with Norwegian, Japanese and French corporations). Idi Amin, the brutal dictator, lived out his life in luxury in Saudi Arabia (d. 2003). The LRA stepped up its military actions in parallel with the UPDF invasion of Zaire (1996), and the subsequent years of warfare and plunder in Congo (1998-present).
According to the investigations of the United Nations and the humanitarian law work of lawyer Karen Parker, the war in Uganda involves massive rapes, killing, tortures, and extrajudicial executions as a policy by the Ugandan military. Some 1.3 million people are displaced in the Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts of northern Uganda (there were 1.7 million IDPs in March 2007). There are over 73 camps with from 1000 to 50,000 people in them, all forcibly displaced by UPDF soldiers, with over 350,000 people out of some 400,000 people displaced from the Gulu district alone.20
THE U.S.-UGANDA INVASION OF ZAIRE
The forced displacements of Acholi people began with Museveni’s ascension to power in 1986, but major forced displacements occurred throughout the 1990’s and again in 2002-2003. However, there was a massive displacement operation in 1996 that appears to have been coordinated in part with the planned U.S. invasion of Zaire from Northern Uganda and Rwanda.
The UPDF Army barracks at Masindi and airstrip at Gulu, both in Northern Uganda, served as the staging grounds for the U.S. invasion of Zaire. The Museveni government organized the closure of northern Uganda in October 1996 ostensibly because of heightened LRA attacks. The UPDF, in chronological coincidence with the U.S. invasion, forced hundreds of thousands of Acholis into concentration camps in the fall of 1996, often by bombing and burning villages and murdering, beating, raping and threatening those who would not comply.
According to testimony from eyewitnesses, on Oct 26, 1996 the top Ugandan brass behind the invasion of Zaire met at the village of Paraa, in the Murchison Falls National Park, near Lake Albert, in the Gulu District. At the meeting were: [1] UPDF Brigadier General Moses Ali—Idi Amin’s right hand man who later became Minister of Internal Affairs, Minister for Disaster Preparedness, and Deputy Prime Minister in the Museveni administration; [2] Museveni’s half-brother Salim Saleh; [3] then Colonel James Kazini; and [4] Dr. Eric Adroma—head of Uganda National Parks. Salim Saleh is perhaps the leading agent of terror in the UPDF Zaire/Congo wars, but both Saleh and commander James Kazini led UPDF troops involved in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide involving millions of people in Eastern Congo (1996-2007).
The meeting was ostensibly about security and it was announced that due to a recent LRA rebel attack at Paraa, the UPDF would be placing parts of Northern Uganda off limits to all non-military personnel. (LRA rebels committed the Paraa attack; UPDF troops arrived on the scene quickly and looted bodies but did not pursue the LRA.) The main road from Karuma to the border town of Pakwach was thereafter closed. This road apparently served as a primary transport route for Ugandan and non-Ugandan military—including black U.S. Special Forces—who invaded Zaire.21
On November 6, 1996, Bill Clinton was elected. Around 10 November 1996 an armored 4×4 Humvee (HUMMWV)—heavily rigged with sophisticated communications equipment inside and out—was encountered carrying two black U.S. special forces in the Murchison Falls region: the soldiers were wearing UPDF uniforms. Two busloads of black U.S. Special Forces were encountered at a UPDF checkpoint on the Karuma-Pakwach road; wearing civilian clothes, with duffel bags, the muscled and crew cut “civilians” showed U.S. passports and claimed they were “doctors” heading to the tiny Gulu hospital. From November 21-23 Boeing C-130 military aircraft passed over the region every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day, heading both north and south. The C-130’s apparently landed at Gulu airstrip—closed by the Museveni government for a two-week period—and offloaded military equipment then moved by roads—closed by the UPDF—to the border. Some C-130’s were charted on a course believed to take them to Goma, Zaire. From mid-November to February 1997 access to northwestern Uganda regions was highly restricted. On 1 March 1997 another wave of C-130’s passed over the region. The UPDF used the LRA threat as cover for massive military operations involving the invasion of Zaire for the United States of America.19
The in-country U.S. Ambassador to Uganda at the time was E. Michael Southwick (October 1994-August 1997). Oil surveys began in 1998 and the entire Northwestern Uganda region is now designated as oil concessions controlled by Heritage Oil and Gas, Hardman Oil and Tullow Oil, three Anglo-American companies connected to British mercenary Tony Buckingham (founder of he mercenary firms Sandline International and Executive Outcomes) and his partners.22 Nexant, a Bechtel subsidiary, is involved with the trans-Uganda-Kenya pipeline. South African firm Energem—tied to Tony Buckingham through Anthony Texeira, the brother-in-law of Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba—is also involved. Another Energem and Buckingham affiliated company tight with the Museveni regime is Branch Energy, involved with the oil pipeline and mining in Uganda.
On September 5, 2007, UPDF troops—and rebels reportedly aligned with Jean-Pierre Bemba—had occupied the Congo’s oil- and gold-rich Semliki Basin on the western shores of Lake Albert. Heavily armed foreign forces occupied the villages of Aru, Mahagi, Fataki, Irengeti and the Ruwenzori mountains. The international press and the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC) remained completely silent about the Ugandan incursions. By September 8, 2007, Ugandan troops were heavily massed on the Congo border while Kabila and Museveni were signing oil and gold sharing agreements in Tanzania. UPDF forces and “rebel” troops alleged to be Bemba’s remained in Congo as of October 25. The MONUC information offices were claiming by mid-October that UPDF had pulled out, but Congolese citizens in eastern Congo continued to report a significant UPDF military occupation.23
The China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Company is also involved in the Uganda-Kenya pipeline, offering an interesting comparison for people concerned about China’s involvement in atrocities in the Darfur region. And, after much scrambling, Libya was cut out of the Kenya-Uganda pipeline deals.24 The petroleum sector in Libya involves U.S., Canadian, and European companies.
Uganda’s representation at the International Criminal Court exploring war crimes in Congo has included at least two very high-profile lawyers from Foley Hoag LLP, an influential Washington law firm deeply entrenched in the proliferation of the mainstream narratives and the victor’s justice doled out—through the ICTY and ICTR tribunals—on Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The Pentagon seconded its lawyers from the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corp to the ICTR to “try” those unfortunate “enemies” both arbitrarily and selectively accused of genocide.25
The people most responsible for atrocities in the region—unprecedented human bloodletting, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide—are protected. These include Yoweri Museveni, Salim Saleh, Paul Kagame, James Kazini, Moses Ali, James Kabarebe, Taban Amin, Jean-Pierre Bemba, Laurent Nkunda, Meles Zenawi… a long list of people whose culpability is without question, many of whom have been named for atrocities again and again. U.S. Special Operations forces know what happened and should be deposed under oath in a legitimate International Criminal Court, which at present does not exist, and is not in the making. Ditto for Madeleine Albright, Anthony Lake, Thomas Pickering, Susan Rice, John Prendergast, General William Wald, General Frank Toney, Walter Kansteiner, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Holbroke, Roger Winter, Frank G. Wisner, Andrew Young… another short list.
