Why can't Bush maintain the Darfur 1999 peace agreement?

[papau]

Why can't Bush maintain the Darfur 1999 peace agreement?

The north-south issue in Sudan is in many ways a Muslim-Christian issue -- where the Muslim north is trying to bring about sharia law in the south, which is predominantly Christian (only 52% of the Sudan speak arabic at home per the last census -in 1956). But Darfur is different -The word "Dar" corresponds to "home territory", so Darfur is the home territory of the Fur tribe.

Actually Darfur folks are black Muslims from many tribes (1.7 million of which perhaps 1.3 million are black with the tribe Fur the largest, and with the Fur and Masalit in the majority within the region West Darfur, with Zaghawa, Erenga, Gimr, Dajo, and Borgo the main other tribes in Darfur). In Darfur, marriage between Black and Arab is not uncommon.

But this is a government run killing field. The rebel groups in Darfur do not have aircraft, so it can be assumed that the Antonov and MiG planes and attack helicopters used to bomb villages belong to the Sudanese armed forces. In addition, eyewitnesses have seen the Antonovs, MiGs, and helicopters at government airports in Darfur. On April 24, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail admitted common cause with the Janjaweed, but implied their cause was a just one. �The government may have turned a blind eye toward the militias,� he said. �This is true. Because those militias are targeting the rebellion.� In an address to the people of Kulbus on December 31, 2003, President Bashir said his government�s priority was to defeat the SLA rebellion and said �the horsemen� would be one of the weapons it used - alongside the army.

The "horsemen" - Janjaweed - are used by the Arabs in government so as to limit the use of the Army - because the Army has quite a few blacks - mainly from the Masalit Tribe - who might feel Darfur folks should not be attacked.

Granted that sedentary African farmers in Darfur have a history of clashes over land with pastoralists from Arab tribes, primarily the camel- and cattle-herding Beni Hussein from the Kabkabiya area of North Darfur and the Beni Halba of South Darfur, but those past hostilities were settled by tribal (and Anglo- Egyptian) laws and procedures. And the current "Arabs moved flocks south earlier than usual" was settled - folks thought - by a reconciliation conference held in 1999 that agreed on compensation for Masalit and Arab losses.

Now under Bush all hell is breaking loose.

www.hrw.org is a source of information that I recommend.

[seemslikeadream]

1. BUSH'S PLAN FOR PEACE IS THE PEACE OF THE COMMON GRAVE

EVERY DEATH CREATES NEW ENEMIES
MORE TERRORISTS
MORE DANGER
MORE DEATH
AND REMEMBER...

HE IS JUST GETTING STARTED...

BUSH'S PLAN FOR PEACE
IS THE PEACE OF THE COMMON GRAVE

http://www.bushflash.com/pax.html WATCH THIS VIDEO only takes 3 minutes

Wumpscut
Totmacher

sie ahnten nichts von mir
von meiner wilden gier
doch als du kamst zu mir
da wurde ich ein tier
kein gedanke an danach
als ich dir die knochen brach

tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot

tot

fuer mein naechstes leben
schoepfe ich neue kraft
ich bin dem toeten ergeben
in der einzelhaft

tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot
tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot

ein dahinsichen
von gottes hand
ich kann dich riechen
und das denken verschwand

tot tot tot tot tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot tot tot tot tot

ich mache dich tot ich mache dich tot
ich mache dich tot ich mache dich tot

sag mir was du willst
dass du meine sehnsucht stillst
ich mache dich tot fuer immerdar
von blut alles rot auf gottes altar

tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot

ich mache dich tot fuer immerdar
ich mache dich tot glaub mir es ist wahr
ich mache dich tot fuer immerdar
ich mache dich tot auf gottes altar


TRANSLATION

Wumpscut - Deadmaker

They didn't expect me
never expected my wild lust
I turned into an animal
No thought about afterwards
When I broke your bones

Dead, dead, dead I make you dead
Dead, dead, dead stained from blood so red

Dead

For my next life (life after death in the religious sense)
I get the power I need
I�m a slave to the killing
In solitary confinement

("einzelhaft" (solitary confinment) has become part of the german vocabulary after the terrorist attacks of the Red Army Fraction during the 70's. It's used for people in prison, who are put into complete isolation not just from other people, but from all kinds of information. It's what might be known in the US as "sensual deprivation", a kind of torture-technique to destroy people's self.)

Dead, dead, dead I make you dead
Dead, dead, dead stained from blood so red
Dead, dead, dead I make you dead
Dead, dead, dead stained from blood so red

Wasting away
By God�s hand
I can smell you
And my thought disappeared

Dead, dead, dead I make you dead
Dead, dead, dead stained from blood so red
Dead, dead, dead, dead

I make you dead I make you dead
I make you dead I make you dead

Tell me what you want
That you fill my longing (that you satisfy my desire)
I make you dead for evermore
God�s altar stained from blood so red

Dead, dead, dead I make you dead
Dead, dead, dead stained from blood so red

I make you dead for evermore
I make you dead believe me its true
I make you dead for evermore
I make you dead on God�s altar

http://www.bushflash.com/animation.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. So, are you saying Bush should stay out of Sudan?

It seems to me that Bush's regime has actually pushed the most out of any government to do something to help the people in Darfur. The Chinese are the ones who were threatening to veto the UN Security Council resolution, and got it watered down.

Does your posting a video which deplores the USA sending troops to other countries mean that you think Sudan should be left to do what it wants with the inhabitants of Darfur?

[seemslikeadream]

3. Reasons for posting that video

http://www.inshuti.org/eir.htm

An EIR team probing the causes behind the genocidal wars that have been ravaging East and Central Africa over the last four years, has uncovered a covert arms and logistical supply network run out of the U.S. State Department, which mirrors precisely the notorious Iran-Contra arms supply operation of the 1980s. As in the case of then-Vice President George Bush and Col. Oliver North's covert Iran-Contra operations, the arms and logistical supply to marauding forces in East and Central Africa is being organized "off the books", and in direct violation of the official, public policy of the United States government toward the conflicts involved.

http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v04n6p11.htm
THE ACTIONS OF EDWIN WILSON ARE TYPICAL of the mirror images that reflect the reality of world politics. A former CIA agent, Wilson is currently in prison for his Libyan dealings. He trained Libyan would-be terrorists while American policy denounced the Libyan terrorist network. His recruits staffed and trained the air force of Libya leader Col. Ghaddafi, and he supplied planes, men and weapons for Ghaddafi's military forays into Chad and Sudan. Such weapons sales were likely financed by the CIA-connected Nugan Hand Bank. While Wilson's escapades often have been seen as that of a traitor, they constantly had the approval of top covert warfare planner Theodore Shackley, as Jonathan Kwitny points out in The Crimes of Patriots.

During the moderate era of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Wilson was jailed and Theodore Shackley, as well as some 800 other CIA covert operations agents, were fired. Before his imprisonment, Wilson, along with Clines, organized assistance to the Contras via Israel, who were Somoza's arms suppliers. Carter's attempts to isolate Iran were frustrated in a similar manner by the same strange alliance of extremist former covert agents and Israel. Even during the holding of the hostages, abruptly ending after the installation of Ronald Reagan as President, Israel supplied arms to the Khomeini regime. These included spare parts for U.S.-made tanks and F-4 Phantom jets, as Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott and Jane Hunter show in The Iran Contra Connection.

AGENTS FIRED BY Carter were employed in the Reagan election campaign, turning their covert tactics on the incumbent President, Reagan's campaign chairman, veteran intelligence agent William Casey, openly boasted of running an "intelligence operation" against Democrats. Later, investigations by a congressional committee showed Reagan forces had infiltrated their opponents with spies, and had even managed to acquire the "debate book" of President Carter, a briefing book used for his television debate with Reagan.

http://www.aboutsudan.com/interviews/baroness_cox_stokes_the_flames_o.htm

The modus operandi of Baroness Cox is easily summarized: She personally oversaw the process by which two political opposition parties, the Umma and Democratic Unionist Party, came together and agreed to acknowledge John Garang, the remaining rebel leader of the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), as their military arm. The resulting umbrella grouping is known as the National Democratic Alliance. After Cox created it in the Eritrean capital of Asmara in June 1995, she organized political recognition for it by inviting its leaders to a strategic planning session at the House of Lords. At that meeting, on Nov. 29 to Dec. 1, 1995, the House of Lords endorsed the Asmara declaration, which had called openly for expanding the war in southern Sudan to a nation-wide effort, and overthrowing the current government of Gen. Omar al Bashir by force. To this end, Cox also negotiated support for the "rebels" from the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments. Her noble colleague, former Minister for Overseas Development, Lady Lynda Chalker, was responsible for Uganda's participation. Now, although the government has signed for peace, the war is being kept going artificially, by military aggression against Sudan, from the three "front-line" states.

Coupled with this political organizing, Cox has led the psychological warfare effort as well. To generate support from circles in the United States, particularly targeting leaders in the African American community who would tend to defend peace in a country like Sudan, she has orchestrated a lobbying and media campaign, charging that the Khartoum government persecutes Christians; specifically, that government-backed Muslim militias raid southern Christian or animist tribes, and enslave their people. To make her case, she has traveled over ten times to Sudan, often in the company of British intelligence-linked media outlets (BBC, NBC, etc.), to stage the purchase of would-be slaves, "buying" them their freedom. In every case, according to testimony she herself has presented on behalf of CSI on various occasions to Congressional hearings, she has entered the country illegally and traveled to those areas held by rebel forces. Whatever she may have "documented," or, better, fabricated, has taken place in areas, by her own admission, not under government control. Yet, her charge is that Khartoum is responsible.

Lady Cox
http://www.acinc.org.uk/baroness_cox_risks_her_life.htm

Sudan, Oil, and Human Rights
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/sudan1103/
INTRODUCTION: WINNING OIL - LOSING PEOPLE
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engAFR540012000
God, Oil and Country: Changing the Logic of War in Sudan
http://www.crisisweb.org/home/index.cfm?id=1615&l=1
Oil Fuels War in Sudan
http://www.ms.dk/Kampagner/Sudan/peacefirst.htm
Documentation on
The Impact of Oil on Sudan
http://www.ms.dk/Kampagner/Sudan/oil.htm
A REVIEW OF JOHN PRENDERGAST'S "GOD, OIL AND COUNTRY: CHANGING THE LOGIC OF WAR IN SUDAN"
http://www.espac.org/oil_pages/oil_industry.html

more to follow

[seemslikeadream]

4. 3.5 million dead in Congo since 1998 Haven't done anything about that

Maria, a mother of three, lost her arm defending her children in Nizi, Eastern Congo. She says soldiers ate flesh from the arm after they had amputated it.


US Quest for Oil in Africa Worries Analysts, Activists

The Bush administration's search for more secure sources of oil is leading it to the doorsteps of some of the world's most troubled and repressive regimes: the petroleum-rich countries of West Africa.


The national energy plan drafted by Vice President Dick Cheney's task force spotlighted West Africa as "the fastest-growing source of oil and gas for the American market," and the administration has promised industry officials to do what it can to promote development. The first African head of state to visit President Bush in the White House was President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, the continent's leading producer. In September, Bush huddled privately in New York with leaders of 11 African nations, most of them current or prospective oil suppliers. Although the talks involved more than petroleum, participants said Bush discussed a $3.5-billion Chad-Cameroon pipeline project, whose partners include U.S.-basedExxonMobil Corp. and ChevronTexaco Corp.

A number of administration officials have traveled to the region in recent months. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell paid visits to Gabon and Angola, where he broke ground for a new U.S. Embassy. Bush plans to visit Africa later this year. The administration is paying unaccustomed attention to Sao Tome and Principe, a tiny island nation of 170,000 sitting atop an estimated 4 billion barrels of newly discovered oil reserves. President Fradique de Menezes has offered to let the U.S. build a naval base in Sao Tome, and a U.S. general went there last year to discuss security issues.

The State Department, which closed its embassy in Equatorial Guinea eight years ago because of human rights concerns and budget constraints, will open a new one there this year, in part because of oil discoveries. Meanwhile, it has authorized a firm run by retired Pentagon officials to train Equatorial Guinea's coast guard. The administration has also increased the authority of the U.S. Export-Import Bank to underwrite foreign projects, and bank officials say energy diversification is part of the reason. In October, the bank announced a $135-million loan guarantee to help finance construction of a petroleum plant in Nigeria.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/natres/oil/2003/0114tome.htm


Cheney's Dirty Business by Wayne Madsen


(AR) WASHINGTON -- The Bush camp touts Cheney as an icon of statesmanship, but after serving as Secretary of Defense in Bush the Elder's administration and rescuing Kuwait's oil from the clutches of Sadaam Hussein, Cheney went on to become Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Halliburton, Inc., an oil drilling firm based in Houston. Halliburton owns the construction firm Brown & Root Services (BRS), a company involved in U.S. intelligence operations in Africa and elsewhere.
Considering the fact that Bush the Elder lives in Houston and was involved with both the oil business and the CIA, the Bush, Jr.-Cheney ticket must be a dream team for him, his friends in the oil industry, and the folks who work at the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Va. (formerly known as CIA headquarters).

The GOP has a knack for reaching into the past to find candidates to lead the nation into the future. In 1996, the party anointed Bob Dole, a veteran of WWII, to preside over a nation entering the 21st Century. Now Gov. Bush has not only reached back to the Bush administration but to the gloomy post-Watergate era, to pick Cheney, who was President Gerald Ford's chief of staff.

Cheney's links to defense contractors and the intelligence community are suspect because of the roles played by Halliburton and Brown & Root in some of the world's most volatile trouble spots. In 1998, while conducting research in Rwanda for my book, "Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999," a member of a U.S. military team reported that the latter was "into some real bad shit" in that beleaguered nation.

http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0008a/cheneycompany.html




Africa and African Oil


U.S. Military Shows Interest in Africa
By: Ellen Knickmeyer
Associated Press Date: 02/24/2004

DAKAR, Senegal - Top U.S. generals are touching down across Africa in unusual back-to-back trips, U.S. European Command confirmed Tuesday, part of a change in military planning as U.S. interest grows in African terror links and African oil.
Trips by two top European Command generals follow last week's similarly low-profile Africa visit by the U.S. commander in Europe, Marine Gen. James L. Jones.

