COMMENT - More about ZDERA here, including a chart showing the direct relationship between the ZDERA 2001 coming into force and the decline of the Zimbabwe Dollar in 2002,
here. - MrK
(THE PATRIOT ZW) President Museveni’s thoughts on Zim sanctions
By The Patriot Reporter - May 9, 2019
By Dr Tafataona Mahoso
I WAS privileged to be at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) 2019 when His Excellency Yoweri Kaguta Museveni delivered his guest of honour address.
In his address, the guest of honour touched on several related themes: The contribution of African nationalism and pan-Africanism to the liberation of the southern African region from colonialism, apartheid and Rhodesian UDI, which was a great achievement in the global struggle for true human rights; the apparent contradiction of the fact that in the 1970s and 1980s, with far less resources than now, African countries were more effective in exerting their influence in international affairs than they are able to exert in 2019; and, last but not least, the shame of the current illegal economic sanctions on Zimbabwe which Museveni described as an act of moral and diplomatic cowardice.
Although the observation that sanctions on Zimbabwe were an act of cowardice did catch the attention of most journalists and editors, it was not covered beyond mere speech reporting. So its significance was largely missed or ignored. The significance is worth revisiting.
The Western doctrine encompassing free-flow of information, open and transparent society, academic freedom and press freedom is daily contradicted by sanctions on Zimbabwe.
An act of cowardice, in the context of discourse and diplomacy, implies an act of avoidance and denial. Indeed, for the last 20 years, the issue of the illegal and racist sanctions on Zimbabwe has seen Western leaders, their ambassadors and the thousands of journalists and editors roped in to justify the sanctions engaging mostly in avoidance and denial. Here is how:
First, it is only white countries who decided to punish black people with sanctions for daring to take back their land which was stolen by white settlers and abused as well as exploited for 100 years. This fact had to be denied or avoided because the same white powers want to project themselves as democratic societies who have overcome racism and racial discrimination and who are now champions of human rights. So, in this sense, illegal sanctions served to foreclose an international debate on the rights of a whole nation subjected to forced removals and denied access to their best lands, waters and other resources for an entire century. Shutting the door on such an important debate became necessary because it would only result in the West looking really bad and backward.
In the second place, having succeeded in shutting the channels of discourse by resorting to illegal sanctions, the next form of denial perpetrated by the West was to change the subject, to suppress the matter of African majority dispossession and replace it with a one-way propaganda barrage foregrounding theoretical ‘human rights’ as if the forced removal of Africans from their lands, waters and other resources were not in fact a fundamental human rights issue.
In the third place, the West had to set up a skewed mass media system which was intended to create the global perception that it was Zimbabwean society which was closed to debate and dialogue because it was not an ‘open’ and ‘transparent’ society. This set up is demonstrated by the fact that Studio 7 was created as a propaganda vehicle to broadcast one-way into Zimbabwe and its identity had to emphasise Studio 7 while disguising the reality that Studio 7 is a channel of the Voice of America (VOA) which is an instrument of US foreign policy under the US State Department.
This feature is critical for supporting President Museveni’s charge of cowardice because VOA is forbidden by US law from broadcasting into the US.
This is profound because Studio 7 goes out of its way to gather many voices around Zimbabwe whose contributions are consistent with the aims of US policy.
In fact Studio 7, on its face value, appears to be levelling the media playing field in Zimbabwe by providing a North American alternative. But that apparent levelling is fake because it does not level the real field where it would really matter; that is affording the masses of Zimbabwe the opportunity to speak to the masses of the US, people-to-people, bout the damage US policy toward Zimbabwe has inflicted upon ordinary people.
In the fourth place, the effect of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA), the 2001 US sanctions law on Zimbabwe, has been to spread diplomatic poison to Zimbabwe’s relations with countries other than the UK and US, that is, countries who (except for race and racism) have absolutely nothing to do with the specific quarrel over land which was between Britain and its settler-kith-and-kin on one hand, and the African majority in Zimbabwe, on the other.
One of those white countries is Sweden, whose Ambassador here in 2008, also went on a crusade of denial about sanctions.
On Friday, November 7 2008, the Swedish Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mr Sten Rylander, made an unusual solo appearance on ZTV’s programme Talking Business where he was interviewed by Supa Mandiwanzira of Mighty Movies.
For those who are trained to read situations in addition to merely verbal statements and texts, the Swedish Ambassador’s appearance was significant in several respects:
It was on the same Talking Business programme on 18 July 2001 that the then MDC spokesman Learnmore Jongwe appealed to Zimbabweans to celebrate the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Bill which was pending in the US Congress.
This Bill became the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZIDERA) in the same year. The only difference between Jongwe in July 2001 and Rylander in November 2008 was that I was given the opportunity to challenge Jongwe on the same programme in 2001 but this time Rylander’s appearance was a solo performance with only the host as an indirect and weak challenger. Both Jongwe and Rylander lied to ZTV viewers by claiming that ZIDERA was not a sanctions Bill but was meant to promote democracy in Zimbabwe and to ban a few undesirable leaders from international travel.
Rylander’s appearance on November 7 2008, just like Jongwe’s intervention on July 18 2001, was part and parcel of a long series of externally orchestrated and world-wide events intended to influence Zimbabwe and the SADC region. Zimbabwean patriots found themselves having to respond to this form of external aggression. Rylander’s appearance was also meant to raise the value and bargaining power of MDC-T and Morgan Tsvangirai on the eve of the SADC Summit scheduled for that same weekend in Sandton, South Africa, where Zimbabwe’s interparty agreement on an Inclusive Government was going to be discussed.
Spy-sponsored documentaries on CNN, BBC and other Western channels celebrated the effects of the illegal economic war on Zimbabwe and its direct impact on ordinary citizens.
Among related events at the time of Rylander’s appearance were a number of spy-sponsored documentaries on CNN, BBC and other Western channels celebrating the effects of the illegal economic war on Zimbabwe and its direct impact on ordinary citizens. As usual, the spy-sponsored documentaries, just like Rylander, never mentioned sanctions nor admitted that ZIDERA was indeed a US declaration of economic war upon the same suffering people of Zimbabwe.
Indeed, the claim that ZIDERA was just a travel ban to promote democracy in Zimbabwe was contradicted not only by the fact that Zimbabwe’s leaders have always been able to travel and were in fact going to travel to SA as Rylander appeared on ZTV. The claim was also contradicted by former US Ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell when he told students and faculty at Africa University on November 2 20005 that:
“The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act is the cornerstone of US policy toward Zimbabwe. Under the Act, the United States conditions aid and financing for Zimbabwe….” Indeed this had nothing to do with travel bans.
Yet, without crediting the decline of Zimbabwe’s economy to the same sanctions, Ambassador Dell bragged that according to the Washington-based Centre for Global Development (CGD) the economic crisis in Zimbabwe had set the country back by 52 years by 2005! The [CGD] paper calculated that the purchasing power of the average Zimbabwean in 2005 had fallen back to the same level as 1953, according to Dell.
In other words, Rylander, Dell and Learnmore Jongwe were all begging the question: Why would the entire US Government make a mere personal travel ban the ‘cornerstone’ of its policy toward Zimbabwe and how could a country’s economy be set back half a century within five years without economic war? This second question is particularly important since the massive decline happened without any change in government. The same Government associated with development progress and improving living conditions from 1980 to 2000 was still in power in 2005. If indeed the Government’s corruption was the real explanation why would it cause such a precipitous decline only after 1999? What really happened to the economy between 1999 and 2005 or 2008?
Rylander did not speak just for the country he was paid to represent in Zimbabwe. He spoke on behalf of all the sponsors of regime change and external interference in Zimbabwe.
That Rylander was a front for all the others became clear also in his desperate efforts to fool the Zimbabwean public into continuing to believe that western aid would flood Zimbabwe as soon as President Mugabe and ZANU-PF handed over to Mr Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T all the cabinet posts and powers demanded by the West through Tsvangirai.
In the fifth place, the effect of the US sanctions has been to destroy the journalistic and intellectual integrity of many media houses on the issue of Zimbabwe.
Former Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor, Dr Gideon Gono wrote a book on the sanctions while he was still in office. Instead of journalists and editors, compromised by donor funds from the West coming out at least to criticise the book where they did not agree with it, the response was a complete black-out. Never mind that the same editors and journalists continued their role of denying the existence of sanctions altogether or misnaming them as ‘travel bans’.
At the core of their denial was the question and meaning of sanctions which Dr Gono tackled on Page 97 of his book Zimbabwe’s Casino Economy: Extraordinary Measures for Extraordinary Challenges.
This was Dr Gono’s view of illegal sanctions, according to his book, on Page 97:
“I believe that, if properly scrutinised in diplomacy, politics and ethics, it should not be very difficult to appreciate that illegal economic sanctions are not different from sanitised terrorism. As instruments of foreign policy, the objectives of terror and illegal economic sanctions are the same: terror, which is generally described as a state of fear or an overwhelming sense of imminent danger.
The individuals, institutions and companies in Zimbabwe that have been targeted for sanctions from the powerful Western countries are supposed to be terrorised by a continuing sense of imminent danger. The same is true of ordinary people who are being made to understand that economic sanctions would not be lifted as long as ZANU-PF and President Mugabe remain in power.”
Indeed, according to Oxford University lecturer Blessing Miles-Tendi’s Making History in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: Intellectuals, History and Media, even university academics were not spared. Many went out their way to distort their research against Zimbabwe in order to fit the western template and to get paid.
In other words, Ugandan President Museven’s observation that white sanctions against Zimbabwe were an act of cowardice is correct. The Western doctrine encompassing free-flow of information, open and transparent society, academic freedom and press freedom is daily contradicted by sanctions on Zimbabwe. These sanctions have made necessary the setting of a huge propaganda façade characterised by denial and avoidance.
That is why Zimbabwe’s Second Republic has made re-engagement with the West the major plank in its foreign policy: Because sanctions, as denial and avoidance, have shut the door on dialogue.
Labels: LAND REFORM, YOWERI MUSEVENI, ZDERA
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(MONITORY UG) Museveni blocks Anti-Homosexuality Bill
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By Yasiin Mugerwa
Posted Friday, January 17 2014 at 02:00
In Summary
President accuses Parliament of breaking the law by passing the Bill without quorum. Parliament- President Museveni has confronted Speaker Rebecca Kadaga for passing the controversial Anti-gays Bill without quorum and described homosexuals as “abnormal” beings who can be “rescued” through economic empowerment.
In an eight-page letter to Speaker and MPs dated December 28, 2013, the President said he was forced to contrite on the issue by “a small group of our MPs, led by Hon Kadaga” who forced through the Bill even after he had advised to shelve it until the government had studied it in depth.
“Some elements, however, insisted and even without quorum of Parliament, passed it,” the President said. “How can you pass law without the quorum of Parliament after it has been pointed out? What sort of Parliament is this? How can Parliament be the one to break the Constitution and the Law repeatedly?”
But Parliament spokesperson Helen Kawesa yesterday said if there was no quorum, “that can be established by the relevant bodies in Parliament,” adding that several Bills were passed between October and December last year, and with similar numbers in the House.
The President said a homosexual is somebody who is abnormal because the normal person was created to be attracted to the opposite sex in order to procreate and perpetuate the human race. He said, nature goes wrong in a minority of cases.