Foley Hoag LLP is also tied to the U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council. On May 6, 2002 in Washington D.C. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and wife Janet were special guests at U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council event sponsored by members Coke, Pfizer and Chevron-Texaco. Museveni also met with President Bush at the White House. Coke director Kathleen Black is a principle in the Hearst media empire, while Coke directors Warren Buffet and Barry Diller are directors of the Washington Post Company, and these are the media institutions that whitewash client regimes, corporate plunder and Pentagon actions. Of course, Coca Cola covets the gum Arabic potential of Darfur, and Coke is a client of Andrew Young’s PR firm Goodworks International. Uganda’s image is sanitized by one of the world’s largest PR firms, London’s Hill & Knowlton. In 2005 Uganda spent some $700,000 on a Hill & Knowlton contract to facilitate and “encourage dialogue between the Ugandan government and people like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, Oxfam.”26
THE RWANDA NARRATIVE
Museveni’s bush war began in 1980. Paul Kagame, current President of Rwanda, was Museveni’s Director of Military Intelligence in the mid-1980’s. Museveni and Kagame led the invasion of Rwanda in 1990. The two military commanders utilized terrorist tactics that assigned blame for atrocities they committed—against both their enemies and their own people—on their enemies. They used psychological operations, embedded international reporters, and fabrication of massacres. These tactics have continued to the present.
While Rwanda is billed as a major “success story” of recovery and development after a devastating genocide—see for example the PR “documentary” film Rwanda Rising produced by Andrew Young’s Goodworks International—the country is ruled with an iron-fist and a finely tuned intelligence and torture apparatus involved in political assassinations, suppression of information and disappearances. Huge areas of Rwanda were entirely depopulated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front and UPDF as they hammered away at Rwanda beginning in October 1990. The invasion culminated in a coup d’etat that succeeded, with broad U.S. military support, in capturing Kigali in July of 1994.
From 1994 to the present President Paul Kagame has used the genocide card and the establishment narrative to institutionalize repression, criminalize or assassinate anyone who challenges the regime, and further depopulate rural areas for “development” benefiting corporate interests.
Another member of the U.S.-Uganda Friendship council is the Honorable Andrew Young, former Mayor of Atlanta and U.S. Ambassador. Andrew Young and his firm Goodworks International have helped whitewash the image of the Rwanda government and its state apparatus of terror. Andrew Young, Quincy Jones and other wealthy Americans are building (have built) mansions on the shores of Rwanda’s Lake Mwazi in areas where peasants were driven off the land or killed by the Kagame terror machine before, during and after 1994. State terror and depopulation is ongoing along Lake Kivu and in the Volcanoes National Parks regions for methane and high-end tourism development.27
Back to the refugees and IDPs question, the United Nations recognized some 650,000 IDPs in “makeshift camps” in Rwanda in 1998 and 1999, in the northwestern prefectures of Ruhengeri and Gisenyi. These IDPs were categorized as “mostly Hutu” and forcibly resettled through implementation of Rwanda’s “National Habitat Policy, or “villagisation” policy, of December 1996, which provides for the relocation of all Rwandans living in scattered homesteads into government-created villages.28 While the UN ceased to recognize these people in Rwanda as internally displaced, in 2003 there remained 200,000 families living in IDP conditions.29 What is their status today?
Rwanda gains currency and good press through big HIV/AIDS projects run by Paul Farmer but funded by the Clinton AIDS foundation. Rwanda was overthrown by and for the Pentagon on Clinton’s watch. Hillary Clinton toured Uganda in July 1997, wore African clothes, danced African dances, and spoke about “democracy” and “development” and a “partnership” against HIV/AIDS.
The Kagame regime has recently awarded petroleum concessions to Canada’s Vangold Resources for the project titled “White Elephant” in northern Rwanda—2700 sq. kilometers of land depopulated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army between 1990 and 2007.30 Contracted to provide “feasibility studies” of petroleum infrastructural development in Rwanda is the San Diego firm Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).31
SAIC has ongoing collaborations with Bechtel—another of the world’s most secretive aerospace technology, energy infrastructure and defense contractors—both known for their involvement in U.S. beyond top-secret “black” programs; SAIC also works closely with DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.32 Recent SAIC directors have included: U.S. Navy Admiral B.R. Inman (Ret.); U.S. Army General W.A. Downing (Ret.); and U.S. Air Force General J.A. Welch (Ret.). SAIC also has an ongoing collaboration with the multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS).33 Unsurprisingly, through shared directorships, BMS is economically and politically aligned with the New York Times Corporation. SAIC has also been flagged for involvement in highly questionable U.S. mercenary activities and human rights violations in Africa.34
Petroleum, defense and mining interests connected to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International programs in “gorilla conservation” led to the production of high-tech satellite prospecting data, gathered by remote sensing over-flights (1994-2000), delivered to the Rwandan Ministry of Defense.35
The Pentagon has been involved in building military bases in Rwanda, installing military and civilian communications infrastructure, and training Rwandan Defense Forces; a military-communications radar installation has been constructed with U.S. support on Mt. Karisimbi in Ruhengeri Province.36 The installation is being built by the Rwanda Ministry of Defense in partnership with the “Rwandan” company Terracom SPRL and Rwandatel. Terracom is owned by U.S. businessman Greg Wyler; Rwandatel is 99%-owned subsidiary.37
It is believed that Rwanda Defense Forces (RDF) sent to Darfur on the African Union “peacekeeping” mission include black U.S. Special Forces disguised as RDF—just as the black U.S. Special Forces were disguised as UPDF during the invasion of Zaire.