The generals are leaders in U.S. military proposals to shift from Cold War-era troop buildups in western Europe to smaller concentrations closer to the world's trouble spots.

Jones' trip included stops in Morocco and Cameroon and talks with leaders of the sub-Sahara's military giants, Nigeria and South Africa, European Command spokesmen in Stuttgart, Germany said.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/8028821...


Oil found off the coast of Gambia
By: Jeevan Vasagar
Guardian, The Date: 02/18/2004

The president of Gambia has announced the discovery of "large quantities" of oil in his tiny West African country, the latest revelation of petrochemical riches in sub-Saharan Africa. In a national broadcast Yahya Jammeh, who seized control of the former British colony in a military coup 10 years ago, said the offshore discovery by a western company would result in "a harvest of prosperity".
West Africa already supplies the US with 15% of its oil imports, and the share is expected to grow as the Bush administration seeks to reduce dependence on the Gulf.

The Gambian find follows the discovery of viable deposits of crude oil off S�o Tom�, in the Gulf of Guinea, where billions of barrels are believed to lie offshore.

Mr Jammeh did not name the company responsible for the study, but an Australian company, Fusion Oil and Gas, holds a licence to carry out deep-water exploration off the Gambian coast.

The Perth-based firm, which was unavailable for comment last night, describes itself as "a holding company for a group of companies whose business is oil and gas exploration in Africa".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,1150369,00.html

U.S. Considers Building Port at Sao Tome to Protect Oil
By: Staff
Associated Press Date: 02/18/2004

DAKAR, Senegal - The United States is studying whether to build a deep-water port and new airport at Sao Tome, an island nation touted as a possible Navy base to protect growing Western oil interests in West Africa.

Ambassador Kenneth Moorefield and Sao Tome ministers signed the $800,000 study agreement at Sao Tome's current international airport, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency said in a statement.

Sao Tome, off oil-rich Nigeria, is one of the lead nations in an oil boom in West Africa as the United States, Asia and Europe look for alternatives to Mideast oil.

West Africa's Gulf of Guinea supplies the United States with 15 percent of its oil, a figure projected to grow to 25 percent by 2015.

The study on expanding Sao Tome's port and airport is in line with a U.S. agreement to "evaluate opportunities for technical assistance" to Sao Tome, the U.S. statement said.
http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=5769&fcategory_desc


US opens new front in war on terror beefing up border in Sahara
By: Rory Carroll
Guardian, The Date: 01/14/2004

The US is sending troops and defence contractors to the Sahara desert of west Africa to open what it calls a new front in the war on terror. A small vanguard force arrived this week in Mauritania to pave the way for a $100m (�54m) plan to bolster the security forces and border controls of Mauritania, Mali, Chad and Niger.
The US Pan-Sahel Initiative, as it is named, will provide 60 days of training to military units, including tips on desert navigation and infantry tactics, and furnish equipment such as Toyota Land Cruisers, radios and uniforms.

The reinforcement of America's defences in a remote, poorly patrolled region came on a day when US police forces gained important powers in the homeland to conduct searches.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1122704,00.html

Repost: African Black Gold
By: Simon Robinson
Time Magazine Date: 10/28/2002


The sleepy tropical island city of Malabo had hardly changed in years. The capital of Equatorial Guinea, a tiny West African nation of fewer than 500,000 people, consisted of little more than some moldering Spanish colonial buildings, a few palm-lined plazas and the tightly packed shanty towns which encircle most African settlements. Its one claim to fame was that novelist Frederick Forsyth lived there while he wrote his military thriller The Dogs of War. But over the past three years, Malabo has been transformed. Office buildings have shot up, hotels and banks have opened, and foreigners � once a novelty in Malabo � now cram the town's fancy new restaurants. There's so much construction, joke the locals, that if you open your mouth and stick out your tongue someone is likely to build on it.
The source of this economic boom can be found buried beneath the nearby ocean floor. Over the past decade, foreign oil companies have found at least 500 million barrels of high-grade crude oil in the country's waters. Production has jumped from just 17,000 barrels per day in 1996 to more than 220,000 and could grow another 50% within three years. The oil boom has fueled fantastic economic growth � 65% last year, down to an estimated 25% this year � and pushed annual per capita GDP from $800 seven years ago to more than $2,000 today. The bonanza in Equatorial Guinea is being repeated across the region. Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world, will soon start pumping more than 200,000 barrels of oil a day through a $3.7 billion, 1,070-km pipeline � Africa's biggest-ever infrastructure project � that transverses Cameroon.

The island nation of S�o Tom� and Pr�ncipe, which sits on perhaps 4 billion barrels of crude, is also attracting foreign oilmen. These upstart countries join such established giants as Nigeria, which plans to increase its output from its current 1.9 million barrels per day to more than 3 million; Angola, which wants to double its almost 1 million daily output; and Gabon, which is encouraging more deepwater exploration to prop up declining production. All the action makes the waters off West Africa one of the hottest places for oil exploration in the world. On a global scale, the numbers may seem modest; total proven reserves in the Gulf of Guinea sit at 40 billion barrels, less than one-sixth of Saudi Arabia's 261 billion. But Africa is just getting started. Says Al Stanton, an Edinburgh-based oil analyst with Deutsche Bank: "The opportunities for expansion are tremendous."

http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,1300... ...

Hunt for 'new' oil
By: Timothy Burn
Washington Times Date: 09/28/2003

U.S. oil companies have been drilling off the west coast of Africa for years, but as major players like ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil continue to strike massive oil deposits in these deep waters, the Bush administration has taken notice.
The United States has been scouring the planet for new sources of oil beyond the Middle East. The September 11 terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq convinced the administration that the United States must move quickly to find new foreign oil partners.

What better place to look than an oil-rich region that lies just 4,500 miles from the East Coast, with an unobstructed sea route to U.S. ports, a region that could supply as much as a quarter of U.S. oil imports?

West Africa is rapidly emerging as a key strategic outpost for President Bush's twin policy goals of taking the war on terror far away from U.S. borders and breaking the Arab stranglehold on world oil prices.
http://washingtontimes.com/specialreport/20030928-123431-1449r.htm


Sept. 2003: U.S. donates ships to protect Nigeria oil
By: Dulue Mbachu
Associated Press Date: 09/05/2003

LAGOS, Nigeria -- The United States is donating several ships to Nigeria to help the West African nation protect its massive oil assets from gangs who steal an estimated 10 percent of oil profits daily, authorities said Friday.
The third of seven former U.S. Coast Guard ships to be delivered by year's end arrived at the port in Lagos on Thursday, a U.S. Embassy official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The first ship arrived in March.

Nigerian authorities plan to deploy the vessels in the troubled southern Niger Delta region, which produces almost all of Nigeria's oil output.

"Our national assets in the sea are worth billions of dollars and the arrival (of the ships) would help safeguard them," a Nigerian navy statement quoted Vice Adm. Samuel Afolayan as saying.
http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=2376&fcategory_desc


Aug 2002: US naval base to protect Sao Tome oil
By: Staff
BBC Date: 08/22/2002

The tiny island nation of Sao Tome and Principe, off the West African coast, has agreed to host a US naval base to protect its oil interests. The country holds a strategic position in the oil rich Gulf of Guinea from which the US could monitor the movement of oil tankers and guard oil platforms.
"Last week I received a call from the Pentagon to tell me that the issue is being studied," President Fradique De Menezes told Portugal's RTP Internacional TV.

"This will be good for Sao Tome as it will ensure the future of the country in relation to those that are ambitious and are looking to come to the country when oil is extracted from our waters," he said.

The former Portuguese colony has a very small army on which it spends only $1m a year.

The president was responding to rumours that the US planned to build a air force and naval base after a visit in July by a US General Carlton Fulford, deputy commander-in-chief, US European Command.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2210571.stm

Americans muscle in as 'big whities' flock to new El Dorado

Rory Carroll, Africa correspondent
Tuesday June 17, 2003
The Guardian

Step inside the air-conditioned lounge of the Viking Club and Luanda's squalor could be another universe. Here the oil executives and engineers sip beer and discuss geological reports, deals and money.
Beyond the shattered skyline of Angola's capital, buried beneath the Atlantic, is a vast store of oil, and their job is to extract it. The accents are British, Australian, French and, increasingly, American.

The "big whities", as the taxi drivers call them, have been coming for years but now the flights are fuller than ever: new offshore discoveries are expected to double output to 2 million barrels per day, prompting talk of a drilling El Dorado.

Angola's government, adept at playing off rival oil companies to maximise its revenue, expects an investment boom of $50bn (�30bn) in the next decade.

A US contractor will help build an oil refinery in Lobito harbour, 250 miles south of Luanda, to process the light crude suitable for American cars. Now that Washington wants west African oil to cut US dependency on the Gulf, its envoys are beating a path to the capital.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,979101,00.html

Scramble for Africa

Fear of corruption and chaos in oil rush

Charlotte Denny, economics correspondent
Tuesday June 17, 2003
The Guardian

Washington's determination to find an alternative energy source to the Middle East is leading to a new oil rush in sub-Saharan Africa which threatens to launch a fresh cycle of conflict, corruption and environmental degradation in the region, campaigners warn today.
The new scramble for Africa risks bringing more misery to the continent's impoverished citizens as western oil companies pour billions of dollars in secret payments into government coffers throughout the continent. Much of the money ends up in the hands of ruling elites or is squandered on grandiose projects and the military.

Tony Blair will today urge the oil industry to be more transparent in its dealings with Africa. Openness and accountability are essentials for stability and prosperity in the developing world, he will tell oil company executives and oil exporting countries at a meeting in Lancaster House in central London.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,979053,00.h...


Oil shocked

A desire to loosen Opec's stranglehold on petroleum prices lies behind Bush's interest in Africa and his plans for Iraq, writes Randeep Ramesh

Friday July 11, 2003

America's new world order appears founded on a declaration of independence. George Bush, an oil man from an oil state, wants America to wean itself off a dangerous addiction to faraway hydrocarbons.
As the president's national energy plan puts it, this is "a condition of increased dependency on foreign powers that do not always have American interests at heart".

Although admirably blunt, this statement has haunted the Bush administration since it was made in May 2001 - months before the attacks of September 11. America's war on terrorism is often viewed as a scramble for black gold.

There is a logic to this. Getting gas out of the Caspian is a lot easier if you are faced with a pliant Afghanistan. If Iraq is not run by a dictator determined to use oil as a weapon of war - as Dick Cheney said " seek domination of the entire Middle East" - then Americans could sleep easier.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,979053,00.html


Oil and terrorism drive the presidential tour

Julian Borger in Washington
Monday July 7, 2003
The Guardian

President Bush's trip to Africa this week signals a recent strategic decision to increase America's military presence to bolster what Washington now sees as two important national interests on the continent - the supply of oil and the struggle against terrorism.
On the eve of departure, General James Jones, the commander of the US European command with responsibility for African operations, said the US was trying to negotiate the long-term use of a "family" of military bases across the continent.

This would include big installations for up to 5,000-strong brigades "that could be robustly used for a significant military presence," Gen Jones told the New York Times. It would also involve smaller, lightly equipped bases available in times of crisis to special forces or marines.

The bases would not only be established in north African states such as Algeria, where Islamic extremism is already a potent force, but also in sub-Saharan African nations such as Mali.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,993022,00.h...

US military wants to increase its presence in Africa
By Eric Schmitt in Washington
July 7 2003

The United States military is seeking to expand its presence in Africa through new basing agreements and training exercises aimed at combating a growing terrorist threat.

Even as military planners prepare options for US troops to join an international peacekeeping force to oversee a ceasefire in Liberia, the Pentagon wants to enhance military ties with allies such as Morocco and Tunisia.

It is also seeking to gain long-term access to bases in countries such as Mali and Algeria, which US forces could use for periodic training or to strike terrorists. And it aims to build on aircraft refuelling agreements in Senegal and Uganda, two countries that President George Bush is to visit on the five-nation swing through Africa that he begins tomorrow.

There were no plans to build permanent US bases in Africa, Pentagon officials said. Instead, the US European Command, which oversees military operations in most of Africa, wants troops now in Europe to rotate more often into bare-bones camps or airfields in Africa. Marines may spend more time sailing off West Africa.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/06/1057430078697...

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. I still don't understand your reasons

Your first and third links come from Executive Intelligence Review, the Lyndon LaRouche organisation. Now, I'm not keen on dismissing things just because of their source, but most DUers do seem to regard LaRouche as a distraction at best, or a dangerous disruptor of the Democratic Party at worst. He has many theories which are pretty unbelievable to me. I don't think I'd put any trust in uncorroborrated articles from his group. In any case, they don't directly mention Darfur.

The second link only mentions Sudan in passing as a target of Gaddafi at one stage. How is it relevant here?

The remaining links seem to be about the human rights abuses by the government of Sudan, and how oil companies are complicit in them. If the US government is mentioned, it seems to be to say it shouldn't be so tolerant of the government of Sudan. So now are you saying that the US government should be intervening against the Sudanese government? I'm confused by your posts - they seem to be supporting opinions from both sides of the argument. Do you actually have an opinion?

[seemslikeadream]

10. 2 out of 26 links

:shrug:

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. Does your shrug mean that you don't have an opinion?

You only posted 10 links about Sudan (even if one hardly mentions it, and you still haven't explained its relevance) above, and another 5 below (about arms trading, though you haven't said what you think they prove, apart from the fact that arms have been imported to Sudan. This is no surprise - we knew that already, there must have been some to kill people).