While in the Bill passed by Parliament there is no provision for killing homosexuals; the President said, “The question at the core of the debate of homosexuality is; what do we do with an abnormal person? Do we kill him/her? Do we imprison him/her? Or we do contain him/her?”
While the President said homosexuality is an abnormal condition that can be cured, he disagreed with the position of Western countries that homosexuality is an “alternative sexual orientation”. “You cannot call an abnormality an alternative orientation. It could be that the Western societies, on account of random breeding, have generated many abnormal people,” he said, adding that his acid test for rejecting Western position is that nature is purposeful.
The President said apart from the people who are abnormal, it seems there is a group of those that become homosexual for “mercenary reasons”—they get recruited on account of financial inducements. He said this is a group that can be rescued and that many of the youth fall in this category.
As for lesbians, the President said apart from those born abnormal and those ones that may become lesbian for mercenary reasons, there may be those that go into the practice because of “sexual starvation” when they fail to get married.
The President said the rescue for homosexuals is first and foremost, economic, focusing on rapidly industrialised Uganda, modernisation of agriculture etc. By delaying government projects needed to create jobs for the unemployed youth, the President said the MPs are exposing the unemployed youth or “impecunious students” to the risks of homosexuality and other temptations.
“Even with legislation, they will simply go underground and continue practicing homosexuality or lesbianism for mercenary reasons,” he said.
The President said he would support a life sentence for one who lures normal youth into “these disgusting behaviours” – especially homosexuality. He said the NRM Caucus will find a scientifically correct position on the proposed anti-gay legislation.
Background
In December 2013, Parliament passed the Bill which criminalises sexual intercourse between same-sex partners. The legislation provides for a sentence of life imprisonment for anyone convicted of homosexuality, which covers gays and lesbians.
ymugerwa@ug.nationmedia.com
Labels: DAVID BAHATI, HOMOSEXUALITY, THE FAMILY, YOWERI MUSEVENI
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(LAND DESTROYER REPORT) The Plundering of South Sudan
US AFRICOM, Israel, and Uganda's Dictator-for-Life Yoweri Museveni set up in South Sudan, inflame conflict, push out China and prepare to take over oil.
January 9, 2014 (LD) - RT's report
"Who is to blame for the crisis in South Sudan?" gave a succinct background on the warring factions inside the new "nation" of South Sudan and the Western genesis of the conflict. The report would state:
The SPLM has received support from the US and Israel throughout the duration of the civil war fought between southern rebels and Khartoum, which has historically had unfriendly relations with the West and has moved very closely to China in recent times to jointly develop the country’s oil wealth prior to the separation. Romantic notions for self-determination did not motivate the West to support southern secession; the objective was to partition Sudan and deprive Khartoum of economically relevant territory in the south where most of the oil fields lie. In exchange for the financial, material, political, and diplomatic support received from the West, the new government in Juba endorsed a ‘Faustian pact’ with its sponsors to open its economy to international finance capital and multinational interests. The government in Juba even applied for IMF membership before it had even officially gained independence from Sudan.
The piece would continue by laying out the current dilemma for the West:
Despite supporting the South’s independence with diplomatic muscle and military aid, the United States has been unable to gain a foothold in the country’s oil sector; Juba’s crippled economy remains dominated by Asian companies, primarily from China. South Sudan must rely on pipelines that run through Khartoum to export its oil, and the two countries produced around 115,000 barrels of oil per day in 2012, less than half the volume produced in the years before South Sudan's independence. Both sides have nearly gone to war over disputed oil fields that straddle a poorly demarcated border. Judging from the poor economic performance of both countries since the partition and the dramatic loss of the life in the ongoing crisis, the experiment of South Sudanese independence is failing.
Image: Violence predictably is centered around currently
Chinese-controlled oil infrastructure. The goal is to have
violence drive the Chinese out just as was done by NATO
in Libya.
The piece would go on to note that peace deals reached leaving Sudan intact could have avoided the deadly conflict now raging - and that of course is correct. However, peace is not and never was the goal of the West and its involvement in Africa - economic gain is.
Precisely because China still maintains extensive holdings in Sudan and South Sudan's oil infrastructure, the conflict will be brought to a fevered pitch - and unsurprisingly the conflict's epicenter corresponds with South Sudan's primary oil producing regions. If and when the Chinese are pushed out of South Sudan, the West will continue either across the border to establish routes for exporting their newly gained oil wealth from the landlocked country, or proceed through Kenya with or without the current government in Nairobi's backing.
The BBC would report in their article, "China's oil fears over South Sudan fighting," that (emphasis added):
The stakes could not be higher for China, the largest investor in South Sudan's oil sector, as fierce fighting continues between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and those of his former deputy.
Some of the largest oil fields China operates are in areas controlled by fighters backing Riek Machar, the country's vice-president until he was sacked in July.
Oil production has already dropped by 20% since the onset of the conflict three weeks ago and more than 300 Chinese workers have been evacuated.
The spectre of their Libyan experience also weighs heavily on the Chinese minds - project after project now lies deserted because of heavy fighting during the Arab Spring uprising of 2011, inflicting huge losses on China.
Most telling of all is the BBC's reference to Libya - another nation destroyed by Western military aggression that saw both Russian and Chinese interests crumble overnight and replaced by Western corporations. While South Sudan's chaos is being orchestrated more covertly by the West, the final goal of pushing out the Chinese and taking over is the same.
Similar covert destabilization can be seen all across what the 2006 Strategic Studies Institute's report "String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China's Rising Power across the Asian Littoral" calls China's "String of Perals." This includes US-backed militants attempting to carve off the province of Baluchistan from Pakistan where China has established a port at Gwadar and at another Chinese port in the state of Rakhine, Myanmar that has been the scene of brutal, genocidal violence carried out by "democracy icon" Aung San Suu Kyi's "saffron monks" against Rohingya refugees.
Setting Up Shop in South Sudan
There is no doubt that the US and its accomplices Israel and Uganda have decided to stay in South Sudan. The US corporate foundation-funded "Enough Project" provided the rhetorical justification for an enduring presence in the war-torn African state in its Al Jazeera op-ed titled, "Al Jazeera America Op-ed: South Sudan’s Salva Kiir needs to put his black hat back on," which stated:
To be sure, growing pains are common in societies working to secure their independence after years of marginalization and authoritarian rule. Building a cohesive national identity among South Sudan’s 81 ethnic groups will take generations. Still, the looming specters of mass intercommunal violence means we cannot afford to be complacent. The United States committed itself to the South Sudanese people’s long march toward independence decades ago. It would be a shame if America allowed a return to war when the South Sudanese are so close to securing their future.
With that humanitarian/freedom-promoting foot-in-the-door, the West has the pretext it needs to meddle for decades to come.
To begin with, Israel Military Industries Ltd. (IMI) signed what it called a "water infrastructure and technology development" deal with South Sudan's government in 2012. The deal allegedly covers desalination, irrigation, water transport and purification, but a visit to Israel Military Industries Ltd. website indicates they are military contractors and arms manufacturers, not engineers and certainly not specialists in water infrastructure. Other sources claim IMI will serve as a conduit for actual Israeli water firms - but in light of US, Israeli, Saudi, and Qatari joint operations elsewhere, IMI will most likely serve as a conduit for weapons, cash, and conflict as well (or instead).
Image: It is not entirely clear how a military contractor and weapons manufacturer like Israel's IMI is going to develop South Sudan's water infrastructure. Just like Qatar's use of humanitarian aid groups to smuggle weapons into Syria, Israel is most likely using "development" as cover for perpetuating conflict both within South Sudan to drive out the Chinese, as well as across the border in Sudan to the north to finally topple the government in Khartoum.
....
In 2013, Israel and South Sudan would begin forging oil deals. In UPI's report, "South Sudan signs oil deal with Israel," it was stated:
South Sudan says it has signed an agreement with several Israeli oil companies, a potentially significant strategic move that will consolidate the Jewish state's relations with the fledgling, oil-rich East African state.
UPI would continue, highlighting the glaring problem of actually exporting the oil to turn a profit:
South Sudan's petroleum and mining minister, Dhieu Dau, announced the oil deal last week after he returned from a visit to Israel.
He said negotiations were ongoing with Israeli companies, which he did not identify, seeking to invest in South Sudan.
Dau indicated the southern government in Juba, ramshackle capital of the infant state, hoped to export oil to Israel, but observed that this could not happen before March.
He gave no indication how the landlocked south would achieve this, or what volume of crude would be involved. But it's a move Khartoum would do everything possible to wreck.
Finally, the UPI report indicates the much larger implications of Israel's (and the US') involvement in South Sudan, using it as a springboard to topple neighboring Sudan in the north:
The prospect of Israel actually getting oil from South Sudan remains uncertain, given Juba's difficulties with Khartoum.
There has been talk of building a 1,000-mile export pipeline from South Sudan across Kenya to the Indian Ocean that would free Juba from reliance on Khartoum's pipelines.
But no definite plans for the project, expected to cost around $2 billion, have yet materialized.
It may be that Israeli companies are seeking to help out in that regard -- if only to undermine the Islamic-oriented Khartoum regime and its alliance with Tehran, and to gain access to the Nile River, Egypt's primary source of water and a strategic target.
During Sudan's civil war, one of Africa's longest conflicts in which some 2 million people died, Israel provided the southern rebels with arms, training and funding, as it has done in other parts of Africa seeking to weaken its Arab adversaries.
Clearly, the presence of Israeli arms dealers is not to develop South Sudan's infrastructure but rather to flood the region with weapons to flush out the Chinese and eventually stab northward toward Sudan and its capital of Khartoum. UPI's report would go on to admit that military aid was still undoubtedly flowing to South Sudan for this very purpose.
In addition to a proxy military confrontation with Sudan, the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have been attempting to overthrow the government in Khartoum from within - attempting an "Arab Spring-style" uprising in late 2013 that eventually fizzled.
Enter US AFRICOM and Uganda's Museveni
Infamous Western collaborator and Ugandan dictator-for-life Yoweri Museveni has been fighting the West's proxy wars in Africa for decades. He has also done much within his borders to appease the West including selling large tracts of land to foreign developers right out from beneath the feet of his own people - many times killing landowners who refused eviction.
Image: Whatever pretext the West attempts to use to place Western troops inside of Africa while Fortune 500 corporations scoop up the continent's vast resources, it is nothing more than modern recolonization. US troops placed in Uganda to fight "Kony" are now conveniently in place to aid in the despoiling of neighboring South Sudan - a state carved out of proper Sudan via Western-fueled civil war.
....
In 2011 under the false pretext of fighting Joseph Kony's "Lord's Resistance Army" the US would begin deploying troops to Uganda. By 2013, these troops would still be there - when violence began to spread across nearby South Sudan, US troops conveniently still stationed in Uganda would be mobilized for the evacuation of US citizens. Stars and Stripes would report in their article, "Marines airlift US Embassy personnel out of South Sudan," that:
Nonessential U.S. Embassy personnel were evacuated Friday from South Sudan aboard two KC-130 aircraft assigned to a Marine crisis response team positioned in nearby Uganda.