Andrew Young is widely lauded as a leader of the African-American civil rights movement and ally of Martin Luther King Jr., claims that were specious to begin with. “In Rwanda Rising,” reads the PR promo for the film, Andrew Young, “a former United Nations Ambassador, Civil Rights leader and top aide to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. documented the amazing transformation taking place in Rwanda today, including the country’s remarkable story of reconciliation despite the 1994 Genocide.”38
Rwanda Rising opened the 15th Annual Pan African Film and Arts Festival February 8, 2007. “Fifteen years into the Pan African Film and Arts Festival and we continue to showcase the important stories of our brothers and sisters on the Continent,” Festival Director Ayuko Babu said. “Having Rwanda Rising open this year’s festival is keeping in that tradition while making sure that we stay connected to our roots in Africa.”38
THE ROOTS OF STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE IN AFRICA
Lockheed Martin is a California-based aerospace and defense giant involved in classified black programs that are beyond “top-secret” and shielded from government oversight. In September 2003, CNN—a corporate-military “news” agency deeply embedded with the Pentagon—reported “[a]ccording to the U.S. Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) classified or black programs account for about $23.2 billion or 17 percent of the 2004 budget request for the Department of Defense.”
According to United Nations spokeswoman Michele Montas the six-month Darfur contract with Lockheed-Martin subsidiary Pacific Architect Engineers, Inc. was awarded without competitive bidding “because of complex requirements and a short timeline.”
Reporting from the United Nations, Inner City Press said the terms of the contract will not be public and the United Nations has violated numerous UN charter laws in the tendering of this award.39
The no-bid award process followed the United Nation’s issuance of an official “Expressions of Interest” notice on October 9, 2007. “The United Nations is seeking Expressions of Interest (EOI) from experienced Multi Functional Logistics Services (MFLS) contractors,” the UN’s EOI notice reads, “for the provision of a wide range of services at headquarters, logistic bases, military and police camps, airfields and water resources at various locations in any or all of the following: the Darfur Region of Sudan, Chad/Central African Republic (CAR), and Somalia.”
Inner City Press reported that the EOI solicitation, made after the rules had already been waived to allow the transfer of $250 million to Lockheed Martin for six months in Darfur, is intended to try to clean up the process after-the-fact.39
Another multinational aerospace and defense corporation directly benefiting from this regional U.S. war is Boeing Aircraft Corporation. The U.S. military used Boeing Chinook helicopters in the U.S. invasion of Somalia in 2006. Tom Pickering, former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, is senior vice president for International Relations and a member of the Boeing Executive Council since January 2001. Pickering played a decisive role in the Clinton Administration overthrow of Rwanda (1990-1994) and Congo (1996-1997). He is a leading advocate for the “Save Darfur” propaganda. He is also a member of the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa along with Ed Royce (R-CA), former U.S. Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker (R-KS), Donald Payne (D-NJ), and Andrew Young.
While the New York Times reported in December 2006 that the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia began in late December, military involvement of U.S. covert forces had been ongoing, and was heightened significantly in the early spring of 2006 when the U.S. Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency openly complained about cross purposes in Somalia. Private military companies were all over Somalia, as were known international arms syndicates, including of course the criminal networks of John Bredenkamp, one of Britain’s fifty richest tycoons and one of the primary financial backers behind the rise and fall of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
John Bredenkamp reportedly acquired three SRAM missiles with nuclear warheads jettisoned in shallow water off the coast of Somalia by a U.S.A.F. B-52 that soon after crashed into the Indian Ocean near the U.S. military base on the island of Diego Garcia. The U.S. invasion of Somalia is believed to have been partly an aborted attempt to recover the lost nukes—called “broken arrows” in Pentagon speak. While the story of the dumped nukes “lost” by Dick Cheney has received some attention, no one has publicly identified John Bredenkamp as the likely weapons dealer involved.40
COVERT OPS IN SOMALIA
The war in Somalia dates back to deep U.S. involvement in the 1980s, where major oil concessions were awarded to four Western multinational petroleum giants: Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Philips petroleum. The infusion of Western “AID” provoked destabilization of Somalia, leading to the U.S. military invasion that culminated in the October 3, 1993 mission where scores of U.S. Special Operations Forces were killed when their Blackhawk helicopter was shot down over the capital city, Mogadishu. The mythology of U.S. involvement was indelibly inscribed in the popular consciousness through the Hollywood/Pentagon film Blackhawk Down. Part of the consistent propaganda on Africa is that “the U.S. does not want to get involved and potentially face another Somalia.” But the U.S. pullout of Somalia occurred in perfect synchronicity with the heightened military involvement in Rwanda (1994).
U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) did not cease Special Ops deployments in Somalia with the U.S. withdrawal and covert operations have proceeded on and off, with heightened activity through the late 1990’s. The Pentagon confirmed in November 2006 that SOCOM forces were in Somalia as of October “providing military advice to Ethiopian and Somali forces on the ground.” The U.S. Navy moved “additional forces” into waters off the Somali coast, where the Pentagon said they “conducted security missions, monitoring maritime traffic and intercepting and interrogating crew on suspicious ships.” These included the USS Ramage guided missile destroyer, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, the USS Bunker Hill and USS Anzio guided missile cruisers, and the USS Ashland amphibious landing ship.41 On June 2, 2007, a U.S. Navy destroyer shelled northern Somalia. Somali media reported that News media reported that the strikes destroyed farms, flattened hilltops and killed or injured an unknown number of villagers.42
The British Navy’s newest warship HMS Bulwark was also stationed off the Somali coast in early 2006. The HMS Bulwark deployed to the Indian Ocean on 9 January 2006 for the first live operation of this “unique Commando Assault ship” (as it is described by the British Navy).43
However, sources in Kenya and Eritrea reported “snatch and grab” terrorist operations involving massacres and torture that were run by SOCOM forces inside Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. There are at least 52,000 U.S. special operations forces on active duty and reserve military worldwide, including SEALs, Green Berets and commando-style troops from the 10th Mountain Division and others.
At least three U.S. Navy guided missile destroyers were operating off Somalia in October and November 2007. The U.S.S. Porter, U.S.S. Arleigh Burke and U.S.S. James E. Williams were operating—sinking “pirate ships” and “terrorist” vessels—as part of the Combined Maritime Forces Task Force headquartered in Bahrain.44
The establishment narrative is that Ethiopia invaded Somalia to displace Al-Qaeda terrorists and check the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, both of which are propaganda themes that misrepresent the reality of U.S. and allied military interventions.