Why are you talking about 26 links?

[seemslikeadream]

5. Arms Dealer Wanted in Africa, Needed in Iraq

Arms Dealer Wanted in Africa, Needed in Iraq




MERCHANT OF DEATH
Viktor Bout standing near an airplane.

Published on Friday, May 21, 2004 by the Inter Press Service
Arms Dealer Wanted in Africa, Needed in Iraq
Coalition forces find new uses in Iraq for an arms dealer they had branded a villain in Africa.

by Julio Godoy

PARIS - Arms dealer Viktor Bout was the merchant of death wanted for feeding conflicts in Africa - until Iraq happened.

Today the United States and Britain are using his extensive mercenary services in Iraq. The condemnation of his role in the diamond wars and other conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa over the past ten years is being silently erased.

The Tajikstan-born Bout would be an embarrassing ally to acknowledge publicly. But the coalition partners are showing him exceptional favors as he does some of their job for them.

The UN Security Council drafted a resolution in March to freeze the assets of mercenaries and weapons dealers who backed ousted Liberian dictator Charles Taylor. Bout should top that list, French diplomatic sources say. But the diplomats and UN sources say the United States has been working to keep Bout off that list.

U.S. officials have indicated unofficially that the reason is that Bout is useful in Iraq, the sources told IPS.

The tanks were believed to have been transported by one of Bout's air freight companies in a deal conducted through Pakistan's secret service. The deal was uncovered by the Russian foreign intelligence service SVR in Kabul, Der Spiegel reported.

more
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0521-12.htm

GALLERY OF INTERNATIONAL ARMS DEALERS

By Matthew Brunwasser

Victor Bout is the poster boy for a new generation of post Cold War international arms dealers who play a critical role in areas where the weapons trade has been embargoed by the United Nations.

Now, as FRONTLINE/World reports in "Gunrunners," unprecedented U.N. investigations have begun to unravel the mystery of these broken embargoes, many of them imposed on African countries involved in bloody civil wars. At the heart of this unfolding detective story is the identification of a group of East European arms merchants, with Victor Bout the first of them to be publicly and prominently identified. The U.N. investigative team pursued leads that a Mr. Bout was pouring small arms and ammunition into Angola, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and the Congo, making possible massacres on a scale that stunned the world.



Despite being pursued for years by a flinty group of private and government arms investigators, a positive visual ID of this United Arab Emirates-based arms merchant only became available when two Belgian journalists ran into him at an airstrip in remote rebel-held Congo. And it was only recently that his name became familiar in the United States, following press reports of his role in arming the Taliban regime in Afghanistan five years ago. If not for this link to Afghanistan, it is probable that Bout would still be a low-profile character in the clandestine world of illicit arms trading.
more
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/sierraleone/bout.html


VICTOR BOUT
FACT SHEET
BORN:
1967, Dushanbe, U.S.S.R. (now Tajikistan); an ethnic Russian.

PASSPORTS:
At least five, two of which are Russian and one Ukrainian.

ALIASES:
Often referred to in law enforcement circles as "Victor B.," as he is thought to have at least five aliases: Butt, Butov, Badd, Bulakin and others.

EDUCATION:
Graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, Moscow.

PREVIOUS CAREER:
Until 1991, served as an interpreter in a now-disbanded military transport aviation regiment in Vitsebsk (now Belarus). Translated for U.N. peacekeeping force in Angola, 1987. Left the military as a lieutenant.

LANGUAGES:
Russian (native), Farsi (Persian, also the language of Tajikistan), English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Xhosa, Zulu.

MOST RECENTLY:
Last seen at liberty in Moscow in March, 2002.

CRIMINAL RECORD:
June 2000: Charged with forging documents in the Central African Republic and convicted in absentia. Charges were later dropped; no explanation was given.
February 2002: Belgium issued an arrest warrant for Bout on money laundering charges.
more
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/sierraleone/bout.html

Jean Bernard Lasnaud



By Julia Reynolds, Center for Investigative Reporting
with William Kistner and Omar Lavieri in Buenos Aires

UPDATE: Just days after the publication of this Web-exclusive report on May 23, Jean Bernard Lasnaud was arrested in Switzerland in response to an Interpol request. Swiss authorities contacted the Argentina courts, where the current judge on the case quickly requested Lasnaud's extradition. If sent to Argentina, Lasnaud will face 22 years in prison on charges of arms smuggling and "abuse of authority."

As this FRONTLINE/World report pointed out, the U.S. had broken from standard practice and never took even basic steps toward detaining Lasnaud. If he finally faces the Buenos Aires courts, it is hoped Lasnaud's testimony will help shed light on how a wanted international arms smuggler was able to spend a decade living openly in the U.S.

Note: After Lasnaud's arrest, his Web site was taken off the Internet.

In the fall of 2001, international arms broker Jean-Bernard Lasnaud was at ease, sounding more like a seasoned entrepreneur than a fugitive from justice.

"Business has been terrible since September 11," he laughed, during a telephone interview with FRONTLINE/World. "I'm going to give it up and buy a hot dog stand in New York City."



Personable and easy-going, he was in the business of selling tanks, rocket launchers and SCUD missiles from a luxury condo in a gated South Florida community.


JEAN BERNARD LASNAUD FACT SHEET


JEAN BERNARD LASNAUD
FACT SHEET
BORN:
March 12, 1942, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.

ALIASES:
Bernard Lasnosky, Jean-Fran�ois Bernard, Fran�ois Laroche.

BIGGEST KNOWN ARMS DEAL:
Illicit sales of Argentinean weapons in the 1990s estimated to have totaled $100 million, including government bribes and payoffs.

SUSPECTED CLIENT COUNTRIES:
Croatia, Ecuador, China, United States, and Somalia.

CLAIM TO FAME:
Accused of brokering sales of 6,500 tons of Argentinean weapons to Croatia and Ecuador in the mid-90s, in violation of U.N. and international embargoes. Faxes signed by Lasnaud document his involvement in and intimate knowledge of the deals. Lasnaud's Argentine partner, Capt. Horacio Estrada, was found shot dead in his Buenos Aires apartment soon after speaking to an investigating judge in the case. Some Florida law enforcement officials suspect that Lasnaud is a protected asset of the CIA or some other U.S. agency.

PURSUED BY:
Argentina.
Interpol has an active warrant for Lasnaud's arrest and extradition to Argentina. The U.S. Department of Justice has refused to pick him up, citing "insufficient evidence" that Lasnaud knew his shipments contained arms.

CONNECTION TO UNITED STATES:
Until recently, lived in Fort Lauderdale. His son Alexandre, a south Florida attorney, recently served a six-month sentence in federal prison on obstruction of justice charges.

MOST RECENTLY:
In spring 2002, Lasnaud suddenly left his Florida residence and said he was "traveling outside the U.S." An Interpol source says his ability to travel freely is "highly unusual."
more
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/sierraleone/lasnaud.html


Leonid Minin





By Matthew Brunwasser


The scene in Leonid Minin's hotel room on the night of August 4, 2000 could have been taken from a Quentin Tarrantino film: Minin, a pale Ukrainian, abundantly fleshy and naked, freebasing cocaine, flanked by a quartet of Russian, Albanian, Italian and Kenyan prostitutes. A pornographic film flickers in the background. Minin, the majority owner of the Europa Hotel in Cinisello Balsamo, a small town outside Milan, Italy, has transformed his two-room suite into a bedroom/office and den of debauchery.

Then, without warning, the police arrive at Room 341, putting an end to the party and derailing the career of a prominent international gun smuggler and high-level leader of the so-called "Odessa Mafia."

Although local police supposedly raided Minin's hotel on a tip from an unpaid prostitute, FRONTLINE/World has acquired a report that shows the Milan customs police had had Minin under surveillance since 1992 while investigating an international criminal organization involved in laundering international drug money through the foreign bank accounts of Italian businessmen. The report also says that in 1997 Italian intelligence services conducted a "complex investigation on a criminal group of Ukrainian origins associated with the so-called 'Russian Mafia' and involved in international arms and drug trafficking, money laundering, extortion and other offenses. This group is headed by the Ukrainian businessman Leonid Minin."

Incriminating Evidence

That hot August evening in Cinisello Balsamo, police found $500,000 worth of uncut diamonds. Later analysis found most came from Russia -- no African origins could be confirmed despite the diamond scales later found in Minin's Liberian office. They found a duffel bag filled with more than $35,000 in American, Italian, Hungarian and Mauritian currency. From a briefcase and piles scattered around the rooms, police collected 1,500 documents -- in Russian, Ukrainian, French, German, Dutch, English and Italian -- relating to Minin's wide variety of business operations. Specific findings included documents on his dealings in oil, timber and consumer goods; an inquiry by Minin into providing Nigeria's mobile phone network; a follow-up by a colleague on Minin's proposal to sell a Ukrainian aircraft carrier to Turkey; an offer from Minin's Beijing representative asking him to ascertain whether Liberian President Charles Taylor would be interested in establishing diplomatic relations with mainland China; correspondence between Minin and President Charles Taylor's son "Chuckie"; and a record of a $10,263.02 payment to Marc Rich, best known for his 11th-hour pardon from President Clinton on charges of fraud and extortion. Rich's oil company, Glencore, once shared a London phone number with one of Minin's companies Galaxy Management.
more
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/sierraleone/minin.html


LEONID MININ FACT SHEET


LEONID MININ
FACT SHEET
BORN:
December 14, 1947, Odessa, U.S.S.R. (Ukraine).

PASSPORTS ISSUED:
U.S.S.R.
Russia (2/2/95)
Germany (1/14/90; Igor Limar, 2/8/90)
Bolivia (2/9/89)
Israel (3/6/75; 11/6/94)

ALIASES:
Leon Minin, Wulf Breslav (DOB: 7/10/44), Leonid Bluvshtein, Leonid Bluvstein, Igor Osols, Vladimir Abramovich Kerler, Igor Limar.

KNOWN BUSINESS ACTIVITIES:
Oil, electricity, timber, small arms, Russian icons, diamonds and gems (Russian and possibly African), consumer goods, prefabricated homes. Investigated in several European countries for money laundering and cocaine trafficking.

LANGUAGES:
Russian (native), Ukrainian (native), English, German, French, Italian.

PASTIMES:
Cocaine, $500-a-night prostitutes.

MOST RECENTLY:
Presently in Vigevano prison outside Milan, Italy. Faces possible 12 years. Still no decision on trial date.

more
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/sierraleone/minin.html







A Lendu child soldier waits in a camp for news of his next deployment. Battles are raging 13 miles to the north of his position.


Sarkis Soghanalian


In an interview with FRONTLINE/World co-producer William Kistner in March 2001, Sarkis Soghanalian, one of the world's most accomplished arms salesmen, gave his unapologetic and seasoned views on the international arms trade and U.S. policy. A veteran of many Cold War arms deals, Soghanalian has seen wars, rebel movements and ideological conflicts become U.S. priorities and then fade into history. He speaks frankly about his role in helping the United States pursue its interests. He is confident that every deal has been undertaken with the approval of the U.S. government.

STARTING OUT IN THE LEBANESE CIVIL WAR

What brought you into this business?

I'm from Lebanon, and my family came to Lebanon from what is now called Turkey in 1939 or 1940, but at the time it was Syria. And the education was not at a very high level. But we had to find work. I went to work with the French army. I skipped school in 1944 and worked with a tank division. So I grew up with it, adapted to it from childhood and kept going.

It's been in your blood since you were young.

Being an Armenian, you are raised fighting to survive. Since we survived the Turkish massacres, a genocide like that of the Jews and others, we were the first generation with such a background. So you can say it was in my blood and in my dreams. As a young man you like nothing more than weapons. Women were secondary, as at that age we didn't know anything about that.

more
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/sierraleone/soghanalian.html


SARKIS SOGHANALIAN FACT SHEET


SARKIS SOGHANALIAN
FACT SHEET
BORN:
1929 or 1930 in Syria, in a region that is now part of Turkey; raised in Lebanon.

PROFILE:
An ethnic Armenian, Lebanese citizen, has lived for more than 20 years in the United States as a permanent resident; last reported in Los Angeles. Has or has had offices in Paris, Athens, Amman (Jordan) and Miami. Weighs about 300 pounds. Walks with a limp and suffers from heart disease.

CLIENTS:
Has armed Saddam Hussein of Iraq (about $1.6 billion), Gen. Anastasio Somoza and the Contras in Nicaragua, Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri (Argentine junta leader), Mobutu Sese Seko (former dictator of Zaire, now Congo), Christian Fallange Militias in Lebanon, and many others. As owner of the air transport company Pan Aviation, he leased a plane to Ferdinand Marcos for his planned return to the Philippines during the unsuccessful 1987 military coup; sold an American C-130 cargo plane to Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi; and rented planes to the CIA, allegedly for Contra operations involving drug trafficking. In the 1980s, he sold the Iraqi army $280 million worth of uniforms, in partnership with former U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew, former Attorney General John Mitchell and Nixon's former chief of staff, Jack Brennan. When the U.S. manufacturer was found to be too expensive, Mitchell had former President Nixon write a letter, successfully urging Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu to manufacture the uniforms.

HAS COLLABORATED WITH:
The CIA, the FBI, the State Department and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Helped break a counterfeit $100-bill printing operation in Lebanon and tried, unsuccessfully, to negotiate the release of U.S. hostage Terry Anderson in Lebanon.

MOST RECENTLY:
In 1999, air-dropped 10,000 Kalashnikov rifles to Colombia's FARC (Fuerzos Armandas Revolucionarias de Colombia) guerillas -- leftist insurgents aligned with cocaine traffickers. (The United States recently sent $1 billion in aid to help the Colombian government defeat them.) Soghanalian says the deal was meant for Peru. It later emerged that the CIA had approved the deal and that it was organized by the disgraced former Peruvian intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos, who was on the CIA payroll for years and is now in jail on arms and drug-trafficking charges.