The article would also report:
Last week, the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force-Crisis Response also was pre-positioned at Entebbe, Uganda, to provide additional support. The unit, from Moron, Spain, was formed less than a year ago to bolster AFRICOM’s crisis-response capabilities.
Uganda, like Sudan, has clearly been permanently brought into AFRICOM's fold under an initial false "humanitarian" pretext that was then quietly shifted to the permanent occupation of African territory. And Uganda not only serves as a base for US AFRICOM, but is also using its soldiers to carry out AFRICOM's objectives beyond Uganda's borders.
The Guardian would report in its recent article, "South Sudan peace talks falter as Uganda sends in troops," that:
The South Sudan peace talks being held in Ethiopia have stalled, officials say, as a rebel commander claims big victories against the South Sudanese government and Uganda sends in more troops and military hardware.
The report would also claim:
Uganda, he said, had sent 1,200 troops to secure installations such as the airport and state house, adding that Ugandan military aircraft had bombed several rebel-held positions.
Uganda says its deployment of more troops and military hardware to Juba this week came at the request of Kiir. Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Ankunda, a Ugandan military spokesman, said on Wednesday that reinforcements were dispatched on Monday and Tuesday "to plug security gaps". He denied the Ugandans were actively involved in combat.
Yoweri Museveni, the president of Uganda, is a strong ally of Kiir. The neighbouring countries have built a bond that goes back to South Sudan's armed struggle for independence from Sudan and the Khartoum government. Museveni recently warned Machar that East African countries would unite to defeat him militarily if he does not agree to attend peace talks.
In essence, Uganda is providing the manpower on the ground while the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others provide the cash, weapons, and everything else. It is another proxy war, just like the ongoing conflict in Syria, albeit with Ugandan troops literally invading South Sudan to prop up the West's proxy government in Juba.
Who is funding and arming rebel groups fighting the West's proxy government is still unclear. Reports indicate it may be dissident factions of South Sudan's own armed forces involved in a recent coup attempt. Other theories suggest that US, Uganda, and/or Israel may be funding and arming both sides hoping to carry the conflict onward to Khartoum. It is clear that Khartoum, Sudan, one way or another, is the US-Israeli-Saudi-Qatari goal - to complete the theft of Sudanese oil as well as the means to export it out of the broken, worn-torn, decimated country.
This is the current state of the Wall Street-London global order in Africa - and a tattered, exploited Africa in our future should this state persist.
Labels: AFRICOM, NEOCOLONIALISM, SOUTH SUDAN, SUDAN, UGANDA, YOWERI MUSEVENI
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The President has a very clear focus on the economy
By David Mafabi (email the author)
Posted Friday, June 8 2012 at 00:00
Commentary
Yesterday, President Museveni delivered the State of the Nation Address to Parliament. The Address once again clearly enunciated where we have come from, where we are, and where we need to go- in terms of national development policy.
Further, the President stayed within the NRM Government overall strategic sector prioritisation focus, covering the period 2011/2016. He has outlined this extremely clearly several times over, including during the launch of the 2011 elections NRM manifesto. The strategic sector prioritisation focus covers the following:
“Expanding electricity generation to 3,800 MGWS; Tarmacking and reconstructing the roads indicated on many occasions; Repairing the railway using UPDF Engineering Brigade; Prosperity For All through agriculture - leading to the reduction of the subsistence sector and expansion of commercial agriculture; Value-addition to all agricultural products that are not eaten fresh; Industrialisation, the promotion of cottage industries, the setting up of ICT parks and the expansion of the optic fibre backbone infrastructure to the rest of the country; Expanding education infrastructure, the building of technical vocational schools, continuing to spread schools to all sub-counties, etc”.
“Continuing to expand and ensure the optimal use of the health infrastructure at sub-county levels and below; Continuing to expand piped water to more towns and trading centres and expanding safe-water coverage in rural areas; Irrigation - mega and micro - mainly for agriculture; Developing our petroleum resource - through building a refinery, etc; Ensuring a living wage for all the public servants by continuing to improve their salaries - as the economy continues to grow and is eventually transformed”.
“Working for the political Federation of East Africa along with our partners in East Africa to guarantee our strategic security and long-term sustained development”.
On the eve of the address however, there had been a lot of discussion on what should and should not be its focus: KFM and others hosted a debate on the economy, while several leaders were quoted in the New Vision of Tuesday June 5 as saying, “President should focus on economy”.
Said Dr Abed Bwanika, leader of the People’s Development Party (PDP): “Any serious head of state would come with … address containing solutions to Uganda’s economic problems. The rate of inflation is so high.” Hon. Wafula (Wafs) Oguttu, a senior official in the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) wants, “practical measures … to reduce poverty”. His senior colleague and my friend, Hon. Alice Also, was later to lament on TV, “Inflation is still in double-digit figures!” My friend Olara Otunnu, the president of the Uganda People’s Congress declared, “The State of the Nation is very painful and appalling!”
But, the real shocker was from Dr Aaron Mukwaya of Makerere University, who “does not expect President Museveni to announce any measures to cause a paradigm shift in Uganda’s public affairs”! Questions arise here: a paradigm shift from what to what? What is the architecture of the current “paradigm of public affairs”? What is the architecture of the “paradigm” to which Dr Mukwaya would have us aspire?
Politics and politicking aside, the Mukwaya dilemma sadly is the general philosophical and ideological dilemma of the African political class, elite and intelligentsia- what is the precise nature and essence of the problem we are dealing with? Fortunately, Museveni suffers from no such dilemma - he is very clear.
Is it a situation, an event or a process? Or a complex combination of these and other elements? Is the problematic a product of specifically a “Museveni phenomenon”, or does it have defining trans-regime and structural dimensions? Are the dimensions political, economic, cultural or spiritual, etc - or a complex combination of all these? Are there any benefits in doing a comparative study of the situation and condition of other African and emergent peoples? What is their common condition in the world division of work and market?
In a word, what construct or template lends itself in a fundamental sense, to the execution of a qualitative leap by the Ugandan and African people from backwardness, into the 21st Century?
Politicking aside, this is the backdrop against which the State of the Nation Address should be evaluated. If we ignore this, we cannot go beyond proposing objectively reckless and irresponsible populist and short term non-answers to the problems of our people!
Mr Mafabi is the private secretary/political affairs- State House.
kdavidmafabi@yahoo.com
Labels: UGANDA, YOWERI MUSEVENI
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Beyond “Kony 2012”. What is Happening in Uganda? America's "Invisible" Military Agenda
by Daniele Scalea
Global Research, March 21, 2012
Kony 2012 is the title of a campaign launched by the organization Invisible Children Inc., focused for now on the half hour video of the same name, which has had a viral diffusion on the internet reaching in a few days almost one hundred million views (it was published only on the 5th March). The campaign aims at supporting the arrest of Joseph Kony, an Ugandan guerrilla leader accused of “crimes against humanity” by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
The campaign’s stated purpose is to encourage international efforts to arrest Kony, by making his case as widely known as possible. Nothing original here, but it’s interesting that Invisible Children Inc. is trying to rally volunteers on the one hand to lobby dozens of famous people (politicians and show business personalities) to convince them to be spokespeople for the campaign, and on the other hand to buy a kit complete with posters, bracelets and other propaganda material.
In that sense something leaps immediately out. Kony’s story is told hastily and in a trenchant way as that of a brutal man without ideals and supporters, who kidnaps children to make them fight at his service.
The reason why many people (who presumably would not have even been able to find Uganda on the map before having watched the video) should rally around the campaign occupies only a relatively short part of the video.
A large part of it, on the contrary, is dedicated to extolling the potential of the internet and grassroots mobilization and to showing young photogenic activists spreading the cause and its gadgets, decorated with logos and symbols graphically very well crafted.
The messages and images recall the happenings of the “Arabic Spring” and its interpretation – in my opinion strained as I’ve argued elsewhere – as the revolt of “Facebook and Twitter users”. And that of the so called “coloured revolts” orchestrated in different countries (Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine) during the last years by the widespread and professional network of US “NGOs”.
Another noteworthy element is that in Kony 2012 the sending of US troops by Obama to Uganda is supported. Indeed the continuation of military support to the Ugandan armed forces is the main goal of the whole campaign: a decision by Congress to disengage from the African country must be prevented. President Obama’s choice is portrayed as the result of grassroots pressure exerted by Invisible Children Inc. during the past years, and as a military mission decided upon “simply because it is the right thing to do”. This interpretation is simplistic just like the superficial and Manichean description of Ugandan situation. Before giving reason for these opinions, a digression on the inventors of Kony 2012 campaign must be made.
Invisible Children Inc. was founded in 2004 with the specific purpose of opposing Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army activity. Its founders, Jason Russel, Bobby Bailey and Laren Poole, university students at that time, had been affected by what they had seen in Uganda during a journey in 2003. Today Invisible Children Inc. collects almost 14 million dollars a year, with a net profit of almost 5 millions. In 2011, 16.24% of expenditure went on “Management & General”. On the 30th June 2011 the organization declared assets amounting to a little less than 7 million dollars. Jason Russel, director and narrative voice of Kony 2012, receive a salary of 1% of all organization spending, that is 89,669 dollars a year. Similar wages are received also by the co-founder Laren Poole and the executive director Ben Kessey. But these numbers are meant to be outclassed this year. According to what Jason Russel has just declared, Invisible Children Inc. should have already sold 500,000 kits, each one costing $30, in only a week for a total income of 15 million dollars.
The organization, as it also boasts in the video, was one of the supporters of the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act
[Sponsored by Russ Feingold, who also co-sponsored ZDERA and sponsored ZTDERA - MrK]
signed by president Barack Obama in May 2010, with which one hundred US military advisers were sent to the African country to support the national army against LRA rebels. Nevertheless, the White House decision, as it’s easy to imagine and in contrast to what seems to be suggested in Kony 2012, was not solely or even principally dictated by humanitarian reasons. But to understand this a digression on the Ugandan situation must be made.
Like many African countries, whose borders were arbitrarily drawn by colonial European states, Uganda is strewn with ethnic conflicts. The most important is that between the Baganda (or Ganda), the inhabitants of the south and east of the country, and the Acholi who live in the north and also beyond the Ugandan border into southern Sudan. Uganda’s history after independence (1962) has been marked by coups d’état and civil wars often fought along ethnic fault lines. The first president of independent Uganda, Edward Mutesa, was also Mutesa II the Buganda’s king, even though the main powers were held by government chief Milton Obote (belonging to Lango ethnic group, similar to Acholi). In 1966 Obote became president with a coup d’état in response to the parliament’s attempt to incriminate him, but in 1979 he, in turn, was overthrown and replaced by his ex-ally, the army commander Idi Amin. In 1978 a war broke out with Tanzania and in 1979, supported with foreign arms, the exiles (mainly Lango and Acholi) succeeded in bringing Obote back to office. Obote’s comeback was legitimized by a popular vote, considered lacking in transparency by his opponents however. Yoweri Museveni from the southern Bantu region founded the National Resistance Army (NRA). In fact the conflict was between the NRA, supported by the Buganda, and the government’s National Liberation Army (UNLA) of Lango and Acholi. In 1985 Obote was overthrown by a new military coup d’état organized by the Acholi, but in January 1986, despite the intervention of Mubutu’s Zaire, the NRA won the war and Museveni became president. He still holds power in a regime where all political parties are banned, and so he has given a certain stability to the troubled country.