Ethiopia is considered an essential partner of the U.S. in its “War on Terrorism” and Ethiopian bases have been used for attacks on Somalia. In 2003, the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division (SOCOM) completed a three-month program to train an Ethiopian army division in “counter-terrorism tactics”—code language for covert operations. Operations are coordinated through the Combined Joint Task Forces-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) base in Djibouti. In January 2004, SOCOM forces from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment replaced the 10th Mountain Division forces at a new base “Camp United” established at Hurso, northwest of Dire Dawa, near the border with Somalia. Since 2003, under the U.S. State Department-sponsored Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) program, CJTF-HOA provided instruction to thousands of Ethiopian soldiers at a base in Legedadi. CJTF-HOA forces from the U.S Army’s 478th Civil Affairs Battalion also operated in Ethiopia (Somalia) in and around Dire Dawa, Galadi and Dolo Odo, among other areas.45
Ethiopia seeks to control Somalia to gain access to a much-needed deepwater seaport. Ethiopia’s oil concessions are contiguous with the oil reserves in Sudan, Somalia, Kenya and Yemen. Hunt Oil, the Chinese National Petroleum Company and many others are active in Ethiopia.46 Hunt’s $18-million refinery across the waters in Yemen was officially dedicated by then U.S. Vice-President G.H.W. Bush in April, 1986. In remarks during the event, Bush emphasized the critical value of supporting U.S. corporate efforts to develop and safeguard potential oil reserves in the region.47
The U.S. military used and uses Ethiopian air bases modernized by infusions of millions of dollars of “AID” funds to launch attacks against Somalia. Ethiopia now has the largest standing army on the continent and this was achieved through the conversions of millions of dollars in “AID” to weapons and militarization; even “debt forgiveness”—where foreign “debt” was canceled—benefited the militarization of Ethiopia, and the same occurred in Uganda.See: Ituri: Covered in Blood (part VII), Human Rights Watch, July 2003. U.S. spy satellites were used provide intelligence to Ethiopian troops as they swept across the Oganden basin and Somalia. Presidents Bush and Zenawi both denied that the invasion was coordinated and well planned, and both denied the involvement of the U.S.
The Ethiopian government retained former U.S. Republican house majority leader Dick Armey as a lobbyist in Washington to whitewash the Ethiopian regimes’ crimes.48
ETHIOPIA’S GENOCIDES
The Ogaden, Oromo and Anuak regions of Ethiopia have seen massive military occupation and state repression. The Ethiopian government of Meles Zenawi has perpetrated mass starvation and scorched earth policy in the region. There has been very little international media coverage and most is favorable the Zenawi regime or pressing the upside-down stories about “relief” and “starvation” that serve the Western “humanitarian” business sector. The Ogaden basin is a bloodbath today. Applying the same legal standards as in Darfur, all three Ethiopian regions qualify as ongoing genocides against indigenous people.49 Failure to apply the genocide standards constitutes genocide denial.
The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1778 (2007) on 25 September 2007 established the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT). According to the UN’s October 2007 Expression Of Interest, “[i]n it’s Presidential Statement of 30 April 2007, the Security Council requested the Secretary General to ‘immediately begin appropriate contingency planning for a United Nations mission to Somalia’. At this early stage it is planned to have a UN logistics base at Mombassa, Kenya to support the main supply line from Mombassa to Kismayo, Mogadishu and Hobyo, which will serve as secondary logistics bases in Somalia. At this early stage the number and location of these sites is unknown, but it is envisaged that approximately 24,000 personnel may be required.”
Ethiopia’s war in Somalia has taxed the government drawing widespread criticism. The U.S. is pressing for an African Union mission as a proxy force to replace the Ethiopian troops and further U.S. interests. Mombasa, Kenya is a U.S. military port. The U.S. war in Somalia is ongoing. More than 100 U.S. military “trainers” supervised “combat training” of two Burundian “African Union” battalions (1700 troops) in Bujumbura, Burundi, in advance of their deployment in Somalia expected in November 2007. French military also provided training, while the U.S. and France both are providing logistical and telecommunications support. Burundian troops are also in Darfur.50 On November 28, 2004, the Bush White House issued a document announcing a cooperative agreement with Burundi, Guyana and Liberia preventing the International Criminal Court from proceeding against U.S. personnel operating in these countries.51
In March 2007 the Pentagon deployed an additional 150 SOCOM Forces in Uganda. The troops were part of the Combined Joint Task Force Horn-of-Africa, an “anti-terrorist naval force” deployed around the Horn of Africa with support points in Bahrain and Djibouti. Ugandan sources divulged that the SOCOM troops would be dispersed “around the country” to “support UPDF troops” and “provide support to distribute humanitarian aid.” It was openly reported that the SOCOM are “possibly training the South Sudanese army, which has just signed an agreement for this with its Ugandan counterpart, strengthening Ugandan capacity to fight terrorism.” The U.S. military has also modernized the old Entebbe airport for UPDF operations, and the Entebbe airport supports a small but permanent U.S. military contingent.52
It is believed that U.S. SOCOM troops are operating in blood-drenched Eastern Congo. Ugandan opposition sources have reported that SOCOM forces in UPDF uniforms have joined the more than 2000 Pentagon-trained UPDF forces sent by Museveni to Somalia. The UPDF troops operating in Somalia behind a “peacekeeping” propaganda front have been accused of widespread atrocities. More than 1000 people die daily in Eastern Congo where fighting since 1996 has claimed at least 7 million lives. The Democratic Republic of Congo has seen multiple genocide campaigns, and multiple genocide denials are ongoing.
SOCOM forces have been openly reported in Niger, where operations are billed as “humanitarian” and “human rights” training of Nigerien troops.53 But the insurgency and “rebellion” by the Tuareg and Toubou nomads has always been about uranium and depopulation: Canadian and Chinese companies have recently gotten involved but Esso (Exxon), Japan and French corporations were exploiting the Agadez and Air regions in the 1970’s and 1980’s (at least), dumping radioactive sickness and social devastation on another indigenous population.54 Niger is the poorest country in the world. Yet another genocide?
Exxon, Elf and Hunt Oil are in Niger for oil. Barrick Gold is also in Niger, and in Guniea, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Madagascar and Mali; through their partnership with Anglo-Ashanti, Barrick is responsible for atrocities and plunder in eastern Congo. Directors of the G.H.W. Bush-connected Barrick Gold include former U.S. Senator Howard Baker (R-TN), whose wife, Nancy Kassebaum Baker, has been an outspoken advocate for immediate action on Darfur.