CRIMINAL RECORD:
1977: Bilked $1.1 million from British competitor Boca Investments by reneging on a transfer of machine guns to Mauritania.: Was convicted in 1982 of wire fraud in connection with the case; sentenced to five years' probation and forced to pay restitution.
1986: Arrested for possession of five unregistered machine guns and two unregistered rocket launchers in 1984 at Miami International Airport. Also charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. A federal judge dismissed all charges in 1988.
1991: Convicted on six counts of conspiring to export arms to Iraq without the required federal licenses, a violation of the U.S. Arms Control Export Act. The case, which included two former officials of Hughes Helicopter Corp., involved the sale of 103 combat helicopters and two rocket launchers in 1983 during the Iran-Iraq War. In 1992 he was sentenced to six years in prison and a $20,000 fine. The U.S. attorney had asked for maximum of 24 years and a $240,000 fine.
1993: A federal judge reduced the conviction for sales to Iraq from six and a half years to two years; prosecutor would not explain. Soghanalian's attorney later said it concerned intelligence Soghanalian gave to U.S. law-enforcement officials to break up a $100-bill counterfeiting operation in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon.
2001: Sentenced to time served (10 months) of a possible five-year sentence for wire fraud involving stolen cashier's checks. Released on recommendation from U.S. attorney's office in exchange for "substantial assistance to law enforcement" in an unspecified investigation.

MORE
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/sierraleone/soghanalian.html

Monzer Al Kassar



By Matthew Brunwasser

This case study details the expert machinations of Monzer Al Kassar in breaking the U.N. arms embargo on Yugoslavia. Distancing himself from his activities through intermediaries, he appears fully confident of avoiding any legal liability.
The case illustrates how Al Kassar and his associates tried to obscure the money trail of an illegal arms sale through various bank transfers, and it clearly establishes Al Kassar's role as the broker arranging the sale of Polish arms to Croatia and Bosnia during the wartime arms embargo on Yugoslavia. The information presented here is drawn from the report of a Swiss judicial investigation into Al Kassar's financial activities.


ANATOMY OF AN ILLEGAL ARMS DEAL

On June 5, 1990, Monzer Al Kassar and his wife opened an account, number 1964, at the Audi Bank in Switzerland. Al Kassar and his wife used their real names and both signed the documents, highly unusual for a bank account that would later be used in an illegal arms deal. The initial purpose of the account is unknown. The bank records from this account and others would later become evidence used by a Swiss prosecutor to freeze Al Kassar's proceeds from the illegal sale of Polish arms to Croatia and Bosnia.

Subsequent events provided the necessary ingredients for an embargo-breaking arms deal: a war, an attempt by the international community to stop it, and a broker able to work around it. Croatia and Slovenia declared themselves independent from Yugoslavia in June 1991. A bloody civil war ensued. The United Nations Security Council voted on September 25, 1991, to impose an arms embargo on Yugoslavia, whose constituent republics were not yet recognized by the international community as independent countries. Bosnia declared its independence in March 1992, which was followed by an even more bloody and complicated civil war.


more
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/sierraleone/a...

MONZAR AL KASSAR



BORN:
Nabek, Syria, 1945.

LANGUAGES:
Arabic, English, Spanish.

KNOWN PASSPORTS:
Syrian, Argentine, Brazilian, Algerian and British; Spanish permanent residency.

INVOLVED IN KNOWN ARMS SALES WITH:
Argentina, Austria, Bosnia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chad, Croatia, Guatemala, Iran, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Panama, Poland, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Syria, the United States and Yemen.

ADDITIONAL KNOWN OR SUSPECTED ACTIVITIES:
Large-scale trafficking in cocaine, hashish and stolen cars. Widely investigated for arming various Palestinian terrorist groups and involvement in terrorist attacks in the 1980s. Offered French anti-ship cruise missile technology to Iran in 1997. Was offered the opportunity to broker the sale of $1.11 billion worth of submarines by the Argentine Defense Ministry. Falsely accused of many things (such as the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland) by conspiracy theorists in books and on the Internet.

CONNECTIONS:
Has had dealings or involvement with Oliver North and Gen. Richard Secord (Iran-Contra); the International Bank for Credit and Commerce (BCCI); former Argentine President Carlos Menem; Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) and its leader, Ahmad Jibril; Abu Abbas, leader of another PLO extremist splinter group, the Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF), who orchestrated the Achille Lauro hijacking; the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Special Command (PFLP-SC) headed by Georges Habash; the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) headed by Naif Hawatmeh; and Abu Nidal, leader of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, a.k.a. Black September or Arab Revolutionary Brigades.

MOST RECENTLY:
Travels freely and lives comfortably in his hilltop mansion in Marbella, Spain, on the Costa del Sol. Known to have huge real estate and construction holdings; has gold mines and other interests in Argentina. Says he has not sold weapons for 12 years.

ALLEGED CRIMINAL ACTIVITY:
First arrested in Yabroud, Syria, for stealing cars.
1972: Arrested in Copenhagen for trafficking in hashish.
1974: Sentenced to 18 months in prison for selling hashish in the United Kingdom.
1977: According to a Swiss judicial investigation, his criminal career began to develop quickly at this point, as he established links with mafia groups, the PFLP-GC (extreme anti-Israel PLO wing) and the PLO, which helped him traffic arms, drugs and stolen cars, arm various terrorist movements, and get rich.
1984: Expelled from United Kingdom for drug and arms trafficking.
1985: In France, sentenced to eight years in absentia for operating a "criminal terrorist organization."
mid-80s: In Germany, fined $150,000 for possessing illegal passports.
1992: Swiss bank accounts frozen at Spain's request. Investigations begun for money laundering, lack of vigilance in financial operations, false documents and false foreign certificates. Arrested in Spain on charges of piracy and providing weapons for the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship by PLF terrorists, in which American Leon Klinghoffer was murdered.
1993: Released after serving nine months, on $15.5 million bail.
1995: Acquitted of all charges in Achille Lauro case.
2000: Indicted in Argentina for obtaining documents under false pretenses in the course of his 1992 acquisition of an Argentine passport with the help of high-level Menem administration officials.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/sierraleone/a...

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. What has this to do with Sudan?

Especially Darfur?

[seemslikeadream]

8. . ARMS TRANSFERS TO THE GOVERNMENT OF SUDAN

IV. ARMS TRANSFERS TO THE GOVERNMENT OF SUDAN

A number of states have supplied arms, military equipment, or military training to the government of Sudan, or have failed to prevent their nationals from providing arms or services to Sudan. Very few of these transfers have been publicly documented (for example, via submissions to the U.N. register on conventional arms). Below we list some of the transfers that have surfaced; they are by no means exhaustive, but merely indicative of the scope of the trade. Human Rights Watch has written to a number of governments to inquire about particular transfers or training arrangements. The replies received are referred to below.

China

The People�s Republic of China, which has sold arms to successive Sudanese governments since the early 1980s, became one of the country�s principal arms suppliers in 1994 and remained so into 1998, largely because China had what Sudan wanted and attached no conditions, other than monetary ones and oil concessions, to their sale. Chinese weapons are relatively cheap, and much of what Sudan has been purchasing is fairly old stock. In perhaps one of the most significant transactions, China is said to have sold the government of Sudan SCUD missiles at the end of 1996 in a deal underwritten by a $200 million Malaysian government loan against future oil extraction, according to a high-level Sudanese defector, who claimed the deal, which he said he witnessed, was arranged by Sudan�s state minister for external relations, Dr. Mustafa Osman Ismail.83 SCUD missiles are notoriously inaccurate medium-range rockets that have been used against civilian population centers in past conflicts, such as the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and the 1991 Gulf War.

more
http://www.hrw.org/reports98/sudan/Sudarm988-05.htm

Security Concerns Raised by Arms Transfers from Candidate Countries
Open Letter to European Union (E.U.) Foreign Ministers, Commissioners Prodi, Verheugen and Patten and High Representative Javier Solana
October 19, 2001



Czech Republic. In 2000 the Czech Republic delivered surplus tanks sold to Yemen despite concerns that they might be illegally diverted, as had happened a year earlier with tanks from Poland. The Polish tanks disappeared en route and were reportedly delivered to Sudan, which is under an E.U. embargo. In 2001 the Czech government initiated negotiations for further arms sales to Yemen.
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/10/arms-eu-ltr1019.htm

Poland, too, engaged in the arms trade with Yemen, with confirmed exports in 2001. A 1999 shipment of Polish tanks to Yemen was diverted en route and reportedly delivered to Sudan, sparking an international scandal that drew attention to the risk of weapons diversion and the responsibility of arms exporters to evaluate more carefully potential arms clients.

� In May 2002, a criminal investigation was opened against a major Bulgarian arms company alleged to have been involved in illegal weapons deals with the government of Sudan, which is subject to an E.U. embargo. The case also served as a reminder of the need to take formal action to stamp out potential conflicts of interest, after Bulgaria's foreign minister announced that the company had ignored his requests that he be removed from the board of directors following his election to public office. He accused the company of seeking commercial advantage from its association with a top public official.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/smallarms/2002/1011arms.htm

According to press reports in South Africa, Mezosy was arrested on an Interpol warrant but was also �suspected of trafficking arms from the Czech Republic to several African states, including Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, the Central African Republic and Ethiopia�.29 According to a report in The East African, Mezosy was suspected of supplying modern weapons, such as AK-74�s and old US leftovers from the Vietnam War to conflicting countries in Africa. 30 The weekly
reported that this could be deduced from a personal computer database of Mezosy, which referred to a great number of African countries.

http://www.nisat.org/publications/armsfixers/Chapter4.html

Between 1992 and 1994 Cenex, a Polish company, sold $4.3 million (US) worth of small arms and light weapons to Somalia, the Sudan and Croatia, using Latvian territory as part of its smuggling route. (5)

http://www.research.ryerson.ca/SAFER-Net/regions/Europe/Lat_JY04.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Are you going to do me the courtesy of actually replying to my questions

or are you just going to cut-and-paste anything you can find on Sudan?

Is there a structure to your argument? Do you have anything to say for yourself on the subject of Sudan?

[reorg]

16. this may actually have a lot to do with Darfur

... to pick up your line in message #12:

"Some say ..."

- that foreign countries have a stake in this conflict

- that insurgents were reassured by foreign countries that something might be worked out in their favor

- that one possible outcome may be the partition of the Sudan

- that it is the policy of certain dominant powers to deal with ever smaller entities or statelets in order to get a better handle on their resources, strategic locations etc.

- that in order to kindle unrest and insurgencies undercover agents are being used

- that so-called intelligence operations are sometimes in fact destabilisation efforts

- that such efforts are sometimes, and increasingly, carried out by third parties, and outsourced, private entities.


Now, if you ask me for sources, that might need some time - but I think seemslikeadream has done a pretty good job in providing some.

[seemslikeadream]

17. 3.5 million have died in Congo since 1998

and there's silence.

"that foreign countries have a stake in this conflict"

and every other conflict in Africa



Thanks reorg

[seemslikeadream]

19. Expelled Congo Diamond Miners Tell of Terror

original thread of mine here (for working links)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=566995


By David Lewis
TEMBO, Congo (Reuters) - There were ups and downs, but for the most part, Papi Konde, a stocky 36-year-old Congolese, said he had enjoyed his eight years digging diamonds in the rich mines of northern of Angola.

He had no immigration papers or license, but the $100 a month he paid in "taxes" kept the authorities off his back. He and his partner struck it lucky several times, bought two cars, owned a house and even stashed away some spare cash.

"Then suddenly my life turned to hell," Konde said, sheltering from the afternoon sun under a tree with hundreds of fellow illegal Congolese miners forced out of Angola over the past few days.

"It was the Angolan army. They came to our house and stole all the money we had. They shot my business partner and raped his wife in front of me. I just had to run for it," he said in Congo border town of Tembo.

Konde said he and hundreds of colleagues left Lunda North, one of the world's richest diamond deposits some 375 miles north of the Angolan capital Luanda, and had to walk hundreds of miles before eventually crossing the swollen Kwango River, which flows along the border with Congo.

more
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=ourWorldN...


822 CARAT DIAMOND REPORTEDLY SMUGGLED OUT OF DRC
May 18, 2004
According to the Democratic Republic of Congo�s (DRC) Ministry of Mining, a massive 822 carat diamond from the country has been sold illegally for some US$17 million in Antwerp, Belgium.

Officials at the ministry say the diamond was smuggled out of Kinshasa in early May to neighboring Republic of Congo. Marcelin Manduakila, an advisor at the mining ministry, says that the Belgian authorities and Interpol have been contacted with a view to recovering the uncertified diamond, reports Sapa-AFP.


http://www.tacyltd.com/Research_Materials_Full.asp?id=5...


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gottaB (1000+ posts) Wed May-19-04 05:19 PM
Response to Original message

2. What's your feeling about this?

Edited on Wed May-19-04 05:27 PM by gottaB

dArKeR posted the story in Foreign Affairs. I recalled a hrw statement from April. But I was at a loss for words.

Now I'm thinking it illustrates a failure of international instruments of conflict resolution.

Start with illegal squaters, thieves, people whose "taxes," paid to UNITA militants, funded a brutal war against the Angolan people. So the expulsion appears to be just in principle. And legal.

But during the expulsions co-operation with DRC authorities breaks down. They can't process the refugees or maintain order on their side of the border. The Angolans get anxious, impatient. Their authority is not being respected. Transgressions occur, out of anger and frustration, perhaps even righteous indignation, rage. More transgressions occur, as the terror appears to be working to drive the Congolese away.

IMO, if an international force had supervised the expulsion and relocation of the squatters, temptations for abuse would have been minimized. One could *almost* see this coming a mile away.