Nevertheless, Museveni’s long presidency was not all a bed of roses. His neoliberal agenda has inflicted heavy social costs in exchange for economic growth, which in addition has been concentrated mainly in the Bantu regions where its support is rooted, while the Nilotic north has been neglected.
Museveni has shown a certain aggressiveness towards neighbouring countries,
[Translation: he invades neighboring states in compliances with the wishes of the United States and the United Kingdom. He is their proxy. That is why there are Ugandan mercenaries fighting in Iraq, why there are Ugandans in the Eastern DRC, etc. - MrK]
culminating in Ugandan intervention in the Somali civil war; an intervention strongly wanted by the United States and that could make one think that the military aid ordered by Obama is granted more to help a military ally which in Somalia has already lost hundreds of soldiers, rather than for humanitarian reasons.
Since its installation, Musenevi’s government has faced a series of ethnic insurrections and resistance movements. In fact the northern region of the country has been subjected to military occupation by the NRA, noted (also by Amnesty International) for its commission of war crimes. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) of Joseph Kony, an Acholi Christian soldier, emerged in this atmosphere. The fight between LRA and NRA has been a no holds barred contest: government soldiers have been accused more or less of the same vileness blamed on the LRA, including the exploitation of children, the Kony 2012 Leitmotif. But in 2005 the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants only for LRA leaders. It is worthwhile remembering that the ICC was established in 2002 and at the moment is recognized by 120 countries. Among those states which do not recognize its authority on themselves are the United States, China, India and Russia.
Uganda’s domestic struggle soon captured the non-disinterested attention of other countries. The LRA has been supported by Sudan, which wanted revenge for Musaveni’s support to the nationalists of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). Thanks to the SPLA South Sudan has recently gained its independence but great tension with Khartoum remains. In the meantime the LRA has been strongly cut down, and moreover it moved towards South Sudan. The Ugandan government, on the contrary, as already said, has the support of the United States (while Sudan has been and still is close to China). Even before the already mentioned order from Obama, the United States had sent soldiers and weapons to support Musenevi in AFRICOM operations, NATO’s Africa command instituted a few years ago as a reaction to the political and trading penetration of China in Africa. In 2008-2009 the United States supported the so called Garamba Offensive in Congo, made by Ugandan and Congolese government armies and the Sudanese SPLA against Kony’s LRA. The LRA seems, in fact, to have almost disappeared from Uganda. In recent years it showed signs of activity only in neighbouring countries.
Kony 2012 has also been criticised. Ugandan journalist Rosebell Kagumire has noticed the great simplification of events made in the video. This is what a source of undoubted prestige like Foreign Affairs, journal of the Council of Foreign Relations, unanimously considered the most influential think tank in the United States, has written about organizations like Invisible Children Inc. which supported the US participation in the Ugandan conflict: “In their campaigns these organizations have manipulated facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the extent of kidnappings and murders made by the LRA, emphasizing the use of innocent children as soldiers and portraying Kony – without any doubt a brutal man – as the unique personification of evil forces, a sort of Kurtz [main character of Heart of Darkness by Conrad].
They have rarely made reference to the atrocities perpetrated by the Ugandan government or the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (including attacks against civilians and plundering of homes and businesses) or the complex regional politics behind the conflict”. Michael Deibert, a famous journalist who studied in depth the Ugandan situation writing a book about it, has commented critically on the Kony 2012 campaign. Far from defending the LRA leader, Deibert has nevertheless noticed that “the Ugandan government now in office got to power using also kadogos (soldier children) and by fighting together with armies which use soldier children in the Democratic Republic of Congo; all these things seem to be deliberately ignored by Invisible Children”. The argument of a lack of impartiality from the organization seems to be confirmed also by a photo showing the three founders posing with weapons in a hostile stance, together with South Sudan rebels. Glenna Gordon, who took the photo, has declared that she thinks the three are “colonialists” and are proud of it.
Doubt about the good faith of promoters, activists and Invisible Children’s supporters is not to be raised. But reality is far more complex than how it is described in the half hour video Kony 2012.
Kony, who in the video (and on propaganda posters) is expressly portrayed as a new Hitler and a new Bin Laden, is without any doubt a censurable figure but he is the product of the struggle of a people, the Acholi, who feel oppressed by president Musenevi, who surely has not distinguished himself by his liberalism, respect for popular sovereignty or human rights.
The good faith presumption does not save Kony 2012 from criticism when it expressly supports US military intervention in Uganda. An intervention that only out of a certain ignorance of events in Africa and with great naivety could be considered motivated only by the desire “to do the right thing”, as is stated in the documentary.
The United States has intervened in Uganda within the framework of increased militarization in its relationship with the continent, made necessary by the political and trading penetration of China in Africa. The sending of military advisers to Museveni, possibly a prelude to military escalation (maybe what the Kony 2012 viral campaign wants to achieve?), is to be taken in conjunction with drone bombardments in Somalia, intervention in Libya to overthrow Gaddafi, French intervention in Ivory Coast to depose Gbagbo. Julien Teil’s documentary The Humanitarian War has shown the role, not too clear, of NGOs in preparing the ground for NATO intervention in Libya.
Invisible Children emphasizes the need to send US troops to Uganda at a time when the LRA seems weakened and, according to many people, Kony hasn’t been in the country for years. At this point it does not seem rash to include also Kony 2012 in the arsenal of US soft power that should support the spread – not necessarily in a peaceful way – of Washington’s influence in Africa.
Daniele Scalea is co-editor-in-chief of the Italian Geopolitica review and scientific secretary of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Geopolitics and Auxiliary Sciences (IsAG) in Rome. He is author of two books: La sfida totale. Equilibri e strategie nel grande gioco delle potenze mondiali [“The Total Challenge: Balances and Strategies in the Great Game among World Powers”] (2010) and Capire le rivolte arabe. Alle origini del fenomeno rivoluzionario [“Understanding Arab Revolts. Origins of Revolutionary Phenomenon”] (2011). He is currently finishing a book on the life, works and thought of Halford John Mackinder
Global Research Articles by Daniele Scalea
Labels: AFRICOM, COLOUR REVOLUTIONS, ICC, NEOLIBERALISM, UGANDA, YOWERI MUSEVENI
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COMMENT - Cecil Rhodes: " “Africa is still lying ready for us,” he wrote. “It is our duty to take it. It is our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes-that more territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race; more of the best, the most human, most honorable race the world possesses.” "
Some mentalities don't die. See Mugabe And The White African, for example. - MrK
AFRICA: The Legacy of Cecil Rhodes' Anglo-American Empire
by Dan Gordon
Global Research, March 12, 2012
"Click this Button or African children will die”: How the “Kony 2012” video drafted a Facebook army to support the militarization of Africa”
In 1877 the British Empire was at the height of its glory, the Spanish Empire would soon collapse, and a young Oxford student named Cecil Rhodes was gripped by a sudden religious vision. Rhodes scrawled out a manifesto. In it, he called for an “Anglo-American Empire” that would begin in the heart of Africa and spread out to conquer the known world.
“Africa is still lying ready for us,” he wrote. “It is our duty to take it. It is our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes-that more territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race; more of the best, the most human, most honorable race the world possesses.”
Rhodes went on to found the DeBeers diamond cartel
[Funded by the Rothschild banking dynasty, NM Rothschild & sons to be precise - still the single largest shareholder of Anglo-American De Beers, especially after Anglo bought out the Oppenheimers of their shareholdings. Anglo-American was founded by Cecil Oppenheimer and JP Morgan. - MrK]
and devote his company’s vast wealth to the colonial project in Africa. He couldn’t have known that, just over a century later, a new invention called the Internet would be tweaking his message, smoothing out his more inflammatory language, and sending his ideas around the globe through YouTube and Facebook. Nor would he ever had imagined that the first black president of the United States would be the one to carry his vision to its ultimate conclusion, under the guise of “humanitarian intervention.”
Fast-forward to March of 2012, when the non-profit “TRI” launched an online video called “Kony 2012.” Filled with lightning cuts, footage of battle-scarred African children, and tearful appeals to emotion, the movie rallies its viewers around a single goal: stopping the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and its leader Joseph Kony. With the help of the U.S. military, of course. And Oprah Winfrey.
At first glance, that’s not such a bad idea. After all, the Lord’s Resistance Army has kidnapped perhaps thousands of Ugandan children and forced them into their militia in their bid to topple the Ugandan government. The fact that the movie ignores, however, is that Uganda’s government, and its U.S.-backed leader, Yoweri Museveni, doesn’t appear to have a much better record when it comes to human rights.
After all, Museveni was recruiting child soldiers to serve in the Ugandan military before the LRA unleashed its guerrilla war against the government. His success is probably what inspired Koney to take up the same tactics. So why does “Kony 2012” try to pin the blame squarely on the LRA for a war in neither side seems to be a friend of the Ugandan people?
It’s because Museveni is a willing tool of U.S. foreign policy. His troops are helping the Obama administration back up an impotent government in Somalia, a regime so mistrusted by its people that it has no power outside of Mogadishu. Because Museveni plays ball with the United States, he is given a free pass, just like Ethiopia’s Zenawi, to commit human rights abuses. Meanwhile, African leaders who try to pursue an independent economic policy like Sudan’s Al-Bashir and Libya’s now-dead Gadhafi are rewarded with NATO bombs and arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court.
“Kony 2012” is a crafty piece of propaganda. It happens to have been released at just the right moment in history. The movie’s narrator warns “this movie will expire at the end of 2012.” Of course, it’s just a coincidence that Obama is running for re-election this year. It’s also a coincidence that the “Kony 2012” signs the group has created to publicize their campaign are the same color as Shepard Fairey’s iconic “Hope” posters that swept Obama into office. The camera often makes shy glances towards shots of the “Kony” and “Obama” posters next to one another. The message is clear: elect one man and you will defeat the other.
Never before has subliminal programming been so blatant. If the makers of the film are truly concerned about stopping violence in Africa, they might want to question the film’s premise-that the 100 U.S. Special Forces Obama sent to Uganda in October of last year are actually there to fight the LRA. After all, according to the UN, the Ugandan military has whittled the LRA down to a mere 200 fighters. With only two guerrillas for every special ops soldier, you would think the war would have been over in a weekend.
Another fact the film neglects to mention is that Uganda’s government announced the discovery of large oil deposits in the northern part of the country last spring. Of course, this is probably a coincidence and has nothing to do with Obama’s decision to send special forces to Uganda several months later, despite the fact that the LRA has shifted their operations to the neighboring Congo.
According to the makers of the film, rather than questioning the true motive of sending troops to Africa, we should use whatever means necessary to pressure the U.S. to beef up its military presence in the region. To do this, the group has hijacked the language and imagery of the anti-globalization movement. Dropping banners, wheatpasting posters at night, holding rock concerts, and raising your fist in the air all become “subversive” ways to fight for escalating our military presence in Uganda.
Cecil Rhodes would be smiling in his grave.