“I was in the Senate at the time of Rwanda,” said Kassebaum Baker at a speech in 2006 where discussed Darfur. Kassebaum Baker served as chairwoman of the Foreign Relation Committee’s Subcommittee on African Affairs. “We were all aghast at what was taking place there [Rwanda], but I must say no one really knew what to do about it,” Kassebaum Baker said.55
The Bakers are on the advisory board for the nationalist think-tank Partnership for a Secure America—another policy-formulating-perception-management-force behind the “Save Darfur” movement—along with a stellar cast of corporate executives involved in war and plunder in Africa.56 Most notable of these are Frank G. Wisner, Richard Holbroke, Anthony Lake, Thomas Pickering, Carla Hills and Sam Nunn. Wisner was also on the National Security Council under Clinton, along with the International Crisis Group (ICG) Special Advisor and ENOUGH co-chair John Prendergast. Wisner’s co-directors of the American International Group include: Marshall Cohen, a director of the Bush-connected Barrick Gold Corporation; Clinton Cabinet members William Cohen and Richard Holbrooke; and Carla Hills, NAFTA negotiator and director of Chevron-Texaco and the ICG. Partnership for a Secure America advisory board members Zbigniew Brzezinski, Pickering, Hills, and Kassebaum Baker are all on the Board of Trustees for the ICG—International Crisis Group—the leading flak organization pressing the “Save Darfur” and Lord’s Resistance Army (Uganda) narratives.
DARFURISM
The Darfur region of western Sudan has been a hotbed of clandestine activities, gunrunning and indiscriminate violence for decades. The Cold War era saw countless insurgencies launched from the remote deserts of Darfur. Throughout the 1990s factions allied with or against Chad, Uganda, Ethiopia, Congo, Libya, Eritrea and the Central African Republic operated from bases in Darfur, and it was a regular landing strip for foreign military transport planes of mysterious origin.
In 1990, Chad’s President Idriss Déby launched a military blitzkrieg from Darfur and overthrew President Hissan Habre; Déby then allied with his own tribe against the Sudan government. Sudanese rebels today have bases in Chad, and Chadian rebels have bases in Darfur, with Khartoum’s backing. When the regime of Ange-Félix Patassé collapsed in the Central African Republic in March 2003, soldiers fled to Darfur with their military equipment. Khartoum supported the West Nile Bank Front, a rebel army operating against Uganda from Eastern Congo, commanded by Taban Amin, the son of the infamous Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, who heads Uganda’s dreaded Internal Security Organization.
France is deeply involved in covert operations and genocide in Africa. Central Africa Republic (C.A.R.), run by General François Bozizé, is a major base of French defense and intelligence operations linked to security regimes in the bloody dictatorships of Republic of Congo, Togo, Cameroon and Gabon, and France backs guerilla groups committing atrocities in Chad, Sudan, DR-Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. C.A.R. is also a conduit for blood diamonds, and the back-up for France’s nuclear policy, today heavily reliant on uranium exploitation in Niger: C.A.R. reportedly has massive uranium reserves. Like oil-cursed Equatorial Guinea, C.A.R. is also a bloodbath, completely off the international media screen.57
Darfur is another epicenter of the modern-day international geopolitical scramble for Africa’s resources. Conflict in Darfur escalated in 2003 in parallel with negotiations “ending” the south Sudan war. The U.S.-backed insurgency by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the guerilla force that fought the northern Khartoum government for 20 years, shifted to Darfur, even as the G.W. Bush government allied with Khartoum in the U.S. led “War on Terrorism.” The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA)—one of some twenty-seven rebel factions mushrooming in Darfur—is allied with the SPLA and supported from Uganda. Andrew Natsios, former USAID chief and now U.S. envoy to Sudan, said on October 6, 2007 that the atmosphere between the governments of north and south Sudan “had become poisonous.” This is no surprise given the magnitude of the resource war in Sudan and the involvement of international interests, but the investigation should center on the involvement and activities of USAID officials Andrew Natsios, Roger Winter and Jendayi Frazer.
Roger Winter, USAID chief in Khartoum today, is directly linked to the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army and U.S. military campaign that destabilized Rwanda and decapitated the leadership of Rwanda and Burundi. USAID’s affiliations with the Department of Defense are now openly advertised with the propaganda peddling AFRICOM—the Pentagon’s new Africa Command. AFRICOM combines U.S. CENTCOM, PACIFICOM and EUCOM operations in Africa; it is nothing new, merely the consolidation and expansion of widespread and ongoing involvement.58
Darfur is reported to have the fourth largest copper and third largest uranium deposits in the world.59 Darfur produces two-thirds of the world’s best quality gum Arabic—a major ingredient in Coke and Pepsi. Contiguous petroleum reserves are driving warfare from the Red Sea, through Darfur, to the Great Lakes of Central Africa. Private military companies operate alongside petroleum contractors and “humanitarian” agencies. Sudan is China’s fourth biggest supplier of imported oil, and U.S. companies controlling the pipelines in Chad and Uganda seek to displace China through the U.S. military alliance with “frontline” states hostile to Sudan: Uganda, Chad and Ethiopia.
There are claims in the Arab community that Israel provides military training to Darfur rebels from bases in Eritrea, but insiders in Eritrea dispute this. Israel has a deep history of intelligence and military relations with both Eritrea and Ethiopia, and Israel reportedly has a naval and air base on Eritrea’s Dahlak and Fatma islands, from which German-made Dolphin-class submarines patrol the Red Sea with long-range nuclear cruise missiles.60 Eritrea reportedly serves as Israel’s outpost for spying on enemies Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Sudan.61 Africa Research Bulletin in 1998 reported an Israeli base in Eritrea’s Mahal Agar Mountains.62 Israel has clearly strengthened ties with the regime in Chad, from which more weapons and troops penetrate Darfur. The refugee camps have become increasingly militarized. There are reports that Israeli and U.S. military and intelligence operate from within refugee camps in Darfur. Israel is all over the Sahara, from Burkina Faso to Ethiopia and Uganda. Israel’s clandestine actions are partly funded by Israeli-American diamond magnates involved in Angola, Sierra Leone, C.A.R. and Congo, especially Dan Gertler (G.W. Bush’s unofficial Ambassador to Congo), Beny Steinmetz, Nir Livnat, Lev Leviev and Maurice Tempelsman.63
African Union (AU) forces in Darfur include Nigerian and Rwandan troops responsible for atrocities in their own countries. Ethiopia has committed 5000 troops for a UN force in Darfur. AU troops receive military-logistic support from NATO, and are widely hated. Early in October 2007, SLA rebels attacked an AU base killing ten troops. In a subsequent editorial sympathetic to rebel factions Smith College English professor Eric Reeves espoused the tired rhetoric of “Khartoum’s genocidal counter-insurgency war in Darfur,” a position counterproductive to any peaceful settlement.64 To minimize the damage this rebel attack has done to their credibility Reeves and other “Save Darfur” advocates cast doubt about the rebels’ identities and mischaracterized the SLA attackers as “rogue commanders.” However, there is near unanimous agreement, internationally, that rebels are “out of control,” committing widespread rape and plundering with impunity, just as the SPLA did in South Sudan for over a decade.