Homo sum humani nihil a me alienum puto


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seemslikeadream (1000+ posts) Wed May-19-04 05:51 PM
Response to Reply #2

5. My feelings start here and I'll post more soon

Edited on Wed May-19-04 06:32 PM by seemslikeadream
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=229&row=1

After George Bush Senior left the White House, he became an advisor and lobbyist for a Canadian gold-mining company, Barrick Gold. Hey, a guy�s got to work. But there were a couple of questions about Barrick, to say the least. For example, was Barrick�s Congo gold mine funding both sides of a civil war and perpetuating that bloody conflict? Only one Congressperson demanded hearings on the matter.

You�ve guessed: Cynthia McKinney.

That was covered in the . . . well, it wasn�t covered at all in the U.S. press.

McKinney contacted me at the BBC. She asked if I�d heard of Barrick. Indeed, I had. Top human rights investigators had evidence that a mine that Barrick bought in 1999 had, in clearing their Tanzanian properties three years earlier, bulldozed mine shafts . . . burying about 50 miners alive.

War is Golden for the Bush Administration

And the commodities connection? President Pretzel's relentless hissy-fit for war on Iraq has of course goosed the price of gold enormously--and that's set Bush Family coffers a-clinking. How so? In the waning days of his failed presidency, Bush I invoked an obscure 1872 statute to give a Canadian firm, Barrick Corporation, the right to mine $10 billion in gold from U.S. public lands. (U.S. taxpayers got a whopping $10,000 fee in return.) Bush then joined Barrick as a highly-paid "international consultant," brokering deals with various dictators of his close acquaintance. Barrick reciprocated with big bucks for Junior's presidential run. And in another quid for the old pro quo, last year Junior dutifully approved Barrick's controversial acquisition of a major rival. (Barrick is also one of the biggest polluters in America, by the way.)

Thus every step toward war fills Bush pockets quite literally with gold. That's the way they operate, these liars and thieves in thousand-dollar suits, these secretive fronts who profit from war, fear, blood and greasy palms. They arm the "monsters," they disarm the monsters, making money both ways. Then they drape themselves with Bible and flag, like smug pimps promenading to church, singing "Glory Hallelujah" while the whole world burns.

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd02152003.html


Billions of Dollars at Stake


American Minerial Fields (AMFI), a consortium based origninally in Hope,Ark.--yes, Bill Clintos's hometown--is a big player in exploiting Congo's mineral wealth. In 1997, just a month before Mobutu fell, it signed contracts with the Kabila-Rwanda-Uganda alliance forces for almost a billion dollars investment in copper, cobalt and zinc mines and processing plants in Kolwezi and Kipushi.

This project is part of the $60 billion so-called National Missle Defense system that George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donalc Rumfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice-President Richard Cheney are pushing so vigorously. Building the space station will require many rare metals found in eastern Congo.

Another big player in the eastern Congo is Barrick Gold Corp., headquartered in Canada. It is the world's second-largest gold producer after Anglo-American of South Africa.

http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Company/kabila1.htm


The Lost World War


The war on Iraq is not the only war in the world and it is not the only war being fought for our material benefit. Western consumers' seemingly insatiable demand for mobile phones, laptops, games consoles and other luxury electronic goods had been fueling violent conflict and killing millions in the Democratic Republic of Congo(formerly Zaire).

The Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC) is possibily the most minerial rich place on Earth - though this has proved a curse to the people of the Congo. The Congo holds millions of tons of diamonds, copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese, uranium, (the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki werre built using Congolese uranium), and coltan. Coltan, substance made up of columbium and tantalum, is a particularly valuable resource - used to make mobile phones, night vision goggles, fiber optics, and mirco-capacitors.

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue13/iss...

THREE MILLION LIVES HAVE BEEN LOST SINCE 1998 IN CONGO

Barrick Corporation and Cynthia McKinney The Real Reason


The real reason McKinney was trashed.

Was Barrick Gold Mining funding both sides of a civil war and perpetuating that bloody conflict?

Top human rights investigators had evidence that a mine bought by Barrick in 1999 had in clearing their Tanzanian property three years earlier bulldozed mine shafts burying 50 miners alive.

Tundu Lissu was one of those investigators and McKinney was trying to save his life.

Only one Congressperson demanded hearings on the matter.
In 2001 Cynthia McKinney convened a special congressional panel to explore the role of US covert forces and private interest in Central Africa.

But maybe ther was another reason Andrew Young and Vernon Jordan let McKinney swing, Remember Barrick? Did I mention to you that Andy Young and Vernon Jordan are both on Barrick's payroll? Well, I just did.
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/unitedstates/de... ...



Anybody read the book, King Leopold's Ghost


by Adam Hochschild? I just started it. It's about the Congo and the slave trade under King Leopold II of Belgium which killed between 5-8 million people. The author's point is that most of us have heard very little about this holocaust and the worldwide movement that happened to stop the slavery trade there in the late 1800s.

The author also mentions an encounter he had while on a trip through the Congo in 1961 and how a CIA agent who had had too much to drink described how Patrice Lumumba--the newly independent country's first prime minister, had been killed a few months earlier--someone the US regarded as a "dangerous leftist troublemaker".

Another event to make Americans proud...



Indeed, diamonds are Bill Clinton's best friend


Throughout his tenure in the White House, Clinton personally profited at profound human loss of life from Congo connections tried and true. For years influential with the brutal Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese-Seko, Cia operative Lawence Devlin used his Congo network to access diamonds and cobalt for Clintonite diamond kingpins Michael McMurrough, Jean Raymond-Bouelle, Maurice and Leon Templesman, and their companies: American Mineral Fields International (AMFI) headquatered in Hope, Arkansas in 1995; and Lazare Kaplan International.

Counted among Barrick directors is Brian Mulroney, former Prime Minister of Canada. Another is Edward Neys, former US Ambassador to Canada and chairman of Burson-Marsteller one of the world's largest and most secretive public relations firms.

Burson-Marsteller is a billion-dollar company that covers for organized crime. They are in the business of "perception management" the latter day term for propaganda. They covered for the Nigerian oil barons and Shell Oil during the Biafran War. They covered for Babcock & Wilcox and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as the Three Mile Island nuclear melted down and irradiated the American landscape. They managed the public and their perceptions as the Exxon Valdez supertanker greased the Alaskan wilderness with black crude. Burson-Marsteller covered for Union Carbide after the gas massacre in Bhopal in 1984. Burson-Marsteller has run public relations campaigns to shield extensive, state-orchestrated terror by the "governments" of Argentina, Indonesia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Singapore.

http://www.audarya-fellowship.com/showflat/cat/WorldNew... ...




Barrick boosts Russian exposure


The 31.7% stake in Alternative Investment Market-listed Highland Gold, formerly Harmony Gold, has been picked up by Barrick Gold and an international group of institutional investors.

Barrick has acquired 10% of the equity from the placing and Highland Gold has also conditionally agreed to issue a further 29.58 million shares at the placement price of 235p per share.

This would give Barrick in total 29% stake in Highland Gold

"This agreement with Barrick marks a new phase in the progress of Highland Gold and we are excited about the prospects of developing a relationship with them in Russia."

http://www.miningnews.net/storyview.asp?storyid=19417 �ionsource=c1...



West has "failed to stop" Congo war profiteering from war {Independent}

In the past five years it is estimated that war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has taken three MILLION lives. Many multinational corporations have made huge profits from this.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?st...

The Lost World War

The war on Iraq is not the only war in the world and it is not the only war being fought for our material benefit. Western consumers� seemingly insatiable demand for mobile phones, laptops, games consoles and other luxury electronic goods has been fuelling violent conflict and killing millions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). By Erik Vilwar.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is possibly the most mineral rich place on earth � though this has proved a curse to the people of the Congo. The Congo holds millions of tons of diamonds, copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese, uranium (the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were built using Congolese uranium), and coltan. Coltan, a substance made up of columbium and tantalum, is a particularly valuable resource � used to make mobile phones, night vision goggles, fiber optics, and micro-capacitors.

What is Coltan
Coltan looks like black mud, but is three times heavier than iron and only slightly lighter than gold. It is found in abundance in eastern Congo and can be mined with minimal equipment. Coltan is vital to the high tech economy. Wireless electronic communication would not exist without it. The �mud� is refined into tantalum � a metallic element that is both a superb conductor of electricity and extremely heat-resistant. Tantalum powder is a vital component in capacitors, for the control of the flow of current in miniature circuit boards. Capacitors made of tantalum are found inside every laptop, pager, personal digital assistant, and mobile phone.1 Tantalum is also used in the aviation and atomic energy industries. A very small group of companies in the world process coltan. These include H.C.Starck (Germany, a subsidiary ot Bayer), Cabott Inc. (US), Ningxia (China), and Ulba (Kazakhstan). The world�s biggest coltan mines are in Australia and they account for about 60% of world production. It is generally believed, however, that 80% of the world�s reserves are in Africa, with DRC accounting for 80% of the African reserves.2

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue13/iss...

Profile: River Congo

By Mark Doyle
BBC News

The boat disaster on a tributary of the River Congo, in which over 160 people were killed, involved two of the very large ferries that ply the waterways of the region...


River rebels

It flows from the capital Kinshasa in the west, in a great arc through impenetrable jungle, to the mining city of Kisangani in the east.


Boats are the cheapest form of travel in DR Congo

The river is so strategically important that for several years, during the Congolese civil war, boats were banned from it because the authorities in Kinshasa thought it could be used by advancing rebels.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3243552.stm


By Martin Plaut
BBC regional analyst



The hunt for minerals has fuelled the conflict
A British-based development group has accused industrialised countries of failing to punish companies alleged to have profited from the DR Congo war.
The group says governments from the world's 30 richest countries failed to investigate what companies based in their countries did in the Congo.

Four years ago a UN panel named companies and individuals that had allegedly been enriched by the war.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3519002.stm


Congo uranium mine investigated




The uranium used in bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 came from the mine



A spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency said it was very concerned about activities at the Shinkolobwe mine in Katanga province.

The mine has been used in the past to producer uranium for nuclear bombs.

The government says it shut down the mine, but a BBC correspondent found 6,000 illegal miners at work there.

They are extracting large amounts of material containing cobalt, copper, platinum and uranium, says our correspondent.

The uranium is sold to nearby furnaces operated mainly by private businessmen from China and India, and exported illegally to the world market via neighbouring Zambia.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3566701.stm


Congo officials seize illegal uranium


KINSHASA, Congo (AP) -- Authorities seized two cases of uranium in Kinshasa, the capital, that they feared might end up on the black market in neighboring countries, Congo atomic energy officials said Monday.

The cases contained less than 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of uranium 235 and 238 and were not sufficient to make an atomic bomb, said Fortunat Lumu Badimayimatu, a top government atomic energy expert.

The containers were seized at the beginning of March. Badimayimatu said he believed the uranium could have been intended for use in the oil industry, in which he said small quantities are used for drilling and measuring the density of hydrocarbon.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa/03/22/congo.ur... /

Trial Begins Over Alleged Congo War Crimes


Wednesday March 24, 2004 8:31 PM


By ANTHONY DEUTSCH

Associated Press Writer


He denied claims by the Dutch Immigration Service that he was ``an important member'' of an execution squad. ``I can't be a member if I have never heard of it, can I?'' he said. He also denied knowing any of the witnesses.

A statement by Francoise Mtumba said Nzapali had forced her into sexual slavery for months, in part by injecting her with tranquilizers.

Mtumba, who the judges said gave an accurate description of the inside of the defendant's house, said Nzapali held her prisoner for two weeks at the Metropole Hotel in Matadi after arresting her for ``bumping into him on the street.''

``He injected me with drugs and I went dizzy. When I woke up I was naked on the bed and he was lying next to me,'' she said in her statement. ``He forced me to, and I couldn't leave because I was scared of beatings.''

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-389...

King of the Beasts Denies He Is A Torturer and Rapist

A Congolese war crimes suspect known as the King of Beasts denied accusations today that he was a feared member of an execution squad who earned his nickname by habitually raping and torturing prisoners.


Sebastian Nzapali is the first suspect to be tried in the Netherlands for war crimes allegedly committed abroad.

He was charged with crimes against humanity that allegedly occurred in 1996 when he was a colonel under Mobutu Sese Seko, the long-time dictator in then Zaire who was overthrown in 1997.

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2691661

A charter to intervene


George Monbiot
Tuesday March 23, 2004
The Guardian


.......

The third argument is surely the strongest. This is that as soon as we accept that an attack by a powerful nation against a weak one is legitimate, we open the door to any number of acts of conquest masquerading as humanitarian action. As Chomsky points out, Japan claimed that it was invading Manchuria to rescue it from "Chinese bandits"; Mussolini attacked Abyssinia to "liberate slaves"; Hitler said he was protecting the peoples he invaded from ethnic conflict. It is hard to think of any colonial adventure for which the salvation of the bodies or souls of the natives was not advanced as justification.

Faced with this dreadful choice, a sort of moral numbness comes over us. To accept that force can sometimes be a just means of relieving the suffering of an oppressed people is to hand a ready-made excuse to every powerful nation that fancies an empire. To deny it is to tell some of the world's most persecuted peoples that they must be left to rot.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1175...

It seems to me that there is no instant or reliable answer to this dilemma. But one thing is clear: that the current framework of international law is incapable of resolving it for us. Even if other nations wished to act selflessly on behalf of the oppressed by attacking a despotic state, the charter of the United Nations forbids it. What this means is that any government can then claim it has a moral duty to ignore the law. In attempting to prevent unjustified acts of aggression, in other words, the charter's lack of discrimination may have encouraged them.


Per-Anders Pettersson

A precariously crammed commuter train rolls into the center of Kinshasha, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After decades of government corruption and a bloody four-year civil war, Congo-DRC�nearly the size of western Europe�has few maintained roads and a decaying transportation infrastructure, making overburdened rail lines one of the few viable travel options.



America Mineral Fields - company decription (link)


http://www.hoovers.com/america-mineral-fields/--ID__535... ...