Dan Gordon is a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C. You can follow him on Twitter at @iamdangordon or contact him at upagainstthewalrus@riseup.net
Labels: ANGLO-AMERICAN, CECIL RHODES, COLONIALISM, DEBEERS, GLOBALISATION, NEOCOLONIALISM, OIL, PROPAGANDA, UGANDA, YOWERI MUSEVENI
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COMMENT - On the Invisible Children 'NGO' StopKony2012 campaign: for what it's worth,
CEO Ben Keesey interned (doesn't say which branch) at
JP Morgan. (YOUTUBE)
Kony 2012 Video is Misleading - Ugandan girl in California(?). And (YOUTUBE)
Keith Harmon Snow on What Is really going on.
How Invisible Children's Kony 2012 Will Hurt - And How You Can Help - Central Africa
Posted: 03/ 9/2012 12:10 pm
Earlier this week, I wrote an essay outlining what I viewed as some of the problems with the "Kony 2012" campaign spearheaded by the American NGO Invisible Children. The campaign and accompanying film advocate -- via technological assistance, training and the presence of United States military personnel throughout Central Africa -- for military support of the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, ostensibly to facilitate the arrest of Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group and an accused war criminal indicted by the International Criminal Court.
To anyone who has spent time in Central Africa in general and Uganda in particular, this appears to be a road fraught with peril. In response to several requests that I elaborate further on the problems of this approach and a possibly more constructive approach, I offer the following.
There are several instances of blatant dishonesty in the film that immediately catch one's eye and trouble one's conscience.
The first is the inference that in the Uganda of today thousands of children are continuing their grim sojourns as night commuters to escape the violence of the LRA. With the LRA's presence in Northern Uganda having essentially evaporated by the end of 2006, the use of images of the bodies of thousands of sleeping children -- who may or may not have consented to be filmed -- attempts to convince the viewer that the crisis of overt violence in Northern Uganda is ongoing, and thus necessitating direct military action. As the organization spent $1,859,617 on travel and filmmaking last year (out of total expenses of $8,894,630) one would think Invisible Children could have shown a more current (and accurate) picture of Northern Uganda and the organizations there working to improve it.
Also troubling is the film's depiction of Lieutenant Okot Santo Lapolo. A Museveni loyalist who serves as a Resident District Commissioner (RDC) in the Acholi region, Santo Lapolo is perhaps better known for harassing and threatening government critics in the press in the region than opining on human rights. When Invisible Children interview him, however, Santo Lapolo is described simply as a "politician," with no mention of his role as an éminence gris for the regime.
This is alas part and parcel of the film's and the organization's whitewashing of the highly tortured history and legacy of the Museveni government in Central Africa, a government that has done some good things for the country but which also, through reckless military adventurism and a hunger to retain power, has routinely trampled on the values of human rights that Invisible Children claims to champion.
The Museveni government has been undergoing a serious crisis of legitimacy since at least 2001, when the Supreme Court of Uganda, while upholding the vote in presidential elections that year, also found that "the principle of free and fair election was compromised." The situation deteriorated further in 2006 when elections were marked by what observers called "serious irregularities and significant shortcomings." In 2011 elections, the National Resistance Movement -- Museveni's political party -- handed out money and gifts, intimidated political opponents and in general behaved in a way that seriously called into question the validity of the final results.
Over the last year, large scale protests against alleged political corruption and economic mismanagement have occurred in Uganda's capital, Kampala, many aligned with the Forum for Democratic Change led by Kizza Besigye, a doctor and former soldier as well as a former Museveni ally-turned-critic. Government security forces have treated the protests brutally, with at least 10 people dying and several hundred disappearing into jail during the demonstrations last year.
Beyond Congo's borders, in addition to its military actions in Somalia (where Uganda's army is essentially fighting a proxy war for Western powers against Islamist militias in that country,) Uganda's army also still has yet to answer for its actions following its late 1990s invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire) alongside Rwanda and a hastily-cobbled together Congolese rebel movement.
In the wars that followed, the Museveni government was the key military backer of the Mouvement de libération du Congo (MLC), a Congolese rebel movement led by Jean-Pierre Bemba, who is currently on trial at the International Criminal Court at the Hague -- the same body that indicted Kony -- for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
In addition to the MLC, the Museveni government also actively supported a faction of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD) and the Union des Patriotes Congolais (UPC), both of whom were implicated in the grossest human rights abuses. One former UPC chieftain, Thomas Lubanga, is currently on trial at the Hague, charged with using child soldiers, while another former leader of the group, Bosco Ntaganda, nicknamed The Terminator and also an indicted war criminal, is now a power broker in the eastern Congolese province of North Kivu and a lynchpin of the regional détente between Congolese President Joseph Kabila (himself re-elected in a controversial ballot last year) and Museveni's erstwhile ally-turned-rival, Rwanda President Paul Kagame.
Then there is the history of high-level attempts to crush the LRA itself.
In December 2008, seventeen U.S. military advisers provided logistics, communications, and intelligence support for the Ugandan and Congolese army's Operation Lightning Thunder, an attempt to nab Kony which failed. In the weeks that followed, the LRA descended on several Congolese villages, killing hundreds of people and kidnapping over 100 children from communities left defenseless against the LRA's desire for vengeance.
What is the system of protection that Invisible Children advocates for communities such as these put in the line of fire by the military operations the group advocates? Invisible Children is silent on this score.
This, then, is the context that Invisible Children advocates further militarizing.
Complicating matters still further, the push for an increased military presence in Central Africa comes after the discovery of one billion barrels of potential oil reserves in the country, with an estimated 1 to 1.5 billion barrels yet to be located.
Last month, London-based Tullow Oil signed two $2.9 billion production sharing agreements with the Museveni government, despite the fact that Uganda's parliament had concluded that there should be a complete moratorium on oil-related activity until new laws were put in place (Uganda's Petroleum Exploration and Production Act dates from 1985). Security for the installations is being provided by a military unit closely linked to the president.
Reactions to the Invisible Children campaign from Uganda itself have been telling.
Writing in the newspaper The Independent, Ugandan writer Musa Okwonga suggested that Invisible Children should have let their viewers know that "when a bad guy like Kony is running riot for years on end, raping and slashing and seizing and shooting, then there is most likely another host of bad guys out there letting him get on with it. "
On the Project Diaspora site, one writer accused Invisible Children of being "a self-aware machine that must continually find a reason to be relevant....selling themselves as the issue, as the subject, as the panacea for everything that ails me as the agency-devoid African. "
How Invisible Children can push for the measures it has and remain eligible for tax-exempt status as an organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code -- which states that such an organization may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates -- would seem to remain something a mystery.
A refrain that is often repeated by Invisible Children's supporters is that the organization's goal is not to "get bogged down by history" but rather to "raise awareness" thus leading to "action." But what kind of action can come in Central Africa if one ignores the region's history?
So then, the line of reasoning goes, what is to be done? If not by supporting Invisible Children's campaign -- intentional or not -- to reinforce the Museveni government's hold on power, then how can those who have been inspired and moved by the plight of those suffering in Central Africa ameliorate the situation of those in greatest need?
Despite living under a rapidly ossifying authoritarianism, Uganda still has a vibrant civil society made up of and working for the empowerment of Ugandans, with a number of organizations that are worthy of any support we can give them.
In Northern Uganda itself, the group Human Rights Focus has labored for years and produced detailed reports on the conflict there far more nuanced and accurate than anything Invisible Children has ever put out.
Elsewhere, as government officials and foreign investors lick their lips at the promise of an oil boom, groups such as the Africa Institute for Energy Governance and the Water Governance Institute are doing important work to hold both Uganda's politicians and their foreign partners accountable to the Ugandan people.
Further afield, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, groups such as the Goma-based Pole Institute and the late, heroic Floribert Chebeya's Voix des Sans-Voix work to defend the rights of the Congolese under the most difficult of conditions.
These are organizations led by people who risk their lives every day standing up to the Musevenis, the Kagames and the Kabilas of the world.
Likewise, by working with local organizations to strengthen the government of South Sudan, a region that the LRA long used as a redoubt and whose rapid disintegration the group is no doubt praying for to give it another refuge closer to home, would also be an extremely productive use of the time of those outside of the region who wish to help.
If the people who have been moved by the Kony 2012 campaign truly want to help Africa, they must start by learning about and supporting the struggles of the Africans themselves. This is their fight, this is their history, these are their countries. Not ours. The citizens of Africa must write their own future from within their own borders. We cannot do it for them.
Labels: PROPAGANDA, UGANDA, YOWERI MUSEVENI
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COMMENT - The LRA is a front group for the Ugandan government, which itself is a proxy of the US/UK presence in Africa, like Kenya or nowadays Ethiopia. President Yoweri Museveni has been providing housing, jobs and protection for Joseph Kony's parents since 1994 (the year Uganda also happened to invade Rwanda, through Paul Kagame).
From the Wikileaks Cables: ¶4. (C) Senior Advisor Shortley asked Museveni for his views on how Kony would be handled if he agreed to a deal. Museveni described his provision of protection, livelihood, and homes for Kony,s mother (and now deceased father) since 1994. Museveni was flexible on Kony,s future, saying that the LRA leader could live anywhere in Uganda where he had not committed atrocities.
LRA: Small but ruthless to Uganda
Thursday, 09 February 2012 00:00
Prof Mungai wa Muthaithai
THE belief that the end is nigh for Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army - a small but ruthless transnational armed group operating in four African states - underestimates its resilience and overestimates the unity and capability of the forces ranged against it.
The LRA is seen as being in "survival mode". It has a lightly armed 1 000-strong militia dispersed across a territory half the size of France, and uses "terror" tactics to subdue local populations and is facing a coordinated response from the armies of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Uganda and the USA.
In recent weeks African Union special envoy for affairs relating to the LRA Francisco Madeira, and the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General Abou Moussa have toured Kinshasa, Bangui, Juba and Kampala to discuss regional military cooperation, following authorisation from the AU Peace and Security Council in November 2011, with the support of the UN, for them to deal decisively with the LRA.
Ashley Benner, a policy analyst at the Enough Project - a US NGO lobbying for an end to mass atrocity crimes - told IRIN: "The proposed AU intervention force will consist of approximately 3 500-5 000 troops from the four affected countries. The mandate and goals of the mission are to end the LRA, protect civilians, and lead to security and stability in the affected countries."
The USA has deployed about 100 military advisers - they carry weapons for self-defence only - to assist the region's military forces, but Benner said this would not be sufficient.
"The advisers need to be bolstered by more capable troops, greater intelligence and logistical capabilities, including helicopters, improved collaboration between regional forces, and increased efforts to encourage LRA members to leave the group," she added.
The Shadows of Peace Sandra Adong Oder, a senior researcher at the conflict management and peace building unit at Pretoria-based think-tank the Institute for Security Studies, told IRIN the same military actors involved in previous and failed attempts to eradicate the LRA were involved in the AU initiative, and asked: "It (the initiative) may be doing more, (but) is it any different?"
The LRA was also not a top priority for the four affected countries: Kony's forces, were no longer operating in Uganda; they were more than 1 000 km from Kinshasa and so not seen as a key security issue for the DRC; they are not threatening any economic interests or political constituencies in CAR; and South Sudan was grappling with more urgent security considerations, said Oder.