Debunking the claims of a “genocide against blacks” or an “Islamic holy-war” against Christians, Darfur’s Arab and black African tribes have intermarried for centuries, and nearly everyone is Muslim. The “Save Darfur” campaign is deeply aligned with Jewish and Christian faith-based organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel. These groups have relentlessly campaigned for Western military action, demonizing both Sudan and China, but they have never addressed Western military involvement—backing factions on all sides.
Christian and Jewish involvement in the “Save Darfur” campaign centers on a long-running but deeply manipulative narrative about slavery and genocide in South Sudan. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum furthered the establishment narrative about Darfur in keeping with the genocide theme; no one ever examines the interests behind the Holocaust Memorial Museum (e.g. Bob Dole), it is merely some apolitical institution with the championing of supposed “universal” human rights of all people everywhere as its raison d’etre. The new political and propaganda doctrine that uses “genocide” as a political tool is morally ambiguous, it attacks the crimes of some and passes over the crimes of others. It uses as its universal principle the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its complementary covenants and proclamations. On the one hand, however, this involves genocide inflation, and on the other hand genocide denial. But the USA—with good Christian and Jewish foot soldiers—is always the final arbitrator: global cop, judge, jury, executioner, surgeon and savior all in one.
Christian organizations involved in Sudan for years include Servant’s Heart and Christian Solidarity International. On Servant’s Heart’s “Board of Reference” is British Baroness Caroline Cox, who is also closely affiliated with Christian Solidarity International (CSI)—one of the main Christian allies of the SPLM/A war in southern Sudan. The propaganda system advocates in favor of the “rebels” in Darfur using a handful of techniques developed in their propaganda campaign behind the “rebels” in South Sudan. Rebels are supported partly by never mentioning them, partly by decrying abuses against them, partly by providing sympathetic one-sided accounts of Khartoum government attacks, and partly by defending their excesses if and when—infrequently—the rebel abuses come to light.65
Christian Solidarity International (CSI) in 2006 issued press releases claiming that the Lebanese organization Hezbollah “is using Christian villages to shield its military operations in violation of international law.”66 These reports appear to be fabrications to begin with and the CSI accusation a projection of their own involvement with the SPLA in South Sudan, where the SPLA for over a decade used the civilian population as human shields, used the Western AID apparatus (Operation Lifeline Sudan) as cover for military support, and used food as a weapon. If Hezbollah did this during the recent U.S.-Israeli invasion they [Hezbollah] certainly learned it by studying SPLA (CSI) tactics in Sudan. Thus we have twisted triple-standards where the establishment propaganda accuses Hezbollah of violating international law, but the SPLM/A—and the “rebel” groups in Darfur—while doing exactly the same thing, are never anything but poor, defenseless Christians under attack in a “genocidal counter-insurgency” run out of Khartoum government.65
Who are the rebels in Darfur? Where do they get new uniforms and modern weapons? With the establishment propaganda on Rwanda and the invading Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army from 1990-1994, all abuses were covered up, the government of Juvenal Habyarimana was blamed for everything, and the “rebels”—backed by Washington, partnered with the Pentagon—were never exposed for atrocities and scorched earth attacks. It was the same with the establishment propaganda that covered for the SPLA: their role in committing and provoking atrocities in South Sudan from 1983 to 2003 has been greatly misrepresented and mischaracterized by virtually every popular source cited in the western press. No one has pressed this line more than Dr. Eric Reeves, the Smith College English professor and most widely cited “expert” behind the establishment narrative to “Save Darfur.”67
There is growing dissent within the “Save Darfur” movement as more supporters question its motivations and the links to Israel. “Save Darfur” leaders have been replaced after complaints surfaced about expenditures of funds. Many rebel leaders reportedly receive tens of thousands of dollars monthly, and rebels emboldened by the “Save Darfur” movement commit crimes with impunity. There is a growing demand to probe the accounts of “Save Darfur” to find out how the tens of millions collected are being spent due to allegations of arms-deals and bribery—rebel leaders provided with five-star hotel accommodations, prostitutes and sex parties.68
The French “humanitarian” charity NGO Zoe’s Ark (L’Arche de Zoé) involved in Chad and Darfur is under investigation by the United Nations, France and Chad for trafficking in black children in the widely under-reported “L’Arche de Zoé affair.” Chadian President Idriss Déby is under attack for alleging “pedophilia” and “organ trafficking” and for arresting seventeen Europeans intercepted at an airport in Chad attempting to depart to France with 103 “Darfur orphans” aged six to ten. The Zoe’s Ark project began fundraising April 28, 2007 to “evacuate 10,000 orphans facing certain death” to France and the United States. Some 300 European’s paid 2000 Euros ($3450) each as “donations” toward logistics costs to receive an orphan. UNHCR determined the children “were living with their families in communities”—they were neither from Darfur nor were they orphans—and their health was not a serious concern.69 The NGO was reportedly provided logistical support by the French military, and they had made numerous trips to villages on the Darfur border offering enticements and taking children.70 Outraged Chadians on the border with Sudan had already been questioning the motives of scores of foreign aid groups that work with Darfur refugees.69 The United Nations and other relief organizations initially denied all knowledge of the Zoe’s Ark NGO but the NGO was registered as an international charity with the UN Mission in Sudan. The Zoe’s Ark website lists 800,000 children “in mortal danger today who must be saved now!”
Humanitarian relief is an industry, with corporate directors, big salaries, career advancement, permanent infrastructure in white economies but mobile, structurally nebulous projects in black countries that entrench structural violence and perpetuate dependence and suffering. Nancy Kassebaum Baker, the outspoken advocate for Congo and Darfur, is also a Director Emeriti for the International Medical Corps (IMC), a “humanitarian” NGO with operations in Darfur, South Sudan, Central Africa Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Sierre Leone—all the “problem” countries involved in the transcontinental warfare and then some—and 14 countries outside Africa, including the U.S.-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. Total revenue to IMC in 2005 was $101,727,119.