America Mineral Fields Inc. (Toronto: AMZ )
St. Georges' House, 15 Hanover Sq.
London
W1S 1HS, United Kingdom
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

http://www.am-min.com

What's in a name? America Mineral Fields is based in London but has mining projects in development in Central Africa (Angola, Congo, and Zambia). The company owns exploration and mining concessions to diamond and mineral (including copper, cobalt, and zinc) properties. Upon acquiring the concessions, America Mineral Fields conducts feasibility studies to determine if reserves can be recovered profitably. Founder Jean-Raymond Boulle owns about 30% of the company through his firms America Diamond Corp. and Gondwana (Investments). Belgian metals processor n.v. Umicore s.a. owns nearly 10%


Bush, Clinton in the Web: Behind the Assassination of Kabila


George Bush Sr., father of the president, even had an intimate connection with one of these plundering corporations.

But this is not mentioned in the commercial media, which, as usual, go even further than indifference to insult the fallen head of state, while speculating on the breakup of the Congo.

The industrial enterprises that set up AMFI, according to Baracyetse, "are interested in the contract for the construction of the orbital platform around the world that is destined to replace the Russian station MIR."

This project is part of the $60-billion so-called National Missile Defense system that George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice President Richard Cheney are pushing so vigorously. Building the space station will require many of the rare metals found in eastern Congo.

Another big player in the eastern Congo is Barrick Gold Corp., headquartered in Canada. It is the world's second- largest gold producer after Anglo-American of South Africa.

http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Company/kabila1.htm

Poppy Strikes Gold

Tuesday, April 8, 2003

By Greg Palast,
From The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin/Plume, 2003)


Some of the loot for the Republican effort in the 1997-2000 election cycles came from an outfit called Barrick Corporation. The sum, while over $100,000, is comparatively small change for the GOP, yet it seemed quite a gesture for a corporation based in Canada. Technically, the funds came from those associated with the Canadian�s U.S. unit, Barrick Gold Strike.....

They could well afford it. In the final days of the Bush (Senior) administration, the Interior Department made an extraordinary but little noticed change in procedures under the 1872 Mining Law, the gold rush-era act that permitted those whiskered small-time prospectors with their tin pans and mules to stake claims on their tiny plots. The department initiated an expedited procedure for mining companies that allowed Barrick to swiftly lay claim to the largest gold find in America. In the terminology of the law, Barrick could �perfect its patent� on the estimated $10 billion in ore�for which Barrick paid the U.S. Treasury a little under $ 10,000. Eureka!

How did he go from busted stereo maker to demi-billionaire goldbug? The answer: Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi arms dealer, the �bag man� in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostage scandals. The man who sent guns to the ayatolla teamed up with Munk on hotel ventures and, ultimately, put up the cash to buy Barrick in 1983, then a tiny company with an �unperfected� claim on the Nevada mine. You may recall that Bush pardoned the coconspirators who helped Khashoggi arm the Axis of Evil, making charges against the sheik all but impossible. (Bush pardoned the conspirators not as a favor to Khashoggi, but to himself.)

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=207&row=4


Latest Breaking News
Original message



Congo Signs $332 Million Mineral Deal


EDDY ISANGO

Associated Press


KINSHASA, Congo - Congo's government has signed a $332 million deal giving a London-based mining company access to lucrative copper and cobalt mines in southeastern Congo, officials said Wednesday.

America Mineral Fields Inc. signed the agreement with the state mining company, Gecamines, in Kinshasa late Tuesday, said Francois Collette, the U.K.-based company's spokesman.

America Mineral Fields said on its Web site the mine at Kolwezi in southern Katanga province could become "one of the world's largest and lowest-cost sources of cobalt as well as a major source of copper."

Congo is struggling to recover from five years of war that ended with a peace deal between rebels, the government and their foreign backers in December 2002.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/8265869.h...

Interesting that American Mineral Fields seems to have used Executive Outcomes (Private Military Company) in the past.

http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:nvBwK5fWMWoJ:www.m... ...


1. The Lost World War


The war on Iraq is not the only war in the world and it is not the only war being fought for our material benefit. Western consumers� seemingly insatiable demand for mobile phones, laptops, games consoles and other luxury electronic goods has been fuelling violent conflict and killing millions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). By Erik Vilwar.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is possibly the most mineral rich place on earth � though this has proved a curse to the people of the Congo. The Congo holds millions of tons of diamonds, copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese, uranium (the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were built using Congolese uranium), and coltan. Coltan, a substance made up of columbium and tantalum, is a particularly valuable resource � used to make mobile phones, night vision goggles, fiber optics, and micro-capacitors.

What is Coltan?
Coltan looks like black mud, but is three times heavier than iron and only slightly lighter than gold. It is found in abundance in eastern Congo and can be mined with minimal equipment. Coltan is vital to the high tech economy. Wireless electronic communication would not exist without it. The �mud� is refined into tantalum � a metallic element that is both a superb conductor of electricity and extremely heat-resistant. Tantalum powder is a vital component in capacitors, for the control of the flow of current in miniature circuit boards. Capacitors made of tantalum are found inside every laptop, pager, personal digital assistant, and mobile phone.1 Tantalum is also used in the aviation and atomic energy industries. A very small group of companies in the world process coltan. These include H.C.Starck (Germany, a subsidiary ot Bayer), Cabott Inc. (US), Ningxia (China), and Ulba (Kazakhstan). The world�s biggest coltan mines are in Australia and they account for about 60% of world production. It is generally believed, however, that 80% of the world�s reserves are in Africa, with DRC accounting for 80% of the African reserves.2

The human costs of this conflict have been horrific. According to the UN, up until last September, in the five Eastern provinces of DRC alone, between 3 and 3.5 million people had died directly because of the war. 4 Many were killed and tortured but most died of starvation and disease. The destruction of farms has resulted in malnutrition and starvation. Millions of people have been forced from their homes. Years of war have led to a social environment in which men abuse women on a staggering scale and children become instruments of war, forced to work in mines and conscripted into armed forces. Surveys in Butembo found that 90% of people were living on less than 20 cents a day and only one meal. 5

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue13/iss...

DulceDecorum (1000+ posts) Wed Mar-24-04 08:02 PM
Response to Original message

2. Scamble for Africa: part two.

Edited on Wed Mar-24-04 08:06 PM by DulceDecorum
So Congo is poised to become the retirement capital of the world's mercenaries?

Somehow I do not think so unless they are planning to airfreight that ore to London. Congo has a 37 kilometre coastline on the west coast of Africa. Nip that and it is all over.

Also consider that the global economy is sinking fast and some minerals are not necessarily as important as they once were.
Compare fibre optics and copper cables.
Even diamonds are losing their value.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html
That is why Walmart has a gem counter.

The basic problem remains the same.
It is a battle between the haves and the have-nots.
Europe has never had anything that the rest of the world wants. This has meant that Europe has effectively been cut out of trade. Therefore Europe has changed this weakness into their greatest strength by investing heavily in items that nobody wants, such as a missile delivered at high speed into their living-room.
The US now finds itself in the same position, hence their funding of mercenary-led attacks on those nations with something of value.
http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id442/pg1 /

On edit:
I just saw the coltan link.
Not good for Congo. Perhaps we can take comfort in the computer-industry slump and the loss of investor interest in technology stocks.


War in Congo has claimed over three million lives since 1998 alone.


While we should perhaps applaud the New York Times and Boston Globe and other major media for having finally reported something on the inhuman conflict in Congo�which is also driving the extinction of the great apes, the deforestation of the vast Congo Basin, and hence global climate mayhem�we must also recognize that the imperatives of corporate profit have insured that four years of western military and economic exploitation of Congo have taken place completely off the radar screen of the American public.

War in Congo has claimed over three million lives since 1998 alone. Innocent civilians have been brutalized, massacred, raped and tortured by all parties to the conflict. It began with the U.S.-sponsored invasion of Rwanda in 1994, and followed with two subsequent U.S.-sponsored invasions of Congo (in 1996 and 1998). These are not the simple "civil wars" declared by the western press. Even the Rwanda "genocide" (in 1994) has to some extent been manufactured in the American mind to serve the mythology of tribalism. Meanwhile, American green berets and military advisors and Pentagon officials have participated from blackboard to battlefield.

Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan, Rwanda and Congo/ Zaire are wars where factions are armed with U.S.-made weapons (M16s, SAMs, tanks); where U.S. covert forces undertake brutal secret missions and psychological operations�accountable to no one�behind the headlines. They are wars where the Central Intelligence Agency is deeply and maliciously entrenched in subverting democracy and orchestrating chaos that is expediently advertised�as such�by our dubious media. At the roots, however, these are wars like any other war.

Essential to the superalloys and weaponry of the global economy of war are Congo�s cobalt, uranium and columbium tantalite (coltan). Cobalt is elemental to nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, tank armor, industrial furnaces and aerospace, and for 50 years the CIA has insured the free flow of cobalt out of Congo. The human devastation in poverty, disease, torture and massacres is uncountable. Adjectives do not describe the suffering. Similarly, coltan is essential for cellphones and children�s playstations, and companies like Sony and Nokia have been cashing in on this windfall�paid in human blood.

Congo's four-and-a-half-year long civil war has led to factional fighting among myriad groups, some employing children. (Photo: AP)

Child soldiers in Congo




Child soldiers with weapons wait for instructions in an ethnic Hema militia camp near Bunia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, June 16, 2003. REUTERS/Antony Njuguna



A child soldier practices with a machine gun in an ethnic Hema militia camp near Bunia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, June 15, 2003. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen



Child soldiers holding machines guns look out from a window in an ethnic Hema militia camp near Bunia in the Democratic Republic of Congo June 15, 2003. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/photoalbum/1074859618.h...


Handicap International raises mine awareness around world

street theatre is used to raise awareness in Kisangani, Democratic Republic of Congo.

People prepare to mark a zone for clearing in Kisangani.

Signs in Kisangani warn people not to step in a minefield.


http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/photogallery/HIgallery....


http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/congo....

Finding 2 � The ongoing civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) is a prime example of the devastating legacy of U.S. arms sales policy on Africa. The U.S. prolonged the rule of Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Soko by providing more than $300 million in weapons and $100 million in military training. Mobutu used his U.S.-supplied arsenal to repress his own people and plunder his nation�s economy for three decades, until his brutal regime was overthrown by Laurent Kabila�s forces in 1997. When Kabila took power, the Clinton administration quickly offered military support by developing a plan for new training operations with the armed forces.


http://www.audarya-fellowship.com/showflat/cat/WorldNew... ...



Keith Harmon Snow, photojournalist reports on U.S. Interests in Africa


Background: Keith Harmon Snow is a journalist/photographer who covers the global crises in environment and security matters. A former electrical engineer and business developement manager with GE Aerospace, he has worked in 26 countries and has presented his photos at colleges and universities across the nation. Last year, he provided expert testimony at a special U.S. congressional hearingon "Western interests, private profit and genocide in Africa." Snow address the roots of violence and the hidden agendas behind the profound, but unnecessary suffering in Africa.



Sponsor: Global HOPE, a registered UH-Hilo student organization
http://harmontalk.blogspot.com /

http://www.survivorsrightsinternational.org/about_us/co...

http://genocidewatch.org/PressReleaseAnuak022804.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/news2002/0828-04.htm

http://www.worldwar3report.com/89.html#africa2

In a new paper on the Congo conflict, award-winning investigative journalist Keith Harmon Snow connects the dots between the Congo coltan mines and the corridors of power. After the 1996 revolution that overthrew the long dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire (now DRC), US-supported Rwanda and Uganda started grooming proxy guerilla forces in eastern Congo to fight the new revolutionary regime of Laurent Kabila (since assassinated, and whose son now rules). Meanwhile, figures close to the White House and global aid programs for Central Africa indirectly profited from the blood coltan:

"Some 80% of world supplies of cobalt and columbo-tantalite (coltan) are found in DRC. Coltan is essential for cell phones, Sony Playstations and computers. During the US proxy wars in Central Africa in the 1990's, Sony America's now Executive Vice-President and General Counsel Nicole Seligman was legal counselor to President William Jefferson Clinton (through the Washington DC firm Williams and Connally, LLP). During his media banking stint with First Boston, one of the major backers of profit-based 'humanitarian relief' efforts in Zaire in 1995, Sony Corporation Executive VP and Chief Financial Officer Robert Wiesenthal counted Cox Communications, Time Warner and the New York Times as major clients."

Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999


Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999 (African Studies, 50)

This book is the source for the information, I believe you are questioning.

Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999 (African Studies, 50)
by Wayne Madsen (Editor)

Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa: 1993-1999
Background
The Ba-n'daw Report
Covert American Support for the Combatants
American Military Support for the Second Invasion of the Congo
Profiting from the Destabilization of Central Africa
Summary
NOTES
Background
(c) Wayne Madsen

Prepared Testimony and Statement for the Record of

Wayne Madsen

Author,

�Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999�

Investigative Journalist

On:

Suffering and Despair: Humanitarian Crisis in the Congo

Before the

Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights

Committee on International Relations

United States House of Representatives

Washington, DC

May 17, 2001


An ominous report on the fate of refugees was made by Nicholas Stockton, the Emergencies Director of Oxfam U.K. & Ireland. He said that on November 20, 1996, he was shown U.S. aerial intelligence photographs which �confirmed, in considerable detail, the existence of 500,000 people distributed in three major and numerous minor agglomerations.� He said that three days later the U.S. military claimed it could only locate one significant mass of people, which they claimed were identified as former members of the Rwandan armed forces and the Interhamwe militia. Since they were the number one targets for the RPF forces, their identification and location by the Americans was undoubtedly passed to the Rwandan forces. They would have surely been executed.<19> Moreover, some U.S. military and diplomatic personnel in central Africa said that any deaths among the Hutu refugees merely constituted �collateral damage.�

Some of the companies involved in this new �scramble for Africa� have close links with PMCs and America�s top political leadership. For example, America Minerals Fields, Inc., a company that was heavily involved in promoting the 1996 accession to power of Kabila, was, at the time of its involvement in the Congo�s civil war, headquartered in Hope, Arkansas. Its major stockholders included long-time associates of former President Clinton going back to his days as Governor of Arkansas. America Mineral Fields also reportedly enjoys a close relationship with Lazare Kaplan International, Inc., a major international diamond brokerage whose president remains a close confidant of past and current administrations on Africa matters.<26>

When the AFDL-CZ and their Rwandan allies reached Kinshasa in 1996, it was largely due to the help of the United States. One reason why Kabila�s men advanced into the city so quickly was the technical assistance provided by the DIA and other intelligence agencies. According to informed sources in Paris, U.S. Special Forces actually accompanied ADFL-CZ forces into Kinshasa. The Americans also reportedly provided Kabila�s rebels and Rwandan troops with high definition spy satellite photographs that permitted them to order their troops to plot courses into Kinshasa that avoided encounters with Mobutu�s forces.<20> During the rebel advance toward Kinshasa, Bechtel provided Kabila, at no cost, high technology intelligence, including National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) satellite data.<21>

One of the major goals of the Rwandan-backed RCD-Goma faction, a group fighting the Kabila government in Congo, is restoration of mining concessions for Barrick Gold, Inc. of Canada. In fact, the rebel RCD government�s �mining minister� signed a separate mining deal with Barrick in early 1999.<29> Among the members of Barrick�s International Advisory Board are former President Bush and former President Clinton�s close confidant Vernon Jordan.


------------

BLOOD MONEY OUT OF AFRICA



Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney

Covert Action in Africa: A Smoking Gun in Washington, D.C.

Rayburn House Office Building
Friday, April 6, 2001
10:00am - 12:00 noon


The accounts we are about to hear today assist us in understanding just why Africa is in the state it is in today. You will hear that at the heart of Africa's suffering is the West's, and most notably the United States', desire to access Africa's diamonds, oil, natural gas, and other precious resources.

You will hear that the West, and most notably the United States, has set in motion a policy of oppression, destabilization and tempered, not by moral principle, but by a ruthless desire to enrich itself on Africa's fabulous wealth. While falsely pretending to be the friends and allies of many African countries, so desperate for help and assistance, many western nations have in reality betrayed those countries' trust--and instead, have relentlessly pursued their own selfish military and economic policies. Western countries have incited rebellion against stable African governments by encouraging and even arming opposition parties and rebel groups to begin armed insurrection.

The Western nations have even actively participated in the assassination of duly elected and legitimate African Heads of State and replaced them with corrupted and malleable officials. Western nations have even encouraged and been complicit in the unlawful invasions by African nations into neighboring counties.

Something must be done to right these wrongs.

I invite you to listen and learn first-hand of the West's activities in Africa.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Prepared Statement of Wayne Madsen

WHAT A DIFFERENCE AN ELECTION MAKES: OR DOES IT?

Wayne Madsen is an investigative journalist who has written for The Village Voice, The Progressive, CAQ, and the Intelligence Newsletter. He is the author of Genocide and Covert Activities in Africa 1993-1999 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1999), an expose of U.S. and French intelligence activities in Africa's recent civil wars and ethnic rebellions. He served as an on-air East Africa analyst for ABC News in the aftermath of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Mr. Madsen has appeared on 60 Minutes, World News Tonight, Nightline, 20/20, MS-NBC, and NBC Nightly News, among others. He has been frequently quoted by the Associated Press, foreign wire services, and many national and international newspapers.

Mr. Madsen is also the author of a motion picture screen play treatment about the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion. He is a former U.S. Naval Officer and worked for the National Security Agency and U.S. Naval Telecommunications Command.

---

I wish to discuss the record of American policy in Africa over most of the past decade, particularly that involving the central African Great Lakes region. It is a policy that has rested, in my opinion, on the twin pillars of unrestrained military aid and questionable trade. The military aid programs of the United States, largely planned and administered by the U.S. Special Operations Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), have been both overt and covert.

Some of the companies involved in this new "scramble for Africa" have close links with PMCs and America's top political leadership. For example, America Minerals Fields, Inc., a company that was heavily involved in promoting the 1996 accession to power of the late Congolese President Laurent-Desire Kabila, was, at the time of its involvement in the Congo's civil war, headquartered in Hope, Arkansas. Its major stockholders included long-time associates of former President Clinton going back to his days as Governor of Arkansas. America Mineral Fields also reportedly enjoys a close relationship with Lazare Kaplan International, Inc., a major international diamond brokerage whose president remains a close confidant of past and current administrations on Africa matters.

One of the major goals of the Rwandan-backed Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie (RCD), a group fighting the Kabila government in Congo, is restoration of mining concessions for Barrick Gold, Inc. of Canada. In fact, the rebel RCD government's "mining minister" signed a separate mining deal with Barrick in early 1999. Among the members of Barrick's International Advisory Board are former President Bush and former President Clinton's close confidant Vernon Jordan.

Currently, Barrick and tens of other mining companies are stoking the flames of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Each benefits by the de facto partition of the country into some four separate zones of political control. First the mineral exploiters from Rwanda and Uganda concentrated on pillaging gold and diamonds from the eastern Congo. Now, they have increasingly turned their attention to a valuable black sand called columbite-tantalite or "col-tan." Col-tan is a key material in computer chips and, therefore, is as considered a strategic mineral. It is my hope that the Bush administration will take pro-active measures to stem this conflict by applying increased pressure on Uganda and Rwanda to withdraw their troops from the country. However, the fact that President Bush has selected Walter Kansteiner to be Assistant Secretary of State for African, portends, in my opinion, more trouble for the Great Lakes region. A brief look at Mr. Kansteiner's curriculum vitae and statements calls into question his commitment to seeking a durable peace in the region. For example, he has envisaged the splitting up of the Great Lakes region into separate Tutsi and Hutu states through "relocation" efforts and has called the break-up of the DRC inevitable. I believe Kansteiner's previous work at the Department of Defense where he served on a Task Force on Strategic Minerals and one must certainly consider col-tan as falling into that category -- may influence his past and current thinking on the territorial integrity of the DRC. After all, 80 per cent of the world's known reserves of col-tan are found in the eastern

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/politics/blood_sp...


Africa: U.S. Covert Action Exposed

By Eric Ture Muhammad
Final Call
April 25, 2001

WASHINGTON -- Corporate greed, combined with a desire to never allow the "throne of civilization" to unite and become self-sufficient, continues to join at the hip the U.S. Government, the United Nations and corporate cartels in a persistent war on Africa, a recent congressional hearing concluded.

Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) chaired the hearing, "Covert Action in Africa: A Smoking Gun in Washington, D.C.," and led the voices of castigation that claimed the U.S. Government, the UN, private militias and western economic interests possessed complete knowledge of pending civil unrest in Africa and fed the fray between African nations. Their aim was to use war, disease, hunger and poverty as covers while continuing the centuries-old practice of rape and exploitation of the continent's human and mineral resources, testimonies charged.

Among those named as collaborators during the daylong hearing were U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Madeline K. Albright and international diamond merchant Maurice Tempelsman.

http://www.corpwatch.org/news/PND.jsp?articleid=116

A former U.S. ambassador to Uganda ? acting on behalf of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) -- gathered intelligence on the movement of Hutu refugees through eastern Zaire. The DIA��s second ranking Africa hand, who also served as the U.S. military attache in Kigali, reconnoitered the Rwandan border towns of Cyangugu and Gisenyi, gathering intelligence on the cross border movements of anti-Mobutu Rwandan Tutsis from Rwanda.<3>

The Defense Intelligence Agency��s African bureau chief established a close personal relationship with Bizima (alias Bizimana) Karaha, an ethnic Rwandan who would later become the Foreign Minister in the Laurent Kabila government. Moreover, the DIA��s Africa division had close ties with Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI), an Alexandria, Virginia private military company (PMC), whose Vice President for Operations is a former Director of DIA.

The political officer of the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa, accompanied by a CIA operative, traveled with AFDL-CZ rebels through the eastern Zaire jungles for weeks after the 1996 Rwandan invasion of Zaire. In addition, it was reported that the Kinshasa embassy official and three U.S. intelligence agents regularly briefed Bill Richardson, Clinton��s special African envoy, during the rebels�� steady advance towards Kinshasa.<4> The U.S. embassy official conceded that he was in Goma to do more than meet rebel leaders for lunch. Explaining his presence, he said ��What I am here to do is to acknowledge them as a very significant military and political power on the scene, and, of course, to represent American interests.��<5> In addition, MPRI was reportedly providing covert training assistance to Kagame��s troops in preparation for combat in Zaire.<6> Some believe that MPRI had actually been involved in training the RPF from the time it took power in Rwanda.<7>
Some of the companies involved in this new ��scramble for Africa�� have close links with PMCs and America��s top political leadership. For example, America Minerals Fields, Inc., a company that was heavily involved in promoting the 1996 accession to power of Kabila, was, at the time of its involvement in the Congo��s civil war, headquartered in Hope, Arkansas. Its major stockholders included long-time associates of former President Clinton going back to his days as Governor of Arkansas. America Mineral Fields also reportedly enjoys a close relationship with Lazare Kaplan International, Inc., a major international diamond brokerage whose president remains a close confidant of past and current administrations on Africa matters.<26>
http://www.geocities.com/minjokhan/SocAnthro/MadsenCong...

Bush, Clinton in the Web: Behind the Assassination of Kabila

By Deirdre Griswold and Johnnie Stevens

The failure of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to express even the most perfunctory regret over the assassination of Congo President Laurent D�sir� Kabila last year, betrays how implicated Washington is in this latest outrage against the most important country in central Africa.

Washington's silence is even more glaring considering that its foreign policy experts are well aware that the African people view the secret intelligence agencies of the U.S. government, which work closely with corporations seeking vast fortunes in the region, as the probable authors of this crime.

http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Company/kabila1.htm

Congo (Kinshasa): Arms Past and Present, 01/2699

Congo (Kinshasa): Arms Past and Present

Date distributed (ymd): 000126

Document reposted by APIC


Region: Central Africa

Issue Areas: +economy/development+ +security/peace+

+US policy focus+

Summary Contents:

This posting contains the executive summary of a new report from the Arms Trade Resource Center of the World Policy Institute, citing past and present U.S. military connections to countries involved in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The report calls for greater restrictions and transparency in U.S. programs of arms sales and military training, and for refocusing resources on civilian development.


Deadly Legacy:

U.S. Arms to Africa and the Congo War

A Report of the Arms Trade Resource Center

January 2000

William D. Hartung

World Policy Institute

65 Fifth Ave. Suite 413

New York, NY 10003

Tel: [phone], ext. 106

Fax: [phone]

E-mail: [e-mail]

Executive Summary

As the Clinton administration moves into the presidency of the United Nations Security Council, it is declaring January 2000, "the month of Africa." Hoping to counter criticisms that it has been engaged in a rhetorical promotion of U.S.-Africa relations over the past two years without substantive follow-up, the administration has announced its intent to prioritize finding solutions to the ongoing conflicts in the region, including a 30-year civil war that trudges on in Angola and the ongoing crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It has not, however, accepted its own responsibility in helping to create the conditions that have led to these seemingly intractable conflicts.

Over the past few years, the administration has made considerable effort to put a new and improved face on its relations with African countries. High-level visits to the region -- first by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, then President Clinton himself in the spring of 1998, and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke this past December -- have reinforced the idea of a new partnership with the continent based on promoting "African solutions to African problems." The reality, however, is that the problems facing Africa and her people -- violent conflict, political instability, and the lowest regional rate of economic growth worldwide -- have been fueled in part by a legacy of U.S. involvement in the region. Moreover, the solutions being proposed by the Clinton administration remain grounded in the counter-productive Cold-War policies that have defined U.S.-Africa relations for far too long.

Unfortunately, the ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo presents a vivid example of how U.S. policies -- past and present -- have failed the people of Africa. After more than two years of devastating war, African leaders are struggling, with little success, to implement the Lusaka peace accord. Signatories to the treaty continue to call for UN peacekeeping support even as they prepare for continued fighting. Despite its demonstrable role in planting the seeds of this conflict, the U.S. has done little to either acknowledge its complicity or help create a viable resolution. Official tours of the region and impressive rhetoric will not be enough to contribute to lasting peace, democratic stability, and economic development in Africa.

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Urgent_Action/apic-012600.h...

The U.S. played a major role in converting the newly independent Congo into a cold war battleground. In 1961, the Eisenhower administration authorized the murder of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who had been voted into office just months earlier in the territory�s first-ever democratic election. Washington, which then installed Mobutu in power and kept him there for more than 30 years, bears heavy responsibility for the disastrous economic conditions, massive corruption, and suppression of human rights in Zaire. The U.S. prolonged Mobutu�s rule by providing more than $300 million in weapons and $100 million in military training.

With the end of the cold war, the U.S., France, and Belgium formed a �troika� designed to pressure Mobutu to move toward democracy. This effort might have produced more positive results had not France defected to support Mobutu and the Hutu military dictator in Rwanda, Juv�nal Habyarimana, in defense of French language and culture, supposedly threatened by �Anglophone� Uganda and its Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) prot�g�s.

All of the Western powers contributed to the Rwandan genocide of 1994 by ignoring warning signs and reducing the United Nations presence at a time when it should have been reinforced. France compounded the problem by intervening, ostensibly to protect Hutus from the vengeance of the Tutsi-dominated RPF, but also to permit the authors of the genocide to escape. The creation of refugee camps in the Congo near Rwanda was a virtual invitation to the 1997 attacks on the camps. The Clinton administration stalled international intervention, which might have saved refugee lives but which also would have thwarted the effort by Rwanda and Uganda to replace Mobutu with Kabila.