In a research note entitled The AU's Regional Initiative Against the LRA: Prospects and Implications published on 30 January, Oder said: "The regional intervention force . . . is based on some assumptions that the LRA is an easy problem to solve, and that the insurgent group's threat capability has been reduced. This may prove to be a grave mistake . . .
"The new force should therefore not merely improve on existing military operations, but needs to refrain from merely duplicating operational structures and techniques that do not work, while at the same time leaving the military command in the hands of national governments, which could fuel suspicion and intra-regional tensions within the alliance, which in turn could severely limit cooperation and coordination - and hence the AU's overall ownership of the mission . . .
"This time round, the consequences of another failure will be prohibitive, in the sense that once committed, the AU mission would then have to use all necessary force to avoid failure, and would be under immense pressure to escalate military involvement to ensure success," the note said.
It should be remembered that the LRA only has to survive to succeed The International Working Group on the LRA, in a World Bank June 2011 report entitled: Diagnostic Study of the Lord's Resistance Army, written by Philip Lancaster and Guillaume Lacaille, said: "It should be remembered that the LRA only has to survive to succeed . . .
"As long as it (the LRA) is present, it is capable of generating insecurity in the region. To survive, it needs only to avoid, as much as possible, direct contact with superior armed forces and continue to resupply itself from vulnerable civilians. As long as it retains the freedom to choose the time and place of its attacks, it retains the tactical and strategic initiative," the World Bank report said.
In the past month, LRA Crisis Tracker, a real-time mapping platform for crimes committed by Kony's forces, has attributed six deaths and 14 abductions to the armed group.
Uganda, the regional military power, is expected to take the lead role in the military operations by virtue of its acknowledged professionalism compared to the region's other forces, and its close working relationship with US forces over the past few years, although its dominance in an intervention force could increase regional tensions, especially between Kampala and Kinshasa.
Last year DRC President Joseph Kabila asked his counterpart Yoweri Museveni to halt operations in his country against the LRA by the Uganda People's Defence Force and it is unclear how this impasse will be resolved.
Oder said although the Ugandan army was "overstretched" with its commitments to the AU Mission in Somalia it had a personal score to settle with the LRA, after previous encounters had exposed the "weaknesses, corruption and competence" of the UPDF.
"It's about saving face and pride," she said.
A 2 February 2012 Enough Project report entitled Ensuring Success: Four Steps Beyond US Troops to End the War with the LRA by Sasha Lezhnev, said Uganda's best troops were in Somalia and it did not have any bases in the DRC.
"Some 90 percent of LRA attacks over the past six months have taken place in DRC . . . The shortage of troops is also hurting civilian protection efforts, which are in urgent need of a boost."
The bush fighting skills of LRA fighters have been masked and overshadowed by their reputation as a ragtag bunch of bandits, marauding and raping, reliant on abducted children brainwashed into soldiering under Kony, and with an absolute disregard for human rights. The LRA is responsible for thousands of deaths and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people across the four-country region.
"We have ample evidence from reports of the past 20 years that the LRA are a force to be reckoned with. Ruthless as they are, their tactics are well adapted to the terrain and the nature of the forces they face," Philip Lancaster - former head of the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration division of the UN Mission in the DRC , the predecessor of the current UN Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the DRC, and coordinator of the UN Group of Experts on the Congo - said in an August 2011 article entitled the Lord's Resistance Army and US.
"The LRA make deliberate use of terror to tie up military forces and survive by hit-and-run attacks that are well-planned and flawlessly executed," he wrote.
Their extraordinary ability to survive, even when constantly on the move, gives LRA fighters an edge over all pursuing armies. LRA fighters value reconnaissance, are skilled in ambush techniques and the evasion of air surveillance, are trained in both irregular and regular forms of warfare and have adapted to different climatic regions from rainforests to arid wastelands.
"Their extraordinary ability to survive, even when constantly on the move, gives LRA fighters an edge over all pursuing armies," the World Bank report said.
The notion that the LRA's estimated 250 fighters and their dispersal into small cells indicates weakness, is misleading, the World Bank report said.
"While the LRA has been weakened over the past two years, it is premature to regard them as lacking capacity, since the number of the core fighters is not much lower now than what it has been throughout the years."
The response to any concerted military effort against them is likely to be accompanied by the LRA's "very crude way of operating" in using civilians as targets, Oder said.
The Ugandan 2008 offensive against the LRA, Operation Lightning Thunder, resulted in a sharp rise in the number of LRA attacks on civilians, rather than a drop-off: There were two successive Christmas massacres in 2008 and 2009.
"These events, particularly the massacre of December 2009 in the Makombo area of Haut Uélé, DRC, provoked questions about the wisdom of offensive operations against the LRA without adequate accompanying measures to protect civilians in the area of operations," The World Bank report said.
The UN Disarmament, Demobilisation, Repatriation, Reintegration and Resettlement exercise has been viewed as a major weapon in deconstructing the LRA through its propaganda campaign to encourage defections.
- DayAfrica.Com
Labels: LORDS RESISTANCE ARMY, NEOCOLONIALISM, YOWERI MUSEVENI
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China pledges to support Africa's ‘just position'
Monday, 30 January 2012 00:00
[President Mugabe greets his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni while Zambian leader Mr Michael Sata looks at the official opening of the 18th AU Summit in Addis Abba, Ethiopia, yesterday.] From Munyaradzi Huni in ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia
CHINA has pledged to support the "just position" of African countries in various international forums saying it was opposed to the "big, strong and rich countries bullying the small, weak and poor" of the world.
In a solidarity speech he delivered at the official opening of the 18th AU Summit here yesterday, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Mr Jia Qinglin, said China did not attach any political strings to its assistance.
"We will firmly support the just position of African countries at various international fora. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China will continue to actively participate in affairs concerning peace and security in Africa with a responsible attitude," Mr Jia said.
He said China firmly supports African countries in their efforts to uphold their sovereignty and independence.
Mr Qinglin said throughout the development of the China-Africa relations, his country respected the sovereignty and development path of African countries.
"We have always treated African countries on an equal footing and pursued mutually-beneficial and win-win co-operation with them. We have always regarded assistance and support between China and Africa as mutual and have never attached political strings to our assistance," he said.
He said his country fully respected efforts by African countries to resolve their issues independently.
"We will firmly support African countries' independent choice of development path. We maintain that all countries, big or small, are equal, and we are opposed to the big, strong and rich bullying the small, weak and poor.''
He said China would develop by maintaining world peace.
"We will continue to pursue an independent foreign policy of peace, respect the right of the people of all countries to independently choose their social systems and development paths and refrain from imposing our will on others.
"While seeking our own development, we will strive for the common development of all countries through mutually beneficial cooperation," he said.
Earlier on outgoing chairperson of the African Union and Equatorial Guinea President, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, said Africa was being manipulated by outside powers that were now sponsoring violence to impose their preferred leaders.
Mr Nguema said the economic crisis in the world was creating instability in Africa.
President Mugabe attended the official opening of the summit together with several other African leaders.
Before the official opening, President Mugabe had joined his counterparts in planting trees around the new AU complex that was built by the Chinese Government.
"Africa is being manipulated by outside powers . . . the economic crisis is creating instability in Africa and other parts of the world," said Mr Nguema in his speech before he handed over the
chairmanship of the AU to the President of Benin Mr Boni Yayi.
Mr Nguema, who was speaking soon after the speech by the Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Raheem al-Keeb, castigated the use of violence by some leaders in the continent to get into power.
He said humanitarian assistance to Africa should not lead to the destruction of infrastructure, economies, social services and deaths.
The speech by Mr Nguema seemed to be an attack on the utterances by the Libyan PM who had earlier on attacked the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and thanked African countries that voted for the wanton bombing of Libya by Nato under the guise of protecting civilians.
UN secretary-general, Mr Ban Ki Moon, also addressed the summit and described the year 2011 as a "year of high drama" in Africa.
He acknowledged that there were differences in resolving the political situation in Libya and Ivory Coast.
Mr Ban, however, struck a wrong chord when he urged African countries to respect gay rights when the majority of countries in the continent are against gays.
The leaders rebuked him for the remarks.
The new AU chairperson Mr Yoyi, in his acceptance speech said "Africa is the continent of the future" adding that "international prosperity depends on Africa."
After the official opening, the leaders had a group photo session and later went into a closed session where issues concerning Libya, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan were discussed.
The summit continues today with the election of the chairperson of the African Union Commission set to take centre stage as current chairperson Mr Jean Ping battles for the position with South African Home Affairs Minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.
Labels: CHINA, MICHAEL SATA, ROBERT MUGABE, YOWERI MUSEVENI
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Sata leaves for Uganda today
By Staff Reporter
Wed 14 Dec. 2011, 13:58 CAT
PRESIDENT Michael Sata is today expected to leave for Kampala, Uganda for the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) Summit. This will be the first foreign trip for President Sata since winning the polls in September this year.
President Sata has in the past promised not to be a globetrotter like his predecessor Rupiah Banda but be prudent with state resources. In Uganda, President Sata is expected to hand over the chairmanship of ICGLR to President Yoweri Museveni.
President Museveni will hold the position of chairman for ICGLR for the next two years.
According to organisers, the heads of state will also be presented with a progress reports on the work of the ICGLR including regional committees on the illegal exploitation of natural resources, prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity, election observer missions and the strategic plan for the Levy Mwanawasa Regional Centre for Democracy and Good Governance based in Lusaka for their consideration.
The Summit would also appoint a new ICGLR executive secretary as the term of the incumbent expires at the end of this month, December 2011, and would consider the application of the Republic of Southern Sudan for membership.
This fourth ordinary Summit of ICGLR will run from the 11th to 16th December 2011 under the theme "United to Prevent, End Impunity and provide Assistance to Victims of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence"
The Summit will be preceded by the meetings of the first ladies, ministers of foreign affairs, ministers of gender, national coordinators and experts from government and civil society organisations from the 11-member states of the ICGLR and beyond.
Top on the agenda of the Summit is the special session dedicated to deliberate and strategise on tackling the endemic problem of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) in the Great Lakes Region.
In addition, the Summit will also consider the progress report on the implementation of the pact on security, stability and development in the Great Lakes Region, as they mark the 5th anniversary since its signing in 2006, in Kenya.
The heads of state will also consult on the security situation in the region, focused on tackling collectively the negative forces and armed groups for sustainable peace and stability.
Labels: MICHAEL SATA, UGANDA, YOWERI MUSEVENI
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Museveni, offside on US forces
Thursday, 27 October 2011 00:00
Musere Kibutu
Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, Uganda's former rebel leader who ascended to that country's helm - from bush to power - in January 1986, is indeed a President gone askew by all Pan African standards.
The recent sending of 100 United States of America special soldiers to Uganda, at Museveni's invitation, to deal with rebels led by Joseph Kony is not only an affront to democracy but an insult and assault to Africanism.
It is indeed a self-defeating act. At a time when Africa is making frantic efforts to find lasting home-grown solutions for its political conflicts in the aftermath of the fatal results of the occupation of Libya by foreign forces, Museveni invites American soldiers to his country.
When Museveni came into power, he was hailed as one of the few leaders, alongside President Mugabe of Zimbabwe to bring stability to their countries and to show flashes of brilliance into African governance.