Amongst the (many) large IMC donors for 2005 and 2006 were numerous Christian and Jewish organizations, charities and missionary affiliates, the Christian right organization euphemistically named Bread for the World (Bob Dole, Donald Payne, David Beckman, Leon Panetta links), and the American Jewish World Service, Pfizer, BP, American Friends Service Committee, Chevron, Trammel Crow (affiliated with Barrick Gold directors), Coca Cola, World Food Program (Bob Dole link), USAID, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Department of Defense.
“Save Darfur” is today the rallying cry for a broad coalition of special interests. Advocacy groups—from the local Massachusetts Congregation B’Nai Israel chapter to the International Crises Group and USAID—have fueled the conflict through a relentless, but selective, public relations campaign that disingenuously serves a narrow policy agenda. These interests offer no opportunity for corrective analyses, but stubbornly press their agenda, and they are widely criticized for inflaming tensions in Darfur. This is what we might call Darfurism.
The latest Lockheed Martin contract with the United Nations illustrates the latest stage in the transformation of international conflict whereby military-industrial giants are openly engaged, rather than clandestinely, as has been previously the case. This development parallels the rise of Darfurism— a mass movement in the West designed to channel popular sympathy and agitate people to act on a cause they know nothing about, but think they do. Darfurism is a pathological mix of fear, patriotism, social immaturity, opportunism and unconsciousness akin to fascism. Under the current climate of apathy, fear and public opinion, anything goes, and warfare involves humanitarian agencies as active players in the mix. Like the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum they are seen as neutral, described as apolitical, but nothing could be further from the truth.
The United Nations and African Union serve as pseudo-privatized military forces backing a hegemonic, corporate, political and economic agenda. Someone who produces both the danger and, at a price, the shield against it is a racketeer.71 The future has arrived, and it uses human rights institutions, the label of genocide and accusations of atrocities, and the ever-expanding international AID and charity industry—operating out of pure profit motives—as pivotal elements in the Western portfolio of soft and hard weapons used to further the prerogatives of Empire and clear the land for absolute corporate exploitation. ~
More information:
EXPOSE UGANDA’S GENOCIDE
CEGUN: Campaign to Stop Genocide in Uganda Now
UNIGHT: FOR THE CHILDREN OF UGANDA
FRIENDS OF THE CONGO
ANUAK JUSTICE COUNCIL
Maurice Tempelsman chairs the International Advisory Council at the Harvard AIDS Institute (HAI) of the School of Public Health; his involvement in covert actions and interventions flags this program as cover for clandestine biowarfare. HAI partners with the U.S. Military HIV Research Program (USMHRP), a program whose said purpose is to develop vaccines and AIDS prevention for U.S. Military servicemen. [↩]
Malaria Vaccine. [↩]
Dulue Mbachu, “Africa’s Unfolding Desert War,” ISN Security Watch, July 11, 2007. [↩]
“Tourist Killings in Buhoma,” Gorilla Journal, June 18, 1999. [↩]
See the 1885 map before partition and after. [↩]
Abu Iskandar as-Sudani, Darfur: The New American French Protectorate, translated by Muhammad Abu Nasr from Al-Hadaf, Damascus, No.1365, May 2005, pp. 22-25. [↩]
Pratap Chatterjee, “Darfur Diplomacy: Enter the Contractors,” CorpWatch, 21 October 2004. [↩]
FIFTH COMMITTEE CONCLUDES CONSIDERATION OF FINANCING OF UN MISSION IN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO, Press Release GA/AB/3499, United Nations, 12/3/2002. [↩]
Daher International [↩]
Statistics generated by United Nations bodies and reported by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. [↩]
See: National Oil Corporation of Kenya and Beicip-Franlab [↩]
“Lundin Petroleum Signs Production-sharing Contract with Kenya,” Alexander’s Gas & Oil Connections, June 10, 2007. [↩]
See: Livelihoods & Vulnerabilities Study Gambella Region of Ethiopia, UNICEF, January 2006. [↩]
See: Michael Maren, The Road To Hell: The Ravaging Affects of Foreign Aid and International Charity, 1996. [↩]
From the BSP web site: “As biometrics becomes an increasingly important component of physical and logical security systems there is a need for an authoritative and regularly updated reference and data base on virtually all aspects of biometrics and identity assurance.” [↩]
See e.g. “Uprooted and Forgotten: Impunity and Human Rights Abuses in Northern Uganda,” Human Rights Watch, Vol. 17, No. 12a, September 2005. [↩]
David M. Rosen, “Child Soldiers, International Humanitarian Law, and the Globalization of Childhood,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 109, Issue 2, 2007, p: 299. [↩]
See: Keith Harmon Snow, “A People’s History of Congo’s Jean-Pierre Bemba,” Toward Freedom, September 18, 2007; and “Effacer le Tableau: Rapport de la mission internationale de recherche surles crimes commis, en violation du droit international, contre les Pygmées bambuti dans l’est de la République démocratique du Congo,” Minority Rights Group International, ISBN 1904584217, July 2004. [↩]
Private interviews, eyewitnesses, October 2007. [↩] [↩]
Karen Parker, “Forced Displacement in Northern Uganda,” United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. [↩]
Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Press, 1999. [↩]
See: Tullow, Hardman and Heritage Oil concessions maps [↩]
keith harmon snow & Georgianne Nienaber, “Are USAID Gorilla Conservation Funds Being Used for Covert Operations in Central Africa?” Z Magazine Online (ZNET) September 19, 2007. [↩]
Angelo Izama, “How badly did Libya want the Kenya-Uganda oil pipeline deal?” Alexander’s Gas and Oil Connections, Vol. 11, Issue 12, November 24, 2006. [↩]
Ralph G. Kershaw, “Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda: International Justice According to Washington,” Covert Action Quarterly, No. 74, Fall 2002. [↩]
Jeevan Vasagar, “Uganda hires PR agency to buff up its image,” The Guardian, May 21, 2005. [↩]
Private interview, Eastern Congo, March 2007. [↩]
See: Internal Displacement [↩]