Despite the end of the cold war, Washington decisionmakers have continued to impose simplistic dichotomies on a complex, ambiguous reality. In Africa, Clinton posited a single solution to the problems of �rogue states��notably Islamist Sudan and �dinosaurs� such as Mobutu�namely the �new leaders� of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, and Rwanda. Presumably these pragmatists would cooperate with Washington in establishing the new order in Africa.
http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol5/v5n10congo_body.html

Holbrooke's defenders argue that the State Department's violently pro-Rwanda policy -- one in which the U.S. has done virtually nothing to try to compel the regime in Kigali to curtail its abuses -- is not just ineffective, as it was when the crisis was restricted to Rwanda and its border areas, but has become dangerous now that a general war has broken out across so much of Central Africa. Holbrooke, they insist, may not have half of Susan Rice's background, but he at least has the wit and the vision to see that something radical needs to be done.

The problem is that despite President Clinton's well-publicized trip to Africa, and his admirable decision to apologize to the Rwandan people for the U.S. refusal to intervene to stop the genocide, Washington is not really serious about getting involved in Africa in any way that could make a difference.

Holbrooke's motives may well be of the best -- certainly, it is hard to see how focusing on Congo will impress the hard-headed pols around Al Gore -- but the initiative he is supporting for a U.N. deployment is the worst kind of symbolic politics. It may be attractive in Washington, since it will permit policymakers to say they don't just care about suffering Kosovars, but about suffering Africans as well. But it has little or no chance of working, and it also risks confirming the cynical impression -- already too common in America and Western Europe -- that no matter how hard people try, there is nothing that can be done for Africa.

If the risks are small for the United States and its allies (they can all do their Bill Clinton imitations and say they feel Africa's pain), the risk for sub-Saharan Africa is great. The last thing the continent needs is more symbolic politics, either in the U.S. or the U.N. version.
http://dir.salon.com/news/feature/2000/05/08/congo/inde...

Depopulation & Perception Management

Keith Harmon Snow, October 7, 2003
GENOCIDE IN RWANDA - capital �G� for its omnipotent grounding in the American psyche - is said to have killed 1,000,000 people in 1994. It is said that hard-line Hutus, which held a monopoly on power for decades, slaughtered minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. There is some truth in this. Like the 1996 and 1998 �rebellions� in Zaire and its nemesis the Democratic Republic of Congo, this Genocide was attributed to tribalism: �An African conflict by Africans themselves,� wrote the western media. That part is pure fiction.

There has been another genocide small �g� for its service to globalization -- and this contre-genocide was orchestrated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) -- the 1994 victors in Rwanda -- to consolidate power. That the RPF may have been Tutsis is incidental.

�Rwanda was invaded by Uganda,� says one Genocide investigator. �These were powerful Ugandans and their job was to grab the place. This pack of terrorists didn�t give a damn whether 1,000,000 fellow Tutsis were killed. And I don�t believe it was one million -- that�s the standard number of dead Africans they need to get Americans to pay attention. Before the RPF invaded there was an army of 5000 in Rwanda. The United States gave them all the support they needed. Now there are 60,000 soldiers and all the money that goes into �helping the victims of Genocide� goes for war. All hell has broken loose. There�s blood all over the place.�
http://www.guerrillanews.com/human_rights/doc3006.html


An investigative journalist, and African scholar


* * *
Amartya Sen does not address rape in the Indian context. With hundreds of thousands of women incorporated into the sex trade in Indian brothels, and thousands taken by sale, coercion or force from Nepal, Myanmar and other countries - among them are girls as young as 10 years old - Sen's omission is highly problematic. Indeed, in terms of some of India's gravest gender inequalities, Sen's scholarly article really says hardly anything.

The United States perhaps leads the world in various forms of gender inequality, discrimination and violence against women. As in Japan, the "glass ceiling" prevails in the work place and restricts women's access to pivotal career opportunities.

Rape as a social institution prevails, particularly in the burgeoning prison industry - and is an epidemic problem for men as well - where thousands of women in numerous U.S. state and federal prisons are constantly subject to egregious coercive sexual violence and rape by their male captors.

Keith Harmon Snow

(An investigative journalist,
photographer and African scholar)
Williamsburg, Massachusetts.

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1826/18261050.htm


principal author of this joint GW and SRI report
Keith Harmon Snow

Crimes Against Humanity, Acts of Genocide and Ongoing Atrocities Against the Anuak People of Southwestern Ethiopia

A Genocide Watch and Survivors� Rights International Field Report

25 February 2004

http://traprockpeace.org/anuak_report_25feb04.doc

A. CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Crimes Against Humanity have been crimes under customary international law since at least 1945. Article 7 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court codifies them as follows:

1. For the purpose of this Statute, �crime against humanity� means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:

(a) Murder; (b) Extermination; (c) Enslavement; (d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population; (e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; (f) Torture; (g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity; (h) Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court; (i) Enforced disappearances of persons; (j) The crime of apartheid; (k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health�.

Crimes committed in violation of customary international law cannot be perpetrated against a civilian population, regardless of whether the State has ratified a particular convention or treaty. According to a current codification of customary international law (articulated in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the ICC), numerous acts constituting �crimes against humanity� have taken place.

The following acts reportedly committed by the EPRDF and Highlanders as part of the larger widespread and systematic attack against the civilian Anuak population, constitute crimes against humanity and are punishable as violations of customary international law:

1) Widespread and systematic murders and executions of Anuaks
2) Arson and murder in order to forcibly deport the Anuak population
3) Mass rape of Anuak women and girls
4) Forced pregnancy to produce non-Anuak children
5) Enforced disappearances of Anuak persons
6) Arbitrary arrests, detention and torture of Anuak persons
7) Purposeful transmission of HIV/AIDS to Anuak rape victims (inhumane acts)
8) Intentional mutilation of Anuak persons
9) Other cruel or inhumane acts intentionally causing great suffering or bodily harm.

B. GENOCIDE

According to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), Article II, genocid

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. seemslikeadream has certainly shown there's a lot of illegal arms trading

into the African continent as a whole; and, in post #8, to Sudan in particluar. I agree that without this there'd be a lot less killing.

But this doesn't prove or disprove the involvement of foreign governments. The links written by Lyndon Larouche's supporters are pretty worthless (as is the critique written by ESPAC - David Hoile has a nasty background in the far right wing of the UK, and connections to various oppressive African governments, and has been funded by the Sudanese government). Apart from them, I haven't seen anything in this thread that says there's undercover interference by countries outside Sudan. I have seen elsewhere articles that say the government of Chad may be encouraging the Darfur rebels - I don't know how much to believe that yet.

Of course, with so much information in the thread about the Congo, I may have missed the interesting bit about Sudan.

[papau]

9. We had a peace in Sudan - and lost it under Bush - why?

Did Bush turn over all of our foreign policy to oil companies who just did not care about human rights?

Granted other conflicts in Africa were ignored by Clinton - and continue to be ignored by Bush.

I am just curious as to how we lost the peace in Darfur.

At the moment the French Gov and NGO's are stepping in via Chad to prevent it getting extremely worse.

But This sure looks like Bush incompetence - this was not that big a deal as far as conflicts go - to let it get to this point shows a huge inability by Bush and company to do their job.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. I don't really think that Bush is to blame here

The oil companies are interested in the south. A peace agreement has been reached in the south (during Bush's term, but I'm not sure how much influence the USA had) - which is good for the oil companies, since it will allow oil to flow more easily.

Some say that the rebellion in Darfur started because some there wanted more of the benefits that the country might get from the oil than the Sudanese government were going to give them; there appears to have been contact between the SPLA in the south and the SLA in Darfur. Others say that is was because of everyday oppression by the government. Some also say that countries, including the USA, were unwilling to put pressure of the Sudanese government to stop the killing in Darfur in case they withdrew from the southern peace agreement.

But Bush was not trying to control the whole country. To blame it all on him seems unfair. Since March at least, the USA has done more than other countries to try to stop the killing, in the UN.

[papau]

14. "unwilling to put pressure of the Sudanese" in order to save oil in South

is my read.

Now I am glad the Islam versus Christain war is (almost) over, even if the reason is the need for peace for oil developement.

But I have to believe there was no reason for the Black vs Brown muslim to get more out of hand than it had in the past.

I agree we are finally on track - the 30 day before sanctions resolution was an excellent one.

But I still see the lack of Bush administration attention because of the sole focus on Iraq as a contributor to the mess.

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. I'd say lack of world attention

and the USA, as the largest economy in the world, does have the largest responsibility for funding the UN, and in some ways for running it. Perhaps Iraq did distract the US; perhaps Bush's bashing of the UN made it more difficult to get earlier action. But the primary blame has to be with the Sudanese; it's possible that this time the government thought it could get away with more because the USA's and world's attention was elsewhere, but you can also argue that it would be afraid of being added to the 'axis-of-evil' rhetoric, with Bush eager to beat up another weak Arab regime he's not too keen on, having got away with Iraq.

Unfortunately the point at which outside governments start intervening in countries is fuzzy - and I don't have any good suggestions for clearer definitions. This means that we only get serious about the intervention when something has already gone badly wrong. There's a peace prize wating for you if you can sort the system out.

[papau]

30. World 'must double food aid to Sudan' (but Sudan rejects 30 day deadline)

World 'must double food aid to Sudan' (but Sudan rejects 30 day deadline)


http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,14658,1274445,0...

World 'must double food aid to Sudan'

Agencies
Monday August 2, 2004

<snip>Outrage from Western governments and suggestions that Europe and the US could deploy troops have put pressure on Sudan's government, but it says it cannot meet the UN deadline to disarm the militias.

The foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, yesterday described the 30-day deadline as "illogical", and said his country would instead implement a 90-day programme earlier agreed to with the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan.

<snip>The Khartoum government and Sudan People's Liberation Army signed a ceasefire in October 2002, but the Institute for Security Studies said violence persisted in the Upper Nile and Shilluk regions, forcing tens of thousands of civilians to flee.

A formal peace deal ending 21 years of war - Africa's longest civil conflict - is expected later this year, but the ISS said Khartoum was intent on perpetuating instability in the south ahead of a six-year transitional period ending with a referendum on secession.<snip>

At stake are the south's newly tapped oil fields - claimed by the SPLA - which produce much of the 300,000 barrels a day that earn Sudan in excess of $3bn (�1.6bn) a year.<snip>

[papau]

31. I agree as to giving attention - but we gave enough attention under

Clinton

and it seems, not enough under Bush.

Indeed, the Sudan reads having oil as a get out of jail card with Bush - as they reject the 30 day demand in the UN resolution.

[reorg]

18. a question in the context of the US sending troops

Do you think the US should be left to do what it wants with the inhabitants of Iraq?

And, given the possible Chineses veto against a Security Council resolution in favor of military intervention:

Do you think the US should be left to do what it wants with the inhabitants of the Sudan?

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. No, the US shouldn't be left to do whatever it wants in Iraq

or in Sudan. But it does have the right to try to get international action, when a government is seriously mistreating its subjects. The action may include sanctions; in the case where large numbers of people are being killed, it may include armed force.

Numbers do make a difference here; both the number of people dying (you can't justify an invasion because of one person killed, however unjustly - the invasion would kill a lot more), and the number of countries who agree that action is needed.

It's very difficult to come up with hard and fast rules about what should be done (and notice that most politicians are shying away from calling this 'genocide', precisely because that would mean they're obliged to act).

But in Darfur, Human Rights Watch and others seem pretty clear that the Sudanese government has encouraged, and sometimes taken part in, the killing, and it's difficult to see why they'd suddenly stop without the threat of at least sanctions. It's possible they couldn't stop the violence now anyway - so it may be better to have some armed forces from somewhere that can. The more multinational that force is, the less chance of it being, or seeming, a grab for power by one country.

With the general humanitarian needs there too, which are worsened by the fighting, the need for action is more urgent. For once, Bush seems like part of the solution, not the problem.

[seemslikeadream]

15. Why can't Bush maintain the Darfur 1999 peace agreement?

The large number of illegal arms in Sudan stands in the way to a lasting peace solution.

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. Thank you

a model of a succinct posting.

Europe, the USA and China need to stop manufacturing so many arms for use around the world. It's an awful use of industry that could be producing useful items instead.

[seemslikeadream]

24. I appreciate your thank you but my opinion means nothing without facts

I've posted all my research, 89 links, I believe, to support my conclusion. You have choosen twice to pick two out of 89 links to discredit, so be it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

26. I also picked another one to discredit

since it was actually a direct rebuttal, by an unsavoury character, of another of your links. This is one of the reasons why your plethora of links are confusing - you can post, without comment, directly opposing views.

Most of your 89 links aren't anything to do with Sudan either - which doesn't help the discussion.

[seemslikeadream]

27. So you're up to 3 now

Thanks for keeping me honest. Sudan does not live in a vacuum.

Sanctions worked really well in Iraq didn't they?

[seemslikeadream]

25. And it's just not illegal arms sales

There's plenty of mercenaries to help out also

The Dogs of War
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=9558&mesg_id=9558

[seemslikeadream]

28. Facts

International arms trade $800 billion annually - largest business in the world.


Twice the second placed - illegal sale of drugs $400 billion a year


82 armed conflicts between 1989-1999 - 79 took place within national borders - arms not needed for self defense.


Reality is most arms are used on ordinary people by forces in the government or close to it.


159 wars fought since WWII - 9 out of 10 in developing world - more than 20 million people - were civilians.


War brings starvation - Biafra, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Chad, Sudan, Liberia and Somalia.


Until there is a radical reassessment of the arms trade and its consequences, millions more will be directly or indirectly killed by this lethal business.


The bottom line is that there is a lot of money to be made in weapons, and this motivates arms manufacturing.


To add to high profit margins, all arms manufactures are heavily subsidised and protected by their governments.


Free trade agreements - nearly always exempt from military spending


Industrialised countries will always be able to subsidise their corporations through defense contracts and grants for weapons research.



Sending troops will not solve this problem.

[Name removed]

29. Deleted message

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