With the notable exception of northern areas which, Kony occupies, Museveni brought relative stability and economic growth to a country that had endured decades of government mismanagement, rebel activity and civil war. Museveni came as a refreshing choice from the mediocrity brought by Idi Amini Dada and Milton Obote's war antics and exchange of power in bloody coups. His tenure also witnessed one of the most effective national responses to HIV/AIDS in Africa but today, his politics has gone off route.
In the mid-to-late 1990s, Museveni was lauded by the West as part of a new generation of African leaders and this explains in American "political ancestry."
Museveni's presidency has been marred, however, by invading and occupying Congo during the Second Congo War and other conflicts in the Great Lakes region. Rebellion in the north of Uganda by the Lord's Resistance Army continues to perpetuate one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
Recent developments, including the abolition of presidential term limits before the 2006 elections and the harassment of democratic opposition, have attracted concern from domestic commentators and the international community. Museveni used sectarian violence which had overshadowed Uganda's recent history was put forward as a justification for restricting the activities of the political parties and their ethnically distinct supporter bases.
The non-party system did not prohibit political parties, but prevented them from fielding candidates directly in elections. The so-called "Movement" system, which Museveni said claimed the loyalty of every Ugandan, would be a cornerstone in politics for nearly twenty years. Museveni was involved in the war that deposed Idi Amin Dada, ending his rule in 1979, and in the rebellion that subsequently led to the demise of the Milton Obote regime in 1985.
Museveni has been among the African leaders who do not miss African Union summits and is a great contributor to progressive African thinking but why he is now going to bed with the Americans at the most critical stage of Africa's self-defence, really defied logic.
At this stage, events in Libya and indeed Egypt and Tunisia, Liberia even, have shown that Africa need to come up with its own military entities to deal with trouble spots. Sadc has a standby brigade and so does the West African community and East Africa should follow suite instead of inviting foreign powers.
What makes a president invite foreign forces as if he has no army, really means something awkward is happening in Uganda. America will now have to manipulate the politics of Uganda and its soldiers will not only help Museveni but will spy on him and when the time comes, they will remove him easily. It sounds like Museveni, for long considered sharp and intelligent has forgotten the biblical story of the camel that eventually took over the room. This is time for leaders like Museveni, to rally behind AU and cement relations between the Sadc Brigade, the west African one and East Africa to come up with a united an army.
* Musere Kibutu is a political science lecturer at Makerere University.
Labels: NEOCOLONIALISM, UGANDA, YOWERI MUSEVENI
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Museveni says NRM firms to supply sugar
Posted Thursday, September 22 2011 at 00:00
In Summary
In what looks like a change in position, the head of state now blames the rise in sugar prices on greedy and unscrupulous traders and says firms loyal to the ruling party will step in to help. President Museveni has, in what appears to be a shift in position, blamed the current spike in sugar prices on profiteering among greedy, unscrupulous traders.
In a message issued shortly before he left for a two-day private visit to India yesterday morning, Mr Museveni said he would “encourage NRM companies to distribute sugar without extorting money” from buyers, as a measure to deal with the current sugar crisis in the country.
“When demand goes up they exploit the public. A kilo of sugar at factory price is still Shs2,800, but I hear some traders are charging as high as Shs8,000. Why?” asked the President, adding, “This is greed of the business people.”
President Museveni’s latest stand appears at variance to earlier public comments he made blaming rising sugar prices on inadequate local sugar production. That position led President Museveni to resurrect attempts, defeated earlier in 2007, to give away part of Mabira forest reserve to Mehta Group to grow more sugarcane and increase their production.
It was also not immediately clear what the President meant by “NRM companies” since the ruling party’s trading vehicle, Danze Ltd., folded unceremoniously over a decade ago.
Information Minister Karooro Okurut declined to comment when contacted and referred this newspaper to Trade Minister Amelia Kyambadde who was also unavailable for comment.
NRM alternative
But the President’s press secretary, Mr Tamale Mirundi, said Mr Museveni is trying to reach out to “companies aligned” to the ruling party because the sugar crisis is “political.”
“It is intended to incite the population against the President especially those who are selling at high prices,” he said. “Of course the government can mobilise its allies. What the president is saying, is look we know there are NRM people who can say let us solve this problem. All he is saying is that NRM has alternatives. This issue is solvable.”
But private sector players are opposed to the move to control the sugar trade.
“This is a free economy,” said Mr Jim Mwine, chairman of the Uganda Sugar Cane Technologists Association. “People will sell at market prices.”
Mr Issa Ssekito, publicist of Kampala City Traders Association, accused Mr Museveni of compounding the crisis by allowing Kakira Sugar Works to control more than half the entire quota of tax-free sugar imported into the country last month..
egyezaho@ug.nationmedia.com
Labels: SUGAR, YOWERI MUSEVENI
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Who was Behind the Rwandan Genocide? The Rwandan Patriotic Front's Bloody Record and the History of UN Cover-Ups
by Christopher Black
Global Research, September 14, 2010
Monthly Review - 2010-09-13
On August 26, the French newspaper Le Monde revealed the existence of a draft UN report on the most serious violations of human rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo over an eleven-year period (1993-2003).1 The massive draft report states that after the Rwandan Patriotic Front's takeover of Rwanda in 1994, it proceeded to carry out "systematic and widespread attacks" against Hutu refugees who had fled Rwanda to neighboring Zaire (now the DRC) as well as against the Hutu civilian population of the DRC in general. Crucially, it concludes that the pattern of these attacks "reveal[s] a number of damning elements that, if they were proven before a competent court, could be classified as crimes of genocide."2
The draft report was leaked to Le Monde out of the plausible fear that its most damning facts and charges against the armed forces of the Rwandan Patriotic Front and President Paul Kagame would be expunged prior to its official release. Sure enough, one week later, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay announced that the official report's release would be delayed until October 1 "to give concerned states a further month to comment on the draft," and even "offered to publish any comments alongside the report itself."3
Such an unprecedented offer by the UNHCHR follows from a number of factors, including the role that Rwandan troops play in UN peacekeeping operations, and the fact that earlier this year, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Kagame to serve along with Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero as co-chairs of a new Millennium Development Goal Advisory Group. According to the New Yorker's Philip Gourevitch -- who, after Alison Des Forges, did as much as anyone to sell the official version of the 1994 "Rwanda genocide" to the West, and clearly remains on very friendly terms with the Kagame dictatorship -- "top Rwandan officials [have been speaking] freely and on the record about their efforts to have the draft report quashed." As Rwanda's Minister of Foreign Affairs Louise Mushikiwabo confided in Gourevitch, "If it is endorsed by the U.N. and it's ever published, . . . if the U.N. releases it as a U.N. report, the moment it's released, the next day all our troops are coming home. Not just Darfur, all the five countries where we have police."4
A third, no doubt more decisive factor is that the Kagame dictatorship is a client of the United States and "acts as a mercenary for U.S. interests in Africa," as Glen Ford observes; the current conflict between this dictatorship and the UN "threatens to reveal the United States' role as enabler in the deaths of as many as six million people while Washington's allies occupied and looted the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo."5 It is Washington's ties to Kagame' RPF, ultimately, as well as London's and Brussels', that public discussions of the draft UN report should turn the spotlight on.
But this is not the first such report to have been drafted by the UN -- nor is it the first one to be covered up. As early as October 11, 1994, Robert Gersony, an employee of the U.S. Agency for International Development then attached to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, made an oral presentation to the UN Commission of Experts on Rwanda. Gersony had been dispatched to survey the situation inside Rwanda to determine if conditions were right for a return of the Hutu refugees who had fled the RPF. Instead he found that the RPF had been committing systematic massacres of the Hutu population in Rwanda starting in April 1994 and continuing through the date of his presentation.
On page 4 of the UN record of Gersony's oral presentation, we read:
"Significant areas of Butare Prefecture, Kibungo Prefecture, and the southern and eastern areas of Kigali Prefecture have been -- and in some cases were reported to remain as early as September -- the scene of systematic and sustained killing and persecution of the civilian Hutu populations by the [Rwandan Patriotic Army]. These activities are reported to have begun, depending on location, between April and July 1994, immediately following the expulsion from each area of former Government military, militia and surrogate forces. These [Rwandan Patriotic Army] actions were consistently reported to be conducted in areas where opposition forces of any kind -- armed or unarmed -- or resistance of any kind -- other than attempts by the victims of these actions to escape -- were absent. Large scale indiscriminate killings of men, women and children, including the sick and elderly, were consistently reported."
And on page 6 we also learn that "an unmistakable pattern of systematic [Rwandan Patriotic Army] conduct of such actions is the unavoidable conclusion of the team's interviews."
The Gersony report is identified in a cover letter dated October 11, 1994, from one Francois Fouinat to Mrs. B. Molina-Abram, the Secretary to the Commission of Experts on Rwanda. In this brief letter, Fouinat explains:
"We refer to the UNHCR's briefing to the Commission of Experts on Monday, 11 October 1994.
"As requested by the Commission, we are forwarding herewith a written summary of Mr. Gersony's oral presentation and copies of some field reports sent to UNHCR Headquarters by UNHCR Field Offices.
"We are confident that as agreed by the President of the Commission of Experts, these documents will be treated as confidential and only be made available to the members of the Commission."
I possess copies of these two UN documents from October 1994 because they are part of the evidence-base at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where I serve as the lead defense counsel for Hutu former General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, once the Chief of Staff of the Rwanda Gendarmerie. The documents were found by my legal assistant purely by chance while scanning the prosecution's Electronic Disclosure System, which contains hundreds of thousands of documents that are not indexed in any order. My assistant came across them as part of a package of material organized by Robert Gersony himself while he was assigned to the UNHCR. It must be assumed that Mr. Gersony thought the documents relevant, as they affected the fate of the Hutu refugees.
At the ICTR, the brief cover letter by Francois Fouinat bears the index number "R0002906." The next 14 pages of R0002906 contain the Gersony report and are numbered sequentially with an 'R' -- prefix number used by the ICTR for documents contained in its Rwanda files.
Because I possess the series of ICTR documents beginning with R0002906, I also have in my possession an even more astonishing document the true historical significance of which has once again been underscored by the leaked UNHCHR report: Namely, the copy of a letter from Paul Kagame to his fellow Tutsi Jean-Baptiste Bagaza of Burundi, dated August 10, 1994.
Let me share with you an exchange that took place on November 18, 2008 in the Military II trial at the ICTR.6 What was said in court that particular day explains how these documents came to light. I was one of the speakers.
Mr. Black,7
"Mr. President, before I do that -- that takes place, I have something which I would like to raise of great importance, I think.
"Yesterday my legal assistant found by accident, something, I think of grave importance for this Tribunal and for the world. It's a letter from General Paul Kagame dated the 10th of August 1994 to Jean Baptiste Bagaza, . . . in Burundi. It's marked 'confidential'.
"I didn't have time to make copies, so I want to read it to you. It has an 'R'-number. R0002905. It's in French, so please bear with me to make a loose translation. It says -- it's only one page and it is short:
'Dear Brother Jean Baptiste Bagaza, we have the greatest honour to extend our sincere gratitude to you both for your financial and technical support in our struggle that has just ended with the taking of Kigali.