“Are the Internally Displaced Persons in Rwanda?” ReliefWeb, July 2003. [↩]
The Rwandan Patriotic Army was renamed the Rwanda Defense Forces (circa 2000?). [↩]
“Uganda: Kampala-Kigali Oil Pipeline Estimated at $ 193.6 Million,” 16 October 2007, Rwanda News Agency. [↩]
Laton McCartney, Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story, Simon & Schuster, 1988. [↩]
SAIC information is taken from their Annual Reports, Proxy Statements, and web site. [↩]
Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Press, 1999: 358. [↩]
Keith Harmon Snow and Georgianne Nienaber: “Gorillas ‘Executed’ Stories front for Privatization and Militarization of Congo Parks, Truth of Depopulation Ignored,” ZNET, August 3, 2007; and “King Kong: The Map, The Mad Scientist, and the Mayor.” [↩]
“Rwanda’s Karisimbi Antenna to Cost USD 2.3 Million,” New Times (Rwanda), 2007. [↩]
David Barouski, “Laurent Nkundabatware, His Rwandan Allies and the Ex-ANC Mutiny: Chronic Barriers to Lasting Peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” ZNET, February 2007. [↩]
“Rwanda documentary to open US Black gala,” Rwanda Cinema Center, January 2007. [↩] [↩]
Mathew Russel Lee, “At UN, Darfur No-Bid Contract Spun by UK, Chad and Somalia Preemptively Bid Out,” Inner City Press, October 24, 2007. [↩] [↩]
See, e.g., Wayne Madsen, “The CIA’s Counter-Proliferation Division (CPD) and British intelligence have evidence that then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney lost three nuclear weapons in 1991,” Madsen Report, May 2, 2007; Alexander Cockburn, “Broken Arrows and Iran,” Counterpunch, August 3, 2005. [↩]
Pauline Jelenek, “U.S. special forces in Somalia,” Associated Press, November 1, 2007. [↩]
Stephanie McCrummen, “U.S. Warship Fires Missiles at Fighters in Somalia,” Washington Post, June 3, 2007. [↩]
“HMS Bulwark welcomed home after Lebanon operations,” defense news, 15 August 2006. [↩]
“U.S. Gunships Battle Pirates Who Seized Ships Off Somalia, Mogadishu,” Fox News, October 30, 2007. [↩]
keith harmon snow, “State Terror Against Indigenous People in Ethiopia: Another Secret War for Oil,” World War Four Report, April 2004. [↩]
See: keith harmon snow, “Today is the Day of Killing Anuaks,” Genocide Watch and Survivor’s Rights International Report, February 25, 2004. [↩]
Mark Fineman, “The Oil Factor in Somalia,” Los Angeles Times, January 18, 1993. [↩]
Xan Rice, “US military ‘used Ethiopian base’ to attack Somali militants,” Guardian Unlimited, February 23, 2007. [↩]
Livelihoods and Vulnerabilities Study, Gambella Region of Ethiopia, UNICEF report, December 13, 2006. [↩]
“Burundi: Troops Ready for Deployment in Somalia,” www.allafrica.com, October 5, 2007. [↩]
“Waiving Prohibition on United States Military Assistance with Respect to Burundi, Guyana, and Liberia, Presidential Determination” No. 2005–08 of November 29, 2004, The White House. [↩]
“Uganda: American Advisors Being Deployed,” Indian Ocean Newsletter, No. 1209, March 3, 2007. [↩]
Robert Kaplan, “America’s African Rifles,” Atlantic Monthly, April 2005; Dulue Mbachu, “Africa’s Unfolding Desert War,” ISN Security Watch, July 11, 2007. [↩]
See e.g.: Mouvement des Nigeriens Pour la Justice; James Finch, “Uranium Mining in Niger at Risk,” The Conservative Voice, July 20, 2007; Sven Ridley-Wordich, “Niger’s Uranium and Oil Sector Threatened by Rebels,” Resource Investor, July 9, 2007; “Uranium prices fall again, conflict in Niger,” National Post, July 9, 2007; “Niger Rebels Pressure Uranium Miners,” The Conservative Voice, July 9, 2007; “Niger rebels attack power plant in uranium area,” Reuters, July 5, 2007. [↩]
Bill Blankenship, “Ex-senator speaks out: Kassebaum Baker touches on politics of Sudan, Iraq,” The Capital-Journal, October 16, 2006. [↩]
See: “DARFUR ACTION NOW, Partnership for a Secure America.” [↩]
Johann Hari, “Inside France’s Secret War,” The Independent, October 5, 2007. [↩]
AFRICOM [↩]
Abu Iskandar as-Sudani, “Darfur: The New American French Protectorate,” translated by Muhammad Abu Nasr from Al-Hadaf, Damascus, No.1365, May 2005, pp. 22-25 ; see also : keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Covert Ops in Somalia? The New, Old Humanitarian Warfare in Africa,” Global Research, February 2007. [↩]
See: “Close intelligence relations between Israel and Ethiopia, Eritrea
,” June 26, 1998, Arabicnews.com; “Israel to acquire two more German Submarines,” IMRA Newsletter, December 22, 2004.; Muhammed Salahuddin, “How Israel Casts Its Dark Shadow Over Horn of Africa,” Arab News, August 31, 2006. [↩]
Muhammed Salahuddin, “How Israel Casts Its Dark Shadow Over Horn of Africa,” Arab News, August 31, 2006. [↩]
Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 35, Issue 6, p. 13131-13166, June 1-30, 1998. [↩]
keith harmon snow and Rick Hines, “Blood Diamond: Doublethink and Deception Over Those Worthless Little Rocks of Desire,” Z Magazine, June & July 2007. [↩]
Eric Reeves, “Darfur’s Bitter Ironies,” Guardian Online, October 4, 2007. [↩]
See: keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Covert Ops in Somalia? The New, Old Humanitarian Warfare in Africa,” Global Research, February 2007 and revised for allthingspass, April 2007. [↩] [↩]
“Hezbollah is Using Christian Villages to Shield its Military Operations in Violation of International Law,” Christian Solidarity International, 1 August 2006. [↩]
See keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Covert Ops in Somalia? The New Old Humanitarian Warfare in Africa” and, e.g. “SPLA Offensive Overwhelms Muslim Forces,” excerpted from Frontline Fellowship News, 197, Edition 2. [↩]
Private communication, October 2007. See also, e.g.: “Gaddafi, the Peacemaker in Chad and Darfur.” [↩]
Stephanie Hancock, “Most Chad Case Children Not Orphans,” Reuters, November 1, 2007. [↩] [↩]
“CHAD: French NGO Accused of Trafficking Children,” IRIN News, October 26, 2007; “Chad: Government Accused of Hypocrisy in Zoe’s Ark Affair,” IRIN News, November 8, 2007; Guillemette Faure, “Trafic d’enfants ou pieds nickelés de l’humanitaire?,” October 26, 2007, Anne Else, “Untangling the Zoe’s Ark Affair,” Anne Else’s Letter from Elsewhere, November 6, 2007. [↩]
Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” In Bringing the State Back In, Peter Evans et al. [↩]
Labels: DARFUR, DRC, KEITH HARMON SNOW, NEOCOLONIALISM
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