'Rest assured that our plan to continue shall be pursued as we agreed at our last meeting in Kampala. Last week I communicated with our big brother Yoweri Museveni and decided to make some modifications to the plan. Indeed, as you have noted, the taking of Kigali quickly provoked a panic among the Hutus who fled to Goma and Bukavu. We have found that the presence of a large number of Rwandan refugees at Goma and the international community can cause our plan for Zaire to fail. We cannot occupy ourselves with Zaire until after the return of these Hutus. All means are being used for their return as rapidly as possible. In any case, our external intelligence services continue to crisscross the east of Zaire and our Belgian, British and American collaborators, the rest of Zaire. The action reports are expected in the next few days.
'Concerning the Burundi plan, we are very content with your work to ensure the failure of the policies of FRODEBU. It is necessary to paralyze the power of FRODEBU until the total ruin of the situation in order to justify your action that must not miss its target. Our soldiers will be deployed, this time, not only in Bujumbura, but in the places you judge strategic. Our elements stationed at Bugesera are ready to intervene at any moment. The plan for Burundi must be executed as soon as possible before the Hutus of Rwanda can organize themselves.
'In the hope of seeing you next time at Kigali, we ask you to accept, dear brother, our most respectful greetings'.
General Paul Kagame
Minister of Defence (signed by his assistant Mr. Rwego8)
"The importance of this letter if you have grasped it fully cannot be overstated. It means the attack on Rwanda from 1990 was not the prime objective of Kagame and his collaborators. Zaire was always the prime objective. That their excuse for the attack on Rwanda about establishing democracy and return of refugees, was completely false. That the invasion from Uganda had only one purpose: to clear the path through Rwanda to Zaire. That the return of refugees, as many witnesses have stated, was not for humanitarian reasons, but to clear the path for the invasion of Zaire. It means that the Americans, British, particularly with Kagame and Museveni, planned the invasion of Zaire [sic] in 1994, probably before that. It means that the excuse given for the invasions of Congo since this letter was written to clear the 'Interahamwe' or 'genocidaires' is completely false. No mention is made of 'Interahamwe'. No mention is made of 'genocide'. It means,
since this was received, it looks like a date stamp of this tribunal, 8th December 1994, that the Prosecutor of this Tribunal has been hiding information indicating a conspiracy to commit a war of aggression against Congo-Zaire, Zaire and all of the war crimes have flowed from it since and the continuation of those wars in Congo now begun 14 years ago, if not longer. And that the principal parties are the principal parties stated in this letter. It indicates that the prime target, Hutus in Rwanda and Burundi, that they want to suppress the Hutu population in order to carry out their plan. Democracy was never their concern. And it indicates that the Prosecutor was in -- had information in a territorial and temporal jurisdiction of this Tribunal under rule -- under Statute-Article 1. That they are also concerned with war crimes committed in neighboring states.
"So, here you have the smoking gun, the letter, planning the invasion of Zaire with the Americans and British. And it confirms our theory all the way through this trial that the Belgians were involved with those other countries. And again, there must be -- and this, as a colleague pointed out, is page 8 of 12. So where are the other eleven pages of -- what other letters do they have in their hands? And again, it indicates that these men have been stitched up, falsely accused, in order to clear them out of the way so this plan can take place. If this is published in the New York Times or Washington Post, the whole picture of the war in Rwanda and the wars in Congo would change.
"So I ask the Prosecutor, once again, where is that file? And in fact I would like them to produce the indictment against Kagame9 because I want to see what he's been charged with, exactly what crimes and where. So, again, I ask for this file to be produced and I ask why they have not acted. Mr. Jallow and Louise Arbour and everybody else have been protecting the RPF which has now resulted in millions of deaths in the Congo and continues up till today and what is going on in Congo now.
"And I state openly that the Prosecution office is complicit with this invasion of Congo and is responsible themselves for all those murders in Congo because they've hidden this for a long time and they could have exposed it many years ago and stopped the invasions.
"If the international community, that is, other than the United States and the Britain, had been aware of what was going on, it would never have taken place. But they sit there and they accuse us, my client, and the other officers here of committing crimes, they knew what they were doing in Zaire. I don't think they can even shave and look in the mirror in the morning."
Mr. President,10
"Counsel, having said all of that, why don't you send this to the New York Times?"
Black,
"It will be sent . . . whether they publish it I do not know."11
In the days after this letter was exposed the prosecution accused the defence of having fabricated the letter and raised questions about its authenticity.
I replied, first, that the letter bears a sequential ICTR index number with an 'R'-prefix -- the prefix used for Rwanda documents.
Second, as mentioned above, this letter was found among the package of material organized by Robert Gersony while assigned to the UNHCR.
Third, the letter was date-stamped "December 8, 1994" by the ICTR. Presumably, this was its date of receipt by the ICTR.
Fourth, it is also noteworthy that the letter that we know was created no later than December 8th 1994 speaks of moving the Hutus out of the way in Zaire and this is exactly what happened. First the UN tried to force them back into Rwanda and partly succeeded. But the mass of refugees refused to return, so in 1996 the attacks on the Hutu refugee camps began, forcing them to flee into the Congo forest. There is a lot of testimony by Hutus who were either forced at gunpoint to return to Rwanda or experienced the manhunt against them conducted by the RPF and its allies.
Fifth, the letter is further authenticated by noting that the addressee (the Burundian Tutsi Jean Baptiste Bagaza) did in fact carry out a coup d'état in Burundi against a more moderate Tutsi and turned against the Hutu political group called Front pour la Démocratie au Burundi (FRODEBU, or Front for Democracy in Burundi). Unquestionably, Bagaza and Kagame were allies. According to the testimony of expert witness Dr. Helmut Strizek before the ICTR:
Q. "Very well, doctor, let's move toward the end. What clarification would you like to make on the relationship between Bagaza and Kagame when the president's aeroplane was shot down?"
Strizek. "If my memory serves me right, Bagaza had left the country, and I think returned after or before the assassination of Ndadaye. Bagaza was a hardliner, a Tutsi hardliner, so there was an alliance between the two of them, and they wanted to prevent a Hutu president from being in charge of Burundi."
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Strizek. "Jean-Baptiste Bagaza was a Hima or Tutsi president of Burundi who took power when he overthrew President Micombero, who had been responsible of anti-Hutu genocide in 1972. He was in power for some time. . . .
"In my opinion, it's quite clear that Bagaza and Kagame follow the same line."12
Sixth, the man whose signature appears on the letter on behalf of Paul Kagame, Mr. Rwego, confirmed to a member of the defence team that he did in fact sign it.
The accidental discovery of this August 10, 1994 letter from Paul Kagame to his "Dear Brother Jean Baptiste Bagaza" was met with an immediate reaction by the prosecution, who accused the defence of fabricating it, pointing out a typo in the letterhead. But this line of criticism failed, as it was shown that there are other letters in existence from the RPF on the same stationary, with the same typo in the letterhead, and these letters are regarded as authentic.
That someone regarded the letter as authentic and dangerous is highlighted the fact that I was followed by a Tanzanian police officer the night after I produced it in court and was forced to complain about this surveillance in court the next day. Yet the prosecution continued its attacks on the letter's authenticity, even though the document came from the files of the prosecutor. And this important revelation during the Military II trial was never reported in the mass media -- though I did send it to many journalists, including the New York Times.
Now that the draft UN report on the atrocities committed by the RPF in the Congo has been leaked, the findings of the very first UN report of RPF atrocities against the Hutus beginning in 1994 should also be recognized and addressed.
The UN must explain why the record of that 1994 presentation by Robert Gersony was marked "confidential" and why the latest draft UN report does not refer to it.
The prosecutors at the ICTR must explain why they hid these documents from the defence for nearly 15 years, and why, even though they have these documents in their possession, they have never once used these documents to bring charges against a single member of the RPF.
Last, Paul Kagame and his American, Belgian, and British collaborators must explain the meaning of the letter -- and in particular, the meaning of the phrase, "plan for Zaire."
Notes
1 Christophe Châtelot, "L'acte d'accusation de dix ans de crimes au Congo RDC," Le Monde, August 26, 2010. For some additional news reports, see: "UN Uncovers Possible Genocide in Congo: Report," Agence France Presse, August 26, 2010; David Lewis, "Rwandan Army May Have Committed Genocide -- UN Report," Reuters, August 26, 2010; Judi Rever, "UN Lawyer Says Congo Butchery Resembled Rwandan Genocide," Agence France Presse, August 27, 2010; Michelle Faul, "UN Draft Report: Rwandan Army Attacks on Refugees in Congo in the 1990s Could Be Genocide," Associated Press, August 27, 2010; "DR Congo Killings 'May Be Genocide' -- UN Draft Report," BBC, August 27, 2010; Max Delany, Rwanda Dismisses UN Report Detailing Possible Hutu Genocide in Congo Christian Science Monitor, August 27, 2010; Chris McGreal et al., "Leaked UN Report Accuses Rwanda of Possible Genocide in Congo," The Guardian, August 27, 2010; Xan Rice, "Returning Refugees: Lush Land the Prize That
Could Reignite Ethnic Conflict in DRC," The Guardian, August 27, 2010; Howard French, "U.N. Report on Congo Offers New View of Genocide Era," New York Times, August 28, 2010; Colum Lynch, "U.N. Says Rwandan Troops Carried Out Mass Killings in '90s," Washington Post, August 29, 2010.
2 See "Report of the Mapping Exercise documenting the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between March 1993 and June 2003," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, draft report dated June, 2010, para. 517.
3 "UN Report on Rights Violations in DR Congo to Be Released Next Month," UN News Center, September 2, 2010.
4 Philip Gourevitch, "Rwanda Pushes Back Against UN Genocide Charges," New Yorker Blog, August 27, 2010.
5 Glen Ford, "Rwanda Crisis Could Expose U.S. Role in Congo Genocide," Black Agenda Report, September 1, 2010.
6 The Military II trial concerns the joint trial of General Augustin Bizimungu, Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Army, General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Gendarmerie, Major Nzwonyemeye, Commander of the Reconnaissance Battalion, and Captain Sagahutu , Commander, Squadron A of the Reconnaissance Battalion.
7 Let the record show that I have written here exactly what I said in court. The translation in the trial transcripts is a bit garbled, and I have corrected the text accordingly.
8 Reference ICTR document number R0002905, letter dated August 10th, 1994, date stamped by the ICTR 8th December, 1994. Marked as page 8 of 12.
9 Defence counsel had been informed by a member of the prosecution that an indictment exists against Paul Kagame for war crimes and is being held by the ICTR for the appropriate time. In order to determine whether this was correct information the defence counsel several times asked the prosecution to provide that indictment as it would affect the defense. The prosecution never denied its existence and the defence was advised to bring a motion to request it.
10 Judge Asoka Da Silva of Sri Lanka, Presiding Judge, Tria, Chamber III, ICTR.
11 Transcript, Military II Trial, November 18th, 2008, pages 1-3.
12 Transcript, Military II Trial, November 24th, 2008, page 62, lines 19-24; and page 63.
Christopher Black serves as Lead Counsel for the Hutu former General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, Chief of Staff, Rwanda Gendarmerie, in Military II trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Christopher Black is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Christopher Black
Labels: DRC, GENOCIDE, NEOCOLONIALISM, PAUL KAGAME, RWANDA, YOWERI MUSEVENI